The 1971 Coup in the Sudan and the Radical War of Liberal

The 1971 Coup in the Sudan and the Radical

War of Liberal Democracy in Africa

Abdullahi Ali Ibrahim

Oh, that single cello! Philadelphia, the film.

The Radicals and the “Trough of the Wave”’ One can understand why the late 1980s and the

1990s are traumatic for African and Africanist radicals. After decades of heaping “theoretical abuse” on bourgeois democracy, they are baflled to see that this democracy is becoming respectable again (Nyan’goro 1994:135). Samir Amin, who has been untiringly writing off bourgeois democracy in a bourgeoisie- deficient Africa, spells out the apocalyptic nature of the dilemma facing these radicals.

Echoing Gramsci,2 he characterizes the times we live in as the “trough of the wave.” The first wave of national liberation has run its course, he says, and the popular forces are still in the making, not crystallizing around adequate alternatives. Behold, he proclaims, such are the scoundrel times marked by “too much disarray and intellectual and political capitulation” (in Azzam, 199O:xiv). Issa Shivji, who quotes Amin approvingly, calls for the need to recognize such capitu- lations where they exist (1991:258). True to his belief, he wrote a “dissenting” epilogue to a conference vol- ume he edited because the radicals who participated in the discussions abandoned their class positions on democracy and jumped on to the bandwagon of liberal democracy (Zbzd.:255). To add insult to injury, these radicals presented their capitulation as a con- quest of advanced “bourgeois intellectual posts by radical scholarship even if it may be no more than atoning for one’s past sins of Marxist radicalism” (Zbzd.).

Radicals inclined now to acquiesce to bourgeois democracy are undaunted by the accusation of capitulation. For support they congregate in conferences

with therapeutic titles such as “Taking Bourgeois Democracy Seriously.”3 They adopt two strategies to defend their position on why “liberal democracy is worth struggling for, even by socialists” (Sandbrook, 1988:25). First, they hasten to disclaim, or show im- perviousness to, the epithets they know their unyield- ing comrades would hurl at them. Sandbrook categorically denies that his appreciation of liberal democracy, which would sound unattractive to socialists, is an anti-revolutionary stance (Zbzd. :24 1). Cohen, on the other hand, is defiant and could care less if he was excommunicated. If they would shout him down as “revisionist,” so be it (Cohen, 199 1 :2). Second, they are questioning their previous radical ancestry and re- routing their genealogy to connect with more ac- commodating ancestors. Understandably, Lenin is targeted in this “ancestor dumping” for his mechani- cal view reducing liberal democracy to a mask for bourgeois domination (Sandbrook, 1988:249), his “vanguardism” ( Cohen, 199 1 :3), and incurable no- tions of the “stages of revolution” and “dispersion of parliament” (Post, 199 1 :47). Bernstein, the German social democrat, is recommended as the right ancestor for the time. He is selected to point the way to the progressive movements of the 21st century for his argument that once workers had the vote, they were “citizens” not just “proletarians” (Cohen, 199 1 :6).

Unlike steadfast radicals, reformed radicals see it as their business to struggle for bourgeois democracy a. Ibrahim, 1987:37). Sobered by the monstrous, social fantasies installed by fiat (Cohen, 1991:12), mel- lowed radicals are embarking on cultivating a taste for the pragmatics of liberal democracy. Gutto sees nothing bourgeois or liberal about elections or freedom of expression and association (in Beckman, 1989:86). Cohen maintains:

Workers, peasants need rights and a legal order to

0 1996: COMAPRATIVE STUDIES OFSOUTHASIA, ARIU AND rHEMtDDiE~sr(formerly SOUTHASIA BULLETIN^ Vol. XVI No. 1 (1996)

Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East

Published by Duke University Press

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facilitate organization, negotiation, and struggle. Poor people, all people-need protection from arbitrary power (1 99 1 : 1 2).

This human need for democracy underlies their call for a “united front” of liberals and socialists to discipline an “errant and quite autonomous state” (Holinquist et. al., 1994:lOl) and block the movements of ruling cliques towards fascism (Ibrahim, 1987:39). In addition, they are redefining socialism in a radical way to become synonymous with greater democracy (Post, 199 1 :46). Socialism, in Cohen’s view, cannot be posed as an alternative to democracy (1992:2). In arguing that it is the lack of democracy that holds back African development (in Becker, 1989: 89), Peter Nyong’o turns the socialists’ pet argument-sacrificing liberties for development to take off-on its head. Excessive belief in the virtue of armed struggle and premature usurpation of power and running a state by revolutionary personnel are shunned (hi.). Democratic movements are encour- aged to employ a combination of legal, extralegal and illegal means to achieve their goal (Post, 1991:43; Beckman, 1989:93). They are persuaded to utilize effectively the “democratic space” bourgeois institutions provide. This space is analogized to a “liberated area” within which a popular movement can survive and develop, providing the basis from which further advances can be made (Beckman, 1989:96).

Remarkably, this novel faith in bourgeois democracy is wed to a conviction that radicalism has faltered largely because radicals were hasty. The sour experi- ences of radicalism have impressed upon radicals the virtue of patience (Nyong’o, 1987:23). Even an unre- pentant radical like Amin preaches the wisdom of knowing how to be patient (in Azzam, 199O:xiv). Im- manuel Wallerstein contends that radicals had been impatient for the last decades and “the wine turned sour” (1 979: 137). Noble causes, argues Joseph, must abide the delays and complexities of democratic constitutions (1993: 240). Democracy is not the realm of happiness and cannot be written off for not living up to radical expectations. Democracies develop over time and no less than Greek tropes are recalled to prove their slow evolution. Contrary to radical wishes, democracy, in Diamond’s words, is contaminated and does not “simply spring into being pure and whole like Athena from the brow of Zeus” (1993:228).

For patience to sell, radicals need to be assured that there is nothing “structural” in African culture or economy that militates against bourgeois democracy. The question in the democratization of Africa, according to Holinquist, is no longer the societal obsta- cles to democracy, but the conditions that will nurture a durable democracy in Africa (1994:lOO). Samuel

Huntington, for all intents and purposes, buried the cultural thesis that maintains that democracy is largely inappropriate for Africa (1 993:ZO). Even Post, who still holds to this thesis, is not terribly pessimistic about the prospects of liberal democracy in the con- tinent (1991). The recognition that cultures are too dynamic to handicap or facilitate democracy (Huntington, 1993:2 1) has been lucidly underlined by the link Robinson (1 994) and Jean-FranCois Bayart ( 1993: 15) make between democratization in Africa and practice theory in anthropology. Unlike path- dependent analysis, practice theory presents indi- viduals as competent actors capable of shaping events and responding to change in their environment (Robinson, 199453). Culture here is not an impediment to democracy. Far from it, culture can be a catalyst in the flowering of democracy.

Objective conditions (specifically, the lack of an African bourgeoisie carving out a civil society), so dear to structuralists (Amin, 1987; Chabal, 1986), who see Africa as inhospitable to liberal democracy, have been challenged. Other factors favoring this democracy have been suggested. Political or civic culture (Sandbrook, 1988:252; Joseph, 1993:288) is especially emphasized as instrumental in the evolution of bourgeois democracy in Africa. The political commitment of individual leaders and the strategies of political activists, which are basic to the kind of civic culture favoring liberal democracy, are pointed to as pivotal to the maturation of this democracy in Africa (Sandbrook, 1988:252). 7be Sudan in Africa

There is a lingering hunch in recent radical writ- ings about democracy in Africa that the popular movement in the Sudan (Nyong’o, 1987; Sandbrook, 1988: 260; Beck, 1989:95) and the experiments of the Sudanese Communist Party (SCP) (Beck, 1989:95, Turok, 1987: 19) are instructive for the debates on the feasibility of liberal democracy in Africa. Ben Turok describes as “quite extraordinary” the party’s pragmatic, yet principled, praxis for establishing a strate- gically correct relationship between the struggle for democracy and the struggle for socialism-omething that has evaded many others in Africa (1 987: 153).

This paper investigates the SCP praxis in which it was found expedient to struggle for bourgeois democracy to effect radical change. Special attention will be given to the party’s work to empower the masses by protecting the “democratic space” provided by bourgeois democracy against risky undertakings especially by the petty bourgeoisie. Hence the paper will focus on the party’s condemnation of the putschist tactics and “new democracy” as risky petty bourgeois tactics



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and gadgets to usurp and hold power. This call for political restraint, in which patience assumes a class content, faults those engaging in premature social fantasies for more than being “do-gooders.” In the perspective of this advocacy, those taking “short-cuts to happiness,” to socialism, can only benefit by haste. To do justice to the multi-layered politics and robust actors of this advocacy, the paper will examine it against the backdrop of the aborted, “allegedly” communist coup of July 1971 against Nimeiri’s regime (1 969- 1985). For this “venture” the party paid a heavy price. The cream of the leftist leadership evolving over three decades was almost wiped out and the credibility of the party, caught red-handed doing what it denounced others for doing, was damaged beyond repair. A Background to SCP Liberal Advocacy

The party’s strategy that the fight for socialism and democracy are inextricably bound goes back to its establishment in 1946 and its later evolution during the rise of trade unionism among workers and the tenants of the state-owned agricultural schemes. In the post-World War I1 period, Britain begrudgingly granted labor the right to unionize on the understanding that the self-ruled Sudan would emulate the institutions of the metropolis. In actual fact the labor and tenants movement grew and matured while fighting the limitations imposed by the colonial ad- ministration on the scope, functions and representation of the emerging unions. E.P. Brown describes the growth of the Sudanese labor movement in a decade, as lucidly penned by Fawzi (1957), as arising virtually out of nothing (1957:~).

