Prof. Jok Madut Jok is a professor of anthropology at Syracuse University in the United States of America and a renowned analyst on matters in South Sudan.
In this second part of an interview with Radio Tamazuj, he speaks about the implementation of the peace agreement, economic reforms, and the polarization of the people along tribal lines and recommends solutions to the problems debilitating South Sudan.
Below are edited excerpts:
Q: Do you think that intellectuals and civil society organizations have done enough to help the government in administering the country and handling public resources transparently?
A: Well, if by doing something you mean people doing research and speaking up and trying to guide the process, then I would say yes. So many people have done so much for this country and sometimes they get kicked out or they get accused of being anti-government. Professor Luka Biong was kicked out of the University of Juba for simply talking about the history of federalism in the country to discuss whether South Sudan should use a federal system of governance, and for that reason, he was threatened with violence. Many others in the parliament itself, people like Luka Monoja, who are intellectuals, and revolutionaries of an extraordinary kind, have always spoken up.
I think we have no shortage of advice. Considering research, the Sudd Institute was engaged in publishing policy briefs and policy reviews every month, all pointing to the need for the country to fight corruption in earnest. The need to rethink the way oil money is used, to talk about how to prevent the destruction of our environment and the killing of our people in the oil field. All kinds of things. There is no shortage of advice coming from intellectuals and researchers and academics and public intellectuals, all of that is there. It is just no will to listen and heed the advice and to try to use that advice as a way to govern the country.
Q: Do you think the reshuffling of finance ministers can lead to the implementation of financial reforms?
A: If history is anything to go by, then I would say no. The reshuffling, especially the quick turnover of ministers of finance, has been a stumbling block to progress because when you change ministers every single year, they have been 12 ministers now since 2005, that quick turnover means that the finance minister has no institutional history or institutional memory.
People are not using that background to see whether changing ministers is the solution. What you need is not to change personalities. What you need is to have a minister develop a policy and a program for five years and see it through. But when you disrupt it, when you change them so soon, like Dier Tong, the former minister was only five days short of completing a year. The one before him was also there for a year. And so on. So, I think this quick turnover of ministers simply disrupts any kind of long-term planning. And I think it has become a liability.
Q: What do you think South Sudan needs to do to come out from this crisis the current economic crisis?
A: Well, for starters, let us create budgets that keep our spending within our means. You and I are employed and we have income. If we spend three times what we make, we will not be able to sustain ourselves. This is exactly what our government does.
The presidency, for example, has a budget but they spend 300 percent over their budget over and above their budgeted amount year after year after year, for decades. And the question is where that over-budget comes from. Where does that come from? It comes from giving the health ministry 4 percent of the budget, education 3 percent and the defense takes 40 percent. But that 40 percent never gets paid to them, it gets taken by the presidency. So, it is a reallocation of budgetary items to keep the president from getting the money every week and every month.
However, often they (the president’s office) go to the central bank and just take the money and therefore we run out of reserves. We need to rebuild our foreign reserves.
We are also almost a 100 percent import economy. Everything we use from toilet paper to needles to food and housing and construction material is imported. So, if you are only importing, meaning that whatever little dollars you have go to a foreign country for you to bring these supplies. If you are an import economy, you certainly are not going to maintain your reserves. The maintenance of the reserves and the money transaction so that people can go and bring foreign items is also fraud with a lot of corruption. It is not fair and it is not transparent.
That process when a business person needs foreign currency to go to Turkey to bring supplies, the process by which you get that money is not transparent. We do not know what works. What is that?
So, for us to rebuild our economy and fight this inflation, we have to start by minimizing our expenditures. And then we go to the level of stabilizing our foreign currency and then we use the oil income equitably. We have to design a new system by which the oil money is used instead of just taking it and distributing it in J1 (presidency). Let us design a new system by which the oil money is spent.
Q: There is this notion that a lot of South Sudanese leaders are using tribal or ethnic dynamics to stay in power. What do you have to say about this?
A: It has increasingly become that way. When people have no civic means to access public office like elections, then they retreat to the ethnic cart. For example, if I want to be appointed or to hold public office, we go and lobby as a community. And if we are not given a seat, then we say we have been marginalized and we use our ethnic card as a way to contest and to demand public office.
That is certainly a trajectory that does not lend itself to how you govern modern states. We have moved away from meritocracy and we have now focused squarely on using ethnic cards as a way to get political recognition, even to the point where leaders are willing to say to their people that “You must defend my job if I am in my position as a president and that my presidency has to be defended by you because if we lose it, all of you will have lost, so defend this presidency of mine”.
