SLICE: Do not look away from Sudan – art as defiance, memory and hope

Sudan is the world’s largest humanitarian crisis. It demands that we educate ourselves and stand in solidarity, recognising how art and culture become acts of resistance. 

Sudan’s history is often reduced to coups, wars and dictatorships. But beneath the headlines are millions of people living through the world’s largest humanitarian crisis. Despite these unimaginable struggles, they continue to fight with hope.  

At the Kaza Kamba Pan-African Theatre Festival in Johannesburg on August 20-22 2026, the film Sudan, Remember Us transported audiences into the world of 2019 Sudanese protesters. In an interview with Brick magazine, director Hind Meddeb explained, “The violence of what we were seeing on a daily basis was so terrible, and not in the news, so I used the camera as a weapon”. She wanted the audience to feel the Sudanese people, “to feel the love and beauty of their culture, not just get a geopolitical explanation.”  

When Sudan is framed only in geopolitical terms of borders and political powers, people’s lives are removed from the story. Film’s like Sudan, Remember Us remind us that friendship, poetry, and community become tools of survival and liberation. A testament that creativity becomes a form of defiance and hope. 

History shows how deeply the world’s silence and complicity have cost Sudan. Since independence in 1956, the country has gone through two civil wars, the genocide in Darfur and Omar al-Bashir’s 30-year dictatorship. His regime enforced strict Sharia law, persecuted minorities and deployed militias like the Janjaweed. Even after the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Bashir in 2009, his regime lasted until 2019 and was eventually taken down by mass protests. 

Once the largest country on the African continent, Sudan split in 2011 after decades of civil war. The birth of South Sudan carried the promise of peace but has instead left a country torn apart. Borders carved by war became fault lines of power and survival. 

On April 15, 2023, a power struggle between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) exploded into war. What began as clashes in Khartoum led to one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, topping the International Rescue Committee’s Emergency Watchlist. Since 2023, more than 14 million people have reportedly been displaced, and over 33 million people are in need of humanitarian aid. Starvation devastates Darfur and Kordofan, hospitals have collapsed, diseases spread quickly, and women and children face heightened risks of sexual violence. 

Today, Sudan is split: the SAF controls most of the north and the east, while the RSF dominates Darfur and the Nuba Mountains in Kordofan. Drone strikes tear families from their homes and leave communities broken, while foreign powers fuel the conflict. Although the UN has warned that Sudan is now the largest humanitarian crisis in the world, aid appeals still remain hugely underfunded.  

Sudan’s struggle is about human beings, their culture and their refusal to be erased. In a country where traditional media is tightly controlled, protest art becomes a platform for free expression. Women have transformed henna, once just used to mark marriage, into a weapon of resistance, writing anti-government slogans on their hands and feet. Poets, performers and activists risk imprisonment to speak truth to power. These acts matter because silence benefits those who profit from war. 

Sudan is not just a war zone; it is where millions of individuals call home. To look away is to accept their suffering. To hear their story and raise their voices is to demand action: urgent aid, safer passages, and putting real pressure on those who profit from war. Sudan’s people deserve peace, dignity and the chance to rebuild. 

FEATURED IMAGE: Still from Sudan, Remember Us. Photo: Watermelon Pictures

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