Something is going to fall like rain

Ordinary citizens have extraordinary plans for their nation, but how far will they go and will they live long enough to rise for their rights?

Something is going to fall like rain

 

By Opoka Christopher Arop

 

‘How can there be heroes when nobody knows the names of the dead? How can the world weep when its eyes are closed?’ Drinks----disruptions---drinks. It feels better that… we are together. There are better issues to discuss. The issues of democracy, another says how about constitutionalism.

 

In another corner a man who is thinking big says professionalization of the military. A possible CPA, real Comprehensive Peace Agreement…not what we have had for the last 6 years, he says…Not what the Olushambos and Kibakimen are doing in Addis Ababa.

 

And when all these fail, what happens? There will be as it is now a requirement for boardroom calculations. Where has federalism gone? Where has corruption come from, another yells as is the cheer in the new facebook fueled democracy euphoria sweeping across the Arab dictatorships?

 

And when it works, we shall strive to hold many people in government accountable. For its not better to account for the bad, but also equally responsible to account for the good deeds, and thus rewarded.

 

No government organ shall belong to a particular province. The head of a ministry shall not divert projects to his tribal heritage.

 

Our fear is that the rule of law that the West and Europe sing is more times determine by those who apply it… and the west ever ready to supervise. China looks on with its gloves-on approach to foreign policy… they drill oil in the south and donate guns to Bashir in the north, or even in Malakal… Sweet democratic deal indeed!!

 

Then we shall sit and make another constitution, the constitution review process, others think has been dogged…

 

Another gentleman argues, it is criminal for us South Sudanese to be forced to carry national identity cards and passports bearing initials in a language of the very people who for a long time oppressed us…whether Arab or English, our people can’t read. They do know their names of course and they know how best to pronounce it, but they just don’t know how to write.

 

My young sister who is a graduate from the infamous cattle can not read nor write Arabic or English, yet her passport and nationality contains six names of which she can not make out her very own name let alone those of her father, and fore fathers…

 

Chief Lamidi Adedibu is an acclaimed political godfather in Nigeria’s Ibadan State; in Southern Sudan we have our very own godfathers… A good story that SOSA-WOOD and NOLLYWOOD combined missed…

 

Lamidi like many of our leaders elected or appointed, results of election rigging or of failed election rigging tend to annoyingly purport that no court could remove him from office, declaring war effectively… In the Democratic Federal Republic of South Sudan, our sin as a new nation should be HONESTY…

 

Ironically and very true as time passes, that nearly all the political bloodletting that shall stain the national canvas shall be between the rival factions between and within our party….members will be convinced that our party will and must win the ensuing and any other coming elections and the rivals will be trying to strengthen their positions in the party to secure public office…has this not happened!!!

 

Democracies in Africa constantly fledge, foreign NGO’s especially those from the United States of America have infected the political blood-stream of Africa… They claim to champion the cause of the poor when they are here to advance, first and foremost, the interest of their own countries…

 

Reagan formed NED---National Endowment for Democracy. It spawned the International Republican Institute (IRI) and the National Democracy Institute for International Affairs (NDI)… There is the USAID whose budget for 2007 is a staggering US$3.7billion. The NED received about US$50million from the US Congress….

 

He who plays the piper calls the tune… learn…We can safely say that these organisations undermine the sovereignty of countries in the developing world, from Haiti to Liberia, and now to the Democratic Federal Republic of Southern Sudan…

 

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf when sharing IRI’s 2006 Freedom Award with Laura Bush, said “They educated. They Instructed. They Supported…”

 

Her comments were an eerie echo of Julius Caesar’s summation of his own empire building “I came. I saw. I conquered…”  Can the Johnson-Sirleaf administration as an example of our very own government here in Southern Sudan honestly say that it takes policy decisions and awards contracts solely in the interest of Liberia, and not the U.S?

Contracts are awarded for the purpose of what we need most…and that is UNITED STATES DOLLARS, and we need plenty of this at that…dont we?

 

USAID’s objective as is the case with most donor funding is to use foreign aid to further “America’s foreign policy interest in expanding democracy and free markets while improving the lives of the citizens of the developing world”

 

Am fine with America’s foreign policy…it for example secured for us the peace we are enjoying today… But it can’t always be perfect… nobody should expect it to be perfect, not even I!!

 

They should have voiced more strongly for the Khartoum government to allow Ban Ki Moon to act….and not a crippled African Union forces that can only react when killed…

 

We should beware of these new churches…a Boston Globe Newspaper survey identifies 159 faith based organisations that received “more than US$1.7billion in USAID prime contracts, grants and agreements from fiscal 2001 to 2005”

 

A guess as President George W. Bush’s Faith Based Initiative… USAID has also tied acceptance of Genetically Modified food to foreign aid… There is a strong body of opinion that G.M foods will in the long run be harmful to the small scale African farmer; lead to the destruction of local food economies…

 

Create a cycle of dependency and cause acute starvation….and USAID will be required allover again… USAID lime many other donors were advocating for the absurd policy of stopping starvation today by creating conditions for more starvation tomorrow….

 

And the IRI says proudly on its website that it has worked in Kenya with political parties to teach…teach what exactly? Do our politicians ever ask why America fights Osama?

 

God forbid, America fights the whole world, as long as you are Arab one would argue, others may say as long as you don’t have a governance system that they do not benefit from!!

 

No----you see, you are wrong professor…. Don’t be fooled by what the media says the professor… Then how do you explain Israel, Palestine Fattah….says a member of the debate…. America is now supporting Fattah, do you know why?

 

Do not ask me says the member, feeling defeated… Tell your listeners at the now new refurbished former Might Bar, the so called Spot’5 where pork and cold drinks come faster that the lazy river Nile…tell them…tell your illiterate classroom… It is like you are teaching a subject you have not yet conquered, a tilted Professor you cut out….

 

No pity whatsoever, my literate comrade…My lack of wisdom and reason combined should instead be your vantage point…that is what building a nation really should mean!!

 

It will in fact make me better at many, my youth and pessimism will be too strong for an old age like you says the strong-hot blooded lad… The freshness of your knowledge should not provoke in you a desire to laugh away at my contribution however small to this country…

 

Professor…your days are numbered…do not behave like other old hands who continue to dance even when their music has come to an end…do not be like Gadhafi or Bashir… or Mubarak, or make our nation another Yemen, Tunisia, Didier Drogba’s Ivory Coast… Prof. I mean to ask you…

 

Go ahead, but you do know am no Professor… You are this and more. At least to your idols you are a champion of the drinking club. You are a hero to all men’s wives… And handsome as a crippled-wizard-hyena…says the professor…

 

You mean by that, your sky-high-charm and charisma. Drunken village folk tremble at your caution. They will not trust you with their wives… And yet send their daughters at my aboard at sunset…. Even drunks, know surely when their manhood wake…

 

I know not of mine ever sleeping, even in Juba’s rare cold morning breeze… Prof. stop that foolish talk...Professor gets into a stupor… and says…Polish your English, for when I am made President by military and tribal decree, you will be made Chief of Staff…

 

Professor…jokes are jokes…lets get serious…you can not even make it to the village council board… Ok… I take my offer back…any way I meant you will only fit into the hole-office for the Chief-of-Staff of the gate-keepers…

 

Professor… People know your intellect. They love you because you are wise. They laugh with you out of silly mock. They eat with you as a common pity. But your plans are too good for them to understand…It is too serious for simple people…

 

Professor takes the stand…and says. All I want is for my people to stop such talk that politics is too risky…for if its too risky, is it synonymous that only those who are brave take risks…? I know a coward who confronted his wife every night with bravery no hero from Anyanya or all liberation struggles ever had…that is yet another leaf of bravery...

 

I remember….DEMOCRACY…Of the PEOPLE, By the PEOPLE, and For the PEOPLE… It simply means that all those in government office at all levels of administration are servants of the people. They are accountable to the public who vote confidence in these people to hold public office…

 

But we have not voted in a very long time…one can not call the vote in 2015 as a vote for democracy…may be Africa should have its own yard-stick for democracy…

 

But such democracy as envision by forefathers of these lands who foresaw freedom as a legitimate demand of their people, will come…it will surely come…and when it comes, I want all people to be ready to participate in this process…

 

How about those who are in office and turn offices into their own homes…those few or many officials who carry the entire office on their backs and in their pot-bellies…

 

Young man…have you not seen the common portrait of our government officials…they say… ah don’t look at my stomach with envy…I have worms in my stomach…in fact am very sick…most of our government officials argue that they grew such bellies, even the women, that because they are over-joyed by today’s prevalence of peace…men appear pregnant when they are not…. What will our women become in 9 months?

 

Young man…fear of elephant style pregnancy in humans should not be our highest worry… Then what is in your educated opinion…? The worst enemy to any civilization is fear and anger in a man… What do you mean…Fear and Anger?

 

Yes there is such a thing….there is also but poverty, disease, illiteracy, Medicare, housing, commerce, clothing, religion, culture… Let us focus a little…these things are secondary… Our people live with poverty, they are poor to the brim…illiterate to skin-teeth…many more can not and have not seen the door mats of classrooms, not the stench of hospitals…many live in shovels and shaky hovels for homes…… Ok I don’t see where you are going with this Professor…? Says the other member…

 

Fear and anger can kill a well-fed-educated-fashionably-dressed-man in less time than HIV-AIDS and Tuberculosis, Gonorrhea and Cancer combined…fear of the future…and anger at the present….these can wipe and self destroy a whole generation…Fear makes men brave or die…fear is nor rich nor poor…fear is a thin line…anger is worse…a hungry man’s wrath is more brutal than the plannings of a rich and happy corrupt one…

 

That is a new one professor, or is it the beer working? Not at all…if it’s a consolatory argument on my behalf, most great political philosophers and scientists in their obsessions with finding the truth, have often appeared and spoken much like drunk and mad men, as you say now I do…

 

So do you mean there is intelligence in madness…? Wake up…you are a grown man…. Do you not pluck hairs from your nose? Are your testicles not forested? That chin surely is shaven by a broken cowry? Black lips, because you no longer tease and play with your mother’s soft, beautiful, fat breast and n*****s… By the shy looks and the sudden anger, she must have fed you on it far too long… Your possessiveness and greed stems from her innocent generosity. Don’t bring my mother in this…. Well, my poor small penis!!!