Traditional Authority Role has to be clearly and cleanly detached from the local Authority rule

By: Gatkuͻth Këdͻk de – Lɛw / Juba

November 28, 2011 (SSNA) — The political culture as well as traditional chiefdom role in the classical Sudan since 1955, had been vaguely distinctive and thus this was what largely contributing to national disunity, distrust of nationalism, civil disobedience and intra anarchy of relentless civil wars that had pit the marginalised regions of the then one country‘s Southern ten States territory and the central parts of dual states of Blue Nile and Nuba Mountains against the off and on oppressively and aggressively successive regimes of the Islamic totalitarianism over the last two and a half decades unabated.

The root causes of that national insecurity was however; not well established so that an immediate and independent solution to be found out; because the then system was fond of having various deformities or defects by reacting irrationally based on the relative consequences not causes precipitating the chaos or lack of national cohesion.

To this end, it was the necessary evil because without such unconscious obligations from there, southerners and their sympathisers would have not been gaining enough grounds or excuses of forging a grand strategy on the path of their liberation quest for full emancipation out of Jalabism and Arabism yoke and yonder.

Now that the secular Republic of South Sudan is attained through a set of complex processes beginning revolutionarily with bullets and ending democratically with ballots, the Government of South Sudan at all levels of governance needs to do it to the best of its ability to revise the past, decide the present and devise the future by avoiding any infectious malpractices be unknowingly contracted or retained from the old system and thus may mix up the past and present which nevertheless invites a doomed future for her beloved people.

As a sheer deterrence to the above would-be a doomed future, only if the Head of State of this spotless state of the people‘s decentralised Republic of South Sudan, should constitutionally detach the native chiefs from the local government armpits especially County Commissioners and the likes who have nowadays devalued the role of a native chief to a native thief consciously or unconsciously being none knows.

Universally, community chiefs or kings in South Sudan for the last six years of interim period, were merely be manipulated through political allegiance not society aspirations and expectations. However; to a lesser degree that would be legally and tactfully correct because by then we were on the verge of seceding away which was being sabotaged by Khartoum using cash and kind to buy locals off for futile triumph of its unattractive unity.

Moreover; that, the ARABS and their grand daughters, have genuinely gone, something crucial or beneficial to our State leadership prior to its broader programs is to make irrevocable measures in building the true sovereignty of each citizen towards the supremacy of nationalism characterised first and foremost by centralisation of the chiefs or Kings direct to the state palace or presidency to enable them learn the blurred distinctions between the role of the State and the role of government, Authority and Democracy, traditional authority and local authority, nationalism and tribalism, constitutionalism and bill of rights, politics and policy and the list is endless, which are mystified presently as a result of political notoriety, conundrum if not naïvety of machine politics or gerrymandering schemes resting on narrow motives to make chiefs dependent upon a tainted politics which is so foreign to either national policy of statesmanship programs or local populace common good of all ages in terns of community development and social justice as rule of law requires.

Consequently; the kind of public malady which is least heeded by many but fuels the insecurity most in the country; is this subject political culture imposed by the authority of this type of presumptuous modernity clique upon the nativity jurisdiction ignoring chiefs as non-participants while chiefs are more essentially neutral and absolutely capable of restraining inter tribal feuds or raids than the local authority officials who sometimes instigate community violence to further their political calculations and destinations.

Were chiefs exempt from those creatures of self-centeredness and ingrained egoism, cattle rustlings as well as aimlessly pervasive killings of random between and amongst the communities, would relatively reduce and be fundamentally unfashionable since chiefs are more reliable to the locals than the local authority officials who respond to multiple choices of appeasing his appointing authority, pleasing his political party and displaying sympathy to his own community i.e the politics of spin by attributing all blames of inefficiency, underdevelopment and inequality to the government in pretence that he/she is a saint in his own island.

By contrast; Khartoum did abstain from recognising the quintessence of native chiefs in the late 20th century due to rigidity of southern chiefs in defiance of Islamization and Arabisation creeds which they were imposing by camouflage in form of pilgrim invitations to Saudi Arabia as a viable tool of brainwashing and acclimatising key chiefs with Arab civilisation of which was in vain but to maintain that technique they created unnatural urban chiefs which most of whom if not all were Muslims or leaning to some ruling elites of the day as opposed to the liberation wars in the south. Not only did the creation of those chiefs intend an extent of legitimate fabrication but also enlarge the wider gap and worsen the broader conflict between the minority southerners in the towns and those majority southerners in the liberated Areas.

As I write, native chiefs have indeed been misled and corrupted by the mixed political cultures of unidentified origins forcing them to pose as political chiefs not local populace chiefs. Therefore the chiefs of the day are not accountable to their jungle or rural like people but aggressively accountable to the local authority that operating under subscribed political umbrellas which treats chiefs like government appointees not like elected civil servant chiefs representing their clan members along natural rights basis defined by the birthright virtues and commonalities.

As a real social stigma of every epoch, the political affiliation or membership allegiance from any chief now has been set compulsorily as a prime prerequisite for each ordinary one to assume the status of natural clan chiefdom and be superimposed over that particular clan when he/she meets that criterion of political loyalty whether he is liked or not by the very people who are supposed to elect him or her based on his /her popular ticket as a member of local community devoid of any artificial authority which should be applied necessarily to the citizenry at the national level only for stressing political direction and polarity.

To my analytical observation and study, this nature will make our community deviate from the democratic civility for which we are yearning most lest toss it to selfish ways of materialistic politics of the fittest which is so destructive to be adopted by the people who have never seen a piece of white chalk nor a stand of black board and who will have no time to analyse and contrast a wider range of political colours while hailing at an ill-equipped environment.

Finally, it would be so wise for the civil society groups and watchdogs of community welfare or community based organisations as well as the State apparatus, to intimately intervene sooner than later by ensuring that Traditional Authority Role has to be clearly and cleanly detached from the local Authority rule which rule them rudely and crudely out of legitimate procedures of natural justice, short of political, economical and sociable equality but contrary a rule of division and derision of nativity ethics and norms if not universal rights abuses in the nearest future possible.

The Author can be reached at [email protected]

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