The Southern Sudan in Historical Perspective by Robert O. Collins

Author:Robert O. Collins [Collins, Robert O.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General, Africa
ISBN: 9781351473583
Google: XJsuDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-07-28T04:59:50+00:00

The Politics of Conflict the Southern Sudan 1955-1972

The Disturbances of 1955

On the brilliant sunlit morning of August 18, 1955, No. 2 Company of the Equatorial Corps was drawn up on the parade ground at Torit in preparation to board trucks for Juba and to proceed by steamer to Khartoum. The troops were apprehensive, for rumors had been circulating that the transfer to Khartoum was a plot to murder them. When the command was given to enter the trucks, No. 1 platoon refused to move and suddenly the whole company rushed to the ammunition stores, armed themselves, and then rampaged through the town killing Northerners and looting Northern shops. News of the mutiny spread rapidly throughout the South and in the villages and towns of Equatoria. Northerners were hunted down and killed. Before the uprising had ended 261 Northerners and 75 Southerners had lost their lives. The spiral of violence had once again begun.

Although the mutineers had devised a plan of assault on Jūba whereby a force under Albino Tombe was to attack from the east while elements of the Equatorial Battalion stationed at Yei and Yambio were to advance from the west under 'Alī Gbatala, they failed to rally the troops or coordinate their activities so that the rebellion died as the mutineers disappeared into the bush. Clearly, the South had become ripe for revolution. Northern politicians and officials had committed a host of insensitive blunders. Administrative duties had been neglected, local Southern officials were bullied and badgered, and a Southern member of parliament was arbitrarily and illegally imprisoned. The central government in Khartoum did little to ease the mounting tension and only exacerbated Southern sensibilities by threatening over radio and press those Southerners who criticized the government. When three hundred Southern workers in the Zande Scheme had been summarily dismissed in July 1955, the precipitate action was regarded as a "deliberate attempt by the management (which is Northern) to deprive Southerners of a livelihood and bring in Northerners instead".36 Neither understanding nor sympathy was wasted on the unemployed Southern workers in the scheme, and when they demonstrated against the dismissals, they were shot down by the army and the police. This was the decisive event, for the Southerners regarded the incident "as the beginning of a war; and if there was some confidence left in the administration it then disappeared completely".37

Although these blunders disillusioned the Southerners and provided the immediate reason for the uprising, the fundamental cause of the rebellion belongs to history. Long accustomed to the impeccable justice of paternal British administrators, the Southern Sudanese could hardly adapt themselves to the rough and tumble politics of the emerging Sudan. The Northerner was still a symbol of fear and hostility, and although his predatory habits displayed in the nineteenth century had been modified by British rule in the twentieth, the earlier restrictions against intercourse between the two Sudans prevented neither the North nor the South from understanding the changes undergone during British rule. Even after the abandonment of Southern

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