Sudanese Revolutions and the Syndrome of Setbacks (1_2)
*The concept and topic of revolution remains one of the controversial topics in the context of academic, social and political studies and hot topics as well, as much as the word contains the semantic connotation, and perhaps the history of revolutions in the world is full of many loads semantically associated with extreme violence, except whether physical or verbal, turmoil, tragedies and excessive violence, which made some historians describe history as a series of bloody events, and if we delve deeply into the history of revolutions such as what is for most. Communist revolutions in the world (the Soviet Union, Nicaragua-Bolivia, China, the Cuban Revolution, the Brazilian Revolution, and in the French Revolution, the famous San Bartholomew massacres and the conflict between Jacobinism and the king and the killing of the prominent political revolutionary orator Robespierre.The social researcher Karl Marx documented it in his book Sixteenth of the Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte), perhaps this is due to the fact that these revolutions began to change in the first place or were established to bring about radical transformations at the level of the existing state structure or others that were previously established to remove kings or clerics from political power, as the references of most global movements believe their ideology in violence for reasons related to the nature of the regimes that prevailed at the time – family dictatorships or feudal systems protected by a thick military wall – or the one-party system – the systems of dominance of the majority. Such regimes cannot be confronted with peaceful tools, and the concepts of civil struggle, civil society organizations and human rights were not crystallized as they are now, and the mechanism of violence accompanying change is implicitly imposed by the mechanism (revolutionary power), that is, imposed by the conditions of the revolution accompanying the process of change and eradication, but the important question is what is the revolution, and when can we launch the revolutionary badge on the political movement!
Does every political movement count as revolutionary?
*Revolution in the definition of many jurists
According to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Revolution in political science is taken from the Latin word revolutio, meaning a rapid and radical transformation of the classes, state, or ethnic and religious structures in society.
A revolution as a political concept is a state in which fundamental and structural changes are taking place, introducing new changes as opposed to what was previously the case.
The revolution also starts in the understanding of Jalbir Ashqar, the Marxist writer
in his book The People Want : A Radical Investigation of the Arab Uprising.
A revolution is any popular or political movement that radically changes the political or social structure of a country.
The most prominent thinker Azmi Bishara in his book (Revolution and the Capacity for Revolution) published by the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies in 2012
sees it as any movement or popular uprising that results in cultural openness and popular awareness.
The great thinker Ali Shariati described it in his book (Building the Revolutionary Self).
A successful revolution is what results in protest intelligence and awareness among the people.
Or its product is a broad popular awareness that differs from its predecessors.
*Perhaps every popular movement that occurred during the Sudanese revolutions carried with it the causes of mortality and inevitable death, when comparing the Sudanese revolution with its French counterpart, we may find a strange and strange paradoxical feature that makes one stunned, and take for example the reasons for the French Revolution
1- Social causes, the crushing financial crisis and economic issues such as poverty, unemployment and inflation during the period of Louis XVI.
2- A head-on collision with the dictatorship of Louis XVI
3- Enlightenment movements and new theses and ideas about the form of the state itself and the system of government that can address the imbalances, as they were adopted by the majority of the French at the time and contributed positively to that period
4- The emergence of new ideologies as well as the emergence of new elites where the authority could not address them due to the fundamental differences between power and wealth
The emergence of new centers of economic and social power that were not represented by politics and other objective reasons that made the French Revolution a great revolution and a gospel for most of the subsequent revolutions
*The Sudanese revolutions are characterized by strange paradoxes, as mentioned above, and this is one of the most important objective reasons for its exposure to setbacks one after another, such as the April, October, and December revolutions, all of which resemble what we mean by transient episodic uprisings rather than a revolution of radical or structural changes, and most of them suffered from the disease of quarrels and disagreements that led in the end to achieve (false victory) We may describe it as a false victory because the Sudanese revolutions could not achieve fundamental changes and address the structural imbalances of the state. The Sudanese revolutions were unable to achieve fundamental changes and address the structural imbalances of the state and perhaps the perceptions of the vanguard holding the initiative did not put forward strategic plans aimed at promoting the cultural revolution and making structural changes and in most cases they seek reconciliation with the actual enemy and the clearest testimony and the Sudanese revolution went through three stages, all of which failed to lay the foundational structures to build a modern state that accommodates everyone and the stages are as follows:
*The first phase of Sudan’s independence until the October Revolution: –
Sudan gained its independence in January 1955 under the presidency of Ismail Al-Azhari, the first president after Sudan’s independence and the exit of the colonialist, and I think it was an appropriate stage to introduce political, economic and social reforms that were left behind by the Anglo-Egyptian colonialist, but it went in a direction drawn by the colonialist himself, and the idea of independence may have many doubts, it soon sank into the sea of political conflicts between the two poles of the then presidents of the Umma Party and the Federal Party as a result of which it handed power to the military on February 17, 1958, led by General Ibrahim Abboud, and with the allegiance of one of the parties, which some call a military coup and the known no.
