Sudanese Intellectuals in the Global Milieu: Capturing Cultural Capital 1793622760, 9781793622761

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Sudanese Intellectuals in the Global Milieu

Sudanese Intellectuals in the Global Milieu Capturing Cultural Capital

Edited by Gada Kadoda and Sondra Hale

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www​.rowman​.com 86-90 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE Copyright © 2022 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. An earlier version of chapter 3 was published in Deng, F. M., Visitations: Conversations with the Ghost of the Chairman. Red Sea Press and Detcro Press, 2020. An earlier version of chapter 14 was published in Deng, Daniel and Kuol, Luka, Journeys across the Invisibile Bridge: Ideas of Francis Mading Deng. Detcro, January 4, 2019. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Kadoda, Gada, editor, author. | Hale, Sondra, editor, author. Title: Sudanese intellectuals in the global milieu : capturing cultural capital / edited by Gada Kadoda and Sondra Hale. Description: Lanham : Lexington Books, [2022] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021061331 (print) | LCCN 2021061332 (ebook) | ISBN 9781793622761 (cloth) | ISBN 9781793622778 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Women—Sudan—Intellectual life. | Sudan—Intellectual life. | Sudan—Civilization. | Sudan—Relations—South Sudan. | South Sudan—Relations—Sudan. Classification: LCC DT154.9 .S95 2022 (print) | LCC DT154.9 (ebook) | DDC 962.4—dc23/eng/20211217 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021061331 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021061332 ∞ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

We would like to dedicate this book to those Sudanese, especially women and youths, who fought the good fight and brought about the non-violent December 2018/2019 Revolution. And to the martyrs who perished in the long road to freedom. Years from now your children will be so proud of you. We are proud of you now—all of you.

Contents

Foreword: Learning from the Past, Reviewing the Present, Imagining the Future Tim Niblock

ix

Acknowledgmentsxiii SECTION I: INTRODUCTORY

1

1 More than a Grain of Sand: Opening Outward—Sudanese Thought in a Globalized Milieu Sondra Hale 2 Capturing Cultural Capital: Where to Start, and Which Ideas Matter? Gada Kadoda SECTION II: GHOSTS AND BEACONS 3 Visitations: Dialogue with the Ghost of Dr. John Garang Francis Mading Deng

3

19 55 57

4 The Beacon: A Glimpse of Suad Ibrahim Ahmed’s Intellectual Life 75 Fatima Babiker Mahmoud SECTION III: HYBRIDITIES AND AMBIGUITIES 5 The Invention of the Northern Sudanese Abdullahi Ali Ibrahim

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93 95

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Contents

6 The Rise and Decline of the Hybridity Thesis in the Intellectual: Discourse on Identity—The Sudan Example Mohamed Abusabib SECTION IV: THE PRODUCTION OF INTELLECTUALS

111 131

7 Interrogating the Dilemma of Sudanese Academics: Producing Knowledge or Recycling Ideologies Atta El-Battahani

133

8 The Pioneering Women’s and Gender Studies Intellectuals in the Sudan: Ahfad University for Women Balghis Badri and Mai Izzeldeen

153

SECTION V: MARGINALIZED INTELLECTUAL COMMUNITIES 171 9 “Peace-building” as Thought and Practice in the Nuba Mountains before 2011 Enrico Ille and Mariam Sharif

173

10 Portrait of a Woman of Courage: Awadeya Koko, Organic Intellectual 191 Mai Azzam and Sana Makawi 11 Life as an Act of Resistance: On Politics and Ideas—Youth Movements in the Sudan Wini Omer

213

SECTION VI: MAHDISTS, FEMINISTS, AND HUMANISTS

235

12 Al-Sādiq Al-Mahdi’s Intellectualism: Searching the Iceberg Rabāḥ Al-Ṣādig

237

13 Transforming Lives: Fatima Babiker’s Feminist Trajectories Amani Awad El Jack

261

14 Francis Mading Deng: Ideas for Bridging Boundaries, Managing Diversity, and Reconciling Differences Daniel Jok Deng and Luka Biong Deng Kuol

283

Index 305 About the Contributors

319

Foreword Learning from the Past, Reviewing the Present, Imagining the Future Tim Niblock

This is an important book, brought together at a significant time. The popular Revolution in the Sudan which overthrew the regime of Omar al-Bashir, achieving success in April 2019, has given rise to intense and ongoing debates among Sudanese about their country’s future. There has been a growing recognition that the choice of the way ahead depends critically on an understanding of the present, which in turn requires a fresh examination of the past and of how Sudanese culture and society have been shaped. The debates have drawn their inspiration from the vitality born of, and demonstrated in, the popular Revolution—one of the very few in the Global South which in recent years has not only overthrown a regime but also led to a sustained revolutionary consciousness among significant parts of the population. The ongoing discussions have, moreover, brought the Sudanese diaspora and the home community together in collective attempts to understand the past and envisage a constructive future for the Sudan. Since the overthrow of the former regime, outside observers have focused on two main aspects of developments. There has, first, been extensive discussion of the international and regional implications of the change: how international and regional alliances are impacted, what implications the change has for the stability of the region, and how the balance of regional power will be affected. Second, much attention has been given to the potential of the new regime to engender economic growth, attract investment, and promote development. The latter process is seen as more dependent on the Sudan’s ability to articulate itself into the global economic order on a different basis than before. ix

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Foreword

Both of these aspects are no doubt important for the short-term stability and well-being of the country, but their utility and effectiveness in ensuring that Sudanese people enjoy a productive and fulfilling future depend on something more fundamental. What is critically important at that level is whether the goals pursued reflect the long-term interests of the population as a whole, and in particular whether the socioeconomic groupings and cultural identities which have in recent times suffered from marginalization, will benefit. This, moreover, needs to be situated within a context which draws inspiration from the cultural wealth intrinsic to the Sudan, using the country’s rich, diverse, and deeply embedded cultures to enable new forms of expression—thereby enriching social life and popular consciousness. In order to achieve the latter objective, a re-assessment of the Sudan’s priorities, strengths, and needs is required, creating a solid basis on which the way ahead can be charted. A popular Revolution of the kind which the Sudan has experienced creates precisely the dynamic necessary for such an undertaking. It requires Sudanese to turn inwards toward their own society, history, and culture—re-assessing the past and then taking note of the social, cultural, and economic dimensions inherent in the present situation. An understanding of where the country and its peoples are coming from must underpin perspectives on where they should now be going. Paradoxically, the preoccupations of the overthrown regime of Omar al-Bashir were also directed inwards, yet that stemmed from a desire to control the population rather than to liberate its cultural, social, and political potential. Decisions on regional/global engagement need to be grounded, therefore, on perspectives stemming from this inwardly focused debate rather than rooted in and shaped by pressures coming from outside. The perceived identity and sense of cultural and historical coherence of the Sudanese population, in its diverse components, should be central. Similarly, development policies need to be framed around a clear, inwardly determined, conception of how they relate to the Sudan’s well-being as an integrated entity, fostering an equitable balance among the country’s diverse social formations and groupings. Critical here is the dismantling of the economic, social, and gender inequalities which have in recent times sapped the sense of communal belonging and common nationhood. This is critical to what development is about, not an irrelevance to the attainment of respectable growth rates. The above reflections provide the context in which the writer of this Foreword locates the significance of the current book. The title, “Capturing Cultural Capital” conveys accurately the immediate requirement for recognizing and taking possession of the strengths inherent in Sudanese culture and history, while at the same time identifying some of the weaknesses. Most of the chapters in the book use aspects of this historical/cultural basis to provide perspectives on how the Sudan’s future can be constructed. In some respects,

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the book takes up the approach and concerns of the Bush and Desert grouping, centered on the poet and social historian Mohammed El-Mekki Ibrahim, in the 1970s. There was the same focus on weaving together literary, historical, social, and political themes in seeking an understanding of what gives the Sudan its special character, and a strong emphasis on the strength and continuity of Sudanese culture. The book, then, is well placed to feed into the debates fueled by the popular Revolution in the Sudan, providing insights and perspectives which can provide an added depth to ongoing debates and facilitating coherent planning for the way ahead. Building on “captured cultural capital” is indeed critical at this stage of the Sudan’s historical trajectory. The subtitle “Intellectuals in the Global Milieu” asserts a rather different focus: an assessment of the role and achievements of Sudanese intellectuals nationally and internationally. The structures within which intellectual ideas have been generated, and the record of the individuals who generated them, do indeed help to explain the basis on which Sudanese have conceptualized their past and their present. In practice, however, it is the detailed discussion of what the intellectuals concerned wrote and thought, rather than their status as intellectuals, which is of greatest significance for the current situation. The concept of “intellectual” in this book, as some of the contributors indicate, is in any case conceived within the Gramscian perspective of “organic intellectual”: individuals who remain rooted in their class background and whose ideas and conceptions are born of and expressed through their social and economic roles. It is their role in society, politics, culture, and economy which is central to the concern. Three themes running through the book are worth particular emphasis. The first is that the emphasis on the Sudan’s culture forming a continuum through history—setting the parameters within which events unfold at every stage—is given frequent emphasis. This marks a significant break from the approach taken by most historians and political scientists who have written on the Sudan’s twentieth-century development. The assumption in the latter works (including that by this writer) has been that there is a clear break in Sudanese history following the Anglo-Egyptian defeat of the Mahdist forces at Kerere in 1898. The dynamics of the contemporary Sudanese state, in this perspective, are seen as explicable primarily (and perhaps exclusively) as an outcome of the structures and processes put in place over the Condominium period. At some levels, in particular those related to the character of the social and economic groupings which dominated the political scene after independence, this was no doubt true. Yet in the longer historical perspective provided by some chapters of this book, the “established” approach now appears unduly simplistic. Sudanese culture has been embedded in historical processes which go back hundreds of years, instilling attitudes and approaches which continue to impact on contemporary developments.

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A second important concern running through the book, and which is effectively integral to the structure and make-up of the book, is the role of women in Sudanese society. Emphasis throughout is given to the strength, breadth, and vitality of the various struggles to place women at the forefront of social, economic, and political development—whether conducted by Khartoum tea ladies, female intellectuals, political activists, or educationalists. It has been a struggle which has sought to confront some long-established cultural practices and attitudes, while at the same time giving expression to humanitarian values deeply rooted in Sudanese society. Sudanese women played a central role in the popular Uprising; without this engagement, indeed, the Revolution may not have been successful. The engagement was present not just in the capital city but across the country. Popular revolutions where women have played an important role do not necessarily lead on to political systems where women enjoy a significant role, yet this dimension is well embedded in aspects of the Sudan’s modern history as well as in the population’s current revolutionary consciousness. It has drawn strength from the international role played by some of the leaders of the Sudanese women’s movement, and is unlikely to fade away. A third important theme is that, despite the division of the Sudan and the emergence of South Sudan, the South remains integral to the debates taking place in the North. To some extent, indeed, the South has taken on a new significance: a yardstick which informs debates on the nature of Sudanese identity, emphasizes the African dimensions of that identity, sets the scene for creating an inclusive multiethnic polity, and enables Sudanese people to search for their own identity rather than submerge this identity in a presumed but not always comfortable Arab identity. The thoughts of John Garang are likely to be as important for mapping the future cultural and political direction of the country as are those of political thinkers based in the North (the Republic of Sudan as currently constituted). The division of the country may have been driven forward by Islamist politicians in the North who believed that it would enable Sudanese identity to be unequivocally anchored in Islamic and Arab identity, but paradoxically it has had the opposite effect. The African roots of Sudanese culture are more important now than ever before. There is, therefore, every reason to state that this book serves an important cause, at an important time. Tim Niblock Tsinghua University and the University of Exeter May 2021

Acknowledgments

This collection came about during a very significant time in Sudanese history—just after an abortive uprising in 2013 and not long before the 2018/2019 popular Revolution. We want to acknowledge that many, if not most, of our contributors were involved in some aspect of the overthrow of the too-long-lasting Islamist military regime (1989–2019)—from the protesters in the street, to the many who were part of the sit-in at the main military headquarters, to the neighborhood committees, to those who sheltered protesters being chased by the soldiers, to those who were writing about it, collecting funds, educating and re-educating, and raising consciousness. Now it is a time to rebuild. Thus, our contributors have been busy and, yet, were able to work out some of the ideas that will be very important to that rebuilding. Tracing the intellectual history of Sudanese could not be more important than it is now. The two of us probably have some separate people and organizations we would like to honor, but we also know that there are central helpers and those who inspired us, helped us select the contributors, and the like. Therefore, first and foremost we would like to thank our contributors, then the sponsoring organization: the members of the Sudanese Knowledge Society, who helped organize the main symposium out of which many of these essays emerged—“The Intellectual: Old and New Modes of Thought in Sudan and Beyond—Moving into the 21st Century”—Khartoum, April 28–29, 2017. For that symposium we would also like to acknowledge our co-organizer, Dar Alhadatha for Publishing, to recognize the Federation of Sudanese Businessmen and Employers, and Impact Hub Khartoum, the latter two offering us free space; and to thank the people who attended and contributed such good ideas.

xiii

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Acknowledgments

We felt very fortunate to have persuaded Tim Niblock, an eminent Sudanist, to write the Foreword. It is just what we wanted. Likewise, we were lucky to find a photo from the collection of photographer Wadah Omer Farag, which seemed perfect for the cover. The photo was taken during the Revolution. Many of the youth, in particular, were sharing books, creating impromptu schools and libraries, performing art, many in graffiti form, for example, writing slogans and poetry on the walls. Wadah’s photo captures some of this intellectual energy. Kenneth MacLean edited and formatted our first co-edited book Networks of Knowledge Production in Sudan, so we called him back again, and he did not disappoint us. Two Lexington Books editors worked with us, first Trevor Crowell and then Shelby Russell who has seen us through to the end with such patience and helpful advice. In general, Lexington Books folks, who published our first book, and now our second, have been very good to work with. We also thank our indexer, who did a solid job, considering the many variations in spellings. Gada: In writing my chapter, I am hugely indebted to my co-editor, Sondra Hale, who patiently listened and discussed with me the ideas I was picking up as I have educated myself about Sudanese intellectuals. I am also indebted to Fatima Salah and Marwan Awad, my friends and fellow founders of the Sudanese Knowledge Society for helping me to identify and find reading resources. It is worth noting that much of the material that went into the production of my chapter was obtained from the organic intellectuals (street booksellers) who enrich our streets and alleyways. In Ali Darfur, I salute all of them. With this backdrop, I would like to recognize the many organic intellectuals whom I have met in my life, not only because they influenced, and eventually shaped the pluralist way I think about knowledge production, or because of freeing me from the confines of academia, but also because they are less visible in written text, including my chapter which was based on secondary research. In Zeinab Balandiya and Sulieman Tayara, I want to salute those who are creating alternatives to patriarchal and central riverain hegemony in favor of the excluded-from-power structures and the marginalized in national narratives. Zeinab’s work on women’s empowerment and leadership and Sulieman’s work on history and linguistics in the Nuba Mountains are expressions of what the masses who participated in the Revolution have called for—justice in all its forms. I have always been in awe of a particular set of organic intellectuals because of their bold challenge to social norms for the sake of access to intellectual production—the women who pioneered the literary salons of 1920s Omdurman that continued into post-independence and whose legacy

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is reincarnated a century later by youth intellectuals. Among all of these categories, I would like to acknowledge the organic intellectuals of social media who brought new thinking and tools to the social and political landscape, and to Revolution. Sondra: I would like to thank my brilliant co-editor Gada Kadoda. She is great to work with and is full of creative ideas. I feel very lucky. Thanks also to the many other Sudanese who have hosted and helped me with my research through many years, starting in 1961 and continuing. Many of them have been close friends, and I cherish those friendships. Some of them have graced these pages in one way or another. I also gained so much from my close group of socialist feminists at UCLA and in the communities of greater Los Angeles. Of course, I thank Gerry Hale, a Sudanese geographer whose original scholarship on Darfur is hardly known. He has always been there for me. And thanks to the rest of my small, but wonderful family who lent love and support: grown “kids” Alexa Almaz and Adrienne Nabila (Bulbul) and her spouse, Evan Jones, and not last in my heart, my brother Michael. NOTE TO READERS ON TRANSLITERATION Because of the many spelling options for non-English words, the editors made the choice of allowing the contributors (most of whom are Sudanese) to use their own spellings of non-English names and places. We have not, therefore, followed some of the more common spelling conventions, nor imposed a classical regime on our contributors.

Section I

INTRODUCTORY

Chapter 1

More than a Grain of Sand Opening Outward—Sudanese Thought in a Globalized Milieu Sondra Hale

Just at a time when many Sudanese intellectuals are exploring alternative approaches to state-building and to the world, a recent book, among many of the same theme and methods, offers a perspective on future-making that is molded by uncertainty and possibilities. The authors (Pink, Akama, and Sumartojo 2018) make the claim that uncertainty can be translated into a generative method (e.g., through technology) for intervening in the world.1 Although these authors may have a different knowledge set and agenda from the actors and subjects of this volume, we posit that, arguably, this is the most uncertain and perhaps generative period in Sudan in the twentieth and twentyfirst centuries.2 That might seem like a grandiose claim about the Sudan and Sudanese, considering such series of events as the early nationalist period (1918–1944), the pre-independence time (1944–1956), the general upheavals from civil war(s), regional conflicts,3 the popular uprisings against military regimes in 1964, 1985, and 2013, and the secession of what became South Sudan in 2011. Nonetheless, the Islamist military takeover of 1989—forming a regime that lasted thirty years—threw Sudanese intellectuals and activists into a more profound “identity crisis,” existential crisis, a deeper economic and environmental crisis, and an even deeper religious crisis than at any time before.4 Some Sudanese thinkers have looked to the past for explanations that might lessen their anxieties; whereas others have taken solace in the possibilities of the future. Regardless, our volume allows readers to experience how uncertainty is generating some of the most exciting knowledge production and literary and artistic outpouring of contemporary Sudan, and the histories that propelled these ideas. This is the first Sudan book of its kind, positioned 3

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within the rubric of postcolonial and global intellectual history, to be published in English.5 In this volume we learn more about the Sudan through its intellectuals, just as we learn about these intellectuals through our knowledge of Sudanese history, culture, and society, an approach enhanced in chapter 2 by Dr. Gada Kadoda. However, in this volume not only do we hear directly from some intellectuals themselves, but we hope to have assembled a striking group of thinkers who are writing about other thinkers. Importantly, we have also revealed the oft-neglected women intellectuals and have brought youth upon the stage. Nonetheless, we do not pretend to have included all of the Sudan’s significant intellectuals, even with Gada Kadoda’s historically rich second chapter, “Capturing Cultural Capital: Where to Start and Which Ideas Matter.” One might consider this chapter a second introduction, but it is so much more. Using mainly Arabic sources, it is rich and fulfilling on its own. Nonetheless, I discuss below, if briefly, some of the unfortunate, unavoidable, and striking omissions in the volume—in fact, what amounts to missing chapters. Although Kadoda filled in a number of these omissions, she has accomplished so much more. She has fleshed out much of the Sudan’s intellectual history. IN THE CONTEXT OF THE SUDAN A puzzle for many observers of the Sudanese intellectual world is that, even though there are a number of intellectuals who might have, in fact, made contributions to global intellectual life, they are rarely seen as belonging within the same intellectual traditions highlighted in global intellectual history. Part of the reason for that invisibility is that for the thirty years of the Islamist military regime (1989–2019) Sudanese were greatly hindered in the development of particular kinds of institutions or programs that make intellectuals visible to each other and to the outside world. In fact, intellectuals have not been trusted by the various military regimes (as is true in many societies and reinforced by theorists such as Marx) that is, unless they are religious scholars.6 Another reason is the highly independent spirit of Sudanese intellectuals.7 Most of them want to be seen as individual thinkers in their own right, not as part of a “school of thought.” For example, two Sudanese artist friends of mine that I have written about, one living in the Sudan, the other in diaspora, have told me repeatedly that they do not want their work to be classified only as “Sudanese art”—or “African” or “Middle Eastern” or “Muslim art.” One understands that intellectuals and artists all over like to think of themselves as unto themselves. We have seen a similar process among some feminist writers in Europe and the United States. They can often

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be heard saying that they do not want to be known as a “woman writer,” only as a writer. It is such a common refrain. However, one result of this cultural independence for Sudanese—almost a claim of being sui generis—is that they themselves may also not relate to particular approaches within the global milieu and, therefore, arguably contribute less to it. In contrast, some particularly famous Indian scholars did not seem to take umbrage over being slotted into the “Subaltern School,” for example, although they often endeavored to distinguish themselves from others also considered to be within that School. Above I argued a partial case for why the ideas of all sorts of Sudanese are hardly known outside the Sudan, and certainly are not seen by global intellectuals as part of a common tradition. One does not hear expressions such as “The Sudanese School of Thought.”8 A number of sources in Arabic on or by Sudanese intellectuals have sparingly filtered out into other parts of North Africa and the Middle East, for example, works by the late Mansour Khalid, Fatima Babiker Mahmoud, and the late public intellectual, scholar, and religious figure, Sadig Al-Mahdi9 (the latter two are represented by chapters in this volume). A few prominent writers and artists may have had an impact on Global Intellectual thought—one in particular is the late novelist Tayib Salih, a diasporan from his mid-life on. His novel Season of Migration to the North (1966) garnered international attention, as have the works of a few other Sudanese writers, for example, the expatriate Leila Aboulela whose work has been awarded a prize virtually every time she publishes something.10 By contrast, novelist and short story writer, the late Gamal Mohamed Ahmed, although much loved in the Sudan, especially among Nubians, was little known outside the Sudan and Egypt, even though he wrote a great deal in English. The poets, with the exception of a few figures such as the late Mohamed Abdel Hai (who was a public intellectual), also did not gain much purchase the outside Sudan.11 Sociopolitical and literary critics (e.g., Hayder Ibrahim and Mansour Khalid) and journalists/editors (e.g., Amal Abbas, Mahjoub Mohamed Salih, and Shamseldin Dawelbait) have been important public intellectuals in the Sudan, but may not have gained much traction outside. Perhaps we can say that one way some of these intellectuals and cultural figures were somewhat aligned with the global cultural and political trends was through their earlier works on colonialism and anticolonialism and later works on decolonialism and postcolonial thought. Or, we might include the thinking or writing of religious public intellectuals such as the late Hasan elTurabi (discussed briefly below and more fully in the second chapter). One area of Sudanese intellectual/cultural production did attract attention outside the Sudan. These are the works and critical voices of more than a few dozen visual artists and art critics who have exhibited internationally and may have written and/or talked about their work in some form

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that reached Europe, the United States, or beyond, that is, an international audience. The diasporan Ibrahim El Salahi, the best known of the Sudan’s artists who fairly recently held a one-man show at the Tate in London, is considered one of the main pioneers of modernist art in the Sudan. The exception to one of the comments I made above is that Salahi and a few others were referred to in the Sudan as the “Khartoum School,” most of whom emanated from or were influenced by art students, teachers, and critics from what used to be called Khartoum Technical Institute (KTI). A few others were important to the global intellectual scene with their abstract arts that were very much a part of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century schools of art.12 The late Hussein Shariffe, primarily a painter, was also a leading intellectual and filmmaker who engaged with international artists and intellectuals while living in London and Cairo. Hassan Musa is an artist and critic living in France. He and the late Mohamed Bolla were leading art critics who totally transformed the art being produced in the College of Fine Arts (formerly KTI) with their avant-garde ideas about art and the place of art in society. It might be more accurate to say that those two critics did not so much change the art as change how Sudanese thought about art. There are quite a few other art critics and historians (such as Mohamed Abusabib in this volume), most of whom are diasporans, and most, but not all, of whom are still living.13 Many of these mainly abstract painters, sculptors, and a sprinkling of filmmakers were part of the global avant-garde and identified as such.14 In terms of other forms of art, musicians, singers, and composers are arguably among the best known outside the Sudan, which is perhaps a feature of the more public and performative nature of their art, for example, the late Hamza El-din, Rasha Sheikh-Eldin, the late Mohamed Werdi, and the young Al-Sarah. A number of academics such as Abdullahi Ali Ibrahim (in this volume), Abdullahi Ali Elnaiem, Amal Fadlallah, and others have garnered great respect in the U.S. academy.15 Some earlier scholars such as the late Saad elDin Fawzi (labor historian) produced a classic book, The Labour Movement in Sudan: 1946–1955, but it seems all but forgotten, even in the Sudan (Fawzi 1957). The prolific multidisciplinary figure, the late Mohamed Omer Besher, is discussed in chapter 2. Although most of the scholars I have not mentioned are/were known in the Sudan among the educated, those who did become known outside were mainly recognized in Egypt, North America, and the United Kingdom, with some exceptions in Eastern Europe, such as the poet Yousif Iydabe. Organizations such as the U.K. and U.S. Sudan(s) Studies Associations have nurtured Sudanese intellectuals and academics.16 Aside from academic circles, or I should say, apart from these circles, a few intellectuals have drawn particular notice not only in the Sudan, but also in the global arena, such as the medical doctor, activist, feminist, and public

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intellectual, Nahid Toubia, and diplomat, scholar, and novelist Francis Deng (in this volume). They are two very important public intellectuals. Despite those mentioned above, we stand by our argument that the ideas of very few academic, public, and organic intellectuals (distinction to be discussed below) emerged beyond the borders of the Sudan. Perhaps more Sudanese intellectuals emerged in Britain, probably because of its role as the former colonial power and later a higher education haven for the first generation of university scholars from an independent Sudan, than in other parts of Europe and North America. As I stressed above, even the African and Middle Eastern milieus have seldom experienced Sudanese intellectualism. Had sociopolitical conditions been different, that is, a Sudan devoid of the constant conflicts, intellectuals from what is now South Sudan might have looked to and produced for Africa and beyond (see chapter 14 in this volume on Francis Deng). That might still happen, perhaps emanating from Juba University in South Sudan. This is not to say that southern Sudanese, before the 2011 secession of the south, were not contributing to the intellectual milieu of Sudan. They definitely were. We posit that one of the factors that played into this lack of visibility is, ironically, the Sudan’s considerable heterogeneity (see below). Instead of such diversity lending itself to Sudanese intellectuals playing a leading role in both the African and Arab worlds, in fact, it caused the Sudan—a country that identified interchangeably as both Arab and African or Middle Eastern and African—to fall between the cracks17 (see chapters 5 and 6 by Abdullahi Ali Ibrahim and Mohamed Abusabib in this volume, respectively). For an area rich in folklore, as one might expect from a country that once claimed over 500 ethnic groups and 110 languages,18 it had a rich flourishing of thinkers and scholars in that field such as the late Abdullah El-Tayib (an Arabic literature scholar), who enlivened the atmosphere of the University of Khartoum, as well as contributing to such publications as Sudan Notes and Records19 through his visits to the customs and traditions of the past. However, despite the establishment of the University of Khartoum’s Department of Folklore Studies at the Institute of African and Asian Studies, enhanced by such figures as the late Sayyid Hamid Hurreiz, few folklorists became known outside the Sudan.20 Furthermore, although a sprinkling of folksingers/interpreters of folk songs did play, sing, and interpret outside the Sudan—for example, the recently deceased Abdel Karim el-Cabli, Mohamed Werdi, and Hamza Eldin—all from the central and northern riverain area— that is, the “Arab/Nubian” cultural complex—they failed to capture for any extended period the imagination of the outside world. Nor were they known to have contributed to theories of musicology, ethnomusicology, or experimental music, despite delivering guest lectures at U.S. and European universities.21 Granted, a few popular singers such as Rasha Sheikh-Eldin

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(a diasporan in Spain) and more recently, Alsarah (in the United States; see reference to the essay by Anita Fabos and Alsarah in the bibliography) gained a modest international audience within the genre of “World Music,” but they themselves (including some of those just mentioned above) would not claim to be “intellectuals” (Fabos and Alsarah 2017, 201–210). We can safely say that in global intellectual life one did not hear such terms as “The Sudan School.”22 Nonetheless, they can be considered purveyors of Sudanese knowledge and culture.23 Intellectuals from the Sudanese academic world thrived in the immediate post-independence years, many of whom were nourished within the then highly ranked University of Khartoum, but had been suffocated (and/or sacked) under the Islamist military regime (1989–2019), in particular, and generally in each preceding military regime. This stifling of the brilliance of the philosophers, professors, poets, religious figures, professionals in various fields, and public and organic intellectuals forced many of them into exile, and silenced, “softened,” and muffled those who remained. IN THE CONTEXT OF GLOBAL INTELLECTUALS In a way we are all trained—or should be—to ask epistemological questions about how we know what we know. Who has brought us particular ideas? Who has been served by them? Who owns them?24 We have also asked how local, organic, or cosmopolitan Sudanese ideas have or have not been integrated into the global milieu. In a series of essays in Representations of the Intellectual, the late Edward Said (1994), Palestinian American literary figure, claimed that intellectuals should maintain a vigilant skepticism toward all received wisdoms (i.e., as opposed to professionalism) (Said 1994). He saw the ideal intellectual as in “exile and marginal,” in the sense of being detached from power (1994, 39). Relatedly, the intellectual must be an amateur, again, someone who is opposed to professionalism (1994, 55). With these qualities he/she tries to speak truth to power (1994, 71). Said and few other thinkers like Noam Chomsky have been represented as quintessential public intellectuals. These are, most often, but not exclusively, academics who participated in or lead public discourses about society, responding to its problems; a social critic differentiated perhaps from the “thinker”; or the academic, or part of the “intelligentsia” (a member of a highly educated social class); even more differentiating is the concept most often associated with Antonio Gramsci—organic intellectual (1982). Gramsci had a Marxist interpretation of the organic intellectual. To him they are the ones who are created by their class and who spread the ideology of that class (Gramsci 1982). Popular thought sees them as emerging from a particular class, usually not of

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the intelligentsia, but more “of the people.” In the Sudan context one immediately thinks of the late poet Mahjoub Sharif, referred to as “the people’s poet who came from humble roots and wrote only in the Arabic of the people—a part of the native intelligentsia.” At any rate, every social class requires a native intelligentsia which shapes the ideology (worldview) particular to that social class from which they originated. In a way, we might consider all of those representatives of “everyman” and “everywoman,” who wrote poetry and recited it in the streets, as organic intellectuals. Therefore, if intellectuals are spokespeople for their particular group and who articulate the ideas of that group, then we might ask what the groups are that are represented by Sudanese intellectuals. Anthropologist Idris Salem elHassan in an unpublished paper delivered in Arabic on “The Intellectual and Power in Sudan” (2016)25 borrowed and paraphrased the differences among the educated, the intellectual, and the thinker (he sometimes uses the last two terms interchangeably). By “educated,” he is referring to anyone who gained a modern education toward a particular job; whereas the intellectual is one who has also gained formal knowledge, but he/she has, in addition, gained informal knowledge that allows him/her to analyze issues and connect levels of ideas that require thinking skills and that are greater than what the educated can produce. In “Intellectuals and Education,” Gramsci seems to present a much simpler (perhaps deceptively simple) rendition, claiming that although everyone in some sense is an intellectual, not everyone in society has the function of performing intellectual work (2000, 304). This seems to point to the production of knowledge in formal educational institutions. Or, what el-Hassan refers to as the “educated.” In this volume we are including in our framework the erudite thinker who develops abstract ideas and theories (perhaps an academic); or an organic intellectual; or a professional (someone in science, law, medicine, etc.) who produces cultural capital; an artist who writes, composes, paints, and so on; a religious thinker, perhaps within the Sufi tradition. In short, we are considering thinkers as those who produce knowledge, not material goods. Taking into account the array of essays and authors, plus this co-editor, the author of the Foreword,26 and two brief addenda in this collection, we are confident that our new and old reading public will be provoked, stimulated, and educated by the diverse essays that partially capture Sudanese cultural capital and move a step toward thrusting Sudanese intellectuals into the global milieus. RICHNESS OF THE FIELDS AND CONTRIBUTORS, AND THE QUESTION OF OMISSIONS Our twenty-one contributors, including the two co-editors and the author of the Foreword, and the people they write about are, with only four exceptions,

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all Sudanese who represent, write within, or gesture toward very diverse fields—including anthropology, gender studies, computer studies, history, political science, law, journalism, the arts and literature, education, linguistics, folklore, and the diplomatic core.27 Referring to this book as interdisciplinary, therefore, is an understatement. They are women and men, alive and dead, from different regions of the Sudan, and those inside and outside the Sudan. Furthermore, the generational span is great, ranging from relatively recent university graduates to very senior scholars and historical figures, from old-time activists to the new youth brigades. The diverse ideological approaches among the authors add spark to the chapters. Our writers were trained in different institutions—some outside the Sudan and others inside. They write from within the Sudan and from the diaspora. Most striking, perhaps, is that there are 10 Sudanese women included, over half of the chapters. Except for books specifically about women, this gender content amounts to a most unusual collection of essays on Sudan, Africa, or the Middle East. With all of the breadth we have indicated above, we two editors were still plagued and haunted by those influential intellectuals of the Sudan about whom we did not present a chapter. Some of the reasons for the omissions were both the usual and the unusual: for example, no qualified person available to write a particular chapter; illness and death; last minute family emergencies; elevation to a high rank in the new government; and the like. Perhaps two compelling obstacles to assembling those intellectuals we thought were essential (and reining in those chapter writers who had committed) was that one-third of the Sudan seceded from the Republic of Sudan in 2011 and became South Sudan. Except for a few, such as the late John Garang and Francis Deng (both represented in this volume) and our contributors who wrote about them, we did not do justice to South Sudanese intellectuals (or “southern Sudanese,” as they were referred to before the secession),28 nor others from the neglected and/or oppressed regions of the country, for example, those from the Nuba Mountains or Darfur (see chapters 9 and 10 in this volume by Ille and Sharif and by Azzam and Makawi, respectively). Our biggest obstacle, however, was that we were producing a book in the midst of the 2018/2019 Sudanese Revolution against the Islamist military regime. For all of its considerable glory, or perhaps because of it, the insurgency sapped the time, attention, and strength of nearly everyone who has written in or edited this book. Then in 2020 along came the Coronavirus pandemic, an obstacle that is creating anxiety. In 2021 a military coup against the transitional government is already taking a toll. There were dozens of Sudanese—famous and not-so-famous (but important) intellectuals we wanted to call to the attention of our readers, but the task seemed impossible. However, despite the seeming glaring omissions, there

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are also some important intellectuals who are discussed in Gada Kadoda’s chapter following this one. Above we mentioned the names of a number of artists and poets and other thinkers. However, the book would have been enriched by the inclusion of more Sufi intellectuals, Sudan being permeated by the spirit of Sufism. We cannot leave this discussion of omissions, however, without noting three intellectuals whom we were forced to omit in terms of devoting a full chapter to them—because of unforeseen circumstances: Hasan Al-Turabi was the founder of the National Islamic Front, an Islamist intellectual whose ideas did, in fact, travel outside the Sudan’s borders, linking him to the broader global Islamist movements. It was his theoretical and philosophical approach that framed the about-to-be-in power Islamist regime (1989–2019). Even though he was eventually forced out and imprisoned by the Omar Hassan al-Bashir Islamist military regime that he had helped to create, and then frozen out of power after his release, some of his ideas remained part of the undergirding of the Islamist Revolution of 1989. He was indeed a very important intellectual. Fortunately, Kadoda does discuss him. Mahmoud Mohamed Taha, too, was the second intellectual we wanted represented in the book, but the most qualified people to write him into this English language tome were not available or fell away. Taha was an important religious figure who tried to do the unthinkable during an era well before the Islamist Revolution was consummated, that is, to reform Islam and Sharia (Islamic religious law) and draw a boundary between religion and the state. He was the founder of what was originally called the Republican Brothers, later changed to the Republicans, most probably because empowering women was a large part of Taha’s agenda. Regardless of the strenuous attempts to reform Islam, Taha’s political group was a moderate one. Nonetheless, Taha was executed in 1985 by the Jaffer Nimieri military regime (1969–1985) for views considered heretical. However, Taha was so respected and loved, even when people disagreed with him, that his execution for apostasy was one of the factors that led to the eventual undoing of the Nimieri regime (see Kadoda’s discussion). The third intellectual whom we reluctantly had to omit from this collection29 was the political activist and public intellectual, Abdel Khaliq Mahjub, the highly respected and influential head of the Sudanese Communist Party (SCP) which at one time was arguably one of the most important communist parties in Africa and the Middle East. Abdel Khaliq wrote a great deal of important scholarly work and was known throughout communist parties in Eastern Europe and particularly in the Soviet Union. During the period that Abdel Khaliq headed the SCP, it was an influential party, to use the vernacular, the party was a player in Sudanese politics, but that involved struggling to keep the SCP independent from the Soviet Union. In a personal discussion

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I had with him I could see it was clear that he was someone who was trying to salvage the relationship between the North and South Sudan. Abdel Khaliq had opposed Aboud and Nimieri or any military regime. In 1971 there was an attempted coup d’etat against the Jaffer Nimieri military regime. Nimieri was someone who had tried at first to present himself as considerably left of center, but who moved increasingly to the right. Nimieri and his backers blamed the communists for the attempted coup and executed Abdel Khaliq Mahjub and others in 1971.30 In this Introduction I have only been able to gesture toward the intellectual contributions of these three important figures. As one can see, they were very different in their politics, but all three had an enormous following and were highly respected. Their ideas were new for the time and place, emerging from the very particular context of the Sudan during the last one-third of the twentieth century, and linking them to global ideas. There were those Sudanese intellectuals who stood outside the fray (or, more accurately, aside from the fray) such as Mohammad Abu Qasim Hajj Hamad who argued that the Sudan was in the grip of binaries—especially the Arab/African one. He eventually turned much of his attention to the Horn, especially to Eritrea, joining the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF), which was mainly Tegray and Muslim, in its struggle for independence from Ethiopia.31 Because of the large number of women contributors and subjects in this volume, the reader will be exposed to many more women intellectuals than some might have expected, for example, Fatima Babiker Mahmoud (herself an intellectual) is writing about one of the dazzling thinkers in mid- to late-twentieth-century Sudan—Suad Ibrahim Ahmed. We have included a chapter on a woman organic intellectual, “Portrait of a Woman of Courage—Awadeya Koko, Organic Intellectual” by Mai Azzam and Sana Makawi, themselves a younger generation of intellectuals. Furthermore, Kadoda’s chapter following this one also touches on a few other important women figures, such as the late Fatima Ahmed Ibrahim, the long-time head of the Sudanese Women’s Union, affiliated with the SCP. We regret that we could not give her the full chapter that she deserved. Her importance is not only as a public intellectual who wrote a few notable works, but as someone who, as a pioneer, was often written about by other important thinkers (such as Abdullahi Ali Ibrahim and Fatima Babiker Mahmoud—both in this volume). THE ORGANIZATION OF THE BOOK As we have said, this collection of essays actually could be said to have two introductions—this one, and then the next chapter by Gada Kadoda which

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elucidates “Capturing Cultural Capital: Where to Start, and Which Ideas Matter?” Using mainly Arabic sources, reaching back five centuries, and by tracing the intellectual historical trajectories, we come away with one of the questions, among many, with which we started: With such an array of thinkers reaching back to the fifteenth century, how and why were these intellectuals not better known to the outside world? And what were the questions they were asking? Kadoda’s chapter is longer than all of the others in order to be able to include the longer story, but also to bring us to some future-thinking. Section II we have titled “Ghosts and Beacons,” which was a chance to introduce readers to two of our contemporary figures who have died in the twenty-first century—first the martyred revolutionary fighter for southern Sudanese and for a unified Sudan, John Garang, in a chapter by Francis Deng. Garang theorized about “The New Sudan,” a visionary contribution to the political history and ideas about how everything could be done differently. Then, referring to the late Suad Ibrahim Ahmed as a “Beacon,” Fatima Babiker Mahmoud, herself one of the leading feminist intellectuals and a contemporary of Suad Ibrahim, gives us our first highly personal tribute. Fatima knew Suad well. To make the essay even closer to the subject, two other members of Fatima’s exiled family add their brief analyses—first about Suad’s thinking, by Fatima’s partner, Mohamed Suliman, himself a wellknown intellectual; followed by a moving family reminiscence by Fatima and Mohamed’s daughter, Azza Mohamed Suliman. We have referred to these two very brief essays as “Addenda.” Section III—“Hybridities and Ambiguities”—consists of two provocative essays that deal in very different ways with some of the ambiguities and contradictions in Sudanese identities—but with both of them focusing on very different meanings of “hybridity.” Abdullahi Ali Ibrahim takes a postcolonial approach to hybridity, mockingly referring to “Northern Sudanese” intellectuals often said to be “hybrids.” Ibrahim is using some of the ideas of Homi Bhabha. Mohamed Abusabib is using hybridity in a more conventional sense in order to elucidate the Sudan’s cultural richness. He uses the arts as a central aspect of his position. In Section IV—“The Production of Intellectuals”—three academics in two chapters tackle what the academic world of the Sudan has produced in the way of intellectuals. The first essay, by Atta El-Battahani, a political scientist, is a study of intellectuals associated with the University of Khartoum, the Sudan’s flagship educational institution. The second essay is by Balghis Badri and Mai Izeldeen, two leading figures on the faculty of the all-women’s university in the Sudan, Al-Ahfad University for Women (AUW). Their feminist approach is on the creation and building of Women and Gender Studies at AUW, founded by Balghis, the first and only such institution in the country.

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Section V hash is titled “Marginalized Intellectual Communities,” meaning that term, first, to refer to an essay by Enrico Ille and Mariam Sharif in which they demonstrate the encompassing of thought and practice among a marginalized demographic—in the Nuba Mountains. In the second essay the term refers to marginalized women organic intellectuals, one of whom is portrayed by Mai Azzam and Sana Makawi. The third use of the term also by a new generation intellectual, Wini Omer, is applied to the generationally marginalized—a study of the ideas within youth groups. We have titled Section VI as “Mahdists, Feminists, and Humanists,” terms we have used to describe the intellectual (and political) contributions of three major figures in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. We began with one of the most powerful figures in Sudanese history—the late Al-Sadig Almahdi—a thinker, statesman, religious figure, and heir of the original Sudanese Sufi— the Mahdi. It is a portrait by an intellectual journalist, Rabah Al Sadig. The second is an analysis of the thinking of a leading Sudanese feminist in exile, Fatima Babiker Mahmoud, by Amani El Jack, a former student of Mahmoud, and herself a middle-generation feminist intellectual. The humanist of our title is Francis Deng, whom we would formerly have referred to as a “southern Sudanese,” when he actually dwelled in the middle, someone who, like John Garang, Deng’s subject in his chapter, has graced our literature and our politics with ideas about what the Sudan could be, or could have been—that is, in other words, he was not only a guerilla leader and politician, but an important visionary.

UNCERTAINTY AND POSSIBILITIES Let us return to the first page and our claim that this is a time of great uncertainty and possibilities.32 After carrying out a successful Revolution in 2018/2019 that overthrew the military dictatorship that had lasted 30 years, Sudanese are now faced with a great deal of uncertainty and anxiety as they build toward a democratic civilian government. However, more important is that it is clear there are many possibilities for imagining justice and freedom, if Sudanese have the will. Gramsci’s famous statement is highly appropriate here. He spoke of “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.”33 NOTES 1. I have written about the gift of uncertainty, stealing the phrase from Malcolm Gladwell of The New Yorker in “A Propensity for Self-Subversion and a Taste for Liberation,” in a Special Issue of the Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies

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(JMEWS)—Scholar, Mentor, Activist: Sondra Hale’s Transnational Feminist Commitments, Vol. 10, No. 1 (2014), pp. 149–163, edited by Azza Basarudin and Khanum Shaikh. In the following issue of JMEWS, Vol. 10, No. 2 (2014), I related these ideas more directly to the Sudan. 2. From December 2018 to August 2019, Sudanese civilians fought a non-violent revolution (a term most Sudanese prefer), overthrowing the Islamist military regime under Omar Hassan al-Bashir. As of the time of writing this introduction Sudanese were involved in the difficult task of restructuring the political system and society, readying themselves for a democratic civilian government. It will be interesting to see if new paradigms emerge from the new period and if they will relate to global schools of thought. 3. It is difficult to classify and date these conflicts. Even the one we can most distinctly refer to as a “civil war” between the North and South has a debatable set of dates. Some date that conflict from a southern army mutiny in 1955; others begin the civil war a bit later. Some stop with the signing of a peace treaty in 1972, but begin the dates again in a few years. Still others insist the dates are continuous, that is, 1955–2011, with a brief interval of only scattered violent confrontations between the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (2009) and the secession of the South (2011), then becoming the independent South Sudan. But this war is only one of many conflicts in the country, and despite the Revolution of 2018/2019, some of which are continuing, for example, in the Nuba Mountains and in Darfur. It remains to be seen how the transitional government, after the fall of the military dictator Omar Hassan al-Bashir (and the generals who were supporting him) in 2019, will manage the conflicts. 4. For a recent book in English that deals with some of the profound changes in the Sudan during a part of the period dealt with in this volume, see Cascari, Assal, and Francis Ireton 2020. 5. This volume is, to a large extent, an outgrowth of a symposium on “The Intellectual: Old and New Modes of Thought in Sudan and Beyond—Moving into the 21st Century,” which was jointly conceived/coordinated by Gada Kadoda and Sondra Hale and organized in Khartoum by the Sudanese Knowledge Society, April 29–30, 2017. 6. See Salomon 2016 for a look at the relationship of Islam to the State in the Sudan, perhaps most especially Chapter 3, “Rebuilding the Muslim Mind.” 7. This is not to be understood as my saying Sudanese are individualistic. It is quite the contrary when it comes to being a part of a family, clan, lineage, ethnic group, region, and so on. 8. This overlooking of Sudanese scholarship as part of an intellectual tradition, even by the former colonialists, is especially striking when one considers the formerly first-rate national university in Khartoum, ranked high on two continents, and the previous excellence of the secondary school system. 9. Sadig al-Mahdi died while this volume was being assembled and after Rabah Al Sadig had submitted her chapter. 10. She is publishing in England, for example, The Translator, Grove Press, 1999. This work was translated into Arabic by the late El Khatim Adl’an, who

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was himself a leading young intellectual, among the first intellectuals of his generation in the Sudanese Communist Party, from which he strayed after years of imprisonment. 11. A partial joke in the Sudan is that everyone writes poetry, from the Sudan’s first Prime Minister to the common every man or woman. These are poems in Arabic, sometimes read aloud, intended for Sudanese, but more than often stuck into drawers and not seen by anyone. 12. I am referring to modernist European and North American schools such as cubism, abstract expressionism, surrealism, and others. 13. One might also have included the late Ahmed Mohamed Shibrain, Kamala Ishaq, Mohamed Omer Bushara, Musa Khalifa, Mohamed el-Nour, Tahir Bushra, Rashid Diab, Salah Hassan, Khalid Kodi, and many more of the previous generation. A relatively new book published in the Sudan (itself a rarity for books about art) brings us up-to-date with the contemporary (mainly modernist) art scene in the Sudan, portraying 30 artists with samples of their work. These artists, working in Sudan, are mainly from a younger generation than the artists I have been discussing in the text and in Note 13. The late Griselda El Tayeb, Lina Haggar, Tarmeem Saeed, and Victor Rohm, Contemporary Artists of the Sudan: Art in Times of Adversity. Khartoum: Dabanga Group, 2015. 14. Hussein Shariffe, for example, in addition to being one of the leading abstract painters, was also a filmmaker whose The Dislocation of Amber, attracted a great deal of attention in international art film circles. It is a surreal and symbolic film set in the deserted and dying eastern medieval seaport of Suakin to portray the death/ suicide of society as a result of colonialism. I was a part of the making of that film. 15. We have necessarily not been able to discuss very many of the significant academic intellectuals—both inside and outside the Sudan—such as Abdel Ghaffar Ahmed, Ahmad Sikainga, Nada Mustafa Ali, Salah Hassan, Khalid Medani, Rogaia Abusharaf, Munzoul Assal, Abdel Magid Ali Bob, Asma Abdel Halim, Abdullahi Gallab, Souad Taj Ali, and Samia el-Nagar. Balghis Badri (in this volume) gained a great deal of notice outside the Sudan because of her prominence in the formation of Ahfad University for Women and the field of Women’s Studies in Sudan. She attended a number of conferences in many parts of the world, made connections, raised funds, and invited many prominent American and European academic figures to Ahfad. Balghis was able to accomplish some of her feats partially by being a member of the Badri family, the most prominent and influential extended family in education in the Sudan. 16. The U.S. organization, following the secession of South Sudan, renamed itself the Sudans Studies Association, the added “s” acknowledging the two Sudans. 17. Omedi Ochieng wrote a major article on African intellectuals, but did not mention a single Sudanese in his text, nor even in his bibliography. See Ochieng 1957, 25–37. 18. This information is from a series of Population Department censuses on the Sudan during the 1960s, planned and carried out by the Greek company Doxiadis and Associates, located in Athens. 19. For decades, it was the leading interdisciplinary English language Sudanese journal, a product of the Sudanese Philosophical Society.

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20. Abdullahi Ali Ibrahim (see his chapter in this volume) thrived as an academic in the United States where, perhaps, he became better known for his non-folkloric writings. However, he should be considered a foremost folklorist. 21. When I was teaching in Critical Theory at California Institute of the Arts, I invited the late Hamza El-Din, a Sudanese Nubian, to spend a semester in the 1990s at what is called CalArts, as a Grand Master of the oud (lute). He aroused quite a bit of excitement among students and faculty and was invited back. He was a guest at a couple of other universities as well. 22. As I will remark below, there is an exception to that statement. In the 1960s and 1970s, emanating from what was then called Khartoum Technical Institute, a cluster of modernist artists were referred to inside and sometimes outside the Sudan as the “Khartoum School.” 23. Alsarah does not want to be pigeon-holed into one category. See Anita Fabos and Alsarah’s essay “Navigating Musical Identities, Knowledge Production and ‘Authenticity’ in the Diaspora: A Conversation with Alsarah” in Sondra Hale and Gada Kadoda, eds. (2017). Networks of Knowledge Production in Sudan: Identities, Mobilities, and Technologies. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, pp. 201–219. 24. See Gada Kadoda’s chapter in this volume, where she tackles some of these questions. 25. (In Arabic) Lecture delivered May 28, 2016. Khartoum, Villa Toubia, at a Round Table on “The Intellectual and Power.” Translator into English unknown. 26. Foreword by Tim Niblock, a political scientist, and one of the outstanding scholars of the Sudan. 27. We are not suggesting that we have all of these disciplines represented, only that the production of knowledge covers or verges on all of these fields. We have done the least service to science and medicine. 28. Southern Sudanese living in Sudan until 2011 made considerable contributions to intellectual life, even though it was very difficult for them to wrench themselves away from politics and tend to knowledge production, or to identify simply as a Sudanese scholar. Some had been intellectuals or academics thrust into politics and war. Some went into exile; others moved to the new South Sudan. Some are no longer living. The disruption of knowledge production cannot be overestimated. 29. The intended contributor for the chapter on Abdel Khaliq Mahjoub grew very ill and died before he could finish his chapter. 30. In addition to Abdel Khaliq Mahgoub, there have been a number of other important intellectuals in the Sudanese Communist Party. For example, the person who “replaced” Abdel Khaliq as secretary general of the SCP was himself a leading intellectual—Mohamed Ibrahim Nugud—who headed the Party from 1971 to 2012, the year he died. 31. I am indebted to Alden Young for reminding me of Hajj Hamad. 32. The subject matter of one new book of essays already mentioned, while not dealing with our particular time period of uncertainties and possibilities, does deal with the “reshaping” that has been taking place. See endnote 4. 33. The actual quote is: “I’m a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will.” Letter from Prison, December 19, 1929. Wikiquotes.

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REFERENCES Casciarri, Barbara, Assal Munzoul, A.M. and Francois Ireton, eds. 2020. Multidimensional Change in Sudan (1989-2011): Reshaping Livelihoods, Conflicts and Identities. New York: Berghahn [original date of publication 2015]. Fabos, Anita and Alsarah. 2017. “Navigating Musical Identities, Knowledge Production and ‘Authenticity’ in the Diaspora: A Conversation with Alsarah.” In Networks of Knowledge Production in Sudan: Identities, Mobilities, and Technologies, edited by Sondra Hale and Gada Kadoda, 201–219. Lanham, MD: Lexington, Books. Fawzi, Saad el-Din. 1957. The Labour Movement in Sudan: 1946–1955. London: Oxford. Gramsci, Antonio. 1982. Selections from the Prison Books. London: Lawrence and Wishart. Ochieng, Omedi. 2010. “The African Intellectual: Hountondji and After.” Radical Philosophy 164 (2): 25–37. Pink, Sarah, Akama, Yoko, and Shanti Sumartojo. 2018. Uncertainty and Possibility: New Approaches to Future Making in Design. Bloomsbury Academia. Said, Edward. 1994. Representations of the Intellectuals. London: Vintage Books, various pages indicated in the text. Salih, Tayeb. 1966. Season of Migration to the North. London: Heinemann African Writers Series. Salomon, Noah. 2016. For Love of the Prophet: An Ethnography of Sudan’s Islamic State. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Chapter 2

Capturing Cultural Capital Where to Start, and Which Ideas Matter? Gada Kadoda

In an unsettling, yet optimistic time for the Sudan, ideas matter. But, is it possible to trace the Sudan’s intellectual history, and how should we do that? As a site of antiquity much of its history is yet to be revealed, and like oral cultures, many ideas are lost without documentation. Do we explore the intellectual history of the Sudan or the Sudanese? If we choose the Sudan, we are dealing with shifting borders, and if we choose the Sudanese, it is contested identities. The Sudan’s modern borders are a legacy of the Ottomans, British, Egyptians, and post-independence civil wars. The identities of its peoples continue to fuel conflicts in what was once the largest country in Africa. I also contemplated the question of where to start and which ideas matter. The choice was from what exists, recognizing that there is less written about ideas produced by women, the poor, and the marginalized. So, what about the qualifications and positionality of the tracer? Neither a historian nor a social scientist, I trace what the intellectuals produced and, in the process, learn about my social make-up and, at times, reveal my political position. I sought objectivity in tracing the ideas of the “other,” but cannot claim that my lived experience and my being (in this order) Sudanese, woman, Africanist, feminist, socialist, privileged urbanite from the “riverain” area1 did not influence the choices. Yet, I am fully aware that interpretations of ideas mattered. Although the issues with which this chapter is concerned are of great importance, the chapter itself is a modest attempt to bring together strands of Sudanese modes of thinking over the past five centuries, from Islamic kingdoms, through colonial periods and Mahdia time, to independence and national rule up to the present. The authors of studies reviewed in the chapter come from different backgrounds—a diversity also reflected in their varied approaches that is reproduced by the contributors to this book. Whereas literature is abundant on the nationalist movement and its prominent historical 19

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moments and figures, the authors and subjects are mostly male, and with few exceptions, are from the riverain—in other words, are mostly written by the elite about the elite. I draw on non-riverain and Sudanese women intellectuals to complete the picture, but also to understand the intersections and deviations compared to centric and androcentric histories of the Sudan. The chapter is not only meant to give the reader an account of ideas, generated or translated, but also a feeling of what energized the place. EARLY INFLUENCES ON CONTEMPORARY SUDANESE THOUGHT At the root of contemporary Sudanese thought, argues Mohammed El-Makki Ibrahim (1976) Arab culture found a foothold after the demise of Nubian Kingdoms and during the Islamic Kingdoms (1500–1821) of Darfur and Sennar (or Funj) Sultanites. This is when the Arabized Sudanese emerged and rose to political power (Basher 1980). The process of Arab identity formation, Ibrahim contends, had profoundly imprinted the Sudanese mind with an inferiority complex that not only was manifested in Sudanese wanting to be Arab and speak “perfect” Arabic, but also in sharing the aspirations and commiserations of the Arab world. Furthermore, for fear of enslavement,2 some even acquired proof of Arab and Muslim identities. Within this context, Sudanese settled the question of which knowledge matters through their thirst for Islamic knowledge and Arab culture. Because of travel difficulties and dangers, however, they had to accept teachers who reached the land. Although Ibrahim saw the Funj era as one of receiving, he admired their innovation in speaking Arabic and practicing Islam. Arabic and Sufism The scholars who came brought two expressions of thought—the classic Arabic language and Sufi philosophy. However, M.E. Ibrahim (1976) notes that Arabic culture was unable to send its crème de la crème scholars because it had already been in retrogression from feuds and battles, and as a result, Sudanese received its waste and crust. He describes an ambiguous relationship Sudanese had with the incoming classic Arabic, between admiration for classic Arabic as the language of the Quran, yet not good enough to replace their local dialect. Judging by the cultural heritage left by the intellectuals of Sudanese Islamic Kingdoms such as Wd Taktook3 and Wd Dheefalla,4 Ibrahim infers that the local dialect persevered until the Turco-Egyptian rule (1821–1885) institutionalized5 classic Arabic. As contact with religious institutions like al-Azhar in Egypt increased, means of travel improved, and

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employment for the formally educated created, more Sudanese traveled for study. They also joined “science circles” that scholars held in their homes, replacing the traditional apprenticeship learning style. With better access to the writings of the likes of al-Gazali and al-Halaj, the differences from Sudanese versions of Arabic and Sufism stood out to Funj intellectuals. For the populace, however, Sufism and Islam were the same. Ibrahim argues that Sufism was also instrumental in shaping the Sudanese intellect with a nonsecular disposition that he saw in the little celebration of scientific research and rational thinking, and in their holding onto the Sufi morality of being content and ascetic, yet not delving into the underlying philosophy. Whereas the identity formation process that Ibrahim discussed is important for the analysis of Sudanese thought, its influence is easier to trace for men than for women because of scarce resources on women’s history. With nonexistent opportunities to apprenticeships or travel, women’s narratives of the day were examined through the eyes of Funj intellectuals who featured them as teachers and poets. However, in her book on women and religion, Nahid el-Hassan (2016) uses Mukhtar Agoba’s (2002) historical account of the Funj era to reveal the contradictions in the context of women. For example, whereas women of the Sultanate of Darfur crowned the Sultan, and Sennar is said to have been named after a “slave-woman,” the fate of a Funj woman was entirely left to her family. Fatima Babiker Mahmoud (2008) demonstrates that women’s political status in the Funj period was a retrogression from ancient Sudan. Analyses of different women’s narratives, however, for example, resistance poetry (Muhammad 1996) and social spaces like the Zar6 (Mahmoud 2002), not only shed light on what they were thinking, but also on how the process of identity formation that Ibrahim scrutinized might have been even more complex than he had recognized. al-Mahdia and al-Azhar By and large, the most extensive work on al-Mahdia thought was produced by historian and documentarian Muhammad Ibrahim Abu Salim (1989). He studied the Diwaniyah (governance) systems and their application in the Mahdia, analyzed and classified al-Mahdi’s writings, synthetizing from his messages the main intellectual trends of the time. Abu Salim found that the foremost intellectual activity revolved around al-Mahdia and al-Mahdi, with opposing ideas suppressed, which in turn, resulted in the lack of scholars to pursue the development of his ideas after his death. Since his seminal work that was based on his doctorate in 1966, and first published in 1970, more books from various discourses examined al-Mahdia’s cultural and intellectual capital. Mohammed El-Makki Ibrahim (1976) dates much of the beginnings of contemporary Sudan’s cultural, social, and political features, as well as

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the emergence of the concept of nationhood, to the al-Mahdia Revolution that ended Turco-Egyptian rule in the Sudan. He explored intellectual efforts by al-Mahdi7 himself to eradicate the Turks’ cultural effects, dismantle their government system, and replace it with his ideas. Ibrahim found evidence of al-Mahdi’s creativity in his effort to construct a Sudanese civilization in the books he produced and in the new salutations and dresses that he promoted to replace Turkish ones. He concurs with Mahmoud (2002) that al-Mahdi’s interest in women’s religious education, evident in famous women-led Khalwas (religious schools) and his “Women’s Pledge of Allegiance,” came at a time when women’s education and political participation were farfetched. Nevertheless, Mahmoud (2002) critiques al-Mahdi’s codes as “pragmatic jurisprudence” that became less harsh during war time, and el-Hassan (2016) explores how women intellectuals are split in their ideas about al-Mahdi. One could see el-Hassan’s distinction between women who considered al-Mahdi closer to Salafi thought enacting unprecedented interference in women’s private lives and others who saw these codes a necessity for combating “degradation and dissolution” that al-Mahdi came to eradicate in Sudanese society—a manifestation of divisions we see among women today between holding onto tradition and aspiring for modernity. The emergence of a leader like Mohamed Ahmed al-Mahdi, a well-learned Sufi with a strong personality, Mohamed Omer Basher (1980) argues, was expected and instrumental in uniting different tribes in a revolution that ended Ottoman’s rule. He considers al-Mahdia as the Sudan’s first anticolonial national movement. However, although al-Mahdi’s appealed to the populace, many intellectuals shunned and even campaigned against him (M.E. Ibrahim 1976). While the culture favored local over imported scholars in the public mode of thinking, intellectuals were split between localized Sufi traditions and al-Azhar’s formal Islam connected to the State which was seen as oppressive and extortionist by the populace. Nonetheless, as the course of intellectual formation was being transformed by the new educational system where State-employed Azhar-ites and Sufi teachers were courted by the Khedive in reward for their allegiance, and as the new government system became more established and Sudanese filled the posts, those who had not acquired al-Azhar qualifications eventually lost traditional privileges. Abdullahi Ali Ibrahim (1994), a historian, concurs with M. E. Ibrahim (1976) that the intellectual debate between al-Mahdi and the Ulama (religious scholars) is intrinsic to the conflict between two of Islam’s schools of thought, Sufi and Sunni. M. E. Ibrahim sees in al-Mahdi’s bold attempt to unify the four main Islamic sects as an affirmation of being free of the inferiority complex that marred Sudanese thought. Nonetheless, Al-Mahdi’s early death and the violent nature of the efforts of his successor, al- Khalifa Abdalla Altaishi’s, in state building cut short this endeavor. As the state was weakened by internal and

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external conflicts, the Mahdists had only courage and religious zeal to face the superior war technology of Kitchener’s forces in the time of the “scramble for Africa” that brought the Condominium Rule to the Sudan. In Gramsci’s types of intellectuals, the conflict within the scholars’ class can be seen as between the organic (such as Muhammad Ahmad al-Mahdi) and the traditional (whose fate was firmly tied to the Ottoman Empire). In defense of the State, these traditional intellectuals were already less susceptible to the concept of al-Mahdi (the savior) than were the Sufis. They challenged the authenticity of Muhammad Ahmad’s claim to be the chosen one. Using the Quran’s “Sultan doctrine,” they warned against the al-Mahdia Revolution. Muhammad Ahmad’s counterargument was from within the Quran, too, using the Prophet’s sayings to assert his right to disobey the Sultan. Being a member of the local Sufi class with a large diverse following, Muhammad Ahmad fits the category of organic intellectual who led a courageous fight against the colonial “infidel” with another religious zeal. Nevertheless, al-Mahdia history and al-Mahdi’s personality are contested. For example, Omer El-Garrai (2021) sees al-Mahdia as religious extremism similar to present-day Daesh and al-Madhi as an opportunist who capitalized on the Sufi belief system and metaphysical intimidation to gain absolute power. Not to dismiss historical contestations of al-Madhia and conceptual variations between uprising and revolution as social phenomena, this chapter thereafter refers to Muhammad Ahmad as he is best known, al-Mahdi, and the resistance he led—a revolution. It was the first of several in modern Sudan that show the changing idea of revolution. According to Mohamed Jamal Hashim (2013), al-Mahdia was a revolution of “embodiment” represented in al-Mahdi, although al-Mahdi himself might not consider it so (Abu Salim 1989). SUDANESE THOUGHT DURING THE CONDOMINIUM ERA (1899–1956) The influence of the Funj, Turco-Egyptian, and al-Mahdia on formulating Sudanese thought is seen in certain intellectual strands that permeated the condominium era such as Funj Sufism, the sensitivities around the Arabic language and Arab aspirations, as well as the fervor to innovate like Mohamed Ahmed al-Mahdi. The Sudanese entered the Condominium agreement, rightly described as “peculiar” (Basher 1980) in the way that the Sudan became a British protectorate with Egypt given a secondary role, after they had experienced colonialism and revolution. During the Condominium’s first two decades, the borders of modern Sudan were drawn, new land laws created, and an industrialization strategy enacted. By World War I, modern

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educational and health systems, construction projects, and a simple system of governance using Egyptian employees were established. The Sudanese, apart from a few religious leaders, had no input or say in these projects, and the lack of skilled workers, low population density, and lack of interest in manual work among the populace brought migrant workers from different parts of the world into the Sudan. Also, the demography of urban centers was changing by the influx of “freed slaves” and new social formations, especially after railway expansions that created a class of workers and merchants who were to play major roles in the trade union and national movements (Sikainga 2002). These changes were to have societal and intellectual impact in the long term. From this context of “industrialization and modernism,” new intellectuals (the graduates) emerged with their own anticolonial thought and practice. In this next section I trace the intellectual influence of the dual Anglo-Egyptian colonialism on identity formation explored by M.E. Ibrahim (1976), on new scholars different from the Ulama described by A.A. Ibrahim (1994), and on conflicts between organic and traditional intellectuals. The Colonial Context The British avoided enforcing a full Western system that would clash with local culture or religious leaders. They eluded slavery abolition8 and women’s education.9 It was also not their intention to reach rural areas with the modernization processes, nor bring industrial technologies to develop the economy, spread and inculcate democratic values, or build a national feeling (Aboush 2013). Despite these limitations, the development of national and women’s movements that influenced Sudanese thought into the twenty-first century relied, for the most part, on the legacy of pioneering graduates from the new educational system. The intellectual context within which this “renaissance” was happening and the reaction to new ideas was explored by Mohammed elMakki Ibrahim (1976) through the impact of the military defeat of al-Mahdia on three generations who witnessed the start of the condominium era. There are the defeated, those who inherited the defeat, and the grandchildren of the defeated. The first of these generations was split along their loyalty to alKhalifa and belief in al-Mahdi. Loyal believers in al-Mahdi were persecuted and apprehended, driving many to rural Sudan, possibly fortifying it against incoming culture. Al-Khalifa’s adversaries welcomed the invaders. Sorrowful about al-Mahdi’s defeat but having served as top administrators and judges, they found work with the new government. This latter group had the most influence on intellectual trends and social change because of their elite status in society. Although they failed to connect at a deeper level with Western culture because of inadequate English and the scarcity of translated texts at that time, their engagement with the new government indirectly popularized

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the colonizer. The second generation, children of those who inherited the defeat, knew nothing but the life and teachings of al-Mahdia. Too old to join the new schools, they went into oblivion. The grandchildren of the defeated had only heard of the defeat and their exposure to new schools and tools for learning and expression brought them new understandings of the Sudanese context and world events. With this perception, they began to see the defeat as not just a military defeat that their fathers had felt ashamed of but also as an inevitability from being backward. Conscious of the oppressive and exploitative aspects of colonization, they eventually became aware of their lack of freedoms to organize and of opportunities in higher government posts reserved for foreigners who looked down on local culture and institutions. The intellectuals kept quiet for the best part of the Condominium’s first 20 years, with not much evidence of struggling for liberation. Without tools to critique Western civilization, some even wrote poetry praising British and Egyptian figures and their modernizing mission, while others joined the Arab chorus of pride in Arabism, Islam, and the glorious past. M.E. Ibrahim (1976), a poet himself, saw their impersonation of Arab poets as escapism from local context, and that in their mimicry, they regenerated the inferiority complex of their Funj ancestors. He saw their fascination with Arab culture limited to literary works and not reaching into the philosophy or science which, he thinks, trapped Sudanese thought in linguistic and religious realms. The grandchildren (of the defeated) generation arose toward the end of World War I to national consciousness, with organizing and dissenting. By 1918, civil society and journalism started to emerge. The White Flag Association, Graduates Club, and al-Hadhara (The Civilization) journal are some of the formations that influenced the Sudanese modernity movement (Aboush 2013). By that time, there were more girls’ schools and the Women Teachers Training school, established in 1921, played a significant role in women’s intellectual formation and political participation in the national movement. The verve between 1919 and 1925 is seen in the proliferation of secret organizations and the production of critical political pamphlets calling for revolution and independence (al-Khanji 1992). The activities of the Graduates, reformists, and non-religious eventually moved to confrontational action. By 1922, secret organizing turned into open struggle. The New Intellectuals In distinguishing between early resistance to the Condominium and the 1924 movement, al-Khanji argues that the former were driven by al-Mahdia zeal and religious notions whereas 1924 was led by the new intellectuals or al-Afendia. This class emerged from the new educational system and was able to follow news of liberation struggles, especially the 1919 Egyptian

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Revolution. M.E. Ibrahim (1976) called them the “leap generation” because their movement was sudden, incomplete, and confrontational. Although they did not have a clear vision of nationalism, they planted the seed for the following generation, the pioneers, to unite against the colonizer. Ibrahim is full of praise for the 1924 revolutionaries, especially their literary contributions and adoption of new writing styles that had emerged in Egypt, the renewal school. More well-versed in Western ideas than any of their predecessors, they changed anticolonial sentiments and action from Messianic to nationalistic, and from romanticism in opposition into one with a new vision of identity. They replaced their predecessors’ flowery and rhetorical language with simple and direct messages. Ibrahim, however, is critical of their ideas about sovereignty and independence, as well as their ambiguous political position between the colonizers—a trend that continued to haunt generations of intellectuals. The leaders of 1924, in their engagement with global events and openness to modern ideas, some of which were carried in by foreigners working on large development projects that became the melting pot of Sudanese cultures, contributing to the formation of national identity, exemplify Sudanese ability to absorb new ideas. Their debates were not restricted to anti-colonial issues but also human rights and economic development concepts (al-Khanji 1992). Ahmed Khier (1948), who is one of the new intellectuals, asserts that they were not only influenced by new schools of thought in the region but also by the Renaissance movement in Europe as well as being part of global power struggles and uprisings against colonization and exploitation. As a class created by, and existentially linked to, the occupier, many questions, however, faced them (al-Kid 1992). For instance, did the British save them from al-Khalifa or were the British more damaging? They pondered over who ruled the Sudan, was it the British or Egyptians? Who were these Egyptians and how did they relate to the Ottomans? More importantly for the national struggle, they debated how to relate to the Egyptians—as colonizers, fellow oppressed, or as Muslims against the Christian invader? These questions, Khalid al-Kid contends, were left unanswered until worldwide debates on nationalism, liberation, and selfdetermination emerged in the years leading to World War I. Khalid Al-kid (1992) argues that the use of the Turco-Egyptian system primarily run by Egyptians and Arabic-speaking expatriates limited the British’s intellectual impact on Sudanese thought; whereas Egyptian influence benefited from the cultural domination through Egyptian teachers of the Ottomans and returning exiles who had fled al-Khalifa’s rule. The British, in high ranks and often with a dual role of government and security employees, were less interested in intellectual engagement with the Sudanese. Limited English language in the educational system, possibly designed to reduce the risk of higher learning and mastery of the colonizer’s tools, might also have

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reduced British influence. Nonetheless, English publications on liberal and socialist ideas did reach al-Afendia. According to al-Kid, there were three distinct trends in al-Afendia’s thought about nationalism. The first group advocated for Islamic Modernism; the second leaned toward Arab-Islamism, combining religion with the modern concept of nation; and the third promoted a Sudanese nationalism exemplified in the writing of Hamza al-Mak Tambal. After the fall of the Ottoman Empire, unlike Arab nationalists, the options of the Sudanese included Sudanism. This was also the time of changing class formation with consequences on positions al-Afendia took on the “Sudan Issue” after Egypt’s independence. There were many heated debates between intellectuals who rallied behind the Sudan is for the Sudanese slogan and others who believed in the common struggle of the Sudanese and Egyptians, calling for Unity of the Nile Valley. While the first group wanted to end Egyptian rule but leave the British in place until the Sudanese were ready, the second group, included new intellectuals with African identity, who were opposed to inherited social status and traditional authority, saw their salvation in the Egyptian model. New ideas on identity, individualism, and nation state provided a theoretical basis to discuss the meaning of “Sudanese” in “Sudan for the Sudanese” (al-Kid 1992). For al-Afendia with enslavement history, nationalism is inclusive and not only fit for “sons of tribes” as espoused by some riverain intellectuals. This showed the glass ceiling between “owners and owned” that limits the benefits of acquiring an important position by an outstanding “slave.” Although the race conflict surfaced in various forms, for example, the Black Flag, and generally weakened the revolutionary movement, the 1924 intellectuals, like their successors of the Graduates Congress, kept quiet on slavery (Nugud 1995). The extent of Egyptian involvement and influence on 1924 movement is often scrutinized as to whether their sentiments about Egypt were out of real loyalty or a mere political tactic. It’s a fact, though, that when the Sudan Issue was raised, al-Afendia, who were not connected to tribes or the riverain’s social fabric, supported “Unity of the Nile Valley.” There is consensus, however, that 1924 came before the Sudanese national movement had matured. Their revolt suffered from fragmented political consciousness and split loyalties between Egypt and Britain among intellectuals. Intellectuals’ Hubs The Sudanese ushered in 1925 in a somber mood, mourning the young officers of the 1924 movement (Khier 1948). The years (1925–1938), between the leap and the pioneers’ generations, were gloomy for the intellectuals who were persecuted, imprisoned, or exiled (M.E. Ibrahim 1976). The British, aware of the danger presented by the educated, started a campaign to isolate

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them from traditional leaders. They closed schools and spaces of congregation creating a policed environment that repelled the educated to the corners rather than the central position they had held in 1924. During these years, the intellectuals retreated to literary work and engaged in a self-teaching ­mission—forming reading associations in their neighborhoods, building schools, and establishing more magazines such as al-Fagar, al-Nahda and al-Neel. Ahmed Khier described the typical bedroom of a Sudanese youth having very little furniture, yet filled with books and magazines in Arabic and English. They read Darwin and Freud, Taha Hussien and al-Agad, wrote poetry on peace and articles on the French Revolution, traveled inside the Sudan and abroad, and organized people-funded educational projects.10 These activities were significant in the trajectory of Sudanese thought from which intellectual hubs11 proliferated, but also on future divisions and differences that were to split the graduates into political parties in the 1940s. The Graduates Congress, established in 1938, played a crucial part in the struggle for independence and the renewal of national consciousness that called for a distinctive Sudanese literary school. Initially, the graduates argued about the mission of the Congress. Should it follow the Indian model for national resistance, Egypt’s al-Wafd as a political party, or take the form of a trade union for government workers? They were also divided on whether to offer an honorary membership to religious sects’ leaders. Some argued that the high status of religious leaders would strengthen and promote the graduates among the populace, but others were wary of importing divisions among the sects. This debate never ceased and coalitions between graduates with one or the other sect eventually split the Congress into political parties. In a nutshell, the graduates represented Sudanese progressive thought of the time and their Congress was home to thinkers, writers, and poets. They were the talented tenth.12 One could be an engineer, journalist, and a poet at the same time; yet their poetry on women’s education showed the different mindsets of the defeat grandchildren and the leap generations (M.E. Ibrahim 1976). While the former praised the educated women as good wives, the latter like Khalil Farah, saw women’s education as a human right. Women Organizing The Association of Educated Women (AEW), established in 1947, is considered to have pioneered women’s organizing. Formed by early women teachers like Fatima Taleb and led by important figures like Khalda Zahir,13 it was only preceded by the short-lived Medani Women Club (1944) which consisted of the wives of civil service officers. Haja Kashif Badri (2002) argued that the clear objective of the AEW, working to raise the consciousness of

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fellow Sudanese women who did not get an education, protected it initially from the fierce criticism that faced the Medani Club. More women-led formations followed, such as the Association of Women Preferment (1949) established by Umma Party women, the women’s cooperative (1951) that was established by teachers, nurses, and community workers in al-Obaid, and the Sudanese Women Union (SWU) (1952) that was aligned with the Sudanese Front Against Colonialism. The SWU became the most prominent platform for women organizing and was led by women rights activist and the first woman parliamentarian, Fatima Ahmed Ibrahim, for decades to come. In the few years that the Association of Educated Women was active, they developed literacy programs, established a night school and a kindergarten, organized a charity market, and began to attract the attention of the local and Egyptian press. Despite this success, the Association succumbed to the criticism and disapproval from both the traditional sections of Sudanese society and the British Administration. Their membership dwindled and eventually became polarized and immobilized by political divisions in the National movement. Women were also joining trade unions, participating in anticolonialism marches, and writing on resistance. Nafisa al-Malik wrote a powerful article in al-Saraha newspaper titled Is it Not Time to Wake Up, where she addressed all women to become part of the national liberation struggle. Whereas the events in Egypt have had a pronounced effect on the national movement in the Sudan, Mahmoud (2002) argued that this did not extend to generating sophisticated ideas about women’s rights and liberation in comparison to what was produced by Egyptian thinkers such as Rufa’a al-Tahtawi, Mohamed Abdu, and Gasim Amin. Instead, the debate among Sudanese intellectuals was limited to education. Mahmoud (2008) discussed the debate emerging after the formation of the Sudanese Women Union (SWU) that split public opinion between those who saw the SWU as a women’s rebellion against tradition and Islam and the intellectuals who supported it. Nevertheless, SWU managed to institute itself as one of the important forces in the national movement through a myriad of social and educational activities and through their mouthpiece Sawt al-Mara’a (The Women’s Voice) magazine. In the articles and caricatures in the magazine’s pages, Mahmoud recounted the issues SWU addressed as part of the Union’s modernist agenda and constitution. The topics included giving advice to housewives on hygiene, house management, and cooking recipes. There were campaigns against traditions they saw as unbecoming of modern women such as female genital mutilation, tribal marks, the excessive spending on weddings and mourning rituals in funerals, among others. Even though Mahmoud salutes the progressive ideas that the SWU espoused and their tendency toward scientific and secular thinking as well as coverage of local and global political issues, she critiqued the influence of dominant (male) narratives on

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their positions and the lack of depth in their analyses of women’s status.14 Mahmoud gives credit to SWU in their highlighting of women’s struggles in Sudanese society such as the burden of housewives and the right of working women to equal pay. However, she pointed out that they fell short of calling for monetary compensation for women’s labor at home or fighting for government-funded childcare. Despite their shortcomings, Mahmoud saw a new feminist thought of national liberation that was unbound by Western schools or a certain ideology. Ideas and Conflicts Mohamed Awad Aboush (2013) explored some of the ideas of prominent writers in the newly founded local newspapers which he credited with not only offering the space for an intergenerational dialogue among the graduates but also for having initiated the Sudanese modernist and renaissance project. For example, Mohamed Ashri al-Siddig was concerned with nation-building and was influenced by the artists of the European Renaissance in how they represented the future with their visual art, which he expressed in words. Hamza al-Malik Tambal—considered a pioneering modernist having started writing in 1916—critiqued imitation and exaggeration in Sudanese poetry. For al-Tigani Yousif Bashir, poetry was thought, and he often critiqued the lack of critique of Arab poetry within the context of modernity. A poet himself, al-Tigani represented the future in terms of freedom, beauty, and justice. Other prominent intellectuals included Arafat Mohamed Abdalla who established al-Fagar newspaper and Mohamed Ahmed Mahgoub who became a Prime Minister after independence. While Abdalla focused on freedoms and saw a modern Sudan without social constraints, Mahgoub saw modernization and the progress of the country dependent on the ideas of a talented group. Until the mid-1930s, Aboush observed that the intellectuals produced national thought that was not leaning toward a political ideology, but was more about building a modern Sudan. After 1936, al-Fagar newspaper turned to political issues producing articles on Sudanese identity. Intellectuals wrote on politics and education, and on a history they thought was misrepresented by travelers and hostile historians. They suggested improvements to Bakht al-Rudha Institute such as the introduction of modern disciplines and the development of linkages with British educational institutions. The institute was established in 1934 for curriculum development and teacher training with an underlying “ruralization of education” philosophy. Despite the legacy of British design and Sudanese execution in operating a firm educational quality control, the intellectuals saw its anti-modernizing disposition. For instance, Mohamed Ahmed Mahgoub’s article titled “Teach us” asserted that higher education is a must for progress,

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calling for the introduction of law, agriculture, and engineering schools. He proposed increasing the intake to Gordon College, opening Comboni15 and Coptic schools to Muslim students, and sending students to the American University of Beirut. Other articles addressed the ills of tribalism, divisions among Sudanese, and offered critiques of the civil administration’s role in reinforcing tribalism and religious elitism, likening it to the Indian caste system. These articles generated debates among notable intellectuals, such as Moawia Mohamed Nour and Mohamed Osman al-Gadi, who promoted the idea that the Sudan’s future lies in the Ministry of Colonial territories and thought that the lack of cooperation between the intelligentsia and the British would open the way for traditional leadership to claim power over the political scene. The positions of intellectuals on who or what mattered most were split among Egypt, the traditional leadership, and the British. Even though conflicts, such as between the Feelab and the Shawgab,16 continued to intensify, Haydar Ibrahim Ali (2011) did not see any profound differences in ideology or thought. On the global stage, much was also happening that influenced Sudanese intellectuals. WWII increased nationalistic feelings because of the involvement of the Sudan Defense Forces, and important events in 1943 such as the Atlantic Treaty, Egypt’s al-Wafd government, and India’s independence, were followed closely by the graduates who wanted to make their own demands for self-determination. The British administration, in return, introduced laws to curb the engagement of civil servants in politics. Despite all these obstacles, Basher (1980) chronicles the development of the Sudanese political scene and the formation of parties starting with the Umma and Ashiga in 1944 and 1945, respectively. These two pioneering political parties were aligned with the main religious sects al-Ansar (Umma Party) and al-Khatmiya (National Unionist Party) and were split along the major intellectual trends of independence and unity with Egypt. The same year saw the emergence of the Republican Brotherhood, which was different from other parties calling for independence. Instead, they called for establishing a Republic that is unaligned with either colonial power. Basher noted the emergence of smaller groups that, in spite of their size, were influential, such as the Communist Party as the “Sudanese Front against Colonialism” (1946) that was very active in schools and universities, and the Muslim Brotherhood’s “Islamic Front against Colonialism”17 (1947). Whereas communist ideas had reached the Sudan through Egyptian communists, British officers, or Sudanese who traveled abroad, the Brotherhood was mainly influenced by the ideas of Egyptian political and religious leader Hassan al-Banna. Among the parties, the two “modern forces” had Southern Sudanese and women in its membership. For the Southerners, this continued until 1953 when the Free Southerners Party was established, calling for a federated union between North and South. Was it an attempt to resolve the question of “who are the

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Sudanese” that the 1924 intellectuals had posed? Women, however, had to wait another decade to broaden their political participation. The pioneers’ generation emerged from the other side of the darkest years that followed the 1924 movement. Mohammed el-Makki Ibrahim called them the pioneers because they delved into Western schools of thought and introduced new literary forms like theater and ideas of philosophizing to the Sudanese cultural scene. They saw themselves as the society’s elite and liberators. Most prominent was their relationship with older generations. Aboush (2013) argued that the coalition between the graduates and religious leaders was not built on an intellectual foundation but on individual assessments and aspirations. This view is supported by M.E. Ibrahim who saw their battles as shallow, not reaching the deeper waters of the separation between the sexes and the rights of women to work and to remove the veil. Khier (1948) was not even sure whether the struggle between the modern generation and the traditional leadership came out of true belief in freedom of thought or was opportunistic and simply represented a power struggle. While the formation of political parties was influenced by global modern trends of democratic transformation, the pioneers failed to produce a democratic atmosphere and ways to deal with each other. Not only did the Sudanese not learn from Nehru and Gandhi, whom Aboush thinks laid out the principles for political practice in their country, they did not learn from their own experiences as well. He quotes Mohamed Ahmed Mahgoub saying that when independence arrived, the intellectuals were not ready and had to scramble to deal with the modern state they had inherited. Nonetheless, M.E. Ibrahim’s (1976) analysis of the generations that witnessed the defeat regarded the pioneers as a generation of cultural awakening through their massive productions, postgraduate degrees, and specializations. He hoped that the following generation would be one of consciousness. POST-INDEPENDENCE YEARS (1956–1989) The Sudanese ushered in independence after the 1955 Southern rebellion and what would become known as Africa’s longest civil war that eventually divided the country into South Sudan and the Sudan some decades later. The debates of the national movement on Arabism and Africanism, and liberation and self-determination were revisited in post-independence Sudan. Whereas some trends endured (e.g., the conflict between the traditionalists and modernists), new lenses emerged (e.g., margin and center). There were moments of “cultural awakening and consciousness” that M.E. Ibrahim (1976) hoped for, but also longer moments of suppression and nothingness. Between independence and 1989, there were many coups with two succeeding to rule

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for 22 years and each being toppled by popular uprisings, followed by brief parliamentary democracies. The first idea losing ground during the transition from the Condominium to independent Sudan (1953–1956) was “Unity of the Nile Valley,” which was advanced by the National Unionist Party that won the 1953 elections led by Ismail al-Azhari. He became the Sudan’s first Prime Minister raising the slogan liberation not development. Yet, Sudanese intellectuals had few ideas to deal with existential and national issues such as national identity, the constitution, and governance model, or to answer the “Southern question.” This section ends at the third parliamentary democracy (1986–1989) led by the late (and last elected Prime Minster) al-Sadiq al-Mahdi18 of the Umma Party that advocated for “Sudan for the Sudanese.” While the first two issues remain unresolved till today, the third concluded in 2011—the secession of South Sudan, a cynical end to a colonial making that fulfilled the Condominium’s separatist Sudan Policies. State Formation and Sudanization The twists and turns of the story of constitutional development revolved mainly around the relationship between state and religion and also mirrored the country’s political instability between coup and democracy. Although the country experienced all forms of governments, its crisis of governance continues and its constitution, in essence, remained not much different from what the British produced in 1956 (Khalid 1993a). Whereas coups by their nature breach the constitution, breaches also happened during parliamentary democracies, for example, the Dissolution of the Communist Party and the expulsion of its representatives from parliament in 1965, and of parliament itself in 1968. This was the height of religious extremism and rebellion in the South. At any rate, conflicts among political parties eventually disrupted19 October’s democratic experience such that prominent intellectual Mansour Khalid (1993a), while recognizing the lame colonial inheritance on the shoulders of national movement leaders, saw debates of the time devoid of intellectualism and vision. Abdullahi Ali Ibrahim, in his book titled and Mansour Khalid (2017), decried the meager credit that Khalid gave the communists’ national unity ideas. Yet Khalid’s writings generated vigorous and critical debates among intellectuals on the roles they played in resolving or exacerbating national dilemmas where Khalid’s relationship to power was often flagged as also among the elites’ contradictions. Nonetheless, if Khalid’s critiques of the educated elite are “above ideology,” as he claimed, then they are freer from classic dualities of Sudanese political thought and intellectual conflict. For example, Khalid (1993a) and Mahmoud (1984) see discrepancies in Mohamed Ahmed Mahgoub’s thought and practice when he

