The Movement of The Ultras. Creative Revolutionaries

Sikka - Alsadig Yaseen

Sports clubs in Sudan arose within the framework of the interaction of the Sudanese Intellectual’s Movement with national issues. In fact, the national movement and the liberation tendency of the Sudanese intellectual’s generation found their way in the right to form associations and sports and cultural clubs – during the British colonial era – to preach the discourse of liberation, independence and the right to self-determination. It chose to make these associations and clubs a façade for its popular interaction, and these intentions carried the clubs and cultural and sports formations nascent in the thirties of the twentieth century the burden of defending the political aspirations and visions of the graduate generation, and made it possible directly with the elusive mass classes on the overheating “Efendi” class with slogans of liberation and independence.

Slogans, Stadium, uniform and name

After the formation of organizational bodies for graduates and political parties, the first generations of middle-class graduates transferred the independence tendency to sports clubs in the logo, dress and name, and invested in the colonial approach by dividing the public space in Sudan during the British colonial era into a colonial space under the auspices of the British administration and a civil space that was an area To uniquely devise patterns of resistance and civil entities that represent and express the direct will of the Sudanese. The clubs arose in intensive activity that included three sectors (sports, cultural and social), and took their names from neighborhoods in cities and national symbols. In the first stage of establishment and coexistence of most sports and cultural forums, he carved an original trend in its establishment in an attempt to create a national conscience that brings together the Sudanese in the beginning, and embraced the cities of civil space, Omdurman, Wood Madani and Atbara are Sudan's top sports teams. We find that the Crescent team, for example, was founded in the city of Omdurman on the thirteenth of February 1930, which is an approximate birth of the emergence of the city of Omdurman after the liberation of Khartoum from Turkish colonialism during Mahdia, according to Muhammad Ibrahim Abu Salim. The sports movement initially embraced historic public squares, such as the Khalifa Mosque Square and the Dar-Arriyadaa (the "Bayt Al-Amana" in the Mahdist era) in Omdurman. All these factors created deep links between the national movement and Sudanese sports in the era of its first formation, and made sports forums and club trips and movements to perform matches in the various cities and regions of Sudan fields for the explosion of independence resistant to British colonialism until independence was achieved in the mid-fifties.

Sports Infrastructure in Sudan

Due to the factors and influences of the emergence in the tendency of the liberation and independence movement, the Sudanese Football Association was no exception to this tendency among the generation of the national movement in Sudan, as it played a leading role in the establishment of the Confederation of African Football, hosted its first championships, and contributed effectively to the development of the African football system in the fifties of the last century. In parallel with this administrative development of the football system, sports clubs were committed to being a form of mass organization, developed with an independent approach from the state and its direct interventions, so mass clubs owned their own stadiums in the sixties, during which most of the public facilities of the national state arose after the October 1964 revolution, and public squares embraced public and local matches and leagues, so they were part of the city and its vitality.

Strange shoes in the green grass

Sudanese sports have endured violent shocks and calamities that hindered its natural development, especially football and its fans, The sports movement has been subjected to decades of political use of sports platforms and mass events by dictatorial regimes, which has caused a central imbalance in the eligibility and democracy of the sports movement as an independent system concerned with the conduct of sports activities without interference from the authorities. These interventions took many forms, starting with the "carnival" competitions fabricated on the occasions of the May regime and not ending with the holidays of the "Islamic Inqaaz Front" era during 30 years. Sports stadiums and stadiums were systematically hijacked in favor of the regime's agenda and events, and were the scene of the "carnival" parade of Mayoist era organizations (vanguards – pioneers) and patterns of "carnival" celebrations cloned from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. These celebrations were an official version of the state's domination of the city space and its crude presence in the comfort of the masses. The dominant aspect of these events was the slogan of the Mayans, which hijacked the will of the masses in favor of the state of the individual (the prestige of a nation in the prestige of a man) in glorification of the person of Nimeiri, who was keen to be a star without a partner in all events, even sports ones, and was keen to be the echo of the masses and their chant led by the choir of supporters, "Who is your president? Nimeiri. Who is your father? It was also the scene of a display of the ruling party's influence over student entities (the General Union of Sudanese Students) and the activities of youth centers that the Bashir regime swept away in its direct intervention in the sports sector, and were platforms for the graduation of batches of jihadist battalions of the ruling regime.

