A sobering history lesson from Ruth First for the prospects of success in Sudan

On Saturday 17 August 17 2019, another chapter in the political narrative of Sudan began. The mechanisms for a new power-sharing arrangement under which the Sudanese will live for the next three years (39 months, to be exact) began to be put in place.

A Sovereign Council was inaugurated consisting of six civilians and five from the military. The soldiers are, of course, from the top brass of the army that served and eventually toppled Omar al-Bashir; the civilians are from the broad opposition and include two women and a Coptic Christian judge. The prime minister is a civilian, the economist Abdallah Hamdok.

In the coming weeks, a new cabinet will be appointed. The military will provide the chair of the Sovereign Council for just over half the time and a civilian the following period. A Legislative Assembly with 300 seats will be constituted shortly. The Sovereign Council and Assembly will end their work after general elections (to be run sometime in late 2022). This is a vision of an orderly political transition. The hope is that Sudan will then finally have turned the page on the miserable al-Bashir era, and civilian rule founded on democratic principles will begin to prevail.

The popular uprising that led to this moment has rightly celebrated the Sudanese people's determination and capacity to bring down a regime so quickly. But this transition has to also lead to some reflection on the long history of transitions in that country, especially on the powers and influence that the military has cultivated since Sudanese independence in 1956.

Omar al-Bashir was in power for 30 years. He had taken power from an unstable coalition of parties in 1989 when he held the rank of brigadier; and promoted himself over the years and eventually took on the non-military title of president. But his origins in the military and ability to muster military surrogates such as the Janjaweed and Rapid Support Forces, to name the most prominent, are now well known.

As the uprising swelled against him, he was arrested on 11 April 2019 by members of the army. The demand of the protestors in Khartoum and elsewhere in the larger northern Sudanese towns was for al-Bashir to step down and for genuine civilian government. Instead, a “transitional military council” took power which generated more protests and now there is a power-sharing agreement in place between this council and the civilian opposition alliance called the “Forces of Freedom and Change”.

The civil society movements certainly have cause for celebration given that their protests finally brought down a strongman who had the backing of the military. However, there are lots of reasons to be cautious and less than glowingly optimistic about the future. Sudanese post-independence political history is really the story of the men in uniform holding sway over politics on the one hand, and, on the other, extensive factionalism among the civilian forces, some of whom were never immune to allying with the army to out-manoeuvre their competition.

Here is a quick timeline of national politics in the Sudan: The British grant independence rather hastily in the 1950s; formal independence is bestowed in 1956 with the new state largely controlled by elites in Khartoum and the riverine North; the first coup d’état is in 1958 ( a mere two years into the post-colonial period); there is a return to civilian rule followed by another coup d’état in 1964; then a return to civilian rule followed by a coup d’état in 1969 (with an attempted coup in 1971); uprisings in 1985 and return to civil rule; and then the 1989 coup d’état led by al-Bashir.

The unfolding events since the fall of al-Bashir, therefore, lead one to ask if they will develop into a major break in Sudanese political history? Will it see a definitive return of the army to its barracks and a sustainable and civilian, democratic order? This is, of course, what the Forces for Freedom and Change demanded.

But history weighs heavily on the present.

I am sure the veterans of the civil society movements and trade unions have been reflecting on their experience over the past few decades and asking which the previous set of events (uprising-civilian rule-military rule) this moment reflects and how to avoid repetition or some version of previous transitions.

The Sudan Defence Force was established by the British in 1925. The British impact would last into the independence period. During World War II it served in the East African campaigns and on the frontline with Ethiopia. With independence approaching, a Sudanisation programme was implemented which also included the military. Political developments in Egypt were always kept in mind by the British, and the rise of Gamal Abd al-Nasser and his Free Officers that overthrew the monarchy in 1952 was a turning point that led to putting Sudan on the path to independence. It was a hasty transfer of power that excluded southern voices and thus begun the great schism in the country.

