Being non-partisan and being neutral: The tenuous distinction that frustrates many

I am non-partisan. I am not neutral. Many people find this strange, even frustrating. I don't blame them. Being non-partisan should be strange to people who don't understand it from a personalized perspective I will explain here. 

I am going to make a distinction between being neutral and being non-partisan. This distinction is going to sound like what philosophers call a distinction without a difference. But hear me out. 

This is important. 

For many people, being "non-partisan" is synonymous with being "neutral" when issues with serious moral implications are being discussed. For instance, a neutral person would not blame one party to the conflict without blaming the other party. To remain neutral, the neutral person or organization must find something to praise or criticize on both sides. 

For many people, this is prudent. It ensures the neutral person or organization maintains the neutrality status. We see this necessary official neutrality with the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), the African Union (AU), IGAD,  troika countries (Norway, USA and UK), for instance. 

In most of their press releases or press conferences, they consistently "urge all parties to the conflict" to either "show restraint", "protect civilians" or "implement the agreement." They avoid addressing one party at a time. Adopting this approach is maintained most of the time even when they know that only one party to the agreement or conflict is  to blame. 

That's the general understanding and approach to neutrality. 

But I think this approach and understanding can be problematic. It can make some parties minimize the societal impact of their mistakes. 

But this is the standard language and approach diplomats use. It is not meant to lead to a solution, necessarily. Its primary aim is to maintain a modicum of positive working relationship between sovereign states. There is a critical diplomatic point beyond which diplomats don't tread. Unless they do not hold the host country in high regard or they do not care about diplomatic any consequences. 

As we have seen regarding the involvement of the regional and international bodies in Sudan and South Sudan, the success of agreements does not depend on the mediators per se. Not really. It depends on the quality of the leaderships of the warring parties or peace partners. For instance, the comprehensive peace agreement (CPA) that was signed in 2005 between SPLM and NCP succeeded not because of IGAD and General Lazaro Sumbeiywo, necessarily. Its success depended very much on the leadership of John Garang of SPLA and Ustaz Ali Osman Taha. 

This is not to take away from the incredible work of General Sumbeiyo and IGAD. But their role, as we would witness with the Agreement on the resolution of conflict in South Sudan (ARCISS), could not produce the same results as the CPA because of lack of a serious leadership with which mediators could work. The friendly relationship developed by Dr. John Garang and Ustaz Taha could not be replicated by Dr. Riek Machar and President Salva Kiir.

The neutrality we witness among regional and international parties in South Sudan is a face-serving mechanism. It is not meant to find a solution. It is meant to ensure a peaceful working relationship that serves the interest of the diplomatic mission is maintained. 

To me, being non-partisan and being neutral are not the same. Being non-partisan means I am not beholden to stand by and defend what a given political entity or organization stands for. Political parties will defend their positions by emphasizing their achievements and downplaying their mistakes or failures. You will never find a political entity that focuses on their mistakes and airs them to the public. Even when a political party admits its mistakes and failures, it will ensure it puts a strong emphasis on their achievements in order to overshadow their failures. 

However, opposition political entities will only focus on the failures of other parties. They will either ignore or downplay the achievements of the party they are opposing. This is where I am different. And this is where I need to emphasize how being non-partisan and being neutral should be considered different by South Sudanese and others. 

Let me give an example from South Sudan. I do not have any political allegiance to SPLM-IG and SPLM-IO. And I don't have any principled opposition to them either. I criticize them wherever they make mistakes and praise them whether they do what in my opinion is good for the people of South Sudan. But I do not do what IGAD, Troika, UNMISS and others do. I don't criticize them equally to maintain neutrality. That flies on the face of social reality. 

When SPLM-IO commits atrocities against civilians, I criticize them without looking for ways to also criticize SPLM-IG in order to be considered "neutral". A neutral person or party either refrains from criticizing at all, or finds something to criticize in SPLM-IG before they make their criticism of SPLM-IO public. I don't do that. I criticize SPLM-IO without worrying about whether nor not they will consider me pro-SPLM-IG. I don't worry about being seen as having compromised neutrality.

I also criticize SPLM-IG when it makes mistakes or commit atrocities through the national army, SSPDF. I don't need to bring in SPLM-IO all the time unless SPLM-IO has also committed atrocities in the same conflict. I don't worry that SPLM-IG will characterize me as pro-SPLM-IO. In fact some do. But that doesn't worry me. 

So I can criticize one party at a time. I do not need to think about being neutral. My position is based on what is good or bad for the people of South Sudan and the world. I don't have to worry about what a given political or military party thinks. So I can also agree with SPLM-IO or SPLM-IG as long as I believe what they are saying or doing at that given time is good for the people of South Sudan. 

So when I agree with SPLM-IO's position, it is very easy for people to conflate that agreement with partisan allegiance. I have also seen that members of SPLM-IO have mistaken my agreement with them as my allegiance to SPLM-IO. SPLM-IG members and President Kiir supporters have also mistaken this agreement to be my support for SPLM-IO. 

