Sovereignty or Dependency: Which one South Sudan?
12 min readBy Hon. Bol Makueng Yuol, Juba, South Sudan
July 5, 2016 (SSB) — The traditional practice of facilitating an African developing country to dismantle its sovereign institutions has always been a re-colonisation of Africa by proxy since the time of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and also even now with the protégé African Union (AU). It is simply an old wine in a new bottle. The tools for doing so are found within the same Africans of the OAU or AU. Libya was dismantled with indifferent AU looking on and more will follow.
How is it done? The members from those powerful industrialised nations come into a country, identify resources they must plunder, study the power structure of the victim country and methodology or strategy that would be applied to achieve what they want. In some cases, the experts are from a former colonial power of the country. One common approach which is a peaceful one is to send in “technical experts”. The experts would always pop into every office to acquaint themselves with information on data and centres of decision making so that they also get involved in the executive decisions of that target country – the Advisors.
The experts sit in every meeting of the nation’s leadership, isolate the leadership from its populace and making declarations on behalf of the leaders. They develop their modus operandi on how to confuse and clash institutions and individuals within those institutions. In a country with tribes, their plans are made easy as they will quickly divide the tribes according to “violent ones against the peaceful”, the friendly and hostile, nomads against sedentary … until the divide and rule policy is firmly established.
In this case, the experts will become the common factor in being the only custodians of peace among these communities who have been neighbours and living together since time immemorial. The communities do not listen to each other again as before unless through the experts. To deepen hatred among the communities, developmental projects are initiated in the experts’ favoured areas for communities who they have oriented against their fellow other communities. Any lack of such projects in one community, the other community is the culprit. Negative rivalry and barriers are constructed between communities.
Sooner than later, the experts will produce a “Country Assistance Strategy” to sell to a busted finance minister who is handed a pre-drafted agreement to sign. Enticed with a 10% kick-back commission to be paid in private accounts, the contracts would be signed while compromising the national resources by handing over everything to foreigners. Loans as part of poverty reduction strategy and microfinance credit will be availed loosely as if no strings are attached to them. Aid money is diverted to the reserve account of the donor nation to pay a profit of 4% return while the receiving nation borrows same amount at 12% interest to feed the hungry population!
All this camouflage is with intention to take over the resources of the country. In the planned agenda, policies of interest rates, bailouts, when to privatise government assets and even exit strategy for leaders who have been over used or those leaders who refuse to succumb to material pressures and stand firm to protect the interest of their nations. In the final analysis, the country ends up with a crashed economy, destroyed government and sometimes destructive riots from a population that has been agitated against its own leadership.
If the plans of the experts do not succeed because the leadership is recalcitrant, they conspire to cut-off the nation from all international borrowing. The plan is total slavery. The experts will be interested to introduce even what does not exist, not acceptable or palatable in that society such as gays’ rights. They advocate freedom of media where nobody has complained or where nobody listens to radio, television or reads newspapers. They pay a lot of money to local media institutions to fabricate stories in an attempt to discredit the government and clash them with country authorities.
Devaluation of local currency is top of the recommendations by the experts. The government is tantalised with promise of billions of USA Dollars unheard of before. The offer of aid to follow is so attractive such that even a lay person would celebrate before seeing what is being promised by the experts. The poor citizens are not aware that their nation is being completely demolished. While such manoeuvres are taking place, the reality is only felt when the government is not able to pay salaries of teachers, hospitals and soldiers for months. Fuel shortages are experienced everywhere in the country.
When all these things are happening the experts will assure everybody that they are not interested in politics and that they do not want to get involved in the internal affairs of a country. However, they will explain that they will support the government, especially the humanitarian side. What this “humanitarian” support is all about in reality is the sponsoring the collapse of the government – uprising, demonstrations, coup detat…name it. By this time, the experts are sure that they have already identified a politician or military general (Mobuto) who would be installed to start to cooperate in the next round and process of looting the country of resources.
To go in for the kill, goods paid for with contracts are not delivered. The country will experience food and fuel shortages with prices of these commodities skyrocketing. Little food that is available will be hoarded. In addition to high prices there will be scarcity and items are only available at the black market prices. The disappearance of these vital lifesaving items will force the population to demonstrate. The same experts will now wash their hands, exposing and abandoning the leadership they have created and supported, labelling it as corrupt. By doing so, the experts will have leverage on any new leadership they have created and to rob the public of confidence once more.