After independence and at the time of the first coup, the Sudanese army was 12,000 strong. Many of the leading political personalities emerged out of the army. Since then the size of the military has grown massively. Moreover, its impact on the economy has spiralled. The statistics in this matter are vague, but one can encounter anything from 70% to 80% of the national budget going to the military. This could be an exaggeration, but it is clear that the share of the military in the budget is out of all proportion for a country with the basic development needs of Sudan.

Furthermore, the economic sectors connected to the military that started growing under the Nimeiri regime in the 1970s expanded rapidly under al-Bashir. While the military-economy nexus is nothing like that in neighbouring Egypt, it is a fact of the economy and any civilian government will face a major challenge if it begins to curtail it.

It is merely a coincidence that the signing of the transition agreement in Sudan happened on the same day South African activist and scholar Ruth First was assassinated in her office at the Centre for African studies in Maputo on 17 August, 1982. Twelve years earlier she had published a major work on the military in African politics which should be considered a classic on the subject.

The Sudan is one of the three case studies in the book. Ghana and Nigeria are the other two, but the work covers much more than these three countries. First, in Power in Africa: Political Power in Africa and the Coup d’état has an exhaustive narrative of the workings of politics in the Sudan; the politicians and the soldiers plotting and planning virtually up to the date of the publication of her book in 1970. It is the most detailed work in English to cover the Sudanese army in politics in the 1960s, a nuanced, sensitive and incisive discussion of the subject, free from dogma and prescriptions.

The sections dealing with Sudan are based on all the secondary sources accessible to her but also, and very importantly, on close contact with Sudanese political actors and on interviews with leading Sudanese actors in Sudan itself. (In the mid-1990s I met exiled Sudanese who had met her in Khartoum.) She has details on the coming of the first coup that was stimulated by a crisis over whether to take US aid or reject it. The Sudanese military was split, which reflected political and sectarian divisions in the country. Furthermore, the middle and junior officers identified with the Free Officers of Nasser in Egypt.

Of the 1958 coup of General Ibrahim Abboud, she notes: “Far from being a take-over of power by the army, it was a hand-over to the army.” She writes that “the initial popular reaction to the coup was relief that the politicians were at last out of the way. For many people, military rule evoked the examples of Egypt and Iraq.”

At the time the military was widely seen, on both the right and left, as a legitimate vehicle through which to modernise a country. The example of Egypt under Nasser was celebrated in parts of the continent and Middle East. Sudan was only the second country in Africa, after Egypt, to experience a military take-over. But opposition to the military was ineffective: as First wrote: “The politicians were as ineffective in opposition as they had been in government.”

By mid-1965, the Sudan “was back in the familiar but fatuous round of Cabinet reshuffles, assembly crises and coalitions, governments falling and struggling to their feet, a rumour of party alliances and mergers and internecine disputes”, she wrote.

“The six years of army rule had convinced the Sudan that military efficiency was no better able than political rhetoric to grapple with the country’s problems.” In May 1969 the government was toppled again in a coup d’état.

Unfortunately, First’s book ends with the 1969 coup of Jaafar Nimeiri. She did not write again on the Sudan, so we do not have her insights on the Sudan of the 1970s when it moved from the socialist camp to Washington. But during this period the war with the South came to an end (in 1972 with the landmark Addis Ababa Agreement) and there was the most plausible prospect of a lasting peace and a single, undivided Sudan.

The military will not simply and voluntarily step aside from its now traditional role in Sudanese politics. There will have to be genuine professionalisation of the army and an explicit commitment from it to respect the political system. Repeated interventions in politics by the soldiers have degraded civil institutions and their capacities. During the next three years it will be imperative to strengthen the democratic system and cultivate a stable, independent party system.

The Islamist factions who benefited most from the al-Bashir regime were able to survive because of state patronage more than popular support. The coming years of the democratic competition will test them and the military itself. DM

Shamil Jeppie is an associate professor in the Department of Historical Studies at the University of Cape Town where he teaches African and Middle East history.