There is a question echoing in the quiet rage of South Sudan’s classrooms, clinics, courts, and ministries: Can South Sudanese professionals be “the drop that caused the cup of bitterness to overflow?” The answer, if history is any guide, is yes. And if the current silence holds, it may be the greatest betrayal of all.
Across the country, the story is one of dignity without reward, service without salary. Teachers teach under mango trees, unpaid for months, drilling arithmetic into overcrowded classes beneath leaking tin roofs. Doctors stitch wounds by candlelight in generator-lit hospitals, their tools few, their supplies expired, their expertise wasted. Engineers stand by as corruption eats through roads, water systems, and projects that never see completion. Civil servants report to ministries that haven’t seen electricity for weeks, shuffling papers for salaries that don’t last the week, if they arrive at all. This is not merely hardship. This is the institutionalized erosion of a nation’s professional spine. And that spine is breaking, not from weakness, but from the unbearable weight of complicity, silence, and a dangerous myth: that only guns can change South Sudan.
We must unlearn this myth. We must remember what the world already knows. It was not guns that brought down apartheid. It was not an armed rebellion that cracked open Soviet control of Eastern Europe. It was not bullets that pushed colonial Britain out of India. It was ordinary people, teachers, doctors, lawyers, workers, refusing to cooperate with injustice. It was professionals saying no. And it worked because when the people who keep a country functioning choose to withdraw their cooperation, even the most brutal regimes find themselves naked and desperate.
This is not the South Sudan we envisioned when we sang for independence. We did not celebrate under the flag so that schools would remain broken, hospitals would rot, and our brightest would flee or fold into survival. We did not fight for a country ruled by thieves, where loyalty to corruption is rewarded and competence is punished. And yet, here we are, exhausted, demoralized, fragmented. But the truth is: we are not powerless. We are simply unorganized. And that must end now.
Professionals are the regime’s oxygen. Every day that we continue to quietly show up to broken systems, we allow them to breathe. When hospitals expect doctors and nurses to serve without proper equipment, when teachers stand before classes without resources or recognition, when police and military personnel are sent out without training, support, or protection, and when judges preside in courtrooms without safety or respect for the law, simply showing up is not an act of patriotism. To continue working under these conditions, without protest or demand for change, is not a noble sacrifice for the country; rather, it quietly sustains a system that fails to honour its people or their labour. True patriotism demands that we insist on dignity, tools, and protection for those who serve.
What if we refused? What if doctors demanded sterile conditions and working equipment before lifting a scalpel? What if teachers refused to fill minds with half-baked knowledge, not because the teachers lack competency, but course materials? What if engineers stopped certifying unsafe buildings and roads destined to collapse? What if lawyers stood together and said: “It is the duty of every citizen to disobey unjust authority and unjust laws”?
This is not sedition. This is civic duty.
Nonviolent resistance is not a soft option. It is not passive. It is strategic. It is bold. And, perhaps most importantly, it is proven. From Poland’s Solidarity movement to South Africa’s anti-apartheid struggle, from India’s independence movement to the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, the world has witnessed the transformative power of organized, non-violent resistance. These movements succeeded not through bullets, but through the coordinated withdrawal of cooperation from unjust systems. Of course, it requires organisation, discipline, coordination, and an unwavering belief that justice does not require violence to prevail.
Why not ours?
The regime is weak. Not in arms, but in legitimacy. The regime’s only real power lies in the silence of those it depends on to survive, you. Professionals hold the levers of legitimacy, the tools of trust. The public believes in you, not in politicians or militias. And that is your greatest weapon.
Imagine a South Sudan where professional bodies refuse to work in substandard institutions. Where lawyers form shadow courts that document and expose injustices. Where doctors set minimum standards for care and refuse to work under dangerous conditions. Where educators establish independent knowledge networks. These are not dreams. These are strategies, tested and proven in other lands, waiting for bold minds to localize them here.
But let us be honest: the regime will not yield quietly. Repression is part of its playbook. Arrests, intimidation, smear campaigns, digital surveillance, these are the tools of every failing autocracy. They will infiltrate unions, offer bribes to co-opt leaders, criminalize dissent, even target your families to break your will. This is not paranoia, it’s pattern. From Egypt to Eritrea, Syria to Sudan, regimes have learned how to harass, contain, and fracture professional resistance. But they have not learned how to outmanoeuvre solidarity. The regime’s greatest fear is not armed rebellion; it is organized conscience.
To resist this repression, we must build resilient, secure, and decentralized networks: Start small. Professional circles, volunteer clinics, shadow legal reviews, anonymous whistleblowing platforms, informal unions- each act chips away at the regime’s monopoly on legitimacy. Each new network grows our capacity to say “no” together.
The international community will take notice. Aid agencies, donor governments, and professional networks know that we are governed by thieves and a criminal enterprise. But they are still listening to you, if you choose to speak. As professionals, your words carry more weight than those of any warlord or official. Leverage that. Build relationships with international bodies. Show them we are not just victims; we are agents of change.
The time for waiting has passed. Every year of inaction costs us more: more brain drain, more youth radicalized by hopelessness, more mothers dying in childbirth, more children miseducated or not educated at all. We cannot afford another decade of quiet suffering. Not when we have the tools, the knowledge, and the authority to change course.
Let us reclaim our power, not with weapons, but with courage and coordination. Refuse to normalize failure. Refuse to endorse fraud. Refuse to participate in the machinery of collapse. If we do this together, we can build a South Sudan that is worthy of its people. Our children are watching. Our patients are bleeding. Our students are waiting. And history, merciless as it is, will judge whether we rose or folded.
To South Sudan’s professionals: your silence is the regime’s oxygen. Your collective action is its coffin. The stethoscope, the gavel, the chalk, the blueprint, these are not just tools of your trade. They are the instruments of liberation. Use them. Now.
The writer, Dr. Remember Miamingi, is a human rights lawyer, governance specialist, and advisor to the Reclaim Campaign. He has worked extensively across Africa on transitional justice, human rights, and civic engagement.
The views expressed in ‘opinion’ articles published by Radio Tamazuj are solely those of the writer. The veracity of any claims made is the responsibility of the author, not Radio Tamazuj.