In 2013 President Salva Kiir told some of his colleagues that he was ever ready to: “dismantle the country by breaking it, sock it and mince it with heaps of filth and cast it very far, so that whoever wants to rule, shall find it impossible to govern”! President Salva Kiir in J-1 in Juba-2013, before three credible living witnesses.
By Joshua Mading Daw,
Dear Compatriots…
September 08, 2015 (Nyamilepedia)-—For almost two years wailing in a bloody conflict! Burying our dead, licking our wounds, looting our belongings, bombing our shrines and blazing our portraits; tarring our imaginations! Compatriots, have we ever thought to withdraw into ourselves a moment to see what we did to ourselves? Really, can we be sober to ascertain the number of lives we exterminated, wounds inflicted and dreams shuttered? Always plotting to obliterate moniamental projects. Killing indiscriminately while supplicating, asking Providence for assistance! Oh, how many losses have we inflicted on our innocent people, for the sake of “wealth and power”! Our exterminators set huge fires on the villages of our most impoverished people whom they never know. That was when people began to sense the ruthlessness of ignorance and how it took what belonged to others and the way badness claimed whatever it wished, leaving our people naked on the margin of life!
It is true some SPLM Leadership of today did supervise the process of mass-killings leading to genocide all over the country! One was staying in Juba, where the continuous process of mass-killings started. I never believed to witness human beings hunting and gunning down each other openly in the streets, after only two years of independence! Citizens lost hope in all what they use to call “government” when they were surprised to witness Kiir, the President of the Republic himself, visiting the scenes of the crimes, which exceeded all the places where crimes are expected to multiply at random in terms of ruthlessness. The Police stations and security offices were almost turned into slaughterhouses! The climax of that tragedy was when people witnessed the SPLA and other security forces all in full attire, hunting down unarmed victims from street to street and houses to house, when President Salva Kiir was touring. Who else could have been the Supervisor!
Verily, lawlessness breeds madness! It was the one, which dominated lives and set our nerves like senseless blocks, when one knew nothing was there to save people from that rampant madness. Throughout our stay in Juba we use to encounter trucks loaded with goods, rocks, bricks, wood and so on. But never have we witnessed trucks filled with human remain roaming the streets of Juba like we saw! People witnessed the government turning all her arsenal against her subjects. When people asked about what happened! The answer they got was that the Leadership must have split the Movement intentionally by eliminating the Nuer, Dinka, Chollo, Moro, Mundari, Murle, Madi and others. Unfortunately, Leaders armed our youth indiscriminately with different types of weapons to finish whomever or whatever to meet, hear or see moving. Clearly, the intention was complete annihilation!
Gazing at the horizon, we see not a single helping-hand reaching our people in need, while chasing the few who dared to reach us. What a contradiction! Really what else could savagery mean! On that lonely way in wilderness to shelter our old, our children and orphans under those remote thorny trees, we encountered our sisters, brothers and friends escaping to hide. Wailing, astonished to see some of us busy, overtaken by wrongdoing, embarked on inflicting horror more than we imagined. Swindlers satisfied their hunger when they stole what belonged to others. So did our people witness brutes pilling bodies and thieves hording booties! As we sat gazing at the horizon we started to feel some benign hands nearing, bringing hope to redeem the nation. Yes, never has a redeemer been revealed before time, for life ends not with the end of a gentle neighbour. That is the reason good things never end with the spread of badness. Let people stick on hope that flickers in the depth of the needy. Although dark be the Planet, there is always a gleam of light that comes from eternity!
After having modestly contributed what could help Leaders draw political programs and resolve the problem in our country in order to live in peace, President Kiir, because of his fearing a fistful roaring power hungry jackals, delayed to lead the country to peace and stability. There are rare occasions wherein a lion would tremble, afraid of a rabbit like reed in an over flowing rivulet. Opportunists frightened him in turns, as he kept on hunting for the best solutions that would enable him to contain those opposing creatures. In spite of the fact that President Salva knows, as the Commander-in-Chief, SPLA had been overwhelmed by his insistence to absorb militia who were loyal to Khartoum, beside other defections which followed, fracturing the SPLA in the process of changing it to be the first state funded private militia no country has experienced. As a national defense force the SPLA ceased to be since before 15/12/2013. NIF/NCP, supporters and jobseekers were all united against the SPLM/SPLA throughout the years of the struggle, when the enemy rallied the fifth columnists against us. To achieve peace in South Sudan today might be difficult, because of the new factors that emerged in our political scene, which people do not know how to contain, complicating the conflict evermore.
The fact that our people kept on falling in big numbers in this civil strife, is because there were friendly neighbours involved in the war like Museveni, whose warplanes continue to mow-down innocent people from both sides to the conflict unknowingly; starting from December 18th 2013 to this time. Since then the role of Yuweri remains unverified and hence, unascertained! Uganda under that former revolutionary Museveni began his interventions starting from Rwanda, then DRC, Somalia, C.A.R. and currently South Sudan, fully involved in an internal conflict, siding by Salva Kiir against his people using tanks and warplanes, while playing a leading role in the same IGAD mediated conflict to bring peace between the two warring parties in South Sudan! Indeed, Museveni is in South Sudan not because of Salva Kiir, but because of Dollars he cashes from Juba, beside other clandestine plans that could burry South Sudan beside his perishing force in the graveyard of his political notoriety. Let investigators move to reveal the amounts reaped from Juba by Museveni through his intriguing assistants! That intervention has lengthened the strife, adding sufferings to people in the war torn areas. That recklessness has also contributed to wreck relations between people of South Sudan and Yuweri, not the people of Uganda. It is high time to pull UPDF from South Sudan, although Museveni tends not to withdraw, in spite of the patriotic stand of the Uganda Parliament. Let it be clearly stated that Yuweri Museveni’s intention in South Sudan is to see, as he prays, if South Sudan could scramble as a nation and create a situation in which to expand his country to southern parts of South Sudan. That “armed benevolence” in South Sudan today as peacekeeping force in a peaceful neighbourhood, has by-passed all the boundaries of human niceties to wanton aggression! Our relations with Uganda shall improve the very day Yuweri withdraws all his troops from every territory of South Sudan. The way peace is being delayed is probably, because of the presence of Museveni’s forces in Juba!
