We have Lost Sense of Nationalism of our Identity
By Daniel Machar Dhieu, Juba, South Sudan
April 1, 2015 (SSB) —- Never allow today’s disappointments of baseless war to overshadow our future dreams we have to look into possible solution to this baseless war in the nation. No wonder the outside world ignores our views on even matters that concern us most. Remember our views get considered only where there is more for the foreigners to gain.
Unfortunately, in most cases, we tend to ignore history and learn nothing from it, thus ending up repeating many mistakes of the past. That is why in most countries, especially in Africa, there are more classroom achievers than those who apply knowledge for the benefit of mankind.
Today personality has become more important than national things. The shameless greed has emboldened people to even use God as a way of mollifying the populace to subjugation, spiritually and mentally. Fear and respect have become so inextricably synonymous that some people have been able to betray their families for a hollow promotion. Such is the situation that when they reach the pinnacle of power, they are unable to think for the welfare of the local people. Anyone who talks about change becomes an enemy of the state without even being heard, listened to and appreciated for a different point of view!
Forgetting that, the only permanent occurrence in nature is change. Each stage of growth is towards achieving the ultimate, which is productivity before death. Change must not only be physical but also mental, so as to use all available resources to leave a legacy to be emulated. By the grace of God, humans were made in His image and people should not just only thinks and hope for positive change but it may be different to what you expected.
Unfortunately, South Sudanese political practice is to maintain one’s position for life and all those who do not conform are prosecuted, persecuted and destroyed. Thus, in South Sudan there is no leadership mentorship for continuity and no plans for inadvertent eventualities. Every occurrence is a surprise. Hence, coups by physical and character assassinations have become the order of the South Sudanese political arena. Our leaders fear criticism, no matter how constructive!
Where have we gone wrong? South Sudan has been one country where the guidance of God has been most recognizable. We peacefully got independence and acceptance to international organizations; we learnt fast to govern ourselves at resonance with the international conventions we acceded to; simultaneously we strived to guard against losing our identity. We have fall apart with negatives foreign policy while abandoning our cultural policy of leadership we realize that we have mostly picked the bad habits from the foreign and discarded the good in our culture.
Greed is ruling this country at all levels of the body politic. Our late hero Dr. John Garang De Mabior would not recognize this country if he returned. We have ‘developed’ even the skills of distorting the truth. What are the things we should copy and do, where all, irrespective of social status, can effectively participate? I shall suggest a few that are so mundane yet so important for us all to stop and prevent the erosion of economic capacity to turn around this adverse situation we are in.
The respectfulness of people to other communities, which has always been associated with South Sudanese, has gone. The bad examples have been strengthened by children’s rights without responsibilities and the consequent degradation of parenthood. Where education is no longer parent based, the fabric of social stability collapses. There is just too much unproductive political debate that is issued to accommodate hatred policies and have lost a lot of business because some potential partners are just unable to cope up with modern system of business in the nation. This is common in public offices, state corporations and even small enterprises in the absence of the owner.
It has become unconsciously a culture of pulling down the office, not understanding that when the enterprise collapses, one is the first one to suffer. The leaders themselves are no good example given the way they treat subordinates and communities: they come late at community functions and, by tiring the hungry people, manage to avoid confronting the simple problems at hand. Their self-interest becomes most important. Once greed has infiltrated reason, solutions are lost in the labyrinth of always trying to accommodate particular interests at the expense of the nation. Thus disrespect for others develops to be the norm.
Suddenly, the leaders, who at taking throat, vow to serve the communities, are able to boldly tell the populace that they are not accountable to them, let alone the national assembly; then there is no way we can together solve our problems. As long as there is no established die-heart that may fulfill people in delivering and good performance through public funds due to lack of stabilize system, delivery of services will always be substandard and we shall continue to reward mediocrity in this nation.
Government members will always act on instructions and not on reason. The consequence is the suffering of the clientele of the services. For example, are the tariffs we pay for services anyhow related to the quality of service we are receiving? Who regulates electricity and communications services?
Do they know what it is to be regulated and how? What operational guidelines or practices are they using, particularly to protect the user from profit-driven mercenary predators? These service facilities are meant to economically empower the populace not to impoverish it. The current state of tariffs in South Sudan is unrelated to the quality of service. Hence it appears to the uninitiated to be unjustifiably high. We have lost sense of who we are that is why the cost of incompetence is immeasurable!
The writer is the Student at South Sudan Christian University for Science and Technology (SSCUST). Contact him on machardhieu@gmail.com
About Post Author
Dear Author,
I have no time to respond to all your lengthy and cheap analyis on the current crisis in South Sudan but all I want to refuted in your partial article is when you shamelessly claims that Dr. John Garang will not recognise South Sudan if he comes back, I want to say that you are totally wrong because why is it so difficult for him (Garang) to recognise South Sudan when he manage to recognised Jonglei-Bor where the same chaos emerged during his dictorial era?
Please rest assure that the current regime has resorted to any other ways around to promote this senseless war in the country but it’s the same evil(s) who is/’re with Garang are the same enemies of progress in South Sudan.