South Sudan: The State We Aspire To

By Adwok Nyaba

South Sudan: The State We Aspire To was conceived and written mid-2009, two years before the conduct of the referendum on self-determination. The comprehensive peace agreement provided the people of southern Sudan this inalienable right after nearly five decades of conflict. Peter Adwok Nyaba incisively discusses the high expectations and hopes the people of southern Sudan had, mixed with anxiety that characterises the fluid and unpredictable nature of the interim period leading to independence of South Sudan in 2011. In this second edition of South Sudan: The State We Aspire To, written after the eruption of violence in December 2013, the events vindicated what the author correctly discussed the situation southern Sudan was in as being on the horns of a great dilemma , or the attitude of its leaders being between treason and stupidity . It was inevitable that the internal crisis in the Sudan People s Liberation Movement (SPLM)/Sudan People s Liberation Army (SPLA) leadership and failure to pursue socioeconomic development commensurate with its liberation ideology would plunge the country into hell on earth. Nyaba s prime objective in The State We Aspire To, is to provoke a debate, inside and outside the SPLM and South Sudan at large, on the political future of South Sudan. He argues that the SPLM top leadership, cadres and general membership are collectively responsible for what is happening to this young nation having willfully abandoned the ideals for which the South Sudanese people sacrificed in the wars of national liberation. the authorincisively discussestion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mkuki Na Nyota Publishers
• Release date: Nov 2, 2019
• ISBN: 9789987753741

Adwok Nyaba

Peter Adwok Nyaba is a South Sudanese intellectual who has witnessed and participated in the struggle since his short stint in the first war (1964-1966), before going back to school. His work as an activist in the student movement and trade unionism won him membership in the Sudanese Communist Party. When the mass movement retreated after the popular uprising that overthrew the May regime in 1985, Peter Adwok Nyaba resigned to become a combatant in the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA). After the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005, he became a legislator and then the minister for Higher Education and Scientific Research in the Government of National Unity. When South Sudan became independent in 2011, he was appointed Minister for Higher Education, Science, and Technology. He has published three books on South Sudan, one of which, The Politics of Liberation in South Sudan: An Insider's View, received the Noma Award for Publishing in Africa (1998).

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Dedication

This book is dedicated to

Dr John Garang de Mabior and his six colleagues who perished with him in that tragic Helicopter crash;

It is also dedicated to all the martyrs of the struggle for national liberation;

May their souls rest in eternal peace.

To the heroes and heroines of the SPLM/SPLA, the people of South Sudan and their Nuba and Funj compatriots;

The struggle for total liberation continues!!!!

List of Acronyms and Abbreviations

Preface to Second Edition

A Tribute to the Victims of Post-Independence Violence

It was on August 8th, 2005. We were leaving the burial ground - now renamed Dr. John Garang Memorial Grounds - immediately after the burial of Dr. Garang’s remains. A senior member of the SPLM Leadership Council (name withheld), in a very exhausted voice, said to me: ‘Garang was a very lucky man.’ I tried to extract the meaning of these words but the man could not riposte. This left me bewildered.

‘How can one be lucky in death?’ I thought to myself. Perhaps what my colleague meant was that Garang did not live to watch the edifice (SPLM/SPLA) he constructed come tumbling down like a house of cards. The sudden and tragic death of Dr. Garang disorganised and disoriented the SPLM leaders. The SPLM leadership started to show cracks in its ranks even as they were still making the funeral arrangements.

Dr. Garang died before achieving complete reconciliation with Gen. Salva Kiir, following the fall out that was the Yei crisis. The conference fudged the matter. The two leaders acted tactically making time until the disaster struck. The drivers of the Yei crisis remained active and, with the death of Dr. Garang, they took the centre stage in the SPLM and the government of South Sudan. The realignment of forces inside the SPLM triggered internal contradictions.

The SPLM could have split earlier. The mutual concern for the exercise of self-determination acted as a restraint, and it worked. The SPLM second National Convention would have been a trigger of another power crisis in the SPLM. Providence let it not be as the agents of that crisis perished in a plane crash, thus quenching the small skirmishes of 2008. Thanks to Salva Kiir’s experience as a military intelligence officer and his quiet nature, it took eight and half years before the SPLM internal bomb exploded into violence on December 15, 2013.

The events of December 15th, 2013 epitomize the climax of a contradiction stifled in order to maintain a semblance of unity. It is a reminder that leaving a problem without discussing it because of the fear that it will divide the people incubates the problem; it will take people by surprise one day. Nobody expected, contemplated, or even foresaw the scale of the destruction that occurred following the December 15th, 2013 events. Nobody imagined that the crisis in the SPLM would emerge as a Dinka-Nuer conflict.

