Sherri McFarland. Journal of Third World Studies. Volume 25, Issue 2, Fall 2008.
The ongoing crisis in Sudan is depicted by the Western media only in terms of the widespread human suffering that is taking place in the Darfur region of Western Sudan. This endless conflict extends far beyond the West; it has affected the Northern, Central, Southern and Eastern regions of the country. This article describes and analyzes the conditions and challenges of women living in the Nuba Mountains, which are located in the central region of the country also known as South Kordofan. The Sudanese government’s policies regarding Arabization and Islamization have adversely impacted the Nuba people as well as other communities throughout Sudan. The civil war that continually plagued the North, South and Central regions of Sudan was the result of an armed conflict between the Northern government and the Southern liberation movement, which was comprised of many people who subscribed to the Judeo-Christian faith as well as indigenous African beliefs.
Several reasons have been advanced to explain the devalued status and roles of women today in Africa in general and in the Sudan in particular. There is a general belief that African and Arab cultural traditions, which have informed public policies in the Sudan during the last several decades, have marginalized women’s roles and minimized their worth in society. However, those who believe that women are victims of their own making support the argument that public policies in the Sudan have no effect on the roles of women and that social roles and the status of women remain the same in both Islamic and non-Islamic societies. Research on the plight of Nuba women reveals that the North-South conflict in the Sudan and the implementation of public policies rooted in Islamic fundamentalism and Arab culture, have subjected Nuba women to various social ills, including, but not limited to, war, slavery, discrimination, confinement, displacement and rape. This has resulted in further marginalization of Nuba women and their relegation to the social, political and economic periphery.
Previous research on the status of women in the Sudan has tended to limit its scope to a general overview of the experiences of the country’s womenfolk.’ Virtually no effort has been made to examine, in great detail, the plight of specific groups of women within the Sudan. Hence, there is a paucity of literature on the plight of Nuba women. Because of the enormous attention paid to the recent crisis in the Darfur region of the Sudan by Western media outlets, as well as the international community’s outcry against human rights violations in that region of the country, many researchers have begun to pay some attention to the plight of the peoples of the Nuba Mountains and the atrocities committed against them by the government and government-sponsored militias. There continues to be a strong need to draw attention to the struggle of the Nuba women, so that the international community can have a broader perspective of how policies of the Sudanese government impact women and other marginalized populations within the country.
Given the fact that the Nuba Mountains are a part of the Central region of the Sudan, which has experienced much isolation due to more than thirty years of civil war, it has been extremely difficult to conduct research in this part of the country. The risks of bodily harm or even death, as well as the various difficulties associated with access to this extremely remote area of the country, have also impeded the conduct of research on the various groups that inhabit the Nuba Mountains. However, as a result of the recent influx of Nuba women refugees into various Egyptian cities, a window of opportunity has been provided for scholars to conduct research among these women. Thus, the field research for this paper was carried out among Nuba women living in various refugee camps in Egypt. Oral interviews of Nuba exiles in Egypt provided an imperfect but important view of the status and roles of Nuba women in their country of birth—Sudan. Since the Nuba refugees in Egypt speak primarily Arabic, an interpreter was used during the interviews. It is important to note, however, that the use of an interpreter presented some limitations because the information that was obtained from these interviews was subjected to the predilections and experiences of the interpreter. Information on the government’s perspective on the impact of public policies on the role and status of Nuba women in Sudan was obtained through face-to-face interviews of officials at the Sudanese embassy in Washington, D.C.
