The Sudan: Bad Medicine

To its 9th century invaders, it was Bilad al-Sudan—Land of the Blacks. To the 4,000,000 blacks who live on its southern flood plains, the name is a mockery. Ruled by harsh Arab masters for most of the past 200 years, the Sudanese Negroes are little more than primitive prisoners in their own land. Political rights have been denied them, education withheld, and they have managed to preserve their dignity only by clinging to their past. The tall, naked Dinkas still worship animal spirits and fear the evil eye. The fierce Nuer herdsmen still subsist on milk, termites and the blood of cattle. The stately Shilluks still spear lion and crocodile, still stand for hours, cranelike, on one foot.

They have been kept standing too long. For the past ten years, rebellion has been smoldering in the south. Two southern political movements were formed in exile to demand independence from the north. From hideouts in the papyrus swamps and upland brush, guerrillas organized by still another group, a terrorist band known as the Anya Nya (Bad Medicine) began raids on government garrisons. Army reprisal from the north only increased the natives' hatred of the "slave catchers" and their "Arab occupation army." Offers of political integration were listened to politely by the southerners, only to be rejected at the conference table. "The problem is simple," observed one expert. "The southern Sudanese want to be Africans. The government wants them to be Arabs."

Unimpressed. Last month, when the Sudan got its first democratic government since a 1958 army coup, Arab hopes ran high that the blacks might finally listen to reason. The new regime promised them equal rights, religious freedom and a minority in the Cabinet. The south was unimpressed. The offers fell far short of the provincial autonomy demanded by even moderate southern leaders. Still worse, the power behind the new regime was a bright young man named Sadik el Mahdi—scion of the Sudan's richest family and boss of the Mahdist sect, which to the south is the very symbol of centuries of Arab rule. Instead of listening to reason, the blacks renewed the attack.

Equipped with automatic weapons hijacked from Communist arms shipments that had been flooding through the Sudan to the rebels in the neighboring Congo, Anya Nya guerrillas showed up in force a fortnight ago at the provincial capital of Wau (see map), tried to storm the army garrison. According to the government, the attack was beaten back and 72 terrorists were killed. Lesser battles were reported in several villages, but it was at Juba, the south's largest city (pop. 40,000), that the war's real fury was felt.

Instead of hurling themselves at the army, the Juba rebels ambushed a lone sergeant out for an evening stroll, sawed off the top of his head, emasculated him, and stuck the amputated part in his mouth. The Arab garrison went berserk. Its troops exploded into the street, firing wildly at everything that moved. They cordoned off the black districts along the Nile, sent four-man assassination parties down every street, setting fire to the thatched native huts and shooting down their occupants as they emerged. Many residents, caught between the advancing vengeance squads and the army cordon, threw themselves in panic into the Nile and were drowned. Unofficial death toll: 1,400.