New South Sudan interior minister vows to launch police reform
September 6, 2011 (JUBA) – South Sudan’s new minister of interior Alison Magaya Manoni intends to reform the country’s police force, by screening its organisational structure and fighting corruption he said Tuesday.
“As a mandate from President Salva Kiir Mayardit I want [to] reform police services and organised forces” he said.
Manoni said the “reform needs collaborative efforts from police and civilians; we are facing illegal guns being possessed by civilians to kill each other over issues that can be solved in a competent court [of] law.”
A recent UN report found that 1,500 people have been killed and 73,000 displaced in South Sudan’s conflicts other recent months.
The policemen and policewomen said the main challenges they face are low salaries and lack of capacity building; communication equipment; transportation and uniforms.
A private in South Sudan’s police service is said to be paid 380 South Sudanese pounds ($142) per month.
The new minister, who was a general in South Sudan’s first civil war (1955-1972) with North Sudan, said that he will set achievable targets for police reform, such as empowering local police officers. The Anya-anya 1 veteran outlined his vision to slim down the central command structure and increase the number of junior officers on the ground.
“We are going to start with simple steps, but we shall soon expand the process into a bigger picture”, he said.
Observers say Magaya is particularly keen to promote safety at the local level, thereby building trust. He hopes to adopt a new model, using patrols and inspections to ensure security within the capital Juba, border points and in the states among local communities and paying special attention to insecurity.
Beyond budget issues, these reforms have practical targets, including protecting administrative buildings as well as encouraging each senior officers to know his precinct well. He called on officers to be familiar with families in the area and to know numbers and names of local and foreign criminals in the area they patrol.
Intent on carrying out a purge of the forces’ bureaucracy, Magaya has asked the heads of police bodies to submit proposals on how to make the service more efficient. He said that he also intends to flush out corrupt officers that extort money at border and checkpoints.
Oversight of the traffic officers accused of extortion will be placed in the hands of the interior ministry’s security service, which has in the past been too lax in supervising police work at checkpoints.
Many of South Sudan’s police are former SPLA soldiers who fought in South Sudan’s two-decade long civil war with Khartoum. On July 9, when South Sudan officially seceded as part of a 2005 peace deal, the SPLA became the nascent country’s official army.
In an attempt to demilitarise South Sudan many SPLA soldiers have been integrated into the police but this has brought its own problems.
Despite being the army of the South since 2005 the former rebels are far from being a professional army. The police service face enormous challenges in accommodating the SPLA members as many retain an army mentality and are less informed about the role of a civilian police service.
These efforts may not attract much publicity, since the dividends are less obvious. However, such Interior Ministry plans, combined with an apparent political desire to eradicate the culture of corruption, suggest that the Magaya’s tenure recognises that police officers will often find themselves in the “front line” in dealing with criminals and unlawful citizens.
Public opinion among the police indicates that they want to see practical steps against tackling criminals, illegal migration, and drug trafficking. This can be done, they say, by exchanges of operational information, improving investigative methodologies, and other technical support.
Minister Magaya thanked the police service for making “tremendous progress” in securing South Sudan in the six years of the peace deal, the conduct of January’s independence referendum and attainment of independence. He added that their demonstrated ability to gradually take the lead on security operations has been “truly impressive.”
He also paid tribute to the security forces who have sacrificed their lives in action against gangs since South Sudan gained autonomy in 2005 and commented that this is “something we feel sad and honour.”
Magaya said he is committed to continuously strive to serve the people, improve the image of the South Sudan Police Services and make them the trusted guardians of the people.
Minister Magaya stated that “now with the tide of our difficulties undeniably turning, we need to maintain the effort and reap the rewards of peace and stability that so much sacrifice has brought so close to our grasp.”
Over two million died and four million people were displaced in Sudan’s North-South civil war.
He reiterated that South Sudanese will spare no efforts or sacrifices to realise the vision articulated by President Salva Kiir in his inaugural speech that the police begin to take the lead in all security operations within the years to come.
(ST)
Bush
New South Sudan interior minister vows to launch police reform
Prove that we are the true leaders of the people, but be careful because some people don’t want this new nation to move forward because they benefit from corruptions and embezzlement.
