Guys!

Here is an article from Hon. Bona Malwa where he prettily much addressed South-South Dialogue well.

South-South Dialogue: The altering concerns
By Bona Malwal

For more than three years now, the political forces of
South Sudan, other than the leadership of the Sudan
People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), have been concerned
that a South Sudanese political dialogue takes place
in the wake of the highly hoped for peace agreement. I
say only the leadership of the SPLA, because
indications all over South Sudan have been that the
political house of South Sudan is not in order; needs
to be put in order and much of the SPLA membership,
with the exception of its top leadership are equally
concerned. This concern has been clearly shared in a
very widespread way, even with the rank and file of
the SPLA. The only exception is clearly the leader of
the SPLA as a person, who, for some concerns of his
own, sees any gathering of the South Sudanese as aimed
at his person or his personal leadership. The
personalised leadership of the SPLA and the mistakes
it has made, may be excusable on war, but they need to
be discussed before they are se aside. But the South
is moving on to peace. It is by any standard a new
era. Any people would like to reappraise their recent
past; take stock of the rights and wrongs of that
past, not necessarily with the view to apportioning
blame to an individual or to a group, but mainly with
the view to taking stock of the mistakes of the past
and trying to avoid committing them again in the
future.

Whether South Sudanese like it or not, the
organisational structure of the SPLA has been
predicated on the word of an individual leader. This
structure has been helped by the fact of war. Young
South Sudanese took to the bush, not to play politics,
but to fight a war against an enemy that has time and
again humiliated them – broke all manner of agreements
with the South and denied the South any human dignity,
let alone participation. It was right that war took
prominence, although, war itself needed political
management, as the terrible mistakes made within the
SPLA show us today. Because of lack of political
structures within the movement, all the South
Sudanese, politicians amongst them included, had to
keep quiet and allow the pursuit of war to go on.

Now, however, whether peace will be signed or not, it
seems such a high time that South Sudanese debate
where this war of the SPLA and its politics have led
them. The people must take part in deciding where what
will become an exclusive peace between the SPLA and
the government of Sudan will lead them.

Because war against the North, for its own sake, was
so paramount to the people of South Sudan, no one
questioned the leadership of the SPLA on its political
articulation of the war. And because the leader of the
SPLA had a hidden personal political agenda, the
leader took advantage of the silence of the people of
South Sudan – their support for the war and used it to
articulate his own agenda of a “New Sudan”. With the
passage of time and the overwhelming acquiescence to
that articulation, “New Sudan” has become an
acceptable slogan for many young South Sudanese
members of the SPLA, whose personal and individual
urge to take up arms forced them into the SPLA.

As the peace process for South Sudan begun to take
route around Africa; even more importantly, because
“New Sudan” slogan had so divided South Sudanese so
much, it was important for South Sudanese in their
various political groupings and organisations to plan
a meeting under one roof, to discuss the future of
their country and agree a political consensus. That
was the idea behind the call for a South-South
dialogue since 2001, that Colonel John Garang has been
fighting so hard to prevent.

Most people will have known about the failed Entebbe,
Uganda meetings on the South-South consensus; the
rebuke to the leaders of the “New Sudan” Council of
Churches (NSCC) for daring to organise a meeting of
South Sudanese without the approval of the leader of
the SPLA; the failed Abuja, Nigeria conference, which
was called off only twenty four hours before it was
due to convene, because the president of Nigeria was
told that he was hosting a meeting of separatist South
Sudanese when he, as a military commander of Nigeria,
had fought a civil war in his own country to prevent
Nigeria from breaking up. Many South Sudanese who were
delegates to the Abuja conference were stranded at
international airports around the world en route to
Abuja, when they were informed that the conference was
called off and they had to turn around to return to
wherever they came from. The SPLA leader and the
personal agents he had mustered to foil the meeting
savoured their success.

As always, the SPLA leader’s view about South Sudan
has been that since becoming the leader of the
movement, he has scrapped whatever there was in South
Sudan before his movement came to life. There are no
more South Sudanese political leaders besides himself.
Only those politicians who support him, whom he
approves of because he uses them capriciously, can be
called politicians. He wants to commission South
Sudanese politicians just like he commissions his SPLA
army officers. He dreams that he has absorbed anything
that was in South Sudanese into his own image and no
one should dare question that, let alone attempt to
undo it. He must think for the South, act for the
South – even order the people of South Sudan to behave
like himself.

