Jok Madut Jok trained in the anthropology of health and holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He is a fellow of Rift Valley Institute and has held fellowship positions at several other institutions. He also served in the Government of South Sudan as an undersecretary in the Ministry of Culture and Heritage for three years. He is currently a professor of anthropology at Syracuse University in New York, U.S.A.
In this second and last part of an exclusive interview with Radio Tamazuj, Prof. Madut says President Salva Kiir’s decision to sack former Director General of the Internal Security Bureau (ISB) of the National Security Service (NSS), Gen. Akol Koor Kuc and Presidential Guard Commander Gen. Lual Wek was informed by persistent rumors of the duo’s alleged involvement coup plots.
He also states that the president has become very weary of army officers who criticize his leadership and contends that this explains the large number of senior and other military and security officers who have been incarcerated for long periods without any formal charges.
Below are edited excerpts:
Q: South Sudan has been experiencing an economic meltdown characterized by runaway inflation for the last few years. What do you think the impacts will be if it is not addressed decisively? How can it be addressed?
A: Many likely things can happen, the first one of course is the country increasingly being unable to address its fundamental responsibilities like the basic responsibility of the welfare of citizens. Already, public employees are going on for a year without salaries and that is already going to create problems within the government. Already we know that most school-aged children in South Sudan are not in classrooms because nobody is there to teach them. After all, the school infrastructure is not there and the teachers are not there. Imagine, since the autonomy in 2005, almost going to twenty years now, the government has not built a single new classroom throughout the country. If there was a new classroom, it was because of the initiative of citizens privately, it was because of the UN, it was because of the NGOs. The same goes for health care. Did the government build a single hospital in South Sudan since 2005? Nothing! So, what is going to happen is that citizens are going to suffer more? The question then will be up to them (citizens) whether they want to suffer in silence or they want to raise their voices to demand what is eventually their rights, the right to welfare, food, education, and health care.
Even where the government has proposed oil for infrastructure and given oil cash cargoes to people like Benjamin Bol Mel and to other contractors to build roads and bridges, this oil has been going to these people and roads have not been done. The only completed stretch of road is from Juba to Bor. Even then it did not continue from there when it was supposed to go up to Upper Nile, but it has stopped in Bor. The Juba-Bahr el Ghazal Road was proposed and oil and money were given, and up to this day, it has not gone past Terekeka. Whatever road little road they have done from there onwards, has been washed away by rain.
So, my view is that the citizens of South Sudan have reached the end of the road with the government. Right now it is up to them. Are they going to continue to suffer in silence or they are going to speak up? I sense that there is not going to be a lot of speaking up because people are not organized. As I said earlier, there are no professional associations or organized civil societies, so, how are they going to speak up? In what form? Is it going to be a popular uprising? And if that happens, who is going to organize it? I do not think that is going to happen.
Now, as we speak today, in Juba there is no water. The Japanese project of trying to pipe water into neighborhoods is still ongoing and has not finished. People were depending on water being delivered by water tank trucks driven by Ethiopians and Eritreans. But this week they are protesting and have gone on strike because the governor of Central Equatoria State and the mayor of Juba City Council demanded that the water tank drivers reduce the prices but the drivers are saying they cannot reduce the price because fuel costs so much. The price of fuel has gone up multiple times and if they have to continue to provide the service, then they have to increase water prices. I think this is one thing that is going to cause people to be angry, at least in Juba. That is the outcome of being a broke country. The outcome of being a country that has no resources to serve its people means that people will eventually reach a point of breaking. So, what the government has done in preparation for the possibility of a break point, is to sharpen its weapons, its knives, by reorganizing its army last week.
Q: Do you think President Kiir’s firing of Gen. Akol Koor from the helm of the Internal Security Bureau (ISB) of the National Security Service (NSS) will see an end to arbitrary arrests?
A: Well, there is already a National Security Service Bill that was passed by the parliament and the president refused to sign it and refused to return it to the parliament so it became a law by default as the constitution says. So, now we have the National Security Act that is going to guide whoever comes into that docket of the Director General of the ISB. General Akol Koor Kuc was been replaced with General Akec Tong Aleu. Is Akec going to grant the bureau a different thing? No! He is simply going to follow the law.
In fact, his (Tong’s) coming into that office as a new person will probably require him to show his loyalty to the appointing authority, the president. To show his loyalty will probably result in him being more stringent and more forceful in the implementation of the National Security Law, which means citizens will suffer more. Particularly Articles 54 and 55 of the law which call for arrest of citizens and detention without legal supervision from the court, without judicial oversight. If that happens, it means that the angry citizens who are not being paid, who have no water, who are tired of corruption and no salary payments will complain and if they do, then the new ISB Director General will be expected to crash any voices. I think we are looking to a near future horizon of conflict between people and the security services in the country. The same thing goes for the commander of the Presidential Guard which is called Tiger Division.
Q: What do you think prompted President Kiir to make these recent changes in the security leadership?