No. I base my criticism or praise on what I believe is good for the people of South Sudan and other vulnerable people of the world. 

It is also important to note that being a critic of the government puts a person most of the time in the same column of critics with the opposition. A writer or a person engaged in any activist or journalistic work will try most of the time to hold the government or the incumbent leadership accountable more it holds the opposition accountable. This is because the government makes more consequential decisions than the opposition. 

The main difference is that the opposition will find it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to entertain the achievements of the party they oppose or the ruling party. They try as much as possible to find something to criticize or critique in the other party's achievements. It would defeat the purpose of being an opposition if they focus on what is good for the people if it goes against their party interest.

Parties do not prioritize people. They prioritize their political and ideological interest. But they use people as selling points and cover.

So when I say  "I am not partisan", I do not mean "I am neutral." I can spend a week criticizing one party without criticizing other parties if I believe the party I am criticizing is being more destructive to the people of South Sudan. This means I am not neutral in this case. But I am still non-partisan. That in itself does not mean I have joined the parties I have not criticized for a week. Time comes when I focus on their mistakes and praise the party I previously criticized.  Neutral people do not do that. 

So when I say "I am non-partisan" on my social media platforms or on #KuirthiyTV, this is what I mean. 

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Kuir ë Garang (PhD) is the editor of The Philosophical Refugee and the host of KuirthiyTV. 

The dangers of uncritical ethnic allegiance

 

Photo: Mercy Corps

By the Editor

In this address at the 39th Ordinary meeting of African heads of state, President Salva Kiir Mayardit of South Sudan pledged to restore peace to South Sudan.

This is going to be a tall order. The president has been making similar pledges for the last decade. Yet peace remains illusive for the people of South Sudan. What we witness today is the withdrawal into ethnic bases. This is putting civilians and the country at risk. Northern Jonglei State has become a battle ground. Civilians have been displaced, some killed.

But it all begins with the political elite.

But South Sudanese civilians have been caught up in the middle of a war with which they have nothing. Elite start their disagreement over power and political ambitions but then end up passing the suffering to the people. Elite don't suffer the consequences of their actions. They benefit from it. This is South Sudan.

Yet, the very people who are affected by elite selfish actions still stand by these elite. Why? In-group bias as a function of ethnic belonging. Civilians will support political leaders from ethnic group even when these leaders do absolutely nothing for the people. This is the case even when these leaders have in the past put them at risk.

South Sudanese elite therefore stir up the crisis knowing that they will bank on their ethnic basis as a default position. They don't have to say or do anything for their ethnic groups to support them. Political differences among the elite is therefore transformed wittily into an ethnic problem and then to a survivalist issue. "Support us or tribe X will exterminates you!" 

Peace will therefore remain illusive unless South Sudanese unite across ethnic lines. 

In my recent conversation with Dr. Gatluak Thach, two issues emerged. Signing another peace agreement with President Kiir will be tricky because the president has shown that he's not interested in respecting any agreement. On the other hand, war is also not an option. It leads to more suffering and death. It also allows President Kiir, who has turned the country into an authoritarian system, to re-entrench himself. 

Peace and war are therefore both difficult, though not impossible. 

But the most important solution is for the people of South Sudan to stare realizing that the problem is not the people themselves. Tribes are not the problem. Leaders using tribe to gain support are the problem. They should therefore start rejecting leaders who turn South Sudanese against each other.

Will Divine Guidance Rescue South Sudan from Turmoil?

Photo: Radio Tamazuj

There is nothing wrong with having a "national prayer" day. The problem with the government of South Sudan is that it has started to misappropriate religion for political ends. This is exactly what Khartoum's Islamic elite did with Islam. They misappropriated Islam as a political instrument for the subjugation of non-Muslims in Sudan.

Since Khartoum elite from the 1950s have used religion as a power instrument, South Sudanese have countered the imposition of Islam with what nearly borders on Christian fundamentalism. It was, in most cases, for a good reason. But it's now getting misused without any useful social value to the people of South Sudan.

The colonial regimes, with their colonial anthropology, the most compromised of disciplines as late Congolese philosopher V. Y. Mudimbe once argued, did not believe Africans had any religion on the same level with Islam and Christianity. Embracing both Christianity and Islam by South Sudanese was therefore a way to get global recognition.

 Being proselytized into Islam and Christianity was instrumental to South Sudanese and the religious regimes that converted them. It won them the support of western Christendom in the 1960s and the 1990s. 

Today, however, these foreign religions have become integral to the South Sudanese social and cultural fabric. They are no longer foreign religions. 

So when President Salva Kiir of South Sudanese recently called a National Prayer Breakfast, many South Sudanese appreciated it. However, there are many South Sudanese who took offense. Religion in South Sudan seems to have become an instrument for political and social blackmail. It has become a convenient tool the president uses to keep the hungry and destitute populace passive, zombified. 

For many South Sudanese, prayers cannot fix national issues. It will not pay salaries that have not been paid consistently for nearly two years now. Security situation has deteriorated, the economy is in taters, the agreement has been virtually abrogated, and the main signatory to the peace agreement (First Vice President Riek Machar) is undergoing an unnecessary court proceedings. 

