Ali Mazrui and Sudan’s Multiple Peripheries

Dr Al-Khidr Haroun
African Peoples and the Peoples of the Diaspora
Sudanese intellectuals warmly welcomed a lecture delivered in Khartoum in the 1960s by the Kenyan Muslim thinker Ali Mazrui entitled The Multiple Marginality of the Sudan.
At the time, the discourse of the “centre” and the “peripheries” had not yet become an instrument of rebellion against the state, a means of seeking its fragmentation, or perhaps even its complete destruction.
Strictly speaking, the “marginality” Mazrui had in mind did not carry the negative meaning commonly associated with the term: that whatever is described as marginal is worthless or lies outside the sphere of concern and attention. Yet the concept was subsequently drawn into the debate between Afrocentrism and Arab nationalism, as though Sudan could simply choose between the two opposing poles.
Some have related that the Ghanaian leader Kwame Nkrumah once said that Sudan could have become a leader in Africa, but instead chose to remain insignificant among the Arabs and merely trail behind them.
Ali Mazrui went to great lengths to explain what he meant by the phrase “multiple marginality”, because of the heavy connotations attached to it. He insisted that his title was innocent of those implications. While the term might carry certain negative associations in some sociological definitions, that was not what he intended.
He wrote:
“Our concept of marginality may perhaps have some affinity with sociological terms such as symmetrical acculturation between two cultures or symmetrical miscegenation between two races. But we do not intend to imply any deviation or to suggest that Sudan is unacceptable to either side.
“Marginality, in one sense, may imply deviation from the nature of something or a deficiency in it, hence the term itself. We, however, use the concept of marginality to denote particular characteristics of Sudan that clearly place it in an intermediate category between two distinct regions of Africa, or on the frontier between two different worlds.
“Sometimes, this intermediate position gives Sudan a dual identity: an African country in racial terms and an Arab country in cultural terms. Fundamentally, however, the idea of marginality as we use it places Sudan on a dividing line between two distinct African worlds—Arab North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa—a frontier that shares some characteristics of both regions.
“It is an in-between region.”
Despite this explanation, I still consider the word “marginality” confusing, ambiguous and lacking in complete clarity. I wish Mazrui had chosen another term.
He goes on to argue that the majority of Arabs in Africa, although geographically associated with the Arabs of the Arabian Peninsula, resemble Sudan’s position in that they are “Afro-Asians”. In contrast, Sudanese people are described as “Afro-Arabs”.
This intermediate position between two worlds can also be understood in terms of the differences between Sudan’s northern and southern regions.
Islam and the Arabic language transformed northern Sudan, despite its ethnic and cultural diversity, into a single melting pot. As Mazrui observes, one finds the inhabitants of the Red Sea region associated with the Khatmiyya, those of the west associated with the Ansar, and the strong tribal presence of the Nuba Mountains and the Beja in eastern Sudan, yet all agree that they live in a single homeland called Sudan.
Mazrui supports his argument with a quotation from Professor Yusuf Fadl Hassan’s book The Arabs and the Sudan, suggesting that this makes this part of Sudan one of the most homogeneous countries in Africa and renders it capable of establishing a state corresponding to the classical meaning of the “nation-state”.
Or, perhaps more accurately, this was what Mazrui observed in the Sudan of the 1960s. He had come to deliver his lecture shortly after the October Revolution of 1964, when the country was experiencing the exhilaration of victory and genuine democracy prevailed across the land.
Mazrui argues that the incoming Arab-Islamic culture interacted with the indigenous Nubian-African component through a reciprocal process of acculturation. This preserved the achievements of deeply rooted Nubian culture in agriculture, design, and numerous social practices, even as Arabic and Islam became dominant.
Even the Arabic names of trees and plants—talh, markh, tundub, salam, sunt and sidr—and the names of animals offer living examples of an equitable process of acculturation in which there was neither victor nor vanquished.
The Reverend Trimingham similarly regarded this phenomenon as a key to understanding Sudanese culture and described it as a valuable “treasure-house” for understanding it. It was upon this understanding that he built his strategy for converting Muslims in Sudan to Christianity.
Marginality was clearer and more pronounced in southern Sudan.
Through the Closed Districts Ordinances, colonial rule prevented the kind of reciprocal acculturation that had occurred in northern Sudan from taking place in the south.
This marginality has sometimes been portrayed as a confrontation between Islam and Christianity, much as Samuel Huntington later conceptualised conflict in The Clash of Civilisations.
Mazrui, however, argued that the conflict was not between Islam and Christianity. Rather, it was between the Sudanese Government and the Christian missionary organisations.
The Abboud Government had expelled foreign Christian missions after evidence emerged that they were fomenting hostility between northern and southern Sudan. This prompted a fierce campaign against Sudan in the Western media.
