Mono-Culture versus Diversity with Democratic Realities in South Sudan
The Big Issues to be observed to achieve the Government of National Unity and the 2018 upcoming General Elections in South Sudan
By Antiphas Paul, Juba, South Sudan
April 23, 2016 (SSB) —- We may start by recognizing the fact that many of the stories I have encountered are to some extent, outlived by some positive developments in countries where conflict has lessened or ceased in recent years and democracy as well as respect of human right have begun to take roots. In the Republic of South Africa, democracy, economic growth and racial harmony appear to be jogging along fine under the government of the African National Congress (ANC). But the gap between the very poor majority and the very rich minority is nowhere near narrowing. Unemployment is as much a challenge as in the issue of healthcare, greatly threaten by HIV / AIDS infection. But much more serious is the issue of land, with so much productive land in the hands of the majority poor, this single issue is most likely to derail any racial harmony if not handled with care and wisdom. So far its leaves a lot to be desired.
Shocking reports of the wealthy people in South Sudan treating their poor brothers contemptuously do quite rightly inflame feelings among us. On democracy, Africa’s recently acquired Western democracy is currently undergoing severe test in South Sudan, where a number of issues have “democratically matured” and the present government with a dilemma: to halt or promote the creeping democracy when comes 2018 General elections. The Presidential Decree issued for the creation of more States is another boost to development and a show of democracy to the young nation, giving every citizen a chance of competition to develop and prosper.
It must be recalled that when the Country was one (Sudan), president Omer Hammed Hassan El Beshir who has ruled the country since 1989, was seventeen years ago dragged, screaming and protesting to the altar of multiparty democracy when Khartoum was bombed in 1998, economic and travel sanctions, Darfur and the International Criminal Court (ICC) not forgetting the referendum for South Sudan by Donor Nations, however it will turn into tribalism, “it will never work in Africa” he protested. But when comes 2018, will it work in South Sudan with the involvement of the TROIKA Members, the A.U and the IGAD in full swing to our affairs?
Nevertheless, a multiparty of sorts was established and the media will not let go. Top among these issues is the widespread crippling corruption and repeated accusations of the involvement of people in high places as well as accusation of government complicity in the ethnic killings just before the general elections. With the collapse of quite a number of financial institutions in the country and rising unemployment leading to criminals (unknown Gunmen) and street children numbering, the economic outlook is very gloomy indeed.
All these seem to have found expression in the on-going country-wide senseless war by the elites since Dec, 2013 to date despite the recently signed peace agreement just like the government of National Unity which committed itself just during the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) implementation where I see the upcoming elections which it now can’t honored like during the signing of the Bills regarding Laws and many other Bills which need amendment, because the South Sudan economy can’t afford it, but the teachers, civil servants and the army counter this by asserting that the economy is not in dire straits, because of their salaries, but because of official corruption and mismanagement of donor’s funds and they would have called for their thousands members to down tools until the government honors the issues pertaining salaries. It is devastating, but “that is their democratic right” the oppositions also sees it as their democratic right on the other hand to remove Kiir by the barrel of a gun and it should be suppose to be done democratically through the ballot with free and fair elections, crimes against humanity and any unconstitutional means can’t solve our internal crises.
In the West, this could be regarded as fair play, an exercise of democracy. In Africa, where such democracy is yet to take roots, it may take a nasty and unpredictable turn thus proving Riak Machar the right. Darfurians, one of the African’s ethnic communities were rightly outraged, eleven years with democracy of the mouths, they don’t have democracy, no freedom, no human right and they are still treated as slaves and humiliated, and raped every day. Darfurians and Southern Sudanese are ticking bombs, and unless they are transformed or Beshir will see an explosion of anger which will take people back to war, that looks like Sunday school picnic, that was predicted in 2010 Referendum and the General Election which gave the South its Independent.