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overlooked in his book (Democracy on Trial) the historical failure of democracy in 1965 during his time as Prime Minister. What is also unclear is why Khalid exempted Abdalla Khalil from elites’ failures. As a Prime Minister, Khalil handed power to the Sudan’s first military dictator General Ibrahim Aboud in 1958. This is reminiscent of the state of “fractured-self” that Khalid held responsible for the paradox of elites between their thought and practice, slogans and action. It is worth noting that elites often use the concept of ‟envy,” rooted in religious doctrine, to rebuff criticism. This captures fractured selves’ ineptness at self-critique. Amidst the triple impact of the Ottomans, Egyptians, and British, in patriarchal and militarized Sudan, thinking about its decolonization is grueling. The first decolonization project after independence involved replacing colonial public servants with Sudanese. Called al-Sawdana (Sudanization), it was led by a generation who identified as Arab and took Islam as the Sudan’s religion. They ignored significant institutions that had formed Sudanese rulers, the graduates, and army officers. A.A. Ibrahim (2010) saw Bakht al-Rudha dismissive of local heritage and values, and Muhammad (1989) pointed out colonial features of the national army where pro- Egyptian or pro-British alignments acted like the traditionalists and modernists divide. While stateled decolonization approaches stayed on shallow waters, intellectuals such as Babikir Badri20 and al-Tigani al-Mahi21 attempted the integration22 of local knowledge with modern systems. By and large, the influence of Arabic on Sudanese intellectual trends, discussed in previous sections, along with class and power struggles in the Sudan’s colonial history (Fadl 1971, 1979, 2008; Niblock 1987; Deng 1995) illuminate the complexity of decolonizing Sudan. Revolution and Rebellion What ignited the October 1964 Revolution is contested, possibly because of the vibrant and intellectual atmosphere preceding the end of the first military dictatorship. There was al-Sadiq al-Mahdi’s book in April and Hassan alTurabi’s famous lecture at the University of Khartoum in September, both on the Southern Problem. There were active students and trade unions of the Professionals Front, and a populace aggravated by the totalitarianism, corruption, economic hardship, and the political oppression of General Ibrahim Aboud Regime. But, it was the martyrdom of a University of Khartoum student, al-Gurashi, which on October 21 brought people en masse into the streets. In a way he became the revolution’s symbol, and the “Problem of Southern Sudan” its intellectual matter. The October Revolution raised new slogans, and therefore carried new ideas. The most prominent was No leadership for the old, denoting the struggle between traditionalists and modernists more than just a generational divide. At that time, the prominence

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of pro-nationalist and socialist slogans showed the greater presence of the left, in comparison to the right, among modern political forces. As for the “Southern Problem,” its course is aptly captured in the title of southerner Abel Alier’s book Too Many Agreements Dishonored (1990). Still, the Round Table Conference of 1965 was significant. While negotiations at the conference reached a deadlock on polarized views on centralized and decentralized governance, the different positions gestured towards the unresolved question of what “Sudanese” meant. For riverain intellectuals, who differed on secular or Islamic constitution and presidential or parliamentary governance (Mahgoub 2004), “National Unity” was the only solution, whereas unity for Southern intellectuals was on Northern oppression and only differed on solutions between independence, self-determination, or federation. Joseph Garang (1971) compared the positions of Southern intellectuals on the “Southern Problem,” who were split along three schools of thought: “the extreme right-wing; the perplexed intellectuals; and the left.” While the “extreme right-wing” and the “perplexed” generally saw the problem in terms of racial differences and proposed separation, the “left” (that Garang belonged to) focused on the class and anti-imperialism struggles. He traced the development of these schools from the early twentieth-century anticolonial struggle of Southern Sudanese tribes, which featured some of the same Northern experiences in the production of the Southern intelligentsia such as exposure to new education and influence of national liberation movements after World War I. The colonizer–colonized relationship that influenced Northern Sudanese was mirrored in the South, for instance, the exclusion of Southern Sudanese from the political process post the 1947 Juba conference23 led to the dominance of “separation and independence” in Southern political views. This was ironic in its similarity to how the Egyptians excluded the Sudanese delegation from the 1936 Treaty negotiations that invigorated the call for “Sudan for the Sudanese.” In between the semantics of revolution and mutiny lays a north–south contradiction that Garang missed when he argued that the “Southern Problem” can only be resolved by defeating imperialism and ending the exploitation of the working class by Northern bourgeois. He saw a lost opportunity when the al-Azhari government responded to the 1955 mutiny with oppression in a similar way to how the British crushed the 1924 revolutionaries. We learn, however, nothing about Southern women intellectuals in the writings about intellectuals from North and South, not from scholars such as Mansour Khalid and Joseph Garang, nor in Fatima Babiker Mahmoud’s tracing of intellectual trends in the Sudanese women’s movement.24 The year 1965 did represent a milestone for the women’s movement. Women gained the right to stand in elections and Fatima Ahmed Ibrahim, a communist,25 became the first Sudanese woman parliamentarian, winning

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her seat in the Graduates constituencies. Women’s visible role in October 1964 is part of the women’s struggle for political rights that continues to today (Kadoda and Hale 2020). This win for the modernists’ agenda required dismantling the condition of being ‟male” in the right to vote in 1953 for the “graduates constituencies” (Abushouk and Abdelsalam 2008). The exceptionalist idea, vehemently fought by the traditionalists,26 is connected to how the Graduates (predominantly male) saw themselves as modern, yet oozed contradictions on women. The critique published on Sawt al-Mara expressed the view of the SWU that the condition (and supposed win) discriminated among “uneducated” sections of the society because women, unlike “uneducated” men, had no voting rights (Mahmoud 2008). Women were therefore conscious of the multiple forms of their oppression. Yet this view was only held by the dominant left-leaning trend in the SWU because members with right-wing leanings thought the struggle went too far and resigned,27 causing the first split in the Union. Although the Communist Party offered membership to women from early on and socialism dominated the thought of politically engaged women, after independence the women’s movement diversified. In tracing intellectual trends in the Sudanese women’s movement and situating them within global feminist thought, Mahmoud sees that the national liberation phase brought together nationalists with those espousing socialist and Marxist ideas. The second phase of postcolonial feminism, according to Mahmoud, saw the emergence of new and different schools of thought such as the Islamic Charter Front which promoted conservative values and ignited debates on whether to show women photos on election ballots, and the Republican movement which held progressive ideas offering alternative Islamic interpretations on women’s issues and challenging Salafi and anti-women liberation ideas. More significant in Mahmoud’s study was her highlighting of the unique ideas of women pioneers, especially socialists whose ideas were not limited by Western feminist experience. While espousing Marxist theory of historical materialism, they believed that the struggle of women goes beyond socialism. Art and Identity The dualities in Sudanese thinking were reflected in the flourishing art and literary circles of the early post-independence years, such as the Khartoum School of Modernist Art and Abadamak that emerged in the early 1960s, members of whom pursued a unique Sudanese identity in their art and theater expressions.28 In blending African, Arab, and Western styles, the Khartoum School29 may have “Sudanized” modernist art (Hale 2018). Ibrahim El Salahi, one of its founders, embodies what Hale observed. His Western

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training did not inhibit him from distinguishing between painting and drawing (Akyeampong and Gates 2012). The Abadamak theater group of writers and poets used performance art to get closer to the people. On the left in their politics, they leaned into African identity with a Merowe symbol: Abadamak. For the Forest and the Desert, Sennar was their symbolism. In their pursuit of uniqueness, the poets of these 1960s literary schools such as al-Nour Osman Abakr, Mohamed Abdelhai, Mohammed el-Makki Ibrahim, Mohamed alFairtouri, and Salah Ahmed Ibrahim generally saw African and Arab identities merge in Sudanese poetry. Identity Expressions came in numerous other forms. There was Wardi, alKabli, Abdelgadir Salim, and Sharhabeel Ahmed singing Nubian, Afro-Arab, Kordofan, and Jazz identities. In addition, there were political songs from prominent women singers such as Asha al-Falatia and Hawa al-Tagtaga. The contributions of Al-Tayeb Mohamed al-Tayeb, an organic intellectual and researcher on Sudanese cultural heritage with no academic qualifications, was eulogized by Mohammed al-Mahdi Bushra (2010) as a revolution in Sudanese folklore. Traditionally, scholarship in the field is dominated by three trends, Arab, Afro-Arab of the 1960s, and the African school (Nasr 1985). So, it seems that al-Tayeb’s lack of academic training freed him to embody the “Sudanization” of folklore, leaving academia to debate who the “Sudanese Arab” is and which lens, linguistic or racial, to use. Critiques of these early post-independence school intellectuals (Afro-Arab) pointed to its underlying conformance to “hybrid identity” and Arab-assimilation theories developed by European travelers/historians (Ibrahim 1989).30 Compared to Arabism that excludes the African and Africanism, the Arabized Sudanese and Afro-Arabism lived longer in intellectual debates and invigorated the old, producing new schools of thought on Sudanese identity. Mohamed Jalal Hashim (1998) analyzed the various schools within Afro-Arabism, such as Sudanawia, Sudano-Africanism, and Sudano-Arabism, highlighting their historical development and relationship with cultural conflicts such as “center and periphery.” The legacy of intellectual debates among these groups still occupies an important place in the Sudan’s cultural history as competing and new identity formations interact and emerge. The Four Seasons of May Regime In the years leading up to the May 1969 coup, the civil war had intensified, calls for an Islamic constitution grew, and “modern forces” were increasingly excluded (Khalid 1993a). The junta were free army officers, part of October’s modern forces. According to them, October was failed by political parties and continues with the “May Revolution.” While people filled the streets waving to Colonel Jaafer an-Nimeiry, reactions of the intellectuals varied. The

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“United National Front”31 of the Islamic constitution either opposed or were cautious, and the left (Arab nationalists, communists, and trade unionists) warmed up to May slogans. Abdullahi Ali Ibrahim’s analysis of the Ulama scholars and their capacity to side with power explains why religious scholars did not take long to give May’s secular slogans Islamic interpretations. But so did the intellectuals who passed through May regime’s seasons. According to Mansour Khalid, one of the regime’s prominent thinkers, there was not one May but four. The first (1969–1972) blended socialism and Arab nationalism; the second (1972–1976) produced ideas on the one-party system and national unity; the third (1976–1983) saw the national reconciliation and the return of 1960s ideas of political Islam; and the final (1983–1985) brought the second civil war and an extreme interpretation of Islamic Sharia laws. The trajectory of the May regime displayed the broad spectrum of political actors and intellectual communities who took turns as May’s Sultan incubator and theorizer besides masterminding countercoups, also calling them “revolutions.” Shunning the Westminster parliament model, an-Nimeiry’s looked toward pan-Arabism and Nasser’s socialist modernization ideas. He pursued an Arabization/Islamization project similar to his predecessor Aboud, the traditionalist. Following the fallout with the Communist Party and an-Nimeiry’s vicious suppression32 of their 1971 “Corrective Revolution,” he turned to new ideas. It was intellectuals, such as Mansour Khalid and Gaafar Bakhiet, who laid the foundation for an-Nimeiry to form a one party system (Socialist Union) and state-run civil society (e.g., Union of Sudanese Women) where he blended the ideas of communists and Arab nationalists to create his dictator nest and “Sudanize” in May’s clothes—socialism and democracy. The final May “season” (1977–1985) was characterized by an-Nimeiry’s right turn and the “National Reconciliation” in 1977 with the United National Charter Front coalition after their nearly successful coup in 1976. In his book on the events that led to the reconciliation with an-Nimeiry, al-Sadiq al-Mahdi (1978) describes the significant influence of the reconciliation in redirecting an-Nimeiry’s Arab-Nationalism from socialist to Islamist values. With this turn he entered what Khalid (1985) called “The Dark Tunnel.” an-Nimeiry declared himself an “Imam” (Islamic leader) imposing Sharia laws better known as “September laws” in 1983, thus forfeiting the 1972 Addis Ababa Agreement and igniting the second North–South civil war. The Sudan’s People Liberation movement (and army), that John Garang33 politically, intellectually, and militarily led, replaced the “Southern Problem” with the “Sudan Problem,” envisioning a “New Sudan.” The “September laws” were not only anti-freedom and anti-women, but also anti-Islam. Whereas most traditional religious leaders opposed these laws, Mahmoud Mohamed Taha who concocted the term to set it apart from “real” Islam, was the most outspoken. Taha was the spiritual, political, and

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intellectual leader of the Republican Brothers who challenged the Islamists from the same reference point. In addition to the “Perfect Human,” the core idea of Taha’s doctrine is what he called the “Second Message of Islam” that distinguished between Qur’anic verses revealed in Medina as appropriate for their time to be the basis of Sharia and those revealed in Mecca as representing the ideal religion and a renewed Islam based on freedom and equality. Taha’s teachings not only ran against the grain of Islamist and Salafi doctrines, but also against religious sectarianism which he held responsible for polarizing the Graduates Congress. Compared to other Sudanese religious thinkers, Taha preached progressive ideas on Islam and women (el-Hassan 2016). The Republicans, however, suffered a demoralizing blow with Taha’s execution in 1985 for heresy. Al-Ustaz (the Master) as they called him, became known as the “Martyr of Thought” in intellectual circles. The 1985 Intifada The popular uprising Intifada, a few months after Taha’s martyrdom, was the second time the Sudanese overthrew a dictator. Following the October legacy of developing a charter between political parties, the 1985’s “Defense of Democracy Charter” vowed to “never again” return to totalitarianism and coups. Aside from Hassan al-Turabi’s National Islamic Front, all political actors signed. While the people’s euphoria was similar to that of 1964 in welcoming the third democratic period, the political landscape was very different. For instance, the “modern forces” changed from the 1960s with the rise of political Islam through the 1970s making the National Islamic Front (NIF) the third largest block in the 1986 election, and the Communist party, having gone underground or into exile since 1971, only winning two seats (Abushouk and Abdelsalam 2008). Unlike the 1950s and 1960s Anyanya separatists, intellectuals such as Mansour Khalid and Yasir Arman became the Northern face of the Sudan’s Peoples Liberation Movement. John Garang, the Chairman, promoted “Sudanism” (Garang and Khalid 1992; Khalid 2003) defining it as the antithesis of “sectarian chauvinism” and “religious bigotry” as well as of separatism. None of the Intifada governments, transitional and coalitions, dismantled the September 1983 “Sharia” laws, necessary for the survival of a united Sudan (Deng 1995). It was indeed a foresight by Garang to consider the Intifada’s transitional government as May II (Guarak 2011). Khalid (2003) critiqued Prime Minister al-Mahdi alluding to factors such as “ideological preference” or “Islamist blackmailers” to have kept him from dismantling the September laws. At that point, the civil war intensified, fueled by atrocities such as the downing of a civilian plane by the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) in 1986 (Mayott 1994) and the massacre of Southerners in El Daein34 in 1987 (Baldo and Mahmud 1987). Along with

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the Arab Assembly Project, initiated in 1987 with the objective of defending the rights of Darfur’s Arab tribes, these events marked a new chapter of state violence that are related to identity formation. The third democratic period was as unstable as post-October governments albeit within a more diverse political scene such as the growth of the Independents and regional and liberation movements. As the women’s movement entered its globalization and post-globalization phases (Mahmoud 2008), important formations like the SWU could not fulfill all the agendas of progressive women. The cultural scene in Khartoum fared better than the political benefiting from freer spaces. Theater flourished, new musical groups such as al-Samandel and Igd al-Galad emerged, and revolutionary singers such as Mustafa Sid Ahmed came on the scene. Notwithstanding these changes, old dualities remained in hot debate on the constitution and governance models, yet again failed to reach consensus. Is it an “addiction to failure,” that Mansour Khalid maintained, or were they not given a chance? The June 1989 military coup, led by the Islamists who had refrained from signing the Intifada Charter for defending democracy, cut their debates short. Whereas the first 30 years after independence showed how the central power, whether colonialists or nationalists, left or right, are capable of oppression, the Sudanese had seen nothing yet. Like previous coup leaders, Colonel Hassan al-Bashir declared the Ingaz (salvation) revolution came to clear up the mess of political parties. Unlike them though, he came into power with an undeclared ideology and political base. It was toward the end of 1989 when rumors were confirmed35 that this was an Islamist coup. This unprecedented deceit is articulated in al-Turabi’s order36 to al-Bashir, on the night of the coup, to go to the palace, president, and I go to the prison, captive. THE REIGN OF POLITICAL ISLAM (1989–2018) For critics of “Political Islam,” especially Arabic speakers, there are linguistic and intellectual37 differences between Islamy and Islamoy from the term “Islamist.” Haydar Ibrahim Ali38 defines Islamy as a thinker who uses methodological analyses in contrast to the power seeker Islamoy who appropriates religion for political gain. This chapter uses the undifferentiated term “Islamist” to refer to advocates of modern Islamic movements that spread out horizontally for years before coming to power, through 2012’s elections in Egypt or 1989’s coup in the Sudan. Having said that, it must be acknowledged that the politicization of Islam in the Sudan began by the Mahdia State in 1885 and re-emerged in the national movement through the various political formations with an Islamic reference point such as Sufi sectarian parties and modern groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Gamaa

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al-Islamiya influenced by Egyptian Islamic thinkers such as Sayyed Gutub and al-Afghani. The second type of modern groups having been more involved in politics are the focus of my discussion. This section starts with profiling the influential political and intellectual leader of the Islamic Movement in the Sudan, Hassan Abd Alla al-Turabi, followed by an overview of the Islamists’ ideas and pedagogy. The section concludes by exploring multiple forms of resistance to the remaking of the Sudanese that the Islamists espoused in their “Civilizational Project.” Intellectual or Politician Did Hassan al-Turabi’s modest number of publications, a reasonable measure of his intellectual contribution, show that “the politician in [him] has trumped, and almost obliterated, the intellectual and religious reformer?” Abdelwahab el-Affendi considered this question in his piece on Al-Turabi on Oxford Bibliographies39.’ While the prolific production of al-Sadiq’s al-Mahdi weakens el-Affendi’s argument, his own books on Turabi’s Revolution: Islam and Power in Sudan (1991) and Al-Turabi, Hassan: The Islamic Movement in Sudan (2009), both self-evaluations of the movement by an insider, make him a reference point on al-Turabi’s achievements. El-Affendi notes that although al-Turabi mastered several European languages, he mostly wrote in Arabic. Al-Turabi’s main Ijtihad or intellectual effort is on the interpretation of the Qur’an and Islamic governance. His book Women between al-Asa’la40 and Modernism, although from a reformist viewpoint, hardly mentions the Sudanese context, in perfect contrast to Fatima Babiker Mahmoud’s book on the same topic. Even though al-Turabi’s lectures are often labeled as liberal and moderate, his time in power was notable for extreme human rights violations. This contradiction is best described by Haydar Ibrahim Ali’s observation that the Islamists succeed in opposition but fail in government. In his later years, al-Turabi was often accused of being too moderate within traditionalist religious circles, even penanced by some salafi groups. Remarkably, his most controversial Ijtihad came on women. In speeches, he intellectualized a woman’s right to marry aketabi (Abrahamic religions follower) and be an Imam (leading) of prayers. El-Affendi notes the prevalence of contradiction and controversy in al-Turabi’s political positions that make it difficult to discern his true stance on some issues. Is he The Last of the Islamists as Abdullahi Gallab (2018) claimed with his book’s title? Like Mansour Khalid’s seasons of May regimes, Gallab divided the Ingaz regime into the First and Second Islamist Republics. In two books, in 2008 and 2016, he traced the rise and fall of the two republics, demarked by almufasala41 (the separation), where al-Turabi’s presence is prominent in the first (1989–1999) and his absence in the second. According to Gallab (2008),

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the essence of the First Republic was the “Civilizational Project” and its strategy of al’dawa al-shamila (Comprehensive Call). He links the project’s ideas to al-Turabi’s work on al-tawheed (monotheism) and the features of the Islamic Society that Gallab thinks he never quite managed to define. Tools for indoctrination and coercion are employed to transform the nation in the image created in the project’s mind. In the Second Republic, the failures of Ingaz began to mount, with excesses of oppression, empowerment, corruption, and notably, the secession of South Sudan, making the Sudanese Islamist State an example of why Muslim actors should not attempt to create one (Gallab 2016). Haydar Ibrahim corroborates this possibility by seeing no future42 for the Islamic movement, unless they re-learn accepting the other. In a country ridden by conflict and contradictions, the Islamists are undeniably not an exception. Yet, many Islamists would find it difficult to ignore the damage that al-Turabi’s thought did to the Sudan and Islam, as Gallab argued, their ideas must have found roots in Sudanese society. Islamists’ Ideas and Pedagogy The 1990s are lined with drastic changes and state violence, with al-Turabi the de facto ruler. A ministry was established for the Civilizational Project, and slogans like we eat from what we plant and dress from what we make were raised. The regime passed the controversial Public Order Law which was policed like Saudi Arabia’s mutaween.43 Thousands of civil service employees were dismissed for “public good,” and the remaining had to attend mandatory indoctrination sessions and military training. Freedoms were curtailed, books banned, and “ghost houses” (torture centers) established. The Islamists controlled the military, government, and economy. They created a state-run civil society consuming public funds and facilitating corruption. Devastatingly, they exploited the idea of irregular forces that was a feature in the Sudan Defense Forces but also al-Maraheel (Arab-identifying tribes) of the 1980s. The regular forces grew beards, but more significantly was the change in their chain of command and doctrine.44 The war in the South turned Jihad, filling National TV with the propaganda of martyrs. An “Islamic constitution” was passed, and the Islamists started to internationalize hosting the headquarters of the Popular Arab and Islamic Congress (PAIC). During this decade, the Sudan hosted Osama bin laden and attempted to assassinate Hosni Mubarak. By its end, a mass exodus from war regions, sending many into displaced and diaspora communities, including from the more secure riverain, was taking place. The Sudan turned into a violent pariah state earning political and economic sanctions, as well as isolation—the antithesis of internationalization. Their ideas were largely confined to jihad and martyrdom, empowerment, and social engineering. Haydar Ibrahim claims that the Sudanese Islamic

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Movement produced little thought for defining, in today’s terms, an Islamic society or for creating working models of Islamic governance. A reasonable claim, given al-Turabi’s modest contribution as the movement’s leading intellectual. However, there is important scholarship on the movement (Aḥmad 1982; Al-Mahboob 2009; El-Affendi 1991, 2009) that chronicles their ideas. The Islamists revived the concept of shura (consultation) in place of democracy, and al-Turabi later developed Nezam al-Tawaly al-Syiasi (political power transfer system) as a modernized constitution based on Sharia that limit presidential power. However, Haydar Ibrahim is critical of al-Turabi’s intellectual effort on shura, arguing that it does not address what happens if al-hakim (the ruler) disagreed, nor offered mechanisms for opposition. To Ibrahim, the consistent making of jurisprudences to legalize a financial or moral malpractice exemplifies al-Islamoy, the power seeker. Education was pivotal for the Islamists’ project since the 1960s and 1970s, but when in power they enacted drastic and rapid changes to the entire educational system, its structure, content, and even imposed a dress code. Although Arabization and Islamization had been pursued since Sudan’s independence, the Islamists approach was not only abrupt and enforced, but also ideological and militarized. Ali (2002) sees that the government’s “reforms” still failed to address the old problem of indigenization versus modernization of education. He gave an interesting example of how human rights concepts such as solidarity and tolerance are replaced by Islamic faith and piety in the elementary school curriculum, demonstrating how ideology and education play out for the “civilization” mission. The Ingaz’s concept of Higher Education Revolution also brought drastic changes, not only in the increased number of public universities, but also in the Arabizing of the curriculum despite much opposition (el-Tom 2006). Mohamed el-Amin elTom, an educational thinker, critiques how this unprecedented expansion of the system was not meant to diversify educational opportunities or to bring equity45 and raise the quality of education, but was more for ‟political and ideological aim” and a mandate for indoctrination (el-Tom 2006: 20–21). In addition to a number of universities46 with religious missions, Ingaz established various institutions for ta’seel (rooting in Islam) or the Islamization of knowledge institutions. Opposition and Resistance A few months after the 1989 coup, the opposition, including John Garang, formed a broad coalition, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), and set up a base in Eritrea. Not to dismiss popular uprisings, this was not only a time for unity in an attempt to defend democracy, but also to raise the consciousness of riverain political groups who until 1989 had hardly engaged in armed

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resistance. Nonetheless, by 2000, even though the NDA was disintegrating, activism was replacing politics as usual, especially after the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2005 between the regime and SPLM that gave the South the right of self-determination. The agreement embodied Garang’s idea of the New Sudan. He perished in a plane crash shortly after the signing and the shaky transitional period achieved little from the agreement. In 2011 Southern Sudanese overwhelmingly voted in the referendum for secession. With the South gone, a new South was created and Garang’s ideas continued with the formation of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North. In its final years, the regime attempted a “National Dialogue” that was boycotted by most of the opposition who continued to envision a future without al-Bashir and without the Islamists with charters like The Dawn and the Sudan Call. The country became like “A Tale of Two Cities,” as Haydar Ibrahim Ali puts it. The Islamists were on one side imposing their ideas and pedagogy, and the remaining Sudanese on the other resisting their remaking and oppression. There are numerous examples of efforts to subvert the Islamists “educational” project. One example is the way in which an elementary school teacher, Mahjoub Sharif, the “People’s Poet,” as he is fondly remembered in the Sudan, exposed his students to an unlimited curriculum—the street (Ibrahim 2010). Another example of resistance came through Sudanese studies, the mandatory curricula in higher education. On the outset, the course is about the history, geography, and culture of the Sudan. Beneath that is patriotic rhetoric for molding minds toward State ideology. Some creative teachers, however, used the course for contextualization and consciousness-raising to explore different narratives and to highlight the absence of academic freedom. As personal freedoms were being severely curbed, civil society was growing, in particular women and youth groups and organizations with varied missions—from advocacy and human rights, to development and humanitarianism. Community libraries and book and debate clubs recall the legacy of the national movement, this time advertised and shared on social media in place of 1930s intellectual hubs. Moreover, new political formations emerged (e.g., Girifna) that use direct and simple political messages in ways similar to the 1924 revolutionaries who had created new forms of resistance in their time. Revolution Again… The December 2018 uprising, popularly known as the December Revolution, toppled al-Bashir on April 11, 2019, thereby realizing its foremost slogan tasgut bas (Just fall that is all). This insurrection is a culmination of a long struggle and experience of immeasurable loss in many parts of the country.

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The critical mass came from grassroots formations, predominantly youth and woman many of whom were unaffiliated with a political party. It was different from 1964 and 1985 in starting from the periphery, going on for longer, and bringing new forms of resistance like the sit-ins that spread across the country. The Sudanese Revolution was also different from the global wave of resistance known as the “Arab Spring” because it stood against a theocratic totalitarian regime accused of horrific crimes, and despite the brutality of the security apparatuses, the protest was peaceful. The Sudanese Professional Association (SPA) assumed leadership and began to organize street marches through a network of resistance committees in neighbourhoods and towns. Whereas the SPA is similar to the 1964’s Professional Bodies Front in 1964 and the 1985’s Trade Unions Association, it used new forms of mobilizations and protest (Medani 2019). The coalition of trade unions and political parties in the face of tyranny was also not new, this time generating the Declaration of Freedom and Change. The regular army that played a role in power transition in 1964 and 1985 now had in their fold Islamists and much economic power. The revolutionaries not only negotiated with the old regime through the Generals but also with Hemedti,47 the leader of the Rapid Support Forces (ethnic militia of Bashir-making, aka Janjaweed). This time, regular and irregular forces claimed part of the revolution. Despite the militarized atmosphere, a massive sit-in developed in front of the military headquarters in Khartoum. It was not only a free city of tents, music, art, sharing, and politics, it also illustrated the way protestors exercised direct democracy and became part of the negotiations. In a coordinated timing, using mixed forces (army, police, and militias), the sit-ins in Khartoum and other cities were brutally attacked in June 2019, described as a massacre with hundreds killed, and many raped, injured, or gone missing. There was a Darfur everywhere. After a stand-off, a power-sharing settlement was reached which formed a military/civilian government to govern the transitional period. The civilians, once united behind tasgut bas, the old struggle between traditionalists and modernists transformed into “soft-landers” and “revolutionaries,” sending a ripple effect of divisions and realignments among Freedom and Change Forces and within its elements. The settlement’s constitution48 was breached or enhanced, according to where one stands on new and old dichotomies and how one sees the root of the “Sudan Problem.” While some see the way forward in dismantling Ingaz as a strategy similar to the “Denazification,” of another era; others see it through a “national conciliation,” with the Islamists. In protecting the revolution, some defend it by suppressing criticism of the transitional government, and others by exposing divergence of action from slogan, practice from thought. However, if December 2018 is the “intellectual revolution” that Hashim (2013) anticipated,49 the ideas of the revolution are more worthy of protection.

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CONCLUDING COMMENTS: INFLUENCES ON SUDANESE URGENT FUTURES This attempt at tracing Sudanese thought, showed some strands to have lingered from the past while others are jolting us with the present. In futures thinking, “urgent futures” are significant changes or emerging issues that are happening with potential for becoming the future. To identify these changes, the past is recalled to situate the present; and to gain future foresight, the changes become features of alternative futures. As the Sudan goes through its fifth transitional period toward a future, we must recall two important works by Atta El-Battahani on the failure of national governments since independence to realize national unity (2011) and on the problem of political transition in the Sudan (2019). In the first work he considered the dialectical crisis of governance asking whether it is a “crisis of dominance or dominance of crisis.” This incessant crisis, he argues, is multilayered, complex, and very much embedded in the social system. It is regenerating its inequalities and the dominance of the central riverain (jallaba50). The second work compared the Sudan’s transitional moments, asking whether the present one addresses the Sudan’s existential question: Would the country dismantle its “system of domination” and become inclusive and just? Aside from the known transitional issues including peace, economy, judiciary, and civil service reform, and so on, El-Battahani sees that the changing dynamic and balance of power between and within the two partners (Civilians and Military) have so far influenced the events of the present transitional period. Factors that would determine the success of the transition, he reckoned, are the will, resources, and commitment of the partners to fulfill the agreement. This transition faced similar instability and failures, but more complexities. Multiple armies, neoliberal agendas, conflicts of interests and geopolitics, changed local power dynamics and manifested in October 2021’s coup by the Generals on their civilian partners. There are features in the present that resemble post-revolutions such as the disarray among the winners and unity of the losers, the exclusion of the revolution’s makers from decision-making, the quarrel over ownership, and the sense of entitlement. Did you carry arms or just hold banners? Did you retain your job during Ingaz or go into exile? There are also features that are influenced by the movement of ideas from other times and places. For instance, the colonial model of the Sudan Defense Forces has not only generated the vicious cycle of coup and uprising, the non-fixed loyalty, but also the ethnic formation of irregular forces that exacerbated age-old conflicts like those between farmers and pastoralists, thus confounding the concept of justice. Are the Janjaweed only villains, or also victims? There is also an economic dimension that can be traced back to the Nasser’s Egyptian Army business model, which took root in the Sudan during the May regime and flourished in Ingaz. The massive Army’s

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business complex not only operates outside national audit procedures, but the practice was extended to Ingaz’s militias to exploit national resources. Against this political and economic power of armed entities is a new slogan of the ongoing revolution “Army to the barracks, and Janjaweed dismantled”. It is important to note that the production of ideas, in the time of social media, is not limited to leading intellectuals, like Atta El-Battahani. There is a plethora of organic intellectuals,51 spread across the Sudan, some have garnered large followings, becoming public intellectuals, sharing their views in text and videos in bold and new ways. Although some frown on these platforms for allowing “anybody” (meaning unknowledgeable), this is a context that I argue has the potential to influence the balance of power and provide counternarratives. On these platforms, racism and sexism that are embedded in the system of domination are openly debated. Borrowed ideas from struggles around the world such as the “Me Too” and “Black Lives Matter” movements are translated into calling for action to dismantle what remains from the hushed Sudanese history of slavery and exploitation of women. These platforms expose the contradictions of the riverain mindset, between thought and practice, and in the process, regenerate the revolution. There are also renewed debates on the permanent constitution. This time the debate is not limited to the difference between secularism and atheism, but is also challenging the difference between legitimacy and lawfulness. Ideas such as the social contract (Jean-Jacques Rousseau) and rights above the constitution, a concept from international human rights charters, are discussed in the context of much critique of the previous election experiences where democracy was limited to the ballot count, bringing majority rule and often with it, the same domination and failure to deal with diversity or justice. The persistence of extrajudicial killings and the prominence of Generals figures who are implicated in war crimes, are creating the conditions that call for the “right to life” and gasas (capital punishment), thus moving the revolution’s slogans to abstract rights—more attributed to divine decree, from its secular and contemporary rights that call for agency and autonomy like “citizenship.” In closing it must be stressed that the Sudanese political and intellectual landscape is by far more fluid and complex than this chapter can cover, nor can we see all alternative futures. There are signals towards futures that regenerate pasts, but also those that point to profoundly new discourses visible in the prominence of resistance committees in the post-coup scene, and their production of new political intellectualities. Also important to remember is that this is not a critique of the intellectuals or their ideas per se, it is more about tracing the emergence of those ideas and the context that generated them. Knowing which ideas rise and fall or those that continue and change, is perhaps one way that shows how societies learn—a collective responsibility. Suppose we had had futures thinking exercise for the Sudan 2022 in 1956? How much would we

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have seen from what transpired in the past 66 years? Could we have imagined that we achieved neither liberation nor development? What lessons would we draw? Which contradictions, conceptions, or complicities must we confront? If we were to develop a praxis for perceiving ideas that matter for freedom, peace, and justice, and that create the conditions for a citizenship state in the Sudan —a new “historical bloc” (Gramsci), we must know our histories of ideas. NOTES 1. A geo-political term to refer to the Central and Northern Sudan and who have, historically, dominated the cultural orientation, political events, and the country’s economy. The so-called “Arab-Nubian core” which represents the center, as opposed to periphery, is used in identity theories and related to the phenomenon of civil war in the Sudan. 2. According to Nugud (1995), the Turkish rulers did not see the Sudanese as Arab, and Spaulding (1982) estimated that in the late nineteenth century a third of the Northern Sudanese population were slaves. 3. According to Altayeb Mohamed Altayeb, an organic intellectual who specialized in Sudanese popular culture, wrote a book about al-Sheikh Farah Wd Taktook who is a prominent cultural figure mentioned in classical Sudanese history books like Naom Shugeer’s. Wd Taktook was born in the mid-eleventh century and lived beyond his centenary witnessing several Kings of Sennar. His stories, sayings, and poetry are alive until this day. Altayeb (1996) describes Wd Taktook as an example of an intellectual for his time. From what is known about al-Sheikh Farah, showing him as someone who was always “speaking truth to power” and disinterested in gaining money or position, makes him represent a “real” intellectual for Benda (1969) and an “amateur” one for Edward Said (1994). 4. Ketab al-Tabagat, popularly known as Tabaqat Wad Dhaif Allah, is considered one of the most famous Sudanese books. Written by Sheikh Muhammad al-Nur Wad Dhaifallah, the book is an important primary source in the history of the Fung Sultanate (1505–1821 CE) and is the first printed reference for the students of Sufism in the Sudan. 5. Both Mohamed El-Makki Ibrahim and Jay Spaulding (who studied the Sennar Kingdom in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries) note that classical Arabic was increasingly gaining popularity in the latter years of that era. Ibrahim examines poetry from the end of the Funj State that showed the style of Mamluk literature and the use of rhetoric and flowery expressions, and Spaulding (1985) explored the growth of the Sudan’s Arab-Islamic identity in the Funj era. 6. The Zar practice, common ritual in the horn of Africa, takes the form of spirit possession. 7. Muhammad Ahmad bin Abd Allah bin Fahal (birth name). 8. Whereas the Condominium Agreement banned slavery, Kitchener’s “Confidential Memorandum” in March 1899—two months after the signing, stated that slavery is not a recognized system in the Sudan and that there is no need to

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interfere in the relationship between “workers and masters.” The famous letter by religious leaders in response to the rise in applications for a “freedom certificate” in March 1925, not only reiterated Kitchner’s definition of slavery in the Sudan, but called for restraint and care in issuing these certificates (Nugud 1995). 9. Whereas Basher’s (1983) historical account of the educational system shows the slow pace of its development and its limited content, Badri (2002) questioned the role of the British in limiting women’s opportunities in education, and Mahmoud (2002) critiqued the curriculum as essentially intended to keep gender roles intact. 10. By 1939, the congress’ efforts in education were visible. They established the Civilian Fund for education in 1941 and extended their reach to outside Khartoum. 11. The prominent intellectual hubs included al-Hashmab, Abu Roof, and Medani. The Abu Roof group focused on Arabic and English literature (especially Fabian with its socialist leaning), and the al-Hashmab group were concerned with national and social issues. The Medani group, more interested in public speaking and organizing forums and public lectures, was credited with generating many of the ideas that had an impact on the graduates’ movement, for example, Graduates Congress, Literary Festival, and Education Day (Khier 1948; Aboush 2013). 12. “The Talented Tenth” is a term used by W.E.B. DuBois to describe a class to lead African Americans. It appeared in an article on “The Negro Problem,” 1903, New York. 13. She was a first in many things, as president of the Association of Educated Women, first to join the Khartoum University Student Union, to be arrested in a political protest, and the first Sudanese Woman doctor. 14. For example, Mahmoud saw the opposition of the SWU to the Zar, as a manifestation of women’s consciousness of their own oppression, and, therefore, as more conformant with the view of male intellectuals. 15. None of these articles, however, mentioned Bakhita Kwashe who was enslaved from her native Nuba Mountains village in 1841, bought by an Italian priest in Cairo, emancipated in Italy, and returned to al-Obaid as part of the evangelical mission of the Catholic Church through Father Comboni in Africa (Powell 2012). She became the first Sudanese nun. 16. The Feelab (named after Ahmed al-Feel and supported by Ali Almerghani) rallied behind the union with Egypt and the Shawgab (named after Mohamed Ali Shawgi and supported by Abdelrahman al-Mahdi) rallied behind “Sudan for the Sudanese” but were divided on the British role. 17. Episode 1, Al Hiwar TV, Muraga’at (Reviews) with Islamic Thinker, Hassan al-Turabi, 2009. 18. See Rabah Al Sadig’s chapter in this volume. 19. There were several significant incidents that influenced the future of democracy in the Sudan and the emergence of new phenomena in Sudanese politics. For instance, the quashing of the principle of independence of the judiciary from executive power as seen in the expulsion of the members of the communist party from parliament in 1965; and the rise of religious extremism as in the apostasy case against Mahmoud Mohamed Taha, accompanied by the violence against culture as in the attack on the al-Ajako Dance show at Khartoum University of in 1968 which was also the precursor of political violence in higher education.

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20. See Balghis Badri and Mai Izeldeen’s chapter in this volume. 21. Among his contributions to Science, al-Mahi coined the term “civil coup” that became a phenomenon in Sudanese transitional periods (cutting short the experience before the goals of transition are achieved) and part of the traditionalists/modernists conflict. 22. Babikir Badri (pioneer of girl’s education in early twentieth century) linked al-Khalwa (religious school) with the modern school system; al-Mahi integrated al-Maseed (religious refuge) in his psychiatric practice as well as in the hospital referral system; and Sharif brought in al-habobba (grandmother) in primary school curriculum. 23. This meeting effectively ended the Southern Policy. It was organized by the British, as part of winning their battle with Egypt over the Sudan, to bring Southern and Northern Sudanese into one political entity. 24. See chapters in this volume by Francis Mading Deng and Amani El Jack. 25. She stood for elections as an independent and was supported by the Sudanese Women Union and the Communist Party, being the president of the former and a member of the latter. 26. Women’s political participation was halted by the cancellation of the graduates’ constituencies in the 1958 elections as part of traditional political parties’ attempt to curb the rise of “modern political forces” in 1958. 27. Suad al-Fatih, affiliated with the Islamic Charter Front, and Thuraiya Umbabi, affiliated with the Umma Party, both left the Sudanese Women Union upon its political declaration to lead the struggle for political rights for women in 1954. 28. See Mohamed Abusabib’s chapter in this volume. 29. Tate Website, Page on the Khartoum School. www​.tate​.org​.uk​/art​/art​-terms​/k​/ khartoum​-school Accessed July 2018. 30. See chapters by Abdullahi Ali Ibrahim and Mohamed Abusabib in this volume. 31. A coalition of traditional and modern political forces that included the Umma Party, National Unionist Party, and the Islamic Charter (the precursor to the National Islamic Front after the Intifada in 1985, and the National Congress Party after the Islamists’ coup in 1989). 32. As-Shafie Ahmed al-Sheikh, trade union and communist leader, was executed by Nimeiry in 1971. 33. See Francis Mading Deng’s chapter in this volume. 34. El Daein, a city located in Southwestern Sudan, where armed members of the Rezeigat tribe (an Arab militia known as Janjawed and often supported by the Sudan Armed Forces) killed more than 1,000 Dinka refugees without being persecuted by the al-Sadiq al-Mahdi’s government. 35. The Ingaz’s Military coup leaders were shown on National TV swearing the oath of allegiance to the consultative council of the Islamic movement and its leader al-Turabi. 36. al-Turabi’s testimony on Aljazeera TV. 37. See book by Algerian Islamic Studies Scholar, Mohammed Arkoun, titled aīn hū al-fkr al-islāmī al-mʿāṣr? Published by Dar al Saqi, 2017.

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38. Hayder Ibrahim Ali is a renowned intellectual, historian, and critic of political Islam. 39. See www​.oxf​ordb​ibli​ographies​.com​/view​/document​/obo​-9780195390155​/obo​ -9780195390155​-0200​.xml. 40. In Islam, asa’la means returning to authentic religion. Fatima Babiker, writing from a secular perspective, used the term “tradition” in her book title. 41. The conflict between al-Turabi and his students was a culmination of a power struggle splitting the Islamists. 42. In a lecture on the future of the Islamic movement at Dal Centre for Research and Media Production, Cairo, April 2015. (www​.youtube​.com​/watch​?v​ =6mCvotz3MUw​&list​=WL​&index​=48). 43. An irregular force for the “Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.” 44. Changes to military discipline and doctrine included that the call for prayer rules over military order and rank, and that loyalty is to God before nation. 45. While there are some positive sides of the expansion in higher education like the increase in the number women students from conservative regions in universities (2006), el-Tom believes that these reforms exacerbated the “structural defects” in the educational system that made it “too deformed to be reformed” (el-Tom 2018). 46. Omdurman Islamic University, University of Quran Kareem and Islamic Studies, and Africa International University. (See Atta El-Battahani’s Chapter in this volume) 47. See “In Sudan, General Hemedti leads the fray” in The New Arab, February 5, 2020 at https://english​.alaraby​.co​.uk​/english​/comment​/2020​/2​/5​/in​-sudan​-general​ -hemedti​-leads​-the​-fray; and the report “Exposing the RSF’s secret financial network,” by Global Witness at www​.globalwitness​.org​/en​/campaigns​/conflict​-minerals​ /exposing​-rsfs​-secret​-financial​-network/. 48. The Constitutional Declaration signed in 2019 was designed to govern the transitional period (to end in 2022) that depicted the balance of power between the partners, at least at the time of signing. Because the agreements did not live up to the revolution for many, this led to polarization in the FFC and important formations such as the SPA, resistance committees, and women’s coalitions. The Juba Peace Agreement signed in 2020 between the transitional government and the Sudan Revolutionary Front (SRF), an alliance of armed and regional movements that excluded two major armed groups, further split change forces between those who see it addressing root problems and others who consider it a struggle over pieces of the national cake. 49. In classifying revolutions in contemporary Sudan, Hashim (2013) saw alMahdi of 1985 as one of embodiment in al-Mahdi, October 1964 as one of symbolism (martyrdom of al-Gurashi), and as one of abstraction (democracy) in the Intifada of 1985. 50. Jallaba is another term used to refer to the “central riverain.” It is considered by some as a more derogatory term especially when used by people from “margin.” Although the word can be understood as originating from the word used for men dress (jallabia) or from the verb (to bring), it is also linked to slave trade. 51. See chapters by Mai Azzam and Sana Makawi, and by Wini Omer, in this volume.

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REFERENCES Abd al-Salam, Al-Mahboob. 2009. al-ḥrkẗ al-islāmīẗ al-sūdānīẗ dāʾirẗ al-ḍūʾ. ẖīūṭ al-ẓlām. Cairo: ktab INC., mktbẗ ǧzīrẗ al-ūrd. Aboush, Mohamed Awad. 2013. al-sūdān al-ḥdīṯ al-bḥṯ ʿn ṭrīq. Omdurman: mrkz ʿbd al-krīm mīrġnī. Abu Salim, Muhammad Ibrahim. 1989. al-ḥrkẗ al-fkrīẗ fi al-mh.dīẗ. Khartoum: Khartoum University Press [3rd edition, first published in 1970]. Abushouk, Ahmed Ibrahim and Abdelsalam, Elfaih Abdalla. 2008. al-āntẖābāt al-brlmānīẗ fī al-sūdān (1953–1968). Omdurman: mrkz ʿbd al-krīm mīrġnī. Agoba, Mukhtar. 2002. al-mrʾaẗ al-sūdānīẗ ašrāqāt al-māḍī ūẓlmāth. Omdurman: mrkz Mohamed Omer Basher lldrāsāt al-sūdānīẗ. Aḥmad, Ḥasan Makki Muḥammad. 1982. al-ḥrkẗ al-islāmīawẗ fī al-suwūdān 1949– 1969. Khartoum: Institute of African and Asian Studies. Akyeampong, Emmanuel Kwaku and Gates, Henry Louis. 2012. Dictionary of African Biography, Volumes 1–6. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ali, Haydar Ibrahim. 2002. al-tʿlīm ūḥqūq al-insān. Cairo: mrkz al-drāsāt al-sūdānīẗ. Ali, Haydar Ibrahim. 2011. al-sūdān al-ūṭn al-mḍīʿ. Cairo: dār mīrīt. Alier, Abel. 1990. Southern Sudan: Too Many Agreements Dishonoured. London: Ithaca Press. Al-Khanji, Abdel Rahman. 1992. al-ǧḏūr al-fkrīẗ lṯūrẗ 1924. In Sudan Studies Series on the National Movement 18, edited by Haj al-Safi, M. A., 85–113. Khartoum: Khartoum University Press Al-Kid, Khalid. 1992. al-ʾafndīẗ ū mfhūm al-qūmīẗ fī al-ṯlāṯīn snẗ al-tī aʿqbt al-ftḥ fī al-sūdān 1898–1928. Bulletin of Sudanese Studies 12 (1): 44–76. Al-Mahdi, al-Sadiq. 1978. al-mṣālḥẗ al-ūṭnīẗ al-sūdānīẗ mn al-ʾalf ili al-īāʾ. Khartoum: al-ḥrkẗ al-islāmīẗ al-sūdānīẗ. Badri, Haja Kashif. 2002. al-ḥrkẗ al-nsāʾīẗ fī al-sūdān. Khartoum: Khartoum University Press. Baldo, Sulayman Ali Mahmud, and Ushari Ahmed. 1987. mḏbḥẗ al-ḍʿīn wālrq fi al-sūdān. Khartoum: Unknown Publisher. Basher, Mohamed Omer. 1980. tārīẖ al-ḥrkẗ al-ūṭnīẗ fi al-sūdān 1900–1969. Khartoum: ad-Dār as-Sūdānīya li-l-kutub. Bushra, Mohammed al-Mahdi. 2010. al-ṭīb mḥmd al-ṭīb: ẖmsūn ʿāmā fī al-ḥql. aršīf al-ṯqāfẗ al-šʿbīẗ lldrāsāt wālbḥūṯ wālnšr 3 (10): 114–123. Deng, Francis M. 1995. War of Visions: Conflict Identities in the Sudan. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution Press. El-Affendi, Abdelwahab. 1991. Turabi’s Revolution: Islam and Power in Sudan. London: Grey Seal. El-Affendi, Abdelwahab. 2009. Translation of: Hassan Turabi, the Islamic movement in Sudan: its development, approach and achievements. Beirut: Arab Scientific Publishers. El-Battahani, Atta. 2011. azmẗ al-ḥkm fī al-sūdān: azmẗ hīmnẗ am hīmnẗ azmẗ?. Khartoum: Khartoum University Press. El-Battahani, Atta. 2019. iškālīẗ al-āntqāl al-sīāsī fī al-sūdān: mdẖl tḥlīlī. Khartoum: Regional Centre for Training and Development of Civil Society and the Khartoum University Teachers Initiative.

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El-Garrai, Omer. 2021. Al-Mahdia ?! Khartoum: By Author. El-Hassan, Nahid Mohamed. 2016. (ḥkāīthn .. ḥkāītī) al-mrʾaẗ wāldīn. Juba: rfīqī llṭbāʿẗ wālnšr. El-Tom, Mohamed el-Amin Ahmed. 2006. Higher Education in Sudan: Towards a New Vision for a New Era. Khartoum: Currency Printing Press. ISBN: 999-42-929-2-1. El-Tom, Mohamed el-Amin Ahmed. 2018. “General Education in Sudan: The Past and Present.” In Towards Education that Achieves Social Justice in Sudan, edited by al-Karib, A. K., 11–45. Khartoum: Friedrich Ebert Stiftun Sudan and Sudanese Organization for Research and Development. Gallab, Abdullahi A. 2008. The First Islamic Republic: Development and Disintegration of Islamism in Sudan. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing. Gallab, Abdullahi A. 2016. Their Second Republic: Islamism in the Sudan from Disintegration to Oblivion. New York: Routledge. Gallab, Abdullahi A. 2018. Hasan Al-Turabi, the Last of the Islamists: The Man and His Times 1932–2016. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Incorporated. Garang, John and Khalid, Mansour. 1992. The Call for Democracy in Sudan. London: Kegan Paul International. Garang, Joseph U. 1971. “The Dilemma of the Southern Intellectual Is It Justified?” Republished on Sudan Tribune Newspaper, 7 February 2006. Guarak, Mawut Achiecque Mach. 2011. Integration and Fragmentation of the Sudan: An African Renaissance. Bloomington: Author House. Hale, S. 2018. Personal Communication. Phone Interview. 15 August 2018. Hashim, Mohamed Jalal Ahmed. 1998. al-sūdānūʿrūbīẗ, aū tḥālf al-hārbīn: al-mšrūʿ al-ṯqāfī lʿbd al-lh ʿli ibrāhīm fī al-sūdān. Sudan Studies Magazine, Institute of African and Asian Studies, University of Khartoum. Hashim, Mohamed Jalal Ahmed. 2013. mnhǧ al-tḥlīl al-ṯqāfī: mšrūʿ al-ūṭnīẗ al-sūdānīẗ ūẓāhrẗ al-ṯūrẗ wāldīmqrāṭīẗ. 6th edition. Khartoum: mrkz al-drāsāt al-sūdānīẗ. ISBN: 978-99942-61-70-9. Hassan, Yusuf Fadl, ed. 1971. The Sudan in Africa. Khartoum: Khartoum University Press. Hassan, Yusuf Fadl. 1979. Some Aspects of the Writing of History in Modern Sudan. Khartoum: Khartoum University Press. Ibrahim, Abdullahi Ali. 1989. al-ʾafrūʿrbīẗ aū tḥālf al-hārbīn. Journal of al-mstqbl al-ʿrbī 11 (119): 110–119. Ibrahim, Abdullahi Ali. 1994. al-ṣrāʿ bīn al-mhdi wālʿlmāʾ. Cairo: dār nūbār llṭbāʿẗ. Ibrahim, Abdullahi Ali. 2010. bẖt al-rḍā: al-āstʿmār wāltʿlīm. Khartoum: dār al-mṣūrāt llnšr. Ibrahim, Abdullahi Ali. 2016. al-tʿrīb hḏīān mānwy. kātb al-šūnẗ: slslẗ ktābāt nqdīẗ fī msāʾil al-fkr wāltārīẖ (7). Khartoum: dār al-mṣūrāt llnšr [Part of title translated to “Manichean Delirium” in subsection ‘Opposition and Resistance’]. Ibrahim, Abdullahi Ali. 2017. ū mnṣūr Kẖāld. Khartoum: dār al-mṣūrāt llnšr. Ibrahim, Mohammed el-Makki. 1976. al-fkr al-sūdāni aṣūlh ūtṭūrh. Khartoum: mṭbʿẗ arū al-tǧārīẗ.

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Kadoda, G. and Hale, S. 2020. “The Radical Imaginations of Sudanese Women: A Gendered Revolution.” Al-Raida Journal 44 (1): 73–92. Khalid, Mansour. 1985. al-sūdān ū al-nfq al-mẓlm: qṣẗ al-fsād ū al-āstbdād. Istanbul: Edam Publishing House Limited [Part of title translated to “Dark Tunnel” in Section ‘The Four Seasons of May Regime’]. Khalid, Mansour. 1993a. al-nẖbẗ al-sūdānīẗ widmān al-fšl. Part 1. Cairo: dār al-āmīn llṭbāʿẗ wālnšr wāltūzīʿ. Khalid, Mansour. 1993b. al-nẖbẗ al-sūdānīẗ widmān al-fšl. Part 2. Cairo: dār al-āmīn llṭbāʿẗ wālnšr wāltūzīʿ. Khalid, Mansour. 2003. War and Peace in Sudan: A Tale of Two Countries. London: Kegan Paul International. Kheir, Ahmed. 1948. kfāḥ ǧīl: tārīẖ al-ẖrīǧīn ūtṭūrhā fī al-sūdān. Khartoum: al-dār al-sūdānīẗ llktb. Mahgoub, Muhammad Ahmad. 2004. al-ʾdīmqrāṭīẗ fī al-mīzān. Khartoum: mṭbʿẗ al-ʿmlẗ. First published in English in 1974 [Translated to ‘Democracy on Trial’ in section ‘Early Post-independence Years’]. Mahmoud, Fatima Babiker. 1984. The Sudanese Bourgeoisie–Vanguard of Development? New Jersey: Zed Press Ltd. Mahmoud, Fatima Babiker. 2002. al-mrʾaẗ al-āfrīqīh bīn al-irṯ wālḥdāṯẗ. Cambridge: dār kīmbrdǧ llnšr [Division of Cambridge Academic Press]. Mahmoud, Fatima Babiker. 2008. al-ātǧāhāt al-fkrīẗ fī al-ḥrkẗ al-nsāʾīẗ. Khartoum: dār Azza llnšr wāltūzīʿ. Mayotte, Judy. 1994. “Civil War in Sudan: The Paradox of Human Rights and National Sovereignty.” Journal of International Affairs 47 (2): 497–524. Medani, Khalid. 2019. “The New Mobilization Dynamics of Sudan’s Popular Uprising: The Virtue of Learning from the Past.” JADMAG 7, no. 1 (Spring). https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/38376 Muhammad, Ahmad al-Awad. 1989. Sudan Defense Force: Origin & Role (1925– 1955). Occasional Paper No. 18. Institute of African and Asian Studies, University of Khartoum. Muhammad, Baqie Badawi. 1996. “The Role of Oral Poetry in Reshaping and Constructing Sudanese History (1820–1956).” Folklore Forum 27 (1): 60–76. Nasr, Ahmad Abd al-Rahim. 1989. “A search for Identity: Three Trends in Sudanese Folkloristic.” In Folklore and Development in The Sudan, edited by Nasr A. A. Sudan. Library Series 13: 13–37, the Institute of African and Asian Studies, University of Khartoum. Niblock, Tim. 1987. Class and Power in Sudan: The Dynamics of Sudanese Politics, 1898–1985. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Nugud, Mohamed Ibrahim. 1995.ʿlāqāt al-rq fī al-mǧtmʿ al-sūdānī: al-nšʾaẗ -ālsmāt -ālāḍmḥlāl. Cairo: dār al-ṯqāfẗ al-ǧdīdẗ. Sikainga, Ahmad Alawad. 2002. City of Steel and Fire: A Social History of Atbara, Sudan’s Railway Town, 1906–1984. Cape Town: David Philip. Spaulding, Jay. 1982. “Slavery, Land Tenure and Social Class in the Northern Turkish Sudan.” International Journal of African Historical Studies 15 (1): 1–20.

Section II

GHOSTS AND BEACONS

Chapter 3

Visitations Dialogue with the Ghost of Dr. John Garang Francis Mading Deng

PROLOGUE It1 was night. I was already in bed. Suddenly, I heard a voice that I surprisingly recognized. I was startled—in fact, shocked and bewildered. Dr. John Garang suddenly appeared in front of me: Raandit (Big Man, a Dinka term of deference to age). “Benydit (Big Chief), where are you coming from? I thought you were long dead!?” I was genuinely bewildered and perplexed. The legendary Chairman of our Sudan People’s Liberation Movement appeared as alive as I remembered him. “This is the biggest myth you will ever experience,” he said, somewhat teasingly. “It’s a complicated story, but as you can see, I am alive.” Confused as I was, I felt truly delighted that the Chairman was after all alive and that the story of his death must have been some monumental misunderstanding—the biggest myth I would ever experience, as he put it. I felt a huge sigh of relief that the leader in whom our people had placed so much faith and hope was still alive to fulfill his vision of a New Sudan for our nation. The story of his having died had only been a nightmare from which, thank God, I was waking up. Suddenly, I drifted back into waking consciousness, and to the disappointment that it was his being still alive that had all been just a dream. The Chairman disappeared as instantly as he had appeared. We did not even have enough time to reflect on what was going on and far less to discuss what had become of our people since his death and whether he had any advice on how to confront the many crises and challenges facing the newly independent nation of South Sudan whose liberation struggle he had led. 57

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I sincerely wished and hoped that the chairman would appear again and have enough time for us to dig deeper into the major challenges of development and nation-building confronting our country and to which he was supposed to have given much thought and even designed plans. SESSION ONE Days after the dream, I was back home from the hospital after having had a major operation for a badly torn rotator cuff resulting from an accidental fall from a four-foot elevated garden onto a pavement. My arm instinctively stretched out, which miraculously saved my life, but completely destroyed my rotator cuff. The surgeon said it was the worst rotator tear he had ever seen. I believe that was probably why he gave me what I was told was the strongest pain killer medication available, which he said he rarely prescribed. Although I had been released from the hospital and was back at home, I was in severe pain and taking that exceptionally strong pain killer, which helped a little. The medication made me feel awkward—hallucinating, seeing human figures without clear shapes. I was talking to someone or to myself and moving about in ways I thought was embarrassing for others to see. So, I locked my door. My wife was worried about my condition and locking myself up alone; but as I was adamant, she conceded. Not long after my door was closed, someone tapped me gently on the shoulder, precisely on my incision. It hurt sharply. I almost screamed, but I feared that I would prove my wife right in her opposition to locking the door. This was utterly bewildering. The door was closed, indeed locked, and there was no other way anyone could have entered the room. But I was of course not thinking clearly. I was in a tormented void. A voice accompanied the tap on the shoulder, “Do not be afraid; I am not going to hurt you.” The voice sounded familiar, but only very vaguely. It was dark. A lamp on the table at the corner of the room shed dim light that made the man talking only faintly visible in some mysterious shape. “Who are you? And how did you get into my locked room?” I asked, visibly shaken, vaguely curious. “I was the Chairman of our liberation movement. You can say that I am now his ghost. Or if you prefer, consider me his spirit.” I now understood the miracle I was experiencing. I was being visited by our dead Chairman about whom I only recently had a dream. I could not believe what was happening. Our beloved Chairman himself? Back in this world alive and talking to me? I wanted to scream with a mix of joy and fright. But I could not. I could not really comprehend what was happening.

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And I was very frightened that something ominous was happening to me. Was I getting insane? “Please tell me why you are visiting me,” I said, still not comprehending what was going on. “I am here to ask you for a favor, to transmit my message because you were both a friend and an elder. I also chose you because I always thought that we shared the same ideas. Or should I say ideals? And we held similar ideas on issues.” As the Chairman spoke, I began to calm down and absorb what he was saying. I could not really see him, but I could recall the image of the man I knew, but was now not clearly visible. His distinctive voice came back: “But that is not the whole story. My real reason for wanting to talk to you is not so much to carry my message, but actually to talk about you.” I was even more baffled. To talk about Me? Why? What about Me would the Great Chairman want to talk about? “You did so much for our country that only a few people know. So I want our conversation to be a record not so of what you and I did together, but what you yourself did for our country.” I was so shocked and bewildered that I almost forgot the agony of my pain. Our legendary Chairman himself, long dead, now coming not only to pass a message on through me, but to talk about me, and what I had done for the country? Of course, I always knew that I was close to the chairman and that although I was never a member of his liberation movement, we shared many ideas about our country. That indeed made us even closer than the solidarity or loyalty of belonging to the same political organization. But why would he now care so much about having my service to the country recognized? Was all this real or an illusion? Was I myself still alive? Or had I perhaps joined the Chairman in the world of the dead, which was why we were able to communicate? I eventually gathered myself enough to respond to the Chairman, “I think I know what you mean. I am flattered and honored that you remember how much we had in common.” The Chairman again displayed his skill in controlling dialogue situations. “My message is long. I don’t think there is enough time tonight for the message. Let’s arrange for me to visit you again tomorrow evening.” “That sounds good,” I said with some sense of relief. I would have some time to try to understand what had occurred and be better prepared for the next round. SESSION TWO It was getting to the time I was expecting the chairman. I waited in eager anticipation. I knew that my wife felt that something suspicious was going

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on in my life. But I realized that she associated that with my health condition. And yet I saw the concern on her face as she looked at me and checked my medication dosage and the number of pills remaining in the bottle. I was absorbed in these thoughts when I suddenly heard the voice of the chairman. “I am here Raandit,” I felt a sensation of relief that the chairman was still in my life. “Welcome Benydit! Welcome!” I said with some excitement. “I am so happy to see you.” I decided to introduce the issue of selection of issues to focus on. “Benydit, I have been thinking about the issues for us to discuss. I realize that you have generously decided that we discuss our shared experiences and mine in particular. I would like us to select the specific areas we should cover. Of course, I know what your agenda as a liberation movement was, but what more precisely are the issues of particular interest you want us to focus on?” The Chairman seemed touched by my question. His voice had become increasingly familiar to me. “I think you have already laid the basis for answering your question. You know that my main goal in the liberation struggle was to create a New Sudan of full equality for all individuals and groups, where there would be no discrimination on any ground. But before we get to that, let me turn your question around and ask you what you yourself would like to be a theme of focus in our discussions.” I was really touched that the Chairman was giving me the opportunity to table a topic of particular concern to me. “Interestingly enough, what I would consider to be an important topic for discussion falls within your broad theme of New Sudan,” I said, “If I were to offer one word that provides an umbrella for my ideas as reflected in policy-oriented scholarship and professional experience I would say ‘Identity.’” I reminded the chairman that I first introduced the debate on identity as a factor in conflicts and nation-building in the Sudan in one of my shortest but most read books, Dynamics of Identification: A Basis for National Integration in the Sudan, which Khartoum University Press published in 1973. My thesis was that the evolution of the conflicting identities in the Sudan took place in a historical context in which conversion to Islam, speaking Arabic, becoming culturally Arabized, and claiming descent from an Arab ancestry elevated one to a level of respectability. This contrasted sharply with being a Black African and a “heathen,” which made one a legitimate target for enslavement. Since Islam and Arabism encouraged such a liberal process of self-promotion, “passing” became a well-documented trend among the indigenous populations of the North. Southern identity on the other hand evolved as one of resistance to Northern slave raids and Arab racial, cultural, and religious hegemony. The chairman responded as I had expected. The idea resonated with him very well as it was an indication of the historical root of the problems that

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their movement sought to address in the Vision of the New Sudan. “You must have read my mind. Or to be more exact, you of course know my mind, and my policy agenda on these issues.” I then resumed: “The case of the Sudan demonstrates the fluidity and adaptability of identity and how it can be shaped and reshaped to serve the interest of the self-identifying character. This means that the crisis of identity also offers policy opportunity for transformation. With increasing recognition of diversity in pluralistic states and the stipulation of the universal human rights principle of nondiscrimination, combined with the evolving political awareness among the marginalized communities in the country, it was my belief that the myth of self-perception of Arabism would be adjusted to the reality of Sudanese admixture and its racial, ethnic, cultural and religious diversity within a framework of national unity.” I went on to elaborate my argument: “It is not the mere fact of identity differences that generates conflicts, but the way diversity is mismanaged. This usually means that some groups enjoy the full rights of citizenship, while other groups are discriminated, marginalized, excluded and denied the rights and dignity of citizenship.” The Chairman then interjected: “Here you are sounding very much like a member of our movement, whether you know it or not. Please continue. I will tell you later where I think we may differ.” “Fair enough,” I responded and continued: “I see identity as both subjective, what people perceive themselves to be, and objective, what they really are by tangible criteria. Scholars emphasize subjectivity as what counts the most. But my view is that when the implications of selfidentification that is not factually grounded negatively impinge on the rights of others, such erroneous self-perception should be challenged. Identity can also be exclusive in a discriminatory way or inclusive in a way that accommodates diversity equitably. That too requires transforming self-perceptions.” I could sense that the Chairman was somewhat uneasy with my presentation. Was he getting bored because he knew it all? I soon realize that he was thinking differently. “I think there is a significant difference between your approach and our New Sudan Vision,” he interjected. “The question is whether inclusivity of identity means accommodating differences or reconstructing identity to fashion a new and unified commonality. When we advanced the concept of ‘Sudanism,’ we were essentially doing both: accommodating diversity equitably, and conceptualizing a new integrated identity that was based on mutual identification with the Sudan as a national framework. We did not think of it in phases: it was an immediate objective. But, of course, that was easier said than done, as we eventually learned.”

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Feeling somewhat edgy, I eagerly resumed: “I think the difference you are talking about between your approach and mine is one of sequencing. You seem to lay stress on the end result, which is recognizing or constructing a shared identity, while I want mutual accommodation of differences as the first step that facilitates the acknowledgment or development of the common identity, that includes identifying and building on the commonality that already exists beneath the accepted realities of diversity.” “You are making it sound more complicated than it is,” the Chairman noted. “Recognize the overshadowed shared elements and you can combine what people now take for granted, which divides them, and what they should uncover that unites them. Why phase them?” It seemed as though we were angels dancing on the tip of a needle, as my American father-in-law used to say. I told myself that one should not argue with spirits or ghosts and tried to bridge our positions. “I understand what you are saying, but what I am trying to do is reconcile reality with idealism. Identity is a difficult concept to manage. Although it is dynamic and flexible, it is also rigid and dogmatically held and protected.” I recalled the way Sudanese reacted to my approach: “In the Sudan, Northerners saw the policy implication of my approach as challenging and threatening their ‘Arabness,’ while Southerners preferred to deal with the Northerners on the basis of their self-perception as Arabs and thought that my approach encouraged assimilation. Some Northerners might even have understood my position the same way and welcomed it. Both were confusing integration, which entails mutual influences, with assimilation, which is a one-way absorption.” “That is precisely my concern with your approach,” the chairman reacted. “You tend to emphasize the present differences to be accommodated, instead of persuading people to come together on the shared ground. I know you want diversities to evolve in a direction of convergence. But the forces responsible for managing or manipulating diversity are more conflictual than conciliatory. Your approach aims at eventual merger on the common ground, but that allows divisive factors to dominate the interim phase.” I was beginning to appreciate the differences in our approaches, but I still believed that they were more perceived than real. I tried to reconcile our positions. “I acknowledge that you may be a step ahead of me,” I conceded. “But I am trying to deal with realities not only in our country, but indeed in the world.” “I am sure we have no fundamental differences,” the chairman conceded. “We only need to fine tune our differences to bridge the gap. You dealt with the issue of identity in your novels, didn’t you?” “Yes. Thanks for remembering. After I turned down the appointment as ambassador to Ethiopia to confront your movement, I resigned, as you know.

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As I flew back to the United States, I asked myself whether I was turning my back on my country. The answer was of course a resounding ‘No.’ What then would I do? I decided that I would write about the crisis of identity in a form that would reach the hearts and minds of our people. I had already written enough scholarly works on the subject. I decided to write fiction.” “That was a clever move!” the chairman remarked. “I hope it was more than clever, but thank you.” We both laughed. “I meant it positively as a complement.” The chairman was slightly apologetic. “I understand. Thank you again. The first novel, Seed of Redemption, is about the descendants of the daughter of a tribal leader who had been given into slavery while pregnant in exchange with her abducted brother who was to become the Chief of the tribe. The elders and spiritual leaders of the tribe prayed that she would prosper and produce a progeny that would eventually lead their enslaved people into freedom. And indeed, the hero of the story was a descendent of that line.” “You must have had a Northerner in mind, since we are the descendants of those who escaped slavery?” “Yes, but they are our relatives. Anyway, although a fiction, parts of the story were a thinly disguised political account whose characters were easily identifiable. The revolution was in many respects reminiscent of the 1924 revolt of Ali Abdel Latif. The second novel, Cry of the Owl, followed shortly after I finished Seed of Redemption. Reactions to the first novel as a partially recognizable historical narrative motivated me to make the second novel more genuinely fictional.” The Chairman then commented: “Although many of your books authoritatively document your ideas about the crisis of identity in the Sudan, your novels proved to be the most effective way of awakening the people’s consciousness. I think it was a very smart move to have them translated into Arabic.” “Thank you.” The timing was also opportune for introducing the debate. SESSION THREE “Are you ready for me Raandit?” The Chairman announced his arrival for the session. “Good evening. Of course I am always ready for you,” I responded with a discreetly corrective greeting. The Chairman then continued: “Let me follow up on an issue you introduced in our last session and which we both agree was the center piece of our movement; what did people really understand by the New Sudan Vision?”

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The motive behind the question was to probe into the extent to which people really understood what the concept meant and what it hoped to achieve. My answer was elaborate and frank. “To tell you the truth, most people did not really know what it meant, and if they did, they thought it was a tactical ploy for pursuing more realistic objectives. Some took it as a utopian wishful thinking. Few Southerners and Northerners understood it and agreed with it. There were also those who understood it and rejected it. Of course, no reasonable person would object to the principles of equality and non-discrimination on the grounds of race, ethnicity, religion, culture or gender, except those who use these as bases for domination and oppression. To the extent that the Vision implied preserving the unity of the old Sudan on new bases, South Sudanese mostly opposed it because they were deeply against any form of unity with the North and also because they did not believe that full equality in one Sudan was possible. I shouldn’t tell you what you know, but the popular response among your soldiers when asked about New Sudan as the objective of the war was in Dinka, ‘Ke tharku angicku.’ This of course was a coded way of saying, ‘We know what we are fighting for.’ The implication was that while their Chairman spoke about unity for his own calculated reasons which they accepted, they knew that they were fighting for the independence of the South.” The Chairman then commented: “What Southerners did not realize fully is that the world is against breaking up countries. This is quite apart from the African commitment to preserving colonial borders. What made the independence of the South acceptable is that our noble objective of promoting equality in a united Sudan was rejected by the North, which made them look unreasonable, and understandably left us with no alternative, but independence. In that sense, we were both idealistic and realistic.” I then resumed: “I remember a conversation I had with the lead negotiator for the government. I told him that you really believed in the unity of the country. His reaction was, ‘We prefer separatism to the unity of Dr. John.’” “He was right,” the Chairman commented. “The separation of the South would leave them free to pursue their Arab-Islamic agenda, as it did, perhaps until the recent revolutionary demand for nationalist reform. The unity we wanted would have fundamentally transformed the system at that time and forced them and their divisive agenda out of power.” I felt obliged to question the wisdom of correcting a wrong by turning the tables: “That would have been ironic and paradoxical, since the vision of the New Sudan was inclusive of all and not to exclude any group.” That provoked the chairman into explaining what their revolution would have meant: “You cannot be inclusive with those whose objective is the monopoly of power based on an exclusive and inequitable ideology. The formula for their inclusion is a fundamental reform and transformation, which inherently means excluding to include, a paradox as you say.”

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“I think I understand,” I said, although I was not sure I fully understood how that paradox could work in practice. I then introduced the issue of his own ambition for power, as the opponents of the New Sudan Vision saw it. “The general feeling in the North, shared by many in the South, was that you were ambitious to be the President of the Sudan. I remember telling some Northerners that you were realistic and pragmatic enough to know that Northerners would never accept a non-Arab and non-Muslim as the President of the country. I said you would probably support as President a Northerner who shared your vision for the country. Your reaction to me was, ‘Why are you denying me the Presidency?’ I liked the confidence in your response. And yet, I believe I was right in saying that Northerners generally could not fathom the idea of a South Sudanese as President. I once heard a Northern Sudanese who was otherwise a liberal say in reaction to the belief that you wanted to be the ruler of the Sudan, ‘Whom is he coming to rule?’” I reiterated to the chairman my original argument about the difficulties of realizing the New Sudan Vision and the costs involved in human lives. “I remember your raising the question with me in your Washington house over dinner,” the chairman recalled. “You asked whether the New Sudan Vision should be pursued to the end and at all costs, even at the risk of the extermination of our people, or whether it should be phased to allow our people to have a break and re-gather their strength for a later round in the struggle. I responded with the question whether people should remain second-class citizens to avoid extermination?” I added to the chairman’s recollection: “As I also recall, you also asked why people should allow themselves to be exterminated? Although I did not tell you at the time that is when I thought your confidence had exaggeratedly gone overboard. I should have argued back that people do not allow themselves to be exterminated; they get exterminated because they have no capacity to protect themselves.” I thought the chairman moderated his position: “But, if you will recall, I did not rule out alternative solutions to the goal of unity in a New Sudan. I remember telling you that separation would essentially come as a fallback solution and as the pragmatic preference of the North.” I recall you said, “We will squeeze them until they literally vomit us out.” “And that is exactly what happened,” affirmed the chairman. “That is what I call the pragmatic self-preserving fallback option of the North. And while it was the first preference of the South, it was not our best possible outcome as a movement.” I then outlined the choices I saw for the country: “As you know, I strongly advocated self-determination, but to be honest, that was because I wanted it to be a pressure on the North that unless they accepted the principles of the New

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Sudan Vision, the country risked being partitioned. I did not fully realize, which I should have done, that the rulers in Khartoum would indeed prefer partition as a more acceptable compromise than the New Sudan transformation of the country.” SESSION FOUR “Good evening Randi,” the chairman announced his arrival for next session. “Today I would like to begin with your visit to us in Addis Ababa a few months after the military coup of 1989. You then chose to go back through Khartoum against our advice.” “Yes. It was exactly three months after the coup,” I elaborated. “My principle was to engage with all the parties. You and many others thought it was dangerous to do so, but I insisted as a matter of principle. In Khartoum, with the facilitation of a Dinka officer, one of the three South Sudanese members of the Revolution Command Council, I had very cordial discussions with all the members of the Council. Some of them even misunderstood my engagement with them as endorsement.” “I asked to visit members of the former government who were in detention in the infamous Kober Prison. The President was taken aback. ‘Visit them in prison?’ he rhetorically asked in obvious surprise. I argued that since I always met with them whenever in Khartoum, for them to learn that I am in the country and not visit them, if only as a matter of courtesy, would reflect badly on me. The President approved and asked the council member in charge of security to accompany me. As we drove to Kober, he said to me, ‘Doctor, take this as an investment when our turn comes.’ We both laughed. Thirty years later, their turn has come and I am determined to honor that request.” “You exceed my expectation for your goodness of heart,” the chairman interjected. “I am not surprised that the leader of the coup was taken aback by your request. But although I would not have done it, I admire you for that.” “You did more than that; you joined with the sectarian parties in the National Democratic Alliance? I never understood how they fit into your vision of the New Sudan, the core of which was separation of religion and state and a refined national identity in which there would be no discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion or culture. You know that Islam and Arabism are among the factors that define these sectarian parties. Help me understand.” “I understand why you could not understand. Let me try to explain. The starting point is that the New Sudan Vision is an inclusive concept. It embraces all diversities that accept that new framework. The traditional parties accepted the New Sudan unity framework. How much they would actually live up to the details of the principles embodied in the framework would

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remain to be seen. You see, conflict in the form of armed struggle may end, but it continues in other more subtle forms. The full resolution becomes an ongoing process. I am trying to explain a very complex strategy.” “I think I understand. But you are right; it is very complex.” “One has to be pragmatic and flexible,” the chairman elaborated. “Life is an endless search for opportunities to build upon. It is also a pragmatic process of choosing a lesser evil. Our ideal was to make the New Sudan inclusive. Some, like the Muslim Brotherhood, rejected it and we bypassed them. The traditional parties opportunistically welcomed it as a basis for preserving national unity and we embraced them. Some of them obviously vacillated and we also vacillated in our relationship with, at times cooperating with them, and at times parting ways and confronting.” “It is all fascinating,” I remarked. “Frankly, I am not surprised. This is, in fact, what I always knew and admired about you, keeping your eyes on the price as they say in America and flexibly making use of every opportunity to learn, educate and gain support. No permanent enemies, hoping for permanent friends, make new friends, but be prepared to lose some, and welcome them back, should they return; they often do in enlightened self-interest.” “I can see you are a permanent friend,” the chairman remarked with characteristic wit. “I have no reason to leave and return,” I tried to respond in kind. “Anyway, going back to my visit to Khartoum, one of the members of the Revolution Command Council with whom I met was said to be the intellectual of the Revolution. I was told that he had only fifteen minutes for the meeting. We ended up discussing for well over an hour. The Secretary kept peeping in, presumably to quietly announce that the time was over, but was conspicuously ignored. Essentially, I was arguing that the young men and women from the South in the rebel movement represented a new generation with aspirations for a united Sudan and not just for the South. I said that I had collected their morale-boosting war songs that demonstrated remarkable self-confidence in their struggle for a New Sudan and in fact claiming the right as the original owners of the country. He listened to me very attentively. In the end, he said how much he had enjoyed listening to me and all I had to say. ‘But just remember that there is another point of view.’ That small, almost casual remark, revealed a great deal. The other point of view was, of course, the Arab-Islamic identity and vision of the Sudan and their ‘Salvation’ agenda for the country.” “Which did not turn out to be the salvation they had envisioned,” injected the Chairman. “To be fair to them, they wanted to liberate the country from the yoke of inherited Western systems of government by building on their Islamic Faith and Arabism,” I commented with surprising defense of our leading political adversaries. “I was asked to address the conference on what they called the

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National Peace Issues. At first I said I was there to learn, not to speak. But people argued that my refusal to speak might be misconstrued as opposition. So, I decided to speak and to do so by candidly stating my views on the national identity crisis and the challenge of unity.” “While affirming my principled support for unity, I presented a choice between the New Sudan Vision and the partition of the country because of the unbridgeable religious differences. If the unity of the nation was the priority, then they had to accept the separation of state and religion. If their religion was their priority, then they had to accept that the unity of the country could not be achieved or sustained. In the question-and-answer exchange, a colleague, who had been Minister of Religious Affairs when I was in the government, commented that if the choice was as I stated it, then, of course, they would choose their religion over national unity.” “That was a simplistic answer to a more complex and challenging question,” the Chairman interjected. “Sudan is not the only country where different religions co-exist and the people have not been torn apart by their religious differences.” “Perhaps I should have presented the choice differently. It is not a case of preferring unity over religion as such, but a divisive interpretation of religion. After all, in the Sudan, there are different versions of Islam.” “That’s right,” the Chairman agreed. “In fact, the more tolerant Sufi Islam has been the dominant version in the Sudan until the Orthodox versions infiltrated the country more recently and took over.” The chairman concurred and elaborated: “The slogan of the Founders of modern Sudan who led the nationalist movement and were also the religious leaders of their sects was ‘Religion to God and the Nation to All.’” “True. My presentation proved to be quite provocative, praised by some, especially Southerners, who intimated to me later that it freed them to speak their mind openly, and condemned by others, especially the hardline Northerners. I later understood that Northerners were divided between those who argued that my frank talk was precisely what was called for, and those who objected to my having been given the platform. ‘This is John Garang himself,’ they were reported to have said. The hardliners prevailed. My diplomatic passport was withdrawn, and was returned only later after some prominent personalities intervened on my behalf.” SESSION FIVE In our next session, the Chairman arrived and immediately got to the point. “I want us to focus today on the difficult but excellent work you did for us in Washington, which most of our people do not know.”

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“You are right, promoting you in Washington was climbing a steep mountain. But that made our success very gratifying. You were initially seen in Washington as stooges of the communist regime in Ethiopia. This created a paradoxical situation in which there was much sympathy for the cause of the South and hostility to the movement that was fighting for that cause. The challenge I put to myself was to try to bridge that gap. I helped put together what became known as ‘The Council’ of a few dedicated individuals who almost miraculously influenced U.S. policy in support of the cause of the South under your leadership.” “Once we succeeded and you were welcomed in Washington, you began to charm the policy makers with your persuasive style, intellect and humor. As I attended most of your meetings at the State Department, Congress, and other centers of decision-making, I observed firsthand how you began to turn the tide. You then visited Washington quite frequently, and eventually established an office and appointed a representative, supported by the US. We organized meetings and discussion groups at several think tanks and universities around Washington, some of which we held at my institution and I moderated myself. You recall that we often appeared together in meetings, including those organized by others.” “Interestingly enough, the discord within your movement was paradoxically also encouraged by the NGO community operating in South Sudan who supported the cause of our people, but sided with your opponents in the movement. Most of them still saw you as agents of socialism and began to persuade your critics in the movement that if they came out openly against the New Sudan Vision, declared their commitment to the goal of South Sudanese independence, and advocated respect for human rights and humanitarian principles, they would almost certainly gain the support of the West and take over the leadership of the movement from you.” “I read some of the reports and comments of those NGOs and met some of them,” the chairman interceded. “Their hostility was quite contagious. It eventually erupted in the abortive coup of 1991 that nearly destroyed our movement. As I have told you on numerous occasions, those who openly called for self-determination without the tools to bring it about would almost certainly end up compromising on an agreement that basically maintains the status quo with the North still dominating the system. That’s what happened to those rebels.” “I remember my first meeting with the Eritrean President in Washington at the beginning of the IGAD initiative,” I resumed my account. “The meeting, which was at his request, was scheduled for I believe twenty minutes. It lasted for about one and a half hours. The President recalled that we first met when I was Minister of State for Foreign Affairs and he was, in his own words, a fugitive.”

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“He then told me that he did not understand why you wanted unity with the North. He said that they had closely observed the racial inequalities against the South in the Sudan. The Arabs of Central Sudan were clearly the first-class citizens, Western Sudanese who, though not Arabs, were Muslims and somewhat Arabized, were second class citizens, and they, refugees from Ethiopia and Eritrea, followed as third class. Southerners came last as fourthclass citizens. How could they accept unity in such a discriminating country? He could have added the Muslims from Nigeria and other West African countries as falling into the fourth class, leaving South Sudanese as fifth class citizens.” “I explained in great depth that your position was more complex than that. I told him that you wanted to liberate not only South Sudanese and other non-Arabs in Northern Sudan, but also the so-called Arabs who were in fact culturally Arabized Africans from their distorted self-perception that they were imposing on the whole multiracial and multicultural country. I explained further that even if the South were to be independent, the only way to guarantee that independence was to transform the system in the North. He was fully persuaded to your policy orientation.” “I also met the Prime Minister of Ethiopia and gave him the same orientation. From that time on, I maintained close relations with them. Every time they came to Washington, they requested to see me. And of course our Resource Group followed the negotiations very closely and cooperated with the IGAD Ministers in developing strategies and responses to the positions of the government. It was a remarkable partnership.” “You really were at a battle front in Washington, fighting with words. Let us end here and continue with the peace process in our next session.” SESSION SIX In the next session, I immediately went to the conclusion of the agreement at the momentous signing ceremony in the stadium in Nairobi, which I attended. “As you will recall, while the VIPs were seated in shaded areas, most people sat or stood in the heat of the blazing sun. Your soldiers marched at the tune of their martial music that brought to my mind the words of their moraleboosting war songs. I remember an earlier meeting with the Sudanese president, when he complained that the movement was corrupting our cultural values. And he gave as an illustration a martial song whose music was being played at the ceremony was whose lyrics included the lines:” Our battalion knows no mercy Even my father, I would give him a bullet.

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“As I listened to the music, read into it the lyrics, and watched the Sudanese President, I could not help think of the wide divide between the parties that had just agreed. An overzealous South Sudanese Muslim every now and then shouted in the crowd, ‘Allahu Akbar,’ to which an equally excited South Sudanese crowd responded, ‘Halleluiah.’” “I saw the Northerners sitting close to me looking very downcast. The speeches were equally illustrative. Surprisingly, the Sudanese President’s speech was quite reconciliatory. Yours elaborated in great details, and with striking candor, the reasons behind the war. Frankly, I felt you could have been more magnanimous against your former adversaries, especially in view of the President’s tone. But I also realized that, quite apart from your principled position to explain the cause of the war that entailed so much sacrifice and suffering, your speech had already been prepared and could not be adapted to the unfolding situation. The speech of the President of Uganda was similar to yours. He began by stating that people do not go to war for nothing, and then focused on the distorted self-perception of the Northern Sudanese as Arabs and their attempt to impose that discriminatory vision on the whole Sudan.” The Chairman responded: “You could say, as I often said to you, the agreement ended the armed confrontation, but it had not removed the root causes. The vision of the New Sudan was still alive for me and the President of Uganda shared that vision. And I had no doubt the President of the Sudan was aware of that.” “I recall the dinner you gave the Leadership of South Sudan after the reception in which people celebrated with great euphoria. Again people spoke with great passion of joy. One of your senior colleagues humorously likened the agreement to having reached the Mountain Top toward the Promised Land. You yourself spoke of having delivered the right of the people of the South to decide whether to be free in their own independent country or remain secondclass citizens in the old Sudan. I found your statement somewhat confusing as it implied endorsing separation over the New Sudan Vision. But as I had long come to understand, the two were not mutually exclusive in your strategy.” “Absolutely,” the Chairman responded, clearly appreciative of my understanding of his position. “And that is what most Southerners did not seem to understand. It is the failure to understand that fact which accounts in significant measure for the tragic developments in South Sudan since independence.” “As you may know, I started working on an edited volume which I initially titled New Sudan in the Making. Later on, when I realized the Vision was still aspirational and not easily achievable, I changed the title by adding a question mark at the end. I tried to document in my recent book, Bound by Conflict: The Dilemmas of the Two Sudans, the persistent challenges of the New Sudan

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Vision and the paradoxical way it continues to bind the two now independent countries together.” “When you went to Khartoum to be sworn in as First Vice President of the Republic and President of the autonomous government of the South during the six-year Interim Period, I joined the movement’s leadership in Nairobi and got to Khartoum before you.” “When I arrived at the Hilton Hotel where most of the Leaders were accommodated, the first thing that drew my attention, and I felt was a major mistake, was to see your photograph and that of Ali Abdel Latif, the 1924 South Sudanese leader of the revolt against colonial rule, put together high on the front face of the hotel. It was obvious that the picture would be read to mean that your revolution was a continuation of the Black Revolution of Ali Abdel Latif against foreign domination, which I thought posed an imminent threat to the ruling Arab minority.” “Why did you want us to deny our revolutionary brother?” the Chairman posed a rhetorical question. “What was wrong with making it clear that ours was a continuation of what they had started that far back?” “I thought it would do what you were trying to avoid: polarizing the country on racial basis,” I tried to explain myself. “Yours was a liberation struggle for all the Sudanese, not only the Black.” “But so was the rebellion of Ali Abdel Latif. The only factor you were concerned about is our color, not our objective or message.” “I guess you are right,” I conceded. “And frankly, Ali Abdel Latif was far ahead of his time. Your revolution was more timely. The experience of your momentous return to Khartoum since 1983 was truly extraordinary. The whole country waited for you in anticipation in a manner that had not been witnessed in the Sudan in my memory. The reception at the airport was impressive. But everything that followed was beyond any expectation. It seems that the advanced team had done superb arrangements. You were to address the Nation. As far as eyes could see, it was as though the whole of Khartoum, joined by masses from elsewhere in the country, gathered to hear you. Those of us who were not out there were glued to the television. Then something which seemed very fishy happened: The sound system failed and could not be made to work. So, you could not address the gathered crowd. Suspicions were obvious and credible. It is unbelievable that massive riots did not take place. You remained remarkably calm through it all.” The Chairman gave an explanation I had already suspected: “I deliberately played down the suspicion of sabotage. I still don’t know what actually happened. But if it were a sabotage, it was a very ill-conceived plan since it risked generating a calamitous mass reaction.” “The swearing in was in many ways reminiscent of the Nairobi signing of the Agreement. The speeches were quite representative of what had

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transpired in Nairobi. The President was conciliatory while you again gave a full account of what the war had been about. You made two points that I thought were particularly confrontational. You said to the Sudanese people that they were now free. ‘Put on your wings and fly to greater freedom.’ Then you said that your movement would establish offices in all the states of the Sudan.” “As you will recall, back in the hotel, you called for me to see you in your room. We talked about the events of the day. I asked you, ‘When you said the Sudanese people were now free and you called upon them to fly to greater freedom, from whom were they free, but from the same people with whom you have now agreed? How will they take that?’ Again, you said you would open offices in all parts of the country. ‘Would you not be competing with them?’ Your answer was a repeat of what you had said in Nairobi, that although armed confrontation had ended, the conflict continued. You also told me that you had qualified what you said by adding that it was a way of promoting the unity of the country. In any case, you were clearly calling the shots.” The chairman commented: “This was a struggle that had lasted for half a century and in which millions of our people had sacrificed their lives. We should not mince our words about the cause. We must be clear-headed and candid in making our case. We might not have won decisively in the battle field, but we had the cause of justice on our side.” I agreed and added: “And there is no doubt at that moment you were clearly on a moral high ground. What I observed about your activities and the response to your leadership among Northerners indicated a new page in the political evolution of the Sudan. That is what I mean when I say that I thought you had set the Sudan on a course of no return. Your impact on Khartoum indicated that your leadership was proving transformative. Then suddenly, tragedy struck.” .

