Page 25 - EVOLUTION OF THE SUDAN PEOPLE’S LIBERATION MOVEMENT(SPLM),

into power, one-party systems followed, either by direct establishment or through elections. Nationalistic
movements were less command-oriented, often urban based but also relatively elite oriented and centralised.
The pro-democracy movements on the other hand were built on totally different organisational principles,

culture and with direct aims of democracy interpreted as popular participation.

For all these categories of movements, political change implied a need to also look at party building and
institutionalisation. Although their starting point and structures may have differed, they faced similar
new realities in having to prepare for formal channels of decision-making, governance and in some cases

elections. They also shared another commonality in that most of them, irrespective of whether they fought
with guns or on the basis of mass action in the streets, had aims of a social revolution. They fought for the
people and/or for the poor. Whether their goal was independence or democracy, they would often have left
wing or socialist aspirations and claim to be revolutionaries. These revolutionaries were, however, soon to

discover that bringing about drastic reform requires other skills and organisation than that needed to run
a government and build parties. As Errol Flynn said about the Cuban revolution: “it is one thing to start a
revolution, another to win it, and still another to make it stick.

Secondly, there is a belief that there is a certain group of people who are responsible for their subjugation.

Finally, it shoulders that a nation and liberation. Taken in this context, a liberation movement can be assumed
to be a social movement committed to radical social change. The SPLM was both a social movement and a
national liberation movement with an agenda of apprehending state power and initiate a socialist program

before the end of the cold war. It had a reformist not revolutionary agenda. Liberation movements use
revolutionary rhetoric to achieve their revolutionary goals. SPLM is not therefore a social movement but a
liberation movement without a clear political program but nevertheless, sought to apprehend state power.

Social movements do not seek to capture state power rather aims at social transformation within the

framework of the state. Social movements end when their objectives are met and the leadership coopted into
mainstream politics. This thesis relies on Amilcar Cabral theory of national liberation. Cabral hypothesizes
that national liberation struggle is conducted in two phases. The first phase seeks to take state power while
the second phase is where the real issues about national liberation are raised and confronted. The social
question is answered in the second phase that is defined by class struggle and struggle against imperialism

or neo-colonial conspiracies. Cabral notes the economic weakness of the middle class and petty bourgeoisie
together with its administrative inexperience in public management. This creates multiple dependencies but
most importantly economic dependency on the former colonial masters. His theory of national liberation

shoulders struggles against neo-colonialism. Such theory cannot fully explain the nature of SPLM struggle
in totality as SPLM never fought against neocolonialism neither has the class struggle been an important
variable in political mobilization. The theory is still relevant in explaining the nature of the national
liberation struggle and post-colonial societies that emerge thereafter (Mukanda Bantu,1983,Ntalaja,1984).

Cabral was a political theorist and practitioner whose ideas liberated a number of former Portuguese colonies
in Africa-Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde, Mozambique and Angola. Other national liberation movements in
Southern Africa with diverse outcomes borrowed his ideas. According to Cabral, national liberationstruggle
is undertaken in two phases. The first phase places the actual conduct of the armed struggle against colonial

rule while the second phase is the answer social and national question that have triggered the struggle in
the first place.

19