Religious and Cultural Diversity in the Nuba Mountains
Many population groups in the Sudan (e.g., the Nuba) have been subjected to various forms of persecution by the government because of the latter’s intolerance of diversity and desire to create, within the country, a homogenous society based on Islam and Arab culture. Within the Nuba Mountains live people with diverse cultural and religious backgrounds who speak some 50 languages. Islam, Christianity and African traditional religions are the three primary belief systems to which the Nuba subscribe. Consequently, the efforts of the government in Khartoum, which is dominated by the Islamic Afro-Arab community, to Arabize and Islamize the entire Sudanese nation is in direct conflict with the Nuba ideals of religious freedom. Since the civil war has caused regional divisions within the Sudan, the Nuba people have experienced an identity crisis because of their geographic location. Given the fact that the Nuba reside in an area that is geographically located north of the internal North-South frontier, the Northern government (i.e., the national government in Khartoum) and the various liberation movements fighting for greater autonomy for the many ethnic communities that inhabit the southern part of the country have fought to incorporate the Nuba into their own agenda. As a result of this struggle, the Khartoum government has, since the beginning of the war, excluded the Nuba Mountains from humanitarian programs. In order to reduce the number of groups agitating for greater levels of economic, cultural, and political autonomy and hence, supporting the efforts of the southern liberation movements such as the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLM/SPLA), the Khartoum government has made a concerted effort to classify the Nuba as part of the Northern region, which of course, is controlled by the government. While any Nuba support with southern liberation movements may not provide the latter with any military advantage, the government is aware that any such sympathy could reveal to the international community that discontentment among the Sudanese citizenry is much more widespread than has traditionally been acknowledged by the government.
The Raiding of Nuba Villages
Because of the civil war in the Sudan, the Nuba have been subjected to various social ills such as slavery, discrimination, displacement and rape. These disruptive conditions have also forced many of them to experience mental and physical injuries such as feelings of despair, fear, hatred, isolation, shame, guilt, fatigue, bodily pains and war-related trauma that have resulted in sickness and death. According to the African Rights Organization, Sudanese government policies have not only encouraged soldiers and members of various ethnic and religious (mainly Islamic) militias to raid Nuba villages and exploit the people (especially women) and their property, but have, in many cases, aided and enhanced the ability of these groups to oppress the Nuba. To strengthen its position and improve its control and dominance over all of the country, including the Nuba Mountains, the government armed local militia groups such as the Misirya Baggara Arabs who lived in areas that were both in and around Nuba villages, and provided these armed groups with the wherewithal to destroy Nuba villages which were considered a challenge to development within Sudan, a society based on Arab cultural and Islamic religious traditions. A more immediate reason for arming various ethnic militias was the central government’s desire to protect the enormous oil reserves in the Nuba Mountains. Thus, the military arrangement between the Misirya Baggara Arabs and the government was a mutually beneficial one: the former agreed to protect government oil and land interests in the Nuba Mountains region and in exchange the government granted them exclusive access to water and grazing resources that were becoming scarce due to competition from the various ethnic groups that inhabit the area. The government raided villages by utilizing a tactic that was referred to as the “combing process,” which encouraged the complete and total destruction of everything and everyone in the immediate area under attack. The government’s combing operations served a dual purpose: they created destitution among the Nuba and allowed government forces to confiscate furniture, food, clothing and other items by looting villages. Whenever the government made a surprise attack on a Nuba village, many men, women and children were abducted and subsequently sold into either slavery or some form of servitude. As a consequence, many of the people who lived in the Nuba villages lived in constant fear of being captured and sold into servitude.
Slavery
For many years, successive governments in Khartoum have denied the re-emergence of slavery in the Sudan. Male dominance is intrinsic to Sudanese society and the notion that women are the personal property of men is supported by the Sudanese interpretation of Sharia law. The Sudanese government’s strict adherence to the Sharia law has caused some scholars to believe that slavery is a legalized institution in Sudan. Human Rights reports reveal that slavery is, in fact, still widely practiced in Sudan. The Arab-Islamic identity of the Northern ethnic groups and the Black-African Christian identity of the central and Southern regions have impacted the institution of slavery. Northern Sudanese, who consider themselves superior because of their Arab-Islamic identity, routinely abduct women and children from the Nuba Mountains and other regions and sell these abductees hundreds of miles away from their homes and villages. In many cases, the abducted women and children are forced to work on large farms owned by wealthy Arab businessmen. Many of the abductees also perform domestic work in the homes of working professionals such as civil servants, lawyers, and doctors in the country’s urban centers. Additionally, enslaved Nuba women have been subjected to brutal beatings, forced marriages and concubinage.
