The Sudanese People to Celebrate the Golden Anniversary of the Glorious October 21 Revolution on Sunday 21 2018
The People of Sudan are asking the Glorious October 21 1964 Revolution as to how did it find the situation when it has returned to Sudan after half of a Century or so?
Sunday, October 21st, 2018 marks the 54th Anniversary of the Glorious October Revolution, which broke out in Sudan on Wednesday, October 21, 1964. It was a popular uprising broke out against the Sudanese military Junta regime in protest against the civil war that was taking place in the south of the country, which resulted in the loss of the lives of innocent citizens in full intransigence of the putschists without listening to the voices of reason that were calling for resorting to cessation of hostilities through Peaceful methods. And that popular uprising of the Sudanese people was labelled the October 21, 1964 Glorious Revolution.
The above-mentioned Sudanese Popular Revolution has been 54 years Old as of Sunday October 21, 2018. Moreover, the Sudanese people will be celebrating the Golden Anniversary of the event and an additional of four more years of this triumphant revolution. But the echo of that event is still valid in the Conscience of the Sudanese nation through the ages, even for generations that were not born at that time! It is surprising that a large number of sons and daughters of Sudan of today were not born at the outbreak of the October 21 1964 Revolution, but the memory of the October Revolution has been in the conscience of every Sudanese over the years because the October Revolution is a unique national occasion and every Sudanese son or daughter feels proud of the occasion whether he/she is within the Sudan or abroad in asylum or in the Diaspora. This is a result of yearning and a longing for a similar Revolution against the ruling regime of the National Congress Party (NCP) which has ruled Sudan with iron and fire for the past three decades, and its type of ruling that has been classified as similar to the most despotic regimes the world has seen. At its worst deeds, the ruling regime of the National Congress Party (NCP) devotes itself to how to contaminate the components of the Sudanese people with the racist and tribal virus to pass it at each other and reach the level of hostile hatred between them in order that Omer al-Bashir Bashir and his criminal entourage to survive and rule. They have been adopting the Machiavellian destructive and poisonous doctrine of Divide, Conquer and Rule. The foregoing policies of the regime have culminated into the Cessation of the South of Sudan and gained independence from Sudan on Saturday 9 July 2011 after a referendum took place in Southern Sudan from 9 to 15 January 2011, on whether the region should remain a part of Sudan or become independent. The referendum was one of the consequences of the 2005 Naivasha Peace Agreement –aka-Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between the Khartoum central government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/M). It is extremely unfortunate for the two peoples in the divided Sudan in both countries; today Sudan and South Sudan have become failed states par excellence according to all the international criteria of a failed state. And the people in both countries today ask in wonder and surprise as to why this happened and the answer was ready at hand that is because both inherited the failure from the mother Sudan after independence from the colonizers as the forefathers who inherited Sudan from the British as leaders did neither learned the lessons of good governance nor the rule of Law, let alone the pillars of Democracy. Thus, the generations who took authority afterword abjectly failed to move away from what they have inherited from their predecessors that ruled Sudan!!
Anniversary quotes indicate that, Anniversaries are special because they mark one of the most important days of your life, a day where everything changed and your life isnever the same and the day that you will never forget.
When you look back it’s easy to reminisce about how special that day October actually was. The people you shared it with, the celebration you had, the proclamations of love you shared with your special someone. All are memorable and equally ingrained in your heart. For the Sudanese people and I am among them, the Wednesday 21 October 1964represents a landmark in the conscience of the Sudanese Nation and I have been amongst them during the past quarter of century during which one has an intense feeling of longing and nostalgia, a deep emotional state and at times profound melancholic feelings for the state of affairs that bedeviled Sudan, the country used to be none million square miles in size but became dwarfed when a third of its precious part of that land with its human components and its agricultural and petroleum resources irreversibly because of the racism that came from the ruling Islamism regime of the National Congress Party (NCP) and its predecessor the National Islamic Front (NIF). Thus, the ruling regime of the National Congress Party (NCP) in Sudan came through the military coup and has been in power for nearly 30 years andtaking the fait accompli as legitimacy acquired when it took power through military coup d’état that ended up the organs of the state and the rights of the citizens to the will of political putschists and it remained continuing for some time until things settle in their grip. Thus, the will of the public has gone with the wind and between the anvil and the hammer.
