BEING SALVA KIIR FOR A MOMENT

Last night I dreamt I was President Salva Kiir Mayardit, and immediately I gave the following speech:

I am Salva Kiir Mayardit, the first President of the independent Republic of South Sudan. Dear compatriots of the beloved ROSS, my warmest greetings to you all. This is my first speech about the current state of affairs in our country. I hereby admit that as at the beginning of this calendar year, 2018, things are really bad in our beloved country South Sudan, for which I and many of you have fought for the best part of our adult lives, for 21 years.

Dear compatriots, by nature I am a quiet person and a silent operator. I do prefer to do things instead of talking too much about everything. I am quite aware about my limitations though. I have not been able to acquire high academic qualifications because I was a simple military man. I believe that was my call. I have never been an ambitious person in my whole life, let alone becoming the president of the country. But as we all know, circumstances out of my control thrust me into the helm of the leadership of our nation. When the founding leader of our liberation movement SPLM/A late Dr John Garang de Mabior died in a plane crash in July 2005, I became the leader, and you the people of our beloved country South Sudan, with all my better educated colleagues in the ruling party SPLM, democratically reaffirmed and chose me to be the president of our new independent nation. I humbly accepted the honour for two main reasons; first, I could not turn down the people’s wish especially considering the circumstances of the death of our founding leader. Secondly, I believed that the better educated among you will support me, by continuously contributing good ideas and good projects, and not just negative destructive criticism as the case now. 

Dear compatriots, 

Many factors colluded to lead our country into its current state of deterioration and suffering. Those factors include the following:

- The better educated people in our party and elsewhere, who were supposed to support my leadership dishonoured their promise and abandoned their roles in pursuit of their own personal ambitions for leadership, through tribal mobilisation, collaboration with foreign interests and the enemies of our nation, by the use of violent means. 

- Some of the foreign interests always wait for, and encourage divisions in our country in order to infiltrate and exploit the situation of instability and chaos. And some of our ambitious brothers and sister travel the world with maps of our nation’s resources for sale.

- The lack of national loyalty within the armed forces of our nation allowed tribal leaders to be able to pull out their tribes people from the national army, with a hand gesture or a wink, into rebellion, under narrow tribal ambitions.

Dear compatriots,

All fair and open minded people can see my following good leadership qualities:

I am a nationalist, not a tribal leader.

Trace my tract record through the tough times of liberation war. Many leaders in the SPLM/A talked too much and fought over the leadership of the movement, even before the mission of liberation was completed. You all know that I did not get involved in those endeavours. If I were a short sighted tribal person, I would have taken over the leadership of SPLA/M during the time when the movement’s leaders from Upper Nile were fighting each other for power. The people of my region Bahr el Ghazal have earned resentment of those ambitious tribal leaders and their narrow minded supporters, and they call us foolish majority simply because we have been far sighted enough and patient enough to stay as the backbone of the liberation effort under the one leadership of late Dr John Garang de Mabior, to the end. I am a patient leader from a region of patient people throughout the history of our liberation struggle. During the time of the Anyanya movement, the leader at the time, late Hon. Gordon Muortat Mayen, sent one of his lieutenants, Joseph Lagu, to receive weapons from a friendly foreign nation, upon receiving the weapons, Joseph Lagu announced a coup against the leader, Gordon Muortat Mayen.  Hon. Mayen gave orders to his guard and all his Head Quarters not to respond with violence. He did not want to see Southerners’ blood-shed by other Southerners. He left the movement and sought asylum in a foreign country. Mr Mayen only came back to South Sudan after liberation. During the SPLA/M liberation war, we were patient when renegade tribes from upper Nile continually ambushed and massacred thousands of young men and women from our region who went there to join the struggle. Even when some important leaders from my region were unfairly executed by the movement, I did not react in a tribal way. And I do listen to my people too. That is why I forgot my personal grievances against the leadership of the movement and accepted reconciliation with late Dr John Garang in Rumbek in 1997.

I am a peace loving leader

I am a peace loving leader. That is why I have sought to and did accommodate those who have previously taken arms against the state, when they showed genuine willingness for peace. And that is why I always extend the hand of peace, and declare amnesty to those who sincerely wish to drop their arms and embrace non-violent political processes. Like late leader Gordon Muortat Mayen, I don’t want any South Sudanese to die, even my opponents like Dr Riek Machar, I did and still do everything to save his life. I want every political opponent to be a life to be able to see the consequences of their actions, learn from them, and hopefully change their ways. I am using patience and the wisdom of our elders; to get through all leadership problems, including the issue of my colleague, former army chief, Gen. Paul Malong Awan, without bloodshed.

I am very disappointed with some opportunist politicians in our country. Some of them used their tribe’s people as fire wood for war, and when the state fights them back in defence of its legitimacy and sovereignty, and they die, unfortunately, these opportunist politicians talk about ethnic targeting and genocide. I am utterly disappointed with some opportunist politicians who support some leaders who previously used their own tribe’s people for ethnic killing of Bor people. I am disappointed about those opportunist politicians who kept silent about the tribal massacres of their own people, and now pretend to be concerned about the deaths of people who were used by their tribal leaders against the state. I am sick and tired of hypocritical politicians who turn a blind eye to the tribal targeting and slaughtering of unarmed, innocent, of their own people, live on Facebook, by the very groups they support. I am sick and tired of the so-called free world media, which turn a blind eye to the tribal mobilisation and inhuman slaughtering of innocent citizens, by irresponsible rebel groups. I am tired of the so-called world media, which takes sides with the undermining of legitimate democratic authority, and destruction of human life and the economy. 

Dear compatriots,

I am disappointed by some foreign powers, which have democracy in their own countries, and support political violence and rebellions in our country. I am very disappointed with educated citizens of my country, who ask me to resign under these circumstances of treason by our own sons and daughters, and conspiracy by foreign powers. I think they don’t know what they are talking about.

I am not resigning

I am not resigning because I am the legitimate, democratically elected president of the country. I cannot resign as a result of deterioration of the country affairs, brought about by acts of rebellion of ambitious people who want to seize power through violence. I don’t want history to record against my legacy the precedence of giving-in to demands of tribal rebellions which continuously fall into the hands of foreign interests and enemies of our nation. No matter what, I will continue to defend the legitimacy and the sovereignty of my country South Sudan.

To my compatriots, intellectuals at home and in foreign lands, I do expect you to give intellectual advice and if you are not happy with my government, to demand peace, justice, the rule of law, by peaceful means, and to call for the transfer of power through democratic process not through violence.

Peace be upon you all.