SESSION SEVEN The tragedy of course was the accidental death of the chairman. When we met for our last session, I reflected on what to say, and decided to focus on what was happening to the movement that he had successfully led to liberate our people. That movement was not only fractured and marginalized, but its vision and programs were almost entirely shelved and forgotten. “Mr. Chairman, I have no words to express how I feel about what this experience has meant to me. I always knew how much our friendship meant to both of us. But that you should choose to spend such valuable time with me among the multitudes of people who are much more deserving of this honor than me is something no language can adequately acknowledge and appreciate. So, let me just use the simple old words: Thank You.”

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“Let me say that your Vision of the New Sudan of equality without discrimination on any ground is as valid to Two Sudans as it was valid in the old Sudan. And of course your strategy of taking the towns to villages or using oil revenue to fuel the engine of agriculture, and your development goal of prioritizing roads, roads, roads, still yearn for implementation. So, you see why you are so sorely missed?!” The chairman reacted again with an attractive balance between confidence and modesty: “I will conclude by repeating what I have already said. Ideas cannot be buried with a person, nor can they die. They may lie dormant, or hibernate as many creatures do during certain seasons, until they are revived, spotlighted and reactivated by timely intervention, stimulation and direction. What is required is faith, backed by patience, and creative search, as always, for the suitable leadership.” The conversation brought to mind two principles that had always guided me in life. One is that strategic optimism generates motivation for constructive action while pessimism leads to a dead end. The other is that in crises there are often opportunities to be tapped and pursued. In change there is also continuity. And in death, there is continued identity and influence through the living. So, I end by saying: “The Chairman is dead; long live the Chairman!” NOTE 1. An earlier version of this chapter was published in Deng, F.M. Visitations: Conversations with the Ghost of the Chairman. Red Sea Press and Detcro Press, 2020.

Chapter 4

The Beacon A Glimpse of Suad Ibrahim Ahmed’s Intellectual Life Fatima Babiker Mahmoud

This chapter is about a heroine. Suad Ibrahim Ahmed, to use the terminology of the Communist Party of the Sudan, was one of the prominent Sudanese “revolutionary democrats.” This is a term coined to refer to a person who abandoned their class of origin and ideologically allied themselves with the working class. In the case of Suad, it was clear, from the time she joined the Communist Party as a student at the University of Khartoum that she chose to desert her bourgeois class ideology and adopt a working-class philosophy. Below I comment on her organic intellectualism. Over the contemporary history of the Sudan, when there were military dictatorships in power, Suad was firm in opposing them; whereas a great number of elites and intellectuals accepted and accommodated these governments, or at least were not prepared to dispute them. In addition, she was one of the women who was relentlessly struggling against colonialism. Through her many battles Suad sacrificed a great deal. Her property and businesses were confiscated by the State. She sacrificed her freedom, when she was imprisoned for many years, and her mobility, becoming home-bound due to illness and house arrest. Moreover, she was constantly harassed, detained, and ill-treated, especially during the 30-year dictatorship of the Ingaz.1 At all stages of her life, Suad was not only a revolutionary democrat, but a beacon of the struggle against whatever impeded the fulfillment of her dream, a better position for the Sudan among the countries of the world; a better life for the working people, for women, for the marginalized, and for minorities. Suad committed herself to the Sudanese Women’s Union, the Communist

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Party of Sudan, and the Khartoum University Staff Trade Union. She believed deeply in democracy; however, she encountered some difficulties, both in the party and in the Women’s Union, in abiding strictly to “democratic centralism,” and fought constantly against its negative consequences, what she used to call “a struggle from within.” Nonetheless, she never got tired and never left the two organizations, remaining loyal. Suad did not allow her intellect to create a barrier between her and the Sudanese people. For example, as part of her work for the Department of Extramural Studies she founded the cinema and theater club, with the main aim of making such activities accessible to the ordinary people. This continued even when she was homebound for health reasons. For example, she organized a co-op in her residential area and within her neighborhood. The center of the co-op was her house. My impression of Suad when I first met her was that here is a woman who looks different, talks differently, and behaves differently from her counterparts and from those in the women’s movement, in the party, from anything I had ever seen. She was modern, confident, and intelligent. As I spent more time in her presence I began to realize quickly that Suad’s house was the heartbeat and center for a host of activities. There were students, youth, men, women, and workers coming in and out in great numbers. Her house was as active as a nest of bees. They surrounded her, asking her advice, talking to her about their educational projects and their personal problems. For all these groups of people and more, she was a great leader—an inspiration and a beacon. It was difficult to describe and analyze such a complex woman, hard to know how to take it all in—the personal and political. Therefore, I have divided my homage and analyses of her thinking into a number of sections, beginning with the more personal, then moving on to her early political awakenings, including a discussion of Suad as an organic intellectual. Following those sections I make brief commentaries on her accomplishments, such being a leader within the Sudanese Communist Party; being a founder of arguably the most enduring of Sudanese women’s organizations—The Sudanese Women’s Union; being one of the founders of the most prominent of all the women’s periodicals in the Sudan—The Woman’s Voice; her important activism in the University of Khartoum Student Union; and perhaps among the most dramatic of the events of her life as a Nubian woman—being among the leaders of the resistance to the flooding of Nubian lands as a result of the building of the High Dam at Aswan and the unequal deal between the Egyptian and Sudanese governments. She was very young then, perhaps the youngest of the prominent women leaders. But she was wise enough to realize that something must be done to save Nubian culture.

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On another theme, in general, Suad’s ideas were very significant in the development of the Sudan’s educational policies, partially through her work in what was then called the new Extramural Studies section of the University of Khartoum; she was an early proponent of forming a connection between university and community. At that time she was one of the few people with an advanced degree in Education. Furthermore, Suad was among the leaders of political opposition in all sorts of areas: for example, she participated in the two overthrows of military regimes and lent support to what is now South Sudan. I also underline Suad’s further development as a socialist feminist and her contribution to the arts. I end with final thoughts. THE SUAD I KNEW I met Suad in 1964 when I was a student at the Khartoum Government Secondary School for Girls. This was immediately after the October 1964 Revolution. A meeting was organized by the communist branch for students of whom I was one and for which Suad was responsible. What drew my attention to her was the way she was dressed, as well as her hair style. She was not wearing a toub2 like most women of her age; instead she wore modern dress—a skirt and a blouse—and had a short cut hairstyle. Besides, although she had just gotten married, the “henna”3 in her left hand was not black, which was the tradition. I thought to myself, “a woman of that caliber and intellect must have found it difficult to stay still for the henna to blacken.” However, the henna did not suit the rest of her appearance; she must have agreed to the henna reluctantly. Compared to the other women leaders who attended the meeting, everything about her seemed to represent modernity, from her self-confidence to the articulate way she spoke. Despite our age difference, we became firm friends, and I soon came to realize I was in the presence of a prominent Sudanese woman intellectual, a politician who was engaged in the struggle for human rights, democracy, and gender equality. She was one of the few who aspired toward a socialist and even a communist society in the Sudan. Suad Ibrahim Ahmed, to use her full name, was through and through a revolutionary democrat who worked steadily for peace, democracy, and development. Suad was a daring activist who surprised those around her with her depth of knowledge, steady resolve, and principled democratic attitude and behavior. She was also fun. I was lucky to have shared so many great moments with her, both political and personal. These are memories as far back as secondary school that will be forever imprinted on my heart.

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EARLY POLITICAL AWAKENING OF AN ORGANIC INTELLECTUAL Suad was born in 1935 during British colonialism. Her father Ibrahim Ahmed was an educationist, and prominent member of the Umma Party, who became Minister of Finance in the first government of the country following independence in 1956. He was a well-read intellectual and an academic. Ibrahim Ahmed had a rich book collection on politics and world ideologies, also covering economics, poetry, peoples’ struggles for independence, women’s rights, and anti-slavery. This library was a crucial aspect of Suad’s upbringing. Suad followed the seminal ideas of Antonio Gramsci and considered herself an organic intellectual. She wanted the masses to be as educated as the educator, and to be aware that it is they who have the power to transform reality. This consciousness must be developed among the people. While the traditional intellectual may deny the masses the access to the intellectual resources they need in order to engage in an expanding dialectic of activities and consciousness, the organic intellectuals would find their intellectual force precisely in their organic integration with the masses. They would be the intellectuals of the masses who would work out and make coherent the principles and problems which the masses themselves had posed in their own practical activity, and so who could build a cultural and historical bloc. Sudanese Women’s Union After the Second World War, the National Liberation Movement was at its peak. The Cold War’s impact had had its effect on the world scene, and the Western blocs were very active in trying to influence what we then called “the Third World countries” toward their position. However, most of these countries were more impressed by the example of the Soviet Union. This was mainly because it was not part of the West which was responsible for colonialism. The second reason was because the Eastern bloc, under the leadership of the Soviet Union, was governed by an attractive socialist system, while the West represented capitalism. Third World countries were more drawn to a system that is not exploitative of their resources. These were the intellectual ideas and ideologies that Suad was absorbing. Also, as a young teenager perusing her father’s library, she had been exposed to many books from which she learnt a lot about the experiences of the women’s movements in the West and in the East. In 1952, Suad, along with two other activists4—Nafisa al-Malik and Khalda Zahir—met at Nafisa’s house to discuss organizing a Women’s

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Union, one that could lead the struggle for women’s liberation as part of the Sudanese national liberation, as well as deal with other more specific women’s issues. While Suad was affected by a host of different schools of thought, movements, and ideas from both East and West, Khalda was influenced mainly by the Soviet women’s movement, and Nafisa by the Egyptian women’s movement. The three went on to invite a group of about 10 other women, primarily from the Omdurman Government School for Girls. With that meeting, the Sudanese Women’s Union was born. The movement stressed the idea that their members were against patriarchy as a system, but not against men as a gender. They shared this idea with the socialist feminist movement of women in the West. However, I branded the Sudanese Women’s Union’s ideology in my book Ideological trends in the Sudanese Women’s Movement5 (2008) and for the first time, during the colonial period, as an anticolonial feminist movement or National liberation movement. During and after independence I called it a postcolonial feminist movement. Being highly influenced by the Soviet Women’s Union, the Sudanese Women’s Union adopted the structure of democratic centralism. Suad was not in support of that and always struggled to bring more democracy to the praxis of the Union. She succeeded in interjecting and implementing a conference that was held every two years to allow the Union members to vote in more important decisions and policies which affected them directly. The union created a strong relationship with the Egyptian movement, the east European bloc, and with local branches of women’s unions, especially the Russian women’s organizations. However, they did not create relations with the British Women’s Movement, the west Europeans, or the American organizations. This is because the women in this union were convinced that these countries were enemies and capitalists, particularly Britain, as it was the colonial power in the Sudan at the time. Except for Suad, the leadership of the Women’s Union, and perhaps even the membership, did not differentiate between government policies and the people. However, the people in many instances did not subscribe to the same ideology as their governments, but were themselves socialists and anticolonialists in their political affiliations. In fact, some of these organizations were independent of their government and their policies, including those within colonial Britain. Because of Suad’s wide readings she was capable of making this differentiation and made an effort to try to convince her colleagues of those differences. However, it seemed that the anti-Western propaganda of the East was too strong in the Sudan. Nevertheless, Suad condemned the attack on Western feminism and praised Western women’s intellectual contributions—that is, their literature as well as their movement. Her ideas were very near those of the socialist feminism of the West, although she did not explicitly brand herself as such.

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The participation of Suad in the establishment of the Union showed that she was not only an intellectual, but also a woman of action. She had a very good organizational sense and did not content herself with just understanding the various problems of Sudanese women, but also had the deep desire to change them radically. Suad had leadership qualities which were clear in her immense contribution to the writing of the constitution of the Union. She was very democratic in her thinking and practice and tried her best to liberate the Union’s constitution from non-democratic attributes, but she had very limited success in that area. Because Suad was aware of the subjugation of women and the poor living conditions of women at the time, her sharp mind, resourcefulness, and wisdom put her at the forefront of the struggle for human rights, in general, and women’s rights, in particular. Sawt Al-Mar’a In 1955 Suad arrived at the idea that a journal or a magazine for the Woman’s Union would be important so that the Union could have a link with the membership and the public at large. As a result, Sawt al-Mar’a (Women’s Voice) magazine was established. She and a group of women leaders founded the magazine with the objective of spreading the Union’s ideas through writing and distributing the magazine to its membership and beyond. At the peak of the October Revolution (1964), the magazine’s distribution reached 120,000 copies. The magazine was distributed throughout the Sudan, the Middle East, and North Africa—mainly in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and Morocco. As a journalist in Sawt Al-Mar’a, Suad used to write about educational issues through her column Abwab (Doors), which were her responses in the magazine’s readers’ section, and the monthly “story/tale.” It was through the readers’ section that Suad met with Amal Abbas and nominated her to write for the magazine. Amal later became a leading woman politician and prominent journalist. Throughout her life, Suad avoided the limelight. However, her contributions to the issues of education, gender, and everyday political struggle were paramount. She represented a democratic trend within the Communist Party and a left trend in the Sudanese Women’s Union and in Sawt Al-Mar’a. Suad’s democratic thinking and its application shone throughout her activities in the Union and subsequently in the magazine. Her decision to introduce Bab Algur’a (Readers’ Contributions) shows how she channeled the magazine to create relations with the readers, thus making the magazine a tool whereby the ideas and preoccupations of general readership could be shared with the leading elite intellectuals.

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University of Khartoum Students’ Union In 1955 Suad started her first endeavor in direct political involvement against dictatorships. When she went to university, she immediately joined the University of Khartoum Students’ Union and became its Vice President. She then became a part of the “Mustagleen”6 an independent political group of students who wanted to be known as neither communists nor Muslim brothers. Seeing both as extremists, they wanted to take a middle stand in the aspiration of appealing to the majority of the students in the union. Suad did not last long in this movement, and in 1958, she joined the Communist Party. As vice president of the University’s Student Union Suad led activities that opposed her father’s position when he was the Minister of Finance, declaring her condemnation of his policy as part of the Umma Party Parliament of 1957. Wadi Halfa Flooding and the Challenge to Nubian Culture During General Ibrahim Aboud’s military dictatorship (1958–1964), Suad had graduated from the University of Khartoum and in 1960 joined the Statistics Department in the Ministry of Finance as an inspector of statistics. At that time, Aboud was negotiating with the President of Egypt, Jamal Abdelnasir the idea of selling the Wadi Halfa area (an area along the Nile very far north) to the Egyptians. This was because the Egyptian government wanted to build the High Dam at Aswan to make water available for irrigation and to help in supplying Egypt with electricity. The idea was devastating to Sudanese, especially Nubians who were a large portion of the Halfa area. Selling Halfa meant flooding the entire civilization of Nubians and the history of Nubia, and it also meant that the people of Halfa would lose their beloved homeland, which was agricultural along the Nile, and be moved to areas such as Khashm Al-Girba which had a different climate and mode of life. The benefit to the Sudan was only 14 million dollars paid by the government of Egypt to the government of the Sudan. At that time, Suad was on a mission to Wadi Halfa for a project fulfillment in the area. The Halfa people were extremely angry and saddened by the news and were using all possible means of protest. Part of this protest was a large demonstration against the decision. Suad was at the heart of this campaign, engaging and organizing, and succeeded in convincing hundreds of people to join in the fight. This was not only because she was a Nubian herself but because of her opposition to the regime, particularly in arriving at such a big decision that threatened the entire livelihood of a whole area and people without consulting with the people themselves. On the day of the demonstration in October 1960, Suad was leading it, shouting the slogans of the demonstration, condemning the regime and

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demanding that Aboud (the military president) go back to the army barracks where he belonged. She never once hesitated about joining, and as a result of her participation, she was sent to prison for six months and immediately sacked from her position in the Department of Statistics. Suad was the second Sudanese woman to be arrested and imprisoned for a political reason, Khalda Zahir being the first in 1948 when she was part of the demonstrations against the creation of the “Legislative Assembly.” However, Khalda was arrested only for hours and was not imprisoned. Suad expected to pay a price for her activism. It did not matter that she was imprisoned and lost her job. The Suad I knew very well would again join any such demonstration whenever it happened. She would have done everything in her power to stop this very wrong decision from taking place in Halfa. This was Suad: someone with immense courage resistant to all kinds of intimidation, giving an example to her generation; and, to the youth at that time—following her conviction that intellectuals should be the vanguard of resistance to dictatorship and for democracy in the Sudan. However, it was not only the more overtly political/economic activities Suad carried out on behalf of the people of Halfa, I highlight later in this chapter how she, as a public intellectual, also tried to play a role in bolstering Nubian culture and saving the dying Nubian language. EDUCATIONAL POLICY AND EXTRAMURAL STUDIES Passionate about education, Suad started a PhD thesis in London in 1976 on the history of education in the Sudan. However, having disagreed with her supervisor, she did not finish, completing only four out of five chapters. She went on to be appointed the Head of the Department of Education of the Communist Party of the Sudan and wrote the philosophy and policy of education for the party, titled “How to Democratize Education.” Suad’s goal and fundamental intentions were toward making quality education available and free for all people. This is in line with some of the ideas that caused me to classify her as an organic intellectual. Although she was made a consultant of the UNESCO for Africa and the Sudan as early as 1980s, she was never a consultant to any committee of education of the government of the Sudan (her politics and possibly also her gender stood in the way). People often consulted her about their research degrees, papers they were writing, or graduation projects. She was doing this consultation throughout her life and even from home after she retired. When Suad returned from America after doing her postgraduate studies, she was appointed Lecturer at the Faculty of Arts, University of Khartoum. Her dream, however, was to work in an extramural school or department.

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Abdalla Eltayeb who was the Dean of the Faculty of Arts at that time had wanted to establish a department to carry his name and legacy. Suad talked to him about the idea of opening a new department and he accepted. Suad was then the first staff member of the Department of Extramural Studies at the University of Khartoum. She was not appointed director or dean, as the university felt it had to bring a male from outside the university without known political views for the purpose. That did not bother Suad who was extremely excited about the idea of starting such a department. She was keen that the University of Khartoum should not limit its services to the elite but should extend its work to reach the general public who pay the taxes from which the university is funded. Suad was very active and influential in writing the objectives of Extramural Studies and the activities that could be included. In her keenness to make the university serve the general public, she organized a university theater which introduced very famous international plays. This was an opportunity for actresses and actors to get involved in acting and get trained in the process. The same group which ran the university theater introduced the festival of the diverse cultures of the Sudan. This was a program that was introduced by the Democratic Front (a coalition between Communist Party members and revolutionary democrats). It was that show that the Muslim Brothers attacked, when a dance from western Sudan was publicly performed. The Democratic Front students counterattacked and events escalated, leading to the death of a student, which became known as the “the events of the traditional arts festival.” Suad also organized a variety of intermediate courses for men and women, designed to allow the individual to achieve extra training in their fields or in other fields of interests. Courses for workers and middle-rank government and private sector employees were prepared in an accessible language and content that broadened the scope of these groups of people. The objective of these courses was to implement and democratize opportunities for education. Suad worked in Extramural Studies for over three decades and was never made the director. I believe this was because of her politics and gender. But Suad was passionate about what she was doing and had no issue with sacrificing career promotions for her objectives. She did all that for extramural studies because she believed that education and cultural activities should not be confined to the university elite members but should be extended to ordinary Sudanese men and women. She believed in the democratization of education and setting education free from its class bias. Throughout her work at the Extramural Studies Center, Suad had a very small office (which was previously a kitchen). Nonetheless, it was like a beehive, buzzing with people, their lively discussions and exchange of ideas

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bringing joy to everyone there, and so many great ideas were formed around our organic intellectual and the beacon, Suad Ibrahim Ahmed. Contribution to the Arts Suad was also the first woman to act in a theater in the Sudan. Until then men had to play the roles of women. They would wear women’s clothes and imitate women to fulfill the role. This is because at that time families did not allow their female members to act and certainly not act with men in a public setting. Suad’s different background permitted her to do so. The Muslim Brothers tried to put pressure on the university to stop the play, but they did not succeed. Suad started the cinema club and people from outside the university got the opportunity to watch international films. At the time there was a show every week in the garden of the Extramural Studies building which was located on Shari’a al-Gama’a (University Street).

SUAD, EVER POLITICAL AND PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL As a public intellectual, Suad has taken seriously her responsibility to stimulate and lead public debate. In addition to speaking, writing, and organizing on violations of human rights aspects in large development projects and on the democratization of education through extramural studies, she has taken on women rights, inside and outside the Communist Party and was active in public discussions on South Sudan and national identity crises of Northerners, to name a few of her key topics. As a socialist feminist, she was present in local and global gender consciousness discussions and work, and as a modern women, she was capable of engaging with younger generations through learning their language and using their communication tools. In her public life, she was never bounded by social or political structures, nor by age or illness issues, to be present in old and new social movements. Always speaking truth to power, whether it is patriarchy, capitalism, or military dictatorship, she exemplifies a woman version of what Julien Benda calls the “Real Intellectual,” (Said 1994, 5–7) who take personal risks in their commitment to principles, making her a minority within a minority of intellectuals. In her public intellectual role in raising challenging questions, confronting convention and code, fighting for justice and freedom, she represented a standpoint that cannot be compromised by power or stopped by barriers (Said 1994, 11–12).

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Sudanese Revolutions (October and April) and Women’s Rights Suad’s role in the Sudan’s political scene was important, affecting political change both inside and outside the Sudanese Communist Party. In 1964 she participated in rallying the University of Khartoum faculty and convinced most of its members, who were then passive toward the October 1964 demonstrations, to join the march. They went on to join the leaders of the demonstration and marched to the presidential palace to hand a memo to President Aboud asking him to step down. This was followed by the judges, then the students of Khartoum University, and a great number of the masses with the members of the Communist Party at the very heart. Suad was very happy, in fact excited, during the October Revolution demonstrations because women outnumbered men in all forms of opposition that the Aboud regime faced. The Women’s Union was present. They presented their demands in slogans that included: (1) Women should have equal pay for equal work (up till then women only gained 4/5 of men’s wages); (2) Divorce should not be left to men to announce it as they please and should take place in the presence of a judge; (3) Early marriage should be changed. The age of marriage was left to the parents to decide, so girls used to be married at the age of 9 or 10 years old; the Union proposed that girls should not marry until they are 18; (4) Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) should be considered a grave crime and those who practice it should be given long sentences of imprisonment. These are just some examples of the demands of the Union which were granted by the October Revolution. There were also other important demands that were granted. Suad had participated in founding this union; therefore, it meant a great deal to her to see the vision and fight amount to paramount change. Inside the Sudanese Communist Party she played a central role in its democratization. She criticized democratic centralism many times at many junctions during the political history of the Sudan. She helped to liberate the party from the rules of democratic centralism and in transcending these rules to follow what the people wanted, thus enabling the party to be at the center of the political scene. This happened largely thanks to her support, both in the October 1964 and the March/April 1985 Revolutions which toppled two military dictatorships. She waged her struggles for democracy, human rights, and gender equality in the Sudan and abroad throughout her adult life, until she left us in 2015. Because of her politics, Suad decided never to leave the Sudan and was encouraging Sudanese abroad to join the internal struggle against the present military regime. She continued to stay in the country despite the harassment and several interrogations by the regimes security that included detention at

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the offices of the security police, imprisonment in Ghost Houses,7 as well as several interrogations at her home in Khartoum. South Sudan One of the most vexing and destructive areas of Sudanese political life was the conflict between the “Nubian/Arab” north and the “African” south. Suad always opposed the long war in what became the independent South Sudan and aligned herself with many Southerners. She was very close to Southern members of the Communist Party, such as Joseph Garang and Joseph Modesto, and admired Southern intellectuals with differing views, such as Bona Manwal. The so-called civil war symbolized one of many identity crises for Northerners, and Suad was active in these discussions. Nubian Language Suad never let time and circumstances dictate her capabilities. So she went on to learn how to read and write the Nubian Language at the age of 65. In 1985–1986 she had returned to Wadi Halfa, that was itself interesting; but what was she doing with the language and why did she go to the trouble of learning it? Again, it was because of Suad’s belief in being in touch with the people. First, she was a Nubian herself and second, because the Ingaz government planned to erect dams in the Nubian areas—projects that threatened the life and civilization of the Nubian people. Language was a good agent of communication with more groups facing dangerous plans such as the construction of dams. She used her Nubian language skills in writing, translating, and publishing political material for Nubians. A GENDER-CONSCIOUS LEADER AND AN INSPIRING SOCIALIST FEMINIST In Suad’s statement for my book African Women between Heritage and Modernity, she answered a few questions (as she was featured in the book as one of the women intellectuals). Even though she was reluctant to talk about herself, nonetheless, as a very conscious educated intellectual, her answers were just brilliant. She went on to condemn the attack on Western feminism by some Sudanese women activists, including some communists. Suad believed that gender consciousness is an international objective reality. It is known to all societies worldwide, even if taking different forms at different stages through history. Despite differences, there is a commonality among all gender struggles worldwide. This commonality, one of Suad’s

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credos, is expressed in the critique of patriarchy, class divisions, and all forms of women’s subjugation and exploitation. Although Suad did reject much of the critique of Western feminist thought and movement, she still thought that the critique unsuccessfully bases itself on the differences in cultures. She argued that differences in culture should not blur our vision of the common realities, because the struggle for women’s liberation is not only a theoretical one. However, these common realities do not take place in a vacuum. They take place in specific societies in specific locations and time and have very clear common features which necessitate international cooperation and unity. To her the rejection of Western feminism on the basis that it does not suit our societies or clashes with our culture overlooks and fails to understand the fact that Western feminist thought and struggle is an international resource that has helped us greatly—both theoretically and practically. Suad’s commitment to the women’s liberation movement and subsequently to the socialist revolution was determined by a host of factors. First, she was the only female child among male members of her nuclear family. Second, her father’s well-resourced book collection opened her horizons to the world and its movements against racism, feminism, and class antagonisms. She read Friedrich Engels’s The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State and was excited by its vision and clarity. Reading this book made her join the Communist Party of Sudan in the 1958. The book explained to her why women were and are subjugated, subordinated, and exploited, and are thought to be inferior to men. In practice Suad observed that the Communist Party’s position regarding women was clearly distinguished. In the university, while the Muslim Brothers were against women’s participation in acting, gymnastics, and singing, the Communist Party encouraged female students to join these activities. Other university organizations were silent on these issues. Suad stated that the “Islamic feminism” of the Ingaz regime lacked the critical policies of an effective feminist liberation struggle. Most importantly was the lack of democracy. All women’s organizations both political and social were banned. The only legal institutions were the government-affiliated political parties and organizations. It was obvious to her that a genuine struggle for an egalitarian society could only be fought within a democratic environment. Suad believed in a secular society and in the separation of the State from religion. That religion should be exercised within a private realm while the public domain should be governed by politics free from the influence of religion. She condemned the Ingaz regime for allowing only the Islamic fundamentalist ideology and banning any other ideology from sociopolitical and economic activities. Suad believed that the Ingaz government forced secular women’s organizations to operate underground and used

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religion to blur the consciousness of women and take away their right to liberation from all forms of subjugation and exploitation. It also caused them to internalize their oppression. The result was that the Ingaz policy divided the women’s movement on the basis of religion—a division which renders non-Muslim women secondclass citizens. Like a considerable number of Sudanese feminist activists, Suad, therefore, did not believe in the coexistence of religion and women’s liberation. Moreover, she believed that patriarchy and capitalism are strongly interrelated and both ideologies are different ways of women’s oppression. Moreover, Suad was a passionate supporter of international human rights treaties that favored women’s liberation, such as CEDAW. For her, hostility toward feminism and feminist demands is inherent in divine laws, and women’s liberation in Islamic societies must therefore start with de-Islamization of politics. According to Suad feminism and political Islam cannot be reconciled. Suad also waged a struggle inside the Communist Party to liberate men in the party from “feudal” conceptions of women, as she used to put it. She wanted to make fundamental changes in the political line of the party in order to make it gender-sensitive and struggled against policies of control, including, in many instances, the leadership of the Women’s Union. A BOUNDLESS PUBLIC LIFE—SOCIAL MEDIA AND SUAD’S PUBLISHING COMPANY Suad was a modern woman, always ready to take a strong position and do what she believed in. One of her positions was the importance of creating links between the party and society’s younger generation, especially after the social media revolution. She created bridges by learning to use computers and different types of social media platforms, including Facebook. We found that whatever a 20-year-old person knows about social media platforms, Suad would be well aware of and capable of using the same tools. Suad suffered from serious illnesses: rheumatoid arthritis, which gave her enormous pain, and diabetes, with low blood pressure which resulted in one of her feet being amputated. She treated her illnesses as an unimportant waste of time, but they meant that she spent much more time at home. Suad was always bursting with ideas and political insights—always welcoming. At home in Khartoum, the young, including, of course, members of Girifna8 (We are fed up) and other protest movements, who continued to visit her without appointment, dropping in at any moment of the day or night to discuss the way forward; she would give everyone coffee and food as she gave them more and more ideas about what they could do in the arena of the struggle for democracy and people’s rights.

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After her official retirement in 1986, in spite of all her other activities, Suad became director of a publishing company—she had always dreamed of doing this. Despite her views, she did not limit the company’s publications to leftist or political books; it published religious books, Quran textbooks, poetry books, kutub al-safra. Nor did she limit her workers to those in sympathy with her politics, but insisted that the running of the company be socialist one: the workers had good salaries and were all treated as partners, participating in the running of the company. LAST THOUGHTS ABOUT OUR BEACON I missed her during the revolution in 2018/2019 when Islamist Military dictator Hasan Al-Bashir was toppled. She would have said: “Ya Salam, we got rid of the head of the gang, but there is a lot to be done. This is just the beginning.” She would have visited the sit-ins of youth at the military headquarters and would have been met with great applause. They would have given her the chance to say something to the crowd and she would have talked about the forthcoming responsibilities of the revolution, about the economy, liberation legislation, women, education, and so on. She would have called for free basic education (at least the state one) and free health services. She would have told those who were in the sit-in that she is proud of them and proud of Sudanese women whose contribution to the revolution was immense. I hope that Suad’s contributions and legacy regarding education will be considered carefully by the new Minister of Education and that the universities follow the kind of policy she left at the Department of Extramural Studies at the University of Khartoum. I hope that her ideas about gender, which I documented in my book and elsewhere, be considered by contemporary women activists. I am saddened indeed that she is not here with us to see the changes and the progress of the present government. In the last years of her life, when I would ring her, she would answer my question: “How are you Suad?” with, “Still struggling. This catastrophic gang are still there; they have stayed too long. I think they should go soon.” In my imagination, she would have put me in the picture (my having lived in London for many years) and explained the conditions of the democratic opposition to the Ingaz government: the corruption of the regime, government-appointed unions as the only legal Trade Unions, the harassment of women, and the unemployment of the youth of both genders. She would have given me a full picture of the political and socioeconomic situation in the Sudan. She would have concluded that “people have stopped eating food they can’t afford: milk, cheese and meat. It is getting impossible

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here while the corrupt gang is living a life which is so luxurious you can’t imagine.” She used to sit in front of her computer from 9 a.m. till midnight, campaigning against the Inqaz government and at the same time giving academic, political, and personal advice to people who visited her regularly—every day—the majority of them youth of both genders. Suad left us physically, but the light of the beacon that she was, will shine forever. EDITORS’ NOTE Because Suad Ibrahim Ahmed meant so much to so many people and, yet, we have only one essay about her in the book (Fatima’s), we thought it fitting that we include an addendum—further analyses of her ideas and reminisces about Suad Ibrahim Ahmed’s character that, in fact, revealed a great many of her ideas and accomplishments. Some ideas from the two people who saw Suad up close are below. These ideas are by Mohamed Suliman, spouse of Fatima and a well-known intellectual in his own right, and Azza Mohamed Suliman, a younger generation thinker who is the daughter of Fatima and Mohamed. AN ADDENDUM: REMINISCING ABOUT SUAD IBRAHIM AHMED BY FATIMA BABIKER’S FAMILY Suad, My Mentor! Mohamed Suliman I became fascinated with Suad the first time I met her. She was in her office when I approached her to discuss an issue (I forgot what it was). She was petite with thick glasses; the moment she spoke I sat up properly and listened. She spoke using straightforward words and argued with conviction and intellect on the way to better our society and on how to advance the educational system; and I listened, impressed. Since that day in early 1968, I became a regular visitor to her home and office. In vain I tried to be like her, generous to others, frugal onto myself, yet keen about social progress, science, and culture. And because I kept trying, I became a good friend of hers. Suad, without any obvious intent from her side, had re-educated me! I joined the Teachers Trade Union, became a member of its board, taught a class on science for workers, and even joined her cinema club.

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Among her friends I encountered some of our future eminent poets and writers. They were all attracted to her inner glow of conviction and honesty, as only conviction and honesty can be, and around her they were able to appreciate the immediate need to do something about prevailing social shortcomings. There were always talented young people around her at her home, which had become their preferred cultural and intellectual hub. Every hour I had spent with Suad enriched me and at her home I met my future wife, Fatima Babiker Mahmoud and many good friends. When I heard that she was seriously ill in the hospital, I rushed to see her. Although a doctor told me that she was comatose, I was not fearful for her life. I knew Suad would be all right. She always replied to “How are you?” with ougatel (still fighting)! With her departure, Fatima and I have lost our best friend. We remember her so often; occasionally we do feel her alive and fighting as always— ougatel. She is, as always, one of our quartet at home. Thank you Suad Ibrahim Ahmed for your rich, inspiring life, and as for us, we are still fighting nougatel. My Fairy Godmother Azza Mohamed Suliman My first memory of Auntie Suad is a borrowed one, from my mother. I am currently writing this in London, sitting on the very chair Suad had sat on some 36 years ago in the Sudan. Here, her spirit owned the conversation with passion. She was fire. Constantly waving her hands, forever conducting an intellectual orchestral. I watched in awe, fascinated. When she left the room, the silence must have been deafening to my young ears. So I perked up, crawled over to the dethroned chair, climbed up and began to imitate her every move; howling a speech in a language that no one could comprehend, about Marxism from the point of view of a two-year old. From the astonished look on my parents’ faces, I was impressive. Or, so I imagined. I exist because of these two phenomenal women, literally, Suad’s friendship with my mother. It was what brought my mother and father together. Suad’s academic and political accomplishments are known and revered; her generosity has helped many; and her love for her country was beyond doubt. But it was her character and energy that transferred to and stayed within so many people who were blessed to have known her in any capacity. We are persistent because of her fight. Relentless because of her belief. Selfless because of her heart.

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We move with the Sudanese people within us Because of her thirst always to do the right thing for humanity.

Suad was both an equal to and a great reflection of her dearest friend, my mother. Suad Ibrahim Ahmed, Fatima Babiker Mahmoud. Two fierce and fearless Sudanese women who taught me a great deal, but most importantly, gave me space to be who I am and what I wanted to be, freely. Now there will never be another who can fill the immense gap that Auntie Suad has left in her family, among her friends, and among her people. NOTES 1. Ingaz is a word that the recently deposed military government (1989–2019) used in reference to their regime. It can be taken to mean “achievement,” “accomplishment,” “fulfillment.” 2. A traditional body wrap that was, at that time, considered the national dress for Sudanese women. 3. A powdered dye prepared from a plant that is used for decorating women’s hands and feet. The most elaborate decoration is for brides and those recently wed. 4. These were two of the most illustrious activists on behalf of women in the Sudan’s history. Khalda was the first woman member of the Sudanese Communist Party which was established in 1946, and the Sudan’s first woman doctor. Nafisa was a pioneer in most of the progressive women’s activities and organizations. The two of them occupy very important spaces in Sudanese history. 5. Published in the Sudan by Dar Azza Publishing (Khartoum) in Collaboration with Alternative African Institute (London) in 2008. 6. Congress of Independent Students (CIS) was established in Khartoum University in 1977. The Sudanese Congress Party, established in 1986, traces its origin to CIS. 7. Torture houses. 8. Girifna is a youth-driven progressive group that first came to the public eye through various guerilla street demonstrations—theater, poetry recitation, and the like.

REFERENCE Said, Edward. 1994. Representations of the Intellectuals. Vintage Books, London.

Section III

HYBRIDITIES AND AMBIGUITIES

Chapter 5

The Invention of the Northern Sudanese Abdullahi Ali Ibrahim

Thus from a mixture of all kinds began, That het’rogeneous thing, an Englishman —Daniel Defoe (1660–1731), “The True Born Englishman”

In this chapter, I assemble a profile of the Northern Sudanese (NS) intellectuals blamed for the political predicament of the Sudan because of their enormous difficulties with the “others” in the nation. I intend with this profile to address global and local concerns regarding their racial and religious bigotry, which the defunct regime of Omer Hassan al-Bashir (1989–2019) brought to an all-time high (Congress Sub-Committee on Africa 1995) by waging a jihad in the strict sense of the word against its others. The NS’s racial intolerance has been seen as so “primitive” as to cause the Pope in his 1993 visit to the Sudan to consecrate the names of the Christian victims in the Sudan as written “on the palms of the hand of Christ, pierced by the Crucifixion” (New York Times 2/11/93). To put together this profile, the chapter investigates the Arab, Muslim, and Western regimes of knowledge that constituted the subjectivity of NS. The profile seeks to uncover their education in racial exclusiveness imparted to them by these regimes of knowledge as part of an ongoing research into the history, identity, and “collective passions” (Julien Benda in Said 1994) of these people (Ibrahim 1988, 1990, 1994, 1996, 1997, 2008) which the fundamentalist regime used to inflame bigotry among the population. It will seek to illuminate the perceptions and delusions through which the NS filter their bigotry in the long-standing civil wars in the Sudan. By awakening the NS to the underpinnings of their smug, self-regarding orthodoxies, I hope to do more than point a finger of blame. Instead, I will persuade them 95

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to liberate themselves from their smugness through self-reflection engaging these regimes of knowledge critically and judiciously. ON THE CONCEPT OF THE NORTHERN SUDANESE These Muslim Arab NS have always been polemically defined against the “pagan”/Christian, African Southern Sudanese, who inhabit the lands below 12 N latitude. Clumps of weeds, dubbed the sud (the dam, the wall), stood in the face of bodily and cultural transactions between Northern and Southern Sudanese before steamboats penetrated this barrier in 1821. This natural cleavage was further accentuated by historical acts and deliberate policies, such as the enslavement of the Southern Sudanese during the Turco-Egyptian regime (1821–1885), British (1898–1956) separation of North and South, and NS nationalist policy (1956–present), which dictated that Sudan should take its “territorial shape from the colony, but its culture from themselves” (Sharkey 1998). As a result, most Southern Sudanese have never felt at home in their alleged nation. Modern scholarship commonly traces the ancestry of the NS to intermarriages between the invading Muslim Arabs and the Africans in the Sudan between the eighth and fourteenth centuries, and the subsequent Arabization and Islamization of the indigenous population (MacMichael 1922). As the product of these marriages, the NS have been viewed via a “bastardization” theory, which implies that the African ancestry of the NS compromised their noble Arab progenitors (Ibrahim 1990). Most NS believe strongly in their untainted Arab ancestry and reject this identification for reminding them of their African ancestry, especially when it implies a degenerative premise about their identity. So much so that Adams (1977) argues that whereas West Africans see themselves as Arabs because of Islam, NS believe that they are Muslims because they are Arabs. Scholars suggest that the regime’s overemphasis of Islamic and Arab purity (Simone 1994) is designed to mitigate the vagueness of the future of their nation and turn negotiations with the South to “mere maneuvers that smack of cleverness rather than wisdom” (Daly 1987). Situated so long at the fault line of Arabs, Africans, Islam, Christianity, Whites, and Blacks, the NS are endeared to none of these categories. As a sign caught at the crossroads of its different and multiple landscapes, they are loners. Contrary to Yeats’s insight, to be lonely in these torturous frontiers is to be desolate. On the global level, the community of nations apparently has given up on reforming the NS as evidenced by the successive, and increasingly harmful, sanctions imposed against the Sudan since the coming of

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this junta in 1989. Bashing the NS in reference to their “mind” such as their shameful “return” to enslaving their fellow citizens—the Southern Sudanese—is prevalent. The idea that they are “replaying” a historical prejudice rather than concocting one makes them hopelessly irredeemable. In addition, this is what is turning their state into a global cultural pariah. The news of which befit publications with ominous names such as Disaster or with titles spelling millennial doom and gloom such as Requiem for the Sudan (1995). METHODOLOGY To better understand the identity disability of the NS, I will draw on two theories animating the fields of identity, postcolonialism, and racial theory. The first theory endorses hybridity as the condition of human existence. This theory emerged in connection with the critique of culture theory for delegitimizing “halfies,” such as the NS. By imposing a “purity taboo” against mixing belief and body (Clifford 1988), the hybrid is thus left “theoryless,” which evokes loneliness and menace. “Bastardization” (Ibrahim 1990, 1988) remains the curse as well as the culture theory of the “mongrels.” In terms of African scholarship, my research is linked to studies of the dynamics of racialization in Sub-Saharan Africa. The unspeakable genocide in Rwanda opened the world’s eyes to racial cleavages long thought confined to south Africa. Studies of these lethal cleavages focus on the role of colonial ethnology in manufacturing tropical “Whiteness.” My research builds upon these studies uncovering colonial and national narratives that invented the NS whose politics spawned the very same superior Hamitic Tutsi of Rwanda and Burundi (Lemarchand 1994). This investigation will more fully develop the NS’s problem with difference that I touched on in Assaulting with Words (1994). In that ethnography, I constructed what I called “the fantasy of difference” in a community of NS farmers. In their pride in being Muslims and “sons of Arabs,” these NS fantasize others—non-Arabs and non-Muslim Sudanese—as cannibals and fortify themselves against their border envy and invasions. My Manichaean Delirium studies the workings of this fantasy at a time when these “cannibals” moved to traditional NS towns because of war-related displacement, famine, and drought. Thus, my early works viewed Islamic revival as a scramble by the NS to keep their cultural boundaries intact. The research I propose herein will focus exclusively on the resources of Arab/Muslim Whiteness, which NS use to avoid looking different in the face.

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WHY WRITE IT? In writing this chapter, I have two goals in mind. As a historian and Sudanese national, I want to reveal the roots of racial bigotry in the Sudan, especially among the NS. By defining conflict as a cultural event (Ross 1995), the chapter seeks to illuminate the perceptions and delusions through which the NS filter their bigotry in the long-standing civil war in the Sudan as mentioned earlier. It is intended to augment the current structural approaches to resolve the conflict in the Sudan, which focus on constitutional arrangement by which authority rotates and wealth is distributed. Furthermore, my analysis intends to help concerned agencies rethink their difficulties with the NS, not to apologize for their actions, or to condemn them as monsters, but to view the NS as world citizens caught in trying cultural predicaments. Boycotting the rogue NS to death has been an integral part of a moral offensive embedded in Western diplomacy. Regrettably, this policy held Western countries hostage to local oppositions with agendas as rogue as the government they oppose. By this research I am attempting what generations of critical liberals have been doing with questionable successes—to buy time for their people “who have placed themselves on the wrong side of history” (Walzer 1988; Sparks 1989). By presenting the NS as “culturally challenged” political actors, my identity profile has a twofold objective. First, to initiate dialogue between the different political categories of the NS that have been in no speaking terms for a long time. Their cherished mode of talking at each other has shielded them from addressing fairly and squarely their existential predicament explained untiringly to them and protested by other Sudanese (Alier 1990). Ambassador Wells, the American envoy to the Sudan in 1995, has persuasively argued for this concern in stressing engaging the NS population in discussing the shameful allegations about their bigotry (U.S. Congress Sub-Committee on Africa 1995). Importantly, this NS dialogue is intended to obviate the evolution of “liberal guilt” among categories of NS who are driven to desperation due to the shrinkage of their political role in shaping the politics of difference in their country. With their progressive conviction that their utopia of racial harmony is failing, these liberals do not atypically endorse guilt as a confessional strategy, as a “position of wishful insufficiency” (Ellison 1996). From inside out, the NS “catalogue of horrors” (Pope-Hennessy 1968) is so numbing to begin to sow dissent among their own ranks. Coupled with the failure of the NS to develop a tradition to discuss collectively their ethnic shame, these horrors have brought forth their own angry anti-NS liberals—the lamenters of the “Sins of the Fathers” (Pope-Hennessy 1968). In identifying the NS as hybrids rather than mongrels, it is intended to stop a reversal of glorification of the African side of their identity currently

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popular among their younger generations. Jumping onto the wagon of bashing the NS, that is themselves, these dissenters and lamenters of the “sins of the father” have been deciphering scandalously and wastefully the code of their “racial archives” (Baldo and Ushari 1987; Khalid 1993). The chapter thus seeks to persuade these NS liberals to work on their self-knowledge to avoid falling into the pit of self-hate where actions toward the other are carried out in sorrow (Walzer 1988; Ellison 1996). In their glorification of their African past allegedly destroyed by the coming of the Arabs and Islam to the Sudan, these draught liberals and leftists, who have been responsible for the wholesome drive for change in the country since the 1960s, are progressively edging toward an unforgiving and counterproductive Islamophobia and Arab phobia. In being pursued to recognize their hybridity and reconciling it to it, they can be saved from repeating their elders’ mistake of venerating a side of their identity at the expense of the other. The hybrid identity denies them the leisure of choosing sides glorifying roots at the expense of routes to their detriment. Instead, they are challenged to engage their mixed origins, in Homi Bhabha’s words, as “resemblance and menace” (Bhabha 1994). Glorification is the death knoll of cultures. A hybrid is uniquely qualified to “menace” the cultures of his origins and discontent. In evoking the narrative of their Arab origins and African encounter (Papastergiadis 1997), hybridity can reconcile them to their blurred milieus, and the NS mixed origins would then be viewed as a nexus rather than boundary (Clifford 1988). Presently, the resolution of civil strife after the disposing of al-Bashir in April 2019 by a popular revolution that broke out in December 2018 is imminent. A window of possibility is opening for the Sudan to wrap up this long civil war. To help a fresh breeze of ideas waft again across this war-ravaged land, I am writing this profile of the NS for those concerned with ending the conflict to understand better the alleged culprit behind it.

THE EDUCATION OF THE NS Arab and Muslim Education The NS’s enormous difficulty with those who are racially and culturally different is a special case of the wages of “Whiteness,” which the NS claim as descendants of Muslim and Arab conquerors. In claiming being Arabs, the mostly Black NS is a special case of asserting Whiteness. I call it Whiteness in strange places. Their difficulty with difference is a special case of the price of “Whiteness” in light of the emerging theory of denaturing race. Chief among the strategies to denature race has been the critique of the “wages

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of whiteness” (Roediger 1994), which characterizes the power and wealth Whiteness bestows on its possessors in a world characterized by a “global apartheid” (Kholer 1978). By stretching the point of racial identity, the NS’s fraudulent case of Whiteness puts the denaturing of race in sharp relief (Gates 1986). In revealing the arbitrariness behind the “Whiteness” of the NS, this chapter augments skepticism about what it really means to have a cultural identity (Werbner and Modood 1997). The NS’s enormous difficulty with those who are racially and culturally different is a special case of the wages of “whiteness,” which the NS claim as descendants of Muslim and Arab conquerors. Caught up in the vortex of both their Arab roots and African roots (Gilory 1993; Al-Siddiq 1989), the NS experience a costly Unheimlichkheit (not-athomeness) (Heidegger quoted in Ashcroft et al. 1989). Fanon has masterfully captured their agony under this not-at-homeness by pointing out the misery that Blacks condemned to a “White education” undergo in coming to grips with their Blackness (body schema). The difficulties they encounter in bridging the gap between their “lived experience as black” and their mother tongue, Arabic, which instructs them into Whiteness, are legion (1967). Laboring proudly under their allegedly “fictitious” Arab identity, passionately claimed by their traditional genealogists, makes them a renegade in the eyes of Africans (Deng 1995). Teyib Salih, the renown Sudanese novelist, said he grew up as a NS thinking that his people are the most elegant among the Arabs and the ones in whom it blossoms most (Jibreel 1997). In polemicizing with the claim that the Sudanese are Africans through and through, the late Salah A. Ibrahim, a poet, titled his rejoinder: “But we are the Arab of the Arabs” (October 25, 1967). Arabs, however, only take notice of them as agents of their colonial desire of Islamizing and Arabizing Africa (Ibrahim 1996a). At any rate, they are commissioned but never heard (Kamal al-Jizuli, Khartoum 8.8.1996). To Westerners, they are a zero-sum game, Jack of all repugnant identities in the West, master of none. All said, they are afflicted with frontier boredom. Their antidote to this boredom is to celebrate it occasionally the American way as in Khalid alMubark’s Rish an-Na’am (1977). At other times, they would succumb to parochialism in the form of a claim to a unique “Sudanism” (Ali 1994) in which they invest their introverted cultural pride. The world only takes any notice of them when they burst into their misguided internationalisms: the dervish Mahdists of the late nineteenth century (Ibrahim 1968), the shortlived “people’s democracy” of the communists in the early 1970s (Ibrahim 1996b), and the Islamic International of the present regime in the Sudan (Ibrahim 2008). A poet called this “our old malaise” that turned us into a nation of guinea pigs of ideological experiments (M. Ibrahim, al-Fajr alJadid, 0, January 1996).

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I will delineate here the rhetorical strategies the NS deploy to cope with the ambivalence of denouncing their own body schema in their own native tongue: In their “restless process of identity,” (Bhabha 1995) the Black NS would describe their color as either brown or green in connection with the traditions suggesting that “green” was the dominant color of the Arabs of pre- and postIslam periods (Al-Tayib 1957). This color consciousness is so enchanting that “brown” was endorsed as the generic color for all Sudanese in passports. This did not go unnoticed by other Sudanese who take pride in being jet black and protested painting a nation with a racially copyrighted color (Kelueljang 1989; Deng 1995). The second plan adopted by the NS to cope with this ambivalence is an intricate strategy of word play (al-Tayib 1957; Osman and Sahal 1990; Najilah 1994). Chief among this is their “compulsive [color] gradations” (Papastergiadis 1997; Bender 1970) by which the NS discriminate against both [European-like] Whites and Blacks, and situate themselves comfortably betwixt and between (Bender 1970). In celebrating the emerging nationalist stirring of the 1940s, a poet puns to salvage his White education from the implications of the Black label of the land: She [Sudan] is not inhabited by sud (black people) Usud (lions) rather pace up and down her range (Najilah 1994)

Brought up as sons of Arabs, the NS are genuinely averse to have their national abode called the land of the Blacks: Sudan. Unabated calls have been made to rechristen “Sudan” by a more suitable name (Osman and Sahal 1990). The revulsion of the name is so much so that an author described himself as “Sudanized” rather than “Sudanese.” The late Muhammed M. alMajdhub, a poet of great renown, related to me the story of his relative who was astounded to discover that the poet, who belonged to the cream of the sons of the Arabs, had faced difficulties obtaining his “Sudanese” nationality certificate just after the independence of the country. The man was stunned to see that his relative, who belonged to the cream of the NS, had to suffer to earn a despised identity traditionally reserved for ex-slaves and other Africans in the Sudan. Reconciling both their Arab roots and African roots has engaged the NS literati since the 1920s in an ardent attempt to obtain a grip on their not-athomeness. The inaugural event of this cultural entente happened when a critic was flabbergasted to find that the face of a Black or Brown NS notable had been described as “prettier than the moon” (Najilah 1994). The ritual of endorsing Africanity by these elite reached a climax with “The Jungle and Desert” poets in the 1960s. These poets take pride in having sealed this quest

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to reconcile origin and encounter by transforming it from a mere alchemy of geographical opposites into a field of synthesis where “there is no dream of a lost Arabian paradise nor a vision of an unattainable Africa. Each [poet] in his own way has written his own song of homecoming and synthesis. Like ‘bees in their honeycomb’ they at once live and create their Afro-Arab culture” (Abdul-Hai 1976). I have already taken exception to the claim that the mission of wedding origin to encounters was completed (Ibrahim 1996a). In this rejoinder, I argue that the African in the poetry of the Jungle and Desert is at best a “noble savage”: good only as a remedial fantasy to the NS drab life allegedly imposed on him by Islam. The NS drama of wrestling with their “lived experience as black” and their mother tongue, Arabic, educating them into Whiteness, is pervasive. Paramount in this is the semantic violence and verbal graffiti (Ibrahim 1994, 1996a; Boddy 1989) the NS generate in failing to identify with their Blackness because of their White education. Examples of these “tongue slips” abound. The Sudanese Mahdi (the Guided-One) of the late nineteenth century was embarrassed by his critics for, contrary to the prescriptive texts on the Guided-One, he was black and began his movement at the wrong mountain (Ibrahim 1968). Distressed by a massacre of a category of NS during the 1955 mutiny of the Southern Sudanese troops, a poet described their action as Thawrat al-Zanj (Negro Revolt) (Al-Tayib 1957) evoking the memory of the revolution of African slaves on Iraqi plantations in the ninth century. Furthermore, poets, in their voluptuous curiosity about the crispness of female bodies, err politically by generically calling the young women of their choice by the Arabic term jariyah “slave girl” (Al-Tayib 1957). Another poet found the term irresistible even when celebrating the 1972 Peace Accord that ended a 13-year civil war in which slavery was an underlying concern (M. Ibrahim 2000). Not even a liberal NS, who pioneered the genre of shaming his rank, hesitated to draw on his education of Whiteness when cornered (Khalid 1993). Western Education The currently accepted view of their identity as an Afro-Arab hybrid draws on the racial discourse in Europe from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries (Young 1992). The distaste of hybrids—“mongrels”—in this discourse rubbed on the characterization of the NS as Afro-Arabs. The British administratorscum-ethnographers, who popularized this altered identity in utter disbelief in the pure Arab ancestry of the indigenous genealogies, viewed them as degenerates debasing Arab blood and paganizing Islam a great deal (Ibrahim 1988, 1990). Even the suggestion that African blood, rather than the Arab one, is the defining factor in the homogeneity of the NS (MacMichael 1922) echoes

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Thomas Arnold who saw the coherence of Englishness in terms of its Celtic ancestry (Young 1992). The colonial administrative and research designs informed by this revulsion of the hybrid are remarkably disruptive and lasting to undergird the volatile and explosive race relations in the Sudan to date. The Closed District Policy of the 1920s, authored by Harold MacMichael, the colonial Civil Secretary, who wrote the definitive work on the identity of the NS, was conceived to insulate African Sudanese from the harmful semen and influence of the NS. Interpreted as assigning children of mixed marriages to their Southern mothers (Beshir 1968, 52), this policy was intended as a pre-emptive strike against the production of a second edition of the NS in the southern and other marginal parts of the Sudan. Largely, this colonial farce sought to avert the repetition of the tragic coming of the NS, a tragedy, the first time around. The Western regimes of knowledge constituting the NS identity, however, must not be taken as synonymous with “colonial” Marxism, supposedly a Western emancipatory idea, had a tremendous hold on the young elite and the emerging trade union movement in the 1940s. However, its emancipatory power, which worked miracles on the NS social and political progressivism, fell short of demystifying their unsavory racial history. Marxism “evolutionics” justified the NS reluctance to come to grips with their enslavement of the Southern Sudanese in the nineteenth century, which underlies the sour race relations in the country. The Marxist assertion that slavery constituted an inevitable rung of the ladder of human evolution was used by NS to dismiss as an anachronism the discussion of the historical grievances, and the political predicament resulting from them, of the present-day generations of the enslaved communities. Abdel Khaliq Mahjoub, the consummate leader of the Communist Party, said defiantly and proudly that the “sons of al-Zubayr” (that is, the NS as pejoratively labeled by the Southern Sudanese in reference to al-Zubayr, a notorious NS slave trader in the nineteenth century) had evolved out of their racial history to build a vibrant communist party (1965). Furthermore, the call of Stockley Carmichael, the Black Power activist of the American Sixties, to wed race to Marxism fell on deaf ears in his lectures to a largely NS leftist audience in 1970 (al-Toum 1970). This NS insulation is so much so that Sirr Anai Kelueljang, a Southern Sudanese poet, protested this deadening silence on the NS racial shame: And when I try to talk to my master about the past He says there is no time

Nationalism Education This reluctance on the part of the NS to talk to their “slaves” about the past was reinforced by nationalism and religious nationalism discourses. NS

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nationalists have always ducked accusations of being the “sons of al-Zubayr” by either pointing to the more graphic slaving record of the Europeans in Africa, or by dismissing these accusations as British colonial ploys to separate the southern part of the country. Preventing this imminent separation was high on the national agenda from the 1920s to the 1940s when the British administration was seriously considering annexing Southern Sudan to Uganda and Kenya. In addition, religious nationalism, in its apologetic phase, that is, refuting the thesis that Islam is incompatible with modernity, argued that slavery in Islam was benign and could have hardly survived the Islamic piety that disapproves commerce in human beings. This apologetic position is fully laid out in a textbook, meaningfully entitled Shubuhat hawl al-Islam (False Accusation Directed at Islam) assigned since the 1950s to high school students in the country. It is the book that introduced the generation engaging in the discussion, or skirting discussing, of the historical or current slavery in the Sudan. Similarly, the Muslim Arab regimes constituting the subjectivity of the NS can be profitably investigated as processual rather than of originary, primordial effect. In this light, we will find that the NS nationalism of the first six decades of last century, in which elites, under the enchanting impact of Egyptian nationalism, identified completely with the Muslim and Arab past, was the NS identity motor par excellence. The glory of this past was recalled to soothe the wounds of humiliation inflicted by living under an infidel, colonial power. Emulation of genres of Arab poetry, the use of arcane Arabic lexicon, and living just like a classical Bedouin lived were authenticating rituals of Arabism and Islam and were indulged by the more romantics among the nationalists (M. Ibrahim 1976). The NS still seem not to have outgrown the dreams and commitments they contracted during the nationalist period, whose terms they singularly defined, considering the colonial and historical settings that slowed or retarded the participation of other Sudanese elites. One, if not so quick to condemn, may see much in the NS’s dismal failure to respect difference as honest bigotry. For example, in an interview I had with Hasan al-Turabi, the alleged evil mind behind the defunct regime in the Sudan, he took pride in pushing, while still a very junior faculty, for the Arabization of the curriculum in the Law School of the University of Khartoum when the hold of the British faculty was still daunting. In his seduction by the nationalist enterprise of Arabizing the medium of instruction, al-Turabi was not aware that many years later this would come to haunt him in circumstances in which he assumed a leading national role. A Southern Sudanese critic would trace his allegedly cultural arrogance running the Islamic state between 1989 and 1990 to the day he taught law in Arabic to his non-speaking Arabic students from Southern Sudan (Kok 1996). The NS’s public officials may be guilty of absent-minded

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bigotry for not taking their nationalist dreams and enterprise, fostered in a genuine fight against intruding foreigners and in isolation from other Sudanese elite, with a grain of salt when legislating to the entire Sudan. Also reconciling roots and encounters may degenerate into the worst forms of cultural engineering. Study of the NS culture has always catered for what uses elites would like to put it to. The interest the generality of the NS takes in practicing and interpreting their culture has never been a serious consideration. The model of harnessing culture to serve the agenda of elitist enterprises was set by the discourse of the racial origin of the NS. In this enterprise, theories of Arab origins are pitted against Afro-Arab bastardization theories allied to emerging theories claiming that the NS are essentially Africans whose racial content survived the Arabization and Islamization process (Nasr 1985). Reinforced by theories of survivals that argue that vanishing cultures leave debris behind, and cultural diffusion, the pet theories of ethnology in the first decades of this century, this feud over origins turned NS culture into an historical science. A culture trait, in this perspective, is taken as evidence of origin rather than a vehicle of layered discursive meanings. Hence, scholars would be looking for traits of NS culture that can be analogized to either Arab or African culture. This procedure considerably retarded understanding NS culture as a culture unto itself. Afro-Arabism, or Sudanism as labeled in recent political discourses, conceived in the elegant meshing of African and Arab traits, is untenable. This generosity of traits will not suffice the NS of itself from engaging a subversive reading of his White education in order to come to grips with his African encounters. Informed by performative and discourse theories, emerging studies of Sudanese culture do not support this textual meeting of mind in the Sudan. Being in bondage to this fictitious Whiteness, the NS hegemonic discourses show them as adept in violating difference by semantic violence and verbal graffiti (Ibrahim 1994, 1996a; Boddy 1989). Non-NS counter discourses are relentlessly emphasizing the rift between Arabs and Africans. They call a NS the one with “red (white) ear” in contrast to Africans “black ear.” Interestingly, a spirit possession ritual studied by Markis (1996) credits the British for abolishing slave trade, an admission nationalist NS would not cede. Thus, reconciling NS roots and routes will entail more than a textual smoothing over of difference. For a meaningful reconciliation, it will be incumbent on the NS to undergo a courageous soul-searching, self-critical, and unwavering critique of their White education. Instead of lulling them by the miracle of complacent texts, scholarship should make them see themselves in the displeasing mirror of their culture. Certain representations led NS elites into believing that their dubious civility and tolerance are genetically theirs (An-Na’im 1992). This political myth is a product of a “hybrid” foundational narrative in which Muslim

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historiography on the Arabization and Islamization of the Sudan is wedded to the Whig interpretation of the Norman Conquest of England. The former, popularized by Ibn Khaldun, has it that the matrilineal practice of the Sudanese Africans enabled the invading Muslim Arabs to gain a progeny and authority by marrying native women. The latter, perpetuated by the British administrators-cum-historians of colonial Sudan (MacMichael 1922; Trimingham 1947), represents the Normans and English as mutually and tolerantly engaging in cultural and bodily exchange after the conquest (Williams 1995). By discounting the element of power in the Muslim Arab invasion of the Sudan, historians saw it rather as a “coming” to the country (Hasan 1967) implying a process of peaceful incorporation into the Sudanese landscape. This fantasy of waves of invading, bachelor Muslim Arabs helping themselves to the African women of the matriliny, paraphrasing Ali Mazrui (1973), persists regardless of the fact that the Muslim Arab model cries for a revisit after two decades of serious challenges to matrilineality (Adams 1977; Delmet in Spaulding 1985; Salih 1977), its founding concept. Suffice it to say here that William Adams, an authority on historical Nubia, states that the records show that royal succession passed from father to son in early medieval Nubia and that the evidence on matrilineality in Nubia is uncertain (1977). At the root of the bigotry of NS lies the perception of other Sudanese that to the NS history and culture in the Sudan at large began with the coming of Arab Muslims to the country in the ninth century. Although this undoubtedly gratifies the NS, this origin is a construct of colonial and postcolonial discourses that re-enacted to the letter the Norman Conquest debate in British historiography revolving around the question: Did the Normans transform England or was their coming merely an episode in the development of British tradition? (Hollister 1969) These discourses rarely took into consideration the various and ingenious ways by which the NS debate the fate of their African ancestors. Local traditions are at variance on the significance, and even the ethicality, of the Arab Muslim conquest of the Sudan. A tradition endorsing the Arab conquest as originary relates that Allah sent snakes that attacked the African population in the Sudan and caused them to desert their homes and immigrate to far-away places. Another account relates that an Arab chief wanted to evict them, whereupon they committed suicide by throwing themselves into the Nile and vanished thereafter. However, other accounts point to existing communities of the direct decedents of the indigenous people of the Sudan before the coming of the Arabs that tenaciously resisted, at least, being contaminated by Arab blood. Furthermore, a recorded tradition relates how a renowned Muslim holy man admonished his people for dispossessing the indigenous Africans of their land (Hasan 1971).

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Elite nationalism stands out as the most outspoken community among the NS holding to the purity of their race and culture. Studies in “identity from below” reveals a praxis of hybridity among common NS not registered in identity discourse in the Sudan. Maliqalm Simone has already used the concept of the “identity from below” profitably to unravel the “carnival of the secular” afoot in Sudanese shanty towns. People of all walks of races and religions in these shanty towns exchange bodies and goods to the chagrin of the elites, the custodians of purity. In these hybrid habitats, as sites of significant cultural seepage, generosity sets in; the NS deliver their racial slurs with more ritualized obligation than passion, and non-NS are simply indifferent to their empty talk (Simone 1994). This is how a category of the NS is unlearning privilege. This scene of racial nonsense is just a few steps short of generosity toward difference in which one’s culture becomes more surely one’s own by virtue of refusal of possession (Greenblatt 1991). The NS elite politics is feud-ridden. Their failure to disengage as humanly as possible their factional wars, in which the disgruntled faction would claim to be the politically correct NS of the future, and confront their racial difficulty genuinely, has far-reaching consequences. They kept putting off the fostering of a tradition of dialogue among themselves and across the spectrum in order for them to own up to their culture. Martin Daly has wisely noticed the absence of any representation of the “northern (Sudanese) secession” discourse, a receptacle of the primordial insecurities of the NS, in elite conferences that seem to dismiss it as “fantastic or at least inadmissible” (1987). In not distinguishing between the realization of peace in the country from the immediate preoccupations of the opposition to the government of the time, NS opposition cadres have failed to make peace, in Dewey’s words, heroic. As a logical extension of their rightful opposition to President Nimmeri, these cadres vilified the peace agreement signed by the president and the Southern rebels in 1971 allowing an opportunity to develop a taste for peace slid by. A poet who celebrated the occasion still carries his cross of shameful collaboration (M. Ibrahim 1994b) postponing confronting their cultural disability in handling difference by fraternizing with the enemy—the Southern Sudanese, the other, in provisional political alliances to outset a ruling NS faction. Their political need for Southern allies makes them hold piously to the unity of the Sudan against the odds of self-determination or secession espoused by widening circles of Southern Sudanese. Unable to do without these alliances, NS opposition cadre would condemn secession of the southern part of the country as national treason, and dismiss its advocates as “collaborators,” that is, stooges of the NS-controlled government in place. This insensitivity to popular moods among the Southerners has already gained the liberal opposition the reputation of monopolizing wisdom (Kok 1996). Liberals of their ilk have always to put up with such “defamation” (Biko 1978).

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CONCLUSION By awakening us to the sources of the smug, self-regarding orthodoxies of the NS, the identity profile of the NS attempted in this chapter seeks to be of immediate use to those concerned with the politics of difference in the Sudan. In highlighting the “collective passion” of the NS underpinning their political praxis, the profile departs from the political habit of debunking each NS-controlled government to fathom responsibly the passion these governments, among other NS cults of power, organize (Julien Benda in Said 1994). Instead of demonizing and trashing one government after the other, NS are better served by fostering a tradition of dialogue and self-reflection to sow their “Seeds of Redemption” (Deng 1986) in their collective cultural predicament.

REFERENCES Abdul-Hai, Muhammad. 1976. Conflict and Identity: The Cultural Poetics of Contemporary Sudanese Poetry. Khartoum: Institute of African & Asian Studies, University of Khartoum. Adams, William. 1977. Nubia: Corridor to Africa. London: Allan Lane. Al-Siddiq, Abdalhadi. 1989. Usul al-sh’r al-Sudani. Khartoum: Khartoum University Press. Al-Tayib, Abdalla. 1957. Asda’ al-Nil. Khartoum. al-Toum. 1970, Feb. 12. “Stokley Carmichael.” Akhbar al-Usbu. An-Na’im, Abdullahi. 1992. In Religion and National Integration in Africa, edited by John Hunwick. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Ashcroft, Bill et al. 1989. The Empire Writes Back. London: Routledge. Baldo, Silayman and Ushari Mahmud. 1978. Madhbahat al-Di’ayn. Khartoum. Bender, M. Lionel. 1970. “Color Term Encoded in a Special Lexical Domain: Sudanese Arabic Skin Colors.” Anthropological Linguistics 25 (1): 19–27. Bhabha, Homi. 1995. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. Biko, Steve. 1978. I Write What I Like. San Francisco, CA: Harper. Boddy, Janice, 1989. Wombs and Spirits. Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press. Cavin, Margaret et al. 1997. “Metaphors of Control: Toward a Language of Peace: Recent Self-Defining Rhetorical Constructs of Helen Caldicott.” Peace and Change 22 (3): 243–263. Clifford, James. 1988. Predicament of Culture. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Crocker, Chester, 1994. His summary of the “Sudan: The Forgotten Tragedy” in United States Institute of Peace Journal 7 (1): 1–2. Daly, Martin. 1987. “Conclusions and Reflections,” in The Search for Peace and Unity in the Sudan, edited by Francis Deng and Prosser Gifford. Washington, DC: The Wilson Center Press.

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Deng, Francis. 1987. Seeds of Redemption. New York: Lilian Barber. Deng, Francis. 1995. War of Visions: Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution. Destexhe, Alain. 1994. Rwanda and Genocide. New York: New York University Press. Ellison, Julie. 1996. “A Short History of the Liberal Guilt.” Critical Inquiry 22 (2): 344–371. Fanon, Frantz. 1967. Black Skin, White Masks. New York: Grove Press. Gilroy, Paul. 1993. The Black Atlantic. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Greenblatt, Stephen. 1991. Marvelous Possession. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Hasan, Yusuf, 1967. The Arabs and the Sudan. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Ibrahim, Abdullahi. 1968. Al-Sira’ bayn al-Mahdi wa al-’Ulama. Khartoum. Republished in 1994 in Cairo by Dar Nobar for Printing. Ibrahim, Abdullahi. 1976. Al-Fikr al-Sudani Ausuluh Watatawuruh. Khartoum: Maṭbaʿat Aru al-tigariyya. Ibrahim, Abdullahi. 1985. “Sudanese Historiography and Oral Tradition.” History in Africa 12: 117–130. Ibrahim, Abdullahi. 1988. “Breaking the Pen of Harold MacMichael: Ja’liyyin Identity Revisited,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 21 (2): 217–231. Ibrahim, Abdullahi. 1990. “Popular Islam: The Religion of the Barbarous Throng.” Northeast African Studies 11 (2): 21–40. Ibrahim, Abdullahi. 1991. “Sahir and Muslim Moral Space.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 23 (3): 387–399. Ibrahim, Abdullahi. 1994. Assaulting with Words: Popular Discourses and the Bridle of Shari’ah. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Ibrahim, Abdullahi. 1996a. Al-Thaqafah wa al-Dimiqratiyah fi al-Sudan (Culture and Democracy in Sudan). Cairo: dar al-Amin Bookstore for Publication and Distribution. Ibrahim, Abdullahi. 1996b. “The 1971 Coup in the Sudan.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Middle East and Africa 16 (1): 98–114. Ibrahim, Abdullahi. 1997. “Tale of Two Sudanese Courts: Colonial Governmentality Revisited.” African Studies Review 40 (1): 13–33. Ibrahim, Abdullahi. 1998. Firsan Kanjart. Khartoum: Khartoum University Press. Ibrahim, Abdullahi. 2008. Manichaean Delirium: Decolonizing the Judiciary and Islamic Renewal in the Sudan, 1898–1985. Leiden: Brill. Ibrahim, Mohammed. 2000. Collected Poetry. Cairo. Khalid, Mansour. 1993. Al-Nukhbah al-Sudaniyah wadman alfashal. Cairo: dar alAmin Bookstore for Publication and Distribution. Kok. Peter Nyot. 1996. Governance and Conflict in the Sudan. Hamburg: Deutsches Orient Institut. MacMichael. 1922. The Arabs in the Sudan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mahjub, Abdel Khaliq. His address to the Round Table Peace in Sudan Conference held in Khartoum in 1965.

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Najilah, Hasan. 1994. Malamih mi al-Mujtama’ al-Sudani. Khartoum: dar alkhartum for Printing and Publishing. Osman, Ali and Sahal, al-Bashir. 1990. Fi al-Thaqafa al-Sudaniyah. Khartoum: Khartoum University Press. Papastergiadis, Nikos. 1997. “Tracing Hybridity in Theory,” in Debating Cultural Hybridity, edited by Pnina Werbner and Tariq Modood. London: Zed Books. Pope-Hennessy, James. 1968. Sins of the Fathers. New York: Knopf. Ross, Marc Howard. 1995. The Culture of Conflict. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Said, Edward. 1994. Representations of the Intellectual. New York: Vintage. Simone, T. Abdou Maliqalm. 1994. In Whose Image: Political Islam and Urban Practices in Sudan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sparks, Allister. 1990. The Mind of South Africa. New York: Ballantine. Trimingham, J. S. 1949. Islam in the Sudan. Oxford: Oxford University Press. United States Congress. House of Representatives. Committee on International Relations. Subcommittee on Africa. 1995. The Crisis in Sudan. Washington, DC: U.S. G.P.O. Walzer, Michael. 1988. The Company of Critics. New York: Basic Books. Williams, Ann. 1995. The English and the Norman Conquest. Woodbridge: Boydell Press. Young, Robert. 1995. Colonial Desire. London: Routledge.

Chapter 6

The Rise and Decline of the Hybridity Thesis in the Intellectual Discourse on Identity—The Sudan Example Mohamed Abusabib

The idea of hybridity remains an unsafe refuge for those who cannot be Arab and do not wish to be African. — Quote by the author, translated from Arabic

This chapter is an attempt to look into the quest for identity of the Arabicspeaking Sudanese and to understand why the hybridity1 thesis expressed by the description “Arabized African” or “Arabized Nubian” has become a plausible identity construct adopted by many scholars such as Peter M. Holt and M.W. Daly (1961) and Yusuf Fadl Hasan (1967), as well as being an attractive solution for the average Arabic-speaking educated Northerner. In the chapter I follow the roots and historical development of the thesis in the Sudan and argue how this seemingly easy and simple solution to identity issues, that has persisted and dominated the debate among the intellectuals for so long, is not based on solid grounds. And, in an answer to the question as to why this thesis has dominated the Sudanese intellectual discourse for so long, I present two sets of factors that I hope will shed light on the answer. One set of factors is ideological mystification, that is, a misconception of Sudan historiography that is not only a narrow cognitive and cultural horizon, but leaves the discussion nowhere. Instead, the misconception led the identity question into a national crisis, combined with the steady intrusion of politics. The other set of factors relates to the changing political and cultural landscape of the country. This is evident in the deepening dissension in the last decades between, on the one hand, the ruling class in the center, on the other hand, and the political organizations in the peripheries, all the while leading to a growing awareness among sectors of the middle class of the cultural dimension in 111

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the conflict. These developments introduced new elements in the discussion about Sudanese identity; the question of self-identification acquired more importance among the educated (mainly among the urban elites). In light of the evidence provided by the scholarship concerned with Sudanese cultures, a return to the validity of the hybridity thesis calls for scrutiny. I am using the designation “Arabic-speaking Sudanese” to distinguish those Northern Sudanese who experience identity problems, and also those who do not experience or are not aware of these problems, but are all actually included by the participants in the debate on the issue. To begin with, there are three instances of identity questions, all of them involving my own personal experiences, which could perhaps encapsulate the aforementioned points and demonstrate the impact of the identity problem on our society. It was in the early 1960s in my last semester of the fourth academic year at al-Gadarif Intermediate School when the tutor of our class came in with forms for every student to fill in related to the impending final examinations for high secondary school. What was required was general information concerning the student’s family, such as residence and occupation. But there was a question which puzzled the whole class. It read: “When did your forefathers come to the Sudan?” Even at that early age we sensed that there was something “threatening” about the question. The feeling I had—and seemingly the rest of the students as well, considering the exchanges among us—was an awareness for the first time of the “relationship” of my family to the Sudan, and that the “authorities” wanted to know about it. Then one of the students hurried to his brother, an official in a nearby government office, and came back with the answer: [It was] “since the coming of the Arabs to the Sudan.” Even the tutor agreed to it when we showed it to him. Our class reflected the size and inhabitants of the town. The class, in fact, represented almost all of the country’s ethnic composition. In addition to the Arabic-speaking and non-Arabic-speaking students the class included two Hausa students and a Somali. Nevertheless, the entire class wrote the same answer, that is, “since the coming of the Arabs to Sudan.” The second example also comes from a classroom in which the subject was titled “Sudanese Interior Design”; it was taught by me as a seminar for senior classes in the Department of Interior Design at Khartoum College of Applied Studies. The class was divided into eight groups which corresponded to eight regions in the country, defined according to their general geographical diversity. The main objective of the seminar was to open up the students’ mind to Sudanese cultures by engaging in group fieldwork to collect information about the inhabitants and their way of life (housing, occupation, diet, traditions, ethnic affiliation, art, etc.) with the help of certain guidelines. The result was astonishing, as the groups competed among themselves in presenting as much as they could of information using

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multimedia, samples of material culture, oral traditions, and live shows of traditional music and dance. Particularly heated discussions on ethnic affiliation and “exotic” and “non-Islamic” beliefs and practices were common. However, one case of a student may summarize my point. The result of the final exams showed that the student had not attended all classes throughout the year, except for this seminar. His justification was that he needed to work to support his family, but, as he put, the seminar was “fun,” and he began “to know the Sudan.” This third example shows that the existing discrepancy between ideologies and realities is better manifested among ordinary Arabic-speaking Sudanese “confronting” the problem of identity. When my father, a farmer in his 80s, returned from the pilgrimage to Mecca, I asked him humorously how he found his Arab cousins, awlad Jaal wal-Abbass. He responded instantly, Abadan! hum nass wa nihna nass, meaning “we are totally different peoples.” I then remarked, “But you all say you are the sons of alAbbass the Prophet’s uncle.” With a rattling laugh he replied, Mitlussiqeen! meaning “we are all Mitlussiqeen.” The word mitlussiq is a pejorative term used to describe someone who claims putative kinship to a clan, lineage, or family noted for its wealth or high status. One might suspect that this answer reflects the kind of frustration caused by the hardships and demanding regulations which pilgrims usually encounter in Mecca. But the use of the word mitlussiq, accompanied by his particular type of laughter, indicated that the old man, in fact, had communicated a serious message. Given that my father’s generation does not take matters of kinship and pedigree lightly, his answer was no passing comment. And it is difficult to dismiss him, and surely many others of his generation with the same experience and attitudes, as isolated cases. On the contrary, one can read his response as reflective of the dynamics of folklore and of identification processes. Moreover, this example has great relevance to broad sections of the Northern population, whether they be those who are constantly on the move between Sudan and oil-rich Arab countries in search of work, or those inside the country living under an Islamist regime committed to “Arabization” and “Islamization,” or the swelling of the numbers of diasporans undergoing an agonizing reexamination of their identity. Again, for the riverain Northerners and their agricultural culture, the adjective “Arabic” has three connotations according to the context. It may mean of Arab origin, or a simple unsophisticated person—usually directed at nomads—or an uprooted person, a qulaii, who does not own land on the Nile, even if he belongs to the same community. Traditionally, it is indeed a social stigma to be an “Arab” in the third sense. Also, it is possible to suggest that the origin of this stigmatic term could be traced back centuries ago when groups of Arab immigrants were hanging about settlements on the Nile.

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As implied above, these instances suggest the multidimensional nature of the identity question in the Sudanese context. While the first instance—me in a Sudanese classroom—indicates the dominant elements of power and ideology and their hold, even on the younger population, the second one—the art and design class—demonstrates the inadequacy of the educational system and its lack of a well-designed, informative national curriculum. The third instance points to the dynamics of identification in the traditional uneducated stratum of the society, people who are outside the realm of such intellectual discourses, and reveals the existing discrepancy between ideology and reality. It is possible, however, to speak of three benchmarks in the historical development of Afro-Arab or Arabized-Nubian identity construct: the writing of putative genealogies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the advent of the nationalist movement in the second decade of the twentieth century, and discussions of the identity issues by intellectual discourses in the academic, cultural, and artistic domains. THE WRITING OF GENEALOGIES The history of the Sudan since the Middle Ages has been interpreted by historians following a certain line of thought in Sudan historiography which is based on the notion of the migration of Arab tribes into the country. A comprehensive political vision for the future of the country has evolved upon this notion whereby the Arabization and Islamization of the indigenous population have been accomplished as a result of this migration. We shall come to this point below. However, new generations of historians adopted different perspectives. According to a work by Rex S. O’Fahey and Jay Spaulding (1974) the late eighteenth century witnessed the decline of the Funj Kingdom (1504–1821) and the erosion of its traditional political institutions and values under the combined pressure of the rising merchant class and Islam. The new Sudanese commercial community collaborated with other foreign traders and expanded their business activities into areas previously monopolized by the King and also created links with the surrounding regional Islamic powers. The merchant community together with the learned Islamic men known as the Ulama constituted the core of a new middle class and laid the foundations of a new socioeconomic and ideological power base. This middle class adopted Arab descent to consolidate its position. O’Fahey and Spaulding put it this way: The aura of Muslim respectability of the new middle class was reinforced by the adoption of the new self-identity—they proclaimed themselves to be Arabs. In support of these claims there arose first a trickle, then a flood of putative

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genealogies, tracing family descent from son to father carefully back to various distinguished Arabs of the early days of Islam. (O’Fahey and Spaulding 1974, 81)

In this statement the two historians gave answers to questions related to the pedigree through genealogies claimed by many tribes and families today— who wrote these genealogies and why. These genealogies illustrate the class dimensions in the so-called Arabization process, and also that an ideology of an ethnic and religious nature was planted for the first time in the soil of political thought and social strife in the country. Furthermore, generations of this class with their political and ideological impact continue to exist. O’Fahey (1995) argues that the same notable families or clans during the later Funj state still dominate the core of Sudan, and that new families were recruited every time a political or religious change happened. Accordingly, many families appeared with the arrival of the neo-Sufi (tarikas). He arrived at the following conclusion: From 1900 to 1947 the debate between colonizer and colonized in Sudan was exclusively one between the British and the Northern Sudanese elite. It was a very effective dialogue between two very small groups who had the greatest respect for each other. The result for Sudan was to create a new generation of ‘modernized’ Northern Sudanese, but with their roots in a colonial state.2 (95–97)

This “generation of ‘modernized’ Northern Sudanese” is what political scientist Tim Niblock (1987) (see Niblock’s Foreword in this volume) has referred to as those social groupings that had benefited from the economic policies under the Condominium (Niblock 1987, 42). These groups include religious and tribal leaders, Sudanese and migrant merchants, and higher civil servants—a representation of the same old middle class. But while the old class was a middle “progressive” class within the Funj feudalist system, it converted in the contemporary period into a politically conservative sectarian upper class, still adopting the same genealogies and Arabic Islamic ideology. THE NATIONALIST MOVEMENT Central to the nationalist consciousness in the 1920s is a notion of a modern Sudanese state ruled by the Sudanese people. This notion emerged and developed in an intellectual milieu marked by social, political, and ideological conflict. With the idea that the colonizer would sooner or later leave the country, the concomitant questions as who has the right to take over, who is

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the legitimate representative of the Sudanese, who is qualified for the job, was on everyone’s mind. This is when the question of identity forced itself onto the cultural life and resonated, for decades to come, in the arts and intellectual debates, and different identity constructs were envisaged defining the Sudan and Sudanese inhabitants. From the outset the debate polarized into two opposing orientations, an Arabic-Islamic standpoint and a Sudanist local one. In the field of politics, the clash between Ali Abd al-Latif, leader of The White Flag League, and Sulaiman Kisha, both of whom were members of the Sudanese Union Society before it split over the phrase “to a noble Arabic nation” that Kisha wished to use as the dedication to a collection of religious poems. Abd al-Latif found this to be completely unacceptable, instead insisting on the dedication “to a noble Sudanese nation” arguing that there should be no distinction drawn between Arabs and Southerners (Kurita 1997, 28). This incident became the epitome of the variance between the two identity polarities, and brought to light the latent political, social, and intellectual discord within Sudanese society. This dichotomy soon appeared in the aesthetic fields, particularly among poets and other writers. From the outset the Sudanese nationalist movement used literary activity as an inspiring agent to evoke past glories and as an effective vehicle for carrying out the political message. Before its engagement with the nationalist question, poetry was divided between two styles, namely, the classical poetry that the (Ulama) religious scholars wrote in standard Arabic and the popular poetry composed in Sudanese Arabic. Both styles are historically rooted in the social strata of those who adopted them. For example, classical poetry has from the very beginning symbolized a system of cultural values that is deeply embedded in the concept of al-uruba, or Arabism. This is where the ideological message and the aesthetic outlook meet in the debate and enter into “conflict” within the nationalist movement over the content of Sudanese nationalism and Sudanese identity. Furthermore, a generation of new traditionalist poets who emerged from among the first graduates of Gordon College inherited the classical form of poetry. Politically and socially frustrated by the new urban lifestyle and Western influences, they voiced the need for unity and solidarity based on Islamic values, and reminded their readers of past Arabic and Islamic glories. As Muddathir Abdal-Rahim has pointed out, certain scholars explained this strong attachment of the early poets and writers of the 1920s to Islamic values and classical Arabic forms as a need for psychological reassurance after the military defeat of 1898 at the hands of the Anglo-Egyptian army and the resulting loss of independence. As he puts it, this was a kind of assurance they found neither in their own past nor in contemporary African realities (Abdal-Rahim 1973, 38).3 This explanation appears rather apologetic in comparison with certain other views, such as the

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one put forward by the poet Mohamed al-Makki Ibrahim, who accused these intellectuals of escapism. The poets in question, in fact, resort not to the old Arabic civilization and its positive achievements to which they allude, but rather to classical Arabic literature (Ibrahim 1989, 60). Then two critics, Al-Amin Ali Madani and Hamza al-Malik Tambal, contemporaries of these poets, were the first to attack traditional poetry and these Arabic-Islamic tendencies. Tambal, in particular, wrote a group of critical essays in the years 1926 and 1927 that were published in 1928 as al-Adab al-Sudani wa ma yajib an yakun alaihi (Sudanese Literature and the Way It Should Be). Rejecting the excessive Arabic and Islamic traditional content adopted by these poets, Tambal argues that it is necessary to produce poetry of genuine feeling and originality, a poetry in which the Sudanese character is depicted and Sudanese national traits portrayed. He called for truthfulness of expression as the aesthetic principle that poets should follow (Ibrahim 1989, 36). The radical intellectual response of these two critics should be no surprise given the political atmosphere of the day and the deepening of nationalist feelings in spite of the suppression of the Revolution of 1924. On the other hand, their views clearly stem from their social background as middle-class intelligentsia who had received a secular education and were influenced both by Western culture and by the new literary trends in the Arabic world, particularly in Egypt, where prominent scholars and writers led a similar call for a “typically Egyptian” literature. Also, Mohammed Ashri al-Siddiq, regarded as one of the leading figures in the 1930s Sudanese intellectual and literary renaissance, followed the same line of Tambal and Madani.

