The learned are out of their home: The intellectual courage of our most learned South Sudanese has fallen short to match the demands of our time
By Thiik Mou Giir, Melbourne, Australia
Saturday, July 03, 2021 (PW) — The impact of wars waged against our people over thousands of years, made it harder for the learned to think and to shape our cultures and traditions through education. These wars have not ended. Just as one war seems to end, another starts.
One would think that it does not make sense at all for South Sudanese to confront common enemies for so long and as they were about to eventually taste peace, they then turned their deadly weapons against each other.
It is normal because, during those years of wars, the enemies had successfully incorporated, through education and through indoctrination, enforced with oppression, elements that would lead to their own self-destruction.
The enemies, the people whom most learned believe as people who know the way to heaven, have succeeded in their implementation of their grand plan while South Sudanese people are losing, losing their lives, and losing the revenues from their natural resources.
The enemies of African people are seen by Africans either as peacemakers or war-makers. The learned South Sudanese have not come up with a plan to avoid being caught up running, continually, between those who look like peacemakers and war-makers, not knowing that the peacemakers of today will be the war-makers of tomorrow.
Some learned people run to war-makers to get weapons to kill their own people and other learned people run to peacemakers asking them to intervene. The enemies, that is, the peacemakers and the war-makers will always be around. They will not leave Africans alone without a fight.
On the other hand, the learned South Sudanese are not convinced that they and their people can survive without always depending on them, that they do not need to prove their own worth to other people, and that they do not have to always please other people.
It must be noted that not all Arabs, all Europeans and so on, are the enemies of South Sudanese. Far from it. There are good and bad people in every society in the world, including ours. However, not only are we dealing with those racist individuals, but we are also dealing with the racist cultures and traditions.
The elements that have poisoned our hearts and minds and for so long are in the books they taught and gave us to read. They are embedded in the Arab/European education that the learned have taken in over the years. The product of the Arab’s and European’s education has made it easier for the Arabs and the Europeans to run the affairs of Africans, particularly, South Sudanese, both closely and remotely.
The conditions of South Sudanese today are the result of what they have done to us, whereas the development in the Western world today could not have been what it is today had it not taken off at the back of our suffering African people, including South Sudanese.
From this general condition of all South Sudanese in the country as well as in Diaspora, emerged some learned people who, instead of confronting our common enemies, have embraced the enemies. They have become Arabs and whites, but still with black faces. They are visually social tools in the hands of Arabs and the whites.
They are tasked to shape and to transform African cultures and traditions into Arab and European cultures and traditions. Some of them have become more Arabs than Arabs themselves, whereas others have become more whites than the whites themselves.
Too much learning of South Sudanese is a dangerous thing. It makes us feel like we are out of our home and are now in Someone else’s home.
Thiik Mou Giir, Bachelor Degree in Education from the University of Alexandria, Egypt; Post Graduate Diploma, from Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. He can be reached via his email contact: thiik_giir@hotmail.com
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