Is the South Sudanese state turning South Sudan into a slave labor camp?

 


Photo Courtesy: Office of the President of South Sudan
January 3, 2025

It is good to be optimistic. It helps you focused to confront adversities in life. There is nothing wrong with that attitude when you are self-motivating. 

But when a president tells citizens to be optimistic without giving them reasonable political or economic plans to be hopeful, he risks trivializing their pain and desperation. 

This is what President Kiir of South Sudan has done in his recent New Year's message. 



South Sudanese have gone for months without salaries. Instead of apologizing to the people of South Sudan, or tell them how the nonpayment of salaries will be addressed in the new year, the president thanked South Sudanese for their patience, resilience, patriotism, and submission. 

Asking South Sudanese to be optimistic when the president presented no tangible agenda for the resolution of what has become a chronic problem in the country is to insult the people of South Sudan. 

Asking South Sudanese to work for free for more than a year, and expecting them to continue on waiting patiently, is risky. It borders on creating a slave labor nation, as someone has noticed.

Admitting economic problems as the president did in his new year's message on December 31, 2024 is reasonable. 

But it is not followed by a plan. President Kiir only asks South Sudanese to embrace uncertainty in perpetuity. A diseased, hungry, flooded, unsafe, and despondent populace cannot build a country. And it can by no means turn into a state-building human resource. 

South Sudanese are exhausted. They have been taken advantage of by South Sudanese leaders under President Kiir and the SPLM. 

The people of South Sudan need more than pastoral inspirations. The youth of South Sudan need programs that would allow them to see and embrace a brighter future the president invokes without a plan. 

The president only invokes a brighter future like a traditional seer or a  false Christian prophet. 

Reminding South Sudanese of the challenges they already live through is to be oblivious of the living conditions of the people. It is self-absolution. 

President Kiir is a political leader. He is not a priest taking confessionals from his congregation. 

He should deal in facts, figures and strategic plans. 

Statements such as "the government will prioritize" or "I am...directing that the Ministry of Agriculture double its effort" are vacuous personal directives. 


The president should speak forcefully in terms of government's plans not personal directives. He should own failures not deflect them or speak in terms of collective mistakes. He is the president. 

When one reads the tone and the messaging in the president's speeches and addresses, he speaks like a middle-management executive who takes orders from the CEO. 

 


That "We in government of today must do our best" or "We must ensure..." are not reassuring. They are abdications of responsibility to the people of South Sudan.

If there are economic challenges, and indeed there are, then what is the government's strategy to resolve the problem? Not mere personal directives. Tangible, documented strategies. This is missing. 

Asking South Sudanese to continue to work for free is a risky affair. It borders on slave labor. 

This must stop!

_________________

Kuir ë Garang (PhD), is the editor of the Philosophical Refugee (TPR)

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