What is this vague unity all about?

By Atok Dan Baguoot

“I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.”

April 4, 2010 — Having learned a lot from all unbelievable cruel deeds done to us in the last 50 years of Sudan’s Independence and count back to historical backdates in those dark hours of colonial periods when South and other areas inhabited by black Africans were still under Closed District Ordinance administration to Juba 1947 two days conference where the South forged marriage of convenience with the North. Those were years of learning from nursery, primary to secondary schools and university in analyzing what is all funny with vague unity or force marriage in which the kids born by the couples are too old to attend to themselves. It is always a mind bothering question if one is to go the normal vertical thinking trends in relation to current looming political rationale of this mismanaged vast piece of land on the face of the continent of Africa.

This is a country that will never agree to itself beyond normal human thinking even if our smooth tongue politicians are trying to buy time in persuading masses to deface their present sights of viewing the whole matter in its current ruinous state. There are people beyond our life time who never knew that peace is exact but not only found on paper as the case here in Sudan. These are those whom the future belongs but not the politicians who have failed this country for almost a century yet none is admittance to the mistakes done to ourselves.

For those of you who are Christians, God never got angry to those of Adam and Eve on the fact that they ate that fictitious Biblical tree but on the fact that none of them admitted to have eaten the fruit. When God asked Adam if he has eaten the fruit, he never answered yes but weighed the whole issue on the woman God himself provided likewise, Eve went on blaming God of Serpent he has placed in the Garden until serpent who didn’t exchange blame to anyone but I think if there was a fourth party he would have done it also. What I’m trying to tell you and I is that, our Northern colleagues whom the whole issue rested upon their shoulders are ever in defensive moods; wanted even to add more weighs on the existing messes they have created.

As a person familiar with this old existing game of deceits from a certain direction, we better go for another option because we had been deceived for so long such that enough can emerge as the best term to described it by saying enough is either too enough. An English language adage says, if a man deceives once, sham on him if twice sham on me because it is a sham on me I who is able to be deceived twice. So our deception by Northern brothers is too enough.

We as people with distinctive cultures, distinctive languages, norms, values, believes, colour, and even distinctive physique as well as wizard that represents our political ideologies, we can better suffer on our own instead of always crying faults while pointing accusatory fingers to their praying direction. It is better to be cheated by our own political wizards than being always prey to an individual whose terms thereto are unique in the name of forging this natural unstable parasitic existence in a very vast ecosystem where any of us can stay without bothering each others.

Due to all these political inconvenience, entrusting our affairs to those whose political allegiances is questionable was and is a deadly decision ever taken by anyone on this planet unless that person who opted for such a decision is naturally half like us in Southern Sudan and other marginalised peripherals in the Sudan. We are half because we refused to identify ourselves and even refused to forge our own economic stand simply because there are people somewhere wanted to be consulted first before you can name your child born tonight. This actually falls within the description of enemy and total slavery as defined by the SPLM in its manifesto of July 1984.

Books and big volumes have been written by many scholars on the relationship between the North, South and marginalised areas in plain language of calling spade a spade but not big spoon, yet our numbed senses couldn’t tolerate to interpret why all these foreign scholars see things within us far away when we cannot see them. Dinkas say what a child cannot see while standing can be seen by an elder seated. Even our elders don’t see things while standing today because they would have seen all tricks by NCP and advise young one to be cautious of foreign intruders. Arabs and Africans are foreigners to themselves and there is no way you can make them become one and not even the best scientists of the modern era have succeeded in doing it.

Unless when we want to abuse the nature, Arabisation and Islamisation philosophy can become realities in the Sudan. with traditional and primitive weapons, Anya Nya 1 succeeded in defending territorial integrity of the South until historical Addis Ababa 1972 peace agreement was signed when the Sudan Army with sophisticated weapons could annihilate disorganized and an unprofessional Anya Nya soldiers. Not we to be either Arabised or Islamized with equivalent weapons.