Most of Sudan’s media outlets have made virtually no effort to write about slavery and other forms of forced servitude in the country. In fact, most of the information about this abhorrent practice comes primarily from foreign media outlets. Within the country, most families of loved ones that have been abducted and enslaved often think that their family members are just “missing” and that they would come home someday. Government officials continue to deny that the practice exists as, according to them, there are laws against such practices. A representative of the Consular Office at the Sudan Permanent Mission to the United Nations emphatically asserted that there was no slavery in the Sudan and that the occasional abduction of women and children that occurs in the country is associated with the fight between nomadic ethnic groups for grazing land, water and other natural resources. According to the Consular Officer, the government has been very instrumental in returning abductees that have been involved in ethnic conflicts to their families. However, interviews with some exiled Nuba women have revealed that the central government has not only been unwilling to put an end to abductions of citizens but has been complicit in the exploitation, especially, of women and children from the Nuba Mountains. The government, these Sudanese refugees have argued, is not interested in safeguarding the rights of certain ethnic groups and communities in the Sudan as evidenced by the horrendous killings in the Darfur region and the destruction of villages in the Nuba Mountains. In fact, some of these exiled women argued that the government claims that displaced children collected from the streets by various government agencies are not actually taken to specialized shelters for rehabilitation but are sold off into servitude throughout various urban centers in the country. The majority of the women who were living in exile in Cairo, where most of the interviews for this paper took place, strongly believe that Nuba people, as well as other non-Arab groups in the Sudan, continue to be oppressed and exploited by the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum. Because of colonial and post-colonial public policies many of these exploited groups continue to be denied full and effective access to basic social, economic and political resources that could allow them to improve their living standards. In fact, they believe that the central government is determined to make certain that the Nuba do not have access to modem education so that they can remain vulnerable to exploitation by the government and other government-sponsored groups.
Peace Camps
According to the African Rights Organization’s account of the Nuba plight, many Nuba women and their families have been forced to leave their home villages because their food crops were burned and their livestock plundered. Thus, many of them experienced starvation as well as material deprivation. The African Rights Organization also indicated that the creation of famine was a government military policy that was designed to drive the Nuba people away from their homelands and into government-controlled areas, notably, the so-called peace camps. Destitute Nuba women and their families were lured into peace camps with the promise of free food, clothing, medicine and education. Unfortunately for these women, life inside the confines of these peace camps was anything but peaceful. In addition to the fact that they received little of what the government promised them, most of what was given them was based on their total submission to the camp supervisors. As a consequence, many of these people unknowingly became involved in a process of forced acculturation, which was part of a larger effort by the government in Khartoum to Arabize and Islamize the entire Sudanese nation. As part of the process, scores of Nuba children were separated from their parents and taken to centers where they were educated to become Islamic extremists, much like those who are part of the current ruling elite. The African Rights Organization further claims that Nuba men were forced to join the various Arab militias, which were responsible for destroying Nuba villages, raping Nuba women, and killing Nuba children. Hence, many Nuba men were forced to contribute to the destruction of their own culture and customs. In the process, they became an instrument that was used by the government to oppress their own people and obliterate their traditional values. Amnesty International asserts that rape is an instrument of genocide. The entire power structure of these government-controlled peace camps was designed to compel women and girls to submit to rape. The African Rights Organization (ARO) also believes that the Sudanese government has had policies that endorsed rape as a means to terrorize and humiliate Nuba communities, as well as destroy the basic unit of Nuba society, which is the family. According to the ARO, “[t]he soldiers in these peace camps coerced women into having sex with them by making threats and withholding food, clothing, or access to water.” Those who refused to submit were punished severely and then raped.
