Seed of South Sudan (29 page)

Since the Rwandan and Somalian tragedies and since the end of apartheid in South Africa, the African Union has formed and taken an active role in trying to mediate disputes in countries on the continent. Likewise, the Union, which has developed a structure echoing that of the United Nations, with multiple functions to address a series of economic, political and emergency situations among the 54 member nations, has provided mediation help in the dispute between Sudan and South Sudan over the oilfields.

The oil pipeline moves oil from the wells at Heglig in Kordofan state, an area claimed by South Sudan, to the northern outlet to the sea, Port Sudan. In the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, the sharing of the well revenues was to be 50–50. Omar al–Bashir, president of Sudan, ordered the pipeline shut on June 8, 2013, because of hostile actions from local rebels. An article by
Agence France-Press
in July 2013 said the two sides wanted even faster help than was being proposed for bringing the impasse to an end.

“In a statement, Sudan and South Sudan confirm their acceptance of the AU plan and call on the African Union” and the prime minister of Ethiopia, chair of another regional body, “to put it into action immediately.”
⁹

Such steps presumably will be delayed as a result of South Sudan president Salva Kiir's dismissal of Riek Machar, the South Sudan representative in those talks. But Majok is optimistic that the changes will be accommodated. He says that more attention should be paid to the tribal disputes that feed the larger conflicts. (Intertribal conflicts have killed hundreds in Jonglei state since South Sudan's independence, according to the
Sudan Tribune
, and the conflict is feeding the Sudan
–
South Sudan dispute over oil.)
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What happens is that they will shift people around, but the direction and the vision will not change. In terms of conflict management, there are some things that South Sudan can do that will resolve a lot of problems. Most of the conflicts arise on the local level, between groups raiding each others' cattle. This is a huge problem. When this happens, it's often part of a tribal rivalry, or it becomes more so because of the raid.

These people who are trying to reduce the conflict at the higher levels need to go to the people. There's a three-step way to bring these fights to an end:

1. Take the talks to the cattle camps. Meet with the leaders of the communities who have their cattle out in the bush, and talk with them to reduce the fights and raids between the communities.

2. Talk to the elders in the communities. These are the people whom other people listen to. They are looking at old age, and they don't get to participate in the community as they did when they were young. But they have a very large influence on the people in their community. Get their advice and have them give their counsel to the people who are fighting and raiding each other.

3. Those who are preaching conflict—work with them to stop that. There have always been those who were not happy—before the Civil War, during the Civil War, and now after. They need to stop preaching revenge and reprisal, and instead preach cooperation.

We need all the tribes in South Sudan to make this country work. The Sudan government loves to divide us and to set us against each other. But we need to stay together and work together. The conflict work needs to be done at the level where it starts—in the cattle camps and in the small villages.

Tribal councils come together to make what we Dinka term “the good decision.” When conflicts arise or situations present themselves, the people, led by their chief and their elders, will sit in a circle to discuss what needs to be done. This is the traditional way, and it apparently has worked over many, many generations.

Ngor Mayol gave an example of this in a discussion of the increase in the price of cattle and the pressures to provide more cattle as bride-prices, especially since the Civil War. Bride-prices of 100 cows or more were being reported as common in some tribes in recent years; in past years such a price would have been an exception. The average price of a cow or bull has also increased dramatically.

“My tribe was affected by the war,” Ngor said of the Dinka Pan-Aruu group he belongs to in northern Unity State. “Many people had been killed, families did not build their cattle herds—they lost a lot due to the war. So after the war, my tribe came together and said that a marriage, which used to cost 45 cows, should bring 25 cows. That should be the norm.” In that way, the burden of creating bride-wealth could be reduced, and the high competitiveness that had come to mark it in some other communities could be avoided. This is a matter that was handled at the tribal level; the government does not get involved, Ngor said. If a marriage was to end in divorce—it does not happen very often—again the tribal court would make a judgment, awarding the groom only 25 cows even if he paid more, because this became the new custom among the Dinka Pan-Aruu.
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South Sudan has so many resources—oil that lies undiscovered, minerals we have yet to identify and find. The land offers a good climate, and little of the land is desert. We have the great expanse of the White Nile River. There are so many crops: sorghum, okra, millet, groundnuts (peanuts), casaba, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, melons, cabbage. Our trees give us kumquats, mangoes, shea butter and lemons. But building an economy based on these resources will take patience.

People in South Sudan need to know that South Sudan is not going to happen all at once. The first thing that we have to provide is water for our people—in the form of water wells. Providing water will help assure our crops can grow—that we will have food. Then we need to have schools and hospitals.

All these things will take time. It will take a while to be like other nations. We are moving in this direction, but it's going to take a while. If we try to have all that we think we need at once, we'll be disappointed. We have to be patient.

South Sudan had a lot of help in coming to life from the countries on the same continent as well as from around the world. Its citizens and military suffered death and destruction and large-scale dislocation. As it gets on its way, it has help from a lot of individuals and countries as well.

The African Union, the union of 54 African states, has played a major role in encouraging resolution of differences between the two countries, particularly over the issue of oil, as noted above. As of this writing both countries were urging the assistance of the African Union in resolving the dispute.

The Union of South Africa has been very strong in support of South Sudan and in providing post-conflict reconstruction and development assistance in step with the African Union's focus on that nation-building capability. In 2011, it trained more than 1,600 officials from South Sudan's government in an effort to increase the abilities of the new nation to carry out government functions.
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According to Ngor, the police and security forces in South Sudan are being trained by South African government police officials.

