In the Republic of South Sudan, a purge rarely means what it says. Officials are dismissed with the solemn language of presidential decrees, television announcers speak in grave tones about “relieving” ministers of their duties, and citizens briefly wonder whether accountability has finally arrived. Then, some months later—sometimes weeks—the same officials loudly return to government. Occasionally they return to the very office from which they were expelled. Thus the purge becomes something else entirely: a political performance.
Under the leadership of Salva Kiir Mayardit, presidential decrees have evolved into a governing instrument not merely for administration but for elite choreography. Over the past twenty-one years, more than 100 decrees dismissing senior officials have been issued. More than 50 ministers, governors, and senior officials have been reshuffled repeatedly, some dismissed and reappointed within months.
In most political systems, dismissal implies wrongdoing, incompetence, or at least the pretense of responsibility. In South Sudan’s system, dismissal often signals something subtler: a temporary adjustment within the ruling coalition. Accountability is implied. Accountability rarely follows.
The purge without consequence: The legal question is as interesting as the political one: what is the constitutional meaning of a purge that produces no investigation, no prosecution, and no institutional reform? The constitution allows the president to appoint and dismiss ministers. Yet the power to dismiss is not the same as the power to absolve. When officials are ceremoniously removed without inquiry—only to return later to the same office—the purge becomes a curious constitutional hybrid: punishment without judgment and exoneration without trial.
In such a system, the dismissal serves three political purposes: Discipline loyalists without destroying them. Signal responsiveness to public outrage. Prevent powerful officials from building independent political bases. The result resembles what analysts describe as patronage-based executive governance, where loyalty to the presidency is rewarded and dismissal functions as a reminder of who ultimately controls political survival.
Scandals that refuse to disappear: The cycle of purge and reappointment might be merely theatrical if it did not coincide with a long catalogue of economic scandals. Take the Dura Saga, the now-legendary food-security program intended to stockpile sorghum for famine prevention. Hundreds of companies were paid to deliver grain. Many of those companies existed only long enough to receive the money. The sorghum reserves were supposed to feed the nation. Instead they fed the corruption archives.
Then came the Letters of Credit scandal, involving financial arrangements with banks such as Qatar National Bank and Stanbic Bank. Nearly a billion dollars in credit facilities were meant to finance imports of food, fuel, and medicine. Investigations later suggested that vast sums disappeared through fictitious imports and currency speculation. Dollars meant to stabilize the economy instead destabilized it.
Meanwhile, the government reportedly spent more than a billion dollars under the oil-for-road infrastructure projects, producing only a fraction of the promised highways. South Sudan acquired some of the most expensive kilometers of road in the developing world. The asphalt was thin. The invoices were not. Then there were the opaque procurement arrangements involving the businessman Ashraf Seed Ahmed Hussein Ali, widely known as Al-Cardinal, whose companies secured lucrative contracts linked to oil revenues and government procurement.
Add to this the oil-for-salaries financing schemes, in which future oil production was pledged to cover immediate fiscal shortages, and the South Sudanese pound stabilization fund, where dollars released to defend the currency allegedly found their way into speculative trading networks. Each scandal differs in detail. Their common thread is institutional weakness. And after each scandal, the political ritual repeats: dismissals, reshuffles, and the quiet return of familiar faces.
Where does the buck stop? Which brings us to the central political question. When ministers are fired after scandals but later reappointed, does each purge absolve the presidency of responsibility? Or does it merely redistribute blame among subordinates?
In political theory, the executive bears ultimate responsibility for the performance of the government. In practice, however, the South Sudanese model has developed a curious inversion: ministers rotate, but the system remains constant. Dismissals create the appearance of corrective action while preserving the political structure that produced the crisis. The buck, as the saying goes, stops somewhere. The puzzle is determining where.
Kiir: Victim or architect? This ambiguity has produced two competing portraits of the president. In one narrative, Kiir is an overwhelmed leader, trapped in a system where corrupt subordinates repeatedly betray his trust. Each purge is an attempt—however imperfect—to restore order.
In the other narrative, he is a calculating manager of a patronage-based executive governance, carefully balancing rival factions within the ruling elite by distributing access to state resources. In that interpretation, corruption scandals are not anomalies but byproducts of a political economy designed to maintain elite loyalty. Both interpretations circulate widely in online and offline political discussions across South Sudan. Both are difficult to prove conclusively.
The ghost of Garang: To understand how this system evolved, many observers look back to the early years of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, led by the late John Garang. Garang’s sudden death in 2005 created a leadership vacuum that Kiir inherited at a pivotal moment—just as the movement was transforming from a guerrilla organization into a governing authority.
What might have happened had Garang lived? Would the SPLM’s intellectual core—the so-called Garang Boys—and the former Red Army cadres have accepted Kiir’s style of governance? Would the internal tensions within the movement have produced a different political order, or perhaps an earlier conflict? These are questions historians will debate for decades. The answers disappeared with the helicopter that crashed in the hills of southern Sudan.
A political system of rotations; What is visible today, however, is a pattern. Ministers circulate through government portfolios. Officials dismissed for failure reappear in new roles. Presidential decrees regulate the tempo of the political system like a drumbeat. This circulation keeps elites inside the ruling coalition while preventing any one figure from accumulating too much independent authority. It is a remarkably durable system. Durable, that is, for those inside it.
For the institutions of South Sudan—the Ministry of Finance, the central bank, the procurement system—the consequences have been severe. Financial credibility has eroded. The currency has struggled under repeated shocks. International partners remain cautious. Meanwhile, the public observes the cycle with growing skepticism. When dismissals become routine and reappointments inevitable, accountability begins to look less like justice and more like what former Editor-in-chief of the South Sudan News Agency, Duop Chak Wol, correctly called a “political theater”.
Too many questions: Is the purge a corrective measure or merely a performance? Is the president a reluctant participant in a flawed system or its principal architect? And perhaps the most important question of all: If everyone else is repeatedly dismissed for failure, who ultimately answers for the system itself?
In South Sudan, that question remains unanswered. For now, the decrees continue, the ministers rotate, and the scandals drift into history—occasionally resurfacing when the next purge arrives.
The writer is an independent media voice known for his critical reporting on governance, security, and human rights in South Sudan. Forced into exile, he continues to comment on civic space, accountability, and democratic reform across East Africa, advocating transparency and press freedom.
The views expressed in ‘opinion’ articles published by Radio Tamazuj are solely those of the writer. The veracity of any claims made is the responsibility of the author, not Radio Tamazuj.