Why Sudanese are in a state of war with their selves
By Dominic Woja Maku*
April 17, 2006 — Sometimes one wonders why we Sudanese in general and South Sudanese in
particular are in a state of war with ourselves and our neighbours. Why other
people are so aggressive towards other people and are always inclined to commit
and inflict grave human atrocities onto a targeted people.
Many historians have written numerous books and articles about the human condition, and they have offered clear cut reasons why other people are fond of exploiting others
at their will regardless of the consequences and the deontological provisions.
Many prominent writers such as Blaut (historian) highlight profoundly where
some of the human suffering and agony originated. Bluat in his book (Eight
Eurocentric Historians) provides concrete reasons why other people are oppressed
and subjugated today regardless of where they live. He relates human plight to
four fundamental propositions that result into persistent classification and
categorization of humans along geographic, civilizational, cultural, economic,
and political hierarchies which can be expressed as below:
1. Progressive cultural evolution in Greater Europe is self-generated, autonomous, natural, and more or less continuous. 2. Progressive evolution in Greater Europe results mainly from the action of a force or factor that is ultimately intellectual or spiritual; it is European “rationality” (inventiveness, innovativeness, ethical judgement, and so on), and is the primary source of European progress in technology, in social, economic, and political institutions, in science, art, and religion. This quality of superiority of culture that originated in ancient or medieval times, or a superiority of Europe’s 3. Natural environment between Europe and non-Europe is the outward diffusion of progressive innovations (ideas, things, settlers in aggregate, civilization) from Europe to non-Europe. 4. A natural consequence of this outward diffusion is the return flow, the counter- diffusion, from non-Europe. Of wealth in the form of precious and non precious metals, plantation products, art objects, and other valuable things, a
sort of partial repayment for Europe’s gift of civilization (Blaut,2000,p,7).
All colonized peoples including us the Sudanese suffer from conceptualization and opperationalization of “Classical Eurocentric Diffusionism”. Thus, why so many wars in Sudan and in South Sudan? Francis Fukuyama(a modern political columnist) argues that because of “clash of civilization” people will continue to launch wars in the name of civilization, culture, oppression, economic exploitation, superiority, racial discrimination, tribalism, and glory).
For instance, powerful tribes would rise against other powerful tribes to demonstrate their military prowess. In the process the weaker tribes would be engulfed and assimilated into the dominant tribes rendering them powerless and voiceless. However, even the powerful tribe would fail to control the destinies of their socio-political, and economic lives because every colonized people will continue to pay taxes for the civilization they received during colonialism.
* Dominic Woja Maku is a Sudanese graduate student at the University of
Saskatchewan. He can be reached at: [email protected]