IDENTITY DISCUSSIONS IN ACADEMIC DISCOURSES History Discourse As many scholars agree, H. A. MacMichael’s A History of the Arabs in the Sudan (1967 [1922]) has been the baseline for the majority of academic discussions on Northern Sudanese identity. In this book he collected the majority of genealogical traditions in Northern Sudan and added to them his own views and interpretation. Central to MacMichael’s interpretation is that the Northern Sudanese Arabs are a hybrid of Arab and indigenous blood and, because of this Arab blood and their adherence to Islam, they are “racially” and “morally” superior to the other Sudanese “races.” Apart from political assessment of MacMichael’s work, which some historians describe as part of the colonial policies of the 1920s, his legacy extends, with a greater or lesser degree of modification, to post-independence Sudanese historiography. For example, P. M. Holt systematically affirms

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in his A History of the Sudan that the hybridity thesis describes the historical process which gradually produced present-day Northern Sudanese ethnic groups. Also taken for granted is the validity of the term “Arabized Sudanese.” A detailed account of this issue is found in Yusuf Fadl Hasan’s The Arabs and the Sudan (1967). He writes: The genealogical traditions, which are now current in the Sudan and which have been current as far back as evidence goes—that is for two or three centuries past—indicate a high degree of Arabization. This is implied by the almost total adoption of Arab genealogies by the inhabitants of the Sudan. This, at least, establishes that they were thoroughly Arabized. (Hasan 1967, 135)

Hasan here views Arabization as a cultural rather than an ethnic process. He explains, By the tenth/sixteenth century actually Arabized stock emerged as a result of at least two centuries of close contact between the Arabs and the inhabitants of the Sudan. Regardless of a few exceptions, the term Arab was progressively being emptied of nearly all its ethnic significance. (Hasan 1967, 176)

At the same time, as he puts it, the process of Arabization was accompanied by a process of Islamization (177). According to this interpretation of the Sudan’s history new cultural entities were born along with new terminology to describe them. Such coinages as “Arabized Nubians,” which describes the Jaaliyyin group, Juhaina Arabs (Africanized Arabs), which describes the Baqqara and the nomads of Kordofan and Darfur provinces, and the Ashraf, which describes certain Sufi families, have become standard terminologies and categorizations of Arabic-speaking Sudanese in contemporary scholarship on the Sudan (Hasan 1967, chapter 5).4 Central to this interpretation, and indeed to a whole theory in Sudanese historiography, is that extensive Arab migration into the Sudan drove the processes of Arabization and Islamization as major cultural developments. Hasan argues that “Until the end of the ninth/ fifteenth century both developments were almost entirely accomplished by tribal migration” (174–175). Certain anthropological views are also based on this notion of Arabization and Islamization. Sayyid Hurreiz, for example, describes the ethnic outcome of “the gradual penetration of and settlement of Muslim Arabs” and the intermarriage between them and the indigenous population as “a new—though not entirely new—ethnic breed” (Hurreiz 1989, 78–79). But in spite of the qualifications or reservations added by advocates of the hybridity thesis, the significance of the notion of Arab migration lies not in its ethnic or cultural outcome. It rather lies in its ideological and political content as an event that

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is seen to have generated the “unabated and overwhelming” Arabization and Islamization processes. The Linguistic Factor Many scholars perceive Arabic in the Sudanese context as a key agent in the processes of acculturation and identification. This perception is consistent with a long-standing Western tradition that treats language (and religion) as pivotal in defining cultural identity. This tradition emanates from an epistemology rooted in Western analytic philosophy, which has shaped Western thought for decades. According to this perspective, language is the main reservoir of human knowledge and experience, and the linguistic analysis of concepts is the only means by which this experience can be comprehended and conveyed. Since reality and experience are then mediated to us through our conceptual schema, a basic analytic premise is that all meaningful human experiences involve concepts that require language.5 As such, society is rooted in a common unifying language (Carmichael 1967, 374). In this respect both Western and Arabic traditions converge, in that being an Arab is based on an Islamic heritage stated by the Prophet’s tradition, “O people, the Lord is one, the father is one and the religion is one, but Arabic for you is not a father nor a mother, it is a tongue, so who speaks Arabic is an Arab.” However, these two factors—Arabic and Western—are highly questionable. The Arabic language, like every other language, is subject to all types of transformational processes engendered by assimilation into a new culture, and is influenced by people as active agents who construct the idiom that suits their own way of life. What Arabic signifies as a Sudanese mother tongue is surely a Sudanese signification.6 Most importantly, Arabic changes not only as a grammar in the course of such transformations, but as an active element within the dynamic fabric of social functions. It thus assumes the roles designated by the historically prevailing cultural setup. In this respect, one major role it has long played in Northern Sudan is that of an agent in the construction of the ethno-religious ideology of Arab descent and cultural Arabization. Indeed, simple abstract notions of language and/or religion cannot be taken as culture, particularly when a culture deeply rooted in history adopts a given religion or language. Furthermore, a new generation of aestheticians have challenged the Western analytical perspective in aesthetics. They dismiss the analytical approach as an attitude that is culture-bound and language-biased, arguing that the majority of human experience is not linguistically articulated or conceptually acquired, and that language is in fact dependent on non-linguistic and sensory modes of knowledge in human experience.7

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Applying the argument above to the Sudanese case, it is clear that Arabocentrics, in theory, wish to understand, explain, and define Northern Sudanese culture within a literacy-produced frame of mind. In actual practice, they adopt a language-conditioned perspective to create a kind of “linguistic ideology” around Arabic, one that would neatly fit into the broader ethnoreligious ideology of Arabic descent and Arabic as central to the process of Arabization. Finally, it is important to include in this account a political document that bluntly expresses the prevailing ideology among the political leaders of the time. Here the notion of hybridity is hinted at with clear prejudice toward the African component. In July 1939 the Graduate Congress, many of whose leaders became rulers of the country after independence, presented a memorandum to the colonial authorities explaining their vision of the education strategy in the Sudan. The summary of this perception is reflected in the preamble to the memorandum, which is translated as follows: In numerous aspects of our life we have much in common with Arab countries of Islamic orient which is due to our akin descent. We therefore consider that education in this country should take an Islamic oriental character and not a pagan African one, or in other words, that the Arabic language and religion instructions should receive the greatest possible care in all stages of education. (Beshir 1969, 152)

The policy of education has, since independence, followed the prescription of this memorandum.

IDENTITY DISCUSSIONS IN THE CULTURAL DOMAIN Al-Fajr Magazine The magazine al-Fajr (the Dawn), owned by its Chief Editor Arafat Mohamed Abdalla, is regarded as the mouthpiece of the Sudanese literary and intellectual renaissance of the 1930s. It embraced the call for a nationalist Sudanese literature and contributed much to the notion of hybridism in modern Sudanese political and aesthetic discourses on ethnicity and culture. An editorial in the May 1935 issue states: “Since time immemorial this portion of the Nile Valley, with its extensions of deserts and plains to the east and west, has received an unending influx of invaders, immigrants, and slave traders and has, without exception, assimilated them and formed new hybrid races” (Osman 1987, 141–142).

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al-Ghaba wa al-Sahra’ School The 1960s witnessed the birth of the school of poetry al-Ghaba wa al-Sahra’ (Jungle and Desert School). The cultural and nationalist conceptualizations of the 1920s and 1930s show how the political and aesthetic aspects of the debate during that period were interdependent and mutually inspiring. They constitute the historical ancestry of later efforts in the search for cultural identity in modern Sudanese arts. The first germs of the main currents in the literary discourse on identity and their ideological bases, namely, Arabism and Islamism, Sudanism, and Afro-Arabism, had already come into existence by that time. Against this background, and inspired by the circumstances and events of the 1960s, a group of young poets adopted the metaphor of alGhaba wa al-Sahra’ in order to describe their perception of the ethnic and cultural roots of today’s Arabic-speaking Northern Sudanese. They perceived these roots as a hybrid of African and Arabic elements, and set off to build their entire aesthetic pursuit upon this conviction. The three exponents of this literary trend are poets al-Nur Osman Abbakar, Mohamed al-Makki Ibrahim, and Mohamed Abd al-Hai. Abbakar coined the metaphor “Jungle and Desert” in the early 1960s. In an article that triggered heated discussions, Abbakar outlined certain main ideas of the school (Abbakar 1967). He perceived “Jungle and Desert” as a symbol of reconciliation much like the example of the Funj and the Abdallab who, as he puts it, defeated a common enemy and reached an agreement of coexistence (Al-Ayyam newspaper 1985). He re-affirms his views on the components of Sudanese identity by remarking that “we speak, write, and feel the Arabic language, and we have no intention whatsoever of escaping this situation. But we have a distinct position within this ‘culture’ that arises from our own realm of life and from the ‘roots’ that support our entire existence. I am not an Arab, but I am tied to the Arabic world by many things, such as my faith as a Muslim” (Al-Ayyam newspaper 1985). Abd al-Hai also contributed a great deal to the theoretical formulation put forth by the school. In the 1960s he suggested that the history of Sudanese culture began with interbreeding kingdoms, such as the Sinnar Kingdom, in which Islamic, Arabic, and African elements met. He argued that it was precisely these kingdoms that began to produce Sudanese culture. In them the African and Arabic elements blended together and produced a new element that was neither Arabic, nor Negro (Quoted in Ibrahim 1996, 27). Abd al-Hai described the aesthetic experience of the poets in the Jungle and Desert School with the following words: “The Sudanese poet has for the first time come to terms with himself and his landscape, his history and his tradition. Although the language is Arabic, these new poets feel free to re-forge it according to the nuances of their own sensibility. Indeed, the new

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Sudanese poetry has created a language within the Arabic language” (Abd al-l Hai 1976, 53).

IDENTITY DISCUSSIONS IN THE ARTS Khartoum School of Art While the first generation of graduates from the School of Design, established in 1947 and renamed the College of Fine and Applied Art, were strict adherents to academic traditions, a second generation of artists took their practice into the sphere of general intellectual life in the 1950s and 1960s (Zein alAbdin 1991, 29). They began producing what they felt to be an authentic art that expressed their local cultures. Like the poets of the “Jungle and Desert School” these pioneering artists regarded their culture as a hybrid of local Sudanese and Arabic elements upon which to establish their artwork. They did not issue a manifesto or document to show what unified them as a common aesthetic program because of their different views and “uncertainty” over the nature and meaning of this cultural hybridity, and they depended on individual media talks and interviews. For example, Ibrahim al-Salahi, who was at that time the most active and outspoken, remarked in an interview that he is “a mixture of Negro and Arab,” (African Arts 1967, 26) but he adds that he is “a Muslim Sudanese of a hundred percent Arabic culture” (Osman 1993, 116). Music There is an abundance of writings, mostly in journalistic form, that touch on music in the Sudan. But there are two pioneering musicologists, Gum’a Jabir and al-Fatih al-Tahir, who published a book in 1988 and 1993, respectively, in which they stated clearly what they believed to be the cultural identity of Northern Sudan and, consequently, the cultural basis of Northern Sudanese music. In addition to providing valuable documentary material, their publications offer important theoretical formulations. Jabir is a straightforward advocate of African-Arabic dualism in respect to Northern Sudanese music. He defines Sudanese music as Afro-Arabic in nature by virtue of his acceptance of the Arabization thesis that has been presented in Sudanese historiography. He explains his viewpoint as follows: Sudanese music is characterised by the pentatonic scale and by its ArabicAfrican particularity. It is of a unique type by virtue of this dualistic identity, being neither Arabic nor African but a combination of both . . . . Arabic culture

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in its Sudanese form remains dominant in this combination because Arabism, according to the Prophetic Tradition, is not the race but the language. This dominance is explained by the fact that the vast majority of Sudanese use Arabic as both the official and colloquial language. Their Arabic song is blended with pentatonic music, which is a common factor with songs in languages other than Arabic, particularly among those relatively few Sudanese tribes compared with the majority who speak Arabic. (Jabir 1988, 253)

Jabir believes in the notion that Arab migration changed “the old African Sudan into an Arabic-African country” (Jabir 1988, 240). He therefore defends his position concerning Arabic-African dualism in Sudanese music by referring to similar positions in respect to literature. For example, Jabir accepts the view of the Sudanese literary critic Abd al-Hadi Siddiq that cultural dualism emerged in the Sudan as a result of the country’s location between West Africa and the Arabian peninsula. He also agrees with statements by the poet Salah Ahmad Ibrahim that the Sudanese “are a mixture of cultures, but no doubt Arabic culture in its Sudanese form is predominant” (Jabir, 241). Al-Tahir also sought to establish a theoretical framework involving history and culture for his views. However, he chose to build it solely upon a simplistic and Orientalist interpretation of Sudanese history by the Egyptian scholar Abd al-Majid Abdin, whose classification he considers to be “the most objective” (Al-Tahir 1993, 13). Abdin divides the Sudan’s history into two general periods. The first, which he describes as a pre-Islamic era of jahiliyya (ignorance), includes the Old and Middle Egyptian Kingdoms, the Napatan, the Meroitic, and the Nubian Christian periods. The second, which he regards as Islamic, includes the Funj, Turkish, Mahdist, Condominium, and independence periods (Al-Tahir, 13–14). Al-Tahir maintained that Sudanese music was Arabized in step with the gradual cultural Arabization of Sudan, which took place under the impact of the Arabic language and the Islamic Sufi Brotherhoods. The Brotherhoods employed local musical traditions of various tribes, particularly those of the towns, in their religious practices. But al-Tahir reached a contradictory conclusion, as he maintained that, “Sudan, despite the Arabic language and Islam, remains an African country and, therefore, the spread of Islam has been limited in the field of music” (Al-Tahir, 35). THE HISTORICAL AND ARCHAEOLOGICAL CONTRIBUTIONS TO IDENTITY QUESTIONS If one looks briefly at the history of this discussion on identity, as exemplified by the abovementioned discourses, we see that the sciences concerned with the

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Sudan cultures and their history, archaeology in particular, and their crucial contributions have not entered the intellectual bloodstream. Even terms like Nubia, Kush, or Sudan civilization, as understood in our time, were almost completely absent in the debate. Therefore, in the final analysis, lack of such scientific leverage turns all postulations offered in these discourses into mere speculations. An important explanation of this shortcoming can be found in a paper by William Adams titled “Paradigms in Sudan Archaeology,” where he discussed the relation between archaeology and Sudanese history. He writes: The pursuit of archeology developed hand-in-hand in Egyptian Nubia and in the Sudan, and from the beginning both followed a rather different course than did the investigations of Egyptologists in Egypt proper. Because of the scarcity of written texts, it was always recognized that field archeology had a much more central and critical part to play in the reconstruction of Sudanese history than in the northern country, where archaeology has generally been treated as supplementary to textual history. (Adams 1981, 16)

In the same paper, Adams analyzes the modes of archaeological thought which he exemplified in four paradigms. He describes the third one as “postcolonial paradigm.” It includes a number of prominent archaeologists, notably A. J. Arkel, Peter. L. Shinnie, Bruce Trigger, and William Adams. This paradigm introduced advanced approaches and analytical techniques, as well as a focus on re-structuring the historical cultural development. Shinnie, on his part, speaks about “the independent national paradigm” where the view of the unimportance of the ancient Sudan that was dominant during the late 1940s and 1950s gradually gave way to the interest of Sudanese, in general, as learners of their history. A new concept of identity began to develop. He summarizes the new past-oriented attitudes as follows: The new concept, sometimes expressed in its most extreme form as a statement that the Sudan is an African rather than an Arab country, has caused quite a different view of the past with great significance for the study of history and archaeology. Now the national heroes are seen not to be those of the Arab world as a whole or even only Abdalla Jammaa, the Mahdi and the Khalifa, properly important as they are, but also Piankhy and Taharqa. (Shinnie 1981, 28)

Within these new spheres of knowledge, new schools in Sudanese historiography have also developed a parallel line of thought, leading to a new approach to the Sudan’s cultural history. Jay Spaulding’s book The Heroic Age in Sinnar, published in 1985 and translated into Arabic only in 2011, is an outstanding example. His conceptual framework is also clear in a joint paper with Lidwien Kapteijns published in 1991, where they argue against

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misconceptions perpetuated by the old historical school and describe its approach as typically an Orientalist paradigm of history. According to them this paradigm, as applied to the late precolonial Sudan, is idealistic in that it reduces meaningful reality to two pairs of opposing reified entities which it labels “Arabs” or “Muslims,” on the one hand and “non-Arabs” or “nonMuslims,” on the other, and it is also pseudo-Darwinist as it suggests the inherent superiority of the former. In this paradigm, as they put it, historical interactions between the same and identically endowed opposing idealized entities are themselves reified as two idealized unidirectional entities of process termed “Arabization” and “Islamization.” They conclude by stating the negative impact of this paradigm: At no time, however, has the vitality of the Orientalist paradigm depended upon its ability to convey historical truth; it has survived and flourished because it has served certain entrenched interests inside and outside the Sudan. It is detrimental to the Sudanese, because it defines the problems of the country in terms that cannot be solved. (Spaulding and Kapteijns 1991, 149–150)

However, a crucial archaeological contribution to the quest for the Sudan identity is the development of the continuity theory. Trigger says that this entails a broad base of data and a broad scope of research to encompass all cultures around the Middle Nile Valley. He noted: As the archaeological record is more fully understood, the oversimplifications of a once dominant Egyptocentric culture-historical diffusionism have been abandoned. A strong emphasis is now placed on the ethnic and cultural continuities that have characterized Sudanese culture over the millennia and on viewing these cultures in their specific and changing environmental settings. It is also acknowledged that both Sudanese history and the agrarian societies of the Nile Valley cannot be understood independently of areas of the Sudan that lie outside the Nile Valley and relations with the pastoral peoples who inhabited the neighboring grasslands. (Trigger 1994, 336–337, 342)

For his part, Adams concludes his intensive research in Nubian archaeological history by confirming the ethnic and cultural continuity of the inhabitants of the central Nile Valley. He refers to the accumulation of substantive evidence in the Sudan and other parts of the world which proves historical continuities of cultures. He indicates that changes can be seen as gradual and natural developments, more probably as a result of cultural diffusion or local evolution rather than of any great movement of peoples. Also he affirms that the re-examination of earlier Nubian skeletal collections, as well as of a great deal of material, has shown that the supposed racial differences

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between successive Nubian populations are largely mythical, that there is no satisfactory reason for believing that the modern Nubians are a different people from the Nubians of antiquity or of any intervening period (Adams 1977, 667). Furthermore, what drastically undermines the hybridity thesis is the dismissal by Adams of the conception of immigration, which dominated archaeological thought since the nineteenth century and was applied to the Sudan by early archaeologists, as a racialist colonial thought. This conception, which assumes that all changes and developments in any group are caused by immigrants, actually deprives the indigenous inhabitants of creativity and the ability to develop independently, and to select and absorb the elements that are introduced, such as Arabic and Islam, within the institutions of their local culture. In this sense, the assumed process of Arabization and Islamization accomplished by Arab immigrants and seen as a stage of “evolution” and cultural transformation in Sudan history is misleading, a point that was discussed by Spaulding. SOME CONCLUDING REMARKS Now, ever since the first germs of Sudanese nationalism began to crystallize, the more such dynamics have been driven by the ups and downs of politics. The more the new groups among the Sudanese population have been politicized, the more new political and cultural entities have emerged, and the more new realities have taken shape and presented themselves in political and intellectual life. Over the course of the last eight decades increasing numbers of Sudanese from the regions have joined in the act of “being a Sudanese” and in defining that “being” through actual participation in the political or military exercise of “power.” In the present situation, what is at stake is not simply ethnicity, but rather a whole gamut of social traits—the intellectual, aesthetic, and emotional make-up that underlie the personality of a given community. In this regard, the flourishing research in the field of folklore, oral tradition, material culture, and the arts, have further instituted the historical depth and interdependence of Sudanese cultures.8 In the aesthetic domain, the arts are among the most historically authentic cultural elements as they are the expressive vehicle of the life of the group, and their originality and uniqueness as Sudanese cultural components is unquestionable. On the other hand, the term “Sudanism” has emerged as the most recent identity construct since the 1980s. It attracted new generations of intellectuals, politicians, and artists as a call for acceptance and ethnic and cultural coexistence, and a basis for establishing a state that reflects this ethnic and

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cultural pluralism. In fact, the political and literary roots of this term can be traced back to the leaders of the 1924 Revolution, and to critics such as Tambal and Ashri. The concept of Sudanism was first coined by Nureldin Satti in a series of articles published in 1979 and 1981. According to him, this concept is “a comprehensive framework that can accommodate all components, diff er en ces a nd e ven c ontradictions of the Sudanese nation which is in the process of formation” (.‫ مجلة الثقافة السودانية‬1980 ،‫ نورالدين‬،‫ )ساتي‬Then the art historian Ahmed al-Tayyib Zein al-Abdin took on this concept and applied it to modern Sudanese visual art, pointing to the presence of local Sudanese visual elements in the work of art as criteria to include it in the concept of Sudanism. Archaeologist Osama Abd al-Rahman al-Nur used the derivation “Sudanology” instead of “Nubiology” Studies and Meroitic Studies to designate the actual geographical and temporal expansion of Sudanese civilization. Even the late South Sudanese leader of Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) John Garang, used to mention Sudanism as “his ideology.” It is possible to conclude, then, that the concept of Sudanism9 denotes a specific interpretation for the cultural and ethnic history of Sudanese societies which have been based on established facts provided by the Social Sciences and the Humanities. And given the present moment of development in the Sudanese national crisis, all indications suggest that this concept became a rallying point for growing numbers of educated Sudanese who are fed up with military dictatorship, sectarian parties, and political Islam, and aspire for a final resolution to the long- standing national crisis.10

NOTES 1. Homi Bhabha, the postcolonial theorist, has written a great deal on the hybridity concept. In fact, in the last decade, in terms of global intellectual frameworks, the concept of hybridity has become “owned” by Bhabha. Not that he is the only person who has dealt with the concept in the past, but that his notions have captured the global scene. In The Location of Culture (1994) he presents hybridity as a doubling, dissembling image of being in at least two identity places at once. He does not stop at describing hybridity, but tries to explain the phenomenon as a paradigm of colonial anxiety. Although I am using the term in a more conventional way, nonetheless, Bhabha’s concept is related. 2. 1947 refers to the Juba conference attended by certain Southern representatives. 3. The principal poets representative of this trend were Abdulla Mohamed Omer al-Banna, Abdulla Abd al-Rahman, and Mohamed Said al-Abbasi. 4. See also Holt and Daly (2000, 2–7). 5. A critical account of analytic philosophy is found in Richard Shusterman (1992).

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6. Two ready examples are the novels of the Sudanese writer al-Tayyib Salih and the plays of Nigerian Wole Soyinka, who write in Arabic and in English, respectively. The themes that they treat signify both the local culture to which each of them belongs, as well as the wider context of their respective national culture. Salih belongs to the Shaiqi group and Soyinka to the Yoruba. 7. Shusterman (1992, 125–128) provides a general survey and critique of the linguistic turn in Western thought. 8. See for example Abusabib (2008) “Adornmental Tools of the Shaiqiyya and Their Cultural Sources, a Study in Traditional Aesthetics,” (in Arabic) where many formal qualities and cosmological beliefs are traced back to Christian and Meroitic eras. 9. In a long article (in Arabic) published in series in al-Midan newspaper in 2017, I discussed the concept of Sudanism and the views of a number of scholars who dealt with it. 10. In 2018 Sudanese carried out an insurrection against the Islamist military regime, and are in the process of reinterpretation and implementation of many new social processes and institutions.

REFERENCES Abd al-Hai, Mohamed. 1976. Conflict and Identity: The Cultural Politics of Contemporary Sudanese Poetry. Khartoum: Khartoum University Press. Abdal-Rahim, Muddathir. 1973. “Arabism, Africanism, and Self-Identification.” In The Southern Sudan: The Problem of National Unity, edited by Dunstan M. Wal. London: Frank Cass. Adams, William. 1977. Nubia: Corridor to Africa. London: Allen Lane. Adams, William. 1981. “Paradigms in Sudan Archaeology.” Africa Today, 2nd Quarter, 15–24. Al-Midan newspaper. 2017, June 8, 15, and 21; July 6, 20, and 27; August 3. Beshir, Mohamed Omer. 1969. Educational Development in the Sudan, 1898–1956. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Carmichael, Joel 1967. The Shaping of the Arabs. New York: The Macmillan Co. Hassan, Yusuf Fadl. 1967. The Arabs and the Sudan, From the Seventh to the Early Sixteenth Century. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Holt, P. M. and M. W. Daly. (1961) 2000. A History of the Sudan. London: Longman. Hurreiz, Sayyid H. 1989. “Ethnic, Cultural and National Identity in the Sudan: An Overview.” In Ethnicity, Conflict and National Integration in the Sudan, edited by Sayyid H. Hurreiz and Elfatih A. Abdel Salam, 69–101. Khartoum: Institute of African and Asian Studies. MacMichael, Harold. (1922) 1967. A History of the Arabs in the Sudan, vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Niblock, Tim. 1987. Class and Power in the Sudan: The Dynamics of Sudanese Politics, 1898–1985. London: The Macmillan Press.

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‫‪O’Fahey, R. S. 1995. “Islamism and Ethnicity in the Sudan.” In al-Tanawwu al‬‬‫‪Thaqafi wa Bina al-Dawla al-Wataniyya fi al-Sudan, edited by Haider Ibrahim Ali,‬‬ ‫‪93–107. Cairo: Sudanese Studies Centre.‬‬ ‫‪O’Fahey, R. S. and J. L. Spaulding 1974. Kingdoms of the Sudan. London: Methuen‬‬ ‫‪& Co.‬‬ ‫‪Osman, Khalid H. A. 1987. The Effendia and the Concept of Nationalim in the Sudan.‬‬ ‫‪Ph.D. thesis, University of Reading.‬‬ ‫‪Shinnie, P. L. 1981. “Changing Attitudes Towards the Past.” Africa Today, 2nd‬‬ ‫‪Quarter, 25–32.‬‬ ‫‪Shusterman, Richard. 1992. Pragmatist Aesthetics: Living Beauty, Rethinking Art.‬‬ ‫‪Oxford: Blackwell.‬‬ ‫‪Siddiq, Abdalhadi. 1973. Usul al-Shir al-Sudani. Khartoum: The National Council‬‬ ‫‪for Arts and Letters.‬‬ ‫‪Spaulding, Jay and Lidwien Kapteijns. 1991. “The Orientalist Paradigm in the‬‬ ‫‪Historiography of the Late Pre-colonial Sudan.” In Golden Ages Dark Ages:‬‬ ‫‪Imagining the Past in Anthropology and History, edited by W. Reseberry and J.‬‬ ‫‪O’Brien, 139– 151. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.‬‬ ‫‪Trigger, Bruce G. 1994. “Paradigms in Sudan Archaeology.” The International‬‬ ‫‪Journal of African Historical Studies 27 (2): 323–345.‬‬

‫املراجع العربية‬ ‫إبراهيم‪ ،‬عبدالله عيل ‪ .1996‬الثقافة والدميوقراطية يف السودان‪ .‬القاهرة‪ :‬مركز الدراسات السودانية‪.‬‬ ‫إبراهيم‪ ،‬محمد امليك (‪ .1989 )1976‬الفكر السوداين‪ :‬أصوله وتطوره‪ .‬الخرطوم‪ :‬مطبعة السهم‪.‬‬ ‫أبكر‪ ،‬النور عثامن ‪“ .1967‬لقاح الغابة والصحراء‪“ .‬الصحافة‪ 19 ،‬سبتمرب‪ .‬الخرطوم‪ :‬دار الصحافة‪.‬‬ ‫أبوسبيب‪ ،‬محمد عبدالرحمن ‪ .2008‬أدوات الزينة عند الشايقية وأصولها الثقافية‪ ،‬دراسة يف الجاملية الشعبية‪.‬‬ ‫أمدرمان‪ :‬مركز عبدالكريم مريغني‬ ‫األيام ‪ 18 ،1985‬مايو‪” .‬محاورات حول الثقافة السودانية‪ “.‬الخرطوم‪ :‬دار األيام‪.‬‬ ‫الصديق‪ ،‬عبدالهادي ‪ .1973‬أصول الشعر السوداين‪ .‬الخرطوم‪ :‬املجلس القومي لآلداب والفنون‪.‬‬ ‫الطاهر‪ ،‬الفاتح ‪ .1993‬أنا أمدرمان‪ ،‬تاريخ املوسيقي يف السودان‪ .‬الخرطوم‪ :‬النارش املكتبي‪.‬‬ ‫الفجر ‪ ،1935‬رقم ‪ ،22‬مايو‪.‬‬ ‫جابر‪ ،‬جمعة ‪ .1988‬املوسيقى السودانية‪ :‬تاريخ‪ ،‬تراث‪ ،‬هوية‪ ،‬نقد‪ .‬الخرطوم‪ :‬رشكة الفارايب‪.‬‬ ‫زين العابدين‪ ،‬أحمد الطيب ‪” .1991‬السودانوية هل هي آخر املطاف؟“ حروف رقم ‪( 3 - 2‬مارس)‪– 23 ،‬‬ ‫‪ .37.‬الخرطوم‪ :‬دار نرش جامعة الخرطوم‬ ‫سايت‪ ،‬نور الدين ‪” .2007‬الهوية والوحدة الوطنية‪ ،‬رؤية سودانوية‪ “.‬مجلة كرامة‪ ،‬العدد األول ‪ ،‬سبتمرب‪ .‬الخرطوم‪:‬‬ ‫‪.‬دار مدارك‬ ‫سايت‪ ،‬نور الدين ‪ .1980‬مجلة الثقافة السودانية‪.‬‬ ‫طمبل‪ ،‬حمزة امللك (‪ .2005 )1972( )1928‬األدب السوداين وما يجب أن يكون عليه‪ .‬بريوت‪ :‬دار الفكر‪.‬‬ ‫عبدالرحمن‪ ،‬عبدالله ‪ .1967‬العربية يف السودان‪ .‬بريوت‪ :‬دار الكتاب‪.‬‬ ‫عثامن‪ ،‬فتحي ‪” .1993‬مقابلة مع الصلحي‪ “.‬كتابات سودانية رقم ‪( 4‬نوفمرب)‪ .139 – 113 ،‬القاهرة‪ :‬مركز‪.‬‬ ‫الدراسات السودانية‬ ‫كيوريتا‪ ،‬يوشيكو ‪ .1997‬عيل عبداللطيف وثورة ‪ ،1924‬بحث يف مصادر الثورة السودانية‪ .‬ترجمة مجدي‬ ‫النعيم‪ .‬القاهرة‪ :‬مركز الدراسات السودانية‪.‬‬

Section IV

THE PRODUCTION OF INTELLECTUALS

Chapter 7

Interrogating the Dilemma of Sudanese Academics Producing Knowledge or Recycling Ideologies Atta El-Battahani

Dating its origins back to 1902, the University of Khartoum (UofK) eventually emerged as a center of modernity, enlightenment, and progress in the conservative, underdeveloped, and conflict-ridden society of the Sudan.1 Like other universities in Africa, the UofK strived to balance demands of autonomy and accountability, expansion and excellence, equity and efficiency, diversification and differentiation, and internationalization and indigenization in the face of neoliberalization and privatization (Zeleza and Olukoshi 2004). Many individual faculty members of the UofK published in internationally refereed journals and a few gained eminent scholarly status. However, while the UofK’s record in generating knowledge is recognized, a critical evaluation is yet to come. From early on, the UofK faced many challenges and had to adapt or resist successive political regimes seeking, with varying degrees of success, to mold the university in its own image and bring it under control. I discuss these attempts to control and the resistance against them within three broad historical periods: colonial 1898–1956, post-independence 1956–1989, and the Inqaz—Islamic-military phase 1989–2019— all of which involved attempts to divert the UofK from its principal mission of knowledge production; recognizing that universities in the Sudan as elsewhere are, one way or another, sites of knowledge and politics. The Inqaz period, compared to former periods, was unparalleled as the most radical of all in terms of actively trying to mold the University in the image of the state. Taking the UofK as representative of universities in the Sudan, I address efforts exerted by the Inqaz regime to alter the role of the UofK from a center 133

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of modernity and enlightenment into a breeding ground for the regime’s official ideology of political Islam. Rather than providing much needed resources and allowing staff members to engage in knowledge production, the government turned the campus into an arena for settling ideological and political accounts with its opponents. Addressing the production of knowledge by Sudanese academics is a huge and challenging research topic. I do not purport to give a comprehensive, exhaustive, and research-based account. Rather, the chapter is more of a speculative treatment in the hope that future research and empirical investigation would delve deeper into some of the themes raised here. All we hope for is to invite academics (both Sudanese and non-Sudanese) whose research focuses on the Sudan to take up this matter further. What is presented here is at best a very general sketch of three historical periods through which universities came to evolve and be established as centers for higher education and research geared toward knowledge production. This is even more pertinent following a recent successful popular uprising that put an end to the Omar al-Bashir-led Islamist government and opened opportunities for universities to be principal sites for knowledge production and steer away from previous wrangling in sterile ideological debates. However, the military take-over on 25th October 2021 posed serious challenging situation for revolutionary forces, putting the transition from autocracy to democracy at risk. Researchers and epistemic communities emerged gradually. I argue here that throughout recent history, the educated and the intelligentsia in the Sudan vacillated between three broad positions or trends during colonial rule.2 These are: (a) a rejection of the colonial, Western educational system which is based on empiricist, positivist foundations and, thereby, can be seen as antithetical to the Islamic values and identity of the nation,3 (b) embracing, more or less, the Western educational system, seen as instrumental for modernization and development, and (c) conditional acceptance of the educational system, that is, accepting the material and technical infrastructure and rejecting “capitalist” values and programs seen as repressive and neo-colonial.4 The three are not mutually exclusive.5 For example (a) and (c) are both rejectionist but for different reasons; while (b) and (c) are accommodative but again with a different reasoning. In the mid-1950s, an enlightened, managerial elite was groomed to run the state in the post-independence era, but the deeply rooted factionalism and the fractured political class that characterized the national movement did not spare universities from its effects. A left and right spectrum in politics soon found its way into campuses and universities, starting from the student movements all the way up to university staff members, as attested by the elections of the vice chancellors of the UofK, and even more so in the elections of the representatives of the electoral college of the graduates in 1965 and 1986. While one may argue that a degree of intellectual and epistemological pluralism prevailed most of the time, yet one may venture to presume that

Interrogating the Dilemma of Sudanese Academics

135

Islamist staff had complete administrative control over universities during the three decades from 1989 to 2019. Hence, in a way, it was only during the last 30-year rule that a certain ideological trend has held almost complete sway over higher education. For this reason, one section in this chapter is devoted to gauge the impact of this trend in influencing academics and researchers during the last 30 years. At some point, intellectuals and academics have been distracted and had their energy consumed in controversies over the country’s politics. Part of the underperformance of Sudanese intellectuals and academics may be attributed to their falling victims to an acute intersection of conflicting cultures (Khalid Musa 2017)6 and multiple marginality (Mazrui in Yousif Fadl Hasan 2006, 240–255; Francis Deng 1994). The Inqaz regime had driven this process to an extreme, the result of which was undermining and transforming the role of the university from a center of knowledge production into a center of administrative control of academics.7 With radical Islam taking over in June 1989 the fate of a highly polarized political environment in universities was sealed. Both the so-called Revolution of Higher Education and the Islamization of Knowledge availed the Islamists of an opportunity to control to the point of hijacking the UofK and attempting to put an end to its historical role as a center for secular, enlightened, and liberal thought and research. It is argued that thawart al-Ta’iem al-Ala’li (Revolution of Higher Education) has as one of its main tenets the objective of aslamat al-maʽrifa (Islamization of knowledge), yet the bureaucratic top-down and disciplinarycommandeering nature of the former in the formulation of policies and the management of resources reduced the latter to an administrative tool rather than a field for knowledge generation.8 To reiterate, within the broad historical periods identified above, in this chapter I sketch the challenges facing academics and researchers in the Sudan in: (i) politics impinging on academics and campus environment; (ii) energy of academics being dissipated and their research priorities diverted by overpoliticization and ideological squabbles to the extent that the UofK failed to give rise to ‟a Khartoum School” in any of the research areas or sites to which the Sudan proved to be a fertile ground for more than half a century (such as conflict and peace-making, structural adjustment policies, and political Islam);9 and (iii) challenges ahead for universities in post-April 2019 to play their role in knowledge production and as centers for modernity, enlightenment, and progress. An awesome task awaits authorities post-April 2019 on how to professionalize and retain the integrity and independence of universities and higher education, but most importantly, this drive should not take an ideological twist lest it begs the question of producing knowledge.10 The December 2018

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Revolution in the Sudan ushered in a new era for academics, in particular for those who have been battling the now-defunct radical Islamic regime for three decades. Now, with the December Revolution11 a new historic phase has opened up for the UofK to confront the dilemma of either knowledge generation or the recycling of ideologies. Different views are expressed by academics on what is at stake: addressing challenges of academic reforms, curricula, or first resolving epistemological issues and framing a knowledge map before talking about curriculum reform, teaching, and research. It remains to be seen whether impingement from the outside would once again dictate things or whether the UofK would be able to re-invent itself and catch up with other academic institutions in the continent and worldwide. STRUCTURE OF THE CHAPTER Following the introduction, section two offers some notes on epistemic communities (ECs). In section three, an overview of the two periods (colonial and postindependence) is given. Section four suggests a brief note on the general status of knowledge production during the Inqaz period.12 Section five looks at how administrative committees (ACs) came to dictate terms of activities of ECs. Section six is a conclusion that focuses on the risks ahead for universities. EPISTEMIC COMMUNITIES AND KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION As part of institutions of higher education, universities are governed by legislations, laws, and statutes defining their mission, setting administrative structures, specifying sources of finance and budgeting, and so on. In African countries, having their achieving following political independence after World War II, universities in these countries were charged with overseeing the transformation of curricula and staff from colonial to postcolonial systems, training the technical and administrative labor force needed for economic development and, above all, working on generating knowledge in fields vital to the prosperity of the nation and humanity at large (Zeleza, Paul T. and Adebayo Olukoshi 2004). In this regard, the UofK is not at all different from other universities in the region.13 However, as will be shown below the UofK’s mission has been frustrated by politics impinging on its policies, causing staff to drift away from their primary roles—a state of affairs that was particularly true during the last 30 years (1989–2019). It was during this period that professional academics came under the mantle of administrative and political appointees as faculty.

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I differentiate between, on one hand, administrative committees (ACs) responsible for running administrative and financial affairs in universities and, on the other hand, epistemic committees (ECs) made up of academic faculty charged with teaching and research activities. It is this latter group that is concerned with research and knowledge production. University faculty carry out their job by teaching and researching. Ideally, teaching and research are related and feed into each other, thus enhancing knowledge production for which universities are sites. Knowledge is produced by individuals as well as groups of researchers; but the kind of knowledge we are interested in and which impacts science and society is produced collectively by researchers and scientists known as an epistemic community (EC). What Is an Epistemic Community? Epistemic communities are defined and identified by their shared sets of causal and principled ideas coupled with a common knowledge base and policy goals. It is not surprising that causal ideas and principled beliefs travel together as scientific paradigms combining principled beliefs or worldviews (core assumptions) with casual ideas (empirically testable hypotheses). It is also not surprising that experts who share intellectual paradigms arrive at a consensual knowledge base. Epistemic communities start from a common knowledge base (or the sense that this knowledge base is problematic or incomplete), a shared normative commitment that something must be done about a certain issue (a call to action), or as an offshoot of a pre-existing community of experts which moves from a technical field into politics—from an academic forum to political ground. Peter Haas’s argument that epistemic communities are recognized by four central elements—shared causal ideas, shared principled beliefs, shared notions of validity, and a common policy enterprise (Haas 1992, 3). This is widely accepted as a working definition of EC. Such communities embody a belief system around an issue which contains four knowledge elements: [1] a shared set of normative and principled beliefs, which provide a value-based rationale for the social action of community members; [2] shared causal beliefs, which are derived from their analysis of practices leading or contributing to a central set of problems in their domain and which then serve as the basis for elucidating the multiple linkages between possible policy actions and desired outcomes; [3] shared notions of validity—that is, intersubjective, internally defined criteria for weighing and validating knowledge in the domain of their expertise; and [4] a common policy enterprise—that is, a set of common practices associated with a set of problems to which their

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professional competence is directed, presumably out of the conviction that human welfare will be enhanced as a consequence (Haas, 1992a-3 in Claire A. Dunlop 2011). Researchers/academics can come together to form and consolidate as epistemic communities through various routes. In other words, the formation of an EC involves elaboration of its ideas, including the collection of scientific evidence, reduction of uncertainty by the testing of causal ideas, and consensus building around facts, ideas, and norms. The core analytical point here is that in the absence of epistemic communities to frame complex issues and proffer new ideas, policy making would follow more conventional, unreflective paths (Haas 2011). On the other hand, the effective contribution of the epistemic communities’ framework is to remind us that “ideas would be sterile without carriers” (Haas 1992a in Dunlop 2011). Thus, to identify an epistemic community is to identify a set of actors with the professional and social stature to make authoritative claims on politically pertinent and socially relevant issues of the day. Though members of epistemic communities came in large part from similar social backgrounds and there is a lot of social overlap, yet the way they frame things and the concepts they use at times seem quite similar. Hence, at the risk of oversimplification one may claim that two broad epistemic communities can be identified in Sudanese universities and research institutions: secular and Islamic; and that the Inqaz has empowered the latter over the former for its duration in power.

FROM COLONIAL TO POST-INDEPENDENCE PERIOD: 1898–1989 Colonial Period 1898–1956 Following the re-conquest of the Sudan in 1898, Gordon Memorial College (GMC) was established in 1902 to train graduates to assist in the lower ranks of the civil service, but the secular education the Sudanese were exposed to gradually helped ferment nationalist spirit among the educated class (Khalid El-Kid 2011, 55–110). With the revolutionary events of 1924, the colonial government moved to reduce modern secular schools and to increase the number of Khalwa, (traditional religious schools) whose number jumped from 161 to 293 (El-Sied 1990, 139; Seri-Hersch 2011; El-Kid 2011). Fear of inciting and fomenting Islamic religious sentiments, repeating the pattern of the Mahdist anti-Western rebellion, was behind the British cautious attitude toward gradually introducing secular subjects to pupils and students and to moderate religious emotions (El-Mubarak 1985, 13). These

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were balanced with concerns about the influence of Egyptian nationalism (White Flag League) and Lugard’s development of the policy of “indirect rule.” Other policy objectives of reducing administrative cost and balancing the government’s books were behind setting up GMC and other educational institutions to train local Sudanese cadres to fill in the lower ranks in the civil service. In 1935 GMC set up specialized colleges beginning with a Law School, followed in 1938 with Arts, Science, Engineering, Agriculture, and Veterinary Science. Graduates of Arts were to teach English and graduates of other schools were to engage as technical staff in implementing government policies in respective areas of their specializations. Social science subjects centered on teaching geography and history of both Sudan as well as the history of the British Empire (Bashir 1974, 124). British social anthropologists were moved in to generate valuable knowledge used by the colonial administration for political expediency in indirect rule in South Sudan, the Nuba Mountains, and Kordofan, among other regions in the Sudan (Bashir 1974, 337). In the aftermath of 1924, reservations and fear by the British colonial administration of growing nationalist sentiments among secularly educated Sudanese led to reducing the intake to GMC. This affected the number of students admitted during the years from 1932 up to 1936. In 1951 GMC and the Medical School merged to form Khartoum University College (KUC), which was affiliated with the University of London. In 1956 KUC was transformed into the University of Khartoum–UofK (Heather Sharkey 2003). Secular educational institutions found rivals in Islamic traditional institutions of khalwas and masids of religious tariqas (religious sects of both the Ansar and Khatmiyya, for example). Evolving and developing parallel with GMC (and University of Khartoum later) was al-Maʽhad al-ʽIlmi (Institute of Religious Studies), an al-Azar-like Islamic educational institution founded in Omdurman in 1912. Fear of being seen as not supportive of religious education drove both the major Ansar and Khatmiyya sects to give assistance to the Maʽhad throughout the 1930s. Support of Islamic religious education to counter secular education culminated in 1951 in the hosting of the Grand Mosque of Omdurman of the Maʽhad. That was the moment when the colonial administration distanced itself from these moves (El-Haj 1987, 229). (See chapter 5 by Abdullahi Ali Ibrahim in this volume.) The educational policies of the colonial administration served two objectives: it measured and controlled encouragement of secular education (but not to the extent of buttressing nationalist sentiments and movements) and very carefully used religious Islamic education (Abdullahi Ali Ibrahim 2008) to balance and act as a counterweight to secular trends and fomented conflict between the rival sects of Ansar and Khatmiyya. Receiving tacit support from some British administrators was another dimension of fomenting regional and

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“racial” divides among the population of the Sudan: Northerners believing and seeing themselves as Arabs and non-Northerners as Africans (Ashraf Abdelhay et al. 2011). Heather Sharkey argues that the GMC acculturated elite Sudanese into a particular idea of the “nation” that was simultaneously Arab and Muslim and that was reproduced at independence, even as these same figures became nationalists (Sharkey 2003). Efforts buttressing Arab identity received a further boost from literacy campaigns. Alongside formal education there were literacy campaigns seen as “a central tool to foster social progress and political modernity” (Seri-Hersch 2011) but these were used to promote and perpetuate the Arab tradition in Northern Sudan, giving more weight to the Arab-Islamic identity. Whether these ‟discriminatory” measure emerged from practical experience rather than deliberate policy, the outcome was more emphasis on Arab-Islamic culture, at least from early educated Northern elites (Umbadda 1990).14 Elena Vezzadini explores a number of facets connected to the question of discrimination and racial selection of the pupils: first, which racial considerations were at work in the admission of students; second, to which extent these were applied and whether there were differences according to the level of education; third, what were the consequences of the gap between stated colonial racial preferences and educational practices in matters of recruitment for government jobs, to which the overwhelming majority of educated Sudanese were destined (Vezzadini 2018a). This configuration, in fact, was especially important in the study of post-war nationalism because it impacted the composition of the nationalist group, as the heterogeneity of school population meant that being an educated intellectual did not coincide with having a specific background. After 1924, and as a consequence of the fact that “Black” Sudanese became the scapegoats of the upheaval, the government became much more careful in selecting only the “right” elements— in terms of racial attribution—for its schools, leading to the construction of an intellectual elite that would be firmly associated with having an Arab background (Vezzadini 2018). The last colonial decade (1947–1957) witnessed a triple process of educational expansion, unification, and nationalization. Mounting Anglo-Egyptian rivalries over the control of the Sudan and the polarization of Sudanese nationalists into “pro-British” calling for the Sudan independence and “proEgyptian” unionists led the British authorities in Khartoum to boost government education while giving up the policy of separate rule between North and South. In practice, the educational unification of the two Sudanese regions meant the alignment of Southern curricula on Northern programs and the introduction of Arabic into Southern schools, first as a subject matter, then as a medium of instruction. Missionary and other private schools were nationalized one year after the Sudan gained independence from Britain and Egypt

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in 1956 (Vezzadini 2018). People in peripheral Sudan, “Black” Sudanese, comprise the bulk of disadvantaged, marginalized, and subaltern groups.15 Sudanization policies and measures in the early 1950s ‟institutionalized” the ethnic-regional divide and, inter alia, ignited violent conflicts on the eve of political independence. Out of the three trends identified above, political and social configurations at the turn of 1950s gave an undue advantage to trends (a) and (b) with the latter having an upper hand, at least during the first decade of independence. Post-Independence 1956–1989 The competition between Islamic and secular centers of education and knowledge continued unabated during the post-independence period, with the former gradually gaining the upper hand. Following independence in 1956, graduates of Khartoum University came not only to occupy the upper echelons of the civil service (El-Sied 1990, 200) but also to form an important component of the leading political elites. Cooperation between the UofK and London University continued. During 1956–1989 and despite repressive measures during Nimeiri’s era, UofK managed to provide space for political liberalism and epistemological pluralism. At the other end of the spectrum stood the anti-secular knowledge center—the al-Maʽhad al-ʽIlmi (upgraded to a College of Islamic Studies and then to the Omdurman Islamic University in 1966) whose graduates generally took less prestigious jobs confined to teaching religion and Arabic studies. The 1960s witnessed activities by the Sudanese Philosophical Society and its journal Sudan Notes and Records. However, these activities were overshadowed by intense political polarization between leftist, secular trends, and Islamic fundamentalists in post-October 1964, which led to the downgrading by the May (Nimieri) regime of Omdurman Islamic University to a College for Arabic and Islamic Studies in 1969. This decision was rescinded in 1973, and the university status was restored when the regime moved to reconcile with traditional and Islamic forces. The decade of the 1970s witnessed intense rivalry between secularist and Islamist forces, each trying to make the best use of opportunities available. Improved relations with socialist countries opened the door for many graduates to obtain scholarships, which further led to the strengthening of a secular and leftist line of research. On the other hand, the 1970s came with huge opportunities for the Islamic-fundamentalist trend. That was the decade that saw the Sudan relying heavily on oil producing countries, Saudi Arabia in particular, for opening the labor market for educated and non-educated Sudanese (El-Battahani 1996). Apart from economic gains, the impact of these migrations played a significant role in shaping the educational and

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knowledge map in the Sudan. Doors were opened for various versions of strict interpretations of Islam to penetrate the Sudanese educational system, in particular when President Nimeiri reconciled with the Muslim Brotherhood and instituted strict Sharia law. This was the time that activities by epistemic communities of Ulama in Omdurman Islamic University (OIU) received a boost in the competition with secular research in areas of banking, finance, and economic development. Academics and researchers in the UofK and in the Centre for Social and Economic Research stood at the other end of the spectrum (ElZain 1996). Space limitation in this chapter does not allow me to give examples of the production of knowledge by these competing ECs. Nonetheless, while both ECs—secular and Islamic—vied for power on campus, both came under the superior authority of the state. A one-party system prevailed during the time, and vice chancellors, deputies, and board of directors for universities and research institutes were directly appointed by the president, standing as a patron of higher education and research. It is my contention that this was the time that administrative and bureaucratic control over academia and research took institutional form but did not yet have a sweeping control. A process of shifting power gradually from academic faculty to administrative committees began during the early 1980s when the Council of Deans in the U of K began to usurp competences of academic committees. Sweeping control was left for the soon-to-come Inqaz regime to achieve.

INQAZ AND ISLAMIZATION OF KNOWLEDGE: 1989–2019 Roots of the Islamization of Knowledge Historians refer to the 1920s as the time for the early Nahda (renaissance) of the Muslim world, following the end of the Islamic caliphate and the efforts by Muslim scholars and thinkers to weave a discourse for Muslims to absorb the shock and rupture caused by colonial rule and to come to terms with modernity. In the Sudan, the re-conquest in 1898 represented a fundamental break with the Mahdist theocratic state. Nonetheless, the British administration sought to incorporate religious sects and work with Sharia courts (Abduallahi Ali Ibrhaim 2008). As mentioned above, the colonial administration encouraged modern, secular education but kept orchestrating and manipulating the expansion of secular education, eyeing with suspicion the growth of the nationalist movement, the leadership of which emerged from Western educated Sudanese. The nationalist events of 1924 confirmed the fears of the British. Hence, factionalism within the nationalist movement

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between religious-traditional leaders and modern secular ones played into the hands of the colonial administration during the 1940s and early 1950s. Those who opposed the philosophy of Western education emerged among the Sudanese who, in most cases, had their education outside the country (Europe and Egypt).This was a trend referred to above, but it was not identified as advocating Islamization of knowledge, as this concept came to be known later. Islamization of Knowledge Institutions Aslamat al-maʽrifa, the Islamization of Knowledge, or Taseelal-Ma’rifa, the Originalization of Knowledge, has roots outside the Sudan, and there are debates on where it originated in the first place (e.g., Journal of Islamization Knowledge, Issue 25). One view claims that the idea of the Islamization of Knowledge first came into being in a book by Sayed Nageeb al-Atas calling for liberating Muslims from Western, secular hegemonic sources of knowledge (Journal of Islamization Knowledge, Issue 25).16 Islamist thinkers did not dwell long as to who first coined the term; instead they were more concerned with its substantive meaning and the practical mechanisms to translate it into reality. Rather than going into philosophical and epistemological issues, the focus here is on the policy implications of political leadership adopting the Islamization of Knowledge as official policy in universities and research institutions in the Sudan. Mahjoub Obeid, a professor of Physics, believes that the originalization of knowledge along Islamic lines helps to put the relationship between science and religion in the right direction and fends off atheist tendencies in science and that this objective can be achieved through a review of curricula, publication of books, and cultural activities (Journal of Ta’sil 1994 no. 1, 6). The Islamization of Knowledge informed the Inqaz regime’s policies of its Higher Education Revolution and Arabicization of curricula in universities, higher institutes, and schools. Following this, a number of institutions were set up to implement this policy: • Ma’had Islam al-Ma’rifa (Institute of Islamization Knowledge) in University of Gezira • Idarat Taseel al-Ma’rifa (directorate of originalization of Knowledge) in Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research • Al-Markaz al-A’lami li-abhath al-Iman (International Centre for Faith Research) • Mustashariyyat al-Taseel (Advisory Centre for originalization) • Mugama’ al-figh al-Islami (Center for Islamic Teaching)

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• Ja;izat El-ZubairlilIbda’ wa al-Tamauz al-ilmi (El-Zubair Prize for Creativity and Scientific Excellence) Moreover, there are a number of other institutes and centers (Such as Markaz al-Tanweer al-Ma’rifi (e.g., Centre for Epistemological Enlightenment) all staffed with Islamic scholars and researchers and receiving generous funds from the government and outside international Islamic sources. It is not my intention to review and assess the impact that the Islamization of knowledge has had on universities and research. However, it does appear that, despite the fact that social sciences, arts, and law faculties and departments in universities were particularly targeted to toe the line of the Islamization of knowledge, very little has been achieved. Academics and researchers of Islamist-like minds have had an undue advantage over secular academics and researchers, yet the former failed to shape the knowledge map. Islamization of knowledge failed to generate scientific knowledge. In effect, Islamization measures in universities overpowered bureaucracy over academia, allowed authorities to use administrative powers to dismiss faculty members and, eventually, ended up by consolidating the powers of the administrative staff in universities, vis-à-vis academics. This latter effect benefitted from the practices of the early 1980s of empowering certain bodies (Deans’ Councils) over other academic bodies (Research Councils and Faculty Boards). With what was described as the Revolution of Higher Education and the Islamization of Knowledge the stage was set for the control of universities and research institutions by the loyalists of the Inqaz regime. This was not a “revolution in paradigms,” to use Thomas Kuhn’s phrase, but it was rather a revolution in a negative sense, that is, doing away with existing policies without putting in place alternative policies geared toward knowledge production. The “Revolution of Higher Education” aimed at “policing the campus” and Epistemic Communities informed by an Islamic paradigm that has hardly generated knowledge commensurate with the huge resources laid at its doors.17 CONSTRAINED EPISTEMIC COMMUNITIES Three major historical periods are identified above as shaping the landscape for education and knowledge production in universities and research institutions. During the British administrative era, political expediency played a role in providing a space for both secular and religious education. It is clear from the above that epistemic communities identified as secular and religious, which spoke directly to the complex challenges faced by decision-makers in uncertain policy environments. This uncertain policy environment prevailed

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in the post-independence period where political polarization led to a shift in policy orientations from left to right during the 1960s and 1980s, whereas the role played by knowledge experts and epistemic communities varied during these periods. While a degree of epistemological pluralism characterized the post-independence period of 1956–1989, the third period was characterized by the sway held by the proponents of Islamic ideology over state institutions and universities for the last three decades. During 1989–2019 the Islamists controlled universities and research institutions to produce a particular type of knowledge. While, admittedly, some changes in orientation, policies, and personnel took place during the 30-year Inqaz rule, nonetheless, the overall thrust of the regime remained the same, and the changes that took place were more of a “recombinant” nature, to use Heydemann’s term (Heydemann 2004), that did not touch the hardcore of the regime. Yet after all long-term strategic planning and training young academics to qualify and take the lead in the Islamization of knowledge and institutional and material resources made available, the actual output in terms of opening up a groundbreaking paradigm came to drab, at best reiterating articles of faith. Islamist academics who rose to prominence hardly adhered to the canons of Taseel al-Ma’arifa. The flip side of this was loss of opportunity by forcing professional faculty to leave the country, if not dismissing them from the start. As far as the legal and institutional set-up of Sudanese universities was concerned, the dominant culture was characterized by over politicization and campus violence with vice chancellors parading in military camouflaged uniforms chanting “God is Great” and competing with their counterparts in other universities to divert resources from research to jihad, and in more than one case, literally converting campuses into security and military barracks. Despite what the universities went through during the 30-year rule of Inqaz, a remarkable degree of resilience and stamina was shown by a number of faculty members who, against all odds, remained inside the country. Following the ousting of the Inqaz rule in April 2019, the onus now falls on those faculty members who endured the ups and downs of Inqaz to resuscitate the academic life in universities. However, they should not do this in a crusade-like spirit, as an ideological stand against the claims of Islamization of knowledge. The landscape of funding and measures facilitating research was shapely skewed in favor of ECs with Islamist leanings against those ECs with secular and anti-regime positions. The latter could undertake research in a discreet, uncertain way. It is important to note that joint research work requires resources and funds that are either unavailable or controlled by ACs who are in control of universities. One alternative available for funding is the one provided through consultancies—which in most cases are interested in policy-oriented research and more aligned with the current neoliberal agenda.

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Part of the reason why the Islamization of knowledge failed to deliver was that the amplified and overstressed aspect was deemed to weaken the scholarly integrity of Sudanese academics and dissipate attention and energy in debates not related to knowledge production, for example, the futility of approaches debating identity as has been suggested above, that is, not debating identity as such or for that matter issues related to Islam. Taking an antiIslamic stand should not be an asset to academic researchers and certainly not a license to generate scientific knowledge. Scientific knowledge should stand the test of verification, falsification in a milieu characterized by epistemological pluralism, conducive environment, and open minded attitude to embrace new ideas. This aspect goes beyond simply changes in government and university administrations. To deepen our understanding, research is required that explores how epistemic communities emerge in the first place and what happens to them as they interact with decision-makers and other policy actors over time, particularly during the last three decades. In a way, Inqaz may not take all the blame; there are deep sociological root for feeble ECs. This is because official sanctioning of Islamization of knowledge has underpinned a dormant tendency, a leftover from Sufi traditions and ethos of shying away from scientific spirit (Muhammad al-Makki Ibrahim 1976, 9; Muhammad Awad ʽAbbush 2010, 167–208), thereby reinforcing the educated Sudanese inclination not to engage in critical thinking and laborious scientific research. The Sufi tradition is pervasive in the Sudan. One would need an entirely extended and different interpretation to understand the relationship of Sufis to the production of knowledge. CONCLUDING REMARKS Sudanese intellectuals and academics have been distracted and had their energy consumed in controversies over the identity of the country. As mentioned above, part of the underperformance of Sudanese intellectuals and academics may be attributed to their falling victim to the acute intersection of conflicting cultures and multiple marginalities (Mansour Khalid 1990; Khalid Musa 2017).18 The Inqaz regime had driven this process to an extreme, the result of which has been to undermine and transform the role of the university from a center of knowledge production into a center for administrative control of academics.19 Thus, the struggle to professionalize and de-Islamize universities and higher education will be a difficult one, possibly requiring new generations of academics and administrators who are not part of the old system and who are more representative of the country’s demographics (age, gender, ethnicity,

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region, race, etc.). In other words, once higher education is diversified, we should start to see change. One note of caution, though, a professionalization and de-Islamization of universities and higher education should not turn into an ideological stand; otherwise the purpose of producing scholarly knowledge would be defeated by those carrying the banner of putting things right. Furthermore, in the neoliberal, market-oriented world, issues pertaining to teaching, and curricular and research policies must be subjected to scrutiny and prioritization of national agenda. The educational and research policies of Inqaz have led to confused privatization of higher education and universities in the service of profit-minded business circles. A paradigm shift in higher education is needed now more than ever.

NOTES 1. I would like to extend my thanks to Ustaz Mahjoub M. Salih, Abdel Muta’alZein al-Abdin, Mohamed Osman Mekki, Hassan Haj Ali, ElNur Hamad, Rebecca Glade, and Nada Mustafa for comments on early drafts. Needless to say, errors herewith are only mine. Thanks are also due to co-editors of this volume Gada Kadoda and Sondra Hale for their patience and fine editing. 2. Couched in “Ideal type” language, broad categories, internally differentiated into sub-sets along epistemological as well as political lines, that is, those embracing scientific methods do not necessarily subscribe to radical political ideologies. For example, many perceive Hasan al-Turabi as radical in thinking, yet politically conservative. 3. Those who adopted this position received their education either from Islamic universities or Western, secular ones. (For example, Sadiq Abd Allah Abd al-Majid went to Azhar University in Egypt and Hasan al-Turabi went to London and Sorboune universities.) 4. In general, most, not all, of these academics received their education from Western universities. 5. Even more so, many known intellectuals had shifted positions from one type to another. 6. Manour Khalid (‫ضحية فواصل تقاطع الثقافات تسعي لتمجيد ذاتها لجبر نقصان نفسي تحسه في‬ ‫ )نفسها‬claimed that being victims of an acute interplay of cultures drives intellectuals to seek self-aggrandizement to overcome a sense of inferiority. See Khalid Musa 18/06/2017. http://alhakim​-sd​.net​/wordpress​/2020​/04​/22/‫وتد المسكوت‬. ‫خالد موسى دفع هللا‬ ‫عنه وزعازع المحرمات‬. 7. Many faculty left the country and joined either opposition parties or armed guerilla movements. 8. Professionally minded academics did not impulsively reject Islamization of Knowledge; some gave it the benefit of the doubt pending research-based studies. However judging from a cursory observation of Islamist faculty members who were trained abroad and charged with the task of “Islamizing” social sciences in the

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departments of the Faculty of Economic and Social Studies did not produce studies and research in line with canons of “Islamization of Knowledge.” See, for example, the papers presented to the conference on Islamization of Knowledge, organized by the Institute for Islamization of Knowledge, University of Gezira, Khartoum, February 2–4, 1994. Political appointees and administrative committees (ACs) marginalized academic staff, undermined epistemic communities (ECs) by depriving them of resources and imposing administrative procedural controls over their academic activities and research. I had exchanged memos with the Graduate College, University of Khartoum regarding assessment of academic theses, and procedures for admitting research studies for postgraduate studies. 9. Since Independence in mid-1950s the Sudan traveled through protracted violent conflicts for almost all the time except for a lull in 1970s (peace talks were underway at the time of writing in 2020). The country has been a laboratory for political Islam and market economy for over three decades and had not produced a Sudanese Archie Mafeji, or Samir Amin, or Isaac Shifji. (This is discussed in the Hale essay—the Introduction.) 10. The challenge in current (post-April 2019) is that policies and the institutional set-up are still pro-defunct regime, maintaining the domination of the Islamists. Though one may venture to suggest that there are a few cases of “liberal Islamists” in the academy who moved away from the mainstream official ideology but still retain and enjoy privilege while claiming an anti-official stand. There is an interesting debate that was going on while I was writing this. It is between those who call for academic reform (curricula reform) without engaging in an epistemological debate and those who call first for debating what kind of knowledge we are after? What kind of epistemology? and so on. 11. The dynamics of which are still unfolding at the time of writing. Going through the whole period since the 1930s and early formation of knowledge producing communities, one can see that as far as epistemic communities go, most of the prominent Islamists went to the University of Khartoum or Gordon Memorial College, not al-Maʽhadal-ʽIlmi or Omdurman Islamic University. The biggest conflicts took place within UofK, in that sense. See papers discussed in a conference on Islamization of Knowledge. 12. See papers discussed in a conference on Islamization of Knowledge, ‫ جامعة‬،‫نحو برنامج للبحث العلمى فى اسالم العلوم” تنظيم المعرفة‬: ‫مؤتمر اسالمية المعرفة تحت شعار‬ 1994 ‫ فبراير‬2-4 ‫ قاعة الصداقة الخرطوم‬،‫ السودان‬،‫ جامعة الجزيرة‬،‫معهد اسالم المعرفة‬. ‫ ادريس‬،‫ اسلمة علم السياسة‬،‫ الطيب زين العابدين‬،‫ رؤية قرآنية لفلسفة السياسة‬،‫ورقة التيجانى عبدالقادر‬ ‫ الجوانب االجتماعية واالسس المعرفية السالمية المعرفة‬،‫سالم الحسن‬. 13. The emblem of the University of Khartoum reads: God, Truth, Country, Humanity. ‫ االنسانية‬،‫ الوطن‬،‫ الحقيقة‬،‫هللا‬. Elsewhere in Africa, Nkrumah called for newly emerging universities to engage in similar activities for the welfare of their nations. I owe this point to Rebecca Glade. 14. Later with the Sudanization of jobs in the early 1950s and afterward, this has converted education as rent source for Northern/riverain elites vis-à-vis other regional groupings. 15. As such, the subaltern are diverse people who have been silenced in the administration of the colonial states. They can be heard through their political

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actions, effected in protest against the discourse of mainstream development, and thereby, create their own, proper forms of modernization and development. Hence, subaltern social groups create social, political, and cultural movements that contest and disassemble the exclusive claims to power of the Western imperialist powers, and so establish the use and application of local knowledge to create new spaces of opposition and alternative, non-imperialist futures. https://en​.wikipedia​.org​/wiki​/ Subaltern_(postcolonialism), accessed on February 12, 2020. In a personal communication with Omer Shirkiyan in 2020, I was given a Sudanese version of Subaltern. 16. The phrase “Islamization of knowledge” was first used and pro posed by the Malaysian scholar Sayyed Mohammed Naquib al-Attas in his book Islam and Secularism (1978). It was also proposed by the Palestinian philosopher Ismaʽil alFaruqi in 1982 in response to what he called “the malaise of the ummah.” He argued that by using tools, categories, concepts, and modes of analyses that originated wholly in the secular West (like Marxism), there was a disconnect between the ecological and social reality of Muslim nations, and worse, a total inability to respect or even notice the violations of the ethics of Islam itself. In his view, clashes between traditionalist ulema and reformers seeking to revive Muslim society with modern science and professional categories were inevitable without the strong ethical constraints that applied to methods of early Muslim philosophy. He proposed, therefore, to revive those methods, restore ijtihad, and integrate the scientific method within Islamic limits. https:// en​.wikipedia​.org​/wiki​/Islamization​_of​_knowledge, accessed on March 30, 2020. 17. This merits a separate research work. 18. See Endnote 6 related to Mansour Khalid. 19. Many leading faculty members left the country and joined either opposition parties or armed guerilla movements. See endnote 7 above.

REFERENCES ʽAbbush, Muhammad Awad. 2010. Qira’a fi Sijil al-Thaqafa al-SudaniyyawaKhitabuha al-Nahdawi (A Reading in the Record of Sudanese Culture and its Renaissance Discourse). Omdurman: Abd al-Karim Mirghani Cultural Centre. Abdelgadir, ElTigani. 1994. “A Quranic Perspective for Political Philosophy.” Conference on Islamization of Knowledge, Institute for Islamization of Knowledge, University of Gazira, Sudan, Khartoum, 2–4 February 1994. Abdelhay, Ashraf; BusiMakoni, SinfreeMakoni, and Abdel Rahim Mugaddam. 2011. The Sociolinguistics of Nationalism in the Sudan: the Politicization of Arabic and the Arabicisation of Politics. http://www​.tandfonline​.com​/loi​/rclp20, accessed on 20 May 2020. Al-Hassan, Idris Salem. 1994. “Social Dimension and Epistemological Foundations of Islamization of Knowledge.” Conference on Islamization of Knowledge, Institute for Islamization of Knowledge, University of Gazira, Sudan, Khartoum, 2–4 February 1994. Al-Sid, Nasir. 1975. al-Taʽlim fi al-Sudan (Education in Sudan). Beirut: Al-Quda Publisher.

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Bashir, M. Omer. 1970. Tatawur al-Taʽlim fi al-Sudan (Development of Education in Sudan 1898–1956). Beirut: Dar al-Thaqafa. Berridge, Willow. 2018. Colonial education and the shaping of Islamism in Sudan, 1946–1956, https://www​.tandfonline​.com​/doi​/abs​/10​.1080​/13530194​.2018​ .1447441, accessed on 21 May 2020. Bloodgood, Elizabeth. 2015. Epistemic Communities Norms and Knowledge. https:// www​.researchgate​.net​/publication​/228597686 Deng, Francis. 1994. War of Visions: Conflicts of Identities in the Sudan. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. Dunlop, Claire A. 2011. Routledge Handbook of Public Policy. University of Exeter, UK. http://centres​.exeter​.ac​.uk​/ceg​/research​/ALREG​/index​.php, accessed, 12 March 2017. El-Battahani. 1996. “Economic Transformation and Political Islam: 1975–1989.” Working paper 5/96, Institute of Development Studies, University of Helsinki. El-Kid, Khalid Hussein Osman. 2011. Al-AfandiyyawaMafahim al-Qawmiyya fi alSudan (The Effendia and the Concepts of Nationalism in Sudan). Omdurman: Abd al-KarimMirghani Cultural Centre. El-Mubarak, Khalid. 1985. Higher Education in Sudan. Dar El-Bihar. Hamid, Mahmoud El-Zain. “Positivism, Research Methodology and State’s Ideology.” M.Sc. thesis in Political Science, University of Khartoum, April 1995. Hasan, Y. Fadl Hasan, ed. 2006. Sudan in Africa. Khartoum: Khartoum University Press. Hass, Peter M. 1992. “Introduction: Epistemic Communities and International Policy Coordination,” International Organization 46, no. 1 (Winter): 1–35. Heydemann, Steven. 2004. Networks of Privilege in the Middle East. London: Palgrave. Ibrahim, Abdullahi A. 2008. Manichaean Delirium: Decolonizing the Judiciary and Islamic Renewal in Sudan, 1898–1985. Boston, MA: Brill. Ibrahim, Muhammad al-Makki. 1976. al-Fikr al-Sudani: UsuluhuwaTatawuruhu (Sudanese Thought: Origins and Development). Khartoum: Ministry of Culture and Information. Khalid, Mansour. 1990. The Government They Deserve: The Role of the Elite in Sudan’s Political Evolution. London: Kegan Paul. Seri-Hersch, Iris. 2019. “Towards Social Progress and Post-Imperial Modernity? Colonial Politics of Literacy in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, 1946–1956.” https://hal​ .archives​-ouvertes​.fr​/halshs​-00510845/ May 31, 2019. Sharkey, Heather J. 2003. Living with Colonialism: Nationalism and Culture in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Shurkiyan, ʽUmar Mustafa. “Identity and Search for Recognition.” Personal Communication, 13 July 2019. ʽUbaid, Mahjub. 1994. “Ta’sil al-Maʽarifa. Journal of Ta’sil, 1. Umbadda, S. “Education and the Mismanagement of Sudanese Economy and Politics.” Discussion Paper no.88, Development Studies and Research Centre, University of Khartoum, October, 1990. Vezzadini, Elena. 2018a. Black’ Sudanese with “a Veneer of College Education”: Nationalism, Elite Formation, and Racial Policies, 1900–1925. Paris: Institut des Mondes Africains.

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Vezzadini, Elena. 2018b. Transnationalism from Below after the First World War: The Case of the 1924 Revolution in Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. https://univ​-paris1​ .academia​.edu​/ElenaVezzadini​.2018. Zain al-Abdin, al-Tayyib. “Islamization of Political Science.” Conference on Islamization of Knowledge, The Institute for Islamization of Knowledge, University of Gazira, Sudan, Khartoum, 2–4 February 1994. Zeleza, Paul T. and Adebayo Olukoshi, eds. 2004. African Universities in the Twentyfirst Century. Dakar: CODESRIA.

Chapter 8

The Pioneering Women’s and Gender Studies Intellectuals in the Sudan Ahfad University for Women Balghis Badri and Mai Izzeldeen

Ahfad University for Women (AUW) is an important institution in the Sudan, not only because it is the only university for women but also because of the intellectual contributions it has made to the Sudan and to the Global South. Perhaps its most important intellectual contribution has been through its women’s and gender studies units, the only developed units of this field in the Sudan. The topics that should be discussed to give the reader a full picture of the importance of the intellectual contributions of Ahfad to the Sudan and beyond would be too extensive to develop in one chapter. Besides, the evolution of the changing thinking and structures within the university that have led to where the university is now is difficult to assess, but we will make an attempt. After the Introduction, we present brief summaries, which in total will amount to a history of the development of Ahfad University and its contribution to the knowledge of gender and feminism, as well as acknowledging the need for women’s and gender studies because of its contributions to intellectual thought. We will present a very brief profile of graduates of gender studies; the contributions to knowledge and intellectual thought through the sharing of curriculum development with other universities—inside and outside the Sudan; the contributions to knowledge through the localization of international knowledge; the contributions to intellectual thought through research; the gaining of knowledge through civic engagement; and finally, some of the challenges facing the Regional Institute of Gender, Diversity, Peace and Rights (RIGDPR) in offering gender and women’s studies—our final thoughts.

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One of the more enlightening portraits of the development of the women’s and gender studies units and of intellectual thought is to present a picture of AUW’s masters programs. As part of that, we also try to develop some ideas about both the intellectual ideas that make up the field of women’s studies and the contributions of that field to our thinking. Although, as we said, we will not go deeply into the nature of feminist thought itself, it is important to recognize that feminist thought, which is the undergirding of women’s studies, is major in the intellectual world, both as part and parcel of modernist thought and as a challenge to that thought and augmenting global ideas. We touch on the issues of epistemology: Who creates knowledge, and why that is or is not important? How does knowledge spread and change through its dispersion? Let us first start by debating the idea of whether or not knowledge is international or universal. Or, is knowledge specifically localized? Can knowledge be both international and local? Responding to these questions leads us into a discussion of the issue of feminism and gender studies at Ahfad University. Knowledge in the basic sciences, as well as applied sciences and technology, may be said to be international. The role of intellectuals and scientists in each country can contribute to its development and its promotion without saying that this is “Western” knowledge, even if the source has been from Western society. This issue of whether or not feminism is “Western” has plagued Global South feminists until fairly recently when many Global South scholars and NGOs began to look at the roots of their own feminisms—local and grassroots feminisms—and also to consider what Global South feminism (whether called that or not) has given to the West. That discussion has been one of the most important breakthroughs in international feminist thought. Knowledge is international and can be shared, for example, the history of different parts of the world. Accordingly, feminist and gender concepts, discourses, and theories are international, and they can be taught in all parts of the world. Contributions from case studies of more debates and contributions in theories, discourses, and so on from different parts of the world are bound to enrich the initial theories or discourses in any other subject. This chapter will only gesture toward these important intellectual and epistemological questions. We concentrate on knowledge and the forms that knowledge has taken in building women’s and gender studies at Ahfad. In the context of introducing women’s studies, we argue that feminist ideas in women’s studies lead to the transformation of the position, status, and identities of women in the Sudan—that is, women’s studies is making a contribution to transforming women’s lives, many of whom have the lowest standard globally. Having stated the above, we need to discuss the issue of how women’s and gender studies has been introduced into Ahfad University. There have been

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several contributors to this process, from the time of the establishment of Ahfad University in 1966 till the introduction of women’s and gender studies in 1986. Up to the present, Ahfad University offers both masters and PhD programs in gender studies. We authors ourselves are part and parcel of this process of the development and promotion of women’s and gender studies; hence the story is told from the voices of those who pioneered it and are now contributing to it. THE NEED FOR WOMEN’S AND GENDER STUDIES Globally, women’s and gender studies as a field basically did not exist prior to 1970. There were no stable or permanent courses related to women in the university curricula, only isolated courses here and there (Rao 1991). The systematic study of women came into being in the late 1960s as a result of women’s movements inside and outside universities and other educational institutions in the United States. In 1968, a group of feminist scholars began to question gender discrimination in academia and its underlying causes. In 1970, a program on women’s studies—actually having the name of Women’s Studies—was started at San Diego State University, California (Rao 1991). Women’s Studies program was furthered by feminist scholars who were part of the UN’s Declaration of the Decade on Women (1975–1985). This declaration raised greater consciousness about women’s issues globally, causing more countries to pay attention. As described earlier, women’s studies in the United States grew out of the women’s movement. Later, when the international knowledge of gender and women’s studies spread to other countries worldwide, it remained for the local population to develop its own appropriate programs. In India, for example, women’s studies grew out of the need to examine the impacts of development processes on women. In the context of developing countries, women’s studies, to this day, examines women’s experiences in terms of poverty and in relation to development policies and programs. In the U.S. context the two—intellectual/academic and ideas/theories vs. development and policy—have usually been separated; whereas, in the Global South women’s studies programs are most often combined with women and development. Women’s studies as a field tends to be not only multidisciplinary but also aware of its political nature and integrative ideas about class or race (Richard and Robison 1993). Sudan, like other countries of the world, was affected by women’s studies that was spawned by many of the external and internal factors mentioned earlier. Moreover, the political context for introducing women’s studies in 1986 was a democratic regime without a dominant Islamic ideology or interference

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in the curriculum of state universities. At that time, in 1986, there were only five universities in the Sudan (namely, the University of Khartoum, Gezira University, Islamic University, the Khartoum Branch of Cairo University, and Juba University). In 1979, the University of Khartoum faculty introduced in the Department of Sociology an elective course titled “Women, Culture, and Social Change”; that title was changed in 1983 to “Women and Development.” The course as originally titled had the problem of finding appropriate faculty to teach. Therefore, when the course, by necessity, had to rotate to other faculty, women’s issues were not sustained. Then the Center for Development and Social Studies introduced a training course in Women and Development in 1990, and in 1993 the Women Law and Development course was introduced. The political context in 1997 for introducing the first master’s program at AUW was a nondemocratic regime that emerged after a military coup in 1989, led by Islamists—the National Islamic Front (NIF). A dominant Islamic ideology that was put in place curtailed the spread of gender studies programs at various other universities, especially government ones such as the University of Khartoum. This was a period (the late 1990s) when a number of new universities were founded. In 1997, the Sudan University established the Institute of Family and Community Development. In 2009, the faculty of urban studies at Al-Zaeem Al Azhari University, established in 1999, introduced women’s studies as a major part of the urban studies curriculum. Women’s studies at Africa International University started in 2005 by establishing that female students would teach the courses on women’s and gender studies. Sudan University for Science and Technology established a Women’s Studies Centre that began to give a diploma for women’s studies. However, this program contained the conventional home economics understanding of women’s studies. After two years, it was canceled and the centre continued to give short trainings to women on food processing, bakery, and perfume making. The Islamic University opened a Women’s Studies Centre in 2015 for research on the issues of women and Islam. The aim was to challenge feminist discourse. AHFAD UNIVERSITY’S CONTRIBUTION TO INTELLECTUAL THOUGHT THROUGH DEVELOPING THE KNOWLEDGE OF GENDER AND FEMINISM The AUW started to build women’s studies knowledge early based on the vision of the founders and contributors to become a beacon for Sudanese women’s empowerment. The journey of progress and success has a historical background that we need to document. Through this part, we show

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the contributions of intellectuals in promoting and developing gender and women’s studies knowledge (1) by introducing and developing women’s and gender studies academic programs at both the graduate and undergraduate levels; (2) by developing curriculum for Ahfad and other Sudanese universities; (3) by enriching research on gender and feminism; (4) by producing publications on gender and feminism; and (5) by encouraging civic engagement which opened up the opportunity to pass on knowledge to women who were working at grassroots levels, which are considered a major contribution to gender and feminist knowledge. Although interest in researching and highlighting women’s issues can be traced to 1966, when the founder, the late Yousif Badri, who had already established Women’s University College, wanted to go beyond that. One activity or program after another in short time led to what became Ahfad University for Women. However, Yousif Badri wanted to go beyond that, so he decided to celebrate International Women’s Day as a week of studentbased activities for women, calling it Women’s Week. Then, during the celebration of the 75th Anniversary for establishing girls education in the Sudan (in 1907, attributed to Babiker Badri), four major activities were launched. These started by holding a special symposium in 1979 to mark the beginning of the celebrations, under the title “The Changing Status of Sudanese Women.” A national committee was formed to discuss the topics and programs of the symposium to which international participants were invited. In that symposium of March 1979, four main outcomes were achieved. The first was AUW establishing an NGO to work on researching and advocating on women’s issues, and undertaking necessary capacity building and awareness raising programs; hence, the birth of the Babiker Badri Scientific Association for Women’s Studies (BBSAWS) in June 1979. The association was registered as an NGO in order to be the main outreach arm for AUW. BBSAWS carried the name, Babiker Badri, of the 1907 pioneer of women’s education in the Sudan and founder of the first nongovernment boys school in Ahfad in 1930. The second outcome was the commitment to publish a special journal to tackle the subject of women’s issues, which led to the publication of Ahfad Journal: Women and Change in 1984. The journal was the first specialized academic journal on women to be published by a Sudanese University. The third achievement, also in 1984, was the integration of topics on women’s and development issues into the ongoing university required course on Rural Extension. The fourth, following the commitment and interest of the founder to make women’s issues focal, led AUW to establish in 1984 a special chair for research on women’s issues, naming Mustafa Abulela (one of Ahfad school’s member of trustees and a pioneer businessman) chair for Women’s Studies. The chair started to develop a plan of action for women’s research.

