From the Legitimacy of Lineage to the Legitimacy of Function A reading of Dr. Farraj al-Sheikh al-F

00:52 AM October, 22 2026

Sudanese Online
د. علي عبدالله الخليفة طه-UK
My Library
Short URL


Complementing, Not Confronting — Series
From the Legitimacy of Lineage to the Legitimacy of Function
A reading of Dr. Farraj al-Sheikh al-Fazari's article "The Return to Native Administration and Local Government" (Part One)

Dr. Ali Abdullahi Elkhalifa Taha

Introduction

Dr. Farraj al-Sheikh al-Fazari writes at a moment when River Nile State, and Shendi and its surroundings in particular, are celebrating the return to Sudan of the Nazir of the Ja'aliyyin, Ustaz Salah Ibrahim Hajj Mohamed al-Bayh. He uses the occasion to open a broader argument: that two systems have proven their worth in Sudan, namely local government with its urban and rural councils, and native administration with its nazirs, omdas and sheikhs; and that the country would have suffered a far harsher fate in this war without them.
We share the author's welcome for every return that brings someone back to their people in a time of hardship. We also appreciate that the article comes from sincere national concern, and that it draws attention to a fact much elite discourse overlooks: Sudanese society has never been a vacuum for the state to fill, but a fabric of social institutions that preceded the state and outlasted its fracture. This paper belongs to the series "Complementing, Not Confronting", in which we read writing on Sudan's future in light of the Charter of Salvation and State-Building. It seeks to move the question from "Did native administration endure؟" to "On what basis, and within what limits, do we build on it؟"

I. Where the Article Is Right

1. Endurance when the centre collapses

The author is right that local structures, whatever their flaws, carried a heavy burden when the central state was absent or its institutions disintegrated across wide areas. For us this is not a passing observation. It is the core of what the Charter calls ascending functional legitimacy: legitimacy is not derived from decree or from the gun, but built from below, to the extent that an institution performs its function in people's daily lives. What local councils and native administrators provided during the war years, in sheltering the displaced, mediating disputes and preserving a minimum of order, is living evidence of this principle.

2. "Dissolution did not abolish its existence"

Among the article's deepest points is the claim that dissolving native administration did not end its role or presence, and that it remains a fact of our daily lives. This converges with Elinor Ostrom's work on polycentric governance: institutions that communities create to manage their common affairs do not disappear by top-down decision, and ignoring them does not end them but pushes them to operate outside the law and without accountability. The lesson of the dissolution of the early 1970s is that abolition is not a policy. Neither, however, is unconditional revival.

3. Acknowledging politicisation

The author does not hide that these structures were politicised under the Inqaz regime, and that this still casts its shadow over service delivery and weakens fairness in its distribution. We build on this acknowledgement because it opens a question about institutions rather than individuals: what in the structure of native administration made it so easy to politicise, and how can it be protected from this in future؟

4. The countryside and its needs

The author links native administration to a vision of rural development by those who know the countryside's needs. Here the article meets the Charter's fourth pillar, regional representation, which starts from the premise that Sudan's crisis is at heart a crisis of the relationship between a centre that monopolised decision-making and resources and peripheries excluded from both, and that reform begins with redistributing power towards the regions and localities.

II. From Endurance to Fitness: A Question of Method

Moving from "endurance" to "fitness", however, requires a step the article does not take. That an institution survived a crisis does not necessarily make it the best foundation for building the state afterwards. Many other networks also survived this war, some benign and some not. Our question is not about the social value of native administration, which we take as given, but about which functions should be entrusted to it in a citizenship state, and which functions it should be protected from, and they from it.
We therefore propose reading the article through five structural gaps, not as an objection to the author but as a completion of what he began.
III. Five Structural Gaps

Gap One: The basis of representation ، lineage or place؟

The article accepts that native administration posts are filled "by inheritance or appointment, out of concern for the cohesion of the tribe and respect for its leaders". This makes sense in the logic of the tribe, but it raises a hard question in the logic of the state: if a nazir or omda is given public administrative, judicial or service authority, what is the position of the citizen who lives on the same land but does not belong to the same house or tribe؟
The Charter holds that representation in public affairs is built on place, not lineage, and that the unit of representation is the geographic unit in which all residents are equal in rights and duties, whatever their origins. A resident of Shendi who is not Ja'ali, or someone who arrived there displaced from Gezira, Darfur or Kordofan, should be a full member of its local affairs, not a guest in another's homeland. This is the essential difference between a citizenship state and an identity state.

Gap Two: What was "cohesion" from one angle was "hierarchy" from another

The author notes that the British administration grouped smaller tribes under the banner of a large tribe led by strong leaders, and that this gave society cohesion. The historical facts are broadly correct, but their evaluation needs a view from the other side.
Mahmood Mamdani showed in Citizen and Subject, and later in his study of Darfur, Saviors and Survivors, that indirect rule did not merely rely on existing tribal structures but reshaped them: it fixed their boundaries, tied land rights to tribal belonging through the dar (homeland) system, and created a distinction between the "native" entitled to land and authority and the "settler" entitled only to residence. In the view of Mamdani and other scholars, this dichotomy is among the deep structural roots of the conflicts in Darfur and Kordofan that later erupted.
In the Charter's language, this connects to what we call the gateway economy. When a leader becomes the sole point of access to land, employment, services and state resources, he gradually turns from a representative of his people into a gatekeeper, and customary standing becomes a resource to be competed over and invested in politically. This is not an accusation against anyone; it describes what the structure produces when left without safeguards.

