Family Affair

The U.S. moviegoer will soon know all about Khartoum. That's where the well-known dervish leader Sir Laurence Olivier and thousands of white-turbaned extras rode out of a Cinerama desert in 1885 and did in Her Majesty's General Charlton Heston (see CINEMA). The movie stops there, but the British did not. Thirteen years later, they recaptured the city and slaughtered 11,000 dervishes, including all known male descendants of the character Olivier portrays, the fierce prophet El Mahdi.

One member of the family escaped. The British overlooked the youngest of the prophet's twelve sons, who kept his father's sect alive, founded a cotton empire, and had six sons of his own. Today, El Mahdi's descendants again rule the Sudan. His grandson, Imam Hadi el Mahdi, is the stiff, unyielding religious leader of the sect to which most Sudanese Moslems belong. A great-grandson, Sadik el Mahdi, is a young British-educated economist who led the Mahdists' Umma Party to victory in last year's election.

Despite his age (now 30), he was the obvious choice as Prime Minister of the Sudan's first democratic government in seven years. Sadik remained in the background "to concentrate on party affairs," instead named Mohammed Ahmed Mahgoub, 58, a chainsmoking poet and veteran diplomat.

Mahgoub was a rigid believer in the orthodox Mahdism preached by the Imam--too rigid, in fact, for his own good. Spurning conciliation, he turned the long-festering rebellion of the nation's three anti-Moslem southern provinces into a full-fledged civil war. He also alienated many members of his own government, a coalition of Umma and the Moslem National Union Party. With the coalition falling apart, Sadik last week decided that the time had come for him to move out of the back ground. Over the vociferous protests of his uncle, the Imam, he led Parliament in a revolt that ousted Mahgoub and elected a new Premier: Sadik el Mahdi.

Sadik could go a long way toward healing his nation's political divisions. First, however, he must find some way to silence the threat he faces from his own family. There is every sign that the Imam, still very much the leader of the Sudan's Mahdists, would very much like the prime ministry for himself.

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