Vive John Garang (4-6)

By Setepano Wöndu

July 29, 2008 — It is July and we need to ask ourselves whether we actually listened to what John Garang was telling us. I am offering a confession; I did not quite digest everything I heard him say. This morning I found myself reading one of his presentations to the community in the United States. I was sitting there near him listening with Madam Rebecca Nyandeng, comrades Pagan Amum, Deng Alor and others. He was still in Arizona. Today, his words sound brand new to me, as if I had not heard them before. On this particular occasion, the Chairman was trying to interpret to us the real meaning of the peace agreement. He knew us so well that he was able to predict our behavior in his absence. He knew some of us were going to do what we aught not to do and not to do what we aught to do.

Not everyone was present in that meeting. But we all know that Dr John was repetitive. I can swear that what he said in America must have been said in Rumbek, London, Aweil…everywhere. For sure, this paragraph was in his speech to the IGAD mediators, facilitators, advisors and sponsors on June 5th 2004 in Nairobi. I know that there is nothing I heard John Garang say that all other citizens have not heard. We all heard him, albeit under different circumstances and in different forums. As we commemorate his departure, let us be more attentive to his teachings than we were when he was among us. Let reflect more deeply on these words.

“…Having briefed you of the vision of New Sudan in all its aspects and having briefed you of the details of the peace agreement, I would like to say something about what peace means to me personally and to the SPLM and our programmes for the future.

The six protocols, for those who had the opportunity to read them, reflect an intricate web of governmental institutions and mind-boggling calculus of power sharing, wealth sharing and security arrangements during the Interim Period. This intricacy is a function of the intricate and complex Sudanese situation. But behind the architecture of power and the calculus of wealth, peace has an inner meaning.

So what does peace mean to us in the SPLM? What does it mean to me personally, not as a leader but as a brother, an uncle, a father and a child of God? There are many – here and elsewhere – who think that peace is about job allocation, is about apportionment of positions of authority, is about lining pockets through misuse or abuse of public assets, or is about lording it over others. Those who thus think must be reading from a different script than mine. We have more supreme goals and loftier ideals and alternatives.

My script reads that peace is what people think and believe peace should hold for them. Peace to my mind and in the depth of my soul is a promise of better living to the young, the middle aged and the aged, to each individual, to the unemployed and the destitute, to the sick and the unlettered, all over Sudan. It is also a promise to the men and women of Southern Sudan, the Nuba Mountains, Southern Blue Nile, Abyei, Eastern Sudan and other marginalized areas of Sudan who suffered in dignified silence the loss of their dear ones in the war of liberation or who felt and still do feel a sense of helplessness and hopelessness, a promise that we shall never betray the cause for which those martyrs have made the ultimate sacrifice. And theirs is a cause for better and more honourable living. It is also a promise to martyrs and to those who lost their dear ones on the other side, a promise that just and honorable peace shall heal all the wounds that we have inflicted on ourselves on both sides. In short the peace agreement must be translated into tangible benefits at all levels…”

On that day the Chairman also spoke about his vision for a people centered model of governance. He called it ‘participatory democracy, a true social contract between the people and the Government’. This, he explained, was the rationale behind a decentralized system of government. Hear him:

“…It is our intention to devolve power to the maximum so that decisions shall be taken at the lowest possible level of governance. We have not wrested power from a hegemonizing national centre to allocate it to another centre that is based on the hegemony of tribal or political elites in the South. Power shall be exercised by the states and indeed by local governments within the states. Armed with the necessary powers and equipped with the needed resources, this style of governance shall ensure a more efficient delivery system of development and services. The principle of decentralization of power is a time-honored principle since it responds to local social and economic situations. Such local problems and concerns cannot be effectively addressed from the Centre since such Authorities are far away from the people; they can only be effectively addressed by empowered local authorities that have both the necessary power of decision making and the necessary resources to implement such decisions…”

Dr. John knew us. He was worried that we had a perilous propensity to grab and abuse authority and in the process undermine our own gains. He feared that when he goes as ‘child of God’, we might forget his scripted vision, loot our own treasury, expropriate public assets, distribute government positions to our families, concentrate power in the hands of a tribal political elite, neglect or even oppress the rest of the population, and forget the overarching grand scheme of the New Sudan.

Today, comrade Salva Kiir is complaining that we are corrupt at all levels including the very state and local Governments the Chairman wanted empowered. This is distressing because we cannot posthumously assure Dr. John Garang that we managed to overcome his worst fears. The question that bothers me now is whether we did not understand what our leader was saying, or our loyalty to him was hollow, or we no longer respect and revere the dead.

[To be continued]

The author is the Sudan’s Ambassador to Japan