There are two things that should make us gravely concerned.
When this crisis is all over, we’ll still be governed (ruled actually) by the
same leaders, who brought us into the heat of this crisis. And the gravest of
all worries for South Sudan is that the young generation has taken after the
old tribal dirt. (Watch
my Video message to young people in Diaspora)
If young and educated people, 15 – 40, rally around their
tribal, conceptual supremacy and only talk about atrocities committed against
their kinsfolks, then you know South Sudan present state has been destroyed and
its future is a destruction waiting to happen.
Something has to seriously change!
Sadly, at the end of this crisis, South Sudan will remain
the way it was before the war started. Some optimistic South Sudanese would say
that this crisis will change South Sudan forever, for better.
We have to remember that South Sudanese only got what I can
call a conceptual independence. The substance of independence and liberation
fruits were only restricted to politicians, their relatives, friends and
foreigners. Average South Sudanese were left in the cold and even treated like
dirt (second class citizens) in their own country. There were reports of
Ethiopian, Kenyan, Somali and Indian businesses employing their fellow nationals
as South Sudanese youth remained unemployed.
So how can we get out of this crisis? Not an easy question
to answer and not an easy process when the crisis is all over.
Ministry
of Tribal Affairs or Directorate of Tribal affairs
South Sudan is a country of tribal nationalities. This is a
basic and bitter reality we have to deal with. For centuries, this has been the
case and will continue to be so. We can’t change tribal realities but we can
change tribal mindsets. No South Sudanese leader has ever tried to make sure
involuntary inter and intra-tribal exchange of ideas, traditional politics,
norms and traditions are given greater emphasis and resources allocation.
Chiefs should be given structured, funded Tribal
accountability Models (TAM) within that ministry (see South Sudan Ideologically).
The Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports has a superficial role that only
helps to foster individual tribal traditions and cultures, however, it doesn’t
actually make prominent, the interaction between and among tribes.
This calls for a Ministry of Tribal Affairs to play a
greater role in making sure South Sudan understands itself, tribally. The pros
and cons of tribal practices could be discussed openly.
TAM should be strengthened and clear modalities put in
place to make sure different tribes learn from each other on regular basis.
Tribes in South Sudan don’t know that some of them have similar norms,
traditions and ethnographic origins.
This would give tribes power over leaders; making it hard
for power-hungry leaders to take advantage of tribal differences.
Proper
Education and Investment in Nationalistic Attitude of Young People
Properly educating and sensitizing young South Sudanese is
the only way of reducing fanatical tribonationalism. Young people who are not
well educated about the affairs of the country are easy to mislead. We’ve seen
that feeding young ones with tribal nonsense that they’ve been marginalized
fuels the growth of hatred. These young people grow up with the general feeling
that their education and ideas will be geared towards freeing their tribes from
external, dominant, tribonationalists: both conceptual and real!
Many young South Sudan are getting educated, however,
fanatical tribonationalism will destroy the future of South Sudan. The current
crisis has exposed the danger been nurtured both at home and abroad.
If highly educated young people come out only to be
fanatical tribonationalists then something needs to change if a prosperous
and peaceful South Sudan is to be realized.
If South Sudan invests in proper education of the youth, it’d
be easy to shape young South Sudanese into helpful nationalists rather than
fanatical tribonationalists.
A few western educated young people who’d want to maintain
seeds of tribal fanaticism will be told off by educated South Sudanese with
credible inter and inter-cultural knowledge base.
Institutions,
Governance and Policy Making
Dr. Marial Benjamin, South Sudan current minister of
Foreign Affairs, is fond of saying that South Sudan has functional institutions.
We can understand Marial’s position as he’s ready to protect the president and
government at all cost; even at the expense of South Sudan's future.
We all know that South Sudan has organizations and
departments, but to call them functional institutions is a disservice to South
Sudan; a path to it's destruction.
The police, the army, the security services are all a mess.
They are undisciplined and tend to see their role as the protection of individual
bosses rather than allegiance to the nation.
Financial institutions, the National Parliament and
Judicial Services have no sense of independence as they feel they owe their
existence to the president.
The security services, financial institutions like Central
Bank of South Sudan, Judiciary and the national parliament need to be set to be
independent and free from executive manipulation.
These institutions need to be professionalized and set in a
manner that makes them free from executive influence and manipulation; and be
free to give checks and balances to the executive.
As things stand now in South Sudan, all these institutions
(if you could call them so) are conceptual rather than functional. They do what
the president says and this is a marked failure of institutional function in
South Sudan.
