Trekking through the jungle, sometimes staying for as long as a month before moving again to the next village, Nassiwa found rebel fighters waiting for children, such as her.

Orphaned during Sudan’s first civil war, Jackline Na-Siwa’s father’s education was cut short by war.

An uncle took him in.

The uncle died a refugee in the then Zaire.

The death forced James Siwa out of school, laying the ground for his desire to see his children achieve that which he had failed to.

Yet, in 2003, he died a refugee a day to Na-Siwa’s last law exam at Makerere University.

“I was left with two papers in the university and I was contemplating: Should I continue; should I not?”

Her world collapsed, her childhood dreams nearly upended. “When I was young we had school plays and we promised ourselves that whatever we said, we would become,” she says. Witnessing her brother beaten by soldiers and her community marginalized, she was determined to become a lawyer. “I used to sing: ‘I am a lawyer, I am a lawyer. I am a lawyer in Christ the king school’.”

Courage to stay the course came from other women’s counsel.

“You know what’?” one said. “You don’t need to dropout when you can.”

The alternative, refugee life in Bidi Bidi refugee settlement, wasn’t appealing.

Her father’s body still in the house, she walked into an exam.

“At first my brain was blacked out,” she recalls.

“I sat for 15 minutes and the lecturer was watching me and asked me, ‘Jacqueline are you alright?  This lady is not writing, she is not understanding’. I told him I lost my dad. I rested for 15 – 30 minutes and I started doing the paper. I thank God that that was the paper I did well.”

Completing her exams that afternoon, the family travelled throughout the night, taking the body back to Yei, where the family journey had began. “By then you could cross the border in the night.”

FORCED CONSCRIPTION

Long before she rose within the women’s circles, Na-Siwa once asked Dr. Ann Itto, the then Secretary General of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, what motivated her. “Hard work and determination,” Itto responded. But, in fact, Na-Siwa embodied hard work and determination long before she would meet the future ruling party’s secretary-general.

Trekking through the jungle as a pre-teen, sometimes sheltering in place for as long as a month before moving to the next village, she found rebel fighters waiting for children, such as her. The Sudanese Army had regained momentum. The eastern rebel front had disintegrated after the 1992 split within the rebel ranks. Rebels had taken Yei only to lose it shortly after, triggering mass displacement. Losing town after town, rebel leaders, preparing for the long haul, turned to forced recruitment of kids.

“I was a young girl by then,” Na-Siwa, the human rights lawyer who played behind-the-scenes supporting roles in both the referendum that earned South Sudan independence and the recent peace talks. “They said all school going kids should go to the army,” Na-Siwa recalls. ”I refused to go to school for that one year.”

The recruitment, according to one witness, was based on the principle that any child old enough to school was old enough to join the army. A crude test determined who was old enough: If a raised hand across the head touched the opposite ear, that child was old enough. Forced conscription only stopped when clergy met and convinced rebel leader Dr. John Garang to keep children in school, paving way for Na-Siwa, like hundreds others, to enroll.

A SCHOOL WITH NO NAME

That defiance exemplified Na-Siwa’s fortitude and craftiness, borne out of necessity. From Christ the King, Yei’s best school, she trekked to refugee life, enrolling in bush schools along the way.

Because they didn’t have light, pupils wrote big letters so as to be able to revise at night under moonlight. One school had a grass-thatched headmaster’s office and a church partitioned to seat class 3 to 6; classes 1 and 2 were held under trees. “I do not even know the name of the school,” Na-Siwa says.

When it rained, the pupils simply walked home. A single teacher would teach per day. Instead of fees, pupils brought in-kind items. Boys brought poles to erect teachers’ huts. Girls molded the mud. Not Na-Siwa.

“I was young and it was difficult,” says the second last born in a family of 6 siblings. She bargained with the teachers to allow her father to bring poles. Years after dropping out of school, James had gotten chance to earn a nursing certificate and become a medical assistant with the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, but he wanted his children to surpass his education.

 “My dad was very supportive with education,” she says.

“So, he could go and get [the poles] and bring it to the school so that I could go on with my education,” she adds. “The studies were hard, but we were determined.”

WE ARE BIG GIRLS

Perhaps, so determined was Na-Siwa that she never let herself be pushed to the back of a queue.

When conscripted pupils scorned those who weren’t, ordering them to sit at the back, she would refuse to enter class until a teacher had entered. “They would say, ‘You are just a “muwatan” (civilian)’” Na-Siwa says. “And when the teacher is there, they cannot force you to sit behind.”