The United States has been spurred by the many efforts of individuals like the late Mickey Leland, the congressman from Texas who died in a 1989 plane crash on a mountain slope in Ethiopia while trying to bring to light the massive starvation and desperate conditions at Pinyudo and other refugee camps; NBA player Manute Bol bringing food to Pachala; George Clooney focusing international attention on the eve of the referendum vote; and the thousands of news items that came out of the Lost Boys' stories as they arrived in the United States as well as Canada and Australia. Whole communities across the United States took the Boys into their homes, schools, and businesses. Many churches have become involved, and several nonprofits have been created to assist those back in South Sudan. Now men (and women, as those brought into foster care in the United States included girls), the Boys continue to educate anyone they can about the atrocities that occurred.

In addition, there are many South Sudanese in the diaspora, people who escaped to Egypt, the Middle East, the United States, Canada, and Australia, who watch U.S. and other countries' support of South Sudan as it continues its efforts to survive despite efforts of Sudan to circumvent the Comprehensive Peace Agreement.

The Obama administration's then–U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, told NPR after the referendum in 2011 that the United States regards Sudan as a state sponsor of terrorism, and that it will only consider lifting sanctions against the country if they abide by the CPA. She said the issue goes “back to 1993, when it was necessary for us to put Sudan on the state sponsors of terrorism lists, as they were housing and harboring Osama bin Laden and supporting many other terrorist organizations at the time. And then there have been subsequent sanctions, both imposed legislatively and by the executive branch.

“In our discussions with the government of Sudan, we laid out … a very detailed road map for how we could work to improve our bilateral relationship in a step-by-step fashion, in accordance with actions taken by the government, and actions that would be reciprocated by us. The first step in that process was to see the successful conclusion of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. A crucial element of that was, of course, the referendum.”

Now, she said, things depend on the status of Abyei. “Rather than dealing with it at the negotiating table, the government moved forces into Abyei and continue to occupy it—since May [now withdrawn]. There is the issue of revenue-sharing and oil. There's the issue of the disputed border areas. There's the issue of ensuring that citizens of the North and the South have certain rights that are respected and ensured in their respective countries. All of these are formal parts of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, as is the status of Blue Nile and Southern Kordofan, where fighting is raging. So these are all issues that we can't sweep under the rug and pretend are not part of the CPA.”
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In addition to the interest of the United States, Canada, and Australia, there is interest in South Sudan from many other countries. China, which built the oil pipeline from Heglig (Panthou) to the North's Port Sudan and developed the port itself, is keen to see the oil flow; India and Malaysia are partners in the enterprise. Japan's Toyota has told South Sudan it wants to help develop a new pipeline that will bypass Sudan and access the Indian Ocean through Kenya, a very attractive prospect to South Sudan.
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So South Sudan, the world's newest country, carved out of the largest country in Africa, home of the White Nile River and the world's largest swamp, and holder of oil and other unknown mineral resources as well as a climate ideal for many agricultural crops, has many challenges, and many opportunities ahead of it.

In the Second Civil War, the one that chased me from my home, it is estimated that 2 million people in southern Sudan died and 4 million were displaced.
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This was the second war since British rule ended in 1956. In that first war, the one my grandmother referred to when she warned me about war coming again, many also died.

The Dinka are not afraid of war, but there needs to be a different kind of war, one that uses our other gifts—the ability to meet together and discuss and find solutions that are more peaceful. In our journey to Ethiopia we were always conscious that an unintended action could affect us—someone could get mad, someone could easily harm us. In fact, the people who were most helpful to us as we journeyed were the women and the old people. Those men of fighting age remained silent and did not help us when we needed directions or food or other things. There are tribes within South Sudan that still have difficulty getting along with each other. Competition over cattle-grazing lands and water are big areas of disagreement.

So the threat of conflict is always there. But we need to do better than that. We need to see ourselves in South Sudan as warriors in a new war—a war to bring ourselves up to the modern age in terms of infrastructure. We need to arm ourselves with new tools and new weapons. Chief among these is education. We need to build wells for water, roads for access, and we need to build schools and clinics.

This emphasis on education goes against the old tradition among the Dinka and possibly other tribes. In fact, education was associated with schools, and schools were associated with towns, as only towns had enough people to attract students from the surrounding areas. For instance, I was designated to receive schooling, and the school was in another town, where I would go to live. When we were part of the former Sudan, everything would have been in Arabic, and only one son would be educated.

In the old days before the SPLA, the Dinka did not trust the towns. Towns were where people learned non–Dinka ways. A boy might become subject to the attractions of the town and get involved in crime or drink, spoiling him for life as a Dinka cattle keeper. So the Dinka mistrusted schools, and the boy who was selected to be educated was one who was not so good at cattle keeping and other traditional duties of a Dinka male.

Towns, too, were places where raids had occurred in the past when Arabs from the north invaded and took away children and girls, enslaving them over time. While this happened mostly to the Malual Dinka, in the northern Bahr el Ghazal area, it was still a threat to other Dinka, including the Agar Dinka. So opposed were the Agar Dinka to engaging with towns and outside cultures that they discouraged roads being built to their areas. Isolation was seen as a good thing. Between lack of access to their grazing lands and the Agar Dinka's reputation as fierce warriors, the people remained relatively undisturbed by the hand of civilization.