By Peter Gaisiance,
The Fluent Diplomat Is An Influential Woman Of High Calibre. Conversation With Dr Abeer About The Problems In Two States: The Democratic Republic of Sudan (DRS) and the Republic of South Sudan (RSS)!
May 20, 2017 (Nyamilepedia) —— On this day, Wednesday 3 May 2017: I left my place just about midday to see someone who I have never heard of before. When I arrived at their reception I delicately asked whether Dr A was in his office, then I was immediately corrected by a handsome receptionist, who said ‘She is she, sir,’ and ‘not him’ and smiled. I said oh, that’s alright. Then after a brief moment I was told she expected to see me and there I was show the way to her office, and all my feelings at that moment can be described as totally hanging upside down as I was wondering along the way what she would expect of me.
The conversation was started first about the extinction of Northern White Rhinos in Africa, a very rare species indeed which is declared to be extinct in the Northern Sudan and as she corrected my conception of this story which was on telly the other day about the only rhinos that is left in the wild of that species is a ‘Male Northern White Rhinos’. She said it is already in Kenya and the rhino is called ‘Sudan’. I was shocked and then she provided prove of her evidence which I could neither disputed nor be able to challenge as there was no contrary to her story. The conversation extended to other areas that affected life in the Sudan and South Sudan, and it was, if recorded, in English that is why I said it will be interesting to see when it’s translated from English to Arabic. I think it will be critical to the warring factions and regimes on both sides of the New Sudan and Old Sudan, as I was left with nothing to defending on but to expose the immense failure of our people from the bottom of the society to the top of the ruling class and elitism, in which all of them expected neither themselves nor their leaders, but the foreigners powers or the miracles to rains down from heaven to the earth like rains to solve their problem.
I did not and would not expect her or anyone else who heard our conversation to agree with all of my viewpoints and certainly I am expected accusation of cynicism and negativeness from those who disagreed with me and were guilty of something, because that is the way the thing is done in these countries. Suspicious characters from all sides always put-up some awkward bare-wises, or a fence of defends by making counteraccusation, for example, if you said this is the communist’s views and the other is likely to responded by saying the contrary that you’re capitalist or fascists too, and the arguments goes back and forth, but this will not relish my description of these people, who were nothing but cowardly and empty shown-down people, on both sides of the aisles and the middle business men in the country who will not admit to anything. For example, those who earned easier moneys in billions of dollars, who would not put back anything to the economics either through the charities or setup a new factories and manufacturers to create thousands of jobs to boost the country’s economics to increase the employment. They should know better than anyone else that the purpose of money is not to take them to overseas which will only benefits other countries but to put them back into the circulation in the market to benefits the community with employment. As the uneducated class and young people, will they see themselves as Sudanese, when nothing shown it that they were provided with the services as citizen of this county, as citizens of other countries are provides with a similar services, or will they see themselves as helpless victims of this country’s endless conflicts and economics catastrophic past?
I am not suggesting that there is a uniform views of opposition or objective criticism in both countries, and anyone who calmly listened to it will certainly recognise the worth of this conversation – because this is a special conversation at the special occasion, between an educated fluent diplomat who representing her country at the higher level and someone who representing only himself or the views of those who are dissatisfied and forgotten people on both sides of the countries. The New Sudan is not like the Old Sudan and neither country is not like the neighbouring countries or any developed country in Europe, so you have to take into consideration what make these two countries uniquely differently in every level of the society. Of course, no one is certainly saying that this is the first conversation the fluent diplomat ever had with the Southern Sudanese, her office is pack with visitors every minutes and she received countless letters and emails everyday too where she deals with particular section of the diplomacy work and enquiry to represent the viewpoints of her government. However, this was my first conversation with fluent diplomat and influential woman like her in this country and certainly anywhere in the world. We departed from original discourse about animal interests to explore widely the present disagreements and current conflicts in the country as a whole and the nature of all Sudanese everywhere regardless whether they are from the North, South, West or East of the country.
As the fluent diplomat lady pointed out herself that this is a theme that engrosses her countrymen and countrywomen everywhere for donkey’s years. I do not know how long is the donkey’s years, but I just guessed that is long enough to be like hundreds years which would be regarded as since immemorial time. There was one particularly interesting point which we both agreed upon it that all Sudanese are alike in one thing because they are such people, who don’t write very much about themselves in the meaningful manner such as writing about one’s autobiographies and biographies is rare either because they are lacking interesting story to tell to the world which is impossible to believe it because everyone’s has a story to tell or they are too embarrassed about it but they do talk proudly and very much about themselves, endlessly and vehemently, and usually without reaching much agreements whether they stated it straight to the course or went astray about it. It is a sort of perennial family arguments.
A spiteful and bad-mannered family argument could be dismissed because it hardly scratched the surface of the family shames and corruption as they are protective to some extent, no one is so stupid enough to expose his or her family to the outsiders to the point of destruction, no matter what the level of disagreements or where the conversation took a place.
