South Sudan: Why Revolutions fail as leadership conspiracies prevail!!!

By Atek Lual Achuil, Juba, South Sudan

Wednesday, February 17, 2021 (PW) — As mankind attempts to understand the universe and its natural construction, nature too dictates it in its own right. Societies have struggled to understand the world and its natural forces, but trials and tribulations continue to be holding, due to many other contradictory and competing views and interests. This having said, is the struggle that permeates within the souls and spirits of our very existence as humans.

Intelligent people from some successful societies have managed to underscore reasons why humanity must control and dictate his natural environment based on his desires, intentions and needs. Some do believe, the ultimate goal of an upright human (homo sapiens)-the thinking man is to mobilize his power and energy to achieve the desirable end of prosperity and welfare. This, due to self-assumption, and lack of proper synthesis and initialization of ideas have been misfired and poorly propagated by the proponents. 

Revolutions are waged to effect fundamental change or achieve an empirical goal which is scientifically tested and proven factual. Ideas don’t hold the truth until they are hypothesized, experimented, and proven realistic and measurable by the virtue of their elasticity on societal matters.

Many ideas that have been produced by great thinkers continue to be workable within the midst of our natural or social environments of today. Political, economic, social, legal and military systems emerged due to the work done by such great thinkers who have and had dedicated themselves over time and space to create something new for the purposes of changing our universe.

In order for revolutions to be waged, and successfully achieved with end results, laws governing natural and social settings must be correctly understood and mastered by the proponents. Any slight defect or failure to master and own the ideological dogma driving it, would be most likely met with miserable failure to achieve the ultimate goal set to be realized.

Proponents of revolutions normally seek to capture the aspirations of the masses by exploiting the existing vulnerabilities and weaknesses that transcends the entire spheres of the ruling system. And, in order for them to achieve their ultimate goal, they must seek to influence the populace by identifying major triggers of failure and henceforth advance a properly coordinated propaganda against the existing government, establishment or a situation. An example in place was the October 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia against King Nicholas ii, whom the populace was dissatisfied with, in regards to the appalling conditions people were subjected to under his absolute monarchy by that time. Vladimir Illich Lenin, a communist theoritician, practitioner and its chief ideologue waged a successful socialist revolution that helped, changed the history of mankind and social order of some societies. When some self styled communists agitated to the Russian masses on the relevance and significance of socialist ideas of Karl Marx, they did this by exploiting the conditions that faced the citizens at the time; particularly the injustice, inequality, poverty, hunger, highest rates of illiteracy and the unfair social stratification created by the perceived capitalist system.

Waging a revolution is one thing, and it could be as easier as taking a glass of water especially when one finds himself as an opportunist in the already muddy water, but achieving the ultimate goals of the revolution is some mammoth task that only few men in the history of humanity have made it through. Most revolutions die theoretically and by design during the onslaught of their birthdays before their actual death day arrive. This is so, because of many factors mentioned below;

1. Lack of the properly synthesized ideological dogma normally in form of a manifesto that acts as the driving force towards some distant goals set by the proponents. In many respects, such ideological doctrines must be understood and mastered in soul and spirit by its supporters. You cannot gather for example; Gelwengs and mold them into a formidable force to understand, run and own or wage a revolution. Your revolution would have died before its real death day. You would have already established a gang of thieves in making that would kill what they never understood and didn’t know in the first place. In another words, some ideologies are ambiguous to master or translate into something that makes sense to the society. Some are completely immeasureable, impractical and unrealistic and do not address problems and realities facing humanity.

2. The problem of organisation is becoming universal and it is burying big cartels, large corporations and companies, decaying public institutions, destroying nation-states and societies, depopularizing political parties and fundamentally killing the reputations of great personalities and prominent leaders. Organisation, I believe is central to the success of mankind in every endeavor. Most institutions in the world whether public or private, terribly fail due to poor organisation or complete absence of organisational skills to its human resource. Proper organisation allows for a better understanding of structures, intentions, strategies, goals, vision and mission of an institution or entity. It defines the do’s and don’ts, create proper line of reporting and span of authority within an institution, allows individuals to understand and own their defined duties and responsibilities, improves performance, enforces ethics and maintain discipline and outlines challenges, vulnerabilities, risks or potential threats to the established institutions or entities.

