The Jieng’s Actions Indicate that they Desire Independence

The Jieng people of South Sudan are first and foremost separatist, colonialists and expansionists. Many readers without knowledge of South Sudan, or even some South Sudanese themselves may wonder and ask the question: how true is the statement? ‘The Jieng are separatists.’ This is understandable, however, to understand the reality of this claim, it is important for the reader to dive deep into the arguments advanced here, to shine a light into the hidden nature of the Jieng psyche, and their hidden desire for separation.

The Jieng vocally portray themselves as patriotic, nationalistic and liberators, but if we scratch below the surface, we will find that public claims to patriotism by the Jieng are made falsely. The strength of this falsity is backed by their control of the state. They claim patriotism and unionism to ensure that their project to dominate and displace the non-Jieng people becomes a success.

Were the Jieng to openly say they want to separate; they will not achieve their colonial expansion and resettlement all over the country. They want to gain the entire land of South Sudan which is the end result of their grand project.

How then are the Jieng separatists? The best way to understand any social group is to first look at its history and the psychological dynamics impacting it over time. Historically, the Jieng people had been brutalised and severely oppressed by Arab immigrants from Arabia and later on by the infiltration of the Turco- Egyptians deep into the Sudan. The Arabs enslaved the Jieng, sold them out to wealthy slave traders in Arabia and far beyond. This relationship between the Jieng and the Arabs continued unbroken until the arrival of the British in late 19th century and early 20th century.

The new colonial power brought with them their own policy against slavery. On 28th August 1833, the British parliament passed the Slavery Abolition Act which criminalised the practice of slavery. Although this act came into force, slavery continued in many of the British colonies for a considerable period. So, the British coming into the Sudan minimised the practice of slavery and directly helped the Jieng from being preyed upon by the Arabs.

The Jieng for nearly two centuries existed as a ‘hunted commodity’ to be enslaved. As every enlightened person knows slavery is dehumanising, instituting the reduction of human beings into objects involving the terror and degradation of the self-worthiness of a person. This process has an extremely damaging impact on the person. The enslaved person lives constantly under fear and helplessness.

In order to understand the Jieng, it is crucial to know that due to their century’s treatment by the Arabs, they may well have developed a negative image of themselves and a sense of insignificance. It is most likely that such beliefs included feelings of inadequacy, which played a role in turning the Jieng into a brutal people. The British American poet Wystan Hugh Auden elsewhere points out that an oppressed person will turn oppressor. Nelson Mandela in his book, ‘Long Walk to Freedom’ throws more light on the impact of the relationship between the oppressor and oppressed by arguing that both the oppressor and the oppressed are robbed of their humanity. The oppressor is a prisoner of hatred, while the oppressed is a prisoner of environmental, economic and mental constraint. Please listen to a reading of Mandela’s perspective read by Liz Helgesen in this link, (https://www.awakin.org/v2/read/view.php?tid=2175&op=audio)    

The moment an oppressed person gets power they become the new oppressors, because they do not know anything in their lived experience other than being commodified, dehumanised and controlled. They think, OK it is our turn to control others and the way to do it is exactly like their master’s did to them. The aspiration to control by using violence is their default position, marred with deep internal fear and a lack of ideas, they constantly feel insecure without control.

The Jieng’s inability to generate and develop ideas is part of the core of the type of society they have unfortunately become. A closed social group with limited scope due to their isolated life. They do not want to integrate into the wider South Sudan. For example, take the Fertit people of Bahr El Ghazal, Equatoria, Chollo and others. These social groups are open, they absorb other people, and the cross pollination of these different cultures produces a highly colourful, vibrant and sociable environment generating a better society with people full of creative ideas.

The Jieng on the other hand have produced wonderful intellectuals such as Dr John Garang, the founder of SPLM/A politic-military movement ruling South Sudan now, Dr Francis Deng who coined the concept of Responsibility to Protect adopted by the UN and others; yet the Jieng intellectuals internally within their social group are ineffective and unable to play any role in transforming their environment and group to become open, or indeed open up. This is essentially because the traditional rules to which they hold, keep the group closed, rigid, stringent and do not allow room for innovation and change.

