Editorial: The Year Ahead: How seriously prepared are south leaders for independence of south Sudan?

Dec. 20, 2009

QUOTE: “A Movement without a vision is a Movement that has no moral foundation,” Nelson Mandela.

After all the exuberance and exhilaration that followed the latest ‘developments’ on the hitherto irresolvable items of the CPA between the peace partners, i.e. Northern jellaba NCP and the southern SPLM, serious doubts still linger among many in the South on how well prepared is the SPLM on the fulfillment of the independence dream for the south.

As it is now apparently certain and assured that the much anticipated and much delayed 2011 Southern Referendum Bill and the other Bills on Abyei and on Popular Consultations will be finally passed in the Sudan Parliament, the worry is how ready the leadership in the South is to consummate that goal.

Absolutely, at whatsoever cost, paid for already or to be paid for, the South will secede and must become independent, whether somewhat ‘smoothly and constitutionally’ through the conduct of the acclaimed 2011 Referendum for Self-Determination (RSD) or alternately, by being propelled into making a unilateral declaration of independence (UDI), which definitely will be chaotic and violent.

Regardless of whatever alternative taken, it is imperatively incumbent that long before that momentous time arrives, the leaders in the south, and especially President Kiir Mayardit, need to envision and visualize what kind of nation we want.

They also must sort out and solve the obstacles and impediments that stand on our way ahead, and finally, to propagate diligently in preparing our nation for the eventuality.

This Year, 2010, is the most pivotal period in our march to the Promised Land. It’ll be fully impregnated with the most crucial items that required their total implementation, beginning with the projected elections.

However, there are certain pertinent issues that must necessarily be tackled by the leadership in the south as it prepares the nation on the road to independence.

Security: As clearly spelled in the latest ICG Report, “the government of south Sudan must recognize the primarily local nature of the conflicts, extend state authority and prove itself a credible provider of security lest violence become an obstacle on the road to self-determination and beyond.”

Irrefutably, the problem is within the south. Kiir’s leadership has had the most appalling record of tolerating and sometimes, wittingly or unwittingly, of abetting the deadly recurrences of insecurity across the south by its compromised incompetence and tribal self-interests.

Unless the Kiir’s junta seriously and resolutely arrests the tribal violence and hegemonic perpetuation of belligerency and aggression, the South vulnerability and susceptibility to Arab wicked manipulation of certain tribes will exacerbate.

Consequently, proxy wars will flare up to thwart our independence march.

Significantly also, the SPLM, as the dominant policy-decider today in the south, must frankly resolve the unknown fate and status of the millions of South Sudanese citizens now trapped in the prevailing unknown political calculus by the Arab North.

Whereas the Arab North leadership has abundantly reiterated that in the event the south secedes, those south Sudanese citizens in the north automatically become ‘stateless,’ the SPLM has irresponsibly equivocated deliberating on this critical issue till now.

Moreover, in a fatal twist to exacerbate their predicament, the SPLM wanted to exclude these south citizens from any vote because they suspect that these entrapped southerners will be susceptible to pressure and manipulation during the vote.

Indeed, even though SPLM omnipotence as the pre-ordained rulers of the south is uncontestable, the Kiir leadership is morbidly obsessed with a mortal paranoia of failure.

They aren’t sure if they can trust these south Sudanese citizens to vote favorably for them in the elections or in the 2011 RSD.

Should the south secede in 2011 or earlier, and should these south citizens not be repatriated back then to the homeland, it will be utterly unforgivable on the SPLM and Mr. Salva Kiir Mayardit, if our people become victims of genocide in the ensuing political disintegration of Sudan.

Secession, historically, has never been a peaceful process as shown in other past antecedents, e.g. East and West Pakistan, in the aborted Biafra or the Balkans.

Inevitably, millions needlessly lost their lives in retaliation and revenge exacted on the forcedly ejected populations, like those south citizens in the north.

Deferred Post-Referendum Issues: Within this one year before the Referendum 2011, the south and its leadership must be brave enough to confront and engage the jellaba Arab North on the remaining issues and not keep procrastinating any longer.

The south must start to talk on the Border Demarcation, the future of the oil wells in the geographical south, the portion of foreign debt owed by the south, education, scholarships and even anthropological and historical cooperation or non-existence, for that matter.