Two successive party conferences upheld this position of conjoining democracy and social change. The Third Conference held in 1956, the date of the inde- pendence of the Sudan, identified socialism as the ultimate goal of the party. To achieve this goal, Su- dan, in the party’s view, needed to build a popular democratic state pursuing a non-capitalist path and led by the working class and its allies among the farmers. Undoubtedly, the party was influenced in this formulation of its goals by the rise of the socialist and popular democracies in Europe and Asia. What prevented this formulation from being a mere parrot- ing of the jargon of the time, however, was the concrete praxis of the party in a politically upsurging labor milieu. The strategy of accessing social change through bourgeois rights was upheld, albeit with a grain of salt, so to speak, by the party’s Fourth Con- ference in 1967. The reason why the party was ambivalent toward liberal democracy in this conference is twofold. First, the attraction of Arab and African “socialism” of the 1960s, spearheaded by a one-party

or a “front,” manned by “revolutionary democrats” was too powerful for the party to resist. A “burning of social stages,” in which a period of bourgeois domination was no longer necessary or welcomed, seemed to be in order then. Second, at the time the conference met, the party was being persecuted by a “savage parliament .” The party’s adversaries in the traditional and religious parties were envious of its good political show (in elections, where they were held) before, during and after the October revolution of 1964, which brought the downfall of the first military dictatorship under General Aboud who had taken power in 1958. The ruthless attack against the party was directed at its Achilles’ heel: atheism. The campaign to ban the party sparked in 1965 in what came to be known as the “Incident of the High Teachers Institute” in which a student with a dubious link to the party was accused of abusing Prophet Muhammad. Responding to the effectively orchestrated campaign to ban the SCP following the incident, the Parliament met and amended the constitution to disband the party and terminate the membership of its nine parliamentary deputies. The High Court, to which the SCP pleaded its case,judged a ban on the party as unconstitutional, but the legislative and executive branches were not impressed by the court’s decision. To ensure that the SCP would never return to the political arena, its adversaries had put on the Parliament’s agenda the passing of an Islamic constitution whose draft they had already agreed upon.

SCP, indeed, can hardly be blamed for its ambiva- lence toward liberal democracy exhibited in its Fourth Conference. The Conference concluded that the social and democratic aspirations engendered by the 1964 revolution were violated by the parliament that came into being thanks to that revolution. Under the banner of defending liberal democracy from its communist enemies, liberal rights, the Conference report argued, were scorned and denied. The fact that liberal democracy was bogus, according to the conference report, was a conclusion the advanced masses had drawn for themselves in the late 1950s before the military take-over in 1958 (Marxiyyah, 131). As an alternative to bourgeois democracy, the report suggests a national democratic state run as a “directed democracy” or “new democracy” (Ibzd., 132).

The liberal debacle prompted the party to question the feasibility of Western democracy in the Su- dan. The skepticism of the party toward the prospects of liberal democracy took two forms. First, the party acidly castigated its adversaries for violating the rules of the parliamentary game they claimed to uphold. The rights granted to the masses by liberalism, the



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party argues, were too threatening for the ruling classes to tolerate. The Conference report continued:

The intolerance [shown by the ruling classes toward liberal freedoms] and the failure [of these classes to abide by the rules of liberalism] stem from the fact that liberal rights as such are attracting the politically conscious elements in the traditional sectors of the economy [where the reactionary classes reign su- preme] to act independently in the national political arena (Ibid. : 134)

Second, not unlike other Third World revolutionaries, the party concluded that a second edition of Western liberal democracy is untenable in a country such as the Sudan in which 87 percent of the population is oppressed by the religious sectarian/semi- feudal relations in the traditional sectors of the economy. The party reiterates the structuralist view, still popular among radicals, that liberal democracy cannot take root in countries lacking a consistent, self- conscious bourgeois class. The Conference report pointed to the insufficiency of the social basis for an enduring liberal democracy in the Sudan:

The Sudanese capitalist class, which is supposed to establish the bourgeois parliamentary system, is still one of the weakest social classes in economic and political terms. Hence, it is unable to articulate independently, and thereof act upon, its interests. Conse- quently, it needs to ally itself to the ancient tribal and semi-feudal institutions (Ibid: 152)

The most this class can accomplish with respect to liberalism, according to the report, is a formal par- liamentarism isolated from the vibrant, politically- conscious mass movement. In case their interests were threatened, the ruling classes, the report predicted, would not recoil from discarding this formal democracy and degenerating into brutal violence (Ibd : 153).

A Sobering Coup and a Killing One The 1 969 Coup: Before and After

Ambivalent as it was, the SCP’s liberal advocacy was twice tested in 1969 and 1971 by progressive coups that subscribed to, if they were not considerably inspired by, the party’s skepticism toward liberal democracy. We will see how this advocacy was refined and “exorcised,” so to speak, of its doubts regarding bourgeois democracy in the practices and political debates within the party and the society at large before and after the May 1969 coup. In these polemics against the putsch tactics, and its social and political implications, the party, at the high cost of a major split in its ranks in 1970, developed a positive, robust attitude toward liberalism. Before the 1969 Coup

The period after the meeting of the Party’s Fourth Conference (1 967) witnessed the publication of the

maturing positions of the party, essentially authored by Mahjub, its charismatic Secretary-General since 1949, on liberal rights and social change. These positions developed in the polemics against sections of the petty bourgeoisie within and outside the party. Dis- heartened by the setback of the 1964 revolution, these sections, according to the Fourth Conference report, lost faith in popular mass action and reveled in indif- ference and demoralization. As early as 1967, the report of the Fourth Conference christened these sections “the adventurers” for concluding, that after the collapse of the 1964 revolution, mass revolutionary activities were futile. Instead, the revolutionary movement should renounce, or better still, denounce liberal rights and resort to armed struggle. In his R o b h Arising a& the Fourh Conference (1 968), Mahjub continued his polemics with these “adventurers” em- phasizing the indispensability of liberal rights for the empowerment of the masses. He wrote:

These demoralized and adventurous elements among the petty bourgeoisie believe that the fight for social change, on the basis of bourgeois democracy is vain. Instead, they call, from the housetops, for a “new democracy” (Problems:6 7).

Even as late as 1968 Mahjub was harboring doubts about the long-term prospects of liberal democracy. In his R o b h , he argues that the material and cultural basis for a stable bourgeois democracy were insufficient. Subsequently, Sudan might not follow the slow path of development headed by the bourgeoisie. A possibility existed, he continued, that a revolutionary eruption would take place opening the road of progress and democracy (Ibid. :2 7).

The “adventurers” in the party apparently were flirting with the idea of a military intervention to re- solve the political stalemate after the setback. Mahjub had to debate publicly with these “adventurers” when Ahmad Silayman, his old friend and a member of the Central Committee of the party, called in the “bourgeois press” (Matar, 197 1 : 10 1 - 107; Qadal, 1986:74- 75) for a reenactment of the political scenario of the leftist-led 1964 Revolution. He proposed the forma- tion of a government of national unity modeled on the government that arose from the revolution including political parties as well as labor and professional unions. For such a government to endure, Silayman suggested that the armed forces were needed to offer it protection (Qadal, 1986:30). In his rejoinder, Mah- jub took his comrade to task for viewing the armed forces as a homogenous force not implicated in class struggle (Ibid. : 76).

This flirting with the armed forces developed into full-fledged putschist tactics in the hands of the “adventurers.” The tactics were laid on the table of



102 ~OMAR~TIK STUDIES OF SOUTH ASIA, AIRILY AND THE MIDDlL blSq VOL. xv/ NO. 1 (1996)

the March 1969 meeting of the Central Committee where, according to the meeting report, it did not pass. However, the “adventurers” later claimed that the report represented only Mahjub’s viewpoint because the Central Committee had not given it its blessing (Matar, 197 1: 199). In any case, the report emphasized that “the putschist tactics could not re- place unrelenting mass action.” A military coup, the report argued, would ultimately put the leadership of the national democratic struggle in the hands of the bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie (Fi Sabil: 18). The party had already concluded that the leadership of either is counterproductive because sections of the bourgeoisie are outright anti-revolutionary, whereas the petty bourgeoisie lacked steadfastness and, as such, would expose the revolutionary struggle to un- necessary pains and sacrifices (Problems: 18- 19). To counteract the appeal of putschist tactics the 1969 report came out positively on the side of liberal democracy by calling for a broad alliance, in a frame- work of “a bourgeoisie constitution,” of all the forces opposing the draft of the Islamic constitution of 1968. (Fi Sabil:15). The report denounces the putschists as follows:

The putschist tactics, as an alternative to mass action, represent in the last analysis the interests of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie within the forces of the National Democratic Front (Ibzd. : 18- 19; Abdel Malek, 1983: 196).

