Solidarity with the unborn Republic of South Sudan
My Aunt who had a knack for keeping memorabilia kept the –E-stan-bye (much like the famous back-to-school sandals) until her death about a decade ago and would even loan me the shoe for my primary school graduation thirteen years later. My mother died five years ago. Both women were a perfect example of what happens […]
My Aunt who had a knack for keeping memorabilia kept the –E-stan-bye (much like the famous back-to-school sandals) until her death about a decade ago and would even loan me the shoe for my primary school graduation thirteen years later. My mother died five years ago. Both women were a perfect example of what happens when dreams die. They both had dreams that independence would spread the juices of the nation’s potentials overall good. They were wrong. We all find out that the balloon of independence tends to burst after the ceremonies.
Africa is an island of burst dreams told each time a pregnant woman dies on her way to hospital for lack of medication; they are told each time a chilly child goes to bed hungry and abandoned; they are told each time an accident claims lives due to neglected potholes; they are told each time a graduate turns to armed robbery; they are told when politicians turn a blind eye and block their ears to the groaning of the people they represent. It is for such reasons that I greet my exuberant and even overzealous Southern Sudanese as they leave their thumbprints on papers which the developed world hopes would redraw the map of Africa and lead to the rebirth of a new nation.
For the southern Sudanese, you could cut the cake of exuberant expectations with a knife. Dreams of a strife-free life befuddle the mind of a people buffeted by years of oppression, civil strife and grinding poverty. Hordes are heading home with dreams bigger than their travel bags. Expectations are further bloated by the beautiful speeches of global leaders singing fake tunes of hope. From London through Washington, speakers are conjuring the birth of a new nation. There are even talks of withdrawal of sanctions against big bad wolf Umar Al-Bashir. Such diplomatic freebies are rare, especially for a man accused of being a worse butcher than Jean Bedel Bokassa, but anything for a yes-vote is good sacrifice.
When global leaders become chummy with emergent African leaders, there is cause for caution. This new love for the ‘freedom’ of southern Sudanese is nothing short of the friendship of the cat towards the mouse. Global affinity for the southern Sudanese is actually love for its oil-rich soil and sundry resources that this fertile land harbours. It is softening of the ground for unquestioned exploitation of the wealth not for the general good of the people, but to fuel the greed of the so-called developed world. Let the emergent southern-Sudanese leadership try to make the oil work for the people and see how quick the tide turns.
From global leadership interview clips, the southern Sudanese may be moving in on false hope. Hope that all the years of neglect would quickly transform into instant development is baloney; that the days of joblessness would end like a dark nightmare and that dawn would reveal jobs is as wrong as any hope that dusty tracks would transform overnight into paved roads. There is hope, but this dream is a long way away and would need intense work to come true. Time is needed to build and equip schools; hospitals with qualified personnel and drugs and to transform rustic huts into affordable houses. Time is needed to provide jobs for the qualified and succour for those who need it.
The dream of citizens of all emergent nations is that independence brings transformation, but very few emergent leaders have the magic to make this transformation, and fewer still want to do more than build a soft net for themselves. Worse still, the troubles across our continent are as a result of the gulf between dreams and reality. Such are the blighted hopes from the first so-called independent nations to the younger ones – Mozambique, Angola, Zimbabwe, and South Africa.
From the abortion of hope come the garrison of opposition and the exodus diaspora expertise exiled abroad but needed at home. This is the reason why I celebrate this new-found expectation with the southern Sudanese with cautious optimism and urge the southern Sudanese not to burn their bridges as they move or laugh at the rest of Sudan. By all means there is cause for ululation, but the discerning look beyond the newness of now to see what the future holds. Leadership needs to show accountability by laying all the cards on the table – providing a roadmap that can be evaluated by all and sundry and have a succession plan that will not turn present-day heroes into a monstrous Mugabe or a ghoulish Gbagbo.
There is a glimmer of hope, but let the southern Sudanese ensure that its present friends have not laid bobby traps for failure. The southern Sudanese proletariat must ensure that its leadership is altruistic and accountable to the people. Oil is not always the blessing it is cut out to be as the examples of many OPEC member-states reveal. Black gold is imbued with an incendiary capacity to ruin dreams and to turn good friends into quondam ones, it also has the capacity to turn celebration grounds into theatres of socio-political, and economic discontent. Happy independence and let us hope South Sudan can reverse history.