DISASTERS AND PERPETUAL TRIBAL LOGICS -: By Makneth Aciek

South Sudanese have struggled to comprehend what exactly happened between prof. John Akec and Governor Joseph Nguen Monytuil at the recently concluded National Economic Conference (NEC). The available facts and modest estimation suggest that the driving force of their emotional confrontation was environmental concerns, and perhaps humanitarian situations in Western Upper Nile, Bentiu.

These great gentlemen stood up and presented their opposite views on dredging; with each saying his piece on open microphone, with no filter. It is absolutely disgraceful seeing leaders and intellectuals, turning the conversation into a quarrel. Right now, the social media is boiling over with partisan dramas. Many of the lesser things concerning our future have been drilled into our minds, but greater things have not been brought to our attentions. It has quickly become a Dinka versus Nuer affairs.

This incident has polluted and adulterated all the promises made at the economic conference! There is mistrust, and acrimony in the air; misguided by negative ethnicity, how shall we generate the best solutions to address our collective predicaments? How can we develop good concept to guide our collective behavior, and to be used as an instrument to measure the current realities.

Any government project that is meant to serve the interests of the citizens must have policies that ignite pride and patriotism among all citizens; but it becomes the greatest tragedy when those policies fragment rather than unify our society. We have been discussing dredging not as united South Sudanese but as enemy communities; we have been swaying to and fro like a water reed in great wind, the wind of negative ethnicity. We have called leaders from other communities names; some appeared on social media to have sharpen their swords, machetes and long knives to slaughter rivals if their interest is not guaranteed. “We must do it ourself ”, they roared…

We often seem to forget that dredging and safety of sudd ecosystems are topics that touch nature; we cannot use tribal theories and identities to define nature. There is no river or any natural phenomenon which belongs to the tribe! It is therefore not possible to discuss the environmental realities of Unity State without reference to their neighbors. It is a known fact, the people of unity state are hurting, and it would be disrespectful to treat the sufferings of ordinary people with nonchalant disdain - and that is the norm in this country.

There are flooding related disasters across South Sudan, due to tribal logics, the kind of sufferings which these disasters generate do not create any sense of solidarity among victims. Our present-day reactions to calamities are not synchronized; when the catastrophe knocks, each tribe wails alone, on different days, at different time. Natural disasters divide and isolate our people, they set villages apart, they tear up the delicate tissue of solidarity among the urban dwellers.

The threats facing Unity State and other affected areas could be averted, the dangers could be made somewhat less terminal, if the nation rally and work with common purpose. The hate of people from other communities, the rejection of humanity and leadership from other communities are our biggest undoing in this situation.

There are elements of mistrust around the dredging project, we neither know the participating institutions in the exercise of dredging nor the intention of Egypt. This is what Prof. Akec tried to emphasis, and most people agree with him on this; his argument is valid. The public opinion is against him only as a matter of civil conduct; he shouldn’t have allowed his emotions to take the better part of him. Being the head of educational institution; he is a public symbol of hope and enlightenment; a model of what young South Sudanese could become, and in this regard he should have demonstrated a higher calling to South Sudanese than mere emotion.

Governor Monytuil seemed well prepared to accentuate differences in a very negative way. The intention of his rhetoric was to trap Prof. Akec into the little boxes of tribalism. The Unity state Governor should not escape scrutiny, his concerns about the victims of the flooding are fake; South Sudanese should not be deceived by his fake outrage and insincere words of humanitarianism. Anything that touches environment should be treated as National project rather than State project; this requires him to tell the truth about the nature of studies done on the project, rather than insincere platitudes.

I doubt whether Governor Monytuil has moral authority to speak about humanitarianism. He is one of leaders who stole away Unity State future and treated the lives of poor people no better than those of dogs. I have wondered many times: what became of our moral outrage in Bentiu? Collective money (5% share of oil proceeds) is routinely plundered in huge quantities, with appalling consequences. The State has become a land where the poor have their health stolen from them; where their children are left uneducated, even though funding was provided. Unity State has enough budget to procure technology to monitor Sudd’s shifting hydrology, but because of greed, the local leaders chose to construct sick administration that steals from orphans and IDPs.