This denunciation would reverberate and haunt the party- Nimeiri’s 1969 Coup/Revolution: a House of Obedience

In appearance the communists’ alliance with the putschists of May 1969, led by Colonel-General Ni- meiri, was a tumultuous honeymoon ending prematurely in a cataclysmic divorce after the 1971 communist coup. Lttle attention is paid to the fact that, at least to Mahjub and his faction in SCP, the marriage had never been consummated. To play further with the marriage trope, Nimeiri’s putschists, in Mahjub’s way of thinking, forced the party into a “house of obedience,” in which a recalcitrant wife is sentenced to be taken to live in with her husband by a court of Islamic law. Even here the trope is deficient for the house of obedience is set for wives not women com- panions. For the latter Islamic law has unpleasant surprises. The element of imposition comes from the fact that the communist officers, adequately represented in the Free Officers Organization, which carried out the 1969 coup, voted twice in October 1968 and April 1969 against the implementation of the coup (Niblock, 1987238,240). Unquestionably, they were coached in this position by the party, whose line on the coup tactics we highlighted above, and espe-

cially Mahjub who supervised the party work among the officers corp. The communist officers were in the minority in the first vote, but carried the majority in the last vote. Nonetheless, the minority, headed by Nimeiri, went ahead on May 25, 1969 and usurped power from a messy parliamentary government (Ibzd.).

The theoretical and practical cleavages that characterized the relation of Mahjub’s faction in the SCP and the putschists were sown on the evening of the day of the coup (Qadal, 1986:77-81). The CC issued its analysis of the coup in which Mahjub reiterated the party’s position on the coup tactics as summarily stated in the report of the CC meeting on March 1969; a position Mahjub’s adversaries denied had commanded consensus in the Committee. Contrary to the 1969 putschists’ public proclamations that what they led was a “revolution,” the party’s statement described the officers’ movement as a “coup” executed by the petty bourgeois officers corps. Neither the method by which they usurped power nor their class affiliation were welcome. Nimeiri’s coup was described as an adventurous undertaking and the petty bourgeoisie that led it was said to have failed the test of consistency and firmness since it embarked on independent political action in the 1964 Revolution. Notwithstanding, the statement reckoned with the leftist reality of the coup. In actual fact the 1969 putschists were regurgitating to the media the letter of the communist rendition of the national democratic program. In calling the party members to support the coup, the statement urged them to wage a consistent fight to lessen the injurious consequences that might result from the coup by basically opening it up to mass participation. The apparent lack of enthusiasm for the political change brought by the 1969 putschists in the party’s statement made a member of the Politi- cal Bureau, who was opposed to Mahjub, describe it as the “damned document.”

Damned or blessed, the document opened up heated and fairly educated debates in the party and society at large on the distinctions between a “coup” and a “revolution.” Discussions touched upon con- cepts such as Lenin’s “conditions for launching an insurrection” and “revolutionary crisis,” Blanqui’s “vanguard,” and the “revolutionary democrats” of the latter-day Soviet theorists as opposed to or super- seding the “petty bourgeoisie” category, and the progressive role of the armed forces in the Third World. We will see how the involvement of the communists in the July 197 1 coup chilled any further thinking or additions to the chapter on the putschist tactics lucidly and polemically authored in those tumultuous times.

On the level of practice, on that first day of Ni-



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meiri’s coup, the party had to contend with the appointment of several communists to the cabinet without prior consultation with party leadership. Those who were enthused by the coup saw no reason why the communist ministers should wait for a green light from the Central Committee before they attended the cabinet meeting which was to be held on the evening of the day of the coup. Considering the obviously progressive nature of the coup, which took the trouble to represent the beleaguered party in its cabinet, these party members viewed the authorization of the CC as a stupid formality. Mahjub was outvoted in the CC and the communist ministers were sent to attend the first meeting of the revolutionary cabinet on time. The CC met later and gave its authorization. Bending to the pressure that the absence of the communist ministers from the cabinet meeting might send the wrong message to the reactionaries about the revolutionary alliance, Mahjub conceded on the understanding that the authorization of the party was sus- pended in this case because of the contingency sur- rounding the new regime. In future dealings with the party, the regime should know that the party would not allow the putschists to “boss it around.” In co- opting communist intellectuals behind the back of their party, Mahjub argued, the putschists could be confirmed in the belief, common in Arab and African petty bourgeois circles, that a communist party is not needed for accomplishing the social revolution (Matar, 197 1 : 134).

The party’s understanding of the importance of liberal rights grew considerably via their polemics, and their stormy relationship, with the Nimeiri regime, and via the conflict raging within the party between Mahjub’s faction and the one that identified completely with the putschists. The debate within the party was extensive, culminating in the Cadre Consul- tative Conference in August 1970 in which the diver- gence in the party led to a split and the rise of two separate parties. Five documents representing the views of the two factions were circulated. The minutes of the meetings of the Central Committee took the “reported speech” form in which the individual voices of the members were kept out of a sense of fairness required in such times, and because partici- pants had the sense that they were responsible to history for what they said or did. Two long documents representing the conflicting positions were put on the table of the Cadre Conference in August 1970 whose proceedings were also published in full. Mahjub, who was popular with the rank and file, prevailed in the conference, but the split occurred almost right down the middle in the Central Committee.

“Gyros” For The Revolutionaries In his polemics with the 1969 putschists, Mahjub

addressed liberal rights on several levels. He apparently continued his consultations with the segments of the liberal alliance opposing the imposition of an Is- lamic constitution as sections of the anti-communist bloc had been planning before their project was stilled by the 1969 putsch. Apparently, Mahjub was courting Sadiq al-Mahdi (the great grandson of the Sudanese Mahdi, whose religious state ruled the Sudan from 188 1 to 1889), who, in his campaign to liberalize his sectarian party, began to entertain second thoughts on the banning of the SCP-something he had played a pivotal role to bring about in 1965. Interestingly, Mahjub’s adversaries in the SCP had always accused him of having a soft spot for Sadiq hoping that Sadiq’s Oxonian credentials might soften the enmity of Sadiq’s traditional party to communism. After the 1969 coup Mahjub apparently continued his com- munications with Sadiq. In fact, Mahjub’s adversaries accused him of showing Sadiq a draft of his negative analysis of Nimeiri’s coup even before it was discussed in the CC (Matar, 1971:219). Importantly, Mahjub seemed to be receptive to Sadiq’s criticism of the over-representation of communists in the new regime. In fact, Sadiq had conveyed this objection to Nimeiri and asked for rectification in order to open the door for meaningful relations between him and the new government. Skeptical of the viability of the putschist regime under the pressure of the powerful traditional, anti-communist forces, Mahjub sought to placate Sadiq and secure his cooperation with the new government. In this context, he proposed to his CC to reduce the number of the communists on the cabinet and to remove Farouq Abu Issa, the deputy Foreign Minister, from his post because he was an outspoken communist not particularly liked in conservative circles (Ibid. :256). Moreover, Mahjub’s adversaries charged him with turning down the offer of the putschists to appoint three more communists on the cabinet (Ibid.).4 To the dismay of his rivals in the party and the putschists, he suggested to the government that they give Sadiq al-Mahdi a portfolio on the cabinet. Conventional Marxist analysis had always as- signed al-Mahdi’s party, whatever forms it took, to the “semi-feudal, collaborationist forces.” This may explain why Mahjub’s foes in the SCP accused him of having a rightist “soft point” for Sadiq that went back to 1956 (Ibid.:2 19).

O n the mass action level Mahjub objected to the republican proclamations issued on the first day of the putsch disbanding parties and banning strikes. He did not see any reason why his party should be banned. His adversaries within the SCP, who ac-



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cepted banning political parties as long as their party was virtually the government party, castigated him for holding to his single tree oblivious of the reality that the whole reactionary edifice, the forest of parliament, reactionary parties and cabinet, against which the party fought hard, were dismantled by the new regime. Mahjub’s fastidiousness was untenable, according to his foes, because the SCP was not only represented in the cabinet, but also met regularly with putschist representatives to exchange views on the performance of the state (Ibzd. :2 12).

