The Politics of Contradictions: My Twic East Community and the Burden of Dinka Heritage
11 min readBy Hatem Dhieu Dau, Melbourne, Australia
Saturday, December 15, 2018 (PW) — The subject of psychology and behaviour is controversial. It is a mixture of unquenchable desire, or as Freud calls it–the urge or drive for a thing or service. But only as through its unconscious realm. This’s intellectual deep. Bottom line, however, is that “behaviour”—whether manifested by a group or by an individual person(s) is the main concern of the science of psychology. Behaviour is the only thing one needs to know, under-stand, and could this also explain: why there is such a thing like Organizational behaviour–simply the behaviour of an idea. All your organs have, each, every one, an individuated behaviour as that organ. Even mere tissues’ excitation can be a big proof—- of its utility and functionality.
In Twi East, we should Trust–in it–nowhere else we can: The Being of us as a place and at the same time as a way of our life, spatially bounded by geographical boundaries, only to know of when Garang’s call for the liberation of the whole Sudan, strategical, tactical, and/or plenary; for us to choose a direction. Uncle Abel Alier in his major book (1999), “Too Many Agreements Dishonoured” in Sudan could explain the intermittent social and political strifes that have characterized, to a larger extent, the relationship between Sudan’s central government and its far-plunged peripheries.
In fact, by the time that uncle Abel wrote his book, there was only one agreement, the Addis Ababa Agreement, signed between the Southern-based Anya-Nya Rebels and the Khartoum-based Government of Sudan, under president Jafaar Al Neimeri; that agreement ended the First Sudanese Civil War which ran between 1955-1972; it granted the South a Semi-autonomous status. Nimeiri’s regime, which into power through a military coup practised quite contradictory politics reflected in his shifting alliances between political camps. Neimeri’s regime ended a democratic government by the time it came to power. It was later deposed from power through a military coup in Sudan in 1989.
The second power-sharing agreement between Khartoum and Southern-based armed Rebel groups was in 2005, one that was brought about by the CPA. The CPA has several clauses addressing what the SOLA’s leader; Garang de Mabior viewed as the “fundamental problem of Sudan”. But if anything, it was that external factors were not considered as important by the Southern political class. Many have pointed it out that the first, the 1972’s power-sharing agreement was narrow; and for this reason, the agreement excluded Too Many things out of its considerations rather than Too Many agreements having been reached between Khartoum and the political class of the South–that were eventually abrogated or dishonoured.
Interpreting the motives behind Neimeri’s abrogation of the Addis Ababa Agreement of 1972 is murky especially among Southerners; many simply refer to the statement that Neimeri made at the times, that the agreement was not written in Quran, an Islamic Sacred Text, in whose parlance, president Neimeri, would be contended to honour because the assumption was that: a genuine power-sharing agreement should have a broad base. But even the armed militia groups? In fact, there is a clause in the CPA Document that refers to these groups as “Other armed groups”.
The CPA is regarded as Garang’s major political victory over his two-decade conflict with his arch rivals, the Islamists-turned nationalists, from NIF to NCP, which signed on behalf of the Sudanese Central government; Garang signed on behalf of the SPLA and Liberated areas. When Garang dies and was succeeded by his long-time deputy, Salva Kiir Mayardit (SKM). The SPLM continued the implementation of the CPA accord in the South. I suggest that: a political history of South Sudan should mark the 1972 Addis Ababa Agreement as the first time that: a power-sharing arrangement was reached and in place in Sudan. It is fitting to say that: Garang, in fact, in addition to being a rebel leader he was also one of the best historians of the modern history of Sudan, and perhaps, one of the leading scholars of Sudan’s government.
When this agreement was dishonoured, it triggered another armed Rebellion in the region again, accept this times, led by Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA). The SPLA was an organization with a strong leader, the weaker the organization, the little does the death of an individual person makes. Honestly, the point of this historical survey is to underline one fact: that agreements are not important; not individuals and not to and in the politics. Any agreement depends on its guarantor and the trust that parties have with each other. As such, any agreement that excludes people of South Sudan, not as the main guarantors of that agreement, for example, for that matter, is destined to automatic collapse when it’s no longer convenient.
This is why a Constitution happens to be the best agreement people can have as a community, a society, and as an organization. To drive this point home. Suppose two candidates presumed to be in contests against each other for the position of a community chairmanship, for instance, the Twi East, choose to enter into an agreement between or among themselves; take for example one chooses to support the other and drops his opposition towards the latter.
Two questions become immediate: (1) Who are the guarantors of this secret agreement? And (2) Can the two individuals still be regarded as candidates, democratic rivals or dictators, and/or could they, after all, be judged as criminals and not potential leaders? It worth pointing it out that whatever is happening at the community’s level is exactly what is happening in and at the party-state’s levels. After all, ours has been a politics of contradictions.
Faith or no Faith, Civilized or Uncivilized, Humane or inhumane: Why choose him?
To trust in an idea you must pledge to be faithful. That’s what I did when I was a Christian—and go to Church. In lights of an idea of, by, and for the Twi East, in the way that we want it, always, I would choose here to be or become a volunteer. Because it’s not an argument. It’s a duty and duty is, in fact, voluntary; any highest good is in an idea. I also promise to be peaceful to you, all. But only through Garang’s style: on War or Peace; After all, uncle Garang was not only creative. He was also methodical. Politically, Garang uses his previous political mistakes or mistakes made by others, but of his region to correct what has not yet surfaced; self-revise and on whose basis he must win his next political game, in the gamesmanship, the “political Garang?”
