The autocrats also browbeat hostile and discordant African peoples to live together in the Westphalian sovereign states they forced on them. The now shattered two Sudans and Equatoria along with countless other African 'nations' continue to groan under the yoke of the Westphalian state system imposed on them without their consent. Attempts by Africans to reverse the damages arising from colonialism, especially the ravenous distribution of Africa at the Berlin Conference of 1884-85 have been met with Machiavellian neocolonialism at best but mostly brute force. The same manipulation, indifference to morality, lack of empathy, and calculated focus on self-interest that Sir John Douglas Sutherland Campbell accurately captured when he uttered, “Never, probably, in the history of the world was there such a rapid portioning-out of other men's goods; for, of course, the natives have not been represented at any of the conferences that have been held in the distant capitals of the invading white men!”(Lorne  1890, 704) persists long after so-called "independence" for African countries. In other words, neocolonialism, an indirect form of colonialism continues unabated. However, Africans are now rising up to take their rightful place in the world, reclaim what belongs to them that was stolen from them and reverse the damages of colonialism and neocolonialism (CONTINUED BELOW). 

Equatoria and the two shattered Sudans

EQUATORIA

Equatoria was part of a larger independent historical state also known as Equatoria that stretched from present-day South Sudan to Lake Victoria (Moore-Harell 2010) north and northwest of which the nation of Buganda is located. Having a basin area that extends to Rwanda and Burundi, the lake’s shoreline is shared by Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania. Known to the Baganda as Lake Nnalubaale and renamed Lake Victoria after Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, Lake Victoria is recorded as the source of the Nile River which “has been a subject of studies in every age” (Kovalevsky 2020). The longest river in the world and the lifeline of Egypt because Egypt has depended on its water for its livelihood from time immemorial (Egypt and the Nile 1878), there was unprecedented curiosity about the source of the majestic, massive, and mysterious Nile River. Consequently, no effort was spared to dispatch explorers in the contest to find it.  In 1910 at the peak of colonialism in Africa, the larger historical Equatoria state was arbitrarily partitioned and pieces forced into unwanted unions with various Westphalian states. After Equatoria was arbitrarily split (Gimba 2018), a part was annexed to Sudan and the rest of the parts were merged with present day neighboring African countries. The piece of the larger independent historical Equatoria State that was annexed to Sudan in 1910 retained the name Equatoria and the other parts were amalgamated with the Westphalian states forced on them. 

Equatoria and the Nation of Buganda

The history of the precolonial Equatoria nation became intricately intertwined with the history of the nation of Buganda when Lord Frederick Lugard, British Military Administrator of Uganda, a bastardized adaptation of (B)uganda from December 1890 to May 1892 predominantly recruited mercenaries from the tribes of Equatoria to keep law and order in British colonies including Uganda and other neighbouring Westphalian states. He followed in the footsteps of Sir Samuel Baker, governor of the Equatoria province who was commonly remembered as the first European to visit present day Lake Albert, accompanied by mercenaries from the tribes of Equatoria. Many of these mercenaries spoke a creolized form of Arabic and became colloquially known as the Nubi or Nubians of East Africa (Kokole 1985). Their descendants eventually became citizens of the Westphalian states where they landed but they are fully aware of their ancestral roots in precolonial Equatoria. In Uganda, concentrations of the Nubi can be found in the town of Bombo and in Kenya, they can be found in Kibera in Nairobi. They can also be found in many other countries. Lord Frederick Lugard was a British soldier, mercenary, explorer of Africa and colonial administrator in many other Westphalian states including present-day Nigeria (CONTINUED BELOW).

THE TWO SHATTERED SUDANS

In the words of French colonial administrator Robert Delavignette, “decolonization fundamentally meant the ‘rejection of the civilization of the white man’” (Betts 2012,  23) and yet the so-called civilization with its forced Westphalian unions continued unabated. In the case of Sudan, it became a forced union of mismatched, discordant, and fighting peoples. Consequently, the splinter of the precolonial Equatoria State that was annexed to Sudan but retained the name Equatoria began openly agitating for change in 1955 starting with a mutiny on the morning of August 18, 1955 when a group of troops in the No. 2 Company of the Equatorial Corps in the southern town of Torit mutinied (Tounsel 2021). Created by the British after 1910, the year a portion of the independent precolonial Equatoria State was arbitrarily annexed to Sudan during the colonization of Africa (Boyce 1911), the Equatorial Corps led this mutiny which eventually morphed into a full-blown war in Sudan after its purported independence from the British on January 1, 1956. In other words, following the mutiny by the group of troops in the No. 2 Company of the Equatorial Corps in the southern town of Torit on the morning of August 18, 1955 (Tounsel 2021), war erupted in Sudan between Southern Sudan and Northern Sudan, in spite of attaining "independence" on January 1, 1956. This war was eventually led by a General named Lagu and it lasted for seventeen years (CONTINUED BELOW).