That is President Kiir talking to his people the Jieng, and then even within Jieng, talking to his people in Bahr el Ghazal, and then even in Bahr el Ghazal, talking to people in Warrap State. This is why you find that more people from Warrap are staunch defenders of President Kiir, even though Warrap is the least served and the least developed of all the states of South Sudan. Why are people from Gogrial and Warrap in general defending President Kiir when they get nothing? It is because of ethnicity. It is because of these ethnic loyalties that are empty and hollow and provide nothing.
When my community says I should be a minister, what do they get? What does that community receive from me being a minister? Instead of being appointed a minister because of my capacity, I am being appointed a minister because my community wants that. Then what do I do when I go into public office? When will I become finance minister after my community has lobbied for me? Am I going to give them my salary? No, I am going to loot the ministry to pay them and to give them rewards for bringing me into office. So, ethnic politics is the death knell of our country.
Q: How do you rate the implementation of the peace agreement?
A: Well, the biggest problem with that peace agreement is that it created an unwieldy government, a big expensive government with five vice presidents, with a parliament of close to 600 members, with the army being made huge and ungovernable, with the cabinet being much larger than it needs to be for a small country of twelve million people. Why should you have forty ministers?
So, the peace agreement in itself, while it is important for it to silence the guns, has simply been bought by South Sudan for too much. In terms of its translation into the welfare of people. What the peace agreement has done is simply put these leaders in posh offices while the rest of the country rots in misery.
Q: Are you blaming the guarantors of the peace agreement for the top-heavy government?
A: Fine. If the leaders in the office today are simply blaming the guarantors and the mediators, then that is stupidity on our side because those are foreigners. They are not the ones who know exactly what is going on in our country. It is not their responsibility for us to govern our country. It is ours. The leaders and the people of South Sudan are the ones who should then sit down and say, ok, if we have now agreed to stop violence and run our country, why should we do it by setting up this huge government?
I think there is certainly something to say about the mediators not knowing exactly how to bring peace to South Sudan because people were at a loss, people were dying and the whole world is at a loss. What happened to South Sudanese? They fought for 192 years to be independent, and now they get it and they destroy it. People were at a loss, so why should we keep blaming the foreigners?
What is going on right now in our country is our own rule, whether it is the fighting itself or the destruction of resources that we are engaging in. It is our responsibility to then sit down and say ok, now we have a peace agreement, let us reform our country. Even if you have all that big government, that government should be focused on managing the resources of the country to provide welfare for their people. Because our people have suffered for too long.
So, I think yes, the blame can be shared between outsiders who negotiated and granted the agreement. But much of the responsibility lies on the shoulders of South Sudanese leaders because it is their country. It is not Kenya, the U.S., Norway, or Britain. Those people should be thanked for helping us sit at the table and achieve this level of stability. But once we have achieved that, the responsibility now shifts to us to make sure that this country is run well.
Q: Prof. Jok, will you seek public office come the elections in December 2024?
A: No! I am just a teacher. I have a good profession where I get to speak my mind. Seeking public office will simply limit the degree of honesty with which I speak.
Q: You have said so much about what is going on in the country. What then is the way forward?
A: First things first. I think all of us and the people in the office today are not talking with each other with honesty. People are using lies and covering up their interests. People are not speaking with honesty. If people talk with honesty like the way Aleu Ayieny Aleu spoke the other day or like Abraham Awolich who spoke a year ago, people turn on them sometimes and say that they are working against the government and the state.
I think the starting point for a way forward is for us to be able to speak with honesty. I always say that people who are talking with one another never fight, because if you are talking the fighting does not come in because you are simply able to state your grievances and it is a give and take. So, I think speaking with honesty is the starting point.
Second is for the people in the government to invest straightforwardly in holding elections so that this country transitions away from this feeling that so many citizens have, that they are under an autocracy, under a kleptocracy, and a dictatorship. Let the people of South Sudan, for once in their lifetime, decide who runs their country and plant a seed for democratic dispensation. Following that, we have to make the country stable enough so that we can invest in our people because once you have invested in your people, they become the most valuable capital you have.
For example, you can dovetail your educational system on how to exploit your natural resources. Because if you train people specifically in mining, if you give people to invest in technical training, in oil, in agriculture, in fishing, in animal husbandry, in tourism, and in all other resources we have, then these people will now become employees. They will employ themselves. And once they are employed, they will be taxed. Then the tax will be enough to run the country, to provide services, good roads, and a good educational system. So, I think one thing that our government has forgotten about is reopening all the technical schools, the colleges that used to be there. There is a Technical College in Wau, there are technical colleges in Tonj, there are colleges all across Equatoria and in Upper Nile, and none of them has been made operational since we became independent.
Why can’t we invest money in our people? We have five national and one very good private university but do not have money to train people and to invest in research, computer science and engineering, and all these things. People like Vice Chancellor John Akech are trying their best but they have no money.