The personal testimony of A.A., a member of the Korongo Abdullah ethnic group in the Nuba Mountains, whose name is not being revealed for safety reasons, tells of the hideous crimes that were committed against him during several years of enslavement while he lived in a peace camp. He was enslaved for approximately ten years of his life.” When the war came to the Korongo hills in 1989, he was abducted at age four and taken to a peace camp where he lived with a man that was responsible for guarding the camp. Each day, A.A. was assigned new responsibilities, which included washing clothes, cooking food, and general cleaning. Many times, A.A. would be asked to care for the young children of the slave owner’s family as well. A.A. relieved his owner’s wife of many of her responsibilities as a mother. If the young baby in the family became irritable or ill during the night, he was expected to lose sleep to care for that child. A.A. was also mistreated during his captivity. If he broke a dish or forgot something remotely related to his responsibilities as a slave, he was beaten with a stick over every part of his body.
A.A. was only permitted to attend Quranic schools. This was largely due to the government’s policies on Islamization. Even though he was captured at a very young age, A.A. does remember his owner changing his Christian name to a Muslim name, which is also part and parcel of the Islamization process. After living for several years with the man who guarded the camp, A.A. was eventually sold to another man who lived in Shendi, a city near Khartoum. While living in Shendi, A.A. was responsible for much of the same chores as he had performed in the first household in which he had lived. Here, he also endured much of the same mistreatment. Many times, he suffered from hunger because of the lack of food or became ill due to being served spoiled food. In addition to his household chores, A.A. was responsible for gathering food at the local market and manning his owner’s shop.
The responsibilities outside the home provided an escape for A.A. One evening, while in the market place gathering food for the family dinner, an older man approached him and asked him about his identity. When the man asked A.A. his father’s name, A.A. immediately recalled his father’s name even though he had been captured and enslaved at an early age. A.A. shared his story with the man. The man also asked A.A. to recite a few words in the Korongo language, which he did. The man, who was also from the Korongo ethnic group, deduced that A.A. was missing from a certain Korongo clan and promised A.A. that he would help him escape and find his family members who were still alive. The gentleman notified A.A.’s aunt about his enslavement. However, when she came to talk to the slave owner about releasing A.A., the slave owner refused. A few days later, A.A. met the gentleman again at the market place. This time, the two managed to secretly escape to A.A.’s aunt’s house who lived in a nearby town. A.A. and his aunt eventually fled the country of Sudan. The gentleman was able to help A.A. and his aunt leave the country because he knew key government officials who could aid them in their departure by processing the proper documentation.
A.A.’s testimony speaks to the fact that the slavery of females is different from that of males. Male slaves and female slaves are often assigned the same responsibilities, but slavery for the two is quite different. Men are more likely to be assigned duties that will involve them leaving the slave owner’s homestead for a period of time. These brief periods of time away from the homestead provide the male slaves with more opportunities to escape from bondage. On the other hand, the female is confined to the homestead because her responsibilities revolve primarily around caring for her own children and the slave owner’s wife and children. Therefore, she is under constant surveillance. Female slaves are also more likely to be raped and engage in prostitution. According to some of the interviewees, female slaves are sold for a higher price than their male counterparts because they are more easily brainwashed. Although the Sudanese government continues to emphatically assert that peace camps are centers for the provision of relief assistance and development, the experiences of A.A. and many others highlight the reality of the harsh circumstances that one must endure in these government-controlled settlements.
Rape
Research done by Meredith Turshen and Clotilde Twagiramariya provides further insight into the argument that rape can be used as a military and strategic policy designed to destroy a given community. The commission of rape boosts the morale of soldiers, intensifies hatred among warring factions and destabilizes society. Many women are raped during times of war simply “because war intensifies men’s sense of entitlement, superiority, avidity and it gives them a social license to rape.”‘ Sudanese policies that promoted rape also encouraged the soldiers and militia-men to take Nuba women as temporary wives. Nuba men and women were forbidden to marry in the peace camps because the government wanted to stop the production of Nuba offspring. Most women, who are victims of rape in a war-torn country like Sudan, suffer in silence because defining rape in a patriarchal society such as Sudan, is complicated by men’s power over the means of women’s survival in situations of extreme scarcity and insecurity. Subjection to the various forms of abuse (e.g., rape, forced marriages, denial of opportunity for schooling) is part of the larger effort, by a male- (and in the Sudan, an Arab- and Islamic-) dominated society to push women to the periphery of the political, social and economic spheres.
