The Politics of Fear in South Sudan

Generating Chaos, Creating Conflict

Daniel Akech Thiong

• Publisher: Zed Books
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781786996817
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Peace & Global Development
• Index: Politics & International Relations

When asked in 2016 if he would step down as President of South Sudan, Salva Kiir replied 'my exit could spark genocide.' Kiir's words exemplify how fear and the threat of mass violence have become central to the politics of South Sudan. As South Sudanese analyst Daniel Akech Thiong shows, it is this politics that lies at the heart of the country's seemingly intractable civil war. In this book, Akech Thiong explores the origins of South Sudan's politics of fear. Weaving together social, economic and cultural factors into a comprehensive framework, he reveal how the country's elites have exploited ethnic divisions as a means of mobilising support and securing their grip on power, in the process triggering violent conflict. He also considers the ways in which this politics of fear takes root among the wider populace, exploring the role of corruption, social media, and state coercion in spreading hatred and fostering mass violence. As regimes across Africa and around the world become increasingly reliant on their own politics of fear, Akech Thiong's book offers novel insight into a growing phenomenon with implications far beyond South Sudan.

1

The role of historical legacy in South Sudan’s conflict dynamics

The work of scholars of South Sudan has pointed to the appropriate historical legacy in understanding the existing conflict dynamics in South Sudan. Such an analytical inquiry is supported by literature elsewhere, particularly in natural sciences, where it is called hysteresis – the dependence of the state of a system on its history.

The South Sudanese people, who had experienced fear-provoking violence since the opening of the Nile basin for exploration between 1839 and 1862, voted overwhelmingly to separate from Sudan in 2011. The political-economic history of South Sudan reads as a story of resistance against foreign interventions before 2005, and post 2005 it reads like a chapter in the world annals of organized crime, with the former rebel commanders and political elite in South Sudan playing the roles of junior accomplices in a tale of massive and protracted robbery.¹ Though true, this interpretation does not adequately reveal the never-ending violent negotiation of power relations among competing groups.

The most dominant elite groups before the British and Egypt jointly took control of Southern Sudan in January 1899 hailed from sedentary communities. All of the Southern Sudanese social groups resisted foreign powers for years, but a few groups, mainly those with centralized political systems, realized quiet earlier to take the option of negotiating relations peacefully. The largest Nilotic groups, the Dinka and the Nuer, who are pastoralists, remained impervious to external influence. The Church took over education in Southern Sudan (1900–26), and the pastoralists were initially discriminated against by the education system established.² There were notable exceptions, such as the elementary school at Malek among the Dinka of Bor District, opened in 1905, and a secondary school at Rumbek among the Agar Dinka opened in the 1940s.³ As a consequence of this uneven access to education, from 1899 to 1955, known as the Anglo-Egyptian colonial period, the educated class was dominated by the non-Dinka and non-Nuer. This infrastructure played a role in how the existing political structures, shaped by the civil wars, came into existence.

Exclusionary politics from Khartoum sparked the First Sudanese Civil War (1955–72) led by the Anya-Nya guerrilla movement that was badly disunited until 1969. When Israel entered South Sudan in 1969–71 to support the rebels to address its regional agenda sparked by the politics following the Six-Day War of 1967, they viewed education as the criteria for selecting people to work with. They chose Joseph Lagu, from Equatoria. With the military resources from Israel, Joseph Lagu unified the Anya-Nya guerilla forces under his overall command. He formed the Southern Sudan Liberation Movement (SSLM), which would negotiate the Addis Ababa Peace Agreement in 1972 with Khartoum and ended the war.⁴ The period from 1969 to 1983 saw a fierce competition between political leaders from the Equatoria region and Dinka group. This being said with the understanding that Equatoria is a region with more than thirty-six groups with varying political interests, and it is unfair to compare it to Dinka, which is a single ethnic group. Nevertheless, the South Sudanese political relations since 1982 began to be discussed in incomparable groupings into the Dinka, the Nuer and the non-Nuer plus the non-Dinka. The non-Nuer plus the non-Dinka are predominantly in the Equatoria region with some in Bahr el Ghazal and Upper Nile regions. The Dinka is mostly in Bahr el Ghazal, and the Nuer being dominant in Upper Nile (where Dinka comes second).

The politics between 1972 and 1983 was marked by the rivalry between the Dinka group and the Equatoria region. Abel Alier, a Dinka from Upper Nile, led the Southern autonomous regional government twice in 1972–7 and in 1980–1; Joseph Lagu, a Madi from Equatoria in 1977–9; and Joseph Tombura, an Azande from Equatoria, in 1982–3; while Joseph Lagu became the Vice President of Sudan in 1982. So, Equatoria was the dominant group in South Sudanese politics by May 1983.

The origin of the SPLM/A

In 1983, the president of Sudan, Nimeiri, dissolved the Southern Regional Government and divided the region into three provinces in violation of the Addis Ababa Peace Agreement of 1972. Fearing revolts, the government ordered the transferring of the Anya-Nya guerrilla forces to the North contrary to the clause in the Addis Ababa Agreement that stipulated that they were to serve only in the South. The former Anya-Nya forces revolted in protest and the SPLM/A was born, which would wage the Second Sudanese Civil War from 1983 to 2005. Col. John Garang, head of the Staff College in Omdurman, who was sent by the government to negotiate with Southern officers who had refused orders to be transferred away from their bases in the Upper Nile region, ended up joining the mutineers. The rebels fled to Ethiopian border areas of Gambella where they met with another group that had previously rejected the Addis Ababa Peace Agreement. The SPLM/A was dominated by the Nuer, and the Equatoria region was largely absent by July 1983. Various independent groups converged in the Itang camp at the Ethiopian border with the Upper Nile. Wrangling over leadership ensued.⁵

