Africa Watch – A play for the throne

Sudan’s military seized power from a transitional government on Monday and soldiers killed at least three people and wounded 80 as street protests broke out against the coup. The leader of the takeover, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, dissolved the military-civilian Sovereign Council that had been set up to guide the country to democracy following the overthrow of long-ruling autocrat Omar al-Bashir in a popular uprising two years ago.

Burhan announced a state of emergency, saying the armed forces needed to protect safety and security, but he promised to hold elections in July 2023 and hand them over to an elected civilian government then. “What the country is going through now is a real threat and danger to the dreams of the youth and the hopes of the nation,” he said. Youths opposed to the coup barricaded streets as clashes broke out with troops.

The Central Committee of Sudanese Doctors said three people had died of wounds after being shot by soldiers and at least 80 people had been injured. Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok was detained and taken to an undisclosed location after refusing to issue a statement in support of the takeover, the information ministry said. The ministry, still loyal to Hamdok, urged resistance and said tens of thousands of people opposed to the takeover had taken to the streets and had faced gunfire near the military headquarters in Khartoum.

Troops had arrested civilian members of the Sovereign Council and government figures, it said, calling on Sudanese to oppose the military. “We raise our voices loudly to reject this coup attempt,” it said in a statement. Sudan has been ruled for most of its post-colonial history by military leaders who seized power in coups. It had become a pariah to the West and was on the U.S. terrorism blacklist under Bashir, who hosted Osama bin Laden in the 1990s and is wanted by the International Criminal Court in the Hague for war crimes.

In recent weeks a coalition of rebel groups and political parties aligned themselves with the military and called on it to dissolve the civilian government, while cabinet ministers took part in protests against the prospect of military rule. Sudan has also been suffering an economic crisis. Helped by foreign aid, civilian officials have claimed credit for some tentative signs of stabilisation after a sharp devaluation of the currency and the lifting of fuel subsidies.

The main opposition Forces of Freedom and Change alliance called for civil disobedience and protests across the country. Two main political parties, the Umma and the Sudanese Congress, condemned what they called a coup and campaign of arrests. Hamdok, an economist and former senior U.N. official, was appointed as a technocratic prime minister in 2019 but struggled to sustain the transition amid splits between the military and civilians and the pressures of the economic crisis.

For the last three weeks, huge crowds of people marched in several parts of the Sudanese capital and other cities in demonstrations against the prospect of military rule, as the crisis in the country’s troubled transition from authoritarian rule deepened. Many businesses in central Khartoum were closed in anticipation of the protest and there was an extensive police presence. Military-aligned groups led by former rebel leaders and current government officials Minni Minnawi and Jibril Ibrahim have held a sit-in in front of the Presidential Palace in downtown Khartoum since Saturday.

In previous commentaries, we had noted that a coup in Sudan was in the offing if the severe economic crisis persists. So, it comes as no surprise given the breakdown in relations between the military-civilian leadership of the transitional government, which was set up after the deposition of President Omar al-Bashir.

Following weeks of protests, a failed coup attempt, growing economic hardship with spiralling inflation and a debilitating currency devaluation and a coalition of rebel groups, political parties and military leaders aimed to dissolve the civilian government, a coup ousting the transitional government was truly inevitable.

The unfortunate reality is that Sudan has continued to slip back into old habits, as the country has not truly enjoyed a protracted democratic climate. The semblance of democratic governance marked by the military-civilian partnership has now been placed on halt. This is a dangerous trajectory Sudan has been placed on and one likely to cause even more economic hardship, seeing that under the transitional government the country enjoyed some support from the West outside humanitarian aid.

It is on the back of the civilian-led transitional government that the country was able to secure US$14 billion in debt relief from the Paris Club. Unfortunately, the failure of the transitional government to proactively meet the demands of its citizens during the weeks of protest; protests which PM Abdalla Hamdok and his loyalists argued the military supported and nudged on. At this point, the African Union, the international community and other regional governments need to put pressure on General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his team to successfully hand over power to a democratically elected government on a realistic timeline to be agreed upon by all parties.

That’s the optimistic view. The reality is that the drivers which have led to a boom in military interventions on the continent over the past 18 months need to be reckoned with and fast, failing which a number of disaffected elements in politically stressed countries will begin to mull over the prospects of joining the fray.