:00:00. > :00:07.-- from me. Now it's time for HARDtalk.
:00:08. > :00:12.It took half a century of civil war to give
:00:13. > :00:16.Just five years later, leading figures from the independence
:00:17. > :00:19.struggle are calling for the UN to take charge.
:00:20. > :00:21.Majak D'Agoot fought in the war of independence,
:00:22. > :00:23.became deputy minister of defence, but was sacked by the president
:00:24. > :00:35.Have South Sudan's politicians failed their starving,
:00:36. > :00:38.displaced people or was the South never viable as a separate country
:00:39. > :01:16.You are talking to us from Nairobi, rather than from South Sudan.
:01:17. > :01:24.The crisis in the country has sent us to different points
:01:25. > :01:28.of the compass, and I find myself being in exile and being in Nairobi
:01:29. > :01:37.It is because of the crisis that broke out in my country
:01:38. > :01:47.It took some of us to jail and powers sent a huge part
:01:48. > :01:49.of the South Sudanese population into displacement.
:01:50. > :01:52.Some of them are now in neighbouring countries,
:01:53. > :01:58.amounting to about 1.5 million refugees.
:01:59. > :02:02.Some of them are internally displaced, some of them
:02:03. > :02:11.are in the protection camps guarded by soldiers.
:02:12. > :02:15.That is the state of affairs in my country and that is why I am
:02:16. > :02:19.The government says your passport and those of others was revoked
:02:20. > :02:26.for calling for foreign intervention in the country.
:02:27. > :02:28.Gordon Buay is the man who handles the South Sudanese diaspora
:02:29. > :02:33.He said there was no freedom for you to call for the toppling
:02:34. > :02:35.of the government in South Sudan and suggesting that South Sudan
:02:36. > :02:38.would be ruled by the United Nations?
:02:39. > :02:46.First of all, let me underscore this.
:02:47. > :02:50.There is no freedom of speech, no freedom of movement.
:02:51. > :02:59.There is no freedom of movement for the people in South Sudan.
:03:00. > :03:02.South Sudan is kind of a big prison at the moment.
:03:03. > :03:05.The government has imposed draconic measures on the entire population.
:03:06. > :03:14.So, when we called for intervention forces to come to the country
:03:15. > :03:21.and restore security and stabilise the situation,
:03:22. > :03:29.so that there is public safety for all, that was because the government
:03:30. > :03:32.of South Sudan has, unfortunately, squandered its very role
:03:33. > :03:48.Sorry to interrupt, the former Secretary General of the ruling
:03:49. > :03:50.Sudan People's Liberation Movement, a colleague of yours,
:03:51. > :03:58.has founded a group called South Sudan Reborn, which he says
:03:59. > :04:02.is to bring the violence to an end by calling on the United Nations
:04:03. > :04:06.South Sudan Reborn are not the political leaders
:04:07. > :04:14.We are a political entity in the country, we present the voice
:04:15. > :04:16.of the majority of our people who call for democracy
:04:17. > :04:27.The President is a democratically elected president.
:04:28. > :04:42.His legitimacy derives from the agreement which was signed
:04:43. > :04:55.in Adis in 2015, August of last year.
:04:56. > :04:57.Are you then calling for the United Nations
:04:58. > :04:59.to have a role in the governance of your country?
:05:00. > :05:01.If not, what alternatives are you seeking?
:05:02. > :05:04.I am calling for the deployment of regional protection forces
:05:05. > :05:15.to restore peace and stability to my country.
:05:16. > :05:18.To help in opening up democratic space for all the political forces
:05:19. > :05:20.in the country, to be able to participate and express
:05:21. > :05:22.their views without fear and intimidation.
:05:23. > :05:33.I have not called for administration of South Sudan by the United Nations
:05:34. > :05:38.because I know the country, it is independent and it is not
:05:39. > :05:41.a member state of the United Nations, unless it is by the free
:05:42. > :05:50.will of its people, it cannot be a trustee of the United Nations.
:05:51. > :05:55.Last Friday, the UN Security Council agreed to increase the number
:05:56. > :06:03.of peacekeepers in Sudan from 12,000 to 16,000.
:06:04. > :06:12.Even that, in view of the Sudan government, seriously
:06:13. > :06:18.undermines your country's hard-won sovereignty.
:06:19. > :06:21.The government Information Minister said it will begin with South Sudan,
:06:22. > :06:24.but it will end up with all of us being turned into new colonies.
:06:25. > :06:32.The government Information Minister said it will begin with South Sudan,
:06:33. > :06:35.but it will end up with all of us being turned into new colonies.
