VIDEO: Breaking the Colonial Grip on African Journalism

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by Peoples Dispatch.

Tensions simmering between Sudan’s army and the powerful paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) boiled over into armed clashes on the morning of Saturday, April 15, following disagreements over the integration of the autonomous RSF into the army’s command chain.

The issue of integration was a key aspect of a deal that Sudan’s ruling junta was to sign with right-wing civilian forces to share power with the latter. The left in Sudan has been critical of the proposed deal, questioning the sincerity of the parties. Speaking to Peoples Dispatch a few hours before the fighting broke out, the Sudanese Communist Party’s Foreign Relations Secretary, Saleh Mahmoud, said “Both the forces, the army and the RSF, have a mutual interest in escalating armed conflict, so that it can be used as a reason to not hand over power to the civilian forces.”

According to the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), the air force carried out strikes destroying RSF’s Tiba and Soba base in Khartoum State on Saturday. Heavy gunfire began in the morning in several cities, including in the vicinity of the Presidential Palace and the airport in the capital Khartoum city.

Earlier, the RSF, which is led by the ruling military junta’s deputy chairman, General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, aka Hemeti, claimed to have taken control of the Presidential Palace, the seat of the junta’s chairman and army chief, General Abdel Fattah al Burhan.

Later, however, after continued fighting, the SAF claimed that the RSF troops had left their weapons behind and fled the the presidential palace area to hide in the residential areas. The army has called on the residents to stay home.

The RSF had also claimed to have taken control of the airports in Khartoum and in El-Obeid, over 400 km southwest of Khartoum in the state of North Kordofan. It also claimed control over the military airbase in Merowe, 200 km to Khartoum’s north, in the Northern State which borders Egypt.

While Hemeti is backed by the UAE, Egypt, which is said to be backing Burhan in this internal struggle, reportedly has planes in this airbase, making it a crucial infrastructure.

On April 12, at least a hundred RSF vehicles surrounded this airbase. Sudan Tribune reported that  “the army surrounded the RSF troops and requested them to evacuate but the paramilitary force refused.” Subsequently, military vehicles of the RSF also rolled into Khartoum and several other cities.

Complaining that “this deployment and repositioning” of the RSF “clearly violates the law,” the SAF spokesperson issued a statement at 3 a.m. on Thursday, warning that the  “continuation” of such deployments “will inevitably cause more divisions and tensions that may lead to the collapse of security in the country.”

According to the RSF, which first issued a statement on the fighting, clashes began after a surprise attack by the army on its troops in Soba, before simultaneous attacks on its bases in several other cities. The SAF has in turn accused the RSF of lying to conceal its own aggression.

RSF and the Army Worked Together to Protect Military Rule from Pro-Democracy Movement

Established in 2013, the RSF was formed by coalescing the various militias used by the state during the civil war in Darfur in the 2000s to commit alleged war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.

Omar al-Bashir, the former dictator under whose administration these alleged crimes were committed, stands trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC). He was forced out of power on April 11, 2019, about four months after the start of the pro-democracy protests that have come to be known as the December Revolution.

By the time of his ouster, the RSF had become, and remains, one of the most powerful organizations in the country with a vast financial network built on mining gold in Darfur. Hemeti had pledged over a billion dollars to help stabilize Sudan’s central bank in the aftermath of Bashir’s removal.

Such increasing power and influence of the RSF have been making the army uneasy over the years. Reports about underlying tensions between the Burhan and Hemeti have been frequent. However, united with the intent to maintain military rule and protect it from the December Revolution, the two forces had been working together.

The junta formed by the generals in Bashir’s security committee after his removal was chaired by army chief Burhan, who in turn declared RSF head Hemeti his deputy on April 12, 2019, exactly four years before he would deploy the RSF to surround Merowe military airbase.

When the mass sit-in demonstration occupying the square outside the army HQ continued after Bashir’s removal, insisting on a civilian administration, the junta deployed the RSF on June 3, 2019. In the massacre that followed, RSF troops killed over a hundred protesters, wounding many more and raping several while the army watched over from its HQ.