But, a Sudanese is a Sudanese, he or she knows what each other is talking about, and to bring the family argument out onto the open was a very dangerous thing to do. While neither accused his or her fellowmen of any sort of atrocities openly without backup the story apart from the Juba atrocities committed by Dinka government of President Silver Kiir against the unarmed civilians who were all Nuer, there was total silent in other areas of similar acts committed by either side. Indeed, each person was as free to defending the undependable act or as free to expose them, the thing they do to each other or to themselves which does not make sense and admits their weakness, and this is not a thing that people usually don’t like to talk about. When we look into a mirror we tend to observe ourselves, where marks, blemish and spots are, that spoiled our look can be removed, we intend to do so and where it is not possible to remove the ugly parts of ourselves, we intend not to look at it at all, so we left it to the foreigners to look at it if they so wish to embarrass and humiliate us or if they prefer and adopt to our behaviour as we are not bothering by it at all. The defects is a shame and stigma that can be left as it is or corrects if the people concern are in a position to correct their defect which is hardly to believe because they never do and the same applies to the guilty warring factions in this part of the world who never admit their guilt or never like to correct what make them to behaved like that even if it is correctable.
Well, who am I to say these things? I could be wrong like the rest of them. I was talking calmly but other might say it was emotion expression of some sorts, whatever their opinion might be, she thought of me as a nature person as I was expressed myself naturally and only about things that concerned everybody, who experienced those things day-after- day, year in year out. I was not afraid to add my opinion to the situation as I pointed out that the warring parties did not reached far enough the people or did not concerned themselves very much about the people’ plights, whether there was starvation or other epidemics and on-going catastrophic, after all some of them wanted to eliminate other people entirely, who were not from their closed quarters or groups. In another word the tribal conflicts has gone deep in the south in which the assailants there reached the point of no returns as they killed and massacred tens of thousands peoples from other tribal groups and they are not afraid to kill or massacred more. The fluent diplomat said she was very much optimistic and indulgent, for a good thing like a peace and normalcy to return to the country as a whole. I couldn’t agree anymore, if I was in her position I would be saying the same thing and always urged other to do their bit for the country.
For the people who once time lived in the South Sudan and who are foreigners and are not like myself on other hand, if they ever heard our discourse, I am sure they would agree that the conversation was special, extraordinary and informative because it tells the true situation which they were all familiar with it in the country. It may not tell them anything that is entirely new or that was not guessed at before, but on almost every aspect of life, whether it be the state affairs of the government which is ruthless and merciless and the nature of the nation-state which doesn’t resembles any other nation- state in the horn of Africa or in the whole continent of Africa, and which reflected only a particular people’s interest which is certainly few and not the vast majority people of the country and some leadership’s minds which is so thin and blockheaded, and the devious foreign workers in the country, who allowed the business of the concentration camps to be carried on in the capital Juba and in the town like Malakal, Bentiu and Leer because it is profitable. What would they said about the Hitler’s concentration camps in Germany during the Second World War? If this was acceptable to the non-Jewish, but what about the Jewish who experienced holocausts, would they condole it or condemned what President Kiir is doing to the Nuer in South Sudan? We live in the world where flow of information is made easily by the advancement of technology, so nobody and certainly no Israelis government or America government or European government or anyone who live and works in the vibrate city could claims that they were not aware of the calamity after calamity that took place in the South Sudan or anywhere in Africa. Even the Boka-Arom is popular not because they are recognised but because of what they do which appeared the moments it happened in some media or internet before it is shown on telly. It take a little knowledge to learn about the situation of other people in other countries because of the Internets, medias and satellites which brought the world closer as one exceptional big family with so many colours of different races, and certainly there’s no excused for anyone for not knowing what is going on in this world, particularly those countries which can influences and may alters any situation in the developing countries where there were man-made disasters, crisis and natural catastrophes, because of their input there, as they are always known to be the funders of some schemes and projects. If you are given moneys for those schemes and projects, why would you not know the situations in those places which have reached a calamity?
The fluent woman said something about the tribal division in the South Sudan, which has gone deep, in which I nodded several times in disagreement on that points. Then she ask, will they ever really came together again? Well, I said, you know when a man’s family, relative, friend, neighbours and everyone he knows or he knew since childhood were killed or massacred by the people who used the power of the governments which supposed to protect them all, especially in the case of that man in office, who became as ruthless as evil and candid as that Dinka who had massacred Nuer in cold blood in their thousands and still put those who still alive in the concentration camps in the capital city and towns across the country which nobody wanted to talk about, then he is entitled to ask a question: Why? Why do so many millions of us loss their fortune, freedom, liberty, land and family overnight, and why do so many more millions loss their lives or hopes? To leave it to the Gods as it is that will make you less than a human, in fact that will put you back straight to a slavery and full colonials, which we all know about that generations after generation were killed, and massacred in millions to liberate us or themselves from it. And if you want to find answers to those questions that will requires some kinds of retributions and or avenging whether in the form of court investigation which will lead to trial and convictions and sentencing, which you would never achieved in this situations as long as the accusers were still the ones in the governments who runs court system and governing the country, even if they were just a small portion to it they will still be the obstacles to this.