Mazrui explained that these missionary organisations sought to retain control of education in a country that had achieved independence and whose government wanted education to come under the supervision of the Ministry of Education.
The confrontation, therefore, was not a war against Christianity. Uganda had taken similar measures without provoking comparable controversy.
Moreover, the number of Christians in southern Sudan at the time was very small and roughly comparable to the number of Muslims there.
Nevertheless, the marginality between Sudan’s two regions—the north and the south—was evident in many respects and was more acute than almost anywhere else in Africa.
While the north appeared relatively homogeneous and eager for democracy—and seemed likely, within a decade, to become capable of building a territorial state comparable to the democracies of Europe—its relationship with the south was entirely different.
Mazrui repeatedly highlighted the role of colonialism in creating this situation. He cited the words of Sir Douglas Newbold, Governor of Kordofan:
“We do not wish to bring northern traders into the South.”
Mazrui also challenged the claim that Sudan serves as a bridge connecting Black Africa with Arab Africa and the Arab world. He argued that Black Africans did not require Sudan as an intermediary in communicating with the Arabs; they could establish those relationships directly.
He identified other forms of marginality that distinguished Sudan, including linguistic marginality.
Arabic was deeply rooted in Sudanese society, whereas English remained largely confined to the Sudanese intelligentsia.
Mazrui observed, for example, that Makerere University in Uganda organised English-language courses in diplomacy attended by Sudanese participants alongside other English speakers.
The Sudanese were distinctive, however, because they were the only participants in those courses who spoke English as a second language, unlike participants from former British colonies, where English had acquired a much wider social presence.
English in Sudan was not comparable to French in the countries of the Maghreb, where a much larger proportion of the population spoke French alongside Arabic.
Mazrui identified yet another form of marginality in the question of which part of Africa had exerted the greater influence upon what he called “Sudanic Civilisation”—the civilisation prevailing across the African Sahel, stretching from the Red Sea in the east to the Atlantic coast in the west.
Did this civilisation spread westwards from the banks of the Nile in Sudan across the continent? Or did the cultural influence travel in the opposite direction?
Here, Mazrui referred to a paper by Saburi Biobaku and Muhammad al-Hajj, who cited the influence of the Nigerian Fulani reformer and jihad leader Uthman dan Fodio on Sudan as evidence for the latter interpretation.
They argued that Uthman dan Fodio had predicted the emergence of the Mahdist Revolution in Sudan fifty years before it occurred and had sent some of his followers to Sudan to await its arrival.
They cited this as evidence of West Africa’s greater role in spreading Islam and exercising cultural influence upon eastern Africa, including Sudan.
Mazrui himself did not adopt a firm position on the question. He regarded it as a complex matter open to debate.
He did, however, argue that Sudan lies between two poles—East Africa and West Africa—and therefore occupies another frontier or intermediate position between them.
Where, then, did this cultural influence originate? In Nigeria or in Sudan?
The sun rises over the shores of the Red Sea and sets upon the Atlantic coast of Senegal.
This is yet another form of intermediate positioning—another “marginality”—that distinguishes Sudan.
African Peoples and the Peoples of the Diaspora
Mazrui also praised both the military officers and the civilians who rose against military rule in October 1964.
The Sudanese military, he observed, did not behave as armies elsewhere in Africa and the Middle East had done by claiming the mantle of patriotism through spilling civilian blood in the streets of Khartoum.
Instead, the military sided with the people’s desire to return to parliamentary democracy.
This did not diminish the heroism of Sudanese civilians or their repeated yearning for freedom and democratic government.
One wonders whether these intersections in Sudan’s geography and the history of its people are the reason others find the country so difficult to understand—and consequently so difficult to deal with.
An American friend of mine, who had himself noticed this confusion, once asked:
“How can the Central Intelligence Agency write that Ghana was the first sub-Saharan African country to gain independence, on 15 March 1957, when Sudan had already achieved independence on 1 January 1956—more than a year before Ghana?”
The BBC repeated the same claim, even though the great power to which it belongs had colonised Sudan for fifty-eight years!
How can this be?
Is Sudan’s position at the intersection of so many frontiers and identities a crime that encourages others to seek its removal from the map of the world?
Is Sudan the only country to be mocked because of its glorious history of independence—as the “State of 1956”?
And is it… and is it…?
Perhaps the truth is otherwise.
Perhaps these very characteristics explain Sudan’s resilience and distinction among nations, as it stands tall in the face of an aggression in which almost everyone has been complicit, except for a handful of hesitant voices speaking out with embarrassment and restraint.
Hold fast to Sudan with all your strength, descendants of the legendary archers who aimed at the eyes of their enemies.
May the watchful eye of God protect you.
For despite betrayal and ingratitude, you represent something of the goodness that humanity still desperately needs.

Shortlink: https://sudanhorizon.com/?p=15683