Can Southern Sudanese prove the North, Observers Wrong?
By Majok Nikodemo Arou
January 28, 2011 — Overwhelmed with euphoria that unfolded from the recent referendum exercise that would lead to creation of a nascent State in Africa, Southern Sudanese are awaiting huge nation-building challenges that require good planning and chalking out of selective developmental priorities.
Following the historic signing of Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2005, the aspirations and dreams of masses were so high, but soon clashed with enormous rocks of challenges, among others, the conduct of calcitrant ruling partner the National Congress Party (NCP) that had been reluctant or dragging its feet to implement the CPA faithfully. Besides, slow capacity building and lack of infrastructure.
Endowed with proven natural resources, minerals and skilled cadres, of whom the majority are still in Diaspora, South Sudan is promised with prosperity should its leaders unite ranks and focus on genuine nation building issues that could be commenced with services such as health, education and roads.
No doubt challenges are so immense, but if the Southern Sudanese get armed with the very spirit they exhibited during the plebiscite from Jan. 9-15, 2011, one wonders why they cannot build their country. This author has seen that enthusiasm during the referendum. A female Arab journalist at the polling centre in Juba, South Sudan Capital, told this author at the late Dr. John Garang Mausoleum that she hasn’t seen anything like it!
People who resisted the tyranny for over five decades, can invoke the stamina to address the looming challenges to prove wrong the North and few observers worldwide who keep saying “they are going to see another failed African State”. This mantra of failing States in Africa is genuine by the way given living examples of the failed States in the continent.
What is the recipe for building a nation from scratch? The answer is simple: good governance based on transparency and accountability. The errors of the Old Sudan should not be repeated. One of them was the growth of Khartoum at the expense of other cities, other distinct man made inequalities in terms of nationwide development and incessant exploitation. It would be morally wrong to assume we didn’t inherit or contract some ills of the Old Sudan. Yet there is a chance to dispel them.
South Sudan should establish a strong federal system, where services will be dispensed to the grassroots. Even in one federal state, the development should be even to develop the rural communities, which are potential sources of agricultural production. This, of course, is attainable and should go alongside the capacity building in health, quality education and other vital sectors to address the challenges of development that could effect immediate changes in the lives of people.
South Sudan has what it takes to develop should it harness resources effectively and wisely. With international focus, minor errors will be under microscope. Hence, the leaders have wider opportunity to deliver as excuses of external enemy would reduce, or could be addressed without fear.
Indeed the NCP was a genuine threat as it had been promoting grim scenario of uncertainty of South Sudan’s future to scare investors away, and to benefit from internal differences of its own creation. But now as South Sudan will be an independent State, the North may pursue its interests, because its strategic survival will depend on good neigbhourhood with the new State.
It’s incumbent on the leaders of South Sudan: Lt. General Salva Kiir Mayardit, Dr Riak Machar and Wani Iga and others to heed aspirations of masses, especially the widows, orphans and veterans who paid so dearly for freedom. They should also establish a broad based government to accommodate other parties.
Could the people of South Sudan who recorded amazing history and staged protracted struggle prove the North wrong through consensus and recalling of the spirit displayed during the referendum? Yes they Can.
The author is a Sudanese journalist based in Abu Dhabi and can be reached at [email protected]
Sam.Eto
Can Southern Sudanese prove the North, Observers Wrong?
South Sudan: A Tragedy in the Making
South Sudan As many of us who keep up with world news (and that means news from some of the less familiar parts of the world as well) are aware, the people of Southern Sudan (the red bit in the map) have just held a referendum on whether to secede from Sudan.
This referendum [1] was the result of a 2005 agreement that brought an end to civil war in one of the world’s largest nations, and for the past several years the country has had two governments, existing side by side. Apparently having their own government wasn’t enough for the people of South Sudan, though, so they decided to break away.
The reasons aren’t that difficult to seek. While the northern part of Sudan is largely Muslim and “Arab” (the quotes because they are of mixed Arab and black African blood, but identify themselves more with the Arabs who ruled over the region for centuries) the South is mostly “African” (likewise with some admixture of blood, but far more tribalistic) and animist, or, very significantly, Christian. And during the civil war the South suffered much at the hands of the government, and from internecine fighting as well. The South Sudanese (who are at the moment seeking a name for their country [2]) probably don’t want to risk that happening again. And who could really blame them?
But there’s a saying: be careful of what you ask for, because you might get it.
Meanwhile, a certain Empire has been at the forefront of imposing punitive sanctions on Sudan –sanctions whose apparent purpose is simply to try and teach the Sudanese a lesson and make them suffer, because going by most accounts they haven’t made the Sudanese regime change its allegedly criminal behaviour in any way. However, seceding in order to escape those sanctions makes excellent sense…and if the purpose of the sanctions is to provoke secession, then they are certainly explicable.
Therefore, according to the prognostications, some 99% of the people of South Sudan (the only ones to have been eligible to vote in the referendum) chose independence [3]. I’m not sure if these figures were padded or manipulated – the chances they were is frankly quite high – but I’m willing to believe that the overwhelming majority of the people of South Sudan did, indeed, choose independence.
This isn’t quite non-music to the ears of certain people in centres of power elsewhere. It’s not perhaps all coincidental that South Sudan has extensive oil and natural gas deposits, especially in areas which will be a bone of contention between a new southern state and the northern rump of the country. In fact, the peoples of these regions are already fighting each other. [4]
These deposits, quite certainly, will be up for grabs. And, if they are, guess who’s going to get the first rights to these deposits?
