22/05/2025
New Blood in the Veins of the Movement… and the Vultures of Power Lurk by the Roadside.
By: Isaac Chol
Nations are not built by a single generation, but are carried forward like waves passing the secrets of the sea. The generation of revolution hands the torch to the generation of builders, so that the dream once born with a gunshot and a cry may finally be fulfilled.
Today — as I watched young men, barely in the prime of their youth, taking their constitutional oath to lead the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), it felt as though I were witnessing the rebirth of South Sudan itself.
Yes, gentlemen… in a bold and commendable move, President Salva Kiir chose to inject fresh, youthful blood into a party born from the womb of revolution — a party whose history was written in the blood of men and women who neither knew luxury nor sought the glow of cameras. These were patriots who did not auction off their homeland for petty personal ambitions.
And then there’s a painful truth that opposition voices refuse to acknowledge:
The truth of Dr. Bol Mel — yes, Bol Mel, the man who spent the better years of his life building, not destroying. A man whose name, when spoken in political and development circles, signifies that something tangible was accomplished for this nation.
Who doesn’t know Bol Mel?
It’s a bitter truth some would choke on even if they swallowed the entire Nile along with it — the undeniable name of Dr. Bol Mel.
A man who never wore the garb of politics as mere rhetoric. A man who never sat idly in Facebook cafés hurling insults.
A man whose legacy is told by the roads he built — roads like Bor–Juba highway, connecting regions like arteries in the body of this nation, through companies like ABMC Thai-South Sudan and ARC Resource Corporation Ltd.
His economic chapter came when he assumed the helm of the South Sudan Chamber of Commerce, Industry, and Agriculture — drafting commercial policies, opening doors for private investment in a country whose windows once looked out only onto emptiness.
Yet among us lurk those who read nothing beyond the headlines of sedition. Hideous faces long accustomed to hypocrisy behind masks of faux patriotism.
These self-proclaimed businessmen and businesswomen, whose account books are as empty as the heart of a lover who betrayed and left stranded on the roadside of memory.
Since 2005, President Salva Kiir opened his heart, his home, and his seat of power to many. He forgave, reconciled, and placated. And what did they do?
Nothing.
No project. No factory. No bridge. Not even a modest workshop for children’s shoes.
Only unrestrained lust for power.
Today — as the president propels young blood into the party’s leadership — I say: Yes. This is the moment we’ve waited for.
The SPLM was never the exclusive preserve of a worn-out elite, nor the playground of banquet comrades.
The SPLM — as the late Dr. John Garang taught us — is the revolution living in the heart of a shoeshiner, in the sweat of a tea seller, in the patience of a soldier in the trenches, and in the laughter of children in the backstreets.
To the new leaders:
Know that tough days lie ahead. You inherit a burdensome legacy and fields riddled with political landmines.
My advice:
Do not let the rats of discord sneak into this nation’s storerooms.
Do not reconcile with the traitors, nor trust those who have already betrayed.
And to you — dreamers of seizing power through backroom ladders — wait.
Elections are coming. And if you remain unsatisfied, the public squares will welcome us all.
And as we say: “Let the one who harvests fill his basket.”