Do We Have Courage To Care?
Elisabeth Janaina
Do We Have Courage To Care?
"South Sudan needs boarding schools for girls in rural areas. Without that, it would be impossible to give majority of girls in South Sudan’s rural areas any meaningful education"
By Clement Angui Deng
As we are bog-down in political posts war that coin up as Dinka-Nuer war, we need to inculcate the following into our memories in the contact of our past and present time as we surge to self-destruction.
In 2013, when I heard President Kiir say, "God has blessed us and endowed our young country with vast resources in terms of fertile land, forests, water resources, minerals and petroleum resources... Those who wait too long may miss the vast investment opportunities that our country offers," (Rwakaringi, 2013), my heart started beating against my ribs with worry about abuses of our people within our own country by companies on which we have no control in any form.
Even if we put up a symbolic legislation, that can easily be manipulated by experience media and lawyers who are paid to water down any claimed against this powerful company’s abuse.
I am not antibusiness, but we need those investors with mutual respect of law, not cunny exploiters who rely on their expertise who design the strategies of abuse cover up before they even start working in the country. As the saying goes, “once bitten twice shy” we cannot afford to extemporise the legislations that could give companies free right to abuse our citizens while getting an absolute protection from our government and our law like what happened in South Africa in 2012.
We need to set up a technical body that critically, look into issues of investment in South Sudan. This body would find out the background of those investors through wherever they have invested in already. Whether in Africa or beyond before discussing anything that concerning investment.
Australia is a Country with more than 150 plus years of existence, but they still don’t accept taking over of their major players by foreign investors. The following is the quote from
“Australia Government rejection of Grain Corp takeover by US Company. Announcing the decision this morning to reject ADM's $3.4 billion bid for the eastern grain handler, Federal Treasurer Joe Hockey said he had to take into account the national interest. I consider that now is not the right time for a 100 per cent foreign acquisition of this key Australian business," he said, adding that the industry was "going through transition and now is not the right time to have all the major players foreign owned". (Midland, 2013)
EDUCATION: For us in South Sudan we need educational system that is right for every child in the country. Educational system which would lead to inventions not just knowing how to read and write.
The current educational system has no benefit to girl child in Rural South Sudan, where the girls are expected to do most part of housework than boys.
I have stablished in 2011 under trees a school in Lek South, Gaikou Boma, Aguok Subregion, which in now Gogrial State. The girls who were there as twelves and above, are no longer there because they cannot resist the pressure of being married off from both parents and those who want to marry them. This is not an isolated case. It is an example of what is going on everywhere in South Sudan.
South Sudan needs boarding schools for girls in rural areas. Without that, it would be impossible to give majority of girls in South Sudan’s rural areas any meaningful education. Girls are growing up very fast to wait for unknown kick off of South Sudan educational campaign to extend a helping hand to every little girl in every village in the country.
I was forced to take my niece way from their parents to keep them next to school, away from their parents and their overload of domestic duties. I have been paying their school registration fee for three years in one class, due to domestic work distractions. I am left with the impression that those rural parents need help from authorities to keep their girls at schools.
Local Languages: Our local languages should not be left behind. We need them. The world is concerned about losing languages. When Sudanese arrived in Australia, especially in South Australia and Victoria, the umbrella was provided by Australian government for every group who have their own dialect to be taught. Dinka language is now taught at school in South Australia because it has got its own academic books and the teachers to teach it. Also SBS Dinka is among 74 languages broadcasting Australian news & information across channel.
Our health is guarantee in our hands: We all have some experience on what happened to us in foreign countries. Some of South Sudanese lost some of their organs and their lives. Issues of health in South Sudan need more attention, not just bring them to clinic. In July last year, I left my neighbour child healthy in the morning, when I came back home I heard the child was dead. This was after she was taken to one of the clinic with suspected malaria as always said by our people. The child was said to have been given, injection and tablet for what they have said to be typhoid. I suspected this was not far from overdose. We need monitoring of all these foreign clinics and foreign aid agencies. There should be a well monitor guidelines to prevent risking of people experimenting their drugs on our people.
