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Sudan
Urban and National Elites
In this regionally and ethnically differentiated country, peoples
and communities have been identified as Sudanese only by virtue
of orientation to and control by a common government. They seemed
not to share significant elements of a common value system, and
economic ties among them were tenuous. If a national society and
elites were emerging, it was in the Three Towns constituting the
national capital area. It was in Khartoum, Khartoum North, and
Omdurman that the national politicians, highlevel bureaucrats,
senior military, educated professionals, and wealthy merchants
and entrepreneurs lived, worked, and socialized. Even those who
had residences elsewhere maintained second homes in Omdurman.
These elites had long recognized the usefulness of maintaining
a presence in the capital area, invariably living in Omdurman,
a much more Arab city than Khartoum. The other, truly urban elites
also tended to live in Omdurman, but the concentration of northern
Sudan's varied elites in one city did not necessarily engender
a common social life. As in many Arab and African cities, much
of Omdurman's population lived in separate if not wholly isolated
quarters.
Two components of the elite structure were not dominantly urban,
however, although they were represented in the cities. These were
the heads of important religious groups, whose constituencies
and sources of power and wealth were largely rural, and what may
be termed tribal elites, who carried some weight on the national
level by virtue of their representing regional or sectional interests.
To the extent that the elites were Muslim and Arab--most were
both--they shared a religion and language, but they were otherwise
marked by differences in interest and outlook. Even more divergent
were the southerners. Most elite southerners were non-Muslims,
few spoke Arabic fluently, and they were regarded - and saw themselves,
not primarily as a professional or bureaucratic elite, but as
a regional one. Many were said to prefer a career in the south
to a post in Khartoum. These southern elites exercised political
power directly or gave significant support to those who did. But
so diverse and sometimes conflicting were their interests and
outlooks that they did not constitute a cohesive class.
Changing Sudanese society had not developed a consensus on what
kinds of work, talents, possessions, and background were more
worthy than others and therefore conferred higher status. There
had long been merchants, entrepreneurs, and religious leaders
in Sudan. The latter had a special status, but wealth and the
influence and power it generated had come to carry greater status
in the Sudan of 1991 than did religious position. The educated
secular elite was a newer phenomenon, and some deference was given
its members by other elites. In the Muslim north, the educated
ranged from devotees of Islamic activism to Islamic reformers
and a few avowed secularists. Despite the respect generally given
the educated, those at either extreme were likely to make members
of other elites uncomfortable.
The younger, larger generation of the educated elite were not
all offspring of the older, smaller educated elite. Many were
sons (and sometimes daughters) of businessmen, wealthy landowners,
and the tribal elite. It had not been established where the interests
of first-generation educated persons lay, whether with a growing
educated elite or with their families of very different backgrounds.
A peculiar feature of the educated Sudanese was the fact that
large numbers lived outside Sudan for years at a time, working
in Middle Eastern oil-producing states, Europe, or North America.
Some of their earnings came back to Sudan, but it was not clear
that they had much to do with the formation or characteristics
of a specifically Sudanese elite.
Tribal and ethnic elites carried weight in specific localities
and might be significant if the states were to achieve substantial
autonomy; however, their importance on the national scene was
questionable.
Socializing and intermarriage among members of the different
elites would have been significant in establishing a cohesive
upper class. But that had not happened yet, and movement in that
direction had suffered a severe blow when the government of Colonel
Umar Hassan Ahmad al Bashir that came to power on June 30, 1989
imprisoned and executed leaders of the elite. Until the Bashir
government displaced it in favor of Islamists, the elite regarded
itself as the arbiter of social acceptance into the company of
those riverine Arab families who had long lived in the Omdurman-Khartoum
area, had substantial income from landholding, and had participated
in the higher reaches of government during the condominium or
engaged in the professions of medicine, law, and the university.
Men from these families were well educated. Few engaged in business,
which tended to be in the hands of families of at least partial
Egyptian ancestry.
Beginning in the late 1960s, northern Muslims of non-Egyptian
background began to acquire substantial wealth as businessmen,
often as importers and exporters. By the early 1980s, perhaps
twenty of them were millionaires. These men had been relatively
young when they began their entrepreneurial activity, and unlike
members of the older elite families, they were not well educated.
By the late 1970s and early 1980s, however, many of these businessmen
had started sending their children to Britain or the United States
for their education. Reflecting trends in other societies, whereas
the sons of the older elite had been educated mainly for government
careers, by the 1980s business education was increasingly emphasized.
In contrast to the more secular elites in the professions, the
civil service, and the military, however, many members of these
newer economic elites gravitated toward religion and the Muslim
Brotherhood.
Typically, the older elite intermarried and excluded those whose
backgrounds they did not know, even if the families were wealthy
and successful in business, religion, or education. Gradually,
after independence, Arabic speakers of other sedentary families
acquired higher education, entered the bureaucracy or founded
lucrative businesses, and began to participate to a limited degree
in the social circle of the older families. The emphasis on "good
family" persisted, however, in most marriages. Sedentary Arabs
were acceptable, as were some persons of an older mixture of Arab
and Nile Nubian ancestry, for example, the people around Dunqulah.
But southern and western Sudanese--even if Muslims--and members
of nomadic groups (particularly the darker Baqqara Arabs) were
not. A southern Sudanese man might be esteemed for his achievements
and other qualities, but he was not considered an eligible husband
for a woman of a sedentary Arab family. There were some exceptions,
as there had been decades ago, but they were generally perceived
as such.
Data as of June 1991
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