Sudan: Tribalism Should be Condemned in the Strongest Terms Possible

General Mohammed Siad Barre once said: “If the Somalis have to go to hell, tribalism is the fastest vehicle to get them there”.

Oh!, my addictive  habit of  browsing the world wide web every morning has exposed me to the  spectacle of the on-going tribal war of words among the South Sudanese surfers on the web. From the inbox to the website discussion boards, I have been there to bear witness to this raging verbal savagery. One discussant on SPLM- Diaspora Forum described it as a cockfight. I can best describe it as a brutal game with neither rules nor referees. It is self-evident that our netters are helplessly intoxicated with political tribalism. Any tribally charged topic, regardless of its merits, makes for a long and fruitless debate in all our net fora.  The tone is often pugnacious, stereotypical, bigoted and utterly offensive. Like in any all out tribal war, you are either with the tribe or you are not, (Bush’s foreign policy, if you I may say). The implied inference is thus that one must vigorously act as a freelance representative of his or her tribe to defend the collective reputation and character of the tribal family. The rest is pain and prejudice.

As you might have experienced, the quagmire for any well meaning commentator in these slippery platforms is that the fine line between the tribe and tribalism can be as slick as jelly on a glass wall. For one thing, tribalism does not exist in abstract. It is a man or woman from the tribe that perpetuates it. It is also a man or a woman from the tribe that condones it. Obviously, the “T” word (tribe) is a common identity with collective sensitivity. That makes it even more daunting to surgically combat tribalists without inflicting cross-fire injuries on the collective soul of the tribe in question. So, no wonder these tribal war combatants often end up fighting the tribes instead of fighting tribalism. For example, if you assert that Jieng (without quantitative adjective such as some) are grabbing the Bari lands in Juba, you will automatically antagonise all Monyjieng (Dinka) including the ones who have never set foot on Juba for bad or good reason. Lump all the Naath, Murle, Mundari and Collo up as traitors and you mobilise all of them for all out tribal war against your tribe. By that, I mean all of them including the intimate comrades in arms you shared the same trenches with during the war against the common enemy.

For the worst, the culture of net writing has produced many pseudo- political writers who are good for nothing but malicious attacks and mass character assassination. Timely issues of paramount importance are deliberately avoided to discuss tribes and personalities. In those intellectually controversial debates, I encountered scores of novice thinkers who can barely compose with basic structural clarity in this ESL of ours.

However, mediocrity is not the culprit in some cases. Reading from the glittering language of some articles I went through on the web, it leaves no doubt in my mind that the discourse features some sophisticated intellectuals who are adept in the arts of critical debate and argumentative writing. Read some infamous characters like John Gatluak Kam, Garang Ding, Jur Kuch Mayian, Isaiah Abraham and the rest to get the point I am trying to drive home. You can also read the two documents of Dinka - Equatorian exchanges of 2005 to inform yourself further.

Playing on the top of this ruthless game, they are also skillful in taking good grist of this digital machine (computer) to hit and hide in this vast jungle of the cyberspace where customers are granted full identity protection. So they roam it at will like the LRA and Kony in the Garamba National Park. The name of the game is: what you cannot say with straight face in any open forum, you can say with virtual ease on your keyboard just by a few strokes and one click sending it across the world to your remote audience on the web in a matter of seconds. Thanks to the computer technology.  So far, some of these freelance tribal warriors have excelled behind fictitious and dubious organisations such as   Nuer Supreme Council, Equatorian professionals in Europe, Bor Community in Diaspora, Collo Community in Diaspora, Madi Community among others to express their over -heated grievances.