Slavery: We still have too many slave in (Bagari) or in Arab Misseriya region of Sudan. My friend Kuach Akol (mach). Told me, his story of looking after Cattle when he was in Bagari place, with another boy from Aweil by name Garang. He said every house has got two to three slaves from Bahr el Ghazal.
Manut Apei told me they convinced a lady to escape with them. She accepted to escape with them, with condition that Manut and his friends could bring her child too. They spent almost a month looking for opportunities to kidnap the child but opportunities became hard to come by. Because the child was staying with paternal grandmother all the time. The guys had to convince the lady to go without the kid; she accepted but changed her mind on the way. She escaped and run back, which put Manut and his friends in danger. They had to use their minds, careful to avoid being track down by house of Bagari.
What do we do as a nation? We cannot just forget them. We need to form a local committee to look into this, then do something about it from recommendations from this committee.
Media: Media and politicians are the gatekeepers of every nation. If they are infiltrated by enemy of peace the country cannot move forward. I am afraid South Sudan is surrounded by media which are only interested in negative issues that do not bring cohesion among the communities. We need discussion about this. Some are Khartoum owned media which are only interested in the destruction of South Sudan.
Security: we need our security industry to be incorruptible. To do that we need to pay them well, and hold them accountable if they fail to do their work. Now in the country almost every male has a gun. To convince communities to hand over their guns and entrusted their lives to the hand of government security, we need to establish a mechanism that can stablish trusted institutions to do it. Failing to do that earlier now, we would end up being a country with no control of citizens taking the law into their own hands. Now some few communities are lynching others. When the communities they have been killing perceive them as enemy lynching, it would be uncontrollable with all these guns in their hands.
Courage to care has been the biggest asset in South Sudan’s history. In seventeen century to nineteen century some of our communities’ leaders stood up for the interest of South Sudan. They did it under poor conditions. There was no form of healthcare and modern arms to equate foreign machine guns aimed at them, not to mention enormous pressure from the formidable force of Colonial Masters’ puppets within their communities, who knew every hiding places in the area. There were many leaders all over South Sudan fighting off slavery and colonialists with their puppets. I will just give just an example of one of these communities’ traditional leaders of South Sudan, who had courage to care on the face of powerful South Sudanese well trained puppets of colonial masters.
This is Chief Alloro of Bari Community, put up resistance against different Colonial Masters for two decades in Gondokoro to Lado. This starting from 1870s to 1880s until 1889 when a brutal Turk by the name of Emin Pasha, finally evacuated his ten thousand well trained South Sudanese puppets to Uganda. All those colonial puppets are said to have assumed the new identity as Nubis (Nubians) in East Africa, in reference to their then Sudanese background. Kuyok (2015)
Any sort of revolution starting from freeing South Sudan from Slave Masters of Islamic Turk to White European Slave Masters and back to Islamic Arab Sudanese. In all of these catastrophes, South Sudanese puppets were used to make deadly impact on the communities of South Sudan.
This was right from the beginning of Anya-nya one revolution movement which set off by Rev. Fr. Saturnino Lohure in 1955 and led by Joseph Lagu until1972. Then SPLM/A fired on by Kerubino Kanyin Bol in 1983 and led by Dr. John Garang until 2005. All of the above achievement were by our leaders while other South Sudanese were on their necks. Can we have courage to care about unfinished business of our liberation and moving forward with what we have?
Ref: Kuyok, A. 2015, South Sudan, The Notable Firsts, Author house, UK.
Rwakaringi U. D. 2013, South Sudan, Announces Foreign Investors’ Conference, Voice of America, 22 of August, viewed at 22 of July 2016, http://www.voanews.com/content/south-sudan-foreign-investors-business-conference-november/1735301.html
Midland, A. D. 2013, government rejection of Graincorp takeover by US Company, ABC, Australia, 29 November 2013, viewed at 23 of July 2016 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-11-29/federal-government-rejects-foreign-takeover-of-graincorp/5124262