Becoming Plural by Boggs Richard;

Author:Boggs, Richard;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Non-fiction, Travel, Africa
Publisher: Garnet Publishing (UK) Ltd
Published: 2012-11-20T00:00:00+00:00

Dinka woman met on the road, Rumbek

One of the courses taught to the civil servants was conflict resolution in the workplace, but I wondered what I could teach the trainees on such a subject; they knew a lot more about conflict than I could imagine. Even when men from one Dinka clan raid another, the ramifications for peace are enormous.

The Southern Sudanese are no more one ethnic group than Europeans and there has been a long tradition of conflict among the tribes of the South. Travelling through Sudan between 1886 and 1871, the German naturalist Georg Schweinfurth wrote of the Nuer, living between the tributaries of the White Nile, as hemmed in by hostile neighbours.5 The ‘hostile neighbours’ does not just refer to the northern ‘Arabs’; in the civil war, ethnic groups like the Nuer have switched sides, sometimes being part of the SPLA against the Khartoum regime, sometimes fighting with the regime against the SPLA dominated by their traditional enemies, the Dinka.

I didn’t have to go far in Rumbek to see some of the casualties of conflict; just a few minutes from the camp, Boum sat in his wheelchair, an arm and a leg amputated after ‘a local skirmish’. And then there was Ox at the compound where we held the course, with one leg amputated from a war injury. His HIV-awareness T-shirt warned of a new enemy.

As I walked into work, all around there would be military-style parades. I think some were the new prison officers being drilled carrying imitation wooden guns as part of their training. Those young men and women parading outside the village huts under their leader’s vigilant eye were, I think, SPLA recruits. And without doubt, the lorry loads of troops outside the compound were SPLA being transferred to a new posting.

But this was now ‘post-conflict’. The key military now held the main civilian posts. But how could their leadership style change from a military one to a style appropriate to the civil service or a hospital? Were the skills that made a guerrilla leader successful in the bush transferable to the local council? Even after all my years in the Middle East, with its blend of khaki and kitsch, I had never come across such a militarized society. Could guerrilla leaders become the leaders of a democratic society?

That week, there were substantial ‘cattle raids’ and up to 60 citizens on the outskirts of Rumbek were killed. But it would be wrong to suggest that Rumbek was without law and order. Once, when cycling into town, I just nipped left on my bicycle rather than go all the way around the roundabout. An eagle-eyed traffic policeman spotted my misdemeanour and summoned me to explain my disregard for the law. It took all my negotiating skills to talk my way out of an on-the-spot fine and Mr Ruben Deng and I eventually parted on good terms. It was heart-warming to see law and order being enforced in town, even if it was only on the one khawaja riding a bicycle.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.