Paper short abstract:

Unity with the North, federation and then self-determination and secession: the positions of the first generations of Southern Sudanese politicians about the relation with the central government evolved in the years before and after the country's independence.

Paper long abstract:

The few educated Southerners which were co-opted after WWII to 'represent' the Southern Sudan started debating their position regarding the future status of their region in the years before independence. An idea of 'southernness' developed and in the late 1950s the request for a federation with the North left space to more radical stands, including self-determination and secession. As years of unrest and violence eventually led to civil war in the South, the end of Abboud's military regime on October 21st 1964 opened the way for direct contacts and negotiations between the Northern parties, the Southern Front, which represented the Southern leadership operating inside the country, and the Sudan African National Union (SANU), the party founded by exiled Southern politicians in 1962. The months of optimism were soon over, crushed by the decision of the government elected in 1965 to consider the Southern question first of all as a security and military problem, instead of a political one. As can be gathered from the secret correspondence between some of their members, the two Southern parties considered themselves as part of the same Southern "national movement" and coordinated their response to events in Khartoum and in the South. My paper aims at analysing and understanding these reactions and whether and how the events of the years 1964-1965 influenced the developing of a Southern Sudanese "national movement".