”We had a dream, burning like fire ehey , dream has come true today,we are believers believing in struggle ehey, dream has true today” a quote by Mr. Kang JJ.
By Tor Madira Machier,
Opinion.
Oct 03, 2014(Nyamilepedia) — We were early last week surprised unexpectedly by the news that the goverenment of South Sudan which have been denying and rejecting the call for federalism has eventually agreed and gave up her rejection which has now paved a way for its introduction. We triumphant, we win we the people of South Sudan. The federalism which we have been advocating for long time ago before the independence of the old Sudan has finally became true.
The introduction of the Federalism as the ultimate system of governance in South Sudan has now finally became one of the principles of solving this Salva Kiir’s personnaly impossed senseless civil war.
This will now mark the end of a long and critically awaited dream the people of South Sudan have been hopefully dreaming for unyieldingly, the Federalism.
The story of how the people dreamed for Federalism goes back to the former British administration seperation policy toward the then Southern Sudan, when the Sudanization committee gave the Southern Sudanese only six posts out of eight hundred posts vacated by the British to be filled by the Sudanese.
After the Second World War the mood in Britain was to give the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan an independence of both Britain and Egypt.
Both Diu was one of the southern leaders who attended the Juba conference which was held on 12–13 June 1947 to discuss the recommendations of the earlier Khartoum conference held in the same year at which it had been decided that
the south and the north of Sudan should be united in one country under the pretext that Sudan was huge but a very poor country and if divided both parts would be extremely weak.
But in reality Southerners were (and are) very different ethnically and culturally from the people of northern Sudan, and it was a difficult task to unite people with different cultural diversites and religions
No southerner had attended the Khartoum conference. At the Juba conference, Both Diu said that although northerners claimed they did not want to dominate the South, there must be safeguards. Northerners should not be allowed to settle on land in the south without any permission, and they should not interfere in local government in the south and should not be allowed in law to call a southerner a slave. However, although Both Diu was infull favor of separation, he said the government should select representatives from the south who would go to the North to study and to participate in legislation, finance, and administration. He said that Arabic should not be introduced into
southern schools with immediate effects or delays so that they could not rush to catch up to the northern culture.
When the Governor-General of Sudan announced the formation of the Constitution Amendment Commission in March 1951, Both Diu was the sole southerner of the commission, which had 16 northerners and three British officials including the chairman. When the commission started work on 26 March 1951, Both Diu called for a federal constitution. His proposals were persistently rejected by the northern members of the commission, and he resigned in disgust.
The commission continued without southern representation. However, the British members of the commission did insist on some safeguards in the draft constitution to protect southern interests, including a special Minister for the southern provinces and an Advisory Board for southern affairs which the northerners had later managed to remove from the constitutional provision.
Today, the almost centural advocated federalism is being refered to as Kokora which was used by Equotorian particularist by then, but Kokora is something else which is so far different from federalism and any way it is fortunate that it is now agreed upon by the waring parties that the federal system of governance will be installed as the governance system in the country.
Tor Madira Machier is a South Sudanese student pursuing Law Degree at the University Of Ain Shams in Cairo, Egypt.
He can be reached at : tormadira2013@gmail.com or +201024930577
