Youssef al-Sewahly took to the streets in Sudan late in 2018 along with other protesters having one goal in mind: to get rid of the autocratic rule of Omar al-Bashir and replace it with a civilian-led government.
They’ve achieved their first goal, however, they still wait for the second to be accomplished.
Now, he and other young protesters find themselves with their futures on hold, suspended with the uncertainty of the post-uprising transition.
Nearly a year after al-Bashir’s ouster, the country is stuck in a dire economic crisis. Inflation stands at a staggering 60% and the unemployment rate was 22.1% in 2019, according to the International Monetary Fund.
The government has said that 30% of Sudan’s young people, who make up more than half of the over 42 million population, are jobless.
Farida, 26, graduated from the University of Khartoum in 2017 with a degree in education. Since then, she has not been able to find work as a teacher, the Associated Press reported. Farida, like many young people, predicts the return of protests if things don’t improve.
Today she helps her mother who works as a tea street vendor in the capital,
“The situation is deteriorating, and prices are skyrocketing,” Farida said.
“If they cannot find a solution, people will take to the streets again.”
“Our trust in the military is zero, we do not expect anything from them,” said al-Sewahly, 19, who stopped attending high school when the protests started.
Al-Sewahly and other activists have found a refuge at a charity center just blocks away from the former location of the sit-in in the center of Khartoum. It sprang up as a central point where family members could come for help as they searched for protesters missing and feared dead in the June 3 crackdown. It has since come to serve as a sort of community center.
Al-Sewahly and his friends sleep there most nights.
On the walls outside the center, a mural with faces of dead protesters reads, “Shame on us if the blood of the martyrs was shed for naught.”
It was high bread prices that had finally motivated many Sudanese people to take to the streets after years of oppression. At first, they were a motley crew of young men like al-Sewahly. But their numbers grew, and the scattered marches in the dusty alleys of the suburbs morphed into the permanent sit-in outside the military’s headquarters. Women and people of all ages and classes joined.
Al-Sewahly said that’s when he began to think they had a chance.
“We came to the conclusion that we would continue on the path to overthrow the al-Bashir regime and build a new free country,” al-Sewahly said.
Online and on television, he and other young people grew up seeing a wider world that didn’t match their homeland.
Sudan was cut in half when South Sudan seceded in 2011. Al-Bashir continued ruling the north with an iron fist, as the economy started a slow nosedive without the south’s oil resources.
One of the clearest symptoms of the dysfunction was a lack of opportunity for youth. In 2013, a spike in fuel prices sparked protests that were brutally squashed, with about 200 demonstrators killed, according to rights groups.
For some young people, the lack of progress has transformed glimmerings of hope into disillusion.
Al-Amin Ali, 30, trained as a civilian air pilot, but has been working as a taxi driver since his return from South Africa in 2017.
A year after al-Bashir’s overthrow, he said he is looking to again leave the country. He says the interim government is far from meeting the basic demands of the uprising — justice for previous crimes, and a decent standard of living.
“Emigration is the only chance of success,” he said.
