Opinion: South Sudanese have seen all wars, no war we haven’t seen

May 23, 2020 Opinions

By Isaac Thok Moses

President Salva Kiir Mayardit and opposition leader Dr. Riek Machar

May 23, 2020 (SSNN) – When you look deep into current South Sudan political discourse in a close proximity, you came to realize that our political elites are here to open the old stitched wounds of 1985, 1991 and 2013. These events occurred as a political showdown between our leaders, but they had devastated results and panned out into tribal lines. Their consequences were severe and left gruesome images in the history of our country.

It’s clear and evidence that the old grievances among our liberators had manifested to ongoing political turmoil in our country one away or the others. Even though the SPLM idealist and their political commentators would abruptly dispute this fact, many young South Sudanese believe that our founding father Dr. John Garang never built the SPLM into a genuine political organisation or decentralized the movement administration in a way that would encourage his comrades’ to exercises their political ambitions.

The leadership top-down approaches which were used during military leadership had rein the opportunity to distinguish the SPLM political raising stars among the good soldiers. All had to be blames on the founding leader Dr. John Garang for holding tightly on the grip of leadership.

Although we cannot shoulders off all the blames to our founding father Dr. Garang. However, it’s fair to say Dr. Garang had left his comrades with romances of deep division rooted from tribalism ideologies which had dragged our country back in 2013 to its darkest days of struggle.

WHAT CAN WE DO TO TURN THE PAGE?

The people of South Sudan are disenchanted by the lack of exemplary leadership from our liberators and founding fathers. Especially we the young people in this country are infuriating to the point of losing all hopes. The landmark peace that was signed in Khartoum seems to be on life support, it would stand a chance only if accompanied by good faith, capable bureaucracies and cooperative leadership on both sides. But all three seem to be absent during this implementation period.

Consequently, the current political deadlock is exacerbating the already broken social fabric, the delayment of forming the states government and reconstitution of our parliament are deemed to be the contributing factors on the increase of political rivalries and rampant communal infighting among the communities.

This peace was for citizens of South Sudan to get back to their normal life. The time for political arms wrestling was supposed to be during the election in 2023. The decision to turn the new page is solely on our leaders. Unfortunately, the chasm between our leaders had already putted our hope for better South Sudan in jeopardy.

UNTIL WHEN WE CAN LIVE WITHOUT WAR?

I was born during the war
I grew up in war
I went to school in war
I become a man in war
I married in war
I become a father in war
I have grey hairs in war

The war life should end with my generation, we want peace, we want harmony, we would like our children to lives in a peaceful country. Our youthful years had squandered in refugee camps and Diaspora countries. We urge our leaders to put our best interest first, we are the generation that you had fought for to have freedom and liberty.

Together let embrace peace and support our leaders to make the right choice to implement the remaining items of R-TGNU.

May God bless our leaders, and may God bless the people of South Sudan.

The author is a concerned South Sudan citizen who lives in Juba. He can be reached via: isaacthok@hotmail.com

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