Kiir and Machar

The civil war in South Sudan after the secession from the north makes Omar Ali-Bashir look like an angel especially when we remember the horror during the Darfur Genocide. I just wonder what is wrong with African leaders who fight for freedom for so long and with much suffering only to use the same freedom to kill their own people!

Why did they even fight to emancipate themselves from the north? They ran from the tyranny of Omar Al-Bashir but what they are doing in a liberated young nation isn’t different.

No wonder, the late Playwright Francis Imbuga was right when he said this in Betrayal in City: "It was better while we waited. Now we have nothing to look forward to. We have killed our past and are busy killing our future." South Sudan emancipated itself from the butcher of Darfur only to manufacture two butchers who don’t care about peace and human life!

The two political opponents-Salvar Kiir and Riek Machar lack leadership, are power hungry and suffer from a syndrome deeply embedded in most African dictators. They don’t care about peace at all. Why have they made a ‘U’ turn on a cease fire they signed last week?

Back to the history of South Sudan’s struggle for liberation, what was the reason for emancipation when Southerners are killing each other left and right because of power?

Salvar Kiir and Riek Machar have proved to the World that independence for South Sudan was a mistake; it was a mistake because the country is a “hot bed” for civil strife and anarchy. South Sudan is inhabitable… People are dying yet the two leaders are only interested in power.

I wonder if the late General John Garang would have done things differently after the secession if he was alive today. The struggle for power by the two men who once served in the same government may not bring lasting peace to the country.

The crisis has reached a stage that the international community through the United Nations needs to move in with speed and work a formula for a transitional government which will pave the way for presidential elections where the two rivals can fight it out democratically.

Otherwise, what is happening in Africa’s youngest nation may degenerate to the Rwandan horror of 1994. Expecting a peaceful resolution between two rivals is totally untenable.

By Joseph Lister Nyaringo
New Jersey, USA.