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John Garang On Air: Radio Battles in Sudan's Second Civil War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2022

Danielle Del Vicario Open the ORCID record for Danielle Del Vicario [Opens in a new window]
Danielle Del Vicario*
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University of Oxford
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Abstract

This article explores radio broadcasting and monitoring by and about Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) leader John Garang during Sudan's second civil war, focusing on the core period of Radio SPLA broadcasting (1984–91). Through oral history, memoirs, and international monitoring reports, the article analyzes radio conversations between Garang and his critics — northern Sudanese, southern Sudanese, and international — to argue that radio battles directly shaped the struggle for political authority between Garang and the Sudanese government, and within the SPLM/A elite. Radio allowed Garang to speak to a dispersed audience within and beyond Sudan, presenting an alternative history of Sudan, publicizing his vision of a New Sudan, and asserting his pseudo-sovereign control of SPLM/A-held territory. However, Radio SPLA did not exist in a vacuum; Garang's rivals responded on government and international radio to criticize his leadership in targeted, personal terms. Radio thus powerfully mediated between personal, national, and international politics during the SPLM/A's liberation struggle.

Keywords

South SudanSudanEthiopiaNortheastern Africacivil warsmediabiographyoral narratives
Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 63 , Issue 3 , November 2022 , pp. 309 - 327
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

1 Federal Information Broadcast Service, Daily Report Middle East and Africa, FBIS-MEA-85-029, ‘SPLA-SPLM Leader Addresses Youth Meeting on Goals’, Radio SPLA (Arabic), 8 Feb. 1985. Unless otherwise stated, Radio SPLA broadcasts cited were originally broadcast in English.

2 British Broadcasting Corporation Summary of World Broadcasts (SWB), online via Nexis UK, Part 4: The Middle East, Africa and Latin America, ME/7800/A/1, ‘Sudanese rebel leader's appeal to the people’, Radio SPLA, 10 Nov. 1984. For discussion of the ‘southern problem’, see Willis, J., ‘The Southern Problem: representing Sudan's southern provinces to c. 1970’, The Journal of African History, 56:2 (2015), 281–300CrossRefGoogle Scholar; S. Manoeli, Sudan's ‘Southern Problem’: Race, Rhetoric and International Relations, 1961–1991 (Basingstoke, 2019).

3 SWB ME/8453/A/1, ‘Sudan reports defections from SPLA: Role of army’, Radio Omdurman, 18 Dec. 1986; SWB ME/8345/A/1, ‘Sudan's Mahdi says Garang uses terrorism’, Sudan News Agency (SUNA), 21 Aug. 1986.

4 For insider critiques of Garang, see L. Akol, SPLM/SPLA: Inside an African Revolution (4 edn, Khartoum, 2018); A. Wantok, Invasion of the Nile Valley 3100BC-1804AD (Ongata Rongai, Kenya, 2019); and D. Joak, The Rise and Fall of the SPLM/SPLA Leadership (North Charleston, SC, 2015).

5 Bayissa, R., ‘The Derg-SPLM/A cooperation: an aspect of Ethio-Sudan proxy wars’, Ethiopian Journal of the Social Sciences and Humanities, 5:2 (2007), 24–9Google Scholar; D. Johnson, The Root Causes of Sudan's Civil Wars: Peace of Truce (2 edn, Woodbridge, 2011), 65–6, 91; A. M. Arop, Sudan's Painful Road to Peace: A Full Story of the Founding and Development of SPLM/SPLA (Charleston, SC, 2006), 199–211.

6 For pro-Garang accounts, see L. Deng, Power of Creative Reasoning: The Ideas and Vision of John Garang (Bloomington, 2013); F. Deng, Visitations: Conversations with the Ghost of the Chairman (Trenton, NJ, 2020). For more neutral studies, see Garang, K., ‘Political ideology and organisational espousal: a political-historical analysis of Dr. John Garang de Mabior's “New Sudan Vision”’, Modern Africa: Politics, History and Society, 7:2 (2019), 10.26806/modafr.v7i2.258Google Scholar; E. Thomas, South Sudan: A Slow Liberation (London, 2015), 114–25.

