Ja‘afar Muhammad Numayri: An Epitome for Sudan Rule
By Steve Paterno
May 31, 2009 — In the earlier hours of May 25, 1969, Radio Omdurman broadcasted recorded messages from Colonel Ja’afar Muhammad Numayri, announcing a coup d’état. Apparently, over the night, a group of soldiers less than 500 in total, with six mid level officers, managed to sneak into the capital and then, cut off telephone lines; seized radio and television stations; secured passages to the main bridges over the White and Blue Niles; occupied the military headquarters; arrested high-ranking officers; and took into custody prominent politicians, among whom were Isma‘il al-Azhari who was then the head of state and Muhammad Ahmad Maghoub, the Prime Minister. By now, it was clear that a staged bloodless coup succeeded. Numayri, who was the highest ranking officer among the coup plotters, became the undisputed leader under the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) and promoted himself into general.
To many people in Sudan, Colonel Ja’afar Muhammad Numayri was hardly a recognizable name. Numayri, a son of postman was born in Omdurman in January 1, 1930. He attended a prestigious Hantoub Secondary School. However, he was more remembered for his talents in soccer field than in academics that his grades barely got him admitted into military college. While at the military college, Numayri honed his political skills by becoming avid admirer of Egyptian President Gamal Abd al-Nasser. He shaped his political ideology around Pan-Arab revolutionary socialism, espoused by Gamal Abd al-Nasser.
Upon Numayri’s graduation from military college in 1952, he got involved in the then nascent Free Officers movement, modeled along the lines of Egyptian Free Officers, a movement with revolutionary goals to restore national freedom, dignity and pride. By 1957, Numayri was implicated in a plot to overthrow the government where he was summarily dismissed from the military only to be reinstated in 1959 for reasons that are still obscure. Numayri would go on to devote much of his time recruiting army cadets into Free Officers so much that he became unacknowledged leader of the group. For all this time, he managed to avoid suspicion and detection, especially when he travelled to study at the US Army Command College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
When he returned from the US, he was strategically appointed at a command center in Gebeit Training School, which presented him with ideal ground for recruitment and planning. In March of 1969, a plan was drafted for coup to take place in May when Numayri will be taking his vocation in Omdurman and most of the senior officers in the military will be on leave abroad, either for medical treatments or for assignments. Nonetheless, when the leadership of Free Officers met in mid April of 1969 to decide on the execution of the drafted plan, the officers voted seven to six in favor of postponing the coup, for reason that the ground was not yet ripe for action. Numayri among the six officers in minority were determined to carry on with the coup as scheduled, and on May 25, they launched and succeeded with the coup.
Now the regime of Numayri must content with the challenging task against his leadership from the competing political forces and the daunting problems facing the country; more importantly, the economy, the polarized world of West versus East and the war in South Sudan. As the leaders of the powerful political parties in the country were in detentions, Numayri wasted no time to ban all political parties. He moved quickly to exploit on the differences within the communist party leadership and secured the backing of the movement. Members of communist held mass demonstrations to endorse the regime. Senior officials in military, police, judiciary and civil servants were purged out through generous pensions and other favors.
To the Umma Party fanatical supporters, the Ansar, Numayri turned to the military to obliterate them totally. The Ansar’s fortified stronghold in Aba Island was bombarded and breached. As a result, tens of thousands were massacred, and the movement’s spiritual leader, Imam al-Hadi Mahdi, the grandson of Mahdi was killed. Suspected coup plotters were effectively and harshly dealt with. Ever an opportunist, Numayri would go on to survive in power with a sheer luck for the next sixteen years by juggling through the support of one party after the other as he in the process alienated and exhausted his allies. He even quickly abandoned members of communist party who provided him the first ever popular support he needed. The leaders of the communist party, including Joseph Garang, a popular South Sudanese hardliner who was among the first to be featured in Numayri’s cabinet, were summarily executed following the crashed attempted coup by Major Hashem al-Atta in 1971. Numayri never even spared his colleagues of Free Officers as he clung into power by hooks and crooks. The Islamists, who were his foes during his rise to power, became his allies during his downfall when he turned from a revolutionary socialist military dictator into an Imam, responsible for introducing ‘Sharia’ Islamic Laws into Sudanese penal system. He mended fences with Islamists after failed Ansar invasion of Khartoum in 1976 which led to secrets reconciliation talks with their leaders and the return of Hassan al-Turabi of Islamic Brotherhood and that of Sadiq al-Mahdi of Umma in last quarter of 1970. Numayri was unpopular leader and that could be best measured by numerous coup plots staged against him during his rule.
