South Sudan’s men’s basketball team will be at the Olympics for the first time thanks to Luol Deng OBE

Report from Mail & Guardian - mg.co.za
By Lethabo Nxumalo
Dated Friday, 6 October 2023 - here is a full copy:

Luol Deng: South Sudan’s great rebound

Hope: Luol Deng (centre) trains young players at the Manute Bol basketball court, built by the two-time All-Star NBA player’s foundation in South Sudan’s capital Juba. Photo: Akuot Chol/AFP

In 2024, South Sudan’s men’s basketball team will be at the Olympics for the first time. The 13-year-old nation qualified for the Paris event after a 101-78 win over Angola at the Fiba World Cup.

In the jubilant locker room after that decisive game, among the elated, perspiring, screaming and dancing players, stood Luol Deng. 

The two-time All-Star NBA player is a class act; a consummate professional on and off the court, a humanitarian whose work has won him multiple awards, including the Order of the British Empire. 

To tell the story of South Sudanese basketball is to tell the story of Deng’s capacity to dream and build.

In 1990, his father Aldo Deng was arrested after a coup in Sudan and the rest of his family fled the country. They eventually settled in London where young Deng joined the British basketball system.

An American scout spotted him and took the lanky 14-year-old into the cold winters of New Jersey, where he enrolled in Blair Academy. By his senior year, Deng was the second-highest ranked and most sought-after high school basketball player in the entire country.

He chose to go to Duke University, known for its prestigious basketball programme, from which he went on to a successful NBA career.

Deng, who was mentored by another South Sudanese basketball great, Manute Bol, never lost sight of his roots. A year after turning professional, he set up the Luol Deng Foundation, which coordinated emergency relief and surgical missions for refugees and people living with disabilities. 

The foundation also placed a strong emphasis on education and wellness, using basketball as a vehicle for positive change.

Its work would provide the blueprint for Deng’s later work on developing basketball in independent South Sudan.

In 2010, a year before South Sudan’s independence referendum, Deng returned to his homeland. He donated his salary to enable people in the diaspora to travel and vote in the referendum. His next undertaking was developing basketball in South Sudan. Deng serves as the president of the South Sudanese basketball federation.

Building a basketball culture in the newly independent, war-traumatised country was daunting. Infrastructure was sorely lacking. In 2015, Deng’s foundation built the Manute Bol Court in Juba. 

It still stands as one of only six outdoor basketball courts in the country — four are still under construction. But Deng appears motivated by challenges. Under his leadership, the men’s basketball team has found its footing on the continent and world stage.

The team is made up of primarily immigrant players whose families left the country during the long war, dispersing to different regions of the world as refugees. They reached the quarter-finals of the 2021 AfroBasket and breezed through their World Cup 2023 African qualifying group, winning all but one of their 12 games.

Their 11-1 win-loss record was a first in the history of the competition. It included two major upsets against the 2021 AfroBasket champion Tunisia and Africa’s most tenured team, Egypt.

Despite not progressing beyond the group stages of the recently concluded Fiba World Cup, South Sudan left the tournament ranked number one in Africa and 31 in the world. And, of course, having qualified for the 2024 Paris Olympics. 

“This is a significant achievement for us as a nation that is only 13 years old,” says Orom Mackmot, vice-president of the South Sudan Basketball Federation.

The feat is all the more remarkable considering that South Sudan only became a member of Fiba in 2013.

Recognising that “basketball, and sports in general, have the capacity to change a nation”, as Mackmot points out, South Sudan is expanding its investment in developing teams and leagues. To rectify a gap between the men’s and women’s national basketball team, which has yet to compete in the AfroBasket women’s tournament, the federation has created the South Sudan Women’s League to build a talent pipeline.

Assembling a women’s national team “is a bit of a struggle because a lot of the players are in collegiate basketball so it’s hard to get everyone in the same place at the same time”, says national forward Christina Deng (no familial relation to Luol Deng). 

