African Entrepreneurship Record

Chapter 329: Chapter 12 Zhu Ba Town

March is the dry season in South Sudan, the scorching weather baking the land of Zhu Ba Town (the previous capital Juba of South Sudan, differentiated from the Jubba region in Somalia).

Zhu Ba Town is a small village on the west coast of the White Nile, and the most ”bustling” area of South Sudan at present. It used to be a site for the Ottoman Empire to preach and hunt slaves. Later, due to Egypt’s betrayal, the Ottoman Empire withdrew, and slowly it became a residence for indigenous people. But the good days for the indigenous people hadn’t lasted long before the East Africans came.

At this moment, Zhu Ba Town’s mayor, Andre, was hiding under the shade of a tree desperately fanning himself, trying to cool off.

Andre said to the military officer of Zhu Ba Town, Levins, ”It’s not far from the North Lake Province here, but I didn’t expect the weather to be so hot; it’s simply lethal!”

Levins replied: ”Don’t worry, the rainy season will arrive in over a month, and it will be cooler by then.”

Even though he said this, Levins knew it was just a comforting remark; even during the rainy season, South Sudan’s temperature wouldn’t improve much.

The climate in South Sudan is way better compared to that of North Sudan; although it’s adjacent to the Sahara Desert, over ninety-five percent of South Sudan’s land falls under moist and semi-moist regions. However, due to the lower altitude, it is much hotter here compared to the East African plateau and even hotter than the East African coast. In the hottest times, daytime temperatures regularly break forty degrees, and it’s muggy, forming a sharp contrast with the Sahara Desert’s dry heat.

Levins continued: ”Now we’re lying here without much work, just commanding the black slaves to work; what more do you want? This is much better than being an ordinary villager in the North Lake Province as you were before.”

Andre: ”I fought to become this town’s mayor myself, and besides, among East African mayors, I’m probably the worst off. Our town, after excluding the hundred or so of your soldiers, probably couldn’t even match the population of a village in the east.”

Levins: ”Hehe, don’t be dissatisfied. You probably saw the immigrant team that passed by here a few days ago. They only had over forty people, even fewer than us; if nothing unexpected happens, they will end up under your leadership!”

The immigrants Levins referred to are headed to a place about forty kilometers west of Zhu Ba Town. Unlike Zhu Ba Town, which was a leftover site from the Ottoman Empire, that place is just an indigenous village and is likely to be turned into a settlement.

Andre: ”Forty or fifty kilometers away, just delivering a message would take at least two or three days, so they better rely on their own luck.”

As the two chatted, the indigenous black people, already at gunpoint by East African soldiers, cleared another batch of vegetation, mainly using stone tools to cut down trees and weeds.

Due to this inefficient productivity, the development work in Zhu Ba Town is proceeding extremely slowly, still in the land clearing stage, relying on over two thousand slaves captured locally to slowly clear vegetation and pick stones from the fields.

After relentless day and night labor by successive waves of slaves, the cultivable land of Zhu Ba Town has now grown more than six times compared to when East Africans first took over; the same goes for the replaced indigenous people, who have also gone through several batches to achieve the current results.

The slaves pile the stones to the side, while the cut trees and weeds are collected together after clearing, then, after two or three days of sun exposure, East Africans set them on fire. After the smoke clears, a large amount of ash remains, which is spread in the fields by East African immigrants.

In the process of developing the land by the indigenous people, they can also drive away the animals living here, especially snakes, ahead of time, thus ensuring safety for East African immigrants for subsequent agricultural production.

The land reclamation in South Sudan is steeped in a strong primitive style, a truly ”slash-and-burn method.” Without sufficient iron tools, land cultivation in South Sudan can only rely on slaves, as the local slaves seem limitless. Every once in a while, the East African army would go out, following the Nile River, to capture a batch of new slaves to supplement the losses.

Only East African immigrants can use iron tools for work; the supply of iron is currently prioritized for East African southern regions, like Zambia and Zimbabwe, so for now, the Negers of South Sudan have to endure hardship first.

Andre: ”We must open up seven hundred more acres of land before the rainy season arrives, otherwise it will be difficult when the rains come, so the next month, we must work overtime to complete the project.”

Just as Andre was planning the upcoming work tasks for Zhu Ba Town, a black person who had been working under the thirty-plus degree sun for five consecutive hours suddenly fainted and fell into the field.

An East African soldier went over to check him and found him still breathing, presumably suffering heat stroke, and dragged him to a nearby water pit to cool him down. Such scenes have become commonplace for East African soldiers.

The abundant rainfall and Great Lake (Lake Victoria) waters have created vast wetlands, swamps, and forests in the upstream areas of the White Nile.

It’s clear that such a climate environment in South Sudan, coupled with abundant water sources, is best suited for rice cultivation, meeting all the conditions for planting rice.

Of course, the premise is to develop the land, and this step is also the most difficult; if South Sudan were in East Asia, perhaps it would have been developed long ago.

But this is Africa, where for thousands of years the indigenous people haven’t developed a farming civilization; instead, it’s the Sultanate and Egypt from the Saharan Desert and the Abyssinians from the highlands next door who have advanced the agricultural tech tree.

Under these circumstances, South Sudan’s agricultural conditions are clearly superior among these places, yet the locals only practice nomadism, wasting valuable water heat and land resources.

Especially in the past, South Sudan had to import both fruits and vegetables, which is a disgrace among African countries; inefficiency in staple crop production was one thing, but importing fruits and vegetables was downright shocking.

Nowadays, all sorts of wild fruits grow abundantly in South Sudan’s forests, they can’t even finish eating them, yet they needed to import them in the 21st century.

The inefficient agricultural development model doomed the past South Sudan to stagnation, or rather, the preference for leisure over labor caused South Sudan to waste its treasure trove, fighting among armed groups over oil fields just so they could receive money from foreigners.

But this money was directly consumed for purchasing food, weapons, and luxury goods, while South Sudan’s hydroelectricity, infrastructure, and roads showed no progress whatsoever; a resource-rich oil-producing country in Africa ranked among the poorest.

Honestly, when South Sudan was still part of Sudan, it kept complaining about the oppression by northern Arabs as the cause of its lack of development, but after independence, it was almost daily embroiled in wars, even more chaotic than neighboring Sudan, with living standards for ordinary people worse than before independence.

In Africa, only the warlord chaos in Somali can compare to South Sudan, but now it’s basically confirmed that these two that the international community once labeled as failed states won’t exist anymore. It counts as a good deed done by East Africa.