Anei Madut Kuendit: Why I resigned and joined Gen Paul Malong’s SSUF/A
16 min readWhy I resigned and joined South Sudan United Front (SSUF
By Hon. Ustaz Lewis Anei Madut
Who am I in brief?
Friday, June 8, 2018 (PW) — I am Ustaz Lewis Anei Madut-Kuendit, a South Sudanese Historian, a writer and a politician who is a holder of Division One Bachelor Degree in Education (Arts) from Faculty of Education, University of Juba, South Sudan. I taught at various secondary schools until I became Headmaster for a number of secondary schools. Thereafter, I served at the Ministry of Education as Deputy Director General for Administration before joining my people’s Liberation armed struggle at its second phase.
Apart from that work experience and academic background, I am a Liberation veteran, an Anya-nya one fighter at my very early age and later as an SPLA combat officer. I did belong to the strategic Mobile Unit in the then SPLA Division- 11. Beside combat, I served as SPLM/A NLC Chairman for Members Affairs Committee during our liberation days. I also served in the Movement as first SPLM/A Commissioner of former Tonj North County (now 10 counties) and as first Governor of the then one Warrap state immediately after the CPA was signed.
At the community level, I left for SSUF Movement while a member of Tonj state Community leaders’ Council and, indeed, the former Secretary General of the Jieng Council of Elders (JCE) at the wider Jieng nationality level. I left Juba, the country’s capital city while I was the Founding Chairman of the Republican Party of South Sudan (RPSS). I am a father and grandfather to many. I come from the Payii clan’s primogenitary family in Awan-Parek Area, Rualbet County in the northern part of Tonj State, Bahr el Ghazal region.
I resigned from the government position as the National Ministerial Advisor on Culture, Youth & Sports, dated May 18th, 2018. I declared having joined SSUF Movement dated 19th instant. This is after I succeeded to escape being arrested by the regime’s National security. I managed to get out of Juba to join SSUF Movement May 16th, 2018.
2. Why I resigned and joined SSUF Movement
I resigned from the Central Government of the Republic of South Sudan and joined SSUF Movement because the President and his SPLM ruling Party utterly failed to manage the country. He caused war and failed to bring peace and stability to the country for five bitter years now! He horribly failed to provide security protection to the citizens.
Instead, the ruling Party leader, who is also the country’s President, allowed the country’s government system to go right at the start into a very bad corruption, lawlessness from lack of application of the Rule of Law. The ruling Party and the country’s leadership irresponsibly allowed the nation to degenerate into an unfortunate high degree of violence, characterised by wanton killings and lootings in both urban and rural areas even before the on-going war started in 2013!
The leadership and its ruling SPLM Party failed to render services to the people and did no development at all. This is despite huge national income that always accrues to the national Chauffer in billions of USDs annually from oil alone! This abject Leadership failure finally plunged the country into this very destructive five years civil War that gave rise to a generalised tribal discord, negative ethno-regional sentimentalism, into such a destruction of the country’s infrastructure and the nation’s social fabric.
I earlier resigned from the ruling SPLM Party and now from the government because the Party’s Chairman, President Salva Kiir, personally mismanaged our Liberation Party through encouragement of gossip, intrigues and division among the members until the Party divided into several fighting factions that put the nation into this unpatriotic open-ended civil war and destruction!
Instead of service delivery to the people, instead of development and nation-building, the ruling Party’s Chairman, disgracefully allowed the country to degenerate into a very bad corruption and instability, causing the death of tens of thousands of our citizens, not to speak of the wounded and the disabled! He badly dispersed the Liberation cadres, many of whom died from neglect, others he pushed into abject marginalization. President Kiir parted ways with 90% of his liberation colleagues and brought our liberation enemies to run the country with him the way the country is in now!
I resigned because the President and his ruling Party has abandoned our original Liberation Vision, diverted from its national agenda and program. The President and the Party abandoned our previous Liberation patriotic ideals. The leadership failure has destroyed our Liberation legacy through making the Party ruling members to go into selfish struggle for riches and power at the expense of the nation.
I resigned because the ruling party badly mishandled the economy and surrendered the masses to the whims of the traders, thereby estranging the Party from its citizens who became flocks without a shepherd.
The President does not personally have a vision for South Sudan. That is why we stagnated.
