Freedom and land ownership in South Sudan
* Article
* Comments (0)
email Email
print Print
pdfSave
separation
increase
decrease
separation
separation
*
*
*
*
By Zechariah Manyok Biar
July 8, 2011 — Freedom is a tricky thing. It is often susceptible to
interest-driven definitions. Some people think that freedom means the
absence of obstacles. They think that to act freely is to do anything
that nobody has the right to question. Other people, like Philosopher
Emmanuel Kant, believe that to act freely is to act autonomously
according to the law you give yourself. Kant’s definition can also be
abused. People who manipulate principles, like freedom, to serve their
individual interests can take autonomy to mean regional independence
in the Republic of South Sudan. Some kinds of regional independence in
our current system of government is not unconstitutional. What is
unlawful is the idea that area belonging entitles one to anything
therein. This is not different from the belief that liberators are
entitled to anything they want. Both beliefs are mistaken.
The autonomy that Emmanuel Kant talks about is the one performed out
of duty and not inclination. The law that autonomous rational beings
give themselves must treat people as end in themselves, not as means
to an end.
This is not to say that Kant’s idea of treating people as end in
themselves is enough. There are times you can justifiably treat people
as means to an end. For example, during the liberation war in Sudan,
we used our soldiers as means for the liberation end of the Republic
of South Sudan, and that was not immoral. Yet, we would agree with
Kant that to treat people as end in themselves is to respect their
dignity.
Those who take some people’s land by force in the name of liberation
do not respect the dignity of those people. In the same way, those who
kick people out of their homes without a clear legal support to their
claims to the ownership of the plot of land are not treating them with
respect too. We have seen over the last six years cases in which
somebody would evict a person from a piece of land and sell the plot
to any high bidder only to be discovered later that the plot had two
title deeds. The only way to settle cases like these was to find out
the older title deed and award the ownership of the plot to the bearer
of the older document. The owner of the newer document is a land
grabber in my definition, although we rarely hear people define them
as such.
The much talk about land grabbing was often directed at people from
other areas even when land grabbing was being practiced by the inner
people of particular areas like Juba, Bor, and Nimule where the land
grabbing complaints were often reported. The land grabbing saga almost
planted hatred among different communities in these areas when in
reality, the people from these areas were involved in land
malpractices more than the people they regarded as land grabbers from
outside their communities.
In the Republic of South Sudan, what would matter a lot is the respect
of the dignity of its citizens. Those who have legal titles of land
must be protected from land grabbers, regardless of where they belong.
Land grabbers from any area are land grabbers in legal terms. They
should not make noise to cause disunity among South Sudanese. Legal
landowners should be the ones to voice their complaints against land
grabbers, whether local, national, or international.
The respect for the dignity of each citizen requires all of us to act
out of duty to do the right thing for the right reason. Those who use
liberation or area belonging as a tool for satisfying their
self-interest should not boast morally. Their morality is wanting.
Some of these people capitalize on hatred. We should remember that
hatred does not go empty-handed. It is often narrowed down. When you
hate people from other regions and they leave you alone, you hate
tribes that do not belong to you. When these tribes leave you alone,
you hate clans that do not belong to you, and so on.
Respecting people for who they are is the only right thing to do in
the independent Republic of South Sudan. We should give each citizen
what he or she deserves in any part of South Sudan. We should not
manipulate the law to suit our individual interest or even group
selfish interests.
My ideas here can still be challenged. Somebody may argue that it is
impossible to eliminate interest from human action. People who make
such argument believe that a freedom minus individual’s inclination
and desire is not possible because what seems to motivate a person’s
action is a desire.
What I can say is that if we believe that the inclination is more
important in our moral behavior, then we will find ourselves in the
mercy of the most powerful people. The soldiers who use liberation as
support for their illegal occupation of lands owned by others would be
justified because they are satisfying their desires.
We must, as Kant argues, use the power of reason to determine actions
that respect the dignity of other citizens in the Republic of South
Sudan. That is the only way good life can be realized by our people.
Area belonging and liberation must never be used as tools for
mistreatment of other citizens. We must be law-abiding citizens who
respect the rights of all human beings.
Zechariah Manyok Biar, BA. Edu., MACM, MSSW. He can be reached at
[email protected]
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "JFD
info" group.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
[email protected].
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/jfdinfo?hl=en.
