Your excellency and my beloved fellow citizens,
I write this letter with trembling hands but with a firm spirit as the very soul of our nation bleeds on the streets of Juba. The attempted assassination of Gen. Akol Koor Kuc is not merely another incident of violence, it is the culmination of a masterfully coordinated plot that threatens to extinguish the flame of freedom our martyrs died to ignite. Let every word that follows be engraved in the conscience of our country.
The orchestrators of this violence, namely, Benjamin Bol Mel, Gen. Gregory Deng Kuach, Gen. Akech Tong Aleu, Gen. Stephen Marshal, Gen. Abraham Gum Makuach, and Paul Nang have painted our capital city’s streets with the blood of innocent citizens. However, this bloodshed is merely the visible wound of a deeper, more virulent disease eating at our country’s heart.
Your Excellency, while mothers in Juba struggle to feed their children, while our brave soldiers patrol our borders on empty stomachs, while teachers and nurses wait months for their meager salaries, Benjamin Bol Mel allegedly transforms our country’s oil wealth into his personal kingdom. He failed to honor the contracts awarded to him as every barrel of oil sold, lies in foreign bank accounts while our hospitals lack medicines, our schools crumble, and our roads remain promises written in the dust.
Our economy bleeds from a thousand cuts. The Bank of South Sudan, once the guardian of our national wealth, now allegedly serves as a personal vault. Infrastructure projects vanish like mirages in the desert, leaving only hollow promises and empty coffers.
Our military, the proud sons and daughters of South Sudan who defended our dream of independence, now watch as foreign forces are courted with the very resources they are deprived of. The attempted assassination of Gen. Akol Koor reveals the brutal strategy of power. First came the whispered lies, then the calculated removals, the false accusations, and finally, the unleashing of violence at the heart of the city at a closer proximity with the diplomatic missions, a shameless exhibition of brutality that mocks our sovereignty and the international standing.
Can you trust and entrust Bol Mel with power and governance of our country? If he can abuse power when he is not yet the president as shown by his assassination attempt on a four-star general, what do you think he can do or cannot do when he becomes the president? Are you satisfied by his constant recommendation for appointment of people and the subsequent reversals? Is it not instability that he invokes? Let him remain your errands boy. He has proven beyond reasonable doubt not to be a presidential material.
Your Excellency, witness how Gen. Akech Tong Aleu, in mere weeks as Director General of National Security, Internal Security Bureau (ISB) has transformed our protective shield into a sword aimed at our own people’s hearts. Our security forces, meant to be guardians of peace, have become merchants of terror in our own capital city.
The orchestrators speak of succession as if the presidency were a birthright to be claimed through bloodshed. Let me be crystal clear; this is not Bahr el Ghazal’s choice; it is the ambition of thieves dressed in regional colors. This is not Aweil’s vision; it is the nightmare of opportunists claiming tribal loyalty. This is not Warrap State’s mandate, it is the scheme of predators wearing community masks. This is neither Upper Nile’s desire nor Equatoria’s dream, it is the plot of pirates sailing under false flags.
To the international community, especially, the TROIKA and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), your silence in this moment echoes like a thunder. South Sudan stands at the face of becoming a failed state not through external aggression but through internal predation. Your intervention is not a diplomatic courtesy, it is a moral responsibility.
To our security forces, your loyalty was bought with the blood of martyrs, not with Bol Mel’s stolen millions. Choose wisely between defending the constitution and serving as mercenaries for merchants of chaos.
To our civil servants, your unpaid salaries are not in empty government coffers, they build foreign mansions and fill offshore accounts. Your suffering is not an accident of poor governance but the result of calculated theft.
The same hands that would assassinate Gen. Akol Koor are the hands reaching for the throne of our nation. Today they silence one general; tomorrow they will silence every voice that dares to speak truth to power.
Your Excellency, the choice before you is plain. You must act now to remove these predators from positions of power, freeze and investigate every account touched by corruption, launch an independent inquiry into the assassination attempt, restore professional leadership to our security services, return our oil revenues to their rightful place in our national treasury, and halt all unauthorized dealings with foreign military forces.
The alternative is to watch as South Sudan descends into a kakistocracy where violence becomes policy, theft becomes governance, and fear becomes law.
Remember, our independence was not won so that a few could feast while many starve. Our martyrs did not die so that ambitious men could build empires on the bones of our dreams and our flag was not raised so that it could become an auction banner for selling our sovereignty to the highest bidder.
The blood spilled in the attempted assassination of Gen. Akol Koor mingles with the tears of mothers who cannot feed their children, the sweat of soldiers who serve without pay, and the hopes of youth whose future is being stolen. This blood cries out not just for justice but for salvation. The salvation of South Sudan itself.
Your Excellency, you stand at the crossroads of history. One path leads to your legacy as the president who saved South Sudan from the grips of kleptocrats and killers. The other path leads to being remembered as the leader who watched while pirates sailed our ship of nation-state onto the rocks of destruction. The choice is yours. The time is now. Tomorrow will be too late.
For the love of South Sudan,
A child of our martyrs’ dreams,
© COURTESY OF THE TRUTHFUL BIG BOYS OF SOUTH SUDAN
The views expressed in ‘opinion’ articles published by TTHEJUBAMIRROR News are solely those of the writer. The veracity of any claims made is the responsibility of the author, not THEJUBAMIRROR NEWS