The alternative always to this thing is the self-determination which mean you have to fight to death in order to create your own entity so that you don’t gaze or gawk eye with eye in a rude and stupid way with your enemy again on the same table. What Northerners did to the Southerners was a discrimination when they negligent them and refused to develop their regions in the same way as they did to the North Sudan. The Southerner responded by going to the bushes and asked for self-determination as an alternative to federal system which was created and failed them. The Southerners went to the bushes twice in 1955 which came to an end with Addis-Ababa Agreement of 1972, then the Southerner went to the bushes again as early as in 1976 within four years of the Addis- Ababa Accord with those of Vincent Kuach-Tut-Jwok. Although the breakout of the insurgents in the South, namely, SPLA became widely known in 1982 which came to an end with the Comprehensive Peace Accord between the SPLA/M and the Government of Khartoum and other warring parties, who signed the same agreement or separate agreements with the Government in 2005 until the Northerners had enough of it and agreed to separate the country.
But in all these struggles there was no known concentration camps and massacred of Southern civilians by the Northern government in large numbers in big cities and towns anywhere in the country from the north to the south from the start until the end of the conflict, but the Southern people were still bitter of the conflicts and as a result they did voted for nothing less than separation.
In comparison the atrocities and massacred committed by the Dinka government in Juba against its own people particularly Nuer then later turned on to other small tribes, which was worse than any period in colonials. If they don’t wanted the separation of the south Sudan into several independence nation-states, then everyone who lost someone will be entitled to ask: Why? Why do they killed and massacred our families and relatives if they wanted to live with us together? Because no matter what kind of any apology they purported to give, no matter what level of compensation they might give to the survivors and remained relatives of those deceases, one thing they will never be able to do is to bring back all those people who they killed and massacred.
The ugly part of this is that it is the Israelis governments or agents who has given that man in juba a satellite which is used against the displaced population and against the Nuer and other minority in the South. Who can imagine that one day the Israelis government or their agent or Jewish person will sponsors a government in South Sudan or anywhere in Africa which reminding them of holocausts and concentration camps of Adult Hitler? The Ugandan armies and military machines were used too to help the totalitarian regimes.
Can people change, and if so, for the worst or better, she asked. I used to think very naively, I told her that once you were born a ‘Sudanese-Nuer’, you always remained a ‘Sudanese-Nuer’, no matter where you born or where you went to school or where you go in the world or whatever the level of your education attainment is. The danger of the war and displacement from within or from your own country to another country has changed all that concepts. The culture of every man even the ‘Sudanese-Nuer’ is sometime breakable when the person is expose to many frightening situations: by war, by hunger, by starvation, by epidemics diseases, by internal displacement by the immigration where he is further exposed to extreme situation of discrimination in another man’s country, by stricken poverty, by the lack of education, by the delay and by the lack of progress in his life whether in term of education or other form of developments or where he was exposed to the lists of defects if he was in a place where he learnt nothing new but the arts of deceit and corruption he will became weak and frivolous and heart-breaking or crafty or if he is lacking in everything he will lost his confident in the world around him and beyond. I think that’s how a person, whether for worst or better can change, if those circumstances were found to be existence in his life.
The political situation in the South is very complicated in a sense that the country as a geography itself is a collective of many tribes which should not be confused with the meaning of the word ‘race’. There are known four African races and one Arab race existence there in the Sudan for centuries. The four African races are:
- Nilotic consists of Nuer, Anouk, Muller, Acholi, Shullok, Dinka and countless other tribes.
- Bantu, consists of Zulu, Manyika, Ndau, Manenguba, Sawabantu, Basaa, Bafia, Beti, Makaa–Njem, Kele–Tsogo, Teke–Mbede and others.
- Hamitic consists of Tutsi, Hutu, several tribes in Ethiopia, and many more.
- Nilo-Hamitic, which consists of Masai, Bego, Geneina, Lagowa, Liguri, and Shatt, who live scattered across the continent of Africa.
- Arab, which consists of baggara, Zurug, Himayd and Beni Selam, and many more.
Each tribes like Nuer contained layers of sections and clans and Somalia has several clans too. So South Sudan has at least 65 tribes and North Sudan has 675 tribes. The problem though is not how many tribes or nationalities or ethnicities are found in one country but how you governs the country without the agreement of every tribes, since the colonist used division among themselves which remained to be the issue to this day in Sudan and certainly in most Africa countries.
What about the problem of location of capital city: is Juba secured in term of food supply and security? No, but there’re other places that can be a great city than Palm City because there is an opportunity to create a vast area of several hundred miles of shallow water without grasses alongside the River Nile that is deep just enough for useful purpose of tourism, playful sport, boats, wildlife and businesses alike like fishery and Juba is not one of them. First in the Western Nuer near Koo, Rumnor, Rang 50 miles south of Adok Bar is an obvious location and second in other places, depends on political atmosphere and economic situation in each region. The second and obvious choice is likely to be on the east bank in central Nuer and region like junction of Sobat and White Nile. The climate or the beauty of the land of the country – South Sudan is another issues that each region has its own characteristic, climates, advantages and disadvantages. Greater Equatoria as a whole is beautiful and rich in natural resources as much as Bhar El Ghazal and Greater Upper Nile are.
