We need healing to clean South Sudan’s armed conflict-related prejudices

So much is going on online and offline about South Sudan and the history of decades of various struggles and armed conflicts that led to its independence. This calls for focusing not only on passivity but also on facts, upholding the truth, and the processes enshrined in the Transitional Constitution and the R-ARCSS while improving on them in conformity with international law.

Implementation issues versus practical impact have been a challenge. But despite the many details in both documents, here are some brief ones: The Transitional Constitution says all levels of government shall: (a) promote and consolidate peace and create a secure and stable political environment for socio-economic development; (b) initiate a comprehensive process of national reconciliation and healing that shall promote national harmony, unity, and peaceful co-existence among the people of South Sudan. (Article 36 (2)).

And the R-ARCSS provides for the establishment of the transitional justice institutions: The Commission for Truth, Reconciliation and Healing (CTRH); an independent hybrid judicial body, to be known as the Hybrid Court for South Sudan (HCSS); and the Compensation and Reparation Authority (CRA).

The Commission for Truth, Reconciliation and Healing, the R-ARCSS says, is provided for as “a critical part of the peacebuilding process in South Sudan to spearhead efforts to address the legacy of conflicts, promote peace, national reconciliation, and healing.”

 The parties also signed up that they are “determined to compensate our people by recommitting ourselves to peace and constitutionalism and not to repeat mistakes of the past” (Para three of the R-ARCSS). 

It is no secret that those who participated in the armed conflicts, both the elderly and younger ones, in many ways continue to show bravado, because of their contributions to South Sudan’s independence.

While I will attempt to discuss that topic in this article, I would like to begin by mentioning the damage done to the image of South Sudanese as a whole as a result of these stories of armed conflicts, some of which were not true. The impact of those stories on how South Sudanese are viewed.

That damage includes common prejudices and an assumption that every South Sudanese has been in an armed conflict, at least engaged in combat, received military training, or knows how to operate weaponry.

That is common in the region and at times beyond. The questions regarding those issues get thrown randomly at people every now and then simply because they are South Sudanese. Some even ask about the possibility of smuggling weapons to them. To some extent, some of the views go to the extreme, insinuating that merely being a South Sudanese means being a killer, having killed or not valuing humanity.

All this happens while in reality, all those South Sudanese who, for various reasons, have been violent in all the conflicts, are just part, not even half, of the current population. And one wonders if their number can even reach half a million, despite the fact that millions suffered as a result of the wars and their aftermath. 

The independence of South Sudan was finally achieved through a referendum vote. In addition to the contributions of the armed struggles and peaceful and intellectual contributions, those who were in the government-controlled areas or in other countries and contributed peacefully or otherwise to the struggles and independence also have their side of the story.

While it is best to plant and promote a culture of tolerance and peaceful resolution of conflicts, the impact of these decades of armed conflicts is not only on how South Sudanese are viewed by others. It has also created new generations of young South Sudanese who admire militarism, violence, and being in the army.

Wearing military or military-related uniforms and taking pictures near weapons has long been something that new generations of South Sudanese young people admire, even when it does not result in practical harm. All these need to be corrected.

‘Tools of development needed’

Berger, an anthropologist and former foreign correspondent, details how South Sudan’s founders forcibly conscripted tens of thousands of children in her new book, The Child Soldiers of Africa’s Red Army.

“According to Berger’s research, tens of thousands of children, some as young as five, were forcibly separated from their families in southern Sudan, trained in Ethiopian military camps, and conscripted into the SPLA,” Foreign Policy writes. It notes: “When the southern rebels’ Ethiopian benefactor, President Mengistu Haile Mariam, was overthrown by a coalition of rebel groups in 1991, the SPLA abandoned thousands of the recruits who made their way on foot to the border with Kenya.”

Under the article, someone wrote the following comment:”… I have had many dealings with The Lost Boys. Their stories differ. Some were deliberately sent to Kenya by families, hoping that they would receive education and perhaps even make that coveted journey to America (by which they meant the Western world in general).

Others were in fact taken off by members of the SPLA, but the goal of fighting for independence didn’t simply mean training as soldiers. In fact, the current president of South Sudan specifically told the younger boys to pursue an education rather than become soldiers. He and other leaders, including Garang, knew that the true fight would come after independence when the tools of the developed world would be needed.”

Indeed, the stories can differ and everyone deserves to be heard, even on an individual basis, I’m not here to comment on those accounts I have shared above, but to contribute to the topic of this article, believing that those quotes can create a better understanding of the same, for the reader

There is a factor of those (then) young people, and new young people recruited in recent years, attaching themselves to the history or achievements of high profile figures (their commanders, dead or alive) to appear or remain relevant in South Sudan’s politics and affairs, even when they do not really love or admire those commanders or how those commanders treated them.

And even when they are simply pursuing their various individual agendas, using the names of those commanders and causing hatred and clashes with others as a stepping stone for political and other positions they would like to get. Some commanders also seem to find the attachment convenient for themselves to remain relevant in South Sudan’s politics and affairs.

Roger Alfred Yoron Modi, a South Sudanese journalist, is the author of the book Freedom of Expression and Media Laws in South Sudan.

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