The expected sanctions on South Sudan should by necessity include Yuweri and al-Bashier, if Africa is to avoid the eruption of a conflict that might pull both opposing parties into war over possible bone of contention. The two tyrants are trying to take South Sudanese according to ethnic proximity in the process of fragmenting the country! Unapologetic as he is, Yuweri tried hard to bring Equatoria to his camp, while al-Bashier is doing his best to recruit his former allies to his camp from Unity State! In his capacity as the de’ facto President of South Sudan, had discussed at length all the matters concerning peace and war with the Governor of Central Equatoria State from behind Kiir! It is well known none of the two countries, the Sudan and Uganda, has much to contribute to the welfare of South Sudan other than giving refugee status and access to humanitarian interventions. Both are involved differently underground to intensify influence, in a futile effort to obtain support by asserting political presence in the country. South Sudan as a country is being shredded to lose “sovergnity” through the intrusion of Museveni and al-Bashier. Let the people institute a profound consciousness to transcend over dictatorships like those who steer our destiny into wars. In this fast changing world there is need for good neighbourhood to work together for peace. Respect your neighbour and reap the good a neighbour offers. So peace first, peace second and peace last!
On 20/5/2015 Heads of States of the Great Lakes Region in Luanda-Angola had a summit. And in the corridors of the meetings attended by President Museveni and President Salva Kiir of South Sudan, it was reported that the Summit considered to tie the reed that would break the back of Kiir’s camel by deciding to bar Troika (US, UK, Norway) from participating in the IGAD lead peace talks! Both desperate Heads, in a desperate move to save their necks from being accused worldwide to be responsible for killing innocent people in South Sudan, might have forgotten that it was Troika that funded and participated in the Sudan peace talks in Naivasha and Nairobi – Kenya 2005 for being an IGAD partner. Today Troika is the one funding that peace process on South Sudan. Had that Summit rejected Troika to participate in that oncoming peace talks, then that would be felonious politics like cutting off the hand that assists them! South Sudan has been destroyed by war and when peace comes our people would need it to be rebuild anew. Therefore, whom would our African Leaders expect to assist our people in that tough, long expensive process? Our people cannot be expected to lose friends who stood beside them during the hard days of liberation for the sake of saving a few culprits! South Sudanese cannot afford to lose Troika as a friend to all the people and not a single tribe!
All the simpletons and demagogues who sing laud un-defendable slogans of hegemony of a single tribe over all other nationalities are now being driven blind by the new facts, which keep on emerging to devastate their political circles. Looking around the globe today one sees no tribal republic built or formed! So can they see no future for a country based on the rule of a tribe! Only a day before yesterday those same “intellectuals” were vanguards in that defanged Sudanese Socialist Union. Yesterday same of the faces shifted to became leading figures in the National Islamic Front, currently National Congress Party. Today the same zombies appeared like coming from a late-night Halloween party, were sneaked in, protected and pushed to lead the SPLM/SPLA. And now the same “Mameluks” installed themselves to became the founding gurus of Dinka unity, funded under-ground by the Presidency like a department! But for Dinka to allow infamous grabbers to lead them to hell remains a riddle! Days ago they asked Kiir to hand them the country to rule, being a failure! Now the country is fully charged a time-bomb ready to be exploded, because of the damages imposed by the opportunists on the people, not to build a strong social-political discipline. The real problem is President Kiir is fully aware of what is taking place in South Sudan and the people responsible for this on-going national tragedy. But where were they during our struggle!
Some fellows who kept on swindling President Salva Kiir are turncoats who were super trained how to deceive leaders in the “Islamic fundamentalists” institutions. Well trained and well paid, how to deceive by singing amorous songs, those trained swindlers sang what made the crow to lose the meat! The fox sang beautifully to entertain the crow sitting atop the tree. The Fox, whichever it was must have sang about the strength, beauty and generosity of the Crow from under the tree on which President Salva was seated. That deceived our excited Crow to lose that piece of meat it was stocking in the beak, to be collected by that hungry Fox. Like the crow, President Salva Kiir has not a grain of genuine nationalistic feelings to do what patriotic leaders do when faced with situations like the one we have in the country, which is to resign. In the end the fox took the piece of meat and the crow looks down despaired with nothing in the beak!
We are stunned by the negative way in which some people take tribalism! A misfortune happens when a tribalist fails to see how destructive tribalism can be, when dealing with public affairs in a multicultural environment. We cannot fail, individually or collectively, to understand the requirements of unity and togetherness in a multi-tribal community. We need not go to a classroom, a church, a mosque or an open market to know how the Creator wanted us to be! When a person yearns to grow a tribal mind such a person would aspire to outwit others by claiming everything, when things were set for every person! All the values of equality, justice, equity and democracy are based on togetherness in every multi-racial, multi-tribal, multi-ethnic, multi-religious, multi-lingual, multi-cultural, nationalities, communities or groups and societies. A tribal mind is a reactionary mind, which perceives through egoistic ways that strives to take things for tribal ends. Yes, we saw tribalism misleading demagogues to pile bad-deeds and disappeared in the armpits of a tribe. A tribalist mind plunges into problems, big or small, to act on behalf of a tribe without taking precaution of the aftermath of that negative deed. It would be so shameful a misfortune for an intellectual to hide under the shallow cover of tribalism for protection!
Today we are witnessing how indiscriminate tribalism can be, dividing the people and setting them against each other. A tribalist mind would aspire to lump people wrongly and punish them indiscriminately and collectively. A tribalist would stock people against each other, to deny them what they deserve. For example, if an X-tribe claims to be the master of South Sudan and so claims to deserve everything in the country, even if it were robbery, theft or murder, then people must accept that claim, otherwise they have to unite against that madness! Opposite to that disuniting claim we find other tribes militantly resisting against that self-proclaiming X-tribe. Divisions in tribalist communities are created according to proximities based primarily on materials to gain. People are being Balkanized militantly into fragments in the absence of law and order. Lack of the two, law and order, are basic to militant formations on which some tribes resort to secure whimsical gains, as oppose to the national reality of a community. Most people are surprised when they witness crimes being imposed indiscriminately on our youth by tribalist. But whatever negative tribalism might impose on the people shall need us people to stand together to have it contained!
