
By Emmanuel K.
I am an Equatorian Nationalist because to be anything but an Equatorian Nationalist at this moment of Equatoria’s existential ruin in South Sudan would be unforgivable. It would mean a condemnation of Equatoria to the pages of history where we find the autopsy of a people who used to exist but don’t anymore because they were conquered and swallowed up by an alien colonizing people who robbed them of their lands, institutions, and resources and proceeded to impose a hegemonic rule over them. An alien people who, because of this domination, were able to marry and merge into them and become their new permanent class of elites. To not be an Equatorian Nationalist as Equatoria is going through this historical process of conquest and erasure would be an endorsement.
I refuse to end up on these pages of history. I refuse for history to record that in my generation, I was one of the people who did not stand for Equatoria, that I was one of the people who did not fight for Equatoria’s survival and national continuity. In this instant of Equatoria’s slumber through its destruction, this time of confusion and a debilitating spell of political disunity characteristic of societies undergoing destruction from without, I am taking a vigilant stance and declaring unambiguously that I am an Equatorian Nationalist.
What is happening to Equatoria in South Sudan, at a fundamental civilizational level, is un-Equatorian because what passes for a nation in the manner of South Sudan is foreign to the Equatorian idea of nationhood. South Sudan, from the Equatorian perspective, is a national aberration, one that has proven a retrogressive imposition on the Equatorian body. For us Equatorians, South Sudan has only civilizational decay and death to offer. It has only an experience of constant trauma and anxiety at whose core are the things that it is making us lose as Equatorians, things that are unique and essential to our way of life, replacing them with a way of life that is bestial and antithetical to our Equatorian civilizational practice.
We Equatorians are a social group that has attained a national identity in the sense that we have amalgamated, through generations, over forty tribes into a distinct national identity called the Equatorians. Such an amalgamation did not take place in Upper Nile and Bahr el Ghazal. They are regions that are still extremely tribal in their socio-cultural and socio-political make-up. Their participation in and understanding of South Sudanese identity and nationhood is unmistakably tribal. They see South Sudan only in terms of their own tribal image and engage with it solely in the interest of their tribes.
Now, ask yourself, who stands to lose in such a South Sudanese national environment? We the Equatorians who are coming into it with an out-group posture of national inclusion, or those who are coming into South Sudanese nationhood with an in-group exclusionary tribal posture? It is us, the Equatorians, who will lose, who are losing. We are farther up the road of national becoming than Upper Nile and Bahr el Ghazal. Going into nationhood with them, as we currently are in South Sudan, means that their tribal outlook and interests are the ones that will prevail, are prevailing, and doing so to our Equatorian detriment, as evinced by their tribal domination and control of all the institutions of the South Sudanese state. We must therefore exit South Sudan if we are to preserve ourselves and Equatoria. We must establish an Equatorian nation-state.
We Equatorians embarked on the South Sudanese national project after independence with the belief that it was going to be a constructive and inclusive national project. History and time have shown that some of the non-Equatorian social groups that the British combined us with in the territory of Southern Sudan were in it for different motivations. It has become clear that they were in it to use it as a conduit for their ethno-nationalism. They were not in it for a collective national becoming of all the social groups in the Southern Sudanese space. Since their ethno-nationalism entails the destruction of those who are not of them in South Sudan and on whose corpses and lands they are to erect their ethno-state, it is incumbent on the others in South Sudan who are to be destroyed for the success of this project to seek self-preservation in their own nationalisms because South Sudanese nationalism has proven a lie. It has proven a failure. It has proven to be a Dinka ethno-nationalist conspiracy.
I am an Equatorian Nationalist because our Equatorian intellectual, political, and military elites have failed Equatoria. In the past, as they navigated the South Sudanese liberation struggle, especially in the post-1983 period, they failed to accurately gauge the intentions and attitudes of the other tribes and regions toward Equatoria. They blindly followed the politicians of Upper Nile and Bahr el Ghazal. Their lack of discernment and cultivation of an Equatorian political consciousness and sustained front in those years as Upper Nile and Bahr el Ghazal cultivated tribal and regional consciousnesses and myths in relation to the liberation struggle is what has led Equatoria to its present intellectual, political, economic, social, cultural, and military impotence in South Sudan.
In the post-independence period, our Equatorian intellectual, political, and military elites made a Faustian bargain with the South Sudanese state. For their sustenance and well-being within the South Sudanese state, which they attain by subservience to the Upper Nile and Bahr el Ghazal dominators and destroyers of Equatoria, they have sold their Equatorian soul and with it Equatoria’s existence. They are of South Sudan and South Sudan only, and they are willing to betray Equatoria for it. But one thing they seem to have forgotten as they commit fully to South Sudan at the expense of Equatoria is that they come from Equatoria, a society where their conduct is deemed unbecoming, where mechanisms for countering and redressing exactly this capitulation of theirs in authority are in place. They have forgotten that in their Equatoria exists systems of governance of checks and balances, one of which is the age-set system of governance, where when the elders fail in their duty of defending and protecting the village, the younger generation is obligated to overthrow them.
The sun might be setting on them. They might have convinced themselves that what they have accomplished in their time following Upper Nile and Bahr el Ghazal politicians constitutes a legacy that they can be proud of and cross over into the other world with. To each their own. But it is us, the upcoming generation of Equatorians, who they will leave behind and who will have to be here to suffer under their monumental failures regarding Equatoria, the ones to be here to experience the humiliation of their surrender of Equatoria to domination and exploitation by Upper Nile and Bahr el Ghazal, to destruction and disappearance in South Sudan.