I earlier resigned from the ruling SPLM Party and tried to form a different political Party because our Party Chairman badly destroyed the unity of our people, damaged the image and good name of our young nation, causing South Sudan to be a laughing stock of the world and making the Dinka nationality the escape goat of the mistakes done to the nation by him and his ruling clique.
The Party leadership failed to maintain internal unity within the Party itself. He destructively divided our people through listening and acting on gossips pitting X against Y and benefiting from those intrigues thereby forcing the country to go into shambles!
When I resigned from the SPLM ruling Party on January 28th, 2017 and setup a new political Party which I had called Republican Party of South Sudan (RPSS), I established it on the principle of non-violence and calling for a peaceful democratic change wishing to do it through elections. I thought the country was to be allowed to have peace that was to be followed by fair, free and democratic elections before August, 2018 as stipulated in that failed Peace Agreement of May 2015 which is now being revitalized in Addis Ababa peace forum.
The President and his ruling clique made it difficult for my new but very fast-growing Party to get official certificate from the political parties’ council (PPC) to make it operate as a legal entity in the country! That Political initiative found no headway as such. It is therefore one of my reasons for joining an armed Movement since peaceful avenues for bringing change are also blocked by the ruling regime.
My Party completed all the legal and political requirements since July 2017, yet it was denied the right to be registered and given certificate by the PPC.
When the Ruling Party became a dictatorial regime and became more destructive and high-handed than even the armed oppositions against it, killing thousands of its citizens, destroying village after village, mishandling the national army, making our soldiers to resort to wanton looting and destruction of the rural countryside throughout the country, it led to the displacement of very large sections of the civil population, causing millions of our citizens to flee the country to become refugees in all the neighbouring countries!
The destitute situation our internally displaced populations found themselves in for the last five years until today, is very inhuman, disgusting and touching. President Salva Kiir doesn’t care about the plight of these citizens who now live a squalid life in neighbouring countries, not to speak of our compatriots in the Diaspora who cannot invest in their country because President Kiir has plunged their country into unstopping instability.
When President Kiir diverted the country’s annual budgets to his destructive war and into his very expensive war diplomacy in defence for his position, he caused very bad suffering to the work force in Juba, the capital city, in the states and in the counties! Government employees including soldiers would go for months without salaries. This comes at the time of a very virulent inflation in the prices of goods and services in the markets, all on account of the government Free Market Policy and uncontrolled dollar rise!
This is why our soldiers resorted to looting their innocent civil populations in towns and villages. That is why the society degenerated into what has come to be known as ‘Unknown gunmen’s phenomenon’. Our Army rank and file resorted to charcoal-making business to earn a living for their families. Urban life has become very miserable as black marketeering is generally practiced even by the senior members of the army, other regular forces and senior personages within the ruling regime!
Moreover the economic collapse somersaulted the society into moral decay! Almost everybody is involved in crime making and law enforcement agencies have become weak or are part of the whole confusion.
Freedom of speech and of the Press have been curtailed a great deal by the National Security. Of the 14 Newspapers then operating in Juba, only 4 remained operational and are largely staffed by Security agents to oversee all the daily news in print. Communication is avidly controlled by the national security. Phone numbers and contacts are registered and recorded as one way of discovering the regime’s enemies.
There is no privacy for everybody in the country. President Kiir established a very dangerous Security Empire with which he threatens any opposition voice against his policies and mismanagement of the country. The National Security has greatly butchered so many citizens to silence any opposition voice.
President Kiir is finishing our educated youths who finds no employment opportunities with the government except to go into the army and into the war fronts to be killed in their hundreds daily. He created operation Units even in the Police and National security for our secondary schools and University graduates to be lured or coerced into for combat operations in the war fields.
The few youths organised into the SPLM Youth and students’ Leagues are generously paid to loudly echo the regime’s empty rhetorics and as additional tools for threats to the society against dissent. Very many of our youths are turned into boot-lickers of the regime’s killing group because they are heavily maintained to be blind not to see or care about the plight the entire nation is in.
Because my Party was the only Party so vocal in Juba, speaking for the people, I was targeted and I was about to be liquidated as a means to kill the Party. I managed to escape under very quick emergency arrangements to East Africa for I know many people they used to arrest from their homes in the nights do not return to their families. People arrested are tortured to death in the National Security cells at the nights and thrown are into nearby the River Nile for fish to feed at.
