The Reactionary Déjà Vu of Sudanese Politics (I Wish Tomorrow Were Now)   Captain Mohamed Hassan Al-Tahir  

🔎 The word Déjà vu is of French origin, meaning “seen before.” It describes a psychological state in which a person feels that the current situation has already been experienced, even though it is happening for the first time.

This sensation of returning to the past without progress becomes a symbol when projected onto politics.

⏳ When politics turns into a closed circle, repeating itself without innovation, it becomes like Déjà vu—leading to regression instead of benefiting from accumulated knowledge. The past should be absorbed and transcended to pierce the veil of a dark future with a bright sun and hope for a better tomorrow.

– “I meet you in a time gone, a time coming, and a time yet to come—I see the past in you tomorrow (I wish tomorrow were now).”

Regression here is not merely clinging to the past, but reproducing the same mistakes, the same slogans, and the same crises, as if time does not move.

In Sudan, this often manifests in recycling the same faces and speeches, leaving the future captive to an unresolved past—stuck in repetitive chewing of old conflicts with little innovation.

⚖️ Living politics is only that which invents new solutions and responds to the challenges of a changing reality.

But when it becomes mere repetition, it loses its essential function:

– Leading society toward progress.

The regurgitation of the past in Sudanese politics has left it trapped between:

– Old slogans

– And recurring crises,

while innovation remains absent or besieged by a state of unawareness—at best described as a condition of istihmar (mental stupefaction).

🧠 Ali Shariati distinguished between:

– Nabahah (critical awareness that leads to liberation)

– And Istihmar (deception that keeps people in ignorance).

In Sudanese politics,

– istihmar is often employed through emotional rhetoric or religious and nationalist slogans to cover up failure, while ….

– nabahah—the awareness of citizens—is the only condition for breaking the circle of Déjà vu and regression.

🚀 Progress and prosperity are not achieved through regression or repetition, but through awareness and innovation.

Sudanese politics needs a new mindset and a forward-looking vision that sees:

– Economy and finance as tools for building a modern state (not merely distributing spoils).

– Investment in education, infrastructure, and good governance as the path to breaking the vicious cycle and turning Déjà vu from a curse into a lesson.

✍️ In this sense, “The Reactionary Déjà Vu of Sudanese Politics” is not just a literary description, but a diagnosis of a reality that keeps repeating itself. Breaking this cycle requires:

– Political courage,

– Popular awareness,

– And innovation that opens the road toward a different future—one that transforms the backward Déjà vu of the present.