South Sudan: Where fish die of old age
July 5, 2014 Musah Gwaunza Opinion & Analysis
Salva Kiir
Baffour’s Beefs with Baffour Ankomah
HAVE you ever heard of fish dying of old age? In this era of over-fishing? Where massive fishing boats with trawler nets scoop everything out of the sea and rivers? And fish populations are dwindling to alarming proportions leading to fish wars and quarrels among nations?
Welcome to South Sudan, the land where fish die of old age. I learned this last week courtesy of South Sudan’s Minister of Transport, Roads and Bridges, Kuong Danhier Gatluak.
This is fish country, and like the Seychelles, fish could be a major export commodity for South Sudan, but, hold on to your chairs, South Sudan imports fish from Uganda and elsewhere while its own fish, multitudes of them in fact, die of old age. Amazing, isn’t it?
This is a land which is still so virgin and fertile that if we could deport some Zimbabweans there for the rest of their natural lives, the word “breadbasket” would have a new enhanced definition.
Sadly the world doesn’t work like that. So Zimbabweans are encased in the four corners of the borders that the Murungu drew, and while they suffer land and water hunger within the artificial borders imposed on them, somewhere in the middle of the continent, only five or so hours plane journey away, swathes and swathes of well-watered virgin land is crying to be farmed. And there is no Zimbabwean in sight! What a crime? If only we could deport some Zimbabweans there! If only . . .
It was therefore appropriate that South Sudan chose to send a parliamentary delegation to Zimbabwe last week to study the system here and see what lessons they could take away to help transform their liberation movement/army mentality into a properly functioning governance culture, something akin to what Zanu-PF has achieved post independence.
The world’s youngest nation needs all the encouragement it can get to make a smooth transition from a strong liberation movement ethos to a workable modern democratic state.
Obviously they realise that after the long war of liberation, the cadres should be able to govern, and govern effectively, because there is a lot of work to be done.
Gargantuan challenges
In fact, the challenges facing South Sudan are enormous, far too enormous for the slender shoulders of the world’s 193rd state to carry alone. Nowhere can you find a nation that became independent and had nothing to inherit from the colonial era.
But in South Sudan, apart from the land and the people, and maybe the River Nile and its many tributaries, the country became independent on July 9 2011 with absolutely nothing to inherit. No roads, no electricity, no pipe-borne water, no government offices, nothing! Everything has to be built, and being built, from scratch.
You must see it to believe it. It is mind-boggling. The neglect of South Sudan by successive governments in the North since Sudanese independence in 1956, and even by the British colonisers before them, has meant that Juba, the capital of South Sudan, is a mish-mash of a village, town and city thrown together in the same place. You cannot find it anywhere in the world, where a village, town and city sit cheek by jowl in the city centre of a capital city.
What is more: In this sprawling and growing city whose population has been swollen by new arrivals from everywhere in the country, there is only 78km of tarred roads. The rest is in the hands of God, and in a country where rain falls like nobody’s business, you can imagine the state of the untarred roads right in the city centre.
President Salva Kiir Mayardit told me last week that when his administration came into office in 2005 (in an interim form) after the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) with the North, which led to South Sudan independence in 2011, it took 30 minutes to drive from his office to the airport, a distance of a mere 3km – because the dirt road was so potholed that one had to drive at less than 5km/h. And this road is right at the heart of the city centre. Now it has been tarred, making life less stressful for motorists.
In fact, the face of Juba has changed so dramatically since 2005 that anyone who lived there before 2005 and has gone away will find it difficult to believe their eyes when they return. High-rise buildings are going up all the time, and there is a real feel of a city in the making.
But the past neglect will be difficult to conquer. The neglect by the British and successive governments in the North means that there is only one bridge – the Juba Bridge to the south of the capital – across a 1 000km stretch of the River Nile that bisects South Sudan into two equal halves. Imagine therefore what life is living on either side of the Nile and not being able to cross Africa’s largest and longest river easily to the other side. It’s not funny at all.
It makes Zimbabwe such a hugely developed country and its challenges so infinitesimal that, a person faced with the onerous duty of comparing the tale of the two nations will struggle to understand why Zimbabweans complain at all. But that is the way of the world; everything is relative.
The history
Perhaps a bit of context will suffice here. South Sudan, 640 000 square kilometres, is larger in landmass than France. On Wednesday 9 July, it will celebrate its third independence anniversary.
