Kiir’s Humility Secured the January Peace Deal
by Jacob J. Akol, The East African.
Aug 23, 2005 (Nairobi) — If Salva Kiir Mayadit ever harboured the idea of one day becoming the overall leader of the SPLM/A, he kept it well to himself. But, judging by his character, it would be safe to assume that such an idea never occurred to him. Carrying out his duty as a soldier and giving practical service to his people has always been paramount.
I met Kiir for the first time in 1992 near the village of Magoth in Kapoeta District. I had gone there from Nairobi with a couple of Western journalists to meet the now famous so-called “Lost Boys of Sudan,” who had been on the road for close to a month. The boys, a few girls and women, totalling 12,000, had run away from the town of Pachalla near the Ethiopian border just ahead of an attack on the town by Sudan government’s troops and were heading towards Kapoeta town.
Along came Kiir, with a handful of SPLA soldiers, heading the opposite direction. He paused long enough to appeal to the international community to “help these children. Khartoum accuses us of turning children into soldiers; but do they look like soldiers to you?”
Turning to his troops he said, “these are men, and we have more of them than guns. We do not need children in the SPLA.”
AS A southerner, albeit a journalist and aid worker, I pulled him aside and quietly enquired, “You are heading towards Pachalla? Surely you don’t have enough troops?” “These will do,” he said. “If [Sudanese President] Bashir’s troops attempt to pursue these women and children, we can hold them back long enough for the children to cross over to Kenya.” That is what eventually happened.
When people talk of Kiir being a political novice, they either do not know or have forgotten that he was leading the initial negotiations that led to the “Machakos Protocol,” the blue print of what we now know as the “Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA).”
WHILE HE gave way for Bashir on his Islamic agenda for the Muslim majority in the North, he never gave way to his opponents’ attempt to extend such laws to the South under various disguises.
Most importantly, it was Kiir who insisted on the only thing that South Sudanese value most in that protocol: the right to self-determination in a referendum that would include the right to secede.
Sure enough, Southerners did not like what they saw as unnecessary lengthy six-year period it would take for them to cast their votes, for they feared many a slip along the road; but they saw its inclusion as not only fair and just, it ensured their solid backing of the CPA.
It was in those initial negotiations that Kiir’s reputation for being “a separatist” took solid roots in the minds of North Sudanese, who negotiated with him at Machakos, a fact which the North later tried to take advantage of to drive a wedge between Garang and Kiir in order to scuttle the signing of the peace agreement.
When he appeared sidelined in the negotiations for the later protocols, Southerners were uneasy, believing that the government of Sudan, with the backing and encouragement of Egypt and the Arab world, would derail or water down the secession clause. And maybe they could have, were it not for the government’s fear of going back to war with the international community.
What they did not realise, however, was the fact that Garang and Kiir, indeed the whole of the SPLM/A leadership, were in total agreement with the secession aspect of the protocol, for only then could they deliver an agreement that was not a rehash of the Addis Ababa Agreement of 1972, totally unacceptable to Southerners at this stage.
One of the options left for Bashir and his supporters was to arm and support anti-SPLM/A and anti Garang Southern militiamen. The other was to drive a wedge between Kiir and Garang.
Although Garang vehemently denied during the famous Rumbek’s confrontation in November last year that he was plotting to remove and arrest Kiir, it was Kiir’s desire to take Garang on his word that defused a tense situation that could have resulted in the biggest crisis the movement had ever experienced. It could have derailed the whole agreement, which was due to be initialled by the end of December – with the South to blame.
Thanks to whoever leaked the minutes of the Rumbek meeting last year, for all of us can now see what Kiir is made of.
According to the minutes, Kiir outlined what he saw as having gone wrong with the movement under Garang’s watch in his speech quoted in various media. Kiir was quoted as having said at the meeting:
“There is no code of conduct to guide the movement’s structures. When the chairman leaves for abroad, no directives are left and no one is left to act on his behalf. I don’t know with whom the movement is left; or does he carry it in his own briefcase?” There was no disputing those facts outlined by Kiir and the chairman was undoubtedly cornered as speaker after speaker endorsed what he had said.
BUT, TO the chagrin of Garang’s opponents, Kiir was determined as ever to remain loyal and accepted Garang’s promises to reform the management of the movement by delegating authority instead of “carrying it in his briefcase.”
No doubt, not all that was agreed in Rumbek has so far materialised, but that stormy meeting, in which Kiir played the crucial reconciliatory role, has seen us through December last year, the signing of the CPA in January, the heroic return of Garang to Khartoum and his swearing in as Sudan’s First Vice president in July.
The same fate that took away Garang has placed the destiny of the marginalised peoples of the Sudan in general and south Sudanese in particular squarely in the hands of the man whose desire has always been to be a servant leader.
With Kiir, we are in safe hands. He deserves our full support and loyalty in return.
Jacob J. Akol is a Sudanese journalist, Editor/Moderator.