Today President Salva is moody trying to relocate the central Bank of South Sudan to Wau for fear of being taken from him and his lonely section of his tribe. Meaning that the process of his dismantling our South Sudan could so begin! In 2013 President Kiir told some of his colleagues that: {he was ever ready to dismantle the country by breaking it, sock it and mince it with heaps of filth and cast it very far, so that whoever wants to rule shall find it impossible to govern]! President Kiir in J-1 in Juba made that irretrievable and foretelling statement before more than three credible living witnesses! Looking around at what he is doing now, one would see him bent to destroy South Sudan and leave it impossible to rule after he goes, without knowing that such a big house would fall on the heads of those who are supporting it from collapsing, and who are the Dinka! In fact President Kiir has began to damage the Dinka by involving them in a useless and dirty war, which none can win but shall consume them or scatter them serfs in the Diaspora. They loot and destroy whatever belongs to others without knowing how to enjoy whatever they loot and destroy! So, why do people doubt what he is doing now! Do we not see what Salva Kiir is currently doing with what belongs to us! Why do we listen to those stories and refuse to believe them, when our boats are sinking fast from under us? Don’t we see how every step he takes brings us more pains even if that were justified! Have we been hypnotized with fake currencies and perishable positions to the extent of refusing to nurse even our traumatized mother!
Please, follow how issues are taken in South Sudan especially, peace talks. Indeed, our people keep wondering about how proposals and resolutions pertaining to peace get flung far by Juba once those presumed emissaries of peace decide to deny what they agreed with the other camp in Addis Ababa, Bahar Dar and Arusha! Well-calculated lies are fabricated and offered to people that: “peace is coming”, since two years ago till now. Liars tactically mound the blamish on Dr Riek Machar and Com Pagan Amum to be the two obstructing and refusing peace, whereas President Salva is the very person responsible for everything! Let people look at this point critically and see how Kiir is the one responsible for whatever is going on in the country. But Kiir fears to be dragged into court for exterminating innocent lives beside other things! To defend himself and his associates, he insists on frowning his face when he threatens whoever disbelieves his fabrications about that failed coup attempt; disregarding the fact that crimes, coups included, are settled worldwide in credible courts of law! The Wise keep saying, it is the Leader of a country, any country, not President Salva Kiir in person, is the one who could be asked about the wellbeing of a people and a country.
Today the world has come to understand that, President Salva Kiir “failed” to the bottom of what is meant by the word failure, to contain the situation in South Sudan! And has refused to reach peace and reversed his gears to accomplish his inhuman war plans, contrary to what he accepted to sign in Addis Ababa before the world with Dr Riek Machar and Com Pagan Amum. But now one sees that Salva’s sun is plunging into dark. Such an amateurish dictator could end by dashing out of the kitchen like an obstinate chef, after fire catches the whole house including the kitchen! One regrets to mention the name of Salva Kiir repeatedly compelled by the situation we are in now, because President Salva Kiir has taken upon himself all the responsibilities of whatever takes place in the country to the protection of proven thieves, killers and swindlers! Through his informers, Kiir covers the country with a chain of liars. Leaders are expected to be straightforward, truthful, brave and kind. But for an elected President to sit and plot with avowed criminals against his people would be a ridiculous thing to do! It would be completely unacceptable. Lousiness of an obstinate may drag a Leader to the deserts and family put below baggers. Where is Ghaddafi!
What is happening today in South Sudan is that, the country has fallen into the hands of those long-piloted by aliens! Which is becoming a real danger, preceding those complications brought in by Uganda. The main reason why those intruding hands dread to grab power now is lack of a credible person to lead from among them. For originally they are but a bunch of desperados long soiled by awful habits. That is the foretelling reason why they always talk tactically from behind the people and claim no person can take power from Kiir Mayar, as if Kiir is the only person created by God! Where was he trained to rule or are they hunting for a person who can continue to cover them and go on promoting looters! Hahaaa, how those intruders dread to reveal their hidden intentions to snatch power like desired by NIF/NCP in Khartoum, who take them for “insects”! So do intruders insist to laud those obsolete slogans of: “Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Long live President Salva!” like they use to do in Khartoum; portrayed the way they rushed to congratulate that new-found Sheikh President for his escaping narrowly an outrageous coup attempt staged by Dr Riek Machar, some mislead “Nuer mercenaries” hidden in the HQs of HE the President and a fistful of the so-called “awlaad Garang”, but was saved by Allah!
And that is how infiltrators describe their first attempt to divide the SPLM. Quite aggressive concocted scenes like derived from the film about the Fall of Khartoum, duplicated by an Omer al-Bashier and how he escaped many coup attempts; fundamentalists believe to have been saved by Allah! Today the country is facing worse times. Our people are at a great fix! To support a narrow-minded person or follow a nationalist whose heart is unhindered by tribal notions from whichever tribe he or she might come. The challenge is here before us all. Those NIF/NCP followers have been standing openly in Naivasha, Nyanyuki, Machakus, Keren and Nairobi by Khartoum against the SPLM/SPLA during the Comprehensive Peace Agreement – CPA, when they occupied the rear seats behind NCP during the peace talks. They use to fall ashamed to be seen by the members of their NIF/NCP delegation whenever they attempted to touch hands with Dr John Garang who was spearheading their liberation, recognized worldwide! When our struggle was on, none of the weaklings and opportunists we see by the leadership of our Movement was there beside us. They were there standing behind Khartoum, unable to show their faces to us! It was that archaic slave mentality, which fixed them naturally behind masters to do whatever a master wants even now. Slaves would always be committed to their masters to an extent of serving them in their absence or die for them! That situation is known since long in human history, when masters used to own senior slaves to run slave trade on their behalf!
