Radio Active by Joe Madison & Dave Canton

Author:Joe Madison & Dave Canton [Madison, Joe & Canton, Dave]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781984543318
Publisher: Xlibris US
Published: 2021-10-03T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 6

THE SUDAN

CAMPAIGN

The Sudan campaign started because a representative from Christian Solidarity International (CSI) in Zurich contacted me. At the time, John Garang was president of the Southern Sudan Autonomous Region — known today as South Sudan. The representative knew me from my radio show. He had been working in Sudan during its 22-year civil war, so he came to me because he wanted the support of the Congressional Black Caucus and African Americans. I suspect that by that time I had a reputation for doing these kinds of things.

So, he asked if I would be willing to go to Sudan to see what was happening with women and children being taken as slaves in the civil war. They would raid villages. The men would be killed, then they would take the women and children as bounty to be sold.

The representative said, “Look, it’s a dangerous trip. They’re in the middle of a civil war.” He didn’t sugarcoat it.

He said, “We can’t tell people we’re going. We go under the auspices of the South Sudanese government that they have established.”

We literally had to fly zigzag over the country to keep from being shot down. Once I was there, I had the opportunity to witness the work of CSI as an organization that raised money all over the world to buy the freedom of slaves — mostly women and children. What they would do is raise money globally, then go into South Sudan and pretend to be slave traders. Instead, they would buy the freedom of women and children.

The first time I went I saw 800 South Sudanese people sitting under a tree. Their freedom had just been purchased. And there was a process where they were photographed so that if they were recaptured, they could be identified. Some people were very critical of this process because they didn’t think you should buy people’s freedom. My position was, hell, during American slavery we bought folks’ freedom all the time.

Some organizations like UNICEF were part of the debate and would say things like: “Oh, how do you know what’s happening?” and, “Are they using you guys?”

I thought, “Hey, we have to do whatever it takes to get these folks back home to their villages.”

I had never seen anything like it. I saw a woman who had her breast burned off with a torch because she was nursing a baby. She had refused to stop, so the soldiers just burned her breast off. I met a 16-year-old girl who was taken as a slave, raped by her captives, then forced to have sex with her brother in front of them. This was horrendous stuff. I also saw a baby crawling around in a minefield, and then a guy who’s now a politician literally walked through that minefield to pick up the baby.

I met two men whose wives were taken. They had tracked the kidnappers through the brush and attempted to free them. The men were caught and their arms were chopped off up to the elbow.

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