Cattle keepers snub dialogue with farmers

By Sheila Ponnie
A planned dialogue between cattle keepers and farmers mainly from Central and Eastern Equatoria States has fallen flat after the former failed to turn up for the indaba organized by the South Sudan National Dialogue Steering Committee in Juba.
This comes in the wake of rising tensions between farmers and pastoralists who have been grazing cattle without permission, vandalizing crops in the process.
The National Dialogue Steering Committee organized a peace and reconciliation conference between the cattle keepers from Bor and farmers from the two states respectively to find a common ground but their efforts turned futile.
During the Equatoria Regional Conference last year, pastoralists and farmers requested the National Dialogue Committee to help them mend the widening rift.
Beatrice Aber Samson, a Member of Parliament from Magwi County of Eastern Equatoria expressed disappointment over the adjournment of the meeting as her constituency remains on the receiving end of vandalism engineered by nomads.
“I get calls every minute, every night. The moment tracks carrying cows arrive am called by the chiefs yet there is nothing I can do. I wanted this issue to come to a logical conclusion. I want us to meet I didn’t want the meeting to be postponed but since the leadership has decided to postpone it for another day, it’s okay.
“But we wanted this issue to be solved once and for all because these cows have deprived the livelihoods of the people in my constituency. Our livelihoods have been destroyed by these cows,” Abe thundered.
The MP added that cattle keepers forcefully displaced many people from their homes within Magwi and a good number of those affected were forced to relocate.
“Which is not good for people. Somebody must have a home state. This denial of livelihood is tantamount to the destruction of human dignity because our people cannot live like savages moving from one place to another, we want issues of cows to be resolved we want these cows to go back to where they are coming from,” she emphasized.
She questioned why cattle should be imposed on her constituency where people are not cattle keepers.
Elijah Biar, Representative of the cattle keepers from Bor Community blamed the organizing committee of the meeting for failing to notify them in advance noting that the current humanitarian crisis in Bor was another hindering factor.
“The information about the meeting was sent in a short note and besides that, the conditions in Bor due to the flooding at the moment are not pleasant, people are displaced and some of our members are not in the country,” Biar explained.
He however underlined that besides some members not being around, the National Dialogue Steering Committee’s conditions are that new members are not allowed to join the meeting except those who attended the first, second, and the third meetings.
“We tried to collect other members who were around but due to limited time, we could not find them in time so we ended up only three people in the meeting. Maybe they (the farmers) got the information earlier before us and they came in big numbers. How do you expect three people to negotiate with more than 70 or 100 people?” he questioned.
The Co-Chair of National Dialogue Steering Committee Angelo Bedo said there is a need for all members to be included in the meeting and that is the reason why the dialogue was postponed.
“We are going to adjourn the meeting and I think the best time will be on a Friday again, we want everybody to come in for the meeting next time because it will be unfair for the meeting to go on in their absence,” said Beda.
President Salva Kiir issued multiple presidential orders for cattle keepers to leave the farming areas and return to their states after the farmers raised complaints about the cows destroying their crops. But that seems to have changed nothing as cattle keepers remained adamant parading their livestock around the country.