These cannot be fixed by prayers. They need leadership from President Kiir. 

A national day of prayer could have been a day of forgiveness with President Kiir leading by example. But he does not. He prioritizes what serves him. He calls on South Sudanese to reject "tribalism, hatred" and embrace "reconciliation." 

However, opposition have noted that this day would have had a meaningful religious significance. Dut Majokdit, a senior political figure in SPLM-IO of Dr. Riek Machar noted that "For this country to realize national reconciliation, it must start from the top leadership." 

This is important. It is important for President Kiir to call South Sudanese to reconcile. But he must also start by reconciling with Dr. Riek Machar, his arch political enemy. 

Edmund Yakani, a prominent South Sudanese civil society leader, echoed Majokdit's words: "We wish the speech of the President could have broken the ground for real forgiveness and reconciliation."

Meaning the human, rather than the divine aspect of the national prayer has a greater chance of bringing stability to South Sudan. Divine guidance is useful only if leaders take initiative on behalf of the people. But when prayers are called only to engage in needless self-absolution, then religion becomes a convenient political tool. 

Reconciliation and forgiveness should not be something others do. It should also be a component of the South Sudanese governance structure. As French deconstructionist and post-modernist philosopher, Jacque Derrida, has noted, what we should give is not just the forgivable but also the unforgivable. 

It is not the divine that will fix South Sudan. It is the human design. 

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Kuir ë Garang (PhD) is the editor of The Philosophical Refugee. 

 

Youth Marginality and Marginalization: A conversation on the Crisis facing South Sudanese youth in Australia

Kuir  ë Garang (Editor)

 

Photo: Refugeeresearchonline.org

September 20, 2025

The following quotes are from my conversation with Dr. William Abur and Dr. Santino A. Deng. 

"You know, there's no any child that can be born as a bad child, for example. No, a child can be a difficult child...based on where the child is raised, based on the environment, based on the family situation, based on the school, based on the community, what the children do. So now with this current climate of the technology, some of the parents don't even know what the kids are doing as Dr. Santino mentioned it before. They can be in a room and the parents are happy. saying, well, my children are inside, they are not out. But they don't know what they are doing, who are the people that they are engaged with. And that is a bigger issue within a number of families. The conversations also don't break through. You know, the relationship between the young person and the parent, when that relationship is broken, it is hard for the parent to be able to play their role.

 The other burden that the parent are facing, most of the parent are struggling with work and the life generally. So they don't have enough time where they can be able to engage with their kid and especially with a teenager to be able to find out how they are going, you know, what is happening. Because it is important, we human being, need check-in. We need check-in to be...

 For example, children, those teenagers or younger children, they need check-in, you know, someone to come and have a conversation with them and say, hey, how did you go at school? How was the day? How did you go at work? How was your day? Those kind of check-in are very important. Psychologically, they are very useful. And this is where you find out that, okay, the person may be open up to talk about, you know, there was incident that happened at school.

 Or there was this that happened that made me upset. That is lacking that conversation. The basic check in. I would say the parent need to step up to be able to do just a simple check in a simple evaluation to check in your kit. Even though they are inside, you need to be able to knock knock at the door and come in and say hey, how is your day? How are you going?"  ~ Dr. William Abur.

 

~ Dr. William Abur.

"I think when we talk of parents, there are a lot that they can do and I am mindful and I understand that some parents might be struggling with other things, language barriers among others and the web, juggling web and so on. And sometimes being maybe some single mothers is really struggling with, you know, with the primary parenting support and trying to put the put on the table as well. But there are a lot that they can do. I have done some work a few years ago, maybe about seven years ago here in one of the school. And I was asked to do some work with a kind of the children that go to school, young people themselves and teachers in school so that I can get their perspective.

 It was one of the schools that was getting overwhelmed and have never been exposed into diversity before. And what came out of that report that I did was a lot of young people were saying, some of the things that I was mentioning earlier, saying that most of the time when they have issues at a school, they report to the teachers, most of the time they're getting ignored, even sometimes.

they get blamed for being the victim. so what happens sometimes they may end up fighting, taking law into their own hand because nobody is actually responding to their complaint and they become more victim and get expelled. Sometimes they get discouraged and told, you can't do this subject. Actually, William know very well that they work in some school here, maybe told that, this is too hard for you, you can't do it.

 Some parents proved some of their teachers wrong and said, I have to do it or go into another school and actually succeed. Some young people, may give in, but support become very crucial. I came across some example where young people were supported by their parents and some relatives and they actually succeed in so many ways. So what they told me was young people in particular."  ~ Dr. Santino A. Deng

                                                          ~ Dr. Santino A. Deng

 

Most immigrant communities face a host of challenges when they settle in a new countries. This is a historical problem. Meaning South Sudanese in Australia are not the only immigrant and refugee group to be in such a situation. South Sudanese in Canada have faced, and continue to experience,  similar problems among the youth. 

