South Sudan: The Crisis of Infancy

By Adwok Nyaba

In this second edition of South Sudan: The Crisis of Infancy Peter Adwok Nyaba has incorporated the dynamics of socio-political developments in South Sudan since 2015 including an incisive and informative account of the recent coup attempt and its aftermath. Fired with passionate preoccupation to decipher the direction in which South Sudan is headed, the author harnesses his critical alertness to the political undercurrents in the country to explain from his own point of view what has happened and what did not happen in the country as South Sudan swings between peace and conflict.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mkuki Na Nyota Publishers
• Release date: Nov 2, 2019
• ISBN: 9789987082001

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

South Sudan: The Crisis of Infancy

is dedicated to the eternal memory of the

tens of thousands of South Sudanese

sent to their graves prematurely

as a result of the events of

15 December 2013.

More especially to my eldest siblings

Pyero and Chiro Nyaba, and her son Gwang

who were killed in Malakal in February 2014.

Preface to the Second Edition

‘You must remain in Juba to feel the heat.’ This was what the Director General of Internal Security Major General Akol Koor, when he refused to give back my passports. The Security officer at the Juba International Airport ordered me out of Dubai bound flight and confiscated my passport on December 31, 2013. I had to put up with the six-month house arrest. However the drudgery of confinement, sometimes I stepped out of my compound to stretch my legs and even ventured to the city centre to have a drink. Many friends and colleagues I encountered would ask, as if echoing what the Minister of Justice has announced earlier, when did you come back? I would respond that I did not travel anywhere. "You wrote all these papers while here in Juba?" would be their answer in disbelief.

The madness that took place in South Sudan beginning with the ethnic cleansing massacres of Nuers in Juba to the revenge killings that followed in Bor, Akobo, Bentiu, Malakal, Nasir and Renk left a searing impact on me that I found it impossible to remain silent. There was urgent need to write; to challenge and repudiate the government coup narrative. I lost many loved ones in Juba and Malakal. It will never be known who killed them and why they were killed. I resigned to a kind of a defiant mood; indeed defiant to the government’s numerous innuendo and lies. Instead of mourning, I took to writing and recording those terrible events. It was imperative to get the world’s attention to the atrocities as quickly as possible. That is how in exactly two and half months I finished the first draft of the manuscript what became ‘South Sudan: the crisis of infancy’ to augment and support the numerous newspaper articles, radio talk and interviews I made from my confinement and incarceration.

I spent only two nights in detention with colleagues in the SPLM who also were with me in the first government of Republic of South Sudan. They now prefer to be called SPLM Leaders former political detainees (FPDs), I must add that belated arrest and detention prove ignominious to the government when the regional leaders visited us in that detention camp. They released me the following day and told to go home - what was going to be a six month house incarceration. In the location of my house I ‘felt the heat twice’. The first was when the SPLA Commando Unit attacked and fought the SPLA Tiger Battalion in which over two hundred soldiers and civilians perished in the vicinity of the old Army Barracks. The second time the National Security Forces attacked the house of Major General Simon Gatwech Dual, a few hundred metres from my residence. The ‘heat’, indeed the brutality and insensitivity was demonstrated by the army firing heavy artillery and tanks in civilian neighbourhoods.

When opportunity availed itself I did not hesitate to leave, although the feeling of uncertainty that laid ahead of me, and the remorse of leaving behind my family in a situation of extreme danger in Juba haunted me. My colleagues in detention had all been released to the custody of the Kenyan Government and were staying in the comfort of Windsor County Club Hotel in the suburbs of Nairobi. I opted to join the SPLM/SPLA to the chagrin of many intimate friends and foes alike. They questioned my decision to join the armed opposition. Some of my tribesmen and women condemned me for joining the ‘Nuers who killed my two sisters in Malakal.’

To me at that material time there were only two parties to the conflict in South Sudan. If I had to contribute to the resolution of this conflict I could only chose the armed opposition. The middle position adopted by the FPDs apparently was a complicating factor engineered by Troika in the context of the ‘principle of inclusivity’ as Western or liberal peace making process usually projects as a template modality. Indeed, it was to become the very unmaking of the IGAD mediation of the South Sudan crisis. True to my Marxist teachings and readings, I believed that in order to change the conflictual situation in South Sudan I had to be part of the conflict. History will judge whether my participation in the IGAD mediation or in the Arusha Intra-SPLM Dialogue was positive contribution helping to move forwards the process or negative trying to retard the process. This is because both the IGAD peace process and the Intra-SPLM Dialogue aimed at reunification and reconciliation of its feuding leaders failed to mitigate the suffering of the people of South Sudan. If anything the two processes escalated the conflict and rendered its resolution more difficult.

