Bor displacement: One of the bitter issues

By Nhial Titt Nhial*

Dec 13, 2005 — The reason I sacrificed my time to write this article is to shed some light on one of our bitter issues of recent time i.e. Dinka Bor invasion and occupation of Equatoria versus Bor Displacement. A person who does not know the background to this remains on the horn of dilemma on what is supposed to be correct. For that matter I will try to take an analytic approach to it and dig out the truth of the matter as much as I can.

The ideology that the Bor Dinka are in Equatoria as occupiers and invaders did not come from the ordinary citizens of Equatoria. It was created by some politicians for political reasons. This ideology has not only led to loss of hundreds of innocent lives from both the Dinka and the Equatorians but it has also cultivated deep rooted hatred and mistrust among the Dinka and the people of Equatoria.

It has also led to a violation of the inalienable freedom of a citizen to live in any part of the country as enshrined in the constitution and is likely to lead to loss of other precious human lives of our dear citizens let alone animals on one of the heavily-mined roads to places of birthrights in Jonglei State.

The government of South Sudan has a lot of questions to be answered on this matter. Is the government sincere and committed in solving the problem durably? Or is it employing the method of solving the problem using an other problem.

In my opinion, solving the problem using separation method seems not to be the durable solution because there is likelihood that these citizens who have been impatiently giving the pressure to the GOSS to force their brothers and sisters away to risk landmines will happen to be in Jonglei State tomorrow and guess what will happen. There is likelihood that Jonglei State is going to attract economic refugees from other states given the fact that it is lying in the sea of oil. I guess and I am afraid there is a probability of an eye for an eye situation.
However, the government will be forced to use the same criteria which I think is not healthy for a people who are badly in need of unity to face the most eminent problem of ages which we are all aware.

An editorial in the Khartoum monitor entitled “The unfortunate Dinka Bor Relocation” put it on the eve of relocation in these statements which I quote “The Bor Dinka in their homeward march will serve as human detonators of hidden landmines and antipersonnel ordinances. Many will loose their lives and limbs and the seriously wounded among them would die due to lack of medical care or medication. As they march, their pregnant women are likely to miscarry or give premature births, the elderly ones would fall sick and die of exhaustion and their frail children would perish of malnourishment and killer in fact disease. When the Bor IDPs reach their homes, they would have lost half of their cattle due to lack of pasture at this time of the year, while serious starvation would haunt the lucky ones until the next harvest.” End of quote.

If you see this urgent way the government has chosen to solve the problem, you cannot help calling it an execution of innocent civilians by the government which the relatives of these citizens fought hard to bring to power. The government could have used its means to contain the situation and show the people how to co-exist while at the same time clear the roads and prepare for possible basic facilities for the IDPs settlement in their original place. This could have provided mutual understanding between the hosts and the IDPs and avoid future problems. In reality, the manner in which Bor Dinka are leaving Equatoria today will never disappear in their minds like the days they were brutally displaced in their own land in 1991.

THOSE WHO KNOW THE HISTORY and the politics of South Sudan will agree with me that it is not only the complaint that the Dinka allowed their herds to graze the farms of the Equatorians. It is not because bees and some small animals hunted by the local people in Equatoria for their living has been chased away in the forest by a large number of Dinka cows.

It is because of the ideology cultivated when the South was enjoying its fruits of the first struggle and germinated into a terrible thing known as Kokora, a Bari word for division, which called for all the Dinka in the then capital of the first Southern Sudan Autonomy to move to their land. This was because there was a feeling among the minority tribes that the Dinka had dominated the public life. The aim was to create a government for each of the three regions of the South so that no one would come and dominate the other in his/her region. This issue weakened the Southern stand against Arabs oppression which led to the abrogation of the Addis Abba Agreement. Guess what will happen to the CPA if such a thing continues.

