Background: As part of the Peacebuilding Practitioners Interview Series, Jason Klocek interviewed Raphael Soloman Sabun, who joined RECONCILE International in 2007 and currently serves as the peace building and civic education coordinator. In this interview, Sabun speaks about his experiences with reconciliation and how his background led him to engage in his current work. Sabun also discusses the role of churches in contemporary southern Sudan.
Mr. Sabun, can you first speak about your background and how these experiences have brought you to your current work?
I am a Sudanese from Yei, but I completed my schooling elsewhere. First I completed my primary schooling in Juba. Then, I went to Loka for secondary school. Finally, I attended a university in Egypt. After my graduation from university there was the war in Sudan and so I could not come back. It was well known at that point, even in Egypt, that those who were educated were killed upon their return. I suppose this was because the government believed we posed some sort of threat being educated and having lived outside of Sudan. At that time, I had no idea where my parents where, but I knew that many people from Yei had fled to Uganda and were living near the Ugandan-Sudan border. So in 1994 I flew from Cairo to Entebbe and then rode up to the border. There I found my mother in one of the refugee camps, which had just horrible conditions. I also learned that my father had died in Sudan.
Those times were very difficult because there was no work. So I decided to go to Nairobi and see if I could find a job there. That is when I began to work with the Community Development Association (CDA), which was a Sudanese organization working behind the rebel lines. In my work with the CDA I returned to Sudan and worked hard to transfer professional skills to the local people. Since most of the men were fighting in the SPLA at that time, we focused most of our attention on training women to develop some basic skills that they could then use to support their families.
In 1998, I moved from the CDA to World Relief, a Christian-based NGO. I was hired to be a base manager, which involved actually opening several bases throughout southern Sudan, managing them for a time and do relief work from them. I still remember when I opened the first base. People were in such desperate conditions; many were even naked. So we worked hard to provide them with clothes and food, as well as to develop some education programs. Of course there were no schools at that time, so we conducted the lessons under the trees.
Eventually my work shifted more towards the education sector, and I became the education coordinator at one base in the Bahr el Ghazal region. I continued in this capacity until 2005, when World Relief formed a partnership with World Concern International. World Concern was primarily focused on microfinance, and they wanted a local Sudanese who knew the area very well. Since I had lived for eight years at the base, I was selected to become the assistant program manager for their new program on microfinance. We trained a large number of people, but especially women, in basic business practices and then granted them small business loans. This was very rewarding work because you could see some of the results of your labors. For example, when I left in 2007 we had nearly completed a village bank.
However, all those years I had been thinking about home and returning to Yei. I knew of RECONCILE International since it was established in 2003, and I was often asking if they had any work I could do in Equatoria. Finally, in 2007 the wanted to open an office in Juba and asked for my assistance. Since this brought me back closer to home and my mother, I accepted.
Not long after I helped to establish the first RECONCILE office in Juba, I received a fellowship from the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation to complete a two-month diploma course in Cape Town on reconciliation and justice. Upon my return, I was appointed as the head of our peace building and civic education program. I am also serving as the acting director for the moment, as our director is on leave this summer.
How has your faith influenced the work you do?
Since I had already worked before in a Christian organization, World Relief, it felt like coming home to a family at RECONCILE. People recognize their need for one another and appreciate the work that everyone does here. Every morning we begin with prayer to both thank God for what we have and to ask for God’s assistance in doing our work.
Can you talk about what the term reconciliation means to you?
To be honest, I feel it is a very vast term. Reconciliation involves things like confession, forgiveness, rights of the victims and culprits, and even justice. After you have taken care of these things, there is a deeper sense of reconciliation. Things are still very difficult in southern Sudan. Even the leaders in our government are both victims and perpetrators. I was behind the lines and I saw what people did, such as killing the wounded. These leaders need to confess and apologize if we are going to have strong reconciliation.
In the meantime, what we are trying to do here at RECONCILE is reduce the tension and hatred in our society. We are trying to support some sort of peaceful coexistence. I don’t think there will be real reconciliation until after there is confession and justice, and, this has no chance of taking place until after the referendum. Then people can be help accountable for the past and we might have the reconciliation we need so badly.
What are the major challenges to the work of RECONCILE?
