EARLY HISTORY
Flashpoint for Conflict
Encouraging Hostility
Rise of the Jallaba
Vivid Memories
"My Cousin Mohamed" - poem
Seasonal Migration
Dawn of Abolition
Darfur
BEFORE INDEPENDENCE - 1900-1956
Pacification & Closed Districts
"Sudanisation"
AFTER INDEPENDENCE - 1956-1989
1956-1989
The First Civil War
Abyei - A Premonition?
A Ngok Dinka Song
"Islamic" Law
Civil War re-ignites
The SPLA
Loss of Moral Authority
Uprising
When Sudan became independent in 1956, open slave-trading had been eliminated for more than half a century. Old former slaves could still be found in the homes of their former masters for want of any alternative livelihood, but they were, in theory, free. Occasional covert slavery lingered in remote regions, but had virtually died out under the Anglo-Egyptian administration.
Human prejudices, however, changed more slowly, and it remained a struggle for southern Sudanese - as well as Nuba, Ingessana and Darfuri peoples - to gain genuine recognition as social and political equals with their Arabic- speaking compatriots in northern Sudan.Top
THE
FIRST CIVIL WAR
From 1955 until 1972 a long and bitter civil war was fought between
successive governments and the Anya-Nya rebels who wanted independence
for south Sudan. Despite many other atrocities, there were no reports at
the time of an upsurge in slavery - although southerners do claim that
it was going on.
The war ended with an agreement signed in 1972 in Addis Ababa which gave the south a form of autonomy and was regarded as the principal achievement of then president Jaafar Nimeiri.
However, this failed to solve the imbalance of economic power and was undermined over the next ten years, both by northern manoeuvring and by disputes among southern groups. Top
