SUDAN:A NATION CAUGHT IN A CONFLICT OF TRUTH VERSUS DISHONESTY by Hussien Arko Mennawi

Truth, credibility and honesty are denotation of human values of morality but they also connotatively refer to achievement, awareness and success in every walk of our life. Lack of credibility,truth and honesty is the major stumbling block that has crippled the progress of mankind since long time ago, nevertheless, when mankind managed to break the constraints of deception, dishonesty and hypocrisy, after a lengthy and a high cost battle many people from all over the globe have been able to move mountains of obstacles that might not be achieved in a time span of million years if they are under the constraints of deception and disinformation . Thus while the world in its speedy change also many nations have outdistanced deceptive life and hypocrisy behind their back. This progress can be seen obviously in a form of transparency covers most aspects of our needs; democracy, knowledge , social interrelations and human rights etc.
However, in Sudan still the nation is held captive by malpractice، misuse of power, cultural misconception and narrow-mindedness resulted from deep rooted conflict of morality versus immorality in which various categories of Sudanese are involved, including social classes, political figures, curriculum designers and many intellectuals. Incredibility prevails like a killer disease in everyday life and in so many forms, as well as deliberate misleading practiced by Sudanese in some critical historical issues. Much of controversy over our history and over many crucial issues not yet been solved, though it’s the main cause of our conflict and disintegration of the country. This controversy actually arises due to lack of credibility and honesty.
Our society is completely absorbed into a fierce and never ending battle to hide the truth. All this happens under an argument of social and cultural beliefs that adore racial purity, the complex which is not exceptional in a particular ethnicity in Sudan, though it is clearer and more painful among certain cultural groups led by Arab culture. Racial or cultural purity has been for centuries a bitter test in our social and political systems but we utterly failed to address it. Ironically many of those who claim their Arab racial belonging are known historically by their African origins , yet they claim Arabism through allegations based on controversial diagram trees descending from ancestors mostly end up at the prophet Mohammad family. Apart from the widespread claim of Aljalyeen tribe belonging to the family of the prophet Mohammed through prophet’s uncle Abbas whom Aljaleen think their great grandfather , also the family of Mohammad Ahmed Al-Mamahadi whose origin goes back to Al-Danagela tribe in the far north of Sudan, and the family of Marghani have tried their best to establish a belief that their grandfathers originally come from the family of the prophet Mohammad and to prove this claim they recognized themselves as Al-Ashraf which literally means the noble origin and figuratively means the grand children of prophet Mohammad. In a similar manner, the concept of racial purity is also practiced by some other tribes in Sudan illogically and without any substantial justification, as it is seen clearly among Zaghawa tribe who categorizes the blacksmith among them as a lower class, while the bulk of Zaghawa paying a steep price to gain their equal rights in a culturally classified society of Sudan.
INCREDIBLE LEADERSHIP IN ISLAMIC COSTUME
Moving from the top heap to the bottom of the society there is obviously so much incorrectness concerning how Sudanese handle truth and credibility. Due to incurable deformities that handicap our cultural system and etiquettes, it turns to be normal that the community runs a wide range of affaires under the cover of disinformation and hypocrisy. Though It is not a big issue when we encounter ordinary people try to conceal truth about some trivial issues because of cultural reasons , it is catastrophic when top political leaders straightforwardly assume cheating, conspiracy and hypocrisy to materialize their personal and public goals, to speak frankly, betrayal, lying and hypocrisy are the mother’s milk of many of our leaders in Sudan. In Sudan truth and credibility are at crossroad, whatsoever money and time been invested in education, it seems that the battle between values of morality and negative cultural inherited has finally anchored in favor of negative inherited to an unwelcoming and unpleasant shore. This is true as long as genocide is being committed selectively on cultural basis, social and cultural arrogance overshadows our community and over two thirds of population are under political, cultural and economic deprivation. What makes the nation in Sudan live in such a fabricated reality is that our politicians are usually triggered or stimulated by cultural illusion and deception to hide truth which they fear it degrades the artificial status in which they survive. Both the two sectarian leadership of Al-Ansar and Al-Khatmia have been able to survive in their egocentric sacred tower for many decades by using controversial allegations of their belonging to Al-Asharaf or the noble origin descended from the prophet Mohammad. To such a degree the sectarian political parties used Islam as mechanism to mesmerize the public and subsequently the current NCP regime, the legitimate baby of the National Islamic Front had followed suit since it has hijacked the state through coup d’état in 1989. The leaders of the National Islamic Front under the NCP Regime proved on more than an occasion that they used fraudulence in name of Islam to stir public sentiment and to justify their mistakes which precisely means the National Islamic Front is demonstrating how it basically originated from a womb of contradiction and incompatibility. In the wake of the coup d’état of 30 June 1989 both Dr Al-Trabi the mastermind of the Islamic movement in Sudan and Omer Basheer the head of the coup, flagrantly disclaimed any link of the National Islamic Front to the coup d’état, the denial which was completely untrue. And a decade later when Al-Trabi and some of his disciples departed the NCP and crossed to the opposition, he openly denied in a public rally the fate of the young combatants who were killed in the battle field. He stripped them off the right of martyrdom and called them just carcass. Islamists are from the same school of thought whether together with Al-Trabi or without him , nothing has changed because of their disunion, still deception and fraudulence are dominant. Nowadays any one who follows up the events regarding the NCP Regime surely he or she will get dizzy, or even falls unconscious because of countless contradictory statements by senior statesmen in Sudan.
