Opinion | By Juol Nhomngek Gec
The role of any Government is to protect the culture of her citizens. The protection involves putting limit on freedoms of her citizens. The reasons for protecting morals and customs of the people is that it is another way of protecting family which the law describes as the basic unit of the society.
The family that is founded on morals creates the strong society. The country where families are protected is the country where people protect their moral inheritance. The pride of any Nation is moral and cultural inheritance.
China and Japan for instance are doing well moral wise because their governance is founded on their original cultures. The communities in the countries with strong morals are occupied by indigenous Communities with original cultures.
Like South Sudan, our cultures are traditions and if we can protect and promote our cultures we can have strong foundation and become very strong in all areas. Thus, it is the duty of South Sudan Government to protect our cultures so that they change by adopting new values gradually to avoid cultural shock.
In South Sudan, we are currently experiencing cultural shock and it is the reason why there is upheaval and moral mayhem. Juba which is the capital city of South Sudan is microcosm of South Sudan as a country.
Juba represents South Sudan and its sixty four (64) tribes and whatever bad things happen in Juba depicts South Sudan as a whole. Hence, the fact that there is high level of moral decadent in Juba shows that Juba is the Centre of Moral decadent due to the following reasons:
First, immorality is at its highest point in Juba. . It is practiced everywhere and nowhere exceptional. Majority of our leaders in the Government who are supposed to be moral compass to show right moral direction to our citizens are even the worse in term of morality. They are in fact amoral.
As a sign of moral breakdowns, prostitution is being practiced everywhere in the citizens and hotels are turned into brothels. There are clearly two types of prostitutions. There are those petty prostitutes who can fall for even less then five hundred South Sudanese Pounds.
Those petty prostitutes are the ones we find everywhere in the city. They snake the streets throughout the city selling themselves like hot cakes. Those petty prostitutes are using their bodies to get money irrespective of the danger that they expose themselves to by attracting National and foreigners who may be hosts of different viruses carrying modern incurable diseases.
Those petty prostitutes are sometimes conwomen as they always fight with men who relieve their stress on them during short time as it is known in in the hotels managed by Eritreans and Ethiopians. This is throughout Juba city and other towns in South Sudan.
As I write this article, South Sudanese government does not have any control over her citizens who are women. Of course, women have all rights and freedoms to determine what is good for themselves but in the present condition of South Sudan, our women need protection because of poverty.
The poor are not choosers. Our women, majority of whom are impoverished and they can accept any conditions imposed on them by funders in order to get few pounds or few dollars to care for themselves or their families. Therefore, the men sometime demand to have sex with them live but they have nothing to do as they need money to support their families and themselves.
Moreover, those petty prostitutes are composed of underage girls, and grown up women, who are at homes with their men but are practicing prostitution under cover without the knowledge of their husbands. There was a time a fight broke out between the husband and his wife after the husband received intelligence that his wife was standing somewhere in town for short time.
After receiving the information he went to that place and found his wife where he was told to find her and the first world war in the prostitute world in Atlabara broker out. The poor was attacked on all sides and the police has to intervene to restore and maintain law and order.
Apart from those petty prostitutes as I have described above, there are also those smart prostitutes who charge hundreds of dollars per night. Some of these kind of prostitutes are women in their houses but are too smart to be caught by anyone. Some of these are running big companies and charitable organizations.
They are being founded by the Government officials with public funds. One of the reasons the Government employees and soldiers do not get their salaries on time even if they spend several months is because of misuse of National resources by the government officials. Another misuse is spending money on wrong project such as on prostitutes or unmarried women who act as side dish for big men.
Some of those smart prostitutes or women have broken their houses in order to professionalize their prostitution. Those professional prostitutes are now becoming more and more role models for our young beautiful girls who are occupied with how to become rich as a way of escaping sweat hard lives.
Selling their bodies is the cheapest way of getting money and becoming rich over night. Specially giving birth to or having a beautiful girls or wives who catch attention of every men appears to become a curse nowadays as the immoral men with dollars have become like hyenas around kraals. It is a tag of war.
Those beautiful girls described above have now come up with the new way of getting money from the government officials as they have become sexual rentals. The Government officials who were initially poor become restless with money rent those beautiful girls or women for some days or months and then give them dollars as agreed after using them. It is pathetic.
There are some immoral activities going in sexual world that cannot be described here all. Surprisingly, majority of all the prostitutes are from Dinka as I have been carrying out survey. Yet the Government, which is being headed by Dinka leadership does not want to do anything because it is preoccupied with how to maintain power even at the expenses of Dinka majority.
In short, Juba city is the centre of moral decadent. The Dinka family where the leader comes from and other families who are not taken care of by their governments are breaking down very first. The cause of all these is the man-made poverty through misuse of resources by the SPLM-IG that does not care about the welfare of the people by allowing its leaders to misuse National resources.
The unemployment the citizens are facing now and the poverty killing our citizens is because of the SPLM-IG that has controlled resources and allowed few individuals to use the resources as they think fit.
The writer is the member of the SPLM-IO and he can be reached through Nhomngekjuol@gmail.com
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