In defending the legal existence of the party and the right of workers to strike, Mahjub was working on the assumption that the success of the national democratic stage, as a transitional phase “rich in class struggle,” depended on a high level of democracy enjoyed by the masses (Ibzd.:133). The fact that the advanced masses refused to submit to Western parliamentary democracy did not mean that they were disinterested in a representative government (Matar 138). Even the appointment of communists on boards of parastatals and local government councils, Mah- jub’s adversaries noted, did not please Mahjub who complained that people were not allowed to elect those representatives (Ibzd. :2 13). Mahjub also criticized the government for confiscating the properties of a number of capitalists in 1970, and asked that such a drastic step should be, if need arose, decided in courts. His adversaries bewailed the times in which the secretary of a communist party would unasham- edly defend private property (Ibzd.:2 1 1). He ridiculed and dismissed the idea of the state running the na- tionalized, small Greek businesses. His biting humor was specially directed at his worthy comrades in the Trade Unions Federation who were put in charge of the Copacabana bar and restaurant, a hangout for American diplomats whose embassy lay across the street. Moreover, he called upon the putschist government, in nationalizing the press, to distinguish between controlling their assets, which they did, and controlling the freedom of expression which they ultimately did. On the ideological level, Mahjub was concerned with warding off the naive rhetoric of the petty bourgeois revolutionaries. He criticized the government for presenting the economic and technical aid provided by the Soviet Union as the magic wand that would heal all the ills of the Sudan economy. He thought people were entitled to an awareness of the complexity of their predicament, and should not be allowed to accept quick fixes. Mahjub was also of the opinion that the newly formed National Security Ap- paratus should be legal and accountable to political supervision (Ibzd. : 159). Finally, the installation of a one-party system in this transitional period was anti-

thetical to the tenets of the alliances that constituted it. Even the communist party, according to Mahjub, cannot be singly trusted to accomplish fairly and squarely the mission of this stage (Ibzd. : 145).

The coup put communists in positions of leadership in the state. This was perhaps premature and Mahjub paid a great deal of attention to the quality of the communists’ statesmanship. To prevent an in- flux of people with suspicious motives from joining the seemingly ruling party, Mahjub directed that new members were not to be admitted. Besides his insis- tence that the putschists should be respectful of the party’s autonomy and seek the approval of the party before they appointed a communist to a position of leadership, Mahjub laid the political and ethical rules for communist statesmen. He asked these statesmen to understand that the positions they occupied were not tokens of a political alliance, but vehicles to best serve the people. These statesmen, argued Mahjub, would be judged by their ability to continue perform- ing their national duties under an enabling state committed to the welfare of the masses. In case the state reneged, the theory that revolutionaries should hold tenuously to revolutionary positions at any price, would be a pretext not to quit. To curb the greed for a “revolutionary position,” Mahjub cautioned the communists against political appointments which would hurt the party’s long-standing relation with capable allies and friends among the intelligentsia. Opportunities to serve at the political and state levels should, he asked, be given to these elements (Ibzd. : 140).

Mahjub was wary that the putschist state, in a fit of political naivete, might provoke the Western, impe- rialist powers. The pressure these powers could apply on the Sudan would be beyond the endurance of the putschists. If overwhelmed by these imperial powers, the putschists would expose the revolutionary masses, who invested, willingly or unwillingly, in the putschist undertaking, to needless pains and sacrifices. Thus, he advised against recognizing East Germany in order not to provoke West Germany (Ibzd.:213). His advice went unheeded. Furthermore, he criticized the For- eign Minister’s address before the UN for being harsh on the United States whose enmity the new regime could not afford (Ibzd.: 22 1-22).

Needless to say, the relations between the party and the regime deteriorated each passing day. Ni- meiri, the leader of the Revolutionary Council, assumed the prime ministership in October 1969 because his prime minister, on a visit to East Germany, acknowledged the indispensability of the SCP to the progress of the revolution in the Sudan (Warburg, 1978: 122; Niblock, 1987:245). Mahjub, of course, did



not see why a putschist should be punished for stating the obvious. Mahjub himself had been in government custody since April 1970: a custody that banished him to Egypt, back again to the Sudan to live on a farm south of Khartoum. Finally, he was incarcerated in the Ammunition Corps from which he escaped on June 29, 197 1 aided, and even housed, as was said at the time, in the Republican Palace, by the com- mander of the guard of Nimeiri who played prominent roles in both the 1969 and 197 1 coups. O n the other hand, the conflict between communist members and Nimeiri’s supporters in the Revolutionary Council came to a head in November 1970 over the adamant opposition of the former to the proposed federation of Arab republics comprising Sudan, Egypt, Syria, and Libya. As a consequence the communist officers were dismissed from the Council and later became the main actors in the July 197 1 aborted coup (Niblock, 1987:255; Warburg, 1978: 124). Pro- voked by the leaflets distributed by the SCP condemning Nimeiri and Mobutu-the president of Zaire, who was on a state visit to the Sudan in February 197 1-Nimeiri announced his intention to destroy the SCP (Niblock, 1987255; Warburg, 1978: 128). Nimeiri’s “rightist somersault,” in the view of the SCP (Warburg, 1978:129), climaxed in April 1971 when he dissolved the communist-dominated students’, women’s and youth organizations. In May 197 1, he set up the Sudanese Socialist Union as the sole political organization in the country (Warburg, 1978: 129). Communists and their supporters were arrested. A suspicion that a communist coup was un- derway prompted Nimeiri to arrest the communist officers (Warburg, 1978: 130). However, they acted before he did and staged their coup on the afternoon of July 17, 1971. These were perhaps the circumstances that a cursory communist analysis of the aborted coup referred to as impelling the communist officers to give precedence to their zero hour thus dis- regarding all other political contingencies.

On July 22, 197 1, exactly 72 hours after its incep- tion, the coup came to an abrupt and a tragic end. The local, regional and international circumstances that combined to abort the coup are crisply described in Warburg (1978) and Niblock (1987). Suzanne Cronji and her co-authors (1 976: 178- 193) detail the logistics provided by Lonhro, the multinational that was then only beginning its business venture in the Sudan, to Nimeiri’s men in Europe to meet and plan against the coup. However, Egypt, under Sadat, who expelled his own pro-Soviet elements from positions of power in the government and in his party in May 197 1, apparently led the successful counterattack against the Sudanese coup. Nimeiri’s Defense Minis-

ter, who was on a trip to Europe when the communist officers took power, flew to Egypt. In Egypt, he assumed command of the Sudanese troops stationed there after the 1967 Arab-Israeli War to defend the Suez Canal against further Israeli attack. He also used the Egyptian radio to address his troops in Su- dan to resist the putschists. Importantly, Egyptian troops, stationed south of Khartoum since the 1967 war, were ordered to move on the capital and con- front the putschists. Libya, a close ally of Egypt and Nimeiri, seriously damaged the chances of the coup’s success by intercepting, on July 22, the BOAC aircraft carrying the leader and one other member of the newly-constituted revolutionary council (Warburg, 1978: 130- 13 1). When the council member was asked by the Libyan security to get off the plane, he was reported to have asked for a cup of whisky in antici- pation of the dry country to which he was forcefully taken. The two council members were later handed over to Nimeiri to be executed together with other council members inside the country. Locally, Nimeiri’s supporters and other groups who opposed a communist take-over were defiant and led civilian as well as military action to bring down the coup. The non- commissioned officers of the Tank Corps were instrumental in organizing and leading the July 22 afternoon offensive that ravaged the putschist positions and brought the coup to an abrupt conclusion.

A vindictive5 Nimeiri returned to office to the chants of his supporters: “In five minutes c‘hk’’,6 the leader bounced back.” His vengeance against the communists found a veneer of legitimacy in the slaughter of tens of officers, who had been incarcerated by the putschists in a government guest-house, close to the Republican Palace, for being staunch supporters of Nimeiri. The communists denied any role in these killings and accused the forces that re- stored Nimeiri of the mayhem. In the communists’ view, the non-commissioned officers were not really interested in bringing Nimeiri back to office, but wanted power for themselves. Nimeiri, in this theory, returned to office only because he had fortunately survived the second coup led by the non- commissioned officers. At any rate, the cost paid by the SCP for the aborted coup was dear. Mahjub, Shafi’ al-Shaykh, a founder of the labor movement and a Lenin Medallion laureate, and Joseph Garang, the party strategist on the Southern question, were executed after brief, mostly secret trials (Warburg, 1978:134). The hundreds of party members incarcerated in Kober prison, where Mahjub was hanged, were nightmarishly haunted by his voice shouting “Long Live the SCP” on his long walk to the gallows. Al-Shaykh’s execution was in fact an act of mercy,



106 COMMMTIYE STUDIES OF SOUTH AsA, ARI4 AND THE MIDDLE blSq VOL. Na 1 (1%)

because when he was taken to the gallows, he was almost unconscious as a result of the torture he had suffered. The communist officers of the revolutionary council died either defending their positions or facing the fire squad. The anger aroused in the party by the kangaroo courts, by the abuse meted out to their leaders by their captors,7 and the executions is re- vealed in a leaflet distributed in December 1971 vowing to avenge the communist martyrs. The leaflet goes on to say, the bullets the communists would fire at Nimeiri and his clique would rest in “chests con- taining neither soldierly bravery nor manhood” (Warburg, 1978:137). At any event, the political re- gression the party underwent as a result of the coup is rightly analogized by Warburg, to “a second child- hood” (Zbtd.).

Toward an Anthropology of News The News

Local realities were unusable in Cold War politics. What the protagonists needed were “satellites” for national and ideological aggrandizement, for bases to install their military hardware and intelligence and for a pool of votes in contentious, international fo- rums. Local knowledge was deemed too trivial to matter in these lofty pursuits. In its focus on tidings with total disregard of their social dynamics in the places from which they originated, Cold War politics stretched the distinction between news and sociology, made by James Reston of the New rOrk T i s , to its limits. For example, instead of recognizing the local knowledge constitutive of the MPLA, FNLA, and UNITA, contending ethnically as well as nationally for power in Angola before and after the ousting of the Portuguese in 1974, the parties to the Cold War endorsed them as representative of Soviet “socialism,” Western “free enterprise” and Chinese “anti- Soviet hegemony” respectively. Because all that mat- tered were labels, UNITA was reassigned the belief in Western free enterprise when FNLA lost the game.