The same reports pointed out that “over the last 4-11 years in Darfur over 800,000 to 1,000,000 Darfurians have been killed, maimed and tortured by the SAF’s main agents the Janjaweeds and the army themselves by describing them as rebels, but we thinks there is more to it then meet the eyes. It would, therefore appears as if Sudan have learned little, if any constructive lesson from Darfur. Furthermore, while racial tensions between the Arabs and the African may until African Blacks against the Arabs, issues arising from the ethnic diversity among us Africans may remain dormant for now, but are likely to arise as a destabilizing factor in due time if not handled with care.
In Northern Sudan and South Sudan, Abyei remain the most pressing issue with an estimated number of thousand of people are displaced internally. And yet in Sudan, like most African countries, has not as yet evolved an indigenous system of governance, which truly bridges the gap between tradition and modernity. Ethnicity is a very strong factor in the management of national affairs in Sudan – as indeed it is the case in other Black African countries. By denying its central and responsible role in the management of national affairs, ethnicity becomes the tribalism; it is falsely accused of and becomes the base for corruption. In spite of much of the Sudan politicians claiming themselves as first and then members of their ethnic communities second, much of the Sudan still ticks on an ethnic basis in employment and the public services which we don’t want to tolerate in South Sudan if it happens to be. As Sothern Sudan vote for a separate South Sudan in 2011, the reality multiplicities have become apparent. Already, ethnic realities within the South have been factors in the war against the North as well as the caused for arm conflicts among South Sudanese. In an independent South Sudan, balancing more than sixty ethnic communities will require a paradigm shift in the thinking of the governors of the young nation; and the basis for the shift in outlook is being planted.
As South Sudan has succeeded in the referendum from the North, ethnic and cultural differences among South Sudanese will no longer be masked by “the Southern Problem.” South Sudan will have to find modern ways and means of accommodating her own destiny and diversity where mono-culture, language and religion were assumed to have been permanently successful. They are not. The continuing colonialism by Super Powers Countries based regime is still tying down vital human and natural resources and the necessary dollars meant for the development of the South as many of the scarce funds are being spent in this senseless wars of power struggle by both parties. We should also remember that, there is no way of 55 years of bad governance imposed on us, chronic corruption, ethnic exploitation and a ruined infrastructure and economy be glossed over in wishful pronouncement, but a warning should also be directed at the indigenous ethnic communities. Their own attempts instigated by the leaders and politicians to kill themselves like nothing in the south should stop immediately before we have reached 2018 General Elections for our own successful Democracy
To my conclusion, realistically then, where is South Sudan heading or where should it be heading? Looking back now, it has not always been true that “all African leaders want to do is hang on to power” as is often repeated by western media. At least four African leaders, namely: Senghor of Senegal, Nyerere of Tanzania, Masire of Botswana and Mandela of South Africa are renowned for surrendering powers willingly. They were torch-bearers for the less power-hungry African leadership which the continent yearns for. We may also take solace in recent advance in popular democracy and respect for human rights, no matter how reluctantly surrendered by governments such as that of Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia. There are now many African countries that have successfully conducted multiparty elections in the last Fifteen to Twenty years to effect change of leadership peacefully.
A few more of these elections may lead us to hope that a culture of multiparty democracy and accountability that is tolerant of criticism and intolerant of dictatorship, a culture that accept responsibility for wrongdoings and intolerant of corruption in all its aspects, may have begun. Let me tell you that, the replacement of the Organization of African Unity, OAU, with the African Union, AU, and the increasing intervention in each other’s affairs to reduce conflict and to police peace in member countries, seems to signal an end to neo-colonialism and to the suffering of the African masses in isolation. Furthermore, the emergence of the AU appears to accompany a move away from OAU’s preoccupation with the preservation of colonial borders to concentrating on the bigger picture. The AU seems to point to a greater unity of purpose, a union that will listen to the cries of disadvantaged people throughout the continent and make nonsense of the colonial borders, which divided the same people.