Another Nuba woman refugee by the name of R.K.K who was interviewed in Cairo, discussed how she was tortured and repeatedly raped and sodomized by government soldiers and members of government-sponsored militias while living in the Sudan. In order to safeguard her identity her full name could not be revealed. R.K.K was a nurse who worked in a local hospital in the capital city of Khartoum. In 1999, the Sudanese government enacted a law that required nurses and other government employees to be trained in military warfare so that they could assist the government in its fight against the liberation movement in the South. R.KK. eventually received a letter from the government informing her that she had to return to the government-controlled area in her home village in the Nuba Mountains so that she could receive military training. Initially, she refused to return to her village to receive the mandated training since participating in the latter implied that she would eventually have to fight members of her own ethnic group who were supporting various Southern Sudanese ethnic groups that were fighting for greater economic and political autonomy from the government in Khartoum. She wrote letters to several government officials arguing that the date on which she was born made her ineligible for military training. However, the government continued to insist that she adhere to federal regulations regarding employee training in military warfare.
R.K.K. eventually returned to the government-controlled area in her home village in the Nuba Mountains to attend military warfare training. While living in the military camp, she was tortured and raped repeatedly by so many men that she lost count of the number of men that had forceful sexual relations with her during the period she had lived in the military camp. One day. Southern freedom fighters attacked the camp and in the midst of the skirmish between the so-called rebels and government troops, R.K.K. escaped. Shortly after here escape, she relocated to the township of Kadugli where she received medical treatment for physical wounds and genital infections contracted from the rapes. Eventually, R.K.K. was able to contact her supervisor who was the director of the hospital in which she worked. He told her that he had been informed by his contacts in the government that military officials were intensely searching for her and advised her to take her family and leave the country. Subsequently, her supervisor took pity on her and helped her and her family flee the country.
Displacement
The number of Sudanese that have been displaced or killed because of the armed conflict between the North and South is staggering. In addition, several thousands of Nuba men, women and children have been forced into the government-controlled peace camps, which are not fit for human habitation. A large number of Nuba people have been forced to seek shelter outside the Sudan—many of them now live in extremely squalid conditions in overcrowded refugee camps in neighboring countries. The Nuba women who were interviewed for this research project said that life in Cairo is difficult, extremely challenging, and unbearable. In addition to the fact that many of these women have been separated from their families for years, many of them do not even know where their family members are located, as they are scattered in refugee camps throughout the region. Perhaps, more important is the fact that obtaining the official papers needed to remain safely in Egypt has been very difficult. The inability to obtain official political status has meant that most of them do not have access to government-funded health care, education, and other basic services. Without official papers, it is very difficult for refugees to engage in productive economic activities and provide the income that they need to support themselves and their families. Many of them are often subjected to exploitation by a corrupt Egyptian bureaucracy that continues to make it very difficult for these exiled Sudanese to legalize their status. Quite damaging to the welfare of many Sudanese refugees is the fact that the Egyptian government continues to refuse to provide support for the various displaced people living in its borders Most of the aid available to these people comes almost exclusively from non-governmental organizations, notably the Coptic, Catholic and Evangelical churches, which provide health care, clothing, food and basic education for these people. Unfortunately, these NGOs do not have enough resources to meet the needs of all the refugees.
Since these displaced people do not have the legal right to work in Egypt because they do not have the necessary papers, many of them have been forced to seek work in the informal sector, where, unfortunately, they are subjected to the caprices of an extremely corrupt law enforcement system. While the Nuba men sold commodities such as hair care products and perfumes on local street comers, the women worked as domestics in the homes of middle-income and wealthy Egyptians. On the streets, the men were harassed and repeatedly victimized by the police. In the homes, unscrupulous Egyptians who did not want to pay the Nuba women for work done, often falsely accused the women of stealing household items. Under such circumstances, the women were arrested and taken to jail and being undocumented aliens, they had few (if any) rights under Egyptian law. Their only way out was to plead with the accusing family and hope that the head of household would either withdraw the complaint or make the necessary arrangements to have the accused refugee released from jail into the family’s custody. Of course, release under such conditions, although it solved the legal problem, it, at the same time, returned the Nuba woman to the abusive situation.
