Liberté

(Another one from the archives)

On Saturday, I happened to find myself watching the “independence” celebration of the newly minted Republic of South Sudan. Frankly, I’d rather have been elsewhere doing anything but thinking of how flawed this independence of the Southern Sudan is.

Granted, not everyone can be pleased, not every need catered for, not every error corrected, not every sin accounted for; but to invite Omar El Bashir to the event, I find surprising. He who still plots and does murder in Abyei and Kordofan, he who still sows confusion and dissent in the south through Northern Uganda’s worst plague, Joseph Kony and other proxies.

Diplomacy has been much exaggerated in this quest for independence. If it was up to me it would have been a zero sum game, a fight unto the death. A complete break from the North. Place all the oil fields in my pocket with absolutely no revenues to the north. Instead, we see a lot of infighting. Southern tribe pitted against southern tribe. Weaponry being sneaked into the South through Kenya as if our tall cousins are ashamed of their freedom. Come on, stand up and take what belongs to you, grow some cajones and take it like you own it!!

If ever there was the biggest display of half measures, ‘tis the Republic of South Sudan. The biggest collaborator in this tragedy has been the Republic of Kenya. We were the stewards that led them down that all too familiar road, garnished with thin tarmac, built by the dashed hopes of a blinded and cynical population and driven on by a leadership that has been continuously proven to be deficient of morals and too trusting in its own wit which is all too lacking.

The envelope was not pushed too far and thus the world has ended up with a half baked nation that will continue to be a problem for the foreseeable future. This irks me, it does irk me so!

But I speak as an outsider, I have not experienced the horrors that the Southern Sudanese have experienced through all these past years. War, hunger, pestilence. I cannot even begin to put myself in their shoes. I do not know how it feels like to want to be free. Ergo, I acknowledge my deficiency in the rendering of this harsh judgment, a judgment I will still hold on to.