AFRICA/SOUTH SUDAN - "Inexperience and corruption are the cause of civil war" says the Bishop of Wau

Tuesday, 24 March 2015

Juba (Agenzia Fides) - "Claims of ethnicity are too simplistic and offensive to people who come from the area. Many times, African conflicts are reduced to clans, tribes. It is not as simple as that", said Mgr. Rudolf Deng Majak, Bishop of Wau, in southern Sudan in an interview with CANAA on the ongoing conflict in his Country between the two factions of the ruling party, the SPLM (Liberation Movement Sudan People's), respectively led by President Salva Kiir and former Vice President Riek Machar.
Mgr. Majak says that the conflict is about inexperience. There is a lot of inexperience in leadership. And leadership is not given on the paper. It is something acquired. There is inexperience in governance, and people have to learn about it and go about it in this clumsy way, with ups and downs, make their mistakes, and the hope is that people will learn from their mistakes. The Bishop of Wau also emphasizes that "the communities (South Sudan) have never had the opportunity to live together as a nation. It is the first time we are beginning to have this sense (of a nation). Yes, it is true we have suffered together It hasn’t gone to the deeper level of formation. That takes time. So, at the level of the community, at the level of leadership, it is the first time in the history of the people of South Sudan that they have a parliament of their own, a sovereign government with an executive, a military. And these are huge responsibilities that take time to mature and to develop in order to have a peaceful, stable, and prosperous community".
Mgr. Majak recalls that the civil conflict, which broke out in December 2013 (South Sudan was declared independent in July 2011), also stems from corruption, in part fueled by poverty, "because people are just coming out from the ashes and the dust of the destruction of the civil war, (the one for independence from Khartoum, ed.)". For this reason the Bishop of Wau believes that economic sanctions that the UN wants to impose to the leaders of the civil war are useless, because the people who are targeted will "continue to accumulate wealth in their own way", while the innocent populations will be affected. (L.M.) (Agenzia Fides 24/03/2015)


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