So the next major dispute one visualizes might be the explosion of a conflict between South Sudan nationalists and elements of the NIF/NCP, supported by armed associates. Those attendants could be pumped to snatch power in Juba, to rescue their long-ruling masters in Khartoum. Faintly indicated by their present token lethal-support to some notorious hands in South Sudan through activated “panya-roads” along the boarders. Or steer up havoc and set the country ungovernable. Let people forget not what al-Bashier stated that, he regrets having accepted to sign that Decree granting independence to South Sudan. Which could be the reason why Omer al-Bashier attends to whatever happens in our country more than expected of a good neighbour. Why should a former master threaten to use force and conducted full-scale operations, bombs, tanks and warplanes! The end of NIF/NCP in the Sudan shall eventually be the end of jackals in South Sudan. NCP is so notorious of interventions into neighbouring countries since when they obtained power in 1989. Although both countries are supposed to cooperate to benefit from oil and other resources, Khartoum, out of an entrenched ideological habit has always been aggressive and interested in interventions. With situation unsettled in Southern Blue Nile, the Nuba Mountains and Dar Fur, the NCP can intensify its aggressiveness especially, with a stable and modernizing South Sudan. To have a very stable and advancing South Sudan near them is something Khartoum would never entertain. But, who knows what!
Looking around today, we see a number of confused intellectuals and semi-intellectuals running around J1 in Juba hoping to snatch something related to power. Like a late-night hyena, they hope to lick something delicate off a bone long licked by a grand-hyena! That is the reason we find some people soiling their trousers by plunging into filth unconcerned in spite of the fact, which they know about the useless-ness of such short-lived endevour. One cannot mature by pretending to know everything, when such person knows nothing. Such a pretender would end a useless quack through whom many problems creep. When “haphazardness” begins to dominate the way things are done people tend to forget the source of such problems! When NIF/NCP usurped power in 1989 one of the most devastating policies they followed was the plan aimed at destroying the civil service in Southern Sudan, total destruction of our emerging social togetherness and hampering the steady growth of Southern Sudanese personality. They were considered undesired blockages to Islamic Arab cultural advancement into Africa. And hence, was knowledge buried under illiteracy and ignorance installed atop excellence. From then onward, began a different kind of war in many a fundamentalist mind, breading contemptuousness, self-conceitedness, meanness, pretense corruption, dishonesty and other kinds of recklessness. Thus, starting from top to bottom, once our oppressors blew the whistle!
Of the most fundamental issues, which the three feuding fragments of SPLM (SPLM–Juba/SPLM-IO/SPLM-G10) should render greatest attention, is the challenge of uniting our fragmented Movement! None of the three factions can have it unilaterally: usurp power then stride over others. Because, that terminating political virus had infected them simultaneously, the moment each of them decided to embrace the present uncompromising stand. The fact that they could not share one name, one roof and work together side by side shall remain one of the biggest challenges. They shall all go on plotting against one another to undermine peace and stability. There is a great need for the three factions to sit together, deliberate and agree amicably as to how they shall rebuild the SPLM and have it reinstituted a robust political body to correct the mistakes, which hit hard the people and begin to lead them to progress. Today the country stands divided in a process that might lead our people to more fragmentations. To unite our Movement would be symbolic indeed, for uniting our country!
The process of unifying the Movement would create a challenge especially, when beginning the hot process of taking senior members of the Movement to account for the wrongs committed. All the mistakes that smeared sorrow and grief on the faces of our people and the country were spearheaded by our leaders and should be cleared. It is true every SPLM member owes each and every South Sudanese an apology! We must apologize to our people for letting lose our Movement and left it be grabbed and shredded by the fifth columnists, whom we knew since long were aspiring hard to obliterate our triumphant march by profaning all the sacrifices our people of South Sudan and beyond freely offered. Indeed, SPLM stands to be our greatest legend and exalting pride! Having diligently and triumphantly succeeded to raise our flag among nations, united as we were, we bypassed all the boundaries of misery and subjugation. Today, we are a free people!
The historic meetings in Arusha-Tanzania, assisted thankfully by CCM and ANC, should mark the beginning of correcting all the mistakes. SPLM, that gigantic African Movement, which did wonders in the Continent, crowned its great struggle by marking the stride of our people with independence. A Movement that has accomplished that monumental success should rise and correct the wrongs it brought to people and the country at large. No people, other than the members of SPLM can redeem the wrongs, which happened in our country, individually or collectively. For all the mistakes, which took place in the country, today every demagogue sings it louder than loud that, SPLM is the party that should be held responsible for all what went wrong. Infiltrators, intentionally and tactically, forget SPLM lost direction the day the fifth columnists lined up before SPLM, pleaded to be admitted and took membership cards. So we hear whatever they divulge with dismay piercing our hearts like spears thrown by hijackers! Out side the meetings some of the members attempted to discuss that strange way of co-opting members into the Movement. But the members, who discussed the matter, did not go further for the Leadership was believed to be aware of what was happening in the Movement. With or without knowledge, there is no way to scape such grave mistakes. It was like opening the door to ‘welcome’ devils!
Compatriots, let us admit, there were many appalling mistakes, which were committed by some leading members of the Movement. It was not the SPLM per se, which brought in all the errors we witness now like killing, robbery, rape and committing crimes unabated, from which our people and country greatly suffer. The SPLM was born free among a committed people, grew up standing by our people for our people, till when those “political-homeless” interfered through holes they dug stealthily like rodents, and began to drill wider holes through which they hoped to creep to the top of the Movement. Today we came to know what was planned against the country and us. The unification of the Movement is a great requirement. The gates of hell shall open no more! The process of correcting whatever went wrong shall not be simple. Let us take that long process of liberation we went through until we triumphantly obtained our independence to be Part One of our struggle. In Part One, we dealt with external liberation primarily, until we achieved our independence. Till now we have not began Part Two of our liberation. Part Two should precisely deal with liberating our internal front. Like liberating the Party from fifth columnists. In the process of disinfecting the Movement from the fifth columnists, let us be mindful about our members who were active behind the enemy lines, as well as, in the Diaspora. They should not be adversely affected or forgotten.
Our members approach SPLM the same way people approach public cafes! We are required to be trained how political organizations are run and kept. Our people know us and followed how reckless we left the Movement to be drifted by different political winds and waves. We lost our political course to wondering infiltrators. We lost all our rights, as if we were in a wedding organized by amateur drunkards lost between pleasure and displeasure or a soldier confused between action and inaction! A leading Movement like SPLM cannot be maintained by following routine. That would shackle and squeeze it, not to respond to political issues, which require prompt actions. Until today SPLM is being run with that token budget, approved since 2005 during the peace talks in Naivasha–Nairobi, Kenya. With a shovel SPLM was condemned to remove a huge mountain! Till now the mountain stands and the shovel is still waiting between rusting and braking.
