October 21, 1964: In Sudan, ten days of general strike topple General Abboud

On October 21, 1964, Sudanese police opened fire on a student meeting on the grounds of the University of Khartoum. Student Ahmad al-Qurashi was killed. Nine days later, the military regime of General Ibrahim Abboud, in power since 1958, had given way to a civilian government. It was toppled not by a coup, but by a general strike.

Everything started with a forbidden debate. The regime had tolerated the university discussing the "Southern problem," the conflict between the Arab-speaking, Muslim north and the Christian and animist south, before banning these meetings and imposing a curfew. The students ignored the order.

A funeral of 30,000 people

On October 22, 1964, al-Qurashi's funeral brought together more than 30,000 people and turned into an anti-government march led by university lecturers, according to the Global Nonviolent Action Database (Swarthmore College). The professors resigned en masse; on October 24, the processions reached Omdurman, Port Sudan, and Juba.

It was then the intellectual professions that tipped the country. Doctors, lawyers, judges, engineers, and teachers formed a Professional National Front, which merged on October 25 with the party front. The strike paralyzed the administration, communications, and businesses. Junior officers refused to fire and stood between the army and the protesters. Abboud dissolved the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces and his council of ministers.

Four years of democracy, then the return of the military

On October 30, 1964, a transitional government was formed around Sirr al-Khatim al-Khalifa, a senior education official who had spent ten years in the south of the country. Of the fifteen portfolios, eight went to the Professional Front, five to the parties, and two to independent Southerners, according to the Library of Congress country study; Clement Mboro became the first South Sudanese Minister of the Interior. Abboud, who had remained head of state, resigned on November 15, 1964.

The transition also granted women the right to vote, and in the 1965 elections, Fatima Ahmed Ibrahim became the first woman elected to the Sudanese Parliament, notes historian W. J. Berridge.

The victory remained incomplete. The vote could not be held in the South, where insecurity reigned, and this urban, northern-led revolution left the peripheries behind. In 1969, the coup by Jaafar Nimeiry swept away parliamentary democracy: Nimeiry had, however, been one of the officers who refused to fire in 1964. The human toll remains debated: the Swarthmore database documents only one death, while the Library of Congress mentions "many deaths."

Key takeaways

On October 21, 1964, Sudanese students, doctors, lawyers, and union members toppled a military dictatorship through a strike, without taking up arms. Sudan would demonstrate this again in April 1985 by ousting Nimeiry.