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Sudan and South Sudan: identity,citizenship, and democracy in pluralsocietiesChristopher Zambakariaa School of Political Science and International Studies, RotaryCentre for International Studies in Peace and Conflict Resolution,The University of Queensland, St. Lucia, Brisbane, 4072 QLD,AustraliaPublished online: 15 Dec 2014.

To cite this article: Christopher Zambakari (2015) Sudan and South Sudan: identity,citizenship, and democracy in plural societies, Citizenship Studies, 19:1, 69-82, DOI:10.1080/13621025.2015.988481

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13621025.2015.988481

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Sudan and South Sudan: identity, citizenship, and democracyin plural societies

Christopher Zambakari*

School of Political Science and International Studies, Rotary Centre for International Studiesin Peace and Conflict Resolution, The University of Queensland, St. Lucia, Brisbane,

4072 QLD, Australia

(Received 6 June 2013; final version received 25 April 2014)

This article discusses the institutional legacy of colonialism and how that has affectedcitizenship in Sudan and South Sudan. It argues that the colonial project made a legaldistinction, especially in how citizenship was defined. It outlines problems facingSudan and South Sudan and the challenges in managing a diverse population. It arguesthat a failure to build a democratic polity by resorting to ethnic federalism will dividethe country along ethnic lines and prevent the emergence of a truly inclusive nation.Finally, the article discusses an alternative solution to the political crisis facing bothSudan and South Sudan, namely citizenship and the establishment of an inclusiveframework to manage diverse populations within a unified nation. The articleconcludes with a discussion of the New Sudan Framework by situating it within thelarger debate on democratic nation-building while also discussing its alignment withregional and international law.

Keywords: Sudan/South Sudan; political violence; citizenship; nation-building;democracy; ethnicity; New Sudan Framework

Introduction

The Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), signed on 9 January 2005, brought an end to

the brutal civil wars (1955–1972; 1983–2005) that engulfed Sudan well before its

independence in 1956. It was the culmination of several years of negotiations that ended

the hostility between the National Congress Party and the Sudan People’s Liberation

Movement/Army (SPLM/A). The CPA created a new political dispensation and landscape

in South Sudan (Zambakari 2011). War between Sudan and South Sudan has been one of

Africa’s longest, deadliest, and most intractable conflicts over the last five decades. The

number of people who have died in the Sudanese civil wars has surpassed two-and-half

million (United Nations Missions in Sudan (UNMIS) 2011; Human Security Report

Project 2005, 128). There is an urgent need to understand what fuels and sustains this

violence. The proliferation of ethnic violence in postcolonial Africa, the death of millions

of people as a result of intra-state conflict raises the question of whether the emerging

Republic of South Sudan can be an exception in a region plagued by mass violence.

Without a good model for nation-building, violence will continue to disrupt and

destroy the lives of many civilians. This article reviews the crisis of citizenship throughout

Africa by focusing on Sudan and South Sudan. It argues that reform of the institutional

legacy of colonialism requires that the mode of rule used to colonize African countries, be

understood. It outlines the problem facing Sudan and South Sudan and the unavoidable

q 2014 Taylor & Francis

*Email: christopher.zambakari@uq.net.au

Citizenship Studies, 2015

Vol. 19, No. 1, 69–82, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13621025.2015.988481

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challenges inherent in managing a diverse population. It develops the New Sudan

Framework,1 an alternative model for building an inclusive state. Finally, it identifies

potential obstacles to the implementation of the New Sudan Framework in the two Sudans.

Sudan and South Sudan: identity, citizenship, and management of a plural society

Sudan has a historical relationship with the outside world including the Mediterranean,

Asia, and the Middle East, predating recorded history. During the Islamic era, Muslim

Arabs settling in Sudan chose to intermarry and assimilate rather than rely on conquest and

force. The rise to power of two Sultanates in the Southeast and Western Sudan, the

Kingdom of Funj and the Kingdom of Dar Fur, gave rise to demand for slave labor for the

state.

The political history of the Sultanate of Funj began in 1504 and that of Dar Fur in 1650.

