The Sudan Handbook

210 thE sudan handbook

solution for the country. When the northern majority in parliament

decided that they had ‘considered’ federalism and had decided against

it, southern parliamentarians organized themselves around the federal

issue in the first post-independence elections in early 1958. Not only was

a large majority of pro-federalist southern MPs returned, but a number

of other MPs from other marginal areas – the east, the Nuba Mountains,

Darfur – began to warm to the idea. This is one of the reasons why the

military seized power in 1958, to save the country from ‘falling apart’.

The First Civil War

It was under the first military government of General Ibrahim Abboud

that the policy of building national unity around the twin principles of

Arabism and Islam was actively pursued. This affected not only the former

parliamentarians, but southern civil servants and students, who were the

most visible targets of Arabization and proselytization. Southern leaders

were arrested or went into exile, schools were closed and students, too,

faced the choice of arrest or flight. Many went into exile into neighbouring

countries following widespread school strikes in the south in 1962, while

others moved into the bush and joined up with the remnants of the 1955

mutineers. The exiles included former parliamentarians Joseph Oduho

and Fr. Saturnino Lohure, and the civil administrator William Deng, who

became prominent leaders in the political and armed struggle.

1962 saw the formation of the first exile political movement, the Sudan

African Closed District National Union (which later dropped the ‘Closed

District’ and became SANU), and 1963 saw the first organized military

activity of guerrilla units answering to the name of ‘Anyanya’ (poison,

or snake venom). It is from this time (1962–3) that the first civil war can

be said to have begun.

SANU petitioned both the UN and the fledgling OAU, putting forward

the case for self-determination for the south and warning the OAU,

in particular, against giving legitimacy to military dictatorships like

Abboud’s. With no external political support and no source of supply,

The Sudan Handbook, edited by John Ryle, Justin Willis, Suliman Baldo and Jok Madut Jok. © 2011 Rift Valley Institute and contributors guerrilla units in the field tended to operate independently of each other.

(www.riftvalley.net).