The Hype of Hatred vs. Identity (Part 7)
The Hype of Hatred and ‘Jieng council of evil!’
By Thiik Mou Giir, Melbourne, Australia
April 23, 2016 (SSB) —- There has been a sustained criticism of Jieng Council Of Elders (JCE) and this criticism gave rise to it being renamed as jieng council of evil (jce). This criticism also has become one of the ingredients that have intensified the hype of hatred, the hatred that exists in South Sudanese society as well as South Sudanese communities in Diaspora. I once heard a radio interview. The interviewer asked one of the members of (JCE) to explain why they formed (JCE). (JCE) member said that (JCE) is not the only one operating in South Sudan. He said elders representing other tribes have formed councils in order for them to look after their own tribes’ affairs just as Jieng elders have formed their own council in order for them to look after Jieng tribes’ affairs. Many people, I assume, who heard this interview must have wondered as to why (JCE) has been singled out and criticized while others have been left out. Let us examine and answer the question why there have been an outcry about (JCE), its activities and its relationship with the government?
Let us imagine that there are sixty-four married women who are standing around their husband. The husband then announces that he is planning to go for holidays and spend some months in one of the most exotic places in the world and that he is going to be accompanied by one of them. The women’s eyes are now seriously bent towards him; each woman is trying to detect the turn of his head and eyes in order to figure out the favoured woman. He made his move and all knew which among them is the one. The favoured wife made promises to buy gifts to each of her husband’s wives. Then, the favoured wife starts to walk towards him. In spite of all her promises, each step she takes towards him is met with unsaid verbal abuses. Unsaid, because African tradition prohibits them to express their feelings of jealousy publically.
But in politics, there is no such thing that prevents you from making a noise when you are experiencing jealousy, except under a dictatorship. Many people, some Jieng individuals included, are concerned about (JCE), about their work and about its relationship with the government. Individual members of sixty-four tribes then decided to utter the abusive words and the words were: “jieng council of evil!” Jieng council of what? You have already heard it hundreds of times: ‘Jieng council of evil’. It has become one of the most powerful ingredients of the hype of hatred. This hatred is so strong that those who say or write these abusive words have disregarded our African codes of conduct, the conduct that forbids any member of younger generation to insult an elderly person or persons. They disregarded that.
This label, ‘Jieng council of evil’, looks like something that had been conceived in a car, driven in one of the Western country’s High Way. Later on, this label was inseminated into hundreds and hundreds of computers worldwide as these computers, in their turn, intermittently, relentlessly, and at a supersonic speed, flung it into South Sudan and South Sudanese communities everywhere in the world.
These people must be mad, really, really mad. When you try to deal with mad people, nothing seems to work. When you hush them or say, ‘calm down’ or ‘take it easy’, they go berserk. When you threaten them with words such as, ‘watch your manners boys/girls!’ or ‘keep your thoughts to yourselves!’ or ‘have some respect!’ or ‘stop this nonsense of yours’ or ‘do not shame us and do not shame our new country’, uh-uh. It is not going to work. Nothing is going to work. What do you do? Listen to them and then you may come up with a different approach.
‘Mad’ is a word I am using to describe the attitude of people who are outraged by what (JCE) stands for. They, however, have left no room for anyone to describe who they are and what they do. They have come up with their own names for themselves. They say they are: ‘Internet Warriors’, ‘Freedom Fighters’, ‘Gallant Internet Troops’ and all other lofty names.
They are on offensive. As time progressed, people who would be on defensive in support of the government and of (JCE) accepted the challenge. They have joined the fight. They, too, have given themselves a name. They call themselves, ‘Defenders of Constitutional Government’.
It is a war. Soldiers with Internet-equipped trenches are in action on daily basis. They use computer keyboards and mouse as triggers, their words as bullets. They fire these bullets into cyberspace to kill or recruit more people. Some are wearing war camouflage; they use fake names and they pose as members of particular tribes, but in reality, they do not belong to those tribes. They so much hide their identities so that the people they perceive as their enemies cannot figure out whom they are fighting with. They have done this for a reason for the people who are supporting the government often say to them, ‘come to S. Sudan and talk like that (or write like that!)’ Well, some of them have come out with this tactic of using false names. What can their adversaries do? Nothing. ‘Nothing? Let us fight then without your threat of ‘come to S. Sudan…’’ they would say. Anyway, the time these people, of both sides of the equation, spend fighting is immeasurable. It is war like no other.
It is apparently clear that the work of the ‘Internet Warriors’ (the rebellion and the government supporters), and the work of (JCE), have become the ingredients of the hype of hatred, the hatred that is taking all of us down. We are going down as miserable people. Or, we all, or at least the majority of us, need to think differently and act differently in order to rescue our country and our people in Diaspora from ourselves. We need to liberate ourselves from ourselves. We need a vision to guide and to inform whatever we say and do. For me, personally, there is no suitable vision other than for all of us to Construct Our New Identity.
Inside Thiik’s Automobile Mechanic Repair Shop for Identity
Renaissance means a bridge between the old and the new. Our elders, the South Sudanese elders, have a very important role to play in order for us to build this bridge. They are to help in moving our people from the Dark Age into Modern Age. So the best council that could serve our country well is a council that is formed by people who had reached the highest national status, regardless of the tribes of their belonging. To avoid becoming too monolithic, it should consist of nine or eleven members. They can set criteria for selection. The obvious members of this group would certainly include General Joseph Lagu, Mr Abel Alier and Mr Daniel Koat Mathews. All their feelings of rivalry and political ambitions are no longer driving force. Their driving force is how they could serve all S. Sudanese society well. Now that they have achieved national status, they look upward rather than downward for inspiration.
