The Face of Truth: Teachers’ Union… and the Memory of Chaos!

Ibrahim Shaglawy

In Sudan, education has long remained one of the most important instruments for shaping awareness. Schools and universities produced generations with a clear sense of responsibility, and in the popular conscience the teacher was regarded more as an educator and reformer than as a mere employee. However, the political and economic transformations our country has experienced in recent years have drawn education into a circle of tension and polarization.

Among the most prominent manifestations of this tension is the politicization of the educational environment, when educational institutions turn into arenas for political conflict. The teacher, by virtue of his position and influence on generations, sometimes becomes part of political polarization, and the educational mission becomes intertwined with partisan or ideological discourse.

Here an important question arises: Does the educational process need a politicized teacher or a professional one?

Experience confirms that education is more stable when the teacher is professional before anything else—professional in the sense of seeing his mission as building the mind rather than filling it, nurturing thinking rather than directing it. When ideology dominates the profession, the space of knowledge narrows, and the classroom becomes an extension of the political conflict present in the street.

From this perspective, one can read the recent statement issued on March 7, 2026, by the Sudanese Teachers Committee, which came in protest against the wage circular issued by the Ministry of Finance.

On its surface, the statement reflects legitimate anger over the deteriorating living conditions of workers in the education sector, a matter whose justice no two people would dispute. A sound educational system cannot exist in a country where its teachers suffer hardship and declining status, because the dignity of the teacher is the dignity of education.

Yet the issue does not stop at the level of demands. The statement did not merely register objection to financial policies; it went further by explicitly threatening a return to the streets and the resumption of what it called “a new round of civil struggle” to reclaim rights. Here precisely begins the dilemma that goes beyond the scope of the union to a broader question related to the political environment within which the teacher works.

After the fall of the rule of Omar al-Bashir in 2019, and during the years preceding the outbreak of war on April 15, 2023, Sudan experienced a phase of unprecedented political fluidity. Many professional sectors turned into direct political actors in public life. The Teachers Committee was not far from this context, as it led during that period a series of strikes and school closures under the slogan of defending teachers’ rights.

While supporters of these movements considered them legitimate union practices, others saw them as contributing to deepening the political polarization that characterized that period and creating a climate of instability in a country already standing on the brink of explosion.

The problem is not limited to disrupting the academic year or disturbing the educational process, but rather to what it reveals about a shift in the function of the union.

In many transitional experiences, unions transform from professional bodies concerned with defending the rights of their members into political platforms that substitute for political parties, especially when the party structure weakens or loses its capacity to influence.

At that point, it becomes difficult to distinguish between what is a professional demand and what is political blackmail.

During the years before the war, the street was the most present instrument for managing political disagreements. The prevailing idea was that popular pressure was the quickest way to extract rights or impose political balances.

Yet this equation itself contributed, to varying degrees, to creating a climate of sharp polarization that ultimately led to the collapse of the fragile balance among different forces and the country’s slide into the war whose consequences and bitterness we still endure.

The political memory still retains that famous phrase uttered at the height of tension before the war: “Street for street.” That phrase was an expression of a climate of polarization that divided society into opposing camps, where every gathering was confronted with a counter-gathering, and every protest with another protest. It ended in a major catastrophe, and the danger of invoking that climate has now become a red line for all Sudanese.

From this perspective, the language of threatening a return to the streets, which appeared in the statement of the Teachers Committee, seems to evoke in Sudanese memory a page that has not yet been turned.

A society that emerged wounded from the experience of war does not view such calls as merely a union tactic, but rather reads them within the context of a return to chaos.

This, of course, does not mean diminishing the legitimacy of teachers’ demands or calling for silence in the face of mistaken economic policies.

Reforming education begins with acknowledging that the teacher deserves a dignified life and a social status befitting his role. Yet political wisdom requires that these demands be managed within a framework that protects the educational process from slipping into an open arena of political conflict.

Countries emerging from conflicts need to rebuild trust in their public institutions. Such trust cannot be formed if the street remains the primary instrument for resolving disputes. Restoring the role of institutions—including the institutions of union negotiation—is the first step toward restoring the state’s vitality.

Education, according to #Face_of_Truth, is not merely one sector among the sectors of the state; it is the field in which the image of the future is shaped. If the teachers’ union turns into an extension of political conflicts, the greatest loser will be neither the government nor the union, but the generations waiting at school desks for a chance to build a more secure and stable homeland.

Wishing you well and good health.

Monday, March 9, 2026

Shglawi55@gmail.com