By Darren Taylor - Washington - 14 February 2007

In public comments made in recent weeks, the United States special envoy to Sudan, Andrew Natsios has called southern Sudan a potential breadbasket for Africa. He's also expressed confidence in the ability of the south to control corruption.

Southern Sudan emerged in 2005 from a two-decade war that had pitted the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) against the northern government of Sudan in Khartoum. According to human rights groups, the conflict killed more than 2 million people, and left hundreds of thousands displaced.

Natsios said in Washington DC recently that southern Sudan's leaders were struggling to implement good governance practices, and that there appeared to be substance to allegations that some donor funds that had been allocated to development in the region had been misappropriated.

"Are there people who've tried to enrich themselves? There appears to be some evidence of that," Natsios said, before qualifying his statement by saying that the corruption that had happened in the south was not "wide-scale" and that it could be dealt with rapidly by putting the necessary "systems" and "institutions" in place. He revealed that the leadership of southern Sudan had requested "technical help" from the international community to launch a fight against graft.

"Corruption is a problem in many developing countries where a lot of money is moving through the system, and the systems aren't there to control abuse," Natsios added. "I know many of the southern leaders; I've known them for many years. I believe that they care about their people. You know, some countries I go to - there's a kleptocracy; the elites are rapacious, corrupt and predatory. That is not true in southern Sudan."

The envoy lauded Sudan's Vice-President and SPLM/A leader, Salva Kiir, as a "man of integrity". It was ironic, Natsios said, that President Omar al-Bashir's government in the north was using the allegations and " rumors" of graft in the south to regularly attack the SPLM administration – yet the Khartoum administration was itself ranked by international anti-graft groups as one of the most corrupt in the world.

Natsios remained optimistic that southern Sudan would in the future emerge as an area of great economic importance to Africa.

'The biggest thing that's changed for the south is that all the food prices are dropping in the cities because there's no war. And the merchants are pouring in from Nairobi and Uganda. There were only a hundred businesses in Yei (one of the most important towns in southern Sudan) when I visited there five years ago. Four years later, there are 1 800 small businesses. People in the south are very entrepreneurial."

While the envoy attached great importance to the development of health and education in southern Sudan, he emphasized that the greatest priority for the region should be the building of roads.

"We're finding out that the roads system is most important, because that is what's causing the economy to begin to boom now," Natsios enthused. "It's one of the richest agricultural areas in Africa! Southern Sudan could feed all of Africa. Its extremely rich soils; there are 10 or 20 million … head of cattle in the south."

With most people in southern Sudan being farmers or herders, agriculture is of primary importance to the area. Natsios was convinced that, with the introduction of modern agricultural technology, southern Sudan would one day be transformed from a place of perennial famine, to a continental breadbasket.

BOMBAY PIONEERS A NEW WAY TO DO MISSIONS

By Odhiambo Okite

The Rev. Calvin Richard Bombay talks development economics with the fluency of a World Bank expert, but when recently Brig. Gen. Zamba Duku, Speaker of the legislature of West Equatoria State of South Sudan, invited him to address an extra-ordinary session of the House of Representatives, he gave a hard-hitting, unapologetically political and prophetic message. Quoting only and frequently from the Bible, he laid out the current political challenges facing South Sudan, the quality of leadership the situation demands, and the content of the hope the people have for their lives and their country today and in the future.

The spectre of the brutal civil war, which ended only recently, still looms large in the memories and expectations of South Sudanese. Bombay established his awareness of this when he called on the legislators “not to waste the deaths of 2,200,000 men, women and children, by taking selfish personal advantage of what the future should hold for every citizen. ... The success or failure of the Government of South Sudan [depends upon] your acts of integrity, honesty, ethical thinking and behavior, . . . or your involvement in corruption and selfishly motivated decisions.”

It was an unusual role for a “foreign” missionary. For 17 years, Bombay was a Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada missionary in Uganda and Kenya, while those
countries were experiencing dramatic political transformations. In those days, foreign missionaries were advised to avoid like the plague any involvement in controversial political issues.