Both Sultanates relied heavily on slaves from the south (O’Fahey 1973; Spaulding 2007;

Gallab 2011, 20). According to the Sudanese expert, Abdullahi Gallab, Sudan was ‘a

slave-producing and a slave-using society’ (Gallab 2011, 21) at the beginning of the

twentieth century. The already violent histories compounded by colonial conquest have

affected the Sudanese society in profound ways. The ancestors of the Arabs in Sudan today

included slaves captured in South Sudan (Mamdani 2011b). The contested identities of the

country, its pre-colonial legacies, colonial governmentality,2 and postcolonial failure to

build an inclusive, democratic nation from diverse nationalities have created the political

crisis of state in Sudan. The outcome has been a chronic instability, underdevelopment,

and marginalization of peripheral regions, and violence affecting millions of people.

In A Civil Society Deferred: the Tertiary Grip of Violence in the Sudan, Gallab,

analyzes the process of state formation in Sudan. He emphasizes the institutional legacies

of the late colonialism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and examines its

subsequent inheritance by various postcolonial governments. The outcome, he states, has

led to the emergence of a ‘centralized violent governing entity’ (Gallab 2011, 189) while

deferring or postponing the complete formation of the Sudanese civil society. By tracing

the evolution of structures and networks of power from ancient to modern time, Gallab

presents a compelling case of key historical forces that shaped modern Sudan: slavery,

colonialism, and postcolonial governmentality.

The Fordham University-based Sudanese scholar, Amir Idris, argues that the conflict

in Sudan is based on a racialized state’s attempt to impose a single identity through force

upon a multiethnic society: ‘an ideology of hierarchy, which assigned a subordinate status

for the people of southern Sudan was historically constructed and politically

institutionalized’ (Idris 2005, 4). Idris connects the history of slavery to that of state

formation and provides a historical analysis of the institutional legacy of colonialism that

takes into account pre-colonial slavery and postcolonial attempts, civil and military, to

build a nation through forceful Arabization and Islamization. He rejects the North/South,

African/Arab, and native/settler dichotomies as valid units of analysis in studying Sudan.

He writes that none makes sense because ‘the people of the North nor those of the South

constitute a distinct cultural and racial group with a distinct history that can be taken as an

object of inquiry’ (Idris 2012, 324). The conflict in Sudan is located within a longer history

of state formation that includes legacies of enslavement in the pre-colonial and colonial

period.

While violence continues in various regions in Sudan and in the Border States, South

Sudan continues to experience violence between and within communities. The period

between 2009 and 2012 has seen an escalation in the number of persons killed, wounded,

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abducted, forcefully displaced, and affected (Zambakari 2013). The five states bordering

Sudan are particularly more affected than the rest in South Sudan. This includes the states

of Warrap, Unity, Upper Nile, Jonglei, and Lakes. Collectively, these states accounted for

93.91% of deaths in South Sudan between 2009 and March 2012 (2013).

The questions that the two Sudans have to wrestle with are also faced by most African

countries. They must build a more inclusive political community that upholds unity in

diversity, maintains the rule of law, and practices democracy in governance. Sudan is one

of the most diverse countries in the world in terms of nationalities and languages spoken

(Lobban, Kramer, and Fluehr-Lobban 2013). Before the referendum on self-determination

in 2011, Sudan was Africa’s largest country (2013). It is home to three of Africa’s main

ethno-linguistic language families: Afro-Asiatic/Semitic/Cushitic, Niger-Congo/Bantu,

and Nilo-Saharan (including Nubian and Nilotic) (2013). Collectively, these diverse

groups represent 400–600 languages and sub-dialects (2013). The legacies of internal and

external migration, war, trade, intermarriage, slavery, and colonization have shaped the

political, social, and cultural fabric of Sudanese societies in the north and south (Gallab

2011, 12).

Today, South Sudan is one of the most diverse countries in East Africa. It covers an

area estimated to be 619,745 km2 (GOSS 2012). South Sudan in addition to the currently

Disputed Border Regions3 is approximately the size of Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, and

Burundi put together (De Mabior 2005). It has an estimated population of 8,260,490 (NBS

2010), and composed of 60 different nationalities (Kimenyi 2012, 17). In addition to

various clans and sub-clans, the number of nationalities rises to 90 (The House of

Nationalities 2011). These nationalities are not homogeneous. The most serious threat to

the new polity in South Sudan and its predecessor state, Sudan to the north, is by all

measure political violence. It ‘threatens to unravel the societal fabric. It poses an

existential threat to both states by destroying the human capital and arresting its infant

democracies’ (Zambakari 2013, 51). Akyaaba Addai-Sebo noted that when violence

erupts in a country, it signals that the centre can no longer hold. This calls for a reordering

of society and a new dispensation (Addai-Sebo 2011). Without reordering society to

accommodate the multiple nationalities within the nation, building a more inclusive

political community, violence will continue to be a response to the politics of exclusion,

worsened by lack of development. An understanding of this violence is the first step to

finding a more durable solution to the political crisis facing both states, Sudan and South

Sudan.

