By William Koang Tut Doh
Dr. Kameir ventured to say that "all believers in the New Sudan are SPLM (ers) but not all members of the SPLM champion the vision".
He went on to say "contrary to what critics and sceptics think, the concept of the New Sudan has no racial, ethnic or separatist connotations. It is rather a framework, a national project, for building a true and sustainable citizenship, state capable of accommodating the diversities of Sudanese societies. It denotes a conceptual framework that is global in nature and can be extended beyond Sudan to address
similar situations of conflicts inside and outside the African continent, while taking the particularities of each case into consideration."
Be that as it may, it took the late Comrade Dr. John Garang a great deal to convince us we the young fighters who consider ourselves as revolutionaries and only for the Liberation of the neglected people of Southern Sudan not the New Sudan as per se.
However, as time went by and his continuation for lecturing us in Military parades and civil functions, we began to realise that his idea makes a lot's of sense as it involves the Liberation of other marginalized people of the Sudan such as the Nuba people and Angesena people of Eastern Sudan.
In fact, we used to ask him tough questions e.g., why and what do we want from Northern Sudan? Comrade Garang would give us the genesis of the Sudan from
creation and according to him the word "Khartoum" it is an African name derives from Dinka and Nuer tribe of the Sudan which means "Kiir Toum" meeting of the
two rivers, the White Nile and the Blue Nile Rivers. Also Gezera Tuti was a village of a black smith Nuer man called Tut who used to make spears and knives for protection and survival.
It dawn on him that marginalisation in all its forms, discrimination, injustices and subordination constitutes the root causes of the conflict that cannot be addressed in piecemeal fashion through dishing out hand outs and concessions to the disgruntled and rebellious groups wherever conflict erupted in a particular region. Therefore, Sudanese have problems every where in the West, in the East, in the North and in the South.
President Omer Hassan el Bashier in one of his speeches stated that "the 1956 independence was incomplete" a ('word distinct'). And President Yuweri Museveni of Uganda refers to Sudan problem as a "problem of people with Turbines and people with ostrich feathers".
In our view as revolutionaries, the attempt by the various minority clique regimes in Khartoum base since 1956 was to build a monolithic Arab Islamic state with the exclusion of other parameters of the Sudanese diversities, constitute the fundamental problem of the Sudan and defines the Sudanese conflict excluding the vast majority of the Sudanese people from government and therefore their marginalisation in the political, economic and social field. For example, the dismantling of Addis Ababa Agreement by the former President of the Sudan Colonial Jaffer Mohammed Nimeiri and declaring Sudan an Islamic State in September 1983, irrespective of other faiths in the country.
The solution to the conflict is the establishment of the New Sudanese political dispensation in which all Sudanese are equally stakeholders, irrespective of race, religion and colour etc.,