7 - Entangled Land and Identity: Beja History and Institutions

Summary

This contribution highlights the interconnections between land as a source of livelihood and land as a source of identity from the perspective of ‘the Beja’ in Eastern Sudan. But who are ‘the Beja’? The chapter traces how nomadic people with claims to certain territories in Eastern Sudan came to be identified as Beja. Foreign interests in Beja territory have a long historical trajectory: Egyptian pharaohs, Roman and Arab armies have all invaded to extract gold and mineral resources. The territory later formed part of the pilgrimage route to Saudi Arabia, which led to multiple foreign contacts and intermarriages. Under colonial rule, land tenure and the political system were reformed, marginalizing customary claims to land as well as political institutions. Agricultural schemes encroached upon Beja lands, especially in the Gash and Tokar deltas. The marginalization of people in Eastern Sudan was further aggravated by post-colonial politics that instead of promoting state-building through diversity fostered homogenization through its Arabization politics. In the past few decades, pressures on rural livelihoods have increased. Together with the eruption of armed conflict, successive droughts and famine, the granting of large concessions for foreign investors in agriculture and mining (cf. Umbadda in Chapter 2 and Calkins & Ille in Chapter 3), and the inability of successive Sudanese governments to govern, regulate and secure their citizens, have led to the disruption of the multilayered relationships between people and their land. This chapter argues that the growing need to protect both land and identity has resulted in a process of ethnic mobilization of different tribes whereby the label Beja was accentuated. This added political weight to their claims for inclusion and enabled their representation through an ethnic political party, the Beja Congress. Therefore, what appear as ‘traditional’ and ‘indigenous’ institutions, namely the constriction of land rights to the diwab system in the frame of customary law (silif), need to be read against a long history of struggle against external interests and encroachments upon the very land from which local nomadic and agro-pastoral communities gained their livelihoods.

This chapter begins with some more general reflections on who are designated as Beja.