The overthrow of the Transitional Sovereignty Council and the dismissal of the transitional government in Sudan is not simply a military coup, as the “international community” of imperialists and the Western media have been hammering, but a counter-revolution. Having started in December 2018, the Sudanese revolution put an end to the 30-year dictatorship of Omar al Bashir and had the dictator himself thrown into prison in April 2019, but then went on to continue the sit-in in front of the General Command of the armed forces for two months. After the massacre of 3 June 2019, when over one hundred martyrs fell, the heroic people of Sudan rose again on 30 June. The Transitional Military Council, which had taken over after the fall of al Bashir had to give in to the power of the revolutionary masses, but manoeuvered to set up a Transitional Sovereignty Council to share power with the representatives of the leadership of the revolution, which at that time was in the hands of the Forces for Freedom and Change and at its head the Sudan Professionals Association.
The ensuing compromise arrested the revolution, but did not put an end to it entirely. The escalation of the world capitalist crisis, its impact on the ruined Sudanese economy, where hyperinflation runs into 400 per cent, the blackmail of the draconian conditions put by the IMF have transformed Sudan into a volcano blowing up the compromise.
The move by the military under the leadership of General Abdel Fettah al Burhan, the President of the Transitional Sovereignty Council, is thus an attempt to liquidate the revolution completely by taking from its hands the last positions that it controls. It is a counter-revolution.
The powerful eruption of the Sudanese masses flooding the streets of Khartoum, organizing around their Resistance Committees and fighting with massive demonstrations, barricades, factory occupations, strikes etc against the counter-revolutionary military intervention, demonstrate the vitality of the Sudanese Revolution.
However, the Sudanese revolution cannot be revived by returning to the situation before the military takeover. This was a suicidal move by the leadership dominant at the time (July 2019), one that represented the modern, relatively well-to-do petty bourgeoisie of the country (professional strata such as doctors, lawyers, journalists in addition to the upper crust of the salaried classes). These strata are only after a Western-type democracy closely linked to the imperialist system, which they consider as the protectors of a new democratic regime in Sudan.
However, to expect that the military in general and the butcher Mohamed Hemdan (Hemiti), the leader of the Rapid Support Forces in particular, would voluntarily abandon their political prerogatives and, even more importantly, their economic interests was obviously against the nature of things. The military takeover has clearly proved this. It is not with the same leadership and the same strategic outlook that the Sudanese revolution can triumph this time.
The loud protestations of the imperialists against the military’s move really derive from the pro-imperialist nature of the petty-bourgeois leadership that took control in the first phase. The imperialist bourgeoisie, and the reactionary regimes of the region, particularly Egypt, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates are aware and frightened that there are forces within Sudanese society that are ready to go much farther and start a process of permanent revolution that would finally bring the working class to power, transforming dramatically the entire situation in the Middle East and Africa.
Apart from the Sudanese Professionals Association, effective only in the centre of large cities, there is another leadership of the revolution: the Resistance Committees that sprang to life during the first phase of the revolution from the bosom of the poor neighbourhoods where working-class families and the urban poor join hands to fight not only for abstract democracy but for their livelihood as well. These Resistance Committees were too dispersed to contest the leadership of the movement in the first phase. However, news from the country now shows that they are very effective in the Joint Chamber of the March of Millions which has been much more vocal in this phase of the revolution.
The Chamber does not advocate a return to the power sharing arrangement before the military takeover, but the handing over of power to civilians. The streets of Sudan resonate with the slogan “Madaniyya”, implying a civilian and secular regime should be set up. A minority within the orbit of the Resistance Committees even accuse the Forces for Freedom and Change of having established a “partnership of blood” with the military wing.
This is the way forward for the Sudanese revolution. The forces of the working class around the world should do everything to help the workers and the poor of Sudan to defeat the military and move forward to establish a democratic regime that serves the interests of the working class, the peasantry and the poor. Otherwise, the Sudanese revolution will consume its energy and its promise in the negotiations and the compromises between the “democracy” defended by the imperialist powers and the military regime propped up by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt.
Down with the military takeover! Smash the counter-revolution!
International solidarity of all working-class and socialist organisations with the heroic people of Sudan!
Reorganise the revolutionary movement around the Resistance Committees!
Forward for the construction of a revolutionary party of the working class!
Priority to the livelihood of the workers and the poor! Nationalise the commanding heights of the economy, including all the banks and the production and commerce of gold!
For the right of all refugees, victims of civil war, to return to their homes!
Put an end to all business activity on the part of the army! Expropriate all illicit property of the generals!
Try al Bashir and the putschist generals not in the International Criminal Court but in revolutionary people’s courts in Sudan!
Break the links that enslave Sudan to imperialism and the Gulf states! Reverse the al Burhan decision to recognise Israel and cut all ties to the Zionist state!
All power to the Resistance Committees!
Internationalist Socialist Center “Christian Rakovsky”
RedMed web network
DIP (Revolutionary Workers Party), Turkey
EEK (Workers Revolutionary Party), Greece
ROR (Renaissance Révolutionnaire Ouvrière), France
MTL (Marxist Workers League), Finland
