Announcements
Announcements:
The Vancouver Conference report will be available very soon. We sincerely thank all our members who contributed, and those who travelled to Vancouver to make the Conference a success. A special thanks to the Otuho Community of British Columbia for their hard work and generosity to make the Conference successful> You folks really rock!
NACO Executive Committee.
NACO Vancouver Conference, 2009
May 19, 2009
NACO Annual Conference
The NACO annual conference will take place on July 5-6, 2009, in the beautiful city of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Arrangement is being made and further details will follow as they are coming in. the participation of all is going to be required. Stay tune for more details to come.
NACO Conference,
Organizing Committee, 2009
2008 NACO Annual Conference
March 28, 2008
NACO Annual Conference
The NACO annual conference will take place on July 5-6, 2008, in South Dakota. Arrangement is being made and further details will follow as they are coming in. the participation of all is going to be required. Stay tune for more details to come.
NACO, Conference Organizing Committee
News articles
Articles:
- False Image of Bona Malual: Can Equatorial Believe in his cheap political rhetoric?
- In Memory of my teacher and political mentor: Uncle Joseph Oduho
FALSE IMAGE OF BONA MALUAL: CAN EQUATORIA BELIEVE IN HIS CHEAP POLITICAL RHETORIC?
Date: April 08, 2008
By J. Omunu
As Junubin are busy nursing their wounds, let us also not forget that indeed there are people out there like Bona Malual enjoying every moment of their lives in the comforts of a home in Khartoum. I doubt whether likes of Bona Malual will forego their selfish desires as majority of ordinary Junubin see the tears of their fellow men and women falling on the land that we fight for.
If this is the healing moment as proclaimed by Bona Malwal on his recent speech titled "In Memory of my Teacher and Political Mentor; Joseph Oduho,†well, it is also a time for nationalists to step out of the tribal cauldron. "THE NEED FOR TRUTH AND RECONCILATION†theme wriiten by Bona Malual, to me, was nothing but just another political gimmick by pretenders to status, and power bigots the opportunity to emerge from the debris of deception and impunity. Him be a senior advisor to the government, should have directed his well machinated speech to Salva Kiir government who in more than one occasion promised the rule of law, but about three years later, it has no credible prosecution record.
One thing is certain to me, Bona Malual merely want to divide Equatoira to continue with business as usual. But this line won't sell some of us who where we come from and where are heading to.
Whilst, those who want to become statesmen out of people's tragedy must reconfigure their public stature. Leaders, after all, are creations of disagreements. The current SPLA/M ranks and files know the assassins of our late hero Uncle Joseph Oduho, any mere political gimmick won't do. Likes of Bona Malual can conspire with others, but they need to be told that Junubin specifically Equatoria are watching their lips with keen interests. The struggle for justice and freedom in 1955 and in 1983 respectively, created heroes of individuals who stood above the crowd to be counted. The late founding fathers Fr. Saturino Lohure, Joseph Oduho and Dr. John Garang were all got killed under mysterious circumstances. History counts these veterans among its children who sacrificed their individual comforts for the common good.
Unfortunately, tribal chauvinists, power bigots in Junub el Sudan today who want to take over everything to themselves, with the sole purpose of satisfying only themselves and their tribesmen, have all forgotten that Selfishness is a bigger sin of all, especially when one is concerned with his own interests while ignoring those of comrades who fought all along during the hard struggle days in the bush. Not to mentioning that when the marginalized people of Sudan specifically Junubin launched a heroic struggle against Sudan Islamic regimes dictatorships, they were fighting not just for the right to belong to, and demand for justice for all, but also to reclaim their fundamental human basic rights.
Surely, as much as Bona Malual wanted us Otuho to sit here and congratulate him in job well done, to me, he is wrong for having used a wrong place and worng occasion to utter his provocative and careless words. I don't is the time for a radical transformation of politics in Junub el Sudan yet. Things would not have gone so wrong in the movement (Uncle Joseph Oduho endless detention) if Bona Malual and others had stood by the right just cause for which he was known during the struggle for freedom and democracy while in London.
For years, power in Junub has been dominated by one ethnic group. Consequently, a good number of the ordinary citizens across Equatoria region have been victimized. Some communities have suffered beyond repair during the SPLM/A war of liberation, even as others celebrate the CPA, and their supposed liberation hard work, they the dominant political force continued to defame others in Junub without attempting to understand the complexities of the liberation meaning itself.
In summary, to get it right from now on, Bona Malual must first denounce tribalism and its ugly faces (power domination) orchestrated by his own tribesmen elites in Junub el Sudan so much so that together we can all start real healing process and start looking at today to build tomorrow if you will.
In Memory of my teacher and political mentor: Uncle Joseph Oduho
Date: April 07, 2008
By Bona Malwal
If being asked to stand up to address an occasion as memorable has commemorating the death of a leader is an occasion of honour and respect for those who are asked to do so, then being asked to stand before you today, you the young and the not so young of Southern Sudan is a very special privilege and honour for me. Thank you so much my dear sons and daughters, brothers and sisters from the Latuka community of Southern Sudan, for inviting me.