MINDED.DUDE
New South Sudan interior minister vows to launch police reform
what is wrong with south sudanese politicians or journalists?
why they have to used the word “vow” everyday they address the public? damn, am sick and tired to hear the word vow…
Alier42
New South Sudan interior minister vows to launch police reform
It was completely unwise decision made by kiir to appoint somebody who had just joined Splm one month ago from our mean enemy Ncp to such a ministry.any way the fact remain that, you have good ideas and good ideas give way to the better ideas,and if want to reform the police forces ,you havd to start with your deputy,is very person who mess up the spla forces through corruption.
hard liner
New South Sudan interior minister vows to launch police reform
Dear Magaya,
this is a one of the biggest task and duty to handle it requires hard work and intelligence, I know you have imense knowledge on this but am here to inform you that ”for this city to be peaceful you need to disarm all the dinka outlaw gangs in the town” and am boldly saying here that when the disarmament was being carried out before the independence, it was only the non-dinka household disarmed and none of the dinka household was disarmed, am saying this because i have neighbours, they have guns and their houses were not searched and my house was searched and my local bow and arrow was confiscated. The question is which weapon is more dangerous? Mr minister, this is what you have work hard on otherwise these guns are now used for robbery, theft and looting people’s properties in the streets of juba.
Bush
New South Sudan interior minister vows to launch police reform
@Alier42
Hi bro!, your are about to make some important point here but the way you sum them up didn’t make it sound well. Most of those are leading us today are those who joined the SPLM yesterday and most of those who started the SPLM are no longer existing so do you want to bring them from the dead to continue lead us? Remember this, generation come and generation go but the world still stand the same.
Together we can deliver, South Sudan needs everyone’s participation, be it small, old, male or female.
JAMUS
New South Sudan interior minister vows to launch police reform
Mr Manani and Mathok Gengdit,
The duo are people of questionable character.Manani,you were the governor of Equatoria when Juba was besieged by gallant SPLA forces. The two major assaults on Juba resulted in many equatorian young men being categorised as ‘Fifth Columnists’ and many disappeared in what was called ‘The WHITE House’ under your watch and you never raised a finger.You need to answer to equatorian about these atrocities. It was the junior man from Equatoria who reacted to these atrocities by killing his commander and defected to his people, this young man was Thomas Chirilo.
You lost credibility in the eyes of equatorian since your junior proved beyond reasonable doubts that he indeed loved his people and can die for them.
Mathok Gengdit is a reactionary of first degree, he initiated the rampant corruption that is now prevalent in the SPLA.For your information, and he was the one who was involved in money laundering to Uganda by hiding money in a coffin. People at the border post asked why would a man from Bhar el Ghazelle called Manut,as inscription on the coffin indicated, be taken and buried in Uganda against the norms that he should be buried in Gogrial, they were really suspicious and when they open the coffin to see “Manut” whose coffin was being taken to Uganda, they found out that it was millions of dollars. Still, this money was embezzled to Uganda.
Jamus
Board1
New South Sudan interior minister vows to launch police reform
Minister Magaya will try to make some changes if he realy came back with his full haert and commit himself to his people. I think he is not corrupt but he will learn from the big corrupted man who is his dupty.
I learn in today’s news that anti corruption chairperson Pauline Riek announced that they recover 120 million Sudan pounds that was stolen in 2010.Mathok is now appointed and he is needed by anti corruption comm.also he might be one of the 13 listed by American not to be imployed if America is going to help RSS. Anti coruption is also fearing where to start bcoz all Gen. Ministers and directors are ivolved
Dinka Dominated SPLA/M
New South Sudan interior minister vows to launch police reform
EMMA McCUNE was an idealistic young British aid worker who spent much of the late 1980s criss-crossing southern Sudan, then as now in the grip of civil war, dressed in a red mini-skirt. Handing out charity pencils, books and blackboards to outdoor schools financed by a high-minded Canadian lawyer, she cut a striking figure.
