AN EXCERPT FROM “SPEECH BY DR JOHN GARANG DE MABIOR ON OCCASION OF SIGNING OF THE NAIROBI DECLARATION ON LAUNCHING THE FINAL PHASE OF PEACE IN THE SUDAN”
(JUNE 5TH 2004)
There are many – here and elsewhere – who think that peace is about job allocation, is about apportionment of positions of authority, is about lining pockets through misuse or abuse of public assets, or is about lording it over others. Those who thus think must be reading from a different script than mine. We have more supreme goals and loftier ideals and alternatives. My script reads that peace is what people think and believe peace should hold for them. Peace to my mind and in the depth of my soul is a promise of better living to the young, the middle aged and the aged, to each individual, to the unemployed and the destitute, to the sick and the unlettered, all over Sudan. It is also a promise to the men and women of Southern Sudan, the Nuba Mountains, Southern Blue Nile, Abyei, Eastern Sudan and other marginalized areas of Sudan who suffered in dignified silence the loss of their dear ones in the war of liberation or who felt and still do feel a sense of helplessness and hopelessness, a promise that we shall never betray the cause for which those martyrs have made the ultimate sacrifice. And theirs is a cause for better and more honorable living. It is also a promise to martyrs and to those who lost their dear ones on the other side, a promise that just and honourable peace shall heal all the wounds that we have inflicted on ourselves on both sides.
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NAIROBI, KENYA, JANUARY 5-6, 2002
It is a good thing and we have every reason to celebrate and be hopeful for better things to come, to materialize out of this peace process, whether among Southerners themselves as being witnessed here or between the SPLM/SPLA and the Khartoum government as it is in IGAD peace process. We are moving in the right direction and every step, and each day that passes, bring us closer to our goal of a fair and just peace for our suffering people. With respect to whether we are going to honor this agreement, unlike the 1993 Washington Agreement, my answer is YES, we are serious to abide by it. The agreement does not belong to us, both leadership of the two movements, it belongs to you; it belongs to the people. And so in its implementations, honoring or dishonoring of the agreement, it will be your responsibility as well to hold us to it, as well as it is our responsibility to give guidance with respect to its implementations. Otherwise, as Dr. Riek said, we have suffered long enough, eleven years of suffering, of confusion and of aimless infighting. So the situation as of now, as we said in the signed reconciliation document, it is our survival that is at stake. Therefore, survival itself, if nothing else, will force us to fully implement this document.
