July 9th: What is it about?
9 min readBy PaanLuel Wel
Juba City, South Sudan.
Last year, July 9th 2012, on the first Anniversary of the independence of South Sudan, I was requested by the BBC to provide a ‘domestic’ appraisal of the Republic of South Sudan, a year after her independence. Naturally, I delved into the ills, then and still now, bedeviling the new nation and touched on the blunders committed by our political leaders, blunders that only add fuel onto the fire, precipitating the downhill slide into the dark abyss. And at the abyss it appears we have finally arrived, merely on the second anniversary of the independence of South Sudan.
We are ranked fourth among the failed states in the world; our infant oil-dependent economy has collapsed, along with social amenities and physical infrastructure; corruption is running amok in the country, sparing not even the office of the president, and our esteemed politicians—Salva Kiir, Riek Machar, Pagan Amum and Rebecca Nyandeng—instead of feeling ashamed of the state of affairs in the country, are flagrantly providing a bizarre episode in a drama of epic confusion. Worse still, the country has run out of able and good leaders that the prodigal son is the one proclaiming our salvation and redemption from the failed Messiah. Little wonder that, while it took us about 50 years of revolutionary armed struggle to liberate ourselves from Northern hegemony, it has taken us barely two years to push ourselves over the cliff. This must be a new variant of the famed Moore’s law.
As a result, there is darkness at the end of a tunnel as we celebrate the second anniversary of our independence today, July 9th 2013. Logically, many have been driven to disillusionment and despair over the sharp contrast between the sweet promises of the Promised Land and the bitter realities of the Real Land. The rapid hellization of South Sudan, the burden of freedom and the curse of independence, must have already compelled some to wonder out loud, ‘when will independence end?’ But while there is darkness at the end of a tunnel, there must be light at the beginning of it, the very light that enabled us to locate the dark tunnel in the first place. It is incumbent upon us therefore, on this occasion of the second anniversary of the independence of South Sudan, to revisit the past, to go back to our revolutionary roots, to retrieve the light from the heroes of our liberation struggle. This is the only antidote to vain moaning and futile ranting about the current unfortunate state of affairs in our country. As Dr. John Garang used to say ‘sometimes it is necessary to go back in order to gain momentum to go forward.’
Going back to the past means reminding ourselves of what this July 9th celebration—yes, it is indeed a celebration, not a national mourning—is all about? It means remembering the obstacles we had faced and overcome: the mountains and hills scaled; the valleys and rivers crossed; the forests and bushes populated; the suffering and the deaths encountered and experienced; the oppression and subjugation we were subjected to and resisted; the heroes produced and the martyrs lost; the milestone peace agreement achieved and the game-changing referendum conducted; the costly independence gained and the legacy of the revolutionary struggle bestowed upon us, and most importantly, the future we are destined to chart for this and forthcoming generations.
July 9th is about our proud legacy, feat of achievement that generations upon generations of our descendant will be marveling at: Torit mutiny—we never received the change of masters, from European colonialism to Arab chauvinism in silence, shattering the myth of the submissive abeed. Anyanya one—we confronted force with force and never succumbed to northern superior military power and human resources, rendering the threat of force from the north impotent. Addis Ababa agreement—establishing a democratic system that was the envy of the north that had bid itself into believing that ‘southerners can’t rule themselves’, shattering the analogy of ‘a sick child being forcefully fed for its own survival’. SPLM/A—by championing the new Sudan Vision, the SPLM/A succeeded in injecting a new paradigm shift in the dynamism of Southern Sudanese liberation struggle in that it “shifted the Southern outlook from that of a minority, struggling for recognition and a degree of autonomy in a marginalized corner of the country, to one of self-assertiveness, pride, and dignity in the struggle for a democratic Sudan” culminating in an independence state of our own.
July 9th is a call for peace, reconciliation and unity—reminding ourselves that in spite of their perennial rivalries, Southerners never lost sight of their brotherhood and common destiny. Even in the midst of their worst antagonism, Southerners were always conscious of the fundamental goal of their struggle. For example, William Abdallah Chuol, one among the few people who concurred with Garang’s views expressed in the 1972 letter, insisted that Khartoum should give him a deal better than the Addis Ababa accord, one similar to the agreement proposed by John Garang in the 1972 letter with separate and independent armies for South and North Sudan, a proposal that greatly puzzled Khartoum regimes. Additionally, Abdullah Chuol demanded that the SPLM/A under Garang, his archenemy, be represented in a talk that had to take place between his Anyanya two and the Khartoum government in a neutral ground, Switzerland or New York City, USA.
