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 exclusive interview with Radio Tamazuj, Prof. Madut says President Salva Kiir and the transitional government continuously lied to the people of South Sudan yet they very well knew that they were not going to conduct elections. He argues that this was done intentionally to deflect attention away from the major issues that the country was facing like hunger, displacement, and bankruptcy of the state inter alia.
He also doubts that the ongoing Tumaini Initiative being mediated by the Government of Kenya between holdout opposition groups and the government in Nairobi will come to fruition because elements in the government are opposed to it.
Below are edited excerpts:
Q: What is your reading of the postponement of the elections and extension of the transitional period in South Sudan?
A: Let us begin with the issue of elections. It seems people were not surprised that the elections were postponed because almost for the past year and a half, the government, and particularly President Salva Kiir, was talking about the elections but we all knew that this was not going to take place. This is because everything that the country has to do to conduct clean elections was not being done according to the peace agreement that they signed in 2018 and not according to any basic standards that are required for elections to take place.
In terms of the revitalized peace agreement, there were basic benchmarks that needed to be met for the election to take place, and they were not happening. Everybody saw that they were not being done, there was no census, no constitution, there was no security, there was no reunification of armed forces and there was even no money and no international support for it (elections). So, we knew all along that the election was not going to happen but we wonder why the government was keeping this mantra. They were lying to the people of South Sudan eventually, knowing that they were not going to conduct elections but they kept talking about it as a way to deflect attention away from the major issues that the country was facing. Issues of hunger, displacement, and bankruptcy of the state among others. The government wanted to keep people focused on this issue of the elections while knowing that the elections were not possible in our country.
So, people were not surprised when they finally decided to postpone elections and give themselves another two years in office. It was a total outrage that the only solution they could come up with and the only way forward was to extend the transitional period.
Many people were saying it does not need to be an extension of the interim period, there are other solutions, including the possibility of creating a government of technocrats that could run the state in the meantime while the country can address these issues that were missing, especially the issue of the constitution.
Q: Do you believe that the government is serious about implementing the 2018 peace agreement?
A: Most definitely not! At least, if history is anything to go by, we saw the extension being done every so often as strictly as a way for the current government to keep itself in office but we do not see anything that indicates that the next two years are going to be any different from the previous two years and the four years before it.
In 2018, elections were supposed to be done within the interim period from 2018 to 2021 and then it was extended and now it is extended again. Most informed people in South Sudan joke, even though it is not a joke, that if they could not do anything that they had agreed to do since 2018, why is the next two years going to be possible? Is it going to give them enough room to do what they could not do in six years? So, we do not think there is any reason for us to hope that the peace agreement will be implemented.
The peace agreement is really a way for the government to defer its responsibility to take care of the people of South Sudan. The interim period is not meant to prepare the country for a transition, it is meant to keep the current government in office and it seems that all parties are having the same mentality. Some people might think that SPLM-IO and SPLM in the government and all the other parties to the agreement were going to push each other. They were going to disagree and push each other such that they could force each other to implement some of the major clauses in the agreement, but it seems that they have agreed to stay in power without implementing anything that they had promised to the people of South Sudan.
Q: In your own opinion, what can be done to fix this issue of extension of the government’s tenure and postponement of elections in South Sudan?
A: Well, unfortunately, we are out of options as a country. If we are going to be honest, I think the options have run out. One option was to commit ourselves to the implementation of the peace agreement, to steer the country towards transition. That is not happening already. The second option would have been the kind of pressure from the people of South Sudan, the civilian population, the military, the opposition, and the civil society. There would be some kind of pressure within the country to force the government to do the things that it has committed to but that option is also out because South Sudan does not have a very strong civil society, or a very strong professional association like Doctors’ Union, Teachers’ Union and union of farmers in the way that they exist in the old Sudan. In South Sudan, there is no history of such an organized group which are often the pressure groups that can force the government to do things. That one is not there.
The third one, of course, is international pressure which normally starts with the donor countries and then with the guarantors of the agreement such as the Troika (Norway, Britain, and the United States of America) and then also other donors like the European Union, the UN and the regional powers like Kenya, IGAD, EAC or the African Union. But that international pressure is also not there because South Sudan has defeated people in terms of what others can do to help the young state come to respect what they have agreed in various agreements and the promises that the government has given the people of South Sudan since the independence or even before independence.
The liberation struggle was meant to create a country that is better than the old Sudan but that option is also out. So, what are we going to do going forward? In practicality, I think everybody is simply waiting for the current leadership of South Sudan to dream and wake up one morning and try to be good to the people of South Sudan, which is not going to happen. So we are out of options in reality. So, what is going to happen is that the people of South Sudan who are suffering immensely today are simply going to have to wait for the goodwill of the current leadership, and that goodwill is not coming.
Q: What is your analysis of the ongoing Tumaini Initiative in Kenya? Do you think it will achieve its objectives?
A: I doubt that there will be anything coming out of Tumaini. There is still quite a lot of hope from around the country that it will produce something but in my observation, I do not think it is going to amount to anything much. Here is why I said that. When it was proposed, President Kiir had really intended it to be a mechanism for him to attract some opposition leaders back into the government and create another power-sharing agreement to append to the 2018 peace agreement. He wanted to attract people like Paul Malong, Pagan Amum, Stephen Rolnyang, Thomas Cirillo, and Simon Gatwech among others. These were the people the president intended to bring to Kenya and ask the Kenyan government to mediate to come and persuade them so that they can go to Juba, and join the government, and then now we will talk about that we have a comprehensive agreement. This is what was intended with that Initiative and the Kenyans called it Renewal of Hope which is what the Kiswahili word Tumaini means.
When the parties went to Nairobi, they also found out that others were not included in that invitation that ought to be invited for that process to be meaningful and to be the last of the peace processes South Sudan is ever going to need. That it would solve the problems of South Sudan together with all the other groups including civil society such as the People’s Coalition for Civil Action. The Kenyan mediators called these groups stakeholders