It is now almost five years since December 15, 2013. South Sudan now tops the list of fragile states in the world. In 2014, it had only Somalia behind it in the same list suggesting that in one and half years the political and humanitarian condition deteriorated than ameliorated. The attempts at mediating peace failed and the IGAD Chairman the Prime Minister of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, Ato Haile Mariam Dessalegn announced this on March 6, 2015. The efforts also to reunify the SPLM leaders as a complement of the IGAD process came to nothing save for brief visit to Juba by a group of FPDs. The apparent transmutation of the FPDs from ‘stakeholders’ to ‘peace makers’ between the SPLM (IG) and SPLM (IO) enabling them to travel to Juba constitutes an imbroglio that renders intractable the two process.

This creation of IGAD plus [comprising Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, Algeria, Nigeria, Chad, Rwanda and South Africa, USA, Britain, Norway, China, EU, AU and UN] to take over the process from IGAD although it remains at the steering wheel may make it a case of too many cooks spoil the broth. The parties to the conflict are already registering reservations about the draft agreement the Special Envoys submitted. President Museveni put Salva Kiir under duress not to accept Dr. Riek Machar as the first Deputy President.

The optimal choice would have been that both leaders did not participate in the transitional government. Their body chemistry is likely to spur bad memories to perpetuate the conflict. However, if President Salva Kiir, on account of incumbency, leads the transitional government then Dr. Riek Machar has to participate in order to bring peace. This will require putting enough pressure on both parties by IGAD, AU and the international community particularly Troika and China to manage the transition peacefully by providing enough deterrent forces that will separate the warring parties.

The lesson learnt from the CPA was the non-implementation of the provision on reconciliation and national healing. This essentially meant failure or refusal to transform the CPA from what it was a political compromise between the SPLM and the NCP to reconciliation and healing of wounds in the communities that have been affected by the war. The war of national liberation created conditions for inter- and intra-community conflicts either because of the erosion of the state or traditional institutions of governance or due to percolation of the political contradiction within the SPLM/SPLA down to the communities.

The same conditions that wasobtained after the Nasir Declaration 1991 have inadvertently been recreated permitting the ethnic barons to go back to their dirty business of extracting profits from the misery of the people. We have witnessed how some war-lords masquerading; as government ministers or party officials have reaped fabulous wealth from recruiting and arming ignorant civilians in Upper Nile, Unity, Central Equatoria and Northern Bahr el Ghazal to protect oil installation or to fight the armed opposition.

Should the warring parties sign the peace agreement their first priority in collaboration with the other political parties, the civil society organisations, faith-based groups and the traditional institutions of governance will be to initiate peace and reconciliation conferences and meeting throughout South Sudan to conscientised the people about peace and the need to reconcile and heal the wounds.

The other lesson learnt from the CPA was the lack of peace dividends. Many communities had been dispossessed of their likelihoods and needed to be compensated either individually or by creating conditions to regenerate these livelihoods. The Government of Southern Sudan had enough economic and financial resources to undertake the task of providing peace dividends. It just did not do that thus giving chance to the unscrupulous leaders to steal and stash away in foreign lands the money simply they did not know what to do. They did not transform the CPA into a programme for mitigating the effects and impact of war. This time round it will imperative and of paramount importance to establish a special fund for reconstruction and rehabilitation of the areas destroyed by war and to compensate life and property lost and repatriate all assets that were looted and transported to other states.

It is in the context, which we may conclude with confidence that South Sudan and its people will never again go through this horrible experience, that we have decided to order the publication of this second edition of ‘South Sudan: the crisis of infancy’. It was necessary to remove some of the parts and sections in order to sharpen the text and focus on what should be done to mitigate the impact of the civil war.

In Chapter four we discuss the interplay of politics, economic and ethnicity in South Sudan over the interim period to draw an intimate linkage between ethnic rivalry over power and wealth and the civil war as well as the SPLM responsibility in it. We suggest that the civil war should be transformed into a revolution in order to launch the national democratic revolution as a way out.