These problems, which Dr. William and Dr. Santino have addressed, include the following: 

1. Being neglected by teachers and school administrators
2. Being faulted when they are not at fault
3. Stereotypes and prejudgments
4. Racist treatment by the police
5. Overrepresentation in the criminal justice system
6. Cultural disconnect between home culture and host culture
7. Lack of appropriate, community role models
8. Lack of parental attention due to pressure from work and life
9. Misconstrual of what it means to be an Australia, Canadian or American
10. Incentivization from gangs and criminal to run criminal errands

Youth workers and scholars who study youth issues are familiar with these issues. They are characterized by overt and subtle issues of social marginalization and institutional neglect. 

On Sunday, I had a conversation with two South Sudanese Australian researchers as the beginning of what I think will be a protracted conversation. 

I wanted to unpack these problems from the perspective of researchers and from the Australian context. These researchers are Dr. William Abur, a lecturer at the University of Melbourne and Dr. Santino A. Deng, a researcher working for the government of Victoria, Australia. 

I asked them to lay out the issues within the Australian context, and to propose possible expert solutions. 

The following is our conversation.

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Kuir  ë Garang (PhD) is the editor of TPR. Follow me on X: @kuirthiy Instagram: @Kuirthiy

Dr. Jok Madut and Dr. Aldo Ajou say Bol Mel is not President Kiir’s heir apparent

 

Dr. Jok Madut (left), Dr. Bol Mel (middle) and Dr. Aldo Ajou Deng (right)

The social media statements by Dr. Jok Madut and Dr. Uncle Aldo Ajou are confusing. I think they will have to explain the following to South Sudanese.

Dr. Jok said that what is being discussed about Bol Mel is based on assumptions and hatred of the man. He also said that Bol Mel has not expressed any desire to replace Kiir. And that Kiir has not said he's preparing Bol Mel to replace him. I will give Dr. Jok the benefit of the doubt because he shared these views on social media where most of us are not always serious and measured when sharing our views.  

I have come to know Dr. Jok as far more sophisticated and self-aware than the status being referenced reveals.

Here is my dilemma. I’m not sure if Jok is saying that for us to accept the argument that Bol Mel regards himself as the heir apparent to President Kiir then he must say explicitly, "I want to replace President Kiir!"?

I will wait for Dr. Jok to explain himself. Bol Mel will have to be a complete dodo to say publicly he will replace President Kiir!

No!

Bol Mel has shown a meticulous ruthlessness, a systematicity of a miskiin sekin! The English calls such a person a silent killer.

Also, there is never a case where politicians are clear about their intentions. Facts and politicians are like Trump and Truth, water and oil!

Since Bol Mel was decreed in, he's been like Kiir's right-hand man. He stood beside President Kiir when the man from Kampala came to South Sudan. He was the one sent to Ethiopia to smooth things over with the New Flower [Addis Ababa] after J1 prioritized the man from Kampala over Dr. Abiy Ahmed of Ethiopia.

When he was appointed VP, Bol verbally, explicitly targeted Riek Machar, a member of the presidency. He also asked Madam Nyandeeng not to abandon Kiir! I'm not sure what he meant by that! He also mentioned that he would get involved in security issues. We must ask ourselves why?

Now, Riek is in detention and Upper Nile and Jonglei are conflagrations. That Bol Mel may be Kiir's successor is more of a presumption than an assumption. Enter Bol Mel as VP and boom! there is money for salary! This is what late Steve Jobs called connecting "the dots moving backwards."

How about Uncle Dr. Aldo?

He said Kiir cannot just make Bol Mel his successor, arguing that SPLM has succession structures. He's kidding, right?

Is it not the same Kiir who embarrassed Kuol Manyang, imposed Peter Lam Both and then tossed him, demoted Wani Igga to Secretary General and then made Bol Mel one of the deputy chairs of the SPLM? Did anyone in the SPLM make a whimpering sound?

Note this. If the president goes abroad for state visits, article 1.6 section 1.6.4 of the Revitalized Peace Agreement says that the first vice president becomes the acting president on a temporary basis. When both the president and the first vice president are absent, the president appoint one of the four vice presidents as acting president.  

Since Riek is now in detention, let’s see who President Kiir would appoint as acting president. Vice President Nyandeeng? Vice President Josephine Lagu? Vice president Taban Deng Gai?

We will see…

Note that section 1.6.5 says that if the president is mentally or physically incapacitated then the next president will be selected by the party of the president. Dr. Riek cannot become president through the revitalized agreement of 2018. Perhaps Uncle Doctor has a point here. If SPLM leaders are no longer afraid of Kiir then they may ignore his wishes and pretend SPLM has structures to respect.

But Kiir is, we are told, not physically and mentally incapacitated now. When it comes to succession, please don’t try Kiir! Try Kiir...just try...!

So Uncle Aldo is saying Kiir will, somehow, respect rules, laws and regulations when it comes to who is to succeed him? Come on Uncle Doctor! Has anyone ever defied Kiir? Pagan, Nyandeeng and Riek did! Where are they now? Madam Nyandeeng is protected by the ghost and the liberation aura of John Garang. She became VP through G [X] not through Kiir’s SPLM.

