South Sudanese students' violence in Rwanda: An update

 

Photo courtesy: The New Times

January 4, 2025 

Since I posted the video commentary about the Rwandan incident, several things have become clear. Both the Rwandan police and the South Sudanese Student leadership in Rwanda have noted that the violent incident that was wrongly attributed to South Sudanese students has, if anything, to do with South Sudanese.

As the president of South Sudanese Students Association in Rwanda, Saleh Mohammed Adam, has said in his interview with Juba-based Eye Radio, “the incident happened on the 27^th of December, so we actually have seen the footage, and I told them clearly when we tried to view the footage …and in the actual truth we found out these people who fought Rwandans…are not South Sudanese.”

He added, “I have called one of the police who was in the investigation process of the incident [and] he told me I was right. They said the issue has been already solved so it was just misinformation and misidentification.”

This is why it is crucial that we wait to hear all the facts surrounding the incident before we respond as to who is at fault. Both Rwandans and South Sudanese automatically assumed that South Sudanese are to blame. They attributed violence, a natural fact of every society, to be a natural propensity of South Sudanese as people.

While the South Sudanese leadership did not respond to the incident, the Rwandan authorities did.  The Rwandan police and the ministry of foreign affairs did not buy into the narrative that South Sudanese are naturally violent. Rwandan authorities have shown a sense of leadership South Sudan’s foreign ministry has not.

Boniface Rutikanga, the spokesperson for the Rwandan national police, cautioned the public against using social media as the source of facts and truth.

 “People should not be worried about what is going on over the social media but should learn to understand that the fact not always comes from the social media” [sic].

Advising against targeting South Sudanese, Mr. Rutikanga said that the incident is a normal event that can happen between any communities living in Rwanda or among Rwandan themselves.

“What happened” he added, “was just a case that could happened to any another community. It is normal. It could happen between Rwandans among themselves or could have happened between one community and another” [sic].

Mr. Rutikanga assured the public that neither South Sudanese nor other foreign nationals living in Rwanda have violently targeted Rwandans.

 “…there is nothing special that would be called that South Sudanese were targeting Rwandans or certain foreign group targeting Rwandans. There were no premeditation of doing that, so let me just assure people that there is nothing problematic.”

Responding to the hateful vitriol directed at South Sudanese by Rwandans on the social media, The New Times warned on January 1, 2025, against current and historical dangers of othering. that “Young [Rwandan] people should be taught about the dangers of otherness, especially prejudicial and stereotypical. It starts off as just that, but the cost is too high. Crimes committed should be reported to the right institutions and dealt with legally.”

The New Times added that “Inciting hate against a specific people has no place in Rwanda today or tomorrow. Our hospitality should reflect the remarkably diverse society we have built over the years.”

The New Times was echoing what the Rwandan Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Olivier Nduhungihere, posted on X on December 30, 2024, about Rwandan values of unity, rule of law and respect for diversity of the people living in Rwanda.  

These remarks underscore what I said in the video; that, at the time, we did not know what happened. I said that we should wait for the police to do the investigation to find out what really happened.

I also, as a cautionary reminder, showed a video of South Sudanese being maligned in the Australian media. Some of the videos shown in Australia as South Sudanese youth engaging in acts of violence turned out to be non-South Sudanese.

 As it turns out, the Australian case is similar to the Rwandan incident as facts start to come out. It is pent-up hatred meant to tarnish South Sudanese.

It is therefore vital that we wait for facts before we share our opinions in spaces that do not have editorial oversights. X, formerly known as Twitter, is a sociopolitical wild west.

While it is prudent that we respond to reports when they arise, it is also crucial that we show restraint and avoid self-denigrations.

I am not, of course, saying that South Sudanese do not engage in acts of violence in Australia or in East Africa. I only suggest that we blame South Sudanese when they make mistakes. As South Sudanese, we should not join self-blame and denigration before we get all the facts.

We have started to see ourselves through the prisms of those who have no respect for us.

___

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

 

 

South Sudanese Facebook and Tik Tok: The good, the bad, and the ugly

Kuir ë Garang*

Photo: 2ser.com 

The social media is, as the English would say, a double-edge sword. For South Sudanese living abroad, Facebook Live and Tik Tok—the two most important avenues of our social media discourse—have become an-everyday reality. Intrusive but necessary, they have become an uncomfortable feature of our cultural and social landscape.

