Sudan should avoid the mistakes that kept Angola in conflict for 27 years

When General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, the leader of Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and former deputy chairman of the Transitional Sovereignty Council of Sudan, landed in Gauteng, South Africa on January 4 for talks with President Cyril Ramaphosa, he looked civil and dapper in a navy blue suit. Standing proudly next to the president of Africa’s second wealthiest nation, acting like a dignified and magnanimous statesman, he did not look like a vicious, power-hungry military operative who had just nine months ago launched a devastating civil conflict that already killed 12,000 people and displaced over seven million others. Since the beginning of Sudan’s latest civil war, Amnesty International says, fighters from both Hemedti’s RSF and al-Burhan’s SAF have committed egregious human rights violations and war crimes including deliberate attacks on civilians, attacks on civilian infrastructure like churches and hospitals, mass rape and other sexual violence. Suffering from a conflict similarly fuelled by leaders more interested in consolidating power than building peace, Sudan must learn from Angola’s 27-year-long civil war, and the failures of the Lusaka Protocol. Although several African leaders, who could not care less about everyday Sudanese, seem to have embraced Hemedti’s sudden and highly suspect metamorphosis from vicious commander to democratic statesman, just as it was the case with Savimbi, there is little reason to believe he is genuine in his newfound commitment to building peace and establishing civilian rule.