Dr. Sizo Nkala
South Sudan’s post-civil war Transitional Government of National Unity held together by a tenuous Revitalised Agreement for Conflict Resolution in South Sudan (R-ARCSS) signed in 2018 appears to be on the brink of collapse.
This was after reports of renewed clashes between the South Sudanese forces controlled by President Salva Kiir and the White Army militia believed to be loyal to the First Vice President Riek Machar.
Although the militia does not fall under the direct control of Vice President Machar, its members are drawn from the Nuer ethnic group to which Machar belongs and fought alongside his Sudan People’s Liberation Movement in Opposition (SPLM-IO) against President Kiir’s Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) during the five-year civil war from 2013 to 2018.
South Sudan descended into a civil war in 2013, just two years after its independence, precipitated by a struggle for the control of state power between Kiir and Machar.
The war reportedly claimed 400,000 lives and left millions internally displaced while millions more fled to neighbouring countries. The fighting, which has been going on in the Upper Nile state’s town of Nasir since February, resulted in the killing of 27 soldiers including General Majur Dak earlier this month.
The militia has also been accused of attacking a helicopter belonging to the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) which had been deployed to the area to airlift the soldiers who had been held hostage. This has increased tensions within the government as key allies of Vice President Machar who include ministers of petroleum and peacebuilding, the deputy head of the army, and senior military officials have been arrested.
The recent spate of violence bears the failure of the transitional government to implement the key terms of the R-ARCSS which include the integration of all the armed forces which fought in the civil war into a single professional national army.
Fighting broke out as the White Army militia was resisting disarmament – a key condition for integration into the national army. The incident in Nasir is far from an isolated incident.
Since the inception of the transitional government in September 2018, the country has endured low-intensity political violence at the local and state levels as officials and soldiers jostle for power and resources.
According to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED), in the period between October 2018 and December 2024, South Sudan has registered 17,000 deaths from political violence with a monthly average of 87 deaths.
The central government, which is made up of a ragtag group of civil war belligerents, has neither the capacity nor the political will to stop the violence. Failure to stem the violence will condemn the R-ARCSS to the fate of its 2015 predecessor, the Agreement for the Resolution of Conflict in South Sudan (ARCSS) which was signed by the warring parties in August 2015 in a bid to stop the civil war and prepare the country for democratic elections.
However, the pact collapsed in 2016 following disagreements among the parties who soon retreated to their respective corners and resumed fighting.
The transitional government has failed to implement the key provisions of the R-ARCSS which include drafting a new constitution, carrying out security sector reforms, building state institutions and establishing the AU-backed Hybrid Court for South Sudan (HCSS) to oversee the investigation into and prosecution of war crimes and human rights abuses committed during the civil war since 2013.
As a result, the country has not been able to hold elections which were initially scheduled for April 2023 only to be postponed to December 2024. In September 2024, President Kiir announced a fresh postponement of the elections to December 2026. It was always going to be difficult to hold elections without a permanent constitution in the first place.
Should the new deadline be upheld, which is highly unlikely, it will mean that the people of South Sudan will only get to elect their leaders 17 years after independence. President Kirr and Vice President Machar have advised against the criminal prosecution of those accused of war crimes arguing that it will only reinforce divisions and undermine efforts to promote peace and stability. This could be the reason they have dragged their feet in forming the hybrid court.
However, without transitional justice, social cohesion will be difficult to achieve which peace and stability even more elusive. The politico-security crisis is compounded by a humanitarian and economic crisises. About 9 million South Sudanese people are in need of humanitarian aid as they battle food insecurity and health problems.
The influx of refugees from the war-torn Sudan numbering almost a million people fleeing the war only makes the humanitarian situation a lot worse.
Moreover, the country is facing a financial crisis owing to its inability to generate revenues following the damage to the pipeline it uses to export oil in Khartoum, Sudan. The government has not been able to import enough food or pay its workers.
This groundswell of disquiet can easily metamorphose into political instability which could plunge the country into another civil war. It is crucial for the regional body, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and the African Union (AU) to act faster to avert the disaster that seems to be in the making in South Sudan.
DR SIZO NKALA A Research Fellow at the University of Johannesburg’s Centre for Africa-China Studies.