The Ministry of Tribal Affairs (MTA) and Ethnic Differences in South Sudan

I have written about the creation of this ministry somewhere , but I will go into it in more detail. It is, I think, a feasible suggestion. But you’re welcome to disagree and discourse with me rationally. Ethnic groups, or to use the dreaded anthropological term, ‘tribe’, are the basic sociopolitical units in South Sudan. This makes them the center around which the South Sudanese society operates. Unfortunately, some South Sudanese have bought into the failed Western idea that tribes can be wished away, and our societies live in a de-tribalized environment. This is an extremely dangerous myth. It makes us overlook the problems engendered by tribal affiliations and belonging and wish for a utopian world where ethnic groups do not exist; a cosmopolitan world of Kwame Anthony Appiah where our universal similarities are overplayed and our ethnic differences downplayed. But as Walter Rodney, in his classic, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa , has noted, ethnic differences are not the