According to the usual approach of one-party systems during the sixties and seventies, the Nimeiri regime used to invent sports competitions to be "carnival" forums for the holidays of what the Mayoists called the "May Revolution", in one of which the masses chanted, "Who is your father? Ali Gagarin" is a distortion of the beloved chant of Nimeiri and his supporters, "Who is your father? Nimeiri" rejoiced at the victory over her rival and revered her lover Ali Gagarin after Al-Hilal won the Gold Cup that night against Merrikh.

On April 28, 1976, Nimeiri issued decisions dissolving all sports clubs, freezing all sports competitions, stopping the travel of all sports delegations abroad, except for participating in the Olympic Games, and that mass sports should be practiced only in neighborhoods. These decisions are considered by sports people as a bullet that assassinated the natural development of sports, challenged the eligibility and democracy of sports practice and sports institutions in Sudan, led to the deterioration of the standards of Sudanese clubs and the deterioration of the infrastructure of sports institutions, and left decades of attempts to escape their effects.

The Ultras. Kinetic stream

Ultras: A word of Latin origin - Ultra, meaning super-limit. In the worlds of sport, a group of fans is very loyal to their team.

The Ultras are a new pattern of public interaction in sports activities and in the space of sports clubs. The mobility of the Ultras has grown rapidly in both Europe and South America, exposing part of the identity of sports clubs and the spirit of the stadiums. The last two decades in Sudan have seen an obsession with sports cheerleading for international teams and following European leagues. Sudanese football, local competitions and even national teams experienced a state of estrangement and mass isolation, resulting after the experiences of the distinctive escalation, and then the sudden decline in levels and results that marked the participation of Sudanese clubs and teams in regional and continental competitions and sports forums. This horrific succession of failure to reach the finals shattered the dreams of younger generations who experienced uprisings in Sudanese football between 2005 and 2012, and generated a state of denial of the deteriorating sports reality like all public sectors, and emotional alienation of sports.

These cheerleading groups arose in light of the recovery of Sudanese football and the achievement of positive results by Sudanese clubs in their continental participations. These groups were no exception to the organizational development that followed the September 2013 uprising, as they grew up on the middle class and university students, and this situation contributed to their steady and gradual growth.

Manvisto founded Ultras groups

Ultras groups rely on customary founding principles around the world, including: financial independence, the adoption of a grassroots structure, gradualism and adherence to the group's constitution, self-denial, contribution and sacrifice for the group, and the principle of AntiMedia to boycott appearances in social media and visual media unless necessary, except for informing the group itself.

In Sudan, the founding structure of these groups contributed to adding new burdens to the groups, created by the state of civil activism through which the Sudanese used to fill the vacuum resulting from the absence of the state and its disavowal of emergency response and lack of services, in addition to the principles and slogans of the clubs included in the Manvisto and its constitution.

Football is a mass space par excellence, based on public interest, and its development is governed by the public contribution and popularity of the game. Edward Galeano says: "Have you ever been into a desolate stadium? Try it. Stand in the middle of the pitch and listen. Nothing is more empty than an empty stadium. Nothing is more bothly than empty stands." Faced with this mass nature of football, the Ultras found themselves as a community ambassador for the sport and the values of their clubs in Sudan. The "Blue Lions" Ultras group organized the "Let's Warm Them" initiative in 2015 to urge positive action towards the homeless and disaffected children, an annual initiative, along with a blood donation campaign, health awareness environment sanitation campaigns, health days on the outskirts of cities, recreational days for cancer children and homes for the elderly, and initiatives in which they assumed community responsibilities, and the subsequent cheerleading groups of competing teams in Sudan followed in the same direction. These ongoing roles have established a real community presence for groups in the Sudanese street and its daily interactions.

