Salva Kiir is a weak leader but loves power. You can visibly see it from how he talks and walks. He lacks vision to lead because he accidentally found himself at the top, but he is not willing to give it up, not even to his daughter, leave alone a distant trusted friend. All what is happening are tools of manipulation and sophistication to maintain power at all costs: mobilize the Dinka by inciting the Nuer.
Riek Machar cannot remove Salva Kiir from power because he is not proactive and rational in his political thinking. He wants to be president but he does not know how to become one. The only card he uses is the 19th-century Nuer legacy of resistance before sophisticated weapons were created. He cannot even have a single external friend to back him up once he is cornered. His blind ambition for power has left the mighty Nuer vulnerable and confused.
Salva Kiir knows he does not have what it takes to run a modern state. He has to keep the people of South Sudan busy by manufacturing war. For him to maintain Dinka support without giving them anything, he has to incite the Nuer by targeting them as what happened in 2013. He knows the Nuer will retaliate. This will prevent the two mighty tribes from working together to remove him. The rest of the tribes can easily be overshadowed by this fiasco.
The White Army, currently an offshoot of the Nuer resistance to Kiir’s incitement, is now an indirect tool for the latter to keep himself in power. Kiir loves it when he sees the white army singing “kamda ke jaang thile malec wa” (there is no forgiveness between us (Nuer) and the Dinka).
Salva Kiir has comfortably succeeded in not being removed from power by anyone because he has achieved Dinka mobilization through Nuer incitement. How can we rewind this?
Well, the biggest challenge now is how we can make the Nuer understand that they do not have any problem with the Dinka as a tribe and that whatever is happening is Kiir’s manipulation to remain in power. If we manage to make the Nuer understand this, we will have removed Kiir from his lousy leadership in a very short time, because that is the only card he uses.
Secondly, we must look for juju (magic) to convince Riek Machar that if he wants to succeed Kiir, he must have other cards than using Nuer for violence. With such, he is indirectly entrenching Salva Kiir in power. Moreover, the Nuer must also know that their fate is not intertwined with Machar’s presidential bids. They can still dignifiedly exist in South Sudan with or without Machar being president. After all, Machar should desist from now onwards from using the Nuer to remove Salva Kiir through violence without having the capacity to arm them. That by itself is a commission of suicide to the Nuer nation by Machar.
Thirdly, what prevents the Dinka from joining or spearheading Kiir’s removal is Nuer bitterness after having been incited by Kiir; Dinka opposition to Kiir’s regime rises at times of peace and declines once war starts.
Fourthly, for us to succeed in removing Kiir, the Nuer must overcome the incitement induced in them. They must have the capacity to distinguish Kiir’s regime from the Dinka tribe. The Nuer in Nasir, or wherever they might be, are not fighting the Dinka tribe. They are fighting the Kiir regime. That is why you see Gen. Koang Chuol Ramley leading the war in Nasir on the side of the regime. How can you continue to sing that you are fighting Dinka with all those big names from the Nuer on the other (Kiir’s) side? Are you guys, the Nuer in diaspora and at home, okay? You are fighting a regime, not a tribe. In fact, with your current state of mind, someone has succeeded in making you sing those songs, so no one from the other 63 tribes of South Sudan joins the fight.
For your information, a tribe can liberate a nation. No matter how some elements who support the regime sometimes mock the Nuer rebellion as unthinkable, the issue is not on the composition of the forces at the onset of any struggle, but the objective. Even some of the liberation movements that liberated us from the North (Sudan) were initially composed of a single tribe. You would find an Anyuak, Moro, or Nuer group, but they talked about the liberation of South Sudan. These revolutionary groups were active at the Southern Sudan borders with Ethiopia, Congo, and Uganda. Thus, the Nuer rebellion should start singing about South Sudan’s wellbeing, not about Dinka animosity or revenge.
For example, the Tigray People’s Liberation Movement (TPLF), an initially tribal outfit, did it to Ethiopia in their decades of struggle. They were a single tribe but fought for the whole country. They did not target other tribes but the regime in the conduct of their struggle. The recently created Nuer Defence Forces (NDF) can do it in South Sudan; however, they must have a vision and national agenda so the rest can join them in the long run. However, if they (Nuer) only sing songs about fighting another tribe, then they cannot liberate even their village. They shall eventually remain a tool to fulfil Kiir’s strategy of tribal warfare and prolong his stay in power.
The Dinka and Nuer must unite to remove Salva Kiir from power because he is killing them and denying them development. Kiir kills both the Dinka and the Nuer, one mobilized and the other incited, respectively. The Dinka must resist being mobilized, and the Nuer must resist the incitement. The local Nuer population should stop blaming the whole Dinka tribe because of the targeted killings by the Kiir regime.
The writer, Bor Gatwech Kuany, is a former elected member of the National Assembly (2010-2020) representing Maiwut and Longochuk in Upper Nile.
The views expressed in ‘opinion’ articles published by Radio Tamazuj are solely those of the writer. The veracity of any claims made is the responsibility of the author, not Radio Tamazuj.