SOUTH SUDAN: Nothing like African ‘Siblinghood’
By Deng Lueth Yuang, Canada
April 19, 2015 (SSB) —- I am a worried man. Why? Because my birth country, South Sudan is creeping into South Africa’s xenophobic attitudes towards foreigners residing and working in that country.
It is not uncommon to see hopes of African siblings fallen between rocks and hard places with their dear lives clasping at the last straw so as to revisit and rediscover their own sense of redefining ‘homeland’ – a place they can call home and that ensures their entitlements/rights are recognized and achieved.
This is observable in Northern Africa (Arab Africa); Sahel/Central Africa/Francophone Africa sandwiched between Arab Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Horn of Africa.
Now, some African countries in Sub-Saharan Africa i.e. South Africa at most, are exhibiting the sad realities of what these lads and lasses face once they (il)legally gotten onto shores of Europe and at times the Jewish state of Israel.
That’s what happens when vulnerable people feel Forgotten, Disempowered and Isolated from the ‘Main Society’!
More than 95% of South Sudanese citizens are helpless lots – a trait of a societal stratification that can easily culminate into xenophobic thinking that foreigners are to blame for their woes. South Sudan’s leadership under Pres Kiir should timely act on this looming human catastrophe. This country cannot afford to fight overboard attacks from her sisterly nations in East Africa or beyond who are her blood lifeline.
Imagine an Africa where her children risks their precious lives to cross waters of death of the Mediterranean Sea so that they reach the shores of heaven of manna — slave Europe!
African Unity under AU is a sham, hypocrisy and no-brainer. Africans will always be causalities of today’s modernization as long as their own leaders build themselves societal enclaves which tend to detach them from the Main Society.
It is time our siblings rather better die tilling and changing their birth soil than imagining that bonds of siblings’ togetherness or glittery lights of Europe and America!
Note:
I’m not advocating for dissolution of AU or disengagement among African states. I’m an ardent supporter of pan African principles as means to solve Africa’s fundamental problems.
We only differ in methodology approach – each of AU member nations has got to first build her own societal systems before championing Africa’s collectiveness. South Sudan or Nigeria for this case has to put her house in order before reaping the fruits of pan Africanism.
The opinion here only opines that ‘Africans be Africans’ and must therefore promote common unity of purpose to foster economic growth and social progress.
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