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The apex of the commitment to bring Ahfad into the light as offering a specialization in women’s studies as an academic discipline led to starting a university required course on women’s studies in 1986. The course was continued to be taught as a compulsory course in all programs, making Ahfad the only university worldwide to make a women’s studies course compulsory in all of its academic programs. The AUW in 1986 established a special unit to administer the three main university required courses (other than languages and mathematics). These are Rural Extension, Women’s Studies, and Population Education. The vision of AUW is to graduate empowered female leaders and change agents. Hence, students need to gain knowledge that will help them achieve that goal. Rural Extension is developed to promote among students the commitment to enhance people’s quality of life, especially in rural areas. To further understand the need to cooperate as diverse groups, students in the Rural Extension program took trips to other parts of the Sudan. These trips were for the purpose of having students get to know their country and its people through hands-on field experience and to assimilate the meaning of how universities can be forces for change. The Population Education program is geared toward raising awareness and understanding of the importance of individual and collective and responsible decision-making actions in changing one’s own community’s future for the better. The Women’s Studies course is meant to give an analytical insight into the positioning of women in society, addressing issues of gender imbalanced power relations, and women’s relative subordination and violence against them by state, community, and individuals. Such awareness is needed to disclose the root causes of these phenomena so that students’ self-esteem and empowerment will be enhanced. Without such confidence and self-assertion, graduates cannot become leaders and change agents. Hence, the three courses are considered complementary. In 1989, AUW established a unit to promote students’ research on women’s issues. The unit was a promotion of the 1984 Abulela Chair. The first research program was to document Sudanese women pioneers’ struggles and achievements. A research competition prize for the students was created in 1986 to encourage them to undertake research on women’s issues. The prize was given in the name of one of the pioneers in midwifery and a woman who campaigned against female genital mutilation and who stopped practicing it herself—that was Hawa Ali Albaseer. By 1998, the prize became three prizes as the number of students who applied to undertake research on women’s issues escalated, which indicated their interest in the subject and their awareness that their cause needed to be researched. In 1996, the three courses—Rural Extension, Population Education, and Environment Studies, the latter introduced in 1991—were shifted to be

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administered by the new and relevant School of Rural Extension, Education and Development (REED) established in 1987. The unit then became an independent Women’s Studies Unit. There was a shift in policy at AUW to go beyond undergraduate studies and offer a series of postgraduate master’s programs in different specializations. The women’s studies administration decided to embark on developing a masters in Gender and Development (GAD). A committee was formed in 1996; workshops were held to discuss the components of the program; and the MSc GAD was launched in July 1997 through the contributions of faculty from Ahfad as well as from other national and international experts. The dream of the university founder, Yousif Badri, for postgraduate studies at AUW came true. The unit in 2000 was promoted to become the Institute of Women, Gender and Development Studies (IWGDS) with the mission of graduating experts on gender issues, filling in gaps in research on women’s issues, forming a national resource center for the acquisition of women’s publications worldwide, and working more on advocacy for gender mainstreaming in policies, academia, and civil society programs. The vision of IWGDS was to promote a worldwide community of learning about gender, peace, and development, linking the local and regional with the global in order to achieve a transformed society of equality, justice, security, and prosperity. Its mission is to achieve women’s empowerment and gender equality. As one of the leading institutions in both Africa and the Arab world, it was important for IWGDS to promote equality, peace, and respect for human rights, with a special emphasis on enhancing women’s empowerment and leadership. Moreover, the IWGDS aims to design study programs to help graduates to act as focal leaders for the dissemination of scholarship, research findings, and policies on gender, peace, conflict resolution, and development issues pertaining specially to the Sudan’s local academia, media, government officials, INGOs, NGOs, and to the wider community, regionally and internationally. In addition to all these goals—advocating for gender mainstreaming in development, gender equality, women’s empowerment, good governance, sustainable peace while influencing and creating policies—it was also important to publish and disseminate information about these goals. The institute also aims to offer graduate programs on gender, peace, development, migration, and governance studies that will prepare students to become gender specialists on these issues. The multidisciplinary nature of gender studies and the global concern for gender equality and women’s empowerment enhanced the world’s commitment for achieving the Millennium Development Goal declared in 2000, to be achieved by 2015, in the International Women’s Conferences since 1974, and the development of CEDAW in addition to the recent Sustainable

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Development Goals. All these activities enhanced AUW’s commitment toward more internationalization to contribute as an academic institute to achieve the national and global goals. In 2008, IWGDS introduced a new MSc degree on Gender and Peace Studies and made plans in 2011 to launch another two MSc degrees on Gender Multiculturalism and Migration Studies (GMMS) and Gender and Governance (GAG). The institute had a vision of becoming an institute of excellence at a regional level. In 2010, IWGDS became theRIGDPR, in part to account for the wider focus of new research and master’s programs as well as the aims of the capacity building programs. In 2013, the Gender and Reproductive Health and Rights Resource and Advocacy Centre (GRACe) was established as part of RIGDPR, which focuses specifically on reproductive health and reproductive rights issues in the Sudan and is involved in supporting research, advocacy, and capacity building of various actors across Khartoum and the country at large. The intellectual concerns of women’s studies as a field were gradually laid out within this complex array of courses, institutes, and programs at AUW. The thought that women are not monolithic as a population was paramount. The processes of these developments were made possible by the dedication of several faculty members and international support of both experts and funding, and through links with regional and universities globally. GRADUATES OF GENDER STUDIES Gender studies graduates are considered as an investment in solutions for the future problems and realizing the equality and justice principle in the Sudan. Major achievements of RIGDPR that contributed to knowledge on women’s and gender studies in the Sudan by development of various MSc programs in the Gender and Development since 1997 as we explained above, awarded to women from governmental bodies, various AUW departments, NGOs and international organizations, a few self-funding students as well as students from few Arab and African countries and European residents in the Sudan. The development of the PhD program in Gender and Development Studies was started in 2001. The RIGDPR graduated quality of gender studies specialists and interdisciplinary leaders who had advanced knowledge and understanding, drive innovation, and contribute to the resolution of complex national and regional problems to meet societal needs. The graduates have skills, knowledge, attitudes, and values. They can help to develop academic and career competencies in different fields. Through their thesis, gender studies programs, they gained critical thinking, such as intellectual curiosity,

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analytical reasoning, problem solving and reflective judgment, effective communication, leadership and teamwork skills, research and inquiry skills, and information literacy, and through their internship program they further gained other personal attributes such as self-awareness, self-confidence, personal autonomy, self-reliance, flexibility and creativity, personal values such as ethical, moral, and social responsibility, integrity, and cross-cultural awareness. The importance of transforming women’s situation in areas suffering from marginalization and exclusion is so clear that we targeted candidates from disadvantaged areas. Trying to reach the disadvantaged areas and groups made us find scholarships for those students from among employees in the Ministry of Social Development, Women and Child Affairs at national and state levels, from the Directorate of Girls Education, Ministry of Youth and Sports, State Universities, and others not employed but are graduates of AUW from the Southern, Darfur, Eastern regions, and other states of Blue Nile and Nuba areas. We have offered other universities opportunities for scholarships for their young staff to study for MSc GAD. These are from Nayala University in Darfur, Juba University, and Bahr Elgazal—a total of 60 scholarships to ministries, NGOs, and graduates from disadvantaged areas in the Southern Sudan. These scholarships made us reach out to those who cannot afford to further their competitive opportunities and chances for a better future. Moreover, it led to improving the capacities of government employees in women’s and gender issues who can make a difference through their policies and activities to improve the lives of many women in particular and Sudanese people in general. This scholarship program linked us to the government and NGOs in a closer partnership to continue the program without political threats and with possibilities of replication in other than degree-oriented programs. These included offering several training courses by some of our graduates and others besides our staff. Advocacy workshops on gender, women’s rights, and peace issues that escalated in numbers since 2004 were also by-products of these links. Also, RIGDPR helped to promote the community development course content which was recently introduced in many government universities. We integrated a component to include income generation and credit, literacy for adolescents, women’s rights, and reproductive health education. CONTRIBUTION TO KNOWLEDGE AND INTELLECTUAL THOUGHT BY SHARING CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT WITH OTHER UNIVERSITIES—INSIDE AND OUTSIDE THE SUDAN Ahfad University has contributed to the introduction of courses on related women’s and gender studies in several universities. The university had helped

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to introduce at Gazeira University a course on population and reproductive health with gender dimensions for the master’s degree in population studies. Also we included gender module in the courses of MSc degree in Forestation at Sudan University of Science and Technology, and in their BSc courses in agriculture. Further, in 2009, Al-Zaeem Azhari University introduced a BSc program on urban and Women’s Studies. Their understanding of women’s studies was that students who major in women’s studies take courses in nutrition and home economics. The general understanding unfortunately at government universities was as such. They consulted us and when we discovered their misunderstanding, we helped by developing for them a list of three courses: (1) women’s studies main concepts and discourses, (2) gender and development, and (3) women’s movements. They divided each into two courses and hence a student who is major in women’s studies only studies these courses in the Arabic language, which is the medium of instruction. CONTRIBUTION TO KNOWLEDGE BY THE LOCALIZATION OF INTERNATIONAL KNOWLEDGE The engagement of many experts and stakeholders to develop the program and certain commitment of academics who developed the courses all lead to more commitment and ownership of staff who taught the courses later and continued to do so over the decades—this created further partnership beyond the courses. Moreover, the active participation of several partners leads to make the program and courses content address national issues and contextualize the global into the local. For instance, courses of theory related to feminism, development, and peace are given with emphasis to discuss, for instance, in Feminist Theory, African Feminism, Muslim/Islamic Feminist writings, Middle Eastern Feminist writings, and contesting Western Feminisms. Readings and discussion by the students relating these issues to the Sudanese context are part of their assignments, workshops, and class debates. The same is done when dealing with development and globalization or peace. In the course on Conflict and Peace Studies, this participation led to include topics on conflict and population mobility and a course on the economy of armed conflicts not taught in conventional master programs of peace studies. This issue of population mobility faces Sudan with a challenge of over five million of its population (one-sixth of the total) being displaced in camps, literally made of tents. To combine the theoretical with the practical, four courses were special in our program. They are: one named Global Challenges in the 21st Century to include all issues that challenge the Sudan and relevant to its context

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(education, environment, technology, Islam and feminism, extremism, and women’s organizing NGOs as means to empowerment, etc.). Moreover, a course on Policy and Project Management was introduced that included field attachment of gender auditing of organizations and project design and management. The other two courses on Gender, Peace, and Media and the course on Identity and Multiculturalism led students to debate and revisit how gender and other identities are reflected in media and in education curriculum, and how they are embedded in culture and that substantial transformation is needed. They contributed to the process of Enlightenment. These courses are easier types of courses to find local case studies, literature of a practical nature from UN agencies and INGOs and media of a global and local nature. Yet, these case studies were not yet gathered in the form of a reader or published case studies book. Partnership with other international bodies such as University of Manchester, the Institute of Social Studies in Hague, Humboldt University of Berlin, the Free University, Bergen University, the United Nations University for Peace at Costa Rica, and EMMIR Consortium of six universities in Europe and Africa, Makerere and Addis Ababa bring to us different experiences both in courses and degree development and in teaching methods. Although the teaching method is greatly innovative and diverse from one faculty member to another, all use a more participatory method, using multimedia, group discussion, brainstorming, workshops, guest speakers, field attachments, reports, essays, debates, and student exhibitions as means to engage the students actively in the course and as part of the assessment process. The development of critical thinking, analytical abilities, organizational and eloquence skills, and academic cooperation among students are embodied in the teaching methods as targets to be achieved. CONTRIBUTION TO INTELLECTUAL THOUGHT THROUGH RESEARCH In many ways, intellectual thought through research has been the most impressive and future-oriented part of Ahfad’s curricula. There is no space here to delve into all of the various research projects and their influence in the world of ideas. We introduce only a few of these projects—18—and present only a few examples of the relationship of the ideas to other aspects of Sudanese intellectual thought and to the outside world, so to speak. Since 1999, the institute has undertaken a great deal of research in partnership with other institutions and other research that is completely without partnership. These various research projects differ in focus, partners,

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impacts, and objectives. A common characteristic is that they were all carried out in collaboration with others outside the institute or AUW. Few are of regional dimension, while most are of national dimension, except for one which has an international context. We give a brief account of some of this research below. From 1999 to 2001, the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT) of the Netherlands embarked on research about Muslim Women’s Experiences and vision as relevant to issues of their education, health, and knowledge of Islam. The research was carried out in six Muslim countries in Africa and Asia, as well as in Muslim communities in Holland. In the same years, 1999–2001, research was undertaken on InterCommunal Conflicts in Sudan. This involved investigating the causes, resolution mechanisms, and conflict transformation. The research was undertaken in five regions in the Sudan—namely, Darfur, East Region, River Nile State, the Nuba Mountains, and the Southern region—and was in collaboration with faculty from the Universities of Khartoum and Juba (which is now in South Sudan). The partners in the research were the Center of Strategic Initiative in Washington and Novib in Holland, which funded the research. From 2002 to 2004, works on various challenges and prospects for ideas within Sudanese Women’s Strategies were undertaken. Another five research projects were undertaken as part of the Link Program between the institute and Humboldt University of Berlin and the Free University in Berlin. Ten senior faculties and another four junior faculties—three from AUW and one from Humboldt University (Germany)—took part. The research was participatory in developing its objectives, guidelines, and methodology. The topics researched were: Rural Women and Finance, Women Entrepreneurs in Urban Markets for Food and Beverages, Gender Dimensions of Time and Space in Rural Areas, Ecology and Gender with Emphasis on Food Security, Peri-urban Agriculture as a Survival Strategy, and Conditions for Problem Solutions. The research began in 2002 and ended in 2004. The team of researchers was interdisciplinary, including economists, sociologists, agronomists, and those with management background. The gender dimension in the research was included broadly, but the focus was on women. Gender Mainstreaming in Sudanese Universities was commissioned by the World Bank Institute. This research was undertaken especially to develop a checklist on Gender Mainstreaming in universities; whereas, Women in Decision Making was undertaken in partnership with the Centre of Arab Women for Training and Research (CAWTR) in 2006–2007. This research on women in decision-making positions was a regional one involving four countries. Sudanese Women’s Awareness of Their Constitutional Rights was researched to assess not only Sudanese women’s rights in the constitution but

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also their awareness of these rights. The research on awareness is basically done by a faculty team leader. The GAD MSc students were designated as data collectors. The topic was designed to be their research for the dissertation. It was undertaken in five states in the Sudan, funded by the Ministry of Higher Education. Related to the above was the research on Contesting the Interim National Constitution of Sudan (of 2005). The plan was to use a good governance model and a gender perspective for assessing the constitution. The research was part of the project on Macro-Micro Peace in Sudan funded by the Christian Michelin Institute (CMI) in Norway. The research was published in the Ahfad Journal in 2009. Other projects have been Talking Empowerment in Arabic—2007–2008 (part of the pathways to the Women Empowerment Project). The research applied a combination of strategies, including a research competition, fieldwork by the three winners, a literature review, content analysis of proverbs, and songs related to empowerment issues. This research was published in Ahfad Journal in 2013. Another research project was Laws on Adolescents Rights and GenderBased Violence—2004. This was part of regional research in the Arab World, sponsored by UNFPA. The final output was six booklets in the form of a training package and a CD produced by and for activists for advocacy and capacity-building purposes. From 2011 to 2012 a project funded by the Canadian Research and Development Centre was developed—the Quota in Sudanese Electoral Law: Achievements, Challenges and Lessons Learned; quotas being one of the more controversial ideas and debates. The research involved using qualitative and in-depth interviews with 80 activists from civil society organizations, government, parliamentarians and academia, politicians and experts, in addition to actors from international organizations, in order to solicit the motivations for the quota and viewpoints regarding the process of quota adoption and implementation. Three workshops, each including 40 participants, were organized to discuss and analyze the findings. As expected, more women were brought into the political process; however, the process did not influence achieving the anticipated feminists’ ends including women’s empowerment that had been expected. The research findings were published in a special issue of Ahfad Journal (2015). Space does not allow us to discuss a number of other important research projects that contributed to the ideas undergirding Ahfad and its partners and ramified into communities outside the Sudan. They are: (1) Assessing Diversity at Ahfad University for Women (AUW): Perception and Management, (2) Literature review on Marriage in the Sudan—2018, (3) Factors Influencing Access of Women Migrant Domestic Workers to Sexual

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and Reproductive Health (SRH) Services in Khartoum State: The Case of Ethiopian Migrant Domestic Workers—2014, (4) Enabling Universal and Equitable Access to Healthcare for Vulnerable People in Resource-Poor Settings in the Sudan (published as a monograph No. 4, of RIGDPR in 2016), and (5) UN Women Sudan was part of a Mapping Study of Actors Working to Eliminate Violence against Women and Girls in Khartoum State (2013). Research that is led by the RIGDPR is mostly of interdisciplinary nature, undertaken in partnership with academia or experts in NGOs or government in the Sudan and from outside the Sudan. It led to a number of publications linked to policy whether in choice of topics that are critical to our national context and highly needed for research and direct policy and activism such as peace, legislations, and empowerment issues. Methods ranged from secondary data and content analysis to qualitative methods while surveys using quantitative methods were barely used. The research also led to some internal capacity building of the young staff, establishment of great partnership, publications, some curriculum development, case studies production, and achieved some advocacy and changes in policy; these are in ascending order of outputs. It became evident that few researches were undertaken with the objective of leading either to curriculum development or as sources of case studies for Sudanizing knowledge. That needs to be addressed and a special workshop has to be undertaken on this and plans to be formulated to address this gap. Other research projects are those undertaken by students as part of their degree award. As indicated earlier, there is no policy to direct them, and they are free to choose their topics. However, recipients of scholarships will be advised to research on topics of priority to the sponsors or as relevant to their mandates. Undergraduate students also undertake research on topics of women’s and gender issues competing to win the prizes AUW offers to encourage students to research on women’s and gender issues as different issues from the students’ main specialization. However, at an earlier stage in the early 1990s, a research project on Sudanese Women Pioneers was undertaken through the students’ research which was then edited, summarized, and published in a series of booklets named “Sudanese Women Pioneers, as part of the AUW Documentation Unit on Women’s Studies.” GAINING KNOWLEDGE THROUGH CIVIC ENGAGEMENT One of the most important research projects was Gaining Knowledge through Civic Engagement. Ahfad’s connection with the Sudan’s

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communities and advocacy activities are focal to the institute’s activities and are highly regarded. These are mainly through holding workshops and conferences. The most important are on Legal Reform, 2008; Constitutional Development, 2012; Federalism Implementation and Challenges, 2007; Family Law; the enacting of UN resolution 1325 in 2006; Women’s Political Rights and Advocacy for a Women’s Quota in the Electoral Law, 2010; Basic Education for All for Living Together, 2007; Women’s Forward Strategies and Plan of actions to achieve MDG3, 2006; Sudanese Women’s Achievements and Challenges in 2005; and African Women Leading Transformation, 2014. All of these activities are undertaken in collaboration with national, UN, and international bodies, and some funding from foreign embassies. Those who gave great contributions are UNFPA, UN WOMEN, UNICEF, U.S. Institute of Peace, the Netherland Embassy, German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), British Council, DFID, International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA), USAID, and Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD). The outcome of these conferences was published in books by AUW, a total of nine books, eight booklets, and four monographs. Zed Press published the conference titled Women Activism in Africa 2017. Concerning Ahfad’s highly regarded and constantly occurring training courses, the most prominent of which were developed since 2000 are: Gender Mainstreaming in University Curriculum in collaboration with experts from the University of Manchester, Reproductive Rights in collaboration with the regional WHO office, Gender Mainstreaming and Planning by AUW experts, Gender in Organizations in collaboration with an expert from Manchester University as well, Women and Adolescents’ Legal Rights, with UNFPA Gender Budgeting in collaboration with Humboldt University of Berlin, Advanced Feminist Research Methodology Course in collaboration with an expert from the Free University of Berlin, and Combating Female Genital Mutilation by AUW Specialists. Also, Ahfad was continuously collaborating with other NGOs and acting as a resource institute for those offering training courses on violence against women, democracy, voters’ education, women’s empowerment, and women in politics. Four training courses that were started in 2011 were on Visionary Leadership. Recently offered in eight states were training courses developed by RIGDPR faculty. Other activities are the production of awareness raising materials. These include materials in the form of booklets, calendars, posters, and brochures. The most prominent are on combating FGM, Violence against Women (VAW), Women’s Empowerment Series, Women’s Rights Series, HIV/AIDs and Reproductive Health, and Family Law.

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CHALLENGES FACING THE REGIONAL INSTITUTE OF GENDER, DIVERSITY, PEACE AND RIGHTS (RIGDPR): SOME FINAL THOUGHTS Above we have tried to present aspects of the intellectual and structural innovations that evolved over the years in order to meet changes in the society. As one can imagine, founding and maintaining an all-women’s university in a very large and heterogeneous country is a major challenge. Although the programs were periodically evaluated and updated to consider the changing situations and needs, problems have remained. For example, the students complain of being overloaded with courses, especially considering that many of them have to hold part-time employment and shoulder heavy family responsibilities. Also, the faculty faces the challenge of finding updated published materials due to international sanctions against the Sudan. Even when sanctions have been partially lifted, the government opened access to scientific disciplines at government universities, not at Ahfad. In short, Ahfad’s students, being mostly mature females with families to take care of are overburdened, combined with an overburdened faculty. Hence, Ahfad is faced with having to provide a high level of academic programs for students who don’t have enough time, are facing family pressures, are often facing severe economic difficulties, have limited library facilities, and not having an adequate level of English language proficiency. Furthermore, in the country, as a whole, there is a stress on applied science, medicine, engineering, or pharmacy, when what is needed are the social sciences or humanities, disciplines that are more relevant to gender studies. Because there is limited funding for scholarships, admissions of students from different regions of the Sudan (for which Ahfad is known) can be very problematic, both to the students and to the institution. In short, Ahfad is challenged to meet the needs of an expanding population of women wanting and needing an education in feminist principles. A major challenge for the last 30 years has been teaching a feminist-oriented curriculum while under an Islamic military dictatorship, the ideology of which does not create an atmosphere for the outlook and work of Ahfad. The government didn’t clearly stop the program but didn’t encourage any teaching of gender studies at any government university, meaning that Ahfad, which should have been able to influence women and men in the direction of the emancipation of women, could not achieve that goal. Furthermore, the Islamist ideology of the regime, within a conservative culture, led to faculty and administrators of Ahfad selfcensoring, for example, not including in the written course syllabi discussions on sexuality. Such sensitive subjects were left as issues to be discussed in seminars and student presentations, and in workshops with outside guest speakers from Europe or United Kingdom.

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In fact, Ahfad, though not untouchable by the government or the public, has for the last 30 years been able to teach some of the most sensitive and political topics anywhere in the Sudan, putting it among the vanguard of feminist intellectual ideas. It remains to be seen what changes the institution will experience following the 2019 overthrow of the military regime. REFERENCES (Note: A fuller view of the sources available for understanding Women and Gender Studies at Ahfad can be found by consulting The Ahfad Journal, as well as Ahfad’s collection of theses and dissertations produced by the Graduate Students.) Badri, Balghis. 2000. “The Evolution of the Women and Gender Studies at Ahfad University for Women.” Unpublished paper presented in Germany on the foundation of RIGDPR. Badri, Balghis. 2005. “Feminist Perspectives in Sudan.” In Sudanese Women Profile and Pathways for Empowerment. Badri, Balghis. 2008. “Women’s and Gender Studies at Ahfad University.” Unpublished paper presented in a conference on Arab Women Activism, Dubai. Hale, Sondra. 2003. “Feminist Education in the Global South: A Visit to Sudan.” The Ahfad Journal: Women and Change 20 (1): 38–41 [translated into Farsi, Goft-o-gu, Tehran, Iran (2004), 162–166]. Hale, Sondra. 2005. “Activating the Gender Local: Transnational Ideologies and ‘Women’s Culture’ in Northern Sudan.” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies I (1): 29–52 [section on Ahfad]. Hale, Sondra. 2014. “The New Middle East Insurrections and Other Subversions of the Modernist Frame.” The Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 10 (3): 40–61 [section on Ahfad]. Rao, A. 1991. Women Studies International – Nairobi and Beyond. USA: Feminist Press. Richard, D. and Robison, V. 1993. Introducing Women’s Studies. New York: Macmillan.

Section V

MARGINALIZED INTELLECTUAL COMMUNITIES

Chapter 9

“Peace-building” as Thought and Practice in the Nuba Mountains before 2011 Enrico Ille and Mariam Sharif

“Peace-building” aims at a state of affairs that can only be described in relative, inevitably limited terms, but suggests that this state can be constructively, tangibly achieved. Peace, where violent interaction is the exception not the norm, is bound to the idea that violence is a bad practice when it comes to achieving one’s goals or to maintaining one’s status quo. Whether and how such an idea can take hold and dominate social action, especially in the aftermath of war, is thus a core issue of Peace-building, requiring the institutionalization of peace as outlined in Boutros-Ghalis’s 1992 UN report, An Agenda for Peace and its 1995 supplement. This makes Peace-building, as a concept born out of concerns of UN post-conflict interventions, both a more intrusive and elusive process than peacemaking (the formal agreement on non-use of violence) and peacekeeping (the prevention of use of violence). It also is more directly confronted with the intricate question what exactly qualifies as peace, especially if it means a state called “positive peace” in that it is more than merely the absence of violence. The term “Peace-building” was long about concerns of “non-local” actors and how they should or shouldn’t intervene to stabilize a post-conflict situation. In critical peace studies, a main issue is the merit of pushing for liberal peace, building on the claim that “democracies do not (or rarely) engage in war against each other” (Tom 2017, 60), with all its implications of statecitizen-market relations. Part of this issue is the interaction with non-state actors whose basic motivation for group formation seemed to contradict “liberal” ideas, “local groups based on affective ties such as ethnic development associations whose organizational forms mirror local customary and cultural practices” (Tom 2017, 65). This specifically concerns the frictions appearing in the interaction with “locals” whose ideas and practices might differ from 173

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those of the “imagined agent of peace” (Verkoren and van Leeuwen 2016, see also Hellmüller 2018). However, even these concerns are further complicated by the vague category of local, “a potential ‘savior’ for contemporary Peace-building by providing legitimacy and access, and by lowering the costs of intervention [but also] static, rural, traditional, incapable and waiting to be civilized, developed, monetized” (Mac Ginty 2015, 841). In short, thinking about Peace-building as an intervention confronts the “fundamental tension between the goal of a representative civil society that fosters conflict resolution and helps to build civil peace and any effort to externally engineer this goal” (Srinivasan 2016, 296). Awareness of this tension and its relation to power led to studies on “vertical integration” (Maccandless et al. 2015), or even avoidance of the construct “local” in favor of processual analysis, for example, as translation of traveling models of conflict management (Behrends et al. 2014). In addition, there have been strong arguments toward understanding both war/peace and violence/non-violence as continuum, rather than clear-cut, mutually exclusive categories that form structurally parallel pairs (Keen 2000). Practically, this makes Peace-building a constant, socially embedded task, where the aim is “conflict transformation, such as re-directing the social energies deployed in war to problem-solving ventures on a cooperative basis” (Richards 2005, 18). Consequently, Peace-building as external intervention is just one of several elements in this task, and attention for the variety of actors and ways the task is approached by is called for. In the Sudan, the question of “the local” is a strongly politicized one, as different parties to violent conflicts make different claims about their being local or national, problems of communities or of the state, tribal clashes over scarce resources or resistance against marginalization by the governing elites etc. Accordingly, there are tensions over whether Peace-building means rebuilding communal relations or rebuilding the state. However, analytical studies have highlighted the intertwining of different levels and scales of conflict, and arguments in literature on Peace-building converge the need for governance reform with the call “for paying more attention to low-intensity and local conflicts and to rebuilding state-society relations through bottom-up processes rather than almost exclusively depend on top-down approaches” (Sørbø 2015, 104). This also implies looking at Peace-building that has been initiated by actors that consider themselves part of these “local” conflicts. We pick up on this point and discuss a case of such an initiative, especially to show that “local/non-local” and “internal/external” remain contested categories even if a Peace-building initiative can be described as communitybased. We discuss “Peace-building” specifically as an aim and task in the Nuba Mountains, where “peace” has not been sustainably achieved for more than three decades. We speak about our own experiences as anthropological researchers between two wars in the Nuba Mountains (2005–2011), when

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we studied receding and mounting tensions in the area, attempts at stabilization of the political, economic, and social situation, and their successes and failures.1 We take here the example of a peace initiative in Heiban Locality (2009–2011) in the context of civil societal activities after the 2002 Ceasefire Agreement and the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA). We got involved with this specific initiative in different ways—as researchers, as consultants, as supporters, and as encountered actors with multi-faceted histories of knowledge, expertise, and experience—and we discuss what their interaction can tell us about inclusive peace as both an intellectual and practical challenge. PEACE INITIATIVE The relaxed atmosphere that was triggered by the signing of the CPA set off a wave of civil society initiatives. These marked a certain degree of reappearance of a civil society from the dimmed underground into the open, and the numbers of registrations of associations and organizations increased significantly after 2005. Against all odds, several initiatives had already tried to revive the idea of civil society as an arena for consensus building and progressive forces in the Sudan, especially after 2000. The new optimism was also encouraged by the ousting of Hasan Al-Turabi, a prominent Islamist political figure and philosopher, and some progress in peace negotiations between the Government of the Sudan and the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A). An example is the optimistic book The Phoenix State, edited by A. H. Abdel Salam and Alex de Waal of Justice Africa. Under the label “Civil Project” (al-mashrūc al-madanī), it demands a “spirit of democracy, pluralism and human rights,” through which “Sudan can rise from the ashes” (Abdel Salam and Waal 2001, xiii). In a second book, When Peace Comes, the inclusionary, pluralist character of the project is set clearly against the exclusionary, uniformist “Civilization Project” (al-mashrūc al-ḥaḍārī) of the former regime (Ajawin and Waal 2002, xii). Seen in a long tradition of Sudanese political activism, the call for free association was channeled here into a forum “to foster dialogue and common understanding between Sudanese from all parts of the country” (Abdel Salam and Waal 2001, xv). The CPA and its promise of a new constitution and peaceful coexistence further nurtured these ideas, in spite of its often exclusionary creation (cp. Salmon 2007); and writers like Hassan Abdel Ati celebrated the “untapped potential” of civil society (Abdel Ati 2006, 68). In accordance with a broad concept of civil society, this potential was seen in more than merely

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“welfare-based” or “issue-based” organizations, which enjoyed governmental and international support. In absence of independent unions and powerful sociopolitical movements, civil society organizations were seen as a crucial element in building social peace after the protracted wars and in reaching peace agreements in ongoing wars: “CSOs [Civil Society Organizations] can bridge the gap between what the Sudanese people want, and what negotiating parties want and the international community perceived they wanted” (Abdel Ati 2006, 70). Within this frame, civil society is not free of the politics of representation. This is especially complex in identity- and social group-based organizations, and the broad range of actors involved in Peace-building—“traditional leaders, faith-based organizations, women, youth, ethnically-based associations, professional societies, trade unions, and student unions” (Assal 2016, 21)— means that understanding them requires a closer look at practices of inclusion and exclusion, participation and absence. Community-based peace initiatives in the Nuba Mountains during the transitional period (2005–2011) are telling examples of these dynamics, and the circumstance that urban migrants took a leading role in many of them adds a further layer. Antecedents The past, the present, and most probably the future of the Nuba Mountains are marked by many population movements, of which a significant part was and is involuntary. Forced and voluntary migration have been a constant feature of Nuba Mountains’ history, and recent developments did not change the instable and flexible character of mobility in, from, and to the region (Komey 2003; Damin 2010). The promise of the CPA to provide a frame for stabilization of security and livelihoods did not bear long-lasting fruits, neither before nor, obviously, after the renewed outbreak of war in June 2011.2 This unstable situation produced a huge number of migrants who claim their belonging to the Nuba Mountains, but are unable or unwilling to live there constantly. In Khartoum, for instance, relatively stable communities developed already before independence, and a significant part of the younger generation is much more attached to the capital in terms of life experiences and aspirations than to the “home region.” Accordingly, the terminology “migrants” loses its overarching significance to describe their life. In a similar way, associations based on a reference to an origin in the Nuba Mountains say at least as much about politics and life in Khartoum as about politics and life in the Nuba Mountains, even when the associations’ concerns seem to be directed toward the latter.

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Research in this organizational field was rather limited, and only two systematic researches of Nuba migrants’ associations before 2011 exist (Meier 1990; Sharif 2005). Sharif 2005 analyzed the changes that took place around the beginning of the Interim Period, with focus on the case of the Heiban Association. The Heiban Association is an example of a relatively successful, strong, and durable social association, whose members explicitly refer to the organization as a civil society initiative. Its active members are also in intensive contact or even overlap with representatives of other social institutions of the community, such as church groups and Native Administration. Sharif observed a significant shift both in aims and interaction with other organizations. Before the CPA, the Heiban Association focused on economic and social issues of their community in Khartoum, such as access to education, sexual morality, and reproduction of a feeling of belonging, especially among the youth. After the CPA, the issue of return to the “home region” entered the agenda as well as issues of economic and social development there. The Association also directly influenced the political representation in the region, especially by initiation and organization of the election of Native Administration leaders. This was accompanied by a stronger presence of SPLM/A as the preferred political partner, especially during annual conferences, which were now conducted in and around Heiban. The latter two points need more clarification. In general, there are many lines between Native Administration and the associations.3 The authority of the chairman of the Heiban Association, for instance, was underscored by the fact that his father was a longtime and very popular mak (chief) of Heiban. Using the authority of direct information from his father in discussions on local matters, he claimed a position of leadership without being involved in daily matters of Native Administration. Nevertheless, he also referred to his former work as security officer in the police and his present work as investigation officer in the American Embassy to explain his reluctance to engage too much in matters he is personally not interested in and to strengthen his voice in matters he is. Thus his engagement in the Association can be seen as adequate, even more comfortable position of influence without being completely disconnected from the “older” forms of authority. The Heiban Association also influenced actively the election of Native Administration leaders both in Heiban and in Khartoum, being constituted by some of the most active and most influential members of the whole social group. Even if influential individuals were not active inside the administrative structures of the organization, friendship and relations connected them with each other. This is based, however, on a strong internal connection of elites who share an intensive interest in their home region. The lines of activities, so to speak, were not defined, but only formalized and named through specific organizations. Although their formal conditions form voluntary social work,

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only the combination of perceived need, ambition, and most of all means cause it. In this frame, the pre-existing elites not only act on basis of their societal status, but manifest and enhance it through an organizational structure that claims to be representative for the social group. But while decisions taken inside the association may reflect the social structure through an elected leader, the formal requirements—intentionally or unintentionally—also introduce new forms of representation, like a public relations (PR) office or a secretariat of women. This leads not only to cultural programs fostering the reproduction of this frame of belonging through carnivals, folklore groups, and so on, but helps also to introduce issues of social change and emancipation, at least into public debates. Similarly, a gradual membership fee and voluntary financial contributions both reflect the socioeconomic differences and aim at redistribution of wealth, for instance through stipends to young students. However, the Heiban Association made an offer for a representational body, which is actively used by some 100 individuals in a social group encompassing more than 10,000. In Khartoum, this meant also, although not only, a constant competition with other forms of socialization and public engagement in terms of financial means and time, among them church groups, private events, and work-related gatherings. Nevertheless, this reflects the struggle for a focal point of institutionally represented belonging and subsequently of social control, which very much dominates activities in Khartoum. Looking to Heiban itself, the issues and its contestation change immensely and immerse into a temporally concentrated presence of the Association through annual conferences. Especially over-regional conferences, like the All Nuba Tribes Conferences in Kauda 2002 and 2005, developed after the Ceasefire Agreement of 2002 into forums for many interactions between community leaders, NGOs, and companies, who were ready to benefit, in one way or the other, from the ceasefire and a somehow peace-like situation under new conditions. At the same time, rather local, often ethnically defined conferences in the Nuba Mountains developed into a main bridge between social and political issues, especially in areas dominated by SPLM. Some impressions of such a conference in Heiban in April 2008 show the different level the Association’s activities developed there. Its claim of a representational function surpassed here issues of social control and cultural belonging. Vis-à-vis the local inhabitants and public authorities, the organizers put issues like bride price and pre-marital sexuality on the agenda as well as the provision of public services and SPLA’s military presence causing insecurity of civilians even after the establishment of a civil administration in 2007. Roads, bridges, and land property appeared on the list together with short skirts and the beating of wives (Ille 2013b).

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For two weeks, these discussions and their relevance for the affairs of the region were central for the small rural town. Open and hidden conflicts showed that even an open forum like this cannot escape the dilemma of public representation, where technicalities and politics intermingle. Confronting themselves with an overloaded agenda, the organizers had to limit the voices heard, in order to get on with the program. Confronting themselves with the necessity to formulate the discussions into decisions and recommendations to be presented to the higher authorities, they had to form a smaller representational group to decide the formulation. Both led to the impression and criticism of permanent inhabitants of Heiban that “urban folk” came to tell them how to run things. In any case, the political consequences of these discussions were limited, as the large-scale political conflicts ran between SPLM/A and the National Congress Party (NCP), who imposed on the population throughout the war and afterward a necessity to choose between them. In a sense, the conference succeeded to operate outside this tight frame: Although there was a clear sign of positive SPLM orientation, neither the topics nor the respect for members of the association were defined primarily by political orientation. The question remains if this means the successful promotion of an alternative, civil society forum, which allows for introducing new perspectives and ideas, at least into public debates. The peace initiative, which was started by elites from this circle, is a good entry point for following up with this question. IDEAS AND PRACTICES The peace initiative had several phases, which differed in remarkable ways from each other. One of its beginnings came from a group of people who identified themselves as the intellectuals, muthaqqifīn, of the area, who had stayed outside the region during most of the war and saw after 2005 new chances for peace and development. But first visits, already after the Ceasefire Agreement of 2002, showed a high level of tension directed even toward them. As “Khartoum people” they experienced suspicions to be a fifth column, regime-influenced runaways, who didn’t join the real fight but now wanted to harvest the fruits of struggle. In addition, peace was not as peaceful as expected, even beyond the SPLM–NCP divide, and when quarrels over land turned lethal, it became clear that things would be much more difficult than the nice term “peace-building” suggested: “peace-fortifying” seemed rather more appropriate. So a long process started in 2008 that would last three years, only to be drowned out in a new war. The underlying idea was at first to bring people

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together, in general as a unification of an area defined as the realm of five tribes and administratively a locality, and concretely through peace conferences for and in that area. The process was driven by attempts to negotiate conflicts and inclusivity in the frame of a post-war situation, when civil initiatives were wedged between the lines drawn and cemented by violence, may they be between war parties, militant forces, or politicized ethnic groups. This re-emergence of a civilian voice in the affairs of the region was nothing less than a test case if peace was possible, and it was made urgent by radicalized conflicts over land (Komey 2010) and other issues, which included attacks of soldiers on civilian leaders. Therefore, the initiators sat together with the political and military leadership, formed and reformed committees, tried to put conflicts and development issues likewise on the table, and neither shortcomings in education, health, or security nor military intervention in civil affairs such as marriage, water distribution, and land use were left out. A conference head was elected, papers on development, native administration, voluntary return, the role of the locality and security were organized, and financial contributions by communities and NGOs alike were collected, the latter arranged by the urban elites through their own networks, rather than through locally present organizations. The first such conference still folded under the pressure of existing tensions, and neither did all representatives stay until the end nor was political inclusivity reached. However, many leaders met each other for the first time after the war, and issues that could easily have been swept under the carpet came out in the open, especially showing courage to challenge military domination. Clear recommendations came out of the conference as well, such as the demand for more health cadres and medical drugs, an ambulance, support of reproductive health, improved nutrition, and water accessibility and water quality. Instead of giving in to the difficulties, further initiatives, committees, and conferences followed, until concrete steps forward were carved out. The most concrete outcome of these conferences was a health project for the locality. Since funding was to be provided by a UK-based organization, mediated by Justice Africa, the process entered at this point the millstones of development bureaucracy. About nine months were spent with proposal writing, proposal review, staff recruitment, staff clearance, questionnaire writing, questionnaire translating, papers signed and sent and returned, and so on. Among others, two anthropologists were recruited for the baseline survey, one as Assistant Team Leader, one as Medical Anthropologist; only at this point we both entered the stage. Our involvement was based both on our research activities in this specific area and our long acquaintance with the team leader of the survey. We were both enthusiastic and cautious about the initiative, as we had high hopes for the significant improvement it could bring, and under civil leadership at

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that, but we did not agree with its pathway of tribal representation, which seemed to miss the chance to get away from leadership structures fashioned by colonial administration and to seek inclusive regional representation of equal inhabitants. From the beginning, we were thus a contributing element to a co-production that was guided by ideas with which we agreed and ideas with which we disagreed. Let us present some of those involved in the baseline survey, in order to show that an understanding of knowledge co-production may be fruitful in order to think about how one becomes engaged with a specific situation, as it avoids deciding what role a person should or shouldn’t play based on some predetermined function. Team Leader Our first example is the team leader, who was, at the same time, one of those leading the peace initiative from the beginning. He represents for us not only how complexly academia and activism can be intertwined, even if academia is the declared homestead. However, his biography shows very clearly how material conditions and intellectual production are deeply interconnected as well.4 In his academic production, he has always been an outspoken advocate for the recognition of Nuba’s struggle for physical and cultural survival, be it as endangerment of their access to their main source of livelihood, namely land, or as endangerment of their access to cultural self-determination in the face of Arab-Muslim hegemonic ideology. In a way, this struggle was inscribed into his scholarly life from the beginning, as already in primary school he experienced the presence of a curriculum and rules of behavior pressuring him to change his cultural orientation toward the dominant Arab-Muslim ideology of Northern Sudan’s power elites. His personal name was changed to an Arabic name; the use of his mother tongue was forbidden; and the conversion from his Christian conviction to Islam was at least suggested by his teachers and by the way the school books represented reality. He resisted this pressure, and this resistance developed into a defining motive of his intellectual and political life. School education had already created the experience of social relations exceeding the village environment. Concurrently, it was for him the first time to be addressed within a wider ethnic notion, as “Nuba,” which developed into a primary category of identification. This process is parallel to a general ethno-political development of “Nuba” from a pejorative exonym to the central element of a movement for political and cultural emancipation (Ille 2015). During the course of his life, he moved beyond his village to national and international universities, and became located primarily in urban

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agglomerations, and social relations grew more complex. However, in his more than 30 years of work experience, knowledge acquisition remained deeply intertwined with political and economic struggles: teaching centralized curricula in public schools formed by cultural politics of an embattled nation-building process; research under conditions of scarce economic resources; development projects as collaboration of strongly heterogeneous actors embedded in global and national political economy (Rottenburg 2009). In addition, he experienced the disparity between international recognition as leading academic in his home region and limited influence on political processes in the region. It is only on this wider background that his activities as one of the spokespersons of the initiative can be understood, as the issue of who can legitimately represent the area and its different inhabitants remained at the heart of negotiations: five representatives of the five tribes were called out in a new attempt in August 2009, extended to 15 for the first meeting, extended again to 50 in October 2009 to include women and youth, reduced again to a more practical working group of 15, culminating in a large conference with 2000 participants in November 2009, and a more focused one with 300 civil, political, and military leaders in January 2010. What is relevant about these numbers is that they express an ongoing strife to be neither too exclusive nor too inclusive to make a difference. Much work went into the intellectual working out of the right boundaries. The targeted groups were sometimes called families (usar), sometimes tribes (qabā’il), attempting to change or follow popular perception and expectations. The grassroots character was highlighted with names of committees such as Self-initiative for Dialogue, Reconciliation, Peace and Development (mubādara dhātiyya li-ḥiwār, taṣāluḥ, salām wa tanmiyya). Yet, at the same time it was led by professional elites, among them a judge and lawyers, and, at a later point, an international NGO and experts in conflict resolution were involved. The team leader himself had to move carefully between being outspoken enough to move things forward and stressing the need to find institutionbased, not individual-based solutions. Some of these attempts succeeded, such as the formation of a union of ethnic associations; others failed, such as achievement of political inclusiveness, since it remained void of NCP sympathizers, not the least after the NCP Governor of South Kordofan tried to enforce the rule that the initiative has to go through his own mechanism for reconciliation and peaceful coexistence in the state capital Kadugli. In other words, although being a leading voice in the initiative, the team leader himself had to find a way through the complex workings of a coproduction, which was multifaceted, not just because of the numerous people involved in it with their own ideas of how to move forward. Even in his own

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reasoning, there was a way to be found between the routine of conceptual doubts in his academic environment, his experience of blunt discrimination, and his wish to make an own, real contribution to the future of his homeland. As we will show later, it is not easy to maintain the right dosage of each direction. Health Workers Our two other examples concern health workers in the region who attended the workshop at the beginning of the survey, where not only the intention and content of the survey was presented, but where their own ideas and expectations were tried to be assessed through discussion rounds and first questionnaires. Their life experiences, professional background, and future perspectives reveal not only intricate complications of what “Peace-building” is supposed to achieve but also the imprints periods of non-peace leave on this process.5 At this point, there were still remnants of the high anticipation and expectation of change after an election and popular consultation to be conducted in 2011. However, it was also still part of an uncertain transitional period that could lead to stable peace or back to war (Flint 2008). The discussions between health practitioners, administrators, and organizers of the Heiban Association went through all these scenarios, and uncertainty shaped all of the work processes and discussions during the implementation period. One nurse, who pinned high hopes on the initiative and participated in the survey as data collector, thought its results might get her out of a situation— shared by many health workers in the locality—where she worked unceasingly in more than one function in a health center, but was treated unfairly in the highly problematic process of civil service integration that started in South Kordofan as late as 2009.6 She had visited initially courses in First Aid and nursing conducted by Red Crescent in Al-Hassahisa (located in Gezira State, central Sudan) where she had been living during civil war (1983-2005). She continued training in nursing at Tabita Butrus Nursing School in Omdurman but had to stop after three months, as the school was closed. Later, in 2008, she came to the health center to work as immunization technician. Although the health center needed this position she was initially not integrated in the Ministry of Health, but got her salary from the resources of the health center. During her work at the health center, she also visited workshops on nutrition, environmental sanitation, and primary healthcare, and also worked at the vaccination office. In March 2010 she finished a health education course about malaria, designed by the National Malaria Control Program for technicians in the health sector in high prevalence areas. Although she did continuously two different jobs in

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the health center, she was later only integrated as immunization technician, seen only on the basis of certificates, while her diverse work experiences were dismissed as an unstable educational background. Apart from that, she was engaged in the formation of a health worker union in April 2011, which submitted health workers’ demands to the different political sides before the election; she had a position in the church and in the women’s union of SPLM, all while receiving no formal payment at all. In fact, nutritional supplements from humanitarian kits, such as Plumpy’Nut, were often the only food she could have. And with her family scattered and her future uncertain, she even started to store some of these, as nobody knows, zuruuf ma ma’ruufa, as she said. While she had the impression that we had come to assess the quality of her work, her understanding and preparations turned out to be a much more sensible approach to the future than ours, as we will show below. Another health worker, head of the reproductive health unit and integrated in the civil service, suffered from lack of funding not only for herself, as she could not even fund visits to most of the clinics under her supervision. But she also hoped that the initiative would free her from the frequent embarrassment with unintegrated colleagues, who kept on working with almost no compensation or support. She had gone to the midwifery school in Kadugli in 1986, having been chosen together with another girl by her community to study there. The study included practice in a health center, which she finished in Dilling. After her graduation her village was a hot war zone, so the Ministry of Health distributed her to work in Kadugli, but she demanded to be sent to a health center much closer to her village, in order to have a chance to run off there. But while still being in the area under government control, she was actually visited at night by SPLM/A members from her village and put under pressure for not returning. She reassured them of her intentions. In the morning, government sympathizers came to her house to find out who had been there the previous night, showing her fragile position between enemy lines. In the end, she escaped to her own village through another village which was at that time under governmental attack, and established there a rakoba (wooden sun shade) to start working, only equipped with her bag from the school without new medical supplies. She advised her patients to make drinks from plants’ roots and referred patients to herbal healers, but also had to constantly build up her own experience and a network of experts to refer cases to. With her rudimentary equipment, she also had to find ad-hoc solutions to many difficult delivery situations, such as during one of the emergency cases during war, when a dead embryo had stayed for four days in the mother’s womb and she had to drag it out piece by piece. After the war, she became an important resource person for all kind of midwifery work in the area, doing training workshops for organizations and

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health centers, although being forbidden by Ministry of Health rules to do so—one of the restrictive rules put forward without provision of a viable alternative service. These biographical sketches reveal two kinds of knowledge and practices that were marginalized during the “peace” period, standing in for the general failure to shape a new political landscape: for one, post-war civil service integration was driven by a distributional logic that owed more to war animosity than Peace-building. Just as macro-politics were conducted as a bilateral, militarized zero-sum game of elitist peacemaking (Ille et al. 2015), formulated into a flawed model of power-sharing (cp. Hadi 2014), the integration process failed to develop into a mutually beneficial exchange of experiences. As a result, the process was thrive with political tactics and ended in a messy situation where health workers provided services without regular payment, much as they did during the war. Instead of learning how to provide health services even under difficult, unstable political circumstances, as experienced by both health workers during the war, the required suspension of political contest for the sake of basic service provision never materialized. Second, the knowledge and practices of those who were most acquainted with the situation in these areas were ignored and dismissed based on formal criteria of qualification that were derived from a limited understanding of institutionalized healthcare. Rather than benefiting from those who learned to operate under constant emergencies and lack of basic resources, a functional model based on standardized educational and professional pathways was simply presumed to be appropriate—since there was “peace.” Healthcare policies were formulated based on an unadjusted extension of a developmentally modeled, “regular” system into the SPLM areas, rather than a qualified process of post-war integration. The latter would have acknowledged the sensibility of contingency practices, the readiness to deal with messy situations as they arise, rather than searching for top-down, interventionist systems of service provision. Being experts of such practices, health workers as the two presented here should have been at the forefront for the formulation of locally doable solutions, of a horizontal co-production of health knowledge and practices, a co-production that we ourselves failed to think to the end at that point (see next section). Aftermath Unfortunately, what ultimately developed was a failing attempt to produce a broad-based assessment of health services in the area. We don’t mean with failure only that the survey never materialized into an actual project but disappeared in the drawers of the funding organization. We don’t even merely acknowledge that the war beginning only five months after the report was

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finished brought an end to any prospect to implement a project as envisaged. We observe an organizational context that produced a lack of intellectual flexibility, which failed to adopt from those living in the area a level of alertness toward the possibility of war that did not remain abstract—such as our own knowledgeable analysis of overall political tension—but already materialized in concrete preparatory steps. Where the health workers we studied put nutrition supplements into hidden storages, our report was based on one singular way forward. Where the population we were concerned with had learned to be prepared for situational mobility, our report lacked a wide-reaching consideration of mobile, flexible solutions for healthcare under conditions not born out of the presumption of peace. In hindsight, our report was based on the pre-conception of stable health units and personnel to be supported by capacity building, not on the perceptions of local health workers long living with uncertainty, and preparing for the worst. REFLECTIONS Although it was ultimately not successful, we consider this initiative a good case for how diverse expertise and skills can be involved in a specific attempt to translate a—to varying degrees consensual—idea (“peace”) into concrete steps to be taken (“building”), as inclusively as possible. In the Sudan, the larger part of what could be called civil society is concerned with social reproduction of and redistribution in a social group, often on basis of and confirming socio-economic differences. Another part, mostly with governmental or international funding, fills gaps of public service provision, and only a small part is directed against structural injustices and toward social change. The initiative was based on analytical awareness of all of these directions, and attempted their integration in one project. The context was not conducive. The political will of the former regime to control all significant resources and to restrict every form of opposition creates a potential of political doubt for every social activity. This resulted also in the suspicion of hidden hostile intentions, which pervades many parts of the social life in the present Sudan. In the Nuba Mountains, this was heightened by the high level of tensions between former war parties, and the aggression which spread due to the wide gap between post-war hopes and post-war reality. The insistence on alternative formations in frame of an idea of civil society was thus also an attempt to encourage inclusiveness, while being entangled into suspicions of enmity. In this sense, conferences and initiatives, such as the ones discussed here, represent a claim of public space by those previously excluded from it. The initially harsh opposition of South Kordofan’s NCP to those events speaks clearly of this.

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Still, there were inner contradictions in this attempt both to preserve and to change social relations toward peace. “Peace” is an ephemeral idea that needs to be institutionalized, settled, and this may be said also about the ideas of “Heiban” or “five tribes.” Ethnic associations may be seen as an attempt to strengthen this settlement, and the historical background to these groups’ existence—and the contested right to be Nuba—make this part of a struggle for emancipation (Rahhal 2001). But the existence of a shared issue—may it be “being Nuba” or “peace”—does not define the form and content of the actual organization around this issue. While the form of the organization of the registered associations, for instance, is defined by centralized preset structures, representation and social action are a result of a complicated net of historical heritage, present contentions, aspirations, and imminences of the coming developments. In other words, the intellectual consolidation that preceded the peace initiative may have been the source of social innovation, an envisaged integration of historically grown communal structures, modern state politics of representation, and the organizational modalities of the development establishment. This daring grasp evaporated into a survey without consequences, as one more ingredient was missing: the lack of presumption of “peace” and what it is. The war-peace continuum means, among other things, that what is relevant in one does not lose its relevance in the other, and survival strategies under insecurity in “war” (Komey 2016) can teach something about development strategies under uncertainty in “peace” (Corbett 2011): those who have not lived under war should not presume to know how to build peace, or even just a life out of the ashes. This also suggests that rather than trying to predetermine what each involved actor will bring to the situation, a reflective and flexible approach to conditions and practices of engagement seem to open the door for a less rigid understanding of the role different actors can and should play. In a wider view, this may lead the way not only to a rethinking toward broad-based consultation for policy-making, but also toward structures of decision-making that prioritize those who are living in the situation under consideration and thus carry the bulk of consequences a decision will have. Looking at the situation end of 2021, this still seems to be a relevant consideration. One can only speculate what present peacemaking will bring about but it can be expected to not foster peace if it is again understood as limited to roundtable power-sharing. The experiences brought together in this chapter bear witness to a failure to achieve “positive peace” because essential questions have not found an appropriate answer: Whose “peace” is built here? Who has a voice in carving out what peace is? Whose ideas and experiences are considered? Should popular consultation or, better, broad-based participation in decision-making be at the beginning or at the end of this process? And what is learned about life under peace from those who learned to live under war?

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NOTES 1. This is based on two field research periods of Mariam Sharif over several months (2004 among ethnic associations in Khartoum, published in Sharif 2005; 2010/2011 among health practitioners in and around Heiban, published in Sharif 2019) and five field research periods of Enrico Ille totaling 32 months (between 2005 and 2010, published in Ille 2013a). 2. Samirah Musa Armin Damin concluded based on fieldwork in 2007 that “[d] espite the challenges in the process of return migration to the Nuba Mountains, most of the returnees interviewed agreed that the CPA was indeed an important achievement” (Damin 2010, 139). However, a report of the American National Democratic Institute for International Affairs asked similar questions mid-2008 and titled the findings Losing hope (Cook, 2009), claiming that most respondents in South Kordofan saw no progress and perceived Nuba-Arab conflicts at a climax, with both ready to go to war should the election have not the favored outcome. 3. Native Administration is itself on the border of political and social control, most obviously perceptible in the cases of a double leadership of amīr and mak. While the amīr is part of the Native Administration system of NCP that was introduced in 1996 mak is understood as “traditional,” or even autochthonous term by groups projecting a revival of “African identity.” These groups, mostly sympathetic of SPLM, began now to appoint their own leaders. This double system created in many areas confusion and sociopolitical tension, like among Kadugli, Miri, Shawaya, Tira, and Masakīn Tuwāl. 4. The team leader has been a mutual acquaintance of both authors since 2005. The biographical details are based on several interviews conducted in June 2009, verified and extended through informal conversations over the years. 5. The biographical details stem from interviews conducted in frame of fieldwork in Heiban in 2010 and 2011, published in Sharif 2019. 6. The integration was supposed to take place at the beginning of the transitional period but was delayed by several political deadlocks between the political “partners” NCP and SPLM/A. While a first survey by the integration committee started in 2006, actual employment of health workers from SPLM areas happened only in 2009 and 2010, with more than 50% of them dismissed, many in spite of long years of medical practice in the former war areas. The process is discussed in more detail in Sharif 2019, chapter 2.

REFERENCES Abdel Ati, Hassan. 2006. “Untapped Potential. Civil Society and the Search for Peace.” In Peace by Piece. Addressing Sudan’s Conflicts, edited by Mark Simmons and Peter Dixon, 68–71 (Accord Issue 18). London: Conciliation Resources. Abdel Salam, A. H., and Alex de Waal, eds. 2001. The Phoenix State. Civil Society and the Future of Sudan. After Proceedings of the Conference on Human Rights in the Transition in Sudan, held in Kampala, Uganda, between 8–12 February 1999. Asmara: Justice Africa and the Committee of the Civil Project; Lawrenceville, NJ and Asmara: The Red Sea Press.

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Ajawin, Yoanes, and Alex de Waal, eds. 2002. When Peace Comes. Civil Society and Development in Sudan. Lawrenceville, NJ and Asmara: The Red Sea Press. Assal, Munzoul. 2016. “Civil Society and Peace Building in Sudan. A Critical Look.” Sudan Working Paper 2016: 2. Bergen: CMI. Behrends, Andrea, Sung-Joon Park, and Richard Rottenburg, eds. 2014. Travelling Models in African Conflict Management: Translating Technologies of Social Ordering. Leiden: Brill. Cook, Traci D. 2009. Losing Hope. Citizen Perceptions of Peace and Reconciliation in the Three Areas. Findings from Focus Groups with Men and Women in Abyei, Southern Kordofan, and Blue Nile. Washington, DC: National Democratic Institute for International Affairs. Corbett, Justin. 2011. Leaning from the Nuba: Civilian Resilience and Self-protection during Conflict. Local to Global Protection. Damin, Samira Musa Armin. 2010. “Return Migration to the Nuba Mountains.” In After the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in Sudan, edited by Elke Grawert, 130–140. Woodbridge, VA and Rochester, NY: James Currey. Flint, Julie. 2008. The Drift Back to War. Insecurity and Militarization in the Nuba Mountains. Geneva: Sudan Human Security Baseline Assessment, Small Arms Survey. Hadi, Mutasim Bashir Ali. 2014. “Power-sharing in Southeast Darfur. Local Translations of an International Model.” In Travelling Models in African Conflict Management: Translating Technologies of Social Ordering, edited by Andrea Behrends, Sung-Joon Park, and Richard Rottenburg, 117–146. Leiden: Brill. Hellmüller, Sara. 2018. The Interaction between Local and International Peacebuilding Actors. Partners for Peace. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Ille, Enrico. 2013a. Projections, Plans and Projects. Development as the Extension of Organizing Principles and its Consequences in the Rural Nuba Mountains / South Kordofan, Sudan (2005–2011). Leipzig and Weißenfels: Ille & Riemer. Ille, Enrico. 2013b. “The 2008 ‘Quota’ in an Urban-Rural Civil Society Conference and Beyond.” Ahfad Journal 30 (2): 107–119. Ille, Enrico. 2015. “Nuba.” A Historical Perspective on Changing and Contested Notions. Nuba Mountains Studies Working Paper 2. Halle: LOST Research Network. Ille, Enrico, Guma Kunda Komey, and Richard Rottenburg. 2015. “Tragic Entanglements: Vicious Circles and Acts of Violence in South Kordofan.” In Sudan’s Killing Fields. Political Violence and Fragmentation, edited by Laura Lyantung Beny and Sondra Hale, 117–137. Trenton: Red Sea Press. Keen, David. 2000. “War and Peace: What’s the Difference?” International Peacekeeping 7 (4): 1–22. Komey, Guma Kunda. 2003. “Internal Displaced Population of Sudan and the Rights of Citizenship.” In Civil Society Dialogue on Peace, Democracy & Development. Proceedings of the National Civic Forum Debate (2002), edited by Hassan Abdel Ati, Joseph Modesto, Galal El Din El Tayeb, and Yasir Abu Zayd, 60–79. Khartoum and Nairobi: The National Civic Forum, EDGE for Consultancy and Research & Heinrich Böll Foundation East and Horn of Africa Regional Office. Komey, Guma Kunda. 2010. Land, Governance, Conflict and the Nuba of the Sudan. Woodbridge, VA and Rochester, NY: James Currey.

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Komey, Guma Kunda. 2016. “‘Civilians’ Survival Strategies Amid Institutionalized Insecurity and Violence in the Nuba Mountains, Sudan.” Sudan Working Paper 2016:4. Bergen: CMI. Mac Ginty, Roger. 2015. “Where is the Local? Critical Localism and Peace-building.” Third World Quarterly 36 (5): 840–856. doi: 10.1080/01436597.2015.1045482. Maccandless, Erin, Eric Abitbol, and Timothy Donais. 2015. “Vertical Integration: A Dynamic Practice Promoting Transformative Peace-building.” Journal of Peacebuilding & Development 10 (1): 1–9. doi: 10.1080/15423166.2015.1014269. Meier, Christoph. 1990. “Ethnic Self-help Associations among Nuba Migrants in the ‘Three Towns’ (Republic of Sudan).” Sociologus 40: 158–178. Rahhal, Suleiman Musa. 2001. The Right to be Nuba: The Story of a Sudanese People’s Struggle for Survival. Lawrenceville, NJ: The Red Sea Press. Richards, Paul. 2005. “New War. An Ethnographic Approach.” In No Peace – No War: Anthropology of Contemporary Armed Conflicts, edited by Paul Richards, 1–21. Oxford: James Currey. Rottenburg, Richard. 2009. Far-fetched Facts. A Parable of Development Aid. Cambridge and London: The MIT Press. Salmon, Jago et al. 2007. Drivers of Change: Civil Society in Northern Sudan. Khartoum: UK Department for International Development. Sharif, Mariam. 2005. “Ethnic Associations of Migrants from the Nuba Mountains in an Urban Context. The Case of Heiban Association in Omdurman.” [In Arabic]. B.A. thesis, Department of Anthropology and Sociology, University of Khartoum. Sharif, Mariam. 2019. Interaction between Health Institutions in Knowledge and Medical Practices in South Kordofan/Nuba Mountains. Bergen: Chr. Michelsen Institute. Sørbø, Gunnar. 2015. “Anthropology and Peace-building in Sudan—Some Reflections.” In Past, Present, and Future. Fifty Years of Anthropology in Sudan, edited by Munzoul A. M. Assal and Musa Adam Abdul-Jalil, 95–110. Bergen: CMI. Srivinivasan, Sharath. 2016. “Civil Society as Counter-power: Rethinking International Support toward Tackling Conflict and Fostering Non-violent Politics in Africa.” In Minding the Gap: African Conflict Management in a Time of Change, edited by P. Aall and C. Crocker, 295–310. Waterloo: Centre for International Governance Innovation. Tom, Patrick. 2017. Liberal Peace and Post-conflict Peace-building in Africa. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Verkoren, Willemijn, and Mathijs van Leeuwen. 2016. “The Imagined Agent of Peace: Frictions in Peace-building through Civil Society Strengthening.” In Peacebuilding and Friction. Global and Local Encounters in Post-conflict Societies, edited by Annika Björkdahl, Kristine Höglund, Gearoid Milar, Jaïr van der Lijn, and Willemijn Verkoren, 103–119. London and New York: Routledge.

Chapter 10

Portrait of a Woman of Courage Awadeya Koko, Organic Intellectual Mai Azzam and Sana Makawi

This chapter tells the story of a Sudanese woman who came from the ethnic and economic margins of the country to the center. She constantly sought political recognition for herself as well as for her fellow women from similar backgrounds. To our understanding, she represents a classical organic intellectual who faced several challenges in order to bring protection and stability to her group of people. The chapter is based on a lengthy in-depth interview with Awadeya Koko in 2019. Awadeya is a Sudanese woman working as a street tea seller in Khartoum, the Sudan. The importance of her story comes from not only an ethnographic richness, but also on the intersections of gender, class, and intellectualism. As the chapter unfolds we understand that Awadeya’s story ties together some threads and makes the picture of complex realities in the Sudan clearer. It brings together women, poverty, marginalization, ethnicities, stigma, class, power, and politics. Her story challenges a narrative of knowledge and intellectualism in the Sudan. Hence, this chapter focuses on “organic intellectual” women in the Sudan by challenging a common understanding of institutional knowledge in making the “intellectual.” We argue that knowledge is a product of accumulated experiences, and intellectualism is claimed through practices in certain sociopolitical fields. In the narration of Awadeya Koko’s story, we use a Gramscian understanding of the organic intellectual. We aim to show that when engaging in rich life stories of women we can get an alternative understanding of intellectualism. In postcolonial states, a conceptual understanding of who is an “intellectual” is best seen within the colonial heritage of knowledge and knowledge production. In addition, the question of women’s rights is best seen within a critical understanding of patriarchy across classes. To our understanding, both systems—colonialism and patriarchy—share an understanding of the 191

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“other” as a dependent and/or a source of risk. In such a relationship, both colonization and patriarchy patronize the “other.” In this chapter we follow a certain anthropological methodology. We try to present an “experience-near” narrative in which the voice of the writer/ scholar is minimized while the voice of the speaker is maximized (Wikan 1991). We retell the story of Awadeya with minimum changes and interventions, enabling the reader to follow Awakeya’s narration as she presents it. We will follow this trail with some theoretical reflections on organic intellectuals. The chapter is organized into various sections; the first section explores briefly intellectuals in the Sudan and their ties to higher education. Then we talk about the organic intellectual woman in the Sudan and the challenges of “invisibility.” From there we explain the socioeconomic and political circumstances of tea ladies in the Sudan and the vulnerabilities they face. Hence, after these sections of contextualization we then explore Awadeya Koko’s story in depth. We divided Awadeya’s story into five sections. Each part covers a shift in Awadeya’s life that has marked her journey. We start by introducing Awadeya as she introduced herself—where she came from and her early life. Then we re-narrate her involvement with an NGO in a dialogical way. Awadeya then starts her cooperative that became a union for women food and drinks sellers in Khartoum, which we explore in the section that follows. Consecutively, her life shifts when she was imprisoned during her pursuit for economic advancement. We follow that experience by exploring how she became a president of the union after her prison time, and later on officially named “a woman of courage” by the American White House. Awadeya’s story and quest for visibility and recognition did not stop here; we explore her participation in the recent political change that took place in the Sudan in 2019. Then we offer some brief theoretical inputs and concluding remarks. INTELLECTUALS AND HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE SUDAN In today’s neo-liberal world, knowledge has become a product, an outcome of itself rather than a process of accumulation. In the Sudan, the identification of anyone as potentially “intellectual” is very much attributed to “higher education.” The previous regime in the Sudan had initiated a program called “revolution of higher education,” which considered knowledge as a “product.” The program aimed at increasing the number of universities in the Sudan in order to provide as many students as possible with higher education. These universities (governmental and private) invested in degrees more than

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knowledge (Mann 2014). At any rate, most of the graduates are part of an educational system that shapes their consciousness, perception, and place in the society. This process of the making and unmaking of the intellectual is connected to the colonial system. The first university to graduate “intellectuals” was Gordon College—now the University of Khartoum—established by the British in 1902. The university graduates, later on, established intellectual associations1 in their neighborhoods. They exchanged books and magazines and developed an anticolonial consciousness. These associations gradually transformed in 1938 into “Graduates Conference,” a major body aimed to end Sudanese colonization. Those graduates formed a seed for the elites or the Effendia strata who claimed knowledge and social status in Khartoum. This history is, of course, not unique to the Sudan; it is true of many other African countries. Diouf (1994) notes that: the colonial power had an aim to create “an intellectual petty bourgeoisie,” or elites serving their own agenda, to be accomplished through establishing institutions for higher education (Diouf 1994, 219). The thrust extended to exclude the masses and was later adopted by the post-independence intellectuals (219). This class of elite intellectuals claimed power, politics, and knowledge, while everyone else was expected to follow the lead. Among those who were excluded were women. No doubt this exclusion of women varied between those who belonged to the social class/ strata of the elites and those who did not. We argue that everyone has a sort of an “intellectual” within themselves (inspired by Gramsci 1989, 115), an intellectual self, that comes with a certain expertise on a particular issue and particular answers to the existential questions. The intellectual in this chapter is a person who is aware of their place in the society, their relation to the power structure, accumulated experiences that allow them to act upon their needs, as well as their class/strata needs. It is a vision that is inspired and emphasized by Gramsci’s description of the organic intellectual as follows: Every social group, coming into existence on the original terrain of an essential function in the world of economic production, creates together with itself, organically, one or more strata of intellectuals which give it homogeneity and an awareness of its own function not only in the economic but also in the social and political fields. (Gramsci 1989, 113)

Gramsci tells us that there is no single form of “intellectualism,” rather there are many forms that are situated according to socioeconomic circumstances. Intellectualism then becomes a pursuit, a process that shapes people into becoming a collective stratum. This understanding challenges an important element about intellectuals as elites in the Sudan. Since independence,

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the notion of intellectualism was coined by the Effendia who had claimed it based on their education as well as their social class2 (El Kid 1992). Hence, within the above discussed background, organic intellectuals became unseen and unrecognized akin to their social classes. Women, in particular, are less seen as intellectuals and organic intellectuals, which we explore in the subsequent section. THE WOMAN ORGANIC INTELLECTUAL There are almost no studies dedicated to intellectual women in the Sudan; most of the studies available focus on the women’s movement, women in politics, women-related issues (such as Female Genital Mutilation), and issues related to women’s rights. It is difficult to comprehend women as intellectuals in a general sense, and even more difficult to point to women as organic intellectuals. It is also challenging to talk about women in the Sudan and avoid reproducing the victimhood image vs. the heroic one. The majority of literature depicts women within this dichotomy, paying less attention to women’s lives within the system, the shaping of agency,3 the negotiations of one’s place, and development of consciousness. This can only be separated from the power dynamics in the society that includes both vulnerable women, as much as vulnerable men. Having said so, we do not claim to bridge a gap in the literature, rather add a small piece to it. Women’s exclusion from the public domain jeopardizes them to be seen as less intellectual than men. Their thoughts are less valuable; their voices are mostly muted. Nevertheless, there are some women who broke into this men’s domain. They were able to break through and make themselves visible. However, if we understand the intellectual as a person who invests in enhancing people’s lives through both thoughts and actions, we then consider that in this category are many women. In the following part we briefly discuss women in the informal sector in the Sudan, those who are mostly rendered unseen and as not being “intellectuals,” according to the society hierarchy. TEA LADIES IN KHARTOUM Women in the informal sector in Africa have for long brought confusion for states. On the one hand, they play an important role in contributing to social and economic stability for their families. On the other hand, they represent the image of poverty in African states. In fact, this is not only about women, but about marginalized and poor people as well. Despite this fact, women in many African cities continued to persist and challenge the patriarchal systems

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imposed on them (Kinyanjui 2014, 63). Similarly, in the Sudan, women are always pushed to the margins by the system. Those who persist against the system are stigmatized by the state and the middle-class city dwellers. In the case of tea ladies in the Sudan they remain in the margins and in the center at the same time. They are in the margins in terms of access to services and political recognition. Yet they are in the center of attention in terms of stigmatization. Tea ladies or sitat al shai belong to the large groups of women who have joined the informal economy market. They sit in open spaces around workplaces, buildings, under construction blocks, ministries, universities, markets, and hospitals. They use small charcoal stoves that are a sort of mobile tool to cook hot beverages. They prepare coffee, tea, warm hibiscus, warm mint, and many other herbs, which they sell to their customers. People (mostly men) use the space around sitat al shai to have breaks from work, to meet their friends, and to socialize (Azzam 2016, 77). These women challenge the male dominant spaces by working in the streets and create direct communication with customers. For these reasons the broader society in Khartoum has always looked down on them. Authorities try to control these women in many ways. For instance, they practice annual campaigns against them during which police officers chase the women from the streets, take their tools, and legally fine them. These are violent practices. One incident that we can refer to resulted in the death of one of the tea ladies in 2009. She was pregnant and faced police officers while she was trying to escape herself, carrying her tools. She was hurt and started bleeding. Police officers left her on the street with no help until she died (Fagiury 2009). In such harsh circumstances these women survive by cooperating with each other. The multifaceted discrimination they face created women like Awadeya to help them live in dignity and stand against authorities’ brutality. In the next segment we explore Awadeya Koko’s story. UNDERSTANDING AWADEYA’S STORY We argue in this chapter that, first, women in the Sudan negotiate their places differently and in many layers, as such they are neither victims nor heroes. Second, in decolonizing Africa and knowledge production, we need to widen the definition of intellectual to encompass people outside the official education channels, and in this we are inspired by Oelofsen in decolonizing the African “mind” (Oelofsen 2015, 131). In the Sudan the wide realm of intellectuals expands sometimes to include politicians, activists, and opposition leaders; nonetheless, the concept needs to adapt to those who are unseen. Those who struggle to make ends meet are the people most acquainted with

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the knowledge of necessities. They often create, resist, arrive at solutions, and generate channels for sustaining life. Here we are careful not to portray a confusing image of knowledge, intellectualism, and needs. However, we would like to make a connection between the three aspects. Hence, we aim to make our argument through narrating Awadeya’s story. Who Is Awadeya? Awadeya is a woman who managed to change the flow of a power conversation. Instead of surrendering to a patriarchal, monolithic power structure, she reversed the direction of power. It’s no longer the “victim” against the “dominant,” but rather a process of power negotiations. It is in Appadurai’s wording “the capacity to aspire” (Appadurai 2007, 33). This process of power negotiations entails as well, an internal awareness of one’s place in relation to the hegemony. It entails reflections on class, ethnicity, and gender. Awadeya Koko was born in 1963. She started her life as a tea seller who had escaped with her family from the war in South Kordofan and settled in Khartoum (Komey 2011). In her own narrative she said: I was born in Abassyia Tagli, eastern Nuba Mountains. I studied there the primary school and sat for the high school exam but didn’t pass twice. I was like a son to my father; I helped him with the farming. When I was 12 years old I wasn’t allowed to work on farms anymore. Then I came to Medani (Wad Medani, another relatively large city) to study 6th primary grad, during these times girls had no say in their life. I was married before I turned 16 to a relative of the family who was much older. My mother was not happy about it, but my father insisted on the marriage. After Altayeb (the husband) traveled to Egypt then my father announced the marriage. He (the husband) then traveled to Saudi Arabia. He got into troubles and was jailed for life. After two years he divorced me. Then after two to three years, I got married to another man but he died.

Awadeya goes on to say: Then I established a kindergarten; it was the first in Mayo (the poor Khartoum neighborhood Awadeya lived in). I followed that by running a class for adult education. After a while, my family said I either had to get married or go back to them. I said I won’t go back but if I find a man I will marry. I got married to my husband and the father of my children now. He is a wall painter. His income is not so good and not enough to feed us. My relatives helped me a lot with

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bringing food; they know that I will get fed up if I had no food. Yet, my husband didn’t like it when my relatives helped me. I knew it, so I talked with him, let me work so we don’t need to ask people. I entered the market after 1986, after the Intifada (popular uprising). By the time I had a newly born child. I gave the little child to my sister and started to work.

In 1969 the Sudan had undergone a major political change led by Gaafar Muhammad an-Nimeiry, (Woodward 1991) who took the power from the sovereign council during a transitional period known as the second democracy.4 The event later was known as the “May Revolution.” The overall political situation was tense; Mayo, the neighborhood where Awadeya lives, was a periphery in Southern Khartoum represented as a slum settlement. The dwellers of the area mostly come/came from Western and Southern Sudan. The neighborhood struggled for a long time for social inclusion and political recognition. Most of the social services in the area were provided by NGOs and self-help groups of the local community (Azzam 2010). In a time of wide political instability and urban struggles, Awadeya made her place in economic production. As an internal migrant woman, she was not only struggling with a system of domesticating women, but also struggling for political recognition within her neighborhood. To further understand the multilayer struggle she faced, we continue with her narrative: During early days in Mayo it was very difficult; there was no transportation apart from Lorries and Toyota trucks. I would wake up early in the morning and go to the market, then go home in the evening. During the rainy season, it was even worse. We would walk to Eid Hussein (another neighborhood to the North of Mayo) to ride on the Toyota trucks used for transporting milk. When it gets stuck in the mud we would push it until it works. Then when we reach the city we would go to the closest ‟mazira” (water source on the street), wash ourselves and put on Vaseline, and then we go the market. We faced many problems in the market, ‟Alkasha” (raids against street vendors), no toilets and the strong sun over our heads; we used trays over our heads for protection but it was not enough. In the times of Mahadi Mustafa Al Hadi (Khartoum governor during the May revolution known for his tough decisions and anti-prostitution campaigns), he concentrated the Alkasha on us and broke the small shops where some people worked. We were 8 women, all from Mayo; I told them not to stop. We bought one kettle and a set of cups; we worked all together on this single set of tools. After two months everyone had their own tools. But, I have never stopped because I became responsible for myself; I eat and drink from my own money. My husband works but I had to have my own money. He knows that it is my right to work and he only told me to be careful and not to be late.

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Awadeya’s experience with the market gave her two things. First, she learned the need for resistance and second, she learned the strength of collaboration. She organized herself and her fellow women to stay and be present regardless of the state policies against women’s presence in public and women participation in a men-controlled market. It is worth mentioning that we are not trying to portray an image of a completely segregated society. Yet, there are certain expectations about women that are prevalent in Khartoum. Among which is the idea that women who enter into a social milieu of men are seen as “potential risks,” “potential prostitutes,” and “easy.” The assumption is built on an imagined morality for a Sudanese person who is supposed to comply with the norms and traditions. Those who divert from this moral imagination are then “deviants.” Such expectations are stronger when it comes to women because of women’s role in sexuality and reproduction. It is noteworthy that Khartoum’s Governor Mahadi Mustafa Alhadi was the first governor to illegalize sex work in Khartoum and rearranged the markets in downtown Khartoum. He represented the moral imagination of the educated elites, the man who was brought up in Omdurman (Elhassan 2015), where most of the elites of that time resided (Hussien 2014). The late governor’s policy was controversial during that time and the intellectuals did not agree with it. While the intellectuals were debating the decision at the University of Khartoum (Albouny 2014), Awadeya had already decided to stay in the center and resist. Nevertheless, the policy that aimed at pushing the poor face of Khartoum to the margins—by pushing and chasing away street vendors—ended up making Awadeya stronger and more persistent about staying in the center of town to make her living. Awadeya’s persistence was met with attention from a local NGO working for development. The next section highlights an important shift in Awadeya’s story, marking the intervention of the NGO. NGO Intervention Awadeya continued working in the market every day; she persisted despite all the challenges. In 1990, an intervention took place that changed Awadeya’s future. She narrates it as follows: In 1990 the Sudanese Association for Development (SDA) came to us; they conducted a survey and asked us about our lives. Because I knew how to read and write I became responsible for the women with me. SDA applied in the municipality so they could give us a place in the market for work. They gave us a place for 24 women. Then later they made another one for 10 women, I now had 35 women selling tea who are stabilized. No ‟Kasha” (raid) nothing; there was water and place to store our tools. Then we were left with women who sell

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food; the place was not enough. Later on we got an invitation from cooperatives to join a festival and make food for the occasion. We then prepared our things overnight. The former president ate from our food and I got the opportunity to greet him. While shaking his hand I gave him a paper asking for a place for women. We wanted a space for those women who make and sell food. Then SDA applied for another space which was granted.

Sudan Development Association is an NGO that aims at supporting poor communities for development. They stated in their blog (Sudanese Development Association 2006) the following about SDA Principles: “Development is a people’s own responsibility…SDA perceived poverty as both a state i.e. deprivation of basic human needs and a process i.e. an outcome of structural inequalities pertaining both material and non-material needs generated by social relations, class, ethnicity, gender, and state ideology” (SDA blog). Through the first part of SDA arguing that development is people’s own responsibility, we would like to show that the intervention of SDA was a response to Awadeya’s efforts. In other words, Awadeya’s work and activities in the market made the NGO respond to her efforts. We are explaining this not to attribute the later achievements of Awadeya to the intervention of SDA alone. This is also evident in Awadeya’s initiative to give the president a paper and make it possible for other women to get a safe space for work. This sort of intervention seems also a dialogical one in which SDA offers one part of the support and women take responsibility to further develop it. Awadeya and the other women made sure to have a beneficial representation for their work during that festival. Through their participation, they were seeking visibility from those in power. It becomes clear that power is negotiated and reassembled by those women. They were also seeking legal protection from state policies against them. This is manifested by women’s need for a safe space in the market where they become institutionalized and the raids (kasha) stop. Awadeya continued to work until she managed to build an association for women. In the coming part we re-narrate the association’s inception and development. The Association/Cooperative The pursuit of recognition did not stop by making safe spaces but went on for legal and institutional protection. Awadeya and the other women went on and organized themselves in a cooperative that made them a legal body. She explains the process as follows: I said now you have made the place for us, but we will suffer from levies. The SDA people said: look for a law to protect you. We couldn’t find anything but

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a cooperative to protect us. Then we started immediately to make it, we had to study for 9 days and be graduated from a short course about cooperatives by SDA. After we established our cooperative association in the market, we became stabilized. Our association is the first of its kind. Now I know that other women in other markets of Khartoum are still suffering. I talked to SDA about it. They went to the other local markets and talked to the women there. Later they helped them with a place in the market and trained them to make a cooperative. SDA also gave us training on our looks, our calculations for money, health education, leadership, hospitality, pasteurization, and four seminars on legal education to the extent that we go to the states and educate other women like us. We wanted those women to know their constitutional rights and what they have in this country. We went to Kosti, Shandi, Atbara, and Alobied (Sudanese cities); we met judges and officials. After that SDA gave the whole thing to the cooperatives. After a while, each big association would make smaller ones. In our market in Khartoum we made many smaller associations. In 2006 Zainab Makki (an Islamist leader)5 came to give us social support for women. We held a big meeting with many women to know their needs. In the end, they gave me four projects out of 64 (small projects for economic empowerment). After that women started to come to me to say; Awadeya you are here in this big shadow under the fans, but we are tired. Help us to find a way to better our situation. I was the general secretary for the association from 1993 to 2006. During each general assembly meeting, I was chosen to stay as a general secretary. We were all women; we had no men with us. Anyhow, after the women talked to me, we sat with the executive committee of the association. We decided to help the women; we took a monetary contribution from each, we collected the money and bought 10 fridges and gave it to women. After two months we bought 10 more fridges; down the road we distributed 130 fridges to women that can be used to make homemade ice-cream and sell it. We even reached out to distribute in other states. Then we said, let us even develop the Sudanese house. We would visit the women and see if they need chairs, TV, digital, etc. but we first gave them the fridges; making and selling ice cream makes money.

Awadeya with her fellow women have now established small cooperative associations for women tea and food sellers in different markets in Khartoum. Cooperatives are well-known economic, political, and social bodies in Africa (Okem and Stanton 2016). Cooperatives in the Sudan have a long history that dates back to the 1920s of last century. The first wave of institutionalized cooperatives was agricultural ones when the farmers in Delta Toker organized a cooperative against the traders’ economic aggression. The initial idea behind cooperatives is to reduce the economic suffering for certain groups of

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people. It is a legal body that consists of people who come together for the benefit of their group/class (Elfateh 2013). Consumption cooperatives flourished between 1955 and 1956 peaking in the mid-1970s during the May regime. For its membership, the consumption cooperatives mainly offered products at factory prices, as well as production means through monthly installments. Currently in the Sudan, there is a General Secretariat for Cooperation that is part of the Ministry of Trade. It is important to note that the cooperative associations were established as a counteraction to present economic hardships to allow its members a space outside the free hand of the market (Elfateh 2013). Awadeya was aware of the need for such an organizational body to bring together her ambition, both economically and socially. The creation of cooperative associations served as a legal place from which women can defend their rights to work and protect themselves from the state. It is here one can see the transformation and shifts of the domestic to become institutionalized. These women brought their domestic skills to be economically meaningful to them as well as to the wider society. It is a field of negotiating gender roles and reassigning it according to the needs. Most importantly it has also shaped a mutual awareness of women who are marginalized and poor. The consciousness of a group was created that makes it in need of an organic intellectual who transforms the thoughts into actions. Awadeya got involved in small economic projects like the ones mentioned above; this step put her in serious trouble and she had to pay a high price. In the next part, we explore Awadeya’s challenges and more shifts in her life.

From a Prisoner to a President In 2006 Awadeya was imprisoned with other women from the association. While trying to finance an economic empowerment project they got heavily in debt. When speaking about her prison experience Awadeya does not regret her courage in implementing the project. Initially, she and her fellow women decided to expand the scale of their work by offering ‟Rekshews” (three wheel motorcycle that transports passengers) to people in need in turn for monthly installments. Some of the people who took the vehicles failed to pay the monthly installments and consequently Awadeya and her colleagues couldn’t pay the suppliers. She saw the prison as yet another challenge with which she had to deal. In her words: We then decided to develop the work, and bring rekshews, we agreed on 2500 as down payment, it was cheap back then. After distributing some rekshews, more

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people started to come. Then we started to work immediately with the suppliers until I got about 60 rekshews. But then after all this, I went to prison for 4 years. I wasn’t sad, I did nothing wrong, I wanted to help people; some of them took the rekshews and didn’t pay. After the 4 years, I was freed, I found a debt of 103,000 SDG (Sudanese Pound). I also went to jail after that more than 6 times; anyhow I went back to the association and was selected as a president. In the prison, they took me first to a police center in another part of Khartoum because the man who accused me was in ‟Alamnyyia” (National Intelligence Security Services (NISS)). The officer said to me you are a thief. I stayed there for 6 days. The 7th day they took me to the court. Then I went to prison where I waited 5 months for a trial. I went to the court again; the judge asked me to bring witnesses. Twelve people witnessed in my favor. The judge said I am innocent. They wanted to set me free but in the end, more people came to accuse me with malicious reporting. I had to go through five trials where each time it’s in my favor, then each time a new accusation takes place, I was taken back and forth between so many police stations. I finally was put in Omdurman prison until I pay. During these four years I was okay because I had money, after two years I requested to have a small shop inside the prison. It was the first of its kind and I paid 60 SDGs every day to the prison. I would take permission from the prison and I go to the big markets to buy things for my shop. I would bring clothes, perfumes, soap, etc. There were other women also working inside the prison, selling tea and food. During the day I was okay but I couldn’t sleep the night. I would think about my children the whole night. I have a son who was in university, a daughter who was about to get married, and a small one who was only in 3rd grade. The prison people took the shop from me, but I was patient. Until one day some women from the Parliament came to visit the prison. One of them knew me, she asked why I was in prison and I told her I have been here for four years. She called the minister of social affairs back then, Amira Alfadil, who sent me her lawyer. After meeting the new lawyer, we started again the process. I went again from one police station to the other and from one court to the other. In the end, they set me free in October 2010. I went home finally and it was a happy day. Everyone said I shouldn’t go to the market again, but I went. Later on, I collaborated with SIHA (Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa), and we made 6 new women’s associations, Yanbi’’ Alkhairatin in Soba, Alkifah in Mayo, Nisaa Alnuba in Omdurman, Alt’’ad in wad al-Bashir, Nisa Alrashid in Alrashid, Alfath 3 in Alfath.6 SIHA started to train us again; after this training we decided that we must make a union. No one believed it can be done. I chased it for two months. In the end, the registry of unions tested us by inviting us to a big event ‟tabin” (memorial services). We made the lunch and prepared coffee and tea, we served there until the

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evening. They were impressed by our work. Next morning I went to the registry of unions and took the approval. I cried my tears off. In 2013 we then registered the women’s cooperative union. SIHA supported us with training and legal advice.

A woman cannot be courageous or independent without paying the price for her bold steps. Nevertheless, Awadeya after spending four years in prison went back to her work even stronger. In 2010 she became the head of the associations’ network supporting about 8,000 women in Khartoum. In a conversation, she had with Aljareda newspaper (AlSudan Alyoum​.c​om 2017), Awadeya mentioned that she will establish a political party if there are free and fair elections in the Sudan. Hence, Awadeya seeking the political recognition in the Sudan got more than she expected. The coming part delves into how Awadeya has won a new title in her life. Becoming a Woman of Courage One of the biggest events that happened in Awadeya’s life that gave her the visibility she has today is her visit to the American White House in Washington DC. She was given the Woman of Courage Award from the U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. She narrates the story as follows: In 2016 the cooperatives people invited me for a talk about the association in Khartoum. Two days later Mohamed Alamin (from the cooperatives office) called me and said you have won the prize for the courageous women in the world, I couldn’t believe my ears, but I kept the news to myself until the U.S. embassy called and told me I will visit the US after 3 months. I told my family, they were all very happy about it. I told my people in the market only a few days before the travel, they celebrated with me and we were very happy. I traveled in VIP style and when I arrived in the US I found people waiting for me. We took the bus and went to DC, the next day we went to the event venue. I cried because I did not see a single Sudanese diplomat there. I was given the award but I wished if there had been Sudanese there with me. Later I met Sudanese girls living in the US. Until the very last minute, they were with me. I spent five days in Washington, then I went to Kentucky after that, and also met some Sudanese there. When I returned to Khartoum I was met with celebrations and in the morning I had a press conference. Then the honoring continued from several bodies. After that I was monitored closely, I don’t know if they were NISS (National Security) or what. They followed me to the market and back every day. The women were worried about me and started to walk me home. Anyhow, one-day people from the cooperatives called me and said one of the ministers wants to

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visit me. He also honored me; it was 8-8-2016. After that, I was then relieved from the monitoring.

Awadeya went from a place of almost no recognition to a high level of it. She, through her work, forced the government officials to respond to her. The state was now becoming a reactionary body. She shifted the power conversation and made herself visible in a way that deconstructs the idea of “victimhood” attributed to women in many cases. Most of the literature recently has been unmaking the victimhood image of women in Africa into one of celebration and heroism. Here, we wish to reflect the situation as it is, involving the challenges as well as the victories without pushing forward the hero image as such. We rather see it as a need for a certain mode of life. A necessity for work to obtain a good life that includes having food, educating the children, and getting the health services one needs. This good life includes having a social status that is respected rather than stigmatized. The following segment explains the fight of Awadeya against a social and political stigma imposed on women and marginalized women, in particular. FIGHTING THE STIGMA One can put forward the question of why Awadeya made all this effort for visibility and what sort of challenges she faced as a woman. When asked this question, Awadeya clarifies: In the association, we used to participate in the international day for the elderly. We also participated in Kiis Aljareh (war injured support) for the soldiers in South Sudan. I remember the first attack on Darfur (2003) when we bought clothes for women there. Since 1986 until today we have had about 7,000 graduated students who now support their families. They accused us Sitat Alshai (women tea sellers) of having HIV. I took 200 women to the Ministry of Welfare, to be tested, and there was only one woman who was sick. We are clean people. They wanted us to free the market after the talk of Magzoob ElKhalifa (the former president’s adviser) who said women tea sellers had to empty the streets and markets. Then the head of the municipality decided to take our place in the market from us. He came and said where is this thief? I said first say ‟Aslam Alikom” (greetings), I have an office, come inside. When he saw our building he was surprised and got greedy. He had a meeting with us to solve the problems, but he deceived us. He wrote a statement that we agreed on—the decision of Magzoob ElKalifa (to evacuate ourselves). We were 75 women. They took us to the constitutional court; I said to the judge the municipality is harassing us. We

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got the protection of the court. I went to SDA and told them; the next morning the case was in the newspapers. In 7 days they changed the system, from a president of the municipality to ‟mu`tamaad” (lower rank government officer). Look now, the vulnerable tea lady has changed the system. When we had problems we didn’t fear because we got strength from the legal awareness we had. We held the market both men and women. They said we shouldn’t work with charcoal, we need Gas. I managed to give the women Gas by collaborating with Civil Defense. The challenges in the market, first are the negative understanding to us women who sell the tea, we hear people saying we are selling our bodies. One time, I heard two men in the bus talking about a woman who sells tea. The man said: a tea lady is not a person and it is not about tea. We were in Mayo by the time he said this. I stopped the car and took the men to the police station. I said those men are arguing against women who sell tea, and us, all the women in this car who sell tea, they said we don’t sell only tea. I said to the police I know the law and I have a training certificate. A man from the police came and slapped him. He said, my wife sells tea to eat and raise her children with clean money. We would take little money every day from each woman; we keep the money for emergencies of women families. Such as children school fee or the like. As I told the governor once, if our children don’t eat they will steal and if they don’t steal they will loot and Khartoum is going to be like a forest. We must raise and educate them to be as every other boy in Khartoum and the girls as every other girl in Khartoum. They couldn’t take the association from me. So, one time they gave an investor a place for commercial toilets in front of our place. We took our tools and beat the men who were digging. We contacted the NGOs and the cooperatives head, after a long struggle they shifted the toilets elsewhere. The customers also gave us a hard time; one man came and said: Allah ykfina shar matter aldali o almzmom o ajayez al Khartoum (may God protect us from strong rain and old women of Khartoum—a local proverb that means women are evil and especially old women who dress up and take care of their looks). He said so because we were dressing up and closing to go for a wedding and refused to make him coffee. One woman then brought hot water and made him coffee; he got embarrassed and insisted to take us on his bus to the wedding. Some customers just sit down near us for a long time and waste our time. We were wise in facing all this. In the market, we learned how to treat the customers and the market. I met the president of the Legislative Council; he said to me, “We want these fingers for knitting.” I said, “These fingers were created for making tea.”

