Not a Coup But a Plan!

The current crisis in South Sudan was not caused by coup; it was a long-term plan from president Salva Kiir Mayadit to achieve his goal; his goal was to plan a way to chase his political rivals out of the country to remain in power. Kiir tried many options to get rid of any democratic sounded-mind individuals including journalists in South Sudan, Isaiah Abraham, who was one of the democratic writers killed in cold blood by Kiir in his house. Since Kiir replaced Dr. John Garang that died in the plane crash in 2005, the country was in unrest, there were many orphans and widows. The president did not want to transform the young nation from gorilla ideology into democratic. Kiir wants to remain in power forever; however, he did not know what to do to remain in power. Kiir did not know that to remain in power it needed him to cooperate with civil society in peaceful and democratic means. Kiir did not understand that to remain in power he needed some work to be done, such as delivering good services to people fairly to make them happy. Kiir chose to lead South Sudan in division, hatred, and lack of human value, tribal action, nepotism and corruptions. I will discuss the cause and the solution of the current crisis in South Sudan in this paper.
My source of information tells me that the President Salva Kiir Mayardit has planned the current death of thousand of Nuer people in Juba.

President Kiir did not have prime work of peaceful means to lead the country. I cannot blame him very much since I know that he got this job accidently, when Dr. Garang died in the plane crash in 2005. After serving the country as vice president in Sudan and president of South Sudan in 2005 to 2011, Kiir did not want to give chance to South Sudanese to exercise the democratic system in the country. Kiir used the military power as mean for him to remain in power by arresting, beating and executing people who tried to express their feeling to bring democracy in the young country. His first plan to murder thousand of people in south Sudan was in 2007, according to my source.
Kiir appointed people to write the current draft constitution of South Sudan before cessation of South Sudan from Sudan. The constitution empowers the president to hire and fire job seekers in the country. The president convened the majority of people in the parliament to write the constitution based that gave him too much power. My source of information tells me that only Dr. Riek Machar and few individuals rejected the daft constitution that empower only the president to hire and fire people from their jobs and when looking for jobs. Machar and few people drafted another free democratic constitution that was later rejected by the parliament because Kiir convinced the majority of people in the parliament by distributing the wealth of the country to MPs in order to carry out his will, since Kiir has money carried in bags in his office, he had a power to transform South Sudan into his own direction. Dr. Riek Machar and some few visionary South Sudanese who corrected the president's draft constitution were voted out, Kiir first step succeeded.
Now the second step was to execute his duty by reshuffling the government staff as may time as he wants. The president started to fire and hire from the top to the bottom by decree. The source of my information told me that the president threatened people to vote for him if they want to keep their jobs; The president used a threat language to force the members of parliament to expose their vote by raising their hands in the parliament for him to know who is doing his will and who is not, this step also worked and the president went further.

Less than a year, the president fired all his advisors and appointed other advisors from his own ethnic community; these are group of eight elders brought from Northern Bahre and Warrap states to advise him for how to dominate specific tribe or Nuer. But first, I want to get rid of Riek Macher, said the president. If I get rid of him, I would be able to murder many Nuer as I can and mislead the international communities that Dr. Riek Machar attempted a coup; The world will be with us because coup is not accept internationally, If I murder many Nuer, other Nuer will fear and follow my leadership normally, the Dinka will lead South Sudan for many centuries to come if I succeed in this strategic plan, Kiir stated.

As soon as the elders started their duties, they adviced Kiir to train personal military guard without acknowledge of parliament, chief of staff or other South Sudanese army generals, this step succeeded.

Another step forward is to fire Dr. Riek Machar to see the reaction of the Nuer now. If they launched war on us, we will report it to international communities that Riek is fighting for sake of position, Kiir and his elders said this. In action, the elders advised the president to reshuffle the all cabinets to confuse the Nuer, so that the Nuer will think that the president is just reshuffling the government for corruption reasons as stated. The elders also advise the president to re-appoint some Nuer elements that would follow the president's order with no doubt.

Now, the president's actions of firing his vice president Riek Machar, reshuffling the government's staff, and re-appointing government staff based on his relationship with them. When Machar was fired, president Kiir and his elders thought Riek will influence Nuer to go to war with Dinka, however, Machar convinced the citizens of South Sudan as whole using the term " calm down", adding that the president has the right to fire me because the constitution mandated him to fire his vice president.

The positive reaction of Machar did not make the president and his elders happy; their plan was to see Machar reacted violently. The president wanted the violence to take place as soon as possible so that he could bring his private army force to Juba and murder Nuer civilians, this did not happen in the way they wanted it to be at that time.
Machar , who is still a MP in the parliament and the second person in splm ruling party, still is a powerful person in the government despite the fact that he has been removed from vice positions. Machar was regaining more support from South Sudanese democratic minded people in the parliament and in the SPLM party as well, the president and his elders were not happy about that.
The president now wants to reshuffle the whole party after he reshuffled the parliament. Now the president in action to reform the party, fired his vice chair in the party, general secretary and replaced them with other people who support him. This action is unconstitutional in the party constitution. Now, the party is divided into two because the president violeted the party's constitution. There was the group of six which was led by Dr. Riek Machar, the ex – vice chairman, follow by ex – general secretary of the SPLM, Pagan Amum and the group of eight led by president Kiir, followed by Wani Igga, the current vice present.

