South Sudan – larger than Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi put together?

A common statement often used by ranking South Sudanese officials affirms that South Sudan, the world’s newest nation, has an area the size of (or larger than) Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi put together.

The claim is usually made in the context of what South Sudan can potentially offer given the right conditions.

But according to Morris Surur, a South Sudanese netizen, this is just another myth that has been left floating for too long.

I have been hearing this myth for a while especially among politicians and some civil servants, whenever asked during presentations or discussions what the area of South Sudan is…. I have seen it appearing in presentations of some big shots in international forum[s]. Besides this being false, it portrays how some of us don’t like to probe generally accepted floating statements…

So we at SS4U took up the challenge to ‘probe this generally accepted floating statement’ and here is what we found.

FACT: South Sudan is not larger than Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda [excluding Burundi]

Geography tells us that South Sudan has a total area of 619,745 km sq . The combined area of Kenya (580,367 Km sq), Uganda (236,040 Km sq) and Rwanda (26,338 km sq) is 842,745 Km sq, which is 223,000 Km sq larger than the Republic of South Sudan.

In fact, Kenya and Uganda (without their other sisters) are larger than South Sudan.

Even after adding Abyei, that piece of land almost half the size of Rwanda and contested by Sudan, South Sudan is still minus 9-Rwandas smaller than the alleged size.

And also, even when your remove the non-land mass area (areas covered by water in Uganda etc)….

So, how come this simple geographical calculation has been left floating and unchecked for so long? Could Morris Surur be right to suggest ’compulsory geography quiz during job interviews’ for the those who have not taken the liberty to ‘probe this generally accepted floating statement’ before using it loosely?

The origin of the statement…

Those who use the statement often accredited the late Dr. John Garang as the source of the quote. Many have just gotten used to swallowing what ever is thrown onto them…  As is usually the case, people simply consumed the information and then assumed, misunderstood, misquoted or misinterpreted what Dr. Garang said.

During his historic speech at signing ceremony of the CPA[page 12], his actual words were:

… the SPLM shall exert all efforts to build physical infrastructure – roads, rail and river transport and telecommunications. There has never been any tarmac road in the new Sudan since creation, since the days of Adam and Eve, and this is an area the size of Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi put together…

The difference (if you see it) is that he said New Sudan and not South Sudan – which are two different kettles of fish.

New Sudan vs South Sudan

New Sudan – as per the 1994 amended definition – means the areas under the control of the SPLM/A. During the signing of the CPA, the ‘map’ of New Sudan would have included the whole of South Sudan, The Nuba Mountains and Southern Blue Nile State.

(Left) The unofficial map of ‘New Sudan’ before the signing of the CPA and (right) the political map of RSS (excluding Abyei)

In the speech, Dr. Garang carefully chose the words to use. To make this particular point (of the undeveloped/under-developed and marginalized area) he used ‘New Sudan’ . Further on in the speech, he used ‘Southern Sudan’ to refer to areas related to the referendum and the CPA and so on. In short, the man himself knows/knew the difference – New Sudan is not the Southern Sudan that is now the Republic of South Sudan….

So, he knew exactly what he was saying… New Sudan, the areas under the control of the SPLA/M at that time was indeed the size of those four East African countries.

But the current independent Republic of South Sudan (plus the contested region of Abyei)  is not!

Misinterpretation
There are scores of officials, civil servants, intellectuals and so on who have confidently stated the myth (and they still continue to do so) that the Republic of South Sudan IS larger than those four countries.

During an interview with BBC in 2009, Barnaba Benjamin, at that time the Minister of Regional Cooperation, told the BBC reporter

It’s [South Sudan] bigger than Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi combined

Barnaba Benjamin, is currently the Minister of Information and official spokesperson of the Republic of South Sudan – a post that gives his statements a weight heavier than the land mass of Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi combined.

Similarly, a book by Lalia B Lokosang entitle “South Sudan: The Case for Independence & Learning from Mistakes” stated in page 93 that

Late Dr. Garang once put the South Sudan to be the size of Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda…

No, he did not.