Juba town is most of the time hot or humid and has a small land to accommodate the population of big city. To be frank, there are some indigenous in Equatoria particularly in Juba who don’t like foreigners mainly Nilotic whether you be Nuer or Dinka or other Nilotic because of experience of uprising in 1982 which led to decentralisation of the south into three regions until 2005. Bhar El hazal is made up of four states and is the greater in land and in human resources as well as in natural resources but it is mostly inhabited and dominated by Dinka tribe which various ethnicities in Equatoria fears and would not accept that the capital city will be placed in their heartland because they will make the rest of them subhuman. Every enlightened person in the country is aware of
competition of tourism in Africa, Asia, Meddle-East, Latin America, Europe, to attract and competes with the rest of the world to be minded that the choice must be second to none. In any event everyone wish to have the capital that is big, beautiful and will have no problem with stability, economic and security both on a short-term and long-term so that it can gets recognitions and gets its place in the world maps as one of secure destination for tourism in order to be able to compete with beautiful capital cities in the world.
Khartoum as a capital of Sudan is a great city because it is situated in the beautiful junctions between White Nile and Blue Nile River and the Tutu Island in the middle of its all is equally beautiful and unique location for wildlife and human inhabitations, and other purposes. Cairo is also beautiful city because of its location along the River Nile as Cape Town is. Rio de Janero is another remarkable and beautiful city because of unlimited richness in sands which create special beaches along the coast. And so the New York with River Hudson and other rivers which made it beautiful city. London and Paris are made great cities because of rivers across the middle of the city. Juba capital city is under a dreadful humidity most of the autumn, winter, spring and at the beginning of the summer that you cannot find anywhere in the rest of the country.
When the time is right to make that decision then there is of course need for scientific study and reports to be prepared by experts from different field so the government would have to allocated special funds for this study in each regions, the experts may include anthropologist, economist, engineer, constructor, architect, geologist, social scientist in all area and so forth. The reports must be debate in parliament and allocated to special committee for scrutiny before it is send to a particular ministry of the government with recommendation to adopt it and implement it. There may also be special equal funds allocate to each region to build within two years the city of their choice then after all that the comparison would be possible because this will be another way of distributed the wealth and created employment in every region.
Who will clear-up all these messes? Certainly, there are several men who are capable of cleared up the messes but the question is not who can do it but the question is the party because SPLA or SPLM is branded as Mafia organisation and everyone has lost confident in it or in those who run it. But that is not the end of it, there’s always someone ready for the challenge. Certainly, if anyone was going to tackle the ongoing crisis in the south there are several Nuer who look capable to lead their people but the problem is, although these blokes look very capable of holding the public office of leadership, many of them were never tested before with public office or power, but if anyone can do it, RMT can. At present he is the man. The son of proper Nuer, he himself has been for years an outstanding scholar, academician, and lecturer at the University of Khartoum and was acquainted with most of the leading Sudanese public figures in the North. For example, he knows the working group of the NUP inside and outside and its leader – Azhari. He knows the working group of the Islamic Charter Front Party led by late Dr al Turabi, he also knows Umma Party and its leadership such as Imam El Hadi, Sadiq El Mahdi former prime minister, and Mohamed Ahmad Mongoud the former leader of Umma Party and late prime minister. He knows the working group of the National Congress and its leadership included President Omer El Bashir, who he worked with in 1995 as Assistant President after he signed the peace accord with them as Nasir Faction which was a branch of SPLA/M since split from the mainstream SPLA/M in 1991.
He joined the SPLA/M before or shortly after he completed his PhD from Bradford University when he discovered that he could not returned to his hometown because everyone there of his calibre had either went to the bushes to joined the struggle or migrated to the North from the South because of the widespread hostilities and escalation of the civil war mainly in the south of the country. While studied in England he was one of many Southern students who was approached and recruit by the SPLA/M and were taken to Triple, Libya in the 1980s, where they were given basic military training and orientation in SPLA/M philosophy and objectives. He became bilingual at very young age when he was allowed to go to local school by his mother, which was predominated taught in Arabic where he mastered his second language and became fluent in Arabic which Nuer considered at the time as foreigner language. He knows the origin conflicts between the Dinka and Nuer and knows very well the Dinka elites, he studies with them at the senior secondary school up to the university of Khartoum, he also knows Dinka politics and their obvious hatred of Nuer as his father was killed by them when he was very little boy that was why he was always called among Nuer who know him ‘Gat Nyagonyang’, after his mother’s name because he was raised and brought up by his mother who worked hard and struggle to pay for his school fees, after his father was killed by Dinka in one of the ethnic wars between Dinka and Nuer. He saw foreigner occupation armies in his hometown because of the ‘Anya-Anya I’ which frequently attacked them and the police post in Leer his hometown. He knows something of communism and communists’ struggle against the dictators and fascists because they were frequently purged by every government that came and gone in Sudan, for example President Japaar El Nimeire. He was one of very few and lucky boys who successfully completed his studies at the local school where he sat for Sudan certificate and eventually went to the University of Khartoum which was by then the only prestigious school in the country as a whole, where he was the only Nuer who and perhaps the only southerner who graduated and was given job there as a lecturer at the same University. He knows the Northerners’ politics as much as he knows the Southerners politics as well (they arrested him as a student in 1970s) and he was put again under house arrested shortly after he was in 20013 in the South Sudan when he was suspected of coup or accused as one of the ring leaders of the coup against sitting President Silver Kiir which failed prematurely before it taken off and reached the point of no returns. He denied that there was no shred of evidence of a coup at all. He was put under house arrests while his colleagues, for example, John Luke and Pagan Amum and others eleven former government ministers were arrested. The arrest was a cover-up by the government which had fired a dozen of his ministers included Vice- President, most of whom were all Nuer.