7 C. Tounsel, Chosen Peoples: Christianity and Political Imagination in South Sudan (Durham, NC, 2021), 99–100, 110–12.

8 Interview with Atem Yaak Atem, phone, 15 Jun. 2021.

9 Reza, A., ‘Reading the radio-magazine: culture, decolonization and the PAIGC's Rádio Libertação’, Interventions, 24/6 (2021), 13Google Scholar; J. Brennan, ‘Communications and media in African history’, in J. Parker and R. Reid (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Modern African History (Oxford, 2013), 501.

10 Interview with Atem Yaak Atem, 15 Jun. 2021; SPLM Information Department (London office), Newsudan, pilot issue (Oct. 1986), 8; SPLA/SPLM Department of Information, SPLA/SPLM Newsletter, 6:86 (15 Aug. 1986), 5.

11 W. James, ‘The multiple voices of Sudanese airspace’, in R. Fardon and G. Furniss (eds.), African Broadcast Cultures: Radio in Transition (Oxford, 2000), 201.

12 Manoeli, Sudan's ‘Southern Problem’, 158, 165.

13 Ibid. 157–8.

14 S. Lekgoathi, T. Moloi, and A. Saíde, ‘Radios of the liberation struggle in southern Africa’, in S. Lekgoathi, T. Moloi, and A. Saíde (eds.), Guerrilla Radios in Southern Africa: Broadcasters, Technology, Propaganda Wars, and the Armed Struggle (Lanham, MD, 2020), 1.

15 R. Heinze, ‘SWAPO's Voice of Namibia as an instrument of diplomacy’, in Lekgoathi, Moloi, and Saíde (eds.), Guerrilla Radios, 137; M. Chikowero, ‘Broadcasting Chimurenga - Engineering a postcolonial Zimbabwe’, in Lekgoathi, Moloi, and Saíde (eds.), Guerrilla Radios, 67.

16 M. Connelly, A Diplomatic Revolution: Algeria's Fight for Independence and the Origins of the Post-Cold War Era (Oxford, 2002), 4; P. Sturges, M. Katjihingua, and K. McHombu, ‘Information in the national liberation struggle: modelling the case of Namibia (1966–1990)’, Journal of Documentation, 61:6 (2005), 10.1108/00220410510632068.

17 See M. Moorman, Powerful Frequencies: Radio, State Power, and the Wold War in Angola, 1931–2002 (Athens, OH, 2019), 143–64; Ndlovu, E., ‘The re-emergence of diasporic radio in independent Zimbabwe’, Ecquid Novi, 35:3 (2014), 10.1080/02560054.2014.957225CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Goscha, C., ‘Wiring decolonization: turning technology against the colonizer during the Indochina War, 1945–1954’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 54:4 (2012), 799CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Ibid. 799, 813.

20 Ibid. 811.

21 Moorman, M., ‘Guerrilla broadcasters and the unnerved colonial state in Angola (1961–74)’, The Journal of African History, 59:2 (2018), 251–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lekgoathi, S., ‘The African National Congress's Radio Freedom and its audiences in apartheid South Africa, 1963–1991’, Journal of African Media Studies, 2:2 (2010), 143–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Lekgoathi, Moloi, and Saíde, ‘Radios’, 3.

23 A. Hlongwane, ‘In search of PAC footprints in broadcasting’, in Lekgoathi, Moloi, and Saíde (eds.), Guerrilla Radios, 230–55.

24 The Nexis UK interface allows for efficient analysis and organization of broadcasts. FBIS reports are cited only where they provide additional information unavailable from SWB.

