New Sudan Consciousness: The Unity
Revolutionary nationalism and black consciousness: a true national cause for the oppressed people in the Sudan.
By John Pangech*
Nov 27, 2005 — The main aim of the present stage of our struggle is the wining of majority rule over the whole of Sudan. This means nothing less than the total liberation of
African people and with them the other oppressed
national groups in the Sudan.
Our hope is the SPLM which holds the principle of the
unity of the working class and marginalized majority
of the Sudanese masses, without regard to race, colour
and religion. The Movement must reject the narrow
ideology of bourgeois nationalism which divides the
workers and marginalized oppressed people and which
can lead to harmful concepts of chauvinism, racialism
and tribalism.
There is no conflict between this, the oppressed out
look, and their unqualified support for the
progressive elements present in the nationalism of an
oppressed people struggling for its national freedom.
They have consistently upheld the efforts of the SPLM
to build up and assert the rights of the African
nation in our country; they have worked hard and long
to achieve the fighting unity of the African people
against the Sudanese Arab elite’s domination.
From this point of view they warmly welcome the
assertion of national identity, pride and confidence
implicit in the overall concept of the New Sudan
consciousness. It is a fully justified and healthy
response to the insulting arrogance of the Sudanese
Arab elite’s supremacists. Therefore, the current
spread of the New Sudan Consciousness is a
contribution to the psychological liberation of the
African people. It is essentially a part of the
prolonged struggled which was proclaimed by the Sudan
People’s Liberation Movement in 1983, and which has
always received the fullest support of marginalized
Sudanese masses.
To see the struggle in this terms is not to endorse
the false formulation by separatists both amongst the
Arab elites’ in the North and African in the South of
Sudan, protagonists of the New Sudan consciousness,
that the struggle in Sudan is not a political but
dividing and weakening of the Sudan.
It must be recognized that the separation in itself
does not express a coherent programmed, still less an
ideology for many people. Within the ranks of those
who express this slogan, in addition to determined and
honest patriots there may be found those who would
seek to achieve merely the advancement of privileged
strata while leaving the masses where they were
before; to displace the African working class and poor
peasants from the leading role which it has rightly
assumed in generations of bitter struggle; or to
sub-merge the emerging African nation with its own
languages, culture and traditions into an amorphous
movement whose identity merely on skin colour.
The SPLM leaderships under Chairman Salva Kiir must
especially be on guard against those inside and
outside the national liberation movement who jump on
to the bandwagon of New Sudan consciousness for their
own ulterior purposes, whether it be for their
business advancement or as a cover for political
careerism. The movement must reject the attempts by
those who would use the emotional sounding content of
New Sudan consciousness in order to isolate the
different Black communities from one another and as a
means of dividing the national liberation movement.
And the ideology of the New Sudan consciousness must
not become the basis for introduction of crude form of
dividing and weakening the Sudan which diverts the
victory from the main target of transformation of the
whole Sudan institutions. Political parties without
real political programmes and principles can at very
least get neutralized in the process of national
liberation movement. South Africa National Party is an
example of that in the liberation history.
Both separatists in the north and south Sudan, which
claims its inspiration from the New Sudan
consciousness ideology, no doubt has attracted some
genuinely patriotic elements. But it also contains
elements, particularly at top levels, which for
example, when they had the choice between
organizations like the SPLM and the NCP, UMMA Party
and others, chose the SPLM and were the northern
parties committed supporters. Apart from their
adherence to the vague formulations about dividing the
country the separatists both in the north and south
Sudan has not yet made clear on what programme of
action they hope to gain support of the Sudanese in
the next election, nor how they sees their role in the
relation to the existing national liberation movement
in West and Eastern Sudan.
Every African in the Sudan had come into conflict with
the previous regimes of Sadiq al Mahdi, Gafaar
Numieri, and the present Al Bashir NCP and its laws at
every stage of its rules. No true conscious
marginalized masses and the oppressed can, therefore,
isolate itself from the struggle for political rights
in next coming election.
Playing lip service to Black Nationalism is not the
same as advancing the true national cause and can, in
some cases, become a camouflage for harmful approaches
in actual struggle. No doubt many who have politically
now stated their adherence to the New Sudan
consciousness, whether in the student movement or in
other political forces, do so as a counter to the
NCP-inspired efforts to divide the Black people, as an
honest reaction to the diluting influence of elite
do-gooders and also as part of a search for additional
organizational forms to advance the cause of oppressed
people. Such elements can and must be won over to the
common programme of liberation movement. But at the
same time where these political forces act against the
programmes of the liberation movement or national
project themselves as alternatives to the SPLM, the
SPLM must engaged them in a national debates if
possible.
* John Pangech is a Sudanese currently a freelance researcher in the field of business ethics and development in Pretoria South Africa.