Part II

While the Civil Secessions, those secession attempts that involved the simple declaration of a territorial sovereign nation and then a struggle for recognition, proved to be a dead end in terms of gaining political separation, they were not the only means attempted during the years of decolonization in Africa. At the same time that Katanga was haggling with the Congolese government and the United Nations, two other secession attempts were already underway on the continent, although due to their nature they received far less commentary and attention at the time. However, these two secessions, the ill-defined Sudanese struggle and the Eritrean Revolution, not only survived the decade that saw the rise and fall of both Katanga and Biafra but continued their struggle for many years, with mixed results. These two conflicts are examples of what this work will term the Long Wars, and they existed within the same international context as the Civil Secessions. However, these struggles took a remarkably different direction in their manner of secession, which resulted in vastly different outcomes.

Revolutionary Methodology

This different methodology of secession may be traced to the intellectual context that surrounded the secession attempt. As has been established, the Civil Secessions were based on the example of decolonization. The secessionist proto-states were constructed in such a way as to attempt to gain international recognition upon their declaration. The struggles themselves ensued when the host state refused to recognize the removal of the secessionists from their state and mobilized military forces to compel the reintegration of the would-be independent polity. The struggles then generally took the form of the secessionist state being gradually overpowered while it vainly attempted to gain the recognition it took for granted following the international precepts of self-determination that had led to decolonization itself.

The Long Wars were based on a different conception of decolonization, taking their examples instead from the far-flung corners of the globe where colonialism and imperialism had not been abolished civilly by international law, but had instead been thrown bodily from the formerly colonized region. Put simply, while the Civil Secessions had taken decolonization as their model, the Long Wars looked to the global liberation struggles for their structure and ideology, resulting in a reversal of the previous model. Instead of declaring a state and then struggling to defend it and its legitimacy from external threats, the Long Wars established a precedent of mass movements struggling against the occupying forces and decisively defeating them before seeking full international recognition. While previously there had been few if any examples to bear out the efficacy or even possibility of such an undertaking, following the Second World War two prime examples leapt into prominence: those of China and Vietnam.

China had been a victim of colonialism since the nineteenth century, with the costly Opium Wars, Taiping Rebellion, Boxer Rebellion, and then the Revolt at Wuchang, which finally overthrew the Qing Dynasty, all serving to bind China further into a web of unequal relationships in terms of trade and power. Following the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty and the ascension of Sun Yat-Sen to the presidency of the First Chinese Republic under the banner of his Kuomintang Party (KMT) during the struggles of the early twentieth century, there had been the hope of a peaceful unification of the state, but it was not to be. Instead Sun Yat-Sen’s government effectively ended with his death in 1925, with the country still split among warlord factions. Chiang Kai-Shek, the commandant of the recently founded Whampoa Military Academy,1 managed to seize power and unify the country following his Northern Expedition to crush the remaining warlord-run regions.

While the country was now unified, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) objected to the increasing corruption and continued colonialism present in the state. Beginning in the late 1920s the CCP split with the KMT and began an armed resistance to the Nationalist government.2 Although the CCP was riven with its own internal conflicts,3 by the mid-1930s the majority of the factions had been put down and the largest remaining group under Mao Tse-Tung was driven across China in the legendary Long March. By 1937 the Communists were at bay and the Second Sino-Japanese War had begun with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria.

The Long March and the following Sino-Japanese war thrust the previously little-known Mao Tse-Tung into the international spotlight as both a political theorist and a guerrilla leader. It would be his central ideas that built the Red Chinese into a formidable conventional and guerrilla force over the course of the eight-year-long war with the Japanese. His writings, which are still widely available today, cover both the essential military strategies needed to defeat the imperialist aggressor and the social programs needed to establish the functional state to drive forward the liberation of China. In terms of military strategy, Mao proposed a guerrilla war to wear down the Japanese in the vast and often hostile spaces of China, weakening the invaders until a decisive struggle could be won against them.4 In terms of social planning, Mao’s Communists built from within and constructed the means to continue the struggle without the external aid of the industrialized nations. By the end of the Second World War, the Communists had not only developed themselves into a powerful military force but had organized themselves into an efficient and organized society from which to launch their final campaign to “liberate” China from its corrupt leadership.