The issue is still alive and being perpetually propagated by some politicians for selfish political interest. It has been a common saying up to today that Dinka, especially from Bor went to Equatoria by force and took control of the land of Equatorians. I quote from an article written recently on one of the Sudanese websites by a gentleman who I think either belongs mentally to the school of thoughts of the kokora ideologues or a product of Kokora.
The title of the article goes like this “The institutionalized Arrogance of Bor,” and I quote this statement from it, “But the problem that makes Dinka Bor vulnerable is the way many of them came to be living in the lands of Equatorian people. These people came to this land by force and ruthlessly displaced the locals not just in Yambio and Mundiri, but also in places like in Eastern Equatoria, like Labone which is now named “New Bor.” End of quote.

Accordingly, the writer complains that the Bor Dinka went to Equatoria by force. The feeling among the people towards their brothers and sisters from Bor is just a mere political jealousy as has the Displacement of Bor been a political making. I do blame the politicians for creating such jealous relationship between the Dinka and the Equatorians rather than blaming the people such as the writer of the above quote. This is because most of us are victims of political misinformation from some of the politicians who choose to create lies and back them with some words the innocent citizens believe to be true.
Some politicians especially from Equatoria created sometime ago that if you let your daughter get married to a Dinka, she will be pregnant with a baby’s legs out because of their tall nature and some politicians from Dinka created lies that the Equatorians are cannibals (eat human beings!). A Dinka politician also was said to have boasted that Dinka were born to rule, an issue which has also generated too much hatred like kokora.

The same is also true of the matter that has repeatedly been said by Equatorians that Dinka went to Equatoria by force because they do not have good land but a person who has toured all the Southern regions can believe this as a lie. Somebody who has the knowledge of how rich a soil is, will agree with me that the great plains of greater Upper Nile and greater Bahr el Ghazel are going to be the future bread basket of our nation like the great prairies (plains of North America).

These are failed politicians who believe creating such situations will make them successful politicians. It is such politicians who say that the big tribes have dominated the political stage in the South. When you go down the corridors of Southern history, you can find that some of the leaders of the South who have been holding the highest offices did not come to power because of their large tribe but because of their distinguished qualifications. I will draw your attention to some examples of our Southern leaders.

Examples of the Southern Leaders with Qualifications not Ethnic Size:
An example of a Southerner leader from a small tribe is Joseph Lagu a distinguished soldier, a politician and a Sudanese UN diplomat. He is a member of Madi tribe, a tiny tribe in Equatoria. He was chosen by southerners to lead our first movement, the Anya anya one because of his military background having been the first southerner to graduate from Arabs dominated military academy in Omdurman. He signed the Addis Abba Agreement that gave the South the first autonomy with High Executive Council as the cabinet and the parliament, The People Regional Assembly based in Juba. He was elected in 1978 as president of the high Executive council and vice president of Sudan having been supported by a prominent Dinka politician from Rumbek, the late Samuel Aru Bol. This shows that Southerners do not support and choose their leaders based on tribe.

The other example of a leader who comes from a large tribe but came to power because of his distinguished qualifications is Mulana Abel Alier, a respected former Sudanese judge, UN human right lawyer, holder of LLM from a USA prestigious university and a Second Southerner after a prominent Southern Sudanese politician, the late Joseph Garang to graduate from the University of Khartoum with LLB. He became minister of Southern Affairs and went on to become one of the key architects of the Addis Abba Agreement that gave the South the first Autonomy with parliament and a cabinet. He was elected the first president of High executive council and became the first Southerner to hold the position of vice president of Sudan because of his own qualifications not because of his large Dinka Tribe.

The same is also true of our recent fallen hero Dr. John Garang de Mabior, who was a down-to-earth gentleman and a distinguished brave soldier, a politician, and a scholar with PhD in Economics and a military training from Fort Benning, one of the USA top prestigious military colleges. He led the fight for the freedom of the South and the marginalized Africans of Sudan courageously for 21 years that finally culminated in peace that gives the South self-determination with a separate army that will protect the peace and act as a guarantee for the self-determination, a status that the South did not achieve in 1972 agreement because of lack of her own army.

