Letter from Sudan # 11

-11-

The schools of Gezira are silent and empty. There has been trouble and the Min of Ed, on the orders of the government and the Prime Minister, Mr. Saddiq Al Mahdi, have shut all the schools of the province for an indefinite period.

The students in the towns of El Messelemiya, El Hasaheisa, and the second city of Sudan, Wad Medani have been rioting and burning. In Hasaheisa one boy was accidentally shot dead. Troops and riot police with shields and protective headgear move round the towns in lorries. Boys take flight when a lorry approaches although the main disturbances appear to have subsided.

The schools remain shut. The boarders have left for their villages; some have been arrested although I hear that these too have been allowed home. The debris has all but been cleared up, but some of the shopkeepers are very bitter about what has happened.

The main reason for the riots was the sudden increase in the price of sugar; around 60% at one go. The reason for this large increase is purported to be the Prime Minister’s acquiescence to the International Monetary Fund regarding the promptness of repayment of Sudan’s massive loan from that body.

Sudan is a poor country, repayment is slow, possibly too slow for the financial gurus of the World Bank. The Prime Minister, faced with the demands of his country’s creditors and his country’s low productivity figures, has made a decision. Sugar prices are the go up. Sugar is important to the people of Sudan. It was already expensive and now it’s price is to rise even higher.

It was said in town that the owner of the gutted shops were stockpiling certain commodities, including sugar, and waiting for the inevitable increases. In the event, the 60% price rise turned out to be the straw that broke the camel’s back and the riots began.

From my house between the Higher Secondary School and the Intermediate School for Boys, I can hear the chanting of a nearby crowd. I turn over and try to go back to sleep. It is five o’clock in the morning.

Walking towards school at 7.30am, the chanting of the crowd of boys and girls is now coming from another direction – the marketplace. The schoolyard, usually so full of boys at this time, is all but empty and very quiet. Some boys are leaving for the marketplace. The noise of the mob reaching the doors of the black-marketeers is only broken by the thud of tear gas being fired into the middle of the approaching crowd by the hopelessly outnumbered policemen who normally have very little to do in this quiet market town in the middle of fields of Gezira cotton.

Flames leap thirty feet in the air and three shops are quickly gutted. The townsfolk are shocked and shops shut to avoid incurring the wrath of the mob. With the burning of the shops and the actions of the police, the rioters lose their momentum, or their nerve and the town becomes quiet again.

An uneasy calm after the riots is a sight to see; men talk volubly in small knots at each corner, women hurry indoors and normal service is suspended for a while.

At 4.30 in the afternoon, there is an announcement on the radio. All the schools in the troubled province are to shut indefinitely. In the course of my stay in Sudan, a period of ten weeks, the schools of the Central Region, of which Gezira is a part, have been shut for four weeks. We have just restarted after a series of similar disturbances in the south of the region.

The schools have been open for exactly one week when the demonstrations took on an altogether more serious and concerted appearance. Instead of one centre of rioting, there are several at similar times, giving rise to speculation that they have been previously arranged and orchestrated.

The schools remain closed with nobody being sure when they will reopen. The boarders return to their remote villages and the tow is quiet again – until the next time.
Robert L. Fielding