Colonialism and citizenship in Sudan

Discrimination and the politics of excluding entire segments of the population threaten the

foundation of any stable society. According to Bronwen Manby, senior advisor with the

Africa Governance Monitoring and Advocacy Project (AfriMAP), ‘exclusion and

discrimination sow seeds of political unrest, economic collapse and war’ (Manby 2011, 5).

She notes that:

The colonies were founded on a basis of racial and ethnic distinction that justified the gaps instandard of living and legal rights between rulers and ruled. On the one hand there wereEuropean settlers – who were full citizens with the same rights as their relatives who lived inthe “home” country of the colonizers; and on the other there were African “natives”(indigenes) – who were subjects. (Manby et al. 2009, 4)

In Southeastern and Western Sudan, this legal dualism led to a predictable outcome, racial

discrimination in urban areas and fragmentation of rural population into as many tribal

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homelands as there were tribes, each with a corresponding native authority (Mamdani

2009, see Part II: Darfur in Context). This mode of organizing the population affected

political rights but also, ‘freedom of movement, and most importantly the right to hold

land’ (2009).

The colonial system inherited at independence was a project enforced by law, where

the urban civilized was governed under common law; the native population was governed

under customary law. Customary law in turn discriminated based on membership in an

ethnic homeland (Mamdani 1996a, chap. 2–5). In turn, law was used to mediate

relationships between the colonized society and the colonial state (Zambakari 2012, 7).

As an instrument of conquest and later governance, law penetrated every strand and fabric

of society from organizing the population into distinct categories to restricting movement

between rural and urban areas (Zambakari 2012, 7). In Sudan, the best example was the

enactment of the Closed District Ordinances between 1920 and 1946. These Ordinances

sealed off the Provinces of Darfur, Equatoria, Upper Nile, parts of Northern Khordofan,

Gezira and Kassala (Beshir 1968, 41). The Permits to Trade Order was passed in 1925,

putting into force that ‘no person other than a native was allowed to carry on trade without

a permit permitting him to trade in the south’ (Beshir 1968, 42). Between a racialized and

tribalized historiography and usage of census to categorize the population into races and

tribes, the modern Sudanese states in the north and south have not completely reformed the

colonial institutions they inherited at independence.

In East Africa, Tanzania is the only country where, under the leadership of Julius

Nyerere, the state was reformed and an inclusive citizenship institutionalized throughout

the country (Mamdani 2012, Chap. 3: Beyond Settlers and Natives). It also stands as the

only country in the region where a group has not been collectively persecuted on the basis

of race or ethnicity. This fact stands in sharp contrast to other countries bearing a history of

mass expulsion, persecution based on race or ethnicity, and ethnic cleansing. Many

countries have inherited the institutional legacy of colonialism and institutionalized old

practices of governance. Once the state makes a distinction in law, (often through a policy

that denationalizes a group by stripping it of citizenship rights), the disenfranchised

segment of the population is set aside either for expulsion or in extreme cases, ethnic

cleansing. Modern examples of mass expulsion of nationals includes Kacha in Sudan,

Lunda, Luba-Katanga, Luba-Kasai in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Banyarwanda in

Uganda and Eastern Congo; Asian expulsion in Uganda, Ghanaians in Nigeria, and the

Burkinabe in Ivory Coast. The instrument that the modern state often resorts to is law.

By stripping individuals and entire communities of political rights, the outcome is too

often statelessness. Statelessness in turn is prohibited under the 1954 Convention relating

to the Status of Stateless Persons and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of

Statelessness and widely recognized in customary international law.

Problem of the Old Sudan

The most important formulation of the problem of the Sudan was articulated by the late Dr

John Garang, Chairman and Commander-in-Chief of the SPLM/A. According to Garang,

the Old Sudan inherited at independence was ‘the dwarf of the Arab World’ and the ‘sick

child of Africa’ (De Mabior 1992, 126). Sudan suffered from a crisis of identity.

It mismanaged its diversity and failed to reform the state it inherited at independence.

