Cush or Not South Sudan is the Best

By Dr. James Okuk

Don't worry too much and don't even join them to become emotional about the half-baked issue of the would-be name of the new country in Africa that is possible to be born after it separates from the Sudan. May be those generals at Juba's  Bilpam and especially the Abyei SPLA's spokesman called Kuol Deim (who is not even yet a Southerner) have got some money to waste for composing a SPLA's anthem but not an anthem of the awaited new state that shall be called the Republic of South Sudan.

Let those SPLA generals be informed that whoever attempts to change the historic and famous name of South Sudan and for whose sake much blood and many souls were gallantly sacrificed, is just looking for a curse and even untimely death at the finishing line.

Let Kuol Deim who does not know at what end of the gun the bullet comes out to strike at the enemy of South Sudan go back to Abyei if he has found himself full of the money and comfort of South Sudan's poor SPLA and all the separatists who are never poor in keeping their dignity with perpetual honour.

Even the current parliament in Juba does not yet represent the people of Southern Sudan as a sovereign nation. That parliament is still one of the levels of the government of the united Sudan by all means.

Thus, until the people of Southern Sudan separates the Republic of South Sudan from the Republic of the Sudan (by democratic peace or military force), the Southern Sudan Legislative Assembly (SSLA) shall never be the legitimate body to be their voice in sovereign total. That is why the SSLA have never been accorded any power for Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) within the CPA's umpire.

Hence, the case of the SSLA in Juba now is one hundred and eighty percent different from the case of the Sudan parliament in Omdurman On December 19, 1955, which unanimously adopted a unilateral declaration of independence of the Sudan. However, it was with the consent of the British and Egyptian Governments that the Sudan achieved its independence formally on January 1, 1956, under a provisional constitution. By then the Anglo-Egyptian rulers were already packing their things to leave and had no much to do with the Sudan directly.  Would history repeat itself under NCP rule?

Let me complement my thought with that of my best brother Makwei Mabioor who wrote: “ Cush? This is delusional. Whatever that name refer(red) to Biblically has nothing to do with the people in the present geopolitical region of South Sudan since neither the people, as we understand them today, nor the country, was in existence. 

It is just a presumptuous  proposition resting on sheer historical ignorant of what the Jewish authors of Bible wrote about their own cultural, political and social perspectives of their world which was nothing more than the herding fields of their goats and sheep. 

Other than the whims of the growing Christians fanaticism in the South, there is no authoritative account of such name as Cush being associate with Africa as a continent in the first place, let alone South Sudan or its indigenous people. 

The long list of candidates, based on the mentioning of two rivers and the sketchy description of the inhabitants, has been as wide as encompassing Iraq, Zulu-land, Ethiopia, USA, England, and Sudan among others. Notwithstanding this uncertainty occasion by the crowdedness of the field, someone has the audacity to entitled an Anthem " Cush." 

There is more sanity in seeking glorious past within our own African cultural practices than importing alien fantasies that have no practical values in this 21st century nor a potential to enrich our lives and strengthen our resolve to achieve our endeavored future.

Away with Cush or Mecca in Africa!!” In truth we should trust and let the kingdom of liars and religious fanatics come to end!!!

Dr. James Okuk is a concerned Southerner reachable at [email protected]