We discuss in Chapter five the quest for, and the shortcomings of the IGAD peace mediation. We believe that peace mediation can only be undertaken when there are no visible national security, economic and political interests of the mediating individuals and/or country. In a conflict like the one in South Sudan, the application of the principle of inclusivity and the roundtable multi-stakeholders negotiations constituted an impediment to expediting peace agreement between the warring SPLM/A (IO) and the Government of South Sudan.

The insistence of the donors to establish transition government of national unity (TGoNU) before the peace agreement had been worked out by the warring parties was tantamount to placing the cart in front of the horse meant to pull it. This pushed to the background the issues of peace as the parties jostled for power sharing rations in the TGoNU.

The ‘crisis of infancy’ epitomises not only the euphemism of story of a two year old child breaking chinaware and glasses in a house as told by the Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Dr. Barnaba Marial Benjamin, in a donor conference in Oslo, Norway, convened to raise funds for South Sudan, but also the insensitivity exhibited by South Sudan leaders in managing the political crisis and civil war. Their failure to make compromises in the interest of the masses reflect their infantile mentality.

We believe the civil war will create a condition conducive to revolutionary and strategic thinking for modernising South Sudan, transforming for the better the lives of its peoples, and building a just society based on ideals and values that trump tendency to family, ethnicity and region.

Peter Adwok Nyaba

Nairobi, Kenya

July 2015

Foreword

In a timely and alert way, Dr Peter Adwok Nyaba’s intrepid pen has been active again. His activism and conscientious application to the politics and society of South Sudan is outstanding. The pace with which he produced this current text is phenomenal and bears testimony to his constant preoccupation with where South Sudan is going.

We have in this text an incisive and informative account of the recent alleged coup attempt and its aftermath. Dr Adwok Nyaba explains from his own point of view what has happened and what did not happen in the country. As usual, he is critical and alert to political undercurrents as the country moves forwards and sometimes backwards. Anybody who wishes to understand South Sudan today would be strongly advised to pay attention to this text and its contents.

As I write this foreword, all interested parties have welcomed the peace agreement signed in Addis Ababa between President Salva Kiir and Vice-President Riek Machar. It is the wish of all that the peace holds and that the horrendous bloodletting and slaughter we’ve seen over the past few months is brought to a definite close. For South Sudan to make progress in a meaningful and sustained, way we cannot destroy and build at the same time. The 50 years of war which eventually yielded independence for South Sudan should not be added onto any more war. The suffering of the masses of the people should not be extended or compounded. It is time for peace; it is time to construct rapidly; to make up for the deficit in development which accrued during Africa’s longest war.

It needs to be said that one of the lessons we must learn from Africa’s contemporary history is the need to create democratic institutions, if we want to avoid conflict. From village to city, democracy in the form of the relevant institutions should be created and allowed to flourish. Diversity and ethno-cultural differences should be openly tolerated, celebrated and given institutional expression. In this way we will be able to turn our differences to beneficial ends.

We will be able to use our wide cultural and ethnic varieties as sources of strength and not grounds for conflict. As we move forward in peace we must also understand that centralised rule has proved from one country to the next unhelpful in Africa and the world. Decentralisation and democracy at the grassroots represent the only way in which we can effectively grow our societies in conditions of peaceful ethno-cultural coexistence. Too often in Africa, we have acted as if unity can only be maintained in a very centralised polities.

Across the continent we realise in the post-colonial era that over– centralisation, rather than creating unity, fosters dissent and conflict, because democratic practices at all social levels, especially at the grassroots, are stifled and inhibited. There is no short cut to peace and prosperity, except through a democratic political terrain.

The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM)/Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) which championed the course of freedom for South Sudan for so long must transform itself into an organisation which respects democratic principles in and out of government and within its own structures. It must prove that it is capable of living up to the highest expectations, not only of the South Sudanese but all Africans. To do this it is necessary for democracy to filter through all its existential processes.

This is the underlying plea of Peter Adwok Nyaba. More recently Dr Adwok Nyaba has resigned his membership of the SPLM. This move came as a huge surprise to many observers. The implications of the resignation speak volumes about his thinking regarding the possibilities for transformation in and out of the organisation. Be that as it may, South Sudan has to consolidate peace and build a society that will do justice to the enormous sacrifices that were made in the long years of painful war and suffering; a war in which millions lost their lives or were displaced. The sub-text of Dr Adwok Nyaba’s narrative is that South Sudan wants democracy, peace and prosperity. Let us hope that, as we move forward, we are able to deliver to the long-suffering people the patent desires of all.