Uncle Doctor also said that we cannot blame Bol Mel for the corruption inherent in awarding contracts. Bol Mel is just a businessman, he said. Is this an implicit endorsement of corruption?

So Bol Mel is our VP but we should not hold him legally and morally accountable? Is that what we are now supposed to expect from our public officials? "Blame the government! I knew there was corruption but what did you expect me to do?"

Folks, Bol Mel is a public figure, for better or for worse. Allow us to unpack his public life! He comes with violence and money…and the slick, efficient smoothness of a high-end gigolo!


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

A tribe called SPLA masquerading as South Sudanese

First Vice President Riek Machar and President Salva Kiir Mayardit

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I know President Kiir, most of the time, says the RIGHT thing but does the WRONG thing. While he can incite tribalism sometimes, he tends to sound like a leader once in a while. Check his Independence Day speech. At times he says the right thing to the people of South Sudan.

His actions, however, are most of the time contrary to what could be called leadership.

But credit where due. His call for calm is the right thing at the moment. I have been saying this over the last two decades: that President Kiir should always come out and address the country anytime there is a national tragedy and speak to the people of South Sudan.

There is something calming about words from the head of state. Leadership is a psycho-social reality.

Honorable Michael Makuei, the Minister of Information and the government spokesperson, calms no one down. Well, maybe a few South Sudanese find his condescending press statements calming. South Sudan is a country bereft of leadership. 

He talks with a princely I-will-say-what-I-want-so-what-the-hell-will-you-do-about-it attitude.

On the other hand, folks from Sudan People Liberation Movement In Opposition (SPLM-IO), that is, their spokespeople, talk like there is a gun to their heads. But they have this impotent, annoying, self-righteous attitude like they own THE truth. Like Truth=IO! They make me want to...forget it!

What South Sudanese do not have are leaders who speak on their behalf, leaders who care about South Sudan and her peoples.

But note that Uncle Makuei is neither Jieeng (Dinka) nor is he South Sudanese. He is from a tribe called the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA). This tribe has different clans. The largest two clans are "In-Government" and "In-Opposition."  Bɛny (1) Kiir are Kuär (2) Riek are their tribal chiefs, respectively. 

SPLA is a tribe that lives in the past. The future scares it. It is a tribe that does not apologize. It considers humility a defeat. It does not entertain criticism. Criticism is disrespectful to this tribe. It considers itself infallible. These people do not take responsibility for their actions.

They only like to point their crooked fingers.

But it is a tribe that is internally divided. SPLA as tribal people have used division to recruit two clueless colonies: Jieeng and Nuer. SPLA has so mentally colonized these two nations that they believe that members of SPLA are their fellow tribesfolk.

But President Kiir, once in a while, acts like a true South Sudanese, not a colonialist. He abandons the egregious, insidious values of his SPLA tribefolk every now and then.

Today, he acted like members of his colony: South Sudanese. But you can see in the same speech that his SPLA tribal attitude jumps out of him once in a while: He points fingers at "enemy of peace", who are, strangely, his SPLA folks and the folks SPLA has mentally colonized.

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Kuir ë Garang (PhD) is the editor of The Philosophical Refugee. 

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Notes

1. Bɛny is a Jieeng word for a leader

2. Kuär is a Nuer word for a leaders.

How long will African youth endure a silent indignity?

Photo: Festo Lang/CNN

The youth in Africa, which is by far the continent with the youngest population, 70% being under 30 years, are like exploitable things used by political leaders to decorate themselves. This is not always a palatable adornment. They are either their political muscles, conduits for their ethnicized polemics, or cheerleaders of their stayist agenda. 

I see this on many South Sudanese fora and social media platforms. 

But African youth are listening, watching...peacefully. Demoralized and devalued as they are, they are still the future. And they know it.

As such, African leaders should not be too complacent. Pre-empting any hints of protests with massive military deployments is also not the way to go. Shutting down youth meetings for fear of these meetings morphing into anti-government movements is not also the way to go. 

The youth may not liberate themselves by picking up guns and flee to the bush. But they know the power of the social media and its importance in galvanized THE STREETS. 

In South Sudan, the youth is unemployed and their parents go for months, even years, without being paid. Protesting, the most democratic means for the expression of grievance, is dangerous, even fatal. The youth of South Sudan and their parents suffering in a silent indignity. 

But the youth in Africa, even in South Sudan, are a sleeping giant. Kenya has shown African leaders that they are no longer willing to be tools for the exploitation of the people and the mouths for the spread of divisive ideas. 

They want improvements in their political culture, their economies and political leadership. It is that simple.

African leaders take the youth for granted. Kenya and Nigeria have now seen the consequence of ageist arrogance. They must appreciate what the youth are doing to change their countries for better. Not all Gen Zs have been zombified and stupefied by Instagram and Tik Tok as some politicians like to believe.

Listen to them. The appropriate responses is change in policies not guns and tanks. 

