South Sudan is the youngest country in the world, but what it has gone through since 2011 has placed it negatively ahead of many countries. Salva Kiir, the current president and his former right hand man, Riek Machar, unitedly fought for the country’s independence. However, recent revelations have shown that their individual interests may have fueled the crisis in South Sudan. The country continues to sink deeper into humanitarian crises caused by political conflicts, while its top government and their family members live large and amass wealth.
On Monday, the Sentry, a Washington advocacy group released its first public reports on the conflict in South Sudan. The report revealed how the country’s top officials have benefited both financially and politically from the continuing war and atrocities committed in their country. “Some have been involved in questionable business deals while others have apparently received large payments from corporations doing business in South Sudan. Meanwhile, some top officials and their family members own stakes in a broad array of companies doing business in the country — and in some cases, these commercial engagements may be in violation of South Sudanese law,” George Clooney and John Prendergast wrote in the foreword of the investigative report.
Over time, African countries have suffered violence because of ethnic sensitivity and marginalization, but in South Sudan’s case, it seems to be a different scenario in the real sense. According to Sentry’s report, “the leaders of South Sudan’s warring parties manipulate and exploit ethnic divisions in order to drum up support for a conflict that serves the interests only of the top leaders of these two kleptocratic networks.”
Only two years after South Sudan became an independent and sovereign state, the tussle for power and control of state resources between Kiir and Machar plunged the country into civil war. Several efforts by regional and international stakeholders to restore the lost peace in the country eventually paid off in August last year.
The two leaders signed a peace deal that caused their fighters to cease fire and a transitional government was formed. However, since July 2016, the peace it found about a year seems to be only temporal. Fighting, killings, and many other atrocities have resumed in the country, and up till now, no definite end is in view.
Kiir and Machar, who apparently instigated the country’s deplorable situation don’t have their families caught in all the troubles. Rather, they own properties worth millions of dollars both within and outside the country, drive expensive cars and also live lavish lifestyles, the report said. The top two leaders are not the only ones indicted in the same report; “immediate family members of South Sudan’s top officials have held commercial ventures throughout the country’s most lucrative business sectors,” a situation that implied the violation of the country’s law.
Just like a Yoruba proverb says, ‘a person would always send another man’s child on a dangerous mission’, ignorant guerrillas are killing their fellow citizens, while those that order them around, including Machar and Kiir, have their families safe somewhere outside the battlefield. The report by the Sentry further raises questions as to whether or not, the South Sudanese people can have the hopes and dreams that came with the country’s independence ever materialize any time soon.
Even as these revelations call for urgent international intervention to save South Sudan from perceived kleptocracy, the quest for the peace of this time may be better achieved if Salva Kiir and Riek Machar step down and give way for a better leadership.