Another research site of Bucknell University was quick to point out that

While South Sudan is rich in culture, biodiversity, and resources, the people are among the poorest of the world and very little research has occurred there for decades due to conflict

That was after it stated..

Sudan is the largest country in Africa and South Sudan is a region larger than Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda combined…

So What is safe to say…

If you really want people to visualize how huge South Sudan is, then you are safe to say the following

• South Sudan is more than 23  times the size of Rwanda
• South Sudan is larger that Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi put together
• You can say South Sudanese, Rwandese but not Ugandese as is popular in Juba Arabic

Popular myths and how they shaped the way we do things today- part 1

I have to give credit to my daughter for inspiring this post by continuously asking how my childhood in South Sudan had been. She does not know that she has encouraged me to re-engineer and modify some of these lies I was told as a child. I have not yet thought of a method to apply my modified myths on them, but when I do, I can then relax and see them struggle to behave or otherwise….

This post is about some myths told to children in South Sudan to scare them into confirming to the rules and/or behaving in certain ways.

Here are a few myths…

1. Aynu ma sunun/To stare with the teeth

If you look up at someone who has climbed a tree with your month open and your teeth showing (or ‘stare with your teeth’), that person will fall!

I have witnessed some cases where a child who fell or almost fell from a mango tree pins blame squarely on others because they had their teeth showing at one time or another. It has become kind or a ritual to always warn the others not too ‘stare with their teeth’ before anyone starts the manoeuvre of scaling a tree.

I guess this simply wants children to keep they mouth shut when looking up…you never know what can fall into your mouth from a tree.

2. Your mother will turn into a cat, or die if you…

The mother, to an African child, is like no other. And when they are made to believe that their misbehaviour could kill their mother or morph her into some other animal, they will often stick to the desired rules even when no adult is there to supervise.

There are a couple of these ‘parenting by proxy threats’ and one that comes to mind is that if you leave one of (or both) your slippers, sandals or shoes upside down, your mother will die…

Children who believed this have grown up do not just kick off their boots and leave them lying around – they always neatly put them away.

3. If you stand close to a person who is seated, you ‘suck their blood’

This myth simply says if one or more people are seated, and another person just stands there, he is said to be ‘sucking’ the blood of those seated.

It is very common in Juba to hear people say

Ma geni tahid, it ge guru dom tan as! meaning, sit down, you are sucking people’s blood!

4. Abu Safa wahid (the one-sided monster)
Back in the days, a notorious one-sided monster known as Abu Safa Wahid (in the local Arabi Juba dialect) would come to town and steal children in the middle of the night. The monster was said to have only a half or one side of his body (one eye, one ear, one nostril, one arm, one leg and so on) – thus the name Abu Safa Wahid.

In all his occasional ‘appearances’ over the years, no-one has managed to catch him in the act – or rather, not one actually bothered to. No child is safe, we were told, when Abu Safa Wahid comes to town. No one knows what the monster does with his victims…every child is left imagine what a one-sided late-night child-thieving monster is capable of.

But there is only one thing that Abu Safa Wahid fears most and he will not come close to it – ashes!

So, to protect themselves against Abu Safa Wahid, children had to secure and clearly mark the boundaries of their houses or compound in a thick, clear and unbreakable line drawn out of white ashes. The line must not break and it has to completely encircle the house or compound to ensure the safety of the children there, in case Abu Safa Wahid decides to pay a visit.

To undertake this necessary life-saving measure, children normally do not wait for an adult to tell them what to do – there is always another kid around the block who knows everything there is to know about the monster. They just get on with – after all it will be them, the kids, who will have that undesirable encounter should they fall victim to Abu Safa Wahid, the one-sided mean monster.

Unbeknown to the children, this myth was brewed with one purpose in mind– keep clean the parameters of your compound. Parent and adults seem to have learned that telling the boys in the house to clean the area around the fence and the backyard does not get the same cooperation, attention and results. The key here is that children will go to great lengths to make sure that the line of ash is clear and unbreakable.

