By Mak Banguot Gok (Makjohnson),
June 19, 2022 — It is always what makes many of the South Sudanese ‘expectations a nightmare hence viewing their country reaching to the extent of losing authority over huge sections of its territory. The so-called Revitalize Transitional Government of National Unity which existed in Juba is miserably failing in providing both the centralized and a decentralized method of delivering political (public) goods to the South Sudanese living within designated parameters (borders. More importantly, it’s losing altogether the focus and answer to the concerns and demands of citizens. Above all, the Defecto rulers in Juba nosedived in organization and channeling the interests of South Sudanese people and, exclusively in furtherance of the national goals and values. It’s failing to buffer or manipulate external forces and influences and, unable to champion the local concerns of the adherents. It’s dwindling to mediate between the constraints and challenges of the international arena and the dynamism of the country’s own internal economic, political, and social realities and, worsening in prevention of cross-border invasions and infiltrations, and any loss of territory. It’s failing to eliminate domestic threats or attacks upon the national order and social structure; it’s failing in prevention of crime and any related dangers to the country ‘domestic human security. And above all, it’s failing to enable South Sudanese people to resolve their disputes with the state and/or with their own fellow inhabitants without recourse to arms or other forms of physical coercion. These and many others failures are one of the indicators undermining the legitimacy of the R-TGoNU, and thus displays of the 2018 peace agreement vanishing.
Today in Juba, only the deadly corruption by the deadliest corrupt government officials is flourishing. This is obvious with the ruling elite who are only pocketing their local and war gains while letting most of the South Sudanese go hungry. Apart from self-enrichment by the rulers of the current South Sudan in Juba, the R-TGoNU is characterized by failure in delivery of a range of other desirable political goods which always becomes possible when a reasonable measure of security has been sustained. R-TGoNU has failed in establishing a mechanism that can enables South Sudanese people to participate freely, openly, and fully in politics and the political process that encompasses amongst many others, the exercise of their essential freedoms; the right to compete for office; respect and support for national and state political institutions, like legislatures and courts; tolerance of dissent and difference; and fundamental civil and human rights.
Meanwhile, the so-called Revitalize Transitional Government of National Unity (R-TGoNU) lead by Salva Kiir and his brother Riek Machar is unable to/and consequently, the two plus their few followers have found themselves sucked disconcertingly into a maelstrom of anomic internal conflict and messy humanitarian relief. Therefore, with the current pretext of the Revitalized Agreement on the Resolution of Conflict in South Sudan (R-ARCSS), it is very difficult to achieve stability and predictability and, the only viable description is that, the current R-ARCSS as well as the R-TGoNU are waver precariously between weakness and failure, truly failing, or even collapsing. Since the signing of R-ARCSS in 2018, what people of South Sudan receive out of the current Government of National Unity is only the growth of criminal violence due to the fact that the so-called R-TGoNU ‘government’s authority continues to be weakening and failing.
This in fact, not only what has been revealed with the recent event of the Ugandan armed force penetrating deep into South Sudan land through Eastern Equatoria State in a gesture appeared to be an aggressive manner, there happenings a many similar incidents by the Kenyan, Ethiopian, Congolese, Sudanese, and even others non-state actors which are too an illegal encroachment of the South Sudanese borders ‘lands. Plausibly, the extent of the South Sudan government ‘failure can be easily traced and measure by how much of its geographical expanse is genuinely being controlled (especially after dark within and outside Juba) by the R-TGoNU? How nominal or contested is the Juba-based central government sway over peripheral counties and rural roads and waterways? Who is really expressing power in the upcountry (especially in the counties, Payams and the Bumas) which are distant from the nation’s capital Juba?
With this simple judgment, one would understand that South Sudan today is a country where its rulers are no longer able or willing to perform the fundamental jobs of governing a nation-state in the modern world. As a failed state, those occupants of the governing hierarchy in Juba are only happy sitting and exhibiting flawed government institutions. In this regard, lawlessness becomes more apparent; criminal gangs in pretext of the R-TGoNU are the ones who took over the governing institutions; the country’s ordinary and systemic police forces become paralyzed; and, therefore allowing anomic behaviors become the norm. In specific regard, today in Juba, the only institution of the government that remains functions without doubt is an executive (Kiir+Riek) and their own corrupt ministers. They destroyed institutions of government and democracy; they abused the citizens’ human rights; they channeled as many of the resources of the country as possible into their own and their sub-clan ‘hands; and they deprived everyone else in South Sudan of opportunity to prosper.
