Mohamed Nagy Alassam is a Khartoum-based activist with the Central Committee of Sudanese Doctors (CSSD) and the union coalition it is part of, the Sudanese Professionals’ Association (SPA). He spoke to Sacha Ismail on 10 February. There were more mass demonstrations in Sudan the day before we went to press, 21 February.
The SPA was established in July 2018, involving doctors, lawyers, teachers, university professors, vets and engineers. It was central in the Sudanese revolution which began at the end of 2018; it was the organisation that announced the Charter of Freedom and Change, which became the charter of the entire revolution.
Now the SPA is an important part of the resistance following the 25 October coup, which ended the transition to democracy and reinaugurated a full military dictatorship. Since then, for more than a hundred days now, people have been protesting strongly and courageously, despite massive state violence. About 80 protesters have been killed.
CSSD was established in 2015; in October-November 2016 it led a nation-wide strike, the largest doctors’ strike in Sudan’s history, to improve the health situation in public hospitals and training conditions for junior doctors. By the way we followed the [2017] junior doctors’ strike in the UK, and around the same time there was a junior doctors’ strike in Kenya too.
During the strike more than a hundred of our members were arrested. But due to the numbers we mobilised the government had to negotiate, and make many concessions to our demands.
That strike gave openings to build relationships with other workers, particularly journalists, who were helping spread news about our movement and had their own organisation, Sudanese Journalists network, and for obvious reasons lawyers, with the Democratic Alliance of Lawyers. That relationship between the three organisations then became the basis for establishing the SPA.
It sounds like those events were pretty significant as a prelude to the fall of [military-Islamist dictator Omar al-] Bashir?
Yes, it was very important as the precursor to the [2018-19] revolution; it showed that people could organise strong activities and protests. The fact of independent unions, not controlled or even at first recognised by the government, was highly significant – it was very hurtful to the regime, which had its own controlled “unions”, and energising for workers, who saw they could do things for themselves.
Do those fake unions still exist?
Yes. The irony is they rely heavily on support from unions in other countries, some national union centres in Africa, regional bodies, some unions in Europe and the ITUC [International Trade Union Confederation]. We have raised that many, many times, going back years now – demanding that genuine union bodies should be able to distinguish between real unions and fake unions invented by dictatorial regimes. It is really insulting.
What is the latest with the protests?
Many people thought they would quickly decline, but so far the demonstrations remain strong. On 7 February we had huge march in Khartoum and there were big protests in ten states.
There are many forms of non-violent direct action. We organised a walk-out from military and security-sector hospitals by doctors and health workers in protest against violence against demonstrators. There are intermittent strikes in a range of sectors, and when there are big demonstrations many people leave work to attend and many sectors shut down.
The leading force mobilising in the streets is the local resistance committees.
CCSD is increasing coordination with many other groups of workers. That includes health workers: pharmacists and lab technicians, both part of the SPA; and other groups including nurses are building up their organisation in close coordination with us. Also journalists, lawyers and bank workers. We are now trying to buuld links with blue-collar workers, for instance the rail workers and the port workers in Port Sudan, who have committees coordinating with us. We are also making links with the long-established committee of farmers in Gezira Scheme, which is a very big irrigation system and farming area [in central Sudan].
Why did the new labour movement in Sudan begin so heavily with white-collar workers?
Over thirty years the Bashir regime destroyed swathes of the public sector through privatisation and cuts. Partly precisely in order to undermine a very strong, very militant blue-collar union movement which had a long history in the public sector. So there was a weakened economic basis for blue-collar unions to organise. Another result is that much of Sudan’s infrastructure, for instance its railway and port systems, often barely function.
However, since the revolution, workers have begun to revive a movement in these sectors I think in contrast by 2015 professional workers had various networks and channels which allowed us to organise more easily, regardless of the situation in the workplaces themselves, so we could collectivise more quickly and easily, plus the relative independency that the professionals generally have compared to blue-collar workers.
I should add that most people in Sudan work in the agricultural sector.
Can you say more about the resistance committees?
They are grassroots democratic organisations; some existed before the revolution but most were formed afterwards. It’s almost impossible to stop their activity, as they are horizontal bodies without the hierarchy of other organisations, with their bases in neighbourhoods. The military can arrest people, and they do, but it does not have much effect.
Committees now exist all over Sudan and they are still spreading. They exist even in areas where there was previously armed conflict, like Darfur, South Kordofan and Blue Nile state, where you have armed rebel movements; you now also have resistance committees that are very committed to non-violent action. Those armed movements are not necessarily very comfortable with the committees, just as they are not comfortable with the SPA and other unions, but I don’t think they have any choice but to deal with them. So the committees are really changing the face of society in Sudan.
There are also coordination bodies, for localities, for cities and even for whole states. In Khartoum we have a coordination body for the whole state, covering millions of people, which is working on a new charter for the revolution.
What role do you see for the committees after the defeat of the coup?
We’ve had discussions in the SPA about things that we got wrong after 2018. There was a widespread view that the SPA got too involved in the detail of politics, that we became almost like a political party. And in fact there was a split in the SPA on political lines – though both sides are still functioning and involved in the struggle.
So I would argue to leaders of the resistance committees, they should consider carefully the limits of their political role. The political diversity within the resistance committees is actually much larger than what we had in the SPA, so the risk of division and fragmentation is even greater.
I would say the focus should be on general themes and values like establishing a sustainable democracy, establishing the rule of law and demilitarising the state, rather than more detailed political programmes, which are a matter for political parties.
The pre-coup transitional government continued the neoliberal policies you described. How do you avoid that continuing under an elected government?
In the sixty-odd years it’s been independent, for fifty Sudan has been under dictatorships. So the main thing is establishing democracy; our civil society organisations society believe that if we have freedoms and can elect our own representatives, we can work things out. The enemy we have to deal with immediately is the military and security apparatus and the pernicious relationships it has with governments who want to plunder the economy of the country – Russia, China, the Gulf States and others. If we can end this situation then we can deal with other issues.
What forms of solidarity do you want?
I think we deserve to be in the news! This is a remarkable movement which deserves attention around the world. Every time the resistance committees announce a day of protests, every week or more frequently, very large numbers turn out, and every time several people are killed. This is not a small thing and we want the eyes of the world on it. Statements of solidarity, particularly from unions, are very much appreciated. Unions should push governments to put every pressure possible on the Sudanese military and the states that support it, particularly the regional players, to come to terms with Sudanese people demands and hopes.
