The Sudanese Revolution in all its Movements
The Sudanese Revolution in all its Movements
Sikka: Mamoun Eljak
Translated by: Salah Mohamed Khair
It is true that there are no two similar revolutions, even though all the tyrants of history are similar to one degree or another. It is the tyrants, not their totalitarian regimes that are similar, where every resistance to a power requires the precise knowledge of it and the means to liberate from this power. Given that the Sudanese revolution is unparalleled, the Sudanese people revolt against the idea of resembling their revolution to the Arab Spring revolutions. This comes because the Sudanese people, at times, regarded the outcomes of some of Arab Spring revolutions as an evil portent, or because they pride themselves on their foregoing experiences of the past century, namely the October 1964 Revolution and April 1985 Revolution. Both contexts, local and regional, were present in the minds throughout the days of the revolution as a source of inspiration and a caution against the repeated lapses. A part of the former regime's propaganda was based on the intimidation from the fate of neighboring states and peoples; a propaganda which the Sudanese people have been fully acquainted with for a long time. This has had little impact on the December Revolution, because these intimidations already existed in the forms of civil wars, secession, and multiple massacres.
Inspiration for the revolutionary past had not been interrupted. This had been revealed by remembering the martyrs and victims of the violence of then-existing power, whether they were students, inhabitants of specific regions or politicians, and the appearance of their photos and demands for retribution in the posters of invitations to participate in the processions. Then the inspiration continued in the procession; in addition to singing the songs glorifying October and April revolutions.
History does not proceed on a linear or horizontal path, as it has divergent phases and its own logic. Moreover, each revolution has its own historical, economic, social and cultural conditions and distinct goals. The April/December Revolution cannot be accurately contextualized and analyzed without accompanying the previous experiences and localizing them. This documentation will, therefore, include a research into the forms of relevance and resemblance, or divergence and disparity of distant national histories such as the two revolutions of the Sudanese peoples in the last century, or near histories such as the September 2013 Uprising. Many observers consider the April – December Revolution an extension of the September 2013 Uprising, and a completion of what has not been realized from it.
This research will be divided into subheadings, such as (relevance/resemblance), where resemblances and links with past revolutions, observed by researchers and historians of this revolution, will be noted. It will also be divided into subheadings such as (divergence/ disparity), where the observations of researchers and historians on the uniqueness of this revolution, the differences, and changes that have reached the structure of the state, the society, the international contexts, and the human will be mentioned.
In this research, the details that will be discussed within broader reasons and relationships will include: the recognized similarities and differences such as the length of time of the event of this revolution compared to the previous revolutions; the continuity of the revolution at the dynamic and conceptual levels to achieve its ends; the start of the revolution in the rural areas; the nature of the regime, at that time, and its violence, which outweighs the violence of the former tyrants; the disintegration of the state structure, in December 2018, to the point where there were several armies of power and opposition; the declaration of memory of the 6 April 1985 as a day to arrive at the army headquarters in Khartoum in 2019; and the submission of a note demanding the army commanders to align with the peoples and to remove the existing regime.
The Sudanese Professionals Association
The revolutionary must not forget the motives of his/her hopes and the ancient sources of his/her dreams. As described by a pre-Islamic poet, hopes and dreams are:
Wishes are the best, when they are real;
If not so, they are still the source of our good living.