25 Freedom of Information Act Electronic Reading Room (FOIA), Directorate of Intelligence, ‘Sudan: Roots and Future of the Southern Insurgency’, Feb. 1986, 7. On the history of SWB and links with Anglo-American intelligence, see S. Bardgett, F. Kind-Kovács, and V. Kuitenbrouwer, ‘The act of listening: radio monitoring, 1930–1990’, Media History, 25:4 (2019), 391–3; Webb, A., ‘The sound of revolution: BBC monitoring and the Hungarian uprising, 1956’, Media History, 25:4 (2019), 450–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 Cf. Moorman, Powerful Frequencies, 151.

27 Interview with Atem Yaak Atem, 15 Jun. 2021. Cf. Heinze, ‘SWAPO's Voice of Namibia’, 147.

28 The number of interviews with listeners was limited by Covid-19 travel restrictions and the difficulty of conducting remote research in South Sudan. Interviewees were offered pseudonymity or anonymity.

29 A. Y. Atem, Jungle Chronicles and Other Writings: Recollections of a South Sudanese (2017), 230.

30 Chikowero, ‘Broadcasting Chimurenga’, 65.

31 E.g. ibid., 79–80.

32 SWB ME/7782/A/1, ‘Clandestine radio broadcasting to Sudan: Radio SPLA’, editorial report, 24 Oct. 1984.

33 SWB ME/1748 E1, ‘Clandestine, unofficial and satellite broadcasts’, special supplement, 23 Jul. 1993.

34 A. Y. Atem, ‘The role and problems of broadcasting by radio with special reference to the Sudan’ (unpublished M.Ed. thesis, University of Wales, 1984).

35 Interview with Atem Yaak Atem, 7 Jun. 2021.

36 Ibid.

37 Interview with Rebecca Joshua Okwaci, Juba, 15 Aug. 2019.

38 Khartoum and Juba Arabic are distinct. See Leonardi, C., ‘South Sudanese Arabic and the negotiation of the local state, c. 1840-2011’, The Journal of African History, 54:3 (2013), 10.1017/S0021853713000741CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 E.g. SWB ME/8497/A/1, ‘SPLA warns of attack on Juba’, Radio SPLA (Bari), 17 Feb. 1987.

40 Interview with Atem Yaak Atem, 7 Jun. 2021.

41 SWB ME/8597/A/1, ‘Sudanese rebel radio explains policy of broadcasting in local languages’, Radio SPLA (Bari), 16 Jun. 1987

42 Interview with Muzong Kodi, phone, 11 Jun. 2021.

43 ‘Captain John Garang's 1972 letter to General Joseph Lagu of Anyanya One’, 24 Jan. 1972, in P. Wël, The Genius of Dr. John Garang: Letters and Radio Messages of the Late SPLM/A's Leader, Dr. John Garang de Mabior, Volume II (Kongor, South Sudan, 2012).

44 Interview with Atem Yaak Atem, 7 Jun. 2021; Bayissa, ‘Derg-SPLM/A’, 27.

45 Interview with Atem Yaak Atem, 7 Jun. 2021; see also Atem, Jungle, 265–6.

46 D. Moyo and C. Chinaka, ‘Spirit mediums and guerrilla radio in the Zimbabwe war of liberation’, in Lekgoathi, Moloi, and Saíde (eds.), Guerrilla Radios, 97.

47 Interview with Lual Deng, video call, 19 May 2021.

48 Atem, Jungle, 247–51; Akol, SPLM/SPLA: Inside, 87–9.

49 Interview with Atem Yaak Atem, 15 Jun. 2021.

50 Ibid.

51 SWB ME/7909/A/1, ‘SPLA leader's “address to the Sudanese people’, Radio SPLA, 22 Mar. 1985; SWB ME/8203/A/1, ‘SPLA's Garang says Lakes Province a “liberated area”’, Radio SPLA, 7 Mar. 1986; SWB ME/0536/A/1, ‘Sudan SPLA leader on coup d'etat and new regime's attitude to peace process’, Radio SPLA, 14 Aug. 1989.