For a country like Southern Sudan, where matters are not as normal as they should be, it is not only tempting to want to talk straight; it is indeed an obligation and duty to talk straight. This is exactly what I am going to do. And I ask for your individual indulgence in advance.
I stand before you with very mixed feelings on this very momentous occasion, because seeing the turn of events in our Southern Sudan Community today; it is very difficult for me to say with clear heart, that my teacher and political mentor, Joseph Oduho, has not died in vain. He spent his entire life struggling and in the end, he died in the hands of Southern Sudanese. We must believe and pray that his blessed soul is now in heaven.
After struggling for the cause of Southern Sudan for so long; escaping death in the hands of the true enemies of the cause of Southern Sudan; escaping the Kangaroo death sentence passed on him by the kangroo courts of Northern Sudan after the Torit uprising of August 1955, Ustaz Joseph Oduho was gunned down in cold blood on 28th March 1993 by the hand of his own Southern Sudanese children, using the guns Joseph Oduho himself may have helped provide to these children for the liberation of our people from the tyranny imposed on the South by Northern Sudan.
It is impossible, as I stand before you, participating in this glorious occasion, marking the death of Joseph Oduho, to escape the thought that this great hero of the cause of Southern Sudan may just have died in vain.
As we remember Joseph Oduho, we must not forget that with out freedom for all who are still alive in Southern Sudan; without total freedom from fear of any kind; especially fear from the rampant lynchmanship in Southern Sudan, in the hands of some of our own; with out pride in the way the government of Southern Sudan conducts the affairs of Southern Sudan today, it will be difficult to avoid the bitter conclusion that Joseph Oduho and all the fallen heroes of Southern Sudan have died in vain.
It would be dishonorable for those of us, who witnessed the political life of Southern Sudanese heroes like Joseph Oduho, to see so much that is going wrong in our community today; to see the squandering of the well earned political power of the people of Southern Sudan and the resources of the ever heroic people of Southern Sudan being used for causes that are not of the people of Southern Sudan and not say that things are not well in our society today.
We all need to work together, to correct those who believe that the power of Southern Sudan is their power and authority for them alone, over the people of Southern Sudan. The would be authorities of Southern Sudan today, seem to think that they have the right to use that power unjustly and unfairly against any member of the community of Southern Sudanese. All of us need to stand up straight and firm to be counted against internal hegemony, political bigotry and internal tyranny.
It is not enough any more, for us to be fed with the falsehood that it is Northern Sudan that is preventing rehabilitation and progress in Southern Sudan. It is not true that Northern Sudan is any more responsible for the mal administration of Southern Sudan since July 2005, since when the present government of Southern Sudan was formed. The current government of Southern Sudan is totally autonomous from the North, almost independent from the North, in its decisions and in its processes.
The North may not be giving the South its total fifty per cent share of the oil revenues from the oil wells of the South. I do not know about that, because if the North is not transparent with the government of Southern Sudan about the transfer of oil revenue to the South, then how transparent is the government of Southern Sudan with its people about how it spends what ever percentage of the fifty percent oil revenue it receives from the North? Are we only entitled, as Southern Sudanese, to know what Northern Sudan is not doing for us and we are not entitled to know what the government of Southern Sudan is doing with our resources for us?
I say these things on this occasion, because I know that Joseph Oduho would not have expected from me anything less. He was always an outspoken frank man. As my teacher in the formative years of my life, I hope I have learned something about frankness from Joseph Oduho. I am proud of that.
Joseph Oduho died struggling for the cause of Southern Sudan. It is ironic that he eventually died in the hands of his own community; a community he so struggled for. It is a great shame on us as Southern Sudanese, that Joseph Oduho did not die in the hands of the enemy of Southern Sudan, who wished him dead on so many occasions in his life.
Joseph Oduho was sentenced to death in absentia in 1955, following the Torit Uprising of August of that year. This is in spite of the fact that Joseph Oduho was a civilian, a teacher and was not even in Torit at the time of the uprising to have been an accomplice.
Joseph Oduho was elected to the 1957 Parliament from Torit as one of the members of Parliament from Southern Sudan. He sought from the floor of the National Parliament in Khartoum, to hold Northern Sudan accountable to the promise of federation, on the basis of which, members of parliament from Southern Sudan voted for an independent Sudan on 19 December 1955.
When Northern Sudan handed power to General Ibrahim Aboud in November 1958, to avoid answering the Southern Sudan demand for federation and in order to let the military repress the South, rather than concede Federation to the South, Joseph Oduho was one of the team of Southern Sudanese parliamentarians who joined the Anya-Nya Liberation Movement, to continue the struggle for the cause of the South. He and other Southern Sudanese did so, rather than to submit to the Northern Sudanese military machinations.