The political developments in South Sudan vindicate that the SPLM did not exist as a functional entity separate and different from the SPLA [Nyaba, 2000]. We have, therefore, been lying to ourselves and to our people about the political reality in the liberation movement. The SPLM is only the man at the top, and that is all. First it was Dr. Garang and when he died, Salva Kiir took over. This explains why Salva Kiir unilaterally dismissed his deputy chair and the secretary general of the SPLM. Salva Kiir dismissed his government and nobody dared to say anything. Salva Kiir imposed on the SSLA Hon. Manasseh Magok Rundial as speaker and nobody protested when he threatened to close the August House if the members rejected his nominee. Salva Kiir emasculated every institution including the army top brass; otherwise how could he have recruited, trained, and armed a private army of three thousand men.

The SPLM did not have functional institutions, that I convinced myself long ago. It is because of the apparent absence of the SPLM that ethnic and regional lobbies occupied the political void. Some of us did not keep quiet; we spoke our minds criticising the dysfunctionality. However, since there was no forum for airing one’s views, we resorted to the media - and this elicited hostility from the leadership. The SPLM top leadership, leaders, cadres, and bona fide members are collectively responsible for what is happening to this young nation. We have wilfully abandoned the ideals for which our people sacrificed in the wars of national liberation.

In Arusha Tanzania¹, the three SPLM factions concluded that the current crisis in South Sudan has its roots in the SPLM leadership failure and, therefore, only reconciliation and reunification of the SPLM is the guarantee against fragmentation of South Sudan along ethnic and regional fault lines. I underline ethnic fault lines. This is because I have appended at the end of this book a statement by the Jieng elders addressing the IGAD Heads of State and Government following their summit resolutions of November 7, 2014.

Written as if addressing a village council, the Jieng elders have acted irresponsibly, assuming that Salva Kiir was a Dinka president of the Republic of South Sudan and, therefore, needed their moral and political support. They forgot there were Dinka people who did not approve of the style of leadership Salva Kiir demonstrated since 2005, which favoured his Rek people from Awiel and Warrap states. The IGAD mediation is not a court of law where relatives or clan members would line up behind their number. The IGAD states are brokering peace; they want to bring peace and order back the country. The Jieng elders exposed their war-mongering attitude.

The position taken by the Jieng elders epitomizes the ethnic politics that bedevilled South Sudan since Salva Kiir Mayardit inherited the SPLM leadership in 2005. We have criticized Dr. Garang’s leadership style on many occasions but we have never accused him of practising ethnic politics in the manner his successor perfected it. The group Dr. Garang had around him reflected the ethnic and regional diversity of South Sudan, and that is what builds confidence and unity among such diverse a people as the South Sudanese. President Salva Kiir, on the other hand, began in 2005 with Bahr el Ghazal elders, and this now expanded to include all the Jieng section.

President Salva Kiir Mayardit rules South Sudan not through the SPLM party and the state institutions, but through a tribal lobby known as ‘Jieng Council of Elders’ drawn from the twenty-four Jieng sections in seven out of the ten states in South Sudan. A cursory view at the list of these elders reveals that many of them are highly enlightened individuals, politicians, and lawmakers. Some of them were part of the ‘Dinka Unity’ politics that precipitated the ‘kokora’ and the dismantling of the Southern Region in the eighties. They are indeed part of the patronage system that has informalized the state institutions and turned South Sudan into a limited liability enterprise.

I cannot believe that they have not learned anything from that experience that they come in support of a discredited coup narrative. They have the guts to support Salva Kiir, the president who ordered the massacre of people who elected him president. I also want to think that while they categorize themselves as Jieng elders, they represent only themselves. Post-December 15, 2013 oral narrative has it that one of the Jieng elders called a former Nuer minister to inform him that they (Jieng) have decided to fight the Nuer in Juba. This was two days before the fighting in the Army H/Qs, proving that the Jieng elders advised Salva Kiir in his adventure.

The Dinka is the largest single nationality in South Sudan but they do not constitute a majority, which in fact should be the other sixty-six nationalities combined. Being a large nationality, the Dinka should act positively to bring around them the smaller groups in the process of nation building, to ensure national cohesion. As a large nationality, they become the core around which the South Sudan nation state emerges. This is because ethnic calculus as a means of acquiring and sustaining power is untenable. It has not worked in South Sudan. The elections to the People’s Regional Assembly 1981 led to the defeat of the group, which wanted to use ethnicity as a ladder to power. There was a positive incident in those elections when Lakes Province elected a Shilluk to represent a constituency. It demonstrated how ideas not facial marks unite people in a political endeavour. I take solace in the fact that progressive and patriotic Jieng people have already distanced themselves from these self-appointed individuals.