Instead of building an inclusive polity, Sudan turned to forceful assimilation of its

population leading to resistance from the periphery. The Sudanese people have been

excluded politically, socially, and economically from taking part in governance.

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The solution to the fundamental problem was

to involve an all-inclusive Sudanese state which will uphold the New Sudan. In 1994 Garangnoted that to bring forth the New Sudan required the “the total dismantling or destruction anddisappearance of the Old Sudan, and from its ruins, the building of a just and uniteddemocratic secular multiracial, multi-cultural, multi-lingual and multi-religious Sudan” (DeMabior 1994, 38). This model introduced a new political dispensation in which all Sudaneseare equal stakeholders regardless of their ethnicity, race, gender or religion. (De Mabior 2005)

Garang concluded that ‘under these circumstances the marginal cost of rebellion in the

South became very small, zero or negative; that is, in the South it pays to rebel’ (De

Mabior 1992). The socio-economic disparity and structural inequalities that are the result

of government policies in the Sudan has spawned various armed oppositions. Recent

examples include armed movements in the western region of Sudan (The Sudan Liberation

Army (SLA)-Minni Minawi/Abdul Wahid Mohamed al Nur, Justice and Equality

Movement-JEM), in the east (Eastern Front), and the Border States (Sudan People’s

Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N). The outcome of the failure to address the identity

of the state has often led to an imposition by the state that attempts to enforce an exclusive

and singular identity upon multicultural, multiracial, and multi-ethnic societies by force.

Garang’s critique of the Old Sudan, his understanding of the problems of the Sudan,

and his greatest concept , the New Sudan, have been adopted by other armed and non-

armed groups that try to topple the current regime in Sudan and bring about the New

Sudan, a more inclusive polity. Recently Yasir Arman, Secretary General of the SPLM-N

proclaimed that, ‘Dr John Garang’s Vision is the Only Game in Town for the Welfare of

the Sudans’ (Arman 2012). Another recognition of Garang’s leadership and vision came

from Hassan al-Turabi, the powerful leader of the Popular Congress Party and architect of

the National Islamic Front. Turabi noted that Garang was

the man around whom all the political forces and the Sudanese have built consensus for thefirst time in Sudan’s history . . . his departure will greatly affect the issues he has raised and onwhich the Sudanese have agreed with him. (ICG 2005, 7)

The right to belong: citizenship and violence in South Sudan

The crisis of citizenship in South Sudan is linked to the history of state formation in Sudan.

One cannot make sense of the crisis of citizenship in South Sudan without understanding

the larger challenge that Sudan and many countries in the region face as each seeks to build

a unified nation out of diverse nationalities. In colonial historiography, nationalities were

labeled ‘tribes’ and in the postcolonial discourse, ‘ethnic groups.’ For Francis Deng, a

leading South Sudanese scholar and United Nations’ diplomat,

The crisis of statehood and national identity in Sudan is rooted in the British attempt to bringtogether diverse peoples with a history of hostility into a framework of one state, while alsokeeping them apart and entrenching inequities by giving certain regions more access to statepower, resources, services, and development opportunities than other regions. (Deng 2005,41)

Writing on the recent crisis in South Sudan, Mahmood Mamdani, Executive Director

of the Makerere Institute of Social Research, noted that ‘The British political problem was

how to administer and rule mobile semi-pastoral communities with a tradition that

combined independence with co-existence in a multi-ethnic region’ (Mamdani 2014). The

resorting to what has come to be called indirect rule, a system of governance administered

by Great Britain combining a highly centralized system with decentralized local

administration, resulted in politicizing race and ethnicities in both North and South Sudan.

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Mamdani called indirect rule in urban and rural areas ‘centralized and decentralized

despotism’ (See Part I (The Structure of Power) in Mamdani (1996a)). Given that this was

how the population was organized, it was no surprise that each government in Sudan

adopted a similar technology of governance, dividing the population on the basis of race,

ethnicity, or religion. The process itself unfolded over time and through different stages.

According to Mamdani (2014):

Their solution was to politicise ethnic identity in a series of steps: First, to define it sharply asan exclusive identity; second, to identify each ethnicity with a homeland; third, to distinguishbetween those “indigenous” entitled to “customary” rights and those without such a right;fourth, to put each homeland under the administration of its appointed ethnic authority thatwould administer this regime of rights; fifth, to give that authority the powers to administerland and adjudicate internal conflicts; and, finally, to render the absolute power of theauthority unaccountable by backing it up with the power of the colonial state but justifyingthis absolute and unaccountable power as “customary”.