The only African country that was reported to have escaped the death net of the experts is Botswana. This country is endowed with natural resources like most of African countries and so, it was a target nation. What Botswana did was simple, using its own national experts who were not contaminated. The national experts studied the “triggers” thoroughly and made one single recommendation. Triggers are a requirement for a country to accept without questioning every“ conditionality” for financial aid. The national experts avoided challenging the “experts” and simply recommended that they go packing. Its sovereignty was maintained.
What are the useful lessons for Africa and South Sudan to learn from this context?
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The Truth that shall set us free: Peace, Reconciliation & National healing
Peace and conflict are always equal and opposite sides of the same coin. There is no way of bringing about peace and reconciliation if there has not been any conflict. And as a rule, root causes of a conflict are always explored so that they are understood and to identify entry points for an inclusive and holistic approach. Another observation is that if some elements of the peace and reconciliation component have proved and demonstrated being the consistent disruptors of harmony and stability among the people, they have to be tackled separately otherwise peace and reconciliation will not be achieved permanently. Communities have to be made aware about such elements.
Why have the South Sudanese communities been harmonious until the arrival of the “educated”?
In the days of the “uneducated” these communities had traditional rules, norms and values for managing crisis. The quarrels were about stolen property (in form of animals), competition over animal pastures, fishing grounds and water points. Solutions were easy. Respected elders on both quarrelling sides listened to each other and made agreements without deception. Settlement of disputes was always satisfactory and acceptable to all sides. No empty apologies for the massacres continuously committed and just to be repeated again next time.
Moreover, quarrels were rare and just happened once in a while. For example, if a Nuer person had quarrelled with a Dinka person over stolen property, the issue would be limited to a small group of Nuers and Dinkas who had happened to be at the vicinity of the conflict. It would not even involve the entire village or cattle camp leave alone the entire Dinka or Nuer communities. Such conflicts were very rare and would not even last for a month. Most importantly, there was no common position (president) for the communities to compete or fight over as well as there were no common (national) assets (oil, wealth) to fight for its control. Above all, there was no outside interest for anyone to fight a proxy war for the benefit of that foreign body. This outside or foreign interest and interference poses a great challenge as it causes lack of will on the part of the “educated” to accept and respect the laid down rules (constitution, institutions and values).
The impact of education on South Sudanese values prior to emergence of the SPLA/M has different lessons in the way they fought in Anyanya (1955 – 1972) and managed the Addis Ababa government in Juba (1972 – 1983).
When the Missionaries first came to South Sudan, they opened schools in those areas that were accessible to them. However, children from different communities studied in those schools. They played together, ate together and developed the nucleus of the nascent nation of South Sudan we have today. These were the first educated leaders who fought in the Anyanya Liberation movement (1955 – 1972) and again in 1983 – 2005.
During the Anyanya war, there were many leaders who went to bush: Agrey Jaden, William Deng, Joseph Uduho, Gordan Muortat, Fr. Saturlino, Joseph Lagu…etc, just to mention a few names. Agrey Jaden was the President of Anynya. When he left, Gordon Muortat briefly took over, later on he left and Joseph Lagu led the Movement until the time of Addis Abba Agreement (1972). The three gentlemen came from different ethnic groups of Pajulu/Bari, Madi and Dinka, and regionally, two came from Equatoria and one from Bhar el Ghazal. Thank God that there were no PhD holders to claim anything using an ethnic support.
South Sudan leadership following Addis Ababa Agreement
On signing the Agreement in 1972, the leadership in South Sudan took turns as follows according to events.
| S/No | Name of President | Tribe | Region | Process |
| 1 | Abel Alier | Dinka | Upper Nile | Appointed, democratic election (twice) |
| 2 | Joseph Lagu | Madi | Equatoria | Democratic election |
| 3 | Peter Gatkuoth | Nuer | Upper Nile | Interim |
| 4 | Gismalla Abdalla Rasas | Fertit | Bhar el Ghazal | Appointed/Interim |
| 5 | James Tumbura | Zande | Equatoria | Democratic election |
When one observes the leadership changes during the Anyanya to regional government in Juba, they represented the face of South Sudan. Nevertheless, there were political differences in the way changes were happening, but were contained within the normal framework of handling national issues although greed and lack of political maturity drove some of those leaders to commit major historical and political mistakes.
In fact, Southern Sudan was just undergoing those critical historical phases of people and nation development.
