Speaking My Mind: Let Us Share the Problems of This Country
6 min readBy Daniel Machar Dhieu, Juba
March 26, 2015 (SSB) — First, we must appreciate the difference we have over other nations; acknowledge the relational role we must have together in the nation, natural resources and national diversity. Let us not turn education into a status achievement tool by which we are to be recognized in society instead of it being expressed in the results of our work.
The traditional customs of respect for others has been corroded by anomalous education. For example, the law is unequivocal about choice of marriage. These cannot be mixed.
The situation of South Sudan now need us to unite to succeed as a nation or perpetrate the state of delusion on accountability for the future of this country to a few, irrespective of their capacity to arrest the real genesis of the country’s problems. This demand would together make us identify the problems, prioritize the sectors for specific actions and develop the operational policies and actionable plans that will maintain a state of mental and social sanity and stability in South Sudan.
We were the victim of December 2013 crisis and other challenges in the nation because we never present our spirit of nationality as citizen of this nation. We divided ourselves to the politicians on tribal bases. Therefore, we have actually expressed ourselves negatively through supporting wrong politicians as citizen. Our leaders mislead the nation in all aspect of leaderships. They did not inform us well on the policies of the government.
However, the consequences are the decadent society we now have! The result is emulation of such leadership styles, which are bound to lead us into temptation where we end up with no fear of the wrong because our pastoral parents are the current example. They also ensure that we however fear to challenge them on national’s constitution of South Sudan.
The same applies with secular leaders, and thus fear becomes the order of the day. All people who are engulfed by fear before any trials freeze their brains and cannot produce solutions to any problem. Thus they eventually fail even to use resources they possess. Fear has become synonymous with respect. What a pity! Let own our national problem because we fear our leaders, we sincerely fail to reject their wrong proposal toward us.
Today development is stunted by functional illiterates who, by their bestowed leadership positions, surreptitiously infect society with intellectual dwarfism. The reluctance to utilize local talent to maintain and preserve a steady rate of development has been the foibles of South Sudan leadership. The belief in external consultants, who bring in solutions to problems and local culture they have no clue about, has retarded development. We see our own as rivals instead of complements of our own sector abilities. In real sense we have to remember where the power of togetherness lost in the background of our national crisis that has stunted development across the nation.
South Sudan is unique in that we are one nation with cultural diversity of tradition. In this situation we need to learn the policy of many ideology one idea and much cultural diversity to one cultural tradition. So we can easily bring together all resources to solve our socio-economic problems. Why we are failing is the inexplicable riddle! That has emerged in us for many years due to negatives though and feeling.
Over the 8 years of CPA agreement and 3 years of independence we have, not only abundant educated human capital but also experienced groups of professional sector retirees. It is indisputable that the country is in dire straits economically the nation is simultaneously suffering under economic recession. So friends prepared to assist have dwindled because they cannot understand what our problem is. Is it greed or failure to utilize the resources at our disposal? Our problems are basically on personal interest, most of our leaders mismanage public funds to their own business instead of delivering services to local people.
Our leaders like allegation rumors than telling true to the people while citizen keep silence without rejecting allegation level to them by politicians this has marked all South Sudanese as victim of the ongoing war in the nation. We are aware of the importance of the modern means of remotely accessing information and have fertile land, enlightened and acquiescent human capital, water, relatively peaceful political environment with no seriously fractious groupings, one family-hood; the list of facilitative advantages is endless.
Why then don’t we use, for the common good, the diverse talents that exist in the country? Let me leave the numerous departments that can contribute suggestions. I shall boldly recommend to all concerned that there is need to separate political issues from technical operations to effectuate policies. It is an incontrovertible fact that for every country the national prerogatives are health, food security, education and infrastructure, preferably in that order.
All other technical solutions must be to facilitate finding solutions to service delivery of these prerogatives. No one person, therefore, can be master of all these; hence political approaches need the technical operations to provide the solutions. Each profession has a singular role to play in every problem-solving exercise. Let me focus only on the sector that I am familiar with: communications. It should be a Government position to have one national infrastructure network policy where the individual components of the network operate in a manner that is transparent to signal type with seamlessly interoperable interconnectivity.
An independent regulator operates within the guidelines of Government policy and the relevant legal framework/statute. The independence is merely from influence outside the guidelines of policy and the statutes.
This approach facilitates the formulation of predictable regulatory regimes in conformity with transparent policies. The transparency of policy and predictability of regulations are the pre-requisites for attracting direct foreign and indeed local, investments. In an environment where knowledge inferiority complex of people in powerful positions ensures frustration of those who exhibit some spark, the future may look bleak but not hopeless.
This experience is becoming too common here. Let us not forget that nothing lasts forever in this fleeting life because change is the only permanent occurrence!
Let all hands come on deck to change South Sudan for the common good. Leadership does not mean being president; it means unleashing talent for the good of the community such that, in our particular work, progeny can emulate. Establishing expensive commissions followed by failure to implement recommendations or any apparent softness towards certain corrupt people tacitly condones dishonesty. Actually the nation fails to understand what corruption in democratic government.
The whole nation was blindfold in 2012 by the president on the case of seventy-five (75) people who were found mismanage the public funds since 2007-2012 of year record. According to president, the list of seventy-five people would be taken to parliament to answer some question but in some-days the statement changed and the members of seventy-five were not taken to parliament anymore.
No one person, or even a few, can be more intelligent than the whole nation, without its permission. So let us own our problems and collectivize our efforts at finding solutions. A lot more is being suggested in the media; lets embark on action by together first identifying the cause and removing it.
There is no need to be spending too much time focusing on the fruits of the problems. We have only one Republic of South Sudan.
The writer is the Student at South Sudan Christian University for Science and Technology (SSCUST). Contact him onmachardhieu@gmail.com
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