Until three years ago, the country of about 12 million people was part of the Republic of Sudan whose capital is Khartoum, the city where the White and Blue Niles meet.
But because of the evils of war and politics, successive governments in Khartoum deliberately neglected the South and left it totally undeveloped. As I mentioned earlier, the British, the colonial overlords of Sudan and South Sudan, set the tone of the neglect when they had the South under their sway.
Going back in time, the story is told of how Egypt invaded Sudan in 1821 and treated it as a slave-hunting territory. At the time, the Egyptians assuaged their conscience by telling themselves that they were going to Sudan to “look for black gold, white gold and yellow gold”. White gold was elephant tusks, yellow gold was real gold, and black gold was African slaves.
“Our territory was hunted for many years, from 1821 to 1898, by the Arab slave traders,” says South Sudan’s current foreign minister, Dr Bernaba Marial Benjamin, a medical doctor turned diplomat, if not historian.
Following on the heels of the slave hunters came the Ottoman Empire during the “Scramble for Africa” era, and effectively became the first colonisers of Sudan, which it ruled through Egypt.
Then came the British in 1898, hiding behind the Egyptians, and setting up a Condominium Rule, in which they administered Sudan jointly with the Egyptians. In fact, Sudan was then considered by the Egyptians as part of its territory, to the extent that the Egyptian monarch was called the King of Egypt and Sudan in the same breath.
But on entering the South, the British saw that it was totally different in mentality, culture, and religion from the North, and so thought it wise to protect the South from Arab culture and religion by making it a “Closed District” where people from the North needed a passbook to travel to, and vice versa.
Therefore during the Anglo-Egyptian rule, North and South Sudan were administered as two different territories, much like North and South Nigeria were ruled by the British as two distinct entities.
Basically, the British saw South Sudan as part of Black Africa, in fact part of British East Africa, while the North was left to its Arabic devices.
As the Mayor of Juba, Chris S.W. Swaka, told me last week: “The South was predominantly African and the North predominantly ‘Afro Arabs’. Arabism in Sudan is not traced to having Arab blood in you
“ It is the Islamic religion that connects them to the Arab world. So it is more an ideological issue than a racial one, although the current generation in the North is changing that dynamic and more of them are calling themselves Africans now.”
The Perfidious Albion
But as perfidy is never far away from the Albion, as Sudanese independence neared in 1956, in fact in the last decade before it, Britain started to change its mind about South Sudan.
As they would later do in Nigeria, the British now saw the two territories they had administered differently in Sudan as one nation, in fulfilment of certain pledges they had made to the Egyptians who wanted to control the entire 6 400km course of the Nile, from Jinja in Uganda to the Mediterranean Sea.
Unfortunately for South Sudan, when colonial Britain had made up its mind, there was not much the colonial subjects could do. And even though the chiefs of the South protested against forcing them into a unitary state with the North, the British and the Egyptians were adamant.
Thus, in a historic Roundtable Conference in Juba in 1947, the Southern chiefs told the British that if the South were to become part of a Greater Sudan, there must be a federal arrangement that would give the South autonomy over its affairs. But this too was denied.
In fury, the South rebelled in 1955, one year before Sudan’s independence, and went into the bush to fight for their rights. That war (called Anyanya I) continued till 1972 when a Peace Agreement was signed in Addis Ababa by the North and South, which ushered in 11 years of peace and calm, the only period in a 56-year span that peace reigned in South Sudan, as the war against the North reignited in 1983, now under the execution of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), and went on until the CPA was signed in 2005.
The CPA ushered in a transitional period (from 2005 to 2011) during which a referendum was held in January 2011 in which 98.85% of South Sudanese voted for separation and independence. It is the third anniversary of that independence which is being celebrated next Wednesday.
As one newspaper proprietor in Juba puts it: “The long years of war mean that the only skill acquired by our people is the skill of war. And I shudder to think that these young men of war are now sitting under trees with nothing to do.
“The devil, they say, finds work for idle hands. And our idle hands are hands of war. It is a frightening situation that needs a quick resolution by the government, by way of job creation – and multitudes of them. Else who knows who will offer war jobs to these young men who have only one skill, the skill of war.”
Interestingly, during the 11-year period of peace (between 1972 and 1983), a lot of natural resources were discovered in the South, including oil. Thus, if investors could be found to turn these natural resources into jobs, a great burden would be lifted from the shoulders of the young nation.
