Twi Leaders, History Distortion and its Implication for South Sudan (Part I)

photo: ilovehistory.utah.gov

What would you do to leaders who want to benefit politically by sacrificing the truth about their own ethnic history? How would you call leaders who advise young people to forget about their history because it’s inconveniencing the falsehood and the political cocoon they’ve built for their selfish interests? How would you trust leaders who can’t unite their own counties but dream of being national leaders in South Sudan? Where in the world does an adult tell young, enthusiastic, truth-seeking people to never, ever talk about their own history? Would you trust a leader who tells his own kids to not be proud of their authentic history and embrace a vilifying, demeaning reality? Too many questions, I know!

Unfortunately, this is exactly what Twi leaders of Jonglei state tell their young people and the less informed populace.

Writers read to authenticate or defend what they write! As I continue to grow, read and discover realities about myself and where I come from, I continue to get appalled at how distorted my own history has become and how leaders from my own county (Twi) are sleeping on the truth in order to protect their interests. If these leaders are decided on destroying our history for their interests, then I’ll expose them to South Sudanese in order to protect my daughter from an impending future in which people pride in falsehood because it’s beneficial. She’ll grow up knowing the value of truth and respect for others.

Destroy our history and we’ll destroy you! Mess with our history and you’re messing with my daughter’s authentic pride and sense of self. And that, my people, is what Europeans and Arabs did to us! Who can allow that AGAIN?!

Some Arabs and the Europeans distorted our sense of pride and historical truth. Why would I want my own leaders to do the same?

Historically, we’ve always been the Twi Dinka, Nyarweng Dinka, Bor Dinka, Hol Dinka, Rek Dinka, Aliap Dinka, Thoi Dinka, Rut Dinka, Twic Dinka, Agar Dinka, Malwal Dinka, Ciec Dinka…etc. That was beautiful not divisive!

Administrative realities have distorted everything so many people refer collectively to Twi, Nyarweng, Hol and Bor as Dinka Bor. How can Bor be a subset of itself?

So Moulana Abel Alier and Dr. John Garang De Mabior are considered to both be Dinka Bor; or Kuol Manyang and Majak D’Agoot are all considered to be Dinka Bor. Dr. Majak and Dr. John are Twi Dinka while Honourable Kuol Manyang and Moulana Abel Alier are Bor Dinka. This was true in the past and is now true; however, politics and personal interests have distorted it. It’s therefore high time someone who has nothing to lose but to point out the truth speaks up. As a writer who does research, there’s no way in hell I can disregard documented history that correlate the words of our ancestors. I owe it to my daughter and the future generation.  (See the attached list of readings for more information!)

The Twi people

The Twi Section of the Jieeng of Jonglei State is currently housed by ‘Twic East County.’ Regrettably, these people have been shuttled between different administrative districts from the colonial period to the present to the point that their ethnic reality has been distorted by their own leaders and the outsiders that are feeding on what these leaders present. Of notable districts that the Twi people have been part of are the former ‘Bor District’ since the early 20^th century and the former ‘Kongor District’ from the 1970s until the SPLA war.

The Bor District was named after the Bor people, the now inhabitants of the ‘Bor County.’ Kongor District was named after one section of the Twi Dinka. The use of the name of a given section within the larger community has created problems. Naming the District of Twi, Kongor created many problems as other Twi sections didn’t want their district named after one of their fellow sections of Twi. However, Kongor was also a government post named after the section of Kongor so the administrators were naming the district after the town; which unfortunately was the name of one section of the Twi. It’s good to remember that the Kongor section never referred to the whole of the Twi people as ‘Dinka Kongor.’

The ‘Federal System’ in South Sudan is not the solution

Photo: http://apgopohannahbrown.blogspot.ca/

Since SPLM-in-Opposition declared their preference for constitutional Federal System in South Sudan, there’s been a lot of heated debate by South Sudanese in the government, in the opposition, in the media and on the street. Understandably, the discussion pits those who support it against those who don’t support it.

While I don’t have any problem with the Federal System per se, I don’t believe it’s going to solve any of our problems now and in the future. It’s true that we need a complete overhaul of our political governance and social systems in South Sudan; however, we need to understand that for any systemic transparency to work, the leadership’s attitude, the citizen-citizen relations and the general understanding of power structure, have to change. As long as the leadership’s attitude and its perception of power and the country remain the same, it doesn’t matter what system we institute in South Sudan, we’ll always remain in a mess.

Unless we have both a good system and good people in leadership, things will remain the same: bad. A good system and a bad leadership or a good leadership and a bad system are all the same: bad!

We need to understand also that a Federal System will not auto-create. The constitutional provisions that will create and inform it will still need the cooperation of all the stakeholders in the country.  It wouldn’t be a mere importation of foreign Federal Systems such as the one in Nigeria, Ethiopia, Canada, USA or any other federated governance system in the world. There has to be internal, idiosyncratic realities to be put into account.

Since power in South Sudan is concentrated in the hand of one man, the opposition see the Federal System as another way to clip the presidential powers.

However, I personally don’t think a Federal System is what we need now. All we need is a well-informed, broad-based and structured decentralization of power. What we have now is actually a form of a Federal System (even if it’s not constitutionally stated as such) as we have state parliaments and governments. It’s therefore important that state governments be given greater and functional autonomy.

This means that ministries such as Education, Agriculture, and law enforcement sectors should be given to the states. Besides, there should be no presidential and national government’s interference in running the affairs of the states; such as the removal of the governors by the president or the president being consulted by the governor on the appointment of state ministers.

State constitutions should have constitutional clauses or provisions on how to remove or replace the governors. Since governors are elected officials, they need to be removed in the same democratic manner by the state parliament as stipulated in the state constitution. And more importantly, there has to be a very well-regulated economic leeway for the states to create their own functional economic systems, internally and externally; nationally and internationally.