The only successful endeavors of Kiir and Riek ‘government in Juba today are increasing oppression, extortion, and harassment of the majority of their own compatriots while privileging more narrowly based parties, clans, sects, or family members. What qualify South Sudan as a failed state are these (the regime officials in Juba only prey on their own constituents; driven by ethnic or other inter-communal hostility, or by the governing elites’ own insecurities.) They victimize the citizens in general and/or some subset of the whole that is regarded as hostile. South Sudan as a failed state is tense, deeply conflicted, dangerous, and contested bitterly by warring factions. Often, the expression of the R-TGoNU’ official power is limited to only Juba and one or more ethnically specific counties not of the situation on the country’s borders. Whilst South Sudan territorial integrity is being surrendered to external forces, here in Juba, the ruling cadres are only busy on their usual patrimonial rule that depends on a patronage-based system of extraction from ordinary citizens. In most cases, the government troops battle armed revolts led by one or more rivals.
Therefore, the Defecto Authority in Juba faces more insurgencies, different degrees of communal discontent, and a plethora of dissent directed at the Juba government and at groups within the government. Moreover, the Revitalize Transitional Legislatures is existing as a rubber-stamping machine with the democratic debate noticeably absent. South Sudan’s judiciary system is just a derivative of the executive rather than being independent. They know very well that they cannot rely on the country’s court system for significant redress or remedy, especially against the state. Other major tribes, clans and subclans, other than the president’s own, became alienated. The shock government soldiers perpetrated one outrage after another against fellow South Sudanese and systematically reduced human security within the country so as to maximize their own personal power, and how that increase in personal power permitted a quantum leap in their control over the country’s rents and riches.
The civil war that characterize South Sudan as a failed state usually stem from or have roots in ethnic, or other inter-communal enmity. Therefore, whence the state’s capacity to secure itself or to perform in an expected manner recedes, and once, what little capacity remains is devoted almost exclusively to the fortunes of a few or to a favored ethnicity or community, there is every reason to expect less and less loyalty to the state on the part of the excluded and disenfranchised because the rulers are perceived to be working for themselves and their kin and not for the state, their legitimacy, and the state’s legitimacy plummets. Thus, the fear of others that drives so much ethnic conflict stimulates and fuels hostilities between regimes and subordinate and less favored groups. Avarice of the current rulers in Juba also propels that antagonism, especially when greed is magnified by dreams of the government official to loot from discoveries of new, contested, sources of resource wealth, like the petroleum deposits, diamond fields, other minerals, or timber.
South Sudan is increasingly conceived as being owned by an exclusive family or group with all others pushed aside. The social contract that binds inhabitants to an overarching polity of the nation-state becomes breached. Various sets of citizens cease trusting the government or individuals in Juba and then naturally turn more and more to the kinds of sectional and community loyalties that are always the main recourse in times of insecurity and their main default source of economic opportunity. In fact, South Sudanese citizens do not depend in any form on the central government in Juba to secure their persons and free them from fear. Being unable to establish an atmosphere of security nationwide, and often struggling to project power and official authority, the faltering R-TGoNU failure becomes obvious even before the infiltration of the foreign forces such as the Ugandan through Eastern Equatoria. Its failure served as the push-factor for most of the South Sudanese who resorted to the transfer of their allegiances to clan and group leaders and, some of whom became warlords. These warlords or other local strongmen from the bordering States ‘counties are deriving their support from external as well as indigenous supporters. In the wilder, more marginalized corners of South Sudan, terrors are breeding along with the prevailing anarchy that always naturally accompanies the country’s breakdown and failure.
Mak Banguot Gok (Makjohnson) via Johnsonmak61@gmail.com
