South Sudan: A Crucified Nation on the Cross of SPLM Philosophy of Liberationism
8 min readBy Gabriel Kucdit Kachuol, Nairobi, Kenya
Thursday, July 26, 2018 (PW) — By definition, the SPLM/A philosophy of liberationism is the abuse of historical devotion and trust of South Sudanese masses to the SPLM/A. In other words, it’s a betrayal of public massive trust, support and mandate; in fact, a cross upon which the nascent African nation, South Sudan, has been crucified. I entreat my readers to reflectively and critically examine the validity of this definition in my proceeding argument from which I derived the definition.
The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), whose liberation struggles gave birth to South Sudan as an independent African nation is the ruling party of South Sudan with two inseparable wings: SPLM (political wing) and SPLA (military wing). First, it’s pertinent to note that the two wings are indistinguishably fused as of wine and water. Second, it is also important to distinguish between the first SPLM/A tier (1983-2005) and the second tier which can be called post-independent SPLM/A of “abekweu.”
Much as the 1st SPLM/A tier had conflicting ideological camps: unionists vs separatists, one thing was clear though: the southerners counted on them as “spear” to fight marginalisation, arabisation, Islamisation and all kinds of injustices perpetuated by North (Khartoum govt) against the South. Faithfull to the southerner’s call, they relentlessly fought for decades without salary, persevering all adversity in the bush until the comprehensive peace agreement (CPA) was signed in 2005 leading to referendum and consequently independence on 9th July, 2011.
When independence came, things soon changed. A completely new SPLM/A emerged: the SPLM/A of “abekweu” (a Dinka word for those who flocked into the SPLM/A with intention of getting positions/jobs for making money). This is the second tier of SPLM/A whose interest is to amass wealth and glorify themselves at the expense of the country. They have no vision for the country. It is this tier my article is trying to focus meanwhile it also underline the fact that the SPLM/A officials who emerged deified heroes and heroines during the CPA has lost vision and mission of SPLM/A for South Sudan due to the fact that power, wealth and fame has become sweet and highly self-fulfilling.
The post-independent SPLM/A tier emerged as a result of SPLM/A’s desire to establish “SPLM/A party dictatorship” as Hon. Gabriel Matur M. Kachuol describes it. The “SPLM/A party dictatorship” is an attempt to concentrate political and military power in the hand of one individual (C-in-C/president) or hegemonic group. Obviously, this results into a struggle for power within the party. Therefore, the refusal to relinquish or share power ended up creating, as a result of divide, rule and exploit policy, “ethnic dictatorship” that also degenerated into “ethnic anarchy” – a situation where every armed person is a law unto himself, the weak – children, the old, and the syndicate – perish in millions; only the strongest and the worst survive to construct future imperfect nation founded upon the rot that poisoned ethnic diversity. Ethnic anarchy is also known as ethnic terror where, because of your ethnicity, every armed man and women you meet from another tribe considers you fair game and may with or without provocation arrest, attack, torture, robe or kill you with impunity.
The SPLM/A ethnic dictatorship is manifested in various forms of “Big man” patrimonial rule. The liberation party fragmented into several rivaling factions: The SPLM/A – Kiir; the SPLM/A – IO (Riek); The SPLM/A – IO (Taban); The SPLM – FDs (Pagan, Nyandeng,…etc); SSUF – Malong (former splm governor of the defunct Northern Bahr El Ghazal state and later SPLA chief of staff); NASF -Cirrilo (former SPLA deputy chief of staff)…etc. all of which are led by domineering and sultanic SPLM/A generals with wanton desire to advance their personal ambitions detrimental to the public good. They all have one thing in common: a mindset that they are liberation war survivors who have the uncontested natural right to occupy the top seats of goverment power where they can forever enjoy wealth and glory.
Generally, as SPLM/A is an integration of political and military institutions, this fusion has a great bearing on the nationhood of South Sudan. It has directly affected the key govt institutions and therefore, the difficulty to become a stable nation. This is because the state apparatuses are at the disposal of the SPLM/A leaders who uses them to maintain themselves in power or shoot their way into power.