By July 1983, before the Muor Muor and Koryom divisions, which were dominated by Dinka youths, joined the SPLA, it was up to Nuer officers to decide who should win the leadership of the SPLM/A between Dr John Garang, a Dinka, and Samuel Gai Tut, their fellow Nuer. Samuel Gai Tut did not contest the leadership of his group for himself. His approach was to propose Akuot Atem, a 58-year-old Dinka, from the same Bor District with Garang, to be the political leader while Tut was hoping to lead the military wing. Tut took his time in the decision and planned carefully. The last thing he would expect was for officers from his Nuer support base to stand against him in support of Garang when he needed a unified front. William Nyuon Bany, a Nuer with the largest army among Garang’s initial allies, chose to side with Garang against his fellow Nuer, Samuel Gai Tut. Nyuon decided that either his national identity as a South Sudanese was tied to his primacy or his decision was motivated by revenge, having been demoted by Tut from the rank of a captain to the rank of a sergeant major in the 1970s before his rank was restored by the Khartoum government.⁶ Garang exploited the frustration of the Ethiopian government with the group of Samuel Gai Tut and Akuot Atem, one of the guerrilla leaders operating from Ethiopia who did not accept the Addis Ababa Agreement of 1972, might not have been performing to the expectation of the Ethiopian government that was fighting a proxy war with the government of Sudan. The Ethiopian government helped the South Sudanese leaders to form the liberation movement with a military wing by June 1983.⁷ But the unity fell through, and Garang moved to frame issues in a way that appealed to the Ethiopian backers. His group won with him as he became the chairman and commander-in-chief of the SPLM/A, followed by Kerubino Kuanyin Bol, William Nyuon Bany, Salva Kiir Mayardit and Arok Thon Arok, in that order. All but William Nyuon Bany, a Nuer, were Dinka.

The military aspect of the movement became more important than the political aspect, and consequently, politicians were marginalized.⁸ What became the Dinka elite domination of the government of South Sudan could be traced back to the wrangling over leadership at Itang Refugee Camp. A fault line was created that would be exacerbated by the split in the movement in 1991, and the wounds created between the two groups would reopen in 2013. While leadership wrangling has always been at the heart of leadership failure in South Sudanese history, critics of the SPLM/A and its leader Dr John Garang blame the deterioration of relationships on ideological orientations that the SPLM/A chose at the beginning. The SPLM/A’s ideology was to fight for a united secular socialist Sudan under new terms.

The backing of the Ethiopian government made the leader of the SPLM/A, John Garang, and his group to be a bit reckless with political orientations just as the donor money from the West would make Salva Kiir’s government in Juba to behave recklessly with their domestic resources. There was more hope from outside than from within.

For example, Sudan was predominantly a Muslim country, and yet the SPLM Manifesto released in July 1983 called for a secular Sudan, and the SPLM/A expected everyone to rally to their cause. The general public in Sudan might have been prepared for a secular state over a strictly religious state, but when a group of non-Muslims and outsiders to the elite club in Khartoum were the ones commanding such a change, suspicions were bound to inform the reactions of the majority of Muslims. A few Muslims who joined the SPLM/A might have been drawn there in search for a political space that might not have been available for them in Khartoum. The SPLM/A’s compensation for this shortcoming was to call for a united Sudan under new terms rather than separation, which, in fact, neutralized some Arab countries such as Libya and Yemen, who lent support to the SPLM/A.

The SPLM/A leaders, having fought in the Anya-Nya movement, knew that self-determination was a popular demand of the South Sudanese people, and yet the Manifesto called for a united Sudan. Though necessitated by the circumstances, both positions were unsustainable in the long run as the events would prove, but the SPLM/A were mostly preoccupied with capturing power, and they would sing songs of any supplier of military resources. A strong defence of the SPLM/A is contained in the last section of this chapter. Gen. Malual Ayom Dor aptly noted in his PhD’s dissertation the contradiction:

During the civil war, the SPLM/A encompassed socialist and liberal ideas in search of ideological allies to achieve this New Sudan, shifting its ideological preferences from East to West at the end of the Cold War. As a result, given the absence of a clear political ideology, the SPLM/A remained a military movement during the conflict while its political organisation was never properly institutionalised. The SPLM, as a movement was really only used as an institutional cover for diplomatic initiatives, for mobilisation throughout Sudan and abroad, and for humanitarian assistance in the liberated areas but not as an ideological vehicle.⁹

Indeed, when the SPLM/A lost the support of the Ethiopian government in 1991, it made a transformation in both rhetoric and symbols to win the support of the West.¹⁰ The red star in the SPLM/A’s flag was changed to yellow, and pronouncements of democratic changes were announced at Chukudum in 1994.

Initially committed to an ideological orientation backed by a powerful foreign patron, the SPLM/A overlooked internal issues such as diversity in the composition of its ranks and file, and it was already too late when moves were made to correct this in the 1990s.

The manner in which the SPLM/A came into existence created problems of ethnic representations in the military, particularly the marginalization of the Equatoria region in the ranks and file of the national army, which would resurface in the independent South Sudan. The second civil war broke out at the time when Joseph James Tombura, a South Sudanese politician and member of the Sudan African National Union from Azande, was in charge as the president of the High Executive Council of the Southern Sudan Autonomous Region...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Dedication Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Organization of the book
• Acknowledgements
• 1 The role of historical legacy in South Sudan’s conflict dynamics
• 2 Integrating existing approaches
• 3 Internal dynamics of South Sudan’s ruling elite
• 4 Governing through fearful means
• 5 Fear of domination triggered by corruption
• 6 Social media as a transmitting channel of fear
• 7 The role of the external actors in South Sudan’s conflict
• 8 South Sudan’s peace architecture
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright Page