The president and his eight elders are not normal at this movement knowing that Riek is going to win the election in 2015. The president and his elders now want to crack down the group of six by force, arrest their members, kill their leader Dr. Riek Machar, and go to the media and lie that Riek and his group attempted a coup. The president had tried to capture his colleague while they were in the first party meeting, however, the president did not trust all his presidential guards to order them to carry his order right. There were Nuer relatives to Dr. Machar in my presidential guards, they will not accept to capture Machar and kill him on spot, we will fight each other; said the president. Well, what should we do, one elder asked? let us plan another plan, other elders said.

The president came and engaged the church leaders and other peace lover individuals for SPLM reconciliation. In the meeting the president started to insult his colleagues in his speeches to see their reaction, and his colleagues walked away in the meeting(the SPLM group of six).

Next step was to disarm all presidential guards together on spot and re-arm Dinka guards later on. Kiir 's plans was to kill those of Nuer presidential guard after re-arming Dinka so that they will not disclose the secret to the public.
Now is the action to disarm guards in their military parade: They were told to put their weapons down. After they did that, the commander Marial Chanoung told the Dinka to go into the store and re-arm themselves. After the Nuer guards saw that they were disarmed and the general re-armed Dinka, one of the Nuer guard asked his colleagues that, why they disarmed us and rearm our colleagues? I think they are trying to kill us, let us go and re-arm ourselves too, they ran into store to rearm themselves and that was where the fighting started.

The president called his illegal trained army force loyalty to him that resided some miles away outside Juba for reinforcement. The Nuers guards were not many and they all got killed after trying to defend their lives in their positions. In the meantime, president's reinforcement came and the president directed the force to Riek Machar' s house to capture him and kill him on spot. Riek saved his life that day by running away from his own house into where he would be safe, this is what the president called to be a coup? The president should tell the truth because God wants people to tell the truth. The bible tells people to tell the truth and the truth will make people free. Kiir could tell the truth otherwise the truth will speak by itself.

It is clear that Nuers were targeted in Juba after the president issued a curfew on December 15, 2013. There were no other reasons to target Nuer rather than their ethnicity and that was the mission of the president for the very first time as I mention above. The presidential guards killed many Nuer by door to door search targeting only Nuer tribe civilians in Juba.

There was no coup attempt by Dr. Riek Machar and his group. There was completely no coup attempt, rather than president's long-term plan to kill Nuer, planned by Kiir and his eight elders from Bahr El Gazal just for hatred reason.
The killing of innocent Nuers is cowardly action, if Kiir is a brave man enough, he could have just hunted for army Nuer than those helpless civilians. The civilians are innocent. I think Kiir took arms against Arab domination before to protect south Sudanese that were mistreated by Khartoum government, isn't it? But why did Kiir become the second Khartoum regime against his civilians? Did Kiir forget that God of the Nation, the God that gave South Sudan independence still watching him?

It is clear that Kiir's fear for 2015 election created him a social phobia ( fear to go out and express his thought in public). That fear created another psychological fear or low self esteem ( a fear that an individual think s/he is not good enough to beat his/her rival). Based on those fears, the president is trying to act in the wrong way as means to defend himself from public judgment. The crime he has committed, will one day make him commit suicide or will get caught by free fighters and will soon follow those innocent Nuer victims.
Kiir is psychologically sick and he really needs psychologicall help. if he admitted that he is mentally sick, it would be easier for him to get help, but it will be hard for him to admit his atrocities, I think so.

My source of information told me that South Sudan president Kiir is an addict too, he drinks liquors in maximum. But, when a leader consumes alcohol too much like that, he will get confused and direct the system wrongly. Salva Kiir has now classically conditioned himself and will alert the public later on what he has done wrong.

The Nuers were the most people suffered during Sudan civil war. The Nuer soldiers fought bravely to free South Sudanese from Khartoum slavery regimes. The Nuer civilians served the SPLA soldiers with their cattle, nursed the wounded soldiers by building shelters and giving food to the wounded soldiers. The Nuer civilians helped the SPLA soldiers to carry ammunitions when SPLA army force was moving to attack the enemy positions.

I thought South Sudan would play a democratic role than many other countries in East Africa because it was found through democratic role. South Sudan did not captured any big town like Juba, Malakal and so through military force from Sudan before. But through international efforts such as from United States of America, which played a maximum role to bring the CPA, which led to five years autonomy of South Sudan that brought about referendum of South Sudan succession in 2011. I thought South Sudan should exercise democratic system more than any country in East African, which didn't happened .
To solve this problem in this young country, the world leaders should bring Dr. Riek Machar into power for the benefit of South Sudanese to regain back the democratic transformations lost by current president. The international communities should persuade the current president to step down, or the youth of this country together, in all corner of this young nation, must rise up to bring down the dictator Kiir because the future of this country belongs to young, this is the simple equation of solving South Sudan current problem.

Tut Makal Dojiok,
The author is a university student in Lethbridge majoring in psychology and can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.