Until now, most of the members of the SPLM remain irresponsive to the fact that a political organization flourishes through membership subscriptions and donations. Now SPLM is required to distant itself from the military, as a matter of principal, since leading a founding political organization in a new democratic environment. That political stand will greatly help to erase that confusing riddle dominating the thinking of militarist-oriented members in the leadership of the Movement since that simultaneous birth of both SPLM and SPLA from the same womb of our reality. Up to this moment not a few members are confused between: who is the firstborn or who gave birth to the other. And consider that to be the Movement’s alter! Like twins, SPLM and SPLA were born together. But SPLA was born wearing teeth and so had the lead as a matter of necessity and historical reality. SPLM was born to be the political think-tank and mouthpiece of the revolution. Led our political-military Movement, safeguarded our political legacy and provided political guidance especially, before we attained independence!
Habitually uncultured misguided people like to live in a disorganized order and disoriented administrative setup. There are people who long to create confusion to obtain appropriate chance in which to innovate shortcuts that would lift them to reach impossible goals they aspire for. Hence, it is within those parameters, after having lost ethics pertaining to how people should manage life, opportunists appear. Therefore, crooks prefer to embrace the shortcuts availed to them by chance to make a living. That was how people manage to live in the areas under NIF/NCP in Southern Sudan and Northern Sudan. In Southern Sudan, since when the dominator decided to contain us below average in every field, they designed to elevate their ‘adorers’ whom they chose for higher positions in civil service from among our weaklings! That was the guiding policy the time NIF came to be in 1989. They were the very people who destroyed our civil service and brought illiterates to lead and control the civil service on their behalf. All the doors were opened for demagogues and quacks to climb to prominent positions once coopted and smeared with their frozen version of political Islam. That subversive policy was intentionally created to breed problems after 2005 peace agreement. It was specifically instituted to be the cornerstone upon which civil service was negatively instituted to hinder the growth of our civil life.
Of the major concerns, which the intellectuals should take with utmost care is the issue of “soul searching”. That is a far-reaching matter, which cannot be simply realized out of pretense or self-conceitedness. But a very serious exercise of soul searching in the depth, positively connected to how people relate to one another and the degree of commitment thereafter. Before we embark on resolving outstanding matters, there is a great need to look at ourselves in the first place, before we start to search others. Therefore, we need to understand and know our shortcomings, when preparing to meet other parties. That is where and when self-respect would be highly needed to build togetherness that can attract parties to the conflict and bring them closer to each other. But examining our realities now, one finds not a small number of intellectuals mentally enslaved by the Islamic fundamentalists, the way they pretentiously lead people along bumpy lanes of not accepting others as equals.
These types of short-sleeved intellectuals refused to learn from our recent experiences. Because they adamantly refuse to know them but, they would pretend to know them, to make a living! Indeed, is it not that shameful for an intellectual to be led by demagogues who do not even know the history of the people and the country! Most of those whom Salva Kiir appointed to sensitive positions are primary graduates and sergeants. Kiir dose not like educated people! With those layers of sterile mentality it would be difficult for them to know what belongs to others and therefore ones belonging. It is saddening that some intellectuals began since long to compare their past experiences with the present, which we all know, whether be it in the South or in the North, in a horrific manner that left martyrs, heroes and heroines, who wrote our history with blood in the pit-hole of history. Intellectuals did almost all the mistakes done in South Sudan, because they lead in every field. They could be the masters of corruption, since it comes in the higher echelons of education and responsibility, which entails planning, funding, prioritizing and executing plans. Intellectuals are the toughest challenge to deal with, whenever involved in corruption, in a nation!
Of the early mistakes we committed, is the fault of not holding aback to fix appropriate mechanisims for knowing and examining ourselves. By saying so one means, after landing peacefully by the riverside of liberty, we should have started to introduce and know ourselves before boarding our boats to cross to the real site of Freedom. Indeed, our struggle was not a clownish joke! When looking aback while recounting the sacrifices rendered by the brave who offered lives and exerted every effort for us to be free today, one feels tears flowing like our Nile gushes by mid-August, the time we began to offer our blood in 1955. We should not allow tears to cover our eyes, not to see and follow our realities. Let people open their eyes to see while drifting tears un-noticed, covered by rain. The fact that we did not start by knowing ourselves is the very reason why our doors were left ajar for croocks of all colours to come and design things the way they were trained and coached in Khartoum by Khartoum, for example. There were also some few smartly dressed swindlers, who dropped in from around the globe, highly certified in mockery and crockery. They arrived, converged and intermingled locally with equals, bringing in different sorts of illegitimacies. Thus, opening wide all the gates of grief and sorrow throughout the country!
With reference to social and cultural fabrics therefore, we have people who fail to understand and appreciate the fact that complications can emanate from misunderstanding and misinterpretation of the issues that could lead people to conflicts. There are people who ignore the fact that problems rise from the way they disregard cultures and social norms. The way to contain such problems are rooted in the manner people understand problems. Now in South Sudan, many problems rise, because of the shallow understanding of the issues at hand. Lack of basic education, lack of basic means to widen human experiences and lack of ability to connect their present status in the community with the past realities have confused the present state of affairs in the minds of those who assume leadership positions around the leader! And especially, the manner some self-begotten opportunists were installed to lead our communities during the war of independence, when our people were uprooted and scattered, severed from origins. That bitter reality was compounded further by the emergence of some self-conceited shortsighted small-minded self-begotten opportunistic elders, who misled the people by leading them to adventurism that took the people into internal wars, which is continuing for acquiring influence and means of living!
