Buth Diu

Buth Diu
Four Nuer local government officials prior to a low-level flight over the central Nuer district in 1947, and including on the left Buth Diu, later one of the first southern members of the Legislative Assembly
Born	Fangak, South Sudan
Died	c. 1972
Nationality	Sudanese
Occupation	Politician
Known for	Early political leader from Southern Sudan

Buth Diu (d. c. 1972) was a politician who was one of the leaders of the Liberal Party in Sudan in the years before and after independence in 1956. His party represented the interests of the southerners. Although in favor of a federal system under which the south would have its own laws and administration, Buth Diu was not in favor of southern secession. As positions hardened during the drawn-out First Sudanese Civil War (1955–1972) his compromise position was increasingly discredited.

Buth Diu belonged to the Nuer people. He was born in Fangak in Southern Sudan. Buth Diu did not attend school, but managed to obtain a job as a houseboy of the British District Commissioner. He taught himself English and learned to read and write and type. With these skills, he became interpreter for the District Commissioner, an influential post. By 1947 he was a local government official.

After the Second World War the mood in Britain was to give the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan independence of both Britain and Egypt. Buth Diu was one of the southern leaders who attended a conference held at Juba on 12–13 June 1947 to discuss the recommendations of an earlier conference held in Khartoum at which it had been decided that the south and north of Sudan should be united in one country. Southerners were (and are) very different ethnically and culturally from the people of northern Sudan, but the rationale was that Sudan was huge but poor, and if divided both parts would be extremely weak. No southerners had attended the Khartoum conference.

At the Juba conference, Buth Diu said that although northerners claimed they did not want to dominate the South, there must be safeguards. Northerners should not be allowed to settle on land in the south without permission, should not interfere in local government in the south and should not be allowed in law to call a southerner a slave. However, Diu was not in favor of separation. He said the government should select representatives from the south who would go to the North to study and to participate in legislation, finance, and administration. He said that Arabic should be introduced into southern schools without delay so they could catch up to the north.

Buth Diu formed an "Upper Nile Political Association" in Upper Nile province. The Governor-General of Sudan announced the formation of the Constitution Amendment Commission in March 1951. Buth Diu was the sole southerner of the commission, which had 16 northerners and three British officials including the chairman. When the commission started work on 26 March 1951, Buth Diu called for a federal constitution. His proposals were persistently rejected by the northern members of the commission, and he resigned in disgust. The commission continued without southern representation. However, the British members of the commission did insist on some safeguards in the draft constitution to protect southern interests, including a special Minister for the southern provinces and an Advisory Board for southern affairs. The northerners managed to later remove this provision.