South Sudan: Freedom of movement has limits
Disorderly Freedom of Movement to anywhere or to Acquire Property is unlawful and has Consequences.
By J. Ojoch*
February 26,2008 — Before attempting to express my opinions I want to salute the heroes who fought and sacrificed their lives and those who won the battle alive to make us all free and happy today. May those who survived live long and longer.
Even without constitution any person must know that freedom means responsibility. Freedom means respect others and expect respect in return. Freedom means living within the law as productive citizens. Freedom means hard work to develop the country and to get access to own property. You do not have freedom to steal or to kill or cheat someone. You have freedom to live in the rightful space but not every space in disorderly manner. When you exceed those limits the result is conflict with the law, with yourself, with your wife or husband, with community or other communities. Freedom of movement or freedom to do anything is not really free if it is not lawful. It has limits.
The freedom brought to us is good but misunderstood by so many Southern Sudanese who write in the media. The argument is, for example, the constitution allows any citizen of the Southern Sudan to go and live anywhere they like because we fought for liberation so that we can live together, integrate and coexist. And therefore anybody has the right to do anything without question and limitation.
Such statements have produced so much rhetoric in the media. Apparently the statements come from writers who wanted to torment others. If it was on belief and resolve then it amounts to complete ignorance or simple misunderstanding. To make things straight some explanation of those rights without limits became apparent.
On another note we may be just excited by the words freedom and liberation. Hence we carelessly throw words here and there. Now we are free. If that is the meaning of freedom how many of us got everything, like all the good life we hoped for when the Arabs are gone? If none why not? If yes, tell us what you got. If you fail then your interpretation of freedom is wrong. You have to take another look in the mirror and see the wrong side of that statement. The wise person must see that we are yet limited by our capacities to attain all our desires because we are beginning from scratch.
Let us take sensitive examples before interpreting what the constitution may mean by freedom of movement or rights to something. Land is very important in rural and urban Southern Sudan. Cattle are equally important in the lives of so many Southern Sudanese. Tampering with one or all of these aspects of our lives ends up in trouble.
Rural Southern Sudanese are in two camps: Sedentary farmers and cattle farmers. In the middle are sedentary farmers with some cattle and cattle herders with some plant agriculture.
People who are sedentary put much value into land as the mainstay of livelihood. Land is handed over from generation to generation at family level and/or community level. The prestige and dignity is attached to the land within its boundaries. Similarly, cattle are very important assets to the owners. It is life itself. Cattle bring up new families and new children. The number of cattle amounts to the prestige of the owner. It is what makes a man a man. Cattle are members of a family. At times people sleep in one hut with the cattle.
Because freedom has limits cattle rustling is a crime. It has disrupted lives of many families when humans are also abducted. Cattle issues make members of the same family quarrel leave alone intrusion from another community. Jonglei State is one place where dangers of rustling have been experienced. At this time the government is at task in solving the rustling pain to normalize life again. The cattle rustling takes away the freedom to own property as human abduction takes away the freedom to live happily.
Freedom to land has limits too. Brothers quarrel on the boundaries of their farms if the other crosses that boundary at planting or when building huts. When a community intrudes into another community it draws those communities into a fierce fight. Many lives are lost in the process.
If the reader followed carefully, let us take the example of migration and relate it to the notion of freedom. Some writers talk of freedom of movement without limits as viable means of integration and coexistence. Sorry to say that such unlimited freedom is aggressive and invasive and prone to conflicts. Seasonal migration for water and grazing is good when carried out cautiously. The migrants whether with cattle or not return home at the onset of rains. They migrate usually to places where their ancestors used to go. The routes are known. Prominent leaders of related communities know the timing of this migration. They coexisted well in those periods. Migrants go to specific grazing and watering grounds without hurting the people of that place.
Now since the war, migration became aggressive, invasive and political in nature. This new migration is not seasonal. It is permanent once migrants settle in the target place. This migration is not for water or grazing. It is a forceful and invasive acquisition of new lands while leaving your traditional territory behind. This is what some people call a viable way of integration and coexistence. Wrong politicians compound the issuing conflicts by supporting this type of movement across borders to boost their ego.
If the migrants and their politicians are peace loving and are happy in the new places, what did they cause to the lives of people displaced? Is this the fast track to integration and coexistence that is desired? The hosts do not need you but you imposed yourself on them and kill some of their members. Is that coexistence? This is what the Anyuak of Akobo are experiencing under the Lou Nuer since the Anyanya days when the Arabs targeted the Anyuak for hosting the liberation movements. It was a forceful, aggressive and invasive migration. The political implications are that the Anyuak do not have access to government and the services. The wrong politicians behind all this are happy for success in misleading their people.
Migration of the Dinka of Bor to Equatoria in 1991 was reasonable and appropriate to save lives from the horrors of the factional attacks supported by the Arab regimes to weaken the SPLA. This migration turned political. The Dinka do want to return home because ..we are free to live anywhere; after all we liberated Equatoria from the Arabs while the natives here were hiding. These are the words of media writers who might be irresponsible. In response, these days we are hearing the voices of the Madi people that a wave of migrants is pouring on them yet again after CPA and pushing them onto other communities. This is the wrong meaning of freedom of movement being implemented if the wave is true. But writers related to those migrants are very happy because they say it is a good way of integration and coexistence. This migration is not seasonal. Don’t the Madi people deserve the right to live with freedom in their land? Why do some people love equality and freedom but deprive others of the same? However, if migration to Madi and Acholi lands at this time is merely seasonal, it is good. In this case the authorities must talk to the Madi and the Acholi to cold down the anxiety. Also the migrants must be told to graze the cattle with respect to the rights of their hosts until the time of their return to the homeland. The government has a big role to play in situations like these. The Payam leaders, the counties commissioners must intervene quickly and guide the migrants with their cattle to proper grounds for the seasonal visit.