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Awadeya aimed by her work to do two things: first is to lift herself and her immediate community (other women) from poverty. Second, is to undo the stigma against women who work as tea and food sellers. In her own journey, she created an awareness of her place in relation to Khartoumians. She consciously wants her children to have equal opportunities in education, social services, and job opportunities. Awadeya adopts in her narration a discourse of danger and crime, a stigma widely used to discredit people who came to Khartoum as internally displaced. It is a latent and soft defense of her class, adopting the language of the state and other classes to point to the fact of inequalities. That is evident in the stigma against Mayo neighborhood where Awadeya resides. It is also evident in the stigma and state policies against women tea sellers. It is through her journey from the marginal to the center Awadeya develops as an organic intellectual working for her people (Kinyanjui 2014, 87). The organic intellectual reflects and develops an understanding of one’s place, gains knowledge, and resituates the knowledge structures to achieve her goals. During her journey, Awadeya has, as well, cooperated with state officials and people in power to achieve certain aims. This cooperation might open questions about the organic intellectual who chose to be pragmatic to favor their class. Her struggle is not only against state polices but against the elites who have governed since the Sudan’s independence as well. The elite classes put forward polices against poor and marginalized groups. As such she collaborates with governors and the like to get benefits for her class. Evidently, this is not new; the idea of organic intellectuals being in proximity to the state has been documented before. Diouf (1994, 223) noted this during the colonial times of Africa as well as after independence. The states institutionalized organic intellectuals in many African countries in their favor. Hence, the reversing of the situation by Awadeya is also evident. She approached the state and turned the powerful people in her favor. She did not passively follow their lead, but rather strategically negotiated her needs. Having said so, the question of her involvement is highly valid, as to what are the limits—if any at all—for organic intellectuals to cooperate with the power they have and, at the same time, trying to challenge? In other words, where, when, and how can the pursuit for visibility becomes risky for the idea of organic intellectuals? We would suggest that this pursuit can hardly be separated from class formations and the global system. Meaning, no one can define such limits but the organic intellectual herself because her relation to those in power exists within a system of economic reliance nationally, regionally, and internationally. During the 1960s in the Sudan, the idea of an “intellectual woman” was connected to women from middle classes or upper middle classes. They were represented as heroes and did not challenge the ethical model

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of the class in power. They were mostly politically affiliated, and were at some point in power. Their engagement wasn’t as harshly judged, maybe because they didn’t work in the streets and didn’t stay long periods outside the household selling tea. Presently, with the increased economic troubles and the conflicts in many parts of the Sudan, the “heroes” became those who break into the power structure. The women who were initially stigmatized and victimized are celebrated more as they managed to make a breakthrough. In the case of Awadeya, it was the recognition she got from the White House that made the Sudanese government respond. It did not mean that the policy of the regime had changed against tea sellers. These celebrations by the White House might have come in handy for the regime, considering Awadeya’s ethnic background, bearing in mind that the regime is accused of inhumane bombing in the Nuba Mountains, Awadeya’s original home. Paradoxically, the situation of poverty that Awadeya and other women are facing comes as a result of many factors. It is a result of the dependency of the Sudan—like many African countries—on the global economic system, and of the state strategy in maintaining Islamic capitalism, as well as from conflicts. It is this same system that celebrates Awadeya’s work and constructs her as an idol. Celebrations started in the White House and reached high ranked politicians in the Sudan. It could as well be seen as part of the historical tendency of co-opting the organic intellectuals. WHAT DO WE LEARN? “Organic intellectuals for Gramsci are those with fundamental, structural ties to particular classes” (Crehan 2002, 137). The preceding quote from Kate Crehan clarifies the main idea behind Awadeya as an organic intellectual. By all means, Awadeya relates and identifies with a class of marginalized women fighting both poverty and stigma against women. She belongs to a class, or rather an “ethnic-class,” systematically marginalized and impoverished. We chose the term “ethnic-class” to reflect two things: one, analysis of the class struggle in the Sudan can hardly be seen outside the ethnic realm; two, the fact that these notions are interrelated to a great extent in the Sudan. Those who are seen as poor are mostly people coming from conflict zones, that is, Darfur, Nuba Mountains, and Blue Nile states. Moreover, economic class often comes with a prestigious social status; nevertheless, even people who have money from above-mentioned areas may still be perceived socially as less prestigious. Nayel (2017) puts it that, “the intersectionality” of class, race, ethnicity, and gender contribute to identity formations (Nayel 2017, 81), and—one can add—to awareness of one’s place in the society.

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The story of Awadeya is not unique to her; there are many other women who negotiate their places and rearrange them. In a recent book by the Al-Alag center, they depicted stories of many women from different areas around the Sudan to show a model of leadership from the local communities. They call it leadership, we call it organic intellectualism. This is because any conscious change requires the ability to think, understand, and act. Think about your place in society, reflect on it, and understand how to negotiate it. From the narration of Awadeya’s story, we aimed to show that women in the Sudan activate their agency according to the status assigned to them by the wider society. In other words, they reflect on their social status and act upon it. The resources available to them, and in other cases the resources unavailable to them, guide their process of negotiating their agency. Organic intellectuals are less visible from the fact that knowledge is also tied to an education structure that favors people with degrees. We aimed to show that the making and unmaking of the intellectual are influenced by a colonial understanding of knowledge. This might have limited the visibility of organic intellectuals, particularly women. Donna Haraway puts it that, “All knowledge is a condensed node in an agonistic power field” (Haraway 1988, 577). Additionally, with this chapter, we wanted to draw attention to the importance of organic intellectuals to the political, economic, and social process. This might encourage widening our perspective on knowledge and knowledge production systems. CONCLUDING REMARKS This chapter would never have been possible without the time Awadeya decided to give us during the interview. Without her willingness to share her story, the chapter would have taken a different shape. She chose to talk to us in a way that she thought appropriate for reflecting her story. As such, we would like to point to her as a partner in producing this piece of knowledge. We addressed only a few parts of Awadeya’s story; many conceptual aspects remain unexplored, such as resistance, co-optation, NGO development, ideas of empowerment, and class interrelations. Awadeya’s narration and style of wording carried a lot of NGO connotations, which brought to our attention some more questions regarding the transformation of the informal cooperation between women in forming an institution, a cooperative that is by default part of civil society. It is a discourse that is carefully chosen to reflect a satisfactory situation to the donors or supporters. To put it another way, we could say what you expect the listener wants to hear.

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Lately, Awadeya has been approached by several news agencies. This made the interview seem repetitive to us and consumed by many other situations and media-related interviews. Nevertheless, this does not make her story less relevant or her struggle less real. It opens up more questions to be researched further on the transformation of organic intellectuals and whether this makes them semi-traditional intellectuals in what ways. It might as well be seen as a process where little difference between traditional and organic intellectuals is visible. Or else, it might push our thinking outside dichotomies of traditional vs. organic intellectuals. It is worth noting that the first draft of this chapter was written in 2018 while the Sudan was still under the National Congress Party (NCP). Important political events have happened since 2018 during which women tea sellers took part. In a revolution against the NCP (the Islamist military regime that had been in power for 30 years) Sudanese organized a two-month sit-in in front of the military headquarters, demanding the former president resign. The sit-in was a manifestation of a mini-state for a future vision of the Sudan. It was a lived and practiced utopia that brought together Sudanese people from across the diversity of the Sudan. Awadeya Koko was early in joining the sit-in to prepare food for the protesters. She lived in the sit-in like many other women hoping for a better future for the country. Many women tea sellers stayed in the sit-in selling their beverages and making spaces for protesters to take a break. When the sit-in was attacked by the military on June 3, 2019, those women, in particular, faced the brutality of the attackers. They were beaten, some raped, and others killed. By the nature of their work, they stayed in the sit-in every day the whole day, making them more vulnerable victims of the attack. The union wrote a proclamation against the attack on the sit-in and clarified the damage that has happened to the women tea sellers and their children. Nevertheless, Awadeya did not stop working and making her space in the power map. She was among the few who welcomed the new Prime Minister in the airport when he came to claim the office.

NOTES 1. AlAbroufin association as an example, see Osman, K. H. A. 1988. 2. Class definition as it becomes hard to grasp in the Sudan. It is intertwined with marginalization and ethnic backgrounds. See Abusharaf 2009. 3. Here I understand “agency” in relation to power and politics, I take inspiration from the feminist understanding for agency in which “the personal” is always political and always embedded in the larger social and political process (Ahearn 2000, 12).

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4. The Sudan has witnessed several “transition periods” taking place after popular uprisings and before having an elected government. During a “transitional period” after 1964 Revolution the Sudan was governed by a sovereignty council from which an-Nimeiry took power in 1969. 5. Zienab Mekkai is a well-known Islamist leader who actively engages in Islamic preaching and Islamic women empowerment. I find it troubling to deal with this particular issue in Awadeya’s story and that is to what extent she cooperates with the state to get what she wants. Islamists are well known for their preaching among local communities. In Mayo in particular there is a heavy history of Islamic preaching organization (Munazzmat Al-Da’wa Al-Islamyyia) involving in aid provision and services delivery in a cooptation process of locals. 6. These areas are all neighborhoods in the peripheries of Khartoum.

REFERENCES Abusharaf, Rogaia Mustafa. 2009. Transforming Displaced Women in Sudan: Politics and the Body in a Squatter Settlement. University of Chicago Press. Abusharaf, Rogaia Mustafa. 2016. “Circuits of Knowledge Production on Darfur.” In Networks of Knowledge Production in Sudan, edited by Sondra Hale and Gada Kadoda. London: Lexington Books. Ahearn, Laura M. 2000. “Agency.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 9 (1–2): 12–15. American Anthropological Association. Albouny, A/Latif. 2014. “Mahadi Mustafa Alhadi.”Alnilin​.co​m, July 27, in Arabic. https://www​.alnilin​.com​/166792​.htm Al-Alag booklets series. 2016. “Sudanese Pioneers.” Al-Alag Center for press services. In Arabic. AlSudanAlyoum​.co​m. 2017, April 27. “Awadeya Koko: Prison made me a leader.” https://alsudanalyoum​.com/​?p​=112488 Appadurai, Arjun. 2007. “Hope and Democracy.” Public Culture 19:1. Duke University Press. Azzam, Mai. 2010. “Socio-economic Factors Associated with Water Management in Khartoum Peripheries, Mayo as a Case Study.” Unpublished Master’s Thesis, Khartoum. Azzam, Mai. 2016. “A Politics of Hope? Youth Charity Activism in Khartoum.” Bergen: unpublished M.Phil thesis. Crehan, Kate. 2002. Gramsci, Culture, and Anthropology. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Diouf, Mamadou. 1994. “Intellectuals and the State in Senegal: The Search for a Paradigm.” In Academic Freedom in Africa. Edited by Diouf, Mamadou, and Mamdani, Mahmood. Dakar, SN: CODESRIA. ElFatih, Mohamed. 2013. The Emergence and Development of the Cooperative Movement in Sudan. Arabic FinDev Gateway. El Hassan, Idris Salim. 2016. “The Intellectual and Power in Sudan.” Al Hadatha Journal 2: 50–54. In Arabic.

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El Kid, Khalid Osman. 1992. “Effendia and Nationalism in Sudan.” Bulletin of Sudanese Studies 12 (1): 44–76. University of Khartoum. In Arabic. Fagiury, Ihsan. 2009. “Women under Whips.” Modern Dialogue website. Issue: 2724. In Arabic. http://www​.ahewar​.org​/debat​/show​.art​.asp​?aid​=179831 Gramsci, Antonio. 1989. “The Formation of the Intellectuals.” In An Anthology of Western Marxism: From Lukács and Gramsci to Socialist-feminism, edited by Roger S. Gottlieb. New York: Oxford University Press. Haraway, Donna. 1988. “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective.” Feminist Studies 14 (3): 575–599. Hussien, Mohammed ElShiekh. 2014. “Mahadi Mustafa Alhadi, a Man from Nimrie’s Times.” Akher Lahza Newspaper, September 16. In Arabic. https://www​.sudaress​ .com​/akhirlahza​/144390. Kinyanjui, Mary Njeri. 2014. Women and the Informal Economy in Urban Africa, From the Margins to the Centre. London: Zed Books Ltd. Komey, G. K. (2011). “The Historical and Contemporary Basis of the Renewed War in the Nuba Mountains, Sudan.” Discourse 1 (1): 41. Nageeb, Salma Ahmed. 2004. New Spaces and Old Frontiers: Women, Social Space, and Islamization in Sudan. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Nayel, A. A. 2017. Alternative Performativity of Muslimness: The Intersection of Race, Gender, Religion, and Migration. Springer. Okem, Andrew Emmanuel and Stanton, Anne. 2016. “Contextualizing the Cooperative Movement in Africa.” In Theoretical and Empirical Studies on Cooperatives, edited by A.E. Okem. Springer Briefs in Geography. Pantuliano, Sara et al. 2011. “City Limits: Urbanization and Vulnerability in Sudan, Khartoum Case Study.” Humanitarian Policy Group, Overseas Development Institute (ODI), London. Scott, James. C. 1998. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. Yale University Press. Sudanese Development Association. 2006. SDA blog, August 7, in Arabic. http:// sdasudan​.blogspot​.com/ Tønnessen, Liv. 2011. “The Many Faces of Political Islam, Muslim Women’s Activism for and Against the State.” Dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, University of Bergen. Wikan, Unni. 1991. “Toward an Experience-near Anthropology.” Cultural Anthropology 6 (3): 285–305. Wiley, on behalf of the American Anthropological Association.

Chapter 11

Life as an Act of Resistance On Politics and Ideas—Youth Movements in the Sudan Wini Omer

In this chapter I attempt to examine the intellectual bases of the different youth movements in the Sudan: the way in which they developed their theoretical frameworks, analyzed the political realities, and established practical or political responses toward such realities.1 The modern political history of the Sudan has witnessed and is still witnessing an increasing number of youth groups, movements, charity associations, and initiatives that are in the public domain, advocating for social, cultural, or political change. Coming from different ideological, political, and social class backgrounds, these groups have managed to establish, lead, and achieve significant shifts; highlight many critical issues; and address them, suggesting paths for survival, or working directly on creating and implementing alternatives. These various groups were also driven by economic hardships. The rise of youth movements and initiatives in the Sudan is strongly linked to resistance to the neoliberal ideology which is guided by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. Their neoliberal policies were implemented in the Sudan, involving downsizing or privatizing public goods, especially in the education and health sectors. Accordingly, youth have found themselves dealing with a reality that lacks fundamental rights and basic needs, accessible entertainments, and capacity building programs. These dramatic changes were not just affecting the economic side of the equation. “Neoliberalism with its subordination of social needs to the mandates of a free market, has compromised the public sphere, democracy, and social citizenship” (Gordon 2010, 32). In fact, neoliberalism has reached all aspects of everyday life. Motivated by hope, compassion or empathy, and other political emotions (Nussbaum 2013), youth movements devoted their time and efforts to achieving change. 213

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The question of whether or not youth are engaged more or less in politics has multiple answers. There is a global perception that fewer youths are participating in campus politics and political parties. And their relationship with politics can be described as “complex” and “problematized” (Farthing 2010). While the two edges of this argument are insisting on either the absence of the youth from the political scene or their real engagement and participation in new forms, both points of view need to be conceptualized and addressed with more context. This is certainly true when it comes to the Sudan. Most of the youth activists I interviewed expressed concern about the lack of research and studies in the area of youth and political engagement. Sudanese youth are less engaged in politics and very critical about the roles and the functions of the political parties. But other scholars argue that it is not that youth are disengaged, but instead do not engage in the same way that the “dutiful generation” has. Youth have shifted to an “engaged citizenship” model by volunteering, protesting, and embedding politics in their daily lives (Earl and Maher 2017, 1–2). Through this kind of revisionist activism, they have, instead, redefined politics in the Sudan.2 The field of studies of collective action, social movements, and youth groups is definitely poor when it comes to the Sudan. In contributing to youth studies, in general, I am trying to shed light specifically on youth activism in the Sudan, questioning the intellectual bases of these groups, their knowledge production processes, and how they theorize for change—whether it is political, social, or cultural change—or all of these. Because I am trying to discover the epistemic frames of some of these youth groups, I have chosen two quite different case studies that have involved interviews with activists and members of Girifna (means “we are fed up”) and Education without Borders (EwB). I have also drawn from my own experience and observations as an activist. I have used social media as one of the primary sources of information and knowledge regarding these groups and their practical and theoretical frames. Furthermore, I have engaged with the rich literature that has theorized social movements and collective action.3 In order to contextualize the Sudanese case, I introduce the case studies and highlight their main patterns and tools as a way of understanding their epistemic and theoretical frames and the ways in which youth groups produce knowledge and build up a momentum of youth-based social movements. ACTIVISM Voluntary work, as we know it today in the Sudan, started as early as the era of pre-independence (before 1956), with the local associations and

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liberation movements such as the White Flag Association established in 1924 and unions and workers’ clubs as early as 1934. The first workers’ magazine was out in 1946. These are among many other associations that were created as a response to the needs of the communities (Bilal 2000). The engagement of youth in activism is always motivated either by their own morals and aspirations for change or their perceptions and expectations of the quality of life they want or dream of. Their morals that revolved around social justice and equality issues, for example, drive many of them to step forward and become active in the public domain. This activism can take many forms and use many strategies, in which all aim at somehow challenging the status quo. A concept like infrapolitics (Scott 2012) can also be used to analyze the engagement of youth in activism, for example, by using various methods similar to the strategies in James Scott’s studies, ones that were developed by the peasants to resist the authority of the state. Through indirect means and tactics, and not through direct confrontation with the state, peasant communities managed to stop or reduce the amount of the money they had to pay in taxes, or zakat, by under-declaring the lands they have, for example. By directly supporting needy families and Vulnerable groups, or supporting the medical needs, or engaging in community mobilization activities, or providing aid at the moments of disasters like floods, Sudanese youth initiatives have managed to offer resistance against the corrupt policies of the state and to form networks for survival. Emile Durkheim’s concept of collective effervescence is very relevant here to understand the rise of youth activism in the Sudan, especially in the urban spaces and spheres where we see the intensification of shared experiences (Collin 2004, 35). These can be political experiences, social or economic ones, or ones coming from the same realities or interests in the same fields, which through communicative actions can build that mutual understanding of the social problems. Furthermore, those experiences would create the mutual vision toward solving those problems. Shared emotional energy, group solidarity, and membership symbols (Liebst 2019, 28), perhaps analyzed within the field of the sociology of emotions can provide key insights toward understanding activism and the reasons behind youth engagement in public affairs. Emotions are assumed to be irrational (Millward and Takhar 2019, 6), but in K.M. Jasper’s (1997) studies of various types of social movements, he argued that it is difficult to separate emotions from cognitive beliefs and moral values. In the Sudanese context, thousands of charities, associations, societies, activism, and various other youth entities came into being, especially after 2005, utilizing the small margin of freedoms that accompanied the comprehensive peace agreement (CPA). The 2005 event created some space

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for activists and encouraged them to transform silence into action. As a consequence, increasing numbers of youth organizations were established after 2010. The changes were very much motivated by the 2010 elections in the Sudan and then the rise of the Arab Spring, which very much influenced the active engagement of youth in the marches and in acts of resistance. Generally, the years that followed the signature of the CPA (2005) allowed some space for civil society and youth groups to flourish. THEORIZING RESISTANCE The way youth practiced their activism carries with it the rejection of the old forms of political practice, for example, a top-down process and acts that were separated from the people. Instead, youth attempted to bridge this gap by practicing politics as an act relative to the people, thereby, effectively learning to create resistance in their daily behavior as activists. Whether it is a direct confrontation with political authority and its policies, a challenge to its security apparatus, or a closer relationship with the wider society through working with it to resist the regime’s destructive policies, these young people have treated their presence in the public domain as a responsibility that must have some consequences or outcomes (interviews with members of Girifna and EwB, September 2019). Bayat’s (2009) concept of “quiet encroachment” can clarify the way in which many ordinary people have formed a style of resistance by practicing it in their everyday lives, and also activists by creating and accumulating these strategies of everyday resistance. People have carried out their fights against authoritarianism; they have created lifestyles that function below the radar of what normally counts as politics; youth also have created their own spaces for entertainment and their ways to express their real identities. Foucault’s work on power and bio-power and states’ urgency to control and dominate was seen during the rule of Islamists in the Sudan; laws and regulations were used systematically to frame and shape individual and societal behavior, criminalizing everyday pleasures. Bayat (2009, 137) also described the Islamists’ tendency to fight fun, and to create a wave of anti-fun policies and ideology by shutting down all the public venues for joy—restricting and criminalizing certain private gatherings. Youth resisted and managed to develop their strategies to maintain their rights to joy and fun. And whether it is zanig4 music, night groups, and qa’dat,5 small social clubs in some neighborhoods (Nawadi Almushahada) for watching films, and playing video games and cards since all cinemas in the country had been closed or destroyed. All these were the spaces and strategies to have fun and these turned out to be a form of resistance against the strict ideology of the

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Islamists. I would argue that, in fact, it was not only during the three decades of Islamist rule that youth resisted, but youth had also always been resisting, directly or indirectly, in an organized way by forming entities that adopt the visions of change, or in an organized way by acting and living everyday life in a way that contradicts the ideology of the state or the authority. Furthermore, organized resistance can encourage new everyday resistance activities (Lilja, Baaz, Schulz, and Vinthagen 2017). The firm belief held by youth on the importance of education as a key factor for the development of communities led Fatima6 to join EwB. According to my interview with her, she told me she believed that this is the area where she wanted to put in her time and efforts to develop and engage. EwB defines itself as a social change movement that aims to contribute to the development of education and learning environments throughout the Sudan, this by activation of the community and interaction with it so that the group grows and expands to become the size of the fuller community. Once this has happened, the group should dissolve and disappear permanently, leaving behind a society that cares about education as an urgent issue (Education without Borders Facebook group website). Situating the objectives of the group within the claims of the capabilities approach, education is one of the components of the infrastructure for individuals to gain agency and to become empowered. Although taking different paths, Girifna and EwB have engaged in the form of social and political resistance, but with very different styles of political dissent. Girifna dissented by innovating a “cool” and close-to-people approach with their catchy orange leaflets and T-shirts. EwB also adopted a similar close-to-people approach and opened up toward the local communities by engaging in the direct process of the development of the schools, reading circles, and community-based activities. Another difference is related to the discourse, the explicit political discourse in the case of Girifna, while EwB tended to avoid direct political language. Between organized resistance and everyday resistance, both are representing a kind of organized resistance since the members of the two groups have gathered around specific objectives, whether it is to overthrow Al-Bashir (Islamist military dictator) and his regime, in the case of Girifna, or to achieve social change through education and enhance the educational environment, in the case of EwB. Both groups introduced themselves to the Sudanese public as social movements. And to understand social movements, many theories explain and illustrate the emergence and the path of the evolution of a social movement. Charles Tilly, one of the major theorists of social movements, defines them as a series of contentious performances, displays, and campaigns by which ordinary people make collective claims on others (Tilly 2004). Tilly considers social movements as the path for ordinary people to

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participate in public life (2004). Sidney Tarrow defined social movements as “collective challenges, based on common purposes and social solidarities, in sustained interaction with elites’ opponents, and authorities” (Tarrow 2011). These two above definitions of social movements are very relevant to the current practices understudy, the contentious nature of their activities, the engagement of the public in their activism, and the social solidarities and interactions. Doug McAdam (1992) identified three important factors in the emergence and development of a movement: its alignment within the larger political context (political opportunity structure); the level of organization of the aggrieved population (organization potential); and its assessment of the chances of success (insurgent consciousness). As I present the information for each of the two case studies—EwB and Girifna—I try to highlight how and in which ways during the evolution of the two groups they touch on McAdam’s three factors mentioned above. It is also important, at this point, to differentiate between youth politics and student politics, since both are populated by the same age group, and because of the historical understanding of the role of youth on campuses during two of the biggest historical moments in the Sudan—the Uprisings of October 1964 and April 1985; and the recent roles of students in the September 2013 Uprising and the December 2018–2019 Revolution. The engagement of students in campus politics has been a pioneering element in the political life of the Sudan. The student movements were always the spearhead in the battles against the dictatorships in the Sudan, starting from the 1964, and beyond that, up to December 2018. Youth activism has been very influential through its dynamics and its contingent relationship to the state security forces (Medani 2013), especially when we talk about student politics. The frequent protests of the students at higher education institutions all over the Sudan have never stopped, and their interaction with micro-politics and the current events in the country arguably mark students as the official representatives of the resistance against a previous regime. As a result of their ongoing resistance and activism, these students made great sacrifices to bring about change, that is, often paying with their lives.7 Utilizing the relatively free space, the political discourse at the campus was different from the one outside the campus and led by the opposition political parties and the previous ruling party. Campus political discourse was so vivid, dynamic, and relevant to the reality on the ground. It was also a mix of the direct political discourse and intellectual rhetoric that challenges and addresses the concepts of secularism, identity, and political Islam, among other issues. Speaking corners, open seminars, and cultural events were the main activities at the campuses. These were led by students who are affiliated to political parties and also those who are not. These activities were usually

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confronted by the violence of the National Islamic Students Movement, the student wing for the immediate previous ruling party, the National Congress Party (NCP), and the state security forces such as the police and the National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS). Most of the youth who have engaged in social and political movements we see today were the sons and daughters of the previous generations of student activists, and therefore had witnessed or actively participated in campus politics, but more importantly, had learned how to mobilize for change, how to navigate the public affairs, and how to build their constituencies. To draw a clear distinction between student and youth movements, student movements developed as a collective action such as the college or university’s campus activities brought them together, and to further demand their rights as students; to protest tuition cost, freedom of expression, and other demands related to their existence at the campus, and to interact with the micro-politics as well. On the other hand, youth politics is essentially about claiming or reclaiming youthfulness, as Asef Bayat describes it in the following way: It expresses the collective challenge whose central goal consists of defending and extending the youth habitus—a set of dispositions, ways of being, feeling, and carrying oneself (e.g., a greater demand for autonomy, individuality, mobility, and security of transition to the adult world) that are shaped by the sociological fact of being young. (2017, 21)

Apart from their role in the university’s campus activities, that scene has brought youth to the field as main actors and as agents of change. More groups (or agents of change) with political claims and slogans began to take shape especially during the September 2013 Uprising, such as Abena (“We Will Not Comply”), Eseena (“We Rebel”), and Margna (“We Came Out”) (Kadoda and Hale 2015). By agents, I am using Amartya Sen’s definition as “someone who acts and brings about change, and whose achievements can be judged in terms of his or her own values and objectives, whether or not we assess them in terms of some external criteria as well” (Sen 1999, 19). As far as expanding their areas of effect, we can apply these meanings to both case studies—Girifna and EwB. Each one of these two groups has its own dynamics and techniques and has gained a huge popularity because of its real engagement and impact. However, any discussion about youth activism and collective work in the Sudan cannot ignore the political and economic situations and the necessities that drove them to engage in action to change the recent conditions. The main constituency of these groups belongs to the middle class, with different interests and diverse geographical and ideological backgrounds.

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THEORIZING YOUTH MOVEMENTS IN THE SUDAN Collective effervescence, a term coined by Durkheim, signifies emerging collective emotions that transform social life and explain how groups become electrified by coming together through the enactment of rituals and the utilization of symbols (Ruiz-Junco 2013). Creating and engaging at this level of collective actions and developing what can be called rituals of the group are also relevant to the political activism of Sudanese youth. Certain ways of dressing or speaking or everyday routines, in addition to the way they are reacting to the external conditions, can place them as activists in the same trench, bearing in mind the ideological difference that would present a wide spectrum from right to the left, and the differences between. The efforts of Shari’alhawadith8 (“Emergency Street”) that led to the establishment of a well-equipped children’s hospital was a key event toward understanding youth activism and voluntary initiatives and their capacities to mobilize resources and their determination to support the health sector and peoples’ needs. The establishment of the hospital of that quality was not the only astonishing part of the story, but that the opening ceremony and the opening bar was cut by Om Gisma, a vendor who sells tea, and one of the supporters of the youth of Shari’ alhawadith, whose banabers (small local seats of the women tea sellers)9 were their offices for meetings and gatherings. This event has drawn many responses—from both sides, the supporters and those who disapproved of that step.10 But it confirmed one thing—dismantling the social hierarchy was one of the objectives of youth movements. The political landscape of the Sudan has long been dominated by the NCP and the two big sectarian parties (Umma and Etihadi) and the Sudanese Communist Party. Being politically active in the public sphere, a sphere where the state had placed lots of obstacles against public activism, including legal consequences for any political performance, can be understood as an attempt to democratize that public sphere. Operating in such political landscape, youth were critical of the roles of both the ruling party and the opposition parties, and aware of the state tactics to limit the political presence of any entity in the public sphere. By challenging state’s limits, youth managed to fill the gap of the absence of the opposition political parties in the public spheres, and they gained the public support and solidarity, and empathy as well, just as Yang (2005) stated. The attitude of the general public toward the movement may influence both movement participants and opponents. For participants, public support is a source of emotional strength, because it may help to build an atmosphere of effervescence to boost the morale and spirits of the activists. The more likely repression is, and the stronger the scene of fear among participants, the more important it is to have public support. (Yang 2005, 79)

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GIRIFNA The idea of Girifna started with three friends chatting and complaining about the current political situation in the Sudan. By October 31, 2009, they had started photocopying and distributing small leaflets, calling on citizens not to register to vote in the coming elections. However, Girifna transformed itself from a campaign to a movement after the election of 2010, declaring itself as a peaceful, decentralized popular resistance movement, prioritizing political change and focusing all the movement’s efforts to address direct political issues such as corruption, political participation, government policies, and the authoritarian practices of the NCP. They had around 18,000 supporters throughout the country, approximately 5,000 volunteers (Canada 1994), and many followers on both Facebook and Twitter. Those in Girifna told me, “We felt that we had to do something; we were witnessing the pre-election preparations led by the ruling party; we felt that we can’t just watch without acting” (interview with a male activist, member of Girifna, November 2018). My interviewee’s engagement in Girifna was motivated by the sense of duty. There are plenty of writings on why people join social movements or engage in activism. Pamela E. Oliver, for example (1984) divides participants into non-members, token members, and active members; John D. McCarthy and Mayer N. Zald (1977) distinguish between beneficiary and conscience constituents; Gregory L. Wiltfang and Doug McAdam (1991) point out the difference between low-risk and low-cost participation from high-risk and high-cost participation; and Florence Passy and Macro Giugni (2001) have written on the influence social networks have in differential participation. These different motivations and forms of participation overshadowed the movement itself. Considering the authoritarian nature of the NCP regime, decentralization was the choice of Girifna in order to give its members security and to create a certain type of flexibility to allow the movement to grow and expand. No theorization around decentralization of the movement has been developed although this mode can be relevant for many other movements or pressure groups. As they were building their manifesto and their agenda for change, Girifna developed a document called Demands of a Nation, (Girifna website) with 16 demands outlined, focusing mainly on political and civil rights. This document can be considered as the Manifesto of the movement. Non-violence was the central pillar of the movement and an essential part of its discourse. Members were inspired by the different contexts of non-violent resistance. The experiences of Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Mandela among others, guided Girifna’s adoption of non-violent strategies (interview with a Girifna movement member, September 2019). In a country that witnessed one of the longest civil wars in Africa, many tribal conflicts, and an increasing number of armed movements, mainly in

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Darfur, the establishment of a non-violent movement that shares the same political agenda with the armed movement, but adopts different strategies for resistance, is something worth noting here. However, theorizing or addressing the issue of political violence or creating non-violent alternatives for existing conflicts at that time was a gap that Girifna did not bridge. Apparently, the focus on the everyday struggles and tactics created this theoretical gap; the tough political and economic conditions in which youth were working have contributed to expanding this gap. Girifna’s security concerns over its members’ frequent detention and security forces was another reason behind their focus on the everyday struggle and resistance, rather than on developing strategic visions and theories for the political landscape. And this is one of the realities they are sharing with other youth movements which were active at the same time in the Sudan, like Altagier Alaan (“Change Now”). Politicizing the Public Sphere The genesis of the movement dated back to street politics. Street talks were the salient feature of the movement, or what they call Mokhatabat (short street talks) and you can clearly notice people’s amazement when those youth started talking openly against the Islamist military regime with no fear or hesitation. Another area of Girifna praxis was to use art to access the public sphere. They sent strong political messages by using the revolutionary poems of Mahjoub Sharif and Mohamed Al-Hassan Salem Humaid, and many other Sudanese poets who have a raised political consciousness, and eloquently managed to claim their standpoints. Girifna also used poetry for the same reason—to claim their political ideas and to communicate politically with the audience in the public sphere, for example, starting the speech with poems to attract people and reaffirm the simplicity of the movement’s discourse by using a very Sudanese accent in both online and offline activism. “We were aware of using a language that moves people and can touch them, simple, but with the ability to address their real issues. We used the Sudanese accent also because the formal Arabic language is already associated with the political parties, politicians and the elitist discourse” (interview with a male activist member of Girifna, November 2018). Girifna also created videos that had a very creative and sarcastic content. They “went viral,” and addressed, in a broader sense, their understanding of the power of sarcasm. Can Altay (2014, 202) argued that “the joke is, after all, an open-source weapon of the public with the capacity to resist and overturn the frame of reference imposed by any political status quo.” By politicizing both art and social media, Girifna managed to design attractive political messages and utilize the cyberspace to approach a wider audience. The Harvard University professor Ethan Zuckerman has put forward what he calls a “Cute

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Cat Theory of Digital Activism.” Zuckerman proposed that with the usergenerated content of the web 2.0 “we’ve embraced the idea that people are going to share pictures of their cats, and now we build sophisticated tools to make that easier to do. As a result, we’re creating a wealth of tech that’s extremely helpful for activists” (Metahaven 2014, 12) and this is exactly what the activists in Girifna are aware of. They have used social media to approach a wider audience about the activities of the movement and to highlight the corrupt practices of the government of al-Bashir, and to mobilize people against these practices. In other words, they turned social media into a space for protest. Furthermore, they created a YouTube channel to document violations and publicize the call for freeing detainees or to document their own activities like the mokhatabat. Other well-known Facebook pages like the diaries of AlBashir (@bashirdiary) or Monti Caro (@monticarro) were also popular, and active in dissenting during the previous regime; ordinary citizens, as well, utilized social media to express their opinions about daily politics in the country and to debate different political alternatives; recently other Facebook platforms like Haraak (@ haraak2018 on Facebook) are actively engaged in networking and highlighting the activism of the resistance committees. Political Identities and Institutionalization The internal dynamics of movements depend to a large extent on the organizational arrangements and the hierarchies of the power that can be reflected through the leadership style. But what role did the internal structure of Girifna play in strengthening or weakening the movement? Generally, “Institutions filter the ideas and objectives of activists, shaping how and why movements carry on and limiting what aims and tactics activists see as valid and realistic” (Dauvergne and Lebaron 2014, 109). As a decentralized and non-hierarchal movement, Girifna was aiming to create a real grassroots movement, and implicitly reject the complicated and usually non-democratic structure of the political parties (interview with a member of Girifna movement). However, the non-hierarchal structure resulted in creating close circles within the movement, and disrupting the flow of information and democratic practices within it. Based on that, some of the members supported the idea of restructuring the movement (interview with a member of Girifna movement). Although, many of the members of Girifna have practiced politics on the campus or were members of political parties, this was one of the main reasons behind their resistance of structuring the movement, considering the main difference between Girifna as a revolutionary movement and the political parties are the space of its individuals to express their opinions and to participate in

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the decision-making process (interview with a member of Girifna movement). The rejection of the hierarchal style and the internal organizational arrangements is an attempt to create a break with the old political forms and practices. Instead, an open and freestyle was proposed. Yet, members did not theorize this proposal nor provide publically any critique of the previous experience, though current steps are being undertaken to restructure the movement internally (interview with a member of Girifna movement). These changes in the organizational nature of the movement should have accompanied an evaluation of the previous experience highlighting the pros and cons of the decentralized non-hierarchal style. This evaluation can be an interesting outcome that can build more knowledge around collective action and social movements in the Sudan.

Girifna introduced themselves as: “A Non-Violent Resistance Movement to Overthrow the NCP” (Girifna official blog). Of course, many other political entities had been sharing the same objective. The way the movement built its political networks and developed its partnerships with other political actors is worth more documentation from the movement’s side. The micro-processes of identity-formation and macro-processes of collective identity-formation are both implicated in the complex processes of movement formation and political change (Radsch 2016); therefore, the way the political actors introduced themselves is highly affecting and affected by the other political actors who have already existed in the political landscape. To summarize, Girifna came to challenge what was already there and to build a different political identity that centered on the visibility of political dissent in the public sphere and on the direct political discourse in their confrontations with the state. Such thought and action were a breakthrough at that time. A frequent occurrence was to see one of the members of Girifna being arrested while he or she was talking publicly in the market or bus stations in downtown Khartoum. Such moments motivated people to challenge their fear of the state and its restrictions by setting practical and visible examples. These clear political stands were not supported by a concrete analysis of the political realities or any ideological positioning. EDUCATION WITHOUT BORDERS Education without Borders (EwB) was founded formally in 2011, starting as a small campaign in social media—mainly Facebook—to collect used school books and redistribute them to those schools and students who are suffering from a shortage of school books, especially in Khartoum’s peripheries, rural

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areas, and other marginal places in the Sudan. Since that start the organization has moved to more activities and projects, all focused on filling the gaps in the educational environment. The organization has utilized social media, especially Facebook, as a space for discussing ideas, making decisions, and sharing reports and documentation. Facebook has become the office of EwB (unpublished paper). On their official Facebook page, one can find all the documents of the movement. Nanjala Nyabola (2018, 95) states, “What is possible online is dependent on what exists offline.” The strong presence of EwB offline—their active engagement and their diverse activities have created a momentum offline—was then reflected online. Through social media, EwB also established its internal democracy online, that is, elections—voting for the candidates and the executive office. In one of the latest elections, over 7,000 voted online through Facebook to choose the members of the coming executive office. The process of digitalization of politics will lead to more democracy, inevitably. I use the definition of democracy as a society in which all eligible members can participate meaningfully in public discourses regarding issues and situations that pertain to society as a whole. By adopting this definition, we can argue that EwB, as a group, managed to establish democratic traditions in their everyday practices and in electing their leaders every six months. At the same time, members were aware of the importance of the social relations between the members of the movement, “We have developed regular social meetings for us as members in the same movement to meet and maintain the sense of friendship and closeness” (member of EwB, phone interview, September 2019). Their activism, while it revolved around social change objectives, has also changed them. As a member told me, “We were aimed at changing the society; what has happened is that we have also changed during this process; we became more democratic, practical and solution-oriented” (member of EwB, phone interview, September 2019). When addressing that, in light of the internal and external function of social movements (Butterwick et al. 2007), my interviewee’s response reflected two parallel processes that can happen: (1) the external function of the movement, which is in the case of EwB, is around social change and engaging communities in supporting education and developing better educational environments; (2) the internal function of the movement can become a life changing experience for its members. Politics of Hope What is crucial for the ability of an authoritarian regime to stay in power is to control civil society and set boundaries for its engagement. What is also crucial is to have domination over all the political spaces. In such an atmosphere,

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youth had to create alternatives and build different strategies and tactics to engage with the people at the grassroots level without drawing the attention of the state. “We are trying to cross the geographical borders by ‘decentralization’ of the movement and spread all over Sudan to challenge all borders” (interview with a member of EwB, September 2019). One of the criteria for the collective action of youth in social movements like EwB is their ambition to overcome all the boundaries to reach out to different communities, regardless of the geographical, ethnic, or any other type of boundaries. Standing up for Fewila was one of the activities of EwB—rebuilding the school of Fewila in Darfur. To raise funds for this activity EwB crowd-funded and launched an exhibition of artwork and photos by youth for sale, making the reconstruction possible. For another activity called Basmati fi rasmati (“my smile is in my painting”), they collected the drawings of Darfuri children and sold them in a gallery to finance further their projects of building schools in Darfur. Crowd-funding and community mobilization are the main tools for EwB to sustain their projects, but also to resist the condition of the government to register them officially through the Humanitarian Aid Commission (HAC), which monitored and restricted the work of civil society in the Sudan. HAC also stood against any agenda involving donor support. The activities of EwB covered different geographical areas and sites, with special focus on less developed areas and disenfranchised communities, to engage with communities in projects like (hit and run) which is about the maintenance and painting of schools. The structure of the group follows a flat decentralized approach to organize their projects where for each project or activity, whether it’s the library, reading club, or cool school, there is a coordinator, deputy coordinator, and the membership. As I said above, Facebook was the real office for EwB. There they have regular conversations to make decisions and to build action plans. Many documents of the movement can be found online and are open for the public. Macro Politics and Youth Movements’ Functionality The September 2013 Uprising and its aftermath impacted EwB negatively; we were so frustrated and felt that we had been defeated. The group was declining, and for a long time—many months after September 2013—we couldn’t function as usual. No one was interested in attending meetings or planning for any activities (interview with a member of EwB, September 2019). Young people, in general, were relying a great deal on regime change to facilitate moving a step forward toward having more agency and freedom. The security grip that managed to retake control of the street was disappointing. My interlocutor above reflected his feeling and his colleagues’ reactions after the September 2013 Uprising, locating the conversation about emotions at the

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center. The feeling of frustration that dominated the scene after the September Uprising led to a certain moment of decline in the work of EwB. However, a year later the movement stood up again and continued its struggle. There were more challenges coming from the external environment like the economic hardships which were reflected internally. More demands and requests were received, and that greater economic need raised members’ awareness of the various links among political, social, and economic conditions. DIRECT POLITICAL CHANGE OR SOCIAL CHANGE? While Girifna is a direct political movement that used political tools and political discourse to address their demands for political change and for the democratic transformation of the Sudan, EwB is a social change movement that works basically to fill a developmental gap and improve the educational environment by engaging in a particular set of activities. The argument about the priority is always there, that is, whether to start with social change or give priority to political change. When talking about the impact, it’s very important to bear in mind this conclusion by the American historian Robin Kelley: Unfortunately, too often our standards for evaluating social movements pivot around whether or not they “succeeded” in realizing their visions rather than on the merit or power of the visions themselves. By such measures, virtually every radical movement failed because the basic power relations they sought to change remained pretty much intact. And yet it is precisely these alternative visions and dreams that inspire new generations to continue to struggle for change. (Kelley 2003, ix)

In other words, we need to understand the impact of these groups as lasting and historical moments that will be built on. In the next sections, I respond to the overarching questions in this chapter that build on the discussion of the praxis of the two groups (Girifna and EwB). If we want to generalize about activism, resistance, and youth movements, we would need to ask: How is the language used to articulate political identities on social media? (Sinatora 2019) and What was the impact of this mix on activism and resistance, and on youth movements? Should we expect a more revolutionized usage of language (e.g., slang) and of social media? UTILIZING THE SLANG Using everyday language to communicate with society was effective. Taking political discourse and activism from the formal language to a language

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Mohamed Ahmed—the ordinary man—can relate to. The field of sociolinguistics can provide many relevant insights in this regard; in both online and offline activism, utilizing language to reach out and oppose the practices of the previous regime. Dissidents have used social media and the language has been used symbolically as a tool of social and political engagement in an increasingly complex socio-political context. Social media can be used to include, exclude, foreground, or erase some identities and groups (Sinatora 2019, 13). Utilizing everyday Sudanese language means talking directly to Mohamed Ahmed and Fatima in a language they can truly relate to. And it doesn’t mean that they can’t relate to or understand the formal Arabic language that has been used historically in the Sudanese political discourse, in both written and spoken discourses, but rather to add the fingerprint of their generation, as “real” and close to people and as a way to exit the traditional elitist style in the political discourse. In addition, mocking the rhetoric of the regime was and is always an effective weapon. A word like Mundassun (infiltrators) was increasingly used by the previous regime’s leaders to describe the dissidents and the protesters, that same word turned to a joke and has been normalized to de-stigmatized youth and other dissidents. In everyday life, one can find Mohamed Ahmed meeting his friends and asking them wain ya mundassun, meaning “Where are you, dissident?” Instead of delegitimizing the struggle of the youth and their demands, the official rhetoric of the authority was turned into jokes, memes, and songs, and torn up and thrown away. ACTIVISM AND RESISTANCE: SOCIAL MEDIA AS AN EXTENDED PLATFORM VERSUS OFFLINE Social media can be identified as a public sphere since individuals are utilizing those platforms in the same way they have been utilizing a material public sphere, but in this case, using social media as “a discursive space in which individuals and groups associate to discuss matters of mutual interest and, where possible, to reach a common judgment,” as the Habermasian way of defining the public sphere (Sinatora 2019, 34). These spaces offered more liberated stages for refusal, for criticism, and for creating alternative messages, as well, and to spread these messages widely. Unlike the old political and social entities, these dissident youths connected very well with the public and with each other through these platforms. Youth movements make use of social media and alternative media to raise their demands and highlight their own political projects in free cyberspace, which allows them to reach out and approach other groups and build large constituencies that support them directly or indirectly, and to develop what

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Larry Diamond called “the ideological marketplace” through which creative ideas and autonomous information are formulated and circulated by civic groups away from the hegemony of the state. These youth groups, according to Diamond, “seek (in a nonpartisan fashion) to improve the political system and make it more democratic (for example: working for human rights, voter education and mobilization, election monitoring, and exposure and reform of corruption practices)” (Diamond 1999, 7–8). The offline activism of these groups works in alignment with their active online presence. In essence, most youth groups used social media basically to reflect their activities and political events on the ground and to document public speeches. Using social media enabled the calls for mobilization to be more widespread, as well as making these mobilizations more visible to local Internet users and external observers. There has been exceptional growth in the number of Facebook groups, YouTube channels, and articles written in online forums. I would argue that social media not only facilitated civil society’s mobilization and greater visibility, but they (the media) raised consciousness and drew in greater numbers (Kadoda and Hale 2015, 10). THE POLITICS AND IDEAS OF THE DECEMBER 2018 REVOLUTION Resistance committees and neighborhood committees, which were an integral part of the December 2018 popular Revolution, opened up a new era of studying and understanding activism and marks a contour of change toward collaborative democracy, one that can sustain and change the face of politics. The December Revolution took a different path which could lead to a longer life because of the existence of the resistance committees. All that online momentum had to take an offline shape. And that offline shape was the committees. The idea of the neighborhood committees was old and can be dated back to 2013 and to the Sudanese Communist Party’s attempts to organize the masses for a broader action against the Islamist military regime of AlBashir. The way that larger sectors of youth stood up to organize themselves reflected their awareness of the value of collective action. The way resistance committees revolutionized their methods and engaged in organizing and coordinating the daily protests made them a real threat, not only for the junta, but for many other political and social forces that tried to maintain the status quo. Simply because the core idea of the resistance committee is to break that closed cycle of elitism, to become an independent voice for change, they became real actors who determine the rules of the game. By narrating the daily details of these committees on social media, I argue that we can come up with a clearer vision about the struggle for freedom, peace, and justice, and

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how these three concepts and other slogans of the Revolution materialized in the everyday life of those youth. More narrative is needed to build the structure, roles, and social forces behind each one of these committees. An Ongoing Revolution? The current political arena attracted an increasing number of young women and men to join and become an essential part of the continuity and strength of the Revolution. What had been called the silent bloc was finally engaging and interacting in the process of creating change. By revolutionizing the grassroots, the act of engaging in public affairs has become a way of being for ordinary people, which to some degree had been the case before. What was new was that these resistance committees developed their responses to any steps with which they don’t agree. A new form of active citizenship is in the process of developing. This phase poses many questions about sustainability and the future forms of these committees and the possible roles they can play, or the possibility that they may be absorbed into the government apparatuses, as Magdi El-Gizoli commented (Magdi El-Gizoli 2019). I believe that the question of the future of these youth movements and the possibilities of their transformation and future roles has found its answer now—with different youth initiatives and associations and groups engaging and sometimes leading protests, creating solutions, and inventing alternatives, grounded by all these experiences. These groups have answered that oft-repeated question of “Who and what are the alternative?” by their extraordinary courage and determination. CONCLUSION In this chapter, I have attempted to highlight the experience of two contemporary pioneering and progressive youth movements in the Sudan—Girifna and EwB—as a contribution to future research on collective action and the contributions of youth in shaping the political landscape, both in the Sudan and elsewhere. Although youth activism and the development of non-traditional methods of resistance, plus the self-reflexivity and agency of these groups have made major contributions to our ideas about political movements, still, there is a huge gap in the development of the theoretical area of political thought and praxis. These contemporary formations represent a space for youth to seek meaning and to discover their own values while they are collectively collaborating with various groups to drive change. Based on a rich praxis, these youth movements have the potential of developing intellectual modes

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by theorizing change through their activism. By building on their critique of the old practices of politics in the Sudan, they can open the way for the development of new traditions and new alternatives that can shift the political paradigm. I cannot put enough stress on the importance of studying collective action in the Sudan, for example, the internal dynamics of political parties, armed movements, and social movements—areas that are truly under-researched. The history of these collective groups attached to certain political events is what attracts the attention of both political and social scientists. Following this path of researching intellectual modes of thinking about youth political development in the Sudan and the modes of collective action can be a gold mine for discovery and analysis, and for learning more about social networks, survival strategies, collective emotions, and many other topics and fields of study. Furthermore, the study and analysis of the resistance committees and neighborhood committees will be insightful and function as guidelines for understanding popular resistance, collective action at the grassroots level, and several other political potentials and possibilities.

NOTES 1. This paper benefitted a lot from the interviews I had with members of Girifna and Education without Borders, I am so grateful for their contribution. The main body of the paper was written before the December revolution; a few paragraphs were added to reflect the changing nature of activism following the great exposure of the resistance and neighborhood committees. 2. I am here referring to one of the writing by Khalid Eltigani Elnour and Atta Elbattahani on youth initiatives and its ways of practicing politics. For more, check: These two contributions have been extended as a roundtable (Hiwariat Alhadatha) by Alhadatha alsudanya magazine in its fourth issue, December 2016. 3. See political process theory (Eisinger 1973; Tilly 1978, 1995; Tarrow 1998; and McAdam 1999), resource mobilization theory (Lipsky 1968; Oberschall 1973; Gamson 1975; Tilly 1975; Tilly et al. 1975; McCarthy and Zald 1977) and framing (Gamson et al. 1982; Snow et al. 1986; Snow and Benford 1988, 1992). These sources have guided this chapter. 4. Zanig music is a kind of modern music that uses loud and quick beats, and has been described as youth music. 5. Qa’dat are night gatherings, where young men and sometimes joined by women drink alcohol, sing, and chill. 6. Fatima is a pseudonym for a female member of EwB with whom I had an interview. 7. The student movement in the Sudan remains under-researched.

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8. Shari’ alhawadith is a youth group that works on providing financial support and medicines for disenfranchised people who don’t have the financial capacity to provide medicine or medical tests fees for their children or for themselves. 9. Banbar: small local seats, used by tea sellers to seat the customers who set to drink tea, coffee sold by those tea sellers. 10. Alhindi Ezz Elden, a pro-Kizan journalist, wrote an article disapproving this step, denouncing those youth who have ignored the minister of health and replaced him with a tea seller for the opening ceremony, describing that as an absurd scene. See here: www​ .alnilin​ .com​ /12677868​ .htm, the supporters were many, including Khalid Eltigani Elnour, Sudanese economist, who said that Youth initiatives redefine politics. See here: www​.alnilin​.com​/12680490​.htm.

REFERENCES Altay, Can. 2014. “A Public Presence versus Greed, Brutality, and Control: Gezi Park.” In Global Activism: Art and Conflict in the 21st Century, edited by Peter Weibel. The MIT Press. Bayat, Asef. 2009. Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East. Stanford University Press. Bayat, Asef. 2017. “Is There A Youth Politics?” Middle East: Topics & Arguments 9: 16–24. doi: : 10.17192/meta.2017.9.7219. Bilal, Abelraheem. 2000. “Voluntary Work in Sudan.” Conference on Voluntary Work and Humanitarian Aid, Khartoum, Sudan May 13, 2000. Butterwick, Shauna, Donna Chovanec, Carolina Palacios, Kjell Rubenson, and Pierre Walter. 2007. “Learning and Knowledge Production in Social Movement Learning: Different Lenses, Different Agendas, Different Knowledge Claims.” Adult Education Research Conference, 832–39. Cordon, Hava Rachel. 2010. We Fight to Win: Inequality and the Politics of Youth Activism. Rutgers University Press. Dauvergne, Peter and Genevieve Lebaron. 2014. Protest Inc: The Corporatization of Activism. Polity. Diamond, Larry. 1999. Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation. Johns Hopkins University Press. Earl, Jennifer, Thomas V. Maher, and Thomas Elliott. 2017. “Youth, Activism, and Social Movements.” The Sociological Review 11 (4): [e12465]. doi: 10.1111/soc4.12465. Education without Borders Facebook Group. https://ar​-ar​.facebook​.com​/groups​/EWB​ .sudan/ El-Gizoli, Magdi. 2019. “Mobilisation and Resistance in Sudan’s Uprising.” Rift Valley Institute. http://riftvalley​.net​/sites​/default​/files​/publication​-documents​/Mobilization​ %20and​%20resistance​%20in​%20Sudan​%27s​%20uprising​%20by​%20Magdi​%20el​ %20Gizouli​%20-​%20RVI​%20X​-Border​%20Briefing​%20​%282020​%29​_0​.pdf. Farthing, Rys. 2010. “The Politics of Youthful Antipolitics: Representing the ‘issue’ of Youth Participation in Politics.” Journal of Youth Studies 13 (2): 181–95. doi: 10.1080/13676260903233696.

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Girifna official blog. https://girifna​.com​/blog​-girifna/​?page​_id​=9403. Accessed November 2018. Girifna website. https://girifna​.com​/demands/ Girifna YouTube channel. https://www​.youtube​.com​/user​/Girifna2010​/videos. Accessed November 2018. Hanagan, Michael P., Leslie Page Moch, and Wayne Te Brake, eds. 1998. Challenging Authority: The Historical Study of Contentious Politics. University of Minnesota Press. Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada. 1994. “Responses to Information Requests on Girifna.” Refugee Survey Quarterly 13 (4): 27–50. doi: 10.1093/rsq/13.4.27. Jasper, J.M. 1997. The Art of Moral Protest. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kadoda, Gada, and Sondra Hale. 2015. “Contemporary Youth Movements and the Role of Social Media in Sudan.” Canadian Journal of African Studies 49 (1): 215–36. doi: 10.1080/00083968.2014.953556. Kelley, Robin D.G. 2003. Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination. Beacon Press. Liebst, Lasse Suonperä. 2019. “Exploring the Sources of Collective Effervescence: A Multilevel Study.” Sociological Science 6: 27–42. Lilja, Mona, Mikael Baaz, Michael Schulz, and Stellan Vinthagen. 2017. “How Resistance Encourages Resistance: Theorizing the Nexus between Power, ‘Organised Resistance’ and ‘Everyday Resistance’.” Journal of Political Power 10  (1): 40–54. doi: 10.10​80/21​58379​X.201​7.128​6084?​needA​ccess​=true​. McAdam, Doug. 1992. Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930–1970. The University Of Chicago Press. Medani, Khalid Mustafa. 2013. “Between Grievances and State Violence: Sudan’s Youth Movement and Islamist Activism Beyond the ‘Arab Spring.’” Middle East Report No. 267: 1–4. Metahaven. 2014. Can Jokes Bring Down Governments?: Memes, Design and Politics. Strelka Press. Millward, Peter and Shaminder Takhar. 2019. “Social Movements, Collective Action and Activism.” Sociology 53 (3). doi: 10.1177/0038038518817287. Nussbaum, Martha C. 2013. Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice. Belknap Press. Nyabola, Nanjala. 2018. Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics: How the Internet Era Is Transforming Kenya. London: Zed Books. Radsch, Courtey C. 2016. Cyberactivism and Citizen Journalism in Egypt: Digital Dissidence and Political Change. Palgrave Macmilan. Ruiz-Junco, Natalia. 2013. “Feeling Social Movements: Theoretical Contributions to Social Movement Research on Emotions.” Sociology Compass 7 (1): 45–54. doi: 10.1111/soc4.12006. Scott, James C. 2012. “Infrapolitics and Mobilizations: A Response by James C. Scott.” Revue Française d Etudes Américaines 131 (1): 112. doi: 10.3917/ rfea.131.0112. Sinatora, Francesco L. 2019. Language, Identity, and Syrian Political Activism on Social Media. Routledge.

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Tarrow, Sidney G. 2011. Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics. Cambridge University Press. Tilly, Charlies. 2004. Social Movements 1768–2004. Paradigm. Yang, Guobin. 2005. “Emotional Events and the Transformation of Collective Action : The Chinese Student Movement.” In Emotions and Social Movements, edited by Helena Flam and Debra King. Routledge.

Section VI

MAHDISTS, FEMINISTS, AND HUMANISTS

Chapter 12

Al-Sādiq Al-Mahdi’s Intellectualism Searching the Iceberg Rabāḥ Al-Ṣādig

COMPOSITION AND PLATFORM Al-Ṣādiq Al-Mahdi (December 1935–November 2020) was a prominent Sudanese intellectual and politician,1 whose massive and diverse writings are analogous to an iceberg: only the tip of it is recognized. This might be attributed to publishing difficulties, political rivalries, and/or “stereotyping.” Nonetheless, these writings ignited both “light and heat!”2 Herein, we venture to give a descriptive and analytical presentation of his thought. Al-Ṣādiq published more than a 100 books and booklets and hundreds of papers and articles, and delivered dozens of lectures and speeches on religious and political issues (Al-Maktab 2005). His thought is a continuation of the legacy of Mahdism in the Sudan, which went through three main stages: A first stage established in the nineteenth century, led by Imam Muḥammad Aḥmad Al-Mahdi (1843–1885), who revolted against the Ottoman-Egyptian rule and succeeded in unifying the Sudanese nation behind that cause. He liberated the country and established a religious state which aimed at effecting social justice3 and ethnic equality.4 The second stage which is sometimes referred to as neo-Mahdism5 was led by Imam ᶜAbdul -Raḥmān Al-Mahdi (1885–1959), dubbed as “the architect of Sudan’s independence and the most important Sudanese personality in the 20th century” (Ibrahim 1998, 5). One of his major legacies was adjusting Mahdism tactics, while keeping its goals, so as to suit the aftermath shock of Karrari.6 This was eloquently said by ᶜUkēr Al-Dāmar,7 “swords are different but strikes are equal.” The third phase was led by Al-Ṣādiq Al-Mahdi, who passed away on November 26, 2020.

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It is reasonable to expect that the impact of his ideas and writings be immortalized and that his physical absence will remove much of the prejudice and political rivalry, which were undermining his intellectualism. EMERGENCE OF AN INTELLECT Al-Ṣādig’s passion for knowledge started at an early age, nurtured by the availability of rich potions of Mahdism in written and oral forms. He was also influenced by anti-imperialist sentiments in the Sudan and Egypt during his Alexandria, Victoria College times of 1948–1952. When he was only 15 years old, Graham Thomas8 recognized him as a patriotic young intellectual (Thomas 1990, 106). Because of his anticolonialism sentiments and the craving for Islamic and Arabic knowledge, he quit formal education at Victoria. He returned to the Sudan, and became an apprentice to Sheikh Al-Țayib Al-Sarrāj (1894–1963), a renowned scholar in Arabic language. In a debate between him and a Coptic professor at the University of Khartoum, the latter disagreed with Al-Sadiq’s decision to quit education and focus on Islamic and Arabic knowledge only, arguing that Western Civilization is superior because it succeeded in science and technology provided by formal education. Convinced by that argument, Al-Ṣādiq joined the Faculty of Science at the University of Khartoum, and eventually went to the United Kingdom to study agriculture in Oxford University. There he changed his mind and decided to study politics, philosophy, and economics at St John’s College (1954–1957). Ḥaydar I. ͨAli criticized this restlessness and readiness to listen to any advice as a sign of immaturity; he also regards the two-year-long Sarrājian period a benchmark in Sadiq’s intellectualism (Ali 2013, 16). Anyhow, in his biography I proved it to be shorter.9 Ṣādiq himself portrayed Sheik Al-Sarrāj as a living museum of Arabia in its pre-Islamic Jāhili form.10 He was highly impressed by Al-Sarraj’s eccentric views; nonetheless, he didn’t incorporate them into his intellectual alloy. Yet, Al-Sadiq’s use of Arabic poetry in his discourse is a glaring influence of Al-Sarrāj (Al-Sādig 2015, 59). Contrary to Ḥaydar’s views, his perpetual search for knowledge and wisdom at that young age might be seen as outstanding. During his study in Saint John’s, Al-Ṣādiq participated in Oxford Student Union debates, joined the Socialist Club, the Arab Association, the Asian, African and West Indies’ Association, established with others the Islamic Association, joined the Sudanese Students Union in the United Kingdom, and participated in the British anti-imperialism Labor Party campaigns. In contrast to the intoxicating atmosphere prevailing in Khartoum University, which was infested by political hostilities, Ṣādiq’s experience with the UK Sudanese students’ union was harmonious and cooperative, despite

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political differences. His reconciliatory attitude and the indefatigable quest for national consensus are underlined by that experience (Al-Sādig 2015, 81–84). Ṣādiq returned to the Sudan after he finished university in 1957. Late in that year he was assigned to campaign for the Umma party in the Nuba Mountains on the eve of the February 1958 elections. Again in December 1960, during the ͨAbbūd’s military reign, Sadiq’s father Imam Al-Ṣiddīg Al-Mahdi (1911–1961) assigned him to tour Kordofān to evaluate the situation on the ground, to advocate for democracy, and to denounce dictatorship. The acquired experience in these two tours influenced his thought (Al-Ṣādig 2015 Vol. I, 91–92, 138–150; Al-Mahdi 2015 Al-Jazeera). Al-Sadiq’s first piece of intellect work was published in 1959. It was an introduction to a book titled Al-ͨIbādāt, a collection of Imam Al-Mahdi’s religious preaching. There he discussed issues elaborately which could be traced in his subsequent thought; for instance, he emphasized the importance of striking a balance between material and spiritual needs, which he further developed into 10 basic needs.11 He highlighted the importance of religion for Man and urged enthusiastically for what he called “Socialism of the Faithfuls” (Al-Mahdi 1959, 9–38). He sought an expert’s view of his script, so he consulted a versed Islamic scholar Sheikh Muḥammad Al-Mubārak (1905–1990).12 His comment was, “this is the Ijtihad blue-print for Imām Al-Ṣādig” (Al-Ṣādig 2015 Vol. I, 132). Al-Ṣādiq didn’t take Sheikh Al-Mubārak’s comment seriously, yet, those ideas truly formed the genesis of his subsequent formulations: Ijtihād. Al-Ṣādiq’s search for cognizance was enduringly increasing. As early as 1953, he asked his younger brother, ͨIṢām (1937–1963), who was abroad, to send him books on communism, “both pro and anti,” as they were banned from officially entering the country (Al-Ṣādig 2015 Vol. I, 64). His perseverance to acquaint himself with intellectual products is novel and was acknowledged by many intellects.13 The traits of his political craftsmanship were first manifested in an Anṣār Notables Conference—Mu’tamar Al-Wukalā, which was convened in Aba Island, March 1963. The conference partly aimed at formulating principles for the post-military rule (Abdel Salam 1979, 238). The Aba Declaration advocated for democratization, a presidential system, Islamic Socialism, decentralization, and equality between Southerners and Northerners, and urged all Sudanese political organizations to unify around these principles so as to form a popular democratic bloc (Al-Ṣādig 2015 Vol. I, 379). Abdel Salam maintained that the declaration bore the prints of Al-Sadiq Al-Mahdi and the party secularizers “who founded a monolithic bloc behind him [. . .], it represented a real revolution in the party’s pace of secularization and democratization” (Abdel Salam 1979, 240). However, the declaration’s overt

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purpose was “to create a progressive Islamic society.” It didn’t call for secularization, but definitely for democratization and socialism. His first book was a study of the “Southern Sudan problem,” which was then flaring up due to the Anyania I war (the main Southern guerilla organization in the North–South war). Published in April 1964, it maintained that peace is achievable only via free and inclusive dialogue to bring about a political resolution (Al-Mahdi 1964, 50–53). It marked also Al-Mahdi’s first confrontation with a despotic regime. The Minister of Interior Majzūb Al-Baḥāri summoned him and said “a decision was issued to arrest you, but I preferred to warn you.” He published the book anyway despite that menacing warning (Al-Ṡādig 2015 Vol. I, 109). By the Sudan’s second democracy (1964–1969), following the overthrow of the military regime of Aboud, he had crystal clear views on a wide spectrum of issues; he lectured on many topics and toured nearly the whole country in six months (while in office as prime minister for about nine months from July 1966 to May 1967), spending quite a bit of time in the South where he was lovingly nicknamed Benj Māryāl.14 He had then a strong Southern ally, the late William Deng who was woefully murdered in May 1968. Since the 1960s, Al-Ṣādig became famous for using new terminologies.15 It is amusing, for example, to trace how he Arabized the term “Syndicalism” as Syndicālīya, which described the style of traditional Jallabia that he wears!16 Following is a description of Al-Ṣādiq’s views on certain topics. ISLAMIC RENAISSANCE We regard his views on Mahdism, Implementation of Shari’a, and Dialectics between Identity and Modernity as subdivisions of his scheme on Islamic Renaissance, as will be presented below. Mahdism Al-Ṣādiq’s conceptualization of Mahdism is an original intellectual work since there was no clear vision on Mahdism and its relevance today. He showed how Mahdism is controversial among Muslims. Ibn Khuldūn rejected it “on the grounds that it destabilized the reigning dynasties” (Al-Mahdi 1980, Mahdism, 9). He enumerated 10 concepts of Mahdism in Muslim thought17 (Al-Mahdi 2015b, 139; Yas’alūnak, 139; Al-Mahdi 1980, Mahdism, 5). Based on the writings Manshūrāt of Al-Imam Al-Mahdi, he explained Mahdism in “functional” terms, that is, “the Mahdi broadcast his mission in terms of specific functions.” He was divinely addressed since “the chair of the viceregent of Muḥammad the Prophet has become empty. He was called upon

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to occupy that chair.” The Quran and Prophet Sunnah were buried, and he was to reinstate them (Al-Mahdi 1980, Mahdism, 6). Al-Ṣādiq showed how Al-Mahdi didn’t embrace the end of time concept,18 and how he combined different Islamic trends: he called for the revival of Quran and Sunnah which is the main Sunnis’ concern, stressed the importance of spirituality which is the focus of Sufis, designated an essential role for leadership (Imama) which is crucial to the Shiᶜa, laid down a rule for a continuous change in formulations,19 which is wanted by ideological Islamists, called for Jihād which is so dear to Islamic Movements, and transcended all schools of Muslim thought Madhāhib and Țuruq, so as to achieve a higher degree of unity on the basis of the holy texts, which is required by Islamic Awakeners (Al-Mahdi 2015b, 249, 275, 340; Yas’alūnak, 249, 275, 340). He considered Mahdism still alive and having to do with modern and future social change. He described how Al-Mahdi inspired Sudanese people to change; he called upon the eradication of “all aspects of foreign influence lock, stock and barrel,” and rejected the socially and economically unjust system prevailing in the Muslim world, which he regarded as contradicting Islamic injunctions and so “titled, status and differential living conditions must be eradicated once and for all,” so ‟land cannot be owned, people are entitled only to its use,” and so “his land tenure in fact bequeathed the modern Sudan a most progressive system of land tenure” (Al-Mahdi 1980, Mahdism, 6). Al-Ṣādiq regarded some Mahdism’s formulations and positions obsolete since they are linked to its historical context, for instance the Takfīr, “declaring as infidels” its opponents and the strict penal code (Al-Mahdi 2015b, 11, 245, 251; Yas’alūnak, 11, 245, 251). He considered Mahdism still alive and having to do with modern and future social change and revival of Islam; it is a call for a progressive role of spirituality in social change and social justice: “Our world will be a better place to live in, if we end the practice of employing religion for the purposes of social reaction and if we genuinely based social justice not on class power nor on expediency but on spiritual and moral imperatives” (Al-Mahdi 1980, Mahdism, 14). To him, believing in Al-Mahdi is voluntary and subject to different interpretations; the various individuals and groups are free to take whatever view they choose; but the functional and progressive role of spirituality is needed (Al-Mahdi 2015b, 342; Yasa’lȗnak, 342). The futurist notion of Mahdism is, however, questioned by those who regard it as a mere on and off historical event, while for a considerable bulk of Al-Anṣār,20 Mahdism continues up to the day of resurrection. It is possible to defend Mahdism within authentic Islamic credentials21 and to maintain that Al-Ṣādiq’s views on Mahdism are consistent with the way he envisaged Islam as dynamic and calling for continuous innovation and justice. Nonetheless, some writers challenge this Mahdism dilemma. Ḥ. I. ᶜAli finds it counterproductive to Al-Ṣādiq’s thought in forcing him to irrationally

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consider intuition a knowledge source (ͨAli 2013, 10). Rasha ͨAwaḍ also regards Mahdism as the Achilles’ heel of Al-Mahdi’s thought in which the politician prevails over the intellectual. His Mahdism discourse, to her, is inconsistent with the courageous spirit of renewal with which he faced much more serious religious issues (ͨAwad 2018). Al-Ḥāj Warrāg on the opposite side argues that “apart from the occults, Al-Mahdi’s interpretations inspired the Sudanese People to achieve their goals, which confirms that it was not just personal delusions. Rather it was an innovative response to the movement of history, what is called by Sufis: the permission.” He described how daring Al-Mahdi was in challenging the then religious Caliphate and prevalent religious interpretations. Despite the fact that Mahdist thought was articulated under relative solitude, he argues “ever since, no other venture managed to unite and inspire the Sudanese as it did”22 (Warrāg 2018). Muhammad ͨUmāra’s judgment on Mahdism is not far from that, “it had liberated the spiritual energies of the Sudanese people, it confirms in all its aspects that it was one of the most prominent awakening movements through which the Ummah in Sudan faced the challenges, which were imposed upon it by its enemies” (ͨUmāra 1997, 282). According to Warrāg, “Al-Ṣādiq grasped the essence of Mahdism in challenging the prevalent interpretations of religion, i.e. innovation ‘Tajdīd.’” His substitute interpretations are more modern, open-minded, and linked to the time, but compared to first Mahdism he didn’t succeed till now in generating enormous physical power to effect its purpose (Warrag 2018). Implementation of Shariᶜa Imam Al-Ṣādiq believed in the power of Islam as a vehicle for change in Muslim societies. He seems to be agreeing with the sociology of incentives introduced by Max Weber (1864–1920) who argues that development needs moral incentives. Weber attributes the shift to capitalism in Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to the emergence of Calvinism,23 which “supplies the moral energy and drive of the capitalist entrepreneur” (Giddens 1930, xiii). It is true; when Weber studied Islam he was too hostile to see its potential (Al-Sādig 2004, 3–5). According to Al-Ṣādiq Muslims deteriorated due to the ideological regime of tradition—Taqlid, despotic political regimes, social injustice, and refuge of the masses in quietist shelters provided by Sufi orders, thus dynamism was displaced by stagnation and decadence, wrongly ascribed by the German sociologist Max Weber to Islam (Al-Mahdi 1980, Social, 9). Resurrection of the true spirit of Islam, to Ṣādiq, provides our societies with the incentive to develop and prosper. On equal footing, Al-Ṣādiq rejected riding the popular tide of Islam by opportunistic politicians to satisfy their craving for power or by despots eager

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to consolidate their illegitimate tenures. He criticized General Ziā’u Al-Ḥaq (1924–1988) of Pakistan, who jumped opportunistically on the Islamic order. Ṣādiq agreed with Islamic activists in Pakistan who “reject his ad hoc approach to Islamization instead of the global approach, challenge the legitimacy of the military regime and maintain that an Islamic program introduced by a dictatorship defeats its purpose” (Al-Mahdi 1982, Islam, 12). Alarmed by this ad hoc trend, he lectured in October 1982 stating that public opinion in the Sudan revolves around demands of Islam and freedom. He decried hierarchy and coup as a means of Sharīͨa implementation, and stressed that the Islamic program in the Sudan should be laid out on the bases of popularity and freedom (Al-Mahdi 1983, 99–100). When Jaͨ far Nimēri (1930–2009) announced his form of Sharīͨā24 in September 1983, Al-Mahdi declared that Sharīͨā implementation in Islam should guarantee certain principles.25 He referred to Nimēri’s legislations, explaining that the Islamic punishments Ḥudūd are just and wise when applied within their context. They are to safeguard a well-established Islamic welfare society. However, if “money distribution in a society is unjust, and the unemployed and the poor had no source of lawful earning, and the rich have great wealth gained through suspicious means, then the penalty Ḥad of theft applied in this society will protect injustice and promote social grievances” (Al-Sādig 2015 Vol. II, 306–309). Nimēri got inflamed and detained Ṣādiq and dozens of his colleagues from September 1983 until December 1984. During detention, Al-Ṣādiq wrote on Islamic penal code (Al-Mahdi 2010) and Nimēri’s Islamic Venture (AlḤaraka 1984). He envisaged Hudūd as a last resort in the Adjustment and Social Control Strategy, which safeguards a righteous welfare society. They come last after five complementary factors, namely, faith, worship, moral initiation, social welfare, and public opinion (Al-Mahdi 2010, 42–47). Dissent to “September laws” partially contributed to the April revolt of 1985 and hence the restoration of democracy. Al-Ṣādiq led his election campaign, calling for the immediate abolition of September laws.26 His National Umma party won a narrow majority and was forced to rule in coalition governments. The NIF27 which totally backed those laws won a considerable vote in the Parliament and had an overwhelming media voice. It toxically outbid the issue, so that Al-Mahdi was rather handcuffed in running his program. Many commentators criticize what they regard as lack of congruity, sometimes contradiction, between Al-Ṣādiq the theorist and Al-Ṣādiq the politician. They cite the Shariͨ a issue as a proof. Al-Tayib Zȇn Al-ͨAbdīn regarded Al-Ṣādiq radical in ideology but conservative in politics (Symposium 2005, 1). M.A. Jādēn argued that Al-Sadiq failed to hold his political and ideological banners while in office (Jadȇn 2002, 222) and A M Abdel Laṭīf thought that Al-Ṣādiq has high political aspirations, which collide with pressing internal and external political facts, so he resorts to the impossible solution of

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reconciling between paradoxes, leading to ideology being opposed to conduct (Abdel-Latif, 24). This sounds very apolitical. Not only in politics, in fact, human thought in general is largely about tackling opposites: Marxist’s dialectics, Structuralism’s opposites, Socrates’s golden mean, Islamism moderation between excessiveness Ifrāṭ and omission Tafrīṭ, the universe is hardly a place for straightforward choices. Ḥ.A. Ibrahim demanded that this dichotomy which has been triggered by the sensitive and sensational issues involved, and the extremely fluid status of Sudanese politics “should not be allowed to belittle the man’s significant contribution in the arena of Islamic intellectualism” (Ibrahim 2006, 171). Editors of Great Muslim Leaders, on the other hand, admired how Al-Ṣādiq worked a middle path to accommodate both the Sudan unity and Islam which could not be served at the same time. They understood that Al-Ṣādiq’s party didn’t get the majority needed to govern independently, and thus was forced to participate in coalitions. Therefore, his hands continued to be tied. They concluded that “he possessed the tenacity and talent to stand, and resist the pressures of all sorts, which demonstrated his extraordinary mettle as a ‘great leader of the 20th century’” (Alim 2006). Their views are validated in 2001 by Al-Ṣādiq’s lectures to Nigerian Muslims, who were applying Shariͨ a in a manner relevant to neither modernity nor national unity. He appreciated that Islamization in Nigeria was being addressed in democracy, but hinted to the need of minding the effect of Islamic implementation on national unity and on democracy, urging all to eschew extremism. He discussed three Sudanese,28 Pakistani, Afghani, and Iranian Islamization programs. To him, Islamization is a legitimate commitment for a Muslim who should take lessons from these experiences. Muslims should realize that in the public domain Islamization has to mind aspects of “the changing circumstances of time and place, the rights of non-Muslims and the circumstances of the international community.” They should consider that the margin of application is wide: some obligations in certain circumstances are necessary; in others they are not as necessary, yet sometimes they become unnecessary, if they could harm the ultimate goals of Shariͨ a. He urged Muslims to eschew the formulistic approach29 and employ certain God-given faculties, such as Wisdom, Balance, and Justice, which constitute a teleological approach. He decried ad hoc approaches to Sharia, the manipulation of Islam for power ambitions, and any venture to force Shariᶜa upon others (Al-Mahdi 2001b, 7–8; Lessons, 7–8; Al-Mahdi 2006a, 27; Kitāb, 27). Dialectics between Identity and Modernity According to Al-Mahdi, dichotomy in the Muslim world between advocates of Identity and Modernity is waging a cold civil war, that rages not only on

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societal but also on individual levels. Each individual has a conflicted self, best symbolized by the Roman Deity Janus who symbolizes January, with two faces one heading to the previous year “Identity” and the other to the new one “Modernity” (Al-Mahdi 2001a, 20; Jadalīyat, 20). He described “two attitudes to the question of identity, namely, a reactionary attitude, and an enlightened one” (Al-Mahdi 2001b, Lessons). In his book Challenges of the Nineties written in 1989 he forecasted the subsequent universal turbulence. He stated that under the prevailing international injustice, especially in the hemispheric division between the Northern haves and the Southern have-nots, the globe will head to a dark age. Enlightened sectors in both the West and Islamic worlds will be overcome by reactionaries. He anticipated the emergence of non-state actors in the South who carry “weapons of mass obstruction,” namely, terrorism, drug trade, illegal immigration, the Southern population bomb, arms trade, and the ecological bomb (Al-Mahdi 1990, 139). Subsequently, he explained the current spread of retroaction among Muslim youth and its Al-Qaida, ISIS, and Somali and Nigerian manifestations. He declared that facing terrorism by security means only is counterproductive (Al-Mahdi, 2015a, 53–61; Ḥāluna, 53–61). He also traced the emergence of the neo-conservatives in the United States and their quite insane views, which are hegemonic and nourishing terrorism. In his book Uncle Sam: Deaf or Listening he cited views of mindful American voices and was beware of the neo-con trends (Al-Mahdi 2008, 10–14). The interaction between reactionaries in our world and Western hegemony is a zero-sum enterprise. They mutually nourish each other, generating conflict and chaos. It is a “dialogue of the deaf.” As for the religious-secular conflict, enlightened Islamic interpretation and a mature secularist attitude are capable of ending the quarrel. This mature secular attitude is conveyed by some contemporary secularists, such as Charles Taylor (b. 1931) and Peter Berger (1929–2017), who argue that secularization theory “that modernity necessarily leads to a decline of religion” has been falsified, and that rather than an age of secularity, ours is an age of pluralism (Al-Mahdi 2015a, 124–5; Ḥāluna 124–5; Al-Mahdi 2011; Maͨ ālim, 54). So as to reach an enlightened Islamic interpretation, Al-Ṣādiq urged for new formulations, Ijtihad, in seven areas: “The concept of Islam, the meaning of jihad, Islam and the state, Islam and the economy, the Islamic criminal code, Islam and the rights of women and Islam and fine arts” (Al-Mahdi 2001b, Lessons). He dealt with these subjects in many of his writings,30 introducing a new Ijtihad on Ibn Al-Qaim’s golden rule of: matching the holy texts’ assignments to the standing reality. However, even if we got the required Ijtihad in all the mentioned fields, this is not sufficient. In order to demolish the reactionary attitude and strengthen the enlightened one, the factors which nourish retroaction should

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be dismantled. So many factors are there including foreign hegemony, social injustice between the global North and South, despotism and social injustice within Islamic countries, ideological and historical hostilities, and the hot spots in Palestine, Kashmir, among others. In the book Modern Calls he articulated three charters for mutual acceptance between Muslims, religious coexistence between different faiths, and international dialogue and cooperation (Al-Mahdi 2001c, Nida’āt). His endeavors within the international Forum for Moderation31 revolve around Muslim-Muslim coexistence, ending the Sunni-Shiͨ i hostilities, and other regional confrontations. His works within Club de Madrid32 focus on democratization and combating violent extremism by eradicating grievances and advocating for international justice. Universal human rights’ principles of justice, human integrity, equality, freedoms, and peace are crucial and should be adopted by all cultures, civilizations, and religions. In Human is the Edifice of God he showed how these principles are part and parcel of Islamic religious teachings (Al-Mahdi 2009, Al-‘Insān). Several writers commended how he made human rights part of Al-Anṣār Religious Oath (Warrag 2018; Symposium 2005). The dialectic is hardly recognized by some of his critiques. ͨAasha Al-Karib said: “I see Al-Mahdi struggling and swinging between two poles, when it comes to Modernity and his background and teachings” (Al-Karib 2018). Again, Mansur Khalid described him as swinging between Oxford and Al-Mahdi’s tomb (Dafalla 2017). The question which Al-Ṣādiq cites is: Can any of the poles “identity” or “Modernity” in its own bring about justice, development, peace, prosperity, and religious coexistence? As for mere identity advocates, Al-Ṣādiq showed how recipes of Shariͨ a implementation fell short of Muslim aspirations; they even failed in fulfilling most of the sacred Islamic principles of justice, accountability, fidelity to trust, rule of law, human integrity, and the like. Also, far from mere rhetoric, true modernity implies certain practical and tangible positions. Warrāg considered it most significant to know how Al-Mahdi’s family, which is labeled as traditional, eschewed FGM decades ago, while some so-called modernizers circumcise their daughters. Instead of imposed, top-heavy or monkey-like modernity, which will inevitably fail, sustainable modernity is in short of a popular creative program, which tackles the issues of Identity and Modernity seriously (Warrāg 2018). It has been proved that modernity irrelevant of people’s cultures is bound not only to fail, but maximize their suffering (Al-Sādig 2018a). Al-Ṣādiq offered a dialectical, not swinging approach. The success of this formula is incumbent upon the collective ability of all stakeholders to strengthen national, regional, and international movement toward justice. It is an uphill battle, not confined to the realm of ideas.

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SOCIOPOLITICAL THOUGHT Here come his views on Social Justice, Consociational Governance, and the gender agenda. Social Justice Social justice is one of the building bricks of Al-Mahdi’s thought. He changed terminology from “Socialism of the Faithfuls” to “social justice” and then “social free market.” Warrag understands the departure from “socialism” after the terminal fall of Marxist socialism with its tragic humanitarian costs. However, he maintains that the classical left is calcified and urged Al-Mahdi to develop his social market script, and advocate social justice as he used to do (Warrag 2018). Actually, Al-Mahdi kept preaching for social justice on national, regional, and universal levels. He urged universal justice in wealth distribution through a recipe of “Brandt Report33” (Al-Mahdi 1990, 17). Regionally he prompted Gulf countries to launch “a Marshall like fund for Development” to help their deprived neighbors (Al-Mahdi Feb. 2015, 1). Nationally, he maintained that states in the South will neither gain stability nor legitimacy because of, inter alia, the curse of unequal income distribution. He has always argued that social justice is a must for the legitimacy of governance, and that free market is efficient in optimizing production, but would lead to bad wealth distribution. Therefore, a social contract is necessary; otherwise, injustice will fuel revolution. Social justice is an imperative for legitimacy and stability of governance (Al-Mahdi 2018a; Al-Mahdi Feb 2015, 1). CONSOCIATIONAL, ONE-PARTY, AND MULTIPARTY DEMOCRACIES During the second democratic reign (1965–1969), Al-Ṣādiq renewed his Aba 1963 call for parties to form a united democratic bloc. He harshly criticized the multiparty system (Al-Mahdi 1967). While exiled in the 1970s, he rejected the one-party system of the totalitarian regime but advocated for unifying national will (Al-Mahdi 1976). As chairman of the Sudanese National front which led opposition to Nimēri’s despotism, he made its Charter recall that quest34 (Al-Ṣādig Vol. II, 129). In the course of Reconciliation, he negotiated with Nimȇri on how to accommodate his infamous “Sudanese Socialist Union” in case a down-up reconstruction and certain democratic reforms were applied. He envisaged the process as a means to establish the democratic popular unifying bloc

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by adjusting the thwarted totalitarian one-party system. However, he soon sensed it was a futile exercise and quit (Al-Ḥarakat 1978). These could be seen as early trends in the Sudan toward what has been recently known as consociational democracy. Consociationalism, always viewed versus majortiarianism, refers to “a stable democratic system in deeply divided societies that is based on power sharing between elites from different social groups” (Suarugger, Britannica). Because of the atrocities and sufferings under May dictatorship, maybe, he changed positions toward the multiparty system during the third democratic reign, and described multiparty as “the best amongst the worst.” However, opting for a kind of consociationalism was behind his call for a “Social Contract” and his urge for national governments during the third democratic reign (1986–1989). The appeal for a national government was initially rejected by his party but later led to its alliance, inter alia, with the National Islamic Front (NIF). GNU35 was actually a platform which NIF used to cripple democracy and later launch their 1989 coup d’état.36 During dictatorships, this reconciliatory attitude was exploited by totalitarians to infuse a false impression that he is “with us.” Al-Mahdi admits that “One of my frequent mistakes is believing the promises of tyrants, because they provide them to solve their problem, when resolved, they completely betray their promises. This happened when we believed Jaᶜfar Nimēri’s pledges to carry on the required reforms in the Reconciliation Program” (Al-Mahdi 2005). According to Ibrahim, Al-Mahdi didn’t “acquire much of his mentor’s37 mastery of manipulation which is seemingly important in Sudanese politicking” (Ibrahim 2006, 161). M. I. Al-Shūsh puts it in other words: “despite his far-sightedness, historical and personal eligibility for leadership, deep intellectualism and sincere patriotism, Sayed Al-Ṣādiq Al-Mahdi has a huge amount of goodwill in the wrong place” (Al-Shūsh 2000). H. I. ͨAli attributes the recurrent unification call to the well-known religious notion of the chosen band “Al-Firqa Al-Nājia” which is highly totalitarian and monolithic (Ali 2013, 61). That Firqa is not supposed to collect others but keeps its righteousness away from those wandering astray. ͨAli failed to notice that the dream of unification is obsolete to Ṣādiq’s contemporary political discourse; it only helps in tracing his line of diagnosis to our political malaise and the early sense against majoritarianism, toward consociationism. Despite any tactical misfortunes, the call for consociational governance is still sound in diverse and polarized societies. International experiences in Switzerland, India, South Africa, and Malaysia lay positive examples. Recently, Sudanese intellectuals have become more eager to advocate consociationism; Al-Țayib Zēn Al-ᶜAbdīn, ᶜAli Rabbāḥ, and Balqīs Badrī are few examples (Ali 2017, 98–103; Rabbāḥ 2018).

