Tribute to human rights icon Albaqir Al-Afif Mukhtar
By Suba Churchill, February 14, 2025On January 23, human rights defenders in the Horn of Africa were thrown into mourning following the passing away of Dr Albaqir Al-Afif Mukhtar, a revered figure in Sudanese civil society and steadfast advocate for human and cultural rights in the region.
Mukhtar was the founder director of the Al Khatim Adlan Centre for Enlightenment and Human Development (KACE), named in honour of another Sudanese political activist, thinker, philosopher and intellectual of the highest calibre, Al Khatim Adlan.
Far from its current status in which its prestige has been greatly eroded by years of internecine strife and intellectual decay, the University of Khartoum was once a learning institution of international repute, well-known for rigorous academic and intellectual discourse.
Adlan majored in philosophy at the University of Khartoum’s faculty of arts, after completing basic education at Medani Secondary School.
Information on KACE’s website adds that at a very young age, Adlan joined the Sudan Communist Party while still in secondary school, rising to member of its Central Committee. “He was a fierce advocate of voluntary unity amongst Sudanese people, based on universal values of equality that recognises religious, cultural, and ethnic diversity”.
This at a time when the divides that still plague Sudan, one of Africa’s largest countries, extended to the southern region that seceded on July 9, 2011 after decades of civil war and loss of lives to become the world’s newest nation, the Republic of South Sudan.
In 1994 Aldan left Sudan for the UK to escape persecution, reuniting with his family in London. Having tried to initiate radical reforms within the Communist Party without success, he and his colleagues resigned to found the Sudan New Democratic Forces Movement in 1996.
His radical thinking and pragmatism are epitomised in statements he made as he quit the Communist Party: “I realised from the early 1990s how the Marxist project for social change had been proven wrong by history. I have not chosen to fall back on the 30 years I have spent in that project; nor am I paralysed by fear to form or construct a new way of thinking and create a new identity. I care not what people, dead or alive, will say. I went back to the roots of all our projects, declared it to myself and now go public: that it’s the interest and right of the people to live in dignity, peace and justice”.
Little wonder that the fallen Mukhtar, who seemed to have been looking up to Aldan as a role model, easily found it befitting to immortalise him through the establishment of KACE, a civil society organisation promoting a democratic and multicultural Sudanese state in which human rights are respected.
Through his ingenuity and resourcefulness, Mukhtar used KACE as the primordial germ cell to convene like-minded human rights advocates and groups in Nairobi in 2016 that culminated in the formation of the Horn of Africa Civil Society Forum (HoACSF).
Mukhtar then guided and mentored the HoACSF fraternity, encouraging them to aggressively widen the civic space for citizens and their organisations. He always appealed for solidarity and synergy – critical enablers of the transformational power of the people within the context of prevailing social, economic and political dynamics in the region.
Under Mukhtar, the HoACSF punched above its weight as it responded to one crisis after another, including the war pitting the Tigray region against the federal government of Ethiopia. To the HoACSF, he was a faithful patriot, a true leader always on the side of the oppressed, and one who never walked away from any battle in defense of the marginalised. As we mourn the loss of this extraordinary individual, the HoACSF extends its deepest condolences to his family and the broader community of citizen groups in Sudan and the region.
— The writer is the Executive Director of the Kenya National Civil Society Centre and chairperson of the Horn of Africa Civil Society Forum — suba_churchill@yahoo.com-