July 9th is about enlightening ourselves that the politics of liberation in South Sudan, our long walk to freedom, was a collective achievement, a shared heritage by and of all tribes and nationalities that inhabit the country. While the Equatorians pioneered the main resistance to Khartoum regimes on the eve, and in the immediacy, of the Sudan independence in 1956, particularly in Anyanya one, the Nuers represented the face of South Sudanese liberation struggle in the Anyanya two and during the founding of the SPLM/A, while the Dinkas dominated South Sudanese clandestine movement of the ‘Progressive Officers’ in the post Addis Ababa Agreement era and, for the most part, the era of the SPLM/A and the post independence South Sudan, with the Fourth Forces playing their proportional role. It is about reminding ourselves that it is a shared legacy, one that was shaped, more or less, by the relative contributions, over varying times and under special circumstances, of each of the four political forces that currently constitute the political fabric of our country—the Nuer, Dinka, Equatorians and the Fourth Forces (anyone other than the Dinka, Nuer and Equatorians, e.g Shilluk, Anyuak, Murle, Balanda etc)
July 9th is about our living martyrs: Father Saturlino, John Garang, Kerubino Kwanyin, William Nyuon, Arok Thon, Joseph Oduho, Martin Majier, among others and particularly our unsung heroes such as Paterno Oboyi, Joseph Akuon and Francis Ngor-makiech. In the solemn words of Dr. John Garang, we all “salute the memory of these martyrs as a reminder that they did not die in vain; they have brought peace and the legacy and spirit of their struggle and sacrifice will always guide us, as well as generations to come, toward a better and ever better southern Sudan. We will always ever be grateful, and we will always remember our fallen heroes and martyrs.” Moreover, in the living words of Father Saturlino—the father of our liberation struggling—we should always know that “the lambs of sacrifice for a country are the best of its sons, just as the unblemished lambs are offered on the sacrificed as narrated in the Old Testament and as practiced in our traditional rites”. Indeed, to paraphrase Dr. John Garang, it is unto them that we owe the struggle to which we owe the CPA to which we owe the referendum to which we owe the independence to which we owe July 9th we are commemorating today!
July 9th is an invitation to evoke how our liberation struggle evolved. It is remarkable how the Southern Sudanese liberation struggle evolved from being a mere call to adopt a federal Sudan (Juba conference) at independence in 1956 to a demand for a separate country (the Anyanya one & two) to an outright championing of ruling the entire country (the SPLM/A) with their messianic message of the New Sudan Vision. That the oft-time region considered the hideouts for the ‘slave and the enslaveable’ who unsuccessfully struggled to get federalism at independence would later roar back to champion the only viable option to maintaining a united, free and just Sudan, and to eventually gain their independence, is a living testament to the determination of the oppressed people of the Southern Sudan and their visionary leaders.
July 9th is about reminding President Salva kiir that strong leadership is expected from him because sometimes, as Uncle Abel Alier succinctly put it, “if we have to drive our people to paradise with sticks, we will do so for their own good and the good of those who come after us”. Though Garang might have been a dictator under some circumstances, his dictatorship was a blessing in disguise, one tried successfully by Joseph Lagu. It is reasonable to argue that Garang’s autocracy and centralization of leadership under one man precluded Southerners from losing the SPLM/A war and brought the CPA with its self-determination clause that guaranteed South Sudan’s independence, just as Lagu’s autocracy had ensured the unification of Anyanya One Movement that eventually won Southern Sudan the Addis Ababa Accord that brought about the first ever federal system in the Sudan since independence, one that has been continually denied to southerners by the north. The absence of Dr. John Garang or Joseph Lagu in Darfur is markedly shown by the proliferation of rebel groups, splintering into numberless entities dogged by infighting and lawlessness. While this should never be fancy as a license to initiate authoritarianism in the Republic of Southern, there is therefore a need for a strong leadership to enforce unity and discipline and an overarching ideological position, with Rwanda and China paraded as role models. The government we have in Juba is hard to define: it is too weak to apprehend David Yau-Yau or to instill the rule of law in Juba or to protect us from northern aggressions and yet too authoritative enough to be ruling by decrees, in the process ending up making nonsense of our national assembly.
In short, July 9th is a solemn celebration of our being the Greatest Generation that fought the war, brought peace, ushered in independence and set out on an equally rough and uncertain road to mold the future we want to bequeath to our children and children’s children. The fact that the road to the future has been blackened by the utter failures of Joshua and his team cannot rubbish the glorious past we have banked with history. There is more to celebrate than to mourn over. Even being number four among the failed states in the world is a cause for celebration. As Dinkas say, a useless child is better than none. Similarly, being a citizen of a failed, or even a pre-failed, state is better than being a second-class citizen in your own country. July 9th oyee!
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