Political Cleavages within the Southern Sudan

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Provinces: Upper Nile and Equatoria, with their capitals at Malakal and
Juba. In a sense, Bahr el Ghazal and its capital Wau were reduced to
the statuses of a sub-province and a sub-provincial headquarters. In
1948 Bahr el Ghazal was detached from greater Equatoria and the
South reverted to the pattern of three provinces with corresponding
capital towns at Malakal, Wau and Juba respectively. The picture
remained the same until Independence Day on January 1, 1956. At
the Round Table Conference and during the deliberations of the 12-
man Committee the one point upon which the Southern Sudanese
delegations were in agreement was that the South, whether as
autonomous region or a federal state, should be reconstituted into one
administrative unit and the its capital be at Juba.1 The Northern
delegation was adamantly opposed to this proposal and this difference
was not resolved until the Addis Ababa agreement of 1972, which
stipulated that the three provinces of the South should constitute an
autonomous region with its capital at Juba. For one decade at least,
save for financial constraints, the South enjoyed a large degree of
autonomy. The first regional premier of the South, known as the
President of the High Executive Council, was Mr. Abel Alier a lawyer
and formerly Secretary General of the Southern Front. He came to
power in April 1972 and was succeeded seven years later on July 1st,
1978
By Joseph Lagu whose term of office lasted till July 7, 1980 when he
was replaced by Abel Alier. Abel’s return to power was short-lived
because of the re-division issue which terminated his term of office on
5th October 1981.
Gismalla Abdallah Rasas headed an interim administration for six
months, but the man who actually supervised the regional
administration was Mr. Joseph James Tambura, who was elected to
office in April 1982. The presidential decree No.1. o f June 1st, 1983
proclaimed the demise of the Addis Ababa agreement and annulment
of the autonomous status of the South.
The following pages will focus on the re-division debate prior to
the dissolution of Southern autonomy. The emotionally charged and
acrimonious debate aptly captures the political atmosphere in the
South at the time and exposes the divisions within the Southern
community. It is argued that, in an important respect, the current
political predicament of Sudan stems, in a large measure, from the
division of the South and the subsequent imposition of Islamic
sharia laws upon the whole country. The Sudan People’s Liberation
Army/Movement (SPLA/SPLM) are a direct result of these misguided
and misconceived policies. The participants in the debate, more
specifically the cons, had foreseen these developments and had
sounded a warning which was never heeded. Let us now turn to the
debate itself.

1
In this respect it is important to note that the late Joseph Garang, a
leading Southern Sudanese intellectual and a prominent member of the
Sudan Communist Party, had proposed Wau, rather than Juba, as the future
capital of the South.