That is why the late Garang himself declared after putting ink to the security arrangement that this time no gentleman will come from the centre and say that the South Sudan parliament is dissolved because the SPLA will protect it. So let any one take it that all the leaders who have been in public life have been there because of their distinguished qualifications.

So Kokora (division) ideology as I would rather call it has nothing to give to the Southerners and the Sudanese in general at this stage but a bloodbath and unspeakable suffering and mistrust among our people as they do not trust each other and do not see each other as brothers and sisters. An Equatorian and a Dinka look at one another with mistrust and use bad words to describe each other. The Equatorian describes the Dinka as uncivilized, brutal, power hungry, and nomad or homeless…the list is endless; and the Dinka describes the Equatorian as incompetent to hold leadership position, collaborator, betrayer, jealous, unpatriotic, insincere and full of complaints…the list is endless. All these kind of words which germinated from the roots of Kokora have been the devils that have caused conflict among the Dinka and the Equatorians in all parts of the region during the years of war.

The Problem is not the Differences of Economic Activities.
For any one to understand exactly that this problem has not been brought by the living together of the crop cultivators and cattle keepers but by political hatred preached by short-sighted politicians. I will be compelled to revisit the history of economic activities of most of the Southern Sudan communities and Bor Dinka in particular.

Most of the communities in the South share pastoralism with crops cultivation and it has never caused a conflict to such a magnitude. Bor Dinka are of no exception to this harmonious co-existence of the crops with animals. They are both crops cultivators and cattle keepers. They traditionally live in permanent homesteads surrounded by a garden of the finest and rarest type of dura known as white dura with various species having specific local names. They fish and have high affinity to rivers like most of the River Lake Nilotes. They also keep a large number of cattle estimated at millions within the same land. They have an age old customary law applied by elders and chiefs to govern the co-existence of such a large herd of cattle with the crops. There are specific tracks followed by the herds when passing through the permanent farming villages when going to Toich from Aying and versa versa (Toich is a sumptuous pasture in wetland adjacent to the Nile during the dry season and Aying is a rich green pasture eastward from permanent homesteads during the wet season). If any cows happen to graze a garden of crops, the bany wut (leaders of the cattle camp) take the responsibility and it is always solved amicably by the community elders and chiefs. There has never been conflict because of cattle grazing the crops in Dinkaland because of the norms established and followed since time immemorial.

One would ask: Is it because Dinka have left their home that they abandoned their age old established norms? The answer is that they have not actually abandoned that but the problems have been exaggerated by political hatred as I have mentioned earlier. It is even clear that there had been a joint communal court between the host community and IDPs to solve those cases peacefully. But one remains wondering why at last that method was abandoned.

TO BRING YOU TO THE POINT, Bor Dinka did not leave their land because of Southern war with Arabs. The war in fact started in Bor in 1983 when Karobino Kuany Bol with his 105 men fired the first bullet of liberation. But this did not displace the Bor people although thousands of men left for military training in Ethiopia to join with some of first Southerners to form the nucleus of the SPLA. Throughout 1980s, Bor remained at home strong and determined in support of the SPLA as a liberation movement for the Southern Sudanese and the marginalized people of Sudan. They supported the SPLA by giving their sons and daughters as soldiers and provided food to the movement in form of cattle, crops produce, fish etc.

The hell happened in 1991 when some SPLA officers tried to overthrow the SPLA leader, the late John Garang in the name of reforming the movement to have democratic institutions and improve its human right records. But in an ironic twist of events, the self declared reformers happened to be the worst perpetrators of human right abuses by turning themselves into tribalists and massacred thousand of innocent civilians and looted millions of cattle from Bor. This was the start of the worst period ever in the life of Bor people.

