South Sudan: Why we are such a disgrace to our martyrs and the need to change?
4 min readBy Martin Ariel Majak, Alexandria, Egypt
February 6, 2017 (SSB) — As you may know very well that what we call a country of our own didn’t pop out of the blue. It was as a result of the sacrificial blood of our fallen and wounded heroes. We didn’t just think of secession overnight and then got granted self-rule the following day. NO.
It was a kind of perilous journey in which many of our compatriots perished in the course of fighting for our common cause of gaining independence. It was a difficult undertaking to be taken by cowards but our brave men dared to challenge the Goliath and won in the end.
We did really loose the best and the nicest of us. I salute them. Without them, we couldn’t be calling South Sudan – a country of our own now. Their blood traded us independence. Indeed, they were the true patriots who bought for us the invaluable thing – freedom.
But the got betrayed though by the same people who should have been supposedly grateful to them.
This time, I thought we should have been thinking of how to help our impoverished country that has never smelt any scent of development.
But here we are, fighting each other and forgot so easily our recent past when we were all at one time in one basket – subjected to oppression and persecution by Arabs. Why can’t one armed with a rifle wanting to kill a fellow South Sudanese just think of that?
When shall we come to know that we are a disgrace to our martyrs? Hating peace and unity – the ideals our martyrs fought for.
It always leaves me thinking, has our country run out of patriots? Were they all killed in the liberation struggle? As a matter of facts, we certainly don’t have patriots now – not even me.
What we have are a bunch of people who owe no allegiance to the state but serve strong men who wield enormous power inform of money. And that’s why we don’t converge on points as we don’t have common goals.
But that has to stop. What is begged of us is to be putting our Country first in whatever we think or do and be resistant to forces that want us separated. Such are the dark forces – egoism, corruption and tribalism.
While we may differ, we can share a common love of our national heritage. We must accept that what we have in common far exceeds that which divides us, and we don’t have to hate one for his ethnicity.
All we have to do is to bring back into ourselves some sense of compassion and tolerance as it has to happen on the inside before it can happen on the outside. It means softening our hardened hearts and opening up our confused minds if we’re to live in peace.
Our martyrs deserve better of us – not killing. We’ve to retrace the better path that leads us to togetherness as we’ve derailed now.
With our potential which is both unrivaled and untapped at the same time, we can achieve big we if we join hands – it has to be said.
Only that we do rarely agree but if we agree, there’s always nothing that stops from achieving. Khartoum government bears better testimony of that. With superior weaponry than us, we engaged them in the war of independence and left them with bloody noses and broken jaws until they yielded to our demand.
Let’s all come together and its starts with you acknowledging that you aren’t spotless and must change. So that when we meet, we may look at each other through the prism of inseparable South Sudanese bound together by destiny. But not look at each other through regional or tribal lenses which serve us no good!
The writer can be reached via arielmajak93@gmail.com or on Twitter as arielmajak93.
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