Update from Dane Smith
During the past week interaction between Sudan and South Sudan has intensified in a positive way. Abdalla Hamdok, Transitional Prime Minister of Sudan, visited Juba August 19 for two days of talks with the South Sudan political leadership. He was accompanied by Foreign Minister Mariam al-Sadiq al-Mahdi, daughter of the late former prime minister, Sadiq al-Mahdi. Hamdok and President Salva Kiir announced that the border between them would officially open October 1 at four road links, including Renk in South Sudan and Jebeleen on the Sudanese side, the only paved road linking the two countries. Another objective of the visit, reflecting Hamdok’s role as a member of IGAD, was to encourage the shoring up of the coalition government, recently imperiled by a split in the SPLM/IO party led by Riek Machar.
During the same week it was announced that the Transitional National Legislative Assembly. Would begin business August 24. President Kiir also publicly urged South Sudanese refugees to return home, warning that the elections scheduled for 2024 would not go well without them.
Meanwhile serious inter-communal violence broke out in Warrap State in Bahr al-Ghazal region, and in Tambura in Western Equatoria. In the north it was violence related to cattle raiding, killing 27 and wounding 29, that pitted Lou Nuer and Thiik against Luach. In Tambura the mysterious death of a law enforcement officer led to a revenge attack by his community members, killing 20. Two truck drivers were killed on the Juba-Nimule Road August 22, prompting the Kenya Transporters Association to suspend transport of cargo to South Sudan and the South Sudanese Government to send a security team to find the hideout of the killer bandits.
The provision of $12,500 in funding from St. Margaret’s Episcopal in Annapolis MD has led to a spurt of building at the orphan school located at the displaced persons camp outside Juba. The school is expected to grow from 350 to 500 students this term, utilizing new classrooms and 11 newly selected teachers.
AFRECS recently forwarded $10,000 to help expand its partnership with Five Talents and the Mothers Union in trauma healing instruction. The program, based on a successful and ongoing pilot program in Renk in Upper Nile, has expanded this year to Terekeka in Central Equatoria.
Finally, more news of Athing Mu, Trenton, New Jersey-born daughter of South Sudan and the 800-meter women’s Olympic champ in Tokyo. At a major meet in Eugene, Oregon last weekend the 19-year-old set an American record of 1:55.04.
Executive Director
Focus Area: Diaspora
Four people, including two Roman Catholic Nuns are killed in an ambush.
We received sad news from Helen Achol Abyei, a well-known leader of the South Sudanese Diaspora in North America living in St. Louis and a friend of AFRECS. “This tragic (incident) happened in South Sudan. May God her mercy on us: From the Catholic Archdiocese of Juba, we are saddened with the news of the untimely passing on of Sr. Mary Daniel Abul and Sr. Regina Roba, member of the Congregation of the Sacred Heart Sister of the Diocese of Juba after being shot by gunman on Juba Nimule Highway on Monday, August 16.”
Further information was obtained from Radio Tamazuj (08162021) and The Global Sisters Report (08172021)
Sr. Mary Daniel Abut
(Both photos courtesy of Friends in Solidarity)
At least four people, including two Catholic nuns, were killed in an ambush along the busy Juba-Nimule highway. A convoy of vehicles was returning from Loa Parish of the Catholic Diocese of Torit in Nimule, where Loa Mission Centenary celebrations were held over the weekend. The convoy was attacked as it was making its way to Juba. Major General Daniel Justine, the police spokesperson, confirmed the incident and said security forces were pursuing the attackers.
Sooley by John Grisham
Reviewed by Anita Sanborn, AFRECS Board Member
This is an unexpected novel by one of America best known authors. John Grisham is a prolific writer who has captivated readers with his smart legal thrillers. However, in 2021 Grisham surprised us with a beautiful and touching tale which blends two unlikely topics: refugee life and basketball. The novel begins in South Sudan in 2016 and follows a young basketball phenom named Samuel Sooleymon. I already knew quite a bit about the plight of South Sudan, but I learned a lot about basketball reading this book. Grisham is a basketball fanatic and that is an understatement. His understanding of the civil strife and complicated warring factions in South Sudan is adequate and he writes with sensitivity and compassion about the 17-year-old Samuel Sooleymon and his family.
