South Sudan needs peace, reconciliation and healing - NOw

Photo: South Sudan Eagle Media

South Sudanese have not known peace. They've only known war. This is almost becoming the national culture. When they are not suffering from deadly, internecine ethnic feuds, then they are suffering from state brutalization or neglect.

Even the period after the 1972 Addis Ababa Peace Agreement, which was supposed to be peaceful, was not entirely so. The elite, instead of taking advantage of the relative autonomy in the interest of the people, they turned the regional government into a theatre of mindless elitism (see Elijah Malok's book) and ethnicized politics. Service provision became secondary.

Today, the government of the day has a chance. It has all the trappings of a conventional government, at least structurally speaking. Functionally, that is a different conversation.

But there is no denying that we are way passed the failed state stage. We are in an anarchic stage. There is no order. The massacre of Nuer civilians in Ayod, Northern Jonglei by the lawless, undisciplined SSPDF (who seem to have turned the national army into, largely, an ethnic army), the recent massacre of over 200 Jieeng civilians in Ruweng Administrative Area by armed Nuer youth from Unity State, and the recent inter-ethnic massacre of civilians in Terekeka in Central Equatoria, are examples of such anarchy.

Something must change!

A recent warning by Hon. Pagan Amum of Real-SPLM of the risk of genocide is tragically coming true. Things should not continue this way.

But there is no government in place, really. There is even no one in power. The recent categorization by Hon. Lual Dau of United People's Alliance of the four competing, anti-people centers of power is one illustration of such political anomie and lack of a genuine, people-centered power center. These power centers are all rent seekers, red in the face with graft and corruption!

What we have is power struggle. It's chaotic. But things look orderly and calm from the elite's perspective. Their photo-ops with foreign dignitaries give them the impression they are successful leaders engaged in state-building.

The powers that be in South Sudan are not affected. Their families are safe. They get money through informal, neo-patrimonial channels of clientelism. The recent mass of arrests wasn't an anti-corruption and anti-graft campaign. It was clientelism betrayed within the graft brotherhood and sisterhood. No honor among thieves, they say!

The majority is suffering. South Sudanese are slaves in their own country, worked for free by their own leaders. Liberators!

What South Sudan needs now is not needless ethnic divisiveness. What we need is a serious leadership to accept PEACE unconditionally; and then launch a HEALING and RECONCILIATION agenda.

We need a people-centered leadership who can travel the country, even at the risk of their lives, to reconcile the people.

South Sudan is a failed state, par excellence. It is now risking a total self-destruction as ethnic groups have no law and order structure and relations.

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

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). 

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!

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Kuir ë Garang is the editor of the TPR.