Rebel leader General Stephen Buay Rolnyang has said South Sudan will not hold elections in December 2024 due to the haphazard implementation of the 2018 peace agreement and lack of progress in genuinely unifying the army.
The leader of the rebel outfit, South Sudan People’s Movement/Army (SSPM/A), was a celebrated liberation struggle military field operator and later venerated commander of the SPLA which morphed into the SSPDF. He was at the helm of forming and commanding the SPLA’s elite commando battalion in 2006.
After serving in several top command positions, Gen. Buay’s career came to a sudden, crushing, and eventful end in May 2018 when he was serving as the commander of the SSPDF’s Fifth Infantry Division based in Wau in Western Bahr el Ghazal State. He was arrested in his home area in Mayom County where he was visiting, flown to Juba in chains, and charged with rebellion, offenses during operations, disobedience of lawful orders, and violation of standing orders as per the SPLA Act, 2009. Buay was stripped of his ranks, dishonorably discharged from the army, and sentenced to a one-year jail term in August 2019. President Salva Kiir later pardoned him but alas, he was to remain civilian.
During his time in detention and his trial, Gen. Buay rubbished the charges brought against him as frivolous and stitched up by colleagues in the army and community members who bore grudges against him from the liberation struggle days.
In May 2021, Gen. Buay declared that he had joined Gen. Paul Malong’s South Sudan United Front/Army (SSUF/A). However, after barely three months, he formed his rebel outfit, SSPM/A in August 2021. His forces, during an audacious attack on Mayom County in July 2022, killed and burned the bodies of Commissioner Chuol Gatluak and three of his guards. They killed 8 other people in a separate attack in the town on the same day.
Radio Tamazuj caught up with and sounded him out about a wide range of issues including the progress of his rebellion, elections, peace talks, and his aspirations for South Sudan among others.
Below are edited excerpts:
Question: It has been a while and your rebel movement has been silent. Can you update us and the public about what you have been up to?
Answer: We have not been silent and our activities are going on. We do not have any problem, are doing well, only that we do not want to shout on social media. We do our things silently and you will hear from us anytime soon.
Q: Your soldiers killed and burned Chuol Gatluak, the commissioner of Mayom County in Unity State. 11 other people were also killed in the attack by your men. Have you resolved that matter with the Gatluak family?
A: What happened in Mayom was not a family issue. The incident was between us as a movement and President Salva Kiir’s regime. As you know, we established the South Sudan People’s Movement/Army (SSPM/A) in 2021 and we are based around Mayom County. Our base came under attack by the late Mayom commissioner and that led to retaliation. Since they attacked our base, we decided to retaliate and attack them in Mayom on 21 and 22 July 2021.
By that time, we were not ready because we were preparing our forces and training them. We did not have any intention of attacking anybody but the commissioner decided to come out and attack our location. That is why were forced to go and attack Mayom. They are the ones who started to attack us.
Q: President Kiir has asked Kenyan President William Ruto to mediate peace talks between the government and the holdout groups in Kenya. Are you in contact with the other rebel leaders such as Gen. Paul Malong, Pagan Amum, and Thomas Cirillo and will you be part of the peace talks in Kenya?
A: Those peace talks concern the holdout groups, those who did not sign the 2018 peace agreement. I was in Juba in 2018 so we are not part of the holdout group. SSPM/A was not even established at that time. If the peace talks are meant for the holdout groups or the South Sudan Opposition Movements Alliance (SSOMA), let them continue because we are not part of them.
Q: Are you in contact with or collaborating with any of the holdout groups?
A: Of course, we are in what is called the National Consensus Forum (NCF). All of us are members there. We formed NCF last year to call the people of South Sudan to the roundtable.
We intend to call all South Sudanese to sit on a roundtable to discuss the problems that are facing the country and know the root causes and how we can resolve them. This is the objective of the NCF. SSOMA members are part of the NCF group. So, if SSOMA is taking part in the peace talks, the rest of the NCF will remain behind because they are not part of the SSOMA.
Q: The South Sudanese government seems to be campaigning for the elections scheduled for December this year. What is your take on this?
A: We are hearing on social media that there are going to be elections in December 2024 but I think this is the decision of the parties who are part of the agreement and they have to ask themselves if they are ready for elections.
Q: As the leader of a rebel outfit, do you think the elections will be conducted?
A: In my personal view, and based on the 2018 peace deal, there are activities in the agreement that have not been fully implemented. If they are implemented, elections can continue but if not, it is not possible to conduct elections. For example, one of them is the issue of the reunification of the forces of the parties that signed the agreement. They are supposed to be unified under one command.
It took them three years to implement Phase One and the other phases have not been implemented. How can people go for elections yet we still have a different commander-in-chief in the country? Riek Machar is still the commander-in-chief, Lam Akol, Hussein Abdulbagi Ayii and Salva Kiir are commanders-in-chief. How can you go to elections and still have different commanders in chief? So this is one of the issues that I see will make the election not take place because you will not be able to unify these forces within the remaining few months.