Launched last year, the second edition of the women’s league is under way with round one and two fixtures scheduled till the middle of October.

Deng’s foundation is collaborating with the Jr NBA for the under-16 league programme.

It’s a long game in which everyone can win. “Basketball can not only bring unity but also improve the lives of players and their families through education, by awarding scholarships. If they don’t make it as pro athletes, they can become doctors, lawyers, and so forth, helping the nation at large,” says Mackmot. 

This article first appeared in The Continent, the pan-African weekly newspaper produced in partnership with the Mail & Guardian. It’s designed to be read and shared on WhatsApp. Download your free copy here

Tags: All-Star NBA, Basketball, Fiba World Cup, Luol Deng, Olympics, Order Of The British Empire, South Sudan

View original: https://mg.co.za/africa/2023-10-06-luol-deng-south-sudans-great-rebound/

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Sudan: Ex-Ghana goalkeeper Fatau Dauda agrees $770,000 a year's deal to join Sudan national team

Report from GhanaWeb - ghanaweb.com/
Dated Friday, 6 October 2023

Fatau Dauda agrees $770,000 a year's deal to join Sudan national team

Ex-Ghana goalkeeper Fatau Dauda (pictured) has agreed to a life-changing deal with the Sudanese national team to be their goalkeeper’s trainer...

Full story: 

https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/SportsArchive/Fatau-Dauda-agrees-770-000-a-year-s-deal-to-join-Sudan-national-team-1857884

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Sudan: Chief of Arab Rizeigat Mahameed clan to mediate between warring tribes in South Darfur

“Sheikh Musa Hilal will lead the initiative as head of the council and native administration* leader, along with other native administration notables and community figures from Darfur and some other states of Sudan”. A Revolutionary Awakening Council spokesperson said that “the root causes of the clashes need to be defined and addressed, to stop them forever”.

Read more in this report from Radio Dabanga - dabangasudan.org/en
Dated 29 September 2023, 13:17 MISTERIYA - here is a full copy:

Musa Hilal to mediate between warring tribes in South Darfur

Musa Hilal (File photo)

Mahameed clan chief and former Janjaweed leader Musa Hilal yesterday announced a reconciliation initiative between the Beni Halba and Salamat tribes that have been fighting each other for nearly two months.

In early August, clashes broke out between Beni Halba and Salamat tribesmen in South Darfur’s Kubum. Several efforts to reconcile the cattle herders failed so far.

Both tribes are ‘Arab’ cattle herders. The stronghold (dar) of the Beni Halba lies in Ed El Fursan. The Salamat settled in Um Dukhun more than two decades ago.

Musa Hilal, chief of the Arab Rizeigat Mahameed clan, former janjaweed leader, and head of the Revolutionary Awakening Council (RAC), yesterday announced a reconciliation initiative to put an end to the fighting that has left hundreds of tribesmen dead.

RAC spokesperson Ahmed Abakar told Radio Dabanga that “Sheikh Musa Hilal will lead the initiative as head of the council and native administration* leader, along with other native administration notables and community figures from Darfur and some other states of Sudan”.

He said that “the root causes of the clashes need to be defined and addressed, to stop them forever”.

The spokesperson added that the war “now taking place in Khartoum and some states is political, not tribal,” and called on the Sudanese “to not take it as an entry point for hate speech, tribalism, racism, and social segregation”.

* The Native Administration was instituted by British colonial authorities seeking a pragmatic system of governance that allowed for effective control with limited investment and oversight by the state. The state-appointed tribal leaders were also responsible for executing policies, collecting taxes, and mobilising labour on behalf of the central government. According to the Darfur Bar Association (DBA), the Native Administration during the 30-year rule of dictator Omar Al Bashir did not represent the real community leaders.

