ethnic groups in Sudan, most research has been
concentrated upon the “Arabs” of northern Sudan,
the Dinka of the Bahr al-Ghazal area, and the Nuba
of southern Kordofan. These groups have been
genetically intermixed for centuries, yet they con-
tinue to define each other as members of separate
races, some of whom are superior to others (Deng
1995, Jok 2001).
The “Arabs” of the north, a mixture of Arab and
African peoples, are politically dominant although
in the minority numerically. They defined, until
recently, Sudanese nationality as Arab and Muslim,
effectively disenfranchising the inhabitants of the
south and west, who define themselves as “Afri-
can” (although there is some Arab admixture), and
non-Muslim. Because the southerners have resisted
governmental attempts to impose Sharì≠a law upon
them, they have been subjected to military action
against them for at least 47 years. Since 1956, each
successive government has pursued a policy of the
Arabization and Islamization of the country, using
negative stereotypes of Africans as backward,
primitive, and pagan as justification for this, and
thereby encouraging what has become in effect eth-
nic cleansing and cultural genocide (Spaulding and
Beswick 2000).
The southern Sudanese, many of whom are now
refugees in the north, are stereotyped as unfit for
anything but menial labor, in fact as “naturally
slaves” (Jok 2001). Since they are not legally rec-
ognized as citizens of Sudan, southerners have no
recourse to police protection. Indeed, they are sub-
ject to police profiling, arrest, and incarceration in
jails where they may be beaten and raped. Women
and children from the south and west, primarily
Dinka and Nuba, who were captured in raids on
their villages, work mainly in northern households
as domestics and nannies. It has been argued that
they are, in fact, enslaved. The women and girls are
especially vulnerable to sexual abuse by the male
members of the families they work for as they are
thought to be sexually wanton: the stereotype of
Africans as primitive, along with the history of
enslaved African women as concubines, encour-
ages this belief. Domestic workers are given
Muslim names and forbidden to speak their own
language; this is used as an indication of a family’s
ability to “convert” a southern woman, an action
which is highly regarded among northerners. A
women who converts may have a clitoridectomy
(Gruenbaum 2001, Hale forthcoming, Jok 2001,
van Achterberg 1998).
Although there are surely women among the
population of northern Sudanese who do not
ascribe to the prevailing beliefs discussed here, it
egypt and sudan 691appears that most do. Many are complicit in the
oppression of southern women because they pro-
vide cheap household labor: the ailing economy has
forced many northern women to seek work outside
the home, and household help has enabled them to
continue to fulfill their domestic duties as well.
Many deny that the oppression of ethnic groups
goes on, arguing that the reports of raiding and
enslavement by government-funded militias are lies
told by the United States and Europe. Others be-
lieve that they are helping the southern Sudanese by
raising them from their primitive state: “One influ-
ential woman leader in the Islamist movement sug-
gested that a solution to the ‘southern problem’
was for Muslim men to take non-Muslim Dinka
women as second wives or concubines, assuming
that their children would be raised as Muslims”
(Gruenbaum 2001, 119).
Hale (forthcoming) reports that Sudan is now in
the process of reinventing its national identity, de-
centering its “Arab” identity and centering “Islam,”
as a way of furthering political goals. Islamist
northern women have been most instrumental in
this, as they have very negative feelings about
“Arab” patriarchal culture. Southern and western
non-Muslim women share these feelings, but they
are also quite resistant to Islamization. They charge
that the Muslims with whom they interact every
day are racist, pointing to the history of slavery
among their people by these very Islamists, to their
casual use of racial epithets, to their prejudice
against dark skin, as well as to their own experi-
ences while working in “Arab” households, to sup-
port these charges. But they also have their
prejudices, and may be heard to refer derogatorily
to families with “Arab blood,” implying an impu-
rity in their Dinka or Nuba gene pools (Deng
1995). In addition, younger northern Sudanese
scholars have begun to ask why they must deny
their African heritage in order to be considered
Sudanese. Al-Afif Mukhtar concludes: “Northern-
ers believe that they are descendents of an Arab
father and an African mother, and they identify
with the father and reject the mother. To the aver-
age Northerner, the mother symbolizes the South-
erner within, and unless Northerners accept their
mother and identify with her, they will not accept
Southerners as their equals” (forthcoming, 43).BibliographyPrimary Sources
A. van Achterberg (ed.), Out of the shadows. The first
African indigenous women’s conference (FAIWC),
Amsterdam 1998.
A. al-Afif Mukhtar, The crisis of identity in northern
Sudan. A dilemma of a Black people with a White culture,