One of these wishes is, undoubtedly, the emergence of the Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA) and its initiative in mobilizing and announcing the dates of the processions since the 25 September 2019 procession in the capital city of Khartoum. With the emergence of this procession, answers have been introduced to several questions, although they are incomplete and temporary. In the subsequent years of the revolution, these answers have ceased to be complete due to political reasons. But in the first four months of the revolution, these answers were sufficient to reassure some of the concerns about the question of representation and the definition of the revolutionaries. The definition provided by the SPA to the revolutionaries did not based on region, ethnicity or class, but it was a definition of the nation under the legacy references, and a definition of the absent state. This is the very essence of the revolution, where "the revolution serves to revitalize the disrupted narrative structure and resistance centers in the memory of certain peoples. To put it in another way, the revolution is a meta-narrative."1 This means that the revolution recounts the nation. Sudanese populations have been identified as either current or potential actors in the state apparatus, or excluded and affected by its various forms of policies. This was achieved by the definition of actors according to their functions, occupations, or grievances. This revolution "did not raise a slogan based on monolithic identity, but it raised, in words and in deed, humanistic and universal rights-based slogans, such as dignity, social justice, development, progression, freedom, and peace."2
That definition was influential because it was the only definition that absorbed an unlimited number of actors and derived them to be organized and involved in the revolutionary action. The definition was also influential as the image of the state was wiped out in the mind of so many people because the state was actually absent and it dropped, over time, all its social and economic responsibilities, until it came, in the end, to what the rebels witnessed in their streets and inside their homes. The state turned into a monster and left only the power of its violent machinery and its police and security services that were not tied to any laws. The police and security service were practicing murder, arrest, and torture, breaking into homes and terrorizing their inhabitants. They took away citizens' most basic rights to freedom of opinion and expression, the right to demonstrate, let alone the right to political representation and organization. In "societies where the eerie absence of state apparatuses and their functional role, or the total absence of these apparatuses from some of the state's context are existed, the state transforms from an apparatus that monopolizes violence to an incarnate, legitimate and communal violence. The state is not only the body of naked and domesticated violence, but it is also the machinery of violence that is involved with the fierce ghouls of violence in licking the blood of the state."3
The state's body has fallen apart through corruption, destruction of productive infrastructure, and emptying institutions from competencies. The state has turned into a monster to collect taxes and restrict freedoms by force of arms. Therefore, hopes were expressed in the SPA's statements, the visions provided by its members and published in research papers, and the social media discussion in the desired forms of the state with its judicial, parliamentary and executive bodies. Later, hopes were reflected in the declaration put forward on 1st January (The Declaration of Freedom and Change). The video, in which the SPA's leader, Muhammad Naji Al-Assam, read out the provisions of the declaration, in a calm and brave manner, was a pivotal moment and a seminal shift in the stages of the revolution. The hope was a splendor when the parities, the armed movements, the revolutionary bodies, and the civil society organizations agreed up on singing the provisions of the Declaration to act to overthrow the existing regime.
In addition, the SPA encouraged the idea of forming other resistance bodies, such as resistance committees of the neighborhoods. Resistance committees existed in certain areas before the SPA, however, its spread and expansion were linked to the SPA' request, during the days of the revolution, that the actors should organize themselves in small groups governed by the place. The value of this formation emerged after the revolution moved to the residential neighborhoods, as demonstrated in the subsequent years of the revolution.