If I have an orchard, which I share most reluctantly with someone else, and a third party comes in and ensures I have this orchard to myself, guess who I’d prefer to give my fruit to?
And when you remember that the Empire and the majority of the people of South Sudan share, broadly speaking, the same religion, the pieces fall even more clearly into place. Religion, after all, is a ready made excuse for intervention/aggression, when one is looking for an excuse.
These, then, are the three legs on which the independent state of South Sudan, whatever it chooses to be called, will rest on: Christianity, oil, and enmity towards the North. Even though the North has (not doing itself any favours; it won’t buy the Empire’s goodwill, going by recent history) gone out of its way to be conciliatory, even volunteering to take on the debt of the South, it’s not going to stop southern resentment when things go sour…as they inevitably will.
Why should things go sour, though? Isn’t the liberation of a nation a moment of deep joy? Why shouldn’t the South Sudanese enjoy prosperity and peace? They’ve earned it, haven’t they?
I can think of several reasons, but they come down to the oil. The possession of oil, in my considered opinion, is a curse for virtually any nation. Certainly for the South Sudanese, it will prove to be a poisoned chalice.
Now, South Sudan isn’t the most developed nation in the world. In fact, the overwhelming majority of its people are illiterate and desperately poor [1], and it will require tremendous amounts of assistance in order to achieve a reasonable standard of living. However, if the past is any indication, the Southern Sudanese will almost certainly remain exactly where they are, if they’re lucky; or else, if they are not, their situation will swiftly become far worse.
Why is this likely to happen?
Well, when you give foreign oil companies the right to extract your oil and gas, they are there, of course, to make a profit. And the essence of making a profit is, going by history, to cut every corner, ignore every regulation, pay every bribe one can manage. And of course the idea is to have a reliable government in power, one that can be depended on not to change the rules suddenly, to enforce regulations and so on.
What kind of government perfectly fits this profile? You really need to be reminded of the long history of venal dictators the Empire has sponsored worldwide?
So, this is what the independent state of South Sudan will look like in a short time: a military or military-supported civilian dictatorship, lording it over a desperately poor populace. There will certainly be strife, much of it artificially created, with the North in order to keep the people in line. There will be major crackdowns on dissidents, the jails will be full, and the rulers’ Swiss bank accounts will get fatter and fatter.
Any attempt by progressive forces to reverse the slide will be opposed on these two grounds: that they are North Sudanese agents, and they are anti-Christians. And, because you can’t keep the lid on forever, you can be sure that over time the South will sink into its very own civil war.
Any South Sudanese who happens to read this is welcome to contradict me; but wait five years and see if I’m not right.
Joseph Milla Simon
Can Southern Sudanese prove the North, Observers Wrong?
Educative article Majok,
Indeed the people of Southern Sudan has spoken through there ballot papers.It would be a night mere that any devil on earth can reverse the path the masses have chosen.
While this is a victory to us, we should begin thinking strategically on how to over come challenges that is accompanying this victory to prove to the whole world that the nagative impression about south Sudan and its peolpe is a whim in making.
Formation of an inclusive government,inclusive constitutional review procedures,zero tolarance to corruption, transparency and accountability, rule of law, justice to all, unity of purpose etc are the most urgent things to embrass now. Apart from this the government, based on the technocrates the country has,should begin to strategize on development peririties. Health, education, agriculture,infrastructural developmwnt need to be boasted. Security of the citizen and property need to be ensured, laziness to be substitute with productive society and etc
Embrassing the above and many more good things, South Sudan and its people will see a good beggining of a new nation in a making.
Already we are witnessing a very bad begining as explain by the formation of the constitutional review committee. Many are viewing this formation as not inclussive of other political parties and civil societies as agreed upon in many of the political gatherings. This is not a good begining and the leaders at the top should act fast to correct this by instituting an inclusive committee. A constitution of a country can not be drawn by one party, person or ethnic group as it is a potential source of conflict.
The government should learn to listen to others at this particular time. The nation need each other and we should accept each others hand.
mohammed ali
Can Southern Sudanese prove the North, Observers Wrong?
The title of the article is very funny!
First, it is not northerners who preidicted that the south is going to be a failed state;it is the international media from the same countries who supported secession andit is them who labeled the south as a pre-failed state
It is funny that your main concern is “to prove”to northerner jalabba that southerners can govern themselves and not to prove to yourself and to your people that you can build a prosporous state for the sake of your own people.
The northern jalabba or whatever you call them are still calling southerners as brothers and the declaration of the result has passed almost un-noticed in the north. No genocide or killing and not a single southerner has been touched.Southerners are moveing freely and peacfully all over North Sudan.Almost all student have come back to join their universities and schools and many others have come back to live again with their “oppressors”
Yesterday ” in his press conference” Ali Osman had extended his helping hand to the GOSS and promised that southerners who work in the north will not be sacked immediately but will be given “in a typical jalabba genorousity” a comfortable transitional period during which the SPLA will prepare itself to accommodate it’s citizents in the promised land.It was very interesting to here an American journallist who was begging the “oppressive” government of the jallabba to offer help and financial assistance to the GOSS, because the US and Europe is passing through a difficult time due to the financial crises!
I am sure that , we the jallaba,Arabs,mandocoro or whatever you call us or whichever way you hate us ,southerners will continue to live with us friendly and peacfully as if they are “one of us”.This is simply because , we the Jalabba , are just like this!