Kwesi Kwaa Prah

Cape Town, 2014

Preface

When I decided to write this book, it was in the context of a simmering political dispute within the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) that culminated in the political tsunami of 23 July 2013. Little information was available to many people in and out of the SPLM until the sudden and unexplained presidential decree in April 2013 to withdraw certain powers from the vice president. Unfortunately the narrative changed when this dispute turned violent on 15 December 2013, plunging South Sudan into the abyss.

The dismissal of the entire cabinet on 23 July gave me the opportunity to travel to Cape Town to finally launch my book, South Sudan: The State We Aspire To, which had been published in 2010 by CASAS. Indeed, I had suspended its release since 2011, when President Salva Kiir appointed me Minister of Higher Education, Science and Technology in the first Government of the Republic of South Sudan. The booklet was critical of the SPLM and the Government of Southern Sudan, and it would not have been prudent to release it while I was still a SPLM minister in the Government of National Unity. I therefore requested CASAS to temporarily withhold it from their list of publications.

After representing the SPLM in the Government of National Unity I did not believe I would serve the party again in any capacity. I was so fed up with their lack of direction, policy strategies and the prevalent crisscrossing, double crossing and blocking of comrades that, after the referendum, decided I would engage only in my own private work. I, therefore prepared myself to establish a youth training centre in Malakal.

It would have been a political risk to turn down a ministerial appointment especially in the first government of an independent South Sudan. It would have appeared as if I was denying the people of South Sudan the experience I gained while serving in the Sudan government, and I am sure nobody would have accepted whatever reasons or excuses gave for turning down this appointment. Moreover, I felt the higher education system in South Sudan was a challenge I could not duck, so I accepted the appointment and postponed launching that book.

In the middle of September 2013, when I started to analyse the political situation in the SPLM, it never occurred to me – not even for a moment – that the simmering political dispute in the movement, whose contours started to crystallise into a choice between democratic reforms or maintaining the status quo, would escalate into a dangerous military confrontation between Chairman Salva Kiir Mayardit and his deputy Dr. Riek Machar Teny-Dhurgon. It was equally unbelievable that this political dispute would translate into the massacre of innocent ethnic Nuer in Juba, or a wider war between the Dinka and the Nuer.

There has been loud talk by the SPLM leadership since 2005 that the organisation should transform itself from a liberation movement to a mass-based political party. This talk turned out to be a hoax. The SPLM was still reeling from the political trauma of the sudden and tragic loss of its historic leader, Dr John Garang de Mabior. Moreover, the events of Yei remained fresh in the memory of many leaders hailing from Bahr el Ghazal. The SPLM leaders had not fully unified their leadership ranks. This manifested itself immediately with the appearance of power centres around the leadership of Comrade Salva Kiir Mayardit.

The political fallout of the Yei Crisis had a devastating impact on the SPLM/A as a liberation movement, its performance in the Government of Southern Sudan, and in the Government of National Unity in Khartoum, as well as in its relations with the National Congress Party and other political forces in the country. The power centres that emerged around Kiir’s presidency played a negative role of blocking internal political discourse within the SPLM. It was evident that only a coterie of confidantes around Comrade Salva Kiir Mayardit discussed these issues and took strategic decisions on behalf of the party although some of them were not bona fide SPLM members. The interim period therefore passed without the required transformation taking place within the movement. The leaders acted tactically than strategically often taking half-hearted policy decisions not meant to have a lasting social, economic and political impact on the situation in the country.

The SPLM established institutions at national-, Southern-Sudan, state- and county-levels, but they remained fora in which bona fide members engaged in struggles to block each other so as to leave room for their relatives and friends to rush into the movement in order to secure positions in government. Some of them were National Congress Party (NCP) operatives or those returning from the diaspora. –

The sum total of SPLM in-fighting and the power struggle between 2004 and 2013 registered as dysfunctionality and ineffectiveness in the face of brazen corruption in government, threatening to transform South Sudan into a limited liability enterprise owned by a clique hailing from the home turf of President Salva Kiir Mayardit. In the complex political mélange that was Southern Sudan (2005–2011), it is not difficult to discern that the SPLM leadership of Salva Kiir Mayardit was bent on building a tribal-based modern state. A state founded on Dinka principles of governance. An emerging context of ethnicity and regionalism, driven by