South Sudan was at birth as a free state in 2011, lapped in the hope of the world. It has become a horrible proof of Hobbes, for without a common Power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called Warre. However Peace may be coming, from the remarkable work of the Anglican Church and the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Many new countries claim that their independence was a delivery from ‘slavery’, but in the case of South Sudan that is literally true. Northern Sudan is an Arab region on the Nile, but the south is Sub-Saharan Africa, and Arab slavers even into the twenty-first century raided and burnt its villages to carry off their human booty. How many women and children were labouring as slaves in Khartoum, their husbands and fathers having been slaughtered, we may never know. There are some in bondage in the north still. The South was not governed by Khartoum but tyrannised, until finally a peace treaty could give the south its desired independence to create a government for those abused people where their had been none before, not really since British rule.
When 98.83% of the population voted for independence, that seemed to show national unity and there was reason to hope that the new country would be united in endeavour. One voice though three hundred and sixty years before had warned that would not be so:
Nor is it enough for the security, which men desire should last all the time of their life, that they be governed, and directed by one judgement, for a limited time; as in one Battell, or one Warre. For though they obtain a Victory by their unanimous endeavour against a forraign enemy; yet afterwards, when either they have no common enemy, or he that by one part is held for an enemy, is by another part held for a friend, they must needs by the difference of their interests dissolve, and fall again into a Warre amongst themselves.
We have seen what happened. It was a new state, and there was all to play for, and just one nudge might overthrow one regime and allow another warlord or tribe to take over. It just took a slight, an allegation of unfair treatment by one tribe against another.
if any one, or more of them, pretend a breach of the Covenant made by the Soveraigne at his Institution; and others, or one other of his Subjects, or himselfe alone, pretend there was no such breach, there is in this case, no Judge to decide the controversie: it returns therefore to the Sword again; and every man recovereth the right of Protecting himselfe by his own strength, contrary to the designe they had in the Institution
Common sense, you would think, or fear, would keep national unity, because the country had only achieved independence after decades of bloodshed and it could yet be a fragile independence. Who could know whether the north, Sudan, would look on a power vacuum as an opportunity to move south again and snuff out this resented breakaway state. In fact they have not, perhaps realising that they have no interest there, restricting themselves to holding undecided patches of territory, but it could so easily have been different.
Instead of unity, the country fell into warring factions each after its prize and barely controlled even within their factions.
What price loyalty to an entity which has no history or ancestral call on any one? The Obligation of Subjects to the Soveraign is understood to last as long, and no longer, than the power lasteth, by which he is able to protect them. For the right men have by Nature to protect themselves, when none else can protect them, can by no Covenant be relinquished. The Soveraignty is the Soule of the Common-wealth; which once departed from the Body, the members doe no more receive their motion from it.
The end of Obedience is Protection; which, wheresoever a man seeth it, either in his own, or in anothers sword, Nature applyeth his obedience to it, and his endeavour to maintaine it. And though Soveraignty, in the intention of them that make it, be immortall; yet is it in its own nature, not only subject to violent death, by forreign war; but also through the ignorance, and passions of men, it hath in it, from the very institution, many seeds of a naturall mortality, by Intestine Discord.
And yet there may be hope born of the reality of what has been seen here. In such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.
There is still a memory of peace, of what it can bring. The greatest peacemakers are in the Church. There are more worshiping Anglicans in South Sudan than in the Church of England, and they worship the Prince of Peace. The Archbishop of Canterbury himself went to South Sudan and joined the hands of enemies.
You might not have read of Justin Welby’s heroic efforts to end the war, putting himself into one of the more brutal killing grounds of the Earth, but why would you – the media will report a pre-set narrative and this does not fit that narrative. He as there though, and guns ceased. We have for now seen the beginnings of peace. We have yet to see if at last the swords have been beaten into ploughshares and the spears into pruning hooks, but we now know who will make that peace if it can be: the Christian congregations of South Sudan.
There must be no complacency though but reconciliation and an understanding of the common nature of the undertaking of the commonwealth: the nature of War, consisteth not in actuall fighting; but in the known disposition thereto, during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary. All other time is PEACE.
See also
- The Noble Savage, Caliban, and Hobbes
- Of the natural Condition of Mankind as concerning their Felicity and Misery
- Quarrel of a dying empire poisoning modernity
Books
- By Thomas Hobbes:
- By Anthony Burgess:
- By H G Wells:
- By Aldous Huxley:
- By George Orwell:
- By Jordan Peterson:
