Rethinking history Anes Abdelrahim When Sudan’s People Liberation Movement (SPLM) led by the late John Garang and the government in Khartoum led by the National Congress Party (NCP) signed the Comprehesive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2005, everyone heaved a big sigh of relief as the agreement put an end to the longest 21-year-old civil war in Africa. Aside from stemming the flow of blood of people on both sides, the agreement opened up all sorts of possibilities for the future. People raised their hope for a better life characterized by a mutual trust between the south and the north. This hope was partly fueled by Petrodollars which had been flowing in steadily for at least one decade since it was discovered in small amounts mostly in the south. But a bit of historical context is necessary to shed light on the root causes of the deadliest conflict in Africa that left around 2.5 million peopld dead and devastated the country. In the words of the late charismatic John Garang, the fundamental problem in Sudan consists in the attempt by various Khartoum-based regimes to build a monolithic Arabic-Islamic state to the exclusion of other parameters of Sudanese diversity as constituting the fundamental problem of the Sudan and defining the Sudanese conflict. The vast majorities of Sudanese are, therefore, excluded from governance and are marginalized in the political, economical, and social fields. And this provokes resistence by the excluded, the neglected, the marginalized, and the oppressed. The Arabic-Islamic state ends up being imposed by force. Governance in the Sudan became chauvenistic and eventually fascist. This incisive analysis is true of almost everywhere in the world, with slight variations. To put it differently, human history is replete with the familiar theme of the domination of one group of people over others whereby the dominant invariably tries to impose its own ideology on the dominated ones and makes them accept their way of thinking and living as the norm. Within such a context, violence breaks out when one of the dominated groups dares to challenge and undermine the authority of the dominant. Armed with this radical understanding of the fact that uneven power structure lies at the heart of the conflict, Garang unwaveringly pursued a vision of New Sudan that would have embraced everyone had he been given the chance to carry it out. As predicted by Garang, trying to ram the Arabic-Islamic narrative down the throats of the oppressed would only lead to a gradual but violent disintegration of the country. He actually said that no one would accept to be treated as a second class citizen in his own homeland. However, CPA gave people reasons to feel that there is hope for a Sudan celebrating its multiethnic, multi-religious, and multi-cultural diversity, and breaking the chains of racism. Hope for the people to take control of their lives and redefine their identities through their culture, history, and their environment Unlike the power-seeking government in khartoum, Garang was genuinely motivated by the vision of what he called “The New Sudan”. His humanistic vision gave him the strength to carry on the armed struggle which was imposed on him by the government in Khartoum and whose casualities he deplored. The CPA stipulated that the southerners be given the opportunity to vote for or against secession in a referendum six years after its signing. In a powerful speech following the signing of the agreement, Garang laid out his economic plan for the New Sudan we don’t want to repeat the experience of other countries where they used the oil money to build a consumer society by just importing goods from outside. We want to use the oil money literally to fuel argiculture. It is important to note that Sudan is primarily an agricultural country but since oil was discovered, the government in Khartoum has set Sudan on a path of consumerism and completely neglected the real wealth: agriculture. It is common knowledge that Sudan is so arable that it is often joked that if you plant a human, other humans will sprout up. But the lure of easy money coupled with the prevailing perception that, in the words of Garang, the government is an object to be looted has ensured that the true source of wealth went down the drain. Now let’s consider Garang’s notion of governance. It was his firm belief that the best form of governance is one which makes for meaningful participation on the part of people. The term he used to describe this type is “people’s sovereignty” which he defines as a “people-centered form of governance. A true social contract between the people and their government. People shouldn’t be alienated from their government”. Both of his economic plan and form of governance aimed at empowering people and giving them voice to engage in making decisions that directly affect their wellbeing. As people who closely followed the events in Sudan know, things did not pan out the way Garang envisaged because On 9 January 2005, the Comprehensive Peace Agreement was signed in Nairobi, Kenya. On July 9, 2005, Dr. John Garang was sworn in as vice president On July 30, 2005 Dr. Garang died in a helicopter crash on his way back from talks in Uganda His death was the death of a vision because the southerners understandably went on to vote for separation and what was once the biggest country in Africa is now two separate countries with a long history of animosity. Had Garang lived, I have very little doubt that he would have worked tirelessly to realize the vision to which he had dedicated all his life. He actually made it clear that unity in diversity would have been the right course to go but a lot of national and international players had a different agenda which required separation rather than