Grapes of Wrath

via Reason:

For many poor women in Sudan, wine making is the only way to make a living. In fact, it is a traditional practice in the south of Sudan. Unfortunately for many women, making wine is illegal under the Islamic Sharia-based law of northern part that nation. More than 90 percent of the women imprisoned in the Omdurman prison in Khartoum since 1992 have been sentenced for making wine.

South Sudanese Women Flood Prison for Wine Making

Sat Mar 6, 2004 09:55 AM ET
By Opheera McDoom

KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Suma Alisa, in Sudan's largest women's prison for the second time in eight months for making wine, says she has no other way to support her nine children.

Wine making is illegal under Islamic sharia law, introduced in Sudan in 1983, and has been a contentious issue in peace talks to end a bloody 21-year-old civil war in the south of the country that has killed two million people, mostly through famine and disease.

Alisa, a 35-year-old widow, is one of an estimated three to four million Sudanese internally displaced by the fighting that broadly pits the Islamist government against the mainly Christian and animist south, complicated by issues of oil, ethnicity and ideology.
Many southerners come to the capital seeking refuge from the fighting, but find they have no access to education or health care and little hope of finding a job in overcrowded Khartoum.

Arafa Sheikh Musa, head of al-Manar (the beacon) a non-governmental group that works in Omdurman women's prison in Khartoum, says about 88 percent of inmates are from the south and prison statistics show that since 1992 more than 90 percent are guilty of wine making.

Wine making, while illegal in the Islamist north, is a tradition in the south of Africa's largest country and many of those involved do not realize they are breaking the law, Musa said.

Even those who know it is illegal find it profitable in dry Khartoum and say it is the only way to make enough money to feed their families while remaining at home to look after them.

"I was making tea and working in someone's house to make money but then there was no one to look after the children," said Alisa, 35, cradling her two-month-old son in the prison courtyard.

Asked if, when released from her three-month sentence, she would continue to make wine, her eyes filled with tears: "I know it's illegal but I don't know what else to do. I have no family and no home, just a shelter and that has collapsed now."

CHILDREN IN PRISON

Al-Manar which provides food for the 250 to 350 children brought into the prison every month by mothers who have no family to look after their youngest. Continued ...

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