Similarly, news of the July 197 1 coup in the Sudan superseded its sociology. Analysts dismissed the coup as a political blunder or stupidity. Therefore, they have been concerned with “witch-hunting” for cul- prits and their accomplices, or revealing the political dogmatism that gave birth to the coup. The Soviets have been blamed for being behind the coup. The undeniable communist leanings of the July 1971 putschists, some believed, could have opened up the region for a significant increase in Soviet influence (New rOrk Emes, July 27, 1971). Soviet advisers in the Sudan were fingered as playing an indirect role in the success of the coup (New rOrk Ems, Ibzd.; Bechtold, 1976: 270). Nimeiri himself has never doubted that

the Soviets had a hand in the coup, but has expressed his accusations cautiously (1978: 120-2 1). Ahmad Si- layman, a communist renegade who wholeheartedly embraced Nimeiri’s regime as we will see shortly, apparently reveals the official mind of the Sudanese government with respect to Soviet involvement in the plot. This involvement, according to Silayman, dates back to the heyday of Nimeiri and the Soviets in 1969 (1985:55-8). The failure of the coup is viewed as a check on the Soviet hegemony in Africa and the Middle East. Unsure who would succeed the seriously-ill Nasser, the Soviets, in this view, planned to install a “satellite” government in the Sudan to influence the course of events in Cairo. The rise of the unpredictable Sadat after Nasser confirmed the Sovi- ets’ worst fears especially when he ousted Ali Sabri, his deputy and the Soviets’ strong ally in May 197 1 (Silayman, 1985). The July 1971 coup made Sadat suspect that the Soviets had a master plan to domi- nate the region (Warburg, 1978: 135). And the Soviets’ lukewarm feelings toward the proposed Federation of Arab States, comprising Libya, Egypt and Syria, could be cited as a part of this master plan, considering the fact that the Sudanese putschists of July 197 1 had been originally dismissed from Nimeiri’s Revolu- tionary Council for strongly opposing the Sudan joining the Federation. Coupled with Iraq’s support of the coup, the coup could hardly escape being seen as an anti-Egyptian move, for Iraq was an enemy of Syria.

The role of Egypt and Libya in crushing the coup (particularly Libya’s hijacking of the British airliner holding some of the coup leaders on their way from London to Khartoum) made Sadat brag that the Fed- eration was born with sharp teeth and the Sudan case was there to prove it (New rOrk Ems July 2 1, 197 1; Legum, 1972:B69). The shift in both Egyptian and Sudanese superpower alliances-seeking rapproche- ment with the West, China and conservative Arab states while distancing themselves from the Eastern block-is attributed to the coup. (Bechtold, 1976:270; Warburg, 1985: 1 7 1 ; New rOrk T z s July 28, 197 1).

Ironically, Soviet and East European communists, Egyptian nationalists and American commentators agree that the coup was an adventurous undertaking. Although they were willing to risk their close ties with Nimeiri because of the bloodletting following the failed coup, some Soviet theoreticians were angry at the SCP for going beyond the Soviet “recipe” for communist parties in Third World countries. This calls for taking the non-capitalist path under the leadership of the “revolutionary democrats” such as Nas- ser, Sekou Touri, etc. (Golan, 1990: 224-5; Yodfat, 1973: 20-25; Gresh, 1989: 393; Hosseinzadeh, 1989),



/BRAHIM.’ THE 197” COUP IN THE SUNN 107

for playing “second fiddle” (Gresh 1989: 393) to these revolutionary democrats.

For its strong stand on its autonomy, the SCP was characterized by a Soviet functionary as “incompre- hensible,” a Czech functionary as “sectarian” and “dogmatic,” and a Yugoslav functionary as “doc- trinal” (Gresh, 1989:404; Warburg, 1978: 138-39; Le- gum, 1972:B70). The Soviet mediators in the conflict between the two factions of the SCP, on the one side, and Mahjub and Nimeiri, on the other side, took a fairly clear stand in favor of the “national communists” who had accepted the Soviet recipe (Gresh, 1989:403; Shaked et. al., 1973:359). On the other hand, Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, editor of the in- fluential, Egyptian Al-Ahram, and the New rOrk Tunes attributed the failure of the coup to the communists provoking their Muslim people by aspiring prematurely to lord over them (New rOrk T i July 25 and 28, 1971). me Sociology of the Coup

The “petty bourgeoisie” is an understudied category in African politics. Chabal(1992:72) underwrites Gavin Williams’ plea for studying this class in terms of “the social relations of production, distribution and exchange” (1976:84) because, as things stood then, “(t)here [was] no theory of petit bourgeois politics” in Africa (Ibd.). Nonetheless, Marxist research in the Sudan has had other priorities. Sudanese Marx- ists, and economists in general, have painstakingly investigated the dynamics and institutions of the bourgeoisie (Rabih, 1979; Shaaeldin, 198 1 ; Abdalla, 1982, Kursany, 1982; Elhassan, 1985; Mahmoud, 1984; Abdelkarim, 1992). Similar to the state of research in other African economies (Chabal, 1992:72,) rural classes, including sections that may be identified as petty bourgeoisie, are adequately examined (Adam, 1971; Ahmed, 1977; Omer, 1979; Ali, 1982; Man , 1982; Abdelkarim, 1985). The petty bourgeoisie, which Niblock euphemistically calls, “the intermedi- ate strata,” to avoid a translation from the European experience that would “impose a spurious unity on a grouping characterized by diversity” ( 1987:98-99), remains largely under-researched. When a petty bourgeois world-view expresses itself through religion, such as the Muslim brotherhood in the Sudan, it is dismissed as pathology rather than politics.

The drawbacks of the absence of a concrete analysis of this class, whose potency in African politics is assumed, are legion. Gavin Williams argues that a tautological theory about the class dominates for lack of a better theory of its politics. Political conflicts, he argues, are explained by showing their class basis in the petty bourgeoisie whereas the class itself is

defined by the very political conflicts which the concept is used to explain (1976:89). More often than not the urban component of the class is glossed as the “elite” confirming their image of themselves as self- less actors whose interests correspond to the nation at large.8 Elite politics is viewed as generational; a corrupt layer peels off as a healthy one takes over. The catch-phrase in the 1964 Revolution in the Sudan against General Aboud’s Junta, led by urban profes- sionals and students, was “Down with parties.” This was an effort to delegitimize the political parties held responsible for bringing about the military dictatorship in 1958 through their mismanagement and parliamentary debacles. A variation of this motto was “Deny the old brats (traditional party leaders) access to authority.” Elite politics, to paraphrase Williams, turns into a cyclical exercise of sorting out the good people from the bad (1976:86-87). This may explain why the petty bourgeois revolutions and coups have been particularly concerned with political purges in the civil service to cleanse the state of the “corrupt” and the politically suspect. Purges, in the hands of these revolutionaries and putschists, have been trans- formed into a spiteful mode of settling political scores. Hasty, young politicized bureaucrats utilized these purges to jump prematurely into higher positions. In Sudan, this haste is commonly known as “pole vaulting.”

“The Mother of Battles” against the Petty Bourgeoisie

Mahjub identified the conflict in the party following the 1964 revolution and culminating in Nimeiri’s 1969 coup as a contestation between petty bourgeois ideology and Marxism. He was a good student of the conflicts in his party and believed that the party grew through class cleansing. His Aspects of thc Hisrory of th Sudanese Communist Party (1965)g argues that the class enemies of the working class inhabit this party as well. In this perspective, every confrontation between working class ideology and foreign ideologies ultimately cleanses the party and reveals its evolving, proletarian nature. Mahjub, who rose to, or was confirmed in, power by successive conflicts in the party might have been projecting his ontogeny as a phy- logeny.

Unlike previous contestation in the party with the incipient bourgeoisie in 1949 and 195 1, the conflict with the petty bourgeoisie, in his view, is nuanced, complicated and insidious. The class touches base with the majority of interests encompassed in the communist program for the national democratic revolution. Importantly, this class comprises the majority of the population, and from its ranks come the



108 cOhiMMTIK STUDIES OF SOUTH ASIA, ARIOI AND THE MIDDLE fiSJ VOL. w. 40. 1 (1996)

working class and the communists variously influenced by their place of origin among the petty pro- ducers.

