Arabizing an Africa Capital
What if government brings up the African face of Sudan?
By Mahgoub El-Tigani
Dec 11, 2004 — The Khartoum administration is working hard these days to prepare the national capital to a grand cultural occasion under the exciting logo “Khartoum, the Capital of the Arabic Culture.”
Wasting no time, the ruling NIF’s Presumptuous Arab Mentality (PAM) decided to inundate the Sudan T.V., the Omdurman national radio service, and all government supported media with a specific message: “Sudan is an Arab society with an Arab government, an Arab culture, and an Arab capital.” Towards this end, the government invoked legal revisions as well as security measures in advance to ensure the most stringent degree of cultural monopoly in the upcoming discourse of the cultural festival.
The Registrar-General of the Cultural Association, Ms. Maria Sa’eed, repeatedly announced in the T.V. that all associations thus far registered under the prevailing law are “hereby invalidated unless they apply for re-registration, hold general assemblies by permission, and elect executive committees with the direct presence of the Registrar’s Office.” When asked “why should an association established by the late highly-esteemed Professor ‘Abd-Allah al-Tayeb be subjected to such procedure,” the Registrar-General forcibly affirmed “it is the law.”
The truth of the matter is that the government wants to run a meticulous check on all available cultural associations of the country so that none of them, other than those fully supportive of the Muslim Brotherhood Arabization-Islamization Cultural Project, would be able to access the Khartoum Cultural Festival.
Related to this policy, the State Security Department, assisted by the Attorney General’s Chamber, summoned the Sudanese famous poet Mahgoub Sharief and had him interrogated by attorney Mohamed Farid for 3 hours. This cheap intimidation of one of the progressive icons of the Sudanese cultural activities was not conducted in vacuum. It was exactly planned to intimidate the anti-government intellectuals to make sure none of them would plan or even think of approaching the State programmed festival.
As expected, henceforth, a number of other measures would be subsequently imposed: arresting as many opponents as is possible, intensifying media campaigns, and placing the whole capital in additional repression under the Emergency Law authority. Of particular significance, the Africanness of Khartoum and her African face and genuine realities will be harshly depressed. Thus, the world will rarely see Sudanese African faces or languages throughout the festival. What the world would be watching is an Arab capital, with Arab faces, Arab language, and Arab Islam, culture, politics, etc. For that purpose, deliberate hiding of the Khartoum Africanness is under way; commercials are already in order emphasizing Arab-Muslim book shows beginning with an Egyptian-Sudanese book fair that is largely reserved to publications on Arab-Muslim literature. Is that what culture is all about in a multi-religious multi-ethnic multi-cultural capital?!
The negativity of this plan is serious: it will help to frustrate the peace climates that are already zigzagging with the government’s hostilities against the SPLM/SPLA, the NDA, and the escalated armed struggles of DarFur. The government emphasis on Khartoum as the capital of Arab culture is another discriminatory policy that would further frustrate the large Sudanese African citizens of the national capital who represent the most victimized sections of the war-affected non-Arab people of Sudan. These citizens would be completely alienated or relegated to inactiveness in their own national capital, as far as the Arabization and Islamization state emphasis is recklessly enforced.
The PAM rulers, however, ill planned their cultural venture in two major issues: 1) the Sudan’s society, government, and capital that they repressively ruled are not claimers of a sole Arab entity or culture as the NIF PAM small population is; and 2) the national capital they obsessively claimed as a capital of the Arab culture is equally an ancient community of non-Arab speaking Africans, including many members of the NIF ruling PAM descendants themselves!
Of great significance, the 5 million or so estimated Khartoum population of the day includes 2 million displaced citizens or more from the predominantly non-Arab South and Western Sudan. Added to this, the vast majority of the remaining citizens of the national capital are humans with a wonderful ethnic and cultural background of Blemmyes (Beja ancestry), African Darfuris, Nubians, Shulluk, Dinka, and other Nilotic and Equatorian origins that have mingled with the emigrating Arabs centuries ago. By all measures, then, it is a serious cultural dilemma for the Khartoum administration to insist through its planned cultural festival on Khartoum as the Capital of the Arab Culture.
The program’s dilemma has already started in the Sudan T.V. programs. Commentary on three of these programs suffices to substantiate the points in question. These programs include interviews with Sudanese scholars, members of the Muslim ‘Ulama or other Muslim Brotherhood leaderships, and some theatrical shows.
Asma fi Hayatuna, a Sudan T.V. quasi-permanent program, started showing lengthy meetings with al-Sheikh Sadiq ‘Abd-Allah ‘Abd al-Magid, leader of the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood. In principle, it is good to have a detailed dialogue with the respectable sheikh who is known for his decency and knowledge of Islamic Shari’a.
The problem, however, is that the program was timely transmitted without balanced critique of al-Sheikh’s views as a cultural program is required to do. Obviously, the timing and the context of the program might have been meant to favor the Islamization-Arabization doctrine the respectable Sheikh has been strongly supporting. This doctrine is severely criticized in a national level because it entrenched inequality and discrimination between citizens of the same society at expense of the rights and freedoms of the non-Arab non-Muslim citizens of Sudan.
Sheikh Sadiq is known as an Islamist hard-liner who issued strong denouncements against the democratic opposition’s ascertainment of Khartoum as a multi-ethnic multi-linguistic multi-religious national capital of the country. It would have been better had the program conductor ensured a balanced interview with Sheikh Sadiq and an opponent of the Islamization-Arabization doctrine. One reason for this suggestion is that it is not serviceable to the national unity or the ongoing peace climates to monopolize the State T.V. programs with biased Islamist influences when the whole nation is heading to a last, just, and non-discriminatory peace consensus.
In another program, the discussion hosted Nubian scholars who honestly spoke about the African-rooted culture of Nubia. One of the speakers put it clearly, “the Nubians, according to many experts and researchers, are ancient Africans who were made to forfeit their deeply-rooted African entity to the Arab penetrating culture.” The program posited the dilemma of the NIF PAM planners since the songs, lyrics, and commentaries were mainly supportive of the Nubian non-Arab identity!
In another program, a group of girls were dancing and singing in a theatre. The conductor claimed that the band “is nationally representative” of some folkloristic activity. The question is: where are the African Sudanese girls who equally represent the nation?
It is a wrongful policy that the NIF PAM insist on sidelining our innocent children from the displaced areas or even the other quarters of the capital to “ensure Arab looking faces” in the upcoming Khartoum festival. It is equally wrongful the NIF PAM insist on frustrating 2 million citizens in the displaced towns of the pauperized city only to make sure “Khartoum is capital of the Arab culture!”
To well-represent the wonders of the Khartoum cultures, as an epitome of the Sudanese rich blends, the Sudan Government is advised to stop its enforceable Arab-Islamized trend that is showing a false picture and content of the national capital of Sudan.
The NIF planners should do justice to the agenda of peace and democracy in our beleaguered nation by simply stating and showing the truth about our society, a beautiful African nation with a multi-ethnic multi-linguistic multi-religious diversity, including the significant Arab components. Let us hope the Khartoum Cultural Festival turns to a real representative of the Sudanese beautiful diversity and peaceful identity.
What if government allows full freedoms to bring to the surface in the T.V., radio and the press the real Afro-Arab face of Sudan?