Academician and professor, Dr. Peter Adwok Nyaba - Courtesy

A veteran politician Prof. Peter Adwok Nyaba says South Sudan is facing an identity crisis as the country is often called by its geographical name.

This was during the review of a film on the Anya-Nya rebellion at the Norwegian Embassy in Juba a few days ago.

Many at home and around the world still call South Sudan – southern Sudan.

Dr Adwok says South Sudanese spend time in political quarrels and war rather than thinking and talking about themselves.

The former Minister of Higher Education describes the calling of the country as southern Sudan as funny.

“Yes, we have a country, and this is one of our failures we are still called southern Sudan which is a geographical name,” said Dr Adwok.

“It is funny in a way, we don’t have a name for ourselves, because this would be our identity. So, if we are southern Sudanese, what is southern Sudanese,” he asked.

“This is partly because, during the transitional period, from 2011 to 2015, we spent it in political quarrels, then civil war.”

“We were not even thinking about ourselves, now we are in a different situation, where we are not even talking to ourselves.”

Prof. Adwok says the Anya-nya had its anthem, flag, and a coat of arms things which were lacking in SPLM.

“Look at our national anthem it is not what our people were struggling for,” Prof. Adowk said.

“The Anya-nya had an anthem, they had a flag, they had a national coat of arms, a Rhino, a Shoebill, and this bird of Bahr el Ghazal. Rhino represented Equatoria, Shoebill for Bahr el Ghazal, and Shield for Upper Nile, and we just threw these things away,” he said.

“These were things that were used by the Anya-nya as part of our struggle, to raise awareness and define our identity.”

Prof. Adwok further stated that the Anya-Nya movement was more organized than the SPLM.

“My personal experience is that the Anya-nya had a good relationship with the people. In that, they got all the resources from the people. They have no reason to abuse the people, this is unlike the SPLM/SPLA,” he said.

“Everywhere SPLA went there was always there is a problem, and there was documented, there are books written.”

Prof Adwok is the author of The Politics of Liberation in South Sudan: An Insider’s View, Fountain Publishers, Kampala (1997), a Noma Award-winning title for publishing in Africa (1998).

He has since authored South Sudan: The State We Aspire to (2010), South Sudan: The Crisis of Infancy (2014) and South Sudan: Elites, Ethnicity, Endless Wars and the Stunted State (2019).