In context, the discourse is generally characterised by victim mentality and conspiracy theory. Unlike patriotic nationalism which tackles issues within the realms of unity in diversity, tribal nationalism is radical, militant and too chauvinistic to reason with. In its offensive climax, some tribes are stereotypically branded as traitors; some are unjustly accused of being born to rule mentality as well as biological trait for corruption. Some other ethnic groups are assigned cowardice as their trade mark. With these hollows, the goodwill participant is provoked to pick the fight either in offense or defense. My Thok Naath Oral Literature has it that” loach e riing’’. The rough English meaning of that is: heart is not hard, if anything, it is a soft tissue like dead meat .Thinking with your heart; you would be definitely tempted to react in haste, either condemning it or condoning it. In practical sense, it takes a big head and thick skin to play role of a spectator in the heat of those controversial debates in our net fora.

It goes without acknowledging the bitter truth that political tribalism is full-blown now in South Sudan. Based on the tone in which it is expressed on the web by the caliber I have met and read, we are truly at the apex of it. I Sometimes wonder aloud to myself: now, these are our tribal pen -men expressing their emotions in this inflammable tone, what will the tribal gun-men do to express theirs? It could be uglier than you can imagine. So one can only hope that the authors of those belligerent documents are street intellectuals who may not one day manage to climb the helm to rehearse what they have already theorised on the web. Alas! Only fate could determine our destiny as a people.

Personally, I used to dismiss these tribal warriors on the web as wild voices without tangible punch until recently when one persuasive commentator articulated it on SPLM forum that” this rhetoric works to inflict the harm it is intended to cause and the consequences can be dire”. True, these divisive writings could leave deeper emotional wounds than meet the naked eye. Given the size of the audience these writings capture on the web, it is probable that our ill- informed majority can easily internalize them to miss-educate themselves that other tribes represent eminent danger to their dear existence. Psychologically, that is how genocide was mentally processed elsewhere in the recent times.

Please bear with my social science jargons to inform you that an emerging scholarship in Psychopathology of Genocide has linked political tribalism with genocide where it happened like in Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Germany. The most recent studies along that finding have contended that genocide is an offshoot of deeply internalised racial or tribal conflict that takes three stages to incubate: politicisation, internalisation and dehumanisation. In real life, it matures in the following order: first the conflict is politicised through mass mobilisation by demagogues to plant it deep into the collective psyche of the community. Through this mass mobilisation, the conflict is internalised to set the stage for the next phase: dehumanisation. At this stage, the community is prepared to remove the human face of the human enemy by depicting the human enemy as a beast or the devil in human form. This is psychologically necessary to prepare the collective conscience of the community for the onslaught. This was echoed in the INTERAHAMAWE (Hutu tribal militia) name they gave to all Tutsi as Cockroaches during the genocide.  Like earthquake which is a result of years of earth movement, genocide does not just erupt. It is processed through word of mouth or stroke of pen like we are doing here on the web.

The most moral wrong of political tribalism in my book is that its chief victims are often the innocent citizens minding their own businesses. Worst of all, its wrath knows no moderates and mavericks. I have just had an educative experience in my current line of work to meet some of those conscientious Hutus who practiced moderation in the face of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda to know how much a Good Samaritan can pay for his or her conscience in a fatally polarised society. According to one victim of that genocidal spree, “the haunting nightmare is that meanwhile you are being hunted as sell outs by your tribesmen (Hutu) for protecting your Tutsi friends and neighbors, the tribal militants of the other tribe (Tutsi) see you like nothing but another Hutu whose throats must be slit the same way their kins and kiths did to their Tutsi victims.” It is called collective guilt, to be very precise. You are guilty by blood association with the offender you do not even know by name. What a price to pay for one’s good conscience!

In other experiences, it has been observed that like the colour-based racism I physically had to live side by side with in the United States, tribalism is mostly driven by the fear of the unknown. One discussant in one of the debates I participated in on the web alluded to it as a Dinkaphobia. True, it is a phobia by correct meaning of the word in most cases. That is why it flourishes where mass ignorance prevails. “Men hate each other because they do not know each other but let no man pull you low enough to hate him”, said Dr. Martin Luther King JR. One way to discover that there is nothing special or terrible with other tribes is to make friends among other tribes. I have done that myself to know the difference between the truth and the conspiracy theory. Believe it or not, South Sudanese can love one another if they work for it. The anguish though is that we are not even trying to give ourselves an opportunity to dialogue with cool heads.