With the Japanese defeated it was only a matter of time before the still simmering conflict between the Nationalists and Communists re-erupted. Finally in 1946 the last confrontation began, with the Nationalists receiving massive amounts of military aid from the United States while the Communists still remained generally isolated from external help.5 Despite the disparity of aid given and the symbolic KMT victory at Yenan,6 the Communists followed the military doctrine they had established in the previous struggle to marshal their strength and gain the upper hand. Their evolution from static defensive warfare with guerrilla operations to a mobile offence marked the beginning of the final stage of the conflict, and Mao’s forces slowly drove the Nationalist forces farther and farther south. As they advanced, the Communists captured larger amounts of military hardware and organized their expanding territory, finally driving Chiang Kai-Shek’s government over the straits to exile in Taiwan in 1949.

The story of the Vietnamese struggle parallels that of the Chinese, but follows a more explicit anti-colonial narrative. At the time of the Second World War, the area known as Vietnam was part of French Indochina, a region that had been claimed and conquered in the late nineteenth century during the expansion of the French Empire. When France was overrun by the Germans, the colony fell under a pro-German collaborationist French government known as Vichy but was swiftly occupied by the Japanese, who intended it to become part of their Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. However, seeing the struggle between the French and the Japanese for Vietnamese favour, the Vietnamese Communists met at a conference in Bac Bo to plan their own struggle for Vietnamese independence. The organization they formed to accomplish these goals was named Việt Nam Ðộc Lập Ðồng Minh Hội,7 or Viet Minh for short. The Viet Minh immediately set out to mobilize the peasants, workers, and bourgeoisie to oppose either French or Japanese imperialism. The mass organization that emerged was stratified under the command of a central committee, much like the CCP, and also followed their example in making it a primary goal to set up guerrilla bases in remote safe locales from which to wage a struggle against their stronger occupiers.8 While there were immediate splits within the greater Nationalist front, the Viet Minh survived in their prepared guerrilla bases.

The Second World War ended with the Viet Minh as arguably the strongest and best organized Asian liberation front. French control had been broken in 1943 and the Japanese were finally defeated in 1945. During the waning years of the war Franklin Roosevelt had made it clear he preferred that Vietnam remain under its own administration, giving hope to the Nationalists that their history as a colonized state was coming to an end. On 2 September 1945 Ho Chi Minh spoke before a crowd of Vietnamese nationalists in Hanoi and proclaimed the independence of Vietnam.9 However, in the aftermath of the war, the French were determined to take back their imperial possession, making conflict inevitable.

While the struggle during the Second World War had been impressive, most could write off the abilities of the Viet Minh because they had been fighting a Japanese Empire that was overextended and finally beaten by a combination of other great powers. With the beginning of the First Indochina War against France, it now appeared that the Viet Minh would be fighting a battered but still formidable imperial power. However, the Viet Minh had a strong political and social structure in place supporting their veteran guerrilla organization, as well as an effective strategy that had been tested against the Japanese aggressors.10 The war began easily for the French in 1946 with the capture of several major cities while the Viet Minh retreated to their previous strongholds in the countryside. The French attempted to counter the political clout of the Viet Minh in 1949 by creating an opposition government, but it gained little international traction. By 1950 the war had bogged down into monotonous raids and skirmishes between the Viet Minh guerrillas and the French regulars, wearing down the French will to continue the fight. By 1954 the situation was considered a quagmire by the French public, a view that was validated by the shocking Vietnamese victory at Dien Bien Phu, which demolished any French dreams of a return to empire in Indochina.