The battle against the petty bourgeoisie is complicated by more than the kinship relations the party and the working class have with this class. Three other factors, according to Mahjub, indicate that combat with the petty bourgeoisie would be ferocious. First, the class, which had been hitherto dispersed in various parties, was mustering its forces and engaging in independent, mass activity putting its ideologies and tactics on the national stage. In the 1964 Revolu- tion the urban petty bourgeoisie led the masses against the military junta. Their “tail wagging” under pressure applied by the traditional parties, as we indi- cated earlier, was severely criticized by the Party’s Fourth Conference. In the Conference’s view, this class was destined to severely damage the revolution if it insisted on playing a leading role in the revolution. In carrying out the 1969 coup against many odds and political conventions, the petty bourgeois officers corps showed that this class would allow no formali- ties to stop its political ambitions (Matar, 197 1: 1 18- 119). Second, the quest for power by the Sudanese petty bourgeoisie was augmented by the alleged successes of its counterparts in building socialism in Arab and African countries (Ibzd. : 1 17- 1 18). Third, the clout of the petty bourgeoisie was further derived from a Soviet interpretation of Marxism in which they were rechristened “revolutionary democrats,” and the armed forces, as a modern, disciplined, national organization, were given an ips0 facto progressive role (Ibzd. : 105- 106). In fact, the anti-Mahjub faction in the SCP was freely borrowing these Soviet no- tions in their treatises. To counteract these Marxist theses, Mahjub employed his own reading of Lenin to prove that the “revolutionary democrat,” as used by Lenin, is just another name for the petty bourgeoisie of the colonized countries in their progressive anti- colonial fight (Ibzd. 1 13- 1 14). He continues:

The revolutionary democrats are not a class or a social category defined in terms of a niche in production or relations of productions. Lenin used “petty bourgeoisie” and “revolutionary democrats” interchangea- bly to indicate the political representatives of the petty bourgeoisie engaging in accomplishing the objectives of bourgeoisie democracy. In the party, we used “revolutionary democrats” to denote these representatives who addressed the problems of national liberation, resolutely fought colonialism, pursued a serious program of social change along non-capitalist lines, and allied with the international worlung class and the Soviet Union (Ibzd.: 1 15).

After explaining the Party’s position on the coup tactics starting with their analysis of the Free Officers

movement in Egypt in 1952, Mahjub concludes that the armed forces are implicated in the class struggle, and that a hard and fast theory of the progressive nature of the armed forces and their coups is untenable. In his view, advocating such a theory plays into the hands of Blanquism and disregards the Leninist characterization of the “revolutionary crisis” and the “factors contributing to the success of an insurrection” (Ibzd.: 106).

At the cost of sounding “churlish” (Niblock, 1987:253), Mahjub was determined to draw the line clearly between petty bourgeois ideology and Marx- ism. He did not want to repeat the mistake he committed when he succumbed to the dazzling lights of the apparent successes of the revolutionary democrats in Africa and the Middle East. So much so that he authored a plan in 1965 to reduce the SCP to a “revolutionary core” for a legal mass socialist party a la the Egyptian Socialist Union or Tanu of Tanza- nial0 (Matar, 197 1 : 2 15-2 18). Mahjub criticized himself for yielding to petty bourgeois politics and pointed to his Socialist Schoolr in A&a (1967), among other statements, as to the extent he had been carried away by petty bourgeoisie tactics (Ibzd. : 1 16). Ahmad Silayman: Coups are my Middle Name

If an individual can stand for the political virility of a whole class, this individual, in the case of the Sudanese petty bourgeoisie, could well be Ahmad Silayman, former Sudanese Ambassador to the USA. Incidentally, this identification between the man and the class is almost 40 years old. It originated in a col- lection of short stories titled The Pet& Bourgeoih, published in 1958 by two disgruntled, communist writers, who left the party shortly before or after. We will meet one of the authors, the late, maverick Salah Ibrahim (d. 1994), later in this article.

Silayman, a lawyer by profession, has led a life of coup-mongering. As a founder of the SCP and a con- fidant of Mahjub, with whom he studied in Cairo in the late 194Os, he was involved in a series of abortive coups during General Aboud’s regime between 1958 and 1964.1’ In 1964, he represented the SCP in the largely leftist cabinet emerging from the revolution that took place in that year. An anecdote has it that he said to Queen Elizabeth, when introduced to her during her Royal visit to the Sudan in 1965, that he was honored to be the only communist minister in Her Majesty’s Empire.

We have seen earlier how Silayman came out strongly for the implementation of a leftist coup to repulse the counter-revolutionary onslaught waged by the traditional and Islamic parties against the SCP and its allies. He was not deterred by the censure he



/BRAHIM= THE 1971 COUP IN THE SUmN 109

received in the March 1969 meeting of the Central Committee for not abiding by the party’s policy of condemning putschist tactics (Niblock, 1987:252). Apparently, he went ahead and joined the putschists of May 1969. After the success of the coup he was first made the Ambassador of the Sudan to the Soviet Union. Later, he became the Minister of National Economy and Planning in which capacity he national- ized the banks and foreign corporations, and confis- cated or sequestered others, including Sudanese businesses. We have seen how Mahjub was not enthused by an old friend implementing an old dream. He even dismissed the whole episode as a “smoke screen” to disguise deadly blows to the SCP (Matar, 197 1:2 10).

When the SCP split in 1970, Silayman was prominent among the “cooperators” with the May regime who opposed the “conditionalists” led by Mahjub (Niblock, 1987:254). For his strict loyalty to Nimeiri and the efforts he allegedly exerted to subvert Mahjub’s party, Silayman was described by Mahjub as the ‘‘official liquidator” of the SCP. Perhaps in an- ticipation of his “martyrdom,” Mahjub, who was embittered by the “betrayal” of his disciple, called him ‘Judas” (Qadal, 1986:88). Silayman survived the July coup whose defeat established powers that cared nothing if a communist was a “cooperator” or a “conditionalist .” The “cooperators” lost their cabinet positions and, when the Sudanese Socialist Union (SSU) was instituted as the ruling and only party, they disbanded their party and joined the SSU. Besides holding leading positions in the SSU, Silayman was variously appointed as Minister of Justice and an ambassador to Her Majesty’s Court in London.

In 1985, when Nimeiri’s regime was brought down by a popular revolt culminating in a military take- over, Silayman made a 180 degree turn by joining the National Islamic Front, a “front organization” of the Muslim Brotherhood. In the NIF he was elected to its national committee. Even before joining the NIF, he had been denouncing the life he spent as a communist. In religious parlance, he described his life as a communist as “j ahiliyyah” (ignorance period), the term denoting the time before the coming of Prophet Muhammad. His sense of humor apparently has not abandoned him in his new “fundamentalist” mode for it is reported that he described his experience with the Muslim Brotherhood as his “second jahiliyyah.” Im- portantly, evidence exists that Silayman was either actively involved in, or privy to, the 1989 coup that brought the Muslim Brotherhood to power.

In his transition from the left to the right, from atheism to belief, from Marx to Muhammad, from Moscow to Mecca, from the communist’s carousing to the praying mat, Silayman apparently has some rev-

erence for ideologies (which are jahiliyyahs anyway), but they come second to his veneration of power. Staggered to see his old comrade in charge of the na- tionalization and confiscations of corporations, Mahjub wondered how such power could be given to someone never known to “sit on his butt” to study a one-page report on economy and finance. However, Silayman knows that power works miracles and “gives earrings even to those who have no ears,” as the prov- erb goes. Silayman has changed beliefs, idols or gods and Secretary-Generals, but remains loyal to his coup concept. His wanderings may stand for the soul of the petty bourgeoisie competing for power sandwiched as it were between an “incipient bourgeoisie,” that never developed enough to govern responsibly, and fretting working classes that can never govern responsibly. The ease with which Silayman straddled the political lanes of the petty bourgeoisie prevailing on them to think of power before beliefs, may reinforce the ico- nicity of Silayman, as the true image of his class. A Parable: The Spell-Checker and the Check Casher

We have seen Mahjub scolding Silayman for his impatience and calling on him to study and reflect. On another occasion he chided him for having an alibi for the coups he pushed others to engage in. Considering the fact that Silayman succeeded in ef- fecting his coups and even surviving the ones that misfired, and Mahjub’s bad luck with the only coup he allegedly engineered, one is tempted to tell the Su- danese anecdote about the businessman and the mer- chant. It is said that of two boys who went to school together, one dropped out. The one who continued his education graduated and worked as a bank manager. His friend became a businessman and a mil- lionaire. One day the businessman came to the bank and wrote a check, but misspelled even the few words required for a valid check. His friend, the manager, corrected his spelling. Unperturbed, the businessman said, “You know how to spell it right, I know how to cash it.” Mahjub’s theory of the coup spells “coup” right, but it is Silayman who cashes “coups.” Mahjub: h a n d , l2 the Trickster

Analysts have hypothesized that the Communists and/or Mahjub staged the 1971 coup (Bechtold, 1976:267; Heikal in Legum, 1972:C164, Legum, 1972:B71; New rOrk Tzmes July 23,1971; Niblock, 19873334; Gresh, 1989:406; Warburg, 1978: 139 ) despite their denial of an organizing role, and their admitted support of it when it took place. This mysti- fying position taken by SCP on the July coup, which still puzzles even the members of the party, will be discussed later. Accusing Mahjub of organizing an aborted coup, however, is ironic. Implicating him



110 COMHRATIYE STUDIES O f SOUTH ASIA, AlRlC4 AND THE hfIDDLE hS7; VOL. 1. 1 (1996)

raises the question of why Mahjub, a consummate politician and thinker, whose polemics laid bare the risky, petty bourgeoisie nature of the putsch, would be caught red-handed doing a messy one in 1971, for which he paid his life.