In a proper democratic society if the head of the government dissolved the coalition government by fired half of the cabinets and ministers, who were all from other parties, the parliament would pass the vote of no confidence in the government or the President would be compelled by the will of the people and the constitution of the country to call for general election, which president Kiir did not do. Though that is another topic for another day. So RMT, was a victim of his success. He knows very much of the Northern politics as much as he was too familiar with the working group of the National Congress and many parties, he was the third Deputy and Assistant President of the Republic of Sudan of President Bashir. He knows very much about the mineral in the country particularly in the south as much as he is too familiar with oil exploration by chevron in Bentiu in Western Nuer and many multinational corporations, He was the one who authorised and signed the agreement for refinery to be opened in Port Sudan as Assistant President. As he wrote thesis and several articles about oil management and production and got hold of his article from the University Archie or from other sources. He knows American politics and British politics as well; his second wife was a white English lady who died in a suspicious circumstances which involved car crashed in Nairobi in 1994. It was suspected that there was a conspiracy to kill him or his white English lady because of the SPLA/M feared that he was getting more attention from the west because of her.
The current situation in the South Sudan justified our suspicious of conspiracy then that the SPLA supporters whether foreigners or otherwise were behind the plot to kill him or his white English lady. His third wife was white
American lady and it was the reason why he might be targeted. Because he has the necessary qualification which are almost essential for anyone who is going to make important decision if he succeeded in his leadership contest. He would be the one to decide whether or not he still wants to do business with British or American who betrayed him. He never had children with any of these ladies, but he has three children with his first wife who is half Nuer on father side and half Shullok on mother side. As many experts pointed out that there is no special person for the leadership of any political party, but the really difficulty is how to succeed when you’re there at the top. It is hard to lead in any polarised society by races and tribal causes because it is hard to satisfy anyone’s needs as their need are always beyond limited resources and races is something you cannot replaced with anything. You cannot be two kinds of leader at the same time, you’re either that type of Silver Kiir who believes in Dinka were born to rule or a nationalist leader who is for everybody regardless of their creed, origin or social status.
The southerner people, as well as the South Sudan as the landscapes of the whole country, have so many defects, in land: it has so many places with low lands with lot of rivers and streams and raising waters during the raining seasons which flooding the lands which make the land small as majority of it will be flooded. But it is advocated that this problem can be easily solved with technological advanced because the both sides of embankments could be raised high above the water levels in several mini canals regulates the waters, as these can be closed and open whenever it is necessary to release the pressure of the water or to hold back the flooding waters. This, of course, could only be achieved, If only there is proper government, proper stability and economic prosperity and right leadership with a clear vision for the whole country. This was not the problem at all as ideas and technology know how to regulate and control the floods can always be borrowing from many countries but in particular, Netherlands is remarkable and has plenty of expert in this field.
The great pitiful is that the regimes caused considerable damages to its people and would be harder to persuade anyone to forget and forgive them for all those mistakes which include the atrocities and massacre of Nuer and other small tribes.
In this situation, everyone who is implicated or involved in one way or other in the conflict has his images, reputation and credibility tarnish or damage by all these things. Everyone is regarded as venal, shiftless, heartless, deceitful, cynical, unreliable and likely to run away as RMT did twice when he split from SPLA/M in 1991 when he joined the government of Khartoum in 1995 but ran away too to the bushes to join the SPLA/M which he once deserted. These records make it harder for anyone who know the history and certainly give the enemy the tools of propaganda against him and his supporters and everyone else who does not wanted Nuer leadership in the South to succeed regardless whether it be RMT or someone else.
As the memory of the incident of 1994 flood back, we wonder how stupid we were then when we did not question anything about the incident when every evidence shown that the British were behind the plot that killed that woman in Nairobi. Her beautiful photographs taken when she was in the South were published by the UK tabloid every morning which is read by millions in UK and Europe. When she was killed in suspicious circumstances involved car accident, the British sent their agent to defuse and derailed any possible reactions. The agent happened to be Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Carey who was sent to South Sudan to cover-up the incident but his tours was very controversial one as it was opposed from several quarters. Partly because he did not go to any Nuer land even to the place in Leer in Western Nuer where she was buried but to Bhar El Ghazal and all Dinka areas instead and partly because the Sudan government in Khartoum was also protested that the tours of Archbishop was illegal. They made it a big issue between the two governments as they claimed the west were helping the insurgents, outlaws and rebels in the South Sudan in fact the SPLA/M in particular.
What evidence can one give, if ask? Well, she did not leave any will for those in Bhar El Ghazal. She did not died in Bhar El Ghazal. She had never worked in Bhar El Ghazal. She had no friend in Bhar El Ghazal, and she was not married to Dinka or to anyone in Bhar El Ghazal, yet every penny and all her funds that were raised in her name were channelled through the Christian Aid, which distributed and spent them in Bhar El Ghazal as if she was a Dinka wife or had a particular interest there. In addition, the Archbishop who went to South Sudan visited all Dinka areas except Nuer land and did not visited any place where she work or where she was buried in Leer in Western Nuer, so the conspiracy to do something against Nuer was long plans by English that was why they also hired a number of people from various places to undermine us in everywhere so that we may not qualified to investigate this problem one day.
