Ethnic Domination in South Sudan and Why truth is always..Bitter??
4 min readBy General South (IP: 41.79.25.123 , cache1.rcswimax.com)
E-mail : southsudanese2014@gmail.com
When late Dr. John Garang told the people of South Sudan in 1994 that “an oppressor has no color”, a lot of South Sudanese thought that he was referring to black Sudanese who oppressed their own people. But with the advent of independence, so many people have begun to analyse what he was referring to and realized that anybody, whether a brother or a sister, could become an oppressor if s/he denies the citizens equality, democracy, rule of law and justice.
Mr. Simon Yel Yel ,to prove that there is “no Coup attempted” does not need somebody to study engineering in Malaysia, When South Sudan became an independent state in 9/07/2011, many people had hoped that the newly independent country would be built on principles of ethnic equality, democracy, rule of law and federalism. There was a reason for people to be optimistic about the future of South Sudan. Those who had hoped that South Sudan would become a paradise of equality justified their argument on the belief that the people of South Sudan had bitterly struggled for equality in the old Sudan for over fifty years.
Common-sense has it that people who struggled for ethnic equality for more than five decades would be able to manage ethnic diversity in a way other African countries failed to do. It is true that people who struggled against the imposition of Arabism and Islamism in the old Sudan could not end up having a government that would behave like successive Khartoum regimes that treated ethnic Africans in general as second-class citizens and the people of South Sudan in particular as third-class citizens.
Prior to independence, so many Southern Sudanese thought that an oppressor who denied people their rights was a Muslim man in Khartoum with a turban on his head. Little did the ordinary people know that a Dinka man with scarification on his forehead would become the new oppressor who may practise the worst kind of ethnic domination in the newly independent state. During the reign of successive regimes of old Sudan, ethnic domination was practised on the basis of religion and political ideology. South Sudanese were marginalized as a unit because the Northern elites wanted to assimilate them into Arab and Islamic culture. Within the north, there was some sort of power-sharing among the tribes of Shaygia, Jaaliyeen, Danagalla, etc. Political participation in the government was not dictated by one tribal affiliation but by whether one was a member of a sectarian party or Muslim brotherhood.
It would be practically impossible for Dinka elite to brutally dominate other ethnic groups in a country whose independence was achieved via a revolution. Dinka elite cannot institutionalize ethnic domination in post-independent South Sudan without facing a military uprising similar to Dr Riek Macher Rebellion. The current formation of various rebel movements in the country is a symptom of rejection of the ethnic domination being imposed from the top. Late Lt. Gen. George Athor Deng admitted in an interview in March 2011, “There is no equality between Dinkas and non-Dinkas in the government of South Sudan”. He further noted that most institutions of the government of South Sudan are built on tribal dominations and there is no equality and equity between various ethnic groups that would take place without regime change in Juba.
The politics of domination the Dinka elite pursue in South Sudan for the control of economic and political power is the main source of incessant conflicts among ethnic groups in the country.
The side effect of ethnic domination in Africa is that civil wars resulting from ethnic tensions and conflicts usually plunge nations and countries into economic mess. For instance, ethnic violence in Nigeria’s Niger Delta area has partially paralyzed economic exploration of crude oil in that state. The ethnic tension between the ljaws, the Itshekiris, and the Urhobos has seriously affected the business of oil companies located in that area.
In the process, economic setbacks are usually experienced. No sane person could argue that economic development will take place in Jonglei, Upper Nile, Unity states which are infested with rebel Movements fighting to topple the corrupt regime in Juba. The cause of all conflict in South Sudan is not North Sudan as pathological Dinka elite would want the world to believe but the policy of ethnic domination which has become the manifesto of the ruling clique
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