Right-Wing Parties Seek Compromise with the Military Junta, Again

In the aftermath of this massacre, right-wing parties in the coalition, Forces of Freedom and Change (FFC), entered into negotiations with the junta, forming a joint civilian-military transitional government in August 2019. In protest against this compromise, the Sudanese Communist Party (SCP), a key player in the December Revolution, broke away from the FFC, which was formed in January that year to represent the pro-democracy protest movement.

Under this power-sharing arrangement with the FFC, the military controlled the defense, the police, the foreign policy, and much of Sudan’s economy. The little power that was ceded to the FFC-chosen civilians in this government was taken back with the military coup in October 2021, since when military rule has been absolute.

“No negotiations, No Compromise, No partnership” with the military, is a slogan that has been resonating in the mass-protests that have continued since the coup, regularly drawing hundreds of thousands to the streets in several towns and cities across the country.

Disregarding this popular call for the complete overthrow of the junta and the prosecution of its generals under a fully civilian transitional government, the FFC returned right back to negotiations after the coup, seeking a compromise and partnership with the military again.

The unpopular negotiations were supported by the Trilateral Mechanism, formed by the United Nations Integrated Transition Assistance Mission in Sudan (UNITAMS), African Union (AU), and the seven-countries regional bloc, Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD).

The United States threw its weight behind these negotiations, imposing pressure on the military as well as the right-wing FFC parties to make compromises and come to another power-sharing agreement.

Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which are backing Burhan, and the UAE, which is backing Hemeti, all want a military regime in Sudan, albeit with different hierarchical structures, Fathi Elfadl, national spokesperson of the SCP, told Peoples Dispatch.

“But the Americans,” he added, “have been pushing for a comprehensive agreement with the FFC to establish a civilian authority, which, however, will only serve as a cover for the real authority that will be invested in the Security and Defense Council controlled by the junta.”

Under much Western pressure and growing threats to their authority from the radical mass-movements below, the junta and the FFC signed a Framework Agreement in December 2022, laying the path toward a final political agreement on another power-sharing arrangement.

By then, at least 120 had been killed and thousands injured in the crackdown on pro-democracy protests by the army, the police, and the RSF. Yet, unwilling to compromise with the military, the network of over 5,000 local Resistance Committees (RCs) across Sudan, which have been leading the mass-protests since the coup, rejected the agreement, and vowed to continue mass-actions till the junta is toppled.

Hundreds of more protesters have since suffered injuries in the crackdown that has continued despite the junta’s commitment in the Framework agreement to respect “international human rights charters.. freedoms of peaceful assembly and expression”.

While the agreement stated that a civilian Prime Minister will be the supreme commander of the armed forces, Burhan clarified to media only days later that the “civilian Supreme Commander of the SAF” neither “presides over the army chief” nor appoints him, but “only approves recommendations made to him.”

Despite these demonstrations of bad faith, the FFC proceeded under the aegis of the trilateral mechanism to negotiate the contested issues left unresolved in the framework agreement.

These included the review of the Juba peace agreement which has brought no peace to the war-torn regions like Blue Nile and Darfur where hundreds of thousands have been displaced since in continuing armed attacks, mostly by the RSF and the militias it supports. Another contested issue was the nature of transitional justice for the victims of the June 3 massacre and other atrocities.

With several compromises, the FFC had found common ground with the junta on most of these issues by last month when the signatories of the framework agreement announced that the final political agreement will be signed by April 1. This was to be followed by a constitutional declaration on April 6, and finally, the establishment of the new joint transitional government by April 11, the anniversary of the overthrow of Bashir.

‘Only Way Out of the Crisis Is to Restore the Revolution’

However, on April 1, the signing of the political agreement was postponed to April 6, and then indefinitely delayed. The FFC said that the delay was caused due to a disagreement between the army and the RSF over the integration of the latter into the former’s structure.

While Burhan is insisting that the integration should take place within the two years of the transitional period by the end of which an election is to be held as per the agreement, Hemeti has refused, demanding 10 years.

“By lining up with the RSF in this dispute, the FFC has lost the little credibility they may have been left with after entering into negotiations with the junta for the second time,” SCP’s Foreign Relations Secretary, Saleh Mahmoud, told Peoples Dispatch.