If Nuer are politically sanctioned by the Dinka, Arabs and the rest of the tribes in the south or in the Sudan as a whole or sanction by the outsiders not to be educated and not to be allowed to rule, can they do this forever? If so can this country be lovely again where the native or other peasants wakeup in the morning smile, stretch out his muscles and ready to go to work to gather a variety of fruits in the farm and accompanied his herd of cattle to the nearby grasslands, while the city boys and girls grabs their bags in the morning and run to the schools like their parents before them used to do without fears of backlash that will lead to instability?
The answer is no, it is the former colonial who instigated all these hatred and sanction against the Nuer because they know them better, the way they live, their strength and weakness in term of economic and mental stamina. It is the British and American who had their eye upon Nuer for different reasons, it is Egyptian who had their eye on Nuer perhaps because of Jungle Canal and waters Nile or for very different reason, it is
Ethiopian who had their eye on Nuer perhaps because of Gambali region which was given to them by President Ibrahim About in the 1950 shortly after Sudan gained its independence from Anglo-Egyptian rule which was meant to be very temporarily but it was never returned to Sudan, or for very different reason, it is European who had their eye on Nuer for very obvious reason, as Dinka has had their eye on Nuer for very long time for an obvious reason, and the rest of the world did not give damn who survives and who is eliminated from any contest, all their eyes were gaze only on the Provincial corrupted politician who can give them the right to explore the mineral and drill the oils in the backyards of the Nuer family homes. While they do neither care about the oils explorations’ consequences for polluted rivers and poisoned waters and fish, nor do they care about their infrastructures, nor do they care about signing proper investment that will be created jobs and benefits a large number of people in the community. The multinational corporations are the friend of every corrupted politician who drops every time they saw a white envelope with a few US dollars in it, whether that is what is called greedy, corruption, embroil, more ebullient but less embellishment or call it what you like, it doesn’t matter at all, all that count is the power that protects them and cover-up whatever they do.
The Nuer politicians are too corrupted but not as much as Dinka politicians are. Why? We know this since the time of slavery and colonialization of Sudan by Turkish, Egyptian, British and Arabs. Unlike Nuer, Dinka will be deceived you by nature and are double faith, and has split personality and characteristics that could never be matched by Nuer. As Dinka, he acts with full deceit to assured his beneficiary, recipient, and master’s wants. He is always pessimistic and frightening of Nuer so he usually submitted into the outsiders in order to betray and sell out this and that. The Dinka’s nature of submission and betrayal cannot be cured, it is like catastrophes that cannot be averted but only mitigated. That is why when the SPLA/M was under their leadership of Dr. John de Garang for 22 years the movement could not hold together and split in 1991 because they killed Nuer. The Dinka who controls the leadership in the SPLA/M and were in charges of any alleged breaches of its conventions, killed Nuer in their thousands. They killed bright young people and bright students like Young Paul who was known and respected among Nais. They too killed many Nuer commanders and politicians like Choul Deang and Samuel Gai Tut, because they wanted the leadership of the movements to come not from any other tribal group in the country but from them so that they will be credited by the government for it when they take people back to New Sudan or Old Sudan as that was the main purposes and general aim of the SPLA/M then under the leadership of Garang. The ideas of the self-determination did not come from the SPLA/M movement but from Nasir Faction led by RMT when the SPLA/M split into two group in 1991.
Samuel Gai Tut was the predominated Nuer politician in the whole Sudan because they arrested him several times for challenged the President Numeri and President of the High Executive Council Mr Abel Alar in the 1980s. And when he went to the bushes he was killed by Garang along with many Nuer. When the CPA was signed in 2005 which ended the 22 years civil war in the Sudan, as soon the government in the South Sudan was under another Dinka leadership President Silver Kiir, they secretly trained tens of thousands soldiers in Bhar El Ghazal who became known as the Presidential Guards, without even the knowledge of the Vice President who was Nuer and everyone in the government. It was these private militias, who with the order of President Kiir killed Nuer again in thousands in cold blood on 15 December 2013, which led to current crisis in the South Sudan for the past four years, and the outsiders again seems to turn blind eye to Dinka crimes by focusing their attention and sanctions on Nuer. When Nuer were the victim of Dinka government. Nuer can only be mitigated the Dinka onslaughts on them and will never be able to avert it all together. Historically, this is not a new thing but there are old envy and hatred found between races as Nuer and Dinka came to exist. Dinka were known to being the only people who were recruited to work as interprets by the foreign invaders both during the slavery and colonial era because they were very good in sell out and betray others. There was no records of Nuer being the agent of British or Arab or Turk or since Anglo-Egypt rule but Dinka was and still are doing the same thing they used to do when this country was under foreigners’ occupation. For example, they spent hundreds of millions of US dollars to hired foreign mercenaries and the armies of President Museveni of Uganda against their own people mainly against Nuer. And no Nuer ever betrayed or sell out their own people or other group to the outsiders, partly because they are patriots and loyalty to their country and its people whether now or when we were together in the Old Sudan, or in the New Sudan or in the South Sudan, partly because they have never relied on outsiders like other people.