While the leader of the SPLA has assigned for himself
a very tall order that he is unlikely to ever succeed
in fulfilling, if one’s knowledge of the political
temperament of the people of South Sudan serves one
well, the idea behind the South-South Sudanese
dialogue is both straightforward and much more
innocent and mundane than the SPLA leader has
interpreted it to be. The idea, really, is to get the
people of South Sudan, whom the SPLA leader has so
badly divided over these many long years of the war,
to rallying together again over their own future.

Ever since the several meetings for the South-South
dialogue had been blocked, the SPLA leader has
attempted to masquerade a programme of South-South
dialogue under his control and in his image. It is a
process like anything resembling the character and the
behaviour of the SPLA leader, that in the end, only
what he wants to happen in South Sudan can happen. So,
he is proceeding with his South-South dialogue. His
army commanders have already met under him; the tribal
chiefs have been gathered and met under him; he says
he is planning to meet the civil society. But all
these meetings are only geared towards confirming what
the leader has done. That is not good enough for those
independent and free-minded South Sudanese, who
believe that they have a point of view in the public
affairs of their country and that if Colonel John
Garang leads the people of South Sudan without public
consent, then it is unacceptable. He must listen to
the different points of view, in a meeting
independently organised and convened for the purpose
and not necessarily by him. That, as a free people,
the people of South Sudan are entitled to their
independent point of view, whether or not, in the end,
whoever leads the people, takes cognisance of that
point of view. Leaders must be guided by public
opinion in whatever actions they take in their running
of the affairs of the people.

The simple and straightforward idea of a South-South
dialogue arose from the concern of many South Sudanese
that, as the Intergovernmental Authority for
Development (IGAD) peace process on South Sudan was
taking a serious turn in Kenya and because the SPLA
leader had decided that only his SPLA movement was to
negotiate on behalf of all the South Sudanese, in what
is a very divided South, it was better to hold a
meeting of South Sudanese political groupings and
organisations to agree on a political consensus for
their future. That consensus would become the guiding
principle to negotiators on their behalf. Since the
SPLA was to be invited and was expected to attend the
South-South dialogue, its views on the peace talks
would inevitably have swayed the trend at the
conference. The SPLA leadership would also have
availed itself of the views of and be in contact with
some of the South Sudanese leaders whom it had no
opportunity to talk to because of political
differences. The SPLA leadership, not only refused the
invitation to a South-South dialogue, it actively
worked to block it. The result is that this dialogue
has not taken place up to now, even though its
proponents have of course, not abandoned the idea.

Looking at the practical political aspects of things,
however, and while the idea of the South-South
dialogue remains valid, the agenda ideas for such a
meeting may have changed quite a bit by now. After
all, the leader of the SPLA has negotiated and
continues to negotiate on behalf of South Sudan on his
own, without the consent of the groups that wanted to
meet with him in a South-South dialogue. Whatever
peace agreement the SPLA leader signs with the
Government of Sudan on behalf of South Sudan, will
only be implemented by the SPLA. Anyone who wants to
be part of that peace agreement will have to let
themselves be first recruited into the SPLA. Recruited
people do not have a say in what they are about to be
part of. But the idea of a South consensus does not
die because the SPLA leader has said so, or signed a
peace agreement with the government of Sudan.

South Sudanese have a right and a duty to themselves
and their country to sit down and agree on a consensus
of what they want to see for their country and its
future. After all, one of the advantages of a
South-South dialogue, if the SPLA leader had agreed to
it and attended, was to mandate him.  He would have
carried the mandate of all of the political opinion of
South Sudanese. It is only the leader of the SPLA and
no other leader else, who would turn down a generous
mandate of his people, no matter how powerful that
leader already feels he is. It is good for any leader
to arm himself with the support of one’s people.
Whatever shortcoming in the South Sudanese political
aspiration arising out of any compromises that may be
made as part of the peace negotiating process, would
have been shared by the entire South with the leader
of the SPLA.

Now, the SPLA leader alone, takes the responsibility
of whatever he signs up for. That includes the
advantages and the disadvantages. But the vast
majority of the people of South Sudan, who do not
agree with the method and the behaviour of the SPLA
leader, still need to meet and coordinate how they
will behave towards any peace agreement that the SPLA
leader will sign with the Government of Sudan.

