By Lisok James Moses
Dear South Sudanese Social Workers,
Especially those ones that are educated, informed and learned; I would like to take this opportunity to invite you for a special Gender Base Violence [GBV] Program. This invitation doesn’t require a lot from you but it also intends to inform you that the cases of GBV are on the rise and really rising so fast including suicidal cases across the country and kindly we need to step up.
The government may deny that there’s no conflicts in this country but that’s political because no any other government in the world can accept its’ image painted and tainted black no matter what. These kinds of organized political parties disguise as governments but in real sense they’re regimes standing on the people as governments.
There’re two things I want to make it very clear here:
01. Government standing as a government
02. Regime disguise as government
01. Government standing as a government:
When a country is blessed and has a government in place, a lot of good things happen and this doesn’t rule out some tiny margins of irregularities within the governing system. However in in this kind of system, they normally govern the populace where, transparency and accountability is encouraged and visible in all arms and sectors of the government. Health system is in pace, security and agriculture picks up and thrives, justice prevails and if it delays it doesn’t mean it’s justice denied. Employment opportunities are being earned on merits but because someone is from my tribe, my sister, brother, cousin, region etc. It’s a very insane and alarming situation to seeing when you enter to most of these government institutions and you hear people speak in their mother tongue and all the staff are from one tribe. At night when you reach a security stop around the city, they the security personnel will first talk to you in either Arabic or English and they turn to discuss what they intend to do with you in mother tongue. Whatever decision they came up with in their mother tongue will be delivered to you in in the language you understand finally. Of course it’s ether Arabic or English. These kinds of officers are being recruited on tribal mindset to carry tribal agendas however in most cases these officers are innocent because they have been presented only one side of the coin and told that the other side is not important and they don’t know about – in fact it’s useless! Such kind of army or military are very dangerous, they can never have positive impact on nation building. They’re there as a project by individuals to protect a tribal loot of a tribal individual from particular tribe[s].
The popular notion that South Sudan is not tribal is a fat lie. The elite group or individuals have created such tribal sentiment and sell this idea believe me they have invested enough resources and sophisticated man power to see that “TRIBALISM” as their most concrete and sophisticated tool and weapon succeeds – the elite group now uses tribalism as a tool to recruit and protect their greed or loot and their ill-gotten riches or wealth. The saddest part of this story is that the children of the poor are the ones guarding these ill-gotten spoils. To all the young people out there, don’t get misguided never buy the idea that “Tribalism” is our problem especially the young people; the real problem is the people who – the old guards – as their project created to differentiate us and widen the gap of our unity: by doing so, they’ll turn us young people to “sycophants” hence we’re doomed forever and the circle shifts to their family lineage.
02. Regime disguise as government:
In this system of government, everything is coated, the leaders mostly have their homes and their siblings abroad, they buy homes abroad or in neighbouring countries, there children study in better schools there and all enjoy a world class health care system; they normally die abroad in German, Kenya, Egypt and the bills of transporting their already worthless carcass and the entire funerals are usually levied on the already all drained nation’s economy – the country and its’ people are held hostages to their greed and love for power – perhaps an open prison!
When an important leader is visiting, they’ll embark on two days cleaning or more and painting and installing traffic infrastructure on specific roads in thy city. Of course these roads are where those visiting leaders will be transported through.
War and physical confrontation becomes their best way to decide who heads the system. If you happen to be an innocent God-fearing mammal within the system and especially as their head, gradually you get consumed perhaps becomes a vulture.
This kind of government system embrace war and causes mayhem and they normally use the word ”RULE’ instead of ”GOVERNING”.
In this kind of government transparency and accountability is an enemy of progress. Health system falls completely – the public servants technically subscribe the populace to their ill-gotten ruin. Everyday people die in every corner of the country but they will maintain at least a peaceful city because that’s their hub for stealing, making important plans and strategies to prolong the making of their ill-gotten wealth and the suffering of the people. In this kind of government, they use the riffle and laws and order takes its course on the poor and the cartels walk free. They will try by all means to frustrate any youth let non-non-violent assemblies and they’ll do anything to deter such – they got the riffle; they hijack the house of the people and make and pass laws that protect them and render the people/populace defenseless. They recruit regime silencers from the poor and appoint the leaders of the regime silencers from the rich – one the cartel or sons and daughters of the cartel. State Business opportunities are shared amongst this click and few others who subscribe to their greed and selfish agendas.
The suffering and maiming of the people becomes their absolute formidable concrete spoils.
Now this is what I mean, if you are social worker and GBV activist in particular, I would like to tell you that South Sudan system of Government falls under category two according to my article and you don’t expect anything positive from the government. In fact, we’re expecting the worst yet to come but never give up – it’s time to step up and help in trauma healing. You don’t need to get employed as a social worker or Gender Base Activist to carry on with your activities. Regardless of your gender, GBV needs our collective efforts to bring it to an end. The wives of the soldiers who died in this senseless war since 2013 needs our collective efforts – these men in uniform left behind children and not even the government or the cartels who orchestrated and created such senseless wars are of help to the children and the wives of the men they sent and died in their senseless war.
I know this kind of government doesn’t allow us to perform easily but lets’ try to identify these victims that direly needed psychological and trauma healing.
I know unnecessary killings around the country is creating more widows, widowers, orphans everyday – beyond that is trauma, psychological torture, suffering and hate on the surviving individuals especially their immediate families.
The author can be reached via Contact: +211 926 069 577 or Email: jamesdy.yoo@gmail.com