A Letter to President Salva Kiir Mayardit: Focus on Substance; Eschew Useless Decrees on SSTV
6 min readBy Chol Biel Lual, USA
Dear Mr. President,
October 31, 2015 (SSB) — Picture a country, where health crisis lingers in the president’s blind spot, where food shortage stays in world’s top-three agenda, where its economy suffocates in the pockets of those who shovel billions of dollars into foreign banks, where elephant grass beats ministers’ chests as they make it to their fathers’ graveyards because even after 10 years of independence, jungle rats still stay ahead with their highways that connect their cities (holes); where its literacy ranks second last in Africa, where killing litters everywhere, from the capital to villages at the outskirts of the country, where its citizens’ well-being remains a concern to every caring being: South Sudan fits these descriptions.
Decrees aired on national TV (SSTV) without on-ground supervisions and security agents that can’t even write and read their mothers’ dialects failed this country.
For any government to stay in power, it must solve one major problem in the country. Insecurity! Villagers need security the most. They don’t need the government to distribute money to them; they are able to toil the land with their bare hands to feed themselves. However, with insecurity, villagers squat along river Nile. A government that’s a product of twenty-two years guerrilla movement can’t solve insecurity pose by those who cried for their own State.
Don’t take me wrong. I know the government can’t wipe off one tribe to protect another, but the government can establish a rule of law to protect all citizens. The government of South Sudan is rotten. Maggots are not the signs of anything rotten. Our government is running with splattered brains.
Splattered brains: stirred the political soup without due respect for the civilians and the country. In 2013, you the president, forgot of your responsibility of being the head and overseer, you agitated without military strategies the beast, Riek Machar. He rushed out of Juba to his gullible section of his tribe, Lou-Nuer. The white flies swarmed and blackened Bortown and areas along the road to Juba, killing everything that moved. Had it not been Ugandan army, Juba along with government would had been a history. But what would have been the reason? Splattered brains can’t answer. Splattered brains didn’t think of consequences.
After the marathon twenty-months war, the international community jumped in with the Compromised Peace Agreement to stop tribal atrocities both sides committed; the head of our country, you, my president cried like a baby on the world TV. I understand people especially adults cry with different tears: of joy, of shame, and of bitterness (pain of any kind). Tears of bitterness relate to tears of failure. On the global TV, my president, you cried tears of failure. Your advisors are rotten zombies with splattered brains. Your advisors glued you down in Juba, where you will think yourself to death. My president, you relied on your past knowledge of areas you visited when you were a guerrilla commander.
You never visit the areas in chaos because your advisors advise you so. “They will kill you; don’t you dare to visit these areas, you will die like Deng Nhial”, the advisors advised you. Ironically, my president, you fly to other nations to correct your government image. My president, Dr. John Garang coming from Uganda, died of “air crash”. Samora Mitchell died of “air crashed”. My president, good presidents don’t care of how other nations describe their governments, but they care of their citizens’ descriptions.
Fidel Castro’s government survived for this reason, Cuba survived the cold war and economic sanctions from the most powerful country in the world, U.S.A, because Fidel knew what is the government. People are the government, so he hopped on a tractor and sweated himself almost to death on sugarcane plantations. My president, the US government lifted Cuba sanctions in 2015, because the US government had ran out of reasons to keep the sanctions and more importantly, Fidel outlived every ill, wished towards his life and that of his government. My president, fire all your advisors because they are vampires. They have bled our country to death.
My president, get out of the presidential palace and visit all broken areas. Your presence will be a sign of hope. Give hope to the disabled, relatives of the victims of your war, and to the seniors (aged) whose huts crumbled because of your enemy fire, by visiting them under their marked trees (their homes). And don’t worry, my president about other nation’s politics. Political endorsements must not creep in your daily job because you have your nation politics to study and to correct.
On the major social site, Facebook, an article, which alleged your endorsement of Donald Trump, floats on majority of South Sudanese Facebook’s pages. My president you can’t get it right politically anywhere, at home and away. Donald Trump is a vicious racist who had no chances of airing his racism so he runs for “president”. Mr. Trump knows he can’t win the presidency, but his racial remarks will last with political impunity. My president, have you or your advisors read Donald Trump’s latest remarks about Africans?
To remind you, he has this to say about Africans:
“African Americans are very lazy. The best they can do is gallivanting around ghettoes, lamenting how they are discriminated. These are the people America doesn’t need. They are the enemies of progress. Look at African countries like Kenya for instance, those people are stealing from their own government and go to invest the money in foreign countries. From the government to opposition, they only qualify to be used as a case study whenever bad examples are required. How do you trust even those who have ran away to hide here at the United States hiding behind education? I hear they abuse me in their blogs but I don’t care because even the internet they are using is ours and we can decide to switch it off from this side. These are people who import everything including matchsticks. In my opinion, most of these African countries ought to be recolonized again for another 100 years because they know nothing about leadership and self-governance”
My president, out of thirty-six Republican Party presidential candidates, is Donald Trump the only candidate that speaks to your heart politically? What about Jeff Bush, a brother to mighty George. W. Bush, who pressured Omar al Bashir and his Khartoum government to sign CPA (Compressive Peace Agreement)? Don’t you read the history of our country? My advice, my president: Stay away from other nation’s politics, the least you won’t appear a clown with your cowboy hat.
Back to the insecurity. The best military minds will solve this chronic insecurity. My president you joined the army when you were sixteen years old. You have more than half a century experience in military strategies. With a glance, you can identify a military tactician. So why are inter-clans and tribal wars persist in your face? For Murle to stop and for Bor to depend herself, you need to assign Deng Kelei Machar to lead the division in Panpandiar.
By the way, what grudges are you holding against him? What crime has he committed, which had not been committed by any living soul in SPLM/A today? My president, you won’t run this country on grudges.
I will stop here. If you have online information collectors, let them deliver this letter to your presidential desk.
Signed: Chol Biel Lual.
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…..and if we trace it well, Deng Kelei Machar might be related to you or your close friend yaa Chol Biel Lual and this kind of thinking is what keeps dragging us back. Why would you write a good article and become bias at a conclusion? This ideology won’t take us ahead.