Tribalism is the worst form of racism and I can attest to its social experience as a bearer of six tribal marks on my forehead that can function at times as stigma for discrimination. Of course, racism where it prevailed like in apartheid South Africa and Jim Crow United States was advanced through racial segregation and legalised discrimination.” In our case, there are no physical barriers to separate us from one another, but our psychological barriers are as tall and thick as the defunct Berlin Wall. Evidently, we live in mutual fear -mutual hate. It is ‘They and Us mentality’ (your tribe versus my tribe); hence, the title of this article. Nowhere than on the web these days can you practically realise that South Sudanese loath their own shadows more than the enemy they call Jellaba. It is a mind- boggling paradox that does not blend well with clamoring for independent polity and single national identity to say the least. Our well known scholar of Political Science and Government, Dr. Walter Kunojok, once remarked that the “onus is on us to prove beyond any reasonable doubt that we are the we we say we are”. By that statement, Dr. Kunojok meant that the independent South we have been dying to attain will not mean anything without coming to terms with ourselves as one nation of many tribes. That is the we; we say we are (Junibiin).

Politically, it is a common knowledge that African politics is generally tribalistic. South Sudan is no exception. As we all know very well, our politicians preach water of national unity in public fora, but between four brick walls, they take wine with their tribesmen and tribeswomen.  Lately, unity of purpose has been on the lips of many in South Sudan. Yes, Unity, Unity, Unity and Unity. Easier said than done. Isn’t it?  As we are wrestling with it, let it be born in mind that like the freedom itself, unity is not free. It comes with a price tag, and if we have to sacrifice something to attain it, it must be the tribal ego. It is time for  South Sudanese to come down to their senses and realise that nations have always been formed along the process where the tribes clash, intermingle, customs and traditions conflict and interact, the ultimate goal being an overall integration and lasting unity. In another word, nations are always built upon the rubles of tribal wars. The word here is that in order to survive and thrive as a viable nation, we must develop strong coping skills to live with scars and bruises, or else, we will turn this half –way house of ours into a hell-house before we know.

It disgusts my senses reading those nonsense on the web that there are patriotic and none patriotic tribes in South Sudan.  Who are you to question patriotism of Equatorian tribes that produced the founding leadership of South Sudan liberation struggle, some of whom are still serving us every where? Do you know which tribes in South Sudan produced super heroes like Fr Saturnino Lohure, Commander Tafeng and General Ali Gbatuala, Joseph Odouho, Agrey Jaden James Wani Igga and the rest? Who are you also to question the patriotism of Naath( Nuer) community that did not  only produce pioneers like Vincent Kuany Latjor, William Nyuon Bany, Samuel Gai Tut ,Dr Riek Machar and others  but also nursed the SPLM/A from its infancy?  Do you know which tribe produced the first SPLA martyr? Do not be surprised to hear that it is the tribe branded now as a community of traitors.  Of course nobody can challenge patriotism of our largest ethnic group that produced William Deng Nhial, Dr John Garang, Kerbino Kuanyin, Salva Kiir Mayardit and many more?  What about our Collo community that produced our current Chief of SPLA General Staff , Lieutenant General Oyai Deng, our able SPLM Secretary General Ustaz Pagan Amum and Dr Lam Akol, the capable  first Minister of Foreign Affairs from the South?

With these historical facts in mind, you should know that what these self-proclaimed pundits do not teach us is that we have had heroes and great leaders from all our ethnic groups including heroes Lokurnyang Lado and Nyachigag Nyachulaba who hailed from our smallest ethnic community of Murle. As the saying goes: “it is not the size of the dog but the size of the fight in the dog” The other way to put it is that it is not the numerical size of your tribe but the content of your character that makes a competent and patriotic leader out of you.