Here is the importance of the protests. Instead of fleeing their countries out of frustration to die in the Mediterranean see like thousands of African youth who continue to defy the deathly Sahara and what some commenters have called the new middle passage, protesting African youth have decided to challenge the historical amnesia of their political class. 

Africans leaders cannot have it both ways. They cannot ignore the ones dying on their way to Europe and expect the ones who have remained at home to be quiet about what made those youth brave death. 

The youth do no like to protest. They like a better living standard. 

It would be foolhardy for African leaders to mock them. Museveni, stuck in the past, as as entitled and blinded by power as former US president, Donald Trump, seems to assume he is going to live forever. 

He uses the police and the army to intimidate the youth and opposition figures. But how long will that last? The army and the police will one day realize that they work for the people. And the emperor will be seen for what he is: Naked!

In South Sudan, the political class is reading from Museveni's authoritarian book. Any time there is a mustering about protests, the army floods the streets with tanks and armored cars. Yes, armored tanks. The South Sudanese army is not used to protect civilians. It is used to intimidate. 

But how long will the youth of South Sudan suffer in dehumanizing silence? How long will South Sudanese leaders rely on divisive politics to prevent youth from reminding the political class that the future is the youth not men and women in their 60s, 70s and 80s acting like they still have the next fifty years to rule?

Since 2005, the political class in South Sudan transitioned from liberation-mindedness to power politics. In power politics, priorities are about parties and individuals. The future of the country becomes secondary if it is at all part of political conversation. 

Between 2005 and 2011, the ruling party, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), failed to transition into a conventional political party. Leaders could not agree on succession. 

They kept on postponing conventions,  normalizing postponement. The consequence was the war in 2013. The culture of postponement has now becomes part of the peace agreement. The elections also seem to be heading that way. 

Meanwhile, the country is falling apart. Salaries have not been paid for months. A recent report by the Associated Press shows that civil servants are leaving their jobs for menial work. Some have resorted to waitressing while others have become charcoal salesmen. 

But the president either does not care or he has no idea what he is doing. Between 2020 and 2024, South Sudan has had six finance ministers. 

Until recently, the president kept the public guessing about the reason for which he fires finance ministers, some of whom lasting for less than a year. Apparently, he is looking for the right person. The South Sudanese finance ministry has become a matter of trial and error. 

The president may have not realized that the reason why institutions vet candidates is to avoid aimless and error. Vetting and interviews are meant to find the most qualified or the most appropriate Candidate for the job. 

A recent selection of a running mate by the presumptive Democratic President Candidate, Kamala Harris, is an example. Harris vetted qualified candidates and settled for Minnesota Governor, Tim Walz. Harris believed Walz is the best Candidate for the kind of the presidency she hope to run should she win in November.

President Kiir needs to learn this. Vetting candidates based on experience, past achievements, education, and fit removes the needs to hire candidates blindly. The president can even outsource the vetting process to ensure a company with experience hiring qualified candidate does the vetting. 

But we know that doing so may lead to the hiring of someone who is good for the job but bad for those who have captured the state governing apparatuses. So for the president to say he is looking for the person to fix the economic when he is not exercising the judgement required to find one is dishonest. 

Today, the president and the ruling class are comfortable. But they should note that the youth are watching what is happening in Kenya and Nigeria. The African Spring is afoot. 

South Sudanese leaders should not be complacent. The youth are peaceful. But they are not mentally dead.

INSPIRING SOUTH SUDANESE

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Kuir ë Garang (PhD) is the editor of The Philosophical Refugee. Follow on X: @kuirthiy. 

See my recent scholarly publication:

An Afrocentric analysis of colorism: Looking at beauty and attractiveness through African eyes. In R. E. Hall & N. Mishra (Eds.), Routledge International Handbook of Colorism: Bigotry Beyond Borders (pp. 175-194). Routledge.

Is SPLM-IO Becoming Politically Irrelevant?

Left: President Kiir; Right: VP, Dr. Riek Machar

By Kuir ë Garang

What I have noticed about Dr. Riek Machar is that he believes if he sticks to the truth and facts, then things will work out well. For some strange reasons, he has internalized this morally necessary but politically unpalatable reality. For a politician, this is odd, and very much so. He has been pushing this narrative now for well over a decade, that the world would side with him because he says the truth and President Kiir does not. But as he very well knows, truth in politics is a casualty of political schemes, interests and hypocrisies.

This does not mean there is no such a thing as truth or that truth does not matter. The issue is this: Truth, yes; but cui bono, who benefits?

Since August 17, 2015, when President Kiir and Dr. Riek Machar signed the agreement for the resolution of conflict in South Sudan (ARCISS) and then revitalized it on September 12, 2018, Dr. Riek Machar labored under the bewildering assumption that President Kiir will implement the agreement as stipulated in all its provisions. He also believes that if President Kiir does not implement the agreement, then peace partners and mediators will force him to ensure that all the provisions of the agreement are implemented.

This is a strange state of mind in politics, especially in countries Stuart Hall has described as complexly structured societies. I can say South Sudan is one of them.