The Spark of endemic tribalism among South Sudanese just crept in slowly and through the political leaders and intellectuals of the time (1972 until today).
As the Addis Ababa Agreement was approaching its 10th anniversary, Southern Sudan by then was experiencing difficult economic situation and Khartoum was using its monopoly on control of everything from economy, security/military and political power to arm-twist Southern Sudan and nobody read the writing on the wall. The then Southern Sudanese East African educated elite came up with “kokora” which played very well to Khartoum’s taste of “divide and rule” policy. The articulation on Kokora was not explained on political platforms, but on ethnic ones, creating ethnic tensions. This chain of political blunders resulted in various ethnic and regional formations: Greater Equatoria, Greater Bahr el Ghazal, Greater Upper Nile, Luos, Dinka unity, BANFA and many other ethnic or regional organisations.
When Khartoum saw the sharp and irreconcilable divisions within south Sudanese leadership and elite, it did not lose the opportunity. It enticed some South Sudanese ethnic leaders to conspire with Nimeri and Southern Sudan was broken up into three pieces. Arabisation and Islamisation were declared and stepped up vigorously. The one time known formidable united strong Southern Sudan bond of nationalism was gone. The South Sudanese nationalists and patriots known as the Council for Unity of Southern Sudan (CUSS) were also sacrificed at the altar of conspiracies and betrayals. The rest was just history.
Subsequently, the SPLA/M was born in 1983 and it started to experience many challenges. The Movement almost became a victim of the inherited divisions among Southern Sudanese nationalities. As a result, there were many interpretations and prejudices against it. It was a time when there was no unity of minds and actions among Southern Sudanese. The 1984 SPLA/M split and infighting added more confusion. The interpretations were that it was a Dinka Movement with an objective of fighting against eviction from Juba as a result of kokora. There was a widespread short sightedness even some intellectuals would ask the question: “Who told John Garang to liberate Equatorians”?
During the entire period of the liberation war, Khartoum used ethnic differences as basis for recruiting militias against the SPLA/M. Southern Sudanese persistence and perseverance paid with Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that led to the independence we are enjoying today. Uncountable thanks to the SPLA/M for paying price.
During the CPA period leading to independence, some reconciliation happened (2005 & 2008). This was initiated by the SPLM. Most militia groups responded and their forces were integrated into the SPLA. Some militia leaders and groups made it a practice of acquiring resources from the government of South Sudan and fighting SPLA and defecting again to Khartoum and back repeatedly. President Kiir offered endless amnesties and the game of defections continued to be a business of rewards and appeasement.
This has created sharp differences among South Sudanese, leaving deep wounds of hatred and distrust. There has never been any organisation to dig into the depth of such issues in terms of allowing confessions by the offenders and listening to experiences from the victims.
Moreover, South Sudanese have not learned from all these so as to change. The desired change needed is the knowledge that struggle for the control of the political power has now been identified as the cause of the conflicts among South Sudanese. This knowledge would facilitate a clear choice between the methods of political practices and processes that lead to capturing a political power. In other words, do we need to access political power through an ethnic violence or through political parties that can compete, using political programmes for people to make a choice?
As a reminder, South Sudan started as a democratic country in 2005 (power sharing) all the way to period of elections in 2010. Its Constitution has the features of being a “decentralised multi-party democratic system of governance”. Before the crisis of December 2013, the South Sudanese public anticipated elections by April 2015. That day was not reached without the crisis. The idea of seeking public office through popular election was not appreciated as an option. This means that this period of Transitional Government of National Unity (TGoNU) must be used to educate South Sudanese on the procedures that must be followed to bring about leaders of government.
First, do we accept elections as the only satisfactory way of choosing leaders in South Sudan? If the answer is yes, then each ethnic group must stop following their son/daughter blindly because the person comes from “our ethnic community”. They must educate their communities.
The second choice is: do we need to mobilise our ethnic communities and take power by violence? If this is the choice, do those foreign “friends of South Sudan” support this as an option? These two questions are the main entry points to making peace, reconciliation and a sustainable political system in South Sudan. Foreign friends, in case South Sudan has them, must patiently study and understand this situation before making declarations of their intent. This approach is the most logical one in changing the mind-set. Using external resources, power and pressure to make negative influence without listening to logics and understanding is the surest way to fail peace and reconciliation.
You can reach the author via his email: Bol Makueng – bmakueng@yahoo.co.uk
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