Hi,
April is a sad month for me and many other Sudanese. It marks the first anniversary of the Sudanese revolution which ousted president Omar al-Bashir. It should be a happy one-year birthday, but there are too many deaths to mourn, too many families still stricken with grief, and too many Sudanese still struggling to secure basic necessities to survive. To close out the first year after a tumultuous revolution that began because people could not afford to eat in an even worse economic situation, exacerbated by a countrywide shutdown because of coronavirus, doesn’t incline one to celebration.
And then there’s the government itself. This wasn’t a "clean" revolution, in that it didn’t eject the head of government and his entire network from power. After months of messy, drawn-out negotiations which saw even more lives lost, the compromise was a transitional government that includes civilian elements, but the country is still in the executive hand of Bashir’s military and security forces. The price paid was so high, in blood and economic stability, that as the first anniversary of Bashir’s removal looms, it’s very hard to stop myself from asking a forbidden question when it comes to revolutions: was it worth it?
Even typing the words feels like heresy. Like a betrayal of those who perished. But it is a question that is asked all across the Arab world. It is asked in Egypt as removing Mubarak only paved the way for a Mubarak redux. It is asked in Libya as the country descends into anarchy. It is asked in Syria and in Yemen where the dead and displaced mount by the day.
But are revolutions ever "clean"? Does any revolution yield an immediately satisfying result in which the previous regime is vanquished and economy, stability and freedom are restored overnight? Are there any revolutions that within a year, have justified the lives lost on the way? The famous joke (wrongly attributed to Zhou Enlai) that it is still "too soon to tell" what the impact of the French Revolution is, sometimes feels like a cynical observation, but it’s probably true. Political revolutions happen because there is an injustice that needs to be righted. They are spontaneous, righteous explosions of demand for political betterment, not carefully calculated cost-benefit analyses.
In a way that remains the comforting thing about Sudan’s revolution, despite the sad one-year anniversary. As the crowds gathered at the beginning of April in Khartoum to face live bullets and teargas, there was no suggestion of hope that the all-powerful government would be felled. For those who did believe, there was no suggestion of a better alternative, but protestors went out day after day, and lives were lost day after day, because the belief that a human has a right to a better politics is an instinct that once triggered, cannot be quietened by bullet or rational calculation.
The moment that instinct is actualised, a revolution is a success. Which makes all revolutions successes the moment they are achieved. The rest is just mourning and impatience for that better life.
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