For many Nuba men who were living on the periphery of Egyptian society with virtually no hope of ever securing gainful and respectable employment, it was especially difficult for them to accept the fact that their wives who worked as domestics were the only source of income for the household. This was quite frustrating for the Nuba male ego, because Nuba men come from traditional societies that support the belief that the man is always the sole provider for the household. Thus, the job status of Sudanese refugees who have been forced by circumstances beyond their control to live in exile, especially in countries like Egypt where they are not allowed to participate in the formal sector, has a profound impact on the social structure and power dynamics of the family.
The experiences of a Nuba couple, A.H. and her husband, J.A., that was interviewed in Cairo for this study, are quite informative. A.H. and J.A. relocated to Cairo in August of 1999, where they occupied a two bed-room apartment with several other Nuba refugees in a section of the city which is generally referred to as Haya Asher. A.H. recounts their story.
Because there were no jobs in Cairo for displaced persons such as myself and my husband, we, oftentimes, had no money for our rent, food and clothing. The clothing and food that we occasionally received were given to us by local evangelical churches. However, obtaining money to pay our rent was our biggest challenge. Living with five other persons did not necessarily lighten our financial burdens because each person was expected to pay their share of the rent as well as provide food for the entire household. In spite of our financial woes, God took care of us; my husband managed to obtain money for our needs by selling various commodities such as hair products, perfumes and handbags. I continued to worry a lot because I had no income and my husband’s income was very unstable; sometimes my husband sold a lot of products at the local market place, and then there were times when he sold nothing. Therefore, we lived with uncertainty day by day.
In addition, to having no money, I experienced a lot of health problems. I felt very tired most of the time and at night I felt feverish. Sometimes in the morning I would cough uncontrollably and blood would come out of from my throat. I needed to go to the local Coptic hospital, but I had no money. I needed desperately to find a job. I knew that I could have easily found a job working as a domestic in an Egyptian home because it is a widely held belief among most Egyptians that Sudanese women are good housekeepers. However, I did not want a job as a domestic because such jobs were problematic for Sudanese women. Oftentimes Sudanese women were falsely accused of stealing from the houses of their Egyptian employers.
I personally knew of a Nuba woman who was falsely accused of stealing from the home of her Egyptian employer. She worked as a live-in housekeeper for an Egyptian couple that was married. One night after taking a bath, the Egyptian woman had the Nuba woman arrested without warning. She falsely accused her of stealing a gold watch and several other items. The Egyptian woman’s husband did not believe that the Nuba woman had stolen such items. He tried to convince his wife not to have the Nuba woman arrested, but she insisted that the Nuba woman had in fact stolen the items. The Nuba woman strenuously proclaimed that she was innocent but her proclamation was ignored.
The Nuba women and their families living in exile were not only confronted with health problems and financial hardships, but were also worried about the attainment of various rights and privileges that were associated with obtaining asylum and being recognized officially as refugees in a foreign country. Many were constantly worried about being in the country illegally; obtaining the funds to renew visas that had expired or were about to expire; and some were forced to endure the long, bureaucratic process through which one must undergo in order to be granted asylum or to be recognized officially as a refugee by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). Some refugees stated that they had spent three years or more waiting for their paper work to be processed. Others were very upset because asylum was denied and they had to wait a long period of time to appeal the UNHCR’s decision. If they were not officially recognized as refugees and granted asylum by the UNHCR, they were considered displaced persons with no legal protection. During the time in which they waited for the asylum process to be completed, many were harassed by the local police in public places such as the market, on the streets, and on public buses and trains. Many Nuba women expressed fear of being accosted; they felt that the local police force was targeting Sudanese people because of the racial tensions that existed between Egyptians and Sudanese. They also said that it was widely known that Egyptians did not appreciate the large influx of Sudanese people resettling in their country. Egyptian children as well as men and women of both high and low status harassed Sudanese men, women and children by referring to them in racially demeaning terms. Pejorative terms such as bonga bonga, chocolata and syamata are quite common and are used to describe people of darker skin. Within Egyptian social circles, such peoples are considered inferior and usually discriminated against. Darker-skinned women are exploited mercilessly and pushed to the social periphery. The men are exploited as well and are discouraged from interacting with main stream Egyptian society.
