The Sudan Handbook

tRaditional authoRity, loCal GoVERnmEnt & JustiCE 205

into that local context and looking at the surroundings from there. The

legitimacy of traditional leadership is fragile and unstable, demanding

individual ability to balance the demands of government and diverse,

changing societies. Native Administration has not survived because

it represents some kind of ideal, much-loved or age-old authority, but

because it is entrenched in local power structures that have been more

enduring than national ones. These local elites have manipulated their

alliances with national governments and political parties as well as vice

versa. But their greater resilience reflects the enduring importance of the

local to the majority of Sudanese people, and their limited attachment

to any central agendas. The latter have tended to ride roughshod over

local interests and livelihoods, and to prioritize political mobilization and

security enforcement over local development.

Sudanese are not intrinsically parochial but their historical experience

has taught that local political structures, including Native Administra-

tion, offer more chance of stability, however corrupt or incompetent

they may be. Of course many feel excluded from these structures and

so contest them, often through appeals to national political forces or

even nowadays to international languages of rights and reform. The

ensuing debates ensure that even local structures are gradually changing,

particularly as new avenues to employment and accumulation open up.

It remains to be seen what the ongoing effects of militarization, displace-

ment, economic migration and urbanization will be on local political and

judicial structures. But it is important to understand that what might be

labelled ‘conservatism’ or ‘traditionalism’ is often a pragmatic tolerance

of structures of privilege and power that have nevertheless offered the

best chance of stable governance, dispute and conflict resolution, and,

above all, defence of communal economic rights and livelihoods in the

face of extractive government and private interests.

Recommended Reading
Abdul-Jalil, Musa A., Mohammed, Adam Azzain and Yousuf, Ahmed A.
‘Native administration and local governance in Darfur: past and future’, in
War in Darfur and the Search for Peace, edited by Alex de Waal. Cambridge MA:
The Sudan Handbook, edited by John Ryle, Justin Willis, Suliman Baldo and Jok Madut Jok. © 2011 Rift Valley Institute and contributors Harvard University Press, 2007: 39–47.

(www.riftvalley.net).