I chose to problematize the negativities of ethnic and regional lobbies in politics in South Sudan. This occurs only in the absence of unity of ideas and purpose. That is when relations in a system are constructed on social rather than institutional principles, procedures, and rules; in which case there is deficit in trust and confidence, and people feel insecure thus they make ethnicity their realm of security and privilege. However, in the SPLM, which spearheaded the struggle for national liberation, and which united the people across ethnic and regional lines, what could be the explanation for the fact that people slided back into their respective ethnic and regional cocoons? There must be an obvious failure.

The failure to create unity in the SPLM ranks stems from three important factors linked to the historical development of the SPLM. The lack of political ideology is a disabling factor. Ideas unite and mould the people into one organization. They create a sense of solidarity and spirit de corps. The SPLM promotes military discipline and routine. The spirit de corps linked to the military ended with the signing of the peace agreement in 2005. This explains why the SPLA combatants (police or army) carried home their weapons to fight on the side of their clans, section, or ethnicity in the conflicts South Sudan witnessed in Lakes, Warrap, Upper Nile, and Jonglei.

The party programme of action builds up the confidence and unity of purpose among the different ethnic communities. The SPLM programme of action was the war of national liberation. This united the people of South Sudan across ethnic lines. The SPLM leadership envisaged liberation only in terms of combat action against the enemy. Thus, as soon as the war was over the combatants went back to their ethnic cocoons where they engage in the old feuds. This affirms the saying that ‘if you want to make them brothers set them to build a tower, but if want to set them against each other throw food between them’. The NCP did exactly that when they poured huge sums of oil revenue to the government of South Sudan and in six years the SPLM leadership forgot the liberation ideology.

The other important factor was the inability to institutionalize SPLM power, which remained personified in the leader. In the absence of politicized, institutionalized relations, people gravitate towards their kin for security and identity. It is very natural in such a situation that a Dinka, Nuer, Shilluk, Bari, Latuka, etc., will first approach whomever he perceives as coming from the same ethnicity. This is the very negation of liberation and freedom. In such a situation, which borders on oppression, some members of the same organization consider themselves free owners while others are only auxiliaries working for them. The social and political environment becomes segregative and hence allows the emergence of lobbies along clan, section, ethnic or regional lines as the only viable means to realise respective rights or privileges.

One of the phenomenal failures of the SPLM leadership, which contributed to state erosion, is that it permitted ethnic and clan lobbies to influence government policy and the running of state institutions. The removal of Hon. Arthur Akuen Chol from the ministry of finance prompted the people of Awiel to pressure Salva Kiir to appoint Kuol Athian Mawien as replacement. President Salva Kiir Mayardit acquiesced to this pressure, suggesting that he was a weak leader and had no direction. Kuol Athian’s tenure at the ministry was the worst ever financial mismanagement experienced in South Sudan².

The SPLM party members of the National Legislative Assembly organize along regional, state, and even ethnic caucuses alongside the SPLM Parliamentary Caucus. The work of the sub caucuses is to lobby for positions in the House Standing Committees. They have not institutionalized and, therefore, have no legal existence. Nevertheless the former Hon. Speaker used these regional and ethnic caucuses to circumvent the SPLM and prevent it from taking charge of the Assembly’s business as part of its political and legislative function.

Ethnic and regional associations sprouted in schools and universities where they have become lobbies in the corridors of power. The president, ministers, and politicians have used these lobbies to garner political support. They have been sources of tensions and conflicts in the student unions, sometimes leading to closure of the university. The existence of ethnic and regional associations reflects the shallow political culture in South Sudan. That is to say, because their social and political horizons revolve around their primeval environment they are unable to conceive themselves as part of the national enterprise involving other ethnic communities. The selective discrimination in ditching out government contracts in favour of the traders and contractors from certain states flows from this convoluted logic.

In this second edition of South Sudan: The State We Aspire To, I revised the original text and made corrections in the language without changing the meaning or context. In Part Four, I talked briefly about the current civil war in the country just to prove what I had reiterated repeatedly that the internal crisis in SPLM leadership was bound to plunge the country into turmoil. It did happen, but I covered that in another narrative published as South Sudan: The Crisis Of Infancy³ by CASAS in 2014.

