Dear Mayak Deng Aruei: Your writing lacks intellectual objectivity
4 min readDear Mayak Deng,
May 6, 2015 (SSB) —- I normally don’t comment on articles written in the social media, however, when I read your piece of writing which is not worth calling an article I felt compelled to respond. Your piece of writing lacks intellectual objectivity which may be expected from a PHD student instead it is based on historical mis-information and un-wanted generalization.
1. In your first paragraph you stated that ‘’there can be no meaningful peace in the Kingdom of Shilluk if their sons don’t stop being too ambitious to lead, too vocal in South Sudan’s affairs and too easy to catch political fires’’. Mr. Mayak what God given right do you or your likes have to deny the sons/daughters of Shilluk to be ambitious to lead and be vocal in South Sudan’s affairs? All the tribes in the Republic of South Sudan have the right to be ambitious and to be vocal in the running of that country and these rights are not God given rights to certain ethnicity or tribes who feels that they and they only have the right to be ambitious to lead South Sudan. You should know better as a PHD student of organizational leadership that in a democratic state every individual citizen has the right to aspire to any high office through ballot boxes and this right is well enshrined in our interim constitution.
2. Mr. Mayak you claimed that and I quote ‘’the ragging fire in South Sudan was fueled by tribal hatreds, and Shilluks have their part in the crisis’’. Really? What has Shilluk go to do with infamous December 2013 incident? If you’re talking about the involvement of Mr. Pagan, Oyai, and Dr. Adwok let me remind you that the three gentlemen do not represent the political, economic and social aspirations of the Shilluk people. Not only that, none of them has ever been elected to represent any of the Shilluk geographical constituency. So for you to label the entire tribe for their involvement is not only fair but it is rather an intellectual nonsense.
3. You alluded to the fact that Shilluk have been very active in Sudan’s politics, played crucial roles in the liberation struggle but yet why are they seen everywhere while their numbers are very few? Again Mr. Mayak who told you that Shilluk are very few? Do you know the true numbers of Shilluk? If Shilluk is always referred as the third largest tribe in South Sudan how could their numbers be very few and not even few? This deformed mentality of majority and minority is what is killing us. The proponents of such deformed idiot-ology have no place in our nascent state, they belong to a long gone past and their place is in the dustbin of history. South Sudanese are equal before God and the Constitution and nationalist would not accept the categorization of our tribes as first, second, third and fourth class, put simply we are all South Sudanese. It does not matter whether your Dinka, Murle, Shilluk or Nuer we are all equal period. So Mr. Mayak gets up from your sleeping slumber of this majority and minority idiot-ology and stop looking at South Sudanese from microscopic lens.
4. Mr. Mayak my piece of advice to you is that next time you attempt to write a piece or an article about certain tribes just take your time and ask yourself this question ‘’ what is the title, and what thesis do I want to prove, rather than putting yourself in sea of intellectual controversy based on generalization of a whole tribe. If your article was to examine Shilluk political leaders than you should confined it to that without labeling the whole tribe. The Shilluk will continue playing pivotal role in South Sudan politics until kingdom come! And it is the right of sons/daughters of every tribe in South Sudan to dream big and no-body will stop that God given right.
From Amanuel Aban
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