Living under the shadow of hunger and currency crisis in South Sudan
6 min readBy Majok Arol Dhieu, Juba, South Sudan
March 25, 2016 (SSB) —- There is a BIG problem; NOT an alarm but a real big problem that people do not want to talk about since it has gone beyond control. The majority of South Sudanese have just squatted all the days and nights experiencing a sudden downturn brought on by a currency crisis which was created by the council of ministers and national MPs.
Some of the South Sudanese also have already gone back to the hegemon state where we separated from and were highly welcomed back in open arms by the Khartoum government. They are welcome in a place called Malesh Bashir ‘meaning sorry Omer Bashir, we were wrong to seceded from North Sudan’. It is an insult and a very regrettable thing which will be itching at the back of South Sudanese for centuries.
This was simply caused by a small problem no larger than a pinhead, the circular of the currency exchange rate which I have just alluded to before. When I read the circular myself that $ 1 dollar in the bank shall be SSP 18.00, I was indifferent to praise and contumely alike because I know that I will be getting more money and waste it forthwith. Then, there is no laughing matter in this scenario as this is akin to the December 2013 revolution.
I personally considered this in the first place as a contumacious because public opinion was not respected at all since it was just a dictating decision imposed on the citizen. The trio if I were the president would have been sacked because they have messed up country’s economy. Why Marial Benjamin alone? What about finance minister and the bank governor?
The two money controllers would have known that conurbation of Juba with its racketeer businessmen who came from various areas of South Sudan and neighbouring countries would possible cause hyperinflation in the near future. This is something they would have foreseen before they came up with their final decision.
Although our government has made too many decisions that were wrong in the past without knowing how such dangerous decisions might be, this particular decision is depressing and devastating and therefore need an immediate solution before it is deteriorating.
Undoubtedly, our country leaders have been refusing to reverse their decisions as they fear of challenges that they would face from the citizen but that doesn’t matter because the citizen will know that their leaders are working on their interest and welfare. Refusing to reverse decisions will also involve the suspicious that they citizen are being dictated unless the government is lucky enough because the majority of the citizen doesn’t know their rights.
I have been observing leaders’ speeches without implementation afterwards. In the president speech last year in which he said that he had been seeing some men from Forex in bad dress and in possession of huge dollars, and then said he wondered where they are getting dollars from.
It is obviously that they are getting dollars from the government officials who have been forging documents, tricking authorities that they are sick and later on put the money in the black market. Those officials deserve to be sacked also since they are educating the whole country with crimes.
President would have talked that day and came up immediately with decisions for implementation on how to control the situation of currency crisis rather than giving go ahead to his council of Ministers imposing a circular that has now destroy the nation.
History itself would have reminded us on what we should do and what we should not do because every single step in the country ends up as the head of the state failure although it was done far away from him. I doubt that, this thing cannot be done without president knowledge.
Coming back to the point, we all know that hyperinflation, wars and revolutions cause hoarding of essentials and disruption of markets but it can be control by the government that cares for its citizen. Why do our government ignore issues affecting its citizen?
Also another factor is insecurity which people talk-and-talk-and-talk-and talk without solution to it. In the aftermath of December 2013 revolution, too many weapons were in circulation and too much importance was put on the civilian’s right to bear arms. Now it’s become the burden on the government because the civilian are killing themselves day by day.
The little assumption put forward that to disarm one community would simply means destruction to another will not help. If we have strong government, there must be a forceful disarmament so that citizen can have access to their gardens this year because having no agricultural activities in place contributes high demand for commodities in the market which in turn cause high prices.
In my own view and analysis base on the number of issues that were done wrongly without populace concerns, the country is experiencing a dictatorship, facts must be told because if the citizen appealed and their concerns is not address and then government come up instead with destruction orders.
Before I could come to conclusion, let me explains in simple term six types of dictatorship. I hope it will bring in too much loggerhead with my readers but let me first take you through so that you will have adequate knowledge and be able to find out what type of dictatorship we are running into.
1) Family dictatorship- inheriting power through family ties.
2) Military/Generalissimo dictatorship- through military force or coup d’état.
3) Constitutional dictatorship- dictatorial powers provided for by constitutional means (often as a provision in case of emergency).
4) Self-coup dictatorship- by suspending existing democratic mechanism after attaining office by constitutional means.
5) Stable dictatorship- able to remain in power for long periods.
6) Majority dictatorship- A majoritarianism which is a traditional political philosophy that asserts that a majority (sometimes categorized by religion, language, social class, or some other identifying factor) of the population is entitled to a certain degree of primacy in society, and has the right to make decisions that affect the society.
There are so many types of dictatorships, but now after having gone through with the said types of dictatorship, what type of dictatorship do you see in our country? I hope you will fear to choose or pretend to say none of the above because of the reasons that are better known to you. As for me, two of the above have already happened and one is likely to be in practice currently.
I wish the government must govern us on the basis of reality and not on their own imaginations because thing we fought for is not thing which we have recovered, but depreciated. We were not fighting for luxuries. We were not also liberating individual families. If one thinks that way, then that is a grave mistake.
My dear readers, this is an assertion of a fact. If I have harm a hair on your head or your uncle, reassure that nothing has been intended for individuals unless you have partaken in the current crisis by shoveling down some food and embezzling of money. I go no further.
The writer is a South Sudanese residing in South Sudan, Juba and can be reach at email: majongaroldit@gmail.com
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