Too hungry to celebrate South Sudan’s Independence?
Flags were unfurled and people took to the streets to celebrate, but Jane Yata struggled to find whatever she could to ease her hunger.
I will only be able to celebrate Independence Days when things get better for me,” she said. I could be lucky and get a meal today, but tomorrow might be a different story altogether.”
Yata, aged 89, who has health problems but no access to doctors, has little to celebrate. She fears things may get worse for her and is scared of starving to death like one of her relatives. Food prices are simply too high for me,” she says.
The only source of food she has are irregular food rations from a local church in Yei, her home city in the southwest of the country.
Citizens in Central Equatoria’s Yei celebrate their independence.
Her story is familiar to non-governmental organisations working in South Sudan: The jubilation of independence is now tempered by the reality of a daily struggle to survive,” says Helen McElhinney, Oxfam policy advisor, in a press statement. Some people are living on one meal a day and double the number of people are in need of food aid compared to last year.”
Oxfam International views social and economic rights as just as important as civil and political rights. The organisation defines basic rights as including the right to enough to eat and the right to have a say in one’s future.
Such goals remain a mirage in South Sudan, where a majority of its citizens live on less than a dollar a day and cannot afford enough to eat. Everyday hardships have been compounded by skyrocketing food and energy prices. Conflicts and this year’s oil shutdown have boosted inflation, which stood at 60 percent in July.
Read also: "What they really think: Citizens comment on South Sudan’s achievements" by Benjamin Majok Mon from Rumbek
Meanwhile, international organisations say they face an emergency in South Sudanese refugee camps which are crammed with people fleeing the violence of the border regions. That violence is threatening to derail the gains of independence according to Dismas Nkunda, Co-Director of the International Refugee Rights Initiative. It would be nothing short of a tragedy if the gains of the past few years, and the hopes of so many people, were thwarted by pointless war,” he said in comments published to mark the anniversary.
In the light of ongoing hardship, Frank Gashumba, a Ugandan activist, has even suggested that, Africans would opt to rewind history in the event of a referendum. Over eighty per cent of Africans would vote for the return of colonialists,” he said in an interview with NTV Television. During colonial times he said people lived a good life” and had access to better infrastructure than today, he argued.
Diana John.
But despite widespread shortages of food and energy, some remain upbeat that the new nation will be able to deliver basic goods soon. Diana John, a student, speaks of her government’s great” achievement. Infrastructure is getting better every day,” she says, adding that people should appreciate South Sudan’s historic step towards independence.
But Yata, meanwhile, is left with her day-to-day difficulties. She asks why the government is taking so long to deliver its promises. While others are caught up in debates about the nations political development, she wants to see her government providing affordable food.
Despite her hunger, Yata welcomes some of her country’s recent changes. She says she can now sleep peacefully at night” as her slumber is no longer interrupted by the armed conflict which raged in her country for over two decades. But until South Sudan manages to ensure its people have enough food and water, Independence Day will be like any other for Yata – another day to survive.
