Sudan’s revolution, although now less prominent on the global stage, marks its fourth year this December. The uprising against President Bashir’s thirty-year Islamic kleptocracy began in December 2018 in response to the latest rounds of economic austerity and the political tactics of repression central to their implementation. Since then, a civilian transnational government, usurped by a coup, has come and gone with little having changed by way of governance. Below the level of a political landscape marred by elite competition and international backing is a story of politics from below, with youth, women and marginalised ethnic communities renegotiating the terms of a collective Sudanese identity from within their new localised political institutions; ‘the committees’. This seminar seeks to illuminate this latter project, asking if another Sudanese polity beyond the historical coup-transition is possible.

Speakers
Raga Makawi is an MSc student at the Africa Studies Centre, who is writing her thesis on the role of knowledge production and dissemination in shaping political legitimacy. She traces the revolution’s prominent narratives through their representative institutions to gauge how power is reconstituted away from the state. In this seminar, she is reflecting on that theme in the larger debate around political settlements, a new one already in the making.
Kholood Khair is the founding director at Confluence Advisory, a policy ‘think and do’ tank based in Khartoum, Sudan. She is a policy and political analyst, current events commentator and radio broadcaster. Kholood will provide an overview of the current situation in Sudan and moderate the speakers and the seminar.
Dr. Khalid Mustafa is the Undergraduate Program Director and Associate Professor at McGill University’s Institute of Islamic Studies. He is author of the book ‘Black Markets and Militants: Informal Networks in the Middle East and Africa’ from Cambridge University Press.
Ahmed Ismat is a member of the Khartoum South Resistance Committees and the official spokesperson of the coordination committees of Khartoum city.
He will introduce the work the committees are doing in leading on a new political project from below through an overview of the integrated charter; what it represents as a bill of rights and popular expression of will, how is it being consolidated and approved and why the process has been fraught with many obstacles.

This event will take hybrid form, with speakers in both Oxford and Khartoum contributing to the discussion.
Join us on teams at this link:
teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_Y2ZkOGJjMzQtZjJiYS00NDA0LTgyODktYWU0YjYzM2ZiNzRm%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%22cc95de1b-97f5-4f93-b4ba-fe68b852cf91%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%2255e84603-af9d-45d2-9604-052642f43cfc%22%7d