Are there social classes in South Sudan?
Sabina Dario Lokolong, deputy minister for humanitarian affairs and disaster management, Nov 2011
By Sinkara Ding Cog
Tuesday, June 23, 2020 (PW) — It’s an important question, simultaneously seems a new topic, and needs more research to learn about the modern social composition of Southern Sudan society, and to know the productive relationships and forces within the state. Do these produce relationships, solidarity and mutually reinforcing or are they relationships based on the method of human exploitation of his brother, in other words, a relationship between oppressors and oppressors.
The state of the southern Sudan with its ten states and its three administrations, historically a rural society before the division of Sudan into two states, and under Turkish-Egyptian rule, Mahdia and Egyptian English rule, the southern Sudan was a rural society, based on economic It is traditional farming and cowgirls and sheep. But in the colonial period, church schools were opened in the then southern districts, graduated in those schools with primary certificates; they were hired as clerks in civil government services, while some were recruited in military and police institutions. These young staff formed the first core of the bourgeois class in Southern Sudan.
These came out of their original class, i.e. peasants, pastoralists and hunters. During the 1972 Addis Ababa agreement, that core grew, joined by the graduates of Khartoum University and other universities, and after the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005, and the independence of the Southern Sudan in July 2011, it was manifested Social division of society more clearly, and it is possible to say that the southern Sudan state has three social layers: (1) the bourgeois class (2) the small bourgeoisie, (3) the worker class and Peasants, two classes are settled: first and second, in the national capital and states, dominating power, and all kinds of capital, whether commercial capital, real estate capital, financial capital (banks) and investment capital. The last class is in the countryside, which is the largest social segment in the state.
In human history, the bourgeois class always has one advantage, the existence of its intellectual ideology to control the power, rule and wealth. So what is the ideology of the current South Sudanese bourgeois class? South Bourgeoisie adopted before dismantling the Sudanese composition unit, racist ideology (black African element), the African Christian in the face of racism (Islamophobia) in Sudan. In the s, martyr Joseph Garang presented in his book entitled ′′ The Southern Intellectual Problem: Is there any reason for him ) In this brochure, Garang divided the southern political movement into three schools of thought, which is (1) far right school (2) confused (3) and left.
But the far right school, that is, racist ideology, and more precisely, remained the southern nationalist ideology, the only dominant of the South Sudanese political movement, and that school led by its class; made right-wing parties before independence such as the ′′ Free Party ′′ “, The Federal Party ′′ and some of the leaders of those parties led the first insurgency under different names, starting from the Union of Locked Areas, through Sanu to the South Sudan Liberation Movement that signed the Addis Ababa agreement in 1972 The South Atafia gave false self-government, and the bourgeois class ruled the southern region, according to the southern nationalist ideology, that is, racist ideology (the African Christian black), but a struggle within this class over power and resources between them, and They began to form and create new ideologies for the purpose of dominating power and resources, for example, Nilian nationalism (Jinqsim Schlosim and Norsem) and Actoranism, in other words, ethnic ideologies have emerged, to replace Southern Sudanese nationalism.
This conflict within the southern Sudanese bourgeois class divided the south into three districts, by former President Jafar Mohamed Nimiri, which was a violation of the agreement; which led some of the members of this class to establish the SPLM and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, led by the martyr Dr. Garang, the leftist movement has taken the trend, in my estimation, was a qualitative and unique shift within the southern class, but ethnic nationalists had a presence under the cover of their ancient ideology, the southern nationalism.
After the death of the revolutionary leader, martyr John Garang, ethnic nationalists, more precisely, not southern nationalists, took over the rule of southern Sudan, according to the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, and the bourgeois class remained in an alliance based on ethnic ideologies, until independence After independence, the conflict once again intensified as under the Addis Ababa Convention, and the genocidal ideology (relative to the Monggang-Dinka) has emerged in public. Neueranism (relative to the Neuer Group), handsome (relative to the Loh Group) and Actoranism (relative to the group residing in the Equatoria), are also in a struggle over power and resources.
Ethnic ideology (Janqwa) has managed to dominate the ruling by the struggle legacy of the people of Southern Sudan, other ethnic ideologies remain in opposition, mostly represented in the Transitional National Unity Government and minority in opposition, meaning More accurate, the southern Sudanese bourgeois class has reached the minimum power sharing and wealth between them, but as a ruling bourgeois tyrant, it has no national project to build a citizenry based nation within the framework of ethnic and geographical diversity and equitable distribution of power and wealth I’m sorry Historically, it is known that any capitalist bourgeois class, whose main goal is to control the state’s apparatus, looting the wealth of the people, to get richer; while the working class and peasants are getting extreme poverty, because their eternal goal is to accumulate money in Their parasitic capitalist economic project remained.
We come to another point, which is the issue of production relations between the ruling bourgeois class, the working class and the peasant class, are relationships based on cooperation, solidarity or exploitation, that is, a relationship between oppressors and oppressors? Answering this question, does not need much effort, and we are all pursuing the economic and political reality of the six years that represented the age of the transition period, and the next nine years of independence, which clearly demonstrate, without confusion, deception and hypocrisy, Production relationships between ruling bourgeoisie and other classes are the relationships of human exploitation of his human brother, and this exploitation has taken two faces: economic exploitation and political exploitation. For example, the working class, whether it is in state institutions or in the private sector, is not worth a price Their pay is the quality and nature of the work they sell for that pay.
Workers with their mental and muscle in Southern Sudan live in a bad economic reality, and I am afraid if they are named in their current status as (the) in the th and th centuries in Europe. Also peasants in their rural areas, do not get state services. Add to this the rural oil-producing areas, one of the poorest areas and their oil wealth is looted by the ruling bourgeoisie, this is economic exploitation, political exploitation, the ruling bourgeois class, has released the toxins of their ethnic ideologies among the working class, and class Peasants, to ensure that they remain in power, and unfortunately, most mental workers have been unconsciously deceived, believe in those false ethnic ideologies, find an educated and enlightened worker defending Brajuzzi in power; just because it is from his ethnicity or His clan, believing that conflict is only an inter-ethnic conflict, and what he doesn’t know is an intra-class conflict, i.e. the bourgeois class. Its first goal is to preserve their chairs, and the second goal is to distract the struggle of workers and farmers from their political, social and economic rights.
In light of the above, South Sudan needs revolutionary and democrats intellectuals to perform the tasks of enlightening the entire society, exposing the parasitic bourgeois ideologies, building a new tolerant society within diversity, and building relationships Solidarity and cooperation between the components of the state of southern Sudan.
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