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

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  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
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The policy to train midwives from all genders is to reduce the prevalent maternal mortality rates in South Sudan

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By Pal Chol Nyan* "Having male midwives was not there in Sudan because they had enough  workforce  in the health sector in contrast to South Sudan. The male midwives are guided by professional ethics including confidentiality, among others, which appeared to one of the complainants that the male midwives will not adhere to what they got trained for." I read a funny story on Radio Tamazuj website that the people of Aweil  and Rumbek are against mothers being delivered by male midwives. They cited two reasons: That the male midwives will develop a loss of libido ( sex drive), and  that it is against their cultures and norms. This means that it is a social taboo for another man to see the private parts of women who are not theirs.  They might be right, as it were, if their concerns are taken in the context of traditional cultural practices. In conventional scientific  and medical practice, that perception has become outdated, obsolete  so it remains a superstition that has no p
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In South Sudan one day...

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By Yien Wil Mayuak Nyoch*   "We will let our intellectuals know that being educated is not about sitting idly at tea shops or being appointed to a certain political position, but it is about putting the skills one learns at school to practice. We will let them know that the value of education is the use of what is learned at school for the development of the society ." Current road conditions in South Sudan  We (the patriotic citizens) will challenge our corrupt politicians by ceasing hotel accommodations and proving to them that spending money in hotels cannot take us anywhere. We will tell them that sending their children abroad for a better education instead of establishing a better education system in the country can only make South Sudan a benefactor of other countries with about 80% of the country’s budget spent in foreign countries. The country will be democratized where a nyone will respect the law and no one will be above the law. The power will be decentralized in
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The dissonance between what leaders say and what they do (Part I)

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  President Kiir and FVP Riek Machar. Photo: TRR World   By Kuir  ë Garang (Editor) One of the main problems with African leaders, and South Sudanese leaders in particular, is the dissonance between what they say and what they do.  Anyone paying a close attention to their public speeches would agree with me that there is value and truth in what they say when it comes to the people. But the value and truth in their statements remain where they utter them: at the podium .  Since he was sworn in as the First Vice President of Sudan and the President of the autonomous Southern Sudan on August 11, 200 5, President Salva Kiir has been speaking up against corruption. He even reminded the leadership of the SPLM about the reasons for which they took up arms to fight for the freedom of South Sudanese people.   The president, however, has not put down any preventative modalities that can ensure that corruption is either eliminated or mitigated. Fighting corrupting and building South Sudan have
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Is it not time for the people to drive SPLM into the sea?

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By Kuir  ë  Garang* "If the SPLA cannot deliver anything and we just shout ‘REVOLUTION! and the cattle of the people are not vaccinated; their children are not vaccinated; there is nothing to eat; there are no basic necessities of life; no clothes in the market; no needle, no razer blade…the barest minimum of things are not available…then the people will drive us into the sea. Even if there is no sea here, they will find a sea to drive us to." ~   Dr. John Garang de Mabior, 1990 SPLM as a political party has failed in what it pledged to offer the people of South Sudan. This is not from me but from SPLM leaders themselves as they laid out their failures and leadership indifference on December 6 th , 2013 .   This was reiterated by SPLM’s former secretary General, Pagan Amum, on SBS Dinka Radio on November 19 th , 2014. That SPLM has failed is something on which we can all agree. The logical consequence of that admission would then be the formulation of the way forward. Unfor
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Child Soldiers' Recruitment and Trafficking Persist in South Sudan Despite Commitment To Action Plans

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 By BANDAK LUL " The report indicates that in 2019, the government of South Sudan put in place a policy or pattern of employing or recruiting child soldiers, which government security and law enforcement officers continued to recruit and use child soldiers, at times by force, and did not hold any members of the South Sudan People’s Defense Forces (SSPDF) or South Sudan National Police Service (SSNPS) criminally accountable for these unlawful acts."   Photo courtesy of Author's Facebook account In June 2020, the United States Department of State released the 20th edition of the  Trafficking in Persons Report , which annually develops a ranking system that divides countries into 3 tiers based on governments’ efforts to fight human trafficking. In the Tier 3 category, countries not fully meeting or making significant efforts to meet the U.S. Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000’s (TVPA) minimum standards risk restrictions and the loss of U.S. civilian aid worth tens
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