The Sudan Handbook

204 thE sudan handbook

continue to rely upon the more accessible and debatably more legitimate

institutions of traditional leadership. On the one hand, the military and

security priorities of government have undermined the effectiveness of

local government and native administration. But on the other hand, as

long as these remain the priorities, the need for trusted intermediaries

with government is only reinforced.

Even in a region like Darfur, where there has been extensive central

government interference in Native Administration, there are still tradi-

tional leaders who are seen to have withstood political manipulation, or

are judged to have acted in the interests of their own people. It is perhaps

impossible to give a verdict on the legitimacy of Sudanese Native Admin-

istration as a whole, when there are so many variables that shape the

authority of any individual leader. It is clear, though, that the common

desire for locally-originating leadership has been magnified by divisive

government policies, so that people are frequently convinced of the need

for a position in the system in order to defend their particular group and

its economic interests.

In the early 1970s, the architect of the abolition of the Native Admin-

istration, Gaafar Bakheit, looked back at the struggles over this proposal

before 1969:

No man in authority was able to contemplate the rural areas

being void of nazirs and sheikhs. These were the pillars of

authority in a country where authority was so fragmented that

it often tended to lose effect and gradually die. Thus as long as

native administration was capable of exerting political influence

in the rural areas, political parties, out of sheer self-interest,

would not try to eradicate it.

He was looking back, but 40 years on from the May Revolution, his

words have a prophetic rather than retrospective truth.

Local Sudanese judgements of their leaders are inevitably more

pragmatic and rooted in the constraints of the local and wider context

than are those of external observers. Understanding the nature of tradi-

The Sudan Handbook, edited by John Ryle, Justin Willis, Suliman Baldo and Jok Madut Jok. © 2011 Rift Valley Institute and contributors tional authority and the bargains that it rests upon requires stepping

(www.riftvalley.net).