View original: https://www.dabangasudan.org/en/all-news/article/musa-hilal-to-mediate-between-warring-tribes-in-south-darfur

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Sudan: RSF to turn Zurrug, N Darfur into a dream city

THE ruthless leader of Sudan's Arab militia has grand plans for the remote western province. But the transformation of Zurrug risks more unrest. Read more in this report from the archives of Sudan Watch, copied here in full.

Blood, sand and gold: victor’s city rises from ashes of Sudan’s civil war

Report from the The Observer - www.theguardian.com

Observer dispatch Darfur

By KLAAS VAN DIJKEN

Dated Saturday 29 February 2020, 17.05 GMT

Photo: Children at the school in Zurrug sing anti-racism songs that praise the Rapid Support Forces. Photograph: Klaas van Dijken/Lighthouse Reports

Zurrug is one of the few towns on Earth that has yet to appear on Google maps. After nightfall, its sparse shacks are illuminated by campfires that throw shadows over pick-up trucks mounted with anti-aircraft guns – the only hint of the violent past of this outpost in Darfur, Sudan’s troubled western province.

The town is being built on the spoils of a brutal war that once tore at the conscience of the world. The victors in that conflict have grand plans for this settlement based on a winner-takes-all vision for their home region – a vision that clouds the future of the whole of Sudan.

The Observer was given unprecedented access to this remote area of Darfur by the Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary group whose influence stretches from Sudan’s borderlands with Chad and Libya to the capital, Khartoum, where protesters last year toppled 30-year dictator Omar al-Bashir.

The RSF wants to show off a future city as evidence of the peace it has brought to this contested land. To the vanquished – scattered in their millions across desperate refugee camps within and beyond Sudan’s borders – Zurrug is an insult being built on stolen land.

Darfur and Bashir were back in the headlines last month when Sudan’s transitional government agreed to hand over the ousted president to the international criminal court to face charges of crimes against humanity. These crimes took place in Darfur from 2003, when Bashir unleashed Arab militia, with the backing of the Sudanese army, to crush an insurgency by black African tribes. What began as ethnic clashes over land and water escalated into a crisis that prompted western public demonstrations, celebrity activism and a genocide investigation.

Those armed herders were known at the time as the Janjaweed, or “devils on horseback”. Today they are called the RSF. Their leader, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo – long referred to as Hemedti – is Bashir’s heir apparent. A renowned and ruthless commander, he was called by Bashir “my protector”, a role that helped him become the wealthiest man in Sudan.

Zurrug is a world away from Khartoum, where riverine Arab elites created a metropolis thanks to their dominance of politics and economy. This makeshift town is a 10-hour drive across the vast plateau from Darfur’s northern city of El Fasher.

In its current form, Zurrug’s market has stalls hawking anything from Chinese phones to sacks of beans. The prefab clinic and school are speckled with the letters “UN”, a reminder that they have been jerry-built from the wreckage of the shrinking peacekeeping mission to Darfur, Unamid.

Photo: Rapid Support Forces on the way from Kutum towards Zurrug. Photograph: Klaas van Dijken/Lighthouse Reports

According to plans seen by the Observer, Zurrug will become a city. The documents call for residential areas, a hospital and town squares. Officials from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates visited in 2018 promising to help finance the work, including an international airport.

For now, two water towers mark the entrance to the town, placed there to slake the thirst of the camels, which vastly outnumber either people or vehicles. The largest house belongs to Juma Dagalo, the area’s chief and Hemedti’s uncle. “We were nomads, but now we want to develop ourselves, so we have to settle and send our children to school,” he said.

In his telling, Zurrug belongs to his ethnic group, the Mahariya, having been gifted to them by their former colonial masters, the British. The chief, who brought Hemedti up, says the land was empty.

This story of empty land is bitterly disputed by community leaders in the camps in north Darfur. They claim Zurrug is on land they inhabited for centuries before being forced to leave by the RSF, who used the same tactics – murder, rape and robbery – as the Janjaweed. One of these communities is the Zaghawa, a black African ethnic group who bore much of the brunt of the war crimes alleged in Bashir’s ICC indictment.