The present practice of ‘indigenization’ whereby citizenship is exclusive right reserved for

indigenes, natives, sons and daughters of the soil, increasingly leads to violence. A group

excluded, seeks its own homeland and, where such an option proves futile, the outcome is

often institutional discrimination and/or violence.

North and South Sudan are connected by more than geography. The regions share a

common history, culture, and several legacies: pre-colonial slave trade, colonial rule, and

postcolonial regimes (Idris 2013; De Mabior 2008; Spaulding 2007). One example will

suffice to shed light on the historical roots of the problem of belonging and, the

contemporary manifestation of that problem in the present crisis of citizenship in South

Sudan. This has allowed ethnicity to become an instrument of abuse by various parties for

political purposes throughout South Sudan. The fragmentation of society into tribal

entities during colonial rule exacerbated and politicized relationships within and between

communities.

Shortly after the completion of the CPA in 2005, uncritical decentralization of

governance was instituted by the Government of South Sudan. The process immediately

set in motion a proliferation of counties. Before May of 2004, Eastern Equatoria State

(EES) had only two main districts: Torit and Kapoeta. With decentralization both were

subdivided. Both districts were home to several ethnic groups including the Toposa,

Didinga, Acholi, Madi, Dongotona, Lango, Lopi, and the Pari. After the SPLM/A passed a

decree (SPLM Regional Secretary 2004) announcing the formation of new counties in

Equatoria Region, Kapoeta was subdivided into three counties: North, South, and Eastern.

Torit was also subdivided into three counties: Magwi, Ikotos, and Lafon/Lopa (Schomerus

and Allen 2010, 42–43). The division followed an ethnic map. The intent was to isolate

each county and populate each by a homogenous ethnic group.

As this logic followed, Kapoeta North went to the Didinga. Kapoeta South, to the

Buya, and Eastern Kapoeta was assigned to the Toposa/Nyangatom. The division in Torit

was similar: Magwi for the Acholi and Madi, Ikotos for the Dongotona and Lango, and

Lafon/Lopa for the Lopit and Pari. The reasoning was that each ethnic group needed to

have its own homeland. As Mamdani noted about similar cases elsewhere, the assumption

driving the subdivision was that the ‘cultural and political boundaries coincide, and that

the state should be a nation-state – that the natural boundaries of a state are those of a

common cultural community’ (Mamdani 2005). At stake were two types of rights which,

under the British indirect rule, were administered by the native authorities. The native

authorities decided who did or did not belong in each tribal homeland. It also managed

communal land by deciding who would use that land. In the case of South Sudan, the

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capital of the state and key towns were located in the dominant ethnic group’s homeland.

This gave that particular ethnic group both political representation and access to resources;

land being the most important resources of all. What the government failed to understand

was the nature of postcolonial ethnic conflict: contested notions of citizenship and claims

to rights, between natives and settlers (foreigners), the question of who belonged and thus

entitled to separate homelands, who did not belong and thus denied the right to land and

political representation. The proliferation of ethnic homelands did not resolve the problem

because every new county created was still heterogeneous and every new county

demonstrated exclusion of many.

The government of South Sudan has failed to reform the institutional legacy of

colonial rule, by its proposal of a new framework for an inclusive citizenship. Rather than

building an inclusive political community, it has resorted to, and built onto, an old legacy.

Mamdani noted that it ‘it built on the British colonial model rather than attempting to

reform it. The politicization of ethnicity inevitably led to a fragmentation of South Sudan

along ethnic lines’ (Mamdani 2014). The result is that South Sudan consists of societies of

individual nations. It has yet to develop a state that brings together diverse nationalities

into the framework of a unified nation.

In mid-December 2013, a political crisis erupted in South Sudan (Zambakari and Kang

2014; de Waal and Mohammed 2014; Jok 2014). According to United Nations sources, the

violence that erupted soon after has led to the death of an estimated 10,000 people (Jok

2014; Africa Confidential 2014; Kulish 2014; ICG 2014, i) and the displacement of

803,200 within South Sudan (internally displaced persons (IDPs)) and another 270,000

into neighboring countries as refugees (OCHA 2014). Whereas the conflict was political in

nature, it quickly disintegrated into ethnic conflict with devastating consequences. Each

party organized its constituencies from its home base. Ethnicity surged to the front as a

mobilizing tool. In a context where each nation or each nationality felt excluded from the

state, they mobilized along ethnic lines. This was relatively easy, given that South Sudan

had yet to formulate and institutionalize an effective national identity.

