An open letter to the President: Mabior-Yar community in Tonj begs you to rescue them from political marginalization
7 min readDear Mr. President, Gen. Salva Kiir Mayardit, as you visit the Greater Bahr el Ghazal region, remember that Mabior-Yar community in Tonj begs you to rescue them from political marginalization
By Madau Madut Madau, Kampala, Uganda
Tuesday, February 26, 2019 (PW) — This is a patriot’s open letter to the president, Gen. Salva Kiir Mayardit, of the Republic of South Sudan. Dear Mr. President, seeking appointment by our community or going through protocols will not deliver my urgent letter to you. I as a son of this nation on behalf of our community (Mabior-Yar community of Tonj State) with all honor beg you Mister President to go through my letter.
Your Excellency the president, please accept my sincere thanks for your great leadership derived from your great ideology and the durable purpose sandwiched with a patriotic vision and relentless courage. This good courage gave birth to the sustained resistance against acts of oppression, repression and forms of injustice in the then Southern Sudan during the liberation struggle.
Your Excellency the president, you launched a purposeful and protracted struggle to bring freedom to people of the South, which is South Sudan today. This set of wonderful qualities as God’s gifts in you included the patriotic spirit, the zeal and zest, and the perseverance measured by the innumerable sacrifices you encountered during the struggle. Thumb up my President!
Indeed, it was a long journey you walked to liberate the South without relenting, retreating, surrendering, and or even abandoning the hazardous mission as did by some of your bush comrades who gave up the fight in the middle but you didn’t do that. You know them more than I do. Congratulations Mister President!
Your Excellency the president, I have all the reasons to cherish the charismatic struggle you championed to the end in which the nation celebrated the tremendous result of successful referendum in July 9th 2011. It happened as a result of your leadership, great wisdom and the spirit of patriotism. These great values in you enabled your leadership to change and transform our country from suffering though tribal politics from different walks of life still full you down in your commitment for peace. God is there to let you through my President.
This successful revolution which gained its full recognition in 2005 was an anointing of only God because it aimed at serving a divine purpose to defend and protect humanity. This purpose is provided for in the book of life and truth (the Bible), in the book of James 1:2-6 and also verse 12. The scripture reads: consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be matured and completed, not lacking anything. If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God.
Verse 12 says: Blessed is a man who preserves under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him. He will defend the afflicted ones among the people and save the children of the needy. He will crush the oppressor. He will endure as long as the sun, as long as the moon, through all generations. He will be like rain falling on a mown field, like showers watering the earth. These biblical words are neither purposeless nor simplistic but very symbolic.
Your Excellency the President, this scripture means a lot in reference to the struggle you launched and led to the end. It means that it wasn’t your own power to win the war but God helped and guided you to win it because He was your visionary leader.
You offered yourself at a very young age like the biblical David against the giant Goliath to save the nation from the hands of those who provoked God many times by harboring very bad intentions and executing evil acts against the innocent South Sudanese. Bravo for you are peace loving president!
God, the almighty made you the pioneer of a higher purpose and a super vision; an icon of good courage; a fountain of a country’s leadership and progress, and yes, a reliable champion and engine of a fundamental change.
Like Napoleon Bonaparte of the French revolution, you came at time South Sudan badly needed a courageous leader of your qualities and gifts. You picked up our nation from the time Dr. John Garang died unexpectedly in 2005. The country was helpless and hopeless but you immediately picked up from there and faced the challenge you offered yourself for.
I started to admire your unique leadership genius right away from the time you addressed us in the school parade in Yithkuel primary school, Thiet payam (Tonj) by then when I was in primary two (P2) in 2001. That was the first and last time I met you. It was a nice experience and I am still remembering the message you told us as young boys as we were. It reminded me of courage and tolerance that was taught to us as children and instilled in me by my parents. It is this very golden secret that resides in your endless courage.
It is these virtues and ideals too that have made you an icon of country’s hope and a darling of South Sudanese despite the odds. No wonder, you are competing with many army Generals in the opposition politics yet these are the guys you made, mentored and groomed.
Surprisingly and impressively in an African view, they are safe and healthy and still opposing your policies and contesting your power. You will shed tears when you visit the states of Bahr-el Ghazal on road early next month. I can’t tell here but you might be well informed more than I do about the nature of things in there. I welcome you in words to Bahr- El- Ghazal before time mister President. You are an icon of hope to the people of this Republic and you have an impressive challenge to tackle a head of you as the recent signed peace need care for country not to go back to war again as common men in the streets of Juba anticipates. What a role model you are mister President!
Your Excellency the President, your achievements are many and speak for themselves. Therefore, I won’t manage to enumerate them all in my article but to go straight in telling you the reason why I am addressing this letter to you.
To begin with Mr. president, I first of all thank you for the wonders you have done for our country as I take the opportunity to ask you to lend me your eyes in reading this piece of article from unnoticeable small man with some good sense containing an issue of concern from his community in one capitalized sentence only as seen below;” YAR QUEST FOR A COUNTY” is the reason this article addressed to you Mr. President.
Your Excellency the President, Mabior-Yar community was and is part of 19 former chiefdoms of the former Tonj district and as I speak to you in this letter, we are potential victims of political marginalization for the reason known by your black mambas in the council of states or thorny ways to your office. We perhaps felt victims because we don’t have our representative at national level to represent us in issues like this.
We are the real victims of the political games of the day. I humbly need to know whether our community doesn’t have right to have a county in ongoing divisions of counties across the country. I therefore, pose some few questions on my own behalf and on the behalf of our community where I come from to answer if it is a legitimate thing for me to do so;
First, what have we done to deserve this political marginalization your Excellency the President? Second, Is Mabior-Yar community not one of the beneficiaries of the SPLM Vision, Policy & Slogan of taking towns to people instead of people going to towns? Finally, should we be the ones going to towns as a reverse ghost statement of SPLM vision, policy and slogan of taking towns to people in the countryside instead of people to towns?
Perhaps no, and I clearly see it as a political right of my community to have their share in the national cake like other communities in Tonj state and South Sudan at large.
I beg to stop here for God and my country.
Thank you Mr. President.
May God bless you,
May God bless South Sudan, and may God bless Africa.
The author, Madau Madut Madau, is a South Sudanese student of Masters in Research &Public Policy (MRPP), Uganda Christian University, Kampala, Uganda. He can be reached via his Email: Madau Madut Madau <madaumadut89@gmail.com>
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