:06:36. > :06:42.I would say this is a bogeyman phobia behalf of Juba.
:06:43. > :06:44.I would say this is a bogeyman phobia on behalf of Juba.
:06:45. > :06:47.The United Nations has no interest in colonising South Sudan,
:06:48. > :06:50.there is no single colony in the world as we speak.
:06:51. > :06:53.The entire world has been decolonised.
:06:54. > :06:56.These kind of statements are coming out in order to mobilise
:06:57. > :07:02.the population and direct them against their bogeymen,
:07:03. > :07:04.that being the United Nations, the United African Union,
:07:05. > :07:06.the United States of America, and other countries.
:07:07. > :07:21.The fact of the matter is that the government in Juba has
:07:22. > :07:22.completely failed to discharge its authority
:07:23. > :07:25.There are deficits in the discharge of public authority,
:07:26. > :07:29.one is that they are not able to form their role in the provision
:07:30. > :07:41.It is in this view that we have decided to call for the deployment
:07:42. > :07:51.of this force, so that our people are able to see peace,
:07:52. > :07:54.see stability in the country that has been rocked for far too long
:07:55. > :07:57.by instability and the threat of being harmed by the very forces
:07:58. > :08:07.that should be discharging this function.
:08:08. > :08:13.The trouble is that even if you have these troops coming in to help
:08:14. > :08:18.with operations on the ground, the record of the UN peacekeepers
:08:19. > :08:22.Sites that are currently providing shelter to 190,000 South Sudanese
:08:23. > :08:26.people, scattered across the country, displaced
:08:27. > :08:30.by the fighting, peacekeepers, according to reports,
:08:31. > :08:34.have been said to be incapable of protecting civilians.
:08:35. > :08:38.We have had the UN humanitarian agency saying they have been forced
:08:39. > :08:40.to cut food assistance in half for the South Sudanese
:08:41. > :08:54.Never, says the acting UNHCR representative to Uganda,
:08:55. > :08:57.never has the gap between what is being provided
:08:58. > :09:09.First of all, in terms of forces in South Sudan and elsewhere
:09:10. > :09:22.But the fact of the matter is that this depends
:09:23. > :09:29.The mandate that the UN missions have.
:09:30. > :09:32.In South Sudan, this has been a peacekeeping mission.
:09:33. > :09:43.What we are talking about now is a protection force that
:09:44. > :09:44.will have a mandate of classifying spoilers,
:09:45. > :09:46.that will have an amendment of protecting civilians,
:09:47. > :09:48.protecting important installations in the capital.
:09:49. > :09:50.Basically, the mandate of the protection force
:09:51. > :10:02.is completely different from the mandate you have specified.
:10:03. > :10:06.I am sorry to interrupt you, but I want to be clear
:10:07. > :10:10.You have used the word pacify, and as I hear that, that suggests
:10:11. > :10:16.that troops would have the ability, if necessary, to kill South Sudanese
:10:17. > :10:18.who they regarded as being damaging to public interest.
:10:19. > :10:39.Is that right? Yes.
:10:40. > :10:41.South Sudanese who are spoilers trying to damage public interest
:10:42. > :10:45.or stability and public safety will be targeted by these forces.
:10:46. > :10:51.This is what the summit of the South African head of state
:10:52. > :10:53.discussed in the past and which the UN Security Council
:10:54. > :11:17.It goes without saying, if South Sudanese have decided,
:11:18. > :11:20.some of the South Sudanese which you may call a gun class,
:11:21. > :11:23.have decided to hold their population
:11:24. > :11:26.hostage, it is incumbent upon the world, upon the African
:11:27. > :11:29.continent, to come in and free these hostages.
:11:30. > :11:32.Let me put to you what a Sudanese broadcaster wrote in
:11:33. > :11:42.the Huffington Post at the start of the month.
:11:43. > :11:45.He said, our sovereignty wasn't an accident of history or a donation
:11:46. > :11:50.We cherish statehood and our glaring failures of self governors must not
:11:51. > :11:56.A force with a mandate to disarm our national army and take
:11:57. > :11:59.a Somalia in the Republic of South Sudan.
:12:00. > :12:12.South Sudan is already on the path to Somalia,
:12:13. > :12:16.with or without the deployment of the protection force.
:12:17. > :12:21.It is true that this country was earned through the blood
:12:22. > :12:23.of our civilians, and through some of us.
:12:24. > :12:26.I was shot twice in the war, I shed blood for it.