Relevance/Resemblance: The Leading Organizational Form of the Revolution
The experiment of the SPA is found in the previous experiences of the Sudanese people. The researcher, Majdi Al-Jozouli compares the SPA to previous Sudanese organizations such as the United National Front that led the October Revolution of 1964 and the Trade Union Federation, which played pivotal role in the April Uprising of 1985. This resemblance is attributed to the fact that the SPA has "a double advantage, where it was an umbrella organization and a political force at the same time. This double advantage has proven successful."4
To trace the establishment of the SPA, Azza Mustafa starts with the history of the trade union organizations in the Sudan. This is because the SPA defines itself as "an extension of the long history of the Sudanese professionals, and attempts that did not continue due to the restrictions imposed by the authorities and the denial of the professionals' right to form trade unions."5 She describes the structure of the SPA, the committees, associations and forums subject to its charter and common objectives declared on 29 July 2018. The SPA includes: "the Central Committee of Sudan Doctors, the Legitimate Sudanese Doctors Syndicate, the University of Khartoum Professors' Association, the Initiative to Restore the Sudanese Engineers' Syndicate, the Democratic Veterinarians Association, the Democratic Lawyers, the Sudanese Journalists Network, and the Teachers Committee."6 For the reasons of the SPA's shift from claiming trade union rights to political mobilization, the researcher says: "When founded, the SPA's objectives were to form a trusted association to lead the opposition instead of the traditional parties, to find an alternative to the formal syndicates controlled by the regime, and to find a tool to implement civil disobedience and strike as a peaceful means of political change."7 The researcher also considers that the violent repression and killing, by which the regime faced the protesters in the country's states and later in Khartoum, had contributed to the change of the SPA's demanding discourse, related to trade union rights, to a discourse demanding the fall of the regime.8
The researcher, Mu'iz Al-Zein, considers that this resemblance to earlier experiments is closer to illusion than to reality, and it does not take into account "the differing historical context and the structural transformations which have been brought about by the process of the reproduction of the relations of power and dominance."9 The researcher attributes this illusory resemblance to the attempts of some advocates of October and April revolutions to think of December Revolution "through retrospective and romantic context wishes to proof that popular revolution is a structural feature inherent in all stages of the transition of the Sudanese state since independence. These advocates continue to venerate the legacy of April and October revolutions and relate it to the current revolutionary event, in the manner that motivates some of them to match and compare the United Front and the Trade Unions Association to the SPA."10
Disparity/Divergence: Transformations in the Social and Economic Sphere of the State (Corrosion of the Middle Class)
The middle class is defined as the class that has received a degree of education qualifying it to for state jobs and positions at all levels. The Salvation Revolution polices have contributed to impoverish the middle class and to deprive it of its social and economic privileges, thorough what is known as the tamkeen (empowerment) policies, dismissal from the civil service on the ground of public interest, and dismantling the national schemes. Due to "the Islamist empowerment policies, liberalization, and privatization, the middle class has lost its coherent socio-economic consistency, which was expressing the reality of its occupational groups, to become relatively poor and without consistency."11 The policies of the Salvation Revolution have also contributed to provide the middle class with a huge number of new arrivals, through the policies of higher education and the spread of universities in various parts of the Sudan. These contradictory policies have somewhat made the middle class to lose its ability of political action.
According to the researcher, Bahaaldeen Muhammad, the middle class was "the primary actor in 1964 and 1985 revolutions. The middle class accounted for 20% of the total population at the time. It was dominated civil jobs in the state and in major food products companies, and the children of its member were the most privileged in education. With the beginnings of the overthrown regime and its higher education policies, new universities have been opened in several areas of the Sudan. The poor and marginalized segments have been incorporated into the educational process, and the middle class have been provided with new members from different ethnicities and regions, which have resulted in the expansion of this class and an increase in the numbers of its members."12
Majdi Al-Jozouli elucidates the causes of the corrosion of the middle class and illustrates the differences between the experiments of the United National Front and the Workers Union Federation and the experiment of the SPA. Al-Jozouli writes:
"Critical differences in content go beyond the resemblance in form between such organizations. These differences can be illustrated in the socio-economic sphere in which the first two organizations have worked, where the government was the primary employer of educated professionals, who sought to challenge the government through strikes and popular mobilization. Both organizations could draw on the support of radical workers' organizations, foremost among which was the Railway Workers Union in the country, strategically positioned to paralyze a cash crop economy. The capital breakthrough by the former regime has transformed the Sudan's labor in favor of enterprises. In addition, both organizations were able to substantiate their representational claims through electoral procedures in trade unions and associations."13
In Mu'iz Al-Zein's view, we cannot describe this revolution as a middle class revolution. This perception is:
"Elusive and does not reflect the reality of the mobilization. This is due to the shift in the structure and consistency of the middle class, since the fragmentation and disintegration of the public sector (government departments, general agencies for employment (railways, river transportation, etc.) national factories (textile factories) national agricultural schemes (Gezira Scheme, etc.) national schools and universities (Khor Tagat, Hantoub, University of Khartoum, etc.). The middle class's consistency has diminished and has shifted from "occupational categories" to broad, and near poor category, where it lost its social and cultural privileges due to the deterioration of its economic conditions. This category includes the unemployed and those who have been displaced by Islamist privatization and empowerment polices. It is one of the most influential categories in nourishing party politics and cultural movement, throughout the first decades of the second half of the twentieth century. In the light of these structural shifts in power relations, the middle class has turned to a presentational and factional entity that lost its social, economic, cultural, and political privileges."14
Al-Zein added that the SPA leaders' representation of the middle class is "regarded as a factional representation, rather than a class and trade union representation, by virtue of their professional and partisan sectors. This presentation takes into account the lack of economically and socially structural consistency, which previously enabled the leaders to express their political opinions through the positions they occupied in the arena of the social conflict over interests and privileges."15
Bahaaldeen Muhammad explains the impact of the disintegration of the middle class on the means of peaceful movement, and how "it was difficult to bring back the experiences of 1964 and 1985 revolutions that toppled those regimes through mass civil disobedience."