What is letting us down the most is the current government. Yes, they have some policies, but there is no implementation. If you are to have reconciliation, you need some sort of mechanism. For example, if property has been taken from someone you need a way for them to recover it or get some sort of compensation. We don’t have anything like this happening in our society today.
Add to this corruption. If the government does become involved, let’s say over a dispute involving someone’s cattle. The government official will recover the cattle from the person who stole them, but then take a few for himself before returning the rest of the cattle to the rightful owner.
Another major issue is tribalism. Just last year there was vicious fighting between the Murle and Dinka in Bor. People were even killed while in the hospital. RECONCILE went to Bor and ran a series of workshops. First, we did workshops for people of each separate tribe. Then, they seemed ready, we brought both tribes together. We even met with church leaders and developed recommendations for the government to support the peace. But there was no follow-up once we submitted these recommendations.
There are still many problems like this not being adequately addressed. Just a few days ago I heard that the road from Juba to Bor is no longer safe to travel because of tribal fighting. The government is not doing enough to provide basic security to people. Of course, part of this security problem is the fact that the army has not been paid for two or three months. This also creates new problems, such as soldiers looting and stealing.
What role do the churches have to play today in southern Sudan?
They have a big role to play. During the war, the churches were the voice of the people. In many ways, they became the government. It was the churches that gave relief aid to the people and provided them with the basic resources they needed to survive. While the rebel groups were fighting—even fighting among themselves—the churches were caring for the people. So today, many people still do not trust the government. They do trust the churches.
The work of the churches also continues today to do what the government should be doing. As you know, we are a church-based organization. Just last month we took a number for local chiefs from this area up to a town on the north-south border to learn about that region. These chiefs had never seen that part of Sudan. They didn’t know much about the people, land, or court system there. In fact, many of them told me it was like visiting a different world.
What made this trip even more unique was that the town is mostly inhabited by those who have been Islamized and are now Muslims. But these Muslims still identify as southerners; they said they want to be part of southern Sudan. In fact, they were worried that we in the south will vote for unification in the referendum. Of course, this is the very same worry we have about them. So we discovered that despite our differences, we were all southerners and want to live together. The commissioners of that town were so happy that they now want to send people to Yei.
This is the work of reconciliation. We are also doing voter education in preparation for elections next February. All of this work is work that the government should also be doing. Yet, it is not. So, it is up to the churches to do this work.
Mr. Sabun, thank you very much for your time today.
I am a Sudanese from Yei, but I completed my schooling elsewhere. First I completed my primary schooling in Juba. Then, I went to Loka for secondary school. Finally, I attended a university in Egypt. After my graduation from university there was the war in Sudan and so I could not come back. It was well known at that point, even in Egypt, that those who were educated were killed upon their return. I suppose this was because the government believed we posed some sort of threat being educated and having lived outside of Sudan. At that time, I had no idea where my parents where, but I knew that many people from Yei had fled to Uganda and were living near the Ugandan-Sudan border. So in 1994 I flew from Cairo to Entebbe and then rode up to the border. There I found my mother in one of the refugee camps, which had just horrible conditions. I also learned that my father had died in Sudan.
Those times were very difficult because there was no work. So I decided to go to Nairobi and see if I could find a job there. That is when I began to work with the Community Development Association (CDA), which was a Sudanese organization working behind the rebel lines. In my work with the CDA I returned to Sudan and worked hard to transfer professional skills to the local people. Since most of the men were fighting in the SPLA at that time, we focused most of our attention on training women to develop some basic skills that they could then use to support their families.
In 1998, I moved from the CDA to World Relief, a Christian-based NGO. I was hired to be a base manager, which involved actually opening several bases throughout southern Sudan, managing them for a time and do relief work from them. I still remember when I opened the first base. People were in such desperate conditions; many were even naked. So we worked hard to provide them with clothes and food, as well as to develop some education programs. Of course there were no schools at that time, so we conducted the lessons under the trees.
Eventually my work shifted more towards the education sector, and I became the education coordinator at one base in the Bahr el Ghazal region. I continued in this capacity until 2005, when World Relief formed a partnership with World Concern International. World Concern was primarily focused on microfinance, and they wanted a local Sudanese who knew the area very well. Since I had lived for eight years at the base, I was selected to become the assistant program manager for their new program on microfinance. We trained a large number of people, but especially women, in basic business practices and then granted them small business loans. This was very rewarding work because you could see some of the results of your labors. For example, when I left in 2007 we had nearly completed a village bank.
