Freedom and land ownership in South Sudan

By Zechariah Manyok Biar

July 8, 2011 — Freedom is a tricky thing. It is often susceptible to interest-driven definitions. Some people think that freedom means the absence of obstacles. They think that to act freely is to do anything that nobody has the right to question. Other people, like Philosopher Emmanuel Kant, believe that to act freely is to act autonomously according to the law you give yourself. Kant’s definition can also be abused. People who manipulate principles, like freedom, to serve their individual interests can take autonomy to mean regional independence in the Republic of South Sudan. Some kinds of regional independence in our current system of government is not unconstitutional. What is unlawful is the idea that area belonging entitles one to anything therein. This is not different from the belief that liberators are entitled to anything they want. Both beliefs are mistaken.

The autonomy that Emmanuel Kant talks about is the one performed out of duty and not inclination. The law that autonomous rational beings give themselves must treat people as end in themselves, not as means to an end.

This is not to say that Kant’s idea of treating people as end in themselves is enough. There are times you can justifiably treat people as means to an end. For example, during the liberation war in Sudan, we used our soldiers as means for the liberation end of the Republic of South Sudan, and that was not immoral. Yet, we would agree with Kant that to treat people as end in themselves is to respect their dignity.

Those who take some people’s land by force in the name of liberation do not respect the dignity of those people. In the same way, those who kick people out of their homes without a clear legal support to their claims to the ownership of the plot of land are not treating them with respect too. We have seen over the last six years cases in which somebody would evict a person from a piece of land and sell the plot to any high bidder only to be discovered later that the plot had two title deeds. The only way to settle cases like these was to find out the older title deed and award the ownership of the plot to the bearer of the older document. The owner of the newer document is a land grabber in my definition, although we rarely hear people define them as such.

The much talk about land grabbing was often directed at people from other areas even when land grabbing was being practiced by the inner people of particular areas like Juba, Bor, and Nimule where the land grabbing complaints were often reported. The land grabbing saga almost planted hatred among different communities in these areas when in reality, the people from these areas were involved in land malpractices more than the people they regarded as land grabbers from outside their communities.

In the Republic of South Sudan, what would matter a lot is the respect of the dignity of its citizens. Those who have legal titles of land must be protected from land grabbers, regardless of where they belong. Land grabbers from any area are land grabbers in legal terms. They should not make noise to cause disunity among South Sudanese. Legal landowners should be the ones to voice their complaints against land grabbers, whether local, national, or international.

The respect for the dignity of each citizen requires all of us to act out of duty to do the right thing for the right reason. Those who use liberation or area belonging as a tool for satisfying their self-interest should not boast morally. Their morality is wanting.

Some of these people capitalize on hatred. We should remember that hatred does not go empty-handed. It is often narrowed down. When you hate people from other regions and they leave you alone, you hate tribes that do not belong to you. When these tribes leave you alone, you hate clans that do not belong to you, and so on.

Respecting people for who they are is the only right thing to do in the independent Republic of South Sudan. We should give each citizen what he or she deserves in any part of South Sudan. We should not manipulate the law to suit our individual interest or even group selfish interests.

My ideas here can still be challenged. Somebody may argue that it is impossible to eliminate interest from human action. People who make such argument believe that a freedom minus individual’s inclination and desire is not possible because what seems to motivate a person’s action is a desire.

What I can say is that if we believe that the inclination is more important in our moral behavior, then we will find ourselves in the mercy of the most powerful people. The soldiers who use liberation as support for their illegal occupation of lands owned by others would be justified because they are satisfying their desires.

We must, as Kant argues, use the power of reason to determine actions that respect the dignity of other citizens in the Republic of South Sudan. That is the only way good life can be realized by our people. Area belonging and liberation must never be used as tools for mistreatment of other citizens. We must be law-abiding citizens who respect the rights of all human beings.

Zechariah Manyok Biar, BA. Edu., MACM, MSSW. He can be reached at [email protected]