Unfortunately, the people of the Sudan have been afflicted by the omen of military regimes in the years after independence from the Anglo-Egyptian Colonization – better known as the Condominium – on January 1, 1956, when they became under the rule of the putschists regimens for about 44 years as of 2018. General Ibrahim Abboud ruled for six years followed by the May 25 rule of Muhammad Jaafar Nimeiri’s nine years and the Putschist Islamist rule led by the genocidal criminal self-promoted Marshall Omer Hassan Ahmed Bashir 29 years! Hence, the Sudanese people have only enjoyed an interrupted 18 years under quasi-democratic system of government.
In accordance with the legitimacy of the status quo acquired by the government when the Authority takes a coup ending by subjecting the organs of the state and other citizens to the will of the political coup and continue for some time until things settle in their grip
Wednesday October 21st, 1964, represents a landmark in the history of Sudan. It is the date on which all the Sudanese people from all parts of Sudan, from the north, south, east, west and center of the country, participated in the triumph of that victorious revolution, which called for the return of real democracy with the end of the prolonged civil war in the southern part of the country where that revolution was not the property of anyone individual, group or entity as the maker of that revolution. The October Revolution was a property of all the Sudanese people including our compatriots currently in the Republic of South Sudan. As we have already pointed out that the direct cause for the outbreak of the October Revolution in 1964 was the injusticedone to the citizens of Sudan in the southern part of the country, which unfortunately today in a country separate from the old mother Sudan.
The reasons for the October 21, 1964 revolution were the lack of freedoms regarding the issue of South Sudan under the military rule led by the late President Ibrahim Abboud, but the people of Sudan today in the remaining the land of Sudan are suffering the lack of fundamental freedoms guaranteed by all international legislations, the lack of basic services of food, education, treatment, along with suffering that brought about by the neverending wars of attrition which are waged by proxy launched by tribal militias of the so-called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and by the ideological Jihadi militias and the mercenaries that crossed the boarders from the neighbouring West African Countries on the orders of the fugitive from the international justice the genocidal criminal and the Fascist Dictator Marshall Omer Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir who has been indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague in the Netherlands since 2009. The (NCP) regime is responsible for atrocities of ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide committed against the Sudanese civilian citizen in the Darfur region Darfur, the Nuba Mountains and the Blue Nile, where human tragedies of more than 300,000 dead, 3 million between internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees along with thousands of victims being raped, widowed and with millions of children lost their parents and remaining orphans; let alone the thousands of others sought better living in the Diaspora becoming prey for the Whales and other sea Monsters as well as some of them becoming prey to the slave trade criminal Lords in the failed state of Libya.
During the National Islamic Front (NIF) –aka- National Congress Party (NCP) regime reign there are the unmissable signs of the decline and decay in Sudan in the form of bread, fuel and gas queues, which are considered by the religious sheikhs of the ruling regime of the National Congress Party to be signs of righteousness and the strengthening of belief in God and the strengthening of faith in Islamic religion. At worse, the religious Clerics of the (NCP) regime consider in their fatwas that the words such as fighting poverty are the fight against God!
Then the greatest catastrophe is the terrible retreat by the components of the Sudanese people, which was united around the identity of being Sudanese citizen in the past to be now divided on tribal lines and divided into the primary components represented by the tribe, ethnicity, the regional affiliation, color, creed and spiritual belief, and this takes place midst of the largest systematic corruption and looting of the wealth of the country through appropriation of Government properties given away to cronies in lieu of bribery. Those sins of bribes are allegedly thought that are subjected to a phenomenon introduced by the fatwas of the religious clerics and sheikhs through religion process known as the decomposition or dissolution! That means they undergo their own kind of disintegration, which called decomposition.
Thus, the difference between October 21 1964 and October 21 2018 is miles wide. Therefore, the October Revolution is considered to be an advanced intellectual and political revolution and a great awareness and progress was developed among the Sudanese people in the sixties of the last century. By comparing what is happening now we see very clearly the extent of the decline of access to the bottom in all aspects of people’s lives.
