South Sudanese Intellectuals Have Fallen Short to Match the Critical Demands of Our Time (Part 4)

The learned are out of their home: The intellectual courage of our most learned South Sudanese has fallen short to match the critical demands of our time

By Thiik Mou Giir, Melbourne, Australia

Friday, July 09, 2021 (PW) –  I, too, am a learned person. I love learning and I love to share, as much as I can, what I have learned with other people. Like all learned South Sudanese, I have read the same books that contain elements that are detrimental to our cultures and traditions.

I have mixed socially with Arabs as well as with White people. If it was not the colour of my skin, I can say I blended with them very well. As I was doing so, I was being fed with Arab-White supremacy until I learned that I have been duped.

At some point of time, in the past, I had realized that Arab-White supremacy has got into me. I had been brainwashed and I was looking at the world very much from the perspective of Arab-White peoples. It makes a difference when one finds out that he or she has been deceived most of the time. I am busy now removing the chains of mental slavery from my mind and that makes a world of difference as far as I am concerned.

That realization came with a sense of guilt. I am guilty and so are you, my fellow South Sudanese. Our situation feels like what is described in the old book, the bible: “Then said I, Woe is me! For I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips….” We have gone too far from our ancestors’ teachings contained in our rich cultures and traditions. We are abandoning our home.

In the next closing articles, under the heading, “The Learned Are Out of Their Home”, I will demonstrate instances that show how we are moving away from our cultures and our traditions and how we are adopting other peoples’ cultures and traditions at the expense of our own. We are very much into some other peoples’ homes. We are in strange lands.

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In the 1990s, when I was still in Khartoum, one of my acquaintances, who hailed from the Equatoria Region, organized a small party for her newly circumcised son.  When I arrived at her house, I saw her Christian son wearing a Jalabiya and a metallic crescent on his forehead. I immediately started a discussion with her.

‘Why is Edward wearing these things, Jalabiyia and artificial crescent?’  I asked her. ‘He is wearing them because he has just been circumcised’, she answered. ‘But these things are Islamic things and neither you nor your son is a Muslim’. ‘Yes, but crescent and jalabyia are also for young boys who are circumcised.  That is why my son is wearing them.’

‘Can you tell me why the crescent was chosen to be a symbol for Islam and why it has been made to be a part of the fashion for the newly circumcised?’ ‘I don’t know.’ ‘I don’t know!’ Answered the South Sudanese learned lady.

When South Sudanese find themselves surrounded by Arab Muslims, some of them find it hard not to be influenced by them. The reason in some cases, is not because Arabs outnumber Africans in the neighbourhood. Rather, it is because South Sudanese in the north have been brainwashed through Islamic-Arabic education, media, rewards, and coercion. 

All those things have made Arab cultures and traditions come on top in comparison with African cultures and traditions.  The culture and traditions of the most powerful people would sooner or later make the cultures and traditions of the least powerful people fade away.

Another powerful tool the colonizing people use against the colonized is when they change and distort peoples’ names and the names of the things that belong to them.  White people have been using this method more than the Arabs. 

Why do they do that?  The answer is simple: to humiliate them and to make the colonized know that they own all those things, including the colonized people themselves.  Arabs and the White people no longer run South Sudanese affairs directly, but we have so far remained a mentally colonized people, mentally in chains.

William Shakespeare wrote, “What is in a name?”  Psychologists would agree that the first thing to influence a baby is his or her name.  From young age to old age, therefore, we have all been influenced by our names.  They are social codes, they are mini-biography, and they are family-ancestors’ history. 

At my place of work, I tell my White colleagues that, from the full names of South Sudanese students, I can see them in three dimensions whereas they continue to see them in two dimensions.  Our ancestors took thought when they coined and gave us these names that we seemed to have been losing, unfortunately. Let us recall those people who have suffered the same fate – the African-Americans.

Africans were kidnapped in Africa and shipped across the Atlantic Ocean as slaves. Their slave masters deny them of their African traditional names and gave them their own family names.  Most of them carry these names up to this day. Not only did they do that, but they also called them Niggers. All African-Americans hated those names. 

Some of them decided to do something about the names, among them was one of the most renowned personalities, Malcolm X. Before he converted to Islam and before he had his name changed to Malcolm X, he was called Malcolm Little.  He and his fellow African-Americans were still being called by the White people, Niggers!  They took pain in order to stop the Whites calling them Niggers. Instead, they took the name African-Americans!

As you know, Malcolm X converted from Christianity to Islam.  If, after that conversion, he went and resided in South Sudan, saw how woeful his fellow Africans were being treated by Arab-Muslims, what would he had done?  He could had converted, once more, to one of the African beliefs system.  He might had taken Kero, Gatluak, Lukudu, Lam, and so on, as his name. 

He could had felt quite content with that.  However, the only Africans he could had avoided to have any contact with or to have anything to do with, would have been the severely brainwashed Southern Sudanese learned people. He would had been content to stay with people in the rural areas, the custodians of our African cultures and traditions. 

This is what he might have had done for sure.  Arabs and the White people have distorted and replaced our African names in Sudan, and it is the learned South Sudanese who could have changed them back.  But do the learned have the will to do that? We will be looking at a few more examples in the next post.

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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