I am an Equatorian Nationalist because I deserve a nation. A nation is a privilege that every soul on this planet is worthy of. I, as an Equatorian, am no different. But my situation in South Sudan says otherwise. South Sudan says that I am, in fact, not South Sudanese. It says that I am Ugandan. That I am Congolese. South Sudan says that I am not part of its liberation story. It says that only the Dinka liberated it. South Sudan says only the Dinka can dominate its institutions, starting from the embassies abroad to the airport and its other ports of entry, to its police on the streets, all the way to its civil servants in the offices. South Sudan says that my Equatorian image is not worthy of representing it. Only the image of the Dinka is to be representative of South Sudan.
South Sudan says that my Equatorian Juba Arabic is not worthy of being a national language. South Sudan has become antagonistic toward my Equatorian Church and clergy, the same Equatorian Church and clergy that was instrumental in it becoming a nation. Not only does South Sudan do this, it makes a mockery of my people’s fight against Arabization and Islamization by encouraging and abetting Arabization and Islamization in my Equatorian lands today.
South Sudan is not using my Equatorian natural resources to develop Equatoria. South Sudan has indeed refused to develop Equatoria’s economic life. It has instead turned Equatoria into an economic and financial colony of foreigners and a non-Equatorian political and military class. South Sudan is not developing Equatoria’s national institutions, either. It is instead destroying and confiscating that which Equatoria built for itself in the past.
South Sudan has no regard for Equatorian lives and the development of Equatoria’s human capital. It has a special hatred for Equatorian lives, in fact, raping and murdering Equatorian men, women, and children alike with impunity.
South Sudan does not defend Equatorian land. It is dispossessing it from its ancestral Equatorian communities through land grabbing and occupation, sale to foreign states and entities, and acquiescence to neighbouring countries to encroach on it.
I am an Equatorian Nationalist because it is only in an Equatorian nation where I can be in control of my national destiny and development and will be able to defend myself and Equatoria from all these ills South Sudan condemns it to, and the malice South Sudan harbours toward it. Only in an Equatorian nation can I own my national identity and not be denied national belonging. Only in an Equatorian nation can I make Juba Arabic my national language. Only in an Equatoria nation can I then go anywhere in the world, and when asked where I come from, I can say that I come from Equatoria, and I will not be mistaken for a non-Equatorian tribe, as I currently am in South Sudan. Only in an Equatorian nation can my Equatorian Church and its clergy be honoured and be the repository of my salvation, spiritual nourishment, values, and mores. Only in an Equatorian nation can I have the Equatoria before the South Sudanese nightmare of today, the Equatoria of old I hear my parents and elders talk about, the Equatoria of Tranquillity and co-existence that has made my Equatorian people to be called a peaceful people.
I am an Equatorian Nationalist for these and much more that make Equatoria and its survival and continuity dear to me and inalienable.
By Emmanuel K.
Newer articles:
- Syria 2025: The historical Syrian project: From revolution to a modern inclusive civil state - 16/01/2025 16:10
- A homage to Anne Ramberg, whose tenure as IBAHRI Co-Chair has ended - 16/01/2025 15:57
- US Determines Genocide in Sudan, Sanctions RSF Leader Hemedti - 10/01/2025 13:19
- U.S imposes visa restrictions on people responsible for South Sudan conflict - 24/12/2024 19:27
- Is Gen. Garang Mabil qualified for a political job based on his social connections? - 21/12/2024 17:24
Older news items
- Will South Sudan Ever Overcome its Tribal Divisions? - 16/12/2024 12:19
- Russia in the geopolitical field of Africa - 09/12/2024 18:21
- Integration Of The Human Ideas Into Real Life, The Difficulty Of Our Age - 09/12/2024 11:49
- President Biden: Absent Principles - No Honoring Words - Broken Promises - 05/12/2024 09:55
- The idea of one nation and one people is a distortion of our reality!!! - 29/11/2024 12:54
Latest news items (all categories):
- UNDP and the Office of the Vice President Launches the Women and Youth Leadership Program in South Sudan - 14/02/2025 11:37
- The Grave Blunders And The Paradoxical Ways In Leadership Sector - 14/02/2025 11:32
- ADF approves $153.66 million for Uganda-South Sudan electricity interconnection project - 13/02/2025 20:48
- Rwandan peacekeepers in South Sudan get UN service medals for their service - 13/02/2025 20:44
- Afreximbank seeks to claw back US$657mn debt from South Sudan - 13/02/2025 20:30
See also (all categories):
Random articles (all categories):
- 2 more South Sudan officials resign, alleging graft, bias - 18/02/2017 11:23
- Ghanaian National Revenue Authority (NRA) boss Dr. Olympio Attipoe dismissed by South Sudan's Finance Minister - 26/08/2019 00:04
- Lessons for Africa from India’s deadly COVID surge - 31/05/2021 03:41
- التغيير الديمقراطي ...و صمود أمام الإدعاءات الكاذبة - 15/11/2010 00:00
- U.N. seeks $1.3 billion in humanitarian funding for South Sudan - 19/01/2016 23:21
Popular articles:
- The Final Communique of SPLM-DC Third Session of the National Council - 29/03/2011 01:00 - Read 76199 times
- Roles and Definition of Political Parties - 29/04/2011 01:00 - Read 61275 times
- Agriculture in Southern Sudan: Challenges and Investment Opportunities - 06/10/2010 01:45 - Read 42384 times
- Fashoda Youth Forum Rehabilitation of Drainage Culverts in Malakal town Report - 07/08/2008 16:22 - Read 33697 times
- Dozens of gunmen on horseback ambush peacekeepers - 24/05/2008 13:47 - Read 26840 times