BUILDING CONSENSUS ON NATION BUILDING: Dr. Lam Akol’s Public Lecture at Juba University

Public Lecture on:

BUILDING CONSENSUS ON NATION BUILDING

By: Dr Lam Akol

Chairman of SPLM-DC

A lecture delivered at Juba University on Saturday the 23^rd of November 2013. 

BUILDING CONSENSUS ON NATION BUILDING

Distinguished guests,

I welcome you warmly and am greatly honoured to share with you today the subject of this important lecture. I am particularly encouraged by the high presence of the youth, and to them I have this to say:

“our generation fought the liberation struggle, but unfortunately we also messed it up; the responsibility to get things right lies squarely on your shoulders. So, take your responsibility seriously”.

What do we mean by consensus?

• Consensus is not about being in one political party; nor is it about having one political opinion.

• Consensus goes beyond one’s political affiliation or tribe.

• Consensus is about having a common outlook, about a shared sense of a common cause and about agreed democratic norms and values.
• Consensus is about developing a common national culture including common institutions of parliament and other public institutions to which we owe allegiance.
• We must build consensus on our constitution for the constitution does not belong to a single party nor to a single section of our society; but is a compact between the people of South Sudan and between them and their democratically elected government. The means of implementing the consensus would not pose a problem as all are committed to it.
• It goes without saying that the consensus can only be in the context of a democratic set-up.

What are the issues we need consensus on?

• South Sudan is now in its third year and is naturally still grappling with the challenges of teething. As a new country, it is facing basic problems of self-identification and control over its own resources. Like all African countries, it has inherited from the colonial powers a country characterized by diversity and extreme underdevelopment. We must address these issues together if we are to have a chance of success.

• Unlike other African countries, South Sudan was born with excellent financial and economic resources, a good reserve of skilled human resources including political leaders and some level of structures. We did not start from scratch as it is too often made out either to justify failure or by the apologists of that failure. Add to this wealth the accumulated experience of the other African countries extending over half a century since independence, South Sudan was better placed to kick off than any of its predecessors. It didn’t need to follow trial-and-error in its development nor reinvent the wheel. What is required is to build on our strengths and improve on our weaknesses.
• Our country is facing a lot of challenges which we must face headlong. It is the duty of all of us to seek solutions to these challenges. Our first task is nation-building which finds expression in the twin issues of unity in diversity and socio-economic development.

Unity in Diversity

• Since independence this matter has imposed itself to the fore forcefully. We have for long known what we are not, it is time to define what we are. Our new country is composed of constituents that enjoy various diversities: ethnic, religious, cultural, regional, etc. We must work out a formula for the cordial co-existence of these diversities. This is the basis of unity in diversity. To achieve this noble objective our system of government and running it must balance the interests of all the constituent parts of our community. Secondly, service delivery and development cannot wait; for there can be no peace and stability without that.

The Economy:

• South Sudan needs to set in place stringent fiscal and monetary policies and measures to control inflation and induce the revival and expansion of the economy in order to attain real growth. It is the growth of the economy that will ensure employment opportunities and control inflation. We must also re-examine the taxation system now in place to adopt one with a scale progressing with the rise in total income. Custom duties are a very important source of income and must be well guarded against defaulters. Overall, for our economy to be viable, we must diversify the sources of national income instead of relying solely on oil revenue which is a volatile commodity both literally and figuratively. Government expenditure needs to be brought under control so as to save money for other areas of public expenditure.

• Development is our gateway to social advancement, economic growth and prosperity in our country. We must develop our resources in an integrated and far-sighted manner. Our people have suffered immensely during the war and the attainment of peace was for them “payback time”. They have great expectations in terms of service delivery and better times ahead. Such expectations cannot be met without a coherent and realistic long-term socio-economic development plan (call it SP 2020, SP 2025, etc.) that taps our natural resources and takes into consideration the complexities of the world economic situation around us. This plan is to be agreed upon and worked out by all the active sections of our society. We live in a world where the boundaries are disappearing as regions and the world at large, as the case may be, turn into one huge market. Let us take of East African Community which is in the news these days. East Africa is the region South Sudan is part of and hence it is natural that events in the region affect us positively or negatively. The question these days is: should South Sudan join or not join the EAC now? Put another way, what are the advantages and the disadvantages of joining EAC now?