Discrimination
Before coming to Egypt, the Nuba women interviewees had suffered just as much discrimination in the Sudan, usually at the hands of Sudanese Arabs. Discrimination pervades the lives of Nuba people in the Sudan because, as they claim, they are faulted for their African heritage, which is not appreciated in the country. Arab identity is thought to be superior to African identity. Therefore, Nuba people are marginalized socially and regarded as slaves. In fact, most of the ethnic groups in Northern Sudan believe they are racially and culturally Arab because they are genealogically descended from Arab invaders who occupied the region several hundred years ago. In Northern Sudanese towns and cities, Nuba does not refer to the rich variety of proud peoples that inhabit the Nuba Mountains, but to second class citizens who sweep the streets and clean the latrines. The Nuba have traditionally been denied educational and occupational opportunities, which have caused abject poverty throughout their community. Such discrimination has led to the mistreatment of Nuba women and their families. Discrimination against the peoples of the Nuba Mountains intensified during the North-South confiict because the government suspected that all Nuba were sympathetic to the Southern liberation movement. One interviewee recalled that she and her family were harassed by the government because the latter suspected that the family had ties to the Southern liberation movement.’ Her father was eventually thrown in jail and she was subjected to intense harassment by government officials, both in the market place and while walking on the streets. She continued to be mistreated by government officials until she left Sudan in search of a relatively better life in Egypt.
The Oppression of Women
Discrimination, slavery and other social ills have continued to be promoted in Sudanese society by the various governments that have ruled the country since it gained independence. Because of the government’s Islamic extremist character and enforcement of its version of Islamic and other draconian laws, the advancement of women is stunted in all aspects of society. Consequently, the good intentions of the Quranic verses cannot be seen in their practical implementation. In June of 1996, the government enacted the Provision for the Public Order of the State of Khartoum, which introduced strict rules that discriminated against women in terms of dress code, movement, economic activity, assembly and travel.'” Women were banned from traveling abroad without men and they could not ride alone on public transport. Additional restrictions prohibited male and female gatherings at social events, theatrical performances, weddings, parties, sports-related activities and picnics.
The Sudanese interpretation of Islamic laws requires that women wear long opaque dresses that cover their ankles and veils that hide their heads. Women are prohibited from wearing pants (trousers). Those who choose to ignore the dress restrictions are flogged in the streets by government officials. Both currently, as well as in times past, there was no consistency with the enforcement of Islamic laws concerning the dress code on a national level. The peace agreement that was signed in January 2005 stipulates that Sharia law can only be implemented in the Northern cities. Consequently, restrictions on the dress code are not supposed to affect most of the Nuba women who live in the rural areas that are located in the central and Southern regions. However, those who live in the Northern urban centers must abide by such restrictions. The Nuba exiles that were interviewed asserted that Nuba women living in rural areas wear whatever they want to wear, be it short or long, and that their heads are not always covered.
The Public Order of 1991 included broad provisions on mixed social gatherings, which virtually excluded women from participating in the male-dominated public sphere. Consequently, the role of women in the political arena is marginalized. The interviews that were conducted in Egypt and Washington, D.C. revealed that women who do hold political positions have very little influence. According to some of the interviewees, the efforts of a few prominent Nuba female leaders such as Fuza Hamm Coifee and Zenaib Mohammoud who hold key positions in the government have been stifled because they do not radically oppose the current government’s agenda which some say definitely does not include helping the Nuba people. Constraints regarding the involvement of Nuba women and other women in the public sphere prevent them from playing a larger role in making decisions that could shape their individual lives as well as those of others.
