What are the alternatives to Salva Kiir?

By the look of things, Pesident Salva Kiir Mayardit has no intention of steering the nation into the daylight. He has been the leading figure in South Sudanese politics for 12 unimpressive years. He has become "Mr. Let's Wait And See How This Problem Is Going To Take Care Of Itself." His love of the leadership has blinded his conscientious self. In ancient Africa kings or chiefs wielded enormous power and with this juggernaut of power came novelty. In most cases, they were principally wealthy and gave away their wealth to the downtrodden populace. Kiir is trying to emulate the traditional leaders’ open door policy by being all ears to a countless number of people all at one go. He just sits there on his presumed throne and families of all kinds come to demand whatever they long for. Even before his ascendancy to the upper echelon of the South Sudanese politics, his laid-back approach to everything cost many soldiers their lives during our days in the bush.

The first task of a leader is to be an initiator. The first to take the first step out. Salva Kiir sleeps on his duties. An influential leader cultivates trust. How does trust come about? He/she is a selfless being who goes out of the comfort zone to make sure the lives of all individuals are secure from harm. Once the people are secure from danger, what comes next is trust and a willingness of the general populace to heed his call. Trust is garnered through three hard-earned steps. First, the character of the leader must be put under the microscopic lenses for all to scrutinize. Integrity reigns supreme here. He/she is accountable and must follow through on his/her promises. Up next is competence. Is the leader in question qualified to lead the institution that he/she is vying for? Last, but not the least is authority. As things stand today, no one in his right mind would delegate any powers to Kiir so he can determine the fate of our nation.

People began to lose trust in Kiir soon after he took over following the demise of Dr. John Garang. Corruption became the name of the game. Insecurity was rampant, thus making everyone to fend for themselves. Money was being carted away in boxes. For someone that is this inept and incapable of taking care of his duties, one may wonder how he survived the leadership upheaval under Dr. Garang. What did John Garang see in him that made him stand out from the crowd? Salva Kiir is a quiet person by nature and by the same token, he hideously swallowed his true corrupt nature so he could feed that monstrous character once power came his way.

According to United Nations, some 2 million people are taking refuge in neighboring countries. Another 2 million people are internally displaced. South Sudanese who first began refugee life in 1987 have now spent 30 years in those makeshift camps. Thirty years more and they are in their 60s, still living the hard life of a refugee. These South Sudanese nationals are not entitled to land rights, agricultural subsidies for farming, and low taxes in their host nations; they consistently live on the hand-outs from the United Nations where the daily meal is beans. What are the alternatives to our current quagmire?

South Sudan as a nation has not fully healed from the traumas we put ourselves through during the liberation era. From the early eighties to the early nineties, SPLA was holding the high ground in our struggle for justice. Major swathes of South Sudan were liberated with the exception of a main towns of Juba, Wau and Malakal. After the splintering of SPLA/M into SPLA/M-Torit/Mainstream and SPLA/M-Nasir, respectively, we began to turn on ourselves and chaos started to confuse our national identity. Our adversaries in Khartoum began to buy our loyalties with the simple word of mouth. We began to switch sides to Khartoum, thinking that we could find greener pastures on that side yonder. No tribe was invincible to the machinations of Khartoum's age-old doctrine of divide and conquer. Our leaders ranging from Kerubino Kuanyin Bol, Arok Thon Arok, Joseph Oduho, Riek Machar Teny, Lam Akol Ajawin and even to a certain extent William Nyuon Bany all decided to abandon our major struggle for an unknown promise from those we were fighting. We were stronger when we were one collective force; however, after the 1991 splintering, the Khartoum regime under Omar el Bashir started to push us back into a rabbit hole. Efforts were made to create a reconciliation project and the December of 2013 crisis has shown that the reconciliation efforts were ineffective.

Our best bet would be for the group of South Sudan Young Leaders Forum (SSYLM), which includes the likes of Peter Biar Ajak and Manasseh Mathiang to take over the mantle of leadership in the land. This group comprises of 70 bright young South Sudanese leaders who were drawn from all the tribes in the nation. South Sudan is a highly conservative nation; a year ago, Kenyan girls were harassed in Wau for wearing skinny jeans. Our older generation would easily dismiss the likes of SSYLM members as mere children and thus incapable of taking over the reins from Salva Kiir. What our people fail to grasp these days is that our young and upcoming generation lives in two competitive cultures at the same time. They live in the Western culture of the iPhone and in the traditional culture where they still pay bride price.  They are good at juggling modernity and the old way of life, whereas the older cohorts could easily be manipulated to succumb to old tribal cliches.

The older generation wants to main the status quo and the old way of life, whereby an Azande traditional dance would be deemed inappropriate by Toposa people. The Toposa would see it as an impure custom, infringing on their pure cultured way of dance. The 34 years we have spent in the diaspora since after the eruption of second Sudanese civil war have taught this young generation to be more tolerant of their differences. Some of them have lived their entire lives outside of South Sudan, coming only for a short family visit after the signing of the CPA.

In case the upper echelon of South Sudanese politics refuses to relinquish the leadership to SSYLM, then they can bequeath the reins to Pagan Amum. Why of all people Pagan Amum? Pagan Amum is neither a Dinka nor a Nuer. He is not an Equatorian indigene, too. After the eruption of the crisis in December of 2013, it has been the Dinka vs Equatorians vs Nuer ever since.

Many would complain again of the Nuer dominance in the government if we relinquish the leadership to Taban Deng Gai or Riek Machar. The same would be the case if we hand it to James Wani Igga or Thomas Cirilo Swaka, or Joseph Bakosoro. Our situation is quite different from the one the Rwandans faced after the 1994 genocide. Paul Kagame is a Tutsi and Rwanda has only two other tribes, namely of Hutu and Twa. The majority of the army that took down the Hutu-led government were collectively Tutsi by ethnicity. As one homogeneous ethnic group, the Tutsi easily understood each other and fought for justice as one collective unit.

After Liberia plunged into two successive civil wars, they elected Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who was regarded as a nontraditional leader, because she is a female. Mrs. Johnson defeated the former World Footballer of the Year, George Weah, in the general elections and Liberia has been stable ever since.

The Dinka, Nuer and Azande are the three largest tribes of South Sudan. By choosing Pagan Amum, we would be choosing a nontraditional leader who would stitch together the scattered parts of our nation into a wholesome and cohesive unit. For our people to continue to turn on ourselves for trivial matters as the competition for leadership is truly unfathomable. We had it worst under successive Khartoum regimes and yet we haven't learned a thing about how to live together as a nation. History has it that when a people go through protracted suffering, they rise up from the ashes and use their tragic past to build better communal relations.

Our people continue to flock to the SPLA-IO and National Salvation Front to wage a non-victorious war against the inept regime of Salva Kiir. Why do we continue to lure our youth into the lion's den when we know better that Salva Kiir won't budge one bit? Even though we are one of the poorest people on earth, we should not just let our youth rot in the refugee camps in our neighboring countries living half-decently on a daily meal of beans.

* THE VIEWS OF THE ABOVE ARTICLE ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHOR AND DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE PAMBAZUKA NEWS EDITORIAL TEAM

* BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Please do not take Pambazuka for granted! Become a Friend of Pambazuka and make a donation NOW to help keep Pambazuka FREE and INDEPENDENT!

* Please send comments to [email=[email protected]]editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org[/email] or comment online at Pambazuka News.