:12:27. > :12:29.But this is not the South Sudan that we had fought for
:12:30. > :12:43.So, the kind of South Sudan which is at the capture of the gun
:12:44. > :12:45.class, at the capture of the military aristocrats,
:12:46. > :12:49.and which this particular individual you have cited is trying to promote,
:12:50. > :12:58.that is not the kind of South Sudan that we fought for.
:12:59. > :13:00.I suspect that Mr Ngor would not say he was seeking
:13:01. > :13:04.to promote that, but you have raised the idea of the gun class
:13:05. > :13:06.or what some might call the warlords who are terrorising your country.
:13:07. > :13:11.You were Deputy Defence Minister when the new Republic
:13:12. > :13:21.We did a lot of things to transform the armed forces,
:13:22. > :13:24.and we did a lot of things in terms of security sector reform.
:13:25. > :13:40.If you go back to the beginning of that short history,
:13:41. > :13:43.we have done everything possible to be able to transform South Sudan
:13:44. > :13:57.from being a country under the control of the military
:13:58. > :14:00.to being a country where the military and security forces
:14:01. > :14:02.are subservient to the will of a democratically elected government.
:14:03. > :14:04.You accept your share of responsibility for
:14:05. > :14:07.I don't think I share in a responsibility in that,
:14:08. > :14:10.because I tried to do my best in terms of transforming
:14:11. > :14:25.We got all the obstacles because the chief executive officer
:14:26. > :14:26.of this organisation that we worked under
:14:27. > :14:37.He wanted the gun class to have power in terms of running
:14:38. > :14:41.the country and in terms of taking the country on the path it
:14:42. > :14:49.Is one of the problems here summed up in the dysfunctional relationship
:14:50. > :14:51.between President Salva Kiir and his former vice president,
:14:52. > :14:53.Machar, who was sacked and is currently in Khartoum
:14:54. > :14:57.One represents the Dinka and one the Nuer, the largest ethnic groups
:14:58. > :15:08.South Sudan was trying to unite those that cannot be united,
:15:09. > :15:18.and do not want to be united, and you can't overcome that.
:15:19. > :15:21.The ethnic dimension of the root causes of conflict in South Sudan
:15:22. > :15:23.are not key in the way they are being portrayed
:15:24. > :15:27.The fact of the matter is, there are two individuals
:15:28. > :15:29.who were at the helm of power in South Sudan,
:15:30. > :15:31.who had untamed and still have untamed ambition
:15:32. > :15:43.One trying to retain power by all means, using violence,
:15:44. > :15:45.the other trying to climb to power through the same methods
:15:46. > :15:57.And it is this that has ripped the country apart.
:15:58. > :16:00.It is not the ethnic people of South Sudan,
:16:01. > :16:17.it is not the tribes, that are responsible for the crisis
:16:18. > :16:21.Given this kind of inclination by these leaders to violence,
:16:22. > :16:24.and the use of ethnicity as an instrument of consolidating
:16:25. > :16:45.It has become necessary that South Sudan can do without the two.
:16:46. > :16:48.In July 2013, both you and another man were among the ministers
:16:49. > :16:50.dismissed when President Kiir dismissed his entire Cabinet.
:16:51. > :16:52.I wonder if this demand for intervention is a case
:16:53. > :16:57.No, I don't think it amounts to that.
:16:58. > :17:00.The fact is, on the ground, is that the government of the day
:17:01. > :17:03.has failed its responsibilities, in terms of protecting the people.
:17:04. > :17:05.They have failed their responsibilities in terms
:17:06. > :17:32.That ensures the public safety of the people of South Sudan.
:17:33. > :17:36.It is in that light that we are now calling for the -
:17:37. > :17:38.for this protection force, at least to provide those critical
:17:39. > :17:41.public services that the government of the day has completely
:17:42. > :17:51.Now, in July, as I say, you were sacked along with the rest
:17:52. > :17:55.At the end of December, you and a number of your colleagues
:17:56. > :17:57.had a news conference in which you accused President Kiir
:17:58. > :17:59.of surrendering the Sudanese people's liberation movement
:18:00. > :18:03.You effectively said he is on track to form a personal army,
:18:04. > :18:05.and you were subsequently charged and put on trial,
:18:06. > :18:11.The foreign minister, Barnaba Marial Benjamin,
:18:12. > :18:26.This has been investigated by the African Committee of Inquiry,
:18:27. > :18:40.The findings are out there, and it is very clear
:18:41. > :18:42.that there was not an attempted coup.
:18:43. > :18:45.There is a recently published book which has made it clear
:18:46. > :18:49.that there was no attempted coup, and so all the findings are pointing
:18:50. > :18:52.to the fact that there was a mutiny within the republican guard.
