“You cannot see the forest before the trees”

Discussing national interests and tribal ones

“You cannot see the forest before the trees”

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By Opoka p'Arop Otto on Monday, 8 August 2011 at 07:39

By Opoka Christopher Arop

'Do we have core national interests or are we defending tribal interests?” 

At my first attempt to explore what core interests entailed and I found out that ‘interests’ must be examined in the context of the States/Nation. States are geopolitical units that have defined borders which over time have acquired a self-justification that make them, and are then assumed to be natural. They are instruments through which people are administered, conduct their socio-economic affairs, and struggle to survive as viable entities. By its nature a state seeks to secure itself from all types of threats whether the danger is internal or external. As a political unit, a state is considered to be ‘sovereign’ and to be a ‘nation’ that has ‘interests’ which need security. The question here is: Is our sovereignty now after 9th July only to secure interests based ‘tribal interests’?

The state faces two challenges in securing its interests. First is acceptance by the people within the state. Second is the acceptance by other states which implies being accorded and treated with respect. Will people within the Republic of South Sudan accept securing of ‘tribal interests’ in a sovereign nation and shall these people be accorded and treated with respect?

Security therefore relates to successful confrontation of these two types of challenges. It requires a thorough understanding of what the national interests to be secured are. National interests on the other hand are the attributes necessary for the well being of the country. These include well run economy, socio-cultural cohesion, good governance and national image. Some interests are core or primary and not negotiable. Others are peripheral or secondary and can be traded for others in order to secure core interests.

The non-negotiable interests are first the sovereignty of the state. This implies the geographical definitions, the people in the said state, and the governing structure or constitution from which all activities are derived. Another question comes to mind at this juncture: Does South Sudan have clear geographical definitions, besides Abyei, but including borders with Southern Darfur, Southern Kordofan State, Blue Nile State, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo and Central Africa Republic? For example, is not a Kenyan flag flying and Kenyans living deep inside Eastern Equatoria State border line towns?

The interplay between interest and security at any level is at the center of any unit, irrespective of its size. ‘Security’ can refer to the survival of that unit as a political entity while ‘interest’ can refer to the values which distinguish that unit from any other.

The two concepts complement each other but it is ‘interest’ that takes precedence in the sense that the purpose of ‘security’ is to secure ‘interests’ that define a given political unit.

The capacity of various political entities to provide ‘security’ for their ‘interests’ varies and depends on numerous factors. Another question comes to play here:

What interests has the government been protecting in the guise of national security, if security is in itself non-existent without prior identification of core interests? Can hold to power by the people who have fought and brought peace be justified in their alignment to national stability as a major core interest and thus sideline other interests of the majority when in reality these persons are just power-drunk or experts in the art of trickery?

The youth are crucial to advancing and promoting core interests. This is because they are part of a given political environment, either through the employments they get in the private or public sector including but not limited to the media industry, as well as in the form of states, are specific to countries and regions (Tunisia and Egypt) and are expected to reflect the values and interests of the societies in which they reside and operate. In this regard, the primary role of the youth especially those involved with the media and other advocacy and civil society groupings is to uphold and protect a society’s values and interests. They have informal obligations to project their particular society in the most positive light with regard to national security, interests and cohesiveness of the citizens. The definitions of core interests are thus at the center of the role the youth can play in the new Republic of South Sudan. If these core interests are not clearly defined and explained to the youth, variations in the definitions and explanations can lead to misinterpretations and thus lead at the extreme circumstance to uprisings such as was the case in Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, among other north African countries where there was a failure by the governments to include youth in the development and promotion of national core interests. And in the new Republic of South Sudan, the ground is rife for such folly, should the government not take a u-turn from tribal politics and tribal core interests, as evidenced by historical clashes based on tribal affiliations.

To perform their duty of projecting a positive image of the new Republic of South Sudan, the youth need to be guided to a more focused all inclusive vision for the new nation. They must be well informed about shared uniting beliefs, norms, and customs of their societies and of the nation at large.

For the purpose of this article, the youth may be classified into two types. There are those who are obedient and can follow guidance when such guidance is provided. There are also the rebellious youth, who are easily misled, not because of their educational background and level, but as a character trait, they are very hot-blooded. For the obedient and sober youth, there is a high degree of consciousness that enables them to be a good force in advancing national interests, securing national security and for building a sense of citizenship. They operate within the context of the state and not outside the state; they are builders and not protractors of national interests.

In contrast, the volatile youth behave as if they are outside the state. They act as if they are not part of the society in which they live and as such they do not worry about national interests. In so doing they can be instruments of state destruction. They end up being threats to society, national interests and survival of the country in which they live and work. A distinction must be made here between youth from the Diaspora and youth from within the state. Diaspora youth can also fall under the same segmentation of volatile and conscious.