The survivors escaped to Equatoria and neighboring countries in 1991. So the Bor Dinka did not leave their land because they like to live in other people’s land. For the sake of truth, the suffering brought by Bor displacement was caused by none other than His Excellency, the Vice President of Government of Southern Sudan Dr. Riek Machar and Honorable Dr. Lam Akol Ajawin, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Sudan. I am one of the people who believe that the past should be put behind by not judging our current leaders according to bad things they did in the past but by judging them according to what they are doing today.

His Excellency, the South vice president Riek Machar could have been in the fore front in intervening in the problems, answering some of the complaints about the so called Bor invasion of Equatoria and rehabilitating the people whose lives he had destroyed in 1991. By doing so, no one will think of judging him according to what he did that time because Bor People also believe in forgiveness for the nation to move on. But it is an ironic coincidence that this problem erupted when His Excellency, the South vice President was the caretaker of Western Equatoria State.

THE SURVIVORS OF THE BOR MASSACRE left with nothing but a life with no food let alone what to wear and medical treatment but with determination and strong heart they moved on in the face of all those. Today, it is very interesting to hear that there is 1.5 millions heads of cattle for Dinka Bor in Equatoria. A person who had seen in 1991 how Bor that was once glorious and strong was reduced to ashes and its people reduced to destitute, would wonder how determined and strong these people are.

THERE IS NO LAND in the South which is not good for those their minds have been filled with bad misleading information. Our land the South over is rich and precious as the blood of our martyrs. What one part of the South lacks is in the other part of the South and that is our unique potential that will put our nation, the South on the status of prosperous and industrialized nations like the USA, UK, Canada, Germany etc no doubt by the time when our heads are as white as snow if the Kokora and tribalism do not tear us apart (John Penn de Ngong, a leading columnist with a Sudanese newspaper, the Sudan Mirror put it that with our oil, our nation will be on world headlines as one of the superpowers if AIDS doesn’t claim us by the time we are Mandela’s age). The oil in Unity and Jonglei States and the gold in Eastern part of Equatoria as well as the agricultural fertile land all over the South are for the whole Country.

OUR DIFFERENCES ARE AS BENEFICIAL as the colors of the rainbow. The rainbow can never be effective to put barrier to the most disastrous rain if one color is missing. Do you know what? Sometimes back its colors used to boast of their own individual abilities. The red used to say that he was the symbol of danger and held the strength of everything including the strength of life since he is the color of the blood. The green used to say that he was the symbol of life and the environment. If it were not him, nobody would live because he symbolized plants that animals eat. The blue say that he symbolized the waters of the oceans and lakes and that every one gets water from him. The other remaining colors said why each was more important than the other but God said to them, “Stop that! And join your abilities together to do a mission, the mission to put barrier to the most disastrous rain that is likely to sweep the living being away on the face of the earth.”

In conclusion, let us avoid the misleading information by carefully examining what politicians tell us before taking action. Finally let us pray with sympathy for our brothers and sisters to move and travel and settle with God protection. (End).

Poem:

Bor welcome back to your destiny.

Bor welcome back to your destiny.

Welcome back to gain your dignity.

Welcome back to the land of Deng, your father.

Welcome back to the land of Abuk, your mother.

Welcome back to the land you grow the finest white dura with its sweet cane.

Welcome back to the land of long horn white cattle.

Welcome back to Bortown the city of revolutions.

Welcome back to abandoned sites,
Of your lovely homesteads with a colorful gardens.

Welcome back on the Nile River, the mother of all the rivers.

Build Bortown to reflect her status of being the mother of revolutions.

Till your land as you had done in the past for countless generations.

Let your beloved cattle graze your heritage of Aying and Toich green pastures,

In freedom as you have done in the past for countless generations.

Let your children meet once again to give you the honor you had lost by utilizing your, Potentials for the prosperity of this beloved nation you offered yourself as the liberator.

*Nhial Titt Nhial:A Sudanese, Winnipeg MB, Canada. Freelance contributor to the fortnightly published Sudanese independent newspaper; The Sudan Mirror published in Kenya and Uganda. One of the Sudanese young poets.