3. Recruitment of weak, undisciplined, lazy and uncommitted cadres into a revolutionary organisation or party is another issue that holds back prominent revolutions in the world. Once a revolution is waged by a group of people who hold common ideas, they must do it bearing in mind the problem of the nature, qualifications, character and personality of people that support them and how they can be molded into formidable force that drives forward the goals and objectives set forth in the written agenda of change. Greed and egocentrism by some leaders within any revolution kill it, because it brings in or encourages loopholes for nepotism, corruption, sectarianism, tribalism, racism, and all sorts of negative ‘isms which are the fundamental factors that bury revolutions before they live. 

In this sense, some revolutionary leaders mostly attempt to recruit cadres based on their lineage, ethnic affiliation and what have you, ignoring the significance of loyalty, commitment, qualifications and the mastery of the ideals postulated in the revolutionary document by these cadres. Poor and undisciplined cadres destroy any revolution. Poor in terms of academic qualifications and level of reasoning. Such people deserve to be relegated to the citizenry but not within the organisational structures of the revolution. That is why proper background checks is made to all cadres before enrolment by some mass parties in the world. The Greeks classify people into three categories namely; the citizens or the patriots, the tribal minded men, and the idiots. The last two in the category do not qualify for recruitment into the revolutionary parties, because they will import those elements that can perpetually destroy the party, unless they are kept at the bottom as mere members.

4. Lack of or insufficient laws governing the operational matters of the revolution. Any revolution that has not made any attempt to formulate basic legal and binding documents would miserably collapse in the eyes of the founders due to the importance of such documents during the path of the revolutionary struggle. These legal documents include the by-laws or the constitution that outlines major goals and objectives, vision and mission, organisation and structures and fundamentally the ideological concepts driving the revolution. The other important document is the Code of Ethics or Disciplinary Procedures to be strictly observed and followed by members or supporters of the revolution. If such code of ethics and standards miss out in any revolutionary movement’s basic laws, then, such a movement is deemed to die before maturity and there is no doubt that many revolutions have witnessed this. Chairman Mao Zedong attested to this very fact in 1936 when his Communist Party of China almost collapsed in its infant stage due to the absence of code of ethics and disciplinary procedures lied down at the time to be observed by his followers. Another document is the regulations that govern the internal operational matters of the revolution. With rules and regulations that govern the day to today operations by the revolutionary leadership or by its cadres lacking, much is not likely achievable due to confusion and disorder arising from who should report to who or who must perform what. With revolutionary rules and regulations in place, there is always room for the definition of roles and responsibilities, duties and functions to be supposedly performed by each cadre spelt out in form of job specifications and description booklet. To be precise, all these legal documents must share one thing in common; the penalties and offenses that enforce discipline within the ranks and files of cadres. Discipline is fundamental to the revolutionary success and most have collapsed or failed due to unruly behaviours of its cadres who are the supposed sole practitioners of the revolutionary ideals and dogmas.

5. Power struggle and ideological differences within the realms and ranks of the senior leadership. The problem of power or who should be the central figure leading a revolutionary struggle has been a serious challenge to many revolutionary movements. Our own SPLM/A fell a prey to this very fact. Power struggle within the senior leadership of any revolutionary movement had and have completely destroyed many revolutions in the world and also paralysed some to the point of total collapse. This is due to greed by some individuals for power and lack of faith and commitment to the principles and ideals being commonly pursued by the said revolution. 

Some self-styled senior leaders of some known revolutions did stab their colleagues at their back, ultimately leading to some setbacks. Joseph Stalin is a good example of power thirty figures who, after the demise of their leader Vladimir Lenin, cunningly staged a secret coup against his colleague, a notorious Leon Trotsky, the supposedly known successor to Lenin by influencing other remaining five members of the senior leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Stalin, a lazy Georgian revolutionary reached to the point of killing the most feared figure in the Bolshevik revolution, Mr. Leon Trotsky, Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Commission who commanded the Red Army during their struggle against the White Mensheviks; another revolutionary group who held opposite views against them. The entire senior leadership of CPSU was divided, hence the nation. Stalin used the position, Pagan Amuom vacated to terrorize other senior members and cadres to consolidate his power. The party and the nation almost collapsed until at a certain point, it recovered. Some western political parties have almost collapsed too, due to power struggle within its senior leaderships in 1960s. The CPC also experienced the same problem between Chairman Mao and Deng Xiaping, but the demise of the former defused the situation to better when Deng took over, but the crisis held on within the cadres until the emergence of the Third Generation Chinese Leaders.

