The Only Weapon Left to Fight Corruption in South Sudan John Adoor Deng, Australia
JULY 27/2012, SSN; As from today, one can recall numerous articles written against corruption in South Sudan. In the same direction, we have heard numerous position papers, enacting of rules to govern the practice and speeches delivered against corruption and against corrupt officials, by various authorities including the most powerful men and women in the Republic of South Sudan. All these attempts fall into deaf ears and the vice (corruption) is still active in all institutions! The question is what is the weapon left to fight corruption in South Sudan? An attempt to answer this question summarises the purpose of this article. Indeed, corruption in South Sudan is real and active as confirmed by our beloved president, General Salva kiir Mayardit, in his letter to the suspected corrupt officials both former and current. The president, on his letter made it clear that the vice is bad; as it robbed our innocent masses of their hard earned resources. Thus, the question about what weapon is left to fight Corruption in South Sudan is worth wrestling with in the next few paragraphs. Of course I must knowledge that the war on corruption in South Sudan is well fought but it has for some reasons failed to cut off the corruption vessels. This may be because we are using an exhausted weapon as demonstrated by the fact that nobody has been prosecuted by the anti-corruption commission since 2005 when the vice took roots in our national resources. Nature dictates that if all avenues fail in the capacity of human beings, they must consult the supernatural realm. The cases about corruption in south Sudan will not be done to finality in the physical-mental realm. The vice is chronic within every individual in south Sudan if I have to exaggerate it in this context. The majority of our national elites find favours in the practice of corruption. And the families, relatives, friends, colleagues, tribesmen, mates of the elites are indirectly involved in the vice as they rely on the corrupt officials (but to them not corrupt but their helper!!! ) to provide them with support services. In this direction, I believe that corruption has become chronic as we accrued such behaviours during our protracted war with the Arabs. For example, in many refugee and displaced camps, people used to cheat to have many ration kilos, some were counted twice so as to have enough food for their families, this was corruption. In the rebel army, people used to loot civilian things and say that it was an order from above! But that was not true as there were no such orders from above, this was corruption. For those that were inside Khartoum, they used to live double life as being supporter of SPLM/SPLA in the dark and being supporter of NIF on the surface so that they survived from assassination from the Arab militants at the time. This was to some extent corruption. Believe it or not, this culture had encroached into our very wholeness and people don’t feel that they are corrupting even when taking things of the public as theirs. The culture of corruption is embedded in every individual and many are corrupt but thinking that what they are doing is “normal”. Hence, the modality of the supernatural becomes appropriate as the only weapon left to fight corruption. What we need is not fighting corruption per se but the transformation of behaviours into normal human instinct sharing spirit. Biblical history reminds us on how the modality of supernatural was effective with the city of Nineveh (Jonah 3&4). The city was transformed into corruption free city and all corrupt officials were forgiven by God. The forgiveness came after repentance. I therefore would take the opportunity through this article to appeal to all our religious categories (Christianity with its various denominations, Islam with it various sectors and may be African Traditional Religions (ATR)) in the country to propose two days for national fasting and prayers. In these two days, nobody will be allowed to work, eat, or dress on with good clothes, all must wear under privileged clothes and pray for forgiveness asking God to rid out the spirit of corruption within us, in our departments, tribe and cities. As in the case of Nineveh, we can be forgiven, transformed and redesigned for posterity. The Author is John Adoor Deng: MPRL & Director of South Sudan support Foundation. He can be reached at [email protected] COMMENTS, PLEASE CLICK HERE Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author(s) and do not represent those of the website. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "South Sudan Info - The Kob" 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 https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
