Prof. Jok Madut Jok is a professor of anthropology at Syracuse University and a renowned political analyst in South Sudan.
Jok, who formerly worked for an independent research organization based in Juba, currently lives in the United States of America.
Radio Tamazuj interviewed him about the current political situation in South Sudan.
Below are edited excerpts:
Q: Can you introduce yourself to our readers and listeners?
A: I am Jok Madut Jok, an anthropologist by training. I currently teach at Syracuse University in New York. I was previously the director of the Sudd Institute, which is a research centre based in Juba. Before that, I was the Undersecretary of the Ministry of Culture and Heritage.
Q: As an observer and political analyst, what is your take on the current political and security situations in South Sudan?
A: Well, at the outset, it is not unfair to say that the country is at a crossroads when it comes to its capacity to serve all the citizens of the country. Therefore, the way the country is being run has become very divisive and now South Sudanese are more divided along ethnic or regional lines than ever before. This does not bode well for the future of this country because not all the citizens are happy about being citizens in the country. So, that is on the relationship between people and the state. In terms of the welfare of the people, the economy of South Sudan has collapsed. It’s destroyed by the people who are running it. The economy of the country is destroyed by the way the resources of the country are managed. How they are basically looted by a few, who have entrenched themselves, particularly around the president. I don’t see any economic progress, economic reforms or generation of more income and equitable distribution of the national resources in the country. I don’t see it happening under the current president and the current political dispensation. So that is a tragic end to the country.
Q: Prof. Jok, what do you recommend as a solution to the problems facing South Sudan?
A: I think we need to push for drastic reforms in the way the resources are collected and used and distributed, how the resources are being applied to the welfare of the people to build infrastructure, to build basic services like education and healthcare. The way this is going is definitely not going to save this country, It’s going to kill the country. Therefore, I recommend that the current government embarks on major and drastic reforms and shifts. If that government does not have the capacity or the will to do these reforms, then it is definitely time for that government to exit.
The question then is how does the current government exit? And the answer to that is either the people protest and have a popular revolution that will force the government to speak, talk to them, and have a dialogue about how to transition the country from this mess into a state that can serve all of us equitably. So that’s one way to do it. Services, reforms and political transitions have to be demanded by the citizens. I don’t see that happening immediately. It needs to be organized. If there is no chance of dialogue between the citizens and the leaders, then the leaders also have to prioritize the welfare of the country by saying let us hold elections and be genuinely committed to a leveled political playfield so that people who are alternatives to the current leadership can be found through the ballot box.
Q: There have been delays in the implementation of the security arrangements and there is also a political impasse. What is the way forward?
A: Well, that is a major part of the reforms I was talking about. If the current leadership is genuinely interested in the welfare of this country, one of the key problems and the stumbling blocks to progress in this country is the issue of insecurity, where all citizens of this country are living in, in insecure environments where there is too much firearms in the hands of state and non-state actors where there is no capacity or will on the side of the government to protect citizens in an equitable way, and that is why there is still so much violence all across the country and many people are dying as we speak in Central Equatoria, in Upper Nile, there is some too much death.
And because of the insecurity, people are not able to work. People are not able to stay on their farms to feed themselves. People are not able to travel freely to do trade as they used to do. So, insecurity is one of the major driving forces behind the economic collapse. If you were going to do reforms, you must fix the security. And to fix the security you also have to fix the political impasse that the country is in now, the current government under Salva Kiir Mayardit is unable and unwilling to transition this country politically and that is a major problem. And so we sometimes call on the government, the president himself to prioritize the country over his political ambitions to stay in power forever.
Q: Prof. Jok, you earlier mentioned that the people around President Salva Kiir could be the ones actually misleading him. Please elaborate on this.
A: Oh yeah. I mean, the president is not being advised properly. If one accepts the view that a president is not the only person who should run the country, a president is part of a team, ideally. If the president has surrounded himself with people whose only goal is to enrich themselves and to mislead the president to keep looting the country, then obviously, the president is not being guided properly by the people who are supposed to guide him. Say, for example, the security adviser to the president is not giving the right advice, in my view. There is a presidential envoy called Bol Mel, he is also the only contractor who gets all the mega projects. He is a man who has unfettered access to the president. He can see the president at any time he wants. The president is also the one who gives him the big contracts. And the only person who gets all the big contracts is the adviser to the president. How is that not a conflict of interest? And when was the last time major projects such as road construction were advertised for open bidding where all the contractors and business people in South Sudan can bring in their bids and say I am the one who is capable of doing this so that you select based on what they have offered?
Q: Do you think that South Sudanese are able to bid for this if they are given a contract? Do they have the capacity and resources to implement some of those mega projects?
A: Of course. What was it that Bol Mel had? How much private money did Bol Mel have before he got the contract for the Juba-Bor highway? He was given an advance by the country. So, if people bid openly and transparently, then you begin to show that this process of the contract given is open to the public for them to see, but we never see it. We don’t even know the details of the contract itself because these big projects should be published so that the citizens of this country know what was given and what was expected, what is the quality, and though all of that is not there, I think that is what has killed the economy. Because you can’t take government money and oil revenue and give it to one person to do the projects the way he wants.
Q: Do you believe there will be elections in December 2024, bearing in mind that we are left with only 16 months?