This fact in tend affects policy making as these
institutional leaders tend to work to appease the president, his close allies
and the executive. Governance therefore revolves around the president,
frustrating decision making and producing mediocre governance and policy.
National
Constitution and Declarative Clarity
Breaking the national constitution is one of those
unforgivable things in a country. However, when the person who’s supposed to
protect it breaks it and warns people who remind him of that gross danger, then
you know that the government is a situation run amok.
Decisions have to be made in South Sudan with clarity of
purpose. In South Sudan, the president makes his decisions in form of ‘decrees’
that are read out on National Television in manner reminiscent of 1984 big
brother decisions. The decrees are unquestionable and aren’t passed through
parliament as always the case in constitution-respecting, democratic nations.
The parliament is a mere, timid formality of ‘yes sir’ men
and women!
The president needs to explain the reasons behind his
decisions in order to show that his decisions are for the interest of the
nation and that he’s actually accountable to the people. Good leaders know that
the people are the boss and if people resent certain decisions then the
president has to either rescind his decision or kindly and conscientiously
convince the citizens about the value of the decision.
Constitutional provisions need to be followed to the letter
so as to set leadership examples. Breaking the constitution and expecting
respect from the citizens is wishful thinking. The removal of Lakes State
governor, Chol Tong Mayay, and Unity State governor, Taban Deng Gai, were all
unconstitutional as the reasons behind the constitutional invocation were
neither explained nor met.
National
Army Integration and Transition to Non-military rule
South Sudan is a military state. The claim that it’s a democratic,
civilian government is illusory. From the president, national ministers to
state governors, all still go by their military titles. Remembere, they are not
regarded as ‘retired.’ The president is not a ‘retired’ general but an active
one. We saw that on December 15, 2013, when the president clearly flaunted his
military fatigues.
Admittedly, South Sudan needs to move away from military
rule and become a nation run by a civilian government.
Besides, the government has no proper way of integrating
rebel forces into the national army. Some of these forces are included in the
army conceptually but they remain under the command of their former rebel
leaders in exactly the same place they used to fight.
These forces therefore still maintain their allegiance to
their former rebel leaders instead of the national army leadership. To make it worse, these forces tend to be
overwhelmingly or completely uni-tribal.
Way Out
of the Current Crisis
It’s certain that peace will come back to South Sudan. It’s
a question of when not if. The warring parties shouldn’t
cultivate the thought that they are the ones who only have the interest of the
nation in heart or that they are not to blame.
Without question, both sides should accept their mistakes
and be practical about what they say. Civilians have to be protected and
peace-talks have to be taken seriously.
South Sudanese government under President Kiir should start
institutional reforms in readiness for peacetime and the way forward. Both
President Kiir and Riek Machar need to draft ways in which path to inter-tribal
truth and coexistence will be started and strengthened. South Sudan’s stability
rests solely on stability of tribal trust.
We should also know that South Sudan’s stability will also
be defined by the rethinking of Riek’s and Kiir’s political lives. Riek’s penchant
for fall back to exploitation of sensationalized tribal fanaticism is a
dirty mark on Riek capacity as a national leader. Without positioning himself
clearly as a national leader and a person who hasn’t or can’t exploit tribal
fanaticism, then the Addis Ababa talks will only be a respite in South Sudan
stability not a long-terms solution to the crisis.
President Kiir should rethink his policy making, his
governance policy, his speeches’ sensationalism and his role as the development
leader of the new country. Kiir has failed to show humility and leadership in
the last two years and this has brought us to the current crisis. It’d also be good to rethink presidential
powers, the national constitution and the clarity of SPLM rules and
regulations. Without any change in
President Kiir’s attitude and leadership style, then South Sudan would descend
into real tribal anarchy.
So in simple terms:
·
Formalize cease-fire with international
observers to stop the fighting· Agree that violent ascendency to power is unacceptable
· Agree that things shouldn’t be business as usual and that serious concessions will have to be made
· The two sides have to acknowledge the wrongs done
· Be serious about holding perpetrators of the crimes to account
· Draft serious and long-term inter-tribal trust-building
· Funds for civilians displaced or affected by war
· Encourage new leaders other than Kiir and Riek as their presence is a psychological reminder of the tragedy
Not only is South Sudan in a crisis as we speak, the future of the country is also a crisis waiting to happen. Tribonationalism is the feel-good sentiment among the youth and this makes a cohesive future South Sudan bleak. A tribally divided youth is a warning of an unthinkable future for South Sudan.
