Talk:Saving South Sudan

Discussion of the Constitution in General

Comments, suggestions about the proposed Constitution of the United Tribes of South Sudan, in general, should go in this first section.

To comment about a specific part of the Constitution, you can study the entries below to see how to contribute, or study the article Contributing to specific parts of the proposed UTSS Constitution.

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Discussion of Specific Portions

Preview #11 Freedom of Religion & Speech

(11) to protect freedom of religion, which means there can be no federal law, passed by Congress, forcing anyone to attend, give to, agree with, or pay taxes to, any religious organization.

Nor any law that limits the free expression by any citizen or government official of any religious view, but especially these principles found exclusively in Christianity: abhorrence of slavery, of torture, of war (except in self defense), of less than equal protection of the laws for the most vulnerable (women, children, orphans, immigrants), of bribes, and of sexual violence.

However, federal laws may restrict speech – even religious speech – which persuasively calls people to commit crimes as defined by the laws of Congress, (which represent the majority of South Sudanese voters), on communication platforms which cross tribal boundaries.

Discussion

1. 11 says what the First Amendment to the U.S. constitution was originally understood to mean.

There was a problem in early America that is like the problem in South Sudan today with Christian and Moslem tribes trying to live side by side under the same laws. In Christian tribes today, slavery and many things done to women are crimes, and it is a crime to even promote them, while in Moslem tribes they are religious obligations which they can’t avoid promoting when they read their scriptures in public! How can they live together in peace?

From 1789 to 1860, the Southern states held slaves – some captured from Sudan by Moslems – which was a serious crime in the laws of the Northern States. Both sides stood on the same Scriptures! So the division then should have been much easier to resolve than the division today. But the division was supported by violently different claims about those same Scriptures.

Then there was war. Four years. The war that produced the most casualties of any war in U.S. history, 750,000, and the only war in world history fought by free men, to free slaves.

The war didn’t stop when the troops went home. The bullets stopped, but the lawyers started. In the United States, the 13th Amendment was enacted in 1866 to outlaw slavery except for conviction for a crime, so the Southern states simply passed laws against what everybody does, that applied only to blacks. Blacks “violated” these “laws”, and then were “sentenced” to slavery.

So the 14th Amendment was enacted in 1868 that made states give everybody “equal protection of the laws”. There could be no laws that applied more to blacks than to others. This was the first time, since the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1789, that the federal laws and courts had jurisdiction over what states do within their own borders.

Although it is very good that slavery was finally outlawed throughout the United States, jurisdiction over the internal affairs of states has been evil.

For example, based on that same “equal protection of the laws” clause of our 14th Amendment, our Supreme Court has ordered all states to allow mothers to kill their unborn babies, for the past 44 years. And now courts are using it to force states to certify sodomite (homosexual) “marriage”.

It took a bloody civil war, and the irregular passage of Constitutional Amendments without letting Southern Congressmen even vote, to finally outlaw slavery in Christian America. It may be much more difficult for the UTSS to force Moslem tribes to give up slavery and subjugation of women, where those crimes are embedded and honored in their religion!

So this will be a choice faced by South Sudanese: do you want a government that will force all tribes to give all their citizens “equal protection of the laws”, the way the 14th Amendment does for the U.S.? Do you want to force all tribes to apply its laws equally to all people? Or do you want the federal government to let such tribes alone, to live by whatever religious values they choose?

In other words, do you want to outlaw Sharia?

In other words, where you have a Moslem tribe, do you want to make it a condition of joining the UTSS, that they outlaw slavery and subjugation of women, and all the rest of their Qu’ran-honored crimes? So that if they refuse, they may not join the UTSS but will become their own sovereign nation, like a Native American tribe, within South Sudan’s borders?

Federal jurisdiction over the equality of laws within tribes will place a considerable burden on federal courts.

Unless the UTSS Constitution clearly asserts such jursidiction, Federal laws will have no jurisdiction over laws any Tribe may make concerning activity within its borders. Congress may pass only federal laws.

For example, a Moslem tribe may choose to retain slavery. However, if its slaves were captured from across its borders, federal laws have jurisdiction. If people are held by a tribe who never wanted to be members of the tribe, and who have not been lawfully convicted of any crime, that is kidnapping across a tribal border and a federal matter.

Perhaps there is value in permitting evil to continue among those who choose it, as a reminder to the rest of the land how ugly it is. But a federal Congress with jurisdiction over “man stealing” across borders, may establish extradition agreements to free people forced by a tribe to join it, or to be Moslems.

As for visitors to a tribe, they are subject to its laws while visiting, just as visitors to another U.S. State, or to any other country, are subject to its laws while visiting. It is only a small problem in the U.S., where the variation is not nearly so dramatic as between Christian and Moslem laws. The federal government may certainly issue warning bulletins for tourists.