Before independence, The Interim Constitution for Southern Sudan set a criteria for

people who could vote in the referendum. Two parallel definitions for eligibility were

drawn up: one based on ethnicity (origin or descent) and the other based on residence.

Article 9 of the Constitution states that a South Sudanese is:

(a) any person whose either parent or grandparent is or was a member of any of the

indigenous communities existing in Southern Sudan before or on January 1, 1956;

or whose ancestry can be traced through agnatic or male line to any one of the

ethnic communities of Southern Sudan; or4

(b) any person who has been permanently residing or whose mother and/or father or

any grandparent have been permanently residing in Southern Sudan as of January

1, 1956.5

In the Southern Sudan Referendum Act of 2009, the reference to ‘agnatic or male line’ was

dropped.6 Instead the new criteria were:

(1) be born to parents both or one of them belonging to one of the indigenous

communities that settled in Southern Sudan on or before the 1st of January 1956, or

whose ancestry is traceable to one of the ethnic communities in Southern Sudan; or7

(2) be a permanent resident, without interruption, or any of whose parents or

grandparents are residing permanently, without interruption, in Southern Sudan

since the 1st of January 1956.8

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The notion of who was entitled to indigeneity was contested given the nature and

identity of some trans-boundary communities, migrants, displaced population, refugees,

people of mixed ancestry, and those of pastoral communities. On 9 July 2011, South Sudan

passed the South Sudan Nationality Act (2011). It drew on criteria established in the Sudan

Referendum Act (2008). Besides naturalization, the act used the criteria established during

the referendum to grant nationality to individuals. To be considered South Sudanese

referred to one:

with one parent, grandparent or great-grandparent born in South Sudan, to individualsbelonging to one of the indigenous ethnic communities of South Sudan and to those who (orwhose parents or grandparents) had been habitual residents of South Sudan since 1956, thedate of Sudanese independence. (Manby 2012, 2)

The challenge then as it is now is, how to prove one’s citizenship given the history of the

region, forceful displacement of people, war and labor which forces people in and outside

of traditional boundaries. On this, the government allows testimonies and statements from

members of the community as documentary evidence for granting citizenship (Manby

2012, 5). As Bronwen Manby, a leading scholar on citizenship studies from Open Society

Initiative for Eastern Africa, correctly noted, ethnically based citizenship sows seeds of

future conflicts and creates unstable systems. In East Africa, the more exclusive and rigid

the definition of citizenship, the more it is prone to incidents with violent outcomes

(Manby 2012, 29).

South Sudan is not unique in its struggles with the contested nature of citizenship and

the dual system of native/settler that operate in most countries in East Africa. The ethnic

notion of citizenship grants political privileges to those said to be natives and it

discriminates against those said to be foreign. Whereas civic citizenship is not

institutionalized and the state actively cultivates a divide and rule strategy with its

population, ethnic citizenship is dominant. Those considered to be indigenes are ‘those . . .

who have always been here,’ ‘sons of the soil’ (Manby 2011, 4). Political right entails the

right to live and making a living inside a community. It also grants the right to use land and

in most cases it also shapes access to resources and jobs with the government. Those most

affected and discriminated against are those who are outside the tribal homeland, migrant

workers, immigrants, refugees, and IDPs.

South Sudan’s diversity requires a new concept of citizenship that is inclusive of the

different nationalities within the country as well as those who, coming from outside may

wish to make South Sudan their homes. The challenge South Sudan faces is how to

reconcile two different claims about citizenship, one based on ethnicity and, the other on

residence. The first is a legacy of colonial rule while the second is a product of postcolonial

nationalism. Without reforming legacies of colonial governance with inclusive citizenship

South Sudan will continue to face uprising and conflict that quickly take an ethnic

dimension. The result augments the fragmentation of society, leads to mass violence, and

the failure to build a democratic society in a region of Africa plagued by failed

democracies.

In her study on nationality in Sudan, Manby noted that ‘In practice, non-discrimination

on ethnic, racial and religious grounds is not only a matter of principle, but also a

foundation for a stable state’ (Manby 2011, 5). The present crisis in the Greater Equatoria,

Bahr el Ghazal, and Upper Nile concerning ethnic homeland is a warning sign that South

Sudan must find a model for citizenship that brings its diverse nationalities into an

inclusive framework of a nation. Without this inclusive framework, the country will

remain unstable, society will remain fragmented, and increasingly, incidents of violence

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by the excluded communities or armed groups will make their voices heard and, by force,

assert their claims to citizenship.

