South Sudan—My Homeland
5 min readBy Deng Mayik Atem, Arizona, USA
May 13, 2016 (SSB) — I just returned from a visit to my homeland, a land I had not seen for over twenty-five years. In fact, that nation, South Sudan, didn’t actually exist when I was last there; it was part of Sudan. I was only seven when I left my home village and started a journey that would take me to Ethiopia, Kenya and eventually the United States.
It was with great excitement that I boarded the Egyptian Air flight that would take me to Juba. But it was also some trepidation. I knew, as does the entire world, that my country has been suffering a civil war. What would I find?
The first thing I found was that little has changed in South Sudan. Poverty is everywhere. Villages lack proper water supplies. Electricity is limited, even in Juba. The roads are little better than washboards. As for education, much of that is a joke even though many youngsters want to go to school.
In Juba I met with political and government leaders. Some wanted our country to do better. They wanted to use the rich resources of our country to make it a better place for all. But some of those leaders did not care. They were happy sitting in their well-furnished apartments drinking Western whiskey and beer and feeling superior.
Why, I wondered, were these apparatchiks not replaced? The reason was quite simple: tribalism.
South Sudan is a nation of tribes. There are sixty-four different tribes. Some such as the Dinka and Nuer are quite large. Others like the Bongo and Murle are quite small in number. In the United States we have members of almost all those tribes. The big difference here is that we all live together in communities. In fact, if you were to ask most of those people where they are originally from, they would say South Sudan, not from a particular tribe or one of the twenty-eight states, which are primarily identified with particular larger tribes. But in South Sudan itself, people primarily identify with their tribal background.
In order to create a viable central authority, the current government has reached out tribe by tribe to bring leaders into agreement; most particularly, the president who is Dinka has reached out to the Vice-President, who is Nuer and who has led the rebellion that has been going on for almost two years. While it is certainly better that the leaders of the tribes work together, the result of this tribalist approach to government means that most of the government officials are not interested in a larger picture; they are in it to get what they can for themselves because that is how the government is recruiting them. I call this the Land Rover approach because traditionally the gift that local leaders have expected from the government has been Land Rovers, which is rather ironic since in our oil-rich country there is seldom gasoline available to power those vehicles.
South Sudan can only reach its potential and can only have effective government when the leaders in Juba and in the state governments stop thinking in tribal terms and recognize that the country must exist as a whole. During the years I fought for South Sudanese freedom, I never asked whether we Dinka would get more than the other tribes; I learned that we were all one and that our blood was all the same. But there are many who would rather see South Sudan remain divided. First, there are those individuals who are amassing wealth at the expense of their countrymen.
Second, there are those outside forces who want to keep South Sudan’s great riches from reaching the world. Besides petroleum, our country is rich in gold, diamonds, uranium, and potentially the rare minerals that are so necessary for modern technology. Also, the water of the White Nile could potentially help irrigate thousands of hectares of crops, which could make a tremendous difference in the power structure of the region. Those outsiders are happy to enrich the individuals and families who work against national identity.
Even though I am a citizen of the United States, I am a proud member of the South Sudanese community in this country, the world, and at home. When I left Juba for my return to America, I determined that I must work to end the tribalism that is rending the country of my birth. When we can all say with pride that we are all as one, all as South Sudanese, at that time we will be able to make our country and all her sons and daughters richer, healthier, better educated, and prouder.
Deng Mayik Atem, one of the “Lost Boys of Sudan,” is currently Secretary General of the South Sudanese Community Association in Arizona. A graduate of Arizona State University, Mr. Atem has dual citizenship in the US and South Sudan, and recently visited the country of his birth to see family he has not seen for over thirty years and to attend a Twic State Conference on governance. He is currently writing a memoir, “A Different Warrior”. He is reachable at azdengatem@hotmail.com
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