History Shows No Mercy… Who Will Listen?!

Sanaa Hamad

I look with concern at the future of this bel oved country—rich in its diversity and resources—yet, like most post-colonial states, floundering in a web of crises that have shackled, crippled and torn it apart, rendering it a failed state. The South seceded after a war that lasted more than fifty years. Sudan’s crisis—past and present—has been its elite and external interference.
I have spent long hours at the British National Archives in the quiet London suburb of Kew–Richmond. Within that archive—among the world’s most important, containing documents spanning a thousand years, as its preface declares—the British recorded the men, the money and the events of Sudan. Each file I requested led me to another, and my eyes filled with tears. Our elite’s history is, at best, inglorious. In my early days among those papers, harsh truths struck me again and again until my mind was purged of the rosy picture I had carried. Since then, that building has become my favourite destination whenever I visit this vibrant city, brimming with sources of knowledge. Each time I find newly declassified files, while hundreds more remain sealed.
I discovered that our land has never been far from foreign interference. For two centuries, it has been a stage for European rivalry—driven by economic motives and beliefs linked to influential esoteric groups there. Western presence in Sudan began in the Turkiyyah era; Khartoum had thirty-four Western consulates in the eighteenth century. Rivals in Europe were united here, sharing commercial and missionary activity: the Germans dominated gold trade and production, while the British and others controlled the slave trade.
Under American hegemony after the Second World War, interventions in Sudan—and the colonies generally—receded. But once some European states sensed the world edging towards a new, multipolar order, they moved in concert to secure a foothold at America’s expense, whose influence was being tested—working to reassert control and re-divide influence in their former colonies, Sudan among them. It is precisely what they did at the Berlin Conference of 1885, the cost of which the Congo still pays today. Western meddling in Sudan did not stop, and many of this afflicted country’s elites have long been their creatures—guarding their interests and executing their plans for scraps. Yet what is happening today surpasses the past: what some diplomats and informants in Khartoum now document and circulate will, in a quarter-century or half, make some researcher sit in an archive, as I did, and weep in anguish—when they learn how their homeland was sold for a handful of silver, or for a passport, a property deed, or a scholarship for a son or daughter. History neither forgives nor conceals.
The elite is an important institution that cannot be ignored: within it are the wise and the sincere, loyal to their country. It is they whom I call upon to unite and support one another. Be brave and take the initiative; the fate and very existence of our country are at stake. Though most of Sudan’s historical crises bear the imprint of manipulation, this time is different: impatient powers are seeking to seize the country for its resources and location.
O people of reason, you have a chance to save your country—seize it. As for those who have sold themselves to the devil, history will take care of them.
Rally around the minimum—by my life, it is a great minimum: safeguard the stability of this country and the security of its people.
Meet in dialogue with open minds and free wills to rebuild the Sudanese state—truly for the first time—on new, just and clear foundations. Let us admit that, after independence, this country lacked a sound vision and a unifying project; that is why it failed. A state of institutions is not built overnight; it takes shape gradually through the awareness of elites and the strength of leadership and institutions.
Speaking of state-building and institutional reform requires agreement on guiding constitutional frameworks, the necessary institutions, and their remits.
Agree on a state governed by law, with strong institutions that safeguard justice, uphold integrity, commit to transparency, and are protected from political interference.
Agree on reforming existing institutions—the armed forces, the judiciary and the police. These bodies need reform, development, and modernisation, more than a century after the British established them. This addresses the legitimate concerns of a considerable spectrum of elites keen on the country’s peace, stability and progress. It is self-evident that such reform is neither immediate nor isolated. Still, part of a comprehensive, integrated and gradual programme of institutional reform for the state, guided by a vision that commands a preponderant majority. Demanding unanimity is a luxury—it has never occurred in human history.
Agree on the system of government: presidential, parliamentary or mixed? Agree on how to administer the country: centralised or decentralised—regional or state-based? Agree to strengthen media institutions so they become part of the reform and reconstruction process, by enacting regulations and laws that protect freedoms and preserve rights.
Agree on a transparent and fair method for distributing power and wealth, and on how to harness resources and manage the economy—so that the results serve the people in livelihoods and services.
Agree on a competent, lean and flexible national transitional government that allays the military’s concerns and enhances civilians’ gains. This is not a time for partisan or personal spoils, but for re-founding a state with an opportunity to rise.
Agree on an electoral system that enables small parties—whatever their size—along with youth and women, to participate in state institutions, foremost the Constituent Parliament.
O people of reason, the exclusionary spirit among elites and their followers has destroyed states and annihilated societies. It spreads and grows when a country lacks bold, strong and wise leadership in times like these. This is a recipe for utter peril to every stability and security. What harm if we accept one another—remembering that we are human, prone to right and wrong—and that the successful are those who carry a stock of experience from which they learn and build their future? Then the politics of demolition will cease—where each generation curses the previous and tears down what it built. We must do this despite differing assessments and stances—not only for the sake of the nation, but also for our own sakes. If this country fragments, we all perish. What I fear—surely—is that its rupture will be caused by elites entrenched in mutually exclusive, mutually hateful, self-absorbed corners.
There must be positive movement towards tomorrow—or the country will reach a dangerous stage in which its people, whose fate and that of their children are bound to it, will accept any option that offers freedom from fear and hunger. These are the ordinary citizen’s priorities, far from elite frameworks and preoccupations—at the cost of stalling a long march of reform.
I fear we may meet the fate of other countries before us—scattered, their people dispersed to the winds. I fear a moment when only the sound of the gun is heard. This demands that elites and actors move from the narrowness of “I” to the breadth of “we”.

Shortlink: https://sudanhorizon.com/?p=8249