Their duties would include:
- To advise the government, but not to interfere;
- To be a link between the government, the tribal leaders (Chiefs), and the church leaders;
- If one area is hit by natural disaster, for example, a draught, or if people from another country are attacking local people, then these elders are to work with tribal and church leaders in order to raise basic needs from all those areas that are not affected.
Imagine these three scenarios in a reverse order.
Scenario C.
In 2015, Messiria, from Sudan, attacked our people of Aweil at the S. Sudan’s northern border. Their homes and crops were completely destroyed. Nothing was left. Imagine, General Joseph Lagu, the head of S. Sudanese Council of Elders, made a national call for aids to be collected to support the affected people. Amum, a twelve-year boy in Malakal, heard the call and he started to dry his two fish he caught in the river in order to donate them. The story is covered by South Sudanese media and replayed on S. Sudan’s national TV based in Juba and was watched throughout the country. To South Sudanese, the General Joseph Lagu’s call is more powerful than a call that would had been made by President Barack Obama of the United States; the boy’s donation of two fish would had meant much more than ten tons donated by the UN; the enemy who attacked our people at the northern border of S. Sudan, would have to face the energized great people of Awiel who by then knew they would not be alone but with a full support of the whole country.
Scenario B.
(I leave it blank so that you write it yourself)
Scenario A.
Now, juxtapose scenario C with scenario A. Scenario A: in 1983, around Torit town in Southern Sudan, there were a Bari, a Jieng, a Jur Chol, etc. in the frontline of the battlefield. They were fighting to liberate Torit. One of them was hit by an enemy’s bullet and he fell. He was wounded. The other members of different tribes, carried him to safety and then came back to continue fighting the enemy. These were no longer Bari, Jieng, Jur Chol, etc, but were comrades in arms. They were blood brothers. This was their identity, nothing more, and nothing less.
Scenario A. is what had actually happened during the liberation struggle period. Scenario B. stands for the unfortunate progression of the events in our home country and within our communities in Diaspora. These negative events that led to the 2013 crisis and beyond have contributed to the creation of our mindset and of our attitudes towards each other up to this very day. I have left scenario B blank so that you make your own list of the things you think constitute evil and your challenge would be how you eradicate them. Scenario C. is what we wish to had had happened. Unfortunately, it has never occurred as it is and it will never happen if we are to continue to have no change of heart and no change of mind. It also stands for what we can work on in order to create the environment for something like this to happen.
The challenge for all of us then, in S. Sudan as well as South Sudanese communities in Diaspora, is: we have to work to liberate ourselves from whatever we think is evil. I, personally, do not have to go far in order to take up the challenge. I start from myself, from within myself. We need to have a liberation movement in order to liberate ourselves from ourselves. The sign that we are liberating ourselves from ourselves is when we make alliances with members of our own tribe as well as with members of other tribes. No single tribe can fight the evil just by itself. We need to do it together, to do it as one people.
Let us examine another example of the fictional work of the National Council of Elders. The members have a school program. They visit schools all over the country. One day, they are visiting a Primary School in a remote area somewhere in Bahr El Ghazal. The elders are seated on chairs while students sit in a semi-circle facing them. It is a (Q & A) session.
Jok: ‘General grandfather Joseph Lagu, why did you take up arms to fight the Arabs?’
General Joseph Lagu (speaking in English): ‘we took up arms because the Arabs were oppressing and marginalizing our people.’
Jok: ‘You are from a small tribe, how did you manage to lead Anya-Nya uprising in which all tribes, large as well as small, contributed people to be recruited?’
A long pause followed. Jok started to show signs of nervousness, obviously wondering whether he had asked the great man a wrong question. His nervousness was infectious. Other students also were not at ease.
General Joseph Lagu (speaking in a broken, yet comprehensible Jieng language): ‘My son, when you love all people…’
Murmuring among students made the speaker pause. Students were surprised when they heard General Joseph Lagu speaking in Jieng language. They were bemused and filled with admiration. The murmuring subsided and the General then continued.
‘When you love all people of South Sudan and you have acquired sufficient education and sufficient skills to lead people, you do not have to worry whether you are from a small tribe or a big tribe.’
Mary Arek: ‘Honourable Grandfather Abel Aliar, how did it feel like to had been able to work as Vice-President in the system and among people that were doing bad things to our people in the North as well as in the South?’
Hon. Abel Aliar: ‘As a trained lawyer and an experienced politician, I was able to make intelligent moves for the interest of our people in the South.’
Majok: ‘Honourable Grandfather Daniel Koat Matthews, as the first Governor of the Greater Upper Nile Region, what was your toughest political decision?’
Hon Daniel: ‘my toughest political decision was when I decided to support SPLA/M. It was the toughest decision because I was still the Governor of the Greater Upper Nile Region. I was still working within the regime of Sudan.’
(The Q & A session is over.)
Apparently, students would come out of that session inspired by the elders. This is how the construction of the bridge between the old and the new looks like. The elders have a vital role to make this happen. It is a sure way from which our people, of different identities, will emerge as people of just one identity – the citizens of South Sudan – in the future.
The Conclusion article of these series of articles will be posted next Saturday. The writer can be reached at thiik_giir@hotmail.com
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