The Sudan Handbook

228 thE sudan handbook

from the Nile Valley, copying their clothes, their cuisine – even their way

of speaking. Often educated in Khartoum, members of the Darfurian elite

considered the culture of the capital as the model to be followed on the

road to development. This process was described as ‘Sudanisation’: it

was about becoming full-fledged Sudanese citizens. Among Darfurians

today the urge to acculturate is much less strong than it once was; instead

the sense of being discriminated against is strengthening a claim to

distinctive Darfurian identity. This is combined with a nostalgia for past

glory and an increasing consciousness of the importance of local history

and culture. ‘Teaching Masalit history is forbidden by the government’,

explains the singer Abdallah Idris, who is also a teacher. ‘As well as

the Masalit language. This has to change. Our language should be on

tele vision, the radio, in the media.’

The sense of cultural exclusion, persistent since independence, became

more acute from the mid-1980s. The government of Sadiq Al-Mahdi from

1986 to 1989, then the National Islamic Front of Omar al-Bashir and his

Islamist mentor, Hassan Al-Turabi – have been particularly disappointing

for Darfurians. Many placed their hopes in the Islamist project, which

promised an expansion of the governing elites under the auspices of

religious renewal. In 1999 Al-Turabi’s exclusion from power signified

the regime’s retreat to their old ethnic base: that of the Arabs of the

Nile Valley.

In 2000, some of the Turabi’s Darfuri supporters wrote and secretly

disseminated the Black Book. This was a compilation of statistics detailing

the over-representation in government and national administration of

northern riverain elites. It showed that since 1954, irrespective of the

government in power, the proportion of ministers from the north and

central states had oscillated between 47.7 per cent (under Sadiq Al-Mahdi

between 1986 and 1989) and 79.5 per cent (at the time of independence).

Western Sudan (Darfur and Kordofan) provided between 0 per cent

and 22 per cent of ministers (the highest percentage was during the

period 1986–9) and southern Sudan between 7.8 per cent and 17 per

cent. Some of the authors of the Black Book went on to found the Justice

The Sudan Handbook, edited by John Ryle, Justin Willis, Suliman Baldo and Jok Madut Jok. © 2011 Rift Valley Institute and contributors and Equality Movement (JEM), one of the original two Darfuri rebel

(www.riftvalley.net).