S. Sudan parliament should pass the Land Bill
By Malith De Them
March 25, 2008 — It is astounding that our Honorables in SSLA – Juba are being paid hefty salaries and enjoying luxuries and privileges without doing anything! They drive luxurious tinted limousines on potholes in a dusty city of Juba and not thinking about their constituencies that gave them votes to be in those places. There are so many Bills that are pending in the Parliament. The most important of all is the land Bill, no wonder that land is the most essential property to any given community in Southern Sudan; it is high time that our MPs arouse from their deep slumber and pass the land Bill.
Land, being an essential property to any given community, a community can protect its land from any perceive outsiders who may unreceptively encroach it. And because of the ill intentions of the Northerners to occupy our land, exploit its natural resources, disrupt the normal and peaceful life of the communities, destroy the natural environment etc. these are the reasons that made us take up arms against the Arabs.
Having achieved this relative peace (CPA), it is time for us to focus more on rebuilding our Country destroyed by war. The bloody civil war that was fought for 21 years had killed an estimated 2.5 millions persons and displaced almost six millions others from their homes to neighboring countries and in Southern Sudan as IDPs especially in “The Equatoria Region”.
Most of the IDPs who got sanctuary in Equatoria are from Jongolei State who were forced to flee from their homes as a result of the 1991 SPLA split and events that followed, and a few from Bahr El Ghazal. We must be grateful to our brothers from Equatoria for their hospitality for giving us sanctuary in their ancestral land during the war.
In spite of the fact that any Southerner has a right to stay anywhere in Southern Sudan, you should not occupy somebody’s land and say that you brought freedom as our fellow Dinkas are being quoted as having said that in Equatoria, because SPLA/M is not a Dinka movement and it was not fought by the Dinkas alone, it is a movement of the marginalized Southern Sudanese, fought by the Southern Sudanese for the benefit of the Southern Sudanese. I am sorry if I have omitted our brothers from the Nuba Mountain and Southern Blue Nile, they fought alongside us but the fact remains that the movement was triggered by the Southerners.
I have read several upsetting articles on this website posted by the disgruntled Madi people whose ancestral land is being occupied by the Dinkas. Of course those Madis have their inalienable right to use their land at the moment, although many of them have sometime missed the point and resort to tribal rhetoric against the Dinka, which is a cheer frustration that can induce tribalism that we don’t want in Southern Sudan. We should alienate tribalism in our social life when we are advocating for our rights.
The question now is why are we still in Madi land? I know that Gen. Kuol Manyang, the Governor of Jongolei State is preoccupied with the issues of insecurity and fighting of corruption. Please H.E Governor, take your people back home who are occupying Madi land as you have successfully restored the security of your State.
I would also like to assure the Madis whose land is being occupied that Jongolei State during the time of the former Governor was not secure, hence Bor IDPs were not able to go back home.
I also called on SSLA to wake up and pass the land Bill so that any given community in Southern Sudan must have a right over the use its land. Please Honorables let me assure you that your days are numbered and all the Southerners are fed up of your passiveness and you will be voted out by your voters if you don’t pull up your socks.
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