Gap Three: From politicisation to militarisation

The article confines the problem of politicisation to the Inqaz era. In truth, matters have gone beyond politicisation to something more dangerous. In recent years we have seen how customary standing can be used for direct political leverage, as in the closure of ports and roads in eastern Sudan in autumn 2021, and how it can be used for tribal mobilisation and armed recruitment on behalf of one side or another in the current war. When people are mobilised on the basis of lineage, tribal belonging itself becomes a legitimate target in the eyes of the other side. This is among the gravest threats to the very social fabric the author defends.
Here the Charter proposes what it calls the Institutional Firewall: a clear separation between political activity on the one hand and executive and military authority on the other. In light of this principle, we propose extending the firewall to native administration itself, so that no one holding a recognised customary office combines it with armed mobilisation or direct partisan activity. Native administration is strongest when it belongs to everyone, and weakest when it becomes a party.

Gap Four: Customary justice

The article mentions, approvingly, that the British administration transferred judicial powers to tribal leaders. We do not underestimate the value of Sudanese customary practice in resolving disputes; the judiyya and ajaweed mediation traditions and the wisdom of elders have saved many lives and extinguished many fires. But customary justice left without safeguards may settle what should not be settled, and may put the interest of the group above the rights of the individual, especially of women.
The Charter offers three-tier transitional justice as a framework that both accommodates and disciplines custom. The community tier has its place in reconciliation, reparation and rebuilding trust between groups, and this is a natural place for native administration, provided that grave crimes remain outside customary settlement and that the rights of individuals and women are protected against any collective settlement.

Gap Five: The education argument and the question of legitimacy

The author answers critics of native administration by noting that many of its early figures received advanced education, citing nazirs and sheikhs who graduated from the Military College, Gordon Memorial College and elsewhere. We do not dispute that many of them were men of learning, culture and judgement. But serious criticism of native administration is rarely about the education of individuals; it is about the source of legitimacy.
Indeed, the author's observation that the British administration took great care to educate the sons of leaders "as the native administrators of the future" confirms this point rather than refuting it: modern education was used to renew a hereditary elite, not to open the door to others. Another question the article does not address remains: where are women, and young people from outside the well-known houses, in this structure؟ A citizenship state does not ask a person about their house, but about their competence and the trust people place in them.

IV. The Third Way: Native Administration within a Citizenship State

We do not wish to return to the option of dissolution, which was tried and failed, nor to unconditional revival, which would reproduce the same problems. In light of the Charter's principles, we propose a third way resting on the following foundations:
Separation of functions: native administration retains its original social functions of mediation, dispute resolution, mutual support and the preservation of memory and custom, while administrative and service functions pass to local councils elected on a geographic basis in which all residents are equal.
Advisory seats without veto: customary leaders have an advisory presence in local councils, where their voice is heard and their experience used, without the power to block decisions of the elected council.
A customary firewall: recognised customary standing is not combined with armed mobilisation or direct partisan activity.
Transparency of resources: all public resources or humanitarian aid passing through native administration are subject to disclosure and accountability, so that it does not become a new gateway.
Open leadership: selection within native administration is gradually opened to wider participation, and women and young people are brought into its advisory structures.
Nafeer, from local tradition to national project: the vast social capital held by native administration is redirected towards the Grand National Mobilization (Nafeer). Nafeer is in origin a Sudanese tradition of collective labour that rural people know better than anyone, making it a natural bridge between what the author defends and what the Charter proposes.
Beneath all this lies the idea of iftiqār (mutual interdependence) on which the Charter rests: that human beings are completed only through others, and that mutual need is the foundation of human society. The tribe at its best embodies this interdependence among those of a single lineage; the national state is called to widen its circle until it embraces all citizens regardless of lineage. The task is not to demolish the tribe in order to build the state, but to make the tribe's best spirit a building block of citizenship.

V. Questions for the Next Instalment

The author has promised a further instalment on popular local government and its role in preserving Sudan's unity and providing services. We look forward to it, and offer him some questions we hope the discussion can take up:
How do we protect local councils from becoming instruments of partisan mobilisation again, as happened in earlier experiences؟
What is the right relationship between an elected local council and native administration in the same place؟
And how do we ensure fair distribution of services between localities, the very problem the author himself identified؟

Conclusion

Dr. Farraj al-Fazari was right to remind us that Sudan was not held together in this war by its central institutions alone, but also by its local and customary fabric. What we add here is not a refutation but a completion: loyalty to this fabric requires protecting it from politicisation, militarisation and the capture of gateways, and placing it in its proper position within a state founded on citizenship and place rather than lineage. In this way native administration moves from the legitimacy of lineage to the legitimacy of function, earning the respect of all because it has come to belong to all.
We welcome the next instalment, and every dialogue that gathers us around a single question: how to build a state wide enough for all of us.

Arabic Forum