Times have changed. We live today in a global era. Geographical borders have grown thin, and so have the differences between job descriptions for local and foreign church workers. Previously, foreign missionaries were expected to help spread the Gospel, to engage in such social and economic development work which had direct impact on the living standards of individuals and families, and to assist in the management of church-related affairs. Otherwise, foreigners stayed away from political action and personal development work, even with respect to such positive values as self-reliance and human dignity. National politics, community organizing, and agitating for the fulfillment of individual aspirations were strictly left to locals, and even then, generally discouraged.

The job description of the modern “foreign” missionary would perhaps include truth-telling on issues like civil rights and just, equitable, participatory and sustainable development. Many church leaders would be uncomfortable with this approach, but Bombay says: "If your living for Jesus does not cause you some inconvenience, some discomfort, some sacrifice or some risk, then you should very seriously examine the measure of your obedience to the will of God."

The situation in South Sudan and Bombay’s participation in it for the past decade helped him to build the vision and practice of this challenging and comprehensive missionary venture. In the twenty years of the civil war, South Sudan was “hell on earth,” according to Steven Wondu, who then represented South Sudan at the United Nations as well as in Washington, D.C. and Ottawa, and who inspired Bombay to visualize and design his project. “Villages are raided and dwellings razed down,” he said. “Crops are burnt, livestock is looted, women are raped, boys and girls are enslaved: the rest are massacred.”

“In fact, there are no Southern Sudanese today who are living at home,” he said. “Aerial bombardment of civilian villages and camps was the daily routine of the Sudan Air Force. The population was constantly kept on the run to prevent them from growing crops and establish basic service institutions like hospitals and schools.”

Bombay bought and freed some of the slaves. He walked into a village left smoldering following a raid by Sudanese government soldiers and tribal militia, and saw food granaries and fields heavy with ripe food crops incinerated by agents of their own government. He saw men, women and children fighting like dingos for food dropped by aid agencies. He witnessed the extent to which people can inflict cruelty on others, even upon those who are in every way similar to them, but he also saw how despair can turn people into animals.

Bombay and Wondu figured out that food drops are unacceptably expensive, not only in human terms, but also financially. A ton of maize flown from Lokichoggia in northern Kenya and dropped in Bar el Ghazal costs US $2,000/- according to reliable sources, but would cost only US$175/- when grown, processed and shipped from within South Sudan. The worst thing, though, is that people became dependent on food dropping from the sky.

They therefore conceived of a project whose objective would be "To give the people an opportunity to restore their dignity by looking after themselves." They would achieve this by setting up farms for mass food production, run by the South Sudanese themselves.

Standing before the parliamentarians of West Equatoria legislature, Bombay knew he was addressing the elite of South Sudanese politics. West Equatoria covers Juba, South Sudan’s only semi-developed urban center, and has a relatively well educated House of Representatives, which is expected to set trends for the other nine states.

Given the opportunity to “preach” about rural community development, he chose to confess that he is a devout Christian and a missionary at heart.

The speech lasted thirty minutes, but the lively discussion that followed it went on for more than four hours.

Bombay used the opportunity to speak with the political elite of South Sudan’s most important state, and poked his finger directly into a most sensitive festering wound in Africa today. He told them not to “become just like so much of Africa: riddled with corruption, graft, greed and self-serving decisions.”

“There are enemies among you,” he declared. “Their personal and secret plans are to personally milk the system for everything they can get for themselves and their friends.” Such leaders will make this country “degenerate into chaos, corruption and moral decay which will destroy the future of South Sudan.”

The speech then became prophetic. “You will have to be leaders in righteousness, in character, in honesty, in transparency and in truth,” he told the hushed House. . “You WILL do this, or you will fail!”

History was being made in another way in that little building, which was awfully inadequate as a “parliament.” Bombay addressed the members with a Bible in his hands, testing the limits of the year-old Peace Agreement, which gave South Sudanese states freedom of religion and a measure of autonomy. “What I have to say to you today is as firm and true as God Himself, and comes from His Holy Word, the Bible.”