What really made McCune’s name, though, was her marriage in 1991 to a southern Sudanese warlord, Riek Machar. McCune saw the marriage as a way of breaching the gap between white and black. But to her fellow aid workers, it seemed that she had crossed an invisible, and not altogether happy, line. When the Khartoum government began bombing Sudanese refugees who were fleeing back into the country from Ethiopia, the peaceable aid worker threw herself into Mr Machar’s violent quest to take over southern Sudan’s rebel movement. In thrall to the man, she paid little attention to the murder and kidnapping that was part of his quest for power. Two years later, McCune was dead, crushed by an itinerant bush taxi near Nairobi. She was 29 and pregnant.
Deborah Scroggins uses the romantic aspects of this beautiful white woman’s story to draw in unsuspecting readers. But she has a sharp eye, and her real aim is to tease out the inconsistencies of Emma McCune’s brutally short life as a way of looking at how foreigners through the ages have involved themselves in Sudan.
The humanitarians of the 19th century, many of whom were driven by urges half-hidden even from themselves, have given way to modern famine-relief programmes. The donors who fund them like the idea of giving pencils to small black children. However, they averted their eyes when the hand-made sweaters donated by American knitting circles in the late 1980s proved too warm for the Sudanese (they ended up being worn as decorative hats) and when American food aid was used by the southern Sudanese rebel movement, the SPLA, to maintain scores of camps where kidnapped children were trained to fire guns. They looked away too whenever the Khartoum government felt that foreign aid was making southern leaders like Riek Machar too powerful, and retaliated by bombing feeding stations full of women and their stick-thin children.
American oil companies pay the northern Islamic government to try and gain access to the untapped oilfields that lie in the south of the country. So far, the violence has stopped Chevron and others from getting very far. At the same time, Christian groups in America pour money into financing the southerners against the Muslim north. They believe they are helping to establish a vanguard against the spread of Islam, but what they are really doing is fuelling the civil war. “Emma’s War” is about the politics of the belly, and what happens when the fat white paunch meets the swollen stomachs of the hungry in Africa. It is a sorry story, but Ms Scroggins tells it awfully well.
Dr. Reality
New South Sudan interior minister vows to launch police reform
police reform by the new minister,
yes, south Sudan need the police to be reform but the question is how??????? the minister should tell us.
Alison Magaya had worked in Sudan ministry of interior for long and upto today sudanese police is leading in civilians and women abuses so how exactly will he reform south Sudan police??????????
Alier42
New South Sudan interior minister vows to launch police reform
Hi mr Bush
your point of arguement is completely contrary to what i meant, i didn,t talk about the generation and who is to lead who is not “right. but i am pointing my figers on Bishar ,s spy and corruptees like Mathok which is undisputable .
you can make no mistake about that ,unless you are not a southerner.
Justin Chicago opiny
New South Sudan interior minister vows to launch police reform
To reform the police force, this is what the police means:
P = polite
O = obedient
L = learned
I = inteligent
C = cares
E = educated
Recruitment to the police force should have all the above in the candidate’s quality and gradually retire the old guards from SPLA slowly based on their age and retrain the young SPLA presently in the police force.It takes time to reform ,but one step at a time will get us to our destinations.
LOJUBA
New South Sudan interior minister vows to launch police reform
yes Mr. Minister, I Believe:
Extraordinary leaders are never solely concerned about themselves and their own personal victories. They have integrity and always remember to hold the needs of others equal to or greater than their own.
Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning
against the right wall.”
Nan dit
New South Sudan interior minister vows to launch police reform
I can i agree with Justin,
There should be atleast qualifications require during the recruitement.
I don’t see any reasons why the States government allow the children and adults living in the street,they call them street children and criminals returning back from Khartoum into police.
They can’t protect the civilian,they are criminals,they do committed crime at night because they know nothing at all.How can you keep the thiefs at home to protect your properties?
Your decission Mr.Minister is welcome we like this kind of leaders,and it is shame on X and Y, shame on you.
acuil deng
New South Sudan interior minister vows to launch police reform
In Israel the police has the power to question the PRESIDENT, and lay charges against him, if he breaks the law. Ironically, our new minister of interior did not VOW for that.