South Sudan Needs a Middle Way
Kit Martin
Written from Cairo Egypt
As the Republic of South Sudan emerges as the newest nation, the time for solutions driven by the latent talents of Sudanese citizens has arrived. Such a direction requires a new plan to invigorate the nation, to both build national unity, and respect the difference inherent in a nation of so many languages, geographies and laws.
South Sudan has fought for fair local determination since 1956. By 1960, in Africa the colonial empire’s contractions left a slew of new nations contained in arbitrary boundaries governed by the Leaders of the Revolutions operated by the remainder of the colonial bureaucracy.
In Sudan, the largest nation in Africa, Britain’s boundaries contained hundreds of languages, governed by a 19th-century bureaucracy residing in Khartoum. The distance and consequent differences between the government of Khartoum in the north and the population of the south precipitated a series of internecine conflicts over the rights of self-determination. These wars and feuds continued until the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005.
These conflicts bred a generation of military men. Guardians of a revolution and now, on July 9, 2011 leaders of a new nation. Ravaged by half a century of conflict, and a century before that of Egyptian and British colonial rule, South Sudan has both been governing itself regionally, while constituting a broken collection of feuding groups for over a century.
This new nation emerges from one of the bloodiest civil wars in Africa, with an estimated 2 million dead, and 4 million in permanent exile the human costs of war are as apparent in the government structures of south Sudan as anywhere. Governors and leaders are selected from those who led during the crisis of war. But now, the country needs men of peace.
The people of Sudan have always provided for their regional needs through local leadership. It should be recalled that top down governance led to Sudan’s civil wars because of disenfranchisement of minority groups’ common laws. South Sudan is made of hundreds of minority groups, and so any government that wishes to avoid the emergence of a post independence authoritarian government in South Sudan needs to respect this mosaic of governing bodies.
In other words, south Sudan should harness the diversity to create a stronger whole. The government, and its foreign donors seek to invigorate the nation’s abilities to reinforced citizens’ capacities, while respecting the differences inherent in a nation of so many languages, geographies and laws.
Though, the budget of the Republic will be provided by oil revenues for the foreseeable future, balancing between the realities of international standards of human rights, while maintaining self-determination will be an ongoing issue.
The new nation is between rocky shoals, on the one side is the dangers of a descent into authoritarian government funded by large oil revenues and a perceived need to protect itself from northern aggression, on the other is the need to strengthen local governance by legitimate elections at all levels of government. If South Sudan, which has fought for self-determination for 50 years crashes on these shores a common story is easily foreseeable. If the newest nation can maintain its founding values of local governance, while buttressing the security of the nation, South Sudan has a bright future.
