The Daily News (Harare)
18 March 2002
THE Pan African Movement (PAM) hosted a national conference of Sudanese women on "Women's Rights in the Sudan: Agenda for the Future", in Kampala, recently.
The conference was organised by the Civil Forum of Sudan in association with Justice Africa.
This was the third of such major conferences to be hosted by PAM in Kampala specifically devoted to the Sudan conflict in partnership with the two organisations.
The first was held in 1999 (Kampala 1) and the second followed in 2000 (Kampala 2).
The Civil Forum has been preoccupied with advancing, organising, mobilising and building bridges within the civil society groups, non- governmental organisations (NGOs) and other stakeholders on the one hand, and the armed groups in conflict in the Sudan (government and rebels) on the other.
Consequently, the first Kampala Forum had the broad theme: "Human Rights in Transition in the Sudan".
It was a very difficult initiative given the suspicions, political, ideological and social cleavages that exist even within the civil society and NGOs and the different protagonists in the Sudan conflict.
The armed opposition welcomes every opportunity to carpet the government, expose its excesses, violation of human rights, etc, but is reluctant or evasive about the same issues being raised about areas under their control (liberated areas).
Generally governments are very defensive about these issues, but they are even more so in states undergoing conflict.
To be asked to account for them by civil society organisations and NGOs is often too bitter a pill to swallow, but they have to learn to adjust to it in these days of democracy, transparency, accountability and good governance.
The old notion of sovereignty and territorial integrity that enabled African leaders to get away with anything is being questioned and contested.
In spite of the suspicions Kampala 1 went ahead and opened new opportunities for dialogue on various issues.
By the time of the follow-up Kampala 2 Conference, whose theme was "The Future of Civil Society in Sudan", there were more participants from Khartoum and other regions, as well as the Sudanese diaspora in Europe, America, the Middle East and Africa.
It is an indication of the continuing peace-building that the recent conference is even more broadly representative of civil society and political groups from inside and outside of the Sudan.
Its specific focus on women's rights and gender issues in a new peaceful Sudan has its own challenges and opportunities.
The discussions so far have been very frank, often very painful emotionally and controversial.
All Sudanese women like other women experience discrimination, powerlessness and denial of rights because of their gender.
But the way the oppression manifests itself is different for the different women depending on their class, race, religion, region or location.
The women in Khartoum who are of Arab/Muslim origin may not have the same experience as a fellow Muslim woman of Nuba, Beja or Darfur.
A Dinka woman in Khartoum whose partner/son/relatives are part of the government may not have a basis of solidarity with internally displaced
Dinka women living under her very nose in Khartoum, let alone those in the Sudanese People's Liberation Army-controlled areas.
This contradictory power relation was brought out by one of the Southern women who gave a heart-rendering account of the bombardment of the All Saints Cathedral in Khartoum by the government.
It was northern women and opposition that gave solidarity, not the Southerners in the government.
Women from the marginalised areas of Nuba, Beja, Blue Nile and the South were very vocal in asking their sisters in the north: what did you do or say when we were being bombarded, killed, maimed and our communities destroyed by government forces?
Apart from individual choices and organisational politics, there are objective reasons why even if women in the north wish to express their solidarity they are constrained.
The politics of coercion and monopoly of power, culture, tradition, political interests and ideology are important factors in stimulating their acquiescence.
Yet the northern women have their own tales of woe to tell, but the objective fact that they are perceived to belong to the ruling group gives them privilege and comparably more power and influence than their sisters from the marginalised groups and communities.
Their situation is comparable to that of whites in apartheid South Africa.
Under apartheid, whatever the political, class or ideological position of a white person, he/she was conferred with powers and access that were not available to his/her black compatriot, man or woman.
This differential inequality has a negative impact on building sisterhood and solidarity.
A participant from the United States of America who has been very active in the civil rights movement in the US and a scholar of the Sudanese Women's Movement, pointed out some of the difficult contours of personal and political mines to be negotiated to build trust.
She stressed sensitivity, honesty and a willingness to learn and be educated.
Another participant questioned pleas of powerlessness by sisters in the north by asking why it was easy for them to hold rallies, make petitions and organise marches in solidarity with the Palestinians, Afghans and not in support of their sisters from Sudan.
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