52 FBIS-MEA-85-029, ‘SPLA-SPLM leader addresses youth meeting on goals’, Radio SPLA (Arabic), 8 Feb. 1985.

53 See ‘Don't get derailed from your own history, Dr. John Garang speaking on the history of the Sudan, 1988’, in P. Wël, The Genius of Dr. John Garang: The Essential Writings and Speeches of the Late SPLM/A's Leader, Dr. John Garang de Mabioor, Volume I (Kongor, South Sudan, 2012); South Sudan Music Videos, ‘Dr John Garang's speech’, YouTube, uploaded 8 Nov. 2018, https://youtu.be/ebLLRx8UgUY [27 May 2021].

54 SWB ME/7800/A/1, ‘Sudanese rebel leader's appeal to the people’, Radio SPLA, 10 Nov. 1984; SWB ME/7962/A/1, ‘Garang address to Sudanese people: views on new Khartoum regime unchanged’, Radio SPLA, 26 May 1985.

55 SWB ME/0204/A/1, ‘Sudan Garang says SPLA is “stronger than ever before”’, Radio SPLA, 12 Jul. 1988.

56 SWB ME/7922/A/1, ‘Sudanese rebel leader's threat to continue struggle’, Radio SPLA, 9 Apr. 1985; SWB ME/0537/A/1, ‘SPLA's four-point peace plan’, Radio SPLA, 15 Aug. 1989.

57 SWB ME/7909/A/1, ‘SPLA leader's “address to Sudanese people”’, Radio SPLA, 22 Mar. 1985.

58 SWB ME/7922/A/1, ‘Sudanese rebel leader's threat to continue struggle’, Radio SPLA, 9 Apr. 1985.

59 SWB ME/0204/A/1, ‘Sudan Garang says SPLA is “stronger than ever before”, Radio SPLA, 12 Jul. 1988.

60 SWB ME/0536/A/1, ‘Sudan SPLA leader on coup d'etat and new regime's attitude to peace process’, Radio SPLA, 14 Aug. 1989.

61 Atem, Jungle, 349.

62 Interview with Atem Yaak Atem, 7 Jun. 2021; see also Atem, Jungle, 349.

63 M. D'Agoôt, ‘Reappraising the effectiveness of intelligence methods of a violent non-state sovereignty: a case-study of the SPLA insurgency in the Sudan (1983 – 2005)’, Intelligence and National Security, 36:3 (2021), 398.

64 Johnson, Root Causes, 91; Ø. H. Rolandsen, Guerrilla Government: Political Changes in the Southern Sudan during the 1990s (Uppsala, 2005), 29.

65 Akol, SPLM/SPLA: Inside; L. Akol, SPLM/SPLA: The Nasir Declaration (Lincoln, NE, 2003).

66 Sudan Archive, Durham, UK (SAD) 985/4/29, Radio message, John Garang de Mabior to Lam Akol Ajawin, info: William Nyuon Bany and Salva Kiir Mayardit (7 Jul. 1990). Also reproduced in Akol, SPLM/SPLA: Inside, 385.

67 Interview with Atem Yaak Atem, 7 Jun. 2021

68 Interview with Atem Yaak Atem, 26 Sept. 2021.

69 A. Mbodj-Pouye, ‘Radio and the road: infrastructure, mobility, and political change in the beginnings of Radio Rurale de Kayes (1980-early 2000s)’, The Journal of African History, 62:1 (2021), 144.

70 Interview with Anyanya veteran, Juba, 27 Jul. 2021.

71 Manoeli, Sudan's ‘Southern Problem’, 194.

72 Akol, SPLM/SPLA: Inside, 387.

73 SWB ME/0537/A/1, ‘Sudan; SPLA leader on coup d'etat and new regime's attitude to peace process’, Radio SPLA, 14 Aug. 1989; SPLM, ‘This Convention Is Sovereign’: Opening and Closing Speeches by Dr. John Garang de Mabior to the First SPLM/SPLA National Convention (1994), 22.