Many human right abuses are done in those security hide out cells during the nights. Sodomy is even practiced on men by those security nihilists as a way to dehumanize opponents of the regime. Such is the plight of the political opponents who come under their detention! Those are practices the like of us cannot wait to be visited upon after arrest.
3: Why I joined SSUF of Gen. Paul Malong and not any other Movement
I joined SSUF Movement because it is the only Movement which is non-tribal and non-ethno-regional. It calls for the unity of all the Opposition Fronts. It also calls for the unity of our people. It is not established against any tribe in South Sudan as are other armed Opposition Movements. It is not about positions and power sharing. It is out for total change.
I joined this Movement because it is led by a very renowned Military General who was one of the founding military cadres of our liberation struggle an officer who rose from within the SPLA rank and file to the rank of a Lt. General.
General Paul Malong, the recent former Chief of the Army, is a tested and a popular Army General, a battle proven military officer with capacity to lead the nation into change through Military insurrection because of his known Military professionalism. I joined his Movement because he has the needed capacity, good roots and influence within the SPLA establishment.
As we all know, President Kiir is a Dinka from Bahr el Ghazal region as is Gen. Paul Malong. The two enjoyed good following from the region, but, as of now, Gen. Malong seems to supersede President Kiir at the national stage after he lost the country’s loyalty he once enjoyed. The two were close allies or friends and they know each other very well.
They distinguished themselves to have the kind of military prowess that can now make Malong to militarily and popularly cause change in the country. Much of the security and military establishments are made up of officers and men loyal to them, but SPLA forces generally know Malong as that General, that leader, who cares for his soldiers and the entire establishment under him.
In addition to all those qualities, Gen. Paul is known to be a brave, courageous and honest man with positive generosity. The general public also know of this qualities in him.
The way Gen. Paul Malong was treated at his removal from Army Chief of Defence Forces, and after his removal to the point of denying him from attending the burial of his own daughter, was so humiliating that it generated a lot of sympathy for him from the general public, from among the Army and the regular forces in the country; and I know he will not stop short of implementing the revolution for change.
The way President Kiir treated me for the last 13 years since his embarrassing and hastily removal of me from governorship of Warrap state only because of the controversy between the Political elites of Tonj and Gogrial over the state capital in 2006, his humiliating rejection of me in the SPLM Political Bureau after I defeated all the 13 candidates at the SPLM Party Electoral college for the Gubernatorial candidacy of Warrap state elections in 2010, all makes me a good ally of Gen. Paul Malong.
I believe many people will agree with me for the long 13 years of tolerant patience and perseverance as a loyal citizen but to no reciprocity on the part of the leadership. My joining Gen. Paul Malong- led Movement also appear to diffuse those tensions that were falsely building among Aweil and Tonj communities following what became known as a quarrel between Gen. Malong and Gen. Akol Koor Kuc, the National Security Chief who comes from Tonj, my home state.
Gen. Paul Malong is moreover believed to have the ability of protecting civilians. Citizens are looking for a practical military General, of the kind of Malong, who can quieten all the guns, remove the guns from the hands of the civil populations in all the regions and states. Many people believe that Gen. Paul Malong can provide protection for them given the widely generated negative campaign and ethnic hatred sown almost everywhere in the country, just from failure, omissions and excesses from President Kiir and his clique.
The SPLA establishment is another factor. Since we are still with the liberation mentality, the SPLA establishment will not throw its lot behind a leader who was not from them and Gen. Paul Malong hails from them. He is also viewed as a man who can deliver. His development legacy in Northern Bahr el Ghazal state where he also served as an elected governor, his widely known simplicity and a man of actions than words, all add to his military career capacities.
All these reasons led to my decision to join SSUF Movement led by Gen. Paul Malong for I know I will certainly play a substantial complementary role as an SPLA Veteran officer myself and a career politician who will fully throw his lot from the angle of politics, mobilization and diplomacy for the benefit of the Movement for change. We will do this in concert with fellow patriotic political leaders and intellectuals.
4. Why did I abandon my principle of non-violence and joined an armed Movement?
Why I changed my mind from the principle of non-violence, which I anchored on the idea of advocating for change through peaceful democratic means, is because I realized that such a powerful security regime set up for more than ten years by President Salva Kiir, cannot be removed by means of a Military coup, or by means of democratic elections. It cannot be removed through telling facts, through public outcry or through daily prayers to God.