Indeed, for organizational reasons, the SPA failed to complete a successful general strike and mass civil disobedience before the fall of Al-Bashir. However, this worked in the days of the sit-in in front of the military headquarters, when the strike was used either to force the Military Council, at the time, to come back to the negotiating table, or to bow to certain negotiating demands. The general strike was also used in the early days after the army sit-in crackdown. Both successes are due to non-regulatory reasons and reflect the inspirations and the anger of the Sudanese people. Before the removal of President Al-Bashir, the SPA held a strike in some sectors of the state on March 6, 2019, but it was not fully successful. Bahaaldeen Muhammad points out to this failure and explains its reason, when he says:
"One of the revolution's scheduling was vigils and partial strikes, some of them were somewhat successful and the other ones were unsuccessful. This experiment exposed a large group of staff involved in or in solidarity with the revolution to the risk of unfair dismissal and dismissal warnings. The SPA was trying to ensure the loyalty of employees of the state and the private companies, and to activate its last weapon of mass civil disobedience. Because of the weakness of some vigils and partial strikes, as well as the slow coordination of the SPA in the creation of trade union other than those existing, it was difficult, if not impossible, to engage in a mass civil disobedience and to achieve it successfully."16
The inability to use the tactic of general strike and mass civil disobedience, before the fall of Al-Bashir, was the direct reason for resorting to the army headquarters and demanding the army to align with the people, in addition to sit-in around the army headquarters.17
Relevance/Resemblance: The Past Discourse
Majdi Al-Jozouli speaks about the SPA' discourse, describing it "as devoid of a distinct political orientation."18 It is a discourse "which speaks in a global and functional language of the freedoms and rights enjoyed by every citizen."19 According to Al-Jozouli's analysis, the shortcomings and disadvantages of this discourse "is largely derived from the national heritage of the Sudanese effendiya (paid employees), based on the labor ideology of a narrow class of educated Sudanese. Most of these employees are Arabic-speaking Muslims who hail from the River Basin areas. They served as clerks and junior administrators under the Anglo-Egyptian colonial rule, and then inherited that colonial state."20 Al-Jozouli interprets the use of this past discourse at the present moment as "a rhetorical maneuver aimed at reviving the idea of national cohesion from an imagined past. It is, however, exactly this poetic but narrow nationalism of the effendiya class that failed to imagine a political home for Sudan's many peoples and is blamed for the hastened decay of Sudan post-colony in raging civil wars." He describes these tactics as a mere "obfuscation of the political conflict through the glorification of the nation. This new function has enabled the ever-conflicting opposition forces to ride the wave of mass political participation, generated by the SPA."21 This has already happened after the signing of two opposing alliances, the Sudan Call and the National Consensus Forces; as well as a faction of the Democratic Unionist Party the Declaration of Freedom and Change, issued by the SPA.
