Numeiri’s Legacy of Failure : Sudan Rekindles Dreams in Wake of Its Tidy Coup

Jaafar Numeiri was overthrown a month ago after a 16-year rule, and now he has become a nonentity in Sudan, cast into the disgrace of exile like so many African presidents before him.

The coup that deposed him on April 6 was a tidy little affair, carried out without much bloodshed or vengeance-taking. It was, in effect, an election, a referendum for change. And when the Sudanese surveyed the economic and political wreckage of their nation in the days after Numeiri’s departure, they reached a unanimous conclusion: The tyrant Numeiri had ruined Sudan.

In a burst of rekindled dreams, they ripped his picture from the Sudanese currency--shopkeepers happily accepted the defaced bills--and pulled down his portraits, which had hung almost everywhere in this sleepy capital on the banks of the Nile. The official news agency inserted the word butcher before every mention of his name, and American diplomats, who not long ago had defended Numeiri as a skilled politician, dismissed him as a playground bully.

Treasury Empty

True, Numeiri did leave a legacy of failure. The national treasury is empty. Political leadership has been destroyed. The Arabs in the north and Africans in the south are at war. Huge sums of developmental assistance appear to have accomplished nothing at all. And, for now, the only change is that a new group of generals is running Sudan. They have made a promise often heard in Africa: Power will be handed over to a civilian government within a year.

But the vilification of Numeiri ignores two key points: First, by the standards of the Arab and African world, Numeiri was less repressive, less corrupt, less intransigent than many of his peers. And, for the first 10 years or so of his presidency, he was widely respected as a competent, conciliatory leader who had taken his country to the brink of significant development.

Second, governing Sudan is an unimaginably difficult challenge. Allegiances are tribal, and 110 languages are spoken in the country. Communications are so primitive that Morse code is still widely used. There are few paved roads outside the capital. And, as is often true in the Third World, the only organized force--the only real political party--is the army, which cannot be excluded from the decision-making process.

“Frankly, I am not absolutely confident democracy can work unless the people, particularly the leaders, have really learned a lesson from the past,” said the head of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan Turabi, who spent 2,258 days in prison during Numeiri’s rule.

“We’ve seen the pattern before. There is division, strife, conflict, and the country adopts democracy, because everything else has failed. A vacuum develops, but not stability. People feel uneasy and someone exploits the frustration and steps in. He can’t hold things together because Sudan is so diverse. Pressure builds and the regime falls. The cycle starts again.”

Ruled by Confrontation

Numeiri, whose coup in 1969 ended a five-year experiment with democracy, ruled by confrontation, keeping everyone off balance. He shuttled friends and enemies in and out of Cabinet positions and in and out of jail. He flirted with the Soviets, the Sudanese Communists, the Muslim Brothers, the labor unions--and abandoned them all when they no longer served his purposes.

Immense sums for developmental assistance poured into the country from Saudi Arabia and the West, and donors created an illusion: Sudan would become the breadbasket of the Arab world and would be transformed into a modern industrial state. Canals, plantations, factories, game parks for tourists--there were many schemes.

“Everyone said, ‘Sign here; we’ll make you rich,’ ” a British businessman recalled. And, for a while, the people believed the dream.

But no one had figured in what is known here as the lassitude factor. This is a somnolent, backward place whose relaxed people devote their energies to enduring the constant heat. No business is more pressing than the afternoon siesta. And most of the money disappeared like water in the desert after a rain, until finally, instead of talking about how to develop Sudan, people began wondering how to save it.

‘There’s Nothing Here’

“Every time they pull a page off the calendar, they must say, ‘Phew, we made it through another day,’ ” a Western economist said. “I mean, there’s nothing here. Sudan has become the ‘Fourth World.’ If the government tried to sell the whole country, it couldn’t get enough to cover the $9-billion external debt.”

For Numeiri, trouble came from several directions at once. More than a million refugees streamed into Sudan from Chad and Ethiopia. Another 600,000 Sudanese were displaced by drought. The civil war in the south flared up after a decade of peace. The country was broke. And Numeiri’s increasingly eccentric policies stirred suspicions that he was abusing the medication he takes for circulatory problems.

His eyes grew dull, his conversations rambled and his face became puffy like that of a boxer who has taken too many punches. He had entered what people now refer to as his “mystic period,” a time when Numeiri seemed to follow the call of some higher voice. His behavior became so peculiar that American diplomats here began cabling the State Department to suggest that Washington put some distance between itself and Numeiri.

By late 1983, Numeiri had alienated southern Sudan by revoking its autonomy, surrounded himself with mystics from the Sufi sect and imposed the harsh penalties of Islamic law on his people.

Ordered Moderate Hanged

Last January, he ordered the hanging of a moderate Muslim, 76-year-old Mahmoud Mohammed Taha, for opposing the imposition of Islamic law, or sharia. It was then that the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum put together a 40-page report analyzing Sudan’s likely course in the post-Numeiri era.

Washington will give Sudan between $300 million and $400 million this year, making it the largest recipient of U.S. aid in black Africa. (The United States provides 100% of the food for 6 million of Sudan’s 23 million people.) Another $45 million has been allocated for military assistance.

Except for some leftist intellectuals, few Sudanese seem to associate Washington’s support for Numeiri with the country’s plight, although during the general strike that led to Numeiri’s overthrow, several hundred demonstrators did chant, “Down with the U.S.A.!”

Self-Interest Groups

However, as one university professor noted, those are the only English words many students know in the Arabic-speaking world. (Other protesters shouted, “Down with the International Wildlife Fund!,” in a mistaken reference to the International Monetary Fund.)

The danger for Sudan now is that Numeiri’s removal has brought numerous self-interest groups--from Communists to trade unionists--out of the closet. In endless discussions with the military, and often contrary to the nation’s real interests, each group is trying to carve out niches of power.

The longer the jockeying continues, Western analysts say, the stronger the army will become politically. And the longer it takes for the pro-Western generals now running the country to reach an agreement with the civilians, the more likely it is that some junior officer could step from the wings to stage another coup.