A: The main reason of course is increasing suspicion that these commanders are also beginning to feel the pressure from the public and they are potentially going to change the way they have been working which is to not suppress any contentious or complaining voices. There were rumors for years about Lual Wek of the Presidential Guard and Akol Koor of ISB being potential coup plotters against the president, so, it seems the president has now come to a point where he believes those rumors that these people are not loyal enough anymore. So, they have to be replaced and bring in people whom he thinks are more loyal.
The president has become very weary of people who criticize from within the army. He does not like army generals and officers complaining about the failures of the state and the failure of his leadership. He said that soldiers should not be political. As an officer in the army, you are supposed to criticize the president who is your Commander-in-Chief.
We see that even the NSS officers who were arrested, including the former deputy of Akol Koor for administration at the ISB, somebody called Christo Thon Mabordit who was jailed for a year and a half now, and recently we began to see pictures of him in which he is so emaciated and he is actually on the verge of death from torture and isolation.
Q: Is it true that Gen. Thon was taken to President Kiir and he told the latter that he rather be killed than continue to live through torture? It is also rumored that he was moved to a better cell after his pictures leaked on social media. Is this true?
A: I cannot say for a fact that this is true because in honesty I do not know whether he has been moved. I suspect there is some truth to it that he has been moved because the pictures were just very ugly and they may have moved the president himself to try to do something about that. But he (Thon) is not related to me but he is related to Akol Koor. Koor is married to Thon’s niece. So, it was surprising that in a country of nepotism where decisions are made through kinship, Akol Koor would have reached the level of torturing Thon Mabordit who is his in-law.
We do not know whether it was the removal of Akol Koor that facilitated the possibility of pictures being taken of Thon or whether the pictures were taken secretly and sneaked out. I have no idea and I do not know exactly what has triggered these pictures to be shown. I also saw pictures of somebody called Michael Wek Nyalic another officer of the National Security Service (NSS) who is also in detention. I know many other soldiers and officers in the army who are in detention but we have not heard of their welfare, their whereabouts and how they are doing. The Blue House and other secret detention centers of the NSS are full of people, many of them officers within the security.
We think that maybe the new NSS Director General will show his character soon about whether he will follow the same footsteps of Akol Koor or he will be different. Nobody knows but what we know is that the law is there.
Q: Professor, what are the charges against these officers in detention?
A: They have never been charged so we do not know what they were being held for. What we know is that there were always circulated rumors that some officers were planning a kind of plot to be part of or to be leaders of a kind of coup or putsch. Those were accusations that led to their arrest. Many others are being arrested and detained for basic differences between themselves and the leader of the NSS. This is because it is a one-man show in essence. If General Akol Koor is unhappy with you as an officer, he can order an arrest. If other senior officers are unhappy with somebody, that somebody can be arrested and detained.
It is not a civilized operation where people can be arrested and then arraigned in court and shown what accusations they are arrested for. This is a secretive torture machine that simply detains people without charging them which is completely contrary to the constitution of that country. So, we do not know exactly whether things will change with the new director or not.
Q: Do you think somebody like Gen. Akol Koor and others will one day be held accountable for their roles in illegal arbitrary detentions, torture, and deaths?
A: No! I do not think that will be possible for him to be accountable for what has happened to some of these officers.
Q: Why not?
A: Well, he will simply say he was under orders from his superior, Salva Kiir, and he will say that he was following the NSS Law, and he can make all kinds of defenses.
What I suspect is that family members of some of the officers who have either fallen like Karbino Wol will continue to hold it against Akol and they might seek their ways of seeking revenge. This one I know will probably be something that they will peruse but not through the law because the law is draconian, but it is a law. It has been passed by the parliament, so, Akol Koor can simply say “What wrong did I do? I did not do anything that is not prescribed in the law.”
Q: There has been much speculation about President Kiir’s health. What do you know about this and how do you think it will affect the country?
A: Anything I say about the president’s health will only be speculation because the last time I saw the president was two years ago. What I hear indirectly of course is that the president’s health is ailing. From what I see him walking or engaging in events like that time when he was being endorsed by the Equatoria SPLM Party members when he went to John Garang Mausoleum and I saw him walking down the steps, I saw a man who was ailing. He was walking with a cane and being very slow, you could tell that the president was not well. But to what extent or what does that mean, going to the future, of course, everyone’s health is in God’s hands. We wish him well obviously even though he is a leader who has failed us but we do not wish him ill.
Q: What is your last message to the leaders and people of South Sudan?
A: I would say it is important for our people to maintain their usual resilience and take care of each other, the only thing that can take care of us in this country is ourselves because there is no government to take care of us. So, let us maintain hope. Hope is an important commodity in our country, even during the tough years of the liberation war in the bushes of South Sudan, there were many moments when people felt like this was going to be the end of their lives but they continued to prevail. A lot of people die but people always come through.
I think we as South Sudanese should maintain our hope and resilience, try to take care of each other, and know that everything has an end. Whatever God has put on earth, has the beginning and end. Even the failed leadership of President Kiir is also going to end one day. Sooner or later, change will come.