When a prefect returned a girl who was on the verge of peeing on herself to the back of the lavatory queue – a common practice to have girls pee on themselves, shaming them, Na-Siwa, returned the girl to the front. In the ensuing fight as she struck back after the prefect caned her head, a nun intervened, canning the prefect, and returning all the girls to the front. “From that time I knew that girls mattered,” says Nassiwa. “You can’t allow your rights to be violated because you are a girl.”

When locals always displaced refugee students from the borehole, Na-Siwa led a revolt. “We are big girls,” she told her fellow refugee students at St.Mary’s School one evening. “If they don’t want us here, let them send us back home.” The following day, her group arrived early to the borehole. The locals removed the refugee students’ water containers. Na-Siwa tightly gripped the pump, refusing to be pushed. Mele broke out, attracting the school nun who, after hearing of the injustice, decreed that henceforth, locals wouldn’t get water until the refugee students had. “I like it when women speak for their rights, than someone speaking for them,” Na-Siwa says. “That is what motivates me: can I empower more women?”

MOM, CAN WE GO TO YOUR VILLAGE?

That kind of fortitude prepared her for the future: allowing her to step into her father’s shoes when he passed on and withstanding another war. “In my family, I became, like, the pillar because my dad died when I was already big,” she says. “But you know Most of our families in South Sudan, the conflict has affected us, even if you have a parent, he will not be able to support?”
Being a pillar means care for her mother who in turn cares for Na-Siwa’s children – two boys and a girl; she also has adopted children.

Days before the 2013 war erupted, Na-Siwa migrated the family to Juba. “I think it was two days; then the conflict started,” she says.

“So, it was all hell and my girl was asking, ‘Mom, can we go to your village’?

“I was, like, ‘We cannot go’.

“And she was, like, ‘Why mommy’?

“And I was, like, ‘Can you get a bike to go to the village?’

“Because they were shooting,” Na-Siwa says. “But I gained courage because, if I broke down, they would break down. I started becoming stronger from that time because when I grew up I also walked in the village; we were displaced in Yei.”

NEW PASSION INSIDE ME

Most of Na-Siwa’s early work, even after she returned from a masters in International Law at Oxford Brookes, was in civic engagement. As personal secretary to South Sudan Referendum Bureau chairperson, now Chief Justice Chan Reech Madut, she managed the office, drafted press releases, and kept an eye on the data to ensure authenticity. As National Democratic Institute’s Constitutional Advisor, she helped the Constitutional Review Commission develop civic education materials and a consultation toolkit, and engaged civil society to conduct grassroots civic education.

“I felt that with the international organizations you can be rewarded, you are paid well, you have privileges, but it didn’t allow me to do the work for South Sudanese and my voice was missing,” she says.

“I was, like, citizens’ participation without effective programs on women cannot work.

“That passion burnt in me: I thought, what can I do?”

In 2017, two months after her last job with an international agency, she started the Center for Inclusive Governance, Peace and Justice.

The aim?

Mentor and create women’s networks and the Women Monthly Forum to amplify women’s voices through communiqués and countrywide protests, pressing fighters to continue the Addis Ababa talks.

“I was not a delegate and I didn’t want to be so that – when I am outside – I can see beyond what is on the table [and] inform those on the table as to what has to be done,” Na-Siwa says.

“I was glued to my phone looking for updates on the peace process and giving my opinion to people who I think can influence the peace process.”

The peace agreement is here, yet for Na-Siwa (meaning daughter of Siwa, which means honeybee) the pollination is just beginning.

HER LAST WORD

“One thing I tell the women is I can be at the negotiation table, but because I know my weakness, I cannot be effective. I know – delegates Alokir, Rita, Amer Aketch – could be there. If they have the strength within to bang the table and say, ‘This is what they want’, I give them the chance to go and bang it.

But the challenge that we have as women is ‘I want to be the one to be seen’ [attitude], and then they start dividing. I was not surprised when I heard this group is divided and that group is divided; or that the ones there [in Addis Ababa] were not coordinating, which was very sad, but at the end, we were able to secure the women quarter, and at least have some gender provisions in the agreement. 

But that implementation requires our concerted efforts. We need to be working together on a common objective to achieve the 35% and the national development agenda can be gender sensitive. That we cannot do if we split into groups like political parties. At the end we all want effective leadership of women and full participation, so when we are divided like that we cannot stand.”