By Bona Machar ,
Opinion
August 7th, 2014 (Nyamilepedia) — Behind every strongman, hardworking there is always a strong woman. This is the case with Mama Rebecca Nyadeng de Mabior a wife to our late leader Dr John Garang de Mabior, the founder of our movement SPLM/A in 1983 though there were some other movements formed before then but the SPLM/A became the popular movement when it was formed. Dr John Garang was a brave man, educated, freedom fighter and a leader with unique qualities of leadership and his zeal and sacrifices with his comrades in the high command at the SPLA made us free from Arabs hostage.
Mama Rebecca has attributes similar to other African strong women who were behind the successes of their husbands during their struggle for justice and freedom from the colonial in the late 1960s and beyond. Those include Mama Nginda Kenyatta wife to former Kenya president MzeeJomo Kenyatta and a mother to the current Kenya president UhuruMuigai Kenyatta, Zineb Jammeh of Gambia,Vivian Wade of Senegal and Salma Kikiwete of Tanzaniajust to mention a few, this was proven when the Juba Massacre occurred on 15th December, 2013. Mama Rebecca was the only Dinka who spoke with no fear of contradiction and said the following words ‘’ Nuer are being killed in the street of juba simply because of their ethnicity, Kiir special army are looking for them from house to house and killed them like dogs’’, those words caught the attention of international media and most of them rushed to juba before they were ordered to leave the country, Mama you spoke as a nationalist who cares for the citizens of the Republic of South Sudan, you spoke as a mother and above all a leader who would want to treats her citizens equally no matter their tribes, religion, gender and individual social status.
During your interview you also put your life into risk by accusing the government who was perpetrating all these crimes and injustices you were talking about, Mama Rebecca, you are not just a leader or a nationalist but a HEROINE and a role MODEL to the current generation too. You have given us hope when the situation was worst, you raised our heads when we were down, you told us South Sudan belongs to all 64 tribes when some of us thought that the owners of the land claims their ownership, you cried with us when nobody was at our comfort, you disagreed with people who claims to love you most when we were bullied, you resigned from the government when our wives, sisters and daughters were raped by government security agents, you went to exile when our brothers were forced to eat a human flesh because of their ethnicity, you told us that Nuer community did not happened to be part of South Sudan by chance but God planned it for so long to put you there because it is through this community that South Sudan one day will enjoy the freedom and the beauty of our co-existence in this Republic, Mama through your talks we realized that it was not the entire Dinka community that planned to kill and finish the entire Nuer community who was residing in Juba but a few who felt insecure as their political graphs were at the declining stage and refuses to make a personal observation but decided to killed innocent citizens who were after their daily casual jobs routine because the government cannot provide them decent jobs despite the facts that most of them were graduates, others came to the city to seek education as the same government cannot provide schools in their villages, others were in the city for medical reasons because the government cannot provide health facilities so the entire population was coming to town as oppose to late Dr John vision ‘’TAKING TOWN TO PEOPLE’’. We held the government and its intelligent responsible for these 20,000 lives which were massacred in Juba within less than five consecutive days and justice must prevail.
Mama as a scholar and a patriotic citizen of our republic, I believe that humanity is the centre of our political ambitions because leaders aspire to leads their fellow human beings and as much as we intend to kill the people we lead, our legitimacy and integrity disappeared in the eyes of the public which is why everybody calls for president Kiir to leave the presidency so that apologies are prepared and reconciliation take the stage. Reconciliation and apologies will be and must be the two interchange words for our society to fully reconcile because at some point we made one another pains so much and unless we acknowledge that we owe each other an apology it will take some time to trust each other but I believe in few years to come tribe will just be an identity for the issuance of citizenship and a mean for equal representation in our public institutions.
Mama Rebecca you were truthful, factual and vocal on the issues when the situation was at its worst peak and it is time we individually and collectively acknowledge that patriotism and talk about it publicly, it is true that age is just a number but ideas compounded with nationalism are resourceful and educative.
The author is the concern South Sudanese, he can be contact on kueth96@gmail.com
