South Sudan: Is She of North Korea, United States, or States of Nature?
6 min readBy Kur Wël Kur, Adelaide, Australia
May 13, 2017 (SSB) — Is South Sudan dictatorial or democratic? I can’t help asking myself this question. It’s a question I know the answer to. And the answer is a big-bellied fat no. But before I gauge our beloved country in any of these systems of governance, I will have to make an impression that even the governance in the state of nature is much better than the type of governance in our beloved country.
Because in nature, all the hierarchical animals observe some rules in their societies. For example, threats to power (dominance) and territory are viewed differently. Among the hierarchical animals, power is individualistic but territory is communal. Any male/ female, which aspire for the dominant female’s/male’s position, must prepare for an individualistic challenge (war). The rest of the members would either spectate, or go about their businesses when the challenger and the dominant female or male are viciously attacking each other.
However, when other group of their kind, take different colonies of monkeys as example, is encroaching into the territory, every member of the defensive group would fight with its claws and teeth to deter the offenders. This behaviour is also observed in meerkats (agoroor), lemurs, and hyenas.
What about our country as a dictatorial or democratic nation?
If our beloved country can’t even fit in the state of nature, how would it work in democracy and dictatorship. Anyway, let’s go with dictatorship. Our president doesn’t qualify as a dictator because of the followings:
Just about all dictatorial countries that exist today are economically stable. When one looks at fundamental anchors or cornerstones of their successes, one finds excellence in national security, citizens enjoy zero tolerance these dictators have to all sort of crimes. No one gets away with any crime, even close relatives of the leaders (dictators).
Libya with Gaddafi was a prime example, Libya flourished in economic and security for long time until the western nations bulldozed its civilisations to ground zero; whereas our country with General Kiir, our country doesn’t fit the dictatorial norms.
Because economically, our country is mauled by hunger and poverty. Millions of our citizens have crawled into refugees and displaced camps just to feed themselves. The UN and humanitarian agencies have declared famine in our country. Politically and militarily, military and political rebels enjoy forgiveness that follows the biblical command (forgive seventy times seven). With dictators, a mere forgiveness isn’t in their vocabularies, leave alone the heavenly forgiveness.
In the dictators’ circle, all dictators are brutal. They hate traitors. Kim Jong-un ordered the execution of his uncle by the anti-craft guns. Kiir is kind, but everything looks rotten when some educated and vocal citizens (critics of the government) disappeared, brutally murdered in the radar of his leadership while similar educated and vocal citizens of the other side, his side, enjoy their God-given lives.
The second reason our country isn’t dictatorial is the turnover of his officials. Dictators rarely reshuffle their cabinets or sack their staffs so often. When a dictator fires an official in a governmental office that means that official’s life also expires. Most dictators work with hundreds of officials who were loyal to their predecessors.
However, our president has reshuffled his cabinets many times and has decreed out many of his former loyalists. And almost all loyalists of Dr. Garang have been sidelined and forced out of the country. It was a national suicide because any one who knew how genius Dr. Garang was, especially in offering jobs would shy away from sacking Garang’s appointees. Guess what? Our president didn’t. He sacked all of them except two who await their exclusion from another reshuffle. And he (our president) still thinks that the pendulum of his politics will remain uninterrupted.
An American military genius, General Douglas MacArthur once said, “old soldiers never die; they just fade away.” This is true, but when a government is ringed by thousands of old soldiers, playing politics in one hand and military in the other, then blood of the innocent citizens will never stop flowing.
The vicious killing of my people on Juba-Bor road interrupted me from finishing a critique on Hon. Makeer Lual Kuol’s book, Personalities with positive indelible finger prints in the history of South Sudan. The killing got me thinking. Those killings are result of stupid politics where dumb tribes are used to fight the proxy wars.
What got me thinking is how the killing on Juba-Bor road coincided with relieving decree for General Paul Malong Awan. This is a reality of war politics because the last time a chief of staff was sacked, a new chief was to direct and fight a war! Do you still can’t get why the president relieved General Malong? A new war? And if General Malong isn’t fit to fight this coming war, what do you think of this war? Brothers’ war?
I don’t know the answers to these questions, but I need you to know that if we have learned anything from war, it’s that we, the South Sudanese people have been broken, wrenched million times by war. And no one is immune from sufferings, the consequences of war.
However, it’s a lesson we haven’t kept close to our hearts because every a living being in South Sudan is armed from its claws to its teeth, a trusted source told me. Villagers are armed with howitzers, rocket propelled grenades (RPGs), mounted jeeps with 12.7 and thousands of PK (Pulemyot Kalashnikova) machine guns are scattered in the villages where they are used to attack, abduct children and terrorise the laws abiding citizens. With these lethal weapons in the hands of criminals and villagers, do you still think you have a country?
My country citizens, by the look of things in our country, our country is neither dictatorial nor is it democratic. It’s not a state of nature either. So what is it? Well, you have a look at the World Political Map, if you find a country being run by double agents, then our country is that country!
Hold your breaths and watch our country melts into the arms of an elder brother, Somalia. Because the weapons in villages today are more powerful and many than the weapons Dr. John Garang with General Salva Kirk and the SPLA used to liberate South Sudan.
Be bless.
Kur Wël Kur has a Bachelor Degree in Genetics and Zoology from Australian National University (ANU). He was the former General Secretary of Greater Bor Community in Adelaide, Australia. He can be reached via his email contact: kurwelkur@ yahoo.com
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