unity. Shortly after the signing of the agreement, I had the opportunity to talk to a bunch of Southerners about the likely outcome of the referendum. All of them were pretty sure that southerners would want to break away. One of them explained that there is a silent apartheid in Sudan and they have borne its brunt for far too long. I couldn’t argue with the obvious. The objective conditions were right for building a different country but apparently the subjective conditions were and are still lagging behind and refuse to catch up. The ideology of the ruling class got in the way of taking advantage of the objective conditions; namely using oil to fuel agriculture as Garang envisioned. Sudan was at a crossroads and the government in Khartoum along with its unity-shattering policies backed by a long history of racism ensured that the wrong road was taken. This is probably what Marx had in mind when he said “the tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living”. The tradition of racism as an ideological tool in the hands of the ruling party gained the upper hand and drove the country into secession. But, let there be no mistake about the fact that this was not an inevitable choice because Garang would have charted a different course had he lived just a little bit longer. As Marx stated “men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past”. We had the right circumstances but we made the wrong history. Similarly, the ever changing status of women is a testament to what happens when ideas catch up with circumstances. It is important to note that feminisn as a movement didn’t spring up when a bunch of women got together and decided to revolt against the shackles of patriarchy. As Marx famously stated that liberation is a historical act and not a mental act, and it is brought about by historical conditions. It was only after the advent of the industrial revolution that women started thinking differently about themselves. In turn, this new perception of themselves was engendered by the fact that the machine made it possible for the rising capitalists to exploit women as a source of cheap labor. The unintended result of this exploitation was that women gained relative economic independence which eventually translated into a new perception of themselves. However, technological developments unaccompanied by conceptual development don’t necessarily lead to substantive changes. Take the status of women in Saudi Arabia and Gulf countries as a a good case in point. Despite the apparent technological advances in these countries, the status of women has remained as it was under Feudalism: nonentity. This is probably attributable to the fact that the people living in these oil-rich countries have not been involved in these technological advances, and they have been passive recipients of petrodollars. Humans transform themselves through their own activities, and when people are not active participant in determining what affects their life, they are more likely to stay unchanged mentally in spite of the changes in their material reality. When it comes to mental conceptions of the world, Saudi Arabia and other countries of its ilk have not gone past Feudalistic value system. The way in which crude slavery ended is another example of massive transformation in consciousness generated by the convergence of historical material conditions and subjective conditions. Just as the machine helped free women, it also helped liberate the black people from the exploitation of the elite white people. To put it differently, two things set blacks and women free: the machine and human agency (the capacity for human beings to make choices). Currently, humanity seems to be on the cusp of a new era with two possible outcomes: paradise or oblivion as the documentary film made by the Venus Project explains. The only thing that is getting in the way of getting there (paradise) is our obsolete ideas and cultural values. As Einstein put it “it has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity”. Our technology (objective conditions) is far ahead of our humanity (subjective conditions) with the result that if our humanity catches up to the level of technology, then we will have paradise, but if we pull technology down to our level, we will become extinct (a far more likey scenario). Nothing shows the discrepancy between our objective conditions and subjective ones more than what has come to be known as the global economic crisis. Technology has become advanced enough to generate massive abundance but our current profit-driven system along with its distorted value system requires scarcity to thrive and survive. In fact, most of our cultural values have their origin in a world governed by scarcity. Take the importance people attach to owning what is perceived to be a scarce commodity. Objectively speaking, we have the technological means for a world characterized by the practice of shared access as opposed to exlusive possession, but subjectively speaking, we continue to be driven by scarcity-driven ethos. What is true of the history of nations and humanity is equally true of the history of individuals. Most people look back on their lives with a sense of regrets having to do with missed opportunities. Every missed opportunity represents a moment in life when the external conditions for something seemed right but the internal state didn’t dovetail. For instance, coming into a large fortune opens up all sorts of possibilities: you can squander it on consumerist lifestyle or you can use it to alleviate the pain of your fellow humans. We build our own history based on what’s possible and what’s available and based on our capacity as humans to act.
Posted on: Thu, 27 Jun 2013 11:56:18 +0000
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