Juba Arabi Should Be Both An Official And National Language Of South Sudan

The first Juba Arabi paper went to the print today, and there has never been a better time than today to pick which languages we are supposed to use for both our official and national mediums of communication going into the future. There is no doubt that we could use English as an official means of communication because it would tremendously help us to easily tread the international waters of commerce and trade with confidential mastery.

On the other hand, we have to make Juba Arabi our national medium of communication since it is spoken all over the land and even our grandmothers in their village localities know how to speak it. Tanzania has more Muslim population than South Sudan and they don't use the much more standardized Middle Eastern Arabic version. Juba Arabi is a pidgin, and that means it is always everchanging and evolving to different varied medium than say, 30 years prior in the past. Juba Arabi is our own version of Arabic, owing to our shared history with Sudan and Egypt.

As long we can remember, this language has been incorporating many native words into its mainstream lifeblood since it first came into existence from the Arabo-Southern Sudan socioeconomic friction from former united Sudan and Anglo-Egyptian Sudan.

No other nation or country, or nation-state in any part of the world could lay claim to the ownership of Juba Arabi except South Sudan, because other versions of pidgin Arabic are not spoken the way Juba Arabi is spoken in South Sudan. Furthermore, Juba Arabi is written in Roman numerals which make life a little easier for the layperson to grasp, unlike the wicked Middle Eastern version that is read from left to right with complicated letters that look like fried chicken legs. Even though Kiswahili is a sub-Saharan African language, the majority of our people have little or no attachment to much of its historical lifespan.

We began to encounter the speakers of Kiswahili once we start to venture to the East African nations of Kenya and Tanzania in the mid 20th century. Juba Arabi is our own version of South Sudanese Kiswahili: for example, a soap is similar in meaning with the exception of a slight addition of an “I” at the end of the spelling; sabun for Juba Arabi, and sabuni for Kiswahili.

The majority of South Sudanese are religiously leaning to Christianity and varied African animist religions so there would be no absolute need for us to force ourselves to camp with the Islamic Middle East and North Africa again. We were part of the Islamic Middle East and North Africa for over 100 years, but we were not wanted to be part of a superior civilization which degraded and dehumanized members of the black race. We need a language that is always changing with the cultural tides of time within our given national landscape instead of a much more rigid and standardized version of Arabic from Sudan – MENA (the Middle East and North Africa).

The Middle Eastern Arabic is highly religious and its cultural embodiment does bode well with the progressive nature of our nation, which is yearning to progress from every socio-economic standpoint and above all, emphasize equality in all walks of life; we wish to pursue gender equality so no one will be left behind and everyone has every right and chance to pursue her/his dreams without any cultural discriminatory bias because of her gender, religion, ethnicity and what region that he/she may hail from.

In Saudi Arabia, women didn't get to drive cars until two months ago and the Middle Eastern women are covered in burqa clothing from head to toe. North Africa and the Middle East have a civilization, however, it is not an open culture where you are openly free to interact with people from different cultures and ethnic backgrounds. Black Africans were openly enslaved on their own continent this year in Libya. In addition, thousands of cases are reported every year revealing horrid stories about how black African domestic maids are maltreated in the Middle East.

Those domestic employees work from morning till dawn for just 250 dollars a month. Our leaders in the August House should never dream of pushing our people back into the lion's den. We deserve to live in a freer world and away from the brutal choking world of the Middle East and North Africa. In this day and age, everyone is free to do whatever he/she likes to embark upon without jeopardizing or dragging other people into their mess without their consent.

Some of our politicians are free to leave South Sudan and head to wherever they wish to reside in the Middle East and North Africa. No exact two people would be perfectly and precisely identical in personality and taste of lifestyles; so everyone has a right to pursue their lifelong dreams no matter where the life takes them.

Apioth Mayom Apioth has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Social Sciences from the Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA USA. He is an Admission Counselor from the University of North Dakota. He can be reached at: [email protected].