South Sudanese People, Believe In Your Leaders!
By: Luk Kuth Dak – USA.
Now that the much-anticipated referendum’s date is within reach, if all goes as planned, it’s indeed, essential, rightly so, for all of the people of South Sudan, who are dying for justice and freedom, to be beware of the fact that, the National Islamic Front, NIF, and its executive wing, the National Congress Party, NCP, are out in full force to undermined not only the aspirations of the Southern people to become independent, but particularly their leaders. If you don’t believe me, just ask Chairman and President Salva Kiir Mayardit. Increasingly, every word he speaks, and any statement he makes, particularly, in the Northern Sudan’s media, are either distorted, trashed, ridiculed, or simply taken out of contact, for pure racist and bigoted purposes.
Obviously, it’s not racist to criticize Mayardit, or any other Southern leader, for that matter, it’s not racist to strip the second most powerful man in Sudan of his hard-earned titles, as he’s now being referred to with only his first name, bare of any of those life-long accumulative achievements. Above all, it’s not even racist to character assassinate him, because it comes with the territory, as US Sectary of States, Hilary Clinton once said.
But, let’s keep it real here, it’s self-evident that there’s something about the nature, the mannerism, the attitude and certainly the ugly way of the most vicious attacks on the president that I believe are outrageous and hard to explain without asking whether his race and being a South Sudanese have something to do with it.
Just for instance, Kamal Hassan Bakhiet, President al Basher’s cousin and the editor –in- chief of the NCP funded ( al Rayulaam) Arabic daily newspaper, and a host of other journalists who have closed ties with the regime, but motorist for their blunt hatred for the people of South Sudan, like: Rashid Abdul-Rahim, Muhamad Abdul-Gadir and Diaa al Deen Balal, to name a few, who have repeatedly disgorged racist statement such as that Southern Sudanese are unequal to Northerners in every way, are mentally inferior to stand on their own feet, and Salva Kiir doesn’t know what he’s doing. “ They – Southerners- have no brains to administer themselves; they will soon come back to beg for unity; but then, it will be too late, wrote Kamal in his syndicated column.”
Personally, I like a lot of things about Northern Sudan. After all, I graduated from Shendi Senior Secondary School, just north of President al Basher’s birth place of ( Hush- Banagga). More so, an overwhelmingly, I repeat, an overwhelmingly, Northern Sudanese Journalists organization, in the United States, headed by one of the most, if not the most, distinguished journalists, Ustaz Fathi al Daw, unanimously elected me as vice president of the union, despite the fact that they know am in full support of separation of South Sudan.
But what I hate about most of the Northern Sudanese, in general, is this ridiculous sentiment that they alone have God ( Allah) on their side, and are superior to all of the other Sudanese people who identify themselves are Africans, and proud of being black.
One thing that bothered me for quite sometimes about the North’s media outlets is the idea that, somehow, Southern Sudanese, aren’t smart enough, and can’t possibly run a state. They continue to show how bigoted they really are by suggesting that Southerners can only succeed in life if they are under the wings of the North!
How ludicrous!
On the ground, however, the claim doesn’t add up substantially to support just how they actually reached the conclusion. On the contrary, the bitter truth is the exact opposite! Otherwise, how do they explain, in all honesty, the fact of the matter that the Sudan Peoples Liberation Movements’ negotiators in the comprehensive Peace Agreement marathon were able to out-smart them in such a way that might lead to the end of end of one of the largest country in Africa?!
In addition, most of the Southerners in key positions today, like Dr. Lam Akol, Dr. Riek Macher, late, Dr. Walter Kutjok, Taban Loliong, Justice John Lok Jok, to name a few, were ones of the most outstanding students at the university of Khartoum, Uk; despite all sorts of racism that they had to go through in their daily lives.
Personally, I have never met President Salva Kiir before, but certainly, he is not the man who is being portrait by the Northern bigoted media. He deserves more for what he has done for South Sudan, then and now. However, if I were his press secretary, I would seriously mull how to prevent him from giving any interviews to any of the NIF’s controlled news media, who are clearly out there to create animosity, fraction and division, on the one hand, between him and his right-hand man, Dr. Riek Machar Teny, and on the other hand, between the Dinka and the Nuer peoples.
By all means, no true South Sudanese who should put up with that kind of garbage, but for the greater good, and to really put matters in the clarity they deserve, last week, I phoned the SPLM’s diplomatic chief in Washington, D.C; and one of the most, if not the most, out-spoken members of his party, Ustaz Ezekiel Lol Gatkouth, about the roar in the Northern media outlets that the relationship between President Mayardit and Vice President Machar, is at the verge of collapsing, at any moment!
“ Those are just misconceptions by the NCP’s lunatics; they have no substance whatsoever; they are only aimed at diverting the attention from self-determination for the people of South Sudan and to divide the South on tribal lines, as they have successfully done before; and I can categorically deny that there are any such problems between the President and Vice President; and from what I know, the two men have so much respect for one another, and they are harmoniously working together for the future of South Sudan, he stressed.”
So there you have it.
The author is a Sudanese Journalist and former anchorman with Juba radio.
I can be reached at: [email protected].