On October 21, students at the University of Khartoum held a conference to condemn the regime’s practices in South Sudan and denounce the regime, and clashes took place between the demonstrators and the regime, resulting in the assassination of student Ahmed al-Qurashi. On the third day, a mass march of more than 30,000 people took place at the funeral of the martyr Ahmed al-Qurashi, led by professors at the University of Khartoum as the stronghold of the civil revolution in Sudan
On October 23, many political parties issued statements declaring their allegiance to the revolution and rejecting the policies of the ruling regime. The revolution spread to other cities such as Omdurman, Port Sudan and Juba, with the increasing pace of popular pressure, the army officers sided with the revolution under the name (Free Officers) on October 28, 1964, where Abboud was forced to step down from power and an interim (transitional) government was formed under the leadership of Deputy Minister of Education Ser al-Khattam al-Khalifa on October 30, 1964, where elections were held in April and May 1965, and the Umma Party won, headed by Mohamed Ahmed al-Mahjoub, author of the book Democracy in the Balance.
All these dramatic events did not leave the concept of elections as the essence of democracy in the concept of political parties at the time, but they did not succeed in answering important historical questions such as
How to govern the country? How to address historical crises? Constitution of the country? Economic system, system of government, addressing the issues of historical marginalization and irony at the time
If we compare the October Revolution with other revolutions such as the French Revolution, can we describe it as revolutionary steps or an uprising due to the high living conditions in the country and if we notice it did not provide us with radical reforms.
On May 25, 1969, army officers seized power under the leadership of Colonel Jaafar Nimeiri with the support of the Sudanese Communist Party. The scenario of the May coup was not much different from the February coup. It is noteworthy that they are all bloodless coups that we may describe as a process of handing over any coup behind specific political parties despite their socialist slogans at the beginning of the coup, and this is the habit of most political forces that may raise false slogans such as democracy and human rights, but in essence they are closed feudal and fascist systems, and their basic system is based on rent and dependence, resulting in the idea of cultivating student vanguards.
*The second phase is the April Revolution and its aftermath:
If we examine this stage closely, we may not find a feature of paradoxes and fundamental changes, as the April Revolution did not leave the threshold of revolutionary slogans and emotional enthusiasm without the existence of alternative theses as in the French Revolution, and perhaps the dominant feature of popular revolutions in third world countries is the feature of relapse and inevitable demise without fundamental changes in the conceptual structure of the memory of power and without changes in the political, economic and social balances and events of the collective consciousness of the Sudanese people. Without fundamental changes in the conceptual structure of the memory of power and without changes in the political, economic and social balances and the events of the collective consciousness of the Sudanese people and ended with them, such as October with the ill-fated Salvation Coup and the thirty years of darkness and gross violations of human rights that did not survive. Thus, it is correct for us to describe the phenomenon as a transient uprising, because it has already become a transient historical event without knocking on the door of history and opening its pages to add an important and great event, and at this stage A betrayal occurred within the National Democratic Assembly when they left the comrades of the struggle led by Dr. John Garang Dembior, as the SPLM was then one of the most important pillars of the Sudanese revolution and the main reason for weakening the fascist May regime, as Dr. John Garang documented that period through two historical letters between 1999 and 2001 Therefore, most of the Sudanese uprisings are unsuccessful, followed by political closure and intellectual stagnation, in contrast to what the revolution is for thinkers, philosophers and mass (popular) revolutions in the world.” Dr. John Garang documented this period through two historical letters between 1999 and 2001 and published in online newspapers under the title War of Letters between Dr. John Garang and the late Sadiq al-Mahdi, leader of the National Umma Party.
Due to the length of the article, we have divided it into two separate parts to make it easier for readers to read and interact with each other.
We’ll see each other again.
October 18, 2024
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