God or Bigoted Men: Who condemned South Sudanese women to perpetual suffering?
Are South Sudanese women condemned alive by god or is it mindlessness of South Sudanese men that make them suffer?
By Daniel Juol Nhomngek, Juba, South Sudan
February 1, 2017 (SSB) — Women are the backbone of South Sudan. Without them South Sudan will collapse and men will migrate from south Sudan to where they are. Women have been vanguard in the liberation war of south Sudan. Women have never led rebelled against South Sudan. They have never killed any person in South Sudan.
Women are source of food as they can provide for food where men have failed to provide one. They are in fact bread winners. The dream of women is to see that the community is built on equality and equity while men dream of power and destruction of the community.
Women love everybody equally and ready to help all equally. Women conceive children, care for them in their wombs, during their births and even when they grow up until when they are eighteen years.
Sadly after being cared by women when they are children, men turn around accuse them of being weak, prostitute and lazy while forgetting that they are the same women who brought them up.
Moreover, women in South Sudan are suffering from the cause they do not have any contribution in. They are being raped by both rebels and government soldiers everyday with impunity.
Women have fought for the freedom of South Sudanese but the freedom they have fought for has become slavery for them. No one cares about their welfare and when they go to men for help, men help themselves with them or give them condition that in order to help them they must pay for their bodies. Sad.
During the liberation war, South Sudanese women suffered in the hands of the SPLA and the Sudanese troops. Women endured all sufferings during the war between North and South hoping that after the independent South Sudan, their welfare would improve.
However, two years into independence of South Sudan, women have gone back to zero. Their sufferings have even increased. They are being raped day and night. Widows of men’s war caused are left with nothing and have turned to the street to beg.
Girls have become beggars not because they wish to beg but because necessity forces them to beg while heartless men don’t care about their plights. Young girls are left there in universities are orphans but no one care for them.
They just roam about in the campuses looking only for what to eat leave alone where to sleep but men are running after them.
South Sudanese women abroad are not different from South Sudanese women in South Sudan. They are being accused that they are prostitutes yet South Sudanese men do not examine their conscience how they contribute to women behaving that way.
The other day someone wrote on facebook that single mothers in Australia look for young men showing them that they are prostitutes. Another day I saw a photo of a South Sudanese woman from Australia with bruises of which the husband had beaten her.
Men abroad like men at home always accused women of leaving them for other men. Men keep on monitoring women’s communications on all media. Hence, treating them like their own property.
The question is: are South Sudanese women condemned alive by God or is the mindlessness of South Sudanese men that make them suffer? Women do not have anywhere to go. They are trapped between cold and frost lands.
Women ran away from North Sudan with the hope that South Sudan would offer alternative best home but those dreams have been dodged on hard ground of cruelty.
What must be understood about women in brief is that women are human beings. They need care, love and understanding. They need respect and freedom. Women are not property of anyone.
NB//: the author is South Sudanese lawyer residing in Uganda and can be reached through: juoldaniel@yahoo.com
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