WHO'S ACTUALLY BEING GOVERNED IN SOUTH SUDAN?

There are many South Sudanese who talk of 'public opinion' or 'popular view'; but how do you gauge that such a view is actually an unsolicited opinion which people hold without fear of retribution? In a nation where holding a contrary opinion is considered a national security threat, it's dishonest to say that there's such a thing as a public opinion because the available 'public opinion' is conditioned into existence by the vicious political class. Those who oppose some of the government's ridiculous, aimless decrees and actions on civilians, have either been silenced, killed or threatened quotidian.

This leads me to this unsavory question: In whose interest the government of South Sudan governs? Admittedly, the government isn't governing in the interest of the people and we still wonder why there's so much inter-tribal hatred and rampant rebellion. When will SPLM and the government actually listen to the people? Apparently, never!

In June and August of 2012, the SPLM and government of South Sudan carried out a study (survey) to gauge 'public opinion'. It was no surprise that, while the people were somehow hopeful about the future, they were categorically dissatisfied with how SPLM was running the country. This should have been a wake-up call for the SPLM leadership to start listening to the people.

SPLM ignored this honest and valuable 'voice of the people.' The 2011-2013 South Sudan Development Plan was also a good development document that could have addressed all the grassroots grievances. Again, it was ignored!

There's nowhere in the world where people can rise up against a government, which listens to the people and addresses their concern.

Are Nuer, who support SPLM-IO, fighting the government because they love to fight? Are folks in Equatoria fighting the government because they love to kill people? Are Shilluk fighting the government because they love to kill president Kiir's tribesmen? The answer is obviously NO!

These people are fighting because of the failure of the government to address their grievance. SPLM, coming from a militarized governance mentality, feels that force is the appropriate manner in which such grievances should be addressed. Another flawless method is to appease some people by offering jobs without actually addressing the underlying causes of the problem.

Molding opinion by coercion or appeasement is dangerous in the long run.

Rebellion, insecurity and inter-tribal feuds will continue in South Sudan unless the government actually talks to the people and addresses their grievances in an honest and comprehensive manner. For instance, a fact-finding mission to the Fertit would find out their grievances and then the government can work closely with them to come up with a method to address their grievances for the long-term. Offering their leaders jobs without actually making sure that the people are 'happy' with the fashioned solution is a myopic leadership fancy.

Conditioning people to sing government praises in Juba doesn't get rid of the actual sentiment people hold. You can militarily force people to surrender but you can't militarily force them to like, with emotive honesty, a government that's oppressing them. If there are things that make it hard for the government to perform some duties then it needs to be honest with the people so that people don't assume things.

Juba is not the only South Sudan and the residents of Juba are not the only population of South Sudan. The zombified (knowingly or unknowingly) people of Juba can't be used to gauge the actual 'public opinion'. South Sudanese have fled to Sudan, Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda; and some are living in displaced camps inside South Sudan. Yet, some of us have the audacity to say that there's an overwhelming, positive public opinion of the government!

GET UP! WALK THE COUNTRYSIDE AND TALK TO THE PEOPLE! Without that, we'll be in a perpetual state of war, insecurity and inter-tribal bloodbath! LISTEN TO THE PEOPLE! This is our only way out!

Creating More States is to Avoid Solving Problems

Slicing up South Sudan into more administrative boundaries [states] is to avoid solving the problem. obviously, additional states are not a solution to governance problems and service provision in South Sudan. Additional states don't increase human power and resources nor do they solve the security problems. From the look of things, things will continue in the same trajectory as this euphoric but false sense of satisfaction from the creation of more states gives people a false sense of hope and security.

The leadership in South Sudan has developed a knack for postponing problems rather than solving them. The internal problems within SPLM resulted from the failure of leaders to tackle things head on. SPLM meetings were postponed in the hope that the problem will magically disappear. The August 2015 peace agreement, the Agreement for the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan (ARCISS), was a postponement of the politico-military problems.

Now, the waves of decreemania that's resulting in the creation of more states in South Sudan is a postponement of conflicts and problems in South Sudan. It gives people false feelings that the leadership is solving their problems.

Not only does the creation of more states compartmentalize some tribes and further exacerbate  tribal divisiveness, it also creates more administrative units with no governance and administrative infrastructure needed for service provision. And since these states are created without prior fact-finding missions to first assess and deal comprehensively with communal border issues, the states have added to fatal divisiveness.

A false sense of hope is more dangerous than hopelessness. This is the case in South Sudan. A populace that comes to  the realization that their government wouldn't do anything for them would resort to self-sufficient methods, however difficult. However, a population that's given a false sense of hope that government decrees will solve their problems will remain in destitution and helpless for a long time.

When will South Sudanese leaders realize that creation of more states is a problem postponed? Essentially, some South Sudanese governors operate remotely; far away from the people they are supposedly governing. As one government critic said, this is to bring problems rather than towns to people. Some administrative headquarters are mere mud huts villages.

The federal government also has no strategic and national method of dealing with inter and intra-tribal problems, most of which fatal. However, the South Sudanese government continues to further divide the country administratively as if the current division isn't enough. South Sudan's tribes need to be brought together not divided administratively. We would have thousands of countries in the world if people were given what they want in terms of self-governance.

Making people temporarily 'happy' isn't the same thing as building a healthy future for them.

The colonial [British] idea of creating ethnically-based administrative units in South Sudan was meant to make it easy for the colonial authorities, most of whom not well funded, to control the 'natives.' There was nothing positive about colonial tribal areas. Ethnic districts made it easy for colonial authorities to turn tribes against one another and therefore make them governable through division.

The 'No Man's Land' that was created by the British officials between the Jieeng and Nuer in Upper Nile, which separated Nyarweng and Hol Dinkas from Lou Nuer and Garweer exacerbated the problem rather than solve it. While Europeans nations were trying to bridge their differences and avoid wars through treaties, British officials denied South Sudanese tribes that chance. They rather separate them than help them see ways of mutual interest.

South Sudan has enough problems as it is so it's needless to create more problems while solutions to them are postponed.