:18:53. > :19:01.But what happened after that, President Kiir saw it
:19:02. > :19:05.as an opportunity to spread his net to engulf all those that he wanted
:19:06. > :19:27.The government says the charges were dropped in the interests
:19:28. > :19:32.This is completely nonsense because, in the first place, we went
:19:33. > :19:35.We were put on trial on trumped-up charges.
:19:36. > :19:48.The case of the government collapsed, and they decided,
:19:49. > :19:51.six days before the court could pass its judgement,
:19:52. > :19:53.its final verdict, they decided to stop the process,
:19:54. > :20:06.and claiming all these kinds of things.
:20:07. > :20:19.Sorry to interrupt you, you have described the country
:20:20. > :20:21.as in effect leaderless at the moment.
:20:22. > :20:23.In an interview you gave with Voice of America,
:20:24. > :20:29.you are critical of both the President and his
:20:30. > :20:31.But what happens now, in that vacuum?
:20:32. > :20:34.We heard from United Nations nearly 5 million people urgently need food,
:20:35. > :20:37.Growth is down 60%, inflation has hit 50%,
:20:38. > :20:49.Poverty is up, but things are more expensive.
:20:50. > :20:51.There are 12,000 child soldiers, according to Unicef.
:20:52. > :20:53.This is a country which, five years after its independence,
:20:54. > :20:56.seems to be teetering on the verge of collapse.
:20:57. > :21:00.It is teetering on the verge of collapse because of bad
:21:01. > :21:03.leadership, and that is why we put it issue of leadership at the centre
:21:04. > :21:06.Because, if it was not under bad leadership,
:21:07. > :21:09.South Sudan would have not come to this kind of situation.
:21:10. > :21:12.And so the main issue to address at the moment is to have South Sudan
:21:13. > :21:15.back on the trails, led by different leaders.
:21:16. > :21:19.They are there in the multitude of South Sudanese.
:21:20. > :21:34.They are within the 10 million South Sudanese.
:21:35. > :21:47.Well, the most important thing at the moment is to create
:21:48. > :21:48.the necessary conditions, the necessary prerequisites,
:21:49. > :21:51.for the people of South Sudan to exercise their rights,
:21:52. > :22:01.It is not up to me to determine who those leaders for the people
:22:02. > :22:15.The trouble is, you have said in this interview already that
:22:16. > :22:17.you were not involved in the coup attempt,
:22:18. > :22:20.and yet you have made it absolutely clear that you want an armed
:22:21. > :22:23.intervention, which would clearly not be led by the political
:22:24. > :22:27.This would have the authority to, if necessary, shoot to kill those
:22:28. > :22:28.who are regarded as destabilising the country.
:22:29. > :22:31.That isn't democratic, that is not about South Sudanese
:22:32. > :22:39.So isn't the allegation which I read out to you at the start,
:22:40. > :22:41.from Gordib Buay, the Ambassador in charge of Diaspora
:22:42. > :22:43.in the United States, absolutely correct, that
:22:44. > :22:47.you are calling for the overthrow of the government of South Sudan?
:22:48. > :22:50.Are people of South Sudan capable of overthrowing the government,
:22:51. > :22:52.should this be the path they want to follow?
:22:53. > :22:54.The people of South Sudan are capable of changing
:22:55. > :22:55.their leaders through democratic means.
:22:56. > :22:59.What is happening at the moment is that the people of South Sudan
:23:00. > :23:02.are under capture by the gun class, and they ought to be set free.
:23:03. > :23:05.They ought to be liberated from the capture of the gun class.
:23:06. > :23:08.Unless you create that atmosphere where people of South Sudan
:23:09. > :23:10.are capable of voicing out what they see as undemocratic,
:23:11. > :23:13.what they see as autocratic, what they see as unacceptable
:23:14. > :23:16.from the behaviour of their leaders, the country is not going
:23:17. > :23:27.The country is stuck with leaders who have taken the country hostage.
:23:28. > :23:29.And that is why you need this kind of transition,
:23:30. > :23:33.where you have a new leadership, where you have a security for all,
:23:34. > :23:35.where you have the possibility of the people of South Sudan
:23:36. > :24:07.Majak D'Agoot, former deputy defence minister of South Sudan,
:24:08. > :24:09.thank you very much for being on HARDtalk.
:24:10. > :24:41.Still a few thunderstorms around at the moment,
:24:42. > :24:46.but they will be clearing out of the way, and for most of us
:24:47. > :24:51.Dry and bright, with sunny spells in most places.