This paper will focus in three main significant areas in which our country found herself in a crossroad and at the river bank where a famous mythical story of two predators (the lion & the crocodile) were involved in unknown competition tearing & pulling apart their prey (buffalo) in different direction with each of them believing that it will get away with a big portion for themselves based on each of them strengths and capabilities.
Before I even go farther to mention about the main downfall of this highest magnitude of crisis, let me remind all of us that we know where we came from and where we are at the moment, but do we really know where we are heading to? This is a common and rhetoric question which each and every proud and patriotic citizen (young /elder) has to ask himself/herself wherever he/she might be on the continent of African and beyond. Have we identified and admits that there are existing problems in the first place in our beloved country? What do we do to get rid of the problems? Why should we even address the problems? When is it right to do so and where?
With the above questions in our minds we will all be in a position to find everlasting solutions to the challenges that are facing the country called South Sudan.
Our current affairs revealed more about many scenarios that happened in many other countries immediately after their independence from their former colonial masters, for instance, let me take this opportunity to highlight the thematic events revealed in the book written by “John Ruganda” which I read during my high school days, years back, a drama book depicting the use of excessive powers to harness into submission the disloyal errants, the book also talk about the survival in the times of political tyranny. The main characters who played different roles were Odie and Wak, where a “play within – a play” helps the readers see through the atrocities committed by the fallen tyrannical regime. It was mentioned that “Odie plays the king of termites” who lives in a glass Jar and wak was actually the victim.
The Jar was symbolizing the comfort zone where the king stays, sleeping and don’t bother at all to give a damn of what is happening at his palace backyard, despising the shooting and shelling and killing outside, the questions from the messenger were if he became deaf, or is it that he had no ear on the onslaughts of man by man, that no ear for human cries of woe? And the messenger asks the king repeatedly, if there was no shred of tenderness left in him, that the liberation war is upon their backyards yet he was ignoring and that there is still time for majesty taking a royal nap. This book was set in an environment neighboring our country and that is non rather than Uganda during their dark days of post-independence events, when there was much more confusion than usual a lot brutality and maiming were happening against early former exiled and elites who became so critical to the ruling government at their time, after returning from their exiles, the justification was, whatever they were doing was in the interest of the public and as well to keep the government in check and do the right things. The current challenges faced by our people and country may not be best described in regards to what we have witnessed so far, but it tells us a lot about the bitter truths and things that might have substantiated and equalized them to the level of events which had happens in other region and ours in recent days of our times.
Let me begin by quoting the statement of a great author of all times Mr. Chenue Achebe of Nigeria, where he mentioned that “a man who do not know where the rain start beating him will not as well know how to dry up off water from his body.” We should acknowledge the truth in itself that, we South Sudanese were greatly caught unaware, unprepared and surprised by the fact that we shall have our own independent country, and that is reality of the matter hence nobody can make an assertion that he is patriotic and has a heart of nationalist, giving an individual’s second thought and a question lingering in every right minded person that if we don’t own and believe in ourselves about this country being ours, who else will come do so? A lot of people still believed that one of these fine days, months and years to come we will be reunited with Sudan and therefore, there is no need to work hard for the interest of the nation development and territorial integrity, but these particular guys are for selves- enrichment rather than a country and citizens welfare, the evidence and testimony is that our well off politicians and business communities prepare investing in diaspora than within the country, is there any tycoon who can attest to the fact that, he had housing and real estates in South Sudan, a flour milling processing factory, learning higher institutions, large scale farming investment other than conning the government of H. E General Salva Kiir Mayardit, President of the Republic of South Sudan with illegal contracts with no money return guaranteed, but end up in buying cars and marrying many women and with aimless trips to Saudi and Qatar for show up. This beg a question to the government officials entrusted with public copers as well, the reason behind, to why do they awards individuals with such huge conning contracts of million dollars without even collateral/ securities for recovering public copers from greedy individuals yet this money does not belong to them, rather than being for the nation if they are not part of the corrupted system, in the same note, those politicians and generals who rebelled always do not love the country’s development and progress forcing a threat to the surrounding, where insecurity is the order of the day giving the government hard time and a leeway to scapegoat it duties and roles to provide services delivery to the citizens as tool of explanation for not fulfilling their responsibilities, one thing lead to the other as much as there is insecurity in the country foreign investors will be forced to go back to their countries of origin because of fear of losing their precious lives and properties this painful part will always deteriorate, as a result the economy of the country will always go down to its knees and this will start the journey of further devaluation of local currency against hard currency as it happened already in the country. South Sudan being one of the landlocked countries in east Africa must choose and listens to herself and the ground (citizens) for woe cries of individuals going through hell in the country and its time for the country to start strategizing on the meaningful peace for everything to work out, while other countries are planning and championing Millenniums Development Goals(MDGs) and Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs) which are mainly Guidance for eradicating poverty and improving human development and addressing a wider range of issues such as environmental concerns, human rights and good governance respectively in the countries, it is the opposite with us, where our country is working hard against the above mentioned importance key components with inevitable goals for supposedly current and future development and growth in term of human capitals to improved our Gross Domestic product(GDP), which is a standard measurement for the value added, created through the production of goods and services in any country, at a certain period of time. Therefore, we are way back near from progressing, day in-day out, our so-called politicians both oppositions and ruling government are too busy using tribal means to rally their ethnic communities and also using elimination methods to get rid whoever on their way, who became so critical to them just for their own interests, instead of our future generation and the country, we are too blinded and putting everything we invested into oblivions to get this country as a nation of our own today. The aspirations our founding fathers and colleagues who perish and some have disappeared into thin air with no traces. Alas!!! the question is who should have accused who? None, why? because it was our collective own making, begging the question,” whether it was a curse or by default that we found ourselves in unfulfilled gap today”. Part 2 & 3 of this article is loading.
The writer can be reached at macharijong@gmail.com
MBA aspiring student at Jomo Kenyatta University A&T (Jkuat)
Bachelor holder in Business Administration & Management and CPA.