Should South Sudan accept help from unfriendly countries?
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- Category: Writing aboard the Kenya Airways: A story on coming to Rwanda for the first time
- Published on Saturday, 12 March 2011 12:02
- Written by Peter Towongo, The New Sudan Vision (NSV), www.newsudanvision.com
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(Vancouver, Canada) – Prior to touching details of this crucial article, there goes a little story to raise our curiosity: Once a certain principled, generous and wealthy man who was well known for good parenting got trapped inconceivably by his doom-wishers. This man was welcoming of his neighbors or friends (including pretenders) to his house and allowing them to socialize and share things together with his well-cared children. Some of his friends (but adversaries) learned what his children liked most—halawa or sweets. Shortly tragedy broke into this man’s family; some of his children began to rapidly experience serious symptoms of sicknesses. After in-depth medical examination, his children were found to have eaten deadly type of poisonous acid put into the so-called halawa given by his adversaries who pretended to be family friends. Regrettably this principled, generous and wealthy man’s family became place for conducting funerals.
The soon-to-be Republic of South Sudan should draw some lessons from the above story in order to repel any deadly “virus” trying to maneuver and poison the wellbeing of the people of South Sudan. After the February 7th 2011 official declaration of the overwhelming referendum results for South Sudan Independence (98.83%), many international organizations as well as governments from several countries including those countries which were standing against the aspirations of the people of South Sudan on self-determination are pouring in and promising to help South Sudan develop and “stand” on its own feet.
To restrict this article on areas of education, countries like Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, South Africa, Ethiopia including the Arab World just to mention but a few,have so far expressed their interests to support the education in South Sudan. And recently, Zimbabwe, that is reported to have been supportive to the SPLA/M guerilla war, has pledged to send in teachers to the South. Also Egypt, which according to Wikileaks stood against the Independenceof South Sudan has recently changed strategy and is now promising to send in teachers to South Sudan apart from other “heavens and earth” promises.
According to the official website of the Government of Southern Sudan (www.goss.org) the South’s education minister welcomed this pledge and even asked Egypt to lobby for “the recognition of the [would be] educational certificates from South Sudan by neighboring countries and the international community”.
Now, any sensible person can raise these multiple questions: Are some of these countries, especially those which stood against South Sudan’s aspirations, genuinely trying to help the South to stand on its feet? Have they really repented from the “other colors”they portrayed towards the South during its long struggle for freedom?
In addition, are these would-be teachers sharing common educational goals or curriculums, cultures, norms, traditions, political philosophies or religions that are found in South Sudan?
Indeed, teachers are very important to any society. Apart from the knowledge they give, they also instill the like-father-like- son characters to their students who are fond of emulating them. What if these teachers have extremists ideologies? Will their words, philosophies and characters not do harm to the children of South Sudan than doing good?
For example, North and South Korea are one people, unlike the two Sudans. They have common language, religion, culture and race but their political ideologies are far different from each other. In short, South Korea has taken the Western political ideology of democracy and in particular, the United States, which is its key ally since the Korean War; and the structure of their education as well as their teachers’ perspectives are correlative to the Western education standard and philosophy.
While North Korea has taken the Russian ideology of political philosophies and their education curriculums and systems are shaped towards such political ideology (communism). Remember Russia has long been known for its communism which is contrary to the Western democracies. Hence the call for the North and South Korea’s reunification has become so difficult since they share opposing political philosophies and their teachers impart different ideologies to their students in proportion to their established philosophical views of the world.
Therefore, the author of this article urges GOSS, especially the ministry of education to be cautious in welcoming any offer to the education sector and in particular the notion of sending in teachers from un-trusted countries to teach South Sudan people. They should remember that even children from the same father and mother but raised in different families and with different philosophies do behave differently and have different views of the world thus making them act differently and have difficulties in agreeing to common issues.
In summary, the education foundation of South Sudan should be safeguarded and laid concretely to avoid instilling diabolical politics, cultures, norms, religions and philosophies which counteract South Sudan’s long search for freedom, equality, justice, secularity, liberty and progress.
The author of this article, Peter Towongo, is a concerned South Sudanese living in Vancouver Canada and contributor to The New Sudan Vision. Email: n This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .
