The Sudan Handbook

kEy fiGuREs in sudanEsE histoRy, CultuRE & PolitiCs 345

He was the SPLM’s presidential candidate in the April 2010 elections, and

gained 21.69 per cent of votes despite the withdrawal of his candidacy

by the SPLM on the eve of voting. After the January 2011 referendum

on self-determination for the south it was announced that the SPLM

Northern Sector would form a new political party in the north on 8 July

2011, immediately prior to the formal secession of the South, with Yasir

Arman as its Secretary General.

Yousif KuWa MEkki (1945–2001) was a member of the SPLA High

Command and SPLM governor of the Nuba Mountains during the north–

south civil war. A Nuba from Miri, he attended Khartoum University

and worked as a teacher in Darfur and the Nuba Mountains before being

elected to the Kordofan Regional Assembly in 1981. He joined the SPLA in

1984 and went for training in Ethiopia and Cuba. He created a civil admin-

istration in the Nuba Mountains with high standards of accountability

and struggled, with limited success, to bring international attention

to the plight of its inhabitants. He died of cancer in 2001, aged 55, in

Norwich, England.

ZubEiR Rahma MansuR (1830–1913). Slave-trader. He left Khartoum

in 1856 with a small army and travelled south, establishing zaribas – armed

camps for trading slaves and ivory – as he went. By 1869, he controlled

an extensive slave-trading empire in western Bahr al-Ghazal and was

appointed Governor of the region by the Turco-Egyptian authorities. In

1874 he invaded Darfur and overthrew the Fur Sultanate, in return for

which he was awarded the titles Bey and Pasha by the Egyptian Khedive

Ismail Pasha. When General Gordon, who was appointed Governor

General of Sudan in 1877, tried to suppress the slave trade, Zubeir

Rahma Mansur travelled to Cairo to protest the fact that the Khedive

had appointed an Egyptian as governor of Darfur and to make his claim

for the position of governor of Darfur. When he tried to return to Sudan,

he was refused permission to leave Egypt and settled in Cairo. He was

permitted to return to his native country after the Anglo-Egyptian recon-

The Sudan Handbook, edited by John Ryle, Justin Willis, Suliman Baldo and Jok Madut Jok. © 2011 Rift Valley Institute and contributors quest of Sudan in 1898.

(www.riftvalley.net).