The Sudan Handbook

kEy fiGuREs in sudanEsE histoRy, CultuRE & PolitiCs 341

Security Council adopted resolution 1672 that imposed travel restric-

tions and financial sanctions on Musa Hilal and three other Sudanese

suspected of committing war crimes in Darfur.

Mustafa Said AhmEd (d.1996). Created a distinctive genre of

Sudanese music introducing sophisticated, politically charged modern

lyrics to Sudanese listeners. He enjoyed huge popularity in student and

intellectual circles in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1989, after the military

coup, he was forced into exile, first in Russia, then in Egypt and finally

in Qatar where he died of kidney failure in 1996. His body was received

by thousands at Khartoum airport.

NafiE Ali NafiE. Deputy leader of the ruling National Congress Party

and Assistant to the President. Nafie Ali Nafie grew up in al-Nafab, a

village not far from from Shendi, and studied agriculture at Khartoum

University, where he taught until 1989. He was in charge of the state

security apparatus in the early years of the Islamist Ingaz (‘Salvation’)

government that came to power in a military coup in 1989. Named by

Egypt and Ethiopia in connection with the assassination attempt on

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Addis Ababa in 1995, Nafie was

officially transferred from security to the Ministry of Agriculture. In

recent years he has re-emerged as one of the most powerful figures in

the ruling National Congress Party.

NGundEnG BonG (c. 1830–1906). Nuer Prophet. Born at the end of the

1830s to a family of Gaaleak earth-masters, Ngundeng is generally consid-

ered to have been the most famous of the Nuer prophets. His prophecies

and messages spread widely through hymns and praise-songs, which he

presented in this form so that they could be easily remembered and trans-

mitted. The Anglo-Egyptian administration, fearful of religious leaders

who might, like the Mahdi, incite rebellion, perceived Ngundeng to be a

dangerous threat and launched a number of punitive campaigns against

him, and other southern prophets. In 1928, more than two decades after

The Sudan Handbook, edited by John Ryle, Justin Willis, Suliman Baldo and Jok Madut Jok. © 2011 Rift Valley Institute and contributors his death, government forces destroyed Ngundeng’s last and largest

(www.riftvalley.net).