Then, the researcher, Majdi Al-Jozouli, moves to recount some facts about the formation of the opposition's alliances and divisions over "strategy and competition over leadership." The researcher concludes: "It is no wonder then, that the emergence of the rather obscure SPA was received with popular acclaim in a political theatre riddled by incessant squabbling."22 The SPA has captivated the political imaginary of the Sudanese people on social networking sites. Perhaps "the success of the SPA, in particular among the Sudanese diaspora, was a perfect example of this, where it provided anchor and agency to broad segments of young women and men wishing to live out their political identity as Sudanese citizens."23
But then, the researcher points out to the inability of the SPA' stakeholders in their experiment. By virtue of their composition, the stakeholders have not succeeded in "expressing the concerns and hardships of the subsistence farmers in the Sudan, the small farmers and agricultural workers, the miners excavating gold in the deserts and remote valleys, the small-scale producers, and the urban poor."24
Relevance/Resemblance: The Partial Success in Toppling the Existing Regime
Majdi Al-Jozouli provides his answers to the two questions: How did the SPA succeed? And why did it succeed? He says: "As a means of political mobilization, one of the reasons of SPA's success is its perceived political innocence, as it was. Young women and men responding to the SPA' calls do so because it reflects their anger against entrenched corruption, nepotism, and incompetence. It also reflects their resentment at the political class's failure, in general, whether in government or opposition."25
The researcher Qusay Hamrour describes the SPA as "an appropriate body that has been smoothly elected by the present popular circumstance, through the rules of historical movement. The SPA has turned into a loudspeaker, a reliable platform and a strategic umbrella of the change forces, in a crucial time, to translate their yearning and to coordinate their efforts. With confidence in the SPA, the masses have drawn much of their energy and intent, where the SPA has become an historic front demonstrating the widespread support for the will to change, which is the second condition for a popular revolution."26 The researcher attributes the discomfort of some people from the phenomenon of the people's strange and sudden attraction to the SPA to their familiar and unimaginative political activism.
Footnotes
1. Bahaaldeen Muhammad, The Anthology of Venerable December, Al-Hadatha Assoudaniya Magazine, September, 2022.
2. Shamsaldeen Dawalbait, op. cit.
3. Mu'iz Al-Zein, (Field Blogger and Translator) The Arch and the Flower, Al-Hadatha Assoudaniya Magazine, op. cit.
4. Majdi Al-Jozouli, The Protest Forces and the Reaction Forces, Bidayat Magazine, 2019.
5. Azza Mustafa, (Researcher in the fields of democracy issues, political parties and civil community) The Nature of the Sudanese Professional Association, Bidayat Magazine, op. cit.
6. Azza Mustafa, op. cit.
7. Azza Mustafa, op. cit.
8. Muhammad Naji Al-Assam, Interview with Al-Arabiya Channel, broadcast on (…..)
9. Mu'iz Al-Zein, op. cit.
10. Mu'iz Al-Zein, op. cit.
11. Mu'iz Al-Zein, op. cit.
12. Bahaaldeen Muhammad, op. cit.
13. Majdi Al-Jozouli, op. cit.
14. Mu'iz Al-Zein, op. cit.
15. Mu'iz Al-Zein, op. cit.
16. Bahaaldeen Muhammad, op. cit.
17. Bahaaldeen Muhammad, op. cit.
18. Majdi Al-Jozouli, op. cit.
19. Majdi Al-Jozouli, op. cit
20. Majdi Al-Jozouli, op. cit.
21. Majdi Al-Jozouli, op. cit.
22. Majdi Al-Jozouli, op. cit.
23. Majdi Al-Jozouli, op. cit.
24. Majdi Al-Jozouli, op. cit.
25. Majdi Al-Jozouli, op. cit.
26. Qusay Hamrou, (Sudanese researcher and writer, specializes in the fields of technical development) When Do Peoples Revolt? The Case of the Sudan, Al-Hadatha Magazine, op. cit.