Literature and mass media of the Ultras groups

The September 2013 uprising doubled the doses of awareness of the public space, and increased the national and revolutionary tendencies among the youth, and stadiums and sports stadiums witnessed the manifestations of this influence on more than one occasion, initiated by the "Ultras Blue Lions" Ultras Al-Hilal Club, with "Tifo" the National Movement Club in one of the "derby" matches in Omdurman, carrying pictures of Sudanese national and historical symbols and figures and a hint of the city of Omdurman, while external confrontations represented other opportunities for the Ultras to interact with national affairs. The meeting between Al-Hilal and Zamalek in the continental competition in 2014 witnessed "Tifo" and chants on the issue of the "Halayeb triangle" in the first manifestation of political topics in the product of the Ultras in Sudan.

Although the Ultras line stipulates the distance from politics and party loyalties in the spaces of the group and its members, the elements of the group committed – to one degree or another – to creating a continuous link between the group and the founding ideas of the club, and the group began during the middle of the last decade in its quest to spread the movement of the ultras in Sudan in universities, and the implementation of murals of the group in the city space that exposed its members to arrest by the security system on many occasions. The group produced albums and songs that creatively addressed the founding manvisto of the group and the principles and values of the club and the group.

The presence of these civil and youth bodies in the sports system, especially in football clubs, has faced many obstacles: the traditional culture of cheerleading is a culture of celebrating victory, while the Ultras group has established a new pattern of continuous cheerleading in the cases of victory and loss. This new approach created a state of debate and scramble in the sports community, in which ultras groups faced security difficulties and a restriction by boards of directors on their spaces in the sports community as an independent mass revolutionary current opposed to the current of control over sports institutions.

The encouraging area for the Ultras of Al Hilal and its pioneers was known as (Curva rebels) to confirm their revolutionary tendency and their presence outside the scope of influence and influence of successive boards of directors, and even their approach aimed at ridding clubs of slipping into the cosmetic exploitation of the occupants of administrative positions in earning in the name of the club. The group organized a sit-in based on the principles of the sports movement's fans, eligibility and democracy, whose slogan was "Al-Hilal for its people, and its people have the decision", during which the members of the group organized a long stay to recover the club's headquarters for the benefit of the fans.

The mass narrative of the Decembrists - Ultras of the Revolution

While many worked hard to carve its details into a scene similar to the experiences of the October 1964 and April 1985 revolutions of the next revolution during decades of political struggle, its literature heralded the reproduction of the victory hours and the timetables of the Sudanese people, until generations trained and grew up on their crafts. The young December generation was unique in intensifying its forms of expression to formulate a unique and young alphabet with forms of expression that conform to the accelerating patterns of technology, believed in youth and peacefulness, hated violence, and absorbed old contexts.

The army headquarters sit-in space represented an intensive forum for forms of mass expression, renewed and unique spaces of creativity for Sudanese creators, artists and intellectuals, as well as an incentive for creativity and a fortress for its genius spaces, including adapting patterns of encouragement to become a continuous declaration of revolutionary slogans that establish the dreams of the Sudanese through revolutionary chants and songs, and the Ultras groups abandoning the club's loyalties in favor of national loyalties and dreams carried by the Decembrist generation.

With this miraculous ability and the amazing uniqueness of the December Revolution in revolutionizing the public space "for everything underneath it", the Ultras groups created artistic productions that embodied the dreams of the young generation, and the stands carried a mass pulse of the Decembrist with inputs (Tifo), which was a public manifestation of the will of the young generation to formulate a new reality entitled "Freedom, Peace and Justice".

The songs produced by the Ultras movement are simple, understandable expressions and words that express the masses and their interactions. In the artistic production of the Crescent Ultras, we find an artistic treatment and diagnosis of the condition of the fans and the stands, and the relationship with the repressive state in the "line of soldiers": "The line of soldiers in front of me is standing. They said the story is guarding and security. Big ranks and the situation is damaged. Where is justice, you comatose?" The songs continue to interact with various aspects of public life, such as the press, the media, and businessmen. "We never forget our false media. It continues to dissect social reality and preach the hopes of the new generation and the aspirations of the Decembrists in the glorious "December" songs.

The members of the Ultras, without the assignment of their groups, played an organizational role that was the most vital, grassroot, youth and renewed revolutionary form, in organizing neighborhoods and completing the revolutionary tide, and overcoming the crime of dispersing the General Command sit-in by continuing the millionth gathering until the majestic thirtieth of June procession.