SSOA's Refusal to Sign Khartoum Peace Agreement is a Continuation of the War
By Apioth Mayom Apioth, North Dakota, USA
Friday, August 03, 2018 (PW) — We have committed wretched crimes against each other in the last four years of the civil war. We can all point fingers at the government, and we can also likewise point the same fingers at the SPLA – IO and National Salvation Front. The best route we should have taken was to set up one Transitional Government of National Unity (TGNU).
However, our brethren at the house of South Sudan Opposition Alliance (SSOA) have taken a different route of refusing to initial an agreement of power sharing altogether, which is understandable to all who know how things span out in the end. South Sudan Opposition Alliance’s standing point is valid and crystal clear, however, our people are scared and helpless no matter where they may reside in any part of the world.
President Salva Kiir may have a wicked thirst for power, but he is starting to open up new avenues for restructuring and implementing policies that may align our socioeconomic interests with progressing prospects.
Yes, IGAD has greatly sided with Juba government and showered her with more power allocations, which is totally unfair to help us to cater to the needs of structural reformation of the government institutions. And since Salva Kiir is beginning to honestly and openly work with varied groups of the opposition, isn’t it better to see how things will turn out in the end.
Our situation is quite different from everyone else in the region. Our South Sudanese people are taking refuge in our neighborly countries and so it won’t abode with us very well to have our people continue to live in such squalor while we continue to criticize the corruptibility of Kiir’s government’s lack of bringing much needed change to South Sudan.
Zimbabwe lived in much prosperity in the first few years of Robert Mugabe’s rule until he started to bring the country to its very knees. After things have gotten worse, the ordinary people had no power to overthrow Mugabe because the military was in the hands of the commander-in-chief, but not in the hands of the common people which could have made matters easier and allowed the people to get rid of the parasitic worm himself, Robert Mugabe.
Similarly, Yoweri Museveni has failed to industrialize Uganda, and the average life of a common Ugandan has not changed for the better since he came to power in 1986. The unemployment rate for the youth is one of the highest in the East African region.
As of late, he introduced a social media tax and there was an absolute outrage in the social media world as to why he would think of such a thing when so many people are unemployed in the country, and if you think of it, how would the majority of people that are unemployed could manage to pay their social media taxes when they have no penny to buy basic necessities of life, let alone a social media tax.
The Zimbabweans and Ugandans have been able to withstood these sort of leeching and corrupt heads of states for over thirty years, partly because there has been an absent of war in their two subjective countries.
Even if their governments haven’t been developing institutions to create jobs and uplift the common people from abject poverty, they have had the freedom to tend to their lives through farming and do what is necessary to make sure they stay afloat even if their governments were eating up their taxes and failed to improve their living standards.
What we need in South Sudan is to allow our people to go back to their original homes so they could start to tend to their lives once more without the fear of having to run for their dear lives due to political instability caused by power struggle among our politicians.
The democratic institutions are undeveloped in Sub-saharan Africa and since there are no relevant institutions that keep the powers of the president in check and balance, it is always a great idea to make sure there is political stability and no one is fighting the other for no apparent unresolved issue.
In our part of the world, constitutional amendments and election rigging are the norms; just about anyone can get away with anything. There are a lot of evil forces that keep good people away from doing deeds for their people. What we rather ought to do now is keep the evil forces from ever getting out of the genie’s pot.
History would harshly judge South Sudan Opposition Alliance for failing to alleviate the suffering that may their way in the foreseeable future. SSOA has a golden chance to help the ordinary South Sudanese from ever going back to the battle zone by agreeing to the agreement of power sharing, but their rejection of the said agreement is tantamount to saying we will continue to press for our grievances through other means, even going back to the bush, and that is what no one wants.
We all know our underdevelopment in Africa and it should be common sense to all of of us by now. There is a bankruptcy of leadership everywhere you turn to, and South Sudan Opposition Alliance has a decision to make: they should either stand with us now and strike the iron while it is still melting, or strike the iron later when it is cold and unworkable!
As time goes on, the wind of change will bring in new thinkers who will replace Salva Kiir at the helm; however for now, Joseph Bakasoro and Thomas Swaka have got to join hands with everyone in Juba so we could put our minds together for our overall betterment! Salva Kiir is not any better than Joseph Kabila, or Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea.
Of the 49 Sub-Saharan countries and with the exception of South Africa and Nigeria which are miles ahead of everyone else in the region, there are only four countries whose economies are booming and that is due to the sole visionary and collective leadership of Paul Kagame of Rwanda, John Pombe Magufuli of Tanzania, Alassane Ouatara of Ivory Coast and Abiy Ahmed Ali of Ethiopia.
The 43 other countries are struggling leadership wise; in this century, we may put all our blames squarely on tribalism and corruption, however, the bankruptcy of leadership is one of the few institutions that may mitigate our suffering and shift our burden to another whole dimension especially due to our underdevelopment of democratic institutions of accountability and transparency.
Economic transformation would only happen in this day and age once a leadership whose character and integrity is incorruptible to greed and thirst for power.
Apioth Mayom Apioth has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Social Sciences from the Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA USA. He is an Admission Counselor from the University of North Dakota. He can be reached at: agutkeu@gmail.com.
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