110 Raphael K.

Badal

THE DEBATE

The debate and controversy over the “re-division” proposal lasted for
well over two and a half years. Launched in February 1981 the
debate continued unabated until the former Southern Region was
dismantled by a Presidential Decree in June 1983. The opposing
camps each attempted to give their particular viewpoint intellectual
credence and respectability. The debate had only one primary
objective: to persuade the general public and to win the support of
President Nimeiri in Khartoum. The actual task of disputation
consisted in either pointing out the beneficial effects of re-division or
its obnoxious fall-outs. In the latter case there was constant appeal to
emotions and nationalist sentiments. Thus while the opponents assumed a
nationalist posture and barely made allusions to ethnic domination,
for the propounders ethnic hegemony was the crux of the matter.
To the divisionists the unity of the South was anathema; to the antis,
the unity and solidarity of the South was more or less sacrosanct and
the call for re-division of the South was tantamount to high treason.
The venues of the debate were mostly public and academic fora
such as National and Regional assemblies, the University campuses of
Juba and Khartoum and the media. However, the most telling part
of the whole exercise was contained in secret and confidential
petitions and correspondences to President Nimeiri himself.
It has not always been easy to disentangle the rather confused,
contradictory and sometimes facile arguments advanced by the pro-
division lobby. This picture contrasts sharply with that of their
adversaries who presented a rather well-argued and coherent position. In
the pages that follow the reader is served summaries of argued
positions rather than a dialectical discourse or point-by-point
refutations of opposing views. The re-division debate has been such a
bitter, acrimonious and divisive matter that Southern opinions are easily
polarized into pros and cons.

Arguments against re-division

The arguments advanced against the re-division may be broken down

into five broad categories:

(i) Economic viability

(ii) Instigation and fanning of “tribalism”
(iii) Balkanization of the South
(iv) Destruction of the special autonomous status of the South
(v) Constitutionality

The first point is so obvious that it does not require much

elaboration. It simply states Sudan’s economy was an ailing and
shrinking economy so that reasons of economy and financial
constraints militated against a regional