Working with communities in Bahr el-Ghazal, Southern Sudan

Sefton Delmer's Article

Daily Express February 12 1953. What does this mean to you? The Great Betrayal - that's what I call it by Sefton Delmer, Khartoum

It is one of the jollier traditions of our Foreign Office to celebrate the conclusion of a major treaty with honours and decorations for the diplomats concerned in its negotiations. I trust that there will be no prizegiving on the occasion of the forthcoming signature of the Sudan Treaty with Egypt. For what I have seen and learned here and during the 800 mile trek I have just completed through the primitive African provinces of Southern Sudan has forced an unhappy conclusion on me. I believe with better judgement, shrewder foresight on the part of our Cairo Embassy and closer co-ordination of planning with the top men of the Sudan Government - yes, yes I know they are not supposed to be British public servants - we could have avoided the humiliation of this surrender to Neguib. It is a surrender which will have the most detrimental effect on British prestige throughout the Middle East. But equally grave will be its effect in Africa. For the Africans are not going to be satisfied with the restoration in a heavily-diluted form of the governor-general's special powers to protect the South's 2,000,000 non-Muslim Africans against the fanaticism of the North's Muslim Arabs. They are going to call it betrayal. And the worst of it is after what I have seen in the South I am far from sure they are not right.

Hopeful. All along, the Cairo Embassy and the Foreign Office have been dominated by the conviction that Neguib was a more reasonable ruler of Egypt than his predecessors. He would be easier to negotiate with, they believed hopefully. So he must be kept sweet with concessions. When Neguib proclaimed his readiness to recognise in principle Sudan's sovereign right to independence and self-determination - long ago recognised by Britain - our diplomats were cock-a-hoop at this departure from the previous Egyptian stand. They entirely failed to appreciate it as the brilliant manoeuvre that it was. They sent out telegrams requesting those concerned to do all they could not to let the Egyptians feel that they had been defeated.

Adroit.... But what the Foreign Office regarded as an Egyptian defeat was, in fact, just the old-fashioned Oriental wrestler's trick applied to politics. Down goes the champion under the impact of his opponent's rush. But as he falls he carries his antagonist with him. And the - wham - he gives him a beautifully timed kick which sends his victim sprawling over his head. The Sudan self-government statute was ready for promulgation. The Sudanese had worked it out with the British in months of careful drafting and redrafting. Egypt had foregone the chance to denounce it. But what did the Foreign Office do? They asked the Sudan Government to hold up the statute's promulgation so that Neguib could have his say. Have his say he did. He has been having it ever since, until the statute is now so modified that it ensures Egypt's first objective in the Sudan: it makes certain of the elimination of British influence in the Sudan and the isolation of that country so that the Egyptians may more easily penetrate it and dominate the valuable Nile waters it controls.

'Stay'. It is in the South that the Foreign Office' anxiety to appease the increasingly arrogant Neguib has asserted itself the most disastrously. Here in the South we have 2000000 loyal friends of the British. They are simple African tribesmen who appreciate the peace, order and security which the British have brought to them, their children and their cattle. Again and again they told me as I visited them in their villages, and sat under the thatched roofs of the courthouses with their chiefs and elders while stark naked spear-carrying warriors watched from outside: "We want out present British administrators to stay." They do not want them to stay for ever, mind you. "Just seven years or perhaps ten - until our own men are sufficiently trained and educated to look after us."

Ashamed. What is the Foreign Office reaction to this? They are alarmed and ashamed. They are afraid that the Egyptians, Northern Sudanese and Americans will ascribe this unusual display of common sense by backward people to the unlawful exercise of pressure by the British administration and by missionaries. So, believe it or not, they have urged the Khartoum Government to do everything to prevent "inopportune" political manifestations by the Southerners. The Southerners' repeated requests that they should hold a meeting of all their chiefs and leaders have been turned down. So has their request for the selection of a number of their leaders to meet and discuss the future with the Northerners. But when Neguib sent his anti-British agitator Major Salah Salem southwards to dance in his underpants with tribesmen and stir them up against the British, the Foreign Office requested that Khartoum should put every possible facility at his disposal and show him every courtesy. The result is confusion and the bewilderment of our friends in the Southern Sudan. The major told all who met him that the days of the British were over in the Sudan, that everywhere wise men were uniting with the Egyptians and their Northern brothers. They would be given splendid rewards and fine jobs for doing so.

Largesse. To underline his words he was most generous with largesse. In one place I visited I found that a local merchant who had been on the point of bankruptcy before the Egyptian visit had gained wondrous wealth since signing. From the British there came no word to dispute the major's claims. For that, in the view of the Foreign Office, might have been interpreted by Neguib as unwarranted interference by the Sudan Government in internal politics and illicit pressure on the public. It is amazing that, in spite of this, as yet there are only small pockets of pro-Egyptian and anti-British opinion among the Africans of the South. The vast majority of them hold the same view as Chief Kwanyin Agoth, a tall wrinkled old chieftain of the Dinka tribe who addressed me at a meeting in Gogrial courthouse. "All the people in this room are young", he said, "but I was born in the time when the Mahdi overthrew the Egyptian Government. My mother was fleeing from the Northerners and I was born in the grass. And I know the badness of the Northerners. When the British came they brought us peace. They brought back those of us who were taken as slaves to the North. "But one thing the British did not do for us. The British did not educate us. Had the British taught us as they taught the Northerners we could by now be ready to hold our own against the Northerners and meet them on equal terms. "So you British must stay with us. You must continue to teach us. Within seven years you must teach us so that we catch up with the Northerners."

Sold. Well, I don't think his demand is as "inarticulate," "unreasonable," and "backward" as all that, do you? But it is not to be granted. Neguib wants us to go, and we are going. Once more our loyal friends are to be sold - as in India, as in Burma, and as in Persia.

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