Editorial

 

Sudan belongs to a group of nations which must pay three trillion dollars as reparation to millions of South Sudan who had died in the hands of their nationals during the last two hundred years. The other countries are Egypt and Turkey. Even before Mohammed Ali Pasha the Viceroy of the Ottoman empire in its Egyptian province could order his army, a naval frigate commanded by Captain Selim to sail upstream the White Nile in 1839 and completing the journey at Gondokoro in 1841, he had already given orders to his Sennar based governor of Turco-Egyptian Sudan province, Hakimdar Khursid Ali Agha to attack the areas of South Sudan bordering the Sudan to capture slaves.

 

From 1827, many South Sudanese were either taken as slaves or killed by the Turks led army consisting of Egyptians and Sudanese Arabs in defence of themselves. Between 1841 and 2005, the number of South Sudanese who had been taken into North Sudan, Egypt, Turkey, the Arabian peninsula countries, north African Arab nations and shipped across the Mediterranean Sea to southern Europe to be sold as slaves counted in millions.

Those who died during shipment under very terrible conditions were also in millions. In the process of capturing South Sudanese as slaves they defended themselves despite the fact that the Turks, their Egyptian and Sudanese allies applied guns of the time while South Sudanese used their traditional weapons like spears, arrows and bows which were inferior to guns and millions other Southerners perished. If all those who were captured and shipped to the different destination for the human degradation known as slave trade are added up they will reach several millions.

In addition to human losses the people of South Sudan lost a great deal of their traditional wealth, livestock such as cattle, goats and sheep and food crops looted by the slave raiders. This given in money could sum up into billions of dollars. Now when the human losses and the looted traditional wealth are put together and converted to money they would sum up into not less than three trillion dollars. Some people even doubt whether this is not an underestimate of the cost of damages inflicted on South Sudanese by the Turks, Egyptians and Arabs of Sudan. Therefore when the generations of the grand children of the South Sudanese who were taken as slaves hear Sudan, one of the chief slave dealer countries demanding the South to compensate it for trivial demands they ask the question when will this country be asked to pay reparation to the grandchildren of the victims of the slave trade?

Instead of rewarding the Khartoumers who are the grandchildren of the slave traders, the amount of money which the African Union Panel of former South African President Thabo Mbeki should be directed to over five million grandchildren of the slave victims of South Sudan who are contemplating to sue the three countries: Sudan, Egypt and Turkey in the international court of justice for reparation. The 6.1 billion dollars proposed to be paid to Sudan should instead be directed as advanced payment by Mbeki's panel to these five million plus grandchildren of the slave victims whose list can be supplied by their group within short notice. Sudan as a former slave dealing country does not deserve any compensation from South Sudan, a country whose inhabitants had suffered greatly in the hands of the Arabs its citizens while the country has not apologized for its gross abuse of human dignity let alone paying reparation.

As from now the AU some of its members like those in the great lakes region of southern and central Africa too had suffered from Arab slave trade conducted by several traders like "Tiputip" whose headquarters was at Bagamoyo in western Tanzania must not be lenient with Sudan and must not appease its leaders like Al Bashir whose great grandfather Zubeir wad Rahama Mansour was one of the most notorious slave traders from the Jailin Arab tribe of Shendi north of Khartoum. Chairperson Mbeki should get this information right and let Al Bashir know his responsibility and prepare reparation and not to confuse the world with their bogus claims from South Sudan which are not genuine.