While under house arrest in Juba before I left the country on June 29, 2014, we toyed with the idea of UN Security Council stewardship of the Republic of South Sudan. The idea was not as far-fetched as some compatriots and foreign diplomats in Juba would say. The idea of UN stewardship stemmed from the fact that the country, along with its army and the SPLA, was divided along ethnic lines. The National Security was predominantly Dinka hailing mainly from Warrap and Awiel. But this received barrages of verbal attacks from my Dinka compatriots, who had a vested interest in the situation remaining as it was.

Now, the threat of external intervention came from the IGAD mediation after the failure of the parties to the conflict to agree to a peaceful settlement. I have also appended the resolutions of the 28 Extraordinary Assembly of IGAD Heads of State and Government held on November 7, 2014, which the Jieng Council of Elders vehemently attacked (Appendix 2).

The first anniversary of December 15, 2013 events in Juba came and passed with the civil war still raging. The IGAD mediated peace talks had failed to produce peace in South Sudan. It continued to spiral throughout Jonglei, Unity, and Upper Nile states and hundreds of thousands of our compatriots unnecessarily perished. Many of them are unknown, buried in mass graves.

I dedicate this second edition to their eternal memory. May the memories of the fallen victims of the post-independence violence in South Sudan inspire us to shun violence in order to build a peaceful, prosperous, civilized, and democratic South Sudan. May war never sneak its horrible face again in the land of South Sudan. AMEN

Peter Adwok Nyaba

Addis Ababa,

20 August 2015.

_____________

¹ Facilitated by Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM), the three SPLM factions [created by the December 15 events] - SPLM in Government of the Republic of South Sudan, the SPLM in Opposition and the SPLM Former Political Detainees - met between October 12 and 20, 2014 in what became known as Intra-SPLM Dialogue.

² The biggest financial fraud, popularly known as the ‘Dura Saga’, occurred under the leadership of Kuol Athian. South Sudan lost billions of pounds to faceless contractors who never delivered the required amounts of food stuff (maize and sorghum). The Ministry of Justice has not prosecuted anybody to date because some of the persons (South Sudan, Kenyan and Ugandans) involved in this multi-billion dollar scam had political connections.

³ ‘Infancy’ derives from the speech of South Sudan Foreign Minister, Dr. Barnaba Marial Benjamin in the Oslo humanitarian conference for South Sudan April 2014 when he compared the country to a two-year old infant breaking glasses in the house.

Preface

Committing mistakes is something human, and sometimes it is inevitable. However, it becomes non-human if one does not learn from one’s own or other people’s mistakes. Not learning from mistakes may suggest that something is fundamentally amiss because it subjects the individual, group, or country to perpetually commit the same mistakes. Criticism of mistakes, particularly if done in good faith, is acceptable and nobody should read sinister motives into any criticism. This brings me to a scene in April 2005 at my residence in Nairobi. Mama Rebecca de Mabior had come to console our family on the death of my mother. Our conversation was, as usual, friendly and indeed touched on everything including the political process unfolding within the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) following the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA).

‘Why, my sister, has my name not appeared in any lists of SPLM members sent for training in South Africa?’ I asked Mama Rebecca, to which she retorted, ‘Are you an SPLM member?’ This response rather took me aback. However, I maintained my composure. In fact, I did not expect such an answer. ‘Who removed me from SPLM membership?’ I asked again. ‘Peter! You have been very critical and I believed you had resigned from the SPLM,’ she said. I did not want to be defensive so I explained why I was critical of the lack of organisation and formality in the SPLM. ‘Your friend will criticise you because s/he wants you to improve your performance; your enemy will celebrate your mistakes hoping to benefit from them; I criticised the SPLM performance because I wanted it to do better.’ Mama Rebecca appeared completely taken off guard and the manner in which she looked at me as I explained myself suggested that she had really appreciated the value of criticism from a friend.

In the second edition of The Politics of Liberation in South Sudan: An Insider’s View, I asked the question ‘What is the SPLM and where is it?’ This question did not go down well with many people in the SPLM, particularly Dr. Garang’s court jesters. I was accused of all kinds of things: being in opposition, a political sell-out, etc. I know this resulted in my being ostracized. Although I did not identify any definite personal enemy, there was nevertheless nobody I could count on as a friend who could assist me when it came to recommendation for positions. This explained how I did not feature in the SPLM assignments or in the various teams set up to negotiate the protocols, including the resource and wealth sharing protocol which made up the comprehensive peace agreement. They say those who labour for authentic organisation end up being unpopular, and more often than not remain in the political cold.