The call for a new meeting of the South Sudanese
opposed to the behaviour and the attitude of the
leader of the SPLA, if it takes place, will have
before it some extremely important matters to discuss.
For instance, how will this group behave, if a peace
agreement signed by the SPLA leader falls short of the
aspirations of the people of South Sudan in some
respects? How will this group behave, if the SPLA
leader leaves out of the new power structures in South
Sudan, some groups of South Sudanese, whose inclusion
into the new political set up, will be crucial for
creating the stability that South Sudan will need
during the peace agreement, leading to the exercising
of Self-determination at the end of the six year
interim period? Most crucial in these groups are the
various armed militia in South Sudan.

The rhetoric of the SPLA leader on the question of the
armed militia is not encouraging. He seems to want
these militia to surrender to him and to be treated in
whatever manner he so wishes, or join the Government
of Sudan in Northern Sudan. Failing one of the two
options that the leader of the SPLA prefers as a
solution to the militia problem, the Government of
Sudan should be charged with the responsibility of
disarming these militia by force on his behalf, a
situation that will surely not result in peace. In
other words, the leader of the SPLA only wants those
South Sudanese who submit to his whims in the South
and no one else. All those South Sudanese who want a
meeting for a South-South dialogue, will surely need
to discuss such a situation and take a view on it.

What about the question of political participation?
Political participation is not only in the form of
sharing the spoils of war or the peace dividend as the
SPLA leader seems to think. There is so much political
participation else to be had outside the government in
a peace situation in South Sudan. Well known for his
totalitarian attitude and behaviour, the SPLA leader
will not be very keen about an open political
participation in South Sudan. He has shown great
reluctance about the political process in the peace
negotiations. He does not want an early election in
South Sudan for instance; working so hard in an
attempt to persuade both the IGAD mediators and the
peace facilitators that the best guarantee for any
peace he signs up to will be to allow him and his SPLA
to get on with it during the six year interim period
without an election. He wants to maximise the period
in which he will continue to mess up the affairs of
the people of South Sudan without a check. It will be
necessary for the South-South conference to have a
view on all these things.

If a political system, which allows functioning of
political parties and groups is allowed to operate in
South Sudan during the interim period, it may well be
in the best interest of the people of South Sudan, to
let the SPLA leader get on with enjoying the benefits
of his own tailor-made to his measure peace agreement.
It will be best for the rest of the enlightened South
Sudanese to become watchdogs on him. The people of
South Sudan may not be well served by a totalitarian
system that absorbs all under its umbrella because of
jobs.

Beyond that, it is necessary for the South-South
political dialogue to take place. We all know how 22
years of SPLA leadership have largely been a curse on
the life of the ordinary South Sudanese. Not to speak
of the unnecessary untold loss of lives. Debating the
political structures of a new system of Government for
South Sudan and how the country will handle the
process leading up to the referendum on
Self-determination, is extremely crucial; especially,
when it is so clear that a South Sudanese unionist
government under the leader of the SPLA, will do all
that is in its power to rig the referendum against the
aspiration of the people of the South. But equally
important, if not indeed more important, is how South
Sudanese will relate to each other during the interim
period.

Throughout the 22 years of war in South Sudan, the
motto of the SPLA leadership has been to leave the
poorest of the poor of the South Sudanese society to
their own devices. It has been the existence of the
fittest phenomenon. Not only that, we have seen,
particularly in Upper Nile, how the SPLA leadership
has used one tribe against the other, even one group
within the same tribe against the other, to settle
political scores and grievances that are best resolved
through conflict management and mediation; especially
if these mediations and reconciliations are inspired
by the political leadership.

If providence helps South Sudanese with a peace
agreement, no matter what the shortcomings of that
peace agreement may be, the enlightened leadership of
South Sudan has a very daunting task to try to
reconcile the communities of South Sudan across the
board and of getting them once again thinking of
themselves as peaceful South Sudanese communities. It
is not going to be an easy task or a small feat. But
some success can be made of it. A South-South dialogue
conference would do well to think about these things
in advance and to discuss them at their meeting. I am
therefore, all for renewing our collective efforts in
organising a South-South conference, whether or not
the SPLA leader likes it and whether or not the SPLA
signs a peace agreement with the government of Sudan.

Meanwhile, no South Sudanese, who is concerned about
the welfare of the ordinary people in South Sudan,
should do anything that may adversely affect the
ongoing peace process. Our people have been yearning
for peace for a long time. They are exhausted and very
tired of war. Nothing is in our hand to give them that
peace. Those in whose hand it is now to get peace to
the people of South Sudan should spare no effort to
give the people peace. If we can promote peace in
whatever collective and individual capacity we can, we
should do so.