Tribe: Africa’s most expensive ‘purchase’

By Kipkoech Tanui

Kenya: South Sudan is again a killing field, flowing with blood of innocent civilians caught in the power struggle between President Salva Kiir and his former deputy Riek Machar.

It is a picture that galls and sears the heart and wraps around every African head the bandana of shame and savagery. The battle is shameful because in the political rivalry between Kiir who is Dinka and Nuer’s top tribesman Machar, the two dominant communities have decided the best way out is to slaughter each other. And so in Bentiu, the oil-rich town, which had been taken back by Kiir’s forces, Machar’s rag-tag militia landed and though they blame retreating government forces, over 200 people including pregnant mothers, children and amputees, were slaughtered and the bodies are still rotting.

As the stench of their rotting bodies and savaged humanity rises to the skies, the top cream of South Sudan are probably somewhere in Nairobi or Kampala, taking life easy in air-conditioned rooms.

You must thank God if on scrolling down your Facebook or Twitter accounts you have not stumbled upon the pictures of decomposing bodies left outside mosques and churches where the victims had sought refuge.

There are four reasons why this savagery and brutality has refused to go. In Kenya, we fear Malaria may kill our children but in South Sudan, the scare of parents in the hotspots is that the neighbour may walk in, chop all your heads in the name of their ethnic tin-gods.

The first is that this is a country that fought so hard and so long for independence from control Khartoum, its northerly neighbour. The freedom struggle and the intermittent inter-ethnic rivalries, largely incited by Omar Bashir’s government, cost South Sudan over 1.5 million lives. There is debate as to how many millions were displaced and maimed. One thing is clear, South Sudan must be having the World’s largest number of amputees after Afghanistan and Iraq.

The struggle took 22 years and so you can imagine the relief of triumph in 2011 as the residents of the world’s youngest nation strode into the family of free nations. It was a nation united in blood and beating of the heart.

The second puzzle is that when it came to a referendum on whether South Sudan should breakaway from The Sudan as an autonomous nation, the people now hunting for each other with machetes voted 99 per cent for self-government. The one per cent that did vote was either in hospitals, sick at home or even on essential duty. In both cases, it is baffling how loyalty to tribe and the ethnic warlord in suits, has triumphed against the larger joy of self-government and return of free will in one’s country.

The third issue is that this is a country that knows too well that if it does not stand united, Bashir’s rogues, who did not wish them independence in the first place, would be fanning and funding trouble by setting them against each other. Remember Machar had during the struggle, and in the style of the chap who used to tell us nitapitia katikati ya Raila na Kibaki (I will squeeze myself between Kibaki and Raila), had actually at one time defected and worked with the enemy in the name of peace and cooperation.

You would expect that the South Sudanese would do everything possible to ensure that the “enemy” is not given chance either to divide them or laugh at them as a people incapable of governing themselves.

Finally, endowed with oil, South Sudanese have done exactly what other African states have done with their wealth reservoirs; light a political match and dance in its fires and literally roasting alive. This was before they even finished up the revenue-sharing agreements with Bashir or resolved boundary conflicts with its Arab-dominated neighbour.

The reaction by Kenyans is predictable; Kiir and Machar should share power. That is the “herbal medicine” we prescribed for Zimbabwe when Robert Mugabe, who can hardly keep awake in meetings because the mind is already straying into the World his grandfathers slipped to.

Things get murky when you imagine that Kiir the fierce military commander and the highly educated Machar can use their dying people as political merchandise. In fact, I am beginning to think that if Kibaki and Raila had the crudity and insensitivity of Kiir and Machar, Kenya would have gone ablaze and we would now probably be in refugee camps in Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia and probably even South Sudan itself.

The other option Kenya is considering, is sending its troops, many of who are either in Somalia or in installations watching out for Al-Shabaab militia. Now this is a delicate issue that is better left to Statecrafts like the wearers of Kenya Defence Force’s epaulets and medals.

The UN, whose forces are clearly too thin and stretched over vast terrain to move fast enough and stop the savagery among children of one big family the world calls South Sudan, is contemplating economic sanctions. I believe the UN also knows that the leaders of South Sudan run their country from fortresses in their country or luxury hotels and houses in Nairobi. They simply won’t feel it.

So what you may ask? I have no answer but I am also reeking of the shame of my continent. Bloodletting simply is our second career choice; from Rwanda to Somalia, Mali to Chad, Nigeria to Central Africa Republic, Tunisia to Egypt…from all corners. The question to ask is till when shall we continue dying for clan, tribe and religion?

The writer is Group Managing Editor (Print) at The Standard.

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