“Attractive Unity”: A minimum goal towards the New Sudan

By John G Nyuot Yoh*

August 23, 2007 — During the past couple of years, Sudanese and non
Sudanese academics, intellectuals and politicians have
been engaged in intense debates dealing with different
aspects of the Comprehensive Peace agreement (CPA),
which was signed in January 2005 between the Sudan
People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) and the National
Congress Party (NCP), a document which brought to halt
the long running conflict in Africa between north and
south Sudan. The main features of the agreement
include granting the right of self-determination to
the people of Southern Sudan, working to promote and
cement an attractive unity for Southern Sudanese
during the six year interim period and to establish a
united democratic secular Sudan through a country wide
transparent and inclusive electoral exercise.

The agreement has created ‘one state-two systems’ in
Sudan, a model which is unique in its features, and
can only be compared in part to the Hong Kong-mainland
China model. The challenging task of
operationalisation and sustaining this system lies in
that, it has generated serious debates and has put the
Sudanese elites, as Wathig Kamier put it in his recent
master-thought provoking piece on the topic, into a
difficult task of transcending and transforming the
‘one country-two systems” model into “one-country-one
system”, a goal which is a vital condition for
maintaining the country’s unity. Secondly, the role of
the SPLM, in collaboration with other political forces
in the country, in bringing about and leading the
transformation.

In terms of the Naivasha consensuses, the use of the
term “attractive unity” was meant to argue that having
failed to convince the Islamists in Sudan during the
Naivasha negotiations (2002-2005) to separate state
affairs from religious politics, there is a need to
create unity on new bases in Sudan.

It is therefore imperative that in order to
contextualise the concept of “making unity
attractive”, its real meaning must transcend the
life-span of the CPA, which is six years. It must mean
more than the two words- “unity and attractive”, which
is, indeed much deeper than what it is often believed
to be.

In the context of the CPA therefore, understanding the
true meaning of “attractive unity” must be informed by
the following realities in Sudan:

Firstly, from historical perspective, the type of the
socio-economic and political systems that existed in
Sudan prior to CPA era was unattractive and not
suitable to attract the marginalized and others who
did not accept the Islamic-Arabist systems in the
country. Because of unattractiveness nature of that
unity, three brutal wars were fought between the
centre and the South in particular (1955-1972),
(1975-1983) and (1983-2005).

Secondly, the marginalized people who chose to resist
the marginalisation politics of the centre, as
exercised by the riverine Jallaba elites, during the
past decades, which was manifested in terms of
segregated socio-economic and political
underdevelopment and exclusion, did not only include
the dissatisfied from Southern Sudan, but also the
Beja, Nuba, Angessena, Darfurians, Kordufanians and
others from other regions of Sudan who believe that
the unity which was created in January 1956 was not
attractive to them due to its discriminatory nature.
Some therefore argue that, the January 2005 attempt
through the Naivasha consensus to make unity
attractive on new bases, ought to be looked at as a
point of departure to right direction, not only to
Southern Sudanese, but also to others who refused to
accept the old dispensation, and are not willing to
join the old Sudan unity, unless its attractiveness
has become tangible and inclusive.

Thirdly, attractive unity is a desire of all the
Sudanese who are in tune with inevitability of
progressive-sustainable transformation in Sudan. A
good example of this desire is expressed in contents
of all the agreements which were signed by the
National Congress Party (NCP) (imposing itself as the
de-facto center of power in the country) with
marginalized and opposition groups in Naivasha, Abuja,
Cairo and Asmara. In all these agreements, the parties
accepted the principle of making unity attractive to
or what is referred to by some as ‘voluntary unity’ to
the Sudanese who are dissatisfied with the status quo.
This new way of thinking, one must admit, is a
paradigm shift both in content and in spirit from the
old Sudan way of thinking, meaning that the
progressive forces in Sudan such as the Sudan People’s
Liberation Movement (SPLM), which pioneered this way
of looking at things, are urging every Sudanese to
move away from the old Sudan to a new dispensation. In
fact, some of the key concepts in these agreements
include: decentralized democratic transformation,
citizenship, multi-cultural, equitable share of power
and wealth between the center and the regions, respect
of human rights and the exercise of
self-determination.