Each member of the group holds themselves as responsible to maintain the group. Conformity is a must otherwise sanctions visible and invisible kick in followed by exclusion. This is a terrifying prospect for any Jieng with ideas of reform. To overcome such a situation, the overwhelming majority of the Jieng keep quiet and toe the line with the consequence of stifling change within, and embedding stagnation in their group. Unbeknown to them by behaving like this, they project a picture of total complicity with the regime. Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of the Jieng are totally blind to what their behaviour as rulers does to the image of their social group. Noam Chomsky in his book, ‘On Anarchism’ using the Kibbutz in Israel as an example explains this phenomenon beautifully.

The Jieng like any other social group are shaped by their history, and as a result of their history, they have sprung up as a highly insecure and anxiety dominated group. Therefore, the appearance of Jieng Council of Elders, famously abbreviated as JCE publicly in 2013 was intended to cleanse the psychological scares the group sustained in the previous centuries. This odious body proclaimed itself as the sole protector and promoter of Jieng interest. Dr Nyaba in defining the JCE points out that, “The JCE compromising the Jieng political, military and business elite is the driver of Jieng ethnic nationalism and its ideology of hegemony and domination, which is an important driver of the raging civil war”

During the war of the liberation between the southern Sudanese and Sudan, the JCE kept their plan to dominate South Sudan under wraps. Once independence was achieved, they hijacked the state of South Sudan and began to show their true self. Please see, ‘The decline of Equatoria and the rise of Jieng tribal power in South Sudan.’ (https://pachodo.org/pachodo-english-articles/43679-the-decline-of-equatoria-and-emergence-of-jieng-tribal-power-in-south-sudan#:~:text=From%201947%20to%201972%2C%20the%20pioneers%20of%20south,with%20their%20leaders%20opting%20to%20be%20in%20Khartoum. )

The Jieng social group by any measure is nothing other than an internal separatist group. They may well be aware, or unaware of it. However, they are wreaking havoc on the entire society of South Sudan and its land. They have adopted destructive values in their interaction with the wider South Sudanese society. Instead of promoting solidarity, fairness and compassion to build a successful country, they have opted to adopt disunity, injustice, lack of concern for others, hatred towards others, mercilessness, insensitivity and cold heartedness to build an exclusively Jieng state. Please see Dr Nyaba’s article titled, ‘Jieng Dinka Attempt to impose hegemony and domination in South Sudan!!’ (https://pachodo.org/pachodo-english-articles/43775-jieng-dinka-attempt-to-impose-hegemony-and-domination-in-south-sudan )

Having captured power and in their quest to regain their humanity obliterated by two centuries of Arab slavery and displacement from Shendi in the Sudan to their present land in South Sudan, the Jieng set out to consolidate power and control over the country with the objective to grow their social group and push the others out of the country into the neighbouring countries. Since the 1960s, the pioneers of the JCE in the persons of William Deng, Abel Alier and others promoted the false narrative parroted by Jieng students in all the junior and secondary schools in southern Sudan at the time that the Equatorians are not southern Sudanese and they must be displaced by force. Since 2013, the Jieng controlled government has consistently displaced the Chollo, the Fertit, the Luo and the Equatorians.

What does this mean? The answer is simple. The Jieng as a social group do not want to co-exist with others in the state of South Sudan. They want to push all the other South Sudan tribes out of South Sudan and into the neighbouring countries, so that the country becomes a pure Jieng state. They see themselves as the only social group with rights over all. As the Jieng have made it abundantly clear by words and deeds that they are unwilling to live with others, the omen is on the rest of South Sudanese to grant the Jieng independence. The banana shaped land they occupy compromising the Abyei Box, in the far north, coming down south to Warrap state, Lake state and the south western tip of Jongule state is suitable enough to exist as a state with a population of 1.2 million people. This land is endowed with oil, rare earth minerals, water, arable land, wild life and millions of heads of cattle.