Governor Abbot of Texas wants to pass a Constitutional Amendment to “1. Prohibit Congress from regulating activity that occurs wholly within one State.” That’s what the U.S. Constitution did, before 1868. Its collision with “equal protection of the laws” may need more discussion of how they can operate side by side in America.

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1-1 The House

The Legislature of the United Tribes of Southern Sudan, consisting of a Senate and House of Representatives, is the only body authorized by this Constitution to create laws. Adapted from Article 1, Section 1, U.S. Constitution

Discussion

In other words, neither the President nor the Supreme Court can pass laws. The President can veto laws, thus forcing Congress to pass them by a 2/3 majority rather than just a “simple” majority (over 50%). But the President can’t pass a law. Today, our president’s cabinet writes “administrative laws” authorizing bureaucrats to swarm across America writing rules, levying fines, and seizing property, and our Supreme Court sometimes overturns laws and writes new ones, but these powers are not in our Constitution.

Here is a choice for Sudanese: should the UTSS legislature be called “Congress”? How about “Parliament”, or simply “Legislature” – meaning the body that legislates, or passes laws?

“Parliament” means where the executive, the Prime Minister, is elected by the legislature from its own members; in a “Congress”, the President is independent and is elected directly by the people. There are a few other differences.

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1-1-1 Composition and Election of Members

(Article 1, Section 1, Clause 1) Members of the House of Representatives will be elected every two years, from each tribe, by the adults of that tribe, by secret ballot. Candidates must be as qualified as leaders of their Tribal Council. The President has no legal power to appoint Representatives, remove Representatives, or to influence elections by any exercise of law. Adapted from Article 1, Section 1, Clause 1, U.S. Constitution

Discussion

Tribes, or States? A choice to consider is whether the subdivisions of the South Sudan government should be tribes, or the current system of 32 “states”, increased recently from the 10 created by the 2011 Constitution.

When you tell people where you are from, do you say “I am from ____ state” or “I am from ____ tribe”?

What authority settles issues within a tribe or between tribes: the state governor, or the tribal council?

What political subdivision has been constant for generations, with boundaries everyone has known for years: tribes, or states?

Divisions by tribes are natural, fixed, and familiar. Self government within tribes is centuries-old habit. Tribes may be a more stable foundation of government than the new “states” whose number changes about every two years, led by governors not elected by the people they govern but appointed by someone from another tribe.

This will be a choice for South Sudanese. Perhaps states will continue to be the choice. Meanwhile these proposals will proceed as if Tribes will prove the preferred subdivision.

What others say about the importance of tribal authority:

The Brookings Institute recommends: “Integrate traditional institutions into conflict resolutjion mechanisms. Ethnic groups in South Sudan, like in other parts of Africa, have long employed traditional institutions (e.g., village or tribal councils) to resolve conflicts. As part of the nation-building project, South Sudan should carefully examine these traditional institutions and incorporate them into its constitutionally mandated legal and judicial institutions in ways that are consistent with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and other international treaties and conventions.”

Sudan: Behind the defiance, a whirr of diplomacy - May 7th 2009 - Violence in south Sudan - Old problems in the new south - Southern Sudan is becoming bloodier than Darfur - Jun 2nd 2009 Middle East and Africa “Tribal councils come together to make what we Dinka term “the good decision.” 

When conflicts arise or situations present themselves, the people, led by their chiefs and their elders, will sit in a circle to discuss what needs to be done. This is the traditional way, and it apparently has worked over many, many generations.” Seed of South Sudan: Memoir of a ‘Lost Boy’ Refugee by Majok Marier and Estelle Ford-Williamson, pub. McFarland, p. 168,

These sorts of tribal fights over access to the best grazing lands have been at the heart of many of Sudan's bloody wars. Up to the 1980s, such conflict was well managed by local inter-tribal councils. Such forums used to resolve how far the nomadic tribes, or pastoralists, would be allowed to bring their cattle through the lands of settled farmers. The marauding herds would cause a lot of damage as they passed through the farmers' fields; but inter-tribal councils worked out the compensation that the nomads had to pay to the farmers as a result.

This system, however, broke down in the 1980s after the terrible drought and famine of the early 1980s, during which some nomadic tribes lost as much as 80% of their livestock. Furthermore, many of the Arab tribes were now armed, for their own political purposes, by the Islamist politicians in the central government in Khartoum. This made the young nomads much less inclined to use old peaceful arbitration methods; now the armed nomads could just shoot their way through.

But it is dispiriting that these clashes still happen, and on the scale of the past few weeks. In recent years the UN and international NGOs have tried to revive the old tribal arbitration systems, even demarcating the seasonal migration routes with clearly marked poles. Yet still the fighting continues, in the south, in the centre and in Darfur.

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