Such a military and security dictatorship cannot be removed through appeals to the world or by means of international community pressures or interventions. Such a military regime cannot be changed through Peace Talks on the table in Addis Ababa or anywhere else.
If a Political Party Chairman calling for peaceful democratic means to bring change can be subject of plans to kill him, then what option is left for such a political leader!? The only option is to join an armed opposition since peaceful opposition has no place in Juba.
Sanctions from regional and international communities cannot bring this security regime down either nor will it also make it to correct itself; and as recently proposed by the IGAD Peace Mediators, retaining President Kiir to head the third interim period over South Sudan will not bring peace in the country.
A large inclusive government in Juba will bring no peace and stability to South Sudan. Isolating Gen. Paul Malong’s SSUF Movement from peace talks on the demand of President Kiir leaves a substantive c0ntribution to peace and a massive destructive fighting force outside an agreement likely to be reached through revitalization Forum anytime. Isolating him will certainly bring no peace to South Sudan. In fact, he is the solution to the problem of South Sudan at the moment.
Given all in the above, I came to the conclusion that this regime can only be removed through a ‘Revolutionary Action’. Talking, telling logics, reasoning, choosing to be silent and complacent, or making appeals to God through prayers will never bring change or peace in South Sudan.
All peaceful methods will never bring change at all as long as it is President Kiir who is still the head of state and government. He has reached a point of no return and cannot proceed any further from where he is killing South Sudanese. The attitude of doing nothing but refusing on the throne must be stopped.
Yes, the President is from the Military intelligence Club. He is not a mere Military officer. He survived the entire Liberation Period while killing and lynching within the Liberation rank and file that he became oblivious to the evil called ‘death’.
President Kiir succeeded to hoodwink the most intelligent and powerful Scholar-Leader, Cdr Dr. John Garang de Mabior, who defeated one of the most powerful Arab and Islamic regimes on the continent, the man who succeeded to establish one of the most powerful armies in Africa, a man who founded a nation for a historic people who lost their sovereignty since Kush Kingdom days at Meroe more than two millennium years ago.
Since president Kiir did not care about the country’s history and his own legacy, he has nothing to do with who is dying, who and how many have died, who or how many are suffering, why or how many fled the country and why such a monumental destruction!
How much damage has President Kiir’s leadership done to our historical pride as a nation!? How many friends have we lost!? How much destruction and waste of time, resources and lives he had misused in the name of the SPLM and under the cover of his Dinka ethnic majority from whom many have now come to the conclusion that the only way is to remove this non-caring, this non-protecting President whose legitimacy time has even ended since 2015. He must resign or be removed by means of a Revolutionary Action, no matter how long it might take, no matter how the region is supporting him.
People of Bahr el Ghazal, or the Jieng people of Bahr el Ghazal, apprehensive of the war going to be fought in the middle of their people in the region, should advice President Kiir to hand over power to anyone in the SPLM in order to save the lives that are going to be further wasted for his sake. He already got the incentive (s) he wanted, having ruled South Sudan for the last 13 years as President of the South plus the years he has been deputy to late Dr. John Garang, the leader of the SPLM/A Movement.
I resigned from Kiir’s government to join my people with the resolve to remove this national burden by revolutionary means; and with this, I beg to call upon all the youths and upon all the opposition Movements and Fronts to come together and unite under one revolutionary umbrella to quickly salvage South Sudan the way Museveni’s NRM rescued Uganda in 1986 from too long political instability.
The region should stand with the people of South Sudan, not with one individual who has destroyed his own country. People of South Sudan, let us abandon those tribal positions we are in, let us make compromises and consider the nation first!
Let us embrace ourselves to rescue our nation from collapse and the issue of leadership can be resolved afterward. For now, Gen. Paul Malong presents the opportunity to lead a unified insurrection to bring a national change in Juba.
Thank you all for finding time to read my reasons of joining SSUF. God help South Sudan to come out from this quack mire!
Hon Anei Madut Kuendit is the former Governor of Warrap State and current member of the SSUF/A. You can reach the author, for comments and opinions, via his email: (wenkuendit2015@gmail.com).
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