THE TWO SHATTERED SUDANS CONTINUED

After seventeen years of the war in the Sudan that was instigated by the Equatoria Corps through a mutiny by the group of troops in the No. 2 Company on the morning of August 18, 1955 (Tounsel 2021), relative peace returned to Sudan from 1972 and Southern Sudan was granted regional autonomy within a united Sudan (Beswick 1991). However, tensions soon developed in Southern Sudan reaching a boiling point in 1977. Politics in Southern Sudan grew “steadily more divided along ethnic lines” (Boswell 2021, 10) and Equatorians wanted their own region through the decentralization and re-division of Southern Sudan into the three provinces of “Equatoria, Bahr el Ghazal, and Upper Nile” (Ladouceur 1975, 406) as it had been before the first war ended in 1972. They got this region in 1983 when Sudan’s President Nimeiri divided up Southern Sudan into the three regions. However, the same year 1983, another war flared up in Southern Sudan. This war was waged by the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), “under Dinka leadership” (Boswell 2021, 10). According to Anderson and various sources, the demand by Equatorians for their own region was one of the “grievances that led to the resumption of civil war in 1983” (Anderson 2016, 13).  

Many Equatorians regarded the formation of the SPLA and the wager of the civil war in 1983 “as a hostile “Dinka” force bent on exacting revenge against Equatorians for the Kokora movement” (Boswell 2021, 10), simply known as Kokora, a term that means division, or redivision (Anderson  2016) in the local Karo language. This second war ended with the signing of a Comprehensive Peace Agreement on January 9, 2005 (Rolandsen  2011). Six years later “on July 9, 2011, Southern Sudan seceded from a unified Sudan and the Republic of South Sudan was born as the world’s newest nation" (Abusharaf,  Seeds of Secession 2013). However, the South Sudan State was constituted without resolving the conflict and issues that prompted the peoples of the Equatoria region of Southern Sudan at the time to want their own region. In other words, the issues were ignored, and the union of the South Sudan State was imposed on the aggrieved peoples of Equatoria. Two years after South Sudan seceded from the rest of Sudan and attained sovereignty on July 9, 2011, the new state disintegrated and went to war with itself in December 2013 (African Union 2014). On July 9, 2021, the tenth anniversary of South Sudan’s secession from Sudan, the country resembled a lawless “Wild West contested by armed factions” (International Crisis Group 2021, 9). Equatoria and its people are now facing an extreme existential threat. As a result, many Equatorians are agitating for secession from South Sudan. 

Since Sudan split into Sudan and South Sudan on July 9, 2011, Sudan has also fared terribly. In 2013, a weak Sudanese government created and formed an “unholy alliance” with the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a rag-tag force “formed from the remnants of the Janjaweed militia of Darfur infamy and run by Muhammad Hamdan Dagalo “Hemedti”” (International Crisis Group 2019). Created to operate as a government paramilitary organization under the command of Sudan’s National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS), the rag-tag government funded Janjaweed was a group that had been elevated from the anarchic local Arab-led Janjaweed militia to government auxiliary for purposes of causing maximum death and destruction to the people of Darfur and other professed enemies.  Also, known as “evildoers on horseback” (Rotberg 2005, 57) and armed to the teeth by the Sudan government, the Janjaweed engaged in a barbarous “bout of scorched-earth ethnic cleansing” (Rotberg 2005, 57) intended for defeating rebels and their mostly black, Arabic-speaking supposed supporters.  According to various reports, as Sudan’s conflicts protracted, Sudanese government forces allied with the anarchic Janjaweed militia to wreak havoc in Darfur “through racial framing” (Hagan and Rymond-Richmond 2008,  876). From 2013, when the RSF was formally created, it was used by the government of Sudan to quell uprisings or intimidate Sudanese people. However, the “unholy alliance” completely collapsed and disintegrated on April 15, 2023 when “fighting erupted in Khartoum and Meroe, an ancient city on the Nile’s eastern bank and the site of an important air base” (International  Crisis Group 2023, 5) between the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF), the official army of the government of Sudan and the Rapid Support Forces. Truces have continually broken down and unprecedented lawlessness continues as it does in South Sudan.  

