The price of Revolution: People’s Education for People’s Power in Sudan

By John Pangech*

Oct 31, 2005 — The effects of force Arabization education in the Sudan manifest in all facets of life of the Sudanese
society visibly at work, socially and culturally. A
poor quality of education naturally produces a poor
product, thus making it difficult for the recipients
to compete with their counterparts within and outside
Sudan. It is for this reason that, since 1990s, there
has never been peace in Sudanese schools.

This article seeks to examine the class character of
people’s education in the context of the current
national democratic revolution in the Sudan. It will
also look at the possible ways in which the dominant
classes can use education to achieve their own ends.
In so doing it will examine the available resources,
the infrastructure and the power behind them. A closer
look will be taken at the ways and means available to
achieve the gigantic task of closing the gap between
mental and manual labour in term of component,
people’s education and theory.

A vital component

The demand for universal system of education for
Sudanese of all population groups, respect for one
another’s culture and language and for equitable
distribution of the country’s resources, has been a
stimulus for struggle in Sudan for many decades. When
Arabic’s education was reintroduced, the SPLM and NDA
Alliances considered the Arabic’s education Act the
most dangerous of oppressive laws, and called on the
Sudanese masses to reject it not just temporarily but
permanently. Accordingly, it is in the context of
these on-going battles that the people’s education
should be considered as a continuing process and a
crystallisation of the struggles of honest decades.

What is happening today is a progressive development
arising from a number of battles which have been waged
at different times during the course of struggle for
the transformation of the society as a whole. For
example, in the 1990s a group of students who either
were expelled from or dropped out of Universities,
together with a group of youth who had already
completed Sudan school certificate and were forced to
leave the country into exiles. In addressing that, a
body needed to be set up with the aim of redressing
the effects of the serious problem of ill-equipped
laboratories in the public schools. The youth and
students must be active participants in the attempts
to structure what are considered relevant and
appropriate methods of teaching and modification of
the curricula. This move will gain much due to the new
national interim constitution in place.

Professionals’ people in the community must also be
drawn in to contribute their expertise. The government
must provide equipments and funding for the schools.
This is one example among many just to illustrate the
point that where there is a will, there is a way.

Programme organised must be implemented and evaluated
through a united body of people. This understanding
and collectivism are necessary to advance the mass
democratic movement struggle. We must remember
therefore that, no single programme of a revolution
can be understood without the understanding of the
integral part of revolution.

For this reason, people’s education in Sudan should be
seen as an integral process in an unfolding current
struggle. It has and must continue to take different
forms as struggle begins to take define shape, and as
the youth, students, teachers and all the participants
become conscious of their historical role in the
struggle.

The position needed to be adopted is that, education
must be placed at the service of the people,
constitutes a long-term investment. In many respect,
without preferential attention to the people’s
education we will not expect the revolution purpose to
be fulfilled. This must also demonstrates that
education is a two-way process. To be critical,
academic expertise is not a pre-requisite for
political and ideological understanding of the
revolution. Very clearly, for a revolution to succeed
it has to have a programme of action to guard against
distortions and diversions. A nation without an
ideology prepared youth and students are a nation
without future.

Correctly, radicalism without realisable objectives
and realistic analysis of the strength and weaknesses
can be a recipe for anarchy. There is some times the
temptation among the youth and students to equate
militancy with revolutionary commitment.
Anarcho-syndicalism deviations can only be defected by
ideologically developed revolutionaries.

The needs for people’s education
Bigger battles still remain to be won; the abolition
of Arabic’s education in it’s entirely. To be precise,
some of these demands must be reformulated with the
aim of advancing total transformation of education
system in the whole Sudan. The strategy is to demand
that people’s education be taught in the existing
buildings, to reorient teachers to teach subjects like
history so as to make pupil and students understand
the evils of arabisation. This new strategy must give
rise to the campaign for people’s education.

Mindful of the fact that, people’s education is a
broad concept which can be twisted to suit the
interests of whoever is in control. It is important to
ensure that the content of education reflects the
ideas on which our struggle is structured. In its
broadest sense, therefore, education, information
transmitted to public, and cultural values may reflect
those of the dominant class, which may not necessarily
be a reflection of what a democratic society should
be.

Naturally, under unjust system, the mass media, which
are controlled by elites and state, transmit the type
of information they deem appropriate for the public.
Such distorted information and cultural values can
distort the very fabric upon which people’s education
must be founded, because it has to protect the
interests of the ruling elites.

Also very important to notes, the proliferation of the
number of privately run schools may run the risk of
encouraging students to opt out of public schools
while not escaping the inculcation of elites and
bourgeois values because only the children of
privileged families will have access to this type of
education. Given a chance, the new NCP/SPLM led regime
would be only too happy to encourage the establishment
of more private schools as this would bail them out of
the education crisis. If this is to happen the rate of
illiteracy would rise, the existing public schools
would degenerate. The new regime then would have an
excused not to increase the supply of educational
facilities to meet the demand and above all their
education would become even more distorted and very
expensive because schools fees would rise faster than
the rate of income.