Fortunately, the south has been providentially endowed with natural and human resources, including an abundance of land and water, that, if only we had or will hopefully have in the post-independence period, a good-performing leadership to fully and properly utilize these for up-lifting our people out of the current era of using stone for grinding our food, we shall never regret our choice of secession.

Furthermore, in the last five years of the post-CPA rule of President Kiir, almost a disproportionate one-third of the south budget has been supposedly spent on the army, the SPLA, ostensibly, to prepare them as a modern army to guarantee our independence against any Arab North obfuscation.

Let’s sincerely hope the money wasn’t wasted on a poorly performing SPLA.

Admittedly and in all frankness, the SPLM, which has had a stranglehold on the south, has been running a calamitous system of government that is synonymous to a legal form of corruption and a failed statehood.

While undeniably encouraging blatant cronyism and debilitating political patronage from the top to the bottom, the SPLM destructively discouraged free thinking, initiative and entrepreneurship and of course, development.

Envisioning a new South Sudan nation must also entail our leaders drafting a new constitution in the expected new political dispensation of a fully democratic south in the post-referendum period.

Hitherto, the current Interim South Sudan Constitution (ISSC) isn’t totally representative or workable in an independent south, especially since this constitution itself was mechanically drafted by a non-elected, insipid and innocuous assembly that wanted only to ensure SPLM longevity, impunity and misrule.

In addition, this constitution was too accommodative and too compromising in perpetually engendering our physical and psychological co-habitation with and enslavement to the jellaba Arab North.

While reinvigorating our vision of an independent south Sudan, the SPLM and all interested parties must rediscover and consolidate our moral foundation for a defined statehood that we shall eagerly look forward to and patriotically embrace as other peoples have done.

Of particular interest, is the sad reality that while the common southerner is looking forward to separation from the North, many top SPLM ministers in both north and south, and party leaders have invested their illicitly acquired monies in the Khartoum.

This is morally reprehensible and a bad faith from our supposed leaders who should be the first to demonstrate by good example.

Will they vote for unity to save their investments? This is what Mandela means having no moral foundation.

Anyway, without any regrets, we never loved or liked the Sudan of al Bashir, el Mahdi, Nimeri and Abboud, that we are walking very soon away from.

In the end, as GOSS President, Salva Kiir Mayardit, himself said, “The only hope of South Sudan is the 2011 Referendum to determine their destiny.”

Again, as Mr. Kiir Mayardit publicly pronounced last July while touring for the first time the Abyei and Southern Khordufan areas, “if secession of South Sudan will bring peace in Sudan, it’s better we let them go for the Referendum and we see what they will do.” 

Precisely, this remaining year, 2010, should allow us to see what we can do as we go for the Referendum.

Let’s hope GOSS and the SPLM/A allow the elections to go smoothly and then we prepare to fulfill our cherished aspiration to reach the Promised Land

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Editorial: A Divided South Sudan, its confused leaders and the uncertain future

Quote: Dr. Garang on separation: “Even if southerners want to secede, I can assure you that nobody will in this country give them the chance to take such a step. In brief, secession is not in our objectives and we, in the SPLM, will fight any idea or actions aimed at dismembering the Sudan,” FEB. 17, 2005

JUL 5/2009: With barely less than two years to the climatic 2011 Referendum when we southerners supposedly will vote either to secede or continue in ‘slavery’ as a united Sudan, the current leaders and people of south Sudan remain pathetically divided and clearly confused about their future.

Indeed, even at this eleventh hour of our destiny, we the southerners, but more specifically, our irresponsible leaders, are recklessly cruising through an ominous Black hole of political uncertainties.

Yes, it is very true that currently we are deeply divided on our most important singular objective which is the actualization of the independence of the south as the fundamental desire of the majority for which they dearly shed their precious blood.

But, despite Garang’s fatal and fateful subversion of our inalienable aspiration for the convoluted modalities of the New Sudan ideology, those progeny of Garang that rule the south today continue their mechanical prevarication between secession and unity.

Arguably, even though the CPA stipulated that both SPLM and Jellaba NCP should strive to make the Unity option primarily attractive for southerners so that they aren’t swayed to vote for secession, our leaders should be responsive and sensitive to the will of the people they lead.

Afterall, in nearly five years of the post-CPA period, the Arab North hasn't provision to us the minimal prerequisites to consummate or attract us to this illusory unity.