While the FFC has denied the allegation, Middle East Eye reported that according to a draft of the final agreement it has seen, a period of 10 years had been agreed upon for this process of integration. Given that the FFC claims that it is only the disagreement within the security forces that is impeding the final agreement, the provision of 10 years in the draft might be an indication of the FFC’s willingness to allow the notorious paramilitary another decade of autonomy.

One explanation for the alleged siding of the FFC with the RSF is that the RSF agrees with the FFC that parties that have not signed the framework agreement should not be a part of the political agreement or have a share in state power. Burhan, however, has shown his keenness to also include other parties outside the framework agreement, especially those who had been in alliance with the ousted Bashir’s Islamist National Congress Party (NCP).

With the escalation of hostilities, however, the prospect of a final political agreement on the basis of the framework agreement has practically fallen apart, argued Mahmoud.

SCP reiterated in its statement that “the only way to get out of the crisis is to restore the revolution and establish the authority of the people.”

KIENI, Kenya—After traversing rivers, hills, valleys, sharp bends, and swaths of uncultivated land in the drier parts of central Kenya, this reporter arrived in early November to hear Anne Nyambura’s story of abuse at the hands of a Saudi employer.

Nyambura is a 53-year-old mother of five. In 2018, she traveled to Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, with the promise of being able to send money back home with what she would earn as a domestic worker. But unable to withstand the working conditions, she breached the contract after a year.

“I was allowed to eat for only five minutes, given a lot of work and paid peanuts, contrary on what we had agreed on the contract,” the former domestic worker said. In Saudi Arabia, Nyambura expected to take home $800 per month. Instead, she received $170, or less than 25 percent of the agreed-upon amount. Meanwhile, the same role in Kenya would have earned her $150 each month. And, so, she returned to her homeland emaciated and poorer than before.

“It was a waste of time,” said Nyambura, who is among 100,000 Kenyans who have traveled to the Gulf countries to work, but whose dreams of earning to support their families have placed them in dangerous circumstances.

‘Biting Poverty’ Feeds Kafala System

Now back in the Kieni constituency in Kenya’s Nyeri County, Nyambura told Toward Freedom she had nowhere to report the dispute with her Saudi employer because the decades-old Kafala system was at work.

Gulf Cooperation Council states, such as Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as well as the Arab states of Jordan and Lebanon have abided by the Kafala system to regulate the relationships of migrant workers with employers (“kafeels”), according to the International Labor Organization (ILO). It has been in place since the 1950s. That is when countries that had experienced a construction boom after discovering oil under their feet needed skilled laborers that they could not find among their lesser educated populations. However, migrant workers have for years aired complaints about the system. “Often the kafeel exerts further control over the migrant worker by confiscating their passport and travel documents, despite legislation in some destination countries that declares this practice illegal,” the ILO states in a policy brief.

Nyambura told Toward Freedom her employer did exactly that, plus took hold of her identification card and mobile phone, among other items.

“The issue of documents being confiscated by the employers is under Saudi Arabian law and we cannot be blamed for that,” said Mwalimu Mwaguzo, a chairperson of the Pwani Welfare Association (PWA), an alliance of 20 private recruitment agencies based in the coastal city of Mombasa. “The Kafala system that people are complaining about was introduced with the Saudi Arabian government to curb running away of domestic workers from their employer and we, as agents, have no authority to eliminate the system.”

But that is not all, according to Nyambura.

“The employer was everything and you, as a worker, have nowhere to take him in case of assault,” she told Toward Freedom, lamenting that sometimes she would get slaps and blows from the employer and that she was denied food for a couple of days.

“Biting poverty fueled by lack of opportunities is compelling many Kenyan women to travel to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries to search for greener pastures, but reaching there many regret,” she said in a low, angry tone. “Returning home becomes an added burden.”

Making matters worse, at least 89 Kenyans—most of whom were domestic workers—died in Saudi Arabia between 2020 and 2021, according to Kenyan Foreign Affairs Principal Secretary Macharia Kamau. Their bodies were returned to Kenya or buried as unknown persons in Gulf countries. Plus, organs had been removed from some of the bodies, Kamau reported.