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After the April 11, 2019 victory of the Sudanese Revolution, Al-Sadiq’s consociationism manifested in the “National Rescue Matrix” of the Umma National Party (Maṣfūfat 2019). Gender Agenda Addressing gender issues by Al-Mahdi dates back to 1980 (Al-Mahdi 1980, Social, 16). In 1985 he published his book Women’s Rights in Islam in which he adopted progressive views calling for gender equality (Al-Mahdi 1985). He showed that his mother, the late Sayda Raḥma ᶜAbdalla (1908–1985), was the driving force behind his promotion of gender equality. Her wisdom and piety contradict formulations of the Classical Islamic School, which attributes to women a lesser share in mind and faith. These formulations leaned upon claimed sayings of the Prophet (PBUH) “Aḥādīth,” which he found either taken out of context or fabricated (Al-Mahdi 2006d, 14; Ḥuqūq, 14). An example is the alleged Ḥadīth: “No nation that enthrones a woman will prosper.” He showed how it contradicts Quran which ascribes slyness to Bilqīs, Queen of Sheba (Quran, Al-Naml, 32). The narrator of the Ḥadīth, Abu Bakra, was discredited by the penalty of defamation.38 Moreover, Abu Bakra had personal interest to justify why he didn’t patron Al-Sayda ᶜAisha in the Battle of the Camel. He showed how the Ḥadīth is historically not valid: it was claimed that the Prophet (PBUH) said it when Borān, the daughter of Emperor Khosrow was enthroned, while Al-Țabari in his history maintained that Persians prospered during her tenure (Al-Mahdi 2006d, 144–145; Ḥuqūq, 144–145). Al-Ṣādiq maintained that the “Sudanese Muslim Private Affairs Law” of 1991 is unfair to women and is retrograde even when compared to the Sudanese traditional settings. He advocated the Moroccan Family Code,39 which strived for gender equality and applied legal restrictions on polygamy. He also backed CEDAW’s provisions. However, he argued that women’s liberation should have neither the mark of Westernization nor of masculinization and should have moral and spiritual roots (Al-Mahdi, Naḥw, 128–129). Ḥ. A. Ibrahim showed how Al-Mahdi supported women rights, but claimed that “he does not seem to be in favor of women’s occupancy of the position of head of a state, or at least, he is silent on the issue” (Ibrahim 2006, 172). In fact, refuting Abu Bakra’s Hadith and referring to the Balqīs’ Quranic case are two examples of his advocacy of women’s eligibility for public office “Al-Wilāya Al-ͨĀma.” He backed up article 2 of CEDAW which condemns all forms of discrimination against women, and challenged those who filed reservations thereto, on the basis of Shariͨ a (Al-Mahdi 2006d, 152; Al-Ḥuqūq, 152; Al-Mahdi 2010, 166). Fruits of his thought showed up in May 2014 when a woman was elected as Secretary General of the Umma National Party chaired by him. In June he nominated a woman Vice President. Both events

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were considered as foremost in the large party with huge rural patronage, which is usually labeled as traditional. Al-Mahdi’s formulations regarding women placed him in the fire line of reactionary jurists serving the bygone Inqāz Regime. They issued verdicts of infidelity on his discourse in 2009 and 2012. His indefatigable support for women’s rights may be ascribed to many factors, mainly: the growing women’s private and public roles in the Sudan, the need to support Sudanese women who were subjected to the injustice of the bygone Inqāz’ “Public Order law,” police and security raids, and militias rapes, a women enlightening school which he established in the mid-1990s, and the rise of women’s empowerment’s discourse nationally, regionally, and internationally. In a comparative study, Nahid Al-Hasan discussed four Islamic renewal schools in the Sudan regarding the gender problem, namely: Al-Mahdi, Ḥasan Al-Turābi, Maḥmūd Muḥammad Ṭaha, and Ṭaha Ibrahim. She showed how they extended women’s spaces in the Sudan. According to Nahid, Al-Mahdi40 recognized women’s rights in work and education but urged them to specialize and work in jobs “suitable to their biological nature and domestic roles” (Al-Hassan 2016, 68). In the reference she specified, however, that Al-Mahdi was summarizing “the Other Islamic View” as opposed to “the Classical Islamic View.” His views however appeared later in the reference when he maintained that: “economic and social rights for men and women should be equalized and provided for ideologically, constitutionally and legally.” He proposed a Women’s Charter calling for “the elimination of all forms of cultural hegemony upon, discrimination against and stereotyping of women” (Al-Mahdi 2006d, 36–37, 73; Al-Ḥuqūq, 36–37, 73). Reviewing Nahid’s book last year, I showed how she followed a kind of May Ziadeh’s (1886–1941) sympathetic approach. She overlooked inconsistencies in some of the main intellectual views generally or in their gender views specifically. She gently pointed at the fact that Turābi’s views totally contradicted his conduct when he took power in 1989, establishing a regime which oppressed women to the maximum degree experienced in the Sudan’s history. As for The Jumhūri “Republican” school of Maḥmūd Ṭaha, Nahid skipped pointing at the rejection it finds among most Muslims, since it bears eccentric ideas on a Second Message of Islam, abrogating revelations (Naskh in Quran)41 and Pantheism, which are more controversial than the Ḥadra “meeting with the Prophet” in Mahdism which she finds rejected by many (Al-Sadig 2018b, 8). By reviewing Ṭaha’s writings, two more points should be added: first is his revolt against the law prohibiting FGM in 1946; he maintained that he rejected the shameless manner in which the colonial authorities were fighting Pharaonic circumcision, while shyness is the base of ethics, and so of religion (Ṭaha 1973, 2). Here he finds shyness more crucial than a basic

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right for women not to be mutilated, that is, psychologically and sexually handicapped, while a well-known Islamic principle states that protecting the body is more important than protecting the religion. The second point is his story of Genesis, in which he attributed the sin basically to Eve, who had to be “relegated to the lowest of the low” before Adam, who actually followed her (Ṭaha October 1969, 90). This contradicts the Quran (20:121 and 2:36)42 in which the sin is either attributed to Adam or to both Adam and Eve equally. Such narrations are the building bricks of women’s oppression. Analyzing Al-Ṡādiq’s gender views on the light of Mahdism seemed to be deficient in Nāhid’s work, and needs further research on Mahdism and its gender stance—something I ventured long ago, but still needs deeper investigation (Al-Sādig 1994). When comparing the four schemes on the scale of impact, we find Ṭaha Ibrahim’s endeavor useful on the elites’ level. Being a secular writer, his views, however, are not much valued among the Muslim masses. Turābi’s statements are stamped with contradictions as Nāhid maintained, and frequently invalidated by conduct. Maḥmūd Ṭaha’s scheme is confined to the narrow circle of his followers, and bears a Genesis story contradicting his gender equality positions. Al-Ṡādiq’s scheme is more consistent and has a stronger impact on the masses; yet, a better deciphering of its Mahdism’s gender code is needed (Al-Sādig 2018b, 8). Philosophy Al-Mahdi made an extensive study of ancient Greek, ancient Oriental, Judaic, Christian, Islamic, Renaissance, and Modern European philosophy. He reached conclusions on basic philosophical topics.43 Unfortunately, that script was lost in the 1970s.44 Fortunately enough, the work on this chapter encouraged me to collect and publish his remaining philosophical writings in a book titled Religion and Philosophy (Al- Mahdi, 2018a, Ad-Dīn). We will focus here on a few themes. Islamic Philosophy According to Al-Ṣādiq, ancient Greek philosophy furthered science, logic, and ontological quiz; it reached Eastern Muslims Al-Mashriq via extensive translations in the ninth Hijri Century. Philosophers such as Abū Yusuf Al-Kindi (805–873), Abū Naṣr Al-Fārābi (874–950), and Abu ͨAli ‘Ibn Sīnā (980–1037) ventured to reconcile religion and philosophy. Eastern Philosophy, however, was knocked out by the famous Imam Abu Ḥāmid Al-Ghazali’s (1058–1111). In Tahāfut Al-Falāsifa (The Incoherence of the Philosophers), he refuted their theistic views, declaring them in at least three

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positions amounting to infidelity.45 Al-Ghazāli focused on Al-Farābi and Ibn Sīna’s philosophy, while they relied on unauthentic texts. He himself was neither precise nor comprehending in some issues, as was subsequently exposed in Abū Al-Walīd Ibn Rushd’s (1126–1198) Banality of the Banality Tahāfut Al-Tahāfut. In the Western Islamic world Al-Maghrib, however, philosophy glimpsed at the hands of Ibn Bāja (1095–1138) and Ibn Țufēl (1105–1185), and reached its zenith with Ibn Rushd, but died soon after. Ibn Rushd’s illuminating effect went to Europe, leaving the Islamic world in its hibernation. Ibn Rushd, according to Ṣādiq, managed to defend philosophy in the face of Al-Ghazāli’s attack, introduced a reasonable interpretation of religion, and reconciled it to philosophy. He said, “Ibn Rushd was the last bright name in the history of Islamic philosophy. In my opinion, he is the most successful Muslim philosopher, but his influence on Islamic thought does not match his grand research and theoretical endeavors. “His works were like a flower in the wasteland.” He showed how internal schisms and fear from creed distortions constituted an overwhelming conservative Muslim trend which shutdown renewal Tajdid; it ruined Al-Mashriq’s philosophical school and let Ibn Rushd’s philosophy fall on deaf ears: “if he appeared before the intensification of that trend, he would have had a positive effect on Islamic philosophy and might have saved it from the locked avenues which it entered with Al-Farābi and Ibn Sīna.” Al-Ṣādiq maintains that [The] history of Islamic thought shows that philosophy is indispensable to religion. Yes Islamic philosophy has faced obstacles which halted its development, but these obstacles have blocked any door for innovation even to religion itself, religious views were petrified and Islamic thought entered the cave in which it slept for ages. (Al-Mahdi 2018a, 195–198; Ad-Dīn, 195–198)

Ethics Al-Ṣādiq studied different theories in Ethics from Plato’s asceticism and Aristotle’s “golden mean” to the recent theories.46 As for Islam, however, he said, “Islam bases morality on the three objective foundations of morality viz.: compatibility, altruism and universality” (Al-Mahdi 1980, Social). Knowledge Regarding sources of knowledge, he discussed epistemological theories, such as Rational “soft” knowledge47 versus Empirical “hard” knowledge,48 and those who combine both.49 Realistic knowledge versus Idealistic knowledge and Critical Idealistic knowledge (Al-Mahdi 2017, 81–82). He argued initially that there are three sources of knowledge in Islam: “intuitive, rational

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and empirical” (Al-Mahdi 1980, Social, 13). However, later on he added revelation (Al-Mahdi 2006b, 36; Naḥw 36). In addition to his personal expertise and faculties, Al-Ṣādiq here is influenced by both Al-Ghazali and Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). He describes Kant as the Glorious Philosopher of Europe and commends his Critique of Practical Reason (Al-Mahdi 2011, Ma’alim, 39; Al-Mahd 2018a, 255; Ad-Din, 255). Putting the four sources on equal footing might lead to misunderstanding and have harmful consequences. For example, under the rule of the overthrown Regime in the Sudan we heard urges for official dealings with Jinn to effect development, and witnessed alleged martyrs’ weddings simultaneously celebrated on earth and in Heaven, and so forth. Al-Ṣādiq said, “using rational abilities in matters of the occults, as taking up the Witnessed world with metaphysical faculties, both are not allowed” (Al-Mahdi 2011, Maͨ ālim, 64). Influences, Classification, and Impact Al-Mahdi was influenced by many; I think Al-Sarraj influenced his eloquence. Ibn Khuldūn (1332–1406) and Arnold Toynbee (1889–1975) had an impact on his historical sense. Three differing Islamic thinkers reconcile in Sadiq’s discourse: Al-Ghazāli, Ibn Al-Qayyim Al-Jawzīya (1292–1350), and Ibn Rushd. Immanuel Kant is the philosopher he rarely mentions bare of praise. Imam Al-Mahdi’s spiritualism, opting for change and style influenced him and Imam Abdal-Raḥmān, was probably behind his novel forgiveness. Al-Mahdi, the Umma party, and Al-Anṣār are stereotyped by some as sectarian, retroactive, and traditional. These judgments are not consistent with the above survey. Al-Ṣāwi as a prominent leftist intellectual even argued that for quite a time the stamp of Umma party as traditional has become less applicable to it in comparison to all other Sudanese parties, including the leftists (Al-Ṣãwi 2008). Nahid Al-Hassan classified Al-Mahdi as a moderate innovator close to Imam Muhammad Al-Ghazāli (Al-Hasan 2017, 101). Asha Al-Karib puts him on the left side of the moderate Islamic school, “probably closer to the Islamic Feminists.” She argued that his pro-women initiatives are reflected in the Umma Party Agenda and Structure (Al-Karib 2018). Rasha ͨAwaḍ regards his thought part of the Islamic renewal school pursuing religious reform as prerequisite for Muslim renaissance. She considers the attempts to deny his enlightenment as reflections of political disagreements on thought (ͨAwaḍ 2018). Ḥ. I. ͨAli classified him among currents of the leftist progressive or awakening Islamism.50 However, he proceeded to deprive Al-Ṣādiq from his renewal credentials and deny progress in his ideas (ͨAli 2012, 6). Some Islamists on their side claim that while in Oxford he was a fan of Western thought fashions and was influenced by Trotskyism (Dafͨ alla 2017).

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Some of his communist opponents believed that he was a Fabian (Thomas 1990). Others could see the originality of his thought: Y. F. Ḥasan argued that “I maybe not overstating if I consider him one of the innovation pioneers in the contemporary Islamic thought.” Warrag goes further to say, “Imam Al-Ṣādiq Al-Mahdi has devoted his religious and intellectual efforts to defend human rights, he is a prominent intellectual, whom I consider in the higher ranks of religious reformers like Jamāl Al-Din Al-Afghāni and Muḥammad ͨAbdu” (Warrag 2018). The 100 Great Muslims’51 editors wrote: Al-Ṣādiq has believed that Islam plays major role in the socio-political life of Muslims. He has been steadfast in his belief that a just social order can be achieved on the basis of the widest popular participation. He has advocated the establishment of a modern Islamic state, but one that is based on a Constitution that recognizes the Ummah as the source of sovereignty; he has sought to restore the functions rather than the form of ‟Medinese” society. (Alam, 2006)

The Gusi foundation52 addressed Al-Mahdi mentioning his award-worthy achievements: Your passionate concern to serve the plight of democracy, development and authenticity in Sudan, and to hold the slogan of Islamic revival in the Muslim World, a revival recipe that implements Human Rights, Democracy, Religious Tolerance, World peace and cooperation, in short of achieving Modernity and Globality in the Muslim World in a way that builds on cultural and religious bases. (Gusi 2013)

As for the impact we recall the concept of organic intellectual, Abu Rabi said: “The distinction made by Gramsci between ecclesiastical and organic intellectuals might be helpful in dispelling some ambiguity about the role of the intellectual in contemporary Arab society. The most organic intellectual in the Muslim world of late has been the ecclesiastical activist” (Abu Rabi 2006, 5–6). In Al-Ṣādiq’s words, “Social Capital in the Muslim world is in the hands of those who call for Islam” (Al-Mahdi 2013, 183, 321). This fact raises his potential in influencing masses. Another fact is his political and religious leadership that makes his word matter to many. Diversity in his discourse also promotes impact. In addition to themes normally tackled by his counterparts, he addresses Nile waters, ecology, arts, athletics, humor, HIV, among others. This made him a constant contributor in fora of specialized realms usually not appealing to intellectuals, let alone politicians. His impact could be seen when he invalidated Nimȇri’s September

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Sharia, when he disrobed the Inqaz Regime’s Islamism and exposed its absurdity, and when he enthusiastically led the campaign of abolishing FGM among Al-Ansar.53 On the eve of the December 2018 Revolution and in its aftermath, controversy around his political thought became inflamed, and despite the strong wave prevailing against political parties and their figures, he again proved to be of high potential to influence political thought in the Sudan. That might partly be behind the huge amount of writings on his thought and conduct, some writers are highly bewitched by Ṣādiq while others are abhor-switched! After his recent sudden passing, some of the latter shifted to sympathy, rather regretted their past stances against him, and it seemed as if many Sudanese could hear and read his words objectively for the first time. Still, and apart from this pilot study, a well-versed and objective research on his thought is needed. NOTES 1. He served as Prime Minister during two democratic reigns (July 27, 1966–May 15, 1967 and May 6, 1986–June 30, 1989). He is the President of Umma party, Imam “religious leader” of Al-Anṣār, Chairman of Sudan Call “alliance of Opposition to the current Regime in Sudan,” chairman of the International Moderation Forum as well as his activism in other regional and international entities. 2. Using Sadiq’s own words, referring to “knowledge and dispute.” 3. The great Mahdi’s position toward social justice led some of the Sudanese leftist ideologues, either Communists or Arab Nationalists to regard Mahdism as socially progressive. (Al-Mahdi 2018b, 2) 4. As for ethnic justice it suffices to quote Al-Mahdi’s poet, Aḥmad wad Saᶜad, praising his deeds: “you made the Notable address the Slave by: my master!” (Ḥasan 1979) 5. The term is not much welcomed by the Anṣār (the Mahdists) probably because the Arabic translation of “neo” is “new,” short of other notions which could be accepted as “revived.” 6. For example, he embraced non-violent tactics. Despite Mahdism’s radicalism and striving for social change, he was coaxer to many societal aspects which Al-Mahdi unabatedly fought, for example, he embraced the traditional hereditary measures while Mahdism canceled them, pursued gradual strategy toward social reform, reconciled with Western culture, and engaged with colonial institutions. 7. A famous Sudanese poet in traditional Dōbēt poetry, who belongs to Al-Anṣār. He was initially not satisfied and urged Al-Imam Abdel-Raḥman: “undress this Qufṭān (civil mode) which doesn’t suit you, what suits you is riding horses in armors (military mode).” 8. A British administrator in the colonial Sudan civil service.

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9. Al-Sadiq himself envisaged it to be two-years long, but I proved that he returned from Alexandria in the second half of 1952 and was fully with Al-Sarraj for few months before joining the university late in the year, he continued seeing him but was also very busy, trying to catch-up the exams in March 1953 (Al-Sādig 2015, 64). 10. He maintains that, despite being a devoted Muslim, Al-Sarrāj regards Islam one of the Arabs glories. 11. Namely: spiritual, material, cognitive, moral, social, emotional, aesthetic, environmental, athletic, and entertainment needs (Al-Mahdi 2016, 49–205). 12. An Azhar graduate who was Sudan’s chief Sheikh then, and was also the director of Maͨ had Omdurmān Al-ͨIlmī “Omdurman Religious Institute.” 13. Yusuf Faḍul said: “Sayed Al-Ṣādiq has continued to peruse passionately publications in English and Arabic within his fields of interest” (Hasan 2007, 139), and Al-Ḥāj Warrāg said: “for quite a time, Al-Ṣādiq has been the most erudite of the international thought trends amongst all the Sudanese intellectuals” (Wrrāg 2018). 14. It is in Dinka language, where Benj means “chief.” I actually made it the title of Vol. I of the biography of Imam Al-Sadiq Al-Mahdi: Benj Mariāl (Al-Sādig Vol. I 2015). 15. ͨAli called it jargon (Ali 2013). 16. Al-Ṣādiq Al-Mahdi made a slight modification to the traditional Anṣār’s Jallabīya in which the neck opening is asymmetrical. Some tailors describe this style as Sindicālīya. 17. Namely: Three Shiᶜa schools: the Twelveth (Ithnaᶜasharīya), the Seventh (Sabᶜīya), and Zaydīya. Four Sunni schools: the eschatological leader (awaited “Muntaẓar” who will appear at the end of time), a leader (Imam) who renews religion at the inauguration of every Hijri century, a righteous leader among 12 chosen ones, according to Ibn Kathīr (not to be mixed with the Shia Ithnaashryia) or Al-Shahīd according to Al-Imam Fakhr Al-Rāzi who sees Al-Shahīd is not the one killed in battle but the person whose activities testify to the truth of the religion. Two Sufi cosmological concepts of Al-Mahdi: those who see Al-Mahdi the Seal of Sufi Quṭbs (axes) and Ibn ᶜArabi’s concept which added to the seal concept that he is the right arm of the Muḥammadan Light Al-Nūr Al-Muḥammadi (which functions as a cosmological go-between Allah and his creatures). And a philosophical Mahdi sketched in Al-Fārābi’s “Virtuous City,” being the head of that city. 18. For the end of time concept, see the previous note. 19. His famous statement is: “For every time and situation there is a setting, and for every time and epoch there are men.” 20. Ansar literally means “helpers.” The term was designated by the great Mahdi to his followers, after a Quranic verse urging the believers to be Ansar Allah (Quran 61: 14), that is, helpers of God. 21. He discussed the issue of Hadra in “Yas’alunak ͨAn Al-Mahdiya,” he also refers to writings such as Al-Siyuti’s “Tanweer Al-Halak” who is a recognized jurist who assured the possibility of seeing the Prophet (PBUH). 22. This was said before the outbreak of December 2018 Revolution, which many commentators regarded as resembling the Mahdīya in inspiring and moving the masses in the Sudan.

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23. The Protestant theological system of John Calvin and his successors. 24. Weird enough, Nimēri once described his program as crummy Sharia “Al-Sharia Al-Baṭṭāla” not that of mercy! 25. Namely, freedoms, consultation (Shura), social justice, social interdependence, international relation built on justice and freedom of religious preaching. 26. One of his famous statements was “they do not equal the ink poured on writing them.” 27. The National Islamic Front, led by Hasan Al-Turābi. 28. Two Islamization programs under totalitarian reigns (Nimeri and Al-‘Inqāz) and one during the third democracy. 29. Formulistic approach to him is based on classical methods used in extending Islamic regulations, relying heavily on consensus “Ijmāͨ” and analogy “Qiyās.” 30. For example: “Dialectics of Identity and Modernity. Islamic Punishments and Social Order, In the Way of the Second Home Leaving,” “Our Situation and our Future,” “Towards a Cultural Revolution,” “Religion and Fine Arts,” and “Characteristics of the New Arabic Dawn.” 31. An organization based in Jordan with branches in many Muslim countries. https://wasatyea​.net/ 32. An organization to promote democracy composed mainly of 95 former presidents or former prime ministers. www​.clubmadrid​.org/ 33. Issued by “The South Commission,” chaired by Willy Brandt in 1980, providing an understanding of drastic economic differences between North and South hemispheres of the world. 34. Article “a” of the Charter was about toppling despotism and Article “b” reads: Unifying National will through a voluntary inclusive popular democratic bloc. 35. The Government of National Unity. 36. The supposed coup leader Mukhtar Muhammadēn died while they were in power (Al-Sadig 2016, 42). 37. Referring to Imam Abdul-Rahman Al-Mahdi. 38. Defamation perpetrators are flogged and their testimony is rejected ever after (Qurān, An-Nūr: 4). 39. Al-Mudawwana Al-Maghribīya. 40. According to her Al-Turabi and M. M. Taha also had the same position, which needs similar investigation. 41. Contrary to the common rule that latest revelations abrogate early ones, Ṭāha maintained that the Meccan Quran abrogates Medani Quran. 42. “Adam disobeyed his Lord” and “Satan made them slip there from (the Paradise).” 43. Such as Theism, the Existence, ethics, the Evil, the Human, the Self, epistemology, and fatalism versus free will. 44. It was lost at the hands of his Lebanese friend Fu’ād Maṭar who intended to publish it. 45. The positions are: monism, declaring world eternity and denying body resurrection. 46. Like Pragmatism, idealism, or critical idealism.

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47. Advocated by Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Descartes, Leibnitz, and Hegel. 48. Held by Democritus, Hopkins, Bacon, and Hume. 49. Spinoza, Luke, and Barclay. 50. Along with Jamal Al-Banna, Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, Muhammad Al-Ghazali (ͨAli 2013). 51. They labeled Al-Sādiq as one of the 100 great Muslims in the twentieth century (Alam 2006). 52. In 2013 Al-Sādiq was awarded the Gussi Peace Prize. 53. His grandfather Imam Abdul-Rahman worked to cease what is called “Pharonic” FGM, in favor of the so-called Sunna, however, in the 1960s he furthered it to total abolition in Al-Mahdi’s family. In 1981 he issued the Traditions Circular “Manshȗr Al-ͨAdāt,” in which he urged Al-Ansar to eschew the harmful tradition (Al-Mahdi 1981).

REFERENCES Abdel Salam, El Fatih Abdullahi. “The Umma Party 1945–1969,” a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment for the M.Sc. degree (political Science), Department of political Science, Faculty of Economic and Social Studies, University of Khartoum, March 1979. Abdel-Latif, Awad Al-Karim Musa. Tanaqudat Al-Sadiq Al-Mahdi. Alam, Mohd Manzoor, ed. 2006. 100 Great Muslim Leaders of the 20th Century. Institute of Objective Studies, New Delhi, India. Al-Ḥaraka, Al-Islāmiya Al-Sūdānīya. 1978. Al-Muṣālaḥa Al-Waṭanīya Al-Ṣūdānīa. Al-Ḥaraka, Al-Islāmiya Al-Sūdānīya. 1984. Al-Niżām Al-Sūdāni wa Tajribatahu Al-Islāmiya. Al-Hasan, Nāhid Muḥammad. 2016. Ḥikāatuhun Ḥikāyati: Al-Mar’a wa Al-Dīn. Juba. Rafīqī publishers. Ali, Al-Țayib Zȇn Al-ͨAbdīn Muḥammad. 2017. Dtrāsāt fi Al-Siyasa Al-Sūdāniya. Noor Publishing. Ali, Haydar Ibrahim. 2013. Al-Tajdid ͨInd Al-Sadiq Al-Mahdi: Al-Ishkalat wa Al-Ikhtilalat, Awraq Lil-Nashr wa’l-Tawzi.’ Ciro. Al-Imam, Al-Mahdi. 1959. Kitāb Al-ᶜIbādāt, Maktabat Ql-Qāhira. Cairo. Al-Karib, Asha. Questionnaire from the author of this chapter, filled and submitted in October 2018. Al-Mahdi, Al-Sadiq. 1990. Al-Dimoqratiya fi Al-Sudan ͨᾹ’ida wa Rājiha, Markaz Abhath wa Dirasat Al-Umma. Al-Mahdi, Al-Sadiq. 2006. Al-Hiquq Al-Islamiya Wal-Insaniya lil-Mar’a, Maktabat Al-Shiruq Al-Dawlia. Cairo. Al-Mahdi, Al-Sadiq. 2010. Al-ͨUqubat Al-Shariya wa Mawqiaha min Al-Nizam Al-Islami, Maktabat Jazeerat Al-Ward. Cairo. Al-Mahdi, Al-Ṣādiq. 1964. Mas’alat Janūb as-Sūdān, April. Al-Mahdi, Al-Ṡādiq. 1983. Mustaqbal Al-Islam fi Al-Sudan,Omdurman. Al-Mahdi, Al-Ṡādiq. 2001c. Nida’āt Al-ͨAsr, Dar Al-Shammasha.

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Al-Mahdi, Al-Ṡādiq. 2006a. Kitāb Ramadan. Al-Mahdi, Al-Ṡādiq. 2006b. Nahw Marjiͨ ia Islāmīa Mutajaddida, Maktabat Al-Shirūq Al-Dawliyya. Cairo. Al-Mahdi, Al-Ṡādiq. 2006c. Nahw Thawra Thqafiya, Maktabat Al-Shiruq Al-Dawlia. Cairo. Al-Mahdi, Al-Ṡādiq. 2006d. Huqūq Al-Mar’ā Al- Islāmyīa wal-Insānīya, Maktabat Al-Shiruq Al-Dawlia. Cairo. Al-Mahdi, Al-Ṡādiq. 2015a. “Memorandum to Club de Madrid.” February, 2015. Al-Mahdi, Al-Ṡādiq. 2015b. Yas’alūnak ͨAn Al-Mahdiyya, 3rd Edition, Maktabat Jajīrat Al-Ward. Cairo. Al-Mahdi, Al-Ṡādiq. 2018a. Ad-Dīn Wal-Falsafa. Ṡālūn Al-Ibdā˘ publisher. Al-Mahdi, Al-Ṡādiq. 2018b, October. On Social Justice, a Note to the Author for the Purpose of This Study. Al-Mahdi, Aṡ-Ṡādiq. 1967. Khutab wa Kalimat Al-Sayed Ra’īs Majlis Al-Wuzarā’. Al-Mahdi, Aṡ-Ṡādiq. 1976. Aḥādīth Al-Ghurba, Dār Al-Qaḍāya. Beirut. Al-Mahdi, Aṡ-Ṡādiq. 1980. Mahdism in Islam. Al-Mahdi, Aṡ-Ṡādiq. 1981.Manshūr Al˘Adāt, Hay’at Shi’ūn Al-Ansar. Al-Mahdi, Aṡ-Ṡādiq. 1982. Development and Politics in the Modern Sudan. Al-Mahdi, Aṡ-Ṡādiq. 1984. Al-Manzur Al-Islami Liltanmia Al-Iqtisadia. Al-Mahdi, Aṡ-Ṡādiq. 2001a. Jadaliyat Al-Asl wa Al-Asr, Dar Al-Shammasha lilNashr. Khartoum. Al-Mahdi, Aṡ-Ṡādiq. 2001b. “Lessons from Modern Islamization Programs.” Lecture presented at Arewa House, Kaduna, Nigeria, on June 30. Al-Mahdi, Aṡ-Ṡādiq. 2005. Makānuki Tuḥmadī. Al-Mahdi, Aṡ-Ṡādiq. 2008. Aṣammu Am Yasmaͨ u Al-ͨAm Sām?, Al-Maktab Al-Khāṣ Lil-Imām. Al-Mahdi, Aṡ-Ṡādiq. 2009. Al-Insan Bunyan Al-lah, Al-Maktab Al-Khas li-Imam Al-Sadiq Al-Mahdi. Al-Mahdi, Aṡ-Ṡādiq. 2011. Maͨ ālim Al-Fajr Al-Jadīd, Maktabat Jajīrat Al-Ward. Cairo. Al-Mahdi, Aṡ-Ṡādiq. 2013. Hasad Al-Am 2013, Al-Maktab Al-Khas. Al-Mahdi, Aṡ-Ṡādiq. 2015a, August. Al-Jazeera Satellite Channel, Shahid ͨAla Al-ͨAsr. 3rd episode. Al-Mahdi, Aṡ-Ṡādiq. 2015b. Haluna wa Ma’aluna, Maktabat Jazeerat Al-Ward. Cairo. Al-Mahdi, Aṡ-Ṡādiq. 2017. Ayyuha l-Jīl, Dar Al-Muṣawwarāt, 2nd edition. Khartoum. Al-Maktab Al-Khas li-Imam Al-Sadiq Al-Mahdi. 2005. Ishamat alImam Al-Sadiq Al-Mahdi fi Al-Fikr wa Al-Siyasa. Published by Al-Lajnat Al-Qawmiia lil-Ihtifal bil-Iid Al-Saba’ini lil-Imam Al-Sadiq Al-Mahdi. Al-Ṣādig, Rabah. 1994. “Nisā’ Odurmān fi Al-Mahdiyya.” Paper to Nadwat Nisā’ Odurmān, Omdurman Ahlia University, January 1994. Al-Sādig, Rabāḥ. 2004. Ad-Din Wa Al-Taghyyīr Al-IjtimāͨI. Paper presented at the conference of “Al-Dīn fi Al-Mujtamaͨ Al-Muͨ āṣir.” Convened by Center of Sudanese Studies, January 2004. Published at https://www​.academia​.edu​/34786189/ Al-Ṣādig, Rabah. 2015. Awrāq fi Sīrat wa Masīrat Al-Imaām Al-Ṣādq Al-Madi, Maktabat Jazīrat Al-Wadr, Cairo. 3 volumes.

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Al-Ṣādig, Rabah. 2016. Imam Al-Sadiq Al-Mahdi Sīrat wa Masīrat, Volume 4. Dar AlMuṣawwarāt, Khartoum. Al-Ṣādig, Rabah. 2018a. “Taṭbīq Al-Folklore fi Al-Tanmiya.” Seminar presented as part of the Masters of Folklore requisites. Institute of African and Asian Studies, February 2018. Al-Sādig, Rabāḥ. 2018b. ͨArḍ Kitāb Nāhid Muḥammad Al-Ḥasan: Ḥikāyatuhun Ḥikāyaty. Khartoum University’s Library, the monthly book review, 3rd October 2018. Al-Ṡāwi, ͨAbdel-ͨAziz Ḥussein. 2008. ““ ͨAlāmāt ‘IStifhām Ḥawl Al-Marjiͨ īya Al-Dīnīya.” Article published in Al-Ahdath Newspaper, 20th January, 2008. Al-Shūsh, Muhammad Ibrahim. 2018. “Fiqh Al-Thiqa Al-Muṭlaqa.” In Ahram 2000 124, no. 41560. Found on 30th October 2018 at the link: http://www​.ahram​.org​.eg​ /archive​/2000​/9​/19​/WRIT3​.HTM Awad, Rasha. 2018. Questionnaire from the author of this chapter, filled and submitted in October 2018. Dafᶜallah, Khālid Mūsa. 2017. “Shakhṣānīyat Al-Tafāͨul Al-Kīmyā’i bēn Al-Ṣāiq Al-Mahdi wa ᶜAli ᶜUthmān Muḥammad Țāha.” 2nd January, 2017, in Sudanile website found on 30th October 2018: http://www​.sudanile​.com​/index​.php​?option​ =com​_content​&view​=article​&id​=96658 Giddens, Antony. 1930. “Introduction.” In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, edited by Max Weber, Translated by Talcott Parsons. Routledge Taylor & Francis Group. Gusi Award Note. 2013. Hasan, Yusuf Fadul. Hawash ͨAlā Mutūn, Dar Sudatech. Khartoum. Ibrahim, Abu-Rabi’, ed. 2006. “Introduction.” In The Contemporary Islamic Thought. MA, Oxford, and Victoria: Blackwell Publishing. Ibrahim, Hassan Ahmed. 1998. Al-Imam Abdul-Rahman Al-Mahdi, Jamiaat Al-Ahfad lil-Banat. Omdurman, 1st edition. Ibrahim, Hassan Ahmed. 2006. “An Overview of Al-Sadiq Al-Mahdi’s Islamic Discourse.” In The Contemporary Islamic Thought, edited by Ibrahim Abu-Rabi’. MA, Oxford, and Victoria: Blackwell Publishing. Jaden, Muḥammad Ali. 2002. Teqyyīm Al-Tajriba Al-Dimuqrāṭīya Al-Thaltha fi Al-Sūdān. Sudanese Studies Center, 2nd edition. Cairo. Saurugger, Sabine. n.d. “Consociationalism,” Britannica. Found on 1st October, 2018 at the link: https://www​.britannica​.com​/topic​/consociationalism Symposium. 2005. “Al Sadig Al- Mahdi as an Intellectual,” during his Seventieth Birthday Festival. Ṭāha, Maḥmūd Muḥammad. 1969. Al-Risālat Al-Thāaniya. 3rd edition, October 1969. Ṭāha, Maḥmūd Muḥammad. 1973. Al-Kitāb Al-Thāni Min Silsilat Rasā’il wa Maqālāt. 1st edition, May 1973. Thomas, Graham. 1990. Al-Sudan: Mawt Hulm. Dar Al-Farajāni. ͨUmara, Muhammad. 1997. Tayyarāt Al-Fikr Al-Islāmi. Cairo: Dar Al-Shirūq.’ Umma National Party. 2019. Maṣfȗfat Al-Khalāṣ Al- Waṭani. Warrag, Alhaj. 2018. Questionnaire from the author of this chapter, filled and submitted in 23rd October 2018.

Chapter 13

Transforming Lives Fatima Babiker’s Feminist Trajectories Amani Awad El Jack

A renowned scholar and pioneer of the Sudanese women’s movement, Fatima Babiker’s prodigious research, teaching, and feminist activism have influenced generations of Sudanese intellectuals and activists’ struggles for equality, democracy, justice, and human rights.1 Fatima’s intellectual contributions, community engagement, and political activism all contribute to her status as a “public intellectual,” who has tirelessly challenged prejudices and oppression throughout her life, undaunted by critiquing political, cultural, and academic authorities in pursuit of social/gender justice. Fatima was among the earliest socialist feminist scholars who problematized Marxist theories emphasis on class as a single lens of analysis. Her multi-disciplinary research addresses how gender, class, religion, culture, traditions, ethnicity, sexuality, and ecology intertwine to shape women’s and men’s identities in the Sudan and beyond. In addition to publishing extensive number of journal articles, book chapters, booklets, policy reports, and bulletins since the early1970s, her published books include The Sudanese Bourgeoisie: Vanguard of Development? (1984); Calamity in the Sudan: Civilian Versus Military Rule (1988); African Women: Transformation and Development, 1991 (in Arabic); African Women Between Heritage and Modernity, 2002 (in Arabic); Intellectual Trends in the Sudanese Women’s Movement, 2008 (in Arabic); Sex and Sexuality and the Exploitation of Sudanese Women, 2012 (in Arabic); and Housing Policies in Sudan: The Predicament and the Way Out, 2018 (in Arabic). Even in the face of serious health challenges, she continues her quest to effect change by publishing and engaging in numerous active research projects, countless invited presentations at national and international conferences, and policy consultations around the globe. This multidecade’s corpus reinforces that achieving gender equality in the Sudan necessitates collective organizing to propel gender-sensitive, revolutionary 261

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social change. The post-December 2018 Uprising era in the Sudan has renewed her scholarship’s vitality in opening up debates, shaping policies, and informing the potential transformation of oppressive gender relations in the country. As one of many former University of Khartoum students2 whose feminist journeys were ignited by her teaching and research mentorship, my goal in this chapter is to reflect on Fatima’s achievements and legacy. This chapter is neither intended as a hagiography nor as a comprehensive overview of Fatima Babiker’s trajectories as a scholar, a teacher, and an activist. Instead, I will utilize some of her own scholarly research and practice to reflect on her a) contributions to feminist theory, Sudanese studies, and politics; b) teaching philosophy and pedagogy; and c) women’s rights advocacy and social justice activism. I augment this overview with my own conversations with her since the 1980s, as well as in-depth interviews that I conducted with her in 2019–2020, plus interviewing some of her former students and colleagues. Fatima’s scholarship and unique pedagogy, not least through her tenacity to push for change when it was not only difficult but life-threatening to do so, have influenced the academic careers of many, as well as shaped and transformed our own personal lives.

FEMINIST INTERROGATIONS Reflecting on Fatima Babiker’s Intellectual Contributions The era of the post-December 2018 Uprising in the Sudan has currently opened new “spaces” and “hopes” for addressing patriarchal gender roles and relations in the country.  It is time for feminist scholars, policy makers, and activists to drive gender-sensitive changes that can potentially allow them to influence transformative gender roles/gender relations in the Sudan. Explicitly working in conversation with Gramsci’s perspective, Edward Said emphasizes the importance of the intervention and performance of public intellectuals. He insists that “intellectuals are individuals with a vocation for the art of representing, whether that is talking, writing, teaching . . . that vocation is important to the extent that it is publicly recognizable and involves both commitment and risk, boldness and vulnerability” (Said 1994, 13). In this chapter, I argue that Fatima Babiker epitomizes the characteristics of the “public intellectual.” Throughout her life, she has tirelessly challenged all forms of prejudices, unafraid of critiquing authority figures in pursuit of equality and justice. Her community activism has always aligned with her feminist values, as well as her own identity, perspectives, and experiences as a Sudanese woman.

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Fatima’s body of publications reveal that she is not merely a socialist feminist in the classical Marxist tradition,3 but rather her intellectual contributions are indeed multidisciplinary. Acknowledging the depth and breadth of her work and the limited space of this chapter, here I utilize seven of Fatima’s major scholarly books to demonstrate the connections between her progressive politics, personal commitment to social justice, and feminist theorization: The Sudanese Bourgeoisie: Vanguard of Development? (1984); Calamity in the Sudan: Civilian Versus Military Rule (1988); African Women: Transformation and Development (1991, in Arabic); African Women Between Heritage and Modernity (2002, in Arabic); Intellectual Trends in the Sudanese Women’s Movement (2008, in Arabic); Sex and Sexuality and the Exploitation of Sudanese Women (2012, in Arabic); Housing Policies in Sudan: The Predicament and the Way Out (2018, in Arabic). In these books, Fatima critically interrogates the fields of feminism, womanism, feminist activism, postcolonialism, globalization, development, ecology, sexuality, eco-feminism, and conflict/post-conflict studies. Overall, she argues that gender inequality in the Sudan is systemic and deeply ingrained in the institutions of marriage, family, work and the economy, politics, religions, languages, the arts, and other cultural productions. From early on in her career,4 she has demonstrated a profound interest in utilizing an interdisciplinary approach to identify the basis for this structural inequality in the Sudan. Published in 1984, her most frequently cited book The Sudanese Bourgeoisie: Vanguard of Development? integrates Marxist and post-colonial theories to examine how the Sudan’s business class impacted the country’s political and economic development between 1898 and 1975. Utilizing quantitative and qualitative methods, her research interrogates how the Sudanese elites’ historical ties to colonial and neo-colonial capitalist interests remained embedded in various sectors across the Sudanese economy after the nation’s political independence from British colonization. The Sudanese Bourgeoisie also articulates how members of the bourgeoisie elite have used kinship and ethnic relations in order to exploit Sudanese groups across ethnic, religious, and family lines in furtherance of their own political and economic interests. For Fatima, Andre Gunder Frank’s view of ‟development” (i.e., that export-oriented economic development engenders negative effects for poor countries) explains the postcolonial history of the Sudan’s bourgeoisie, which constituted the base of the country’s dominant, mainstream political parties. One of Fatima’s hypothesis in the book is that the continued hegemony of these elites would lead to recurring political breakdown has proven correct as evident by the direct role some of these

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elites have played in the Sudan’s successive, prolonged military regimes and short-lived democracies. Four years later, Fatima continued her postcolonial approach to understanding the root causes of militarized conflicts in the Sudan with Calamity in the Sudan: Civilian Versus Military Rule. This edited book was published in 1988 by the Institute for African Alternatives (IFAA) in London.5 The book scrutinizes the vicious circle of civilian-military rule that has haunted the Sudan from its pre-independence era to the present day. Her analysis remains deeply relevant to the dynamics of the December 2018 Uprising in the Sudan, and contributes more broadly to literatures on militarization, national liberation struggles, and conflict/post-conflict theories and praxes. Her courage as a daring public intellectual in criticizing Sudanese dictatorships shows her commitment to holding those in power accountable for their actions. Since the 1990s, Fatima’s books/feminist theorizations have filled important gaps in the literature on women and gender issues in the African context. To this day, much of the scholarship on African women has been produced by outsiders, predominantly from the global North. To bridge this gap, Fatima has continuously stressed that African women’s perspectives should be central to knowledge produced about them. For me, two of Fatima’s groundbreaking books (in Arabic), African Women: Transformation and Development (1991) and African Women Between Heritage and Modernity (2002), provide original and ‟home-grown” analyses of African women’s realities in a particularly honest and transparent manner. For Fatima, this approach requires and leverages shared histories and understandings among women from across the continent, not just the Sudan. As she boldly stated during her first address as the founding president of the Pan-African Women’s Liberation Organization (PAWLO) in Uganda in April 1994: African women share a common history, a common conceptual framework in understanding our reality in order to change it, and common enemies and friends within and outside Africa. We have similar challenges to face and a better future to look forward to. There is now a serious need for a new Pan African Women’s organization, embracing African women on the continent and in the diaspora to address these commonalities. (Babiker 1996, 237)

Furthermore, Fatima’s books examine the meanings and relevance of Western feminist theories and praxes to women in Africa and other parts of the globe while navigating the debate over reconciling African gendered cultures/traditions and women’s social, economic, and political rights. Fatima argues that if feminism entails a clear understanding that women experience systemic inequities and calls for a demonstrated commitment to ending all forms of discrimination against women, then feminism is surely not a foreign

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or Western construct. Rather, it is deeply rooted in indigenous African cultural and matrilineal traditions that predate European civilizations. She further stresses that there is a need for a nuanced understanding of how the construction of femininities and masculinities are central to African women’s history and current lived realties. Rather than being viewed in conflict with one another, gynocentric African traditions and feminist principles share a similar foundation as practices that can empower women. Further problematizing Western feminism from an African feminist perspective, Fatima has utilized the concept of womanism to emphasize that African women are not a monolithic group.6 As a result, they should not be expected to have homogeneous experiences or perspectives. A hallmark of public intellectuals is their fearlessness in openly addressing topics that are socially provocative or even dangerous. In this way, they help the public to begin a dialogue about subjects that may otherwise be deemed “inappropriate” for open discussion. Suad Ibrahim Ahmed affirms in her foreword to Intellectual Trends in the Sudanese Women Movement that, Addressing contested women’s issues in Sudan is very important. However, some of these controversial issues are like landmine fields, if the researcher dares to examine taboo topics, she/he will be subjected to venomous critiques. Nevertheless, unlike other scholars, Fatima Babiker is bold, honest, and daring in tackling many of these sensitive topics. (Ahmed 2008, 5)

Her bold approach to sensitive issues is clearly demonstrated in her 2012 book Sex and Sexuality and the Exploitation of Sudanese Women (in Arabic). In this book, she outlines to Sudanese scholars and practitioners that sexuality, sexual orientation, and sexual identity should be approached as an essential component of feminist scholarly analysis. She tackles several topics that remain taboo in Sudanese society, such as lesbian, gay, transgender, bisexual, and queer (LGTBQ+) issues. She also questions the inferior position of women in Islam as well as the exploitation of women during the Sudan’s Mahdiyya era. Influenced by pioneering North African feminists such as Nawal El Saadawi (1969, 2007) and Fatima Mernissi (1975, 1995), radical feminist theories, as well as Western queer feminist theorists Bell Hooks (1984), Audre Lorde (1984), and Adrienne Rich (1980), this book analyzes how identity markers such as ethnicity, sexuality, religion, language, and socioeconomic class intersect with various patriarchal power structures to shape the dominant heterosexual, gendered experiences of Sudanese women and men. In Sex and Sexuality, Fatima also links Sudanese patriarchy and heteronormativity to many forms of gender-based violence including genital mutilation, honor killing, forced marriage, exploitative sex work, prostitution, and rape. Throughout the book, she reveals her relentless commitment

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to protecting women’s and girls’ bodies from the numerous forms of inflicted physical and emotional gender-based violence. Although all of Fatima’s work has enhanced my critical thinking, and more importantly, ignited the feminist fire in my brain, I consider her 2008 book titled Intellectual Trends in the Sudanese Women’s Movement (in Arabic) to be my “north star” reference on feminist theorization. This book reflects Fatima’s deep and continuous engagement with ever-evolving feminist theory over the past five decades as she examines liberal, Marxist-socialist, and development feminisms from the 1960s; revolutionary feminisms (multiethnic feminism, social construction, postmodern, and queer theory) of the 1980s and 1990s; and gender resistant feminisms (such as radical feminism, lesbian feminism, psychoanalytical feminism, and standpoint feminism). She also discusses the impact of French theorists such as Simone de Beauvoir, Lacan, Derrida, and Foucault on feminism. Beyond engaging with gender theory at a global level, she critically articulates the historical development of the Sudanese women’s movement in Northern Sudan, compares the status of women in ancient and modern Sudan, and assesses the implications of contemporary feminist activism that is rapidly mushrooming in the country.7 For instance, Fatima demonstrates in Intellectual Trends that women’s power in Sudanese society did not start with the establishment of the mainstream women’s movement in some parts of Northern Sudan in the 1940s; rather, it dates back to the Sudan’s ancient history. She utilizes the term Candaca8 which is currently linked to women’s political influence during the December 2018 Uprising to reflect on the powerful history of Candacat, and analyzes the roles they played in ruling the Sudan during the Napata and Merawi kingdoms (Babiker 2008, 34–35). Furthermore, the book provides an in-depth analysis of the challenges that some of the Sudanese women face as a result of interlocking, systemic forms of gender inequality. These include lack of access to housing and transportation, education, inadequate healthcare, female genital mutilation, women’s experiences in prison, and internally displaced and refugee women’s situations. Despite the ongoing structural problems confronting women, Fatima is optimistic about the developments in the Northern Sudanese women’s movement. Energized by the activism of young grassroots women’s groups, she argues that democracy and gender equality will prevail in the Sudan. In 2018, Fatima published Housing Policies in Sudan: The Predicament and the Way Out, which is part of her edited book series on housing issues in the Sudan. This book (in Arabic) articulates a nuanced feminist/gender-sensitive analysis that tackles the challenges facing low-income and poor families in accessing affordable housing in the Sudan.9 Housing Policies traces the history of housing/homelessness challenges since the Mahdiyya rule, as well as interrogates it contemporary ethical dilemmas. This book (and the book

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series) has influenced housing policies in the Sudan, as well as having been a good resource for scholars, students, and policy-makers. For instance, in her reflection about Fatima’s publications on housing, Mahasien Zien Al-Abdeen Abdalla10 states: I met Fatima for the first time to discuss a research project on the question of urban poverty and squatter settlement in greater Khartoum. Her work on the issues of housing in Sudan, a series issued by Saad El Din Fawzi was the most valuable source. It provided me with data unavailable in other publications. Attending Fatima sounding knowledge pave unlimited paths and means for learning, stimulate your inner passion to know, to raise questions and to search for answers. In my last meeting with at her home in London, I saw Fatima that I have always known, full of knowledge in different realms of subjects: in the presence of Fatima (and Mohamed) the tour oscillated form economics to philosophy, from politics to life, and ending in Brecht’s poetry. I left Fatima and came back home with a jubilant soul. No wonder I was happy as I was carrying some of her books “signed by the author.” Undoubtedly, Fatima has successfully upgraded the writings of women about women from the stage of mere “description of what has happened” to the stage of “analysis of what has happened, what is.” (Mahasien Zien Al-Abdeen Abdalla in discussion with the author, June 2020)

Indeed, Fatima’s work has personally inspired many of her former students to follow in her footsteps as academics and activists. For example, Amina Al Rasheed, Azza Anis, Hala Alahamdi, Khalda M. Abdel Hafeez, Magda Mohamed Ali, Mahasien Zien Al-Abdeen Abdalla, Mawahib Ahmed, Nada Ali, Saadia Izzeldin Malik, and Siham Elmugammar (just to name a few), have either attained advanced degrees in women’s and gender studies or are currently engaged in feminist activism. Others have pursued careers that focus on women and gender issues at national and international scales in government, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and human rights work around the globe. As my University of Khartoum classmate, Mawahib Ahmed,11 reflects: I came to know Dr. Fatima Babiker in 1987, as a political science student in her class “Sudanese Government and Politics,” then further through her publications, especially African Women Between Heritage and Modernity. I lived with the ideas she promulgated in this essential book about African feminism and referred to them in my own PhD dissertation and publications. I consider Dr. Fatima one of the pioneers of women’s resilience and struggles for the better in Sudan. I owe her special gratitude as I, my daughters, and for sure younger generations who are inspired by her ideas, will continue her path towards a

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better life for all of us Sudanese women. (Mawahib Ahmed in discussion with the author, April 2020)

Hala Al Ahmadi12 has similar thoughts about Fatima’s influence on her life: Dr. Fatima Babiker has a great influence on my thoughts and subsequent choice of my career path.  Her lectures on women’s rights and feminisms were exceptionally powerful and influential. She opened a window in my mind and inspired me to pursue post-graduate gender studies. Her passion and believe in feminism(s) as a liberation force was inspiring.  A great deal of my achievement in this field goes to Fatima Babiker, the prominent Sudanese scholar and women’s rights activities. (Hala Al Ahmadi discussion with the author, June 2020)

Fatima’s commitment to her work and goals for bettering the world have driven her to pursue social and gender justice causes even in the face of grave health challenges. Her scholarly contributions have never been merely academic exercises. Instead, they reflect her own lived reality and embodiment of the feminist mantra that the personal is indeed political. Since the 1980s, she has been struggling with breast cancer in addition to a host of other serious and life-threatening illnesses. For years, even though she has been experiencing intolerable and constant pain, she has chosen to channel her pain into working and publishing. During this period, she has published several scholarly works and has continued her activism. Her “pain and health struggles have given [her] the strength to persevere rather that to surrender” (Fatima Babiker in discussion with the author, January 2020). Her bravery in confronting injustice in the Sudan and globally has remained steadfast throughout her life. Even when confronted with threats to her safety for criticizing military regimes, she has not compromised her beliefs or her passion for justice. For Fatima, the very act of insisting on publishing her work in Arabic is an opportunity to challenge power asymmetries. We often rely on Western feminist theories and activist practices as primary examples of feminist scholarship and activism, mainly due to colonial legacies and the global dominance of the English language that shapes the field of women and gender studies. This means that women’s voices and perspectives in marginalized parts of the global South such as the Sudan are often absent from this landscape. In order to bridge this divide and contribute to the field of Sudanese studies, Fatima consciously and deliberately decided to write at least four of her major books in Arabic and publish them through a Sudanese publishing house: Dar Azza. In doing so, she ensured that her books are accessible to a wide range of Sudanese scholarly and activist communities.

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In teasing out the multiple forms of gender inequalities/inequities in the Sudan, a critical read of the totality of Fatima’s seminal works show that: a) her publications, for the most part, have primarily focused on examining the challenges and issues facing women, men and children in the Northern, Central, and Eastern regions of the Sudan under successive authoritarian male-dominated governments. And, b) while Fatima problematizes the homogeneity of Sudanese women’s experiences, her theoretical and regional approach could have delved a little deeper into intersectional feminist analysis that interrogates how power relations such as place, space, race, ethnicity, religion, language, nationality, and sexuality (among others) intersect to shape Sudanese women and men’s distinct experiences.13 It is, however, important to note that despite their intellectual heft, her publications are also practical and outline the best practices to redress gender inequalities. They enable scholars and activist communities to forge meaningful conversations about the gendered politics of knowledge production. As she summarizes in her 1996 piece, “Building a Pan African Women’s Movement”: “What I am looking for at first are feminist theories about why women and men are unequal, and second, feminist gender politics, the activities and strategies for remedying gender inequality” (Babiker 1996). Her scholarship has contributed to feminist epistemologies by addressing gender injustices and by providing tangible tools that enable activists to push for systematic and gender-sensitive changes in the Sudan and elsewhere. The combination of the academic and professional qualities of her work shows her continued engagement with her community as a celebrated public intellectual. The Personal Is Political: Fatima Babiker as a Teacher As one of Fatima’s former students at the University of Khartoum, I have an intimate insight into her roles as a collegial and passionate teacher and mentor to her students within her classrooms and beyond. Here, I reflect on her pedagogy, teaching philosophy, mentoring, and supervision of her undergraduate students’ theses. While the courses that she taught were not listed as feminist classes, her teaching philosophy and methodology were indeed feminist. She aimed to enhance her students’ learning by promoting an understanding that social, economic, and political factors intersect to shape the construction and utilization of knowledge. In her classrooms, Fatima encouraged us to draw on our own experiences and identities to challenge existing boundaries and move beyond them. She encouraged students in her classes to become personally engaged, which in turn challenged us to relate her course materials to our own daily lives. Fatima spent many years teaching under the repressive military regime of Jaafar Nimiery, which imposed Islamic Sharia laws as well as silenced,

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intimidated, imprisoned, and killed many of its political opponents.14 At that time the University of Khartoum was the hub of students, faculty, and workers’ anti-regime activism. Many university community members were subjected to intimidation and harassment by government intelligence forces. However, students found Fatima’s classrooms to be safe, supportive, and intellectually stimulating spaces. She was bold and daring in challenging military dictators despite the danger of such actions. She motivated her students to engage in lengthy class discussions, to make their voices heard, and to never back down from addressing “risky” political questions. These regular practices ingrained in her students the ability to represent themselves and their ideas courageously, endowing them with the potential to become public intellectuals. As a result of her outspokenness and pedagogy, Fatima was regularly subjected to intimidation and arrest by the regime’s security forces. Former student Siham Al Mujamar recollects: Dr. Fatima is an inspiring professor! Her strong character has deeply influenced my life in ways I don’t know how to describe. Her teaching style, the confident way she talked, walked, and carried herself was distinct, empowering, and very different from other professors at the University of Khartoum. It was clear (that) she really loved her job and enjoyed teaching our class. She encouraged us to think outside the box and engage in critical analysis. More importantly, she developed close relationships with many of us. I remember that I met Dr. Fatima when she visited Sudan a few years ago; I was constantly reminded of her sharp intellect, warmth, kindness, and modesty, the modesty of a humble intellectual. (Siham Al Mujamar in discussion with the author, May 2020)

It’s, therefore, not surprising that I knew of Fatima’s reputation as a “progressive leftist” and revolutionary teacher before enrolling in her class. I still remember joining her course “Sudanese Politics and Government” at the University of Khartoum in 1987; I was excited to be taught by the only female professor in the Department of Political Sciences at that time. She may have worn Sudanese traditional attire, “the toob,”15 but she was by no means a traditional teacher. She appeared modern and confident in her dress and speech, with a distinct, non-traditional, short hairstyle. When I entered her classroom, I was taken in by her unique, engaging, non-hierarchical pedagogy. I was a timid undergraduate student in those days. However, even though I did not yet develop a close relationship with Fatima, I was pleasantly surprised when she invited me along with other students to an end of semester dinner at her home.16 As a junior student brought up in a traditional patriarchal family in Singa, a city in Central Sudan, that evening forever shattered my preconceived notions of gender roles and gender relationships.

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Shortly after arriving, Fatima kindly asked the male students to assist her husband and lifetime partner, Mohamed Suliman, in setting the dinner table. Meanwhile, she escorted the female students to chat with her in the living room that has a distinct wooden carved furniture. At dinner, Mohamed Suliman proudly announced that he had cooked the dinner. This deliberate action alone was enough to spark weeks of heated debate among the dinner guests/classmates. More importantly, it debunked some of the essentializing gender stereotypes that I witnessed in my own family and community. This non-traditional model for gender relations in the male-dominated Sudanese society offered a powerful glimpse of alternatives that have stuck with me since that evening. Once again, through her personal example, she acted in the role of a public intellectual by challenging the hegemony of patriarchy and demonstrating to her students a gender-sensitive model of living. In teaching and mentoring her students, Fatima pushed us to think critically and creatively. Her classes were markedly different from other courses at the university, and difficult to enroll in given the long list of students attracted to her teaching methods. Despite her busy schedule, she spent time with her students outside the classroom too. Her departmental office was always crowded with students. She listened deeply to them and engaged them in serious, constructive debates that pushed them beyond their comfort zones. These discussions were so stimulating that students regularly followed Fatima to the parking lot where they would continue their conversations near her car, sometimes for hours. My classes with Fatima did not focus specifically on gender studies, an academic field that did not exist at the University of Khartoum. However, when I approached her about supervising my capstone research, she encouraged me to write about women’s issues, and suggested I investigate the socioeconomic conditions of female workers at the university’s female residences. Under her supervision and guidance, I interviewed 40 workers, coded the interviews, and developed the project’s themes. She introduced me to her book, The Sudanese Bourgeoisie: Vanguard of Development? along with Sondra Hale’s Women and Work in Sudan: What is Alienated Labor? She presented me with feminist theory and methodologies that I continue using to this day. From Nawal El Saadawi and Fatima Mernissi to Nahid Toubia and Sondra Hale, my appetite for more feminist literature was insatiable after being exposed to these authors for the first time. Fatima enthusiastically shared each piece with me since many of these works were not accessible via the university’s library. Uplifted by her capstone mentorship and curious about what could be done to improve the working conditions and socioeconomic/political status of female workers in the Sudan, I approached Fatima again in 1988 to brainstorm ideas for my BA (Honors) dissertation in the Department of Political Sciences. She invited me to lunch at the University Faculty Club

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and discussed my project with me for hours. This inspired me to build on my research and examine how Sudanese women’s political organizations enhance women’s socioeconomic conditions and political participation. As I reflect on those times, I am reminded how Fatima has shaped my thinking both personally and professionally. Her mentorship was hands-on and rigorous. At a difficult time in the Sudan’s political history, she encouraged me to interview leaders of progressive secular women’s movement, conservative Islamist women, and members of other groups, some of whom she disagreed with intellectually and/or politically. Even as she wrote an article highly critical of the Sudanese Women’s Union (SWU), she arranged for me to meet its leader, Fatima Ahmed Ibrahim. In her own commitments to feminist activism and women’s agency, Fatima sought to uphold standards of objectivity and inclusivity. She ignited my own feminist curiosity and consciousness, motivating me to pursue a PhD in women’s studies at York University in Toronto, Canada, and eventually become an Associate Professor at the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, at University of Massachusetts, Boston. I owe all of my modest accomplishments to her inspiration and example. My experiences with Fatima are not unique. Over the decades, she has supported the journeys of countless women and men in the Sudan and elsewhere. Many of her former students have shared with me similar stories, trajectories, and gratitude for her lifelong engagement and support. For instance, Nada Mustafa Ali,17 who joined the University of Khartoum a year after me and also graduated with a degree in political sciences, recently reflected on Fatima’s pedagogy: Dr. Fatima taught a course on Sudan’s politics and government, where she led intellectually stimulating discussions about Sudan’s colonial and post-colonial history and politics, using what I now know are feminist pedagogical practices. She asked and encouraged us to engage with tough questions but always with a smile on her face, and with praise for students who come to class prepared. (Nada Mustafa Ali in discussion with the author, June 2020)

Mawahib Ahmed sums up the profound impact Fatima’s has had on her students with the following recollection: The first time I came to know Dr. Fatima Babiker was in 1987 as a political science student in her class “Sudanese Government and Politics.” I was attempting to better understand my beloved country’s systems of governance and politics. At that early stage, I learned from a passionate, female, politically active scholar the importance of connecting theory and practice to have a real impact on people’s daily lives. This was an essential milestone in my career development. (Mawahib Ahmed in discussion with the author, April 2020)

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In a recent conversation I had with Fatima, she humbly mentioned that her engagements with her students were not only significant to them but were a “two-way relationships that benefited [her] as well.” This illustrates the kind of person that Fatima is, modest and beloved by all her students. Her inner strength and resilience have enabled her to confront many personal, professional, and political struggles. Because of her activism she was forced to leave the Sudan and reside in London before I completed my honors thesis. Even in the face of this personal hardship, she remained committed to mentoring and guiding me throughout the years. Fatima has been central in many of her students’ decisions to become proud feminists engaged in activism and social justice movements in academic and community spheres. Ameena Al-Rasheed,18 one of Fatima’s former students reiterates that: Dr. Fatima Babiker has played an important role in inspiring me and shaping my character and that of my colleagues at the Department of Political Science, University of Khartoum. Her teaching methods, her commitment and endeavor to stimulate us to explore a broader spectrum of knowledge and to question, has been inspiring and unique in quality and in substance. Dr. Fatima was proactively offering advice, resources and opportunities . . . She provided me with a solid foundation in many aspects of my academic work, covering a broad spectrum of interesting topics, expanded my research interests, and inspired me to move further. (Ameena Al-Rasheed, in discussion with the author, August 2020)

Fatima remains a mentor and friend across space and time, willing to share experiences in a generous spirit and investing in their success, cheering their accomplishments, and providing unconditional support and friendly advice as they navigate their studies, careers, and family lives. A public intellectual through and through, her courage and tenacity continuously reinforce her desire to help others and to enlighten people on the possibility of a more just and gender equalitarian world. BRIDGING ACADEMIA AND COMMUNITY: FATIMA’S ACTIVISM Fatima’s activism began at an early age when she learned how to challenge gender stereotypes and discrimination. During a conversation I had with her in January 2020, she recounted that while her parents were progressive, supportive, and invested in her success, she experienced the patriarchy of the male-dominated Sudanese culture within her extended family and the society at large. She stated:

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When I was in primary school, my parents, siblings and teachers encouraged me to succeed in my education and I ranked first in my class’s grades. I specifically remember that my aunt and male cousin scolded me for my success because my scores were higher than my cousin, who was my classmate. They downplayed my success to guard his male ego. My cousin reasoned that regardless of my success, he was still superior to me because he was male, and that in Islam/ the Quran, women are inferior to men. At that age, I strongly felt that if this is what Islam says, then Islam is problematic and unjust, which motivated me to study harder so that I could do better and prove them wrong. (Fatima Babiker in discussion with the author, January 2020)

Fatima continued her fight against women’s subordination in the Sudan as a teenager in middle and high school. She increasingly engaged in various forms of students’ activism and participated in many protests and resistance movements. A distinct incident in Khartoum’s public high school for girls remained prominent in her memory: In the 1962–3 academic year, in religion class, a conservative, religious male teacher quoted a Quranic verse and stated that women should be beaten if they disobey their husbands. When I exclaimed “WHAT?!,” the teacher expelled me from the class for the rest of the semester. Another teacher suggested that I spend this class time in the library, so I read many of the library books. However, reading a book titled The Mother changed my life and ignited my feminist path. (Fatima Babiker in discussion with the author, January 2020)

Dr. Fatima joined the Sudanese Communist Party (SCP) in 1964, during the era of the October Revolution. The Marxist socialist thinking appealed to her in its ideological and practical tools to combat poverty and enhance struggling Sudanese communities’ well-being, as well as a means to seek solutions to gender inequality and to push for women’s empowerment. She also held a personal commitment to combat poverty issues in the Sudan; despite growing up in an educated, middle-class family, the ways poverty impacted women, men, and children have always pained her. Acceptance to the University of Khartoum provided new opportunities for her to continue fighting for democracy, development, human rights, and gender equality. Sharpening her activist tools, Fatima became a leader in the university’s student union; acted as a spokesperson for the students’ Democratic Front; and frequently orated to student crowds about the challenges facing Sudanese women, and how to empower them. While an undergraduate, she also joined the Sudanese Women’s Union (SWU). During the 1960s, the University of Khartoum was a center for progressive student and faculty activism. Fatima further demonstrated her commitments by publishing an

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elaborate daily wall magazine, which was read by the entire university community, without missing publishing a single issue during her undergraduate years. However, Fatima’s commitments to political activism were not blind. She and a mentor in the SCP, Suad Ibrahim Ahmed, played central roles in challenging the party to reform in light of their view that “democratic centralism” held negative consequences. In the 1970s, she became a member of the SWU’s Central Committee. Unlike other committee members, Fatima and Suad were highly critical of the SCP’s hierarchical and patriarchal structure and began advocating for the SWU’s independence. Fatima’s intellectual activism sought engagements across multiple places and spaces. For instance, as a founding member of the Sudanese Writer’s Union, she organized activities attracting a wide group of intellectuals, students, and activists. For instance, in 1987, she announced to her Sudanese Politics and Government class a public lecture she organized, titled “The Historical Defeat of Matrilineal Societies,” which was presented by Sharif Hatata (Nawal El Saadwi’s husband). The lecture had a lasting impact on its attendees, myself included. Hatata and Fatima recounted the power women had in matrilineal societies, controlling land, means of production, and reproductive rights, even being celebrated as goddesses and spiritual ideals. Hatata and Fatima argued that capitalism’s development led to women’s disempowerment and subordination. While the lecture sparked lengthy debates, Fatima patiently persuaded attendees that women’s power could only be reclaimed by organizing for women’s equality and social change through sustained forms of activism at the family, community, and other levels. After graduation, Fatima worked as a research sociologist in the Sudan’s Ministry of Housing in 1971. She was the first to write about housing with sensitivity to gender and class. Her work and publications directly enabled some of the Sudan’s working class, poor, and otherwise disenfranchised communities to access to housing (Babiker 2018). Fatima recalls being sent to a Ministry work mission in Port Sudan (Fatima Babiker in discussion with the author, January 2020). Being a patriarchal and hierarchal community in Eastern Sudan, many community members were offended by the government sending a female representative. Despite some residents issuing death threats against her, she persisted in her work and accomplished her mission goals. Later in the 1970s, as a graduate student at Hull University, Fatima developed an international scope to her activism. She launched several graduate student associations, including the African Students Union. Along with Mohamed Suliman and other renowned African scholars, Fatima took the lead in establishing the Institute for African Alternatives (IFAA).19 Her work’s reach continued to increase over time: a president of the Pan-African Women’s Liberation Organization (PAWLO) for many years. In the late

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1980s, with the military dictatorship of Omar al-Bashir and the National Islamic Front20 targeting progressive and leftist intellectuals and political opponents, sustained persecution forced Fatima and her family to leave the Sudan for London. In spite of the pain of living in the diaspora and facing significant health challenges, Fatima channeled her energy into publishing numerous books, authoring many book chapters and journal articles, and serving on the Editorial Advisory Board of the Journal of Gender Studies. Over the years, she continued to be in high demand as a speaker at prestigious national and international conferences and workshops. She has also maintained a simultaneous commitment to organizing smaller conferences and roundtable discussions that are attended by community members, nonacademics, as well as less privileged members of the Sudanese community. For instance, Khalda M. Abdel Hafeez, a Sudanese Women and Human Rights Activist based in London, UK states: When Dr. Fatima resided in the UK in the 1990s, she actively sought to encourage females with vested interest in feminism and development studies to join IFAA-sponsored workshops and programs. Those programs attracted scores of Sudanese dissidents who had to flee the country in the face of the Islamists’ persecution. She was also a founding member of the UK chapter of the Sudanese Human Rights Society. Fatima’s strong connections with British feminist groups and African and Arab human rights networks helped tremendously in the world-wide campaigns to expose the heinous crimes of the Sudanese regime against political opponents. Dr. Fatima is always available to extend academic advice and counseling to students and researchers. (Khalda M. Abdel Hafeez, in discussion with the author, July 2020)

Indeed, inside the Sudan and globally, Fatima’s intellectual contributions remain driven by her passion for social and gender justice and deep commitment to feminist activism. Reflecting on the responsibility of public intellectuals, Noam Chomsky argues: Intellectuals are in a position to expose the lies of governments, to analyze actions according to their causes and motives and often hidden intentions. In the Western world, at least, they have the power that comes from political liberty, from access to information and freedom of expression . . . The responsibilities of intellectuals, then, are much deeper than what Macdonald calls the ‟responsibility of people,” given the unique privileges that intellectuals enjoy. (Chomsky 1967, 1)

These qualities define Fatima’s work ethics and feminist activism. She has always devoted herself to the struggles for democracy and justice.

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She repeatedly demonstrated this commitment by confronting authorities, specifically the Sudan’s military dictatorships throughout the country’s history. Fatima’s life embodies exactly these ideals in inspiring generations of Sudanese feminist activists worldwide, whose identities and politics vary across age, class, ethnicity, education, and religious traditions. Noam Chomsky (1967) posited that truth is revealing what makes people certain and clear in their action and knowledge. It is only this kind of truth that an intellectual has a responsibility to speak. By these criteria Fatima is indeed a Sudanese intellectual who has always spoken truth to power no matter the threat, and whose knowledge production continues to bridge divides between academia, community activism, and politics. Like Edward Said’s “ideal” intellectual, Fatima is driven by commitment and risk, boldness and vulnerability, to represent issues that matter to publics within and beyond her homeland. CONCLUSION In this chapter, I have attempted to reflect on Fatima Babiker’s trajectories as scholar, teacher/mentor, and activist. I have aimed to do so in two ways: first, by utilizing her own publications and life story to illustrate some of the traits, methods, and commitments which enable her successes; and second, by sharing experiences of some of her students and colleagues who are deeply influenced by her intellectual contributions. I admire Fatima’s accomplishments, from her prolific publications and dynamic theoretical engagements to her innovative, rigorous pedagogy and creation of inclusive spaces for students, all enduringly grounded in strong feminist leadership and a lifetime commitment to community activism. In appreciation of Dr. Fatima Babiker’s intellectual contributions to the fields of women and gender studies and Sudanese studies, I tried in this chapter to assess her achievements and character as a pioneer, a role model, a humble intellectual, and a kind, respectful, and compassionate human being. I have examined some of her intersecting identities as a feminist, activist, scholar, and a teacher. As a feminist activist, she has been relentlessly fighting for human rights, gender equity, and women’s equality. As a scholar, she produced robust, home-grown studies that are, on the whole, sharp, theoretically rigor, and accessible to most. As a teacher, she was deeply devoted to enhancing her students’ learning and well-being within and outside her classrooms. Throughout the years, and despite serious health challenges, she has continued daring to love and live life fully, immersing herself in producing new knowledge, as well as making beautiful arts which embody her longing for a peaceful, democratic, and gender-sensitive Sudan.

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Fatima Babiker continues to mentor and inspire new generations of Sudanese scholars and activists even as she still supports former students and celebrates their successes. The last time I was in London, I called to check on Fatima’s health and she warmly welcomed me into her home, which she shares with her husband Mohamed Suliman and her daughter, Azza. As I chatted with her in their living room, I noticed the same wooden furniture that I first saw at their University of Khartoum faculty home when she invited her class to that momentous student dinner in 1987.21 As Mohamed served us tea, cake, and cookies, I came full circle to see anew how their family continues to defy gender stereotypes in their everyday lives. When Fatima shared a copy of her latest book, Mohamed spoke with pride and joy about the significance of her work. As with hundreds of students and scholars before and after me, in these simplest of acts, the couple once again reaffirmed the transformative power inherent in relationships of equality and mutual support, an ethos that Fatima Babiker has come to embody for many Sudanese women. NOTES 1. Dr. Fatima Babiker is affectionately referred to as “Dr. Fatima” by her former students, including myself. Keeping up with this book format and style, I will address her in this chapter as Fatima. 2. I am one of Fatima’s former students who graduated with a BA (Honors) in Political Sciences from the University of Khartoum. I am currently an Associate Professor and the Chair of the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, USA. 3. While Fatima problematizes the emphasis of Marxist theories on class as a single lens of analysis, it is important to note here that as an active member of the Sudanese Communist Party Central Committee/Sudanese Women’s Union Central Committee, her perspectives have historically influenced the Sudanese Communist party writings about Sudanese women’s movement from a class- and gender-sensitive perspectives. 4. Please note that in 1968, Dr. Fatima has conducted her undergraduate BA thesis at University of Khartoum on “Sudanese Women’s Union.” 5. Fatima has been engaged with IFAA, and she was one of its founding members (in 1986) along with her husband/partner Mohamed Suliman, as well as prominent scholars from Senegal, South Africa, the Sudan, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe. 6. Introduced by Alice Walker’s 1979 short story Coming Apart, womanism is a social theory based on the history and experiences of women of color in the global North. According to Walker and her fellow womanist scholar Layli Maparyan, a womanist approach seeks to “restore the balance between people and the environment/nature and reconcile [e] human life with the spiritual dimension” (Walker, 1979). Since Walker’s initial use, the term has evolved to envelop varied and often opposing interpretations of concepts such as feminism, men, and Blackness.

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7. She maps the history of Northern Sudanese feminism over time, including the development of women’s organizations such as the Sudanese Women’s Union, statesponsored women’s organizations, and the Islamist women organizations. She also praises the achievements of contemporary grassroots and non-governmental feminist organizations that are currently mushrooming in Khartoum such as the Gender Center for Research and Training, the Salama Center, and the Taiba Center for Human Development, just to name a few. 8. The term Candaca is a royal title given to the mothers of kings in ancient Sudanese and African civilizations. For instance, a Marawi Candaca led her kingdom’s military in a battle against the Romans in 23 BCE (Babiker 2008, 35). 9. This book is the third book in Fatima’s edited series on housing issues in the Sudan. The first two books in this series were authored by Saad El Din Fawzi. 10. Mahasien Zien Al-Abdeen Abdalla is a Sudanese human rights advocacy activist whose professional experiences extended from working as a local government executive in the Sudan to a lecturer in the management field at Ahlia University in Omdurman. In 1995, she moved to Qatar where she worked at different positions within Qatar Foundation, currently as a societal development consultant. 11. Ahmed earned a PhD in Women’s and Gender Studies from York University in Toronto, Canada and is currently a Research Associate at Hamid Bin Khalifa University’s Research Center for Islamic Legislation and Ethics in Doha, Qatar. 12. Hala Al Ahmadi is an expert on gender equality and women’s empowerment. She has worked for UN Women–Sudan Country Office as Program Specialist where she was in charge of the Women Economic Empowerment, Peace and Security and Humanitarian Assistance portfolios, as well as served as Gender Policy Specialist, for UNDP Regional Bureau for Arab states in Cairo. Hala holds a PhD degree on Social Studies from University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands; MA in Development Studies from Institute of Social Studies in the Hague, The Netherlands; and BSc in Economic and Political Sciences from University of Khartoum, the Sudan. 13. Intersectionality originated in critical race theory and was articulated by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989). 14. As some of the other contributors have said, in part, Jaafar Nimeiry ruled the Sudan as a military dictator for 16 years (as the Sudan’s president from 1969 to 1985). He assumed power through a military coup and began rule as a secular, socialist leader. However, in the late 1970s, he allied with Islamist groups which led to the implementation of unjust Sharia laws throughout the Sudan in 1983. His regime ignited militarized conflicts in South Sudan, Darfur, and other parts of the country. He was ousted by a popular uprising in 1985, which led to his exile in Egypt. He returned to the Sudan in 1999, where he resided until his death in 2009. 15. While working in the university, Dr. Fatima wore a toob, a body wrap similar to the Indian Sari, which is the traditional dress for women in various parts of the Sudan. 16. Her home, which was part of the University of Khartoum faculty housing complex called Al Saria Alsafra (an Arabic phrase which translates to the yellow villas), was very beautiful—warm and full of modern wooden furniture, beautiful arts, and lots of books. While I was a bit nervous to visit the home of one of my professors,

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upon entering the house for the first time I instantly felt a very distinct, comfortable, and loving environment. 17. Nada Ali graduated from the Political Sciences Department at University of Khartoum, and currently teaches at the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at University of Massachusetts Boston. 18. Ameena Al-Rasheed graduated from the Political Sciences Department at University of Khartoum and taught at the University for Peace (an intergovernmental organization with university status, established by treaty at the United Nations General Assembly in 1980) in Costa Rica. She is currently based in London and works for the United Nations. 19. The Institute for African Alternatives (IFAA) is an independent, non-governmental institution focused on promoting sound analyses of social, economic, and political issues across the continent. Based in South Africa with a continent-wide network, IFAA conducts economic research related to industrial policy and promotes discussion of key concerns through its publications. 20. This regime governed the Sudan from 1989 to 2019 during which time it perpetrated ethnic genocide in the marginalized areas of Northern Sudan and the Darfur region of Western Sudan. Bashir and the NIF also committed numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Nuba Mountains, Blue Nile, Eastern Sudan, and other regions of the country, resulting in the killing and forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of residents. Dr. Fatima discusses these events in her book, Calamity versus Military Rule. These atrocities have posed gender-specific challenges to groups of women, men, and children based on their gender, religion, language, ethnicity, culture, class, and geographical location. 21. With the nostalgia familiar to diasporic communities, and as a symbol of their love, they shipped to London the same furniture that they had in the Sudan when they got married and wanted to keep it with them for the rest of their days.

REFERENCES Ahmed, Suad Ibrahim. 2008. Introduction to Intellectual Trends in the Sudanese Women Movement. Khartoum: Dar Azza Publishing. Babiker, Fatima. 1984. The Sudanese Bourgeoisie: Vanguard of Development? London: Zed Books. Babiker, Fatima. 1988a. Calamity in the Sudan: Civilian versus Military Rule. London: Institute for African Alternatives. Babiker, Fatima. 1988b. “The Role of Alienation and Exploitation of Women in the Origins of State Capitalism in Sudan.” In Women of the Arab World, edited by Nahid Toubia. London: Zed Books. Babiker, Fatima. 1991. African Women: Transformation and Development. London: Institute for African Alternatives. Babiker, Fatima. 1996. “Building a Pan African Women’s Movement.” In Pan Africanism: Politics, Economy and Social Change in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem, 237. New York: New York University Press.

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Babiker, Fatima. 1999. “The Gender Impact of War, Environmental Disruption and Displacement in Sudan.” In Ecology, Politics and Violent Conflicts, edited by Mohamed Suliman, 45–58. New York: Zed Books. Babiker, Fatima. 2002. African Women: Heritage and Modernism. Cambridge: Cambridge Academics Press. Babiker, Fatima. 2008. Intellectual Trends in the Sudanese Women Movement. Khartoum: Dar Azza Publishing. Babiker, Fatima. 2012. Sex and Sexuality and the Exploitation of Sudanese Women. London: Institute for African Alternatives. Babiker, Fatima. 2018. Housing Policies in Sudan: The Predicament and the Way Out. London: Institute for African Alternatives. Bakr, Mawahib Ahmed. 2017. “From a Concealed Face to a Parliament Member: A Question into the History of Gender and Meaning of Feminism in Sudan.” Journal of Academic Perspectives 2017 (1): 1–25. Crenshaw, Kimberlé. 1989. “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics.” University of Chicago Legal Forum 1989, 139–168. Chomsky, Noam. 1967. “The Responsibility of Intellectuals.” The New York Review of Books, February 23, 1967. Collins, Patricia Hill. 1996. “What’s in a name? Womanism, Black feminism, and Beyond.” The Black Scholar 26 (1): 917. El Saadawi, Nawal. 1969. Women and Sex. Cairo: Al-Shaab. El Saadawi, Nawal. 1985. “Growing Up Female in Egypt.” Translated by Fedwa MaltiDouglas. In Women and the Family in the Middle East: New Voices of Change, edited by Elizabeth Warnock Fernea, 111–120. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. El Saadawi, Nawal. 2007. The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the Arab World. Translated by S. Hetata. New York: Zed Books. (Original work published 1977). Frank, Andre Gunder. 2004. “The Development of Underdevelopment.” In The Sustainable Urban Development Reader, edited by Stephen M. Wheeler and Timothy Beatley, 38–41. New York: Routledge. Gramsci, Antonio. 2010. “Intellectuals and Hegemony.” In Social Theory: The Multicultural and Classic Readings, 263–265. Boulder, CO: Westview. Hale, Sondra. 1983. “Women and Work in Sudan: What is Alienated Labor?” Proceedings, Conference on Women and Work in the Third World, 245–250. Berkley, CA: Center for the Study, Education and Advancement of Women, University of California. Hale, Sondra. 1996. Gender Politics in Sudan: Islamism, Socialism, and the State. New York: Westview Press. Harding, Sandra. 1991. Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? Thinking from Women’s Lives. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. hooks, bell. 1984. Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center. Boston, MA: South End Press. Lorde, Audre. 1984. Sister, Outsider. New York: Penguin Books. Mernissi, Fatima. 1995. Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books.

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Mohanty, Chandra Talpade, Ann Russo and Lourdes Torres, eds. 1991. Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism. Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press. Phillips, Layli. 2006. “Womanism: On its Own.” The Womanist Reader. New York: Routledge xix–lv. Rich, Adrienne. 1980. “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence.” Women: Sex and Sexuality 5 (4): 631–660. Roy-Campbell, Zaline Makini. 1996.  ”Pan-African Women Organizing for the Future: The Formation of the Pan-African Women’s Liberation Organization and Beyond.” African Journal of Political Science 1 (1): 45–57. Sadiqi, Fatima, ed. 2016. Women’s Movements in Post-“Arab Spring” North Africa. New York: Palgrave Macmillam. Said, Edward. 1994. Representations of the Intellectual. New York: Pantheon Books. Smith, Dorothy E. 1990. The Conceptual Practices of Power: A Feminist Sociology of Knowledge. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Walker, Alice. 1983. In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Walker, Alice. 2012. “Womanist.” Buddhist-Christian Studies 32: 45.

Chapter 14

Francis Mading Deng Ideas for Bridging Boundaries, Managing Diversity, and Reconciling Differences Daniel Jok Deng and Luka Biong Deng Kuol

This1 chapter summarizing the ideas of Francis M. Deng is co-written by two of his relatives, one a brother and the other a son. Rather than relying on a scholarly review of his published works, we take a more personal approach to trace the evolution of his thinking. The aim of this chapter is to portray some of his most salient ideas in the context out of which they emerged and integrate them into what might be called his worldview. Our interest is not biographical but to provide a nuanced perspective of Deng’s ideas. Deng was born in 1938 in a village called Noong, north of Abyei town, in an area that is both a gulf and a bridge between what was then the two main regions of the Sudan, the Northern and the Southern, now the two independent countries, the Sudan and South Sudan. This strategic location of Abyei has shaped Deng’s thinking that has fundamentally been concerned with bridging boundaries and reconciling differences. Deng’s thinking can be understood by starting from inside-outside and then progressing from the local through the national, regional, and global levels. The incredible outward success and ideas produced by Deng are grounded in his early upbringing and right living. Deng has published and/or contributed to more than 40 books (see Addendum titled “Four Levels of Deng’s Books”) and many peer-reviewed articles in prominent journals. The ideas of Deng are anchored to the African Dinka universal values that are well captured in his books (see section titled “Four Levels of Deng’s Books”) such as the Dinka of the Sudan and Tradition and Modernization. On the basis of his African universal values, Deng shaped national debate about Sudanese national identity and management of diversity through his books such as the War of Visions and Dynamics of Identification, regionally by grounding the management of conflict, diversity, 283

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human rights, and good governance to African values as captured in his books such as Sovereignty and Responsibility: Conflict Management in Africa, African Reckoning: A Quest for Good Governance and Identity, Diversity and Constitutionalism for Africa. Globally and based on his regional work on Sovereignty and Responsibility that contributed to the adoption of the principle of “Responsibility to Protect” by the United Nations, Deng advances the global debate about the protection of internally displaced persons as reflected in his books such as Protecting the Dispossessed: A Challenge for the International Community and Idealism and Realism: Negotiating Sovereignty in Divided Nations. This chapter is organized into five sections including this section and other sections, which discuss how Deng’s ideas germinated at local level and then progressed through the national, regional, and global levels, and the conclusion.

INSIDE-OUTSIDE: THE FOUNDATION OF DENG’S IDEAS AND WORLDVIEW The Dinka’s Universal Values: Cieng and Dheeng Earlier, we mentioned that Deng was born in a border area between what are now two independent countries, the republics of the Sudan and South Sudan. This tug between two polar forces, one pulling southward to Black Africa and the other pulling northward to the Arab world, appears to have fostered within him a creative tension, which he has sought to reconcile throughout his life. From this tension, he considered the fundamental concept of the Invisible Bridge. But, upon a closer read of the man and his works, this tension might well trace to an even more fundamental pull, due not to geographic location or political identification, but to the genetic poles of his maternal and paternal lines, or what scientists would refer to as mitochondrial and nuclear DNA. In Africa, these have always been approached in terms of ancestors and lineages, and are the subject of familial and tribal myths. In Deng’s search for personal identity, this first difference due to the primordial fact of gender is the first order of reconciliation. His community, the Ngok Dinka of Abyei, operates according to a patrilineal agnatic descent system. This requires outward association with one’s father and a more personal identification with one’s mother. Throughout his life, Deng dutifully cultivated this paternal identification, even authoring an autobiography of his father, The Man Called Deng Majok: A Biography of Polygyny, Power and Change. Inwardly, however, he deeply identified with his mother. This comes

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across clearly in his book, Blood of Two Rivers: Legends from Paternal and Maternal Lines, and memoirs, The Invisible Bridge, his complete memoirs. The Man Called Deng Majok published in 1989, portrays Deng’s legendary father, a tribal chief, as an iconic presence in his life. Deng’s relationship with his father was ambivalent because of the huge size of the family (the chief had over 150 wives and many children), the demands of chieftaincy, and the culture. Therefore, despite being privileged in many ways with a closer relationship to his father than most of his brothers and sisters, there was nonetheless distance. Whereas he felt overwhelming love from his mother’s side, his father’s love was not as unconditional. Yet, his father’s presence as an idea would shadow him across decades and continents. While his father epitomizes for Deng the just administrator who shrewdly deals with internal and external relations of the tribe using a combination of diplomacy, force, and compromise, Deng’s maternal lineage draws from a spiritually oriented line, known for their long vision and wisdom. From this foundation of reconciling polar extremes across the boundary of man as an inherently gendered being, biologically and socioculturally, Deng would in time speak about his ideas in terms of local, national, regional, and global domains of experience and contribution. Of these, the local level is the most formative because it speaks to the deep influence his early upbringing had on his worldview. In essence, it is a worldview based on the integral logic of the Dinka village he came to know in Abyei, in his father’s court where he witnessed the management of human relations, and in the home of his maternal relatives where he felt most fully loved. Deng seems to reify this concept of the Dinka village and the court around which it was structured as an ideal for human development. In the ideal of tradition, Deng posits some of mankind’s most noble virtues; however, it would be a mistake to take his promotion of the Dinka at face value. He does not hold any particular regard for the outer form of the tribe as a mark of belonging, but rather seeks to understand the internal logic that sustained a people for centuries in the absence of soldiers or militaries, and that produced such remarkable personalities as his father and his mother, for whom he holds great admiration and respect. In looking at the tribe, Deng is formulating a microcosm of social organization and cohesion in order to understand the complexities of human diversity, and how these are best managed. His approach is to see what is good, focus on it, and build upon it. This approach reconciles differences and bridges boundaries, and applies at all levels, from local to global. Deng writes extensively about two concepts, Cieng and Dheeng, in his early works, including in Tradition and Modernization and in The Dinka of the Sudan. Cieng refers to an ideal of human relations characterized by the search for harmony in unity while Dheeng refers to an ideal of proper conduct

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and physical presentation. Together, they frame a notion of human dignity that Deng considers both particular to the Dinka in as much as these concepts have context-specific connotations, but are also universal in their resonance with similar concepts everywhere. They are key to the idea of the bridging of boundaries and reconciling of differences because they set the benchmark, guidepost, and final point of reference in the negotiation process when interests appear incompatible. Because they are universal, they are the constant reference points, manifesting in a social context what Deng has referred to as “the inner policeman,” which he believes all people share—that is, a sense of conscience. For Deng, his image of a Dinka village seems to epitomize the ideal of human dignity as embedded in an integral set of social relations and values. What is also interesting is how he then takes the seminal notions born of that particular ideal—Cieng and Dheeng—to the national, regional, and global levels by virtue of the functional concept he refers to as the invisible bridge. In a very direct way, that bridge enabled him, no matter how far removed from his place of birth, to travel back, psychologically, to connect with those deeply personal attachments that root him. This would be important for Deng in his early years in Europe when he became disillusioned with the sense of isolation and longed for the familiar sights, sounds, and relationships of home. The invisible bridge is therefore at once personal, while also a mechanism for exploring the outside world and finding its universals. Every human that travels away from home faces the threat of homesickness and has the possibility of using such an invisible bridge, through which they can stay rooted to their identity. The question, however, becomes personal: How fulfilling is that root? The answer depends on what it represents to the person, how thoroughly they have understood it, and the place it occupies in the narrative of identity that is equally a definition of “self,” and an expectation for the world around them. Deng’s invisible bridge does not take him to a place of ambivalence and doubt, but rather grounds him in safe place of comfort. It is this grounding that is remarkably apparent in all Deng’s writings—no matter how theoretical the subject, when unraveled, his thinking draws its inner logic from the principles of Cieng and Dheeng, which he recognizes as basically sacrosanct and universal. Even mundane aspects of village life—for example, the household division of labor, the construction techniques, and the relationships to cattle, are infused with social and spiritual significance because of their expression of these foundational concepts—not necessarily as something that has been actualized at any given time, but rather as the constant ideal—the guidepost and the measure on life’s roadmap. Throughout his career, his reference to these concepts remained unchanged and constant.

