Glory & Gore: The Forgotten Children of South Sudan
When a millennial is told that the world is in perhaps its most peaceful state in all of recorded events, he’s forced to take that with a grain of salt, but the history books would prove the postulator right when one recounts the records of two world wars, napoleonic wars, Trans-Atlantic slave trade, Arab Slave trade through the Sahara and Indian Ocean, centuries of systematic genocide and slavery in the Americas and widespread medieval barbarism. One is forced to gobble the ugly truth that the twenty-first century even with its plethora of microcosms of conflicts around the globe is indeed one of the most peaceful states of existence we’ve ever known. Clemency is however in order for the millennial who thinks otherwise, after all, his eyes feast only on the countless insurgencies and civil wars around the globe. Ears filled with the cacophony of cries from children orphaned by piercing bullets and clattering bombardments. We have an ugly peace — if one dares to even bestow such a tag on the status quo — an unsatisfactory one. Those of us fortunate to live in pockets of the world with some semblance of tranquility have paid inadequate attention to regions engulfed in chaos, even when the outcomes of confrontations in such regions could bear telling consequences for our world at large and have domino effects on our lives. If one was to nominate banner bearers for modern conflict, it’d be the hands of those in Syria. Day in day out the evening news brings us bad tidings of the macabre in that region. The media outfits do so with good intention but the fact is that it drowns out other on-going conflicts of similar consequence, as in Afghanistan, Yemen, South- Sudan, Libya and many more dens of violence. While it is without question a neurotic endeavor to start a shouting match over which conflict zone has the shorter end of the stick, it is by all counts a noble cause to ensure that the international community’s attention is drawn to where it is found wanting. For this reason I shall draw my reader’s attention to South-Sudan and the dynamics that pervade it. It is also in the interest of a reader to source for information of pertinence to such a reader and so I implore the reader of African descent, citizenry — or at the very least a reader with a stake in the continent — to indulge me not solely on the account of geographical proximity but also in light of sociopolitical similarities between our scrutinized conflict zone and where such a reader calls home.
South-Sudan in the year of 2011 was a beacon of hope for the world, and in particular the African continent. Once again a confirmation that repression can be defeated by an underestimated force, that struggle can know glory — albeit at the cost of much gore. Like Rwanda — another affirmation against repression — it reminded the world that some form of a just resolve can be extracted by the downtrodden but it also reminded us of the cost of this resolve. How then did the youngest nation in the world after toiling for the right to self-determination against the odds stacked against it by its parent state, Sudan get plunged right back into conflict just after two years into independence? A state that is itself a product of multiple civil wars with its mother-state Sudan, is now at war with itself — one too many civil wars, it begs the question what could be civil about these wars? For even the slightest chance of attaining a suitable answer to that inquisition, one must peer into the roots of the country, its parent state and the continent it calls home.
It is not by chance that Africa like the Middle-East is home to ethno-religious conflicts and sectarianism, factors which have skewed the politics of these regions for the longest time. This is because of errors from the past, errors of commission rather than omission. Western imperialists in their centuries of violating the African continent cared little for key sociological factors — chief amongst them, ethnicity and religion — when drawing borders on the African map and laying the foundations of nationhood for many Africans. In truth, prior to European invasion and pillaging of the motherland, Africa — especially subsaharan with North Africa as the aberration — lacked many integrated communities that formed in the true sense of the words, nations or empires. In the stead of those, we had sparsely distributed tribes and small communities each still in their stage of metastasis of becoming nations either through a population boom of local tribe population or an (unlikely) interaction with other communities, by way of trade, conflict, inter-marriage and other alliances. The only major interactions amongst tribes seemed to be amongst those in relative geographical proximity to one another. Africa lacked nations in the same magnitude or cohesion evinced in Eurasia. Pay no mind to the White supremacist or the Neo-nazi whose only explanation for the stalled integration of populations in the African continent is the proclamation that one race was/is superior to the other without any scientific credence to his fallacy of a proposition. On the other hand there are more scientific theories regarding the stalled integration of populations on the motherland, and rarely do argue in favor of genetic superiority. Perhaps the most credible theory of them all culminates in the Pulitzer prize winning author’s book, Jared Diamond’s Guns, Gems and Steel. In his book, Jared argues that a number of factors inhibited population integration — and as a consequence technological advancement — in Africa and the Americas unlike Eurasia.
