Dear Juba City Council: Where is Juba City Central Business District?
By Longar Mathiec Wol, Juba, South Sudan
Sunday, October 04, 2020 (PW) — The city under the sun, they call it. As I take you through to explore the above question I would like to warn you in advance that I don’t in anyway claim expertise in urban or city planning. All I will discuss is what you can see with your naked eyes. It does not require expertise in any field of urban planning,architecture or any related engineering fields.
Having mentioned that, many people may be wondering what doI mean by where is the central business district (CBD). Well, to take you through a bit; in any city planning, there is an area reserve or designate with in the city to serve business purposes only. That space is call central business district. In Juba I am not quiet sure whether such space or thing exists. If it does then it would require city council to take skeptics like me for a city tourto be shown and get convince.
In the country where any thing could be grab, we should not be surprise to learn that what was mean to be city center might have been grabbed decades ago. If that was not the case, then you can’t tell me that the city that was established during colonialera around 19 century and becomes municipal 1922 was planned without central business district.
What we call Juba city center today does not genuinely look like the central business district, with many claims that the current Juba city center or Juba town most part of it is mosque’s land that had been leased out to business men and women to set up their businesses shows that the so call Juba city center or Juba town is private property of Kuwait mosque. That beg more questions, what will become Juba city when these leases expire and mosque for some reasons decided otherwise to not renew leasing, that means the so call city will be taken. What will be explanation to the public from Juba city council. How could you be a city council when you don’t have a city. Operating in small markets like Jebel, custom, Konyokonyo and quarter councils does not make it a city. These markets are part and parcel of the big city but not city themselves.
As of now, Juba still has chances to redeemed itself, there are still rooms for planning, make a radical land reform and give us our city center. If I was to suggest, I will suggest painful and radical land reforms that may not go well with majority but for the sake of our future we have to think right now. Juba as it is today is the largest slum in making. Juba posses slum characteristics, when there is no flowing water, no sewage, no drainage system, no internal tarmac roads, no specify dumping areas, liters everywhere, how do you call such a place. What qualify a place to be call slum? Is it not luck of certain amenities, like water, sewage, luck of demarcation and so forth. Those are the consideration that qualify a place to be call slum.
Some of you might be wandering specifically people from diaspora on how do people live in Juba with such conditions. Well, for your more information, many who are privilegeenough are using the private means but majority of Juba residents who are not lucky enough are left vulnerable. Using toilet as benchmark of our today discussion. Majority of the building in Juba had been constructed without toilets or washrooms.
I have been trying to get proper explanation but till date I haven’t found satisfactory answer. One of the common vague answer I got is that there is no sewage pipeline in the city and the owners of these buildings don’t want to bear the cost of removing and transporting these exhausted waste out of their buildings.
Due to that almost every one in Juba is left vulnerable. We pray to God to always have mercy on us because the level of vulnerability of catching diseases are extremely high. In the absent of proper public toilets and most of the house are not able to afford to dig and construct their private toilets many resort to release themselves in open spaces. That means there are only two categories in accessing toilet service, it is either private means for the people who can afford and open space.
In circumstances you are not lucky to have fallen into this two categories above (private means and open spaces) then you mustbe in third category of flying toilets. To some who are not aware of what flying toilet means, it is a situation where the populace living in area without amenities particularly in slums where there are no toilets use paper bags to defecate and urinate inthem then throw them away. That is the condition majority of Juba resident has been confined or subjected to.
The matter has been made worse that some apartment owners built apartments without washrooms as I mentioned earlier,some might think it is a lie but if you think it is, check it out yourself, seeing is believing. The intention of these people is to collect enough cash as much as they can since majority of the owners are foreigners without looking at the tenants needs. The people living in such apartments are force to either use hire toilets far away from their apartments or resort to other means.
When worse come to worse, they use paper bags and buckets to store faeces and urine respectively and dump or pour them away the following day. As you read through, it might seems like a dream, imaginary or movies of some sort, but the truth of the matter is that you are not dreaming. It is happening everyday, welcome to Juba city.
The city where the only human is a foreigner. Imagine when Sudan peace was sign on Saturday, October 3rd, 2020; our city council become restless, cleaning all over. I am not saying it should not have been done, but the same spirit and hospitality we render or do to foreigners should also be apply on us. I have been say that there is no and there will never be super human in the name of a foreigner. We are all equal and deserve same treatment regardless.
Juba is the only city where there are no garbage collections binsalong the streets, you can litter as much as you want and no one will ever bother. It is the only city where citizens dump the garbage in the middle of high ways and no one will everquestion them. The city where we built skyrocketing towers without parking space, where there is no proper garbage collection plan, some residential areas have never seen how the garbage collection vehicles look like since the creation of the city. This is the kind of a city we shamelessly live in with ourcity council and two governments. Shame on us.
To go back a bit on some of the radical land reforms I promised you earlier on, for us to have what we call city we need to act crazy before it is too late. Some might think I have gone out of my mind to suggest the below. For this nation to have a city we will all be proud of we must remove Juba international airport in it current location and relocate it to 45 kilometers away from Juba.
This will give space for city expansion, that place call Juba International airport in my understanding if we want to have a city with international standard has to be part of Juba city central business district unless we plan to relocate Juba city somewhere from its current location soon. Use that place and part of new site as Juba central business district before it is too late.
I rest my case here, take it out of context at your own peril but we are all in it together.
The author, Longar Mathiec Wol, is a Concern citizen who can be reached via his email address: longarmathiech@gmail.com
About Post Author
It was not too late to relocate the city and come up with many plan for citizen. I see people are now busy in doing what is not helping them in term of health sectors. However, you have see clearly that city councils are sleeping. You have a wake them and let see what is in their plan.
We are feel bad when we see our own citizens were suffering as writer mention a lot of the things which are affecting