The Viet Minh victory was seen as a remarkable feat: a non-industrialized proto-state had organized itself and waged war on an imperial power that had the backing of the United States.11 By constructing a social and political apparatus to sustain a protracted war and avoiding direct conventional conflict with the stronger enemy, the Vietnamese won their independence and inflicted a decisive defeat upon their previous colonial overlords.12 While the rest of the colonized world could take notice of Mao’s victory in China over a Western-backed opponent and appreciate the victory, it would always be possible to dismiss it as a victory against a rotten and corrupt regime. The Viet Minh victory over the French was a direct application of concepts either paralleling or borrowed from the Chinese example. The efficacy of the revolutionary liberationist model offered could no longer be denied. The colonized world could look at the decisive Viet Minh victory in 1954 and see a possibility that had previously been considered impossible: that by fighting a slow, protracted war supported by an organized citizenry, smaller and less developed nations could drive out their colonial masters.

The Revolution in Africa

This model was not slow in its transition to Africa. Looking simply at North Africa, the Front de libération nationale (FLN) in Algeria began waging its own protracted conflict in 1954, following the Chinese and Vietnamese revolutionary model to wage a struggle in both the urban centres of the state and in the countryside.13 However, sub-Saharan Africa was a different story. With the political agitation of the increasingly aware and mobilized populations of the colonies, self-government and then decolonization began in 1957, seeming to negate the need for such drastic measures as a protracted liberation war. However, not all regions of Africa were in the process of decolonization and many did not have the same dynamics as the majority of the states now being given self-rule. Portuguese Africa was held under the ideology of lusotropicalism, and the fascist government that ruled Portugal argued that Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, and the Cape Verde islands were not colonies themselves but were instead overseas provinces of Portugal proper.14 South Africa was held in the grip of an apartheid minority rule and also claimed a mandate over Namibia.15 Northern Rhodesia followed the more peaceful path of decolonization but Southern Rhodesia (simply Rhodesia following 1964) resisted the calls for majority black rule and declared itself independent in 1965.16 In all of these cases, the international call for decolonization had not started the process of self-determination, and so the alternative route of protracted liberation struggle was called for.

Portuguese Africa consisted of three major territories: Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau, with the Cape Verde islands initially being lumped in with Guinea-Bissau. During the process of decolonization, the peoples of lusophone Africa had high hopes for their own self-determination, but these were quickly dashed as the Portuguese refused to release their colonial holdings. While initially the nationalist groups within these territories accepted this idea, assuming this meant that then they would be treated as Portuguese citizens, it quickly became obvious that this was just a conceit to allow the weakest of the colonial powers to maintain its grip on its empire. Several mass movements quickly formed to demand and eventually struggle for their liberation from the Portuguese. In Angola no fewer than three movements developed over the course of the 1960s, with the Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola (MPLA), the Frente Nacional de Libertação de Angola (FNLA), and the União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola (UNITA) all forming social bases, guerrilla cells, and international contacts to carry on their struggle for liberation. In Mozambique the Frente de Libertação de Moçambique (FRELIMO) was formed by the combining of three nationalist fronts under the leadership of Eduardo Mondlane. It fought for a social and military struggle for control of northern Mozambique and then spread its control slowly through the country to contest Portuguese rule. Lastly, there was the Partido Africano da Independência da Guiné e Cabo Verde (PAIGC), formed under the brilliant leadership of Amilcar Cabral. Cabral’s understanding of the interrelationship of social transformation and military struggle in the pursuit of liberation made him a rising star amongst the African nationalist leaders.17 His overarching philosophy and skill in enunciating it even earned him international recognition at the Tricontinental Conference in Havana, where leaders from states in South America, Asia, and Africa met to discuss their challenges and hopes in the process of decolonization.18

In each of these struggles the fronts made political education and mobilization their primary concern, creating safe loyalist areas that then supported the expanding efforts of guerrilla control. The developments of these fronts and their resolution to use violence resulted in protracted conflicts with a NATO-backed Portuguese military that would not accept the loss of its African territories.19 These conflicts were long, and although the fronts had limited battlefield successes, they drained the already fragile Portuguese economy while undermining Portuguese support for the wars. The ultimate success of the nationalist fronts came in 1974 when the Carnation Revolution overthrew the Portuguese dictatorship and the new government made ending the interminable colonial wars a priority.

