A perspective on African socialism
“Any group that want to hold power in Sudan must have a policy of economic self-reliance based upon provision of the basic human needs of its people. Any effective economic policy must be based upon the rural areas where most of the people live. …….. [SPLM’s socialist ideology]…………. cannot be determined mechanically and equated with Communism as Numeiri would like the Western World to believe. The concretisation and particularisation of socialism in the Sudan shall unfold as the armed struggle and as socio-economic development programmes are implemented during and after the war and according to Sudanese local and objective conditions”.
Dr. John Garang de Mabior
1. Introduction
The key to understanding and somehow predicting the direction into which any emerging state is heading to economically and politically is by studying its social structure, economic structure and activities. To analyse Southern Sudan’s social structure and economic activities, and the SPLM’s economic policies; understanding the conflict in the Sudan not only in political terms but also economically and its underlying causes is paramount and enables one to assess economic potential of Southern Sudan as an emerging state.
As Ann Mosely Lesch noted
“…… Sudan is the largest country in Africa, covering a million square miles. It is a land of extraordinary diversity, and analysts classify its twenty-six million (over 35 million now) residents among more than fifty ethnic groups, which they subdivide into at least 570 distinct peoples. The largest groups are self-defined (in descending order) as Arab, Dinka, Beja, Nuer, Nuba, Nubian, Fur, Bari, Azande, Moru, and Shilluk.
…………..40 percent of the population identifies itself as Arab, the actual meaning of the term remains ambiguous. A generally accepted definition would include peoples who speak the Arabic language and claim to have originated in Arabia, even though that genealogy is largely fictional. Many indigenous peoples call themselves Arab since, over the centuries, they adopted the Arabic language, customs, and Islam. In that sense, most Arabs in the Sudan are really Arabized Nubians, Dinka, Nuba, Shilluk, Fur, or Beja. Moreover, Arabs are not homogeneous socially: some have nomadic origins and others are based on riverine villages. Even among those categories, there is considerable diversity, which urbanization, labour migration, and long-distance trade patterns have magnified over hundreds of years.
Nonetheless, Muslim Arabs from the Nile Valley have dominated the political, economic, and cultural life of the Sudan. They hold the main government posts in the capital city, the majority of seats in all the parliaments, and the senior positions in the armed forces. They lead the educational institutions, trade unions, industries, and businesses. As the largest and most centrally located ethnic group, Arabs wield a disproportionate influence over policy-making and over the cultural identity of the country. It is not surprising that they have, therefore, tried to shape the identity of the country in their own image: Arab culturally and Muslim in its religion.”
To paraphrase Dr. Peter Adwok, there is a false belief in the North that professing Islamic religion, culture and speaking Arabic language, tantamounts one to be an Arab and hence superior to a Southerner, but the wars in Darfur and Eastern Sudan have already shattered the myth and falsehood that northern Sudan is homogeneously Islamic and Arab. SPLM’s official ideology is that it is fighting for a New Sudan that would be more representative of all marginalised people of the Sudan which is according to Dr. Adwok “social and cultural emancipation, political independence, economic vibrancy and unity of [all Sudanese] people”.
Forthrightly, Sudan is an artificially enforced union of different regions and unequal ethnic groups politically and economically and sets one ethnic minority namely the Arabs, above other ethnic groups. It is regionally and ethnically differentiated country, where people and communities have been identified as Sudanese only by virtue of orientation to and control by the government. The South does not share any significant elements of a common value system and economic ties with the North.
The British during the Anglo-Egyptian condominium rule in Sudan practised the so-called ‘Southern policy’. During that era, Southern Sudan’s remote and undeveloped provinces of Equatoria, Bahr el Ghazal, and the Upper Nile received little official attention until the end of the First World War. The only exception was in the efforts to suppress tribal warfare and the slave trade. The British later on justified this policy by claiming that the South was not ready for exposure to the modern world! Whatever that meant Lord knows.
To allow the South to develop along indigenous lines, the British, therefore, closed the region to outsiders except, the missionaries. This policy was introduced secretly in 1930 to isolate the south culturally and linguistically from the North. The British focused on developing the economy and infrastructure of the North. Southern political arrangements, plus the economy and infrastructure were left largely as they had been prior to the arrival of colonialist. As a result, the South remained isolated and backwards.
In 1943, the British began preparing the North for self-rule however in 1946 the colonial authority reversed its policy on South and decided to integrate Northern and Southern Sudan under one government. It was not until the 1947 Juba conference that Southerners were informed; and as if all these betrayals were not enough, everything was handed over to the Northern minority and handled by the Northern minority leading up to the independence. Southerners were not represented at various conferences that led to the independence and establishment of the so call Sudan. Furthermore, Southern Sudan was under represented in the government that was formed; for example out of the 800 positions vacated by the British in 1953, only 4 were given to Southerners.
Towards the independence and under the provisional constitution, Arab-led Khartoum government was supposed to establish a federal system that would have granted self-rule to the Southerners but it reneged on its promises. When Southerners tabled their grievances, they were not heeded and war erupted on the 18th of August 1955 and thus the iniquitous term
Therefore, due to imposition of an artificial union on different ethnic groups without ensuring their equality by the colonialist and also due to a very aggressive and accelerated rates and attempts to Arabise and Islamise Southerners by post-colonial Arab regimes, Sudan has continually sunk into a dark abyss of conflict and instability; and if this artificial compartmentalisation is upheld by the NCP and SPLM, without ensuring equality of all ethnic groups in Sudan, the eventual demise of a united Sudan has a very high probability.