Together with other similar heroes who fell for the cause, like Reverend Father Saturino Lohore, the Anya-Nya cause delivered autonomy for Southern Sudan under the 1972 Addis Abba Agreement. Joseph Oduho took part in the political and the government leadership of the South under the Addis Ababa Agreement. In the end, the North abrogated the Addis Ababa Agreement in 1983.
It is important for many of you young Southern Sudanese here gathered today, to know that as much as Ustaz Joseph Oduho was a Southern Sudanese separatist par excellence, he was also an unswerving Southern Sudanese Unionist. During the great KOKORA debate in Equatoria, in the early1980s, Joseph Oduho led the crusade for unity of Southern Sudan amongst Equatorians. He and a small, but brave number of leaders from Equatoria, who stood so steadfastly for the unity of the people of Southern Sudan, were treated almost as traitors to Equatoria. Joseph Oduho was undounted by such classifications.
In 1984, only one year into the SPLA led war against the North, because this was only one year after KOKORA succeeded to split Southern Sudan, most Equatorians saw the SPLM/SPLA as a reaction to KOKORA and stayed away from it. In an open letter to Equatoria, Joseph Oduho implored Equatoria to join the SPLA, not because there was shortage in the personnel fighting the war, but because he saw that history was being made for Southern Sudan. He thought it was important for Equatoria to be part of that history. Equatoria heeded Joseph Oduho's advice and joined the SPLA in droves.
The yesterday's leaders of KOKORA are today the leaders of the SPLM/SPLA. It is ironic that the leaders of KOKORA of yesterday are not just the leaders of a united Southern Sudan today; some of them are currently the advocates of the idea of "A New Sudanâ€.
As a perpetual struggler for the cause of Southern Sudan, even though he was already in an advancing age, Joseph Oduho saw no choice for himself but to join the SPLM/SPLA in 1983, at its foundation, to continue the struggle. It is ironic that he remained a prisoner in the hands of his own people, until he met his death at Panyagor, in Jonglei, in 1993, in the hands of his own children. He was killed at the age of 67, while on a peace mission, trying to reconcile the warring factions of the SPLA
It is impossible to speculate how providence judges atrocities like the death of Joseph Oduho. But I am tempted by my human failing to believe that the always fair Almighty God has put the soul of Joseph Oduho into heaven.
If Joseph Oduho died a tragic death the way he did, it is almost inescapable to believe that Joseph Oduho would love the Machakos Protocol of 2o July 2002, which is the first Protocol of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), which gives the people of Southern Sudan a referendum on Self-determination, in the year 2011, to be successfully carried out. Southern Sudan must not allow that noble right of Self-determination, to be subverted by those we currently see usurping the rights of the people of the Southern Sudan for their own anti- Southern Sudan causes.
As a pupil of Joseph Oduho, I am privileged and proud to stand before you here gathered today, to hold those who are responsible for the implementation of the CPA, to carry out Self-determination referendum as the final act of the CPA with out deviation.
Joseph Oduho was my teacher and protector at a very young age for me. After completing Rumbek Secondary School, Joseph Oduho became an intermediate school teacher at St Anthony's Bussere Intermediate School in 1951. He joined and taught me in my second year intermediate school. He was a great footballer and became our sports teacher. He played in our school team, many times matching us youngsters against his old team of Rumbek Secondary School. He always protected us against older football opponents from elsewhere. He once put us into a football pitch battle in Wau town, because one of our young team mates was kicked in the stomach by an older player. He physically knocked down the offender player and kicked him in the stomach. We became engulfed in a football pitch warfare with the Wau town crowd, with Joseph Oduho as our protector.
THE NEED FOR TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION:
It is a well known fact of life that in any war situation, there occurs excesses and war atrocities. Southern Sudan was no exception to this. What is important, is how a traumatized society, like the Southern Sudan society, deals with these issues at the end of the war. It is important to tell the truth about who did what against whom, during the war and to reconcile the society before it forgives the excesses of the war and then move on. South Africa and Mozambique have led us in this. Rwanda is going on with the same process at the moment in a very impressive way. With so much internal atrocity against each other during the war, Southern Sudan can not avoid telling its truth to each other and then to reconcile. It is impossible to assume that leaders like Joseph Oduho have died the way they did and that no body responsible in Southern Sudan cares to make public how they died.
It is necessary for the Government of Southern Sudan, therefore, led by the SPLM/SPLA that was largely responsible for the war atrocities within Southern Sudan, to now establish a truth and reconciliation commission, to lay to rest the ghosts of war and to enable the society to reconcile and to move on.
Southern Sudan can not afford to have lost heroes like Joseph Oduho in vain and as we falter from the paths and principles for which Joseph Oduho and others lived and died, let us remember that Southern Sudan can not afford to fail. May Almighty God rest the soul of Joseph Oduho in eternal peace?