74 Moorman, Powerful Frequencies, 149.

75 Moorman, ‘Guerrilla broadcasters’, 260.

76 Interviews with Federico Vuni, UK, 20 Apr. 2019; Kosti Manibe, phone, 1 Jun. 2021.

77 Interview with John Okech Okello, Juba, 7 Aug. 2019; Arop, Sudan's Painful Road, 92.

78 Interviews with Kosti Manibe; Otim David Okot, Juba, 2 Aug. 2019.

79 Interview with Otim David Okot.

80 V. Lugala, White House (Perth, 2017).

81 Ibid.

82 Interview with ‘Michael’, phone, 17 May 2021.

83 Interview with Lemi Logwonda Lomuro, phone, 21 Sept. 2021.

84 Ibid.

85 Interview with Atem Yaak Atem, 15 Jun. 2021.

86 Ibid. See also discussion of ket in F. M. Deng, The Dinka and Their Songs (Oxford, 1973), 199–201.

87 Interview with Atem Yaak Atem, 15 Jun. 2021.

88 Interview with Jacob Akol, video call, 15 Jun. 2021. See also SPLM/A, Manifesto (1983), ch. 4.

89 Interviews with Otim David Okot; Timothy Tot Chol, Juba, 10 Aug. 2019; Akol Miyen Kuol, Nairobi, 7 Sept. 2019. On foreign journalists as ‘public figures’, see A. Fiedler and M. Frère, ‘“Radio France Internationale” and “Deutsche Welle” in Francophone Africa: international broadcasters in a time of change’, Communication, Culture & Critique, 9 (2016), 78.

90 Article 19, ‘Sudan: Press freedom under siege’ (London, 1991), 1.

91 BBC Written Archive Centre (WAC), Caversham, E3/1 416/1, International Broadcasting Audience Research, ‘The BBC in Urban Sudan, Summer 1986’, Jan. 1988, D4.

92 Ibid. 3.

93 Ibid. D1, D8-D9.

94 Ibid. D9.

95 Interview with Lemi Logwonda Lomuro.

96 James, ‘Multiple voices’, 200.

97 For example, SWB ME/0536/A/1, ‘Sudan SPLA leader on coup d'etat and new regime's attitude to peace process’, Radio SPLA, 14 Aug. 1989 refers to speech given 27 May 1985.

98 SWB ME/7963/A/1, ‘Garang address to Sudanese people’, Radio SPLA, 27 May 1985.

99 SWB ME/8215/A/1, ‘Sudanese rebel leader addresses conference in Ethiopia, Radio SPLA, 21 Mar. 1986; ME/8220/A/1, ‘Sudanese rebel leader addresses conference in Ethiopia’, Radio SPLA, 25 Mar. 1986; ME/8221/A/1, ‘Declaration of Sudanese groups’ meeting in Addis Ababa’, Radio SPLA, 28 Mar. 1986. See also J. Garang and M. Khālid, The Call for Democracy in Sudan (2nd edn, London, 1992), 118–44.

100 SWB ME/8537/A/1, ‘Sudanese rebel leader's statement on uprising anniversary’, Radio SPLA, 6 Apr. 1987.

101 SWB ME/8263/A/1 ‘John Garang reaffirm's [sic] SPLM's willingness to meet new government’, Radio SPLA, 17 Apr. 1986.

102 James, ‘Multiple voices’, 198.

103 SWB ME/7922/A/1, ‘Sudanese rebel leader's threat to continue struggle’, Radio SPLA, 9 Apr. 1985.

104 SWB ME/8203/A/1, ‘SPLA's Garang says Lakes province a “liberated area”’, Radio SPLA, 7 Mar. 1986.

105 Bodleian Library Special Collections (BLSC), Oxford UK, MS.Oxfam.PRG.3/3/1/36, SPLM/SPLA press release, 15 Aug. 1986.

106 FBIS-MEA-86-160, ‘SPLA Radio broadcasts congratulations’, Radio SPLA, 18 Aug. 1986.

107 SWB ME/8343/A/1, ‘SPLA blame Mahdi for shooting down of plane: More planes will be attacked’, Radio SPLA, 19 Aug. 1986.

