Good of you to mention the President’s visit. I noticed a few things about the Cabinet meeting in South Kordofan.

1. The cabinet meeting itself was completely irrelevent as far as media coverage went: the visit was displayed as the kick off for the NCP election campaign. A lot of promises; fascilities being opened by the president; native administrators pledging allegiance and candidating al Bashir for president; etc.

It seemed that the NCP, rather than making some kind of gesture to the SPLM in South Kordofan to show its genuine interest in co-operation, brought in the President himself to officially turn South Kordofan into an election battle ground.

The SPLM percieved it as such, judging from the comment by the SPLM’s official Spokesperson in the State, Mohamadeen Ibrahim, who said that “what came in the President’s speech must be followed by practical procedures that would benefit the citizens of the State”.

By the way: two weeks before the visit of al Bashir, the SPLM website announced the kick off of its campaign in South Kordofan with a visit of Dr. Ann Itto: “The SPLM Deputy Secretary General for the Southern Sector was expected to launch the party’s mobilization campaign in South Kordofan, as the SPLM gears up for the forthcoming general elections.”

2. The president denounced the existence of ‘closed areas’ in South Kordofan. With this he meant the areas under SPLM administration that are still not integrated with the state administration as a whole. Surely an undesirable situation, but why would the president denounce it now, in a speech in Mujlad, when he left the issue unresolved for three years?

SPLM spokesman Ibrahim urged the government to prove its intention to making the ‘closed areas’ part of the south Kordofan’s community. To me that signals a clear lack of co-ordination on renewing the NCP-SPLM partnership prior to Haroun’s appointment and al Bashir’s visit, making it less likely that the parties will get any closer at all.

3. The president urged the people in the state to ‘renounce tribalism and regionalism’. Of course this can be understood as a general appeal to all the various peoples of South Kordofan to focus on their communalities rather than on their (tribal) differences. But it reminded me of something the late Yousif Kuwa told me in an interview. Talking about the period he participated in state politics as deputy speaker of the Kordofan Assembly (around 1983), he said:

“We thought our area was backward – there was no comparison between Southern Kordofan and Northern Kordofan or any other part of the country. We wanted some equality, some services, so that people could feel that they were belonging to the same country. [But] it wasn’t possible, because whenever you talked, you would be described as a racialist, a separatist, a this and that and always they would try to find something to condemn you for.”

Meanwhile, a very sad event – the killing of 25 Misseriya and 1 Nuba in clashes near Abu Januk – highlighted the tribal tensions in the state. I do not doubt this particular conflict has a long history, but I can’t help but wonder if the attack coincided with the visit of al Bashir by pure chance or whether somebody was trying to make a point here.

thank you for your comment. Good to know you enjoyed the article. It also gives me a nice opportunity to add an update.

Both Ahmed Haroun and Abdel Aziz al Hilu have said they want to renew the NCP-SPLM partnership in order to solve the problems of integration and security in South Kordofan and prepare the state for the upcoming elections. It sounds hopefull. At the same time the previous Governor Omer Suleiman and his Deputy spoke similar words and we know how that ended.

All in all it is not very difficult: when Haroun is genuine about reconciliation he will have to come up with some measures that will gain him the trust of the SPLM. Deployment of the former SPLM police officers who have been trained to function within the oficial state administration would be a good first. Making the state’s finances more transparent and giving the SPLM its share of authority in this realm would be high on the list, together with actually hiring and employing the administrative personel recrutied in SPLM areas in August last year. From its side, the SPLM shall have to acccept that it cannot continue to function as a seperate administration in large parts of South Kordofan.

Two things to watch for: relevant measures of the SK Government, and the census results for South Kordofan.

To be continued…

I have nothing much to say, but I really liked the article and believe it provided very logical and factual analysis and I thought I should say so. Many thanks.