South Sudan: Who will make Tonj Great, Again?

By Ustaz Abraham Mabior Rioc, Juba-South Sudan

Wednesday, May 27, 2020 (PW) — Tonj community at this stage has remained a critical thin line between the interests of opportunists, reactionaries, and true leaders. Virtually, chances are very high for Tonj Great to turn out to be like Somalia if more efforts are not doubled as quickly as possible, to avert the adverse consequences of human suffering and social disharmonies.

Peace and love among the ordinary and their immediate leaders are the prerequisites that Tonj should adopt as early enough as possible. In order to have peaceful settlements among the intellectuals, youths, leaders, and ordinary citizens of Tonj, it is imperative that the combination of their peaceful efforts ought to be directed to build wider social connectivity outside their family cliques.

In my view, family supporters of our immediate leaders are the primary suspects of disunity and distrust in Tonj community due to their biased positions towards other sections. For instance, most of our MPs at state and national leaderships do not listen to the concerns of their subjects but only take advice for actions from their close family members. This is already presenting a pathetic situation that needs to be drastically changed for the stability of Tonj. 

Undeniably, with sectional or familial connotations besetting our beloved community, here and now, there is no doubt that massive family support on one side is creating more harm than good. Indeed, most of our leaders who origin from our respective subsections of Tonj community have already taken a side in the communal conflicts which have been ongoing to date. With more communal skirmishes happening unprecedentedly across Tonj as well as with their neighbouring states, it is surprising none of our leaders (especially MPs) have never come out openly to condemn the ongoing bloody conflicts, both internally and externally.

With our known behavioural norms as human beings which centre around our family egocentricities of all sorts, our social networks and social fabrics have been negatively affected. Phenomenally, our social egoisms have led us to a different world of hopelessness and helplessness under the hands of some merciless leaders who see Tonj bleeding without taking bold and realistic actions to bring peace. It is imperative that family and sectional egocentricities have created deep wounds, both at the individual, intellectual, and community levels. Why?

In terms of geographic scope in the context of leadership, I view both Tonj East, South, and North counties should be treated with ultimate perspectives in terms of social, cultural, political, military participation, or and political alignment. There should be no upper hands in leadership positions, both at state and national levels. In light of the in-proportionality of leadership positions, room for hatred, discontent, and above lack of respect for our leaders becomes automatically created. Convincingly, this can be unhealthy for our unity of purpose as well as building economic prosperity at grassroots levels and sectional heights. 

Without dwelling much on things that create disunity, I strongly accentuate to cherish equality and equity of all the resources including leadership positions. Let honesty and transparency prevail and be centred around our basic needs and common agenda for the common good of all. This will keep our unity intact as well as being practically sustainable. 

Literally, parliamentarians from all consistencies of Tonj should always come together, both in good and bad times, in order to pull a dignified rope of unity. This will give no room for some family supporters of an MP to override other people’s rights and manipulate the concerns of the majority. Definitely, such moves could create a long-lasting peaceful conclusion among the communities of Tonj and their neighbourhoods. 

From an innovative perspective, let graduates from different fields always come together (based on specialized fields of studies) and brainstorm on what they can do with the knowledge and skills they have acquired through formal and informal learning and training domains. By doing so, they will be able to come up with innovative and creative ideas that can attract massive support and word of advice from well-wishers and community leaders as well. Life is about being creative, professional, intellectual, and above all, being innovative. 

By and far, gossips and agitations are the biggest killers of unity and perpetrators of communal conflicts and sectional tensions as well. The intellectuals and youths should refrain from such unwelcoming behaviours and instead adopt fact-telling conversational behaviours where unfounded allegations ought to be proved in the course of face to face discussion of the matter at hand.

Equally important, idly sitting at tea and shisha stalls by youths should be minimized. It has nothing to add to one’s life at all. Instead, such unhealthy social gatherings are changing the mindsets of the youths and intellectuals alike based on the issues they discuss. Anyway, social gathering is not bad, but it must be exercised responsibly and leisurely. 

In fact, I am personally aware that youths and intellectuals of Tonj have great and brilliant mindsets to quickly make Tonj great again if professionally aligned and wisely utilized. The problem is that such learned and positive mindsets are not collectively amalgamated together so as to be practically put into good use by us. Let’s think twice about my brothers and sisters!

Let us not support wrong family ideological principles and clanic agenda. Let us embrace peace and unity at all costs because, without peaceful coexistence, economic prosperity and social cohesion will be threatened at will. Our common unity is more paramount than our sectional or family build-ups. 

Let us skilfully use our knowledge of common purpose to sustainably build our beloved community, hence making Tonj great again. Let us reject being agitators of realities and instead incline towards adopting peaceful pathways as true agents of peace-making and conflict building in our communities. 

Let us reject being categorized as rich, poor, educated, uneducated, bad or good, etc. In fact, listening to such social and economic categories of classes is detrimental to our peaceful coexistence. Socially and culturally, we are all equal before God, before ourselves, and before our community. So, equality and respect of purpose are viable and sensitive discourse to be encouraged at all sectional levels. 

It is, indeed, our collective responsibilities as citizens of Tonj to invest our resources and double efforts to make Tonj Great, again. Wala Lazim, it is just a take it or leave it recipe of love, unity, and peace. I wish you the happiest Eid Holiday! Stay Safe, Stay blessed!

The writer is a teacher by profession who holds dual Master’s Degrees from the University of Juba and The University of Hong Kong respectively. He is electronically reachable via mabiorrioc@gmail.com

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