We Set and Accommodate our Failures, Sit and Cry on our Problems, in South Sudan

By Ustaz Morris Mabior Awikjok, Nairobi, Kenya

Saturday, March 19, 2022 (PW) — Many people whether young or old see the roots of our failures in misguided decisions taken in various sectors since 2011. We have set up our failure, we sit and cry on our problems and we are confused on how to address our own internal issues and put our house in order again. But this is partly true if you can take a look back. International and regional Specialists are still arguing about where we went wrong as a virgin State in Africa.

They are not to be blamed for looking at life from their different perspective point of views and promoting their vision in a volatile political atmosphere of South Sudan. My good president Salva Kiir Mayardit have been played like a ball by corrupt masters and misled him in everything. They civil population have been left to suffer alone with the common slogan that “Nhialic abï kariëc ëbën war yïc”, meaning God will bring some changes to us. Those who will take this article to the president should bear with me and read it to the end.

I am sure that no coherent and workable programme can emerge if it is written in several different offices, with some writing the economic, others the political and yet others the international parts in arts of singing it without implementation. And then all this is mechanically “glued together” and presented as a single state platform for looting. That is not the way to go about it. We will not get anywhere that way if we cannot correct ourselves and take a different direction.

Any programme begins with the identification of the main goals. A national programme begins with what can unite all of us, the citizens of our country. For a South Sudanese citizen what is important are the moral principles that we first need to acquire at the family level and that form the very core of patriotism. That is the main thing. Without it we cannot agree on anything, without its South Sudan would have to forget about national dignity and even about national sovereignty for the next 30 years. The national thieves and killers who are misleading our virgin State first need to confess properly before God and accept that South Sudan is our nation all of us and we have equal rights and responsibilities enshrined in the Transitional Constitution of our country (2011) as Amended.

That should be our starting point of correcting ourselves and put the law before us. And it is the task of our political leaders to set common goals, to assign a proper role to everyone and to help people believe in themselves. This is the only way to create teamwork and spirit togetherness, to achieve the collective goal for our common good. So, it is vital to openly admit our core problems and set our priorities right now and forget the past.

I can tell you how I see things at my personal perspectives as the concern citizen of this great nation. Our first and most important problem is a weakening of the will, a loss of will and perseverance in following through with our plans vacillations, going from one extreme to the other and the habit of putting off solving the most difficult tasks.

It is high time we should come together to grips with our problems, first and foremost the most dangerous ones, the problems that are holding us back, that are strangling our economy and are preventing the state from developing. Frankly speaking, these are problems that threaten our very survival as independence sovereign state.

To continue to shy away from these problems is more dangerous than to face the challenge. People no longer believe promises, and the authorities are less and less respected. The state machine is coming apart, its engine the executive branch sputters and hiccoughs as soon as you try to get it started. Bureaucrats are “pushing papers” but are not doing any real work and have all but forgotten what discipline is all about in public institution.

In these conditions people, of course, cannot count on the rule of law or expect justice from the authorities. They can count only on themselves to stop rampant corruption endlessly and imposes transparent accountability to the corrupt leaders before the competent Court of law. What is the use of such a government then if government officials abuse the law, tempered with public resources, and left without being accounted for?

A high level of crime is an example of such persistent evil and subsequent collapse of the statehood in the eyes of the people and the whole world. Here, mark my words very well! Somalia will be far better than South Sudan in the next century.

For many years since our hard-won independence, we have been idly talking about the need to fight corruption, crime, insecurities of inter-communal violence in nature, thus merely driving that evil deeper into the fabric of South Sudan history. Banditry grew stronger, controlling government system and villages and taking root everywhere across the country. 

The whole country, Republic of South Sudan, the entire ten States and three Administrative Areas, were taken over by the politically motivated conflicts and turned into a boxing fields and cemeteries. But as soon as we challenged the political bandits head on and defeated them, a real step will be taken towards the rule of law, the Glory of the law, which treats everyone equally regardless of social, economic, and political status.

Now, wherever these illegally graduated terrorist or criminals may be hiding in the states, in the bushes, in the highways or in any town of the Republic of South Sudan, they must be brought into justice. We can no longer look to assistance from or find shelter in POCs or in Refugee camps when we have a legitimate government and virgin nation God almighty father has endowed with everything. We have done a terrible blow to ourselves, and it will remain on us for decades as a big “dot”.