During the question and comments, many of the members of the Legislature assured Bombay that they too would monitor the farms of the Savannah Farmers Cooperative and be on guard against corruption. Bombay had no way of knowing which of the members might be Christian or Moslem.

Religion was a major factor in the civil war which last year’s peace pact ended. The war lasted 20 years and cost South Sudan more than two million lives, and devastated its society and economy.

The Sharia law, was introduced in the early 1980s when a small, but determined and fanatical clique called Moslem Brotherhood took over the Khatoum government in a palace coup, and systematically began to restrict severely the practice of other religions. Southerners were “expected” to become Moslems, to speak Arabic and to be generally Arabized. It was the people’s resistance to this forced Islamization and Arabization which the Khartoum government called rebellion and provided the pretext for the civil war and full scale genocide which followed.

Freedom of religion, belief and worship shall be guaranteed under this new Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed on January 9, 2005 in Nairobi, Kenya. The Peace Agreement also guaranteed that “a suitable atmosphere will be maintained for practicing, worship, proselytization and preaching.”

Indeed, a few days after his appearance in parliament, Bombay participated in the largest evangelistic events ever in Juba, when by the end of the meetings, 50,000 people gathered well into the night to hear the Christian Gospel. Thousands made public decisions to follow the Christian faith.

While we can, we must help. The Peace Agreement continues on a very fragile basis. Khartoum is known for its non-adherence to any of the agreements it has signed over the years since 1989. There may be a limited window of opportunity to kill the dependency syndrome in southern Sudan. "For years the UN has been flying supplies into the troubled region, and now the population has come to expect food to fly in from the sky. People have become dependent on being fed through airdrops. Not only is this demeaning, the process is outrageously expensive.

But now Bombay has set up an organization called Cal Bombay Ministries, whose specific purpose is to establish food security through mass mechanized farming. He already has four operating farms of varying large acreages. Thousands of acres await development. Food security is a viable dream.

Through the Savannah Farmers Cooperative, a Sudanese entity, small local farmers are able to multiply their own crops through the contractual use of the more than twenty tractors already available from the four farms. Zamba Duku projects that such use of the tractors “can quadruple the produce from a local five acre farm, producing beyond their own subsistence and providing cash for improvement of life, education and adequate housing.”

Hell has moved 450 miles north to Darfur. But in the presently peaceful south, there is a revolution of expectations. Continued peace, electricity, potable water, improved living conditions, political stability, education for their children: these are the new dreams.

Bombay says, “I cannot walk away from what I know can be done with some help from outside southern Sudan. To restore human dignity and establish food security is basic. The only way I see this happening is by working from the grass roots up: by giving their economy a kick-start by taking advantage of their greatest asset – agricultural development on vast fertile lands.”

Cal Bombay Ministries can be found at www.calbombayministries.org

End Note:

Odhiambo Okite died on May 25th, 2006 just as he was finishing this article. His wife, Carol Ann Okite agreed to let me finish the few corrections and the last paragraphsfor which he had asked me information. His son Mirambo, in his eulogy, said of his father Odhiambo,

“What a life! My father was born on Rusinga Island in Lake Victoria, deep in the interior of Africa. He became a citizen of the world. His strongest tribal affiliation was to humanity. The people he met over the course of his life include Lyndon Johnson, Desmond Tutu, Queen Elizabeth II, Indira Gandhi and many others. He was fluent in four languages. He visited the four corners of the globe. Those of us who have been lucky enough to sit and chat with him know that he had an amazing story for every day of the year, like his surreal experience walking in the ‘whites only’ line with Billy Graham in Apartheid South Africa; or walking his school fees, in the form of a goat, and losing it to a predator; or his experience at the March on Washington.

He suffered the indignity of torture at the hands of the government he served. He had more reason than anybody here to be jaded and cynical, yet he held fast to his faith in love. He took some of the hardest blows life could throw at a man, yet I never heard him once utter a word in self-pity or vengefulness or pettiness. This was the kind of man he was. How sweet, how precious those smiles, that laughter, those jokes, those songs after all he suffered.

Odhiambo went blind because of the tortures he endured. His last years as a journalist were spent with his family, and many hours working on his ‘talking computer’.