Darfur, and indeed the whole of Sudan, is in the grip of a genocide that no one wants to speak about. More than 150,000 people are estimated to have been killed in the ongoing war, with 12-million displaced — internally and as refugees in neighbouring countries.
The current conflict started in April 2023 after the two generals — head of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) commander General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo — differed on the timetable for the incorporation of the RSF into the SAF.
Al-Burhan and Dagalo had both worked together in Darfur, the southwestern part of Sudan populated mainly by Africans of non-Arabic descent. They both tried to quell the rebellion of the Darfurians who felt the government of then president Omar al-Bashir discriminated against them.
Burhan led the official government forces while Dagalo led what was then known as the Janjaweed, Bashir’s terror militia that rode on horses, killing, raping and abducting. It was and remains an ethnic cleansing exercise which the people of Darfur, through Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement, fought very hard against.
The atrocities committed by both Burhan and Dagalo’s forces were the reason that Al-Bashir was indicted by the International Criminal Court for genocide and crimes against humanity in 2009. This was the warrant of arrest that South Africa didn’t want to effect when he visited the country in 2015 and then had to be sneaked out when his arrest was imminent.
As the fighting between the SAF and RSF rages, Dagalo has retreated to his usual hunting ground, Darfur, where he has conducted large-scale slaughter of civilians, sometimes even videotaping the killings and posting the footage to show his troops were in charge.
On scale alone, the magnitude of deaths and displacement in Sudan overshadows everything that is happening anywhere in the world, including Gaza. And yet the world, and Africa, and our own government in particular, pay not even lip service to the plight of the people of Darfur, whose crime, as the struggle song used to say, is being black and in the main, non-Muslim.
The fall of El Fasher last Sunday led to many civilians being killed. El Fasher is where the SLA launched its first attack on the SAF in April 2003, which led to the emergence of the Janjaweed. The UN calls what is happening in Darfur “ethnically motivated violations and atrocities” on a genocidal scale.
On scale alone, the magnitude of deaths and displacement in Sudan overshadows everything that is happening anywhere in the world, including Gaza. And yet the world, and Africa, and our own government in particular, is not even paying lip service to the plight of the people of Darfur, whose crime, as the struggle song used to say, is being black and in the main, non-Muslim.
Our government has mounted pilgrimages to Ukraine and Moscow, we have dragged Israel, rightly so, to the International Court of Justice, and at every turn or event, we megaphone these conflicts. And yet, back here at the continental ranch, barbarism is reigning supreme and we have nothing to say?
Don’t we care about what happens to our own? Why is the United Arab Emirates, which is siphoning gold from Darfur to fuel its gold-processing industry in Dubai, not being called out for its military support of the new Janjaweed? If the UN special rapporteur for Palestine can call for third-country supporters of Israel to be shamed and sanctioned, why can’t the same be done over Darfur?
When Nigeria hanged Ken Saro-Wiwa in November 1995, and the world was in uproar, Nelson Mandela was the only African president who recalled our then ambassador, the late George Nene, from Lagos. It was a bold step that signalled that as a country we would not stand by silently while people’s rights were trampled on, especially in Africa.
Only this week, Paul Biya, the 93-year-old ruler denied the people of Cameroon a better future when he “won” an eighth term.
Nearer home, the offices of the respected Zimbabwean Pan Africanist thinker, publisher and commentator Dr Ibbo Mandaza, were petrol-bombed on the eve of a press conference to decry Zanu-PF’s latest attempt to make Emmerson Mnangagwa another Robert Mugabe — a virtual life president.
I could mention Alassane Ouattara of Ivory Coast who changed the constitution to run again and again, or Tanzania where President Samia Suluhu Hassan’s government arrested, harassed or disqualified key opponents from running in Thursday’s elections.
Where is our voice? Where is our outrage that Africans can do this to each other, from Darfur as the biggest stain on our conscience, to the manipulations of those reluctant to leave office? Our principled stance cannot be measured solely against what we do for other others, but most importantly for our others.
- Tsedu, a former editor of Sunday Times, is a member of the board of the South African Heritage Resource Agency
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