In this power acrobatic, the economy, which is the backbone of the country severely suffers as SPLM/A ruling elites, whose hands wields the politcal and military power, are invariably not only the same people who make decisions regarding the allocation of resources but are economically illiterate mafias whose promotion of economic growth is an anathema. They have seized and monopolised political, military and economic power to advance their own selfish and criminal interests, not to serve their people and country.
Their overarching obsession is to amass wealth, gaudily displayed in flashy V8 and a bevy of fawning women. Therefore, the SPLM/A has proved to be a vampire elite party/army whose inviolate ethic is self-aggrandisement and self-perpetuation in power. The ruling party’s elites has hijacked South Sudan from the masses and reduced it into a “mafia state” – a state hijacked by gangsters, crooks and scoundrels – where anyone with official designation can pillage at will.
To achieve their selfish objectives of self-aggrandisement and self-perpetuation in power, the SPLM/A elites subvert and paralysed the institutions and therefore dishonesty, thievery, nepotism, peculation, indiscipline, laxity, ineptitude and lack of professionalism pervades all public or private institutions.
The most perverted institutions are the military, judiciary, banking/national treasury, civil service and media. A quick look at the most trenchantly perverted institutions will shock you:
The military: the function of the military is to provide defence to the national territorial integrity and protection of civilians and their property from internal and external aggressions. The police and other special military organs are supposed to provide internal security while the army is supposed to provide protection from external threat. Unfortunately, a critical look at South Sudan military institution will bring your eyes closer to tears and your mind nearer to insanity. The national army, SPLA, is locked in combat with the people it’s supposed to defend.
The SPLA have only proved themselves to be uncouth and indisciplined brutes, bullies and buffoons wielding guns to harass civilians and causing unnecessary troubles; they wage needless devastating wars against her own people. Its organ like the police, national security (NS), tasked to apprehend the brigandage have instead proved to be legal looters and highway robbers; most of our wild animals and plants are at the verge of extinction at the very watch of Wildlife service; the prison service is a lucrative organ, where wardens receives hefty bribes. The “criminals” who remains in prison for years are those who lack financial means to bribe their way out and those who come from common families without “big men” to order or negotiate their release.
Another shocking reality in the South Sudan military is its enormity. The SPLA maybe said to be the largest and most disorganised and sycophantic army in Africa. More daunting is the phenomena of “generals” and of “ghost soldiers” in the SPLA. The number of generals or officers in the SPLA is almost equal that of ordinary soldiers. When juxtaposed with those who are alive, similar can be said of “ghost soldiers” (spla soldiers present only by name either because they are killed, rebelled or never existed or are family members whose name are inserted in the paysheet but whose money are received by particular individual officer or general or group).
The judiciary: it is disheartening and shameful to point out that this system is packed with cacophonous assortment of crooked judges, who seem to have specialised in “judicial entrepreneurship.” Judges have played major role in the miscarriage of South Sudan national constitution, which is the dispenser of justice in the nation. They have aborted justice in many ways; swearing in of the “recycled thieves one after another”, continuous dispensation of “selective or delayed justice ,” bribery in the courts, exoneration or failure to bring into book criminals who steal public money. Many big scandals and heinous crimes involving several “big men” have been reported but the judges either exonerated them or never prosecuted them (criminals) as they deserve.
The civil services: some of basic physical infrastructure like schools, roads, hospitals, water, electricity, and telephone services are in shambles not because SPLM/A government has no ability and possibility to provide them but because the SPLM/A government prefer some of these sectors to remain in dilapidation as a strategy to maintain power or get into power. For example, with impassable roads and shamble in communication system, it is something next to impossible for the insurgencies or political opponents to effectively organise against the SPLM/A-IG.
On the other hand, the SPLM/A-IO and other disgruntled groups can destroy any govt installation or establishment to frustrate effective service delivery such that public wrath and disdain is attracted to the inefficient govt. Inasmuch as there are many external and internal factors responsible for south Sudan’s ailment, the SPLM/A philosophy of liberationism standout as a chief detriment.
The author is Gabriel Kucdit Kachuol, student in Nairobi and can be reached via kucdidgab@mail.com
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