A: Well, I hope so. I mean, the majority of people of South Sudan would wish that the elections be held as stated. But having said this, I think there are challenges that might make the conduct of elections impossible. One of them is all the benchmarks that the 2018 peace agreement later on translated into something called the roadmap. All the benchmarks that were supposed to be done before you conduct elections have not been done. We don’t have an electoral commission. We don’t have electoral laws, we don’t have the constitution, we don’t have the security arrangements. We don’t even have clarity about where the money is going to come from to conduct elections. We don’t have a census. We don’t have constituency demarcation.
So, if you go by the logic of elections, I would say we are not ready as a country to hold elections. But at the same time, if there was political will, we could still do this in the remaining months. We can still do this. The problem is that it seems like the people in office today, the president and his vice presidents and all the entire SPLM government and the coalition government ‘RTGoNU’ seem like they are happy to maintain the status quo.
Q: Prof. Jok, you recently proposed gradual or phased elections to happen in the country, starting with the governors, the commissioners, the mayors and the rest. Could you expound on this?
A: The country, as I said, is in a fix. On the one hand, if you say you hold elections and do it in this environment where nothing has been done to prepare for it, that election might cause conflict. And so, holding elections is not so easy. But if you don’t hold elections, what happens? The current government will be extended, and you will get the same government. So, you are in a bind if you hold elections, you have risk, if you don’t hold elections, you have the risk of maintaining the status quo. Neither of the two is a good proposal for the people of South Sudan. So, there should not be black or white, either you hold elections or you don’t hold elections. There should be a middle ground.
In my view, the middle ground could be that we have a phased system of elections. This has been done in other countries. We can study those countries that have done it and see what the advantage of phased elections was. By phase election, I mean you begin at the local government level, like counties and county assemblies, county commissioners, who, by the way, in our constitution, should be elected. But because the president has bulldozed the constitution, these people have never been elected.
Q: Don’t you think that this process will also give a chance to the president to extend his term in office?
A: Oh yeah, the current government can stay in office for another year. But the government institutions closest to the people would be moving. People of South Sudan will get this sense that something is happening. If we elect county assemblies and county commissioners, then we elect governors and we elect the national assembly members, then that newly elected legislature would then be made up of people who have an interest in doing the right constitution in creating constituencies, in making the electoral law and in structuring the electoral system.
I think if you have a legislator that is elected by people, they would be compelled to do those steps and then at the end of that period, you now move on to the presidential elections. I think, when you do at that time, you will have all the established systems which are in accordance with the law, and the new law will now prevail.
Q: Have you shared this idea with the interested parties to look into it further?
A: No, I haven’t shared it directly with people in the government or in the opposition or political parties. I have only shared it as a kind of proposal that I have made, which needs to be studied. So perhaps this is a good suggestion that it should be shared widely with the stakeholders, the political parties, and the presidency and so forth so that instead of being squeezed into a box where we have to either hold elections or not hold elections, let us consider other possibilities to get the country moving.
Q: Prof. Jok, there are people talking about another extension come 2024. What do you think are the repercussions of this?
A: I see nothing other than getting the usual extension that has been done before and nobody said anything. The people of South Sudan have been dormant, and they have been bulldozed down and they have not lifted a hand. So, I think if it comes to that point where elections have not been held, it seems like the only option would be to extend the interim period for another 12 months or two years, depending on the aspirations of those who are holding power right now. But an extension like that will mean an extension to the same situation where people are now suffering. We have millions of people still IDPs in their country. We have millions of people who are refugees in the neighbouring countries. We have people starving to death inside South Sudan as we speak. We have no healthcare system, and our people are dying from diseases that no longer kill people anywhere in the world. Our people are unable to get quality education as they should, and the country is not developing its human capital, so these people then become an asset to the country. On the contrary, what we have is a population that is unable to work and run their own businesses and their own farms, their own fishing and are not able to feed themselves.
We are still at the largesse of the international community. Most of our people are being fed by aid. Most of our health care centres are being financed by foreign countries, and we call ourselves the sovereign country? No, we are not. If the people are not sovereign, the country is not sovereign. So, I think an extension would simply mean the same stuff that is going on right now and that would be just a tragic situation for the people of South Sudan to have spent almost twenty years in autonomous existence and independence eventually. It’s been eighteen years going to nineteen years this year since 2005. And if we spend two decades doing nothing, not able to translate our euphoric independence into the welfare of our people, what is the point of being an independent country?
Q: If there are no elections next year, do you think that South Sudan got stuck and has no way out?
A: Yes, I think that South Sudan is definitely stuck. As a result, what you are going to get is localized episodes of violence. People will be fighting each other because the resources are not distributed equitably, and people will be fighting over these resources. Whether in political terms in Juba or in violent terms in the rural areas. There is nothing good coming to South Sudan in these circumstances going forward. I think our leaders if they call themselves leaders, should really think very carefully about what the lack of transition and reforms will produce in another year. If they think and analyze the situation carefully and they are nationalists who love their country, I think they would do something.
But for me, I’m not holding my breath because we have watched these leaders for a good eighteen years doing the same thing, year after year after year, with no interest in changing the situation at all. It’s not a lack of resources, and it’s not a lack of capacity, it is simply people who are mean and unwilling to distribute the wealth and unwilling to use that wealth to improve the livelihoods of our people and the lives of ordinary daily people.
The people in the office today don’t think about this. Former governor of Warrap State, Aleu Ayieny Aleu, spoke the other day at a meeting where he outlined what is killing this country economically. It boils down to the fact that the president has surrounded himself with people who loot the country, whether they are in the Ministry of Finance, or in the Revenue Authority or whether they are business people, big business people who get all the contracts. The thing is, the people in power today, whether in business or government, have no interest of any kind to serve the people and the country and chart a good future for this country.