The Other Northerner: Writing About Marginalization from the Margin (Parts 1-2)

The writings of the “other northerner” about the south are often criticized for being in the genre of “a witness from within.” These writings typically only lament the marginalization of the south.

In the armed and unarmed critiques of Sudan, particularly during the ongoing war for the 1956 state—which is said to have become the exclusive domain of the northern Muslim Arab group after independence—there is a striking paradox. While the marginalized regions lament the hardships they have endured under this state, a more precise understanding of these hardships often comes from an elite group within the same accused northern community.

No issue in Sudan has been the subject of more writings than the center-periphery issue. Mansour Khalid, the writer and former minister, dedicated himself to this issue since he joined the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) in 1985. He authored numerous, often voluminous, books on the subject. For instance, his book “Sudan: The Horrors of War and the Aspirations for Peace” (2003), translated from its English original, spans nearly two thousand pages. Not to mention the writings of legal scholar Salman Mohamed Salman, sociologist Al-Wathiq Kameer, and linguist Ashari Ahmed Mahmoud.

This northern elite can be described as the “other northerner,” a term coined by journalist and South Sudanese minister Bona Malwal, who called upon them to emerge from within their own ranks. In an editorial he wrote for “The Vigilant,” a newspaper he founded in Khartoum in the mid-1960s, Malwal urged northerners to rescue themselves by producing from within their own ranks a northern other who transcends the grievances of his closest kin, understands the injustices faced by southerners, and champions their cause with courageous and sustained support.

This group emerged in the mid-1980s, boldly advocating for the southern cause. However, their advocacy was more aligned with the SPLM (led by Colonel John Garang) as the representative of the southern issue rather than the issue itself. They became committed members of the SPLM, with some even taking up arms, adhering to its strict revolutionary military bureaucracy, where discipline was paramount. For these “other northerners,” the legitimacy of the southern cause became indistinguishable from its representation by Garang or his movement, which they viewed as the sole representative. This alignment is clearly seen in Mansour Khalid’s writings on the conflict that erupted within the SPLM in 1990 between the “Torit faction,” led by Garang, and the “Nasir faction,” led by university professors Riek Machar and Lam Akol. The dispute arose, according to the Nasir faction, because Garang delayed meetings of the SPLM’s high command, rendering Machar and Akol’s membership meaningless. Unlike Garang, who came from the armed southern nationalist movement, Machar and Akol brought with them a tradition of democracy acquired through union activities and civil resistance in Sudan before joining the SPLM. Lam Akol wrote a book titled “The SPLM and the SPLA: Inside an African Revolution” (2001), detailing Garang’s disruption of the high command meetings as an ultimate manifestation of his one-man rule within the movement.

When the other northerner became a committed member of the SPLM and its leader, his writings consequently fell into the category of propaganda for the SPLM. In his book “A Call for Democracy in Sudan” (1992), Mansour Khalid did not see the SPLM’s internal conflict in 1990 as an expected event in an armed political movement. He dismissed Machar and Akol’s account of Garang’s strong grip on the movement, which was also criticized by southern intellectuals like Peter Nyaba Adok and Bona Malwal. Khalid portrayed the Nasir faction as a group of disheartened rebels who had grown weary of the struggle and sold out the cause to the National Salvation regime for a pittance. Khalid, as a member of the SPLM’s Torit faction, thus became entangled in the internal disputes of the movement, reducing the southern issue to a mere allegiance to one of its factions, despite the issue’s broad scope for differing perspectives.

The writings of the other northerner about the south are also criticized for their inherent bias, as they are often framed as “a witness from within.” These writings typically echo the south’s grievances, without questioning whether the north’s breaches of agreements were not influenced by political circumstances in which southern parties themselves played a role, as will be discussed.

These writings often emerge from a sense of “liberal guilt,” a concept common among elites from dominant groups who have left a legacy of exploitation and violence. This sense of guilt grips a large segment of the northern elite, who not only acknowledge their group’s wrongdoings against others in the nation but also lament their diminished role in shaping policies towards these others, who differ in race and culture within their country. These northerners experience a form of liberal guilt similar to that of other liberals who grow increasingly disillusioned with the failed utopia of racial and national homogenization. As a result, they adopt this guilt as a strategy to atone for their perceived sins against the other, akin to a Christian who is tormented by a sin he has committed and seeks solace in confession. These other northerners seek, through this acknowledgment, to symbolically compensate for a deep-seated inadequacy they cannot rectify, turning into chronic mourners of the “sins of the ancestors.”