PBS Newshour 7/11/2011
Excerpts from transcript
JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour): Rebecca Hamilton, what are the other main challenges facing this new country?
REBECCA HAMILTON, Pulitzer Center: Can I just say before the challenges that it's a huge moment of hope and expectation? Because I think we can get so quickly bogged down in the challenges, and what you have here as the greatest resource is a people among whom everybody knows someone who died in that war. And so the stakes are so huge to make this project of South Sudan work to honor the memory of those who were killed.
But you're right. The challenges are enormous. And I think the first one is whether this government, this new government is going to be able to deliver on citizen expectations. If you go and interview people who are not in the capital city, who are out in the rural areas, and you ask them what are their expectations of the new nation, they don't talk about an abstract sense of nationhood. They talk about real concrete change in their daily lives.
Are there going to be hospitals? Are there going to be schools that are not under a tree? Are there going to be roads? And they have been blaming the North, the Sudanese government in the North, for not having those things. That's certainly been a huge part of the story, but it's not the only thing.
And the question now is whether this new government is going to be able to deliver services to the population before they get frustrated. If they do get frustrated, there is every chance they won't channel that frustration through a political channel, but will instead resort to arms that are prolific across the region.
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JUDY WOODRUFF: So, Rebecca Hamilton, what do you look for in the months to come to see whether this new country is getting on its feet or not?
REBECCA HAMILTON: Yes. I think we have got to start firstly by changing the way we look at the new government of South Sudan.
For a long time, the international community has seen the South as the victim, which it has been the primary victim in the war years. But now we have got to be able to hold it just as accountable as we would any other government to make sure it lives up to the expectations of its people. That means dealing with issues that are already a problem, like corruption, a huge amount of corruption in the Southern government right now, about making sure that it is putting in the work to start diversifying its economy, because, if you are 98 percent dependent on oil, you are in a very risky situation.
And the good news is that South Sudan is this incredibly fertile territory. If you go, it is not the image that you have of Sudan. It's green and it's lush. It really could be a breadbasket for the region. But it means that they need to shift their focus and start developing the agricultural industry.
And then I think the other key thing is whether they are going to avoid the fate of so many liberation movements, which is that, when they get into power, they don't live up to the ideals that they were fighting for. And that means increasing political space in South Sudan. It's very much controlled by one party at the moment, and they need to open up that space, so that, when there are inevitable challenges and frustrations, they get channeled to a political system.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Rebecca Hamilton, thank you for helping fill out the portrait of this new country. We will be watching
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