We can't ignore the crisis in Sudan

"WITH profound sorrow, I implore you all, without accusing anyone of indifference, to open your eyes, hearts, and minds to the catastrophic war tearing Sudan apart and to seek strategies to end it swiftly.

- ASHLEY GREEN-THOMPSON

This call in June 2025 from Dr Francis Deng, one of Sudan's most eminent elder statesmen, has not made the headlines in South Africa's media. This is a forgotten conflict that is causing the largest humanitarian disaster in the world. It's in Africa. It's our continent. Sudan must be our concern.

I visited the country with some Catholic bishops in 1999 when people in the south of Sudan were still fighting for their self-determination that would come in 2011 with the formation of South Sudan. We started in Khartoum, the capital where the Blue Nile and White Nile meet to continue as Africa's longest river. At that time Omar al Bashir was in charge having taken power in a coup. But his regime was removed by the 2019 popular uprising, continuing Sudan's proud history of nonviolent resistance (intifada) against military dictatorships in 1964 and 1985.

The military have always sprung back, though, as happened in this phase of the country's life. This time the fighting began in April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).