Samuel becomes known as Sooley as he begins a new life at North Carolina Central college. Following the devastating attack on his home village while he was playing in a special tournament in the United States for young players with high potential from around the globe, he is invited to stay. With his father dead, his only sister abducted and his mother and two brothers in a refugee camp in Uganda, he is thrust into a most lucky situation peopled by well-meaning Americans.
The NBA success of real-life South Sudanese such as Manute Bol makes this tale believable and yet miraculous. Sooley is a smart and loyal young man who works hard to help his remaining family stay alive until he can bring them to the United States. I felt deep admiration for his character who reminded me so much of the young men from South Sudanese I have known over the years. For those of you who have become close to the South Sudanese, this story is full of familiar stories and a mix of immigration difficulties, international NGO heroines, refugee camp woes and the power of faith in building new lives.
Sooley will break your heart. But for many of us, our hearts have already been broken open by South Sudan. This is a good book and a great reminder why it is important that we keep the faith with our friends from the Sudans.
Excerpts from A Rope from the Sky: The Making and Unmaking of the World’s Newest State by Zach Vertin (New York: Pegasus Books, 2019)
Excerpted by Rich Jones, AFRECS Board Member
While working in South Sudan as an analyst for the Crisis Group in 2016, and then again in 2013 while working for Princeton Lyman, U. S. Special Envoy for Sudan and South Sudan, Zack Vertin made friends with a Nuer leader named Rembang Koang. Koang was born in Akobo in 1978 and became a soldier in the youth wing of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, before diverting to a refugee camp in Kenya. After studying law and project management in Nairobi, he returned home to work for a United Nations program in Malakal. Koang married a Dinka woman from a prominent family and had two children. After the outbreak of violence in Juba in December 2013, Koang, now County Commissioner for Akobo County, refused to return to the capital and was replaced. In 2019 he continued to function as an unofficial, quasi-government leader in the territory contested between Salva Kiir and Riek Machar. This book helped me by combining detailed political analysis with personal encounters.
Vertin writes:
“When the war began in 2013, Koang was attending a meeting in Bor, the state capital, some 150 miles across Jonglei from Akobo. The army, and the populations, were suddenly fracturing. He worked with government colleagues, both Dinka and Nuer, to try to contain the situation, but the genie had already left the bottle.
“The president ordered Jonglei state officials to report to Juba at once, but Koang had received news of the targeted massacres that had already taken place there. He worried that he might be detained or otherwise neutralized if he went to Juba, and his gut told him to return instead to his Akobo constituency. “I should be where my people are,” he recalls thinking, “so that if I am to make a decision, I do so informed by the feeling of my community.” When a government helicopter arrived from Juba to collect him and the others, Koang did not get on board….
“Koang was torn, and still is…. But Koang was forced to choose.
“’He came under incredible pressure,’ says his former [U.N.] boss and mentor, who spoke with him in the hours before he made the decision. ‘He saw it as a rabbit hole. He saw the stakes and wanted to be part of the solution, not just part of a Nuer-only rebellion.’ But there was no middle ground. Koang met up with Riek Machar’s entourage as it retreated into the Nuer heartland, and he informed Riek that he would join the emergent resistance.
“Adopting a slightly defensive tone, Koang wants me to know just how difficult it was to make that choice. ‘The pastor from my home, Akobo, was among the first killed in Juba,’ he says, adding, ‘killed while wearing his collar. Shot, just like that.’ Koang says he otherwise had no political connection to Riek but asks rhetorically, ‘My own people being killed by the very government that I am representing? I cannot accommodate that.’
“But neither is he comfortable with what happened thereafter in his own community, where fellow Nuer took justice into their own hands by retaliating against innocent Dinkas. ‘Any revenge is inappropriate,’ he says, the frustration evident in his voice. ‘I condemned the killings of Dinka.’
“… After moving our two plastic chairs outside, Koang picks up the conversation again. ‘There are other young people in South Sudan that have influence now in their communities. People who also think things must be done differently.’ He explains that this generation of common minds must find a way to link up. ‘It can be done. But I am here now sitting alone, in Jonglei, thinking about ideas, scratching my mind.’ He continues, scratching his head theatrically. ‘Let me know those in Duk, in Warrap, in Juba, who think like me.’