President Kiir has shown time and again that he is either not interested in implementing the agreement or he does not know how to implement the agreement. This is a warranted presumption. Why Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-in-Opposition (SPLM-IO) still believes that President Kiir will change and implement the agreement is beyond me.

SPLM-IO has no political leverage. They only believe that truth and facts are on their side and that regional leaders will see who is at fault. But Kiir is the president so how regional leaders approach him is not as a subordinate or someone they can force to accept their punitive dictates.

This is something SPLM-IO must understand. Hear this again: They cannot, and will not, force Kiir’s hand! He is their colleague even when they at times act condescendingly toward him. IGAD leaders tried threatening Kiir like an infant in 2015. We know what happened.

If President Kiir must change, then that condition of change must be a political leverage Dr. Riek and SPLM-IO develop, either within the region or within the country. The agreement itself is not a leverage, but SPLM-IO believes it is.  The case of the Tumaini Initiative is a good example. It shows they neither have political leverage nor are they taken seriously in the region.

Running to mediators and regional leaders regularly to share grievances and the contravention of the agreement by President Kiir will only prove to Kiir that you are politically impotent and potentially becoming irrelevant. When regional leaders share Riek’s grievances with Kiir as casual advisories among colleagues, then any chance of Kiir taking you seriously dwindles with time.

Mediators and regional leaders can only urge the parties to the agreement to work toward the implementation of the agreement. That is all they can do. The people of South Sudan suffer when the agreements are not implemented; but President Kiir does not. He suffers no disincentive when he runs SPLM and ARCISS through the mud. As a frustrated former Ethiopian Prime minister, Hailemariam Desalegn, once said about the South Sudanese peace talks in Addis Ababa in 2015, the peace process had become meta-talks, talks about talks, not talks about peace.

SPLM-IO and Dr. Riek must find a way, through their own internal political mechanics, to force President Kiir to implement the agreement. No one outside Juba will do that. When President Kiir removed the minister of defense, Angelina Teny, on March 3, 2023, all SPLM-IO could do was share their displeasure and disenchantment with his actions. That was all.

It is time to realize that SPLM-IO political relevance in South Sudan should no longer be through the revitalized peace agreement. It must grow as a political entity. This is time for a political make-over. Even when we all know SPLM-IO is not necessarily on the wrong about ARCISS, and we know that facts and truth are on their side, being doggedly fixated on R-ARCISS is a dangerous political naivete. SPLM-IO’s long-term relevance should be through an institutionalized, coherent platform as a political party. That is the future, and that is the future of South Sudan. If Riek has no political leverage against Kiir, and facts to this date show he does not, and if regional leaders only convey advisories to Kiir, then it is time for Riek to change course. Political and strategic monotony is a sure path to political oblivion.

SPLM risk becoming, or it has already become, politically irrelevant. Unless of course being in government and occupying functionless, but fat government positions is how SPLM-IO wants to remain politically relevant in perpetuity.

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Kuir ë Garang (PhD), is the editor of The Philosophical Refugee. Twitter/X: @kuirthiy

 

SPLM's predatory elitism and the red army’s betrayed generational mission in South Sudan

 Published on Friday, May 17, 2024. 

Photos: WHAS11; City Reviews

'Garang also reiterated the importance of education to the red army as future leaders in his speech to Sudanese refugees in Itang Refugee Camp (also in Western Ethiopia) in 1988. Garang told civilians that Southern and Western Sudanese were excluded from power in Khartoum because they are said to be uneducated. “Why are they not educated?” he asked. He added that “this is why we have built schools for the red army because they are the future generation. No one will say in the future that they are not educated.”'

 

As we yet again commemorate another May 16th, I think about the future of South Sudan through these three generational groups: The SPLA generation, the red army generation, and the youth (as conventionally defined by the United Nations and the African Union). 

When I read in Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth that “Each generation must out of relative obscurity discover its mission, fulfil it, or betray it”, I wonder about the youth in South Sudan and my generation (the red army generation). With the current political and economic situation in South Sudan, the red army generation seems to have betrayed its generational mission.

But is this generation to blame? First, what is this generation and why it is important?

The red army generation, called the lost boys of Sudan in the United States where some of them resettled as refugees in early 2000s, were born in the late 1970s and the early 1980s. To the Southern rebels (1983-2005)—the Sudan’s People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA)—the red army generation was to furnish Sudan with disciplined, educated post-liberation leaders.

Of course, SPLA recruited some of these boys as combat infantry in the 1990s. These older boys, called Jesh el-assuot (black army) informally because they were of fighting age according to the SPLA, were hardly adults as conventionally defined. It is however important to note that the SPLA leadership believed in the education of this generation. With all their short-comings, which are very well documented, SPLA  leaders did not blindly use them all as child soldiers. The future was a haunting presence.

While the use of child soldiers must be condemned, and rightly so, it is important to understand the cultural and the survivalist context in which SPLA recruited and inducted them as child soldiers. This cultural dimension, while not necessarily acceptable per se, must be factored into any analysis of South Sudanese liberation history and all its complex dimensions. It cannot be ignored, or oversimplified, if the present status of the youth and the red army generation in South Sudan is to be properly contextualized.

