There
are three main socio-political monstrosities impeding progress in South Sudan.
But they are not difficult to fix. They don't cost money. They only need a
leadership that is not afraid to offend colleagues and relatives. A leadership
that has principles on which it compromises only if doing so advances the
interests of the citizens of South Sudan.
The first monstrosity is our identitarianism marked by acute, self-righteous, ethnocentric sentimentalism. It is now clear, to all of us (however much some of us may pretend) in (and from) South Sudan that most of us will support politicians from our home areas or those with whom we have consanguineous relations regardless of the enormity of their immoral acts. We celebrate them even if they are murderous, unprincipled graft entrepreneurs.
Corruptocrats, as I call them!
The second monstrosity is the desire to join the elite and climb the socioeconomic ladder in South Sudan. It is an invidious motivation that turns one away from care of citizens to naked bourgeois interests. Rigid, pure, materialist quest for money and power. In this context, corruption and cronyism have become instrumental tools in our fetishization of Kiir's monarchial, Medievalist decrees. This is what South Sudan has become.
The third monstrosity is political relevance. This is at the heart of the political anomie in South Sudan. Many politicians (and young wannabe-politicians) will go to extreme lengths to remain politically relevant. Young folks in South Sudan join political parties not for ideological reasons or on principle, but for relevance, simpliciter. In the process, South Sudanese civilians either become pawns in this quest for political relevance, or they become virtually irrelevant, nonexistent.
As long as these three monstrosities are not addressed, South Sudanese will continue to suffer under the self-serving interest of the political class that has turned South Sudan into an extractive colony.
Tumaini Initiation
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Kuir ë Garang (PhD) is the editor of The Philosophical Refugee.