For many people the question is not judicatory. It is rather about how politics, as a questionable activity, works. Most of the people who raise the question want to trust politics, but seeing that the best minds also succumb to Machiavellianism, they are hesitant to do so.

On the judicatory level, however, Mahjub denied charges of his complicity in staging the coup during the summary trial that sentenced him to death. The only prosecution witness, a businessman and spouse of a CC member, who was expected to testify that Mahjub attended a meeting in which the plan of the coup was worked out, denied any knowledge to that effect (Abd al-Raziq, 1972:67; New rOrk Tms July 3 1, 1971). However, Mahjub did not disown the documents produced during the trial showing his activity proposing policies and personnel for the new regime (New rOrk firms July 3 1, 197 1; Legum, 1972:B73-74).

On the factual level, Mahjub’s exact role in the coup is still being debated. Two recent Sudanese pub- lications have come up with diametrically opposed views of Mahjub’s role in plotting the coup. Mahjub Bashary’s work (1992), a vivid depiction of Mahjub’s itinerary during the three days of the 197 1 coup, tells of his utter skepticism about its prospects to the extent of advising the putschists to relinquish power and fly to Cairo. Bashary’s account is corroborated by Fadil Abbas’s article (1 988) in which Mahjub is said to have expressed displeasure with the coup for it would throw to the dogs the good work the SCP had been doing for a quarter of a century. Murtadah Ibrahim (1993), on the other hand, implicates Mahjub in masterminding the coup behind the back of the CC (1 993: 196- 197). The value of this testimony stems from the fact that Murtadah is an in-law of al- Shaykh, the second ranking leader of the party at the time, and the brother of one Fatmah Ibrahim, a vet- eran Political Bureau member and the founder of the Sudanese Women Union in the early 1950s. Her younger brother, the late Salah Ibrahim, a maverick whom we have seen earlier satirizing Silayman, re- peatedly held Mahjub responsible for staging the coup. Mahjub, according to Salah, not only nurtured the coup, but also refused to heed the advice of al- Shaykh. Apparently there is an Ibrahim family record indicting Mahjub for the coup which needs serious consideration. However, Salah, who accused Mahjub of unfairly discharging him from the party, is a dubious character witness. A reader of his powerful G M -

bat al-Hababay (1965) would make the obvious connection between the African trickster and Mahjub in the poem titled “Anansi” (the spider, a trickster in West African lore). The poem portrays Mahjub as a trickster whose many faces include a strategist “filled to the brim with theory,” a crass pragmatic in the mold of the proverbial British District Commission- ers, and a jester (1965:79-8 1).

Salah Ibrahim’s account is partly open to question. In an unprecedented move for an official in the higher echelons of the SCP, Fatmah Ibrahim discussed the behind-the-scenes happenings of the July coup last April with a Sudanese magazine published in the diaspora. Although her discussion made no reference to the role of Mahjub in the July coup, it categorically denied that the party had had anything to do with the coup. She indicates in the clearest terms possible that the Free Officers Organization, an alliance of communists and democrat officers, imposed the coup on the SCP. O n the eve of the July coup, Hashim al-Atta, the only communist in the Free Officers Organization, according to Ms. Ibrahim, conveyed to the SCP the decision of the Organization to lead a “corrective movement” to restore Nimeiri’s regime-a regime many of the officers in the Organi- zation either helped in launching or supported vigor- ously-to its radical, national democratic origins. The CC of the SCP was called to a meeting to discuss the officers’ line of action. Ms. Ibrahim, who was unable to attend the meeting, asked al-Shaykh, her husband, to vote by proxy for her against the move to stage the coup since it went against the accepted tactics of the party. Before the meeting was even held as scheduled on July 19-the day the officers staged their coup- Ms. Ibrahim says they began hearing on the radio that major al-Atta was going to deliver an important statement. At that moment, Ms. Ibrahim goes on to say, a soldier showed up at her door asking al-Shaykh on behalf of Major al-Atta to compose the awaited statement. Obviously infuriated by these develop- ments, al-Shaykh is reported by his widow to have said to the soldier, “Tell Major al-Atta that al-Shaykh is not an orderly to do things at his convenience. He (al-Shaykh) is a member of the communist party and the party did not decide to launch a coup. Tell him sorry you are on your own n0~.”13 The fact that the party did not endorse the coup does not constitute in itself any tight evidence that Mahjub was not implicated in the coup as strongly proposed by Ms. Ibra- him’s brothers. As it stands now, Ms. Ibrahim’s story may provide a useful context to understand a 1987 account in which a connection between Mahjub and al-Shaykh is made without accusing the former of engineering the coup, in accord with Ms. Ibrahim’s



/EMHIM: THE 1971 COUP tN THE SUmN 111

account. A journalist who attended Mahjub’s trial reports that Mahjub said that after his escape from prison a few days before the July coup, he was told by al-Shaykh that the comrades had been talking about a coup in the making. Al-Shaykh, according to Mahjub, passed on this information very casually giving him no reason to be concerned or alarmed. Mahjub took the coup to be a “rumor,” festering in a political at- mosphere fraught with tensions and expectations (Hasan, 1987). “The Time Has not Yet Come to Evaluate the French Revolution”

The SCP, to use an Islamic description of frown- ing on the spirit of investigation, has closed the “door of $zhzd” (independent thinking) on the July Coup. In its meeting in September 197 1, the CC of the SCP described the coup as “an accusation we would not deny and an honor we would not claim.” As with all proverbial wisdom, which runs the risk of turning into cliches, the statement lost its power to convince, as we will see shortly. The 197 1 coup was also characterized by the CC as a “revolutionary change” carried out by the revolutionary elements in the armed forces. In a clear rebuttal of the cherished petty bourgeois theory of the progressive nature of the armed forces, the CC approvingly noted that these elements identified themselves as part of the forces of the national democratic front, and not as the representative of the armed forces. By this identification, they avoided the long-standing confusion between the armed force as a repressive, state organ and as a receptacle of a revolutionary vanguard. Moreover, the CC commended the “July 19 movement” for checking the degenera- tion of the Nimeiri regime into personal rule and for giving “new democracy” a second chance (Qadal, 1986:58-59). For a fuller analysis of the July 19 movement, the party members have been asked to wait for a comprehensive analysis to be undertaken by the CC.

In 1985, 14 years after the coup, Muhammad Nu- qud, the Party Secretary elected in 197 1, stated that the ‘July 197 1 movement” was a military operation outside the party’s adopted tactics of patient mass action against the deviations of the Nimeiri’s regime. He continued to say that the “coup” (a rare admission as we will see later) was neither the party’s nor Mah- jub’s decision as rumor has it. In saying that the July 19 coup is a revolutionary event, he continued, we should not be misunderstood as claiming any honor in its organization. The credit, in fact, goes to the revolutionary officers who proposed their coup plan to the party, and who executed it despite the party’s stated objections. The objections, he added, will be made known in the comprehensive appraisal of the

coup being prepared by the party (Ibzd. : 60-6 1). Like all institutions and people, the SCP became

superstitious when confronted by the daunting task of explaining an embarrassing, grievous situation. To buy time, it referred the matter to the CC in the pious belief that the whole thing would go away. The delay- ing tactic has apparently run its course. Khatim Ad- lan, who came out of the party underground in early 1994 to lead a split in the party from London, made fun of the delay. In this connection, he related the one about Comrade Premier Chou Enlai of China. It is said that the Comrade was asked his views on the French Revolution. “The time for its evaluation has not yet come,” he said (Qhzuh 3,l [ 19941).

The absence of an official evaluation of the coup did not prevent individual communists or, understandably, European leftists from judging it. The ruthlessness with which the 197 1 coup was crushed confirmed Fatima Mahmoud’s skepticism of the party’s faith in a supposedly progressive national bourgeoisie, and her suspicion that this class was allied to international capital beyond redemption (1 984: 141). Although brief and suicidal, others argued, the coup pointed to an existing alternative beyond the dictatorship of the petty bourgeoisie garbed in social- istic rhetoric and sanctioned by International Com- munism. Short-lived as it was, those three days in July, according to Alain Gresh, delegitimized Nimeiri’s one-party state and prevented it from achieving total hegemony made up of consent as well as repression. Nimeiri’s fall by popular revolt in 1985 was, in Gresh’s view, posthumous revenge by those who dared to speak out against the fledgling dictator of the early 1970s (1 989:404-406). The virtual disappearance from the political arena of the “National Commu- nists” who advocated playing “second fiddle” to the revolutionary democrats of Nimeiri’s putsch attests to the farsightedness of the “dogmatists” in the SCE! Waiting for Godot

The SCP is apparently under mounting pressure from members to expedite its long awaited appraisal of the coup. Seizing an opportunity in which members have been asked to air their views on the future of the party in the realities of the post Cold War period, some members are arguing that an analysis of the coup, with an emphasis on the party’s role in its organization, is overdue (Qed 3,l 119941). The party’s statement about disclaiming the credit for the coup and not disavowing the accusation for organizing it, is dismissed as rhetorical (Ibzd.). Some members wanted the party, with due reverence to the coup martyrs, to be respectful of the people who deserve better than cliches (1.d.).