The youth being another one of the branches of the family that society has for perpetuating itself, depends on another factor. This is the family/clan structures along with the educational systems in which parenting is institutionalized, and the youth are taught and inculcated with the society’s values, traditions, norms and what it is that constitutes proper behavior. The family and the educational systems are supposed to work together to propagate and defend the interests of their society. The challenge however when coming to the youth protecting core interests, is on the kind of education and parenting they receive and their way of thinking.

The way of thinking raises the question of whether the youth have a philosophy of a society that demands developing a sense of pride in one’s family, society and nation; such sense of pride to enable them to understand an injustice when it occurs.

The role of the youth in the new Republic of South Sudan is even more acute when the world is no longer considered a global village but a global jungle. In the old days, the world was a village, where one would move from one village to another without having to arm oneself, gather friends to accompany them, prepare for likelihood of danger, anticipate such danger; because then the world was a village where people of the next village were receptive, friendly and joy was a reflex away.

However today, the world has become and is a global jungle. One is never and can never be certain of what to expect. For in jungles, one will expect to find wild beasts, other enemies, hunters and the hunted, as such due preparation is not a luxury but a necessity. You either kill or get killed. And in certain communities in the new Republic of South Sudan, the youth are constantly involved in cattle raids where you are either killed or you kill. This raises a more valid reason why the youth need to be more central to the development of this new nation as Dr. John Garang himself saw in his paper, delivered on his behalf by Dr. Barnaba Marial Benjamin to the 17th All Africa Students Conference (AASC) 28th-29th May 2005, held in Windhoek, Namibia.

Whether not today’s youth will have a positive or negative impact on tomorrow’s Republic of South Sudan remains for the reader to decide for themselves. But one thing am sure of is that something is brewing. The atmosphere surrounding the conclusion of the Constitution; issues of transferring the capital city, land issues, corruption, tribalism, bribery, abuse of power by the executive, judiciary and even the legislature have become more common adage than primary school and baby class recitals as common are Roman Catholic hymns on the lips of child molesters in the United States and elsewhere.

My point here hopefully is that the youth are often at the center of such debate because they are the ones directly affected by such debate. Was it not the youth that attacked one another in parts of the country during the 25 years of civil strife, and is not the youth that hold the future of this country in post independence celebrations?

Whomever can manipulate the youth will become the most powerful man on this land. Pagan Amum has for the right reasons or not been an icon for virtue or vice among the youth today. While many youth are celebrating his success as an SPLM cadre, others may feel different. The recent rift between him and other SPLM bigwigs leaves the youth in a difficult dilemma.

Nonetheless, I choose to end this article with a sinister anecdote. While having lunch on the date this article was concluded, I and my colleagues were disturbed by the utterances of a drunken citizen of this new nation. We were visiting a new place to have lunch, and he said things that convinced many of us, including his fellow citizens and tribesmen that for this country to remain one whole the ideologies imprinted in his inside and exterior persona must be whitewashed with a deliberate effort to cleanse him of his idiocy and self gratification. His self elevation and elevation of his fellow citizens (including his own tribe and the tribes he considered to be belonging to his and their personal and collective traits) must at once be deleted and replaced with a national interest, an interest far greater than selfish patriotism.

Such racist, tribalist ideology and behavior led one man Alexander Kimenyi to write a poem in honor of General Fred Rwigema, the commander-in-chief of the RPF who died in the early days of the invasion of Rwanda in 1990. The poem, called 'Nsingize Gisa umusore utagira uko asa' (A tribute to Gisa, a young man with an indescribable beauty), appeared in Impuruza (no. 17) in December 1990. Here is an excerpt translated into English by Dr. Froduald Harelimana:

‘You are a bullfighter who launched a war to free the Nobles [Tutsi]

Since you decided to use the entire arsenal

The termites [Hutu] will run out of the country

Just a few days before the first shell has landed

Those wild rats, corrupted crooks [Hutu] are already panic-stricken

They are looters, hooligans, and killers [Hutu]

I see those traitors with bloated cheeks [Hutu] running in panic and disarray

Those thieves [Hutu] are troublemakers.

The ugly creatures [the Tutsi mythology preaches that people of Hamitic origin are generally handsome, whereas people of Bantu origin are ugly] are insane and furious

They are the enemies of Rwanda; they are nothing but a bunch of dishonorable dirt.’

 For me the words of this man at the restaurant and his blatant references to the supremacy of one or two or three tribes as the collective, the collective single unit deserving praise for the coming of peace, the single three tribes deserving, the economy, industry, business, military and ministerial positions as well as the most bitter of his demands that all the women of South Sudan especially the women in the areas where the other tribes are according to him infidels, cowards and useless; is a calling that will disintegrate this nation far worse than Rwanda, Congo, Angola, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Nigeria combined. He was a drunk and we let the argument pass, but we shall never in our hearts stop thinking that should such elevation be demanded, the people shall never rest. Journalism aside, the media cannot do what was done in Rwanda, by blindly hiding behind journalistic ethical standards as shrouds.

The Writer/Journalist is a Journalism Trainer and can be reached at [email protected]