For example; the 2005 Agreement between North and South Sudan, was negotiated by the Horn and East African countries with the backing of AU. Although it includes the distinct possibility of succession for South Sudan, its signing was nevertheless witnessed by a large number of African countries and dignitaries from the other parts of the globe. This fact alone seems to underline an end to the sanctity of colonial borders and immaturity of African leaders. The African Union is aiming, seemingly at ending the current civil wars, dictatorships, sadism, corruptions, and wars among member nations, genocide, human rights abuses, ignorance, poverty, disease and the general exploitation of the resources of the continent by the outsiders.
The AU, it appears is aiming at building the continent to be proud of. In a nutshell, the guardians of our continent seem to have at last recognized that the sanctity of the current nation states within colonial borders have largely proved to be at best a disappointment and, at worst a burden of nationality on their citizens. But most of these seemingly brave attempts at finding a lasting solution to Africa festering problems of wars, disease, famines, and alienation of citizens from their governments and exploitations of the continent’s resources are in reality still seeds scattered in the desert and therefore, are most likely to bear healthy fruits. The attempts are misleading because they remain unfocussed.
In reality, they are still in pursuit of the elusive super-state at the expense of diversity and the slogans are being replaced with new ones. Now and again we hears slogans about “returning to our roots” or in more sophisticated languages and in a roundabout way “African Renaissance” and we need to define and redefine what we mean by these terms and seriously consider coming back down to earth to re-emerge with re-newed and focused energy.
How are we to do this?
The first thing to realize is that the colonial borders and administration of the amalgam of subject of nationalities they called “tribes “under the colonial fishing nets served the foreign powers well, but fail miserably to serve the so-called “Independent African States.”Whether we know it or not, we have been, and to a very large extent still trapped or suspended in that colonial spider’s web in so many ways: linguistically, culturally, religiously, intellectually, administratively and economically. For the last twenty years or so of post colonial Africa, the result of that suspension or trap, intended or otherwise, has been widespread tribalism and corruption, coups and counter-coups, wars, chronic poverty, famine and disease under the umbrella of nations which citizens are ashamed to identify with.
The reason is simple: we have failed to merry the foreign values we have inherited from our colonial masters with our own traditional values which by the time of independence were followed and respected by the vast majority of our various ethnic communities, and in many ways are still followed and respected by them.
In discarding our traditional ways of governance, we have regressed beyond what even the colonial masters dared not touch, which even they respected and effectively used to collect taxes and bring law and order to the remotest parts of their domains. During the British administration of the Sudan, for instance, the government effectively used the traditional ways of resolving conflicts in both North and South of Sudan.
The slogans they used led us to live a false identity in which we could not recognize ourselves and in which we were denied our real identities, which could have served us well.
Thus we were programmed to call ourselves Sudanese, South Sudanese, Ugandans, Kenyans, Nigerians, Congolese, Ghanaians and so on and so forth, nations brought about by European fishing nets. Our real identities, which an overwhelming majority of Africans, lived, respected and still do, were scorned upon by school-educated Africans as “Tribalistic” and “backward” exactly the terms used by colonialists for our ethnic communities. The result of such a false approach to identity issues left us confused. We could not recognize ourselves in the macro-nation state inherited from rejected colonial administrations. And when we could not recognize ourselves in such mirrors, we could not see any moral value with which the leaders and their people could identify in those super-states.
Lastly, according to Dr, Francis Mading Deng, “introduced practices have been taken out of their source context; and changes have not been integrated into the receiving culture, as a result, modernization is disruptive. The violence, the unrest, and the revolutionary trends in the African scene today are the matters of common Knowledge.” Within ethnic state, one is always a son or a daughter of so and so. In the large state, one is just an individual, subject to laws that are even less understood, feared but not respected by most citizens. And thanks.
The writer can be reached at antiphas2@gmail.com or Antiphas Paul @ Facebook.com
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