Mwaguzo told Toward Freedom detainees in Saudi deportation centers are either on the run from their employer or are involved in prostitution.

Remittances Flow to Kenya

According to the ILO, the migration and employment system implemented by most countries in the Arab states region is based on a relatively liberal entry policy, restricted rights, and a limited duration of employment contracts and visas.

Kafeels are liable for the conduct and safety of the migrant they bring into the country, and they can exert control over a migrant’s movement and employment.

The ILO Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations (CEACR), which is responsible for evaluating the application of international labor standards, has noted “the kafala system may be conducive to the exaction of forced labor and has requested that the governments concerned protect migrant workers from abusive practices.”

Meanwhile, Amnesty International has said the situation in Qatar had worsened as it prepared to host the 2022 World Cup using migrant labor.

According to an article published by Global Policy Journal, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) estimates more than 2.1 million workers in the Gulf from around the world are at risk of exploitation and work under inhumane conditions. In the past, some countries had halted deployment of domestic workers to Saudi Arabia. Such bans improved working conditions, increased salaries and lessened mistreatment.

If the governments of Kenya and other countries halted to deploy their workers in the Gulf, could things change?

Migration to the Gulf continues providing thousands of job opportunities and billions of dollars in remittances. Around $124 billion was remitted in 2017 from countries that adhere to Kafala. Statistics from Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) show remittances from Saudi Arabia have more than doubled in the last two years to Ksh 22.65 billion ($179 million). That amount was sent back home in the first eight months of this year, ranking the Gulf nation as the third-largest source of remittances for Kenya behind the United Kingdom and the United States. However, 2021 remittances marked the fastest growth, with a 144 percent climb since 2020.

Reports of Rape and Torture

As the country continues enjoying remittances from the Gulf, Haki Africa, a human-rights organization headquartered in Mombasa, estimates more than 200,000 Kenyans in Saudi Arabia are working in different companies and homes, and that most are working under inhumane conditions. The organization’s estimate is double that of the Kenyan’s government’s.

Haki Africa Executive Director Hussein Khalid said the Kenyan embassy in Saudi Arabia has been ignoring complaints, fueling the vice.

Khalid said most of the Kenyan women in Saudi Arabia have undergone sexual assault, physical abuse and mental torture. He said, this year alone, the organization has received 51 complaints from domestic workers in Saudi Arabia.

“We would like to urge the government of Kenya to speed up the rescue process for our women who are suffering in Gulf countries and return them home,” Khalid said. “It is the responsibility of any government to ensure that all of its citizens are safe regardless where they are.”

Joy Simiyu, a former domestic worker from Bungoma in rural western Kenya, said her Gulf-based agent declined to speak with her when she needed help. Simiyu’s employer in Saudi Arabia only allowed her to sleep four hours and eat one meal per day. Plus, the terms of the contract weren’t being abided. “[After] reaching Riyadh, I was forced to work for the relatives of the employer.”

She said one day her employer attempted to kill her, but she was able to run away and report the matter to the nearest police station. Then she was then taken to an accommodation center, a location the Saudi government runs to keep migrants before they are deported or while they are looking for work after fleeing another employer.

Now based in Nairobi, the 24-year-old revealed the accommodation center was insecure, as she learned potential employers who visited the site would sexually assault women using the promise of a job. Food, water and electricity were unavailable, too, she said.

“I would like to urge my fellow Kenyans not to go to Saudi Arabia to look for jobs, things are not good there, you better suffer in your country than in other people’s country,” she said with tears rolling down her face. “What is in Saudi Arabia is slavery and not job opportunities.”

Recruitment Agencies: ‘Mother of All Problems’

In July 2021, when appearing before the Labor and Social Welfare Committee, then-Labor Cabinet Secretary Simon Chelugui reported 1,908 distress calls from the Gulf between 2019 and 2021.

While in the Gulf, Nyambura observed governments taking action when workers from different countries contacted them about mistreatment.