Let us take the rate of the Sudanese Pound compared to the US Dollar today. The national currency was equivalent to US $ 3, which means 100 Sudanese pounds worth 300 dollars before the accursed coming of the National Islamic Front (NIF) through Military Coup d’état in 30th June 1989. Right now in the middle of the public market and on Khartoum University Street and at the Confluence of the two Niles, the Blue and White Nile junction in the Sudanese Capital Khartoum, where the Central Bank of Sudan is located, the price of US $ 300 equal 14 million Sudanese pounds is the value of 300 dollars. Are we the Sudanese now being advanced as a people in the 21st century?! Thus, the foregoing coincides with the report by Radio Dabanga quoting Enough Project report which said: “An inner circle within Khartoum has privately expropriated oil, gold, and land for self-enrichment and to maintain control through corruption and violence, according to international activists – a “kleptocracy with economic activities that have devastated the Sudanese economy and resulted in underdevelopment”. https://www.dabangasudan.org/en/all-news/article/corruption-in-gold-oil-show-sudan-s-deep-state-enough
لThe Enough Project report went on as follows: “The Mineral Resources and Mining Development Act that controls legislation for the mining industry allows for corrupt practices: under this act, owning land does not equate to owning the right of mining. Meanwhile Khartoum’s attempts to capture the gold wealth and control exploration sites has caused insecurity, including more armed robberies and gold smuggling by (government-supported) militias in Jebel Amer, Darfur. The report highlighted that Sudan’s incomes from its key oil sector, which has suffered a major loss since the secession of South Sudan in 2011, are used by the regime for political patronage and securing the military support. Elite actors benefited, instead of Sudan’s infrastructure, education or public health.
Sudan has been ranked as qualifying all the features of a failed State. For nearly three decades, the (NCP) regime President Omer Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir has maintained his position at the pinnacle of Sudan’s political order after seizing power through a military coup in 1989. During his rule, the government of Sudan has perhaps been best known for providing safe haven to internationally classified terrorists on top of which included Osama bin Laden and other Islamic militants in the 1990s, in addition to committing genocide and mass atrocities against its citizens in Darfur, along for the secession of South Sudan in 2011, and for the ongoing armed conflict—marked by the regime’s aerial bombardment of civilian targets and humanitarian aid blockade—in South Kordofan and Blue Nile. Sadly, Sudan is very often portrayed as a country wracked by intractable violence and hampered by racial, religious, ethnic and social cleavages. Sudan today has been ranked consistently among the most fragile or failed states.
At this grim juncture, one would raise the question as to “What would happen if the revolutionary martyrs including Ahmed al-Gurashi, and many other demonstrators, who had stirred up with dedication and bravery the streets of the Capital Khartoum with massive demonstrators of the October 21 1964 were to rise up and see what is happening a quarter of a Century since the outbreak of the Popular Event under the rule of the Military Coup regime that calling itself the National Islamic Front (NIF) that labelled itself as the civilizational project and the missionary orientation after the Popular Glorious October Revolution?!
Here we have the right to echo the words of the Prominent 10th-century Arab icon Poet Abu At-Tayyib Ahmad ibn Al Husayn Al Mutanabbi Abu Tayeb al-Mutanabbi, who says O Eid, in what circumstances have you returned, is it, as in the past, or you have brought something renewed?
What surprises us is that the NCP regime despite its extreme weakness and its condition, which makes it subject to fall at any given time, is still alive. As it is said snakes are long-lived!
Mahgoub El-Tigani*writing in the Sudan Tribune cyber journal in 2003 indicated that “The Sudanese October occurred with no precedence in any 20th century country. It came before the Iranian Revolution and the Polish Solidarity. It was never spontaneous, as some wrongfully claim. Were it so, it would have replicated itself every year or day for the causes of the uprising never ceased to occur! The public strike by the Sudan Civil Service, the army officers and soldiers’ rebellion, and the well-organized confrontations between tens of thousands of unified demonstrators and the government regular forces could never have been spontaneous. October was a fresh, creative, and most promising revolutionary initiative.” Mr. El-Tigani added and said; “October was a legitimate product of a highly calculable process of political change in which both objective and subjective conditions were insistently inviting the uprising”. The October Revolution, as Sudanese love to call it, was not fully executed to the extent of accomplishing its promising ends. The popular zeal for change was oppressed; the people’s chosen representative government was usurped; and a quick come back was rushed to enable reactionary programs to take over only to pave the way to the May military coup in May 25th 1969.
That Have been narrated and said, would /will the October Revolution be repeated under the rule of the international Muslim Brotherhood Movement (MBM) Khartoum Branch😕 That is an amalgamated and rather loaded question that awaits the answer from the people of Sudan, who had previously made an unprecedented civil revolution in the 1960s!
Benjamin Franklin FRS FRSE the American polymath and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America and who as well a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, freemason, postmaster, scientist, inventor, humorist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat has been quoted as saying: “Rebellion against tyrants is obedience to God”. http://www.wiseoldsayings.com/rebellion-quotes/
Dr. Mahmoud A. Suleiman is an author, columnist and a blogger. His blog is http://thussudan.wordpress.com/