If football match can unite us, then let’s organize a friendly match between Kiir and Riek!
If football match can unite us, then why not organize a friendly football match between President Kiir and Dr. Riek Machar?
By Atem Sijin, Juba, South Sudan
December 1, 2015 (SSB) — The only time I revive my beliefs that South Sudanese are not ready for unity was when our own bright star national team immensely defeated Djibouti. Many approaches were tried by the international community and IGAD in particular to put the two warring parties and South Sudanese at large on the same page but it seems like none works and as such I think there is a need to study the complex behavior of South Sudanese people.
I once strongly condemn the mediation carried out by the IGAD in an attempt to bring the two warring parties together, because IGAD totally failed to understand the nature of the people she is dealing with. We must ignore the things that divide us and encourage things that unite us regardless of our political and ethnical differences.
When you are dealing with people whose emotions and reactions are unpredictable, there is a need to avoid blame game or threats. Because threatening one side or both will put them on defensive mood and in that content they will not be in a position to admit their faults neither will they conceive the idea of putting aside their differences as suggested by the international community.
The world should be careful when dealing with South Sudanese especially their leaders because most of them are popular in deceiving the public and because our public do not know their rights it will be hard to defeat the politicians, illiteracy is playing a great role in this case. If it is so, then why not use a language that will be understood by the majority illiterate? As the saying goes, if you can’t defeat them then join them!
The only language that is well understood by both literate minority and illiterate majority with equal perception is football. Politically educated minority views on this conflict are very different from the views of the illiterate majority but in Juba stadium south Sudanese views were uniform. We were chanting and screaming in the same style, therefore if at all IGAD and other international bodies are willing to bring peace then they need to change their approach else we jeopardize peace in the newly born nation.
If we cease blaming any party, and retain the AU report on violation of human rights during the conflict by both parties, there will be hope that peace will once return to South Sudan. When Kenyans were taken to ICC for the crimes committed during the conflict that erupt after the election between Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga, what happened? We start hearing statements like ICC is targeting African leaders and blah! Blah! Blah!
Since football or call it sports generally unites South Sudanese as demonstrated at the Juba stadium, when they rally behind their own bright star national team. Then an approach similar to that must be put in place in order to bring everlasting peace to the people of South Sudan. Peace lies in the hands of the troublesome leaders since they are followed by the flock of illiterate majority and a clique of literate position seekers.
We must stop beating the drums of accountability and work towards cementing everlasting peace, if they are to be held accountable while urged to bring peace at the same time then we have a mess to clean up.
For those who watch football a referee can either smarten the game or spoil it, so IGAD is the referee and the two teams are the government and the opposition; meanwhile the captains on both sides are Nhial Deng Nhial and Taban Deng Gai respectively and the coaches are President Kiir and his former vice president turned rebel leader Dr. Riek, however IGAD should be aware of coaches like Mourinho!
South Sudanese can unite if a different approach is used because we are not enemies of peace neither are we interested in peace. We rally behind leaders who seriously unite to rob us and disagree to kill us as stated by Edmund Yakani; young south Sudanese must not forget that every era has its errors. So instead of blaming our leaders for dragging the young nation into war we must help them in bringing peace and building trust starting from among themselves down to their flocks of followers.
Maybe in our era we may have errors but not the same like theirs which ranged from corruption to wars. Every situation comes with its difficulties and joys, it was bitter when they were dodging the bullets in the bushes of South Sudan and now it is refreshment time, however I don’t think their suffering during the struggle is worth millions or billions of dollars they embezzled.
Because they were mentally, socially and psychologically affected by the struggle, some left their pregnant wives, some left their newly wedded wives heading for the bush and others left their girlfriends whom they promised to marry only to come back fifteen to twenty years later and found that they are married by other men.
The biggest mistake is killing us but not robbing us, because I surely believe that living peacefully is number one priority to a human being then other things follow. Hence we must work for peace and also tighten the holes of corruption because they have embezzled enough; their tummies are already heavy with our petrodollars.
Therefore they should start giving services to the people by building roads, schools, hospitals and so forth.
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