“Kenyans in the Gulf are like orphans,” Nyambura said. “They have no one to protect them.

However, the Kenyan government lately appears to be taking action. A few weeks ago, Cabinet Secretary for Foreign and Diaspora Affairs Dr. Alfred Mutua traveled to Riyadh to discuss the domestic-worker issue with Saudi officials. Mutua said the two agreed Kenyan domestic-worker agencies could set up offices in Saudi Arabia to deal with issues concerning their clients. The two countries announced they are collaborating to “flush out” illegal agencies and those that break the law.

“We have to break the cartels and streamline the agencies, some of which are owned by prominent Kenyans,” Mutua told the media. He added his ministry will release a set of new instructions and procedures prospective migrant workers will be required to adhere to and meet before they can be cleared to travel to the Gulf states. The foreign ministry reported hundreds of Kenyans have been repatriated. Mutua and his Saudi counterpart agreed to the formation of a hotline (+96 6500755060) that Kenyan workers can call to report abuse.

Meanwhile, in February, the Qatari government shut down 12 recruitment agencies. The operation came a few days after Central Organization of Trade Union (COTU) Secretary General Francis Atwoli and Qatar Labor Minister Ali Marri held talks in Doha. It is part of a campaign Atwoli is involved in that also has been putting pressure on the governments of Kenya and Saudi Arabia.

Atwoli told Toward Freedom recruitment agencies must be prohibited, calling them the “mother of all problems” facing workers.

“The issue of negotiations on the terms and conditions of workers should be government to government, and not [on] the recruitment agencies,” he told Toward Freedom.

Meanwhile, recruitment agencies oppose the ban of agencies. For instance, Maimuna Hassan of Nairobi-based Asali Commercial Agencies said many people do not talk about the benefits of working through recruitment agencies. Haki Africa Rapid Response Officer Mathias Sipeta urged those aspiring to travel to the Gulf through recruitment agencies to verify them before signing agreements.

Nyambura said Atwoli has been trying to fight for workers’ rights in the Gulf, but that he gets sidetracked by Kenyan politics. She also said he lacks support from the government.

Like Simiyu, Nyambura has concluded it is better to work in Kenya. She pointed to the country’s coffee and tea farms as better options. But seeing for the first time in Kenyan history both a government official and a labor leader holding meetings with Gulf state officials has indicated to some, like Nyambura, that the situation may improve.

“Maybe under the new administration,” the former domestic worker said, “things will change.”

Shadrack Omuka is a freelance journalist based in Kenya. He writes about human rights, climate change, business and education, among other topics. His work has appeared in several publications around the world, such as Equal Times, Financial Mail, New Internationalist, Earth Island and The Continent, among others.

The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP), along with partner organizations, held events April 4 in three countries across the Americas to launch an effort to activate popular movements in the region in support of a call for a “Zone of Peace.”

The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) declared the Americas region a “Zone of Peace” in 2014. This came in response to centuries of oppression at the hands of Europe and, later, the United States. U.S. policy has related to Latin America and the Caribbean as the United States’ “backyard” ever since the Monroe Doctrine was announced in 1823.

“The U.S. declared the European states must stay out of the hemisphere, which meant the United States was claiming the entire region as its own,” said Margaret Kimberley, a BAP Coordinating Committee member, who spoke at a BAP press conference held April 4 in Washington, D.C. She added CELAC exists to counter the Organization of American States (OAS), a multilateral organization based in Washington, D.C., and known for backing U.S. policies in Latin America and the Caribbean.

After years of struggle and U.S. sanctions that have been linked to the deaths of 40,000 people in 2018, socialist-led Venezuela completed its withdrawal from the OAS in 2020. Meanwhile, another socialist country, Nicaragua, announced it was exiting in 2021.

“Biden says it is the ‘front yard’ in a clumsy attempt to be somewhat progressive,” Ajamu Baraka, chairperson of BAP’s Coordinating Committee, told Jacqueline Luqman and Sean Blackmon on the day after the launch, April 5, on “By Any Means Necessary,” an afternoon talk show on Radio Sputnik.