The SPLA senior leadership also understood that a revolutionary agenda without any strategic plan for the young generation is foolhardy. Speaking in 1988 to Jesh el-amer (the red army) in Pinyudo Refugee Camp in Western Ethiopia, John Garang de Mabior, the co-founder of SPLM/SPLA and its ideological architect, said that the duty of the red army generation is “to re-build the country.”  Garang added that “my responsibility and the responsibility of my generation will be to dismantle Old Sudan…we will raze it to the ground.”

Garang also reiterated the importance of education to the red army as future leaders in his speech to Sudanese refugees in Itang Refugee Camp (also in Western Ethiopia) in 1988. Garang told the civilians that Southern and Western Sudanese were excluded from power in Khartoum because they are said to be uneducated. “Why are they not educated?” he asked. He added that “this is why we have built schools for the red army because they are the future generation. No one will say in the future that they are not educated.”

The importance of education for the red army is also underscored by the decision by the SPLA to send about 600 young men and women to Cuba in the mid-1980s for education. Another important educational program encouraged by the SPLA leadership to educate the red army generation produced scholars of Face Foundation of Polotaka, Eastern Equatoria.

Additionally, in refugee camps (Itang, Pinyudo, Dima, Kakuma, etc) where the red army settled, SPLA appointed leaders to supervise them. They emphasized the importance of education to aid agencies providing relief services in these camps. On a personal note, I completed elementary and high school in Kakuma Refugee Camp due to SPLM’s emphasis on education. It is with this emphasis on education that a prominent SPLA commander, after talking to my mother in 1995 in Mangalatore Displace Camp, accepted to take me to Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya. Schools in Mangalatore were poor. Because of the itinerant nature of internally displaced persons, I found it difficult to benefit from constantly interrupted schooling.

DR.  JOHN GARANG DE MABIOR ON LEADERSHIP, SERVICE PROVISION, AND ACCOUNTABILITY

With this emphasis on education and the red army as future leaders, why then are the youth and the red army generation marginalized in South Sudan?

The obvious answer is what SPLM leaders have become. Instead of building an inclusive economy and democracy, or allowing the red army generation to play that role, SPLM has built a self-enrichment kleptocracy where a coterie of powerful political and military elites siphon state resources to foreign banks. Within this system, the youth is seduced into it or marginalized. This predatory “gun class”, as South Sudanese scholar an former minister Majak D’Agoot calls them, has become callously parasitic on state resources.  So the conditions in which the youth and the red army generation could fulfil their generational mission, in state-building for instance, are non-existent.

As D’Agoot has noted, “SPLA has morphed into a degenerative gun-toting aristocracy that straddles the sociocultural, political, and economic spheres like a colossus.” This has enabled a predatory elitism, an elite-centred economic system of reciprocity. They have made it the political and economic culture in the country. The youth and the red army generation joins them because it pays. Others join this predatory elite on ethno-centric basis. The generational mission has become an inconvenience or a threat to personal safety.

To stop the gun class from money-laundering, the United States sent Sigal Mandelker, the Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, to Kenya and Uganda, which have become money-laundering hubs for South Sudanese gun class. After Mandelker’s visit, money laundering continues. State-building and service provision have been abandoned.  

Instead of being allowed to fulfil their generational mission, the youth and the red army generation face arbitrary arrests, tortures at national security secret locations, and the unexplained disappearances. Frustrations has also caused self-destructive decisions for this generation. The rebellion and subsequent assassination by the South Sudanese army of businessman and philanthropist, Kerubino Wol, and the arrest by the FBI of Dr. Peter Biar Ajak, resulted from these generational frustrations. It is the attempt by the youth and the red army generation to fulfil their generational missions that puts them in trouble with the South Sudanese national security.

Those in positions of power are appointed through nepotistic arrangements or through political cronyisms. They are mere tokens without real power. For instance, the deputy governor of Jonglei State, Atong Kuol Manyang, is the daughter of a powerful former SPLA commander, Kuol Manyang Juuk. Kuol is also a senior advisor to President Kiir. The deputy Mayor of the city of Juba, Thiik Thiik Mayardit, is the nephew of President Salva Kiir.

The governor of Jonglei State, Mr. Denay Jock Chagor, the national minister of health, Ms. Yolanda Awel Deng Juach, and the national minister of petroleum, Mr. Kang Chol, are among the red army generation who were appointed through the revitalized agreement for the resolution of the conflict in South Sudan (R-ARCISS) signed by SPLM-In-Government and SPLM-In-Opposition in 2018. SPLM leaders find it nearly impossible to appoint the youth and the red army generation into positions of power on merit.

Co-opted South Sudanese youth and the red army generation must therefore reject SPLM’s predatory elitism however solvent. Otherwise, corrupt, and self-centred leaders in their 60s, 70s, and 80s will continue to be the past, the present, and the future of the country.  

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Dr. Kuir ë Garang is the editor of TPR.