Ban tribal and regional associations in South Sudan to give peace a chance
4 min readIt is high time to ban tribal and regional associations in South Sudan to give peace a chance
By Garang Biar, South Sudan
September 21, 2015 (SSB) — South Sudan is slowly folding back into tribal and regional groups when our prime reason of fighting for an independent country was to have nation where our national affairs are to be discussed within our national institutions. It is when we have our national plate forms like National parliament, council of Ministers, state Assemblies and State cabinets that we are proud as an independent country with institutions that address our issues of the common interests but not having the tribal groups that derived their legitimacies from nobody since they are formed by self appointed groups with any mandates from the communities they claims to represent.
However, it is becoming a mind boggling to see our country rescinding back to the pre-colonial time where we lived as a communities but not as a nation. We are now in a form of greater Equatoria, greater Bahr le Ghazal, Jieng Council of Elders and Nuer Council of Elders. What is the unifying factor here to bring all these different groups under a common umbrella to have one country one nation as we always claims? To me, it is difficult to unite all these competing tribal groups because each group will always advocate for their own interest that does not interest other group, hence putting our national cohesion in question.
Therefore, since our legal existing political entities are Bomas, Payams, counties and States on one hand, and the parliaments, party councils and council of ministers on the other hand, then there is no reason to have these parallel tribal bodies to be involves in the national affairs because almost very member in these different groups hold some important positions in the legally existing institutions that are suppose to put things right in this country, So I don’t see why they become more effective in the tribal groups than in the national institutions.
The history tell us that the more we fold back to our regions and tribes, the less stable and weak we become thus giving the chance to our enemy that enjoy our disunity. this can be seen in early nineteen eighties when we chose this very option that we are repeating today. it is always good to learn from the past mistakes and uses they past challenges as precedents to plan the future, why are our leaders risking the future of their own children they fought so hard to enjoy freedom, unity, prosperity in their diversities as a proud nations?
It is my personal appeal to the president of the Republic to ban all the regional and tribal bodies in involvement into the national affairs if we are to have a peaceful country. When their tribal and regional activities reached the peak in early 2013, was when the current conflict start brewing and finally burst into full war at the end of the same year. I can clearly remember the Equatoria Conference and its outcome and the subsequent Greater Bahr el Ghazal conference and their communiqués. The outcomes from these two regional conferences contributed to over 60% of the current conflict according to my rating.
I am totally against these grouping because when South Sudanese were fighting for their Independent, they were fighting as south Sudanese not as a tribes or regions. If we prefer our tribes than the nation, then let agree to have 64 countries within south Sudan if that is what we comfortable with otherwise.
In conclusion, I strongly believe that we can create a strong united country in absent of all these regional and tribal grouping because its give the supremacy to our national institutions whose functions are being paralyzed by these tribal bodies now. it is when we stand as a South Sudanese is when we are recognizes as country not when we are tribes and regions.
It is a high time for our leaders to be proud of being national members of parliament and councils of minister than being proud of being a member of Jieng Council of elders, Nuer Council of Elder and Equatoria Leaders. This because we proudly voted for you as MPs to be our voices in the national and state assemblies but you only assumed being a member in each of the stated groups without being mandated by anyone, so take what we entrusted you for and drop what you assumed a lone.
The writer is a concern South Sudanese and He is currently living in South Sudan. He can be reached at garangbiar@yahoo.com
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