Thus they will clean and rid the entire compound of weed and overgrowth to secure them from Abu Safa Wahid.

5. If you swallow gum, your digestive system will be blocked…

… and nothing will be able to come out.

Back in the days, some children would chew one gum for days. Sometimes, when they need a break to eat something else like food or so, they would remove the gum and keep it safe behind their ear for ‘recycling’ at a later time.

It appears, there is some truth to the cautionary myth.

According to research carried out in China and America, most parents lie to their children as a tactic to change their behaviour. This is just another reassurance to encourage me to ‘lie’ for a good cause.

More myths on the next post. Remember, to come back because there is myth that states…

if you don’t read all the parts of a post about myths, then…

Ghosts do exist…

It just occurred to me that ghosts really do exist. I have not seen one in real life – maybe I did but I did not know what I was looking at – but if you ask anyone to draw a ghost, they would probably draw something that looks like Casper from the animation movie.

Not too long ago, I was watching this show about haunted houses with a self-professed Christian who bluntly told me he did not believe in ghosts. Isn’t God a ghost – The Holy Ghost?

But seriously, today I read this story about ghost officers in the Kenyan Police Service. One, posing as an assistant police commissioner for 5 YEARS, had his cover blown and was arrested. An investigation has been kicked off to uncover any other ‘ghost’ officers

In 2010, in the 318 ghost names were discovered in the payroll of just one ministry – Ministry of Education – in the South Sudanese state of Western Bahr El Ghazal. Only two former officials were investigated, but nothing was ever heard about that again…

Ghost workers are everywhere in the RSS costing the government millions and millions of pounds per month.

 

I wish you a better Juba in 2013

[NOTE: The article was first publish on SudanTribune,com on 5thJan2013]

By Steven Wöndu
I am recycling and article I posted in the middle of the year 2012 complaining about the health and security or rather, the lack of health and security in Juba. Today, we are beginning the year 2013 in a Juba that is even filthier and more dangerous to live in.

I do not have the desire to talk about the dirt anymore because the people and the authorities do not seem ton appreciate the logic of public health. Grass is allowed to grow to my height between the roads and the walls of residential houses, offices and public facilities. Plastic bottles, food cans and garbage on walkways everywhere as if there was not a single government official responsible for urban management!

These days our school campuses are surrounded by shops and all kinds of commercial activities. An example is the Dr John Garang Secondary School, formerly Juba Girls. What a disgrace to Dr John Garang! The entire campus perimeter is now taken over by factories, warehouses and stores. There is no visual link between staff houses and the dormitories any more. Who allowed this and why? One would have thought that as adults, our primary responsibility is the protection of children, especially the girls.

The schools are finished and so the investors are invading the churches and mosques. The Bari Parish Church is no longer visible from any direction. The grand mosque in what used to be a parade ground in down town Juba is now engulfed, just like the one at Konyokonyo. Now ‘development’ is starting around the All Saints Cathedral of the Episcopal Church. The western side has already been fenced off. The fencing has nothing to do with the construction of new church facilities. A foreign investor is quietly putting up a hotel or a line of shops right in front of the Cathedral.

Before the liberation of South Sudan, the space between Hai Malakal and the orchards near the river was a cemetery. Today it is home to tragic shanties and big warehouses. Is it conceivable that those investors excavated the bones of our departed relatives without colluding with some of us in public offices? Why are squatters allowed to dwell on graves? Is there no red line, no abomination, no taboo in our culture any more?