A CULTURE VICTIM HISTORY
Normally education ,wealth and power play an instrumental role in any human society to help an individual or a group qualify their social status but only education is the most able factor that domesticate cultural recalcitrance and curb whatever trespass occurs as a result of any unsound cultural concepts. In a calculative manner I can conclude that enough money and time for a century been invested in education so that the nation could defeat the deep rooted cultural discrepancy among Sudanese society, which means that all kinds of incorrectness embodied in a form of hypocrisy, dishonest and deception to be buried by awareness acquired through quality of our education. On the other hand, it is unfortunate that the outcomes are ridiculous and unfruitful, whereas the depth of cultural division in the society has become more fathomless, a century old hatred erupted again in its worst violence against humanity in Darfur and other marginalized areas of Sudan and the history of genocide that occurred in Al-Matamma and in elsewhere in Sudan a century ago has recycled itself in several areas comparatively with more advanced war machines.
History is more than mere events from which people may trace back or recall some elapsed time. History is a priceless testimony that stimulates us to avoid repetition of bygone mistakes and to inspire us for better future. For this purpose many nations select the great events of their history to commemorate from time to time so as they benefit from both advantages and disadvantages of history.For instance,in Uganda and its neighboring state of Rowanda people never let events of genocide which occurred in their history pass without paying any memorial dues to that indelible history and this almost happens in every nation suffered from grievances of history. Whereas in Sudan all catastrophic evidences are deliberately buried by dishonesty and fraudulence.
Generations of modern history in Sudan understand that there has respectively arisen a Sudan of two eras without any visible intervals, the Sudan of Al-Mahadyah and the Sudan that came into existence as a result of evacuating the condominium rule in the mid of twentieth century. Whether it is a coincidence or not, the fact is that the Sudan of the two eras has been characterized by instability, war, corruption, injustice, persecution, genocide and so many other violations against humanity. I believe that all the failure accompanied our history is due to culturally unsaid and lack of credibility in dealing with serious social and political issues both at private and public level. The deeper we go into the history of Sudan during Al-Mahadyah the more we find ourselves amid awesome facts about how the state been run under very cruel authority and how anarchy overpowered every corner in the then Sudan. Regardless of the two contrary positions towards Al- Mahadyah , yes, still in the modern history of Sudan no political era that might compete Al-Mahadyah in confronting colonialism, that is the bright side of Al-Mahadyah but it is another issue. In term of human rights issues domestically Al-Mahadyah was no more than any tyrannical rule experienced by mankind, but regrettably, this reality not considered in our national curriculum. Instead our educational system in Sudan deliberately has kept fostering young generations by information that depicts the era of Al-Mahadyah as flawless and perfect revolution.
Despite all the critical status quo in which Khalifa Abdallah ran his state after the death of Al-Mahadi, it is immoral to turn a blind eye to the violations committed during his reign without giving any considerations to that tragedy as a part of our history to be taught in details in the national curriculum. Tyranny is almost a part of history of every nation and it should not be exempted from the national curriculum as it is seen currently in the case of Sudan.
Honestly in our historical records there is a very limited literature of unsaid facts written by an honest and a dauntless person like Babiker Badre showing his own experience at private and public levels during Al-Mahadyah , yet all what he narrated remained hidden for a long time because many Sudanese, particularly those of interest group who control over the state bureaucracy are unwilling to unveil facts about our history under the pretext of intolerable cultural taboo that they think it breaks the virginity of values such as dignity, honor and racial purity. Babiker Badre who belonged to those who underwent ordeal of persecution under the rule of Al-Mahadyah was one of those who passed on to generations the truth about what happened in in Al-Matamma concerning genocide, rape and female enslavement, that is why Babiker Badre is today the icon of truth and honesty in Sudan.
Once again history repeated itself after more than a century in a typical manner of Al-Mahadyah behind Islamic disguise. This time the difference between the atrocities of yesterday and that of today is qualitative in a wide range of aspects, among which the degree of brutality, sophistication of weaponry ,policy of divide and rule, availability of resources , recruitment of mercenaries from across borders, Alqayda combatants in particular and financial support of global Islamic movements, likewise, this time the victims in Darfur and in other war areas are unlike the victims during Al-Mahadyah rule, today their outcry in face of genocide and rape is so frankly and honestly that no room has been left for deception and evasiveness whatever constraints there are in name of taboo or cultural restrictions

Hussien Arko Mennawi is reachable at [email protected]

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