These factors include geographical factors such as climate, regional distribution of domesticable crops and animals, written language etc… Let us isolate just two of these factors to make greater Jared’s point. One can argue that the temperate climate and domesticable animals of Eurasia made movement and ultimately settlement feasible for the occupants of the landmasses and as a consequence interaction amongst populations brought about exchange of ideas, cultures and technology and by so doing catalyzed European and Asian civilizations far beyond the levels attained by the tribes in the Dark Continent and pre-explored Americas. As the Spanish sought places to settle in the Americas, they found a land Bueno Aires — which literally means “good airs”. As the Boers also sought a piece of land to settle in, they chose fairly temperate regions of South Africa to settle in. Places that share similarities with their home climate, having already possessed the requisite technology and relatively advanced weaponry such as a frigate and muskets to make such a voyage and suppress indigenous populations. Jared also argues that these populations who were not gifted the geographical and geological benefits that Eurasian populations possessed however did make the best of their environs and maximized its potential. The proof of this lies in what Africans like indigenous American populations accomplished, from art to medicine, crafts, agriculture and more, we do indeed have lots to be proud of. Jared or his theory is not without his/its critics. Some say his theory leans too heavily on determinism and makes little room for social ingenuity. While his theory may be imperfect, it does beam with credence and plausibility. Regardless of your disposition, the fact remains that Africa barely had integrated populations — as Western nations did — in the time of violation by European nations. The consequence of this, is that it made the divide and conquer policy birthed at the Berlin Conference of 1885 by European powers seeking to pillage the motherland, all the more effective. The absence of full fledged nations with advanced weaponry made it a yeoman’s task for the continent to mount a proper defense of its land and its peoples against Western imperialist forces and so we succumbed to mercantilism and subjugation.
Western conquest of the motherland also spelt out an interjection of the continent’s metastasis. And so European nations sought to expedite the process to nationhood for pockets of communities and tribes in the motherland and so they mashed us all together. Therein lies the root cause of our ethno-religious conflicts. Colonial powers cared nothing for the sociological consequences of their actions. Prior to European invasion of Africa, Islam had taken up roots on the continent. This was no surprise because North Africa was in proximity to the Middle-East through the corridors of Egypt. As Islam took up an expansionary policy and the Arab Slave trade bloomed, it spread further southward of the continent while some areas remained immune to Islamization. The Europeans came after and further polarized the continent, leaving it sandwiched between the two monolithic religions of Islam and Christianity. It is in the grouping of these religiously polarized and seemingly incompatible populations that we find the roots of ethno-religious conflicts in Africa. The Northern area of the old Sudan for its proximity to Egypt inevitably holds a predominantly muslim population, while its Southern area harbored majorly non-muslim populations. This demographic sketch bears a not so uncanny resemblance to many African nations and for me, as a citizen of one of such nations, Nigeria. Both Sudan and Nigeria mirror one another, they were both colonies of Britain, they both share a prime natural resource, crude oil, both were amalgamated into full-fledged nations, have both had bloody civil wars with the potent risk of ethnic-cleansing for the non-Muslim populations and both to some degree share hopes in the question of self-determination. It is now not too difficult to see why the non-Sudanese/non-South-Sudanese African — especially Nigerian — should have keen interest in the state of affairs of South Sudan. South Sudan in the old Sudan suffered repression from the North as they became custodians of the whole of Sudan upon their amalgamation in 1946 — much like the Nigerian story. Sometimes the roots of ethno-religious conflicts are not just found in mere religious polarization but are sometimes the result of the practice of Western colonial powers granting one (group of) tribe(s) dominion over another. Empirical evidence of this practice is not found in only the Sudanese or Nigerian history books but also the Rwandan history books; where the Hutus sought their pound of flesh against the Tutsis for essentially being the lapdog of the Belgians during the colonial-era. Most civil wars on the continent of Africa took place not too long from independence, affirming that whatever ethnic tensions were causative of such a civil war were surely seething and biding time for the colonial powers to vacate before bursting to life.
