By Tong Akok Anei Mawien
By Oxford’s definition, loyalty means showing or giving firm and constant support or allegiance to a person or institutions, though it is not defined with regard to the outcome in return at the end, I believe it is something that shows togetherness at the cost of pursuing any common objective, it shows ones dedicated commitment towards the goals.
This loyalty is a double edge sword, it can be best when purely exercised and can be fake as well when concocted for interest, the greatness of this loyalty is justified by how that person pays it, many people turned to pay allegiance just because of the outcome, the reward binds to it or the impact it would make in one’s life while other pay it dearly despite having no direct impact to their own lives but for common good, others pay it for personal gain while other pay it for inclusive goals.
Some turned out to be too loyal to their leader for he/she is a unifying factor, others turned to be too loyal to the laws or policies that guide the leaders to lead well, while others turned to be loyal to leaders only to win their interest for the positions in order to enrich themselves but not to lead people and gain other benefits and pay less care to the laws just putting the leader above the laws in their view to please them. No matter if the leader is committing an error and the error does not relieve this interest’s loyalist from their position, they will still applause him as doing right and not correcting him, loyalty is slavery and hence many individual interest loyalists view it that correcting a leader means losing one’s loyalty.
In contrast to our own case as South Sudanese, many of our leaders pledge allegiance/loyalty just to gain position or not to lose their position, many of them are not loyal to the law as the governing wheel but to the person, many of them are not loyal because the citizens are benefiting but because they could access the national cake, some of them would even agree to break the law if it can please the boss, others can even be walked on if the boss wants to, just to please him and be labeled as a right-hand fellow, others can even lick the boss foot in order to maintain himself or herself or get a new thing, that loyalty is slavery.
Some of our leaders are not leading for the sake of the wellbeing of South Sudanese but for the sake of their positions or to attain positions, but mine you, unjustified loyalty is slavery, a loyalty that has no hinge of nationalism but just for interest is slavery, it is good to pay loyalty to the law and the law drive the leader, It is good to enslave oneself to law rather than to individual to please his or her interest
The Author is an Applied Statistics Master’s Student at the University of Juba.
He Can be reached via tongakok7170@gmail.com/tongakok47@gmail.com 0929300008/0988011119