Leadership Deficiency on a Community: The Striking Case of the Greater Bor Community
8 min readCould we not managed to have kind of leaders among greater Bor community like Abel Alier and Dr. John Garang who could inspire people in both side of the divide and build unity that can propel the community toward prosperity?
By Michael Mading Akueth, Nairobi, Kenya
Thursday, September 06, 2018 (PW) — The greater Bor community whom their sons and daughters had turned up in big numbers during the beginning of the war of liberation 1983 is currently fighting to maintain its cohesiveness. The military scientists always advised every society and its leadership about imminent consequences of arm conflict. We have observed that conflict have forced us to seek refuge in most parts of the globe which has made it hard to continue with our ancestors’ unity. The people are in constant conflict using abusive messages on social media with each other which have forced me to think about our future.
When a community is in constant conflict with itself it remind us about the theory of evolution by natural selection through which nature is seen to be at war with itself and the weak nature is obvious the next meal of the stronger one. The theory of evolution by natural selection is a theory about the mechanism by which evolution occurred in the past, and is still occurring now. Could this be the case in greater Bor community?
Are the community members who belief to be strong striving to eliminate the weak among them by using this theory? Or what else could be the basis of these massive hatred campaigns which we are witnessing all over the world among greater Bor community? Greater Bor community had achieved many things in the history of our country with great dedication to the cause of freedom and pursuit of happiness for all.
There is no single accepted definition of conflict in the contemporary sphere of studies but many experts have defined conflict as disagreement over significant issues between two individuals, parties, institutions and groups (Paluck, Shepher & Aronow 2016). The significant issues that herald conflict are several, these stretches from, differences in personal interest, dissimilar opinionated mentality, personality traits, ideological stands and many more others (Betts, 2017).
Though the world is struggling with many issues such global warming, drugs and global integrations but conflict is considered to be a prime global challenge that deteriorates human to human relationship and brought down great empire until they dined on the table of shame and despair. It can affect a close family link and further extending towards other human social links such as marriages and wrestling in our case as Bor community.
We are a life witness that conflicts have caused major moral decay among us until we are no longer considering the values that have put us in the map of global communities as intelligent and law-abiding. This conflict has affected our other core values of our community settings and brings in careless talk that does not pay allegiance to any creed. It is historically recorded that the community who accept to be in constant conflict without listening to voice of reason may end up in the history of destruction and total disintegration.
This is does not happen immediately but gradually we will end up avoiding each other, composing songs against each other and building independent political alliances in exclusion of others. Then finally, in the shortest time possible before the return Christ we may go for full blown conflict that may involve deadly weapons which will deposited us into the abyss of disintegration.
I think we are in agreement as a people that this great community which was built by the sacrifices and dedication to the truth and unity by our ancestors cannot just chose to be disintegrated by the conflict that could be fixed by arising above the temporary victories of self-glorification.
This is a community where people used to value the truth, love and unity as demonstrated by our great chiefs who chose to die in 1969 for the land and the people they love. They advised their members not to stage any resistant against the enemy who was targeting them because they know the enemy was more powerful and had a capacity and intention to destroy the community. They provided leadership to saves lives of the people but loss theirs.
The community elders and chiefs were devoted to trained children to be honest, respectful and love others with passion to serve them in unity even to the point of death. Most of us who had an opportunity to go through Dinka Bor initiation will remember that this was the first training that we were all taken through; for you to be called a gentleman you must hold up to the true values of self-respect and fear of evil.
By holding up to these values the community leadership always tries vividly to address conflict and enforce discipline among the people. The leaderships both traditional and civil focus on delivering justice to all citizens because the chiefs, MPs and Bishops were the custodian of rule of laws, peace and unity.
In the administration of justice chiefs listen to cases and passed their judgement on grounded evidences without fear or favor. The chiefs promote rule of laws, respect and good governance in their chiefdom and guide their subjects to live well with neighbors. The chiefs who were known for their great wisdom were moving all over greater Bor villages listening to cases and passing judgment and by so doing they had register great honor which their descendants are enjoying now.
In my evening discussion with an elder about the conflicts in their days and how they do managed to address without necessary causing disintegration. He said that they used to have conflicts and some even reached to fighting and eventually result to deaths but the leaders seek avenues of resolving them and the communities move on with their normal lives. He said why it was easy for greater communities to address their conflicts was because they shared common interests such as TOCH, grazing land and other resources.
Today, Greater Bor people are over the entire world with different interests which has made them not to care for the unity whom some of them see as non-beneficial. But In the past, you need to strengthen unity with positive network of love and kindness because you may need pastures, TOCH and protection from these communities in regardless of being in Twic, Bor and Dukeen.
We appreciate that conflict is an inevitable phenomena and any no community which can live without one. However, they create conducive environment to address their conflicts through constructive dialogue with each other and move on with their lives. They make their dialogues to be honest and constructive but not Machiavellian.
In our case, there are issues of names being constantly debated mainly by people who don’t share a lot of things in common. Is this issue difficult for us to fix as a community? Can we not have a biblical woman character among us who can say give him to her but I will continue seeing the child as my biological child? This heart of compromise is recorded in the holy book as exemplary and no one has ever identified himself with a selfish woman who had agreed for the child to be cut into two. King Solomon the man who had it all passed the holy judgement in this case.
I have no problem with naming because there is no single name that can united us without a community claiming it. Therefore, I think we should not focus our mind to this some issue which our forefathers have been living with it and it didn’t affect their individual livelihoods. I’m specifically coming from “Athooc section in Bor county for example” do you think there is no particular community where this names come from in the first place? There is always a community where the name originally comes from and if we reduce ourselves to struggle over names we will not reach to where we are intending go.
In this particular case, there is nothing we are debating today which our fathers didn’t know about the names but they focus their minds in achieving great things which I recommend us to do. Why is this conflict threatening to tear our community apart? In my view, it is because we are experiencing the consequences of leadership deficiency due to massive global immigration where our people have traveled to other countries and they believe that they have nothing to loss in disintegration. The crops of leaders who are leading us are also thinking the same way like their constituents. This is the tragedy that has fallen over our community.
Reference,
Betts, R. K. (Ed.). (2017). Conflict after the Cold War: arguments on causes of war and peace. Taylor & Francis
Paluck, E. L., Shepherd, H., & Aronow, P. M. (2016). Changing climates of conflict: A social network experiment in 56 schools. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(3), 566-571.
The author, Michael Mading Akueth, is a South Sudanese PhD student in organizational leadership at PAC University, in Nairobi, Kenya. He can be reached via his email address: Michael Deng <mdeng405@gmail.com>
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