SPLM with meager resources also ventured through until CPA we are enjoying today came to what most redundant northern politicians confusing us on in its implementations. Not even a single old mum or dad in the villages of Southern Sudan has awaken up, asking for compensation of his/her lost son in the battle yet our learned colleagues are going here and there confusing people in the name of vote for NCP. I thought we would be talking the tongue of vote for the SPLM so that we obtain what had been denied us for century.

Qualitatively, I doubt the kind of education given by Arabs to Southern Sudanese and other marginalised black Africans in their northern universities. One time I told a friend of mind in a casual discussion that if Dr. Garang graduated in Khartoum University, he would have retreated in the battle like the rest of his graduate colleagues who deserted the battle fields for Khartoum. I refused to go to Juba University in Khartoum when Southern Students from East Africa were granted that privileged. In fact, it is not the education acquired in the North which is the problem but the way Arabs subdued Southerners is what I didn’t like because I was ideologically different given my backgrounds. “Whatever spoken within a reach of a child turn to the formation of a character of that child”, I refused Khartoum-Juba University until is brought home.

Be aware that any political destiny determined in the north in our names in the South here, worth none of a support in the South and that’s why SPLM-DC is just like shoe brush in the eyes and minds of normal Southerners. If there are people to sue to court of law because of our wasted youth and childhood happiness, it is those Southern politicians who opted to affiliate to north in determining our political fate. If there is anyone outside there who still holds on those Arabs fallacy of Southerners unable to manage their affairs, tonight is your answer to evacuate from that well calculated negative statement of subduing your senses to their control.

Since none of us can reverse his/her past but all of us able to change our future, tonight is your turn to reverse your fixed thinking of yourself because you had been in the den of lion and that you can be a complete independent being for you were created to as independent without cost. These elections whose process is rigged is soon coming to past therefore, your target is the referendum in which you will determine your political destiny. Late Dr. John Garang De Mabior said if you opted to continue as second class in your own country, it is absolutely yours.

Enough is enough, so let SPLM runs by our own brothers and sisters be the one to do those bad things to us if we really liked to be mistreated forever and ever. Otherwise, time has come for the old to listen to young because the old is too old to be listened to. Both history and contemporary events have taught us such that we hardly be deceived. Northern born SPLM-DC of renowned politician Dr. Lam Akol is one of those ancient north sponsored programs of setting South in disarray.

Indeed, events that took place in the government of Southern Sudan after its inception were really unexpected because these were actually characteristics of Old Sudan hence, deserve transformation but they don’t need someone to be sponsored in the North. If Dr. Lam had stayed in the South after he lost Foreign Ministry portfolio and form SPLM-DC in the South, he would have been the right option to correct them but when he extended his tentacles to North for blessings, Southerners see Bashir in the big picture of Lam. Beyond that, Dr. Akol remains as a great thinker and a liberator who only missed to take child to its rightful and supposed birth place.

Not even a stupid politician can form a political party as an option for the purpose of the South in the North and thinks of garner huge supports when you know very well that out traditional minds set towards the north is so negative that even blinds and deaf can see and hear. What happened to Dr. Akol can be compared to as adding table salt onto acid as a solution to stomach ulcers and sit back expecting your patient to cope with the treatment. Because of the North, Sudan Africa Closed District Union (SACDU), Sudan African National Union SANU, Nile Provincial Government NPG and SPLM/A and many other splinter groups that did not work were formed. Of cause, Nasir group, SPLM United, SSIM and so many others are living examples of war against the north. Children were orphaned and widows plus many malfunctioning incidences have occurred in between the Arab North South political relationship and that’s why somebody like me can have a lot to say.

Any outcast politician in the South is the one that affiliated with the north whereas; the best politician is the one who stood pressuring ground while advocating for the South in the South despite his intellect. If Dr. Lam had done that, disgruntled masses in the SPLM like the Independents, plus many others who felt rigged off in the recent Political Bureau nominations including me would have flocked to SPLM-DC camp for political settlement.

Atok Dan is a journalist working for Southern Sudan Radio and TV and can be reached at [email protected]