The Nuer way of life down the centuries is one of the nomadic to some extent which is limited to summer time when they moved their cattle from one place to another in search of better and rich pastures and grazing, free movement, cattle herding, resistance to the slavery, colonial and famine, one of the resilient too, born free, loyalty to his family, relatives and country. There’s no other like Nuer in that sense that is why they lost out because the colonial and slave masters did not give Nuer tools and wealth of modern trade and education as they rewarded other groups who used to help them with slavery and carried out colonial policy.
Nuer population is reduced significantly down the years from many millions to just few millions because they always fall victim to someone since Europeans, American and Arabs had invaded all coasts of Africa, and some countries deep in the interior Africa, as Sudan was invaded and colonised by layers of invaders and wave after wave of foreigner colonials and invaders ever since.
During all this crisis, the Nuer mastered the art of war for centuries. Although they take life easily in order to survive
and mitigated disaster after disaster and circumstances like these in South Sudan they rather prefer to glide elegantly over the surface of life and leave the sell-out business to Dinka and slaves masters. Why? Well, mainly, it seems, because they do not wish to combine and coalesce like other people they recognises just one assurance basis on existence of family – the Nuer family, used to value marriage with cows, in that way they practice all the applauded virtue within the family, loyalty, transparent, truthfulness, rituals, ceremonies, big wedding, small wedding, fair play, generosity and so forth. But with the time they do not always remained the same. They were forced by the unusual circumstance to change just a bit to go about or change whether they like it or not. Through the time the Nuer had witnessed something unusual within the family as well as outside of the immediate family. The family embattled. It must learn a new art of survival and of defending oneself not just against other family but against the Dinka and foreigners and above all in recent time against the Dinka Government of Silver Kiir. There is an old say that goes with the Nuer legend that came down the generation that once a man leaves his animals: cows, sheep, and goats in the field at night alone without supervision of someone with them, he must knowingly invited all kinds of animal: beast, lion, hyenas, or theft to help themselves or attack them and if any dude leaves the front door of his house open he is at war with outside world and in crisis anything goes–double dealing, trickery, dissimulation of any kind.
In my conversation with the fluent diplomat we discovered and perhaps realised one crucial point that everything we touched in our discourse, every topic, every issue even the family one, economic crisis, inflation, war, disagreement among the people, and level of our dissatisfaction, it is a vicious circle. Why? The family can never be really safe because of the Dinka government that has already made mistakes after mistakes, committed masses atrocities and massacred in the short span of time in the name of protectionism on behalf of its Dinka cannot go back in time to
the place and position it used to be and be effective government again, cannot avoid corruption and mismanagement, because of their sins gone deep and because the rest of the family will never fully support it.
The legend of everyman is repeated every now and then that the man invented the tools to defeat the enemy and discipline themselves or other as they see fit, to forget disgrace and misfortune to a man‘s anxiety and angst, to sleep and comfort him in his solitude, morals and fair play in the Nuer sense is forgotten and doesn’t come into it. The world as we know it is divided into two: the educated class and the uneducated class, the rich and the poor, the middle class and the very low class. The conversation of the educated class is always very different to that of the uneducated class for a very obvious reason. The native in the rural regions are presumed and perhaps rightly thought so to be uneducated for very good reason that since they remained in the Dark Ages or in remote areas which is isolated from the rest of the world by lack of urbanisation and development as they would be relied only on the primitive tool which could not matched the tools of educated elites, for example in war you can’t imagine a man with spear can compete or fight the man with helicopter gunship or other modern weaponries. In that sense the Nuer has no modern weaponry and relies on the outside sometime for survival.
The capitalist is still almost incomprehensive to most Nuer both in the urban regions and rural regions which is untouched by the civilization and the those who dwells in the urbans areas who admire, envy and imitate the modern trade or the work of the civilized society, often very unsuccessful, its outwards aspects, its power and its practical products too. The native would be on the side of those who doubt it if they ever exist at all. Nuer in the village or in non-urbanised areas whenever they heard of story of their children who went to schools or worked in the urbanised zones and comeback and tell their parents, family, relatives and friend and neighbours about the thing they saw in person, experienced and heard.
The story goes on like this that in the city and town or in the place with effective government there is something called rule of law which is totally different from the one they used to have in their regions and villages. They would immediately dismissed it as pure fantasy or nonsense. They heard and listened as they were told a story of a man who involved in the fight and when he was knock down his opponents wanted to beat him and kick him down there until suddenly a voice in the crowds screaming and shouting at the top of his voice, which diverted the attention of everyone who started to turn around and look at him instead at those who were fighting, even the man down there tried to have a glance at them and wonder what everyone is looking at, they all gazed at one direction to have a nibble glimpse of a direction where a strange voice and screams was coming from, it was not him he knows. The voice in the crowd said ‘No, don’t and never kick a man when he is down,’ he said. ‘Why not?’ he asked. ‘It is forbidden’ he replied. ‘By whom?’ he asked. ‘By law,’ he replied. And another voice commented that I do not think the Nuer really obeyed that crap or law. They laughed and the fight end from there which save his life. The victim rose then to his feet from where he was knocked down and walked away with just a few bruises and managed to avert the brutal damage that was about to unleash if that dude did not surge with a silly joke from anywhere. The rest of the crowds carried on with the conversation that a man should not be kicked if he is old, if he is strong and can immediately kick back, if he can avenge himself latter, if he has powerful friends and relatives, if he could be useful some day in any way, or if the policewoman is not watching, why policewoman? Because a policewoman is attentive to little things and will take action to report it. While it will take a couple of persuasions or kicks and punches before a policeman reacted or realised it is serious fight and not a boys’ plays or jokes because every man when he was a boy he got used to such thing – play hard as boys, which if you observe from a distance it looks to him like usual plays or jokes or it is difficult to tell whether those two boys were really fighting or playing or joking.
