The Sudan Handbook

188 thE sudan handbook

reported to a British governor of one of the nine or so large provinces.

For the majority of Sudanese, it was the provincial or district government

that was the hakuma, with perhaps only a vague sense of a distant capital

‘on the river’, as Darfuris put it. Over the twentieth century increasing

numbers would visit or move to Khartoum, but for rural communities

the local town has remained the seat of government.

Since independence, local government offices have been staffed by

Sudanese civil servants, yet they have retained something of the alien

origins of their predecessors as far as local society is concerned. There

is something about entering government employment, military service

or even urban life that is seen to remove a person from their original

community and transform them into the bureaucratic, uniformed repre-

sentatives of the hakuma. This is less stark if the government officer at

least comes from the area in which they are employed, but in many

periods it was government policy to deliberately locate them outside

their home areas. In the 1950s, Equatorian chiefs complained that new

southern local government officers were being transferred too rapidly,

before they had a chance to get to know a district as their British prede-

cessors had. Unsurprisingly, there is a widespread belief that local

interests and cultural particularities can only be understood by those

originating in that locality, or at least by those who have lived there for

many years.

The principles of detached neutrality and institutional hierarchy that

underpin bureaucratic government have always been at odds to some

extent with the moral and social principles that govern local communities

across Sudan. Many Sudanese have become adept at operating under both

sets of principles. Yet government employment is still seen to alienate

individuals from local society, restricting the authority and effectiveness

of local government officers. At the same time rulers and politicians have

sought to create institutions that are more easily controlled by patronage

and political manipulation than professional bureaucrats might be (and

which offer a cheaper means of administration than salaried graduates).

Local communities, meanwhile, have needed effective negotiators and

The Sudan Handbook, edited by John Ryle, Justin Willis, Suliman Baldo and Jok Madut Jok. © 2011 Rift Valley Institute and contributors spokesmen who could defend them from government demands and

(www.riftvalley.net).