9th Anniversary of Independence: South Sudan Independence Commemoration, Nine Years on

By Deng Vanang, Juba, South Sudan

Wednesday, July 08, 2020 (PW) — What seven years left off war-torn country is the matter of personal conjecture and wild imagination, making this tenth independence anniversary a mixed reaction of sorts.

To the regrouped elite looting machine, is a celebration of a glorious liberation past gone wrong.

While a mournful commemoration to the reformist opposition driven to the woods alongside the masses deprived of peoples’ power and basic livelihood.

Who categorically believe the independence isn’t worth the celebration in a country people still suffer from the simplest basics of life.

They are hungry lot due to lack of food. Most still walk naked as they can’t afford buying clothing. Continuously dying of curable diseases owing to grim shortage of basic medical care.

No schools for their children since they can’t afford elite schools abroad.

Tribes and clans armed to be busy killing themselves and not to think of violently engaging their tormentors – Juba self-seeking kleptocrats.

With millions of them still stranded in exile, mountains’ caves and water-locked swamp areas fearful of returning to their homes.

Haunted by defaulting government that never fulfills its signed regional and international protocols in violations of their dignity as South Sudanese people, believing everything, like they do locally, is for free to eat and enjoy.

Bringing us to the glaring reality check that South Sudan still remains beholden to the clashing and deep seated interests of traditional ruling elite, as are its myriad of popular aspirations and expectations turned monumental challenges.

Among them is the struggling nation building in the backdrop of an endemic corruption ravaging the country.

That started way back in second liberation struggle against Riverine Arab rule in 1983 through to pre-independence period in 2005 when CPA was signed and out of which was born a new country in 2011.

The time when zonal, sectoral and sub-sectoral commanders held captive the smitten civil population or pawns in the game. As local tax revenues were clawed into their disposal in both cash and kind, with enough firearms and ammunition to sell.

Unnecessary high fines levied on subdued subjects and had to foot with razor-thin skin of their teeth over petty civil offenses.

Civil and criminal courts fell under their irresistible spell, with absolute power over critical matters of life and death.

Appeal court in person of John Garang as leader being a distant mirage to reach over trumped up judicial rulings to be executed in a lightning speed.

Long before such a grave vice was molded into this regrettable proportion were deliberate failure to instill discipline against truly normal social mal-practices.

Integral parts of which were the introduction of gun laws and wanton adoption of foreign corrupt practices by top pseudo- military administrators.

With semi- illiterate top commanders getting married to wives as numerous as the battalions they commanded. While producing children as countless as the sands on the banks of the River Nile.

All fed on commandeered relief food aid and home-grown grains exhorted from fear-gripped peasants. The same peasants from whom their mothers got married off with cattle loots or on credit until highly hyped freedom beckoned.

Some before becoming wives, were virgin underage girls mercilessly coerced at gun point against their own and voluntary will of their parents.

When freedom dawned and government formed, these individual commanders turned Generals and politicians’ salaries and allowances couldn’t meet the balance sheet of ever growing needs of an army called families. 

With each family unit ranging from well over 50 plus wives and concubines bearing 150 or so children.

All in need of dazzling clothing, sumptuous daily meals, prestigious education, posh homes and health care worth 70 years of life expectancy.

From which obviously arose the temptation to sneak the crooked fingers into the public cookie jar as more natural as irresistible.

Some educated commanders on the other hand weren’t any better, but similarly up in arms and running amok over the control of external sources, estimated to be worth hundreds of thousands of US Dollars in logistics to foot war chest.

As well as engrossed in the control of more lucrative foreign diplomatic missions aimed at educating the global community on causes crazily driving the decades old conflict at home.

This whole lot of corruption over doze injected into the post-war self and later independence government proved more toxic than it could absorb.

Laced with passed forward accumulated ethnic rivalries leaders in high offices use to persecute perceived rival tribes, especially through denial of newly acquired plumb jobs and thick bundles of petro-dollars.

Foreign cash donations and non-oil revenues moreover served as baits lavishly dispatched to build strings of political patronage.

Not forgetting the whipped up ethnic hatred against the conspicuously marked rival tribes at the center and clans on the peripheries of an overly ran down country.

Staff training, services provisions and government tenders with extremely exaggerated costs are exceptional luxuries only awarded to long lost friends and suddenly resurfaced relatives on solidified promises of bountiful kickbacks.

These perpetrators of no-holds barred corruption and runaway ethnic chauvinism are generational amalgam of people changed overnight by ravages of war in the past and threats of an abject poverty at presence starring them up-close.

And squarely at odds with establishing robust rules of favorable engagement and institutions of good governance that treasure checks and balances based on common purpose and posterity for all.

While public employment turned out to be an opportunity to dispel off transparency and accountability seen as major impediments to pre-meditated plunder of public goods and services.

Out of this break neck scramble for crippling power and ill-gotten wealth, big brothers conspicuously stood, slugging it out as little ones craned out necks for long overdue claims, than restraining them, with even more devastating effects than the deep rooted causes themselves.

Victims of this degrading corruption, negative ethnicity and nepotism took to alcoholic abuse. Rest died in over heated struggle of the fittest laced with thriving witchcraft trade to which loved ones are offered in exchange for economic riches and mega political positions in an increasingly ill-fated government.

Or went mad in vain attempt to keep up with ever fast moving pace. With war dead families flocking the streets. As sharp knives set apart couples’ previously ordained ties that bound on matters of new flashy lifestyle. 

Beneficiaries of thriving vices weren’t even luckier either for they drank themselves crazy or died in the bliss of the moment. As the rest over ate themselves into early graves, thanks to high blood pressure and stroke.

The living dead called survivors who stood the test of challenging times finally made it for each other throats over unfair distribution of South Sudan’s most treasured largesse.

Which heralded a complete U-turn to ground zero of deadly renewed conflict three years after an harmattan wind-blown flag of blue triangle, super imposed yellow star, black, red, white and green strips was hoisted on the blood stained sacrifices of the unsung, long forgotten war dead.

The cliff hanger episode of maddening greed concluded South Sudan’s eight years of unprecedented misrule.

Told through a testimony of acrobatic heads over heels bullet speed innundated with side shoving, kick boxing and elbowing to outrun one another into yet another doomsday of devastating conflict and subsequent State collapse after third year of its founding. 

Deng Vanang is UDRM/A’s Secretary-General and Member of SSOMA’s Leadership Council. Cordially reachable at: dvanang@gmail.com

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