• For a start, EAC is basically an economic community and therefore the advantages of joining it must be economic. There is no denying the importance of the other factors or their interconnectivity, but the singular advantage of an economic community is to provide a larger market for the country’s goods and services. In the case of EAC, the total population (if South Sudan is included) is 115 million persons. This is a huge market compared with the population of South Sudan at a mere 8.25 million. The same market is available to all the countries that are members of the Community. At the moment we do not produce anything let alone having products that can compete in that market. Our physical infrastructure is at a dilapidated state and cannot help put us in a competitive position in terms of serving markets and production centres. It doesn’t therefore need much effort to conclude that at the moment joining the EAC is not the right decision to be taken now.  We hasten to add that such a conclusion does not affect in any way our bilateral relations with all the countries of the community. A country that does not produce competitive goods and services turns into a consumer and a dumping ground of others and cannot enjoy the benefits of such an association.  The Regional Economic Communities of the African Union should not be confused with other organizations of similar naming. The only REC that succeeded to combine both its AU role and that of a regional economic community is ECOWAS. We should concentrate on developing agriculture, the area in which we have a relative advantage in relation to many countries in the Community and beyond. It is also the field in which more than 80% of our population are engaged for their living. We have millions of hectares of virgin land, huge water resources and enough capital to invest in agriculture and agro-industry. Our oil resources must be directed to bring about an agricultural revolution to produce enough food for ourselves (food security) and for export. Rather than being a basket case, we can be the bread basket of the region and beyond.

• Investment is a solid pillar of economic transformation. To begin with the government must have an investment map for the country as a whole that will serve as the basis of investment. The investment law must guarantee significant concessions to the investors including a tax holiday and a single window taxing and should be designed in such a way so as to attract investors to the countryside. There are also other impediments that need to be overcome, such as security, multiple taxation, employment policies, etc.

International Relations:

• Our international relations must be employed to bring us economic and investment benefits, protect our regional and international interests, maintain good neighbourliness and foster our role in contributing to international peace and security. For such a policy to be sustainable all stakeholders in the country have to be involved in its formulation.

CONCLUSION:

As the official opposition party in South Sudan, SPLM-DC has the onus of preparing the ground for objective dialogue with a view of building consensus on the national issues. The immediate challenges are fostering nation building, developing a common outlook on economic transformation and developing clear policy perspectives on international relations. We are ready to cooperate with the government and other political parties in these areas.

Someone may ask: these matters have been on the agenda ever since and there has been no cooperation between the government and the opposition. What is new now?

Well, as a Party, we have noticed since the beginning of this second half of the year, discernible signs of change in the government’s attitude and actions. The government began to pay more attention to tackling the cases of corruption, it adopted a lean government, made peace with all but one of the armed rebels fighting it, and became less exclusive politically than was previously the case. These issues of fighting corruption, reduction of government expenditure and reconciliation are dear to our hearts and the heart of every South Sudanese. Therefore, the measures the government took were the right step in the right direction and they have to be encouraged to continue in that line. We are responding to that. However, it must be stressed that this is just the beginning and a lot needs to be done. This is why we say that this is the time for building a consensus on national issues.

As a Party, the priority issues are the security (from fear and from want) and service delivery. On the first policy issue, we need to make peace all over the country and we need to provide a regime of law and order, at the same time we need to produce enough food for ourselves and to establish a food security surplus. Health, and education and basic infrastructure are needs that must get the attention they deserve. To be able to sustain achievements in these priority areas we must fix our economy to the satisfaction of our people.

On the Party level, the coming period will see bee-like activities to revamp the party and prepare it for the upcoming Convention scheduled for September 2014 or earlier if the Political Parties’ Affairs Council is formed and so decides.

These are the general outlines on our appeal for building a national consensus on nation building. Nothing is easy, but with our collective will as a nation, solutions could easily be found.