Mimicry, militias, and African statebuilding: a hybrid analysis of Southern Sudanese political propaganda

This paper examines a magazine series of political propaganda made by the Southern Sudanese Liberation Movement (SSLM) between 1970 and 1972. The investigation extends understandings of the role of representations in African politics, by examining self-representations in a field dominated by analysis of Western-made images and texts. The series, the Grass Curtain, is analysed here using Bhabhanian hybridity theory, with particular focus on mimicry as a representational device. The article shows that these mimetic representational processes result in the self-representations of the Southern Sudanese proto state as a militarised ‘black African’ nation, which is over and against the Arab (non)governance of the North, and over and above so-called ‘tribal’ identities and chiefdom systems rooted in the South. Investigating whose visions of statebuilding are being mimicked in these self-representations –in what ways, and why - reveals aspects of Southern Sudanese political identities which were previously opaque. In particular, the representational analysis underlines the importance of Israel as a Southern Sudanese ally, problematises the relationship with the USA and the broader pan-African movement, and complicates understandings of the racialised militarism at the root of Southern Sudanese statebuilding. Representations are further revealed as devices to shape African politics, and not merely describe it.