The government tightly controls women’s access to power and privilege by preventing them from taking advantage of various educational opportunities and obtaining certain jobs in both the public and private sectors. In the Sudan, as in most Muslim countries, more emphasis is placed on the education of boys than on that of girls. During the war between the North and South the lack of educational opportunities for females within Nuba communities became even more profound because the government was unwilling to build schools in Nuba communities. Because there are very few educated Nuba women, there are few who have professional jobs. In addition to the lack of education, government restrictions regarding women’s participation in the economic sector are equally debilitating to Nuba women. By prohibiting Nuba women as well as other women from working in certain professions, the government is attempting to control the material conditions of the lives of women, regardless of their class. By law, women are banned from working in restaurants, hair salons and in offices along side men. Islamic laws instituted by the government also restrict women’s participation in the economic sector by prohibiting them from working in various jobs after dark and forbidding them from selling commodities such as groundnuts, tea and Marisa beer, a homemade brew. In the Nuba Mountains, most women earn their livelihood by farming and selling the aforementioned commodities in the local markets. Consequently, government restrictions that state that women are to work only during the daytime heavily restrict their ability to secure livelihoods for themselves and their families. Since such laws have been instituted, agricultural work goes undone because it oftentimes cannot be completed during the daytime and the cash made from the sale of food and drink cannot be earned after sunset.
In some remote villages, women are flogged by government-appointed officials for selling food, alcohol and nonalcoholic beverages at local truck stops. Women who are discovered by police to be selling beer and wine in secret are thrown in jail and their personal belongings sold. Islam outlaws the consumption of alcohol and persons who violate such a sacred ordinance are punished by receiving 80 lashes according to Sudanese law. Many women are aware that Islamic laws do not condone the drinking and selling of alcohol, but they continue to sell liquor and engage in prostitution because they have no money to support their families. Some women have been incarcerated simply because they resisted while being raped. In some instances, a woman’s resistance to rape merits a charge of prostitution. Because the Sudanese government is very strict in its observance of Islamic laws, it does not consider the factors that impel women to break these laws. Women who have children are constrained by government laws that state that “[w]omen should work only if they have no children and if their income is needed by the family.” This of course, restricts Nuba women, as well as other Sudanese women, from fully participating in the economic sector because the majority of them have children.
In addition to being marginalized in the economic sector because of their gender, interviews of Nuba women in exile also disclosed that their economic participation in Sudan was restricted due to race and ethnicity. As previously mentioned, if one has genealogical links to the Saudi Arabian Peninsula then he or she is considered to be racially superior to a person of African descent. Many believe that government policies encourage people throughout the state of Sudan to renounce their African identity. According to the interviewees in Egypt, the quality of life for Arabs in Sudan is much better than it is for Africans. Arabs have access to better housing, educational and occupational opportunities. If the current Islamic government continues to restrict women’s movements and activities and prevent them from gaining an education as well as having access to various resources, Nuba, as well as other Sudanese women, will be hampered in their efforts to be fully integrated into the national economy.
Conclusion
The comprehensive peace agreement that was recently signed by the Northern government and the Southern liberation movement in January of 2005 has provided a launching pad for positive changes to take place for the Nuba as well as other minority ethnic groups within Sudanese society. The newly established political structures in the Nuba Mountains have allowed women to play a bigger role in the decision making process. Twenty-five percent of the seats in the South Kordofan Parliament have been reserved for women, and political leaders are looking for women to fill more seats so that the percentage could increase.” Now that the atrocities that were committed by the Northern government have stopped and the reconstruction of their lives and communities has begun, there is more of an emphasis on the education and health care of Nuba women and children. More schools have been built for young girls, and communication and advocacy groups have formed so that issues relating to diseases such as HIV/AIDS can be properly handled. Women are also being taught new income generating techniques so that they can have a financial impact on their community. In spite of the positive changes that have been made regarding the needs of women in the Nuba Mountains, the struggle to address the issues of these women will continue because of the patriarchal structures of Sudanese society which overshadow such issues. For the hundreds of thousands of Nuba women who are trapped in the urban centers of Northern Sudan because they are unable to return to their homeland due to financial hardships the governmental policies regarding Arabization and Islamization continue to be a part of daily living. The hardships that are associated with such a reality continue to make it even more difficult for Nuba women as well as other women to make a substantial difference in the society in which they live.