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TRADITION AND MODERNIZATION Deng wrote his first book on the basis of research fieldwork he carried out in Abyei after he was diagnosed with glaucoma. On June 9, 2016, at an award ceremony for the Glaucoma Foundation where he was being honored with the Kitty Carlisle Hart Award for Lifetime Achievement, Deng narrated the story of how his struggle with glaucoma pushed him to excel academically, and embark upon the research fieldwork that would consolidate his understanding about Abyei and his own roots. His concern about his future with glaucoma was reflected in his statement during the award ceremony that: “Now knowing that glaucoma posed the threat of blindness, I became depressed, concerned not only with the use of drops for life, but particularly about the dismal prospects for the future” (Deng testimonial, 2016). After his second operation on the right eye, Deng asked his doctor what the prognosis for the future was, as he wanted to be realistic about the prospects. He was told that he would see as he did for three years and perhaps up to five years. Beyond that his doctor couldn’t tell. Deng concluded that he would probably be blind within five years. This, combined with his being in exile, meant that even if the political situation was resolved, and he returned home, he would not be able to see his people. Deng decided that whatever happened, he must make himself useful to society and that he was racing with time. He therefore resolved to achieve as much as he could while he could still see. To compensate for not being able to see his people, he began to work on studies that would help bridge with his background. Over the coming years, based on recordings he had made before leaving the country and continued to make after his return, he produced a number of books on themes related to his Dinka background, including songs, folk tales, ethnography of Dinka life cycle, oral history and cosmology, and the biography of his father, Deng Majok. He expedited his law studies to get his graduate degrees within the shortest possible period, obtaining his Masters and Doctorate in Law within three years from Yale University after graduating from the University of London. His idea was that having a doctorate would enhance his capacity to function, even without sight. Deng’s dissertation focused on the customary law of the Dinka, looking at it in the context of their culture and the challenges of modernization in their society. Yale University Press published the dissertation, which was well received in the circles of African studies. That book, Tradition and Modernization: A Challenge of Customary Law among the Dinka, discussed the tension between forces of continuity and forces of change in Dinka society. In the dissertation, Deng proposed a notion of Transitional Integration as a response to the challenge. He conceived of it as an intelligent policyoriented process of selecting the elements of continuity and the elements of

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change, and introducing changes purposefully and in a controlled manner so as to avoid the disruptions and losses that modernization might impose, while also benefiting from all it had to offer. Through the dissertation, he created with Professors Lasswell and McDougal of the New Haven School of Jurisprudence a framework that centered on Human Dignity as the overriding value proposition for Dinka society. This made the particular study of the Dinka relevant to societies everywhere, who likewise, Deng surmised, pursue Human Dignity. Through the modality of family law, he was then able to apply the framework to the interview material he had amassed. The outcome was a thorough empirically based exposé of his people, during a period of intense changes. The Dinka come across as proudly assertive of their identity, in the face of strong influences, both Arab-centered and European-centered, but also open to change, cognizant of the mixed opportunities for development and growth, alongside threats of crisis and social disintegration. This book would lead Deng to embark on an ambitious attempt to pioneer a development project using Transitional Integration as its basic framework.

TESTING AND APPLYING DENG’S IDEAS AT NATIONAL LEVEL Dynamics of Identification Dynamics of identification has evolved from Deng’s initially rather remote observations as a pioneering scholar of his own people, to an effective model for understanding conflict and its transformation globally. While his ideas regarding these dynamics support other normative principles, such as Constructive Management of Diversity, they find their own support in the Invisible Bridge concept, which Deng used to navigate diversity in his own life. Dynamics of identification is also an expression of Deng’s inclination to reconcile differences that may appear from one perspective as bipolar opposites but are in fact polar complements. This is true of his maternal and paternal lineages, the competing communities of Ngok Dinka and Missiriya Arab along the Sudan’s North–South border, and the Black African community in which he was born and the White American community into which he ultimately married. His ideas in this regard are a contribution to wider humanism because they argue that while in the panorama of diverse races, ethnicities, religions, cultures, and other orientations, an individual is enriched by his or her unique genealogy but shares in a humanity that is the unchanging anchor for an all-embracing universal identity with its multiplicity of forms.

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Deng introduced the debate on identity as a factor in conflicts and nationbuilding in the Sudan in a study that was published in one of his shortest books, Dynamics of Identification: A Basis for National Integration in the Sudan, which Khartoum University Press published in 1973. Deng’s thesis was that the evolution of the conflicting identities in the Sudan took place in a historical context in which conversion to Islam, speaking Arabic, becoming culturally Arabized, and claiming descent from an Arab ancestry elevated one to a level of respect that differed sharply with being a Black African and a “heathen,” which made one a legitimate target for enslavement. Since Islam and Arabism encouraged such a liberal process of self-identity, “passing” became a well-documented trend among the indigenous populations of the North. Southern identity, on the other hand, evolved as one of resistance to Northern slave raids and Arab racial, cultural, and religious hegemony. The case of the Sudan demonstrates the fluidity and adaptability of identity and how it can be shaped and reshaped to serve the interest of the self-identifying character. Deng believed that with increasing recognition of diversity in pluralistic states and the stipulation of the human rights principle of nondiscrimination, the myth of self-perception of absolute Arabism would be adjusted to the reality of Sudanese admixture and its racial, ethnic, cultural, and religious diversity in national unity. Deng’s policy argument is that it is not the mere fact of identity differences that generates conflicts, but the way diversity is managed, which usually means that some groups enjoy the status of first-class citizens who enjoy the full rights of citizenship, while other groups are discriminated, marginalized, excluded, and denied the rights and dignity of citizenship. Deng sees identity as both subjective, what people perceive themselves to be, and objective, what they really are by tangible criteria. Scholars emphasize subjectivity as what counts. Deng however argues that when subjective self-identification negatively impinges on the rights of others, it should be challenged. Identity can also be exclusive in a discriminatory way or inclusive in a way that accommodates others equitably. Initially, Deng’s ideas on identity conflicts were resisted in the Sudan and even internationally, including among scholars. In the Sudan, Northern elites saw the policy implication of his approach as challenging and threatening their “Arabness,” while Southern elites preferred to deal with the Northerners on the basis of their self-perception as Arabs. Ironically, Dynamics of Identification was misconstrued by some as advocating assimilation into the dominant identity of the North and by others as promoting the “Africanization” of the North. However, current dynamics in the Sudan indicate that Deng’s thinking was ahead of his time, and perhaps contributed to the pluralistic identity politics currently driving the national political discourse.

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Internationally, there was also resistance to discussing identity as a factor in conflicts. This was in part a reaction to the racist policies of Nazi Germany in which non-scientific basis of differentiating races led to persecution of groups, the worst case being the Holocaust. Identity was also considered intangible as a factor and therefore not negotiable or susceptible to resolution. While Deng saw identity as central to the analysis of African conflicts in the African Studies Program at the Brookings Institution, and later in carrying out his UN mandates on internal displacement and genocide prevention, he initially met with strong resistance from his scholarly colleagues. It took persistent efforts to eventually turn them around. Identity politics are now recognized as a significant factor in the contests for state power in Africa and across the world. But this recognition does not necessarily mean acceptance of diversity in unity and on equitable bases, as is the case in the current debate about migrants and the emergence of antimigration right-wing populist movements in the United States and Europe. For example, in Europe, fears of migration are fueling nationalist movements. In the United Kingdom, the British people voted with fear of migration to leave the European Union. Russia has aligned its foreign policy to support such nationalist movements in an effort to revive a sense of Pan-Eurasianism. Across Africa, the reality that tribal diversity remains the most persistent characteristic of the political landscape is unavoidable. Deng articulated an important point regarding identity, which is still under-utilized in understanding the various types of identity politics across the world. While the center of gravity of an individual’s identity is set in the objective genetic factors of lineage and tends to also be firmly rooted in a territory, citizenship, and family, the outer perimeter of identity is not fixed, but rather is subjective and, therefore fluid and fungible. This perimeter can expand outward to include other groups or be permeable to align with other groups in the dynamic of identification. It can also retreat inward toward greater parochialism. It tends to do so in times of certain types of shock and/ or crises and expand in times of peace and/or security when fear, scarcity, and desperation recede, and competition is no longer seen as zero sum. Of global significance is the manner in which economic crises are now creating various forms of parochial identification, pitting groups against one another in a political discourse that tends toward aggression, antagonism, and violence. Even more dangerous are those identities that define themselves in opposition to others. These may be the most insecure and reactionary in the shaping and sharing of power. Deng would eventually admit that he had underestimated the depth and strength of Northern Sudanese commitment to Arabism and the related version of Islam. That was when he contributed to the formula of One Country, Two Systems as a means for reconciling the conflicting visions of the North

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and the South for the Sudanese nation in a framework of unity in diversity. Even that compromise was not accepted in the end and the country was partitioned into two independent states in 2011 with the establishment of the Republic of South Sudan but bound by ethnic-related conflicts caused by mismanagement of diversity that spill over their borders. WAR OF VISIONS AND THE VISION OF A NEW SUDAN In 1995, Deng wrote the book, War of Visions: Conflict of Identities in the Sudan. In it, he argued the war in the Sudan essentially reflected a crisis of national identity and mismanagement of diversity. He explained how the independence movement, pioneered and championed by the North and Egypt, the subordinate partner in the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium rule, was reluctantly supported by the South, which stipulated federalism and guarantees for the region as conditions for endorsing independence. Deng argues that on the basis of Northern promise that their concerns would be given “serious consideration” after independence, Southerners voted for independence. It soon became abundantly obvious that not only did the post-independence Northern ruling elites dishonor their promise to the South, but worse, they despised diversity, and adopted Arabization and Islamization as policies for national unification through homogenization. War of Visions explains how Southern reaction to the impending ArabIslamic hegemony and domination first took the form of a mutiny by a battalion in Southern Sudan that soon escalated into a rebellion that resulted in the civil war, which devastated the South for 17 years. That war, led by the Southern Sudan Liberation Movement (SSLM) and its army, the Anyanya, aimed at the independence of the South from the North, but ended in a compromise solution that gave regional autonomy to the people of Southern Sudan. The unilateral abrogation of that agreement in 1983 by President Nimeiri, who had made it possible in the first place, triggered the second civil war championed by the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement and Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLM/SPLA). Unlike the first liberation movement, which called for Southern secession, the SPLM/SPLA postulated the creation of a New Sudan that would be free from any discrimination based on race, ethnicity, religion, culture, or gender. The vision of the New Sudan was mainly that of Dr. John Garang de Mabior, Chairman of the SPLM. Initially, it was not understood, far less supported in the North and the South, even within his movement. The fighting men and women in the South took it as a clever ploy to allay the fears of those opposed to separation within the country, in the African region, and in

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the international community. Deng believes that while Garang was talking the language of the New United Sudan, Southerners were fighting for the secession of the South from the North. In discussing the New Sudan vision, Deng would say at a symposium at the Center for Conflict Resolution in Cape Town: What is important to underscore in the context of Garang’s vision for a New United Sudan is that the dichotomy between the Arab-Islamic North and the African South is largely a fiction. While the North has been labeled Arab, even those who can trace their genealogy to Arab origins are a hybrid of Arab and African race, and even their culture is an Afro-Arab race . . . .The vision of the New Sudan therefore promises to liberate all these people, along with the South, from their marginalization, and to create a country of genuine pluralism and equality, with a greater influence for the previously marginalized African groups. An aspect of Africanization therefore underlay the vision. (Concept paper, 2005)

The New Sudan vision was largely in line with Deng’s thesis regarding the identity conflict in the Sudan. He argued that two sets of normative issues underlie the North–South conflict: Failure to manage constructively the racial, ethnic, religious and cultural diversities of the country and, correlatively, failure to build on the indigenous cultures, values and institutions, which were deemed primitive and inferior to the Arab-Islamic culture, postulated as the national framework for unity and nation-building. (Concept paper, 2005)

While right up until the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2005 and beyond, many continued to perceive the War of Visions as simplistically a North–South issue, Deng early on recognized that the national challenge penetrated deep into the North. He recognized that the CPA addresses this multilayered crisis of identity by giving the South the right of self-determination, to decide whether to remain within a united Sudan or become fully independent, through a referendum to be exercised after a 6-year interim period, while, at the same time challenging the North and all those who want to see the Sudan united, including African countries, the West, the Arab World, and others, to exert all efforts to make unity an attractive option for the South.

He had helped to coin the concept of “making unity attractive,” and also the formula of “One Sudan, Two Systems.” In fact, both of these were largely

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his conceptual inventions, which helped to frame the CPA. And while most Southerners saw the CPA as a means toward Southern independence, Deng fundamentally believes in the New Sudan. Deng recognized that “the South will have its own government, fully independent of Northern interference, its own army, virtually at par with the national army, its own branch of the National Bank, which, unlike its Northern counter-part branch that will remain Islamic, will be conventional.” He also recognized that “despite a national foreign policy, the South will have the right to establish bilateral relations with international trade and development partners,” with “an effective role in the Government of National Unity (GNU).” Yet, he was not sure as to what the South would do with it. He hoped that “what is likely to emerge is a restructured Sudan in which the traditionally dominant Arab-Islamic center will cede power to the periphery and by the same token allow the process of African renaissance to bloom.” He further hoped that the arrangement would provide “the South with the opportunity to manage its own internal ethnic diversity, but also to orientate its system of governance to its indigenous values and institutions through a strategy of transitional integration that bridges tradition with modernity in dynamic synergy.” These were the best-case scenarios. Deng did question however, “whether the Government of the South will, in fact do this,” concluding rather that it “will remain to be seen,” particularly “without Dr. John Garang de Mabior, who was a major force in its (the CPA’s) achievement and the prospects of its successful implementation.” He questioned as well whether the national government would make the unity of the Sudan attractive to the people of Southern Sudan. His 2016 book, Bound by Conflict: Dilemmas of the Two Sudans, largely answers the question with the power of hindsight. In other words, the CPA has not led to the transformation of the South, nor had the North allowed an African renaissance to create diversity within unity in the areas still under its control. Rather, both the Sudan and South Sudan continued to replicate the systems of deprivation that led to the history of recurrent civil wars. South Sudan had lost sight of the ideals of its own liberation, and was locked in a complex dynamic with the Sudan, where each accused the other of supporting rebel movements, were determined to consolidate their power by military means, and neither had launched the type of inclusive development and governance that Deng advocated for as a process of self-enhancement from within. The War of Visions had taken root in the South. Although devoid of the religious dimensions, nonetheless there remains a conflict of identities and a challenge of diversity management requiring a bridging of differences that had become gulfs separating tribes in a terrible struggle for the central seat of power.

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Constructive Management of Diversity Deng points out that diversity is a global phenomenon. Hardly any country can claim to be fully homogeneous. So, diversity is pervasive, yet not all countries characterized by diversity experience such terrible identity conflicts. Some manage well while others do not do so well, and yet others perform dismally. The difference begins with their notion of sovereignty, whether leaders have accepted it as a responsibility or still use it as a shield. The states that see sovereignty as a responsibility are more likely to be pursuing inclusive development for their people, while those that use it as a shield are more likely to be engaging in zero-sum power struggles. Many are caught in the transition area between these two different systems and the rules they imply. The paradox, however, is that the system of governance he grew up experiencing, and ultimately idealizing, was partly democratic and partly autocratic, based on the relationship between an inherited chieftaincy and the colonial rulers. His deeply personal connection with this system of governance, personified in his father, the legendary Paramount Chief of the Ngok Dinka, Deng Majok, forms a thread that is woven through his thinking across disciplines and levels of service; it forms an inclusive platform on which he contends, intellectually, with the traditional, the village, and the modern, the colonial state. The autochthonous segmentary lineage-based system of self-administering clans and self-reliant homesteads meant that the autocratic system of governance of Ngok Dinka society was in no way akin to the military autocracy of Europe, but was something totally different—a place where rule was generally based on the will of the people, without which legitimacy to rule could never be imposed by force. This led him to often say that South Sudanese are inherently democratic, but that makes them hard to govern. It also problematizes the notion of democracy. If people are selfreliant and self-administering, then aren’t they self-determining? And isn’t self-determination the end result that democracy seeks to accomplish? In Deng, we therefore can see an embrace of the democratic ideal, but a simultaneous sublimation of the concept itself within others, which are, for him, of a higher, more explicit, and therefore, meaningful order—sovereignty, dignity, self-determination, and constitutionalism to name just a few. With these, the question of whether to have elections or not seems less straight forward. At a national level, the fierce pride in his people, and the recognition that in the village, Cieng and Dheeng define standards, whether individual or collective, his threads of thought were woven into the New Sudan vision, which he, along with John Garang articulated. He defined the New Sudan as a place free from discrimination, where all groups, regardless of how small, would feel a part of the nation, and be accorded a fair share of control over their lives and

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destinies without interference from the center. With such a system in place, he believes the greater power of unity would prevail, and no group would seek secession, because deprivations would be eliminated and privileges would be merit-based. In the New Sudan vision, we do not get a simplistic notion of democracy as evidenced by elections, or even “civil society,” but a more basic question as to whether people—and specifically families in homesteads who are part of nations within nations—feel that they are in control of their own lives and destinies, not theoretically, but practically, administering their own resources and directing the course of their own development from within the sociocultural infrastructures they inherited from their ancestors. For the Sudan, Deng genuinely believed in the possibility of unity, on the basis of equality, and envisioned the African culture he had experienced growing up, in contrast to the Christian and Muslim emphasis on exclusivity of religious beliefs, as being accommodating enough to accord everyone their dignity. In that sense, he saw the Sudan as primarily an African nation, but one in which Arabs, like any other “tribe,” would be free to participate and contribute. His New Sudan vision was close to Garang’s, perhaps only with a difference in emphases. It was through the modality of this shared vision that the two became friends, and it was that friendship, rooted in that shared vision, that propelled Deng to help build a U.S. constituency for the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) (see Deng’s chapter on Garang in this volume). For him, that work was an expression of the Invisible Bridge. While many of his brothers had taken to the bush to fight a liberation war against the government in Khartoum, he had opted to pick up the pen, living in the United States, where he used his various fellowships and appointments with policy institutes, to push the agenda of the liberation struggle, not as a member of a political party, but as a nationalist committed to certain ideals. Under the Center for Strategic International Studies (CSIS), he coined the concept of One Sudan, Two Systems that eventually became the backbone of the CPA. Perhaps now he would modify that to be One Sudan, Multiple Systems, to encompass the other marginalized groups left behind with the independence of South Sudan. At that time, however, the core agreement needed seemed to be between the SPLM and the government in Khartoum, and it was a formula, which by making unity attractive, was meant to safeguard the unity of the country. What Divides Is What Is Unsaid: Talking Things Out Deng has been known widely for coining the Dinka wisdom and idiom of human relations that “what divides is what is unsaid.” This Dinka idiom is now attributed to Deng by many including Dr. John Garang who quoted

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this idiom in his popular letter to former prime minister of the Sudan Sadig al-Mahdi in February 2000. Deng sees negotiation and the closely related field of diplomacy as essentially management of human relations involving individuals, groups, or nations. While accepting that “grounds for conflict exist in normal human relations,” he believes “people are more apt to cooperate and harmonize their incompatible or potentially conflictual positions, and that conflict is in fact a crisis that signifies a breakdown in the normal pattern of behavior.” His original grounding in Abyei taught him that there is a normative code, with the normal pattern one of relative cooperation and mutual accommodation, even in a competitive framework. In his view, “To call that state one of conflict would be to put a negative value judgment on positive motivations and endeavors,” and to ignore what he believes is a relatively high degree of success in peaceful interaction. He therefore argues that through education, both formal and informal, desirable norms of behavior can be promoted and, therefore, pointed out certain principles that might be promoted in such a way as to assist in “reconciling, harmonizing, or managing incompatible interests by fostering a process of institutionalized peaceful interaction.”

DENG’S GLOBAL IDEAS AND WORLDVIEW Identity, Diversity, and Constitutionalism for Africa As the state Minister of Foreign Affairs, Deng engaged extensively with African Governments on issues of management of diversity and governance. Later, as director of the Africa Project at the Brookings Institution, he continued to explore the root causes of the governance crisis in Africa. His research led him to two sets of interrelated issues: the management of diversities through various forms of self-administration, including self-determination as a model of governance; and cultural contextualization through the application of relevant indigenous norms within the framework of constitutionalism. In this notion of constitutionalism, he stressed democratic principles of consensual decision-making, the pursuit of human dignity through culturally relevant principles of “human and people’s rights,” and socioeconomic development as a process of self-enhancement from within that balances growth with equitable distribution. For him: Constitutionalism is governed by fundamental concepts that set the rules for participating in the shaping and sharing of values. It should be seen as a living process that is constantly evolving with the participation of its people to promote their ownership of governing frameworks. While constitutionalism has

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conventionally been understood to constrain the use and abuse of power by the state, to promote fundamental rights and freedoms, and maintain the rule of law, increasingly, it is being viewed as emphasizing the promotion of human dignity.

Sovereignty as Responsibility Deng served as representative of the secretary-general Kofi Annan on Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), and then for Ban Ki-Moon as advisor on Genocide Prevention. His work on behalf of these leaders of the UN over the course of two decades introduced him to countries in conflict, which are so acutely divided that he wondered how they would ever become united as nations. On his dozens of missions to affected countries, he would first meet with the leadership and then visit the IDPs. He would ask the IDPs what message they wanted him to convey to their national leaders. Their responses were almost identical, wherever he went. They did not see those in government as their leaders because they did not identify with the state; nor did they feel the state signified them as part of the nation. “To those rulers, we are not citizens, but criminals, and our only crime is our poverty,” one community leader in a Latin American country responded; “none of our people is in that government,” a spokesman in a Central Asian country replied. In an African country, a prime minister said, “The food you give to those people (his country’s IDPs) is killing my soldiers.” Deng understood these reactions to indicate acutely divided societies where large elements of the nation, which might even historically have been nations on their own, do not feel connected to the state. In fact, these more natural communities see the state as their enemy and are seen as enemies of the state. Deng was faced with a rather impossible situation by representing the UN in trying to engage with member states who wield the shield of sovereignty against external scrutiny of their internal conflicts. These conflicts were sensitive, politicized, and violent. Why would they want to cooperate with the international community, particularly when they were being accused of mass atrocities, and sometimes genocide? For them, the more logical strategy may often be to use sovereignty as a shield to shame or scare off critics, hiding behind projected nationalism and entrenching the regime; and yet, Deng believed that any differences, no matter how incompatible the interests appear, may be bridged. So, he put the onus back on the host governments’ by proposing that the challenge of identity conflicts is in how to manage diversity constructively, to promote a sense of equality, belonging on equal footing, and pride in being a citizen who enjoys the dignity and rights associated with citizenship. He would point out, subtly, that this is an objective, which no self-respecting government can question, far less oppose. This formulation provided a

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positive basis of engagement with governments during the time of his UN mandates. It was the origin of a concept that he developed and referred to as “Sovereignty as Responsibility,” which was later reformulated as the Responsibility to Protect (R-to-P), which is now considered an important mechanism for the UN Security Council’s activities in states considered to be failing their people. Idealism with Realism When Deng was appointed as special adviser on the Prevention of Genocide by the UN secretary-general in 2007, he struggled on how to reconcile his aspiring task of genocide prevention and the practical challenge of how to negotiate not only sovereignty but also how to engage governments in a constructive dialogue on issues of sovereignty and responsibility, good governance, and equitable management of diversity. In 2010, Deng shared the dilemma of his mandate in a published piece called “Idealism and Realism: Negotiating Sovereignty in Divided Nations,” which was actually the text of the 2010 Dag Hammarskjöld Lecture, organized by the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation and Uppsala University. In his comments, we see the visionary thinking of the man of ideas that he was, but we also see the pragmatism of a man who has had to apply his ideas in order to achieve results in a real world of complex challenges. [T]he delicate balance between asserting the need for international protection for the vulnerable and the need for constructive engagement on the part of governments seems to be working. I know that this is not the approach favored by those who believe that on these matters we should cry out loud, stand on the mountain-top and preach what is right and condemn what is wrong. However, when we do that, we might satisfy our conscience, but how much can we help the people who need to be helped in a practical way?

CRITICISM OF DENG’S IDEAS An area of criticism for Deng’s conceptual framework is its lack of rigorous accounting for economic factors and how they interact with dynamics of identification within a political marketplace. Certainly, the postulation that societies function on the basis of shaping and sharing of values can accommodate economic analysis, and it can be argued that with dignity defined as the widest shaping and sharing of values, that economic motivations can be subsumed, however, the extent to which capital, corporations, and commodities both drive culture and are shaped by culture is a complementary area of

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inquiry to which Deng gives relatively less consideration. Here, we also encounter a real politick that complicates the work of a bridge builder. It is easier to choose a side than to occupy the middle ground, particularly when lines are sharply drawn and divide territories that are fiercely defended. To build a bridge over such troubled waters exposes the builder to attacks from either side. Hence, confidence building becomes essential. But an honest broker must first take a leap of faith by venturing onto contentious grounds. Dr. Deng’s vocation as a bridge builder has challenged him repeatedly to take such a leap, step onto such grounds, and at times endure attacks for doing so. One example of this precarious situation at a local level concerns his concept of Abyei as a bridge between the two Sudans. Some Northerners saw the idea as an attempt to formalize the Dinka administration of Abyei while some Southerners saw it as an acceptance of subordination to a northern Sudanese hegemony from which they had vowed to separate. Few saw that by aligning interests all parties had more to gain. Nationally, another example concerns Dr. Deng’s support of the New Sudan vision. By envisioning a Sudan free of discrimination on the ground of gender, religion, and ethnicity based on pluralism, some elements of Northern Sudanese society saw Deng’s articulation as a threat to the Arab-Islamic character of the Sudanese state. Conversely, certain Southern Sudanese saw his preference for unity of the country as a compromise of Southern Sudan’s legitimate desire for self-government. Deng endured attacks from both sides but nonetheless stayed true to his belief in a New Sudan. At a global level, the Responsibility to Protect that sought to create a framework for constructive engagements with states based on an explicit capacity building agenda and premised on an assumption of state legitimacy was reinterpreted by some as grounds for justifying foreign intervention and by others as a shield against external interference. There are several lessons in these critical responses to Deng’s bridgebuilding approach. First, it seems the modern world is gripped by contentious dialectics where the winner is assumed to take all in a zero-sum equation. This is an expression of mistrust, which in itself becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Second, it highlights the importance of complementing the strategic vision of cooperation with a tactical engagement that meets parties in conflict where they are and uses persuasion to open their eyes to possibilities for common ground that may lie outside of their field of view or their perceived self-interest. Third, it means that the bridge builder must both accommodate the perspective of others in facilitating dialogue toward agreement but also remain centered in a moral position whose merit may only be evidence in time. Even so, there may be times where no common ground exists, either because interests are indeed divergent or worldviews are too dissimilar to reconcile. The critical view of Deng’s work begs the questions: When is it

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sufficient to disagree and allow the uncommon to remain uncommon, and what are the implicit costs? The work of a bridge builder takes an unwavering tenacity just as it also takes conciliation and openness. It is perhaps this mix of qualities that makes Deng unique in both his intellectual formulations as well as his political engagements. It is a conviction deeply rooted in his mother’s homestead and his father’s court, which despite their great distance from the halls of power into which destiny would place him, nonetheless remain always a guiding force to which Deng is connected by the invisible bridge. CONCLUSION The African village has long been envisioned as an ideal oasis of pristine organization amidst the turbulence of modernity as represented by the city, with all its promises and woes. However, there may also be some things more immediately relevant in how the African village was designed, in harmony and balance with the natural and human diversities that constitute the ecosystem in which the concept of a village is embedded. For unlike the city, the village is part of a natural landscape, including not only its structures that blend seamlessly, but also its governance, whose symbol is the tree, under which members of community sit to discuss. Deng’s inner identification with his maternal lineage established the moral core at the heart of the Invisible Bridge, and is the spiritual grounding that connects him back to his identity as a Ngok Dinka. His skill as a diplomat comes from his identification with the court of his father, Deng Majok. The most basic architecture of his mind arguably comes from his mother, and her line, in that it gives weight to the moral consequences of actions that make bridging a far more profound concept, enmeshed by idealism, than just Game Theory and rational choice, enmeshed only in realism. Deng’s ideas suggest that knowing oneself deeply and having the inner perspective to see the universal foundations of one’s particular identity allows one to make the linkages to other people. As he traveled, Deng sees his own African culture not as primitive and backward, to be left behind, but as a positive enrichment. He was able to see the universalizing elements of where he came from and how it feeds into the world he went into, thus allowing him to see the integration of worlds. He took this perspective nationally, internationally, and globally, before returning to his home country after his UN service. Whereas many have left the village with ambivalence about being from a primitive culture, Deng is not ashamed of where he came from, or even his father’s polygyny. Rather, he used it as a platform that he puts boldly on the table, to analyze, discuss and be proud of, while also realizing its limits and

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the imperatives of change. In this sense, the invisible bridge has to do with the way you know yourself, as well as reach out to others. Without, however, a concerted process of introspection, self-knowledge may be elusive, and external relations concomitantly weak. While not explicitly cultivating the village concept in his works, Deng’s overall worldview is based on a deconstruction of the idea of an African village, through his voluminous empirical work, early in his academic career, including analysis of songs, folktales, hymns, myths, and interviews of all elements of Dinka sociology and culture, and their reconstruction through his initial books. It is in his exploration of his own people, from a perspective deep within his father’s court, his mother’s homestead, and his community’s cattle byres, that Deng roots an integral worldview that he has articulated locally, nationally, continentally, and globally, using different formulations, all expressing the same basic structure—that humans though constituted of various component parts, taken from maternal and paternal contributions, are nonetheless whole, and their various levels of administration, starting with their own physical maintenance and presentation, should be a reflection of such wholeness, which he finds in the notion of human dignity. While rooted internally, in the reconciliation of his maternal and paternal lines, representing moral and administrative order, respectively, Deng’s bridging concept took shape as an expression of his father’s attempt to manage relations internally within a large extended family, at the heart of the Ngok Dinka, across borders with neighboring communities, and particularly the Missiriya Arabs to the north, and with the Government(s) of Northern and Southern Sudan. These differences, and the need to bridge them, remain as challenging as ever, and Deng has not given up his belief that such a bridge is possible.

AN ADDENDUM: FOUR LEVELS OF DENG’S BOOKS Local Tradition and Modernization: A Challenge for Law Among the Dinka. The Dinka of the Sudan The Dinka and their Songs Dinka Folktales: African Stories from the Sudan Dinka Cosmology Africans of Two Worlds: The Dinka in Afro-Arab Sudan The Man Called Deng Majok: A Biography of Power, Polygyny and Change Frontiers of Unity: An Experiment in Afro-Arab Cooperation Customary Law in the Modern World: The Cross-Fire in Sudan’s War of Identity

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Blood of Two Streams: Gender Balance in Parental Legacy Abyei between the Two Sudans

National Recollections of Babo Nimir Dynamics of Identification: A Basis for National Integration Peace and Unity in the Sudan: An African Achievement African-Arab Cooperation in the Sudan Preventive Diplomacy: The Case of the Sudan Diplomacy and Development in the Sudan Seed of Redemption: A political Novel Cry of the Owl: A Novel Partners for Peace: An Initiative with General Obasanjo The Search for Peace and Unity in the Sudan Famine Relief in the Sudan: The Paradoxes of Emergency Operations Their Brothers’ Keepers: Report of the IGAD Resource Persons Bonds of Silk: The Human Factor in the British Administration in the Sudan War of Visions: Conflict of Identities in the Sudan New Sudan in the Making? Sudan at the Brink: Self-determination and National Unity Bound by Conflict: Dilemma of the Two Sudans Reflections on the National Dialogue Visitations: Conversations with the Ghost of the Chairman

Regional Conflict Resolution in Africa Human Rights in Africa: A Cross-Cultural Perspective Sovereignty and Responsibility: Conflict Management in Africa African Reckoning: A Quest for Good Governance Strategic Vision for Africa: The Kampala Movement Identity, Diversity and Constitutionalism for Africa Self-determination and National Unity: A Challenge for Africa

Global Protecting the Dispossessed: A Challenge for the International Community Masses in Flight: The Global Crisis of Internal Displacement Forsaken People: Case Studies in Internal Displacement Idealism and my Realism: Negotiating Sovereignty in Divided Nations

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NOTE 1. An earlier version of this chapter was published in Deng, Daniel, and Kuol, Luka. Journeys across the Invisibile Bridge: Ideas of Francis Mading Deng. Detcro, Jan. 4, 2019.

REFERENCES “Confronting the Threat of Blindness.” 2016. Testimonial by Francis M. Deng to the Glaucoma Foundation, June 9, 2016. “Southern Sudan within a New Sudan.” 2005. A Concept Paper for a Policy Meeting, Cape Town, November 14–15, 2005.

Index

Page numbers followed with “n” refer to endnotes. Abadamak, 36–37 Aba Island Declaration, 239–40 Abbakar, al-Nur Osman, 121 Abbas, Amal, 80 Abdalla, Arafat Mohamed, 30, 120 Abdalla, Mahasien Zien Al-Abdeen, 267, 279n10 Abdal-Rahim, Muddathir, 116 Abdel, Salam A. H., 175 Abdel Hafeez, Khalda M., 276 Abdin, Abd al-Majid, 123 Aboud, Ibrahim, 34, 81, 82, 85 Aboush, Mohamed Awad, 30, 32 Abulela, Mustafa, 157, 158 Abu Salim, Muhammad Ibrahim, 21 academics, 134, 135, 138, 144, 146 ACs. See administrative committees (ACs) activism: and resistance, 218, 228–29; youth, 214–16, 218 Adams, William, 96, 106, 124–26 administrative committees (ACs), 137, 145 AEW. See Association of Educated Women (AEW) African-Arabic dualism, 122, 123 Africanization, 289

African south, 86 African women, 264–65 African Women Between Heritage and Modernity (Mahmoud), 86, 264, 267 African Women: Transformation and Development (Mahmoud), 264 Afro-Arabism, 37, 105 Agoba, Mukhtar, 21 Ahfad Journal: Women and Change, 157 Ahfad University for Women (AUW), 153, 156; advocacy activities, 167; civic engagement, 166–67; collaboration, 167; Conflict and Peace Studies, 162; curriculum development with other universities, 161–62; Gender, Peace, and Media course, 163; Global Challenges in the 21st Century, 162–63; graduates of gender studies, 160–61; Identity and Multiculturalism course, 163; issue of feminism, 154; knowledge of gender and feminism, 156–60; PhD program, 160; Policy and Project Management course, 163; Population Education program, 158; research projects, 163–66; Rural Extension 305

306

program, 158; scholarship program, 160; special chair for research on women’s issues, 157, 166; students’ research on women’s issues, 158; teaching method, 163; training courses, 167; women’s and gender studies, 153–55, 157–60; Women’s Studies program, 158 Ahmad, Muhammad, 23 Ahmadi, Hala Al, 268, 279n12 Ahmed, Mawahib, 267, 272 Ahmed, Suad Ibrahim, 75–77, 265, 275; contribution to the arts, 84; critics on democratic centralism, 85; democratic opposition to Ingaz regime, 89–90; early political awakening of: (arrest and imprisonment, 82; Sawt al-Mar’a (Women’s Voice), 80; Sudanese Women’s Union, 78–80; University of Khartoum Students’ Union, 81; Wadi Halfa flooding, 81–82); educational policy, 82–84, 89; Extramural Studies, 82–84; gender consciousness, 86–88; “Nubian/ Arab” north and African south conflict, 86; Nubian language skills, 86; as political and public intellectual, 84; (April 1985 Revolutions, 85; October 1964 Revolution, 85–86; women’s rights, 85); publishing company, 89; reminiscing: (by Suliman, Azza Mohamed, 91–92; by Suliman, Mohamed, 90–91); as revolutionary democrat, 75; as socialist feminist, 86–88; social media use, 88; The Woman’s Voice, 75 al-Abdin, Ahmed al-Tayyib Zein, 127 al-Adab al-Sudani wa ma yajib an yakun alaihi (Sudanese Literature and the Way It Should Be, Tambal), 117 al-Afendia, 25, 27 Alam, Mohd Manzoor, 254

Index

Al-Anṣār, 241, 246, 253, 255, 256n20 al-Attas, Sayyed Mohammed Naquib, 143, 149n16 al-Azhar, 22 al-Azhari, Ismail, 33, 35 al-Banna, Hassan, 31 al-Bashir, Omer Hassan, ix, x, 11, 40, 44, 95, 134, 217, 223, 229 al’dawa al-shamila (Comprehensive Call), 42 al-Fagar, 30 al-Fajr, 120 Al-Fārābi, Abū Naṣr, 251, 252 al-Faruqi, Ismaʽil, 149n16 “Al-Firqa Al-Nājia,” 248 al-Gadi, Mohamed Osman, 31 al-Ghaba wa al-Sahra’ School, 121–22 Al-Ghazali, Imam Abu Ḥāmid, 251–52 Alhadi, Mahadi Mustafa, 198 al-Hai, Mohamed Abd, 121 Al-Hassan, Nahid Muhammad, 250, 251, 253 Al-ͨIbādāt (Al-Mahdi), 239 Ali, Ḥaydar I., 238, 241, 248, 253 Ali, Haydar Ibrahim, 31, 40–44 Ali, Nada Mustafa, 272, 280n17 Alier, Abel, 35 al-Islamoy, 43 Al-Karib, ͨAasha, 246, 253 al-Khalifa, 24, 26 Al-Khanji, Abdel Rahman, 25, 26 al-Khatmiya (National Unionist Party), 31 al-Kid, Khalid, 26–27 Al-Kindi, Abū Yusuf, 251 al-Latif, Ali Abd, 116 All Nuba Tribes Conferences in Kauda, 178–79 Al-Mahdi, Al-Ṣādiq, 237; Al-ͨIbādāt (Al-Mahdi) (Al-Mahdi), 239; award-worthy achievements, 254; Challenges of the Nineties, 245; classification, 253–54; as emergence of an intellect, 238–40; ethics, 252; gender agenda, 249–51; as

Index

higher ranks of religious reformers, 254; Human is the Edifice of God, 246; impact, 254; influences, 253; Islamic philosophy, 251–52; Islamic renaissance. See Islamic renaissance; knowledge, 252–53; Modern Calls, 246; “the Other Islamic View,” 250; philosophy, 251; Religion and Philosophy (Al-Mahdi), 251; social justice, 247; “Southern Sudan problem” (Al-Mahdi), 240; support for women’s rights, 249–51; Uncle Sam: Deaf or Listening, 245; Women’s Rights in Islam, 249 al-Mahdi, al-Sadiq, 33, 34, 38, 39 al-Mahdi, Mohamed Ahmed, 23 al-Mahdia, 21–25 al-Mahi, al-Tigani, 34, 50n21 al-Majdhub, Muhammed M., 101 al-Malik, Nafisa, 29, 78–79, 92n4 Al-Mubārak, Sheikh Muḥammad, 239 al-Mubark, Khalid, 100 al-mufasala (the separation), 41 Al Mujamar, Siham, 270 al-Nur, Osama Abd al-Rahman, 127 Al-Rasheed, Ameena, 273, 280n18 al-Salahi, Ibrahim, 122 Al-Sarrāj, Sheik, 238 al-Sawdana (Sudanization), 33–34, 37 Al-Ṣāwi, ͨAbdel-ͨAziz Ḥussein, 253 Al-Shūsh, M. I., 248 Al-Ṣiddīg, Imam, 239, 242 al-Siddiq, Mohammed Ashri, 30, 117, 127 al-Tahir, al-Fatih, 122, 123 al-tawheed (monotheism), 42 Altay, Can, 222 Altayeb, Altayeb Mohamed, 48n3 al-Turabi, Hassan, 11, 34, 39–43, 104, 175, 250 al-uruba (Arabism), 116 Al-Zaeem Azhari University, 162 Annan, Kofi, 297 Ansar sects, 139 April 1985 Revolutions, 85

307

Arab, 70; education, 99–102; genealogies, 118; genealogies writing, 114–15; identity, 100; migration, 114, 118, 123; nationalism, 38 Arabic descent, 119, 120 Arabicization of curricula, 143 Arabic language, 20–21, 119–23, 228 Arabic-speaking Sudanese, identity of, 111–14 Arab-Islamic agenda, 64 Arab-Islamic identity, 67, 140 Arab-Islamism, 27 Arabism, 66, 289, 290 Arabization, 43, 104–6, 113–15, 118– 20, 122, 125, 126, 291 Arabized Nubians, 118 Arabized Sudanese, 118 Arab Muslim conquest, 106 Arabness, 62, 289 Arab phobia, 99 The Arabs and the Sudan (1967, Hasan), 118 archaeology and Sudanese history, 123–26 Arkel, A. J., 124 Arman, Yasir, 39 armed confrontation, 71, 73 Arnold, Thomas, 103 art, 36–37 asa’la, 51n40 Ashiga, 31 Assaulting with Words (1994, Ibrahim), 97 assimilation, 62 Association of Educated Women (AEW), 28–29 Association of Women Preferment (1949), 29 Ati, Hassan Abdel, 175 AUW. See Ahfad University for Women (AUW) ͨAwaḍ, Rasha, 242, 253 Awadeya Koko’s story, 191–92, 195–209; becoming a woman

308

Index

of courage, 203–4; challenges, 201–5; establishing the cooperative associations, 199–201; experience with market, 198; imprisonment, 201–2; life, 196–97; NGO Intervention, 198–99; as organic intellectuals, 206–7; struggling for political recognition, 197; Woman of Courage Award, 203–4 Babiker Badri Scientific Association for Women’s Studies (BBSAWS), 157 Badri, Babikir, 34, 50n22 Badri, Haja Kashif, 28 Badri, Yousif, 157, 159 Bakhiet, Gaafar, 38 Bakht al-Rudha, 30, 34 Bakra, Abu, 249 Ban Ki-Moon, 297 Basher, Mohamed Omer, 22, 31 Bashir, al-Tigani Yousif, 30 Basmati fi rasmati (“my smile is in my painting”), 226 bastardization, 96, 97 Bayat, Asef, 216, 219; quiet encroachment, 216 BBSAWS. See Babiker Badri Scientific Association for Women’s Studies (BBSAWS) Berger, Peter, 245 Bhabha, Homi: concept of hybridity, 127n1; “resemblance and menace,” 99 bigotry, 104–6; racial, 95, 98 Black Lives Matter, 47 Blackness, 100 Black Sudanese, 140, 141 Bound by Conflict: Dilemmas of the Two Sudan (Deng), 71, 293 bourgeoisie, 263 Bushra, Mohammed al-Mahdi, 37 Calamity in the Sudan: Civilian Versus Military Rule (Mahmoud), 264, 280n20 Calvinism, 242

campus politics, 218–19 Candaca, 266, 279n8 capitalism, 88 Carmichael, Stockley, 103 Ceasefire Agreement of 2002, 175, 178–79 CEDAW, 88, 159, 249 Challenges of the Nineties (Al-Mahdi), 245 Chomsky, Noam, 276, 277 Cieng, 284–86 civic engagement of AUW, 166–67 “Civilizational Project,” 42 Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), 176 civil society peace initiatives, 175–76, 180 civil war, 32, 37, 39, 86, 95, 98, 99, 102, 221, 291, 293; North-South civil war, 15n3, 38 class, 206–7, 209n2 classical Arabic, 20n5 collective effervescence, 215, 220 colonial educational policies, 139–40 colonialism, 24–25 colonial period 1898–1956, 138–41 common identity, 62 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), 44, 175–77, 188n2, 215–16, 292–93, 295 Condominium agreement, 23, 48n8 conflict transformation, 174 consociationalism, 248 constitutionalism, 296–97 constructive management of diversity, 288, 294–95 contemporary Sudanese thought, 20; al-Mahdia and al-Azhar, 21–22; Arabic and Sufism, 20–21 Contesting the Interim National Constitution of Sudan (of 2005), 165 CPA. See Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) Crehan, Kate, 207 Cry of the Owl (Deng), 63

Index

CSOs. See Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) cultural Arabization, 118, 119, 123 “Cute Cat Theory of Digital Activism” (Zuckerman), 222–23 Daly, Martin, 107 Damin, Samirah Musa Armin, 188n2 December 2018 Revolution, 44–45, 136, 255, 266; neighborhood committees, 229, 231; politics and ideas, 229–30; resistance committees, 229–31 decolonization, 34 “Defense of Democracy Charter” (1985), 39 de-Islamization of universities, 146, 147 democratic centralism, 85, 275 Democratic Front, 83 Denazification, 45 Deng, Francis M., 283; Bound by Conflict: Dilemmas of the Two Sudan, 71, 293; bridgebuilding approach, 299–300; constitutionalism, 296–97; constructive management of diversity, 288, 294–95; criticism for, 298–300; Dinka’s universal values: Cieng and Dheeng, 284–86; diversity, 296, 297; dynamics of identification, 288–91, 298; Dynamics of Identification: A Basis for National Integration in the Sudan, 289; genocide prevention, 298; “Idealism and Realism: Negotiating Sovereignty in Divided Nations,” 298; idealism with realism, 298; identity, 290, 296–97; “Invisible Bridge” concept, 284, 286, 288, 295, 300–301; “making unity attractive” concept, 292; The Man Called Deng Majok, 284–85; national foreign policy, 293; New Sudan vision, 291– 95, 299; “One Sudan, Two Systems,” 290, 292, 295; publishing, 283–84; sovereignty as responsibility, 294,

309

297–98; tradition and modernization, 287–88; transitional integration, 287–88; as UN representative, 297–98; War of Visions: Conflict of Identities in the Sudan, 291–93 Dheeng, 284–86 Diamond, Larry, “the ideological marketplace,” 229 digitalization of politics, 225 Dinka, 288, 295, 299; universal values: Cieng and Dheeng, 284–86 Diouf, Mamadou, 193, 206 discrimination, 61, 66, 71, 140 diversity, x, 61–62, 289–93, 296–98, 300; constructive management of, 288, 294–95 Durkheim, Emile, 215; collective effervescence, 215, 220 dynamics of identification, 288–91, 298 Dynamics of Identification: A Basis for National Integration in the Sudan (Deng), 60, 289 ECs. See epistemic communities (ECs) education, 43, 44, 217; Arab, 99– 102; policy, 139, 143–44; racial preferences, 140; religious, 139, 144; secular, 138–39, 142, 144 Education without Borders (EwB), 214, 216–19; activities, 226; community mobilization, 226; crowd-funding, 226; Facebook campaign, 224–26; functionality, 226–27; goals of, 226; macro politics, 226–27; politics of Hope, 225–26; as social change movement, 227 Egyptian revolution of 1919, 25–26 el-Affendi, Abdelwahab, 41 El-Battahani, Atta, 46, 47 El-Garrai, Omer, 23 El-Gizoli, Magdi, 230 el-Hassan, Idris Salem, 9 El-Hassan, Nahid Mohamed, 21, 22 ElKhalifa, Magzoob, 204 El Salahi, Ibrahim, 36–37

310

Eltayeb, Abdalla, 83 epistemic communities (ECs), 137–38, 142; constrained, 145–46 epistemological pluralism, 134, 141, 145, 146 equality, 64; gender, x, 159, 249, 269; New Sudan Vision of, 74 ethnic diversity, 293 ethnic genocide, 280n20 EwB. See Education without Borders (EwB) extermination, 65 Facebook, 223–26 Faḍul, Yusuf, 256n13 Fanon, Frantz, 100 Feelab, 31, 49n16 feminism, 88, 154, 162, 266; gender and, 156–60; Western, 36, 79, 86, 87, 162, 264, 265, 268 Foucault’s power/biopower, 216 Frank, Andre Gunder, 263 Free Southerners Party, 31 funding for research, 145 GAG. See Gender and Governance (GAG) Gaining Knowledge through Civic Engagement, 166 Gallab, Abdullahi, 41–42 Garang, John Dr., xii, 38, 39, 43, 44, 127, 291–96 Garang, Joseph, 35, 86 Gazeira University, 162 gender: equality, x, 159, 249, 269; and feminism, 156–60; identities, 163; justice, 268 Gender and Governance (GAG), 160 Gender and Reproductive Health and Rights Resource and Advocacy Centre (GRACe), 160 Gender Mainstreaming in Sudanese Universities, 164 Gender Multiculturalism and Migration Studies (GMMS), 160

Index

gender studies in AUW, 153–55, 157– 60; graduates of, 160–62; need for women and, 155–56 genocide prevention, 298 Girifna, 88, 92n8, 214, 216–19, 221–22. See also Education without Borders (EwB); Demands of a Nation, 221; institutionalization, 223–24; non-hierarchal structure, 223–24; non-violence discourse, 221–22; “A Non-Violent Resistance Movement to Overthrow the NCP,” 223; nonviolent strategies, 221; political identities, 224; political messages, 222; as political movement, 227; politicizing the public sphere, 222– 23; security concerns, 222; social media and, 222–23 Giugni, Macro, 221 global intellectuals, context of, 8–9 GMC. See Gordon Memorial College (GMC) GMMS. See Gender Multiculturalism and Migration Studies (GMMS) GNU. See Government of National Unity (GNU) Gordon College, 193 Gordon Memorial College (GMC), 138–40 governance, 293, 294, 296 Government of National Unity (GNU), 248, 293 GRACe. See Gender and Reproductive Health and Rights Resource and Advocacy Centre (GRACe) Graduates Congress, 28 Gramsci, Antonio, 8, 9; organic intellectual, xi, 193, 207 Gusi foundation, 254 Haas, Peter, 137 HAC. See Humanitarian Aid Commission (HAC) Ḥadīth, 249 Haraway, Donna, 208

Index

Ḥasan, Yusuf Fadl, 118, 254 Hashim, Mohamed Jalal Ahmed, 23, 37, 45 Hatata, Sharif, 275 Hawa Ali Albaseer, 158 Heiban Association, 177–78, 183 Hemedti, 45 The Heroic Age in Sinnar (Spaulding), 124 Heydemann, Steven, 145 higher education, 192–94 A History of the Arabs in the Sudan (1967 [1922], MacMichael), 117 A History of the Sudan (Holt), 118 Holt, P. M., 117–18 Housing Policies in Sudan: The Predicament and the Way Out (Mahmoud), 266–67 Ḥudūd, 243 Human is the Edifice of God (Al-Mahdi), 246 Humanitarian Aid Commission (HAC), 226 human rights, 26, 43, 44, 47, 61, 69, 85, 88, 159, 254, 276, 277; principles, 246; violations of, 41, 84 Hurreiz, Sayyid, 118 hybrid identity, 37, 98–99 hybridity, Northern Sudanese (NS), 97–99, 102, 107, 118, 120, 126 ‘Ibn Sīnā, Abu ͨAli, 251, 252 Ibrahim, Abdullahi Ali, 22, 33, 34, 38 Ibrahim, Fatima Ahmed, 29, 35–36 Ibrahim, Hassan Ahmed, 244, 248, 249 Ibrahim, Mohamed al-Makki, 117, 121 Ibrahim, Mohammed El-Makki, xi, 20–22, 24, 32, 37, 48n5 Ibrahim, Salah Ahmad, 100, 123 Ibrahim, Ṭaha, 250–51 ideal intellectual, 8 ideas and conflicts, 30–32 identity, xii, 21, 27, 37, 60–63, 66, 286; conflicts, 289, 290, 292–94, 297; debate, 146; dynamics of,

311

288–91, 298; and modernity, 244–46; multilayered crisis of, 292; of Northern Sudanese (NS), 103; politics, 289, 290; problems, 112–13; question of, 111, 112, 114, 116 Ideological trends in the Sudanese Women’s Movement (2008, Mahmoud), 79 IDPs. See Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) IFAA. See Institute for African Alternatives (IFAA) Ijtihad, 41, 239, 245 immigration, 126 inclusivity of identity, 61 Ingaz/Inqaz regime, 40–43, 45–47, 59n35, 75, 86–90, 92n1, 133, 135, 136, 138, 142–47, 250, 255; education policy, 143–44; Islamic feminism, 87; Islamism, 255; and Islamization of Knowledge, 143–46; policy, 88 Institute for African Alternatives (IFAA), 264, 275, 278n5, 280n19 Institute of Women, Gender and Development Studies (IWGDS), 159–60 institutionalization, Girifna, 223–24 intellectual hubs, 27–28, 49n11 intellectualism, 191, 193–94 intellectuals, xi, 135, 146, 192–94; organic, xi, 8, 9, 23, 37, 47, 193–94, 206–8, 254 Intellectual Trends in the Sudanese Women Movement (Mahmoud), 265, 266 Inter-Communal Conflicts in Sudan, 164 intermarriages, 96 Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), 297 Intifada 1985, 39–40 “Invisible Bridge” concept, 284, 286, 288, 295 Islam, 11, 21, 22, 25, 29, 34, 60, 66, 68, 96, 99, 102, 104, 114, 117, 123, 126,

312

Index

127, 134, 135, 142, 146, 241–45, 252, 254, 274, 289–90; political, 38– 45, 88, 127, 134, 135, 148, 148n9, 149n16, 218 Islam and Secularism (1978, al-Attas), 149n16 Islamic Charter Front, 36 Islamic feminism, 87 “Islamic Front against Colonialism” (1947), 31 Islamic fundamentalist ideology, 87 Islamic governance, 43 Islamic ideology, 145 Islamic modernism, 27 Islamic philosophy, 251–52 Islamic renaissance: dialectics between identity and modernity, 244–46; implementation of Shariᶜa, 242–44; Mahdism, 240–42 Islamic society, 43 Islamic Sufi Brotherhoods, 123 Islamist academics, 145 Islamists “educational” project, 44 Islamization, 43, 105, 106, 113, 114, 118–19, 125, 126, 244, 291; of Knowledge, 135, 142–46, 147nn8–9, 149n16; (Inqaz regime and, 143–46; institutions for, 143–44; roots of, 142–43) Islamophobia, 99 Islamoy, 40 Islamy, 40 IWGDS. See Institute of Women, Gender and Development Studies (IWGDS) Jabir, Gum’a, 122–23 Jādēn, M. A., 243 Jallaba, 46, 51n50 jariyah (slave girl), 102 jihad, 42, 241, 245 Kapteijns, Lidwien, 124 Kelley, Robin, 227 Khalid, Mansour, 33–35, 38–41

Khalil, Abdalla, 34 khalwas, 139 Khartoum School of Art, 36, 122 Khartoum University College (KUC), 139 Khatmiyya sects, 139 Khier, Ahmed, 26, 28, 32 Khuldūn, Ibn, 241 Kisha, Sulaiman, 116 knowledge, 154, 252–53; production, 134–37, 144, 146 KUC. See Khartoum University College (KUC) Kuhn, Thomas, 144 language, 227–28 Latif, Ali Abdel, 63, 72, 243 Laws on Adolescents Rights and Gender Based Violence—2004, 165 “leap generation,” 26 liberation movement, 60 The Location of Culture (1994, Bhabha), 127 MacMichael, H. A., 117 MacMichael, Harold, 103 macro-politics, 185 Madani, Al-Amin Ali, 117 Mahdism, 237, 240–42 Mahgoub, Mohamed Ahmed, 29–34 Mahjub, Abdel Khaliq, 11–12, 17n30, 103 Mahmoud, Fatima Babiker, 21, 22, 33, 35, 36, 41, 91, 92, 261–62; academic and community activism, 273–77; African Women Between Heritage and Modernity, 86, 264, 267; African Women: Transformation and Development (Mahmoud), 264; “Building a Pan African Women’s Movement,” 269; Calamity in the Sudan: Civilian Versus Military Rule, 264, 280n20; feminism, 264–65; feminist activism, 268, 272, 274–76; Housing Policies in Sudan:

Index

The Predicament and the Way Out, 266–67; intellectual activism, 275; intellectual contributions, 262–69, 276, 277; Intellectual Trends in the Sudanese Women Movement, 265–66; mentorship, 271–72; political activism, 274–75; as progressive leftist, 270; publications, 261, 263; Sex and Sexuality and the Exploitation of Sudanese Women, 265–66; social and gender justice, 268; students’ activism, 274; The Sudanese Bourgeoisie: Vanguard of Development?, 263; as a teacher, 269–73; womanism, 265; works personally inspired by, 267 Majok, Deng, 287, 294, 300 “making unity attractive” concept, 292 Makki, Zainab, 200 “the malaise of the ummah,” 149 The Man Called Deng Majok (Deng), 284–85 Manichaean Delirium (Ibrahim), 97 Manwal, Bona, 86 Marxism, 8, 36, 91; colonial, 103 masids, 139 Masters on Gender and Development (GAD), 159 “May Revolution,” 37–39 Mazrui, Ali, 106 McAdam, Doug, 218, 221 McCarthy, John D., 221 Mekkai, Zienab, 210n5 “Me Too,” 47 micro-politics, 218, 219 Middle Nile Valley, 125 migrants, 176–77 migration, 176, 290 mitlussiq, 113 Modern Calls (Al-Mahdi), 246 modernity, identity and, 244–46 Modesto, Joseph, 86 monopoly of power, 64 Moroccan Family Code, 249 Muhammad, Ahmad al-Awad, 34

313

Muslim Arabs, 96, 104, 106, 118; hegemonic ideology, 181 Muslim Brotherhood, 31, 40, 83, 84, 87, 142 Muslim education, 99–102 Muslim Women’s Experiences, 164 “Mustagleen,” 81 mutaween, 42 National Congress Party (NCP), 179, 219, 221 National Democratic Alliance (NDA), 43–44 national identity, 26, 33, 66, 68, 84, 283, 291 National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS), 219 National Islamic Front (NIF), 39, 243, 248 National Islamic Students Movement, 219 nationalism, 27 nationalism education, 103–7 National Reconciliation in 1977, 38 Native Administration, 177, 188n3 Nayel, A. A., 207 NCP. See National Congress Party (NCP) NDA. See National Democratic Alliance (NDA) neighborhood committees, 229, 231 neoliberalism, 213 neo-Mahdism, 237 new intellectuals, 25–27 “New Sudan Vision,” 38, 61, 64–69, 71–72, 74, 291–95, 299 Nezam al-Tawaly al-Syiasi (political power transfer system), 43 NGOs, 69, 198–99 Niblock, Tim, 115 NIF. See National Islamic Front (NIF) Nimieri, Jaffer (Gaafar) Muhammad, 11–12, 37–38, 141, 142, 197, 243, 247, 248, 279n14, 291 NISS. See National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS)

314

Index

non-discrimination, 64 “A Non-Violent Resistance Movement to Overthrow the NCP,” 223 Norman Conquest of England, 106 Northern Sudanese (NS), 95, 96; as Afro-Arabs, 102; ancestry of, 96; Arab and Muslim education, 99–102; Black, 99, 101; Brown, 101; concept of, 96–97; cultural identity, 100; culture, 105, 120; elite politics, 107; hybridity, 97–99, 102, 107, 118, 120, 126; identity, 99–103, 107; (academic discourses, 117–20; al-Fajr magazine, 120; al-Ghaba wa al-Sahra’ School, 121–22; art, 122–23; cultural, 120–23; history and archaeology, 123–26; history discourse, 117–19; linguistic factor, 119–20; music, 122–23); as land of the Blacks, 101; nationalism education, 103–7; peace agreement, 107; race and culture, 107; racial bigotry, 98; racial history, 103; racial identity, 100; racial origin, 105; Western education, 102–3; Whiteness, 99–100, 102, 105 North-South civil war/conflict, 15n3, 38, 290–92 Nour, Moawia Mohamed, 31 NS. See Northern Sudanese (NS) Nuba Mountains, 174, 178; forced and voluntary migration, 176; migrants, 176–77; peace-building initiatives in, 174–79, 186–87; (Ceasefire Agreement of 2002, 175, 178, 179; conferences, 180; health workers for, 183–86; ideas and practices, 179–86; knowledge and practices, 185; phases, 179; representatives, 182; team leader for, 181–83); return migration to, 188n2 “Nubian/Arab” north, 86 Nubian archaeological history, 125–26 Nubian language, 86 Nyabola, Nanjala, 225

Obeid, Mahjoub, 143 October 1964 Revolution, 34–36, 85–86 Oelofsen, 195 O’Fahey, Rex S., 114, 115 offline activism, 228, 229. See also online activism Oliver, Pamela E., 221 “One Sudan, Two Systems,” 290, 292, 295 online activism, 224–25, 228–29 organic intellectual, xi, 8, 9, 23, 37, 47, 193–94, 206–8, 254 organic intellectualism, 208 organized resistance, 217 Originalization of Knowledge, 143 Pan-African Women’s Liberation Organization (PAWLO), 264 “Paradigms in Sudan Archaeology” (Adams), 124 Passy, Florence, 221 patriarchy, 34, 79, 84, 87, 88, 191–92, 194, 262, 265, 271, 273, 275 PAWLO. See Pan-African Women’s Liberation Organization (PAWLO) peace-building, 173–74; All Nuba Tribes Conferences in Kauda, 178– 79; civil society initiatives, 175–76; initiatives: (health workers, 183–86; ideas and practices, 179–86; in Nuba Mountains, 174–79, 186–87; phases, 179; team leaders, 181–83) peace-fortifying, 179 The Phoenix State (Abdel and Waal), 175 political conflicts, 179 political identities, Girifna, 224 political Islam, 38–45, 88, 127, 134, 135, 148, 218; al-Turabi, Hassan, 41–42; December 2018 Revolution, 44–45; Islamists’ ideas and pedagogy, 42–43; opposition and resistance, 43–44 political liberalism, 141

Index

political movement, 227 political polarization, 135, 141, 145 Population Education program of AUW, 158 postcolonial feminism, 36 “postcolonial paradigm,” 124 post-December 2018 Uprising, 262 post-independence years (1956-1989), 32–33, 141–42, 145; art and identity, 36–37; four seasons of May regime, 37–39; 1985 Intifada, 39–40; revolution and rebellion, 34–36; state formation and Sudanization, 33–34 “pragmatic jurisprudence,” 22 public intellectuals, 8, 47 quiet encroachment, 216 quota adoption, 165 the Quota in Sudanese Electoral Law: Achievements, Challenges and Lessons Learned, 165 Quran, 20, 241, 249; Sultan doctrine, 23 Rabi, Abu, 254 racial bigotry, 95, 98 racial divides, 140 racial inequalities, 70 racialization, 97 racial preferences in education, 140 racism, 47 radical Islam, 135 Regional Institute of Gender, Diversity, Peace and Rights (RIGDPR), 160, 161, 166, 167; challenges, 168–69 religion/religious, 68, 87–88, 119, 120; bigotry, 39; education, 139, 144; Islamic education, 139; nationalism, 103–4 Republican Brotherhood, 31 research, funding for, 145 researchers, 135, 138, 144 research projects of AUW, 163–66 resistance: and activism, 218, 228–29; against Islamist ideology, 216–17;

315

social and political, 217; theorizing, 216–19 resistance committees, 229–31 Revolution of 1924, 25–27, 32, 117, 127 Revolution of Higher Education, 135, 143, 144, 192 RIGDPR. See Regional Institute of Gender, Diversity, Peace and Rights (RIGDPR) Rish an-Na’am (1977, al-Mubark), 100 Rural Extension program of AUW, 158 Rushd, Ibn, 252 Said, Edward, 8, 262 Salafi, 22, 36, 41 Salam, Abdel, 239 Salih, Teyib, 100 Satti, Nouraldeen, 127 Sawt al-Mar’a (Women’s Voice), 29, 80 scholarship program, 160 School of Rural Extension, Education and Development (REED), 159 Scott, James, 215 SCP. See Sudanese Communist Party (SCP) SDA. See Sudanese Association for Development (SDA) “Second Message of Islam” (Taha), 39 sectarian chauvinism, 39 secular education, 138–39, 142, 144 secular educational institutions, 139 Seed of Redemption (Deng), 63 self-identification, 289 Self-initiative for Dialogue, Reconciliation, Peace and Development, 182 Sen, Amartya, 219 separation, 65; of religion and state, 66, 68 “September Sharia laws,” 38, 39, 243 September 2013 Uprising, 219, 226–27 Sex and Sexuality and the Exploitation of Sudanese Women (Mahmoud), 265–66 sexism, 47

316

Index

shared identity, 62 Shariᶜa, 242–44, 246, 249 Shari’alhawadith (“Emergency Street”), 220, 232n8 Sharif, Mahjoub, 44 Sharif, Mariam, 177 Sharkey, Heather, 140 Shawgab, 31, 49n16 Shinnie, Peter, L., 124 Shubuhat hawl al-Islam (False Accusation Directed at Islam), 104 shura (consultation), 43 Siddiq, Abd al-Hadi, 123 SIHA. See Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa (SIHA) Simone, Maliqalm, 107 slavery, 102–4 social justice, 241, 246, 247, 268 social media, 222–25, 227–29 social movements, 217–18, 227 sociolinguistics, 228 “Southern Problem,” 34–35, 38 Southern Sudanese, 96, 97, 103, 104, 107. See also Northern Sudanese (NS) “Southern Sudan problem” (Al-Mahdi), 240 South Sudan, 7, 42, 64, 86, 293; emergence of, xii sovereignty as responsibility, 294, 297–98 SPA. See Sudanese Professional Association (SPA) Spaulding, Jay, 48n5, 114, 124, 126 SPLA. See Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) SPLM. See Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) state formation, 33–34 Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa (SIHA), 202–3 student movements, 218, 219 student politics, 218–19

Sudan, 293; context of, 4–8; culture and history, xi; division of, xii; higher education, 192–94; intellectual women in, 194; popular Revolution in, ix–xii; youth movements in, 220 Sudanese Arab, 37 Sudanese Association for Development (SDA), 198–200 The Sudanese Bourgeoisie: Vanguard of Development? (Mahmoud), 263 Sudanese Communist Party (SCP), 11, 274, 275 “Sudanese Front against Colonialism” (1946), 31 Sudanese history/historiography, 118, 122, 123; archaeology and, 123–26; Orientalist paradigm, 125 Sudanese intellectuals, 4–8 Sudanese music, 122–23 “Sudanese Muslim Private Affairs Law,” 249 Sudanese nationalism, 27, 126 Sudanese nationalist movement, 115–17 Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), 39 Sudanese Professional Association (SPA), 45 Sudanese thought, Condominium era (1899-1956), 23–24; colonial context, 24–25; ideas and conflicts, 30–32; intellectuals’ hubs, 27–28; new intellectuals, 25–27; women organizing, 28–30 Sudanese Women’s Awareness of their Constitutional Rights, 164–65 Sudanese women’s movement, 35–36, 40 Sudanese Women’s Strategies, 164 Sudanese Women’s Union (SWU), 29–30, 36, 40, 78–80, 85, 272, 274, 275 “Sudan for the Sudanese,” 27, 33, 35 Sudanism, 27, 39, 61, 100, 105, 126–27 Sudanization, 33–34, 37

317

Index

Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), 291 Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), 44, 178, 179, 291, 295 “Sudan Problem,” 38, 45 Sufi Islam/Sufism, 21, 22, 68 Sufi tradition, 9, 22, 146 Suliman, Mohamed, 271 Sunnah, 241 Sunni, 22, 241 Sunni-Shiͨi, 246 SWU. See Sudanese Women’s Union (SWU) Syndicalism, 240 system of governance, 24, 293–94 Taha, Mahmoud Mohamed, 11, 38–39, 49n19, 250 Taleb, Fatima, 28 Talking Empowerment in Arabic—2007–2008, 165 Tambal, Hamza al-Malik, 30, 117, 127 tariqas, 139 Tarrow, Sidney, 218 tasgut bas, 44, 45 Taylor, Charles, 245 tea ladies, 195. See also Awadeya Koko’s story Thawrat al-Zanj (Negro Revolt), 102 Thomas, Graham, 238 Tilly, Charles, 217–18 transitional integration, 287–88 Trigger, Bruce, 124, 125 Turco-Egyptian system, 26 Ulama, 22 Ummah, 31, 242, 254 Umma Party, 31, 33, 239, 243, 253 Uncle Sam: Deaf or Listening (Al-Mahdi), 245 “United National Front,” 38 unity, 64, 67, 68, 70, 290–93, 295, 299 “Unity of the Nile Valley,” 33 University of Khartoum (UofK), 133, 139, 156, 193; academics and

researchers, 135; challenges, 133, 135; colonial period 1898–1956, 139– 40; knowledge production, 133; postindependence 1956–1989, 141–42 Vezzadini, Elena, 140 Waal, Alex de, 175 Wad Dhaifallah, Sheikh Muhammad al-Nur, 20, 48n4 Wadi Halfa flooding, 81–82 Walker, Alice, 278 War of Visions: Conflict of Identities in the Sudan (Deng), 291–93 war-peace continuum, 187 Warrāg, Al-Ḥāj, 242, 246, 247, 254 Wd Taktook, al-Sheikh Farah, 48n3 Weber, Max, 242 West Africans, 96 Western education, 102–3, 134, 143 Western feminism, 36, 79, 86, 87, 162, 264, 265, 268 Westminster parliament model, 38 When Peace Comes (Ajawin and Waal), 175 White education, 100–102, 105 White Flag Association, 215 Whiteness, 97, 99–100, 102, 105 Wiltfang, Gregory L., 221 woman: exclusion, 193, 194; liberation, 87–88; organic intellectual, 194; rights, 85; role of, xii; in Sudan, xii, 195 womanism, 265, 278n6 The Woman’s Voice, 75 Women Activism in Africa 2017, 167 women and gender studies: in AUW, 153–55, 157–60; empowerment, 159, 165; need for, 155–56 Women between al-Asa’la and Modernism (Al-Turabi), 41 Women in Decision Making, 164 Women’s cooperative (1951), 29 Women’s Rights in Islam (Al-Mahdi), 249

318

Women’s Studies program of AUW, 158 Yang, Guobin, 220 youth: activism, 214–16, 218; politics, 218, 219 youth movements, 213–14, 219; EwB. See Education without Borders (EwB); Girifna. See Girifna; in

Index

Sudan, 220; use of social media, 228–29 Zahir, Khalda, 28, 49n13, 78–79, 82, 92n4 Zald, Mayer N., 221 Zar practice, 21, 39n14, 48n6 Ziadeh, May, 250 Zuckerman, Ethan, 222–23

About the Contributors

Sondra Hale, Professor Emerita in Anthropology and Gender Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), is a long-time scholar of the Sudan where she has carried out many research trips from the 1960s until now. She has published widely on the Sudan and Sudanese women, for example, a monograph on Gender Politics in Sudan (1996) has co-edited Sudan’s Killing Fields (2015) as well as essays on gender, ethnicities, class, conflicts, critical pedagogy, and youth. She has contributed dozens of articles, chapters, and encyclopaedia entries on the Sudan and Eritrea, works on global insurrections, and feminist and Sudanese art. More recently she has been publishing with Gada Kadoda, for example, their co-edited book on Networks of Knowledge Production in Sudan (2017). Hale is the co-founder and early co-editor of the Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies. In 2017 she was awarded an Honorary PhD in the Arts from Ahfad University for Women (the Sudan), as well as other awards for teaching and scholarly contributions. Prof. Hale, an activist, is also the co-founder of a number of community and academic organizations, for example, a Founding Member of the International Network on Gender, Social Justice and Praxis and the founder and long-time coordinator of California Scholars for Academic Freedom. Gada Kadoda is founding president and current head of the Board of Directors of the Sudanese Knowledge Society. She is the Sudan’s representative for the Barefoot College, and board member of the International Network on Appropriate Technology. Kadoda has a PhD in Software Engineering (Loughborough University, UK), an MSc in Information Systems and Technology (City University, UK), and a BSc in Computer Science (University of Khartoum, Sudan). Her work experience includes research and teaching posts in the United Kingdom, Barbados, and the Sudan. She 319

320

About the Contributors

has published on software development as well as interdisciplinary areas, for example, Knowledge production, ICT for development, innovation systems, and ethics of appropriate technology, social media, and activism. She is a certified knowledge manager and futures thinking practitioner. Kadoda was 2010’s African Scholar Guest of the Annual Program at the University of South Africa, on UNICEF’s list of nine innovators to watch in 2014; received the Sudanese Women in Science Organization Award in 2015; came fourth in list of “30 Sudanese Women You Should Know” in 2016; selected by BBC for their 100 Women List in 2019; and is one of the pioneering Athena40 Global Women 2020–2021. Mohamed Abusabib is a practicing visual artist and Professor of Aesthetics. He has taught at the College of Fine and Applied Art in Khartoum and at Uppsala University in Sweden. He is the former dean of Khartoum College of Applied Studies and head of the Department of Interior Design at the college. His publications include African Art, an Aesthetic Inquiry (1995, Uppsala University), Art, Politics and Cultural Identification in Sudan (2004, Uppsala University), and Shaiqi Adornmental Tools, a Study in Traditional Aesthetics (in Arabic, 2008, Abdalkareem Mirghani Cultural Centre). He published a number of articles on Sudanese, African, and Islamic aesthetic and cultural issues, and has exhibited his own artwork locally and internationally. Mai Azzam trained as an anthropologist, receiving a Master of Philosophy (M.Phil) degree from the University of Khartoum, the Sudan. She then obtained a Master of Philosophy (M.Phil) degree from the University of Bergen, Norway, in the Anthropology of Development. Mai has worked in research for more than five years in various positions. She is currently a PhD candidate in the Anthropology Department, University of Bayreuth, Germany. She is also a Junior Fellow in Bayreuth International Graduate School for African Studies (BIGSAS). Her research interests include youth, women, religion, and activism. Along with her studies, Mai has also worked in different local NGOs in the Sudan, as a part of attempting to merge academics and activism. This partially grows out of her attempt to reflect her interlocutors’ voices in her writings. She argues that the agency of people should always be shown in the social sciences. Balghis Badri is Director of the Regional Institute of Gender, Diversity, Peace and Rights at Ahfad University for Women, Omdurman, the Sudan. She holds a PhD in Sociology/Social Anthropology from Hull University, UK. She was the founder of Women, Gender, and Development Studies in the Sudan in 1979, and initiated the development of post-graduate programs on Gender and Development, Gender and Peace Studies, Gender, Migration and

About the Contributors

321

Multicultural Studies, and Gender and Governance at Ahfad University. Her most recent publication is Women’s Activism in Africa, co-edited with Aili Tripp (2017). Many others have been published within the Sudan; many in Arabic. Among these are Pathways to the New Constitution in Sudan (2011– 2012); Gender and Diversity (2011–2012), The Impact of the Quota System in Sudan on Enhancing Women´s Political Engagement in Party Politics, 2011–2012; Contesting the Sudanese Constitution from a Good Governance and Gender Dimension (2007–2008); and Inter-Communal Conflict and Traditional Conflict Resolution Mechanisms in Sudan (2005). Dr. Balghis has edited or co-edited numerous others. Francis Mading Deng, currently South Sudan’s Roving Ambassador, is Deputy Rapporteur of the South Sudan National Dialogue. He was the country’s first Permanent Representative to the United Nations. He also served as the UN secretary general’s Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide at the level of under-secretary-general and as the secretary general’s Representative on Internally Displaced Persons. He was the Sudan’s ambassador to Canada, the Nordic Countries, and the United States, and minister of State for Foreign Affairs, as well as holding a series of positions in leading think tanks and universities in the United States. Dr. Deng graduated with an LL.B (honors) from the University of Khartoum and also holds an LL.M and a JSD from Yale University. He has authored and edited over 40 books in a wide variety of fields and has written two novels on the crisis of national identity in the Sudan. Daniel Jok Deng received his BA in Urban Studies from the University of Pennsylvania and later engaged in additional educational programs at the International School in Washington, D.C., the University of Juba, South Sudan, as well as postdoctoral research at the University of Cape Town. He serves as a Technical Advisor to the Center for Secure and Stable States of Development Alternatives Incorporated (DAI). Prior to that, he was Chief of Party for the Monitoring and Evaluation Support Project of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in South Sudan, implemented by Management Systems International (MSI). He has been senior advisor to the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA), the Government of South Sudan (GOSS), and worked for UN agencies, International NGOs, local NGOs, and the private sector across 12 African countries since his graduation from the University of Pennsylvania in 1997. He is currently engaged with a multidonor, inter-agency, cross-sector collaboration around communitybased resilience efforts in South Sudan where he is responsible for facilitating joint work planning and researching the connection between social cohesion and resilience.

322

About the Contributors

Atta El-Battahani is a Professor in Political Science, University of Khartoum (Uof K), and was educated at U of K and Sussex University (Britain). During 2003–2006 he was head, Department of Political Science, Faculty of Economics, U of K; a founding member of Amnesty International Khartoum Group (1987–1989), and also a founding member of Sudanese Civil Society Network for Poverty Alleviation (SCSNPA) 2002–2005. He served as manager and senior advisor for the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) in the Sudan, 2006–2011. El-Battahani did a number of consultancies for UNDP, ECA, IDRC, IGAD, OXFAM, IFAD, and World Bank on governance, resource-based conflict, early warning, urban poverty, and gender and development. He researched and published widely on governance and conflict in the Sudan; development Impact of Ethnic and Religious Conflicts; Governance and state institutional reform in Africa and the Middle East; conflict and Cooperation in the Nile Valley; Peripheral Capitalism and Political Islam in Sub-Saharan Africa; Elections and Political Transitions, Economic Liberalization and Institutional Reform in Irrigated Agriculture, the Politics of HIV/AIDS in the Sudan, and Democracy Deficit in the Arab World. He contributed a chapter “New Wars in the Global South” to SAGE Handbook of Political Science 2020. El-Battahani is Editor-inChief of Sudan Journal of Economic and Social Studies. Abdullahi Ali Ibrahim, Professor of History, University of Missouri (since 1995) received his PhD from Indiana University in 1987 in Folklore and Anthropology. He also received a BA and MA from the University of Khartoum (History and Arabic). After chairing the Department of Folklore, University of Khartoum, Professor Abdullahi taught courses in Arabic, History, and Anthropology at Chicago, Northeastern Illinois, and Northwestern Universities. He received grants and fellowships from the University of Missouri; the International Institute, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; the Ford Foundation Middle East Research Competition in Cairo; and the Institute of African Studies, Northwestern University. Professor Abdullahi has many publications, among them: Assaulting with Words: Popular Discourses and the Bridle of Shari’ah (Northwestern University Press, 1994; recently translated into Arabic); and Al-Thagafah wa alDimiqratiyah fi al-Sudan (Culture and Democracy in Sudan) Cairo, 1996. He has many journal publications, for example, in the International Journal of Middle East Studies. Enrico Ille is Academic Staff Member at the Institute of African Studies at Leipzig University, as well as Consultant Researcher for the Rift Valley Institute in the X-Border project. He worked previously as Postdoctoral Researcher in the DFID-funded project “The urban land nexus and inclusive

About the Contributors

323

urbanisation in Dar es Salaam, Mwanza and Khartoum” for the Institute of Development Studies (IDS, University of Sussex), and was Urgent Anthropology Fellow for the British Museum and the Royal Anthropological Institute, with a project on socioecological history in Northern Sudan. He has also published on history, land issues, development interventions, and the violent conflicts of the Nuba Mountains. He is the member of the Law, Organisation, Science and Technology (LOST) Research Network, and focuses on Political Ecology in food production and extractive industries. Amani Awad El Jack is the chair of the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies; and an affiliated Faculty in the PhD Program in Global Governance and Human Security, McCormack Graduate School at University of Massachusetts Boston. Between 2014 and 2019, she worked as an Associate Professor/ Research Coordinator of Social Issues at the Gulf Studies Center at Qatar University. She holds a PhD in Women’s Studies from York University, Canada; an MA in Political Sciences from the American University in Cairo, Egypt; and a BSc (Honors) in Political Sciences from the University of Khartoum, the Sudan. Amani’s research and teaching traverse socioeconomic, political, and cultural interrogation of the gendered fields of transnational migration; conflict/post-conflict reconstruction processes; and women and sport in the Persian Gulf region. She authored numerous scholarly publications and policy briefs on these subjects. Luka Biong Deng Kuol is the Academic Dean and a Professor of practice at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies (ACSS), U.S. National Defense University in Washington. He is also an associate professor of economics at the University of Juba, South Sudan, a Global Fellow at Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), and a fellow at Rift Valley Institute. He was a resident fellow at Harvard Kennedy School, former director of the Institute for Peace, Development and Security Studies at the University of Juba. He served as a minister of the presidency of Southern Sudan and a national minister of Cabinet Affairs of the Sudan during the 2005 Sudan Comprehensive Peace Agreement until he resigned in 2011. He also worked as a teaching staff at the Faculty of Economics and Rural Development at the University of Gezira, the Sudan, served as a senior economist for the World Bank in Southern Sudan, and was a founding member of the South Sudan National Bureau of Statistics. He received his PhD from the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at University of Sussex, UK, and earned a Master of Arts in Economics and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, and Bachelor of Science from the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, University of Khartoum, the Sudan. He has published scholarly articles in a wide array of prestigious international journals and

324

About the Contributors

contributed many peer-reviewed chapters in various books. He is a co-editor of the books entitled The Struggle for South Sudan: Challenges of Security and State Formation and Abyei: Between Two Sudans. He serves as a member of the editorial board of Disasters journal. Rabāh Al-Ṣādig, holds a BSc Honors in Electrical Engineering, University of Khartoum (1991) and is a masters’ student in Folklore in the same university this year. She is a journalist and from 2001 to 2014 was an op-ed columnist in several Sudanese newspapers. Rabah is secretary of Research and Publishing and director of the Private Office of the late Imam Al-Sadig Al-Mahdi. She served as deputy chief editor of “Hurryiat” electronic newspaper from 2010 to 2018 and of Al-Democrati journal since September 2020. Rabah is author and editor of several books, including a five-volume biography of Imam Al-Sadig Al-Mahdi. She has published dozens of papers and articles regarding culture, human rights especially women’s rights, gender issues, the media, and democratization. Fatima Babiker Mahmoud graduated from the University of Khartoum and earned her doctorate at the University of Hull. Her doctoral thesis was the basis of her most frequently cited work, The Sudanese Bourgeoisie: Vanguard of Development? (1984) where she traced the historical development of the modern Sudanese bourgeoisie and concluded that it had no progressive role to play in the development of the Sudan. Her research interests include women’s issues, political economy, and housing policies. Her other published books include: Housing Policies in Sudan: The Predicament and Solution (2018); Sex and Sexuality and the Exploitation of the Sudanese Woman (2012); Intellectual Trends in the Sudanese Women Movement (2008); African Women Between Heritage and Modernity (2002); African Women, Transformation and Development (1991); Calamity in the Sudan: Civilian Versus Military Rule (1988). In 1994 she became the founding president of the Pan-African Women’s Liberation Organisation (PAWLO) and served as a member of the Editorial Advisory Board for the Journal of Gender Studies. She is also founding member of the Sudanese Writers Union and the Sudanese Organisation for Human Rights. Sana Makawi is a feminist and a Pan-Africanist who graduated from the Faculty of Arts, University of Khartoum. Sana has been working on women’s issues for more than six years in the Sudan. Since 2011, she has been engaged in different capacities with Salmmah Women’s Resource Center in Khartoum. Through her work, Sana developed experiences on studies and research, violence against women, and youth empowerment. Sana is also a member in different regional and international feminists and Pan-African

About the Contributors

325

allies and coalitions, such as Women Living under Muslim Laws Solidarity Network, Afrika Youth Movement, and Afresist, a multimedia platform rooted in the values of Pan-Africanism, using technology for the co-creation of alternative leadership models as well as training and documenting youth work across the African continent and beyond. Sana developed an interest in Sexuality and Reproductive justice issues on which she focuses now. She is currently part of the Institute of Reproductive Health and Rights in the Sudan, as program manager. Through this position she is a Cofounder and Coordinator of Sudan Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights Network. Moreover, Sana has a passion for research and works as a research assistant in different advocacy action research and book projects. Wini Omer is a journalist, feminist, and human rights defender, with 10 years’ experience advocating for human rights and social justice in the Sudan, especially in areas related to gender and women’s issues. Currently, Wini works as a project manager at the Democratic Thought Project and as an editor at Alhadatha Alsudanya [Sudanese Modernity] magazine. She published investigations and pieces in Alhadatha as well as in Citizen and Aljareeda newspapers, and on African Argument website. She received her Master’s degree on Theory and Practice of Human Rights at the University of Essex. Mai Izzeldeen Osman graduated from Ahfad University for Women (Sudan), School of Psychology, 1996, receiving a BSc in Psychology and an MSc in Gender and Development Studies (1999). Then she received a PhD in Social Psychology, Juba University (2005). Prof. Izzeldeen Osman is an associate professor in Gender and Development at RIGDPR (2005–Present); deputy of the Regional Institute of Gender Diversity Peace and Rights (2018–Present); and the coordinator of the Gender, Peace and Development Master’s program since 2010. Some of her research studies and publications include Women in Decision-Making Positions (2006); Perception and Attitude of Diversity among Students at AUW (2014); Early Marriage as a Strategy for Economic Survival Case Study, Al Fath Village (2012); Violence against Women, Mapping Study (2015–2016), among others. She has refereed for a number of journals and other publications. Her books or edited collections include Women’s Empowerment: Meaning, Theories and Practice (2013), co-edited with Balghis Badri, Samia Alnager, and S. Ausama (2008); and her edited Gender and Decision making Case Study, Sudan: Locus of Control and Self Concept and Their Relation to Depression Among Elderly Pensioners (2009). Dr. Izzeldeen Osman has written chapters in books such as Overview of Sudanese Business Women as Medium and Large Entrepreneurs: Challenges and Constraints (2008) and Overview of Women’s Social Positioning in Sudan. In Sudanese Women Profiles and Pathways to Empowerment.

326

About the Contributors

Mariam Sharif received her MSc in Sociology and Social Anthropology from the University of Khartoum in 2017, with a scholarship from the Christian-Michelsen-Institute in Norway. She works as lecturer of Medical Anthropology and Sociology at colleges in Khartoum, and has worked as an anthropologist for several organizations (Epi-Lab; Institute for Public Administration and Federalism, Khartoum University; Sudan Medical Heritage Foundation). She is a member of the Reproductive Health Working Group (RHWG) in the Middle East region and of the Sudanese Knowledge Society. Mariam has published several papers, for instance, “Institutionalisation and Regulation of Medical Kits in an Emergency Situation in the Nuba Mountains / South Kordofan” (in Emerging Orders in the Sudans, co-edited by Sandra Calkins, Enrico Ille, and Richard Rotten­ burg, 2015) and “Production and Protection of Knowledge: Language Use, Herbal Medicine and Health Education in Heiban Locality” (in Nuba Mountain Language Studies, co-edited by Thilo C. Schadeberg and Roger M. Blench, 2013). A book based on her Master’s thesis Interaction between Health Institutions in Knowledge and Medical Practices in South Kordofan/ Nuba Mountains was published by the Christian-Michelsen-Institute, Bergen, Norway.