2. SPLM and African Socialism
The question over the conflict in Sudan is very complex when viewed from a different perspective. The composite nature of the war in Sudan arises because the war in Sudan is not just a class struggle but rather a class struggle that is profoundly underpinned by a conflict of identity. Sudan is at the clashing point of two different cultural nationalisms – Arabism and Pan-Africanism.
While Khartoum regimes have been fluctuating between radical and secular Islam, some past regimes such as Nimeiri’s can be identified with specific form of Pan-Arabist ideology, namely; Nasserism – i.e. revolutionary Arab nationalism and Pan-Arab ideology. Other Khartoum regimes can be identified with general nationalistic ideology of Arabism. The present regime’s ideology (Fundamental expansionist Arabism/Islamism) however characteristically evil and radical, is indigenously Sudanese and was almost single handed created by Dr. Hassan Abdhalla El-Turabi.
The founding fathers of Southern Sudanese nationalism, the likes of retired General Joseph Lagu, the Late William Deng Nhial and later SPLM/A founders and ideologue, especially the Late Lieutenant General Dr. John Garang de Mabior were Pan-Africanists. Garang had a profound belief that, Sudan is a homeland for all Sudanese – whether from South, or North, East or West - whose dignity, freedom and Unity – Uhuru Na Ujamaa – is our sacred duty to struggle, uphold and glorify.
The philosophical underlying notion of Pan-Africanism is that all peoples of African descent whether they live in north or South America, the Caribbean or in any other part of the world are Africans and belong to the African Nation or rather the continent – the motherland, the cradle of mankind and humanity.
The SPLM, in its manifesto, ‘The SPLM Manifesto’ released on the 31st of July in 1983, explicitly states that “the principle objective of SPLM/A is not separation for the South. The South is an integral and inseparable part of the Sudan.................” Whether the South is inseparable part of the Sudan is questionable and beyond scope and needs to be explored further. However, the SPLM, and Dr. Garang personally later went on to clarify and justify this statement by saying that the movement was fighting a war of liberation from socio-economic inequalities and marginalisation and thus the SPLM’s saying, ‘the question is not, liberation from who, but rather the main question is liberation from what?’ Therefore in essence, SPLM’s ideological objective is socio-economic betterment and political development of the whole of Sudan and the balance of power within Sudan by creation of a New Sudan through social, political and economic liberation and development of the marginalised peoples of the Sudan and that is African socialism and not Marxism/Leninism.
In addition, the SPLM although a pragmatic socialist movement, is first and foremost nationalist and secondly socialist. Since its inception in 1983, SPLM has consistently dismissed the notion that unity, equality, progress, justice, and freedom of the whole country should be subordinated to independence of the South and or the single-minded pursuit of prosperity through economic liberalisation and structural adjustment of the Sudan. The SPLM recognised along time ago that the ills of Mother Africa and political instabilities stem mainly from colonial and neo-colonial ideologies that have lost the vision of love of the neighbour and introduced the wanton pursuit of private interests at the expense of communal well-being, in other words, the introduction of Capitalism into Africa. “A synoptic view of the African political landscape reveals astounding reality of conflicts, civil wars, famine, preventable diseases, and many other epidemics. Fifty years of flag independence [and] most African countries [still] find themselves in fiscal deficit which must be covered by donors – a sad reminder that it is ‘not yet uhuru’” to quote Dr. Adwok.
The socialist regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam in Ethiopia undoubtedly had some ideological influence on SPLM, however the founding father of the movement can be deemed to have been influenced by the political activities in Africa before and up to and even after the inception of the movement in 1983. SPLM’s affiliation with the Mengistu’s regime was purely an axis of convenience, as were its affiliations with the anti-Nimeiri Libyan regime and other Arab governments, and should not be misconstrued to suggest that the former had a Marxist/Leninist philosophy.
The biggest influences on SPLM/A were independence movements and wars such as those that were being executed by Samora Machel’s FRELIMO in Mozambique, Robert Mugabe’s ZANU/PF in Zimbabwe, Sam Nujoma’s SWAPO in Namibia, etc; and the school of thought at that time (African Socialism) spearheaded by the likes of Mwalimu Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, Amilcar Cabral and Mzee Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya just to mention few.
Dr. Garang, on Radio SPLA on the 15th of August 1989, in the second half of his speech of the 14th of August 1989, clearly outlined the socio-economic policy of the SPLM by stating that “any group that want to hold power in Sudan must have a policy of economic self-reliance based upon provision of the basic human needs of its people. Any effective economic policy must be based upon the rural areas where most of the people live”.
In African socialism social investment and creation of a culturally cohesive nation (thus avoiding ethnic conflict) is emphasised and tremendous faith is put in rural African people and their traditional values and ways of life. Note here that the word African is meant to convey the African root of the system i.e. unique and indigenous to Africa. African socialist like the late Mwalimu believed that life should be structured around the traditional African values and way of life. He believed that in these traditional villages, a socialist structure and the underlying principle of socialism namely, socio-economic equality (uniquely and indigenously African) had existed long before the arrival of the imperialists and even before Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels were born.
Affiliation with the Soviet Union was an axis of convenience for majority of African Nations during the struggle for independence and following the post-colonial era, which has largely been misinterpreted and suggested that African Nations had a Marxist/Leninist philosophy. During the struggle for independence and following independence most political organisations in Africa were and are nationalist dedicated to pragmatic solutions to Africa's political, economic and social problems and therefore the war in Sudan especially in the South was a communal action brought about by communal intention in a state of moral togetherness that is, it was and is a “struggle for restoration of our dignity, freedom and liberation of our land and people” (Dr. John Garang de Mabior, 1st National Convention April 1994).