112 COMAIRATIYE STUDIES OF SOUTH ASIA, Amia AND THE MIDDLE &sq VOL. XYI No. I (1996)

Some communist leaders are apparently yielding to this rising pressure. Tijani al-Tayyib, a founder of the party and allegedly the ghost-writer of the first and last statement delivered to the media by the 197 1 putschists, admitted that the coup was a political blunder for which the party should be held accountable. Although the party did not make the decision to carry out a coup, the responsibility for the coup, he maintains, rests with the communists because those who spearheaded it were party members (Qdqzh, 2, [ 19931). In a rejoinder, the intractable Khatim, who is presently leading a split in the Party, wondered if what al-Tayyib said about the coup was his personal view, because the members are still awaiting the evaluation the CC promised to prepare for them. However, Khatim strongly suggests that the party was involved in the organization of the coup (Qdayzh 3,l [ 19941). Proletarian Faces, Petty Bourgeoisie Masks

Determining the individual(s) who unleashed the 197 1 coup is a point that cannot be labored. Consid- ering Mahjub’s political responsibilities, no one would expect him to be in the dark regarding the plan of the coup and its implementation. Granted that Mahjub stands to be blamed for the coup and its aftermath, the question remains: Why would Mahjub go against the grain of his political praxis and initiate or endorse a putsch to bring about a desired political change? For a likely answer, one does not need to go further than Mahjub’s theory of the sociology of the coup. Con- sidering the numerical strength and political virility of the petty bourgeoisie, an argument can be made that the 1970 split in the party did not “cleanse” the party of the petty bourgeois mentality. This would not have surprised even Mahjub who complained in a letter, sent from Cairo in May 1970, that the CC, the weakest sector of the party, and other popular party cadres, were ignorant of the inner party life. They did not see the conflict raging in the party in the late 1960s and early 1970s for what it was because of their “bourgeois ‘paternal’ attitude,” which valued unity even on the basis of false compromise (Qadal, 1986:85).

In 1969, as well as 197 1, the petty bourgeoisie, especially in the military establishment, endorsed the communists’ grievances and perspectives, but repu- diated their tactics. Some maverick officers, even the 197 1 communist officers, thrust their putsches down the throat of the party. In both cases, the military “zero hour” took precedence over the “revolutionary crisis,” Blanquism surpassed Leninism and the petty bourgeoisie “shepherded” the proletarians. In real terms, the potency of the petty bourgeoisie turned the SCP into a double-faced organization: an official face

committed to mass, revolutionary action and a masked “putschist” face dominant in practice.

Presumably, the “double-faced” hypothesis will free those who closed the “door of $zhzd” (independent thinking) on the coup in order to quiet a contro- versy they are afraid may tarnish the shine of Mahjub by focusing on the discrepancy between his preaching and practice. For Mahjub’s failure to live up to his word, according to this hypothesis, inhered in this “hypocritical” social situation in society and the party. The hypothesis, I must hasten to say, has not been hatched for the convenience of any institution or individual.

My original plan was to study the edge the petty bourgeoisie had in society and in the SCP in terms of its numerical strength, political possibilities and con- stituencies of potency and eloquence, better to understand the double-faced nature of the SCF? I will leave that to a more opportune time. Suffice it to say here that Mahjub, at the time the 197 1 coup was con- ceived, had been a “hostage”, so to speak, to the communist, putschist officers (Niblock, 1987:334). We have seen how these officers smuggled him out of his detention at the Ammunition Corps in the Khartoum Military Area just three days before their coup. For months before the coup, these officers were the only link Mahjub had with the party. It is important to note that Mahjub had not deliberated freely with the party organs since April 1970 when he had been taken into custody. The “logistics” of the situation before the coup, with the control the communist ofi- cers had on the communication at the decision- making levels of the party, gave them an authorized niche of power in the SCP.

Conclusion The July Coup cast a long shadow on the SCP ad-

vocacy of dovetailing liberalism and social change. The coup led to an untimely closing of the book on the sociology of impatience-the unwarranted risks taken by radicals to impose happiness on people and the wine, in Wallerstein’s words quoted earlier, “turned sour.” The turnover of coups overwhelmed the SCP and prevented it from reconciling itself, albeit skeptically, to liberal democracy and developing its understanding of the “democratic space.” The aborted coup and the tragic reprisals made the SCP superstitious. Just like the Ibo who would call a “snake” a “string” to placate it, the SCP, in its evaluations of the coup before and after its defeat, would not call the July putsch a “coup.” Instead, they euphemistically called it a “revolutionary change” or by its generic, calendar identification as “the 19th of July” (Qadal, 1984). These evaluations even credited



/BRAHIM: THE 1971 COUP IN THE SUMN 113

the coup for rescuing “new democracy” from the claws of Nimeiri’s personal rule (Ibid. :59). In resusci- tating this lethal concept, the party regressed to an “infantile disorder” it presumably had outgrown.

Notes 1 The paper was written during a short fellowship in November 1994 at the International Institute of the University of Michigan- Ann Arbor, and presented to a seminar on post-Cold War at the Institute. I am grateful to the impeccable, intellectual and personal hospitality of Prof. David W. Cohen, the Director of the Institute and the understanding and help of his wonderful sM. I am indebted to the members of the Michigan seminar, David Wakefield, Majid Bob, Ahmad Elamin Elbashir, Mohammed Bashir Hamid and Vasant Kaiwar for their help at various stages of writing this article. 2 “The old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interreg- num there arise a great diversity of morbid symptoms,” Gramsci, %on Notes. 3 Held at the University of Warwick in September 1989. 4 I am inclined to see the charge that Mahjub rejected the putschists’ offer to appoint more communists on the cabinet as something the putschists spread to turn their communist friends against Mahjub. In fact, the Minister of Interior, who was later executed for his role in the 1971 coup, called the Central Com- mittee and other communist cadres to meet with him to hear a complaint from Mahjub that they were impeding the development of positive relations with the government. 5 Mansour Khalid, who became the Minister for Foreign Mairs after the crushing of the coup, was an eyewitness of the session in which Mahjub was interrogated by Nimeiri and his clique, described his vengeance, from which he himself suffered later, as “severe and clinical” (1985:23). 6 “Hack,” which means “short” or “brief” among other things, is used here to maintain both the celebration of the speed by which Nimeiri returned to power and the rhythmic pattern of the original Arabic motto. A literal translation would be: “In five minutes, the leader is back.” 7 Mansour Khalid, who was present when Nimeiri showed up at the room where Mahjub was questioned by some of Nimeiri’s men, describes Nimeiri’s vengeance as follows:

Mahgoub (Mahjub) was tired, worn out, with his lips cracking. He asked for water and Omer [the Minister of Information and Culture] poured him a glass, two, three. With the man hand-cuffed, Omer had to hold the glass for him to drink. Having quenched his thirst, Mahgoub asked me for a cigarette. I obliged by lighting one for him, placing it between his lips ... At this point Nimeiri and Abul Gasm Ibrahim (his future vice-president) showed up. Nimeiri gazed at the hand-cuffed man, clenched his teeth and said nothing. Then he impul- sively picked up the half-full glass of water and emptied it on Abdel Khalig’s wahjub] face. Abul Gasm Ibrahim, wishing to outdo his President, pulled the cigarette from his mouth

8 The many masks of the elite have been the butt of some insight- ful comments. The focus on the structural impediment to democratization, in Jean-Franqois Bayart’s view (1 993), conceals the mechanisms by which the African elites have sought political and economic hegemony on the backs of their citizens. Anthony Ap- piah (1992), on the other hand, interprets the fashionable policy of authenticity advocated and enforced by elites as a bid for power based on a sentimentalized past. 9 The booklet was originally presented as lectures to the communists incarcerated in early 1960. The lectures were later published in C m h s (Arabic), the party’s theoretical underground jour-

(1985~24-25).

nal in 1961. In 1956 its public edition was published by the communist-run Dar al-Fib al-Ishtraki (Socialist Thought Publishers. A third edition appeared in Khartoum in 1987. 10 The plan was abandoned thanks to advice from the “Soviet comrades” (Matar, 197 1 :2 18). 1 1 Nuqud, the Secretary of SCP, argued that the party realized the futility of the coup as a tool of political change from the tragic coups of the late 1950s and early 1960s against General Aboud’s regime. As a result, the party adopted the general strike to bring down the military dictatorship. The success of these tactics in 1964, when the junta collapsed after a general strike, confirmed the party in its mass action tactics (Qadal, 1986:60-61). 12 A spideI-a trickster figure in the folklore of West Africa. Salah A. Ibrahim, who gave the name to Mahjub, apparently knew about this figure during the period he spent teaching Arabic at the famous African Studies Institute established in Ghana by Kwame Nkrumah to promote African political and historical conscious- ness. Salah joined this Institute in 1963-64. 13 The writing of the statement episode in Ms. Ibrahim’s story is borne out by the fact that it took Major al-Atta a longer time than usual in a coup situation to deliver the programmatic statement the radio had prepared the people for. This inordinate time taken to produce the statement did not escape the people then.

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Documents

The 1971 Coup in the Sudan and the Radical War of Liberal