A History of the Sudanese Communist Party Abdelwahab Himmat A submission presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of South Wales / Prifysgol De Cymru for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy February 2019 This is to certify that the work described in this thesis and portfolio is my own. No part of this thesis or portfolio has been presented or is currently submitted in candidature for any degree at any other university. Signed: Abdelwahab Himmat Date: Director of Studies: Acknowledgements I would like to thank the many people who have helped and supported me during this research. First and foremost I would like to thank my interviewees without whom this work would not have been possible. They gave generously of their time and knowledge, sharing the details of their lives and experience with me. Thanks, too, to my friends in the UK and abroad who helped me obtain more obscure written source materials. Warm thanks are due to all the staff and former staff – academic, library and administrative – at the University of South Wales who have helped me during the writing of this thesis. It has been a long and difficult process, severely hampered by my chronic pain and ill health and I am grateful for their patient support. In particular would like to thank Dr Glenn Jordan, Professor Sharif Gemie, Dr Norman LaPorte, Professor Hamish Fyfe and Professor Ruth McElroy. Special thanks are also due to Professor Chris Weedon for her help and support. I want to thank my grandfather Abbas Sidahmed who took me to school on my first day despite being paralysed on one side. He supported me throughout my education. Every year on 1st January, which is Liberation Day in Sudan, he asked me to hang the Sudanese flag in the roof of the house and he turned on the radio to listen to patriotic songs. About five years ago, while doing my research for this thesis, I found his name among the founders of the Labour Trade Unions. I also wish to thank my grandmother Amna Fageer Hamid Baharia, my mother Hafsa Abbas, my father Abdelgadir and my brother Abdelmoniem. My uncles Abdien, Jafar and Mahjoub Abbas influenced me profoundly. I learned from them how to become a fighter for social justice and human rights. Together with my aunts Khadija and Batoul, they have given me all kinds of support throughout my life. My wife Amel Elkonti and our daughters Minass and Sara have been an ongoing source of strength and have helped to make this thesis possible. My First head teacher Mohammed ElHasan Koko.My special friends,Prof Farouk Mohammed Ibrahim, Prof Abdullahi Ali Ibrahim, Dr Siddig Elzailaee, Mubarak Ali Osman Eldaw, Mohammed Ibrahim Abdo Kabaj, Micheal Picardi the Late Makki Aldukhri. I would like to dedicate this thesis to memory of all those who have fought for democracy and social justice in Sudan, in particular the late Elkhatim Adlan. Summary This thesis addresses the largely untold history of communism in Sudan in its changing political and social context. After over throwing Ottoman-Egyptian rule in 1885, Sudan became effectively a British colony under the Condominium Rule of Britain and Egypt in 1898. During this period, 1898-1956, Sudan underwent major transformations from a subsistence agricultural economy to an agricultural exporting economy. With the coming of forms of modernisation, political movements gradually developed, reaching a peak in the 1940s, when the major political parties were established. These post-war years were a period marked by anticolonial struggle. The Sudanese Communist Party was initially founded in 1946 as an anticolonial movement known as HASITO. Ten years later it formally became the Sudanese Communist Party. The thesis traces the party’s development from 1946 to the present looking in particular at its structure and day-to-day practice. These are areas that have not been examined in detail before. For most of this time it functioned as an underground party. Much of the originality of the thesis for Sudanese political history lies in its use of rich oral history data which throws light on unexplored dimensions of the party including the daily lives and work of cadres both above and underground. For this research I interviewed twenty-six members and former party members about their lives in the Communist Party. Their combined stories, read alongside and against official documents and available secondary literature have enabled me to put together the most detailed picture to date of the culture, organisation and workings of the party. This original research adds a new dimension to the available written literature on the Sudanese Communist Party