This article was published for the first time on the symposium on Women orgnised by Darb al intifada
Women and Politics in Sudan
The Contribution of Dr. Nazik Hamad
Dear readers of Darb Alintifada,
I feel that I must start my little contribution by admitting that, although I enjoyed reading what the others wrote, I myself was very reluctant to write. Try as I might, I could never really get myself interested in the NDA. I have never been eager to listen to news about it, nor get myself acquainted with its activities.I can only defend myself by stating that I, like many other women, do not have any expectations from the NDA. In addition to being mainly composed of old names that have not delivered anything positive to women in the past; in its present form, the NDA has not offered anything except singling out women for special treatment with recourse to "our noble traditions and beliefs". "Our noble traditions and beliefs" is a magic phrase that has proved its usefulness to patriarchy in our country again and again. It is almost always mentioned whenever women betray signs of venturing into public life or asking for a few rights or other such unforgivable sins. Having said this, I do not at all think that the issue of women representation in the NDA is a trivial matter that ought to be totally ignored. On the contrary, whatever we think of the NDA, we cannot forget that it represents substantial part of the Sudanese political class and it will most likely be the heir to the NIF sooner or later. As such, it does have the capacity to hurt women enormously. I am not so optimistic as to say that the NDA is likely to use its power to advance the status of women, unless of course, things change.
Unfortunately, change for the worse has been the rule in the Sudanese political and social life for the last twenty years or so. And when taking into account the experience of political movements in the third world, in particular progressive ones that Sondra Hale wrote about, we can allow ourselves to be even more pessimistic. This is because the NDA is by no means a unified political movement in the strictest sense. It is simply an alliance composed of various Sudanese parties, ninety percent of which are right-wing parties with a horrendously bad record when it comes to women ( and many other things when you come to think of it).
Even a seemingly new party like SAF, is not at all the sparkling new growth as its members would like us to believe. The vast majority of its members are the Ex-Mustagillleen (Independent Students Congress) and " Mutamr Watani" (Congress Party) with a complete record on everything, including women. A record that is as blessed with many blotches and blemishes as that of any other Sudanese party and is certainly worse than the record of progressive parties.
All this implies that the problem of women's representation in the NDA has deeper roots than the hitherto identified structural problems or issues related to dominance of certain parties over others. I see the dominance/marginalization feud as little more than a fight between a few privileged men, that has little to do with women aspirations. To me, the primary issue is how each of our parties individually, before collectively, approaches the issues of women's right to equal treatment. It is the problem of women being taken seriously enough to be granted the right to full citizenship and not the rights of legal minors who are to be treated with a different set of rules than those applied to their male-counterparts. It is also a matter of whether or not the lessons of these awful times have sunk in yet. As we have seen, the loss of one freedom has quickly and predictably led to the loss of another and another until we reached the current state of becoming a society that is totally stripped of freedoms of all types and at all levels. Our leaders need to recognize that democracy when defined so narrowly as to be the freedom of powerful men from being imprisoned by other powerful men, will have no meaning for the majority of the population, and as such it will soon be lost, as the experience of Sudan illustrates again and again.
As was obvious form the contributions of those who wrote before me, one of the thorniest issues is the relationship of women to political organizations. As Sondra Hale mentioned, the experience of progressive parties is of paramount importance here. As much as these parties have helped create and support women’s organizations, they have also stunted the development of feminist consciousness among the membership and leadership of these organizations.
These problems became more pronounced when women came to face the challenge posed by the NIF assault on women’s freedoms that was unparalleled in its viciousness. In the absence of independent feminist thinking, the general tactics employed by most politically active women, in particular progressive women, were the same as those adopted by the main male-dominated anti-NIF parties and organizations. The crux of the responses to the NIF’s attack was to reduce the problem to merely defending Islam against the NIF’s "misinterpretation" and abuse of Islam. Effectively, there was a failure to deliver a strong secular counter-attack. It was a war between the forces of "bad" Islam as represented by the NIF and the "good" Islam as represented by the anti-NIF camp including its progressive elements. As might be expected, the message that came from the latter camp was weaker and largely ineffective since it lacked the vigorous zeal that the NIFers loaded their message with. This is extremely important for women because as a result of their lack of independence, we saw that politically active women have trapped themselves within these very limited boundaries of debate. I say "limited" because sincere attempts at secularizing every aspect of our lives, including the private domain, have never really been made by our parties. Even during earlier episodes of democracy, we saw that secular democracy was a male privilege, while women's lives continued to be governed by Sharia law.
In the pre-1985 Intifada period, the energies of politically active women were called for to support the political struggle against Nimeri and his NIF allies. Female university students, women doctors, women lawyers etc.., devoted most of their time and energy in student’s unions and professional unions in order to advance trade union agenda of winning seats and defeating the NIF in every possible election. In the process, very little actual work was done in confronting head-on the NIF conservative challenge especially in the social arena. The same went on during the post-Intifada years, the only difference was that the relative freedom provided by democracy allowed the political activity in trade unions and parties to reach feverish heights. During these periods, inviting Ustaza Fatima Ahmed Ibrahim to deliver a speech filled the little space that would become available now and then for women's issues. In other words, throughout that turbulent period, a single soldier delivered the feminist message, with very little variation.
Here, I have no intention of belittling Ustaza Fatima's efforts. To me, she is a pioneer and a determined fighter. The fact that her brand of feminism is different from mine and from that of many others, is not the issue of discussion here. A more interesting question to me is why is it that our self-declared feminists, some of whom were university professors, with supposedly more radical views, failed to lead or even create a small niche of feminist ground among university students and professional women, let alone reach a wider audience? To what extent can we attribute this failure to the fact that the majority of them were hindered by their loyalty to men-dominated organizations including progressive ones? The answers to these questions are important to our understanding of how women can organize themselves to face the challenge of the current situation having in mind that after all we have been through as a nation, the NDA still believes that secularism is for men only!
Despite the gloomy picture, we see signs of many changes taking place now. So much has happened in the last 10 years, at least among Diasporic Sudanese. We see that women are increasingly achieving more presence in the cultural and political life of Sudanese communities and that they are increasingly more able to articulate their concerns with mush more independence from old structures and old concepts. I think it is essential that women should strive to have a strong presence in the intellectual life in the Diaspora and engage actively in delineating and dissecting the basis and conditions for women oppression. We should not be deterred by the fact that we are outside Sudan now, because we are not as isolated from Sudan and from the people inside as many would like us to believe. Another factor is that the political leadership of the NDA is itself outside the country, so a lot can be done to try to exert pressure on it in order to accord women
the respect they deserve. The practical aspects of how to get together and act towards achieving common goals should also be explored. I hope the next few months will bring palpable results in this regard.
These were quick thoughts as I have tried to make this contribution amid an acute shortage of time but hopefully the discussion continues in future opportunities.
Thank you very much for your time.
Nazik Hammad