For South Africa, things were not so clear cut, since in theory the state had been a semi-autonomous dominion within the British Empire since its formation in 1910, had lifted the British veto over its legislation in 1931, and only been formally independent since its adoption of a new constitution in 1961. However, during this entire period the country was ruled by the white settler–dominated government, which imposed a hardened race-based social stratification on its population, with the Africans being made into a permanent underclass. Following the ascension of the National Party in 1948, the structure of apartheid was imposed, harshly delineating the lines between races and oppressing the black majority more than even the previously insensitive white rule had done. The black majority had already had political organizations such as the African National Congress in place to try and deal with the increasingly unfavourable situation they found themselves in, but following the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960 the ANC formed Umkhonto we Sizwe ( “Spear of the Nation,” also abbreviated as MK) as an active military wing.20 Using the pre-existing social networks of the ANC and other liberationist groups, Umkhonto we Sizwe launched a series of bombings across South Africa to try and weaken the apartheid government and draw international attention to the struggle.21 However, MK did not achieve much in these initial strikes; their initial command structure was not well coordinated with the goals of the ANC, and following the 1963 raid on the Rivonia farm, their leadership was largely jailed or in exile.22 This experience found itself paralleled with the more radical Pan Africanist Congress, or PAC, which was formed in 1959 and had initially organized itself for a more active role against the apartheid regime than the ANC. Beginning as early as 1960 the PAC had formed its own armed wing, which came to be known as Poqo (Xhosa for “Alone”).23 However, much like the ANC, after a series of directed clashes with white police and indigenous collaborators, the PAC and Poqo were largely driven into exile by the active apartheid security forces. Beginning in the early 1960s the members of the exiled leadership for both groups reorganized themselves into more politically integrated and disciplined military forces abroad and attempted to find ways for their fighters to return to South Africa and begin the fight anew.24 However, due to the hostile regimes in Angola, Mozambique, and Rhodesia both groups experienced extreme frustrations in attempting to continue their campaigns. Even collaborating with other liberation fronts led to at best limited successes, with the ANC taking notable losses in the Wankie Game Reserve when they attempted to infiltrate that region25 and Poqo being limited to mixed results in their partnership with the Zimbabwean African People’s Union.

The tide eventually turned with the fall of the Portuguese Empire in 1974. The ANC was now able to move its MK forces into Angola and Southwest Africa, where they aided the local nationalist groups and managed to press their way into South Africa. The Soweto Uprising in 1976 led to a massacre of black South Africans by the apartheid government, convincing many young men to join both liberation fronts, swelling their ranks. By the early 1980s both groups were infiltrating South Africa and organizing domestic military structures to carry on the guerrilla struggle within the country.26 A campaign of bombings and targeted killings in the cities was followed by an expansion of attacks into the white-controlled farming regions in the countryside.27 The South African government, already reeling from its exertions in Southwest Africa, Angola, and Mozambique, began preparations for a political transition under President F.W. de Klerk in 1990, with the anti-apartheid groups being decriminalized and the political prisoners being released. The pressure of the armed groups such as Poqo and Umkhonto we Sizwe, under the direction of their political leadership, had brought the apartheid regime to heel and brought forth open elections whereby the Africa National Congress under Nelson Mandela would assume power in South Africa.

