A peace and reconciliation drive is underway among communities of Kajo-Keji County of South Sudan and Uganda’s Moyo district, Radio Miraya reports.
This comes after several killings in September last year during a period of high inter-communal tensions between Kuku and Ma’di communities.
Members of the civil society and the South Sudan Council of Churches are meeting with different groups including local leaders, women, youth and religious leaders to find ways of enabling the two communities to co-exist peacefully.
Dabe Francis Elisama, Director of Save Hope Organization, one of the NGOs facilitating the reconciliation drive, says the two communities share much in common and should come together again in peace.
He told Radio Miraya: “What I really anticipate from this community the way they were trying to deliberate from the beginning is to explore some ways of coming together with their brothers and sisters from the other side of Moyo as because they know very well that since long in history they have stayed together, they have intermarried.”
“Some clans in Kajo-Keji trace their background to have come from the Ma’di region and equally the other side of Ma’di also traces some of their clans to come from the Kajo-Keji community. So this long history of being one people in terms of history, in terms of culture, in terms of geography is the most binding stones that they feel it is difficult for them to cut. But whatever happened last year in September was uncalled for.”