Full of socialism ideological enthusiasm, Numayri was determined to transform the country’s economy. The regime took immediate steps for monopoly through nationalization and state control economy. All the private enterprises were nationalized with little to no compensations given for the owners. State corporations were created to oversee the nationalization effort. Unfortunately, the plan faltered in planning, execution, and objectives. Officials charged with running those newly acquired and created corporations were inept and turned the companies to white elephants; liabilities and running at no profits. Legislations to support social services were enacted, which at least showed substantial impacts in subsidies in housing rental and home ownership as well as among students and workers.
In a world polarized between the Capitalists West and Communists East, Numayri’s regime turned to the East. Diplomatic initiatives between the regime and Eastern countries, netted the regime millions of dollars in soft loans. The regime announced that it can only allow imports from the Communist Eastern countries. However, over period of time, the regime shifted to West, becoming one of the biggest American allies in the region, underscoring Numayri’s opportunistic flare of switching from one supporter to the other as a means of survival.
With problems of South Sudan, especially the
ensuing civil war, the regime was caught up flat, not knowing what to do. To them, the initial thought was that the insurgency of the Anyanya movement in the South was nothing more than a bunch of armed criminals who could be quelled by the use of military force. The regime’s military strategy was to provide more weapons, equipments and supplies in order to fight off the insurgencies in the South. The newly acquired weapons and equipments from Eastern blocs were immediately put into use against the insurgence. By that time, the Anyanya soldiers were already operating in most of the countryside of South Sudan and the group was better organized and armed more than in any other time. Numayri’s all out offensive against the rebellion paid off to limited extend in some few battles, but in the end, the Anyanya stood its ground to prove that it was a power to be reckoned with. Numayri’s propaganda war against the Anyanya was equally not effective. With stalemate in the battle fields, Numayri agreed to negotiate a peaceful settlement with the Anyanya, which culminated into the Addis Ababa Agreement of 1972.
The Addis Ababa Agreement, which is Numayri’s single biggest achievement and legacy, is also his biggest failure, because he dismantled the agreement himself and threw the South back into another long and full scale cycle of war. Alexis Heraclides summed it well when he wrote: “It is in a way ironic that Numayri, whose single greatest achievement was to help reconcile Northerners and Southerners, will enter the annals of history as having undone his accomplishment, thus forfeiting his main claim to perpetuity. The series of measures he took are so confounding that outsiders not familiar with Numayri—a man of limited caliber, plagued by insecurity, who largely survived by constantly switching allies and pitting them against each—would wonder how it was ever possible to reach a miracle of the Addis Ababa Agreement in the first place.”
By 1985, Numayri’s lucks simply ran out. He was ousted out of power through a popular revolt. He would go on to live a lowlife in exile throughout until 1999, when Dictator Omar al-Bashir permitted him back to the country. On May 30, 2009, Numayri succumbed into his illness after battling the disease for quite sometimes. He died at age 79; 40 years exactly after taking power and 23 years after getting overthrown from presidency. If anything, Numayri will be remembered as an epitome of Sudanese political rule that is characterized by unstable parliamentary system, coup d’états, ruthless military dictatorships, popular uprisings, instabilities and conflicts. In Sudan’s five decades of independence, the changes of power in governments through coups were more than peaceful transitions. By itself, the country enjoyed long years under ruthless dictatorial regimes, continuous instabilities and endless conflicts. Even if Numayri was out of power for the last two decades, and he is now dead, the country he presided over years ago still bears the same resemblances and characteristics just as it had during Numayri’s regime—another dictator is clinging to power and outpacing Numayri in doing whatever it takes to remain in power.
Steve Paterno is the author of The Rev. Fr. Saturnino Lohure, A Roman Catholic Priest Turned Rebel. He can be reached at [email protected]