Sudan’s “Southern Problem”

Race, Rhetoric and International Relations, 1961-1991

Sebabatso C. Manoeli

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9783030287702
• eBook ISBN:
  9783030287719
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: African History
• Index: History

The book offers a history of the discourses and diplomacies of Sudan's civil wars. It explores the battle for legitimacy between the Sudanese state and Southern rebels. In particular, it examines how racial thought and rhetoric were used in international debates about the political destiny of the South. By placing the state and rebels within the same frame, the book uncovers the competition for Sudan's reputation. It reveals the discursive techniques both sides employed to elicit support from diverse audiences, amidst the intellectual ferment of Pan-Africanism, the Cold War, and Black liberation politics. It maintains that the interplay of silences and articulations in both the rebels' and the state's texts concealed and complicated aspects of the country's political conflict. In sum, the book demonstrates that the war of words waged abroad represents a strategic, but often overlooked, aspect of the Sudanese civil wars.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. The Origins of the “Southern Problem”
• 3. ‘Apartheid’ Sudan: Rebel Narratives of the “Southern Problem”
• 4. ‘[A] Nation Is Not Physically of One “Blood”’: Portraying Sudan as Non-racial
• 5. The Political Afterlives of Rebel Narratives
• 6. Discourse, Diplomacy and Disintegration at the Round Table Conference
• 7. SANU’s Discursive Legacies
• 8. ‘We Have No Harlem in Sudan’: Sudan’s Deflective Diplomacy
• 9. ‘The Cuba of Africa’: Sudan’s Socialist Networks and Narratives
• 10. Narrative Jiu-Jitsu
• 11. Conclusion
• 12. Epilogue: Narrative-as-Lived—The Meaning of the “New Sudan” to SPLM Soldiers
• Back Matter