South Sudan’s Cybercrime and Computer Misuse Bill, 2025, passed by President Salva Kiir’s compliant parliament on November 25, 2025, does not function as legislation. It functions as a muzzle. It is a political instrument crafted to intimidate critics, bully perceived enemies, and silence anyone who dares to speak openly online.
On the surface, the bill appears sensible. It lists familiar cyber offenses: hacking, cyber-terrorism, economic sabotage, espionage, unauthorized digital transactions, online harassment, and impersonation. Many countries legislate against these acts, and in isolation these provisions resemble standard efforts to regulate digital activity.
But the bill’s true purpose becomes clear not in what it claims to fight, but in how it empowers the state to wage that fight.
The most dangerous provision is Section 6. Vague and deliberately expansive, it grants the National Security Service sweeping powers to monitor, track, intercept, and arrest individuals without judicial oversight. In a country where security forces already operate with near-total impunity, such authority is not protective—it is predatory. It normalizes warrantless surveillance, legitimizes arbitrary detention, and erodes what little remains of civil liberties.
Is this bill intended to curb cybercrime, or to tighten the regime’s grip on dissent? That is for readers to decide.
Some senior government officials argue that the bill is designed to “protect the country.” But a government confident in its legitimacy does not fear criticism. A secure and competent leadership does not need to police social media posts, private messages, or online commentary. There are more appropriate security and legal tools for addressing online harms. Only a leadership anxious about its image can present a restrictive cybercrime law as a national-security measure.
Dictatorial regimes—past and present—often craft laws that appear reasonable on paper but conceal darker intentions. Legislation this broad does not dismantle criminal networks; it manufactures criminals by turning ordinary speech into an offense. It transforms frustrated citizens, whistleblowers, activists, journalists, political opponents, and even casual online commentators into potential targets.
Now, as the bill awaits President Kiir’s signature, it stands as yet another reminder of the government’s familiar pattern of intimidation: suppress first, justify later.
And the irony is unmistakable. A regime haunted by social-media posts fears digital criticism more than its own well-documented failures—corruption, mismanagement, and human-rights abuses—have ever seemed to trouble it.
This is not a cybersecurity law. It is a state-sanctioned license to surveil, intimidate, and silence. The law does not protect the public from online threats; it protects Kiir’s government from the truth. And there is no question in my mind that the Cybercrime and Computer Misuse Bill, 2025, will be misused by the government the moment President Kiir signs it into law.
The writer, Duop Chak Wuol, is an analyst, critical writer, and former editor-in-chief of the South Sudan News Agency. He is a graduate of the University of Colorado and focuses on geopolitics, security, and social issues in South Sudan and the broader East African region. His work has appeared in leading regional and international outlets, including AllAfrica, Radio Tamazuj, The Independent (Uganda), The Arab Weekly, The Standard (Kenya), The Chronicle (Ghana), Addis Standard (Ethiopia), and Sudan Tribune. In 2017, the Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation highlighted his article on Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s role in Ethiopia’s economic transformation. He can be reached at duop282@gmail.com.
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