Qualla: Republic of Sudan (1956–1969)

Republic of Sudan (1956–1969): Introduction

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On January 1, 1956, in the blue hour before dawn, the Sudanese flag rose over Khartoum for the first time as the flag of an independent nation. Prime Minister Ismail al-Azhari and opposition leader Muhammad Ahmad Mahgoub stood together for the ceremony, symbolic of a unity that would last about as long as the morning fog. Sudan had just become the first sub-Saharan African colony to achieve independence, and the British and Egyptian flags were coming down together. What nobody on the podium quite admitted was that the country they were inheriting had never agreed on what it was going to be, or who its people were, or how they would share a state they had been told, for the last half-century, belonged to London and Cairo.

Republic of Sudan (1956–1969): The Transitional Constitution

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Because the political parties could not agree on a permanent constitution, they adopted a Transitional Constitution with a five-member Supreme Commission serving as head of state, a Senate indirectly elected, a popularly elected House of Representatives, and a prime minister nomi...

Republic of Sudan (1956–1969): The South

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The people most anxious about independent Sudan in January 1956 were its southern inhabitants, who had been administered separately from the north under British rule and who feared, with good reason, that Khartoum would replace British administrators with northern Sudanese ones a...

Republic of Sudan (1956–1969): Abboud's Coup

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On November 17, 1958, the day parliament was to convene, Sudan's first military coup took place. Prime Minister Abdallah Khalil, himself a retired general, had planned it with Umma Party leaders and the army's senior generals, Ibrahim Abboud and Ahmad Abd al Wahab. The justificat...

Republic of Sudan (1956–1969): The October Revolution

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On October 20, 1964, riot police stormed a seminar at the University of Khartoum on the Problem of the Southern Sudan. They killed three people: two students, Ahmed al-Gurashi Taha from Garrasa in the White Nile and Babiker Abdel Hafiz from Wad-Duroo in Omdurman, and a university...

Republic of Sudan (1956–1969): The Second Parliament and Its End

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Civilian rule returned. A second parliament sat. The same parties that had failed before tried to govern again, facing the same unanswered questions about the south, the economy, the constitution. Southern guerrillas known as the Anyanya, named after a poisonous concoction, had b...