SSPM/A Christmas and New Year Message

My dear fellow citizens, 

December 12, 2021 — I greet you all in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen. I know that it is a very painful experience for you to celebrate this Christmas season in the makeshift camps without much joy due to the flooding this year, which destroyed your livestock, your homes, your towns, your villages, your properties, your lives, or anything along those lines.

As a leader of the South Sudan People’s Movement/Army (SSPM/A), I, therefore, sympathize with you and the SSPM/A put you in their prayers and asked for God’s intervention on your behalf. In other words, we understand this year is different as you are now celebrating the Christmas season in the water, which you have never experienced in your lifetime before. Although the regime recognized the flooding as a natural disaster, it has not declared a state of emergency in the affected states so that the Global Communities could have provided humanitarian assistance to the people affected. Furthermore, the regime did not even bother to prepare for the worst flooding ever by either building the dikes or giving people a warning to move and relocate to higher grounds before the disaster strikes. 

As a result, the regime is just busy looting the national coffers without any regard to evacuating the affected citizens to the high grounds and providing them with makeshift shelters and survival kits, as they have lost everything in their possessions to the flood including cattle and other essential belongings. 

The flood came with water diseases and other harmful creatures, such as reptiles, which seek to live together with human beings on the same dry land as they are too affected by the flooding disaster. As you might have seen on social media, all towns and villages have been flooded and all belongings submerged in the water. For this reason, people had to make it by canoes to the high grounds and they have not seen any humanitarian activities being carried out either by the regime or other good Samaritans for the rescue of our people. So, the SSPM/A condemned this barbaric behaviour from the regime on behalf of our innocent people in the strongest terms possible. In other words, the regime of the Republic of South Sudan must be held accountable for allowing these people to die by negligence.

My dear citizens, the regime would have had a capacity to rehabilitate the affected communities had it not looted the national coffers, while our oil reserves are in great abundance compared to other poor countries in Africa which are now ahead of South Sudan economically simply because the regime does not care with the lives of its citizens and tends to sell the very oil to cartel countries in advance even before its extraction from the ground.

Furthermore, the five 5% percent revenue, intended to be given to the oil-producing states for community development disappeared into the thin air in the hands of greedy and corrupt authorities, whose intention was only to get rich faster than improving the lives of its citizens. 

The communities in the oil-producing states have endured years of devastating suffering on the people and environment. Water and grazing lands for both animals and humans are contaminated and the oil spreads over the surface in the thin layer that stops oxygen from getting to the plants and animals that live in water. Oil pollution harms humans, animals, rivers, underground water, insects, and so forth. In addition, there are no healthcare and other social services provided for the communities.

My fellow countrymen and women, the entire civil servants and organized forces are going hungry for months if not years without receiving any salaries because the money is divided among the cliques leaving the People’s Army who liberated this country and their families begging on the streets of Juba like orphans. They, indeed, become orphans after the death of our nation’s founding father, the hero, Dr. John Garang De Mabior.

Besides, the regime has totally failed to eradicate illiteracy in the country. There is a need to provide free education from primary to secondary levels, because poverty is the main reason for children not being sent to school by their parents. Parents cannot afford paying the school fees for their children and only at the tertiary level pay a limited amount of tuition fees for tertiary study. 

All forms of sexual violence against the girl child in educational institutions would be banned and good educational system should be developed including kindergartens in order to achieve the development of every child in the mental, physical, emotional, social and moral aspects.  

Educational Programs such as adult and mobile education, teachers and vocational training should be provided adequately in rural and urban areas to reduce the illiteracy to 20% in the Republic of South Sudan.

My fellow citizens, as we celebrate and embrace the joy and traditions of the holiday season, Christmas and New Year, let us also mourn the loss of all those who will not celebrate this joyful day with us and offer our deepest sympathy to their loved ones. These are the innocent people killed and victimized by the regime’s security personnel across the country and let us not forget to sympathize with all the political detainees who are languishing in jails for the rights of their citizens across the country. For instance, among them is the former governor of Northern Bhar El Ghazal state, Kuel Aguer Kuel, and others for their struggle against the regime to liberate our masses from the politics of tribalism, bondage, and repression.

My fellow compatriots, it is worth mentioning here that the current regime will not bring about permanent peace in our country. The regime has failed totally to honour many peace agreements signed so far with opposition groups in the country including the revitalized peace agreement that was lastly signed in 2018 between the regime and other opposition groups. The regime has lured in and neutralized the opposition groups and taken another mischievous step by not implementing the important provisions provided in the revitalized agreement, such as security arrangements and transitional justices which are no more to be implemented. Instead, the regime machinery has systematically bought off and disintegrated the opposition groups which resulted in a fight and split within the rank and file of the SPLM/A -IO. Consequently, many senior opposition leaders have been surrendering on a daily basis to the regime in Juba, our nation’s capital. This is the Plan-B of the regime so that there would be no peace to be implemented. Then the choice will remain with the opposition leaders either to surrender to the regime or go back to the bush.

My fellow countrymen and women, your movement, the South Sudan People’s Movement, and the South Sudan People army (SSPM/A) is doing their very best to rescue you from the despotic regime, to restore your dignity and respect, where people of South Sudan can choose and elect their own leaders democratically without any fear of intimidation and threat to be jailed in Notorious Blue House in Juba, you have a say.

As I write this article, be cognizant that the SSPM/A is in full swing to liberate the people of South Sudan from the politics of tribalism, bondage, and repression. The SSPM/A has finally succeeded in mobilizing thousands of masses from all the corners of our country to wage an armed struggle against the regime.

Dear compatriots, since all peaceful and non-violent means have failed and been undermined by the regime, we are left only with one option which is armed struggle. Therefore, it is the only national agenda and objective of the SSPM/A to fight for a fundamental regime change in the Republic of South Sudan. As a result, there is no more fake peace agreement, which would be signed with the regime in order to further its life in power. The more you sign peace with president Kiir, the more you resuscitate him in power through transitional procedures.

Moreover, the SSPM/A would like to appeal to all the other armed groups who are fighting the regime with the same national agenda to unite their rank and file with the SSPM/A to form a single robust and resilient armed resistance movement that can flush the despotic regime out of power so that we restore security and economic stability in the country. 

My fellow citizens, the SSPM/A is doing its level best to unite the people of South Sudan and eradicate the so-called tribal -virus which has perished our people and destroyed our social fabric through the regime’s tool of systematic planning to divide -and -rule the people of South Sudan.

In my capacity as a commander in chief of the South Sudan People’s Army (SSPA), I hereby order the SSPA forces to remain vigilant at their respective fronts as the regime is planning to attack the locations of the SSPA in the upcoming dry season. The SSPA reserves the right to fight in self-defence and launch a nonstop campaign when provoked by the regime at the time we are mobilizing the masses to fight for a regime change as (Phase 1) which is going concurrently with (Phase 2) which is organization and training and finally (Phase 3) to launch a major campaign against the regime if the desired change is not put in place.

I wish you a healthy Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, peace, and joy in the name of our Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit throughout this Christmas season and throughout the New Year, Amen.

May God bless South Sudan

Victory is ours!!!

Signed:   21/12/2021

General Stephen Buay Rolnyang,

Chairman NEC/NLC SSPM and

Commander-in-Chief SSPA.

SSPM/A HQS, Newsite -2.