Mohamed Ibrahim, a Zaghawa chief or umda, said: “What Juma Dagalo is saying is not true. Zurrug was not empty land. We have our farms there but we cannot harvest. The RSF denies us access.”

Injustice and asymmetric war on civilians dominated much of the three decades that Bashir spent in power. His hold on office relied on a complex of alliances that spanned the Islamists, the army and support among the Arab middle class. Last year the regime collapsed as demonstrators in the cities demanded a civilian government. But insiders claim that Bashir stepped down only when Hemedti refused to use the RSF to crush the demonstrations. The protector switched allegiances from Bashir to the protestors in a move that saw him expand his support base far beyond Darfur.

“I stood beside the Sudanese people,” Hemedti told the Observer from his gilded residence in Khartoum. “A massacre would have happened herein Khartoum, a genocide would have happened on 11 April without our existence.”

The RSF is sanctioned by the state but its allegiance is to Hemedti, not Sudan’s army. His leadership of what is effectively a private army has reportedly helped him make a fortune from gold, construction and alleged smuggling. Hemedti denies that the men he commands perpetrated atrocities, either in their former guise as the Janjaweed or more recently as the RSF.

Today, Hemedti, whose Mahariya clan is part of the populous Rizeigat tribe, is vice-chairman of the sovereign council, the transitional body that is meant to guide Sudan to a new civilian government. But his credentials as protector of the people were stained in June last year when soldiers – many in RSF uniforms – attacked a civilian sit-in in the capital. More than 150 people were killed and many woman were raped. Hemedti denies ordering the violence and blames elements of the former regime seeking to discredit him. His denial is dismissed by most of the protest groups.

Photo: Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, the RSF leader. Photograph: STR/AP

Meanwhile, a struggle is being waged inside the Sovereign Council, and on the streets, to make good on the promise of a transition to civilian rule. The army retains a powerful, possibly decisive voice on the council. Straddling it all is Hemedti, not beholden to Sudan’s army, confident in his wealth and political support. He has the backing of influential Gulf States, cemented by sending the RSF to fight in Yemen alongside Saudi proxies in yet another gruesome conflict.

For now, Hemedti prefers to whitewash the RSF’s recent and deeper past, saying his forces have brought safety and stability to Darfur. On the issue of land, he appears magnanimous: “Whoever took land or built anything on land which is not his, he has to leave it. Everybody has to take his own old land.”

But those who have done the taking in north Darfur are overwhelmingly Hemedti’s own Mahariya people. His uncle, Juma Dagalo, has toured the region enticing members of his own ethnic group to come and settle in Zurrug and six other proto-towns around it. Each one has the same school and clinic, recycled from the UN bases. The teachers and doctors are on Hemedti’s payroll. Water towers, a practical and symbolic way of staking claim to land, have started to appear – all financed by the RSF.

A report last year from the UN panel of experts for Darfur concluded that development around Zurrug was meant to lure people from the cities. It also warned that it had the potential to “become a new source of conflict”.

The land issue is far from buried, and Darfur is part of the same negotiations between Sudan’s transitional government and various rebel groups that saw Bashir offered up to the ICC. Whatever those talks conclude, the facts on the ground are already being changed, with mono-ethnic settlements expanding every day.

After dark in Zurrug the children of the Mahariya gather around a single lightbulb to recite passages from the Qur’an. During the day they sing songs that mash up anti-racism slogans with praise for the RSF. These anthems would ring hollow with the disenfranchised Zaghawa, who have formed committees in their camps and written letters to Sudan’s new leadership. They have had no response and their leader, Mohamed Ibrahim, warns: “If we can’t solve this peacefully, we will take up arms again.”