Equally culpable, even the southern leaders headed by Kiir have abysmally disappointed our people by denying to them the peace dividends envisioned in the CPA, thereby exacerbating the peoples’ disgruntlement and disillusion with the SPLM and GOSS.

However, what is important is that our southern leaders must be more concerned about the future objectives rather than trying to resuscitate the past doctrines that were expounded to satisfy Garang’s megalomaniacal grandiosity.

Absolutely, time has come for southern President Kiir to cease confusing himself on the intricately incomprehensible modalities passed on by Garang to the SPLM.

Yes, at this critically late hour of our march to the 2011 Referendum on Self Determination, the least the people of south want are leaders still wavering and muting on the issue of secession, as Kiir has been lately regurgitating during his tour of the marginalized areas.

Should the people of the south overwhelmingly vote for secession, those leaders not wholly secessionist, can’t be allowed to take charge.

Today, the south is being incontrovertibly misruled by Kiir because he was obviously least prepared for or groomed to be the leader.

Our disunity and confusion as southerners is exasperatingly compounded by the presence of a multitude of political parties with various ambitions and divergent views, all claiming to represent the south.

Obviously, unless there is consensual concurrence by this cornucopia of southern parties on our singular objective, it is highly unlikely that we shall attain the actualization of our inalienable right to independence.

It’s therefore imperative that the Kiir’s SPLM respond to the popular demand of the Kenana Leaders and other concerned southern leaders for a dialogue to strategically discourse all the outstanding problems crucial to the unification of our common interests.

For instance, one problem the Kiir’s SPLM has naively eschewed for reasons best known to them but which was tactfully advanced by the Arab NCP is the discussion of post-Referendum division of assets should the south vote for secession.

Procastinating any discussion on such crucial issues is utterly injudicious as we should be positive on attaining our goal.

That’s what always complicates everything in the south and Kiir must confront these now than later, as he already messed up with the census and elections.

Southerners are palpably bamboozled why it was easier for Kiir to meet the Jellaba Arab political leaders like Siddiq el Mahdi and Mirghani while averting to meet his own southern ‘brothers’ be they the Kenana leadership, Dr. Lam or others?

These leaders have serious points of concern directly pertinent to our commonality as one people.

The experience of 1991 and the latest splinter of Dr. Lam Akol and his ever mushrooming SPLM-DC at the expense of the so-called Kiir’s SPLM should vividly remind us that bigoted intransigence and tribal arrogance don’t bode well for the future of the south Sudan nation.

Yes, due to President Kiir’s own impuissance, deadly insecurity is everywhere in the South and this is one vital issue that southern leaders want to be urgently addressed together with Kiir before we go for the elections.

According to the UNMIS coordinator in South Sudan, the prevalence of violence ‘is the result of local conflicts and the lack of rooted state institutions as well as the absence of infrastructures.”

That simply means that in most parts of the south, even including the Capital, Juba, there is no rule of law, no police to enforce the law, no courts to prosecute and no prisons for the convicted.

All the above have nothing to do with the Jellaba north, asserts Mr. David Gressly.

Just like the inability of the compromised, toothless, money-eating Anti-Corruption Commission or the Governor of Bank of South Sudan, all seemingly appearing to be colluding with habitual tribal highway robbers in SPLM/A and GOSS leaders to loot the south.

Ludicrously, Kiir is just shedding crocodile tears after his government’s belated objections to the Census and the electoral procedures and yet, in spite of his public charade, he’s benignly letting himself being dragged into the unknown.

We southerners are all stakeholders in the South Sudan nation.

It’s time for all the political leaders purportedly representing the southern people to confer and ally with one another before the start of and during the elections, and reach also some consensus on those outstanding and yet unresolved problems.

The lessons learned from ‘Kokora’ should emphatically resonate among our leaders and remind them of the fragility of our presumed oneness and also of our vulnerability to self-destruct as a people, especially if others still think that they have the propensity of being ‘born to (mis) rule.’

We southerners should not give any room to leaders who are waverers on the issue of secession nor to opportunistic leaders who are sitting on the fence and expecting to be accorded, yet again, the highest chair on either side of the country whatever the outcome of the referendum.

Our destiny and future must be certain and unambiguous.

An independent south Sudan will be properly actualized only by die-hard separatists who have the vision of managing a sovereign South Sudan Nation.

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