Which he contrasts with the Sport espoused by: “Ayiang”. For Garang, ‘peace is not to be taken as an absence of war but a continuation of the same in different forms’. I don’t know for sure what peace is like. I have no peace experience before, I just wish I would; I didn’t live it, and have no experience as to what it is like to be at peace with peace and at the same time down to earth as a personal physical person(PPP): Taking on referrals as ends in themselves and not means to ends. To be Kantian in Heideggerian context is to be a character, a sort of Being, an ontological Being of its own Being as a Being supervening its own Being and the beings of Others.
This alone does not mean to be at peace with the peace, either; the perfect peace and perpetual warfare. if at all, I knew then, how could I became a refugee, a temporary legal status stripped of its sovereign accent, described by the hosting sovereigns, here very included, but simply as an escapee of violence, a fugitive–wanted by his captor for moral reasons to be here only I for Identity, not India. If I call or refer to myself–as who I am, it would be because that I am an “Ajuong”, you “under”-minus- “stand”, where are you standing? Right? Then you ought to look down, you have to, down under, and that is the meaning of the one word: “understanding”. I hear it from you because you said it that: I am who I am. And when you say Me, I say me, too.
Because I am you, too, my own you, the me-you, too. To be different and to make a difference are different ideas. Because to be different is not your choice sometimes, but accept it to be your or our choice, after is to be the same; how would I know myself if, you, the rest–Pakeer, and everybody, who is there as that: That is always there, how would I be called? I assume here and there the Idea of Twi East Community would itself be a morality-ladder–But only if you want to become; we become, as well.
German philosopher, M. Heidegger summarized what he sees to be the totality or an essence of what it means for us, if needs are, for all of us, one and many, but individually to be at all a human being; if you consider yourself as a space, of course, you are, with space running across horizontally and Time vertically, according to our best theoretical physics formation and into his book title he thus calls: Being and Time (in German Zein und Zeit, 1927). Imagine that Twi East is dead. You will only lose your belief: that there was such a thing as Twi East–and as an organized body with its own structures that structure everything.
Did you deceive or lie to yourself through believing that Belief? The problem is Heidegger didn’t say that and but in fact, it was Friederich Nietzche who did say that Beliefs can be at any moments pronounced “dead” and at the same except the very small, earthly ideas in order to arrive at the big idea; death of idea is called nihilism, a condition of meaninglessness. One way of killing an idea is to just give it up. At this state, Nietzsche says that every value–of sense and meaning has been exhausted.
I wanted my message, as stated above, to be private–to you all. But now that you wanna know it, what I mean by it, I will say why? But first, I want to say a couple of things before saying it all, if all is at all, a good all for you. The first thing to say is me! Or I, I am sorry of it all. The Burden of the Dinka Heritage is a big problem: It’s a pride and a Despondence.
Right across the border–Towards east and to the Gulf of Aden: Cutting across the Horn of Africa; who’s Afraid of saying I am sorry if we fail the idea of an organization? Who will organize us? Bhar el Ghazal or Sudan? All are non-existent ideas with even big problems, but to make a choice. Even sorry to be a Dinka.
Elections, not Democracy: But to leadership
A friend of mine, a philosopher, once asked me the question as to: “why do we at all choose leaders”, a procession, that you and I call the Democracy. This is to say that if elections are at all important then who elect who and why? He went on to highlight three radical things that left my ears in pain; (1)that elections do not mean Democracy and that population does not rule; it simply decides who rules; but went to say that: Imagine the two candidates paraded before only to choose for an individual’s gains, he asks what if none of the gentlemen–Liberal or Labour, Green or in- between, it happens that none of these is my choice, would this mean that: I have not exercised my democratic rights, by now choosing or rejecting would is my choice, genuinely?
He said that: a genuine Democracy should not be monopolistic. He says a genuine Democracy should be multi-choice exercise, taking into accounts that in turns should reflect on all the habits of human beings, including not always having the ability to wake up every morning, or on that particular morning: He had an amazing one-night-stand, courtesy of a woman he knights–as Queens of Queens, and campaign for Mr and/or Mrs: “John Bharmill”.
The funny and factual thing was that: That friend of mine disputed the whole fine issued against him for not having voted at that election. His argument was simple: Monarchists are not Democracies; also, he added: himself had not experienced what it’s like to be choosing a leader, and questions how he should trust, advocate, champion their course, him which, by virtue of voted for anybody, code-named “candidates” and who hasn’t voted in a federal, states, and Territories’ election, and huh! What do we mean by an election and why we at all have it after all if the whole idea is to make somebody, everybody, who would go on saying that: “I, Mr Don’t Choose Alone if the idea is meant for Everybody?”
It is the idea that’s important, not the person. It is imperative, to organize is to behave. Very simple. In sum, you cannot lose and win in an election, or lose and at the same times win the game, if you are that lucky in a poker Machine; wherever and when this happens, it’s nothing less than the manifestations of a Politics of Contradictions, and as such, I am not afraid of saying sorry!
Atemthi D. Dau is a Chemist and Public Health Researcher at Flinders University, Australia. He holds bachelor degree in Science (Majoring in Analytical and Environmental Chemistry) and Master degree in Project Management (healthcare services and project management) from Victoria University; and a master degree in public health from University of Newcastle Australia. His academic work has been published in prestigious international journals. He can be reached via atemddau@gmail.com
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