Launch events were held in Port-au-Prince, Haiti; Washington, D.C., USA; and in Havana, Cuba, where the call for a Zone of Peace was initially made in 2014. The event in Port-au-Prince involved eight hours of activities, ranging from performances, talks, exchanges, and graffiti and sign-making.

The launch took place on BAP’s 6th anniversary, which is the 55th anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Exactly one year prior to his murder, King had publicly denounced the U.S. war on Vietnam, as well as what he identified as the three pillars of U.S. society: Materialism, militarism and racism.

“This campaign will be informed by the Black Radical Peace Tradition,” reads BAP’s press release. “With its focus on the structures and interests that generate war and state violence—colonialism, patriarchy, capitalism and all forms of imperialism—the fight for a Zone of Peace is an attempt to expel all of these nefarious forces from our region.”

BAP describes the reason behind the use of “Our Americas” on its website:

Nuestra América is a term revolutionary forces in the Americas have used to assert themselves against colonialism and imperialism by claiming one contiguous land mass stretching from Canada to Chile for all of the historically oppressed peoples of the region. BAP has translated the singular Nuestra América (Our America) into the plural “Our Americas” to help bridge the gap between the U.S. usage, “America,” that describes the United States as the only “America” and the concept put forth by revolutionary forces.

However, Baraka distinguished the campaign’s target.

“We’re not talking about the people of the U.S.,” he told “By Any Means Necessary.” “We’re talking about this settler-colonial state. We know [the United States] cannot exist as a settler-colonial state if it gave up its militarism.”

BAP also issued six “initial core demands”:

1. Dismantle SOUTHCOM. Shut down the 76 U.S. military bases in the region
2. End U.S./NATO military exercises. Close foreign military bases, installations and enclaves, as well as withdraw foreign occupation troops
3. Disband U.S.-sponsored state terrorist training facilities. Shutter the “Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation” (WHINSEC)—formerly the School of the Americas—in Fort Benning, Georgia, United States, and terminate U.S.—as well as foreign—training of police forces
4. Oppose military intervention into Haiti. Support the people(s)-centered movement for democracy and self-determination
5. Return Guantánamo to Cuba. The United States must give back to the Cuban people and their government the territory it illegally occupies
6. Sanctions are war. End illegal sanctions and blockades of regional states, including all economic warfare and lawfare, and recognize their sovereignty

Yet, BAP is clear the method for going about this work must be different than what has emerged from predominantly-white organizations based in the United States.

“This work must be de-colonial, anti-imperialist, advance a People(s)-Centered Human Rights (PCHRs) framework, and be conducted across at least five languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese, French and Haitian Creole,” BAP states on its website.

Jemima Pierre, co-coordinator of BAP’s Haiti/Americas Team, said at the press conference that the United States uses multi-lateral organizations like the OAS to oppress the peoples of the Americas. And, so, of the initial approximately 25 organizations that had signed onto the campaign before it had been launched, more than half are based outside the United States and Canada. Some of the partner organizations that will help coordinate the effort include:

• MOLEGHAF (Haiti)
• REDH (Network In Defense of Humanity) (Cuba)
  
• Caribbean Organisation for People’s Empowerment
• African People’s Socialist Party (Bahamas, Jamaica, United States)
• Proceso de Comunidades Negras (PCN) (Colombia)
• Asociación de Trabajadores del Campo (Nicaragua)

“Our homelands are not playgrounds for the U.S. to launch its wars of aggression,” said Nina Macapinlac, secretary general of BAYAN USA, an anti-imperialist alliance of 20 organizations dedicated to the liberation of the Philippines. Macapinlac spoke at the Washington, D.C., press conference as a member organization representative of the United National Antiwar Coalition, one of the organizations that BAP has partnered with for the Zone of Peace campaign.

BAP invites organizations and individuals to endorse the Zone of Peace campaign and activate the popular movement element in what they describe as a “multi-phase campaign that aims to build a united-front opposition to liberate our Americas from the U.S./EU/NATO Axis of Domination.” A U.S./NATO Out of the Americas Network will be launched as the mass-based structure of this campaign.

Julie Varughese is editor of Toward Freedom.