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Reviewed by:
  • South Sudan: from revolution to independence by Matthew LeRiche and Matthew Arnold, and: Post-Referendum Sudan: national and regional questions ed. by Samson Wassara and Al-Tayib Zain Al-Abdin Muhammed
  • Zoe Cormack
Matthew LeRiche and Matthew Arnold, South Sudan: from revolution to independence. London: C. Hurst (pb £22.50 – 978 1 84904 195 9). 2012, 313 pp.
Samson Wassara and Al-Tayib Zain Al-Abdin Muhammed (editors), Post-Referendum Sudan: national and regional questions. Dakar: CODESRIA (pb £22.95 – 978 2 86978 588 5). 2014, 232 pp.

The politics of South Sudan is a fast moving arena. Two books under review take up the challenge of providing a timely analysis of independence and the process of state building. Although both went to press before the outbreak of an internal conflict in December 2013, they are valuable additions to the growing literature on South Sudan and will also be of interest to scholars working on the politics of secession and liberation movements. Grounded in academic research, both books aim to inform a wider audience about one of the most troubled parts of the world.

South Sudan: from revolution to independence by Matthew LeRiche and Matthew Arnold is a guide to the creation of South Sudan as an independent state. It covers the history of Sudan's second civil war (1983–2005), the six-year transitional period leading up to the referendum (which resulted in a landslide vote in favour of separation) and the political process of founding the new state. The account revolves around one question in particular: why did a civil war result in the secession of South Sudan, when the insurgent Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) claimed to be fighting for a national political revolution, a 'New Sudan', not independence?

This book is an excellent introduction to the history and politics of the SPLM/A – rebel movement turned ruling party. The historical overview of the civil war and the SPLM/A's internal politics, such as the 1991 split and its bloody aftermath, will be extremely useful for anyone trying to understand the complex political and military crisis that propelled the new state into civil war in 2013. As LeRiche and Arnold make clear, one of the greatest challenges for the new state is that the civil war in Sudan was never simply 'North verses South'. The conflict shredded the social and political fabric of the South, exacerbating existing grievances and creating new divisions that continue to penetrate every level of society.

Moving through the interim period to independence, there is an engaging discussion of how, after the sudden death of its charismatic leader, John Garang, the SPLM reoriented its political objectives towards securing a referendum that could guarantee South Sudan's independence. There is a systematic summary of post-independence institution building and the foreign relations of the new state. Here too are insights of continuing importance, for example on how the new administration attempted to deal with armed groups opposing the SPLM/A following the end of civil war in 2005. The administrative and security services were used to bring as many people into supporting the government as possible, by offering posts and salaries. While temporarily managing political instability, this strategy undermined effective institution building and vast amounts of public [End Page 419] finances were swallowed up as salaries. As the outbreak of civil war in 2013 attests, this failed to resolve effectively the divisions within South Sudanese politics.

The book's main focus on the SPLM/A is welcome: one cannot begin to understand contemporary South Sudanese politics without a basic grounding in SPLM history. But there is a delicate line to tread between explaining the importance of the SPLM to the creation of South Sudan and reproducing the SPLM's own narrative as 'liberators' of the nation. LeRiche and Arnold highlight widely made criticisms of the SPLM/A, such as brutality to the civilian population and political dominance. Yet the almost exclusive focus on the post-1983 period results in a foreshortening of South Sudanese political thought.

This focus on the SPLM also excludes other important voices. The introduction promises to explore what kind of future South Sudanese want...

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