CAPE TO CAIRO - 19

"Stop, we must do that again" says Rabeea Elhassan "you have got to be more aggressive towards one another". The two actors, who had been rolling around in the grass and fighting, jump up and return to their opening positions. "Go !" says the director and they try again.

"Drama for Peace"
It is Sunday morning, a normal working day in Muslim Sudan, and director Rabeea is conducting a rehearsal of the play "Excellency" with the two protagonists, Abubakr Fisal and Gama Suliman. Together with playwright Abulgassim Gor, the author of "Excellency", they form the nucleus of the theatre group "Drama for Peace". It was founded in 1998 and is unique in Sudan. The young actors, mostly drama graduates from Sudan University of Science and Technology's College of Musaic and Drama (photo right) are trying to do something the government has been trying to prevent for decades - to bring about reconciliation between the different ethnic groups and religions in Sudan, a country torn by civil war.

Background to conflict over-simplified
Two million lives have been lost in this war and a whole generation has grown up amid a perpetual state of emergency. Hundreds of thousands were driven out of their villages and are now vegetating in dust-ridden refugee camps. If one is to believe the mass media, or Christian fundamentalists in the United States, then the war in Sudan is largely being fought along religious lines. This is their scenario: wicked Arabs from the north of Sudan are enslaving the population of animist and Christian faith from the south in order to force them to accept sharia law.

Rebels and "slaves"
This somewhat one-sided interpretation can have grotesque consequences. A missionary from "Christian Solidarity International" flies regularly to southern Sudan to pay for the release of supposed slaves, Dinka and Nuer who were kidnapped by the Arabs. CNN and other television stations have shot moving footage of families being reunited, but failed to look closely enough at the people they were filming. If they had done so, they would have seen that the "slaves" were actually farmers dressed in rags, with whom the SPML/A rebels share the ransom money of US$ 35 per head.

U.S. setting pace of negotiations
The real reasons for the war in Africa's largest country (in terms of territory) are far more complex. Religion does have a part to play, but oil, geopolitical interests and the simple thirst for power are more important factors. The government and the rebels are currently negotiating the details of a peace agreement in Kenya. It looks as if peace could be durable this time, even though critics dislike the pace at which the United States, once arch-enemy now favoured partner of the Khartoum regime, is forcing along the negotiations.

"Excellency"
"Even if peace comes, it will be too late for our generation" says director Rabeea Elhassan. "Those who were born in the 1970s and 1980s will be marked for the rest of their lives", he says. That is the theme of the play "Excellency", which Rabeea, Gamal and Abubakr are rehearsing on this hot morning on the lawn in front of the university buildings. It deals with the fear that young northern Muslim men have of being forced to serve in the People's Defence Force, a government militia notorious for taking young men off the street and sending them to the front.

"...perpetual fear of being sent to the front"
"Salim" and "Asim" are two such potential recruits. They hide in an apartment, which they only leave in order to buy food from a nearby market. An X on the calendar marks the days on which Salim goes shopping, a Y signifies that it is Asim's turn. Then there is a catastrophe. Salim has a nervous breakdown and refuses to leave the apartment on the days allotted to him. They quarrel and turn violent. "These two stand for a whole generation of young men whose nerves are shattered, who are traumatised by the perpetual fear of being sent to war" says Abulgassim Gor.

At each other's throats
At the start of the play, one of the protagonists says: "This apartment is the only safe place in the world". But it soon turns into a trap. Watching this play one observes that Salim and Asim have the power to shock. One moment they are staring apathetically into the foreground, the next they are at each other's throats.

"they were standing at my door"
Later - the rehearsals were moved indoors because of the heat - the sound of military orders and goosesteps produce macabre echoes off the walls. If these scenes seem so realistic then it is because the two actors can speak of such matters from personal experience. "One day they were standing at my door" says Gamal Suliman, who plays Salim in "Excellency". I showed them my student's pass and they left me in peace. I was fortunate." Others were not so lucky. "Our clinics are full of young men" says director Rabeea Elhassan. "Those who don't end up in a psychiatric ward, have usually lost an arm or a leg."

half Christian, half Muslim
"If we artists don't speak out, who else is going to?" asks Abulgassim Gor (photo below, centre) rhetorically. He runs the Peace Culture Centre at the University of Khartoum. But his thirty two proteges - half are Christian, half Muslim - are not politically motivated actors. Rabeea has just finished a production of Büchner's Woyzek, Gamal has been doing Brecht.

Cattle thieving
Nevertheless, both consider "Drama for Peace" a valuable experience. Last year the group went on tour with a play about cattle thieving through the troubled province of Abyie, where the Misereya (of Arab origin) and Dinka (Christian and animist), who live from cattle breeding, regularly fight each other. The villagers laughed and applauded enthusiastically when the group demonstrated with their role playing the absurdity of violence and its escalation. In the meantime, Gor has found teachers in the provinces who are taking the play around villages on their own so it reaches more and more people. Productions by Drama for Peace now have a reputation for quality and popularity - the word has spread in Sudan's development community. The project is now being supported by UNICEF and Deutsche Entwicklungsdienst (DED) (German Development Service).

"For us it is too late!"
The rehearsals come to an end. "Salim" and "Asim", quarrelling a few moments ago, hold hands cracking jokes. Somebody brings news of the peace talks in Kenya. Perhaps there will be a breakthrough next week. "What will happen to Sudan's youth" I ask Rabeea Elhassan. "For us it is too late", he says repeating an earlier remark. "I only hope the next generation will be spared the experiences we were forced to endure and that this time, peace will really last." How does the play end? Salim and Asim settle their differences and are not recruited by the militia.