But from where will the investors come, now that South Sudan’s progress has been stalled by yet another war that broke out last December over political disagreements and personal ambitions between the President and his deputy?
Enter Zimbabwe
So where does Zimbabwe fit in South Sudan’s story? And why did Juba send an official delegation to Harare last week to understudy the Zimbabwean system?
The answer is simple. There are uncanny similarities in the trajectories of the two countries that become clear on close inspection.
First, Zimbabwe has grown from a liberation movement culture into a functioning democratic state, and though things are not quite hunky-dory in Zimbabwe, South Sudan still has a lot to learn from Harare.
Second, Zimbabwe has an advanced agricultural system and culture that South Sudan can learn from. Because of the long years of war, during which much of South Sudan’s population was displaced and thousands more went into the war proper, agriculture was neglected and despite the unrivalled fertility of the land, agriculture is still at a rudimentary stage in South Sudan.
Half of the country’s 640 000 sq km of landmass is arable while 39 percent is forest. South Sudan is second only to DR Congo in forestland. It is a land that needs no fertilisers or chemicals to make things grow. Therefore the opportunities in agriculture are huge.
The Minister of Agriculture, Beda Machar Deng, told me: “We have got enough land. Other resources such as water, animals, and fishes are also more than abundant in this country.”
South Sudan has three types of climate. There is the equatorial zone in the south where it rains nearly throughout the year. There is also the nearly tropical middle zone where it rains for six to seven months a year, and the rich savanna zone where it rains for five months a year.
Besides, South Sudan, low-lying in comparison to its six neighbouring countries – Uganda, DRCongo, Kenya, Sudan, Central African Republic, and Ethiopia – has the good fortune of receiving water and silt washed by rivers in the six countries that flow into the Nile. Thus, water for agriculture and other purposes is no problem at all.
Right in the middle of the country, as the Nile meanders its way to the north and into Egypt, lies the Sudd region, a 35,000 sq km of water bodies fanning out through the land, teeming with fish and animal life. It is here, in the Sudd, that fish die of old age.
An amazing total of 30 rivers flow into the Nile in the Sudd region – 18 tributaries come from the Ethiopian highlands and elsewhere in the east of the country; while 12 tributaries come from the west, all the way from DRCongo and Central African Republic.
The 30 rivers converge in the Sudd region, making it a treasure trove of water bodies, full of organic fish begging to be harvested, but which, sadly, is not being harvested either at all in most of the Sudd or only minimally in certain places by the locals.
Some of the lakes in this vast wetland are so far away from the main sweep of the Nile that the locals cannot reach them. This means the large populations of different fishes in the lakes just grow and grow and grow – until old age sends them into their watery graves.
Kuong Danhier Gatluak, the Minister of Transport, Roads and Bridges, told me of one study conducted in the Sudd by a group of Americans using a helicopter to visit some of the lakes where they found fish that had actually died of old age.
According to the Minister of Agriculture, Beda Machar Deng: “There are small lakes in this area that we need to open up and connect to the Nile, so we can maximise the growth of fish and harvest it all year round.”
—–Prestigious cattle—–
And it is not only fish that is super abundant and not being commercially utilised. As a Zimbabwean, you may fall from the edge of your seat to hear that in South Sudan, according to Minister Beda Machar Deng, there are over 30 million heads of cattle, owned by subsistence cattle herders, that are held only for the prestige they bring, and not for commercial purposes.
“The people are just proud of having large herds of cattle but not converting them into money on a commercial basis,” the minister said ruefully. “A cow can live to 15 or 20 years and dies. Just like that. Instead of being sold and bringing money to the owner! Or instead of being culled when they are 5 or 6 years old.”
The minister continued: “One can build himself a very good house out of cattle, and send his children to school, but they are not doing so. They are just holding the cattle for prestige purposes. You can marry a girl with 100 cows, no problem, and then live in poverty. They don’t value the money. They value the prestige that the holding of cattle brings.
“My ministry has started educating the people to change their mindset. Money from cattle can increase farm sizes, buy tractors to mechanise the farms, and thereby increasing the productivity of the farms.
“The same thing happens with fishery, another vital resource in this country. The Nile cuts the country into two equal halves. And as the country is below sea level, and all the six neighbouring countries are higher than South Sudan, all the rivers and water from these countries wash into South Sudan, and into the Nile.
