And then one fine day the bourgeoisie is awakened by a terrific boomerang effect: the gestapos are busy, the prisons fill up, the torturers standing around the racks invent, refine, discuss…And they wait, and the hope; and they hide the truth from themselves, that it is barbarism, the supreme barbarism, the crowning barbarism that sums up all the daily barbarisms.

— Aimé  Cesaire, Discourse on Colonialism

As the protests demanding justice for George Floyd quickly turned into a nationwide uprising with people taking to the streets in all 50 states in America, we are called to study and reflect on the radical movements that came before us. Indeed, we would be remiss if we were to gloss over or ignore both the lessons and pitfalls of the radical uprisings that Black people have launched and sustained around the world.

With this in mind, this moment offers an opportunity to reflect on one of the more recent upheavals: the Sudanese revolution that began in late 2018. The purpose here is not to conflate the struggles of the Sudanese people with other struggles, including the one currently being waged in America. The point, rather, is to understand how Black struggles globally are co-constitutive and kindred. This moment demands that we draw lessons and motivation from one another, and recognize that local ecologies of struggle hold the keys to a transnational and anti-national understanding of liberation.

A monumental uprising; not a perfect revolution

On December 19, 2018, people from all ages, genders and regions and a wide variety of occupational, class and ethnic backgrounds launched what would become one of the longest, most sustained and most rupturous moments of protest in Africa’s history and, by no contest, in that of Sudan. After months of hyperinflation, long queues for ATMs and, finally, a 40 percent hike in the price of bread, nearly a dozen cities across Sudan erupted in protests.

What began as protests against devastating economic conditions, soon transformed into calls for the removal of president Al Bashir and for a total upending of Sudan’s entire economic and political systems, social norms, reparations for Darfur and South Sudan, de-Arabization of the national culture and media and an end to theocratic rule, among other demands.

At the time of the revolution, Omar Al Bashir, a racist ethnonationalist who massacred millions of people in Darfur, South Sudan and the Nuba Mountains, had amassed almost $9 billion in personal wealth, siphoned from a country that had already been bled dry by sanctions imposed by the international community. Add to this the fact that Sudan has spent most of its history since independce engaged in civil war, and it becomes clear that throughout his decades-long reign, Al Bashir was a de facto wartime president who ruled by force rather than popular consent.

These are the conditions under which a broad based coalition of students, labor unions, women’s rights groups, rebel factions, neighborhood committees and professionals associations, united under the banner of the Forces for Freedom and Change, managed to mobilize huge swathes of working class people and professionals alike. It was not a perfect revolution by any means, and it would not benefit any of us to pretend that race, gender, geography and, in particular, class, did not present major antagonisms inside the movement from its initiation to this day. Indeed, the leverage held by middle class Sudanese both in the country and in the diaspora is something that still requires a remedy.

No women were present at the signing of the transitional agreement in early 2019, despite sexual violence being the main weapon of terror used by the ruling party, and despite women making up the overwhelming majority of protesters.

We also cannot deny the ways in which the armed struggles of people in the provinces over the last few decades, as well as the disproportionate violence meted against them during the protests, were omitted from the conversations about the non-violent tactics used by protesters, as well as the Khartoum-centered bias of international media and the diaspora.

Yet we also cannot deny how monumental this uprising was; what a fantastic break from the past it offered. It also reveals how, time and time again, a diversity of tactics and, most of all, creativity, can carry and sustain a movement in ways that are both old and entirely new at the same time.

Occupying the Qiyada

Protests, strikes and widespread civil disobedience began in earnest in December 2018, building on prior protest movements in 2011 and 2013, and continued into the new year, despite mass arrests and the brutalization of protesters by the regime’s security forces. In response, Al Bashir declared a state of emergency on February 22. Protests intensified on International Women’s Day, and continued until April 6, the day which marked the tipping point of this uprising.

April 6 is the anniversary of the 1985 revolution which overthrew the military dictatorship of Jaafar Nimeiry, paving the way for Al Bashir’s rise to power four years later. It was also just four days after protesters in Algeria had booked a major victory in forcing president Abdulaziz Bouteflika to step down after 20 years in power. In Khartoum, hundreds of thousands of people marched to the capital’s military headquarters, starting a sit-in in the area known as the Qiyada that would last for two months.

The Qiyada managed to do all that the state had failed to do; there were areas dedicated to political education, improvised schools, Quran lessons, Bible studies, meals were being provided with funds raised in the diaspora, doctors on strike offered free medical examinations, therapists were offering free counseling and men and women patrolled night and day to ensure the safety of all the protesters.

In a country in which artistic expression was stifled for more than thirty years, the Qiyada was an explosion of the frustrations, desires, strivings, disappointments experienced by young people in particular, who gave concerts, danced, sang, and covered the area in street art. Outside the Qiyada, neighborhood committees were established to develop plans for civil disobedience, share information, share resources and practice the types of non-hierarchical democratic associations that had been denied to them for decades.

Meanwhile, in the midst of a media blackout and initial refusal of major international outlets to cover the uprising in December, social media was harnessed in what can only be described as a remarkable display of creativity and innovation. Sudanese in the diaspora were providing rapid-fire translations of documents and updates, Whatsapp group chats were harnessed to share information on the whereabouts of family members and to collect and distribute funds.

Young people memed their hearts out, offering unrelenting critiques of the state and a balm for those living in the midst of such a tempest. Facebook groups dedicated to gossip where mobilized to out informants and organize students. The social media presence was so undeniable that soon the entire world was talking about Sudan and bearing witness to this cataclysm, decades in the making.

Finally, on April 11, Al Bashir was ousted in a military coup led by his cousin Awad Ibn Auf.

Of course, the people were not satisfied and after only one day in office and with the number of people in the Qiyada continuing to grow, Ibn Auf quickly resigned. General Abdel Fattah al Burhan took over, aided by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, better known as “Himedty,” the notorious Janjaweed commander responsible for the ethnic cleansing campaign in Darfur nearly 15 years ago. In response, the civilian coalition called for an intensification of the sit-in and a general strike.

In early June, the first week of Ramadan, Himedty’s forces attacked the sit-in with live ammunition, setting tents on fire and committing mass sexual violence on women in the Qiyada. Internet was blocked to prevent any evidence of their crimes from leaking to international press, and phone lines were cut for ten days as the massacre continued. Despite the killings, strikes and protests continued until mid-July, when the government conceded to the demands of the protesters and a transitional peace agreement was signed. This agreement is only the first step in a long struggle for liberation in Sudan.