Let the destruction begin...

I've returned to Rumbek again, and it's so nice to be back. Back with Oxfam's great team, the fun expat crew and our movie nights and pool volleyball, my local friends, hanging out in the square watching the basketball and the traditional dance. Rumbek is certainly my favourite place in South Sudan.

What's NOT so nice though is what the Department of Lands and Planning has done to some of the neighbourhoods and the market around Rumbek town. They're completely flattened. Huge trees are uprooted, houses and fences knocked over, buildings razed to the ground. And it's all in the name of progress.

Since South Sudan has become a new country, the Government is going through a process of subdivision and land allocation to ensure that land ownership is sorted out and town planning is done properly.

The problem with that though, is that the process is completely unfair, corrupt and non-transparent. People's houses that are 'in the way' have been knocked over to allow for the construction of roads, with little (1-2 days) prior warning that they need to move, and no compensation. I have been told that some people are being given new land elsewhere, but it's on the edge of town, and it in no way replaces someone's home in which they have invested a lot of money over a long time to build up. Many land subdivisions are given to 'mates'. Most people are not given anything. They have no choice but to move elsewhere. Our cook Margaret has lost her entire house and is getting nothing. She is completely devastated.


And the strange thing about it is that roads are being built parallel to existing ones, in many cases only tens of metres from the last road - creating unnecessarily small blocks. And unnecessarily destroying peoples' houses, not to mention some of the beautiful big trees that make Rumbek the green, leafy town that I love.

 

In the case of the market, the government is doing a 'clean up' - any buildings that are not permanent have been destroyed to make way for bricks and concrete. Which means entire blocks of buildings, the type that people can actually afford to build - of bamboo and wood and tin sheeting - are now gone. Even piles of bricks remain where I'm guessing 'semi-permanent' buildings once stood. It's such a crime. Walk down the main drag of Rumbek town and peer down the many small roads leading away from it, and all you see is devastation.

Sure, the town needs to be well planned, and look nice, and progress is inevitable. But there has to be a much more inclusive, consultative and transparent way of doing it. Not to mention some compensation offered. I just wonder how many people have been affected, and how many more are so much poorer than they were before. They are poor enough already, and struggling to make a living, without this. It's horrible.