The New Sudan framework

Two of the factors that have contributed to the civil war between Sudan and South Sudan

are the question of citizenship (Deng 1995; Idris 2005) and the role of religion9 in the state

(United Nations Missions in Sudan (UNMIS) 2011). One of the key challenges that South

Sudan has to address is that of citizenship. The New Sudan is clear that the place of

religion belongs in the private, not public, sphere. A state cannot impose a single religion

upon a multi-religious population.

Many Sudanese scholars see The New Sudan Framework as the best way forward

(Deng 2010). It offers the best alternative to the triple problems of histories of

enslavement, colonialism, and the postcolonial model of nation and state building. The

greatest achievement of the New Sudan is its ability to shift discussion on Sudan’s crisis

‘from race and ethnicity to issues of nationality and citizenship’ (Idris 2010, 208). The

Framework promulgates a move from exclusive to inclusive definition of citizenship. It

shifts the emphasis away from descent and prioritizes residence as basis for new inclusive

citizenship. It departs from a preoccupation with the national question, native versus

settler, and moves the debate to the citizenship question. It demands and set forth a process

whereby the civic sphere is de-racialized and the customary realm is de-ethnicized. Simply

put, the New Sudan is new way of thinking about modern citizenship in the African

context of ethnic pluralism.

Sudan and South Sudan can learn from the South African experience where racial

violence was effectively brought to an end; and an inclusive political community which

accounts for the diversity within South Africa was created and inaugurated with the first

election in 1994. South Africa, like Sudan, had the option to perpetuate an endless war or

reach a political settlement. It opted for the latter. The terms of the settlement are

instructive in settling the crisis in the Disputed Regions and all marginalized areas in

Sudan. The solution in North and South Sudan demands a similar political imagination

like the one in South Africa. A Senior Research Specialist in South Africa noted the

political imagination that enabled South Africa to make a peaceful transition from

apartheid to a democracy:

It was the fact that the contending political forces imagined the future of what South Africancitizenship might look like after apartheid, and that this imagination was shaped by thehistorical particularity of state formation in South Africa, by both its limits and itspossibilities. (Pillay 2010, 35)

This political imagination, crucial in propelling South Africa forward was summarized

in South Africa’s Freedom Charter of 1955. The Charter presented a vision of South

Africa similar to what Garang envisioned for Sudan. It declared ‘that South Africa

belongs to all who live in it, black and white, and that no government can justly claim

authority unless it is based on the will of all the people’ (African National Congress

(ANC) 1955).

South Africa’s transition was not without its shortcomings. Whereas the transition in

South Africa was a landmark case in Africa, it had its flaws. The transition in South

Africa focused on the ‘relationship between perpetrators and victims’ instead of focusing

on beneficiaries and victims. The first was very narrow and focused on activists and

political elites (victims), perpetrators (state-agents) while the second would have focused

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on those most affected by the crimes of apartheid (society) (Mamdani 1996b). Apartheid

was a political, legal, and social phenomenon. It targeted entire groups of people rather

than individuals. Under the apartheid regime, an estimated ‘3.5 million people were

forcibly removed from their communities’ (Mamdani 1998, 39) between 1960 and 1982.

Rather than focusing on the majority of victims who were dispossessed, forcefully

removed and displaced through enforced segregation, Land Acts, pass laws, and Group

Areas Act. In his critique of the TRC, Mamdani summed up the shortcomings of

South Africa’s search for truth and the implications it has for the majority in the post-

apartheid period:

In its eagerness to reinforce the new order, however, the TRC created a diminished truth thatwrote the vast majority of apartheid’s victims out of its version of history. The unintendedoutcome has been to drive a wedge between the beneficiaries and victims of apartheid.In doing so, the TRC has failed to open a social debate on possible futures for a post-apartheidSouth Africa. (Mamdani 1998, 41)

The New Sudan represents a deliberative agency that enables many nationalities to

form one nation. Given that every polity emanates from the aspiration of the people, it

also derives its legitimacy from all its people. Whereas the colonial state has a

tendency to exclude a segment of the population from citizenship, the new dispensation

provides the foundation for an inclusive citizenship that brings both majority and

minority groups into the nation. Given that the colonial state divided a nation into

smaller minorities, the problem of building a national consensus and consciousness, an

inclusive framework in which everyone is included, has led to an acute crisis of

citizenship.

