By Deng Vanang
Aug 17, 2021 — Following Kitgwang declaration amidst subsequent clashes in Magenis and its surroundings, Dr. Riek Machar’s IO factional Spokesman, Col. Lam Paul Gabriel weighed into the melee, blaming external forces for orchestrating a split within the leading rebel movement in the world’s youngest nation.
Short of naming names behind his alleged plot putting the movement a thunders, Col. Lam posed a number of inquiring questions through persuasive appeal, imploring the Nuer community to stand against the ghost of division which are now taken up to field by Cde Deng Vanang, UDRM/A’ Secretary-General in support of what he terms Kitguang’s God-sent declaration.
Col. Lam posed such a series of questions all in concerted effort to nail some external forces in order to validate what his beleaguered Juba’s IO faction has been arguing all along since the accriminous final break up two weeks ago.
I am not a nuer, but a South Sudanese and an IO officer, Col. Lam Paul Gabriel volunteered to share his frustration on social media platforms.
Therefore whatever you feel as a community, I feel it too being citizens of the same country, concluded Col. Lam.
In response, Deng Vanang terms Col. Lam Paul Gabriel’s concern was misplaced and highly hypocritical to warrant some feedback from genuinely concerned and disappointed Nuer like himself.
Col. Lam is hypocritically concerned because being someone close to Dr. Riek Machar with 24 hours’ access to his Chairman and Commander-In-Chief, he couldn’t wait to be concerned until hell broke loose and spiralled out of control, Deng is quoted as saying.
He had both the opportunity and time to forewarn his boss earlier enough against dire consequences his ill-motivated moves would later bring forth, Deng continues.
Hence, Lam’s expressed concern amounting to proverbial shedding of crocodile tears after their forces got their match and rooted out of Magenis and its surroundings by galant forces of the two preeminent army generals: Simon Gatwech and Johnson Olony, concludes Deng.
Col. Lam: I would like to add something little regarding nuer killing nuer. If we look carefully into the situation in Magenis, let’s ask ourselves the following six questions first:
- Who sponsored the Kitgwang declaration?
Deng: Kitgwang declaration doesn’t need anybody to sponsor since it rose out of prolonged built up anger within the hearts of disappointed and long suffered Generals in Magenis, having been used and dumped by their ex-boss, First Vice President of the Republic Dr. Machar who hastily jumped ship into bed with President Salva Kiir Mayardit. Your question ‘’who sponsored the Kitgwang declaration’’ rather connotes the Generals’ lack of human feelings to know the pain Machar inflicted on them till they are told by somebody else to react in the way they have done.
Col. Lam: 2. Who took money to Magenis for mobilisation?
Deng: This is the usually asked question in Machar’s camp since 2014 when one questions the former leader’s style of doing things. Such a person must have been only bought to react to his wrong doing as is currently reflected in your question. It is exactly how people get deprived of their natural conscience to think and ask why and how things are badly moving in his camp. The leader and his cronies always demand forced uniformity in thinking from enslaved SPLM/A-IO’s members and yet they claim to be custodians of freedom, justice and equality as integral elements democracy partly enshrines.
Col. Lam: 3. Who recently took money to accommodate the Kitgwang leadership in Kosti?
Deng: My answer to question number two equally serves as reply to question number three: ‘’who recently took money to accommodate the Kitgwang leadership in Kosti?,’’ with some additional text disputing the time Col. Lam said someone took money to accommodate Kitgwang leadership in Kosti, which is the same time Kitgwang leadership was in Kitgwang as their usual habitat. There is no way, as per the law of space and time, Kitgwang leadership could reside in two locations at the same time. Even if two locations are a distance away from each other by a single metre.
Col. Lam: 4. Who wants to take down both Machar and Gatwech Dual?
Deng: None, but one is taking another one down as opposed to Col. Lam’s question. The SPLM/A-IO’s former leader started by removing General Gatwech from SPLA-IO’s powerful position of chief of Staff and subsequently appointing him to an advisory role of dysfunctional Revitalized Peace Agreement which Col. Lam’s boss acknowledged in recent past not to be working as expected. So General Gatwech has to fight back in self-defense. This is pure and simple natural order of life and no midler could be an escaped goat here.
Col. Lam: 5. Who is working hard from the diaspora to destroy Riek Machar?
Deng: Col. Lam sounds like Diaspora and whoever is in it there influencing the political re-organization in SPLM/A-IO as unwanted external interference by asking the above question. Col. Lam should know Diaspora has signficant membership in IO as South Sudanese citizens with the say and stake in the way the country and IO are run. They also have family members in South Sudan and IO’s control areas who can be affected either positively or negatively by any policy made by either government or IO for them to make their stand known collectively or individually.
It is a similar reason making me concerned and involved as a member of the holdout opposition UDRM/A in SOMA in the affairs of SPLM/A-IO for they indirectly affect me as are the government’s policies. What any political organization does in the country affects the rest in the same country, simply because they engage in interlinked political matters: discussing and correcting political situations.