A few years before the ascendance of NIF into power on June 30th 1989, our communities respected life so dearly, orderly and peacefully. In those days, the distance between where people abide and where they work was not far to alienate our youngsters from their origins, that benign cradle of orderly behaviour. When that ruthless-bloody war was intensified people scattered to alien environments and began to fight for better means of survival. Our people survived in dire poverty. During those unbearable days people were subjected to Islamization and Arabization through opportunistic means to have them kill themselves by themselves! There were no proper courts of justice to resort to! And today all South Sudanese people are faced with the challenge of how to bring justice to our communities. There is a great need to plant the seeds and trees of justice to flourish free in our country. When peace comes and justice returns, how people see justice shall remain a big problem. Viability and equitability of justice are fundamental for building a democratic nation. Let a credible non-South Sudanese be appointed a Chief Justice. That is vital to modernize our Justice Department.
To take readers into the depth of the benthos of what is actually happening in this new part of the world for which justice is urgently required, it would be appropriate to examine samples. Hence, what can one say when meeting a ‘tractor driver’ elevated by mentors to be a Minister of Finance! What can one write when sitting to a ‘baker’ elevated to be the Minister of Education! What can we do when facing a notorious ‘counterfeiter’ elevated to be the Minister of Agriculture! We say elevated, not promoted, for how could that be! Those stories are happening in our new Republic of South Sudan and more bitter-jokes are happening like the appointment of an illiterate third-world mid-aged woman to be a Security Advisor! Indeed, these satiric tales are examples for Africa to learn from what is taking place in South Sudan. It runs blindly, disregarding common sense and knowledge!
All these unfortunate facts are allowed to take place in South Sudan to open wide the gates for corruption to mushroom and become the rule in the era of President Salva Kiir ‘Mayardit’. President Kiir loves to exploit corruption like accusing seventy-five Ministers and politicians of corruption, but never took them to court. Because that gives him chance to extort his opponents. Exploit his appointees by pushing them to execute whatever he wishes like opening secret accounts abroad, run according to his directives or shift his maternal-uncle from Prisons Department to head Civil Aviation Authority. Today, the government, which should have handed over power on the 9th of July 2015 to an elected new one, has started to face much more opposition engulfing most of the population of South Sudan! Killings in the streets and lanes of Juba, for instance, have become something quite normal. Salva Kiir, that iniquitous pendulum stuck between bad and worse, is living to destroy the country. Salva looks fascinated when he parades his imaginary horses tied behind carts donated by opportunists! Kiir Mayar could be simple, but obstinate. Kiir Mayar is very intelligent, but equally stupid in believing that he can deceive everybody. Kind, but ruthless to his opponents!
The world was closely following what was running in our country with a lot of dismay. They saw all what tribalism did to our people! Clipping our lives, destroying houses, looting properties, devastating our economy, spreading lawlessness; exposing lives to uncertainties! But, only yesterday our tribes were living together in peace. For more than sixty years shading blood, we fought the war of liberation together. We lived in harmony since when our ancestors shared the bush and meadows in a harmonious way and resolved disputes according to what kept people together until mid-December 2013. That warm co-existence took our great ancestors to produce bondages and exchanged hands amicably. And in that process they consummated all their relations to friendships leading to intermarriages. All the people, including us today lived together. And through the good, which people inherit to pass on to others, our ancestors inherited them, kept them and passed them to us as the good-neighbourhood, which some of us believe should be taken to mean the “good people should destroy”, as from 15th December 2013. Our educated sons and daughters, whom our people take for celebrities, are the creators of our tribal-conflicts! Our conflicts designers keep hiding among engineers, speakers, governors, ministers, generals, economists, engineers, doctors, judges, economists, directors, journalists, business people, school directors and the like, who are thirsty for power by exploiting tribalism to gain support to obtain power. What a culture can that be!
Yearning to destroy all the good we have those carnivorous-guys decided to design “reasons and means” to ignite this ongoing civil strife. They refused even to learn how disputes are resolved. They refuse to return to the past to learn how to benefit from other communities. But, unfortunately some intellectuals deteriorated and started to believe, to be endowed with divine powers to mow other tribes or nationalities, bypassing what our ancestors left for us to follow. We all remember how tribalism set our streets ablaze during the dark days in Juba, December 2013. No sober mind can ever wish those horrors to recur. Such misfortunes happen in many communities, but the manner in which we handled them remains to be a lesson to learn. The present crises took many souls we never experienced in any conflict. The losses were huge and to redeem them people need ringleaders to be held accountable for the crimes they did. At certain stages they should apologize to relatives of the victims for the crimes done in the pogrom, which brought grief and losses. People should know how to express sorrow and apologize to victims. Exalt them, so they may feel recognized in a transparent way!
We all saw and closely followed what Kiir Mayar did and intend to do to the country. He directed the nation to lose billions of Dollars, built specialized corruption clubs for some members of his tribe and erected white-elephant projects. Destroyed government institutions. Kept the country in darkness! Rendered our people baggers. What people need is the revision of the steps taken to institutionalize whatever was meant to construct a modern state. Whatever Salva did wrong stands to be a reason to take him to court! We have to pursue all the wrongs and correct them openly. Of our urgent need would be the appointment of an experienced and credible banker to set the Bank of South Sudan on track internationally. Let our people stand firm to control whatever anger and avoid any meaningless confrontation. No tribe, not a section of a tribe, family or an individual should we allow to redeem disputes unilaterally. Disputes should be settled in acceptable ways. That is how nations are built to give hope to the weak and deprived to live in peace and harmony. People need to enroll in appropriate institutions to know how to run our affairs. There is need for experts to assist us to correct and modernize all the mass heaped up by opportunists throughout the years of despotism, tribalism, nepotism and opportunism.
To correct our ailments and begin to build a democratic society, we have to look very critically at our economic situation. At the stage of backwardness we are in today, we have to sit down and look critically at the ways we use to do things. Let us begin to critically examine how revenues are collected, kept and spent. Like Justice Department, let our people know, the cleaner the means of collecting and spending our finances, the better our national performance! Therefore, let us have a qualified foreigner to administer our Revenue Authority. Equally important, people should examine the manner taxes are levied. In those instances, we will not fail to put our hands on our social diseases. It is from here can people straighten their resolve to move. Many things got massed up and corruption advanced to destroy whatever public. Now people are very bitter experiencing what is happening to South Sudanese Pound destroyed by opportunists, who planned to horde Dollars under their pillows, beddings, holes and secret accounts overseas, having seen their days are numbered irreversibly and people shall spare them not. Those self-enriching opportunists adulterated our emerging South Sudan economy, leaving our poor people nothing to survive!