Most revolutions reach to the point of fragmentation due to greed for power or ideological differences or deviations within its senior leadership. Such differences do not necessarily respect the principle of disagree to agree but disagree to destroy and our SPLM/A is a victim of this unfortunate believe. The problem should not be, struggle for the position but rather struggle together for a common realistic cause that you all believe in. One seat equals one person, but there is no one seat for many people unless it is vacated by the first person. Once occupied by one person, then all should rally behind him or her because this position is meant for a leader who is only entrusted with the overall responsibility to only lead not do or control everything. Doing is the collective role by all. So, which one is important? Leading from the apex while you are far from the resources or being entrusted with resources and power to act? A leader is someone entrusted with overall responsibility to lead by making decisions on behalf of others. Such ideas that turn into decisions originate from other leaders, the subordinates or the entire citizenry. For me, one seat shouldn’t have always been the matter, but the realization of common ideas binding members together.

Ideological differences are normal metaphors in the world of divergent or convergent views. There is no problem with that. People must agree to disagree. This is because each one’s point of disagreement may carry some great sense of purpose not realized by others and he or she must not be chased wholesomely with that idea. He must be listened to and his views analysed before rejection. Once, observed to be irrelevant, then he/she is convinced with experiments and illustrations until the point of self defeat is accepted. Those who disagree and run away straight are the problem to the world. Why disagree and wish to destroy what you helped created, if your point of argument is not accommodated. That is not the work of an upright human.

6. Lack of common unifying factor definitely kill some revolutions by principle and design. Some revolutions have failed to perform or realize their ideals due to lack of common unifying factor to all its cadres. A common unifying factor may be in form of language, religion, culture, symbols, norms and beliefs. If all the above factors miss out within the general setup of the entire membership of the revolutionary cadres, then such revolution is likely to suffer from many retractions. A common culture, shared history and religion are very important factors that help drive forward any revolutionary organisation. The stringent absence of these factors ultimately advance to the death trap that many revolutions have fallen into.

7. The problem of strong leadership. Strong leadership emerges from strong leaders who are either born genetically strong or phenotypically molded by the existing environment. With the existing academic literatures on the types of leaders, many concepts related to leaders and leadership have recently sufficed. Previously, we used to have three main types of leaders namely; the charismatic leaders, legal rational and traditional leaders. The first two types of leaders are known for having made great achievements to humanity in many ways. Those of Martin Luther King Jr, Mahatma Gandhi, George Washington, Nelson Mandela, Julius Nyerere and Dr. John Garang all fall under this category. There are also leaders with extraordinary qualities of qualifying to be named as charismatic, but situations and the surrounding natural forces do overwhelm them to the point of hibernation. 

It must not be logical to say that strong leadership is made possible by charismatic leaders but some correlations exist amongst them. While charismatic leaders attempt to control and manipulate forces under their very direct control, other types of leaders tend to be passive and rely on legal and institutional establishments for the management of the situations under their trust. Such leaders tend to be democratic and only abide by established norms for their governance. They also tend to rely much on others most particularly the close allies and friends. While charismatic leaders tend to be great thinkers and chief ideologues by their own right, other types of leaders tend to make decisions from the advice of others and have no time for deep thinking.

Most revolutions however, have had history of bad leadership and readership combined and this has been a problem to their success. Strong leaders make quick and timely decisions. They also quickly preempt any situation likely to be dangerous by employing forces of resistance and suppression. Strong leadership is a key for success in any organisation, institution, entity, company, society and so forth. 

In conclusion, revolutions in Africa and elsewhere in the World will always fail to bear fruit except in very few instances where the citizenry take issues under their direct control through collective participation. The Arab Spring is a good example of successful revolutions though somewhere somehow, it was hijacked in Egypt and Libya. Sudan also provides an excellent example of a partially failed revolution due to factors named above. 

Note, the ideas presented here do not represent any institution or organisation but purely of my own academic invention.

The Author holds Bachelors of Science in Political Science at the University of Bahr-El-Ghazal and Master of Science in Security and Strategic Studies, University of Juba. Can be reached @ pinyditapol@gmail.com

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