No one is against any sincere effort that will rescue the people of unity state from the menace of flooding, our civil population is afraid of the intention of Egypt! South Sudanese civil populations are less trusting of Egyptians; this mistrust evolved during the Turco-Egyptians, and Anglo- Egyptians rules of the then Sudan. Even though the time and circumstances have changed, the mistrust has persisted to this day, and is now being expressed in form of prejudice and negative emotions toward an Egyptians-backed project. We need to remind ourselves that the highest authority in the world is human feeling, and whatever the government intends to do with that project should be based on careful consideration of the emotional features of all south Sudanese.

In case we forgot, slavery in the Southern Sudan was introduced for the first time by Egyptian rulers. When Turco-Egyptian rulers organized an expedition along the Nile in 1830s, it was not for the benefit of the then Southern Sudanese. They were motivated by the desire both to discover the source of the Nile and to procure more slaves. The shocks caused by the slave trade in our communities have not yet fully disappeared. Stories containing how our peoples were dehumanized had been passed from the lips of one generation to the next.

Today, our communities recall memories of the slave trade and rekindle grievances precipitated by the past experience. Those who suffered in one way or another still see some resemblance to the action of the past in the present involvement of Egyptian government in our national project. We can’t blame our peoples for the kind of mistrust they have toward Egyptians, the norm of mistrust is one of the things that had protected our ancestors against slave raiders, and it is the only thing that can protect us now from manipulation and exploitation. How our peoples feel about dredging project might be dismissed as some sort of irrationality and paranoia, but we should not be worried; a minimum of irrationality and paranoia are necessary in this situation if we want to stay inside history and benefit from the Nile water resources.

The image of South Sudan produced since 1880 is full of damaging stereotypes. In all 19th century exploration literatures, what is now South Sudan was described as “inaccessible swamp inhabited by archetypal savages - a place whose people were incapable of meeting the challenges of modern world; all of these had origin in the Egyptians’ desire to have the indigenous communities along the White Nile destroyed.

The value of the Sudd swamp to South Sudanese is not just a cup of water we drink, it symbolizes life itself. Apart from its resources, it is a major source of security and defense for the local populations. All the Nilotic peoples who survived the slave trade, and series of wars that occurred in South Sudan, owe their survival to the “toc”. No Nilotic leader in his/her natural state of nature can suggest something that has the potentials of suffocating this important ecological system in our land. If there is a need to dredge our rivers, it should be a scientific research program, not a charity endeavor. Why were Egyptians so quick to donate the dredgers? We should first pay attention to the intention of the giver before we appreciate the kind of a gift received.

It is very unfortunate some of prominent leaders in the Greater Upper Nile region are not critical and deliberate; much of their thinking is based on what effortlessly comes to mind. When they are demanded to provide leadership, they reach for simple solutions and use mental shortcuts much of the time - wielding natural disasters and peoples’ despair as weapon to be used for political mobilization. All they do is opening old garbage container full of festering resentments and call it a solution!

Generation of Nilotic peoples had coped with many severe floods before, what is making things difficult for this generation is a lack of unity. Communities no longer aid each other when need arises because bad politics and populist politicians have blasted the rock upon which Nilotic moral community rested. The networks of exchange that were used to link our peoples are mutilated. This reality has subverted the public morality in the Region, leaving our communities trapped in an equilibrium of uncooperative behavior and mistrust. Instead of cooperating to overcome the challenges of flood, our peoples are eyeing each other with increasing suspicion.

I have watched mentally gated youths framed their emotional motives as moral motives and inflicted their illusions upon others with an air of self-righteousness; this is a dangerous way of anticipating the future. If the young people fail to tune their consciousness to the demand of the time, then the community will remain at the risk of living on ad hoc basis, just operate as reactionaries.