Vol. 7 No. 8 · 2 May 1985
pages 6-7 | 2492 words
The Coup in Sudan
John Ryle
In Africa the fall of a tyrant does not always presage better times. Worse things have happened in Uganda since the overthrow of Idi Amin – even worse than happened under his regime. Imperial autocracy in Ethiopia was succeeded by a military dictatorship which has proved equally repressive and a great deal bloodier. In countries where political life has been stifled, traditional leadership undermined and educated people wiped out or driven into exile, there may not be the wherewithal to establish representative government of any kind. This is not the case in the Sudan. There are all too many people waiting to form a government. President Nimeiri’s 16 years in power were characterised more by political confusion and economic mismanagement than by outright repression. The executions and amputations of the last two years were the last stratagem of a demented Machiavel who thought, perhaps, that he could safeguard both his soul and his worldly power by playing the Islamic card.
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[*] Nimeiri and the Revolution of Dis-May by Mansour Khalid (Kegan Paul International, 409 pp., £15, 25 February, 0 7103 0111 1); The Sudan: Second Challenge to Nationhood by Bona Malwal (Thornton Books, 42 pp., $3.90, February, 0 936508 13 2).
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Letters
Vol. 7 No. 16 · 19 September 1985
From Roy MacGregor-Hastie
SIR: It was generous of John Ryle (LRB, 1 August) to apologise for one of his errors, but there are others, I’m afraid. General Gordon kept order in the Sudan for more than three years. From 1874-1880 he was law and order, even if for the first three years he was nominally in charge only in the Equatorial provinces (indeed only of Equatoria); John Ryle should read Romolo Gessi, or even my new biography of Gordon. Nor is John Ryle right to say that ‘Christian missionary activity had barely begun there’ in Gordon’s day: it was a hive of missionary activity, and Khartoum alone had five churches prospering. Nor is he right to say that the word ‘animist’ was not in current use. I do not know what he means by ‘high-minded’, but it is not an adjective I should use about the Khedive Ismail; the whores he hired at the Paris Opera thought highly of him as did the British bankers who beggared him, but ‘high-minded’?
Yes, I do think the Christian and animist South of the Sudan must be hived off from the largely Muslim, Arab North. Maybe they would be happy in the Congo, a loose enough federation. If I were John Ryle I would not be so ready to use the word ‘corrupt’ about what is now called Zaire. The United Kingdom is no place for angels – at a recent local government conference in North Wales, a councillor said to me: ‘Al Capone wouldn’t have lasted for a week in Rhyl.’
Finally, I am not Mr MacGregor-Hastie. This would imply that I was a Harley Street physician. They mask their doctorates for some reason, but I do not. Dean, Professor or Dr – it is all the same to me: but I am nobody’s Mr.
Roy MacGregor-Hastie
Provincia di Trento, Italy
