kEy fiGuREs in sudanEsE histoRy, CultuRE & PolitiCs 333GoRdon MuoRtat MayEn (1922–2006). Politician. Born in Karagok
village near Rumbek, in 1951 he graduated from Sudan Police College
and in 1957 became an Assistant District Commissioner. In 1965 he was
appointed leader of the Southern Front delegation at the Round Table
Conference between northern and southern Sudan. In the same year he
was appointed as Minister of Works and Mineral Resources in the post-
Abboud transitional government. In 1967 he left the country and joined
the Anyanya guerrilla movement. He was an outspoken critic of the 1972
Addis Ababa agreement and lived in the United Kingdom until the CPA.
In 1994 he was appointed an Advisor to John Garang. He represented his
Rumbek constituency in the Southern Sudan Legislative Assembly from
2006 until his death in 2008.Hassan Abdullah al-TuRabi (b.1936). Ideological and political
architect of the post-independence Islamist movement in Sudan. The
son of an Islamic Judge, al-Turabi was born in Kassala in 1932. He
joined the Muslim Brotherhood while studying law at the University of
Khartoum in the 1950s and obtained his doctorate from the Sorbonne,
Paris. He emerged as the leader of Sudan’s Islamist movement in the mid
1960s with the creation of the Islamic Charter Front (later renamed the
National Islamic Front then the National Congress Party). As President
Nimeiri’s reliance on the support of Islamists grew from the late 1970s,
al-Turabi was able to increase his influence in government, where he
served as Attorney-General and Adviser on Foreign Affairs. From within
the government, he laid the groundwork for his party’s military coup in- Al-Turabi reached the height of his power in the years following
the military coup. However, his decision to back Iraq in the first Gulf
War and his support for radical Islamist causes beyond Sudan’s borders
in the early 1990s, condemned Sudan to a decade of international isola-
tion. In 1999, he attempted to extend his power within the regime, but
was preempted by Omar al-Bashir who dissolved parliament and placed
al-Turabi under arrest. Al-Turabi’s power has been considerably curtailed
since the 1999 split. He has founded his own Islamist party, the Popular
The Sudan Handbook, edited by John Ryle, Justin Willis, Suliman Baldo and Jok Madut Jok. © 2011 Rift Valley Institute and contributors
(www.riftvalley.net).