Though a Jieng state will in size be small, this should not be a point of argument. There are many tiny states in this world. In Africa, Lesotho, Cape Verde, Sao Tome and Principe, Sychelles, Comoro/s Island, are all small countries with smaller populations than the current Jieng states. In Europe, Liechtenstein and Luxembourg etc are very tiny states with populations under a quarter of a million and yet they thrive. So, the Jieng can do much better with their resources to become a successful state in peace. In fact, elsewhere Bona Malual strongly put it that the Jieng have land where they can return to and survive without any difficulties. He is definitely right.

The rest of the people of South Sudan must not force themselves to co-exist with people who want to live separately to promote their culture and expansion. The UN Charter and The International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights 1966 grants the right to break ties with the Jieng as equally it grants the Jieng the right to pursue their own future as they wish in their own state.

The current situation where the Jieng grow their social group at the expense of all others, in all areas, including massive displacements and depopulation using unimaginable extreme violence, is neither acceptable, nor tenable and helpful. As it condemns the people of South Sudan into a never ending conflict between the 1.2 million Jieng, and the 10.8 million others which with time will lead into the extinction of the other smaller tribes. As I write, the Jieng as the ruling group have already committed genocide against the Nuer and various Equatorian’s. Please see, Clemence Pinuad’s book, ‘War and Genocide in South Sudan’ and Carol Berger’s piece, ‘South Sudan: the Dinka plan to use ‘ethnocide’ to create their own state – Martin Plaut   (https://updm-rss.org/UPDM/Ethnocide_Dinka_strategy_dominance.pdf )

The longer the status quo continues, the more people will be lost, the more the future of the coming generations will be bleak, the more the hatred will grow toward the Jieng, with possibilities of further genocides to come, the more the region will be sucked in and remain unstable. The people of South Sudan should think about the future carefully, there is no gain to be had by keeping the Jieng in the greater South Sudan society, as their actions so clearly depict that the rest of the people of South Sudan are of no value or interest to the Jieng as a community. They do not want unity with non-Jieng. They have demonstrated it in word and deed. Let them have their desire of becoming a separate state, as this may help achieve peace, growth and development for the rest of South Sudan.

The 10.8 million current victims of the Jieng have no interest in forcefully governing any social group, and this includes the Jieng. Governing any social group forcefully leads into dynamics of oppression which as already pointed out above, is not helpful. South Sudan should not wish to be drawn into such destructive dynamics that benefit no one. It may be painful to admit, but when a ship is sailing in the middle of a storm, with the crew arguing violently, those who do not want to continue on the journey are always granted the freedom to take the life boats and sail to their desired destination. This is where South Sudan is, so as seems to be their desire, let the Jieng go in peace!

Presently, the Jieng regime has no allegiance to the state of South Sudan. This is evidenced by the regime openly ceding the sovereignty of South Sudan to Uganda, a foreign power with huge interests in South Sudan’s resource. Uganda has been promoting instability in the country to reap maximum profits and thanks to Jieng foolishness, Uganda now holds the levers of the South Sudanese state. This level of irresponsibility is unheard of in relationship between states.  Additionally, the Jieng regime entered into many secret financial deals worth hundreds of billions of dollars with no benefit to the people of South Sudan whatsoever, exposing our future generations to unwanted poverty. Furthermore, this Jieng regime opened up the country to all sorts of dangerous non-state actors to thrive in the country, without taking into consideration the security of the South Sudanese people.

Plainly put, South Sudan is atrophying because of Jieng leadership, and a quick solution is needed. Dr Nyaba in his article referred to above concludes with the question, “Having discoursed Mr Awet having let the cat out of the bag, I want to pause and ask ourselves whether the desire to erect a Jieng ethnic state in South Sudan is worth the suffering, sacrifices, tribulations and agony the people of South Sudan are experiencing daily and possible dismemberment of the country?” The answer to Dr Nyaba’s pertinent question can be found in the argument advanced by this article. What is needed is a surgical operation to remove the Jieng banana shaped land out of South Sudan and let it stand by itself in the interest of peace, coexistence and good neighbourliness.

[Truth hurts but it is also liberating]

Elhag Paul