“‘We need a transformation of all the civil service,’ Koang says. ‘And it needs to be done by people who are wholly blank of the past … neutral’. He rests his elbows on his plastic chair and interlocks his fingers. ‘Technical people in the areas of finance, technical people in the area of judiciary, and so on, and they come and do screening, from the director-general down to the last civil servant.’”
A Sudan Reading List
Compiled by Rich Jones, AFRECS Board Member
1. Andrew S. Natsios, Sudan, South Sudan, & Darfur: What Everyone Needs to Know
2012, Oxford University Press, 256 pages. Natsios served as USAID Administrator 2001-2005 and US Special Envoy for Sudan 2006-7.
2. Edward Eremugo Kenyi, Sacrifice and other Short Stories
2020, Africa World Books, 133 pages. Kenyi is a public health physician and poet, currently working at Johns Hopkins University; stories are set mostly in South Sudan and Khartoum, with one in Washington, DC and one in outer space.
3. Zack Vertin, A Rope from the Sky: The Making and Unmaking of the World’s Newest State
2019, Pegasus Books, 497 pages. Vivid descriptions of Sudanese leaders and villagers woven into a coherent chronology of US diplomatic work between 2005 and 2016, as witnessed by a notetaker for the U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan.
4. Francis M. [Mading] Deng, War of Visions: Conflict of Identities in the Sudan
1995, Brookings Institution, 577 pages. Sociological and historical analysis of ethnic and political background of conflict, 1860-1992, including detail on the Ngok Dinka.
5. John Grisham. Sooley. Doubleday, 2021.
If you have recommendations for other books offering enlightenment on the people or countries of Sudan and South Sudan, please don’t hesitate to forward them to the Editors (Send any contributions to klamcd21@gmail.com).
Other News from Various Sources
Radio Tamazuj 0242021
Civil, political organizations call for resignation of President Kiir and VP Machar
South Sudan activists in anti-government protests. (Photo – Radio Tamazuj)
Groups identifying themselves as non-violent civil and political organizations said in a Joint Communiqué that they held a meeting and resolved to mobilize citizens to demand the resignation of President Salva Kiir Mayardit, First Vice President Dr. Riek Machar Teny, and the RTGoNU. We, the representatives of the following non-violent civil and political organizations: The People’s Coalition for Civil Action (PCCA), the United Citizens for Change (UCC), National People’s Movement (NPM) and Red Card Movement (RCM), convened a virtual consultative meeting on the situation in our country, the Republic of South Sudan, on 20 August 2021,” the Joint Communiqué dated 20 August read. Earlier this month, The People’s Coalition for Civil Action (PCCA) said plans were afoot for protests against the transitional government across South Sudan and the diaspora and launched a public campaign to demand political change after 10 turbulent and often bloody years of independence.
Unpacking South Sudan’s food crisis: Fighting, flooding, and donor fatigue
by Okech Francis and Philip Kleinfeld
South Sudan is experiencing its worst food crisis since independence as seasonal flooding sets in amid an economic downturn and renewed conflict. Efforts to distribute food have been complicated by funding gaps in the humanitarian response, and by the repeated looting of food convoys and warehouses. Attacks against aid workers have also risen, and government officials have created new administrative hurdles for some agencies.
Some 7.2 million people are currently enduring severe hunger across South Sudan – the highest number since the country of roughly 12 million broke from Sudan in 2011. Of those, tens of thousands are thought to be in famine. The government has downplayed the crisis.
Though humanitarian agencies have managed to reach most of those in greatest need this year, aid officials said efforts to raise the alarm at an international level have failed to garner extra resources, leading to ration cuts for those displaced people and refugees who are considered less needy.
https://www.
Poor pay, insecurity affecting education in South Sudan
Many students have stopped going to school due to displacement occasioned by the war and many teachers have abandoned the profession altogether due to safety concerns and lack of or delayed pay.
An elderly lady, Mama Julia John, said that after the outbreak of war in 2013, education declined due to challenges presented by conflict and that many parents, who could afford it, relocated their children and entire families outside the country. Mama Julia said, “When children go to school and at the same time there are sounds of bullets in the locality, automatically parents become unsure about the safety of their children and this fear still exists in many parents.’