Since peace was concluded in 2005, our people never experienced difficult times as they are now experiencing, as things kept deteriorating from bad to worse throughout South Sudan: No light, no water, no food, no transport, no jobs, no money, no schools, nothing in the market and rents souring! But the biggest riddle, is when people go to the Ministry of Finance to cash their bills, they are told: “sorry, we have nothing”! For sure, no person can assert when that worsening situation shall improve with the type of government, which has no alternative plans and means to deal with the sensitive ways of managing funds, especially budget control! For that reason and examining that kind of calamity like happened in other countries, none can differ with those who predict, there shall be no other way under the sun unless people take Kiir to where he should be held responsible and have him accountable for all the wrongs he committed. Let people wisely and quickly resort to the examples people undertook to find appropriate solutions.
Of the most stunning things happening today in South Sudan, is the fact that people are cool and looking unconcerned with whatever is going on around them! People look quiet and unaffected by all what is going on, which gives a kind of acceptance to what is happening in the country and alternatively gives the government the wrong impression that things are moving well to the right direction! Many gunshots are heard cracking from more than two to three directions through the night and at times during the day. Security wise, everything in Juba is very uncertain. And so are things in the markets, hospitals, garages, restaurants and so on. Juba, the capital of South Sudan, seems to be a town sitting on a landslide at the verge of sliding from a cliff into the sea. One would only wonder as to what kind of tragedy are people waiting! South Sudan is a country at the verge of total collapse. Whatever is affecting Juba today affects all its peripheries, if not worse where the heavy hands of the government fall on the citizens without sorrow or remorse!
In the last five years, the government of Kiir Mayar committed appalling mistakes, sins and unbelievable capital crimes. It stole, looted and robbed a virgin nation, South Sudan, more than any country in the world, given the short time in which it joined the group of nations, as an independent State. In 2011 South Sudan had no debits being a newborn nation. By 2014, it lost about 20 billion dollars! In less than three years South Sudan rose to be the third country in the world, corruption wise, with an inefficient civil service and an elementary market! Today two questions keep on ringing in every sober mind: Most of the thieves are well known and where they keep the money also known. Shall they ever return that stolen money! In which dens in the world shall thieves hide what they looted from South Sudan? Let the Interpol and its international associates get involved in an unprecedented way to put an end to the ongoing “loot of a nation”! Our people need to be saved from that catastrophic happening, which might abolish a nation from the world map! That tragic fact happens and the country is yet, a tiny infant learning how to walk! It seems Salva Kiir must have lost his bearings to an extent of refusing to use the simple tools, which could help him hand over that overdue Presidency, peacefully. Salva knows all the processes through which our people passed the Constitutions. Salva was the person who took oath to preserve and protect the Constitution of South Sudan!
On the 7th August, President Salva sent a controversial letter on the issue of peace brokered by IGAD in Addis Ababa, Chaired by Hailemariam Desalegn, the Priminister of Ethiopia. The end result of Salva’s 9-page letter was that he rejected IGAD’s peace arrangements and suggested for IGAD to retrieve what they suggested and produce almost a new proposal! That was not the first time for Juba to play with IGAD peace offers and hide behind proposals sent to all sides to the conflict after almost two years. The reasons behind that rejection are two. First: Dr Riek Machar may be abandoned soon by his Generals, hence no need to reach an agreement with him. Which is a stupid calculation! Second: All those leading peace talks from the side of Salva are afraid to be exposed to justice for embezzlement and corruption, once they lose ministerial seats. This comes in addition to the fact that Kiir dreads to be taken to The Hague! These are the main reasons behind their insistence to cling on government positions, to protect them from the hands of justice. They fear the aftermath of their criminal deeds. But truth shall be revealed since being a bunch of people who believe in lies the way they believed that concocted coup attempt of December 2013!
That aggravating situation in Juba has diverted our people’s attention from asking that Kiir’s government about what is going on in Malakal; one of the three main towns where about a third of the population of South Sudan are. Let people know Kiir’s government has lost Malakal socially, politically and militarily! But that should not explode rage, vengeance and dismay among people around Malakal and else where. The fall of the capital of one third of our country, Malakal, should conclude the wrong ways we use to do things and start to do them rightly. Because, in that way, we might loose the whole country! People may lose Wau the same way to make it two-thirds. People know they have no parliament to defend South Sudan and its constitution, even if we lose ‘three-thirds’ of the country! Malakal shall mark the start of the deterioration of many things in the country, whatever “al-Sahaaf” might claim. Paloch, our only coffer left where “national-looters” divert Dollars to fund the war, shall follow Malakal. That fall of Malakal, even if it were taken for a single day, shall go into our history as a terminating blow to that war-mongering dictatorship. So the first nail intended to pierce the brain of our first dictator has rightly hit the target. Meaning, South Sudan shall never be ruled by a dictator, even if he or she heads the coming transitional period!
Now, Juba is being held tight by the throat by thugs who never thought to find themselves, one day, face to face with the international community! So they hear about it, but they refuse to know how they work. South Sudan, an unknown nation that came into existence, because of the support Southern Sudan freely received from the international community, based primarily on humanitarian laws and norms, cannot turn against the world in such a short time when being helped to resolve an internal crisis. In simple words, that could be “bad manners”! Thugs cannot rise before their day to dictate a rejection to international norms. That war is an internal one, of a people against the very people! The manner in which crimes are committed now, are horrific and completely unacceptable. And those who commit them are well known and shall be faced worldwide! Crooks, as they are, they cannot tell the world that they do not care what the international community will do! They are an amalgamation of ignoramus who knew all the facts about humanitarian laws, though they ignore the fact that humanitarian laws are powerful! They do not know the fact that the strength of humanitarian laws is based on human conscience. One must be conscience to understand what humanitarian laws are all about!
