ME and Ophelia

THE COMEBACK KING:
Sadig Al-Mahdi

The politics in Africa is mind boggling. Unless you know who is who and have followed it for the past 50 years, it must be difficult to say who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. I've only seen this one report on Sadig Al-Mahdi, who is an Oxford graduate, and the last democratically elected Prime Minister of Sudan.

He served as prime minister between July 1966-May 1967 and again between May 1986-June 1989 when his government was toppled by the military coup headed by current Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir.

He is the only Sudanese who has held the position -- once Sudan's highest political office -- twice and who hopes to return to office, through "only by the ballot box".

"I have always been a great believer in multi-party democracy and in strengthening democratic institutions in Sudan," he explains. "Dictatorship and military intervention in the political arena have been the curse of the country."

He strongly believes that Sudan must not break up. That would be a tragedy for the Sudanese, both northerners and southerners, he insists, believing the country's disintegration could tip the continent back into darker times. Here is the full story on his profile.