Another important thing is the permanent constitution. Voices are saying that the permanent constitution is not important at the moment but why was it written in the agreement that we should have a permanent constitution? If it was not important, they would have left it out. Or they should have stated clearly that alternatively if there is no constitution, people can still go for elections.
We have the issue of population census. How do you know members of the parliament? How do you determine the number of MPs from each constituency?
We also still have South Sudanese refugees in Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, and other locations. These people need to be repatriated back home so that they participate in the elections. And there are many other issues. So in my personal view, this election cannot be done for many reasons.
Q: Has the leadership of the government in Juba tried to convince you to cease rebellion and return home?
A: Up to this moment, no one has reached out to me in this regard. What kind of peace can be reached between us and Juba? Even the current peace agreement has not been implemented. Will our peace with them be implemented? I do not think so. Even though no one reached out to us, the 2018 peace agreement has gone on for years without its implementation. They kept on extending it several times. Do you think that my peace with them would succeed? Let them first implement what they have signed, and let them focus on that.
The provisions of the 2018 peace agreement are very good things that, if implemented, will bring change to our country. So, I do not see any need for another peace agreement since the previous one was not implemented.
Q: If an invitation reached out to you from the presidency, would you come back to South Sudan?
A: This is not a matter of coming back or not. What kind of invitation are you talking about? Which way will they take to invite me? Do you mean through peace or friendship? I do not understand.
Q: I mean to come back to Juba through a peace invitation.
A: I have already pointed out to you that we are not part of the expected election because we are not signatories to the 2018 peace agreement. They have not implemented the peace yet. What guarantee is there that if we sign another peace with them it will work out? Let them reach the holdout groups or SSOMA if their new agreement will be implemented better than the previous peace agreements.
Q: What are your immediate plans?
A: At the moment, we are still in the bush within South Sudan and whatever plan we have, this is not the right forum to reveal them. We are not in a position to tell you anything about our plans.
Q: Is it true that you have been fighting the SSPDF for the last few days?
A: No! I am stationed at the border between Sudan and South Sudan and there is no fighting here. The fighting is inside Sudan between the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). We have been in this location even before the war in Sudan started in April.
Q: What is your message to South Sudanese all over the world?
A: My message to all South Sudanese is that let us unite together. Our unity is very important so that we fight for regime change in South Sudan and to remove the current dictatorship in Juba. South Sudanese need to be liberated. If you look at the situation around you, you will realize that our people are suffering at the hands of a dictatorship in Juba.
You find fighting everywhere. Recently, there was fighting between the people of Abyei and Twic County and there is fighting in Jonglei State. SSPDF soldiers have not received their salaries for several months. That is why I said our unity is very important to fight for regime change.
Q: Do you see yourself as an alternative leader for South Sudan?
A: My mission is to liberate the people of South Sudan from the dictatorship. I do not want to become president. If I liberate the people of South Sudan, that will be enough and better than becoming a president.
It is not necessarily that if I lead a liberation movement, I become the president. This is not true. If you liberate the people of South Sudan and you are enjoying your life in your house and you see people are free, this is even more enjoyable than becoming a president.
At the end of the day, the people of South Sudan will be the ones to choose their leader because if I also say I liberated you and I want to be a leader, it means I will be imposing myself. If the people of South Sudan do not want me, I will not be different from Salva Kiir who is now imposing himself on the people. So, it is good that I am just fighting to liberate them, then they will choose their leaders.
Q: Where do you get your support from as you are situated along the Sudan and South Sudan border?
A: Anybody that is in the bush does not run short of anything. Many things come to you and we have what we have and I cannot tell you how we are getting support. We are even getting some support from the regime itself.
Q: Do you still have some of your forces being held captive in Unity state?
A: These people have already been executed. You might have seen videos on social media of four of them being executed by a firing squad. 18 others were killed along the Bentiu and Mayom Road. So, we do not have anybody in the prison.
Q: There has been speculation that you are not within South Sudan and you traveled to America or Canada. Is that true?
A: I will not tell you where I am. I thank God that you have been able to reach out to me. Whether I am in South Sudan or America is not important. I am where I am.
Q: Any parting shot?
A: I will only repeat what I stated earlier that we should all unite and come together and sit around for roundtable discussions. The roundtable is our objective in the NCF so that people come together and ask themselves. Even the SPLM Party will be there and youth, women, church leaders, and all stakeholders will be represented and we will ask ourselves what the problem of South Sudan is.
After we identify our problems, it will be easy to discuss the root causes then we come out with solutions to the problems. If you go and see a doctor and you are diagnosed with malaria, I think the doctor will prescribe some Malaria treatment.