The blanket denial of right to peaceful demonstration in South Sudan

The blanket denial of right to peaceful demonstration and claim of threat to National Security and Public Safety: The case of 8^th May 2017 Juba peaceful demonstration

By Garang Geng Akot, New Delhi, India

Juba university demonstration, 8 May 2017

August 13, 2017 (SSB) — The right to peaceful demonstration is an intrinsic part of democratic society and civilized nations. According to The Transitional Constitution of the Republic of South Sudan 2011, South Sudan is governed on the basis of a decentralized democratic system of governance, yet one wonders why it’s become an audacious act to stage a peaceful demonstration.

Before I take you (the readers) through legal instruments that grant the right to freedom of assembly in which the right to peaceful demonstration is manifested or coupled to, right to freedom of speech and Media, allow me to talk briefly about the 8^th May Juba peaceful demonstration in which I was personally a victim of arbitrary arrest.

The 8^th May Juba peaceful demonstration is the latest protest against government’s poor governance with the first protest being 1982 in Wau in which the prison officers indiscriminately fired live ammunitions at the protestors. Since then, the few protests that have taken place so far are government sponsored protests.

Ethnicity and Democracy in East Africa: Following Kenya footsteps?

By Junior William Deng, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

The tragicomedy of the South Sudanese politics: SPLM-IG vs SPLM-IO

August 13, 2017 (SSB) — Electoral democracy in Africa has caused various political damages; it is specifically designed to benefit incumbency and discriminate against oppositions and minorities. In Kenya, electoral frailties are not generated by political opposition as alluded by international and regional observers, it is about the political history of Kenya ethnically conceived by Jomo Kenyatta and implemented by President Moi political patronage system for thirty (30) years.

This, in 1966 when Jaramogi resigned from the government, he formed his party with which he decamped KANU with a great number of Kikuyu politicians. Unfortunately, during snap elections in 1980, the majority of Kikuyu politicians who had followed Jaramogi to formed KPP were beaten and ethnically forced to abandon Jaramogi.

In another snap elections, all these politicians sought political representation from their areas where they were unanimously elected. This, however, made Jaramogi consolidate his political organization from Nyanza, Western and a few from Ukambani. This political trend continued to mesmerize equal and democratic representation in the country.

Oh! The Mighty Gentlemen

By Adol Akuei, Eldoret, Kenya

Adol Akuei

August 12, 2017 (SSB) — This poem expresses the plights of young people especially the male-man in staying with their closest members of the extended family. It’s one of the thrilling poems that bring to the surface what an average gentleman quietly go through in absence of their biological parents, in pursuit of the life success in the distant land far away from their homeland. Despite all the challenges, the male-man must live and there go the society, 2017 draft.

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In the outskirts of the dreaded city full of insecurity and a death hunting human beings,

They were welcomed with open arms in amidst of this disaster that caught almost everybody unaware with arms up and heart throbbing,

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She didn’t raise a white flag in such a momentous gaiety to have received and cared for them

They were in lots, all  of them were men, dominating her home in Harlem like soldiers armed to teeth like a Cheetah in a Spanish arena dominating the battlefield,

A squad you can call it, carrying with them bags and their objects of survival

They were all gentlemen though, who have taught themselves manners of living in their hood