As noted, the apartheid government also had difficulties with the South West African Peoples’ Organization (SWAPO), which was struggling for the liberation of Namibia. Namibia had been a German colony following the Scramble for Africa, but had devolved to South African control after their conquest of it in the First World War. Since that time the South Africans had ruled it as an occupied territory and ignored calls for its self-determination following the Second World War. As such, in 1962 SWAPO was created to organize the people of Namibia in their struggle against the encroaching apartheid of South Africa. Hostilities erupted formally in 196628 and continued as a protracted struggle known as the Border War, named so after the border with Angola, which was seen as the militarized region that threatened South African control. SWAPO fighters had found it increasingly challenging to operate solely within Southwest Africa and so had begun crossing the border to Angola for sanctuary from the aggressive South African forces. This in turn led to South African military interventions into Angola, sparking a regional conflict that eventually involved SWAPO, the MPLA, UNITA, Cuba, the ANC, and the South African military. Finally in 1988, following the titanic struggle at Cuito Cuanavale in Angola, the South African government agreed to recognize the independence of Namibia in the tripartite talks between Angola, Cuba, and South Africa proper.29

Lastly, the minority government in power in Rhodesia30 took the radical step of declaring its unilateral independence from the British Crown in 1965 to preserve its white-dominated colonial system. While Rhodesia’s neighbours and former federation members Zambia and Malawi had gained their independence upon the election of a representative government, the Rhodesian government did not wish to incorporate the majority-African population within its white settler–dominated government. Britain therefore refused to grant the Rhodesian government self-rule, leading the Rhodesians under Prime Minister Ian Smith to issue the Unilateral Declaration of Independence.31

At that time a liberation struggle had already begun under in 1962 the auspices of the revolutionary Zimbabwean African Peoples Union (ZAPU), which in 1964 had split to produce two rival liberation fronts, ZAPU and the Zimbabwean African National Union (ZANU). While they consistently made statements and token efforts toward a unified front, their rivalry continued to simmer even as each built their social base amongst the populace and built safe base areas in the surrounding sympathetic African nations. ZAPU took a more orthodox Marxist-Leninist line, attempting to mobilize the labouring urban Africans within Rhodesia. They largely were given support by the Soviet Union and despite attempting guerrilla actions throughout the war were often focused on building larger conventional formations to effectively combat the Rhodesian security forces.32 Conversely, their rivals ZANU took a more Maoist perspective and focused on mobilizing the rural peasantry for the liberation struggle. They largely drew their support from China and throughout the struggle focused on widespread guerrilla warfare to drain resources and manpower from the Rhodesians.33 While both found support within the country, increasingly the mobilization and organization of peasant cells gave ZANU a powerful constituency.34

Already the Unilateral Declaration of Independence had seen the Rhodesian government expelled from the Sterling Zone in 1965 and isolated from any Commonwealth ties. While the Eastern Bloc supported the liberation fronts, the Rhodesian government only found formal allies in South Africa and the Portuguese Empire, but both of these were facing their own struggles in southern Africa.35 With the fall of the Portuguese Empire in 1974 and the withdrawal of much of the South African support in the same period, the Rhodesian government found itself isolated and facing two mature liberation fronts with broad ethnic bases of support.36 The Rhodesian position was increasingly untenable, and despite several operational victories, strategically the war was becoming unwinnable. Finally, in 1978 the white minority attempted a power-sharing agreement, allowing the election of Bishop Abel Muzorewa in 1979, but this could not last in the face of the surging nationalism of ZANU and ZAPU. To resolve the issue, the Rhodesian government, ZAPU, and ZANU attended a British-facilitated constitutional conference beginning in September 1979. By December all parties signed an accord called the Lancaster House Agreement that reversed the Unilateral Declaration of Independence and set elections to be held under British auspices. In April 1980 the ZANU-PF party of Robert Mugabe was elected in Zimbabwe as the strong political education and social base fostered by ZANU’s strategy created electoral support for the liberation parties.37 However, it is important to note that without the exhaustion of the Rhodesian government through the protracted conflict, the liberation of Zimbabwe from white rule would never have occurred.

