Identity Issues

During the southern regional government before South Sudan’s independence, our politics were dominated by tribalism, nepotism and elitism. The people never had a chance under such conditions. But what united the people of the southern region at the time was external problems. Our common enemy and focus at the time was the ‘’Jalaba,’’ as in the Arab in Khartoum, Sudan, who sought to make Southerners (now known as South Sudanese) permanent second or third-class citizens in Sudan. We faced a lot of racial, economic, political, and societal marginalization and discrimination, and those problems were big enough to keep the real rooted issues at bay. We wanted the decentralization of the Khartoum government because it deserved power and resources too. When we realized we couldn’t be accepted or seen as equals, we decided to become our nation through sweat, blood and tears.  

We all collectively contributed cattle, women, men, children and many more to win the fight for South Sudan. In 2011 after many decades of civil war, we achieved our goal, and a new state was born with 64 tribes and counting. Our unique country came with our unhealed colonial traumas and our identity issues. During the civil wars to fight for South Sudan, we didn’t fully define who and what a South Sudanese was and by what standards citizenship achieved. Instead, we inherited a people so fragmented, divided and lost in a new state. The distrust, internal issues, authentic tribalism and nepotism reared their ugly head once we achieved independence. It was evident when we went back to civil war, political instability and economic chaos just two years after independence from Arab Sudan. 

Our collectivity was defined by resisting the Arabs and White European colonizers. Trauma, pain, mistreatment and marginalization were the glue that held us together and now having an independent state exposed us that our roots are rotting and that we don’t have a cohesive and working social identity that we all feel a sense of belonging. We commit a week in November 2021 to fully dissect our identity issues.

In conclusion, our current regime had the opportunity to be a unifying factor in our new republic yet chose to do the opposite instead. Nations are not born but are built through proper leadership that meets the needs of the state and the people. To become one, we have to respect the process we all have to undergo in becoming one. It will require we dissect our souls and ask tough questions before we can become fully healed.