The first political challenge that arises in South Sudan from creating a believable,

bonding force is legitimate popular sovereignty. This means that people deliberate

together and decide together (Taylor 2001). The first challenge will be developing and

fostering popular sovereignty and a legitimate leadership to carry the task of nation-

building. The second challenge is to develop social cohesion within a context of a highly

fragmented society. The third is related to what Nyerere identified as the Achilles Heel of

the nation-building in Africa: the development of a national consciousness, national

identity that celebrates, embraces, and acknowledges diversity that transcends ethnicity

and rooted in a single citizenship. One of Nyerere’s lasting legacies was that he ‘created a

national citizenship based on residence in a country where colonialism had left the legacy

of defining every individual on the basis of a racial or tribal political identity based on

origin’ (Mamdani 2011a). For a durable peace and democracy to succeed in Sudan and

South Sudan, both countries must find way to bring together diverse nationalities into the

framework of a nation without discriminating and disenfranchising a segment of the

population.

Conclusion

This article has discussed the institutional legacy of colonialism and how it affects

citizenship. It argues that the colonial project had a legal distinction especially in how

citizenship was defined. The New Sudan Framework is offered as a model that reconciles

between two concepts of citizenship: civil or ethnic. This process is not without its

challenges.

Modern democracies are getting more and more heterogeneous as immigration brings

people from diverse places and creates a multicultural, multiracial, and multi-ethnic

society. If diversity is poorly managed, it leads to conflict. In Africa, these conflicts often

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turn violent. But democracies also need a degree of homogenization (Taylor 2001, 123).

This does not mean that everyone speaks the same language, comes from the same ethnic

group, looks similar or hails from the same country of origin. Rather, democracy can

celebrate diversity when it has something even greater, a bonding force (Taylor 2001,

124). This force is the glue that holds differences together. This is the concept behind the

famous inscription on the American seal: E-pluribus Unum.

The two Sudans have no choice but to develop and foster popular sovereignty a

legitimate leadership tasked with nation building, build an inclusive political

community, and implement democracy in governance. The second challenge that can

create an obstacle is developing national identity and social cohesion in a fragmented

society. Nation building must be linked to state building in order to create a power that

is legitimate, democratically elected by the people and rules in favor of the people.

Finally, a nation does not arise. It must be built. It is out of the aspiration of the people

that a state is born. The nation building-project in Sudan and South Sudan must prioritize a

democratic process in matters of national importance. Policymakers must develop a

deliberative agency called ‘We The People’. To turn this into reality; the two Sudans will

need to implement the New Sudan Framework in order to form a more viable democratic

nation in a plural society.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Barbara Pine, the Editors, and reviewers of Citizenship Studies whotook the time to provide very constructive feedback that greatly improved the final draft of thismanuscript.

Notes

1. The conceptual framework of the New Sudan was first presented and elaborated in great detailby Dr John Garang at the Koka Dam meeting in 1986 (see De Mabior 1992). For more recentdiscussion of the model as a viable framework for the crisis of identity in Sudan and SouthSudan, refer to Deng (2010).

2. The term gouvernementalite or governmentality, developed by the French philosopher MichelFoucault, literally means ‘to govern’ and ‘mentality’ so it is more than governance in the sensethat it also includes how people self-govern, how they are governed/ruled by an organizedpolitical power, and the interaction between these two.

3. In addition to Abyei, Blue Nile, and Southern Kordofan States that are recognized in the CPA,other contested regions includes: Kafia Kingi and Hofrat en Nahas, Panthou/Heglig, Kaka,Jordah/Winthou), Megenis and Munro-Wheatley.

4. The Transitional Constitution of the Republic of South Sudan 2011, Chap. II, Art. 9(2)(a).5. The Transitional Constitution of the Republic of South Sudan 2011, Chap. II, Art. 9(2)(b).6. Southern Sudan Referendum Act, 2009, section 25, cited in Manby (2012, 23).7. Southern Sudan Referendum Act, 2009, section 25, cited in Manby (2012, 23).8. Southern Sudan Referendum Act, 2009, section 25, cited in Manby (2012, 23).9. Sharia law, state policy of Arabization and Islamization.

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