Ken Ramani
5 December 2004
Nairobi — At 4.8ft tall, with a light skin complexion, Suzzane Jambo stands conspicuously among other women of the New Sudan.
The region, commonly known as Southern Sudan, is dominated by 5.8ft plus tall people - both women and men.
Suzzane is of mixed race parentage, hence her conspicuous skin complexion that for a long time, was a source of friction between the southerners and northerners in Khartoum where she was born in 1976.
She struggled through her childhood to fit into the community that today favourably looks at her.
Since graduating from the Buckingham University in England seven years ago, Suzzane has become a voice for the voiceless women of the Sudan.
Within the short time she has been in public/international limelight, her activities have rubbed organisations and governments the wrong way.
She is used to controversy which, in her own words, "makes me re-discover myself every time I get entangled in one".
This is the same woman who, in 2002 lobbied the Kenya government against importing oil from the Sudan.
The then Energy minister Raila Odinga had indicated Kenya was ready to import oil from its northern neighbour since the commodity was cheaper compared to the one imported from the Persian Gulf.
Suzzane and her 48 New Sudanese Indigenous Non-Governmental Organisations (Nesi-Network) that she coordinates jumped into action to oppose the idea.
Kenya was by that time the chair of the Inter-Governmental Agency on Development (Igad) that was trying to end the Sudanese war, pitting the Sudan People's Liberation Army against the Khartoum government.
Suzzane and other like-minded women organisations under the Nesi-Network argued that the Sudanese oil was being exploited at the expense of human life, with thousands of people being killed, enslaved and evicted from their lands by government forces to clear more land for oil exploration.
She urged the Government to re-examine its commitment to the cause of the people of southern Sudan.
"Why is it that we do not matter to our African brothers and sisters?" Suzzane asked.
Her crusade against oil exploitation and exports in the Sudan did not end in Nairobi- she travelled to the Hague, Netherlands and exposed a Canadian oil giant that had just been registered in the country to avoid being blacklisted in the New York Stock Exchange Market for being involved in "bloody oil" business.
While in Netherlands, she lobbied the media, Parliament and discussed the issue of Sudan's internally-displaced persons and their plight due to war over the oil resources. Suzanne was born to a father who was of a Portuguese-Indian parentage and a Dinka mother. Her father is said to have eloped with a white woman when she was still very young.
Her mother, a Dinka from Southern Sudan, who currently lives in Atlanta, USA, was forced to single-handedly bring her up until she re-married.
Suzzane had to struggle to gain legitimacy even among her own siblings. She recalls how, whenever she could walk on the streets of Khartoum with her kid brother, Arabs could call him names: "You abid (slave as blacks were often referred to those days), where are you going with our daughter?"
"You see, due to my skin complexion, I could easily pass for an Arab and the northerners claimed I was one of their own and should not mingle with the southerners. My brother could not understand what the insults were all about. So he started avoiding me whenever he went out for a walk and to date we are not that close due to that bitter past," says Suzzane.
She believes that her boldness is as a result of her lineage. Her grandfather, Jambo, was an eloquent and controversial chief who was killed during the Anyanya struggle for independence.
"Coming from a politically-conscious family background, it was natural for me to confront issues as they came without shying away nor thinking of the repercussions," says Suzzane.
She first worked with Unicef as a human rights training officer in areas of child rights, child soldiers, women empowerment.
She, however, locked horns with numerous UN and other agencies operating in southern Sudan which she accused of perpetrating the culture of dependence by "making people look to the skies for Manna to drop down."
"The organisations were helping my people with relief supplies, yes, but were not doing anything to empower them nor own certain projects designed to help them. The agencies were receiving millions of dollars but most of the funds ended up paying for logistics and huge salaries for expatriates even in jobs locals could do. So I had to protest through writing critical reports which made concerned persons uncomfortable working with me. So I had to quit on time before the sacking letter was drafted," she said.
She attended Comboni Sisters School in Khartoum before moving to England for her undergraduate studies in Social Sciences at the Buckingham University.
In her book, "Women's Perspective of the War: Negative Customary Law," she documents the atrocities perpetrated on women during armed conflict.
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