African movements for secession, separation, and self-determination within existing polities

Like many Westphalian states around the world, the two shattered Sudans were a forced union of mismatched, discordant, and fighting peoples. Consequently, they have now failed catastrophically. Bracing themselves for a catastrophe and mayhem worse than that of the former Yugoslavia which after decades of a forced union collapsed in the most cataclysmic manner, the inhabitants of the two shattered Sudans are being brutalized and murdered with impunity by lawless militia under the watch of the international community because like the Eurocentric Westphalian sovereign state system imposed on Africans during colonialism, a connived and imposed Eurocentric International Law also prohibits interference, notwithstanding the fact that the United Nations as the law’s originator has lamentably failed in its much touted R2P (Responsibility to Protect). Like the now failed and shattered Sudans, the former Yugoslavia originated from a tyranny. Its history included distinct groups that had different backgrounds and opposing beliefs (Tomasevich 2001). Like the peoples inhabiting the territories of the shattered Sudans, the divergent Yugoslav groups never got along, and their conflicts never really went away but a Westphalian state was imposed on them, nonetheless. Hostilities continued and the result was the catastrophic collapse that shook up a world that continues to have its head in the sand about all forced unions.  

Indisputably, the cataclysmic shattering of the two Sudans is authoritative proof that the Westphalian state system imposed on African peoples has never worked and it will never work. Nonetheless, these abysmal failures provide a rare 21st century opportunity to unveil a different political model or models that Africa’s secessionists, separatists and groups pushing for self-determination can emulate or customize. Since the inauspicious Berlin Conference of 1884-85, many African nations have wanted to revert to precolonial polities through secession, separation, and self-determination. A number of related movements have continued to proliferate, with many contending that Africa’s arbitrarily set contrived Westphalian borders must be dismantled immediately and different political systems instituted for African peoples. They declare that it is time to discard imposed colonial amalgamations and give all African nations the right to revert to their precolonial polities or form unions of their choice, not ones unscrupulously assembled, regulated and enforced by White supremacists. However, continuing Machiavellian neocolonialism, brute force and an outmoded, illegitimate, Eurocentric International Law that was inconspicuously connived to plunder global resources and purposefully keep the peoples of the resource rich African continent underprivileged stands in the way.  

This oppressive and outdated law has been impeding the radical changes being sought by Africa’s secessionists, separatists and groups pushing for self-determination within existing polities. However, what if this law can be challenged and a legal precedent generated for all the nations of Africa through the shattered states currently known as South Sudan and Sudan in Westphalian nomenclature? In other words, what if the two shattered Sudans present an opportunity to emancipate Africa with Equatoria boldly leading the charge as one of the nations currently facing extreme existential threat within a completely failed South Sudan State? What if the shattering of the two Sudans and the existential threat to Equatoria is providential for purposes of hastening Africa’s return to precolonial polities at long last? What if it is possible to use the law to dismantle the Westphalian state system that has been wreaking havoc on Africa and triggering bloodbaths like Biafra and other secessionist movements when groups of people try to secede and separate from these imposed states or push for self-determination within them? In other words, what if it is possible for groups to secede, separate, and self-determine using the law instead of the wars and savagery that ushered the Westphalian state system in 1648 after the signing of “The Peace of Westphalia” in the first place? Why can't African nations secede from imposed Westphalian states if they wish to? Could the two shattered Sudans and the existential threat to Equatoria finally be what hastens Africa’s return to precolonial polities at long last through a legal precedent generated by the unprecedented events currently unfolding in the lawless Westphalian States? Could the mantra “What the Enemy Intends for Evil, God Will Use for Good” become real for all the nations that have been actively but unsuccessfully campaigning for secession, separation and self-determination? Could this mantra become real as a different political system is proven more successful for the two shattered Sudans and the continent of Africa by extension? Follow this precedent setting story in real time and find out what the possibilities are through the story. 

PLEASE CLICK ON "EMANCIPATING AFRICA THROUGH THE TWO SHATTERED SUDANS AND EQUATORIA EVENTS OCCURRING IN REAL TIME" TO BEGIN!