The Capture-Recapture Technology Manufactures More Graves: The Case Of South Sudan
5 min readBy Dut-machine De Mabior, Nairobi, Kenya
May 23, 2015 (SSB) —- My colleagues and writers of opinionated articles on how to run our country might have missed my opinions for the last three months. I had taken a break due to some unavoidable circumstances. Even as I put this piece in writing, the same circumstances have not permitted me to do so but I consider the fate of the country painful enough to make me defy my personal conditions on why I should not educate South Sudanese on the futility of the war they are fighting.
My dear readership, as indicated in the title, the capture-recapture method being used by the warring parties of South Sudan creates more graves than building the country. At independence, we had vowed to create a country in which every one of us would be proud to live in; only to realize two years later, it’s an oasis of death and suffering. For us to have a nation that preserves humanity, embraces peace, feeds its population among many more, we, must have a heart of humanity that fears human suffering.
The engagement in war and the continued violation of the cease fire (I don’t know which party to blame) bleeds our country more yet we all know the solution, whether we like to hear or not, will be found on the negotiating table in Addis Ababa or any other city in Africa. Whatever the reason of the war is; whether protecting legitimacy as argued by the government of the Republic of South Sudan or fighting Reforms as claimed by the SPLM-IO rebellion, none of the two is fit enough to slaughter South Sudanese. Quoting from the outgoing president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, H. E. Goodluck Jonathan, he said after losing elections, “No body’s ambition is worth the blood of a Nigerian.” I hereby challenge the principals of the warring sides that, no matter how much legitimacy needs protection, it’s not worth the blood of a South Sudanese. I here boldly tell the other side that no amount of reforms not intertwined with a political ambition is worth the blood of a South Sudanese.
Capturing a town only kills people, recapturing it kills South Sudanese, do we know we are depleting ourselves, one by one? It is pathetic to always claim fighting on behave of the people you are killing. Isn’t that funny and ironical? It’s pathetic to claim love of the people that only suffers as a matter of our own making. It’s inhumane to expose our elderly, children who are indeed the future of this great Nation and women as if we don’t care about how they suffer yet we claim day in, day out that they are the people we want to comfort. Comfort my bosses! Do we comfort people after sending them to the displace camps, widow or widowers them? Are we willing to comfort the dead since that is what our continued deafness to calls for peace is creating? My bosses, are we planning to kill more in order to liberate our masses form nothing that calls for bloodshed? I am sure the war we are fighting can be handled on the table of negotiations.
Needless to remind someone that if we were able to sit and talk, achieve peace with Khartoum, a people we parted thereafter, then why not with a brother whom you will always be confined to the same territorial borders. Maybe it will hurt some people who want this war to continue but I will tell the naked, plain reality, we are not going to part ways with whoever we don’t like, whether for a political reason or something! We are all in South Sudan to stay together and that is the naked fact!
To the SPLM-IO of Dr. Machar, reforms are only fought, negotiated and brought to a people. Not unless your rebellion needs to bring reforms and be a reformer of the dead; this war should and must stop, yes soon I mean. No matter how much your intentions are pure for South Sudanese; we don’t feel the genuine when what they only bring is death and suffering, creating more disabled and orphans without forgetting widows and their opposites. If they are intertwined with people political ambition, then that should be addressed through the social means.
As I finalize appealing to the presidency of South Sudan, not unless you want to govern the dead, this war has to stop and stop soon. What is the fate of legitimacy when the very people who gave it are all deceased? I must state clearly here that the Juba regime is legitimate because people voted for it. What becomes of this very legitimacy when the population is depleted is a theory that can be defined by the English Language. Putting it in plain terms again, legitimacy and the people governed is one and the same thing, so they either live together or die together. Whether we like to hear it or not, the legitimacy of the Juba government will be no more when it cannot work to avert the death and the suffering of South Sudanese.
Finally, we must remember, we can put our land to better economic use rather than burying our loved ones. We must stop creating more graves through the technology of capture-recapture and get back to the peace talks to find a negotiated solution to the current crises rocking the country. Peace must be brought to the country now to stop the looming predicted famine in South Sudan.
May God almighty bless South Sudan and make us understand that we are one people in many political divisions. May peace prevail soon.
South Sudan oyee.
The author is a student of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Kenyatta University, Nairobi Kenya.
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