25 August 2024 General Mabil, I write to congratulate you for exercising your constitutional right to speak out so eloquently about the disastrous situation in our country. You have joined General Aleu Ayieny and of course the SPLM leaders who held the 6th of December 2013 Press Conference, many of whom became the SPLM political detainees. You have also joined a long list of South Sudanese heroes who have chosen to speak
I have watched you for many years walking on foot in Juba. You are humble and able to live meagre in the middle of abundance for some of your former comrades. You have made a name during the liberation struggle, you are a hero, but like many of your comrades, you have been neglected.
I was a witness to one incident while I was in J1 after the death of Bior Marol, the brother of Late Gen. Bior Ajang. One day Gen. Bior and Dr. Lual Achuek Deng came to J1 attempting to see the President and they were denied entrance to the State House. Dr. Lual called me because he knew that I was inside the State House, and he mentioned that they were at the gate with Gen. Bior, and they were being denied access. I pleaded with those in charge then that they should allow Gen. Bior to enter. They entered but the President refused to see them. I know Dr. Lual was angry and frustrated, but Gen. Bior did not say a word until they left.
I felt betrayed then, because if Gen. Bior could not see the President, after the death of his elder brother, something was terribly wrong. Gen.Bior was humbled and dignified, but I knew he was bitter though he kept his cool. I was bitter and I was ashamed by the manner with which a giant hero was being treated. For the years when I had the privilege of access to J1, I saw hero after hero being turned away. The staff in J1 had to make up lies and excuses for the President who refused to see his own comrades, many of whom saved his own life and protected his power.
I am narrating this to make a broader point, many people were taken aback by your sudden outbursts, but I know you and your comrades have been denied the opportunity and the space to express your many grievances for so long and it is only fitting that you can spew the venom built up inside you to grieve your fallen comrade.
I was disappointed that the organizers took the microphone from your hands. You should have been allowed to speak freely. Dr. Garang used to meet with you all and to brief you about the big picture of the liberation struggle and about the scope of the operations and you had your inputs.
You might think that those in the SPLM Secretariat, the Liberation Council, or the Political Bureau have privilege access. My interview with them in April 2021 showed that this country is technically run by one man with his security agents. I agree with you, there is no SPLM, there is a shell of the SPLM. The SPLM is President Kiir and whoever has accepted to serve as his stooge. We have no ruling party; we have a ruling man in the person of President Kiir. The SPLM Political Bureau, the Secretariat, and the NLC remain nominal, they are sapped of vitality and power. They have no decision-making power.
President Kiir has succeeded to beat the battle-hardened SPLA/M veterans into submission. They have all bent a knee for him. Many tricks have been deployed to achieve this: regional politics, ethnic politics, political appointments, economic deprivation or incentivization, and a willful systematic destruction of institutions of governance and accountability such as the SPLM. Leadership over time moved from shared and collective, to personal and autocratic. After he secured the whole power for himself, he then took over all the finances of the country. He decides who eats, who gets treated, and who is allowed to languish and die. Hon. Joseph Lual Acuil spoke of rats last week, those are small rats, the real rat sits in J1.
When the people of South Sudan realized that the SPLM leaders—the liberators, were all beaten to submission, they spoke the truth in the National Dialogue, that President Kiir was responsible for the crises in the country together with Dr. Riek Machar and call for them to stepdown. President Kiir betrayed the people of South Sudan, yet the SPLM and the parliament kept silent. This is when we knew that the country cannot be saved. No one had the courage to confront President Kiir because the consequences of doing so are severe. We also knew that the patriots in the system had no tools to bring about change within the system. The tools have all been destroyed or locked up.
This is what gave birth to the People’s Coalition for Civil Action (PCCA) as a response of ordinary citizens to a political system and structure that has lost all the guardrails. There are only two ways to deal with an autocratic system, a popular action or a military action. A military action is for the military, but for those of us who are civilians, we feel that only a non-violent popular action is feasible though with grave danger.
General Mabil, your speeches have inspired the country, it is a country so thirsty for leadership. It is a country looking for a savior. It is a country consumed by fear, by political uncertainty, and economic distress. I support your call for internal dialogue within the SPLM, but this is not possible because President Kiir fears internal SPLM dialogue. I remember when Gen. Kuol and Gen. Daniel Awet spoke out in 2021, they had asked for a Political Bureau meeting to address these emergent issues. President Kiir refused to convene the meeting. Instead, he opted to meet with them individually. Often, people are given money to keep quiet.
What the country needs right now, is not a meeting or internal dialogue within the SPLM, what the country needs is a national political dialogue and a constitutional conference. This is what we are calling for through the Tumaini Initiative. An SPLM internal political dialogue happened in Lobonok in 2018, and its resolutions are not implemented to date. The 2015 Arusha Agreement (the SPLM Reunification Agreement) was not implemented either. The SPLM has no sufficient internal mechanisms to hold itself accountable. The SPLM is no longer a political program, it has become a sole proprietorship of President Kiir and so it is totally incapable of pulling the country out of its current crises.
We must seek solutions outside the confines of the current political institutional structures. These institutions have all been instrumentalized to serve a man, not a nation. The SPLM serves President Kiir, the ministry of finance and the central bank serve President Kiir. The National Security Service, Tiger Division and even the SSPDF serve President Kiir. The Revitalized Agreement on the Resolution of Conflict in South Sudan (R-ARCSS) has been instrumentalized to hold together a political marriage of President Kiir and Dr. Riek to the detriment of the country. The most important provision of that Agreement is the power of the two to extend their stay in power.
As we mourn Gen. Bior Ajang, let us also use this opportunity to dive deeper into our souls about the fate of this country that we have liberated. Let us ask questions and acknowledge that we have the power to bring about a new day in South Sudan. In the pursuit of justice, freedom and democracy, you have many comrades in the PCCA.
