Neither Settler nor Native: The Making and Unmaking of Permanent Minorities

by Mahmood Mamdani

Islamists were convinced not only that they had to do the Troika’s bidding but also that, with the predominantly non-Muslim South out of the picture, their grip on the North would be that much more secure. Meanwhile, Africanists in the South, including Kiir and Machar, saw opportunity in the terms the Troika was pressing. Africanists thought that their fate would be sealed in a New Sudan, as in the old, should they continue to be a political minority. They wanted the referendum. Had the debate been purely internal to Sudan, with only Khartoum and Garang’s camp at the table, there might have been no referendum. It is for this reason that many suspect Garang’s death was not accidental—that those who stood to gain from independence arranged the fatal helicopter crash to ensure that, instead of a New Sudan, there would be two Sudans: founded on a colonial worldview, shepherded into existence by outside powers, and structured to benefit both those powers and the heirs of customary law and native administration.