“This water is producing lots of different fishes in this country, ready to be harvested. So investors in the fish industry are welcome. And the Nile is also good for tourism.”
—–The current problem—–
But all these resources and good work done by the government since independence three years ago, and even beyond to 2005, have been put on hold because of the crisis sparked by yet another round of war that started on 15 December last year, when Vice President Riek Machar took up arms because of political disagreements with President Salva Kiir, and some say personal ambition on the part of Machar.
Kiir and his supporters call it a failed “coup”, but Machar says he took up arms to fight dictatorship and corruption in Juba. But whatever it is, it led to thousands of deaths and the resurrection of an age-old hatred between the two largest ethnic groups in the country, the Dinka and Nuer.
Kiir is Dinka, and Machar is a Nuer. Incidentally, the Nuer make up a good 65% of the armed forces, so Machar had a ready army at his beck and call.
However, Machar was forced by the heavy fighting in Juba to retreat with his supporters to his home state of Upper Nile in the far northeast of the country bordering Ethiopia. At the time of writing, that is where the war currently is, in addition to two other states bordering Upper Nile. Therefore, the war is now confined in three states in the northeast, of the country’s 10 states.
Several ceasefire agreements since May this year have not worked. But on 11 June, the regional grouping, IGAD (or Inter-Governmental Authority on Development, bringing together Ethiopia, Uganda, South Sudan, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan and Djibouti), which is mediating between the warring factions in South Sudan, forced through a decision calling on both Kiir and Machar’s sides to agree to the establishment of a transitional government in Juba within 60 days, leading to elections in the near future.
IGAD’s mediation efforts are headquartered in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and are being assisted by the African Union and a Troika (made up of the governments of Norway, UK, and the USA).
It is here that another similarity with Zimbabwe jumps out – the proposed “transitional government” will be an inclusive government or government of national unity formed by political foes, with all its merits and demerits, and particularly demerits as it happened in Zimbabwe’s case.
To IGAD, the transitional government might mean a totally new caretaker government, with the current elected Parliament being dissolved. But that is not how President Kiir understands it.
—–The interview—–
Here, another even more deadly similarity with Zimbabwe emerges. It concerns attempts by the Americans to use the transitional government as a weapon of regime change against President Kiir. When I interviewed Kiir in Juba last week, he refused to bite his tongue. Below is a snippet of the interview:
I asked the President what the transitional government meant for the future of his elected government. He replied:
“Well, it is not our position. It is a position which is being imposed by the IGAD countries who are under pressure from the Americans, the European Union, and the international community. They have put pressure on IGAD that the government in Juba must be dissolved so that a new system comes up in Juba.
“And there are many things that you can read into it. There are people who are looking for resources and they see South Sudan as a country full of resources, especially the oil. With my government, they see that they cannot loot these resources. But if it is Riek Machar, they can play around with him and then they can take over.
“And so it is the situation of Iraq that they want to happen here. These are strong nations, they can come in, throw away the elected government, and then install one of their stooges. That is the first thing.
The second is that those who talk about democracy are saying that the SPLM as a party is too strong to be challenged by any political party. We have 18 political parties in this country, plus the SPLM, making it 19.
“So they say these 18 political parties, even if you combine them cannot challenge the SPLM. Therefore the SPLM has to be destroyed. It has to be divided. Their aim is to crush the SPLM into factions, to create so many factions.
“Now they are supporting Riek Machar and his group, in the hope that those who went with him are not actually his supporters per se, and they will break away from Riek any time soon and form their own parties. So this is what they want, factions.
“Concerning the dissolution of Parliament, they also think that over 90% of the parliamentarians are SPLM members and so nobody can pass any motion without the SPLM agreeing to support that motion.
“This is why they say Salva wants to establish dictatorship in South Sudan. But I am not. I don’t go to Parliament usually, it is the SPLM that has the majority in Parliament and this majority came through elections, they were not appointed.
“But I told the mediators in Addis Ababa that the dissolution of this Parliament which was elected, is a red line to us. We will not accept it. It is not going to happen, because this Parliament was elected by the people and even if we reach an agreement here in Addis Ababa, it is the same Parliament that will endorse it.
“Even with the transitional government, people do not accept it but for me I thought if this is what will resolve this conflict, then let it be.
“Regarding the Executive, I told them if you talk about the removal of the elected president, again it is a red line to us. If you don’t want grudges and conflict to deepen in South Sudan, leave these two institutions untouched – Parliament and the Executive.