108 SWB ME/8343/A/1, ‘Sudanese minister on shooting down of plane: proof of Garang's “criminal acts”’, Radio Omdurman, 19 Aug. 1986.

109 SWB ME/8345/A/1, ‘Minister threatens guerilla warfare against Garang’, SUNA, 21 August 1986.

110 SWB ME/8345/A/1, ‘Sudan's Mahdi says Garang uses terrorism’, SUNA, 21 Aug. 1986.

111 Interview with Sunday Beiag, Nairobi, 6 Sept. 2019; focus group with Equatorian youth, Nairobi, 5 Sept. 2019.

112 SWB ME/8375/I, ‘Anti-Garang broadcast heard on former Sudanese rebel radio frequencies’, 27 Sept. 1986; FOIA, cable from FBIS London to Rutlaab/FBIS Washington, ‘FYI: Anti-Garang radio broadcasting on Radio SPLA frequency’, 25 Sept. 1986.

113 SWB ME/8376/i, ‘Pro and anti-SPLA radio continue broadcasting on same frequencies’, 29 Sept. 1986.

114 SWB ME/8375/I, ‘Anti-Garang broadcast heard on former Sudanese rebel radio frequencies’, 27 Sept. 1986.

115 SWB ME/8420/A/1, ‘Sudanese anti-SPLA radio broadcasts Voice of Anyanya II programme’, editorial report, 19 Nov. 1986.

116 Johnson, Root Causes, 67–9.

117 SWB ME/8401/A/1, ‘Anti-SPLA radio claims despondency among Garang's forces’, PAFP, 25 Oct. 1986.

118 SWB ME/0058/A/1, ‘Sudan anti-SPLM radio reports interview with defectors on “split” in movement’, National Unity Radio, 23 Jan. 1988; SWB ME/0174/A/1, ‘National Unity Radio calls on SPLA to reject Garang's leadership’, National Unity Radio, 6 Jun. 1988.

119 Cf. Connelly, Diplomatic Revolution, 133–5.

120 SWB ME/8394/A/1, ‘Sudanese rebel radio denies reports of Garang's death, SPLM split’, Radio SPLA, 17 Oct. 1986.

121 SWB ME/8422/A/1, ‘Reported death of John Garang’, SUNA, 19 Nov. 1986; SWB ME/8436/A/1, ‘Sudan's Anyanya II rejects Islamic-Christian committee; Garang rumours’, SUNA, 2 Dec. 1986.

122 SWB ME/8430/A/1, ‘Sudanese prime minister comments on southern question, Ethiopia’, SUNA, 28 Nov. 1986.

123 Ibid.

124 BLSC MS.Oxfam.PRG.5/3/1/10, Nick Winer to Tony Vaux, ‘South Sudan’, 3 Dec. 1986.

125 SWB ME/8439/A/1 ‘John Garang's news conference in Addis Ababa’, Radio SPLA, 8 Dec. 1986 and SUNA in Arabic, 9 Dec. 1986.

126 Sudan Open Archive (SOA), online, Mark Cutts (for SCF UK), ‘The mass exodus of Sudanese refugees from camps in western Ethiopia and programmes for their rehabilitation in southern Sudan’, July 1991, 14-15, 21.

127 Akol, SPLM/SPLA: Nasir, 1–4.

128 Interviews with Lucy Hannan, Nairobi, 19 Mar. 2018, and Colin Blane, phone, 26 Apr. 2018.

129 Interview with Colin Blane.

130 Radio message, Riek Machar to SPLA high command and all units, 28 Aug. 1991. Reproduced in Akol, SPLM/SPLA: Nasir, 290–3.

131 Interview with Colin Blane.

132 Akol, SPLM/SPLA: Nasir, 14; SAD 985/3/7, Press statement by SPLM/SPLA, 31 Aug. 1991.

133 From 1992, SPLM/A-Mainstream published the weekly SPLM/SPLA Update and SPLM/A-Nasir published the roughly bi-weekly Southern Sudan Vision.