This is the first step, and it will be followed by others. This would not be achieved and accomplished by just sitting in Juba and inventing endless “programmes to fight corruption and crime without serious of implementations put in place to address such tough challenges”. One had to challenge the enemy on his own turf and defeat him. The biggest enemies of president Salva Kiir regime include corrupt officials licensed to loot at will, high crime rates and endless insecurity related issues.

I hope I have made it clear how such difficult problems can and must be solved. Reality leaves no other choice: it is only by meeting the challenge that one can prevail.

Another major problem is a lack of firm and universally recognized rules. Like a person, community cannot live without rules. A country’s rules take the form of the law, constitutional discipline and order. They are about the security of a person’s family and property, individuals’ security and confidence that the established rules of the game will not change.

The country should have to start with itself. It should not just make rules that are not respected and follow them. This is the only way to make sure that uniform norms of behaviour established by the law are complied with. In a state where there is no rule of law is therefore regarded as a weak state, the individual is vulnerable and not free. The stronger the state the freer the individual. In a democracy your rights and my rights are limited only by the similar rights of other people. Recognition of that simple truth is the basis of the law, which should apply to everyone, from members of the government to ordinary citizens.

But democracy means a dictatorship of the law and not of the people whose job is to uphold the law. I think it is worth remembering that a court of law passes its rulings on behalf of the people of South Sudan as stipulated in the Transitional Constitution and it must be worthy of its high authority. The police and the Prosecutor’s Office must serve the law rather than trying to “privatize” their authorities for their own benefit. Their immediate and only task is to protect people and not misguided notions of honour and departmental interests.

Rules are necessary and important for everyone and everywhere, for the authorities, entrepreneurs and even more so those who are weak need social protection. You cannot help the weak if taxes are not paid into the treasury. It is impossible to build a civilized market in a country that is riddled with too much corruption. No economic progress is possible if government officials depend on moneybags. We asked ourselves how we should treat these professional political wolves? The answer is, the same as everyone else. The same as an owner of a small bakery or a shoe repair shop. Only an effective and strong state can afford to live by the rules (that is, by the law). It alone should guarantee the freedom of the entrepreneur, the individual and society.

If we teach ourselves to respect the rules we make and learn to behave decently, we will force others to follow suit. If we punish offences strictly according to the law, those who up until now stood more to gain by violating the law will prefer to stay on the right side of the law. And those who have forgotten should be reminded that governing the country is a job paid for by the taxpayers and our earnings. I am aware that many today are not afraid of presidential orders. But order is all about rules. And those who today are fiddling with notions and presenting a lack of order as true democracy should not suspect any foul play or try to scare us with the prospect of a return to the past. “Our land is rich, only there is no order in it,” many South Sudanese used to say this wherever they lived. No one will ever again have reason to say that about us.

Finally, there is one more big problem which renders all “grandiose plans” useless.

We have a very vague notion of the resources at our disposal today. Everybody seems to agree that property is inviolable, but how much property is out there? Where is it and who does it belong to? Today we don’t even have accurate numbers that show what belongs to the state, starting with the treasures of oil revenue, non-Oil revenues and ending with intellectual property to which the South Sudanese people have a rightful claim to talk about it. One is ashamed to admit that no one in the country today can name the exact number of working enterprises or revenues or even provide accurate data on the number of people in the country.

It is time to clearly determine who owns what in the Republic of South Sudan. Only then will we be able to properly assess our own potential and determine which tasks are feasible. This is the luggage that we should have as we set out on our journey. What we need today as much as we need air to breathe is a complete inventory of the country; we need an accurate record and proper recognition of everything that there is. Upon assuming our collective duties, our leaders and lead Managers holding managerial positions should begin by looking at the balance sheet. The Republic of South Sudan is a huge, complicated and very diverse enterprise. It makes no sense to argue whether we are poor or rich as long as we haven’t made a review of all our successes and setbacks, our past losses and our new achievements.

Each of us surely has his or her own idea of the root causes of our setbacks and miscalculations of the current leadership. But it is high time we, the people of South Sudan, should make up our minds as to what we expect the state to deliver and on what points we are ready to support it. I am speaking about our national priorities. Without it we will continue to waste time while our fate is decided by irresponsible chatterboxes.

This article will be continued tomorrow about our priorities as the sovereign state on how we face and overcome the challenges surrounding the current administration under the wise leadership of Gen. Salva Kiir Mayardit, president, Republic of South Sudan.

The author, Ustaz Morris Mabior Awikjok, is a student pursuing Master studies program in “Global Affairs and Strategic Security Studies” at the Atlantic International University. You can reach him by email: morrisawikjok@yahoo.com

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