South Sudan: The State We Aspire To was conceived and written mid-2009, two years before the conduct of the referendum on self-determination. The comprehensive peace agreement provided the people of southern Sudan this inalienable right after nearly five decades of conflict. Peter Adwok Nyaba incisively discusses the high expectations and hopes the people of southern Sudan had, mixed with anxiety that characterises the fluid and unpredictable nature of the interim period leading to independence of South Sudan in 2011. In this second edition of South Sudan: The State We Aspire To, written after the eruption of violence in December 2013, the events vindicated what the author correctly discussed the situation southern Sudan was in as being "on the horns of a great dilemma", or the attitude of its leaders being "between treason and stupidity". It was inevitable that the internal crisis in the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM)/Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) leadership and failure to pursue socioeconomic development commensurate with its liberation ideology would plunge the country into hell on earth. Nyaba's prime objective in The State We Aspire To is to provoke a debate, inside and outside the SPLM and South Sudan at large, on the political future of South Sudan. He argues that the SPLM top leadership, cadres and general membership are collectively responsible for what is happening to this young nation having willfully abandoned the ideals for which the South Sudanese people sacrificed in the wars of national liberation.
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