Evidently, many who still wish to continue with their
studies but are unable to make it because of financial
constraints and poverty will leave schools and become
victim of exploitation of any sorts.

A caution is necessary as early as this. We need to
bear in mind the objectives of the new government.
They must dramatically accept the programme for
people’s education and also to the entire agenda for
transformation. If any thing they must work towards
not divert the people’s education for people’s power.

Surely the idea of people’s education based on the
rejection of unequal education is not to create a
class which will reduce the pace of the
transformation. If anything, the momentum needs to be
accelerated.

At best, there can be no normal education in an
abnormal society. Any education based on bourgeois
norms encourages people to believe in and depend on
the iniquities of the system. It is in recognition of
these pitfalls that the youth and students must place
the education struggle within the ambit of the
national democratic mass movement for freedom.

While some of the problem catalogued above will be
sorted out as the struggle develops, nothing should be
left to chance.

Evidently, students schooled in a way that no other
system could teach them. They will enter the market
conversant with trade unionism, fearless and sure of
their powers. It is this kind of education that a
people’s education should reflect and defend. In this
connection therefore, it must be noted that, worker’s
education, as stated above is a component part of
people’s education. Indeed, the centrality of the role
of working class in the national democratic revolution
makes worker’s education to occupy a central role in
the programme for people’s education. A large majority
of people in the Sudan, particularly the marginalised
masses do not participate in the decision making
process that affects their lives, politically,
economically, culturally and socially.

The rural poor, the labourers and the factory workers
are told to accept the status quo as natural and
normal. The entire previous education system in Sudan
is destined to satisfy the labour needs of the ruling
class whilst at the same time making the workers
believe that they have a say in their running of their
own affairs.

Importance of theory in people’s education
Without a sound progressive working class theory the
Sudanese masses can become victims of two main
opposing trends; namely, the myopic ultra-leftist
workerist tendencies which seek to divorce the
struggle against new elite’s oppressions from the
struggle for people’s education for people power, on
the one hand and the contradictions of the new agenda
on the other. At worse, whilst the workerists’
theories are busy telling workers not to submerge the
trade union struggle in the mass democratic struggle
in the Sudan, the bourgeois elites is calling on them
to join the populists as the only way forward. The
extreme left is wittingly or unwittingly, weakening
the very left whilst the new ruling class is striving
to consolidate its position by blurting the
irreconcilable contradictions between the warring
classes in Durfur and East Sudan.

It is this gap that should be closed by providing
relevant education to the masses, such as adult
literacy classes and political education, to teach
them about inequalities of the Sudanese system and the
injustices inherent in it. The masses educational
programme should include education on how to move from
the present stage to a higher level of development,
where their cultural heritage, human values and
progressive traditional norms shall be developed and
respected; where their shall be no exploitation of man
by man. In this respect, our poor must be taught how
to build a dynamic and equitable system of production,
participation and distribution. The masses must be
told to have confidence in themselves, for their
entire Sudanese economy is in their hands. Without
their hard acquired skills, the Sudanese economy would
crumble. Therefore, the skills the masses have to
have, no matter how elementary, can be developed as
part of the programme for people’s education. The
masses have an enormous wealth of knowledge that can
turn our country into a better world for all Sudanese.

Some Sudanese feel that poverty, education and
knowledge are privileges of the dominant social
classes, and the bourgeoisie would like them to
believe that this situation is natural and
irreversible. It is through the people’s education for
people’s power that the Sudanese masses can become
conscious of the possibility and the need to defend
their interests against the ruling classes, who wish
to keep knowledge as their exclusive preserve.

Education for people’s power should combine a unity of
political, ideological, theoretical and organisational
work. Accordingly, it will make the masses conscious
of their historical responsibility to rid our country
of the source of racial and gender discrimination and
elites inspired division in the Sudan.

In this respect, it has becomes imperative, therefore
that the Sudanese students both parents and through
their trade unions should have an input in the shaping
of education agenda, to make it reflect it what
education should be in a democratic Sudan. The content
of education should not deviate, either in letter or
in spirit, from people’s education for people’s power
in Sudan. Economically, and ideologically the
educational charter must mirror the working class
culture. But this can only be guaranteed if the
working class and poor masses organisations are
actively involved in all the campaign for
democratisation of our society. A people’s education
for people’s power must cart the way forward and
agitate for the betterment of lives of the rest of the
toiling masses in Sudan.

The current political situation in the Sudan is very
encouraging. Therefore, their must be an onslaught
against the tyranny of discrimination of the past and
all its repressive institutions will require unity
between the youth and students, trade unions and the
entire mass democratic movement. Indeed, here the need
to guard against the present government manoeuvres
cannot be over-emphasised. Division will certainly
weaken the demand for people’s education for people’s
power so unity is vital to force the sitting
government to adopt the masses demand.

* John Pangech, a Sudanese currently a freelance researcher in the field of business ethics and development in Pretoria South Africa.