28/06/2025
We Are SPLM/A
When the SPLA captured Source Yubu in Western Equatoria in 1989, we fled across the border to Bambuti in the Central African Republic (CAR). One night, SPLA soldiers entered this CAR town. We panicked and ran into the bushes. By morning, word spread that the SPLA was addressing refugees on the premises of the Catholic Church.
Since the night had passed peacefully;, we learned their mission was only to recover military vehicles and logistics brought over by the SAF (Sudanese Armed Forces). Throughout the operation, they had killed or harassed no one, not even the soldiers who had crossed the border with us. I was so impressed that I eagerly went to listen. For a moment, I even flirted with the idea of returning with them to continue the struggle against Arab domination we had begun at Tombura Secondary School.
After apologizing for displacing us twice, the SPLA spokesman explained why they were fighting and why they had crossed an international border. Then he said: “We are returning home shortly to continue the struggle for a New Sudan… you are welcome to join us. You also have the option to stay in CAR. But if you choose to stay, do so with the sole purpose of getting an education and sharing our stories with the outside world. We have given up education for guns, but when the field is cleared, we will need your knowledge to plant the right seeds. Whether you fight with guns or with pens, what matters is that you are fighting. We are all SPLA.”
Those powerful words became my compass. They kept me searching for school and using every platform to share Sudan's stories. When there were no good schools in Mboki, we attempted to reach Uganda through the DRC. When that failed, we trekked from Mboki towards Bangui, CAR's capital, searching for education. Finding no opportunities there, we hit the road to Cameroon and then to Nigeria. We spent thirteen years in Nigeria as street children, sleeping under bridges and church premises, working as gatemen or doing any job that offered shelter, all in that relentless search for education. After thirteen years without schooling, we finally sat in a classroom again in Nigeria. When we finished our first degrees and received scholarships to South Africa, we went to the airport without a ticket because we couldn't afford one. We did this solely to honour our promise: to fight with pens, not to return empty-handed, but armed with the knowledge of seeds and how to plant them when the field is cleared.
So, if you carried guns on the frontline, provided food or intelligence to those who fought, had family blood that watered the ground for seeds to grow, escaped and spent time in refugee camps or resettlement programs getting an education (preparing to return with knowledge and spread our people's stories), or voted in the referendum that ended Arab domination with the nuclear option of independence... you are SPLM/A, according to that officer.
Conversely, if you used your guns to kill, r**e, and oppress our people; used your education, knowledge, or government position to steal and loot money from our hospitals, schools, and road construction projects; sold our country back to former settler colonial masters or to other nations... you are not SPLM/A—and you never were and not even a Jeish Amer, because even as children who gave up their future in exchange for ours, they were not feared for stealing from their own people, but for surprising and overwhelming our enemies.
But a good story isn't just about the beginning; it's also about the end. The beautiful story of the SPLM/A, and, crucially, the heroic struggle of the South Sudanese people, now reaches its final chapter. Who gets to write it? Will we allow the thieves, looters, killers, and betrayers of our people's blood and our children's future to write SPLM/A's final chapters? Or will we, the people and the true liberators, stand up as we always have? Will we erase these brutal, blank paragraphs and purge these parasites from our history and body politic?
As children, we believed our parents would fight for a good future. Now, our children believe the same: that we will fight for a country that will not abandon them as "ni***rs", "Toronto boys", or commercial s*x workers on Juba's streets or in the night alleys of East Africa.
~ Remember Miamingi