Source: https://sudanwatch.blogspot.com/2020/03/sudan-blood-sand-and-gold-victors-city.html

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RSF's future plans for parts of Darfur, Sudan

NOTE that the following report is over three and a half years old.

From Lighthouse Reports

By Klaas Van Dijken, Nouska du Saar 

Published 19 February 2020 - here is a full copy:

Sudan’s violent new rulers

Traveiling with perpetrators of Darfur atrocities illuminates self-styled saviors

After Sudan’s long-serving dictator Omar al-Bashir was toppled by protesters in 2019, the country was back in the headlines early in 2020 when its transitional government handed him to the International Criminal Court to face charges of war crimes. Bashir’s alleged crimes took place in the western region of Darfur between 2003 and 2008 after he tasked a notorious Arab militia with crushing an insurgency by African tribes with the backing of the Sudanese army. Known then as the Janjaweed, or “devils on horseback,” these fighters have since restyled themselves as the Rapid Support Forces. Their leader, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo – better known as Hemedti – has also rebranded himself, as the guardian of democratic transition in Sudan. His influence stretches from Sudan’s borderlands to the capital, Khartoum, where he shakes hands with world leaders. But a guided tour through a sleepy desert city reveals how Bashir’s heir apparent really sees Sudan’s future, and exposes the devastation and division wreaked by his forces.

METHODS

Combining a range of research methods including travel writing and traditional war reporting with the analysis of satellite imagery, this investigation seeks to shine a torch on the true violent nature of Sudan’s self-professed democratic guardian, and his paramilitary force. Embedded with members of Hemedti’s Rapid Support Forces in a tour to remote parts of North Darfur, we secretly collected coordinates of areas being targeted by Hemedti’s paramilitary forces. Extending the investigation, we obtained and analyzed leaked documents on future plans of Hemedti and his forces for parts of Darfur. To corroborate our findings and deepen our insights, we also interviewed confidential sources in secret locations  and spoke to  Hemedti himself in his luxury residence in the capital Khartoum. Finally we analyzed satellite imagery of destroyed villages in North Darfur and linked them to reports of attacks by the paramilitary group.

STORYLINES

Our reporter travelled to Zurrug, an outpost of Darfur so remote that it has yet to appear on Google maps.  A desert outpost whose sparse shacks are illuminated by campfires that throw shadows over pick-up trucks mounted with anti-aircraft guns – the only hint of the violent past of this city-in-the-making in Sudan’s troubled western province.

The town is under the control of Sudan’s most powerful man, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, or  Hemedti., head of a paramilitary group that was one of the world’s notorious militias, the janjaweed, or devils on a horseback. Flanked by his fighters, rebranded as Rapid Support Forces, Hemedti plans to build a city on the spoils of a brutal war, according to official plans that may rely on funding from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to materialize.

But community leaders from camps in North Sudan claim to have been violently driven off land they had inhabited for centuries by Hemedti’s henchmen. They are among hundreds of thousands scattered across camps in Darfur who claim to have been violated and forced from their homes by the RSF after bearing the brunt of the war crimes ascribed to Bashir.

Satellite images have revealed the extent of the destruction wreaked by Hemedti’s fighters to villages to date, attacks corroborated by independent media and other sources.

Although Hemedti insists he has the best interests of all the Sudanese people at heart — claims he pressed during an exclusive interview — the grand plans of Bashir’s would-be successor for Zurrug rather point to a a winner-takes-all vision that could spell new upheaval for the strife-torn nation. Already disenfranchised ethnic groups, their appeals for a resolution snubbed, are warning of armed insurrection.

COPUBLISHED WITH

Trouw

The Guardian

Co-publications from this investigation

• The Guardian: Blood, sand and gold: victor’s city rises from ashes of Sudan’s civil war
• Trouw: Built on stolen land
• Trouw: He wants to do the right thing for Sudan - he says

View original: https://www.lighthousereports.com/investigation/sudan-violent-new-rulers/#impact

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