The first thing to note is that South Sudan is an undeveloped, land-locked state, barely linked to neighbours, except Uganda and the Sudan. To reject international cooperation, the alternative would be to deal with the under-world! Whether we like it or not, South Sudan is about to become a den for thieves, smugglers, and swindlers internationally, if peace is not achieved! Today South Sudan under Salva Kiir is actively linked to one country in the world, Uganda! But Uganda shall soon stop cooperation with South Sudan, because of two important facts. One is, South Sudan shall run out of oil and hence, Dollars, for which Museveni is killing our innocent people. Museveni shall withdraw listening to what the Parliament advised him, in an election year. Second is because, of the rising international pressures on Yuweri to withdraw from South Sudan, for being a mediating country. The Sudan on the other hand began welcoming brake-away Generals and self-appointed weaklings from the camp of Dr Riek Machar, longing to get a share of cake from the current peace agreement in Addis, report to Juba or withdraw to create havoc anew! For about two years “Mathiang Anyor”, a private militia of Kiir turned into an army, was funded publicly in a process unapproved by the Assembly, to represent the sovergnity of a country in the UN!
On the 16th August 2015 the main parties to the conflict, Salva Kiir, Dr Riek Machar and Pagan Amum, met in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to attend the IGAD Summit on the signing of Peace Agreement to resolve the conflict in South Sudan. The summit was convened by IGAD on behalf of the AU, attended by: Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Djibouti, The Sudan, Tchad, Egypt, Algeria, South Africa, Nigeria, AU, Troika, Norway, UK, USA, EU and IGAD and South Sudan. Through day and night the dignitaries, in a marathon endeavor, met with President Salva Kiir, Dr Riek Machar and Pagan Amum, urging them to put an end to war. Elders, religious leaders and civil societies also attended the meetings. President Museveni and President Uhuru attended. Hailemariam Desalegn, the Priminister of Ethiopia, chaired the meeting. The Agenda was specific and crystal clear, not to bring peace to South Sudan, but to bring Peace and stability by signing a Comprehensive Peace for South Sudan by August the 17th 2015! President Kiir, Dr Riek and Pagan were not allowed to leave Addis Ababa, which was a clear pressure, unless the three leaders and witnessing parties conclude the meetings by signing an amicable Peace Agreement to be witnessed by the attending Leaders! After 5:00 pm August 17th 2015 two opposition Parties, SPML-IO and SPLM-G10, signed the Peace Agreement, witnessed by all the Leaders and dignitaries, leaving Kiir lonely in the Hall, gazing at that historic event after which he trotted, initialed the Peace Agreement and promised to sign it in two weeks time! Salva tried to follow the disappointed President Yuweri out of the Hall, and was stopped by President Uhuru not to leave the Hall, but to sign the Peace Agreement. After Dr Riek Machar, Chairman SPLM IO and Com Pagan Amum, Chairman GT and Secretary General of SPLM arrived from Juba and signed the Peace Agreement, Kiir Mayar was left stark naked and felt it fit to resort to Juba for further consultations.
That was simply, the tether on which Kiir Mayar tied the PEACE process for the awaiting peoples of South Sudan, Africa and the world! It is important for the people of South Sudan to know, who refused to let us have PEACE in our country! Peace for a country in civil war wouldn’t need a contemptuous President to follow a disappointed President of a neighbouring country. Let those who adore disappointing leaders know how they fell, following those who deceive the people and adversely present them as criminals like those bunch of failures, who installed themselves to be leaders of Dinka Council of Elders! For long years, those swindlers have been making a living out of Dinka people and the entire people of South Sudan! Let our people know, at times, new nations might come to pass through complicated ways. And that experience, which took two years of our lives, was one of the most bitter and saddest times for a people to go through! And therefore, we should not forget. Today we know the culprits and how they plotted, day and night for years to delay our independence and destroy our country! When Kiir stood hesitant before the world to sign the Peace Agreement and the tears of our orphans, widows and Mama Rabecca Nyandeng were flowing, since when she lost The Leader, Dr John Garang de Mabior, what else is left for us, but to turn a new page in our history to bring a new life founded on the sound principles of justice, equality, equity, unity and democracy for our people to live free in peace!
Let our people rise attentive to wisely handle that new unfolding reality of the capture of one third of South Sudan, symbolized by the fall of Malakal to mark the very day our glorious Revolution was born in Bor, May 16th 1983. Which Kiir Mayar decided not to celebrate in Juba for the shame of shames he fought for to receive. Soon the era of “one-man-despotism” of Lt-Gen Kiir Mayar shall come to end whether inherited by an elephant or a rabbit. Our country is about to witness a transitional period during which to erect the foundation upon which to construct a united, democratic, federal, peaceful and a just republic. Let people unite and exert efforts to harvest a fruitful transition. Let people be prepared to take every step a civilized people take to safeguard that coming era of peace, stability and progress. Let us ask the world, except al-Bashier and Museveni, what wrong did our people do to be contained bleeding in a cage of a seditious, corrupting and a lying dictator? Enough, Kiir Mayar, enough!
LONG LIVE THE PEOPLE OF SOUTH SUDAN!
VICTORY IS CERTAIN!
1 comment
Great article just too long. Didn’t have the time to reread it. Yes Kiiir and his JCE are making near impossible for feature leaders. Maybe it’s because they unlike Nuer already acknowledged that Equatoria is leaving South Sudan in the near future which mean South Sudan will be left to Nuer and Jaang. Ofcourse it will end up cut up because Nuer and Jaang are like cats and dogs at each other. Since Jaang know they have no chance in hell against Nuer they are taking their chance right now because tomorrow will never come. Nuers at this point should contemplate the question of WHAT IF SOUTH SUDAN DOES BREAK UP INTO THREE STATING WITH EQUATORIA. What would be the fate of the Jaang that are scattered living within and SINCE JAANG WANT TO RULE WITHOUT EMBRACING OTHER TRIBE IS LEADERSHIP and rather destroy the country because Jaang already seem to have foreseen the country breaking up into three How do you counter such am inevitable fate. Nuer council do not ask these question and ask the phd holder to volunteer and present their research finding as to be better informed, debate analyze and make an informed decision. Why fight unnecessarirly when the Jaang plant and direction is obvious. This place the population within now and force them to make a decision of to peacefully coexist or separate. They can not be allow to loot the country riding on the back of other and yet put very mule they are riding to make a decision of separating.