Democracy is Unworkable in Tribal Environment of South Sudan

By John Sunday Martin

“It is most unfortunate that, we love tribalism we are decrying more than the democracy we are demanding because we always alter democracy in form of tribalism in our society – thus making it difficult for us to attain this very democracy in demand as a Nation”

 May 8, 2015 (SSB)  —-   Liberation is over, and now is time for revolution; the struggle for meaningful political changes but the worse of it is that, the very political struggle is customary associating with racism – in form of tribalism and believes; which are causing of individuals claiming to be the political leaders of our societies.

As a Nation, we don’t have honest politics that aims to build our Nation as multi-tribes Republic than simple propagandas by individual political leaders for their own selfish interests.

Thus when there is any political struggles, our leaders intends to first mobilize their tribesmen behind them and then manipulate every selfish interests on political terms while using their own tribesmen as tool to attain their very individual goals on the expense of our national unity and coexistence.

Today as a nation, we have recognized the facts that, tribalism is our problem and therefore we are calling for democracy as means for destructions of tribalism in our midst, but failing to admit that, tribalism and democracy are not friends.

Where there is tribalism, democracy will be outfitted by tribalism and therefore, the minority tribes becomes always victims of power influence of the majority tribes as democracy hold on unfair believes that, “Majority rules which on contrary, masquerades threats to the free wills and desires of the minorities in our society as tribalism will always works in form of democracy where there is spirit of tribalism which will always cause destabilization in our society.

It is therefore, illogical to call for democracy before addressing this very issue of tribalism in our society. We need to find solutions to the problem of tribalism in our society so as to give space for democracy to take its’ roots.

We need democracy but this will only come when we have dealt with tribalism in our society. Even the so called revolution we are engaged in as nation now will not bring the democracy in view because it simple altering of spirit of tribal supremacy in political sense, calling for regime change in tribal sense of replacing existing tribal leader with another tribal leaders.

Revolution is not about regime change alone, but systematic changes of policies and practices that are odd to our society; which unfortunately are the very anomalous policies and practices deep in our hearts and minds as revolutionary agents or leaders.

We are tribal by our very nature when we call on national Revolution, as the revolution is not about the change of system in our governance, but desire not to be lead by a certain tribe from within our Society – thus even the democracy we are singing can never be that song; because the song is now different from the singing.

Yes; we need revolution but then another new revolution; that is the Holistic Revolution which never has any links with tribal ideologies for supremacy over certain tribes. SPM-IO has become almost 90% Nuer Military-Politico, which is causing fear of another coming tribal regime to be install in South Sudan with support of the Western World.