The question ‘What is the SPLM and where is it?’ remains as pertinent today as it was in 2001. This may be explained by the fact we alluded to above – not learning from own or others’ mistakes. In political organisations where institutions and structures exist, criticism and self-criticism is practised as a matter of obligation and right. Party leaders and cadres exercise the right of criticism in order to identify and rectify party failures and this is done formally and internally in party meetings recorded with minutes, but not openly in the press. It is the absence of formality in the SPLM that has encouraged open criticism and this was done in the hope that it might elicit appropriate responses in terms of calling formal and organized meetings of the party organs.

The writing of this book was prompted by the same objectives as The Politics of Liberation in South Sudan: An Insider’s View. I acknowledge that many books authored by South Sudanese, some of them bona fide SPLM members, have been published following the signing of the CPA. I am not quite sure if any of them has addressed SPLM organisational complacency. Indeed, some of them amounted to personal gratification; others absolved themselves and left the mistakes to Dr. Garang alone. This has thus deprived the SPLM of the opportunity to learn from its mistakes.

As is said, if the wound is gaping open and the pus is causing repeated convulsive fits, how can silence cure it? In any human organisation, leadership is as critical as it is imperative. Dr. Garang set a style of leadership, which in his absence I believe no one could manage. The present leadership configuration is the exact opposite. It is a leadership which is pulled from different directions by contradictory concerns and aspirations, preventing it from decisive action even in times of serious SPLM internal political crisis or stand-offs with the National Congress Party in respect of CPA implementation. It sometimes beats an unexpected retreat from agreed positions.

What makes this internal situation positively dangerous is the absence of frank and honest internal debate, whether at the leadership level or at the lower levels. In fact, lower levels of the SPLM seldom exist as political institutions; if anything, they operate like civil servant bureaucrats concerned with administrative and financial matters. The once active cadres have given up and have either joined the government or resigned themselves to sitting in small groups agonising all day while others have adopted the tactic of silence in order to insure self, and to maintain privileged positions.

The prime objective of this book is really to provoke a debate, inside and outside the SPLM and South Sudan at large, on the political future of South Sudan as its people prepare to exercise their inalienable right to self-determination in the referendum on 9 January 2011. It is intended to bring to the fore the social and political processes in state and nation building in South Sudan. The SPLM and its leadership feature by virtue of being the leading political party in this process.

Many people, especially those who have made wilful blindness the rule of their political conduct, would want to leave such crucial matters of destiny to chance. And indeed, it was the late veteran politician Luigi Adwok, disgusted with the apolitical manner with which the southern political elite approached what it called the ‘southern problem’, who said that Southerners do not engage in meticulous political calculation so things come their way only by chance. The element of chance exists in nature; but in political struggles, chance appears where there is no organisation, no defined institutions for decision-making and at worst absence of strategic thinking. Thus, things will happen by chance if the leaders have no strategy but only wait and react to events as they occur.

Leaders are what they are because they exercise authority and must take responsibility for their actions. When things occur, people look up to their leaders either to praise them for their victories or to blame them for the shortcomings. South Sudan is at a precarious crossroads, between becoming a state through the free will of its people expressed in a secession vote in the referendum on 9 January 2011 or else disappearing into thin air consequent to its leaders squandering the opportunity through lack of unity of purpose and strategic thinking. I say this because the internal political dynamics of the SPLM as the leading political force in South Sudan suggest that its top leadership is divided and unstable. The actions of some SPLM leaders in the executive, in the legislature and in the party are not consistent; this is why the party oscillates like a pendulum between different political positions.

The SPLM has dominated the Government of South Sudan (GOSS) and the social and political process in South Sudan since 2005, yet its leaders have failed to stamp their vision and political objectives on the process in terms of policies and programmes. The SPLM does not command the same level of support and confidence of the people as it did in 2005. The results of the general election, which give overwhelming support to the SPLM, are deceptive in many aspects and do not reflect reality. The people have not been oblivious of the performance of the SPLM and its leaders in the last five years; if anything, they voted for General Salva Kiir Mayardit only to maintain stability.

The ordinary people do not care much about personalities of the leaders; but they care about and appreciate the services these leaders deliver. They are very sensitive and intelligent and they know who can or cannot deliver. When the people of Western Equatoria overwhelmingly voted for the independent candidate against the SPLM nominee, the SPLM top leadership in Juba should have learned the bitter lesson. Indeed, it should have learned much earlier in the run-up to the SPLM Second National Convention in 2008 when most of the liberation stage leaders were trounced. The SPLM Chairman had to swallow his pride and appoint them to the National Liberation Council. Therefore, refusal to learn has subjected the SPLM leaders to commit the same mistakes ad infinitum. The question is why?

The