As for depicting one tribe as corrupt by trait in the Government of South Sudan (GoSS), it is unfounded because we are well represented as tribes in that system. If not all the tribes are represented, it has to do with the number of ministries and commissions created in the GoSS. Over all, we all have big brothers and sisters by tribe in the establishment who should not be part of it if they do not like it for politics; the best government is the one you are in. So if the system is corrupt, most of our tribes have fingerprints in it.

Meanwhile, it is our inalienable right as citizens to hold our government to account; it is unbecoming to criticise our leaders as tribal personalities. They must be criticised as national political leaders. For instance, it is your right to criticise individual personality or character flaw of Stephen Par Kuol but criticising my Naath tribal character is a red -no go, as that will make it a row between your tribe and my tribe.

The myth of born to rule mentality is an outdated conspiracy theory which should not be entertained by those who claim intellectual prowess and educational credentials. South Sudan cannot be a whim dominion of Naath (Nuer) and Jieng (Dinka) because of their numerical sizes unless the other tribes allowed that to happen. In democratic politics, they can be shown the difference between the power of numbers and the power of persuasion. Therefore, what the future South needs is liberal democracy with rule of law as its main pillar. The rest will take care of itself. In the mean time, inter-communal dialogue must continue but the tone must change. It must also be taught that these tribal conflicts cannot be resolved in the cyber space. They must be brought down to earth for practical resolution.

Having condemned political tribalism as a menace, I must acknowledge without contradicting my thesis that it is human to be tribal. In his humble origin, man developed as a tribal-warrior-hunter over a two million year period. In that volatile environment of the Stone Age, humans had to live on communal basis for collective defense and economic survival.  Like it or not, we are naturally wired with tribalism. It is in our DNA, but with right information and right political leadership in place, it is manageable.  By instinct, mankind is family oriented.

Traditionally, our tribes are our extended families and there is nothing wrong with that.  It is the political use of the tribe that uses the tribal community as a human shield and political refuge to launch violent assault against other communities’ that we should all object to. Otherwise, diversity is a delicious cocktail and all our tribes are sweet. I do not know about your taste but my taste buds tell me that other tribes taste sweeter simply because they are different flavors.  South Sudan with my Naath people minus other ethnic groups would be dull and boring in my humble opinion. Who knows it could be another failed state like Somalia which is the largest homogeneous nation in Africa. Tribalism in my view is like a giant onion with countless layers. It comes in many shapes and forms. We call it tribalism when it is between the tribes, we call it clanism when it is between clans and it is called sectionalism when it is between sections of the same clans or tribe for that matter.  So it is a fathomless pit that can consume the whole nation. That is why I think political leaders and intellectuals with their country at heart should not use their pens to entertain it. As proposed afore, let the discussion continue but it must cease to be my tribe versus your tribe. Tribalism can be the fastest vehicle to the hell as General Siad Barre Prophesised for Somalis.

Traditionally, our tribes are our extended families and there is nothing wrong with that.  It is the political use of the tribe that uses the tribal community as a human shield and political refuge to launch violent assault against other communities’ that we should all object to. Otherwise, diversity is a delicious cocktail and all our tribes are sweet. I do not know about your taste but my taste buds tell me that other tribes taste sweeter simply because they are different flavors.  Southern Sudan with my Naath people minus other ethnic groups would be dull and boring in my humble opinion. Who knows it could be another failed state like Somalia which is the largest homogeneous nation in Africa. Tribalism in my view is like a giant onion with countless layers. It comes in many shapes and forms. We call it tribalism when it is between the tribes, we call it clanism when it is between clans and it is called sectionalism when it is between sections of the same clans or tribe for that matter.  So it is a fathomless pit that can consume the whole nation. That is why I think political leaders and intellectuals with their country at heart should not use their pens to entertain it. As proposed afore, let the discussion continue but it must cease to be my tribe versus your tribe. Tribalism can be the fastest vehicle to the hell as General Siad Barre Prophesised for Somalis.