I’m intentionally ignoring Twitter. It’s the abode of pretenders, who think they are better, elites, intellectuals…! They think they are better than Facebookers. They say proudly, ‘I’m not on Facebook!’ That’s a topic for another day.

Facebook and Tik Tok make us laugh, sad, angry, confused, or indifferent. We use them to promote cultural events or fundraisers. We also use them to vent with uncharacteristic bitterness, expose people’s secrets (the post-relationship and post-friendship exposés), or declare enmity.

They are confusing. We complain about them, but we can’t stop watching them, or using them.

But we must admit some things. They are a moral problem and a good. Meaning, we can’t wish them away. Since the good doesn’t need to be fixed, it is the bad that we must address. That is true. In Logical Investigations, Edmund Husserl tells us that Truth is ‘eternal’. It’s not bound by time or a place. (You’re free to dispute this!)

If you use this social media duo [Tik Tok and Facebook] to spread positive social, cultural, and political messages, then kudos. Continue! We need you. That’s true. That’s eternal.

But here is the problem we must address. Insults.

We must address them not for what they mean to the community. That is easy. Any idiot in our community knows that Facebook Live and Tik Tok insults are moral harms and social wrongs. No reasonable person, even the foul-mouthed Facebooker, would say public insults on Facebook are a moral good.

What we must address as a community is the underlying problem, the unspoken. We tend to focus on the fact that so and so insults so and so. The question we must ask ourselves is: Why would a reasonable personal go live, his/her children in the house, and open a verbal artillery of the unspeakable? It’s not the visible that is the problem; it’s the invisible.

What happened to rɔ̈ɔ̈c ë guɔu (shame) and riëëu de rɔ (self-respect)? Why are people saying anything and everything that comes to mind publicly? There must be something deeper, something Freudian about the public insults. Why do the young men and women who vent publicly in the most grotesque of ways on social media believe this is the panacea? Of course, insults make us feel good.

Remember when we were kids and a certain son and daughter of a certain man beat you up. You’re weak and cannot compete so you use your mouth. After thirty seconds of hurling the most filth you can imagine on that son of a gun, you feel amazing! Sigh. But then you run! Run!

Of course, folks who unleash their smutty tirade know public insults are not the panacea for their problems. No matter the amount of vitriol they unleash on their targets, the problems will remain.

But then they feel good! Well, before their friends and relatives call to ask them to refrain.

But their insults play two roles. It gives them a chance to say: ‘I’m not the problem.’ For women, it also gives them the chance to speak. To use Spivak’s expression, women in our traditional communities are the subalterns who don’t speak.

A good wife (tik| tiŋ pieth/tiŋ nɔŋ piɔ̈u) or a good girl (nyaan pieth/nyaan nɔŋ piɔ̈u) doesn’t speak about her marital problems. A young South Sudanese female doctor recently said that women have been freed from the constraints of our tradition. They can no longer afford to be the non-speaking good girls or good wives, she argued. They’ve found a voice.

That sounds good. Worrying but understandable.

I must add something though. Since I’m not a medical professional, I’ll ask our health professionals some questions.

Is there a mental health, trauma element to this?

There is normal venting or speaking out your truth. But then there is scotch-earth, full-blown, leaving-nothing-to-the-imagination paroxysm. Is there something we can do as a community to help people vent respectfully? How can we validate venters, especially women, without normalizing harmful Facebook videos?

What our people don’t realize is this. Venting on the social media, however deceptively privately or reasonable it appears, is like going to the shopping mall full of people and screaming one’s frustration standing on top of a table on the food court. Imagine that. Imagine it for a moment. You may say it is not the same; but it is.

Like it or not, the social media is here to stay. All we must do is to minimize its harm and maximize its usefulness. But if we don’t go to the roots of the problem that make people vent publicly without any ounce of retrain, then we shouldn’t complain about any filth on Tik Tok and Facebook.

The great danger to public venting is this: They are social harms that make some people heard, and self-validating. ‘I will not be ignored!’ is the message.

South Sudanese community ‘leaders’ and health professionals, this is your challenge. The likes of Kuirthiy can only write!

 ______________

Kuir ë Garang is the editor of the TPR.