Secession as Protracted War

It was these models of liberation struggles that informed the structure and methodology of the Long War secessions. The factions involved recognized that their separatist states would never be given recognition without first winning a military victory over the host state. However, as may be noted in the cases of Civil Secession, the host state held all the advantages in terms of political and military power. The existing state held international legitimacy, which opened up a host of strengths denied to the secessionist bodies. The host could deal fairly and openly with other nations of the world, receiving access to both markets and international aid. They had currency to purchase military hardware, medicine, and food. They had a larger and established economic base to draw from to pursue their military goals. Simply put, as a rule the host state was larger, stronger, and better developed in pursuing the projection of violence and political power than the separatist groups. It was thus imperative for these groups to find a model that offered a chance for victory in terms of a secessionist struggle. They found such a model in the conception of the protracted struggle of a mass movement of people.

This model offered a number of advantages. The general methodology and structure of the revolutionary liberation model involved initially politically and socially mobilizing the populace, usually through intensive educational efforts. This population base would then serve as a recruiting ground for fighters, cadres, and support personnel, as well as a source of food, shelter, and intelligence during the guerrilla operations intended to weaken the enemy.38 When a region that could be made safe from the opposition was found, whether across international borders or separated by difficult terrain, it would be transformed into a base, where a developing industrial and agricultural economy would be set up. These regions would take on increasing complexity as members of the popular front with various skills found their way to the base area, with the eventual goal being one of self-sufficiency and enough output to support the operations of increasing numbers of guerrilla fighters. In effect, at this point the popular movement would have taken on the form of a functional society within their state, and it then used the base of this society to support the campaign to harass and weaken the host society. When the enemy was weakened sufficiently and the surrounding populace mobilized enough, additional base areas would be created until a final conflict could be chanced with the enemy.39

These movements offered a contrasting vision to the conventional state that they existed in and took on a methodology that would attempt to counter the inherent strengths of the host state. While the host state had the sole legitimate access to the outside world, the liberation/secession front attempted to create a self-sufficient society. While the host state had a large, strong conventional military, the liberation/secessionist model offered few targets for this military and weakened it through guerrilla warfare. In effect, the secessionist groups did not need to have the legitimacy of a state (and therefore take on the weaknesses of the Civil Secessions) and therefore were free to prosecute the conflict in as advantageous a way as possible.

However, this model also imposed several of its own limitations and difficulties. To gain a large enough and devoted enough following often required a complex and often circuitous path to create a program that would sustain a protracted conflict. Class divisions often proved nearly fatal to the protracted conflicts as the goals of the peasants, the base of such insurrections according to Maoist doctrine, were often distinct from the goals and aspirations of industrial labourers, the bourgeoisie, and even the colonial elites. To create an effective mass movement the program they followed often had to address these varied goals and create a compromise that could attract enough general followers without creating a program too broad to build an attractive alternative society upon. For example, the Viet Minh were able to build an effective popular movement by creating a liberationist program against the Japanese, but they were able to sustain this program and move it forward by offering a compelling and egalitarian society to the disadvantaged peasantry and workers. However, even during the Japanese occupation, they had to soften their program of land redistribution to attract the rural landlords to their cause and sustain it in the struggle against the occupiers.

Beyond this class struggle, in Africa and elsewhere there was the difficulty of ethnic identity, which often had influence well out of proportion to its historical basis. In Angola the three fronts were often based regionally and developed their own ethnic identities. In Zimbabwe, ZAPU gained the reputation of being an Ndebele movement while ZANU was thought to better represent the Shona. Such ethnic divisions could easily tear a liberation or secessionist front asunder. As will be noted, the secessionist struggle in Southern Sudan had to continuously reinvent itself to maintain a balance in perception with respect to the various groups within it. When this balance was upset, the movement inevitably splintered into another regional or ethnic movement.

The program of the popular movements that drove the Long Wars will often be seen to change, splinter, and evolve throughout the course of the decades-long conflicts. Class, ethnic, economic, and even racial conceptions of the struggle had to be addressed and accepted by a large part of the populace to allow for the growth of a society that could foster and endure the protracted nature of the struggle. However, when a program was finally agreed upon, the struggles that ensued could bear fruit, as will be noted in the successes of both South Sudan and Eritrea.