Neither Arop Madut nor Mabior Garang has fully explained the December 2013 Crisis
6 min readIn neither Madut nor Mabior Lies an Elusive Solution to the 2013 Conflict
By Deng Vanang, Dares Salaam, Tanzania
March 25, 2018 (SSB) —- The said story with its full content to be divulged into as narrated by two personalities from different political divide demands a third person to clear the air of pollution it created.
These two Honorable personalities however, need not be extremely admonished too for some deliberate misrepresentation of facts that are yet to be explained.
Since after all they are politicians and each wants his side to be safe and secure in the annals of history and not necessarily ignorant of history or political realities of the day in our country.
Particularly, Honorable Arop Madut Arop is the respected writer and politician known to many for being old enough to be Uncle to most readers of this esteemed website.
He is moreover an up to date academic who has been through torturous journey this beloved country has travelled more than seventy years ago.
While the man, Honorable Mabior Garang de Mabior who is rebutting Madut’s side of story of conflict is equally exemplary in the way he put forward his counterargument.
Coupled with all the due respect for the elderly scholar and Honorable who has chosen the path of factual distortion over his age.
He is undoubtedly honest, keen learner of current affairs and product of some part of a long history.
Especially, given the fact that he is the son of a world renowned strategist, liberation icon, public intellectual and a nobody’s fool, Dr. John Garang de Mabior.
But who is not certainly father of the nation as he contrarily put it so pompously in his official address.
Father of South Sudan nation is one independence President Salva Kiir Mayardit to put the credit where it is due in regardless of his faults.
Though some members of the public might have bestowed that title up on Garang, which is unofficial, is just a matter of consolation for an extra-ordinarily long bereaved family.
For as per common practice globally, he who gets the privilege of raising his country’s independence flag is accorded the said peculiar title, but which doesn’t diminish Garang’s omnipotence in case of South Sudan.
Enough of pleasantries, though I’m a politician in my own right and terms, I instead wish to take a professional route on this subject of debate.
Ostensibly to inform the public since of course being an avid chronicler of our history, both past and present.
Because once an opportunity avails itself, history is best penned by spectators of politics and not its active players.
Lest the eventual victors write it through a crossed eye’s vision against the vanquished victims.
Based on even more common sense that no player can be a referee of football match he is laboring to win.
Needless to mention becoming a presiding judge of his own cause against the law of natural justice.
And therefore, the reason for me to chip in and start with Honorable Madut.
Who in a rather long and cumbersome article heaped blame on SPLM’s politicians opposed to Kiir’s planned extension of his presidency back in 2013 till today.
Including Dr. Riek Machar and Cde Pagan Amum Okiech simply for wanting to be President.
His writing revealed a glimpse of an inner self, sorry to say, of a sycophant advocating dictatorship and President Kiir’s divine right to rule, no matter how questionable is that divine right.
All in travesty of his academic background as the man who takes pride in having studied supposedly fair and analytical field of journalism in the land of a thousand years’ liberal democracy, United Kingdom.
Which by so doing, he is equally alluding to the misplaced defense that Kiir is morally justified by provocations to massacre those he deemed supportive to his political opponents.
These victims of criminal act comprised of infants and unborn fetuses not even conscious of cruel fate that was happening.
While in the same vein of convoluted judgement, Kiir to him is the only liberator of the new country from Arab rule, its sole proprietor, Alpha and Omega who is over and above reproach.
And not to be challenged by those he considers lesser political mortals whose peaceful quest for democratization of political space is equated to a criminal offence.
All the above faulty arguments are also the reason Honorable Madut is floored flat on the ground by Mabior on factual, periodical and orderly narration of facts behind actual cause of current conflict in 2013.
Not necessarily he Madut doesn’t know those historical facts Mabior correctly pinpointed.
But out of political expediency he wanted to avoid them and subsequently score none substantive points.
Not so impeachable too is Mabior Garang’s very own rebuttal entitled: The Root Cause of The December 2013 Crisis In South Sudan: The Riek Machar Factor.
Which is a belated response to Honorable Madut’s article that is entitled: How Political Wrangling In The Ruling SPLM Party Wrecked South Sudan Apart In 2013.
In which he Mabior has gotten it wrong to stake claim to the ownership of struggle for SPLM/A-IO which 2013 SPLM’s internal political revulsion and its subsequent intriguing dynamics have savagely bequeathed.
Since what began as SPLM’s in house matter transcended the ruling party’s parameters by twist of fate in engulfing those not interested in its affairs.
The issue rather spiraled out of control from politics to an ethnic angle as he shrewdly narrated in the first place and which as the result is no longer the SPLM’s project to solely brand and own.
For as conflict erupted and continuously evolves, hundreds of thousands of people have died and other millions have ever since been displaced both internally and externally, while having no political affiliation whatsoever with SPLM.
If anything, most of whom have been opposed to ruling SPLM’s kleptocratic dictatorship and anti-socio-normative behaviors in and out to death and eternity.
Hence, the wrong insinuation by Mabior that other opposition groups and their leaders who have lost kith and kin to political inferno that is on-going South Sudan civil war are just bloody opportunists out to take away what is SPLM/A-IO’s struggle against the killer regime.
A detrimental stand to currently much sought after solution to the crisis which gives credence to politics of exclusion that is even more divisive, dangerous and opportunistic than the opportunism of which he accused other fellow armed and unarmed opposition groups.
Whose most of their members are where they are today as was previously unlike the SPLM/A-IO’s teetotaler politicians as newly manufactured products of tragedy, the Nuer massacre.
The author of several books, Deng Vanang, is a graduate of the Catholic University of East Africa in Kenya with a bachelor degree in Philosophy and political sciences. He got awarded with undergraduate diploma in public relations and management at Kenya school of exports and imports in Kenya. And in later years secured a post-graduate diploma in print media journalism from the University of Nairobi as well as a post-graduate diploma in peace and development studies at the University of Juba, among several short courses certificates in both information and governance from East African region and Republic of South Africa. He once served in SPLM/A during the war of liberation as political commissar and other political groupings in the post-war period. He became a Director in GoSS’ Ministry of Information and Broadcasting in Juba until 2010 while serving as the columnist with various newspapers before and after the December 2013 conflict erupted. He can be reached via his email: dvanang@gmail.com
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