“We are ready to appoint members of the political parties that you want to Parliament. We are also ready to expand the Executive so that we can accommodate other political parties although we already have representation of the political parties in the Executive. Even in Parliament, I appointed some members of other political parties to serve in the House. So this is where we are. We are not in agreement with the transitional government idea.”
Q: So you are being compelled by outside forces to accept a death warrant, something that will really be injurious to this country more or less?
A: Of course! If they were to accept a ceasefire, we would sit down and discuss how to set up the transitional arrangements. We were ready, and are still ready to do it, because we need peace in our country, not because the transitional government idea is good, but we need peace.
Then they come and ask me what role I think Riek Machar will play in the transitional government. I tell them that Riek Machar should not play any role in the transitional government.
Because when he staged the coup, he wanted to be No.1. He was the vice president at the time. So what do you think he will accept? If you want to bring him back as vice president, he will not accept it. And he cannot be a minister.
So unless he says he wants to be prime minister, which we don’t have in our constitution, that position doesn’t exist in our setting, then I don’t know what he can do. So we say Riek Machar should remain as an opposition leader for this interim period and then he can stand for elections. He can prepare himself to challenge any presidential candidate that will come up, whether it is me or anybody else.
Q: Has Riek Machar accepted the position of staying out of government during the interim period?
A: Well, we did not discuss it in Addis. He talked alone with the mediators, and I talked alone with them. But we did not reach that position. We, however, agreed that there would be a transitional government in 60 days.
Q: Elections had been fixed for 2015, but now because of the crisis you have been quoted as saying elections may not be possible in 2015, maybe in 2016. What is the position?
A: Well, when one examines the timeframe of when this war can be stopped and people can go back to the arrangements for the elections, it is clear that the elections cannot be held in 2015 but beyond that, yes; even in 2016.
But the Troika – the Americans and the European Union – want the elections to be pushed back three years. The reasons behind that are very clear. They think that in three years, they will be sufficiently prepared to have a candidate of their choice, equip that candidate with whatever amounts of money he may need to win the elections, so that they may have their man in Juba.
Q: Looking at the Americans, they supported the SPLM/A during the liberation war. Why are they now turning their backs on you and undermining the very thing they fought for – an independent South Sudan?
A: They say the government in Juba has ignored them, it has turned its back on them.
Q: Is it in connection with China’s role in the oil production in South Sudan?
A: Yes. They say that their companies are not allowed to invest in the oil industry here. But it is not our mistake. When we signed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005, we wanted to review the oil agreement that was signed by Khartoum and China. The Americans refused.
They said “no, don’t touch the already signed agreements, we will be given access later to the files so that we will know what has been done. But we have nothing to say on it just now. If there are new contracts to be awarded, yeah we will sit down and sort them out, but not the existing agreements.”
So we left the existing agreements alone. And the Americans went on to impose sanctions on President Omar al Bashir and pulled out their companies from South Sudan. I appealed to them to bring back their companies when I became the First Vice President of Sudan.
I said “those companies that were operating in the oil fields in South Sudan, let them come back”. They said, “no, if this is done Bashir will benefit from this money. So we are not coming in”. They wanted Bashir to fall. But Bashir cannot fall because he is with his people.
Now when South Sudan became independent in July 2011, I called the Americans again. “Let your companies come,” I told them, “so that if there are oil blocs that have not been awarded to any companies, I will give them to you, including Bloc 5B which had actually been awarded to an American company that later pulled out. Up to now that bloc is still not awarded to anybody.”
So I called them but they said no. Riek Machar had told them that, “if you help me to become president, I will chase away the Chinese and the other Asian oil companies in South Sudan, and I will give everything to you.” And they believe him.
So this is my crime. I haven’t offered them what Riek has offered them – to chase away the Chinese and the other Asian companies.
Q: So that is why they want you out of power?
A: Yes, out of power.
Q: And all the talk about a transitional government is just a smokescreen …
A: … To get me out of power. It is a smokescreen.
Q: Like they tried to do in Zimbabwe?
A: Yes.
—–In conclusion—–
So, there you are. You can now read between the lines and understand why Juba wants to learn lessons from Harare. Let’s hope that their delegation did not, or would not, go back home empty handed.
Thé Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni, Ssabassajja and Dr. Kiiza Besigye, Uganda is in anarchy"
Kuungana Mulindwa Mawasiliano Kikundi
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