ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with the importance of the military in Sudanese political affairs. For the greater part of its life since independence, punctuated only briefly by shortlived civilian and parliamentary governments, the Republic of the Sudan has been ruled by the army. The Southern Sudanese have often used the differences between the North and the South as an argument for secession. Aggrey Jaden’s statement reflects the deep feeling among many Southern Sudanese against any Khartoum regime. Parliamentary life in the Sudan 1954–58 was characterized more by factionalism, nepotism and corruption than by Party politics, and consequently its debased quality was to be used by Lieutenant General Abboud and his colleagues as a justification for their action in November when they seized power. The repression of the mutiny in the South was the beginning of the use of force as an instrument of coercion in the South by independent Northern Sudanese administrations.