together with an archive of oral history interviews that future researchers will be able to access. It makes an original contribution both to Sudanese political history and international communist studies. I was motivated to write this thesis about the SCP because it played such a formative role in my early years in Sudan. It was this early experience and the people I got to know from my own involvement with the party at that time that enabled me to gain access to interviewees who had never spoken out before. From a Western perspective, the thesis is of particular interest for the light it sheds on how a largely underground Communist movement functioned in a developing society, governed by a traditional, largely oral, Muslim culture. Table of contents Chapter 1. Introduction and Methodology 1.1 Why this topic 1 1.2 The Political History of Sudan: a Brief Overview 6 1.3 The Sudanese Communist Party 9 1.4 The Tribe and the Extended Family 14 1.5 The Structure of the Thesis 16 1.6 Methodology 18 1.7 The Oral History and the SCP 26 1.8 Methods by Chapter 31 Chapter 2. The Sudanese Communist Party: Origin, Culture and Development 2.1 Introduction 34 2.2 Precursors of the SCP 40 2.3 The Sudanese Movement for National Liberation (HASITO) 48 2.4 The Founding of Public Organisations 55 2.5 Organising the Working Class 55 2.6 The Gezira Farmers Union 59 2.7 Other Popular Organisations 61 2.8 The SCP and the Cultural Domain 67 2.9 International Comparisons 75 2.10 The SCP, the CPSU and the Eastern Bloc 80 2.11 An Uneven Development 85 2.12 SCP Party Culture 88 2.13 The SCP and the Egyptian and Iraqi Communist Parties 94 2.14 Conclusion 98 3. The Sudanese Communist Party: Organisational Structure and the Development of Cadres 3.1 Introduction 101 3.2 The Objectives of the Party 103 3.3. The Party and Undemocratic Regimes 106 3.4 Defining the Cadres 109 3.5 The SCP and the Concept of Cadre 110 3.6 The Organisational Structure 113 3.7 The Structure of the Branch or Cell 115 3.8 The Higher Organs 116 3.9 The Secrecy of the SCP 119 3.10 How the Smallest Units Function 120 3.11 The Cadres and the Party: A General View 122 3.12 The SCP’s Military Cadres 123 3.13 The Cadres: Specifics 125 3.14 The Cadres’ Schools 125 3.15 The Fractions and Their Role 127 3.16 Passing Information 128 3.17 Concluding Remarks 129 4. The Underground World of the Sudanese Communist Party 4.1 Introduction 131 4.2 Background 133 4.3 Internal and External Influences 134 4.4 The Underground Apparatus 137 4.5 Qualifications 148 4.6 Daily Life as an Underground Cadre 152 4.7 Recognising Cadres 164 4.8 Where are Underground Cadres to be found? 169 4.9 Escapes 171 4.10 The Importance of the People 174 4.11 Cadres’ Standard of Living 177 4.12 Written Contributions 178 4.13 Humorous Situations 179 4.14 Concluding Remarks 181 5. Communists and Islam: The Case of Sudan 5.1 Introduction 184 5.2 Religion and the Establishing of the Communist Party 189 5.3 Marxism/Leninism, the SCP and Religion 191 5.4 The Early Years: 1946 – 1971 195 5.5 The SCP, Religion and Women Leaders 207 5.6 The Years of Decline: 1971-1989 209 5.7 The Current Situation 211 5.8 The Membership 216 6. Conclusions 219 6.1 Economic and Social Conditions for Party Building 221 6.2 Legacies of Marxism-Leninism 223 6.3 The Future of the Party 228 Bibliography 232 Appendix 1: Notes on People 245 Appendix 2: Notes on Places 259 Appendix 3: Notes on Organisations, Publications and Cultural Practices 260 Chapter 1 Introduction and Methodology 1.1 Why this topic Being a member of a political party, especially the Communist Party in a developing country like Sudan, is difficult and can have many unpleasant consequences, indeed it can be extremely difficult to practice politics without involving personal risk. This thesis addresses a largely untold history of the Sudanese Communist Party and the people who dedicated large parts of their lives to the socialist cause. Since independence from Britain in 1956, Sudan has gone through frequent periods of dictatorship by governments that have stood against democracy and done their best to fight the very existence of democratic parties. The unstable nature of democracy in Sudan has produced three military coups followed by military dictatorships. The first and second periods of military government were from 17 November 1958 to 21 October 1964 (Ibrahim Aboud), and 25 May 1969-6 April 1985, the regime of Jaffar Numeiri. The third coup on 30 June 1989 produced an Islamist dictatorship that remains in power today. Each of these regimes was characterised by political repression and resistance and communists figured largely in both.