Azande Unhappy About Continued Marginalisation in SPLM/A

Worldwide Zande Community Network

NAIROBI, Kenya — Hundreds of Azande all over the world and in the SPLM/A have been contacting the office of Hon. Charles Barnaba Kisanga, SPLM NLC member from Yambio County and chairman of Zande Community Network to express their anger at the recent action of SPLM which saw many SPLM/A comrades and cadres go to South Africa for on-the-job training and others sent for duties in Khartoum in which the Azande were grossly marginalised. Out of trainings and assignments for more than 210 people only three were Azande. In the list of 85 going for different departmental trainings in South Africa there was not a single Zande at all while one county in Upper Nile Region had around 20 nominees.

The Azande feel that the statements in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) of January 9th, 2005, in which there is a great emphasis of inclusiveness, equality and justice for all races and tribes in the Sudan should have been started now in this interim period and especially with Azande who throughout the SPLM/A liberation struggle had always been marginalised in the SPLM/A higher ranks. So far the SPLM had never appointed a minister from Zande tribe in its ranks of the movement’s cabinet ( secretaries or commission heads as they were called ). It is worth noting that on the document detailing those going for diplomatic and international relations training the SLPM chairman put emphasis on gender balance while ignoring ethnic balance in other fields. The successive minority clique regimes in Khartoum, had always practised ethnic marginalisation of African and other tribes to undermine equality and justice in Sudan and that was why we had to fight a liberation war for the whole Sudan. How can we again marginalise the second largest tribe in Southern Sudan and then tell the world the CPA belongs to the Sudanese people? The Azande had been at the heart of SPLM/A, sustaining the movement over difficult years and contributing thousands of troops and they want their equal share and not marginalisation.

The Azande within the SPLM/A are now asking one of their leaders and NLC representative, Hon. Charles Kisanga, to put together a delegation and a petition to appeal to the SPLM chairman so that every Southern Sudanese can receive inclusiveness, fairness and equality during the implementation of the CPA and this have to start right now. The petition is being prepared and a delegation will soon approach the SPLM/A Chairman and Commander in Chief , to seek an audience with him to hand in the petition and seek some explanation of continued Azande marginalisation in SPLM/A.

– Hon Charles Barnaba Kisanga, Member SPLM NLC
– And Chairman Worldwide Zande Community Network
– Tel: +254 735 897 053
– E-mail: [email protected]