It took two civil wars in fits and starts that spanned half a century in Sudan before the south could break away to form South-Sudan. Many Nigerians — specifically the Eastern and some Southern Nigerians — who clamor for another attempt at secession may look to South Sudan as a source of inspiration in their search for Biafra — or at least its equivalent. After much bloodshed and human rights violation on the path of both belligerents — The Sudanese government and the Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) — South Sudan is by no stretch of the imagination a utopian state. It is now in a civil war of its own, a frank reminder that even when religion is not at play — as a majority of the populations of South Sudan are Christian — the presence of resources still pose difficult questions to answer about fairness in splitting the bounty. This brings to the fore of our discourse the internal dynamics and conflicts of the tribes of the Niger-Delta in southern Nigeria. If hypothetically speaking, the Southern and Eastern regions of Nigeria were to secede from the North, there is no guarantee that internal conflicts would not persist over how resources and the proceeds from them are split amongst the seceding tribes right after secession.
Currently, we have a president, Salva Kiir Mayardit at odds with his since sidelined vice president, Riek Machar in South Sudan. The Dinka and Nuer tribes warring against each other but the cause of the new war is not so much grievance over resource allocation and distribution of political powers as it is a lack of a clear vision for the aftermath from the jump. It is not uncommon for people to give in to popular notions of secession when aggrieved in the same way it is not uncommon for the aggrieved to lack an ideological blueprint for the aftermath of the secession. A revolution without a robust resolution is a recipe for disaster, one that includes blood, sweat and tears, and for what? Nothing, absolutely nothing… History is replete with failed revolutions precisely for this very reason, with some of the recent ones on the continent being those in Egypt and Libya stemming from the Arab Spring. The Southern-Sudanese State is now one ruled by old warlords, subjecting its people to essentially a one party state, with power grabs and tussles amongst old friends now foes — surely this cannot be the will of its people. For (some) Nigerians and Africans agitating for secession, it’d be imperative to take into account these factors if ever events were to lead us there. For the foreseeable future, we are stuck in an imperfect union of ethnicities and religions, but one that holds great potential not just on account of the repository of resources on and beneath our land mass and coastal waters but also on account of the strength that lays in our population from this imperfect union. As the most populous nation in Africa — even with an incredulous census figure which I suspect to be south of the accurate figure, we are approximately twice the population of the second most populous nation on the continent, Ethiopia — we hold within us great potential when the sheer force of the people are applied towards strengthening our economy, indigenous technology, academia and more. Therein lies the bane of the people, we are aware of the potential we hold within us, but this potential seems to stay latent and ever fleeting from attainment. A revolution-cum-secession is often brought about when the socio-political sphere shifts from inexpedient to outright unbearable, Nigeria is by no means near unbearable nor a crisis. For now we’ll have to settle for making small gains that move our imperfect union towards a more perfect union, within the slow and painstaking process of progress we shall operate and substitute utilize that framework in the stead of a single spontaneous event.
For our brothers and sisters in South-Sudan we acknowledge that glory and gore go hand in hand with gore usually preceding glory rather than proceeding it. We do not wish to see more gore after attainment of self determination, and hope — even pray — that the civil war is resolved briskly and thus; we implore the international community in its entirety to intervene decisively, for peace for good for hope, for progress. The children of South-Sudan are not to be forgotten.