However, all those years I had been thinking about home and returning to Yei. I knew of RECONCILE International since it was established in 2003, and I was often asking if they had any work I could do in Equatoria. Finally, in 2007 the wanted to open an office in Juba and asked for my assistance. Since this brought me back closer to home and my mother, I accepted.
Not long after I helped to establish the first RECONCILE office in Juba, I received a fellowship from the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation to complete a two-month diploma course in Cape Town on reconciliation and justice. Upon my return, I was appointed as the head of our peace building and civic education program. I am also serving as the acting director for the moment, as our director is on leave this summer.
How has your faith influenced the work you do?
Since I had already worked before in a Christian organization, World Relief, it felt like coming home to a family at RECONCILE. People recognize their need for one another and appreciate the work that everyone does here. Every morning we begin with prayer to both thank God for what we have and to ask for God’s assistance in doing our work.
Can you talk about what the term reconciliation means to you?
To be honest, I feel it is a very vast term. Reconciliation involves things like confession, forgiveness, rights of the victims and culprits, and even justice. After you have taken care of these things, there is a deeper sense of reconciliation. Things are still very difficult in southern Sudan. Even the leaders in our government are both victims and perpetrators. I was behind the lines and I saw what people did, such as killing the wounded. These leaders need to confess and apologize if we are going to have strong reconciliation.
In the meantime, what we are trying to do here at RECONCILE is reduce the tension and hatred in our society. We are trying to support some sort of peaceful coexistence. I don’t think there will be real reconciliation until after there is confession and justice, and, this has no chance of taking place until after the referendum. Then people can be help accountable for the past and we might have the reconciliation we need so badly.
What are the major challenges to the work of RECONCILE?
What is letting us down the most is the current government. Yes, they have some policies, but there is no implementation. If you are to have reconciliation, you need some sort of mechanism. For example, if property has been taken from someone you need a way for them to recover it or get some sort of compensation. We don’t have anything like this happening in our society today.
Add to this corruption. If the government does become involved, let’s say over a dispute involving someone’s cattle. The government official will recover the cattle from the person who stole them, but then take a few for himself before returning the rest of the cattle to the rightful owner.
Another major issue is tribalism. Just last year there was vicious fighting between the Murle and Dinka in Bor. People were even killed while in the hospital. RECONCILE went to Bor and ran a series of workshops. First, we did workshops for people of each separate tribe. Then, they seemed ready, we brought both tribes together. We even met with church leaders and developed recommendations for the government to support the peace. But there was no follow-up once we submitted these recommendations.
There are still many problems like this not being adequately addressed. Just a few days ago I heard that the road from Juba to Bor is no longer safe to travel because of tribal fighting. The government is not doing enough to provide basic security to people. Of course, part of this security problem is the fact that the army has not been paid for two or three months. This also creates new problems, such as soldiers looting and stealing.
What role do the churches have to play today in southern Sudan?
They have a big role to play. During the war, the churches were the voice of the people. In many ways, they became the government. It was the churches that gave relief aid to the people and provided them with the basic resources they needed to survive. While the rebel groups were fighting—even fighting among themselves—the churches were caring for the people. So today, many people still do not trust the government. They do trust the churches.
The work of the churches also continues today to do what the government should be doing. As you know, we are a church-based organization. Just last month we took a number for local chiefs from this area up to a town on the north-south border to learn about that region. These chiefs had never seen that part of Sudan. They didn’t know much about the people, land, or court system there. In fact, many of them told me it was like visiting a different world.
What made this trip even more unique was that the town is mostly inhabited by those who have been Islamized and are now Muslims. But these Muslims still identify as southerners; they said they want to be part of southern Sudan. In fact, they were worried that we in the south will vote for unification in the referendum. Of course, this is the very same worry we have about them. So we discovered that despite our differences, we were all southerners and want to live together. The commissioners of that town were so happy that they now want to send people to Yei.
This is the work of reconciliation. We are also doing voter education in preparation for elections next February. All of this work is work that the government should also be doing. Yet, it is not. So, it is up to the churches to do this work.
Mr. Sabun, thank you very much for your time today.
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