Why has Nuer such a legend which was never heard before in other society? The answer is in the culture and tradition which with exception of few things is almost universal because Nuer in the old day has no rule which protects elderly, children and vulnerable people and animal because they take those things for granted as rights as Nuer with his cows are inseparable as English egg and bacon. The society used to be healthy, no mental illness, no disease except when the weather is changed, culture is superior over others because a child is born free, is disciplines, nurtures, loves, protects, respects and coaching by everyone as there was never any special social status for anyone, everybody has his or her place in the society. If they ever went to school everybody would be sent to the same school, and if you’re talented and gifted in any sport or warrior, you will be applauded at the time of war or game and after everything is over everyone returned to their usual place and every man is a king in his own castle and not a subhuman or slave to anyone.
As a child we were told both by our parents and adult in the family and stranger that please children don’t’ forget the history of your parents and where you came from. Often they started with something interesting like a song that became folklore or a story of somebody who had everything but one day when they targeted him he lost it all because of injustice in this world. For example, those in Europe who wanted Jews without Jews began to loot and destroyed their property, following by masses deportation and concentration camps which led to the last phase of extermination. It became clear that the Jews were innocents and not guilty of any crimes. How could they be? A crime of one person in any family is not a crime of everyone in the family. It does not make sense that there were target simply because someone who happened to be Jew or Jews committed a crime. Why all Jews became victims everywhere in those countries in Europe even in those countries which purported to support them where they were still targeted? The only logical explanation was that the cause
of all this was the jealousy. The white man has a very powerful jealousy when it is unleashed, it became toxic and uncontrollable. So much of the racial hatred, violent and hostility toward Jews in all these places were derived from their wealth and their disproportionate representation in the ranks of commerce, bankers, lawyers, doctors, scientist, even the first American atomic nuclear bombs which were used simultaneously in two Japan’s cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was constructed and built by the Jews scientists in United States, so there you have your first evidence. The racial hatred, violent and hostility toward Jews before and during the second world war in Europe is derive from their tremendous wealth and their unrivalled position in banking, in law, in the field of science, technology, arts, architectures and in every field which caused some people became jealousy of their wealth, money, property and success and during this period of holocausts, their property fell into the hand of liquidation commission that was set up for the purpose of acquiring the asset and for the purpose of distribution. Those who were sent to concentration camps are already practically all dead now and have left no heirs to claim their assets belong to Jews who were exterminated in the concentration camps. Jewish who survived all these were able to go back to the land of their ancestors where they were able to set up their own state because they had the necessary skills and stamina and resilient, without having their own nation-state their problem in Europe will not be resolved even they could tried to finish them if they had not already done that as millions of Jewish perish in holocausts. The Jewish survived the holocausts because they returned to Israel – the land of their ancestors and also because they have the necessary professional skills and wealth and knowledge of know how to start from scratch. But what about Nais, what do they have?
The Nuer (Nais) in other hand, use to have the wealth but that was when Sudan was one. They had their land, cattle and other domestic animals which they used to rely on and was the only thing that make them feel proud like property owner
and wealthy people but that is gone now. The first and second and current civil wars in South Sudan has reduced them almost to nothing. The current conflict will definitely finished them as they are massive displaced and massacred in large number. If Nuer were killed by Dinka, why are you Nuer or Nais in Juba still with Dinka?
RMT background was academician, scholar, engineer, and something civil. Although he was trained in Libya and Ethiopia by the SPLA, he had never got hold of it. He was given a pistol and the power to use it if necessary. I saw him in Nasir in 1992, but he looked civilian then and wish to remain like that to this day and the native like him as they see him as someone who have something in common with them. He was not really a military man by nature or even by training. In the bushes, he surrounded himself with native from villages who are very strong men who loved him but they have no education and don’t speak Arabic or English language like him, as they considered those as foreign tongues. And when he was in the government in the city, when he became the Vice president of the Republic of South Sudan he behaved as if he was still in the bushes. He made few friends or had no new friends at all particularly the educated and intellectual Nuer have isolated him or he was the one who isolated them and when the problems occurred he is alone. As he has no one who rushed to the rally and media to defend him or to enlightening the people of the problem. He had not made many friends among the educated class and intellectual who in the time of adversity can come to support him because they have had the necessary skills to write and able to disseminate information widely. That is why if you ask anyone of his opinion he will tell you that RMT has a little chance to win the general election if the call for it before this crisis because he had not tackle that problem and he himself had still a very few friends except the native which is not sufficient. But, change, if any, should be for the better and not for worst, I think but we shall see.
Peter Gaisiance can be reached via p.gaisiance@outlook.com
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