Sit-ins and strikes win more support in Sudan

A strike at Sudan’s government-owned SEEN Flour Company in Red Sea state near Port Sudan has sharply posed the challenges for the continuing uprising.

The flour workers started an indefinite strike last week for better wages. Journalists report that there are bread shortages in Port Sudan because of the strike.

This is adding to a sense of crisis as the military threatens protesters and there is also a lack of electricity and water.

On Friday, thousands of people in Suakin near Port Sudan closed part of the Khartoum-Port Sudan highway. The continuing sit-in is “to call for the demands of the revolution”.

The multiple crises can be solved only by decisive action. Workers and those fighting for change have to create their own democratic organisations.

The flour workers, and those building the barricades to protect Port Sudan’s sit-in, have to come together. They have to take over the factories, set new wage rates and decide who gets the bread they produce.

They must fuse political and economic demands.

Umbrella

The Transitional Military Council that took over after the fall of dictator Omar al-Bashir remained in office at the start of this week. It is opposed by the Declaration of Freedom and Change, an umbrella organisation of opposition groups.

Occasionally the military threaten or, in some places, attack the sit-ins that have continued for weeks across Sudan.

Two people were wounded when the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the main government militia, tried to break a sit-in in Zalingei, Central Darfur, last Thursday.

The RSF is commanded by Lt Gen Mohamed Hamdan (known as Hemeti), deputy-head of the TMC and effectively vice-president of Sudan.

Support for the sit-ins is reaching all corners of society.

Members of the Sudanese Tennis Association in Khartoum, whose facilities were confiscated and demolished under Bashir, marched to join the sit-in in Khartoum last week.