An elderly lady, Mama Julia John, said that after the outbreak of war in 2013, education declined due to several challenges presented by conflict and that many parents, who could afford it, relocated their children and entire families outside the country. Mama Julia said, “When children go to school and at the same time there are sounds of bullets in the locality, automatically parents become unsure about the safety of their children.“
Students in an outdoor classroom. (From Radio Tamazuj)
Professor Ben Tombe says education in South Sudan suffers greatly due to the weakness of the teaching cadre who abandoned the profession because of poor salaries and deplorable working environments.
An activist, Bosco Simi, says improving the education sector requires several interventions starting with improving the pay of teachers, education infrastructure, and training of more teachers. “There is a lot that must be done to improve education; raise teachers’ salaries, improve the school environment, train human resources to provide the best for children, and modernize education,” Simi recommended.
There is no doubt about the importance of education in nation-building and there are many challenges that impede the delivery of education services in various parts of the country due to the recent conflicts. There however remains hope that all these obstacles and challenges will be overcome, and the conditions of teachers and the school environment improved for a better future for all citizens of South Sudan.
https://radiotamazuj.org/en/
South Sudan deploys team to smoke out criminals on Juba highway
by Garang Malak
South Sudan’s National Police Service Spokesman Gen Daniel Justine said a joint security team, composed of military intelligence and police officers, had been sent out on Monday to track down bandits who have been attacking traffic along the highway between Juba and Nimule. On Monday, the Kenya Transporters Association (KTA) suspended transporting cargo to South Sudan after two truck drivers were killed 45km from Juba on Sunday evening. A religious group traveling the highway from a celebration of the 100th anniversary of Loa Parish was attacked and four people including two nuns were killed.
South Sudan gets $334 million in loan from IMF
The IMF has loaned $334 million (284 million euros) to South Sudan, the country’s central bank governor said Tuesday, as its ailing economy teeters from a currency crisis and soaring inflation. It is the third time in a year the Washington DC-based lender has extended financial aid to the troubled country, which ran out of foreign exchange reserves last year when oil prices fell sharply. The price slump, brought on by the coronavirus pandemic, deprived the fragile government in Juba of much-needed revenue and sent its currency into freefall. Earlier this year, one US dollar was fetching 700 South Sudanese Pounds on the black market – the weakest exchange rate since independence a decade ago.
Central Bank Governor Dier Tong Ngor said the IMF loan would “substantially boost” foreign reserves and allow room to try and recover in the midst of the pandemic. “The increase in reserves will help build external resilience and sustain the current reforms in the foreign exchange market,” Ngor said in a statement seen by AFP.
South Sudan is emerging from five years of civil bloodshed that left 380,000 dead and shattered its economy, which is almost entirely dependent on oil. The government has not been able to pay civil servants on time, while the price of basic goods remains stubbornly high.
https://www.sudanspost.com/
Sudan, South Sudan to reopen border after 11 years
by Garang Malak
Sudan’s Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok and South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir shake hands after agreeing to reopen the border after 11 years. (Photo by AKUOT CHOL | AFP)
Sudan and South Sudan have agreed to open their borders after 11 years. This was announced after a meeting between South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir and Sudan’s Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok held in Juba. The border has been closed since South Sudan
The borders were closed in 2011 when relations deteriorated after the south seceded following a long civil war, taking with it three quarters of the country’s oil. This affected traders and communities on both sides of the disputed line.
“The two parties engaged in extensive talks and candid discussion on all aspects and fields of cooperation including the opening of four border crossing posts: Jebeleen-Renk, Meriam, Buram-Tumsah and Kharsana-Panakuac. The official launch will take place on October 1, 2021, by the two parties,” reads the joint press statement.
https://www.theeastafrican.co.
We are deeply that grateful that contributions from you, our supporters, continue to nurture AFRECS in expanding our impact. You make a difference in the essential peacebuilding work of the Episcopal Church of South Sudan, so needed in these challenging times. We hope you will consider taking a moment to consider a gift for our work with the people of the Sudans and to offer a prayer for their nations. You can contribute online at https://afrecs.org or send a check made out to AFRECS to P.O. Box 3327, Alexandria, VA 22302
This issue of the AFRECS E-Blast was compiled by Board members Caroline Klam and Richard Jones.
AFRECS Editors encourage readers to submit their news for publication; the next deadline is August 31, 2021, please submit your news to Caroline Klam at klamcd21@gmail.com.