When migrants refuse to return then the affair turns into chaos. The worst of it is such migrants do not want the hosts to complain. The hosts have to keep quiet and just endure the cultures of the migrants and all the unknown ways they bring along.
Migrants maintain rights to their cattle and any property they bring. They will fight if rustlers come their way. It is their right to property and they have to defend it at any cost. Now if the migrants wake up one morning and find the hosts milking the cows will the migrants accept that as coexistence and integration? If the migrants will be offended why have they offended the hosts so much and disturbed their lives by their invasive influx?
Going back to the constitution the right interpretation of the freedom of movement, to live anywhere and access property is this. Traders can do business anywhere. Licensing fees and taxes are applied. Build a house in any town. The municipality of that town will issue permission and applicable fees. Officials working for the government, NGOs or other organizations can work anywhere they are assigned. People can travel from corner to corner on foot or by other means for business, visiting relatives or just for tourism. While you live and do business in the place of your choice you do not have any domination on the people you found there. You haven’t hurt their lives. In a way you gave them employment and services. If your business dominates the economy of that town or region it is good. You earned it in the proper way: The hard work.
The great people of the Southern Sudan, let us maintain the status of being war heroes. Freedom of movement is not driving herds of cattle across territories or settling anywhere disregarding the lives of others. Freedom of movement does not either mean whole villages rise up and go somewhere for farming, clearing any forest. There is no such thing as freedom of movement without limits. Even milking your own cows there is a limit of how much milk you can take because the calf has the right and freedom to have its mother’s milk too. In your own house you have limits to what you can do for your very own family. You have freedom to eat food presented to you at the table but you have limits because your stomach can hold just a certain quantity lest you burst. Why do the educated intentionally refuse to accept wrong? Writers in western diaspora must know better because they know just trivial things like crossing a lawn or standing in the neighborhood lands someone in prison. The west is the place for absolute democracy and zero tolerance when rights are tampered with. These people must be able to advise their migrant relatives or friends to sit down for development. In the long and short run the government will provide services in your area.
Someone in the media said that preventing freedom to move entails confinement and crossing territories with visas. This is a very outrageous assertion. The meaning of freedom itself is terribly misunderstood. Disorderly movement is what is not required or desired. Take examples of what relates to you. You have freedom to drive on the roads but you must follow regulations to be safe. That is the limit. You have the freedom to eat food but you must buy it or grow it yourself. Again you have limitations in this and everything else.
To emphasize again, orderly migration is good and possible. People and cattle cannot go hungry and thirsty when there is plenty in the other corner of the same country. Even crosscountries movement is possible. Traditional leaders are good at managing such things. Arrangements can be made such that migrants [and their herds] use accepted corridors to migrate and graze and drink in designated points till the time of their return to the homeland without disrupting the hosts. Those who intermarry in transition are free to do so. The government can be involved if necessary in case security along the routes is feared. All of us heard President Kiir allow the Miseriya tribes to carry on with their seasonal migration into the South with the limitation of leaving their guns behind. The Miseriya are our enemies. Yet we allow them to migrate across borders as they traditionally do every year at the same time. Such procedures are possible in Southern Sudan. Why do we Southerners want to infringe on ourselves and make our lives miserable? The Arabs have done it to all of us. Why do the same to our neighbors and far off friends? Have we forgotten the meaning of respect or we never had it in our customs? Assume that your tribe alone liberated the Southerners. Your tribe did not do it violate the rights of others when the Arabs are gone. Your tribe does not have that right or freedom at all.
Our own government has to be blamed too in all this. They see these bad things happening. They hear voices and yet the government is not sensitive to the dangers. Even if the CPA is not rocky how can the government bring development to people who are at war with themselves? Why does the government at large refuse to clean the house first? Governors, County Commissioners and Payam Leaders should be in the forefront to take care of the population under them. Mr. Kuol Manyang is doing his job well right now. Disarmament in Jonglei is succeeding. Cattle and human ‘rustling’ have subsided. Bor town is taking shape. All the people who are not employed or not doing business in any way are asked to go back to the rural areas where they belong and do farm activities instead of loitering in Bor town causing troubles. Is Mr. Kuol Manyang against the rights of freedom to move? He is streamlining the lives of the people in his state. That is administration and the rule of law. The ministers and civil servants are being scrutinized to weed out the ghost employees. He is not against the right to work and be paid. He is against the wrong ways of employment and wrong ways of earning salary. He also wants the workers to be paid for good work and not for sitting around and gossiping all day long. Mr. Kuol Manyang must go one more step to bring an end to the present disorderly migration against which the Madi people are talking. There is so much water and land in Jonglei State that cross-country journeys, which are troublesome, are not necessary. If there is real need, the government should be behind this migration to avoid chaos en-route and at the target area. The states, counties and Payams that are affected by any sort of migration should streamline the movements of people and their properties and be ready to receive them back on return.
Southern Sudan is big. There is place for everyone to live with decency. But there is no room or space for one to dominate or take away the rights of another. If you want something ask for it. I wish the rhetoric about freedom of movement, which caused bitter exchange on the media, is clear.
If the message above is well delivered let us join hearts and hands together and look to the North. The war is not over.
J. Ojoch* can be reached at: [email protected], USA.