And even if Col. Lam refers to Diaspora as a foreign entity, such a foreigner could be rightfully concerned to involve in as much as we all live in the post-modernism era where the problem of one country is the problem of all independent states in the UN body governing the world. Since it is one component of humanity suffering which gravely affects the psychology of the rest million miles away.
Col. Lam: 6. Who is behind Duer Tut’s program?
To be sincere, your answers will never miss a nuer name. What’s happening is not a war against Riek Machar Teny but the progressive destruction of the Nuer community using the nuer. Period.
Deng: My answer to your question and narration is as simple as this – the Nuer community has already been grossly divided and destroyed by Dr. Riek Machar’s poor leadership style. And as you know, no the same thing can be destroyed twice by one person. What is ongoing in IO is the recovery effort to save Nuer lives from Machar’s continuous destruction and systematic violation of their dignity and integrity. You are rather confusing corrective measures with systemic self-destruction, Col. Lam. And in a nutshell, Nuer can’t unite in surrender to the status quo in Juba, Col. Lam.
Col. Lam: You {Nuer} can remove Dr. Machar from the leadership of the SPLM/A-IO but you will never replace him with another Nuer because this movement is not tribal but National. So, don’t be deceived that any Nuer member selected outside the SPLM/A-IO National Convention will be easily accepted and endorsed to replace Dr Machar by the other community in the movement.
Deng: Well, it is true SPLM/A-IO is the national movement, but you seem to forget Simon Gatwech’S IO has Colo and other South Sudanese who equally make it national like your IO faction.
What you as well forget, no liberation movement or political party can topple the government without massive support of the Nuer community in South Sudan and your faction will be the prime casualty. Similarly, a weaker Nuer doesn’t augur well for the future of South Sudan. The same being the reason why Nuer should be bailed out from its weaker position Riek Machar has currently placed them and raised them to the pedestal of strength. The Nuer community being known to be naturally religious makes it the country’s moral conscience. And when you make such a sizable population wicked, you deprive the country of its spirit and soul. Similarly, when you violently radicalize them unnecessarily as the second largest ethnicity in the country, the whole country will be embroiled in violence due to many ethnic groups with which it shares borders. Hence, a weaker Nuer is a weaker South Sudan with numerous examples attesting to the aforementioned argument.
Anyanya I started in 1955 in Eastern Equatoria town of Torit only thrived when Nuers joined it in Greater Upper Nile in 1963.
Anyanya II in Bilpam made possible by largely Nuer officers as the result of Akobo mutiny in 1975 became the reception centre of an influx of disenchanted South Sudanese politicians, military officers, intellectuals and intelligentsia wanting to unseat Khartoum-based Arab dominated government in the Southern region.
SPLM/A’ s bulk of forerunner battalions were Nuers who dislodged Anyanya II from Bilpam and subsequently fired the first bullets on government’s Malual Gahoth garrison town and brought down the first two military aircrafts in my home village of Mandeng, Nasir in November, 1983.
Most towns in the South fell into SPLM/A hands only when rival Anynyanya II fully reconciled and reunited with the former in 1988.
After Nasir declaration in August, 1991, SPLM/A under Dr. John Garang became a pale shadow of its former self until in January, 2002 the time Nuers returned to SPLM/A when the united movement regained its lost strength to take on the belligerent Khartoum government, leading to signing of CPA and attainment of South Sudan independence.
I’m not being tribalistic to you and other South Sudanese, but I’m just reminding you with concrete evidence how a weaker Nuer under Machar or any other leader is dangerous to the viability of South Sudan as the country.
Col. Lam: Take it or leave it, you either use this incident in Magenis to wake up and unite for a common good or this oil money will take you down as a community using your own hands. This is my personal opinion and has nothing to do with my assignment in the movement or community.
Deng: Col. Lam, your above sentiment amounts to barking up the wrong tree. For you are declaring as innocent Dr. Machar, the lead sellout for petro-dolar at the expense of petty gluttons for petro-dollars, if at all they are.
Who has been signing peace pacts of veilled surrender for position of Vice President and wealthy pay package such position accrues?
Who has been amassing multi-million dollars meant for selection, feeding and transportation of SPLA-IO’s combatants to the unified training sites and solely blaming it on President Salva Kiir Mayardit?
Who is dying to surrender the whole IO with its officials and officers to the regime so they are crammed into an open jail with him in Juba?
Who is planning to return to the mother SPLM party in order to become Ist Deputy Chairman and Ist Vice President for life to Salva Kiir till Kingdom come like Zimbabwe’s late Joshua Nkomo to late Robert Mugabe?
And why should your boss’ insatiable greed for anything that glitters be holier than the rest?
Deng Vanang, UDRM/A’S Secretary-General and Member of SSOMA’s Leadership Council. He can be reached through email at dvanang@gmail.com,
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