Fourthly, the Naivasha process, which resulted in
Abuja, Cairo and Asmara consensuses has interpreted
‘making unity attractive’ in short and long term
perspectives. For example, for Southern Sudanese who
believe that the “political north” have not been
willing and successful in making unity attractive for
the past five decades, and are not expecting it to do
so within six years of the interim period, attractive
unity to them would mean a short term kind of ‘wait
and see’ attitude until July 2011 when they will have
voted in an internationally supervised referendum to
choose whether to remain part of the confederation as
it is to day, or opt for an independent state of their
own. In other words, they are saying if the “north”
(including NCP), failed to provide the incentives and
the dividends for making unity attractive during the
interim period, such a unity will be unattractive to
many of them.

Fifthly, it would be equally unfair to suggest that
the Sudanese progressive forces such as the SPLM, the
Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM), the Sudan Communist
Party (SCP) and other progressive groups in the
country, would look at attractive unity from a merely
short term perspective and indeed, one would be doing
injustice to the CPA which has contextualised the
attractive unity as a framework and road map for
genuine long term- progressive change and
transformation in Sudan. In terms of the CPA
interpretation, making unity attractive is a long term
perspective, which means creating a New Sudan on new
bases, within, but also beyond the Naivasha
consensuses and its time frames, to attract all those
who have rebelled against the old dispensation. It is
true that some of these frameworks are unrealistic,
ambitious, and short-term in out look and require
substantive good will from the parties to implement
them. In other words, the CPA urges Sudanese to adopt
new mind shift, and adopt philosophical and long term
ideological process of transforming the Sudan into
either new attractive nation for all those who have
despised the old constitutional and social contracts;
opt for confederal arrangements between the centre and
the regions, as the CPA has created or the country
will disintegrated into small unstable independent
entities, some of which will not be sustainable.

Sixthly, it should be emphasised that even if the
South chooses to secede in July 2011, it should not
necessarily mean that the rest of the marginalized
forces, who advocate the New Sudan ideology, will give
up the struggle for making unity attractive. This is
because it is no longer the South that needs
attractive unity, but all those who have been
disadvantaged by the old system, who are nowadays the
pioneers of the new attractive secular united Sudan.
The New Sudanese are the Sudanese who daily join the
ranks of the SPLM in different parts of the north,
south, east, west and centre. These are those who are
convinced that the underdevelopment of the Sudanese
socio-political consciousness lies in the refusal by
the riverine elites and the religious zealots of the
Islamic political parties to accept that Sudan is what
it is and every citizen must accept its diversity as
it is. However the good news is that, in the long run,
even the South, which might choose to secede in 2011,
may revise its conditional-secessionist option at
later stage, if the attractive unity they have been
fighting to achieve since June 1947, become a reality
in the remaining parts of the country. Thus,
attractive unity, as espoused by those who believe in
it, is regarded as the essence of the progressive
forces’ revolutionary struggle in Sudan, and means
revising and applying new long term perspectives to
the manner in which Sudanese have been relating to
themselves, their institutional and national
socio-economic frameworks.

To the New Sudanese therefore, advocating for an
attractive unity is an expression by the marginalized
of their rejection of policies of marginalisation,
discrimination, religious fanaticism, and all forms of
underdevelopment policies. But it also means that the
current coalition of anti-change, anti-attractive
unity and anti-transformation in the centre (who are
guising under the ‘jama al-saf al-watani’- ‘uniting
national ranks’, an initiative by former President
Sawar Al-Dahab), which has been the beneficiary of the
old system, must be held responsible to make unity
attractive and it must be forced to have every reason
to be worried if it does not take steps to that
effect. This is because the rest of the country, the
south, far north, east, west, Kordufan, Nuba Mountains
and Blue Nile are saying they are not attracted to the
current unity paradigm and are determined to replace
it through democratic process by the national
progressive alliance, if the old Sudan ruling elites
do not succumb to the ongoing wave of transformation.

On the other hand, making unity attractive has to be
understood to mean opening up political space, not
only in the federal centre through transparent
participation of the Sudanese in all aspects of
political, social and economic life in the country,
but also opening up political space in the South,
where the SPLM, the guardian of transformation in the
country is in power. The SPLM elites are currently in
power both in the north and in the south, and have
instituted, what can be regarded as a transparent
political system in the south, where the federal
nature of the government, as stipulated in the two
interim constitutions in Khartoum and Juba, is
reflective of some of the expirations of the people of
the New Sudan. The first burden the SPLM has to carry,
is to build itself as a formidable political party,
with strong political structures which can withstand
socio-economic pressures from the regions (states) and
nationalities that form the South. It is imperative
therefore that the unity within the South and among
the Southern regions and nationalities must be
attractive, otherwise, whether the South remains part
of the current confederal Sudan or becomes a separate
independent state, the type of the unity its
leadership will have achieved must be attractive to
all those who live in Southern Sudan, otherwise, new
complains about marginalisation will resurface in the
South. This is the first burden of being a new
Sudanese.

The second burden the SPLM is likely to carry, is the
burden of protection of the CPA. The Anya-Anya
leadership was trapped in the 1970s by General Numieri
and the Northern political parties into becoming the
sole guardian of the Addis Ababa Agreement. The
northern political parties were all against the Addis
Ababa Accord, and did everything to trap Numeiri into
giving up its alliance with Southerners. All the
military coups that were staged against Numeiri’s
regime during the period between 1974 and 1982 were
repelled and quelled down by Southern Sudanese
soldiers who were made to believe that they were
protecting the Addis Ababa Agreement and the unity of
the country. In fact, Numieri May regime’s strategists
made it a point to blackmail the South in every way
they could. Unity of the country was linked to South’s
acceptance of its guardian role in making the unity
attractive. The 3rd March of every year was celebrated
as a Unity Day, not in the whole country, but only in
the South. When Numeiri and his lieutenants got
convinced that the opposition and the pressures
against the Addis Ababa Agreement have reached the
peak from the Umma National Party of Sadig Al-Mahdi,
Democratic Unionist Party of late Sherif Al-Hindi, the
National Islamic Front of Dr Hassan Al-Turabi, the
Sudan Communist Party of Mohamed Ibrahim Nugud, the
Sudan National Party of Father Philip Abbas Ghaboush
and other opposition political parties, Numeiri signed
the famous “National Pact” agreement with these
parties in 1977, hence turning his back to the South
and the Addis Ababa Accord.

As a result of the “National Pact”, the Islamist
parties in Sudan allied themselves with Numeiri and
successfully abrogated the Addis Ababa Agreement.
Today, we see the same scenario repeating itself, in
the form of the “uniting national ranks” an initiative
by General Sawar Al-Dahab, a well-known Sudanese
elder, who was once a Defense Minister of General
Numeiri’s regime. General Sawar Al-Dahab and Dr Jazuli
Dafalah, both members of the National Islamic Front,
led the interim government, following the popular up
raising against Numeiri regime, between 1985 and 1986,
which later on paved the way for election of the
“National Pact” signatories into power in June 1986.
The burden of the Addis Ababa Agreement was carried by
Southern Sudanese leaders, who themselves, as
represented then by Joseph Lagu and Abel Alier, became
the victims of their attempts to carry the burden of
making unity attractive between the north and South
and indeed their attempts to force Numeiri to
implement the Agreement also were frustrated. Will the
SPLM and its leadership become the victims of the
burden of the CPA? The repeat of the 1977 is in the
making, and unless the SPLM/A made the price of not
implementing the CPA by the NCP and the northern
political parties higher than the price of
implementing it, the SPLM may find itself confronted
by the “New National Pact” coalition in 2009, when
general national elections are conducted. This is
because El-Bashir, El-Mahdi, El-Mirghani, El-Turabi
and Nugud have already bought into General Sawar
El-Dahab’s initiative. These leaders did actually meet
and were paraded on Omdurman TV recently, a typical
show of solidarity against the CPA. The question is
what is plan B for the SPLM leadership as the
“National Pact II” moves on to destroy the CPA?

In the final analysis, moving away from ‘one-state-two
systems’ to “one state-one system” requires that the
attractive unity paradigm must be seen as a natural
outcome of the Naivasha consensuses, in which every
political force in Sudan, should accept the new
dispensation as an irreversible natural course of
creating a new united Sudan or a second republic as
some would prefer to call it.

Indeed, some argue that the south will secede, if it
does, as a result of historical accumulative
resistance of change and transformation by the centre
and the traditional-Islamist political forces and not
because the NCP or the sectarian parties did not make
unity attractive during the interim period (2005-2011)
through physical development.

Thus, making unity attractive is a statement of faith
by all the progressive forces in the country and acts
as a political manifesto for attaining their future
goals-namely, creating a united democratic, secular
new Sudan, which is voluntarily joined and accepted by
all those who believe in it. The role of the SPLM as
the pioneer advocate for the creation of New Sudan is
imperative, but the ownership of the transformation
process, which may take another five decades or more,
must transcend the pioneering role of a single
political force.

* John Yoh teaches political science at the Department
of Political Science, University of South Africa in
Pretoria