Let me turn to my pet subject of naming the roads and numbering the plots. There are fundamental practical reasons why urban streets, roads, lanes, and boulevards are named or numbered. The simplest reason is that it gives us a platform to celebrate the geography, history and culture of our country. In a small space we have an opportunity to display Jekou, Chukudum, Wau, Kapoeta, Yambio, Lol, Sue, Jur, Yei, Imatong, Gumbiri, Mayat, Sobat, Kineti, Tombura, Deng, Lolik, Majok, Tete, Nyankir, Awate, Lita, Tafeng, Naivasha, Machakos, Torit, Bor, Addis Ababa etc. We can seize the opportunity to teach ourselves the number line by having First Street, Second Street, Third Street etc. We can use this space to remind ourselves of the alphabet, B Street, M Street, J Street etc. This would be another opportunity to learn the campus; Fifth Street East, D Street North, Mundri Road West, Kajokaji Road South, etc.

Naming and numbering makes ordinary daily life easier for everyone. The shop you are looking for is at Number 7, Munuki Road. My house is number 52 on Logali Street. One would not need to describe the relationship between the house and the big tree. One does not need to say anything about the colour of the gate and roof.

Consider how names and numbers can assist security officials. In their secret files, they identify ‘subjects of interest’ with the numbers of buildings and street names. Some buildings and facilities need security monitoring. Examples include diplomatic premises, financial institutions and sensitive installations. The addresses of such properties have to be exact and the only way of achieving precision is street names and plot numbers. When pursuing a suspect, the police should be able to call a backup to a specific coordinate using road intersections and numbers of buildings. The security agents need to respond fast and this requires precise and unambiguous information about the location of the incident. Same thing can be said about Ambulance and Fire Services. These things sound obvious but why we are not able to do it beats me and it hurts! Many officials have visited Tokyo and Kigali near here. Can we not even copy?

Folks, I wish you a cleaner and safer Juba in 2013 so that I will not have to recycle this article in January 2014.

The author is the South Sudan’s Auditor General.

Dark days in SS history: 28th December

The recent history of South Sudan has its share of dark days – or rather dark years. But the events that unfolded on the 28th of December some years ago scream out a bit louder than most.

“Study the past if you would define the future.”  Confucius

In 1989, in a small town called Jebelein along the White Nile in Sudan, around 2 thousand South Sudanese where systematically and indiscriminately hunted down and killed by ‘Arab‘ militiamen. Women, children and the elderly were not spared, even livestock and property that belonged to the South Sudanese were destroyed!

Sadiq El Mahdi armed Arabs tribesmen who lived/bordered other African tribes. He tried to cover up the massacre and no one was tried for the crimes

This massacre had several features that make it unique among the atrocities in the recent history of Sudan, but indicative of what the future might hold.

A Shilluk community had lived in Jebelein since the 1950s, employed as wage labourers on pump schemes and mechanized farms…. Relations with other ethnic groups in the area were generally good, and there was no background of tension or conflict between the Shilluk and local people of Arab descent, who are mostly Ta’aisha….. The militia group responsible came from more than 80km further north, from a population loosely known as Sabaha Arabs.

More..

Another website relates the events leading to the dark day as follows

It all began when an Arab landlord asked his workers, then on their Christmas holidays, to get back to work. The workers refused to go back because they were on holidays. A fight broke out and the landlord was killed. Those who killed the landlord were arrested by the police.

Unfortunately, our story does not end with the arrests….

 

Governor Rizik Sacked – NOT TRUE

Rumors making rounds in the internet that Governor Rizik Zakaria has been sacked following the recent chaos in Wau, appear to be false.

At 06 PM Juba time today 21st December, Rizik Zakaria – the Governor of Western Bahr El Ghazal State (South Sudan)- was interviewed by Miraya FM in his capacity as governor. He spoke about the situation on the ground saying it is calm now. He even appealed to civil servants to return to work and collect their salaries in time for Christmas.

He went on to call on the over 1000 people who took refuge in UNMISS camps to return to their homes and localities as the situation is now calm.

He said the problems in Wau that recently to the death of innocent people are not related to the transfer of the municipality, but that was rather used be others to advance their own objectives.

In the same program, a spokesperson the UNMISS said there is still a sizeable number of people (mainly women, children and some elderly) who are camped under their protection in Wau.

This news – that is his still in power – will come as a shock to many who prematurely started to celebrate. To them, the removal of the governor would stop the chaos that has begun to pitch tribes against each other.

According to the a recently amended article in the Constitution of South Sudan, a democratically elected governor can be removed by the President of the Republic. Some members of the National Assembly had requested the President to oust Governor Rizik.

He would have been the first Governor to have that article applied to him.

South Sudan Oil: Did you know…

As South Sudan embarks on its second oil refinery, a few issues remain foggy. Will the refineries eliminate the dependency on Khartoum? When will South Sudan stop importing fuel? When will the first refined products hit the market? What about the plans to talks to lay a pipeline all the way to the Kenyan port of Lamu?

Well, if there is anyone that could explain anything in the oil section even to an 8-year old, then that person is Warille Benjamin Warille, CEO of IMATONGAS Company, a leading petroleum company in South Sudan.

In a recent thread on one facebook page discussing the opening of refineries in South Sudan, Warille shared his knowledge of the sector by enlightening the readers.

SS4U has selected some points for you.

Blends of Crude Oil

Apparently there are three blends or types of crude oil in South Sudan namely Nile, Thar and the Dar blends. The blends differ in chemical composition/profiles and the location where they are drilled.

The Nile blend is generally considered as being of a better quality (and thus more expensive) than the Dar blend which requires much more processing; cannot be transported independently; and produces much more pollutants.

The Thar blend, found in Thar Jath in Unity State, is less known internationally and (like Dar blend) needs a little more work before it could be sold as a usable product.

Strategy, production

It is reported that the first South Sudan refinery in Melut, in Upper Nile State, aims at refining 10K barrels a day of the Thar blend and will mainly cater for the domestic needs.

A second refinery in Bentiu, Unity State will refine the Nile blend – a better quality blend which is also much more marketable than the other two.

A third refinery has been approved by the council of ministers, and is yet to be launched in Akon for the Thar blend.

Benjamin Warille CEO of Imatongas Petroleum Company

According to the CEO of the first South Sudanese petroleum company, the 10K per day capacity of the refinery in Melut is needs to be increased.

“.. I will opt for a bigger refinery… I would go to say, 80K barrels-per-day  minimum to utilize the full potential of the Thar blend, which up to now cannot be transported independently..”

He went on to point out that upping the capacity of this facility will “preserve the Dar and Nile blends for export”, as well as satisfy the increasing local needs.

“…we need to increase the production capacity to meet the anticipated surge in demand in the coming two years..I expect the demand to double given projections of growth in industries like roads, oil E & P and agricultural schemes…”

Do we still need Khartoum?

Yes.. well maybe.

Crude oil needs to be transported under some specified conditions. For example, the Dar blend, which is thicker, needs to be transported at high temperatures (45-50 degrees celsius) to avoid congealing in its storage tanks in ships. A pipeline is as such needed to safely transport the crude oil to the ports and further to the international refineries.

“.. if these local refineries produce excess of local demand for refined products, then we can export diesel, petrol..etc to regional markets and still earn dollars..the basic difference between refined and crude products is that the first does not necessarily need pipeline for transport..”

So, we are stuck with Khartoum – at least for the next 5 years –to get the crude oil to the ports.

When will our local refined products hit the market?

The foundation stone for the first refinery was laid about a month ago. It will take a year or more before these refineries start to operate as expected.

What is the current local demand and will the facilities satisfy it?

South Sudan current demand for heavy fuel oil (HFO), gasoil (diesel), gasoline (petrol) and kerosene (jetA1) is around 25-30 million liters per month. That is roughly 4-5K barrels per day.

“The Thangrial refinery in Melut will produce 10K barrels per day – enough to meet the current demand and have surplus for export – but the refinery is designed to produce more of HFO (to be used as an alternative for the costly diesel generators), less of gasoil (currently 70% of the demand) and might not produce lighter products like petrol.”

In other words, the refinery could produce excess HFO for export, but – depending on the demand – South Sudan might still have to import lighter products like petrol and maybe diesel.

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