South Sudan at Heart

Letter of complaint from South Sudanese child  By: Abraham Daljang Maker KAMPALA: Dear Fathers, I am writing this letter of complaint with tears rolling down my cheeks. I am totally broken down and I don’t know what to do; I always become the victim of the circumstances whenever any event unfolds. This leaves me with unanswered question, why always me? I can still remember every event even if I am sleeping and I will continue to recall all the incidences as much as my memory can afford. It was on 16 may 1983 in Bor town when you, my own dads said you were tired of the way your brothers (Arabs) were mistreating me and you wanted me to be a free child in my own country. I had seen the ugly face of the war and its ramifications, there were metallic birds that would fly over heads defecating with hot feces on our grass thatched roofs burning it with flames, and my mother would run with me to a hole dug around our compound. She covered me with her fragile body exposing he...

What footsteps will South Sudanese youths follow? By: Abraham Daljang Maker Kampala: it is hard to speak out at this critical moment but it is worth saying something. I would begin with a famous dictum that “one dead frog spoils the whole water.” By this I am alluding to the current crisis in South Sudan which is the continuation of the past incidences. The 1991 Bor incidence seemed to have again given birth to 2013 Juba, Bor, and Malakal incidences, and if the whole affair does not stop, I am afraid it will lead to another incidence in some decades to come. Bad prediction! Yes indeed it is bad, but there is likely that the history sometimes repeats itself unless people get committed to change the history. What would be called a political arm twisting within the SPLM party has taken a different dimension by involving the army which I believed should be an independent body; and worst of it all, it turned to be a tribal strife. This leaves me with a question; what footstep...

South Sudanese have globally lost pride again By: Abraham Daljang Maker KAMPALA: for the last two decades, south Sudanese who took refuge in different countries in the world have been moving with their heads lowered in shame. They have physically been tortured, emotionally disturbed and psychologically attacked by some individuals in hosting countries. This was inevitable because there is saying that “even a prince in a foreign land becomes an ordinary person.” As for my case, I did not live in concentration camp but I came to Uganda in 2003 to seek for better education as our education system was a total dwarf due to lack of qualified teachers and better educational facilities. However, I was not different from those in the concentration camps. I was just like any of them, I experienced the same physical, psychological and emotional abuses; all we could do was to swallow the pride and move on with the hope that one day our country will be back to its feet. The words that ...

The role of social media in South Sudan political upheaval  By: Abraham Daljang Maker KAMPALA: The recent fighting among the presidential guards has resulted into what would be termed as massive killing in the country if massacre is an over exaggerated word.   Much as many people look at the two men; president Kiir and his Ex-VP Riek Machar as the two big elephants flexing their muscles, it should not be forgotten that the social media especially Facebook has also played a significant role in fueling all these violent. It started way back when the president took a decision of dissolving the entire cabinet most of whom had served in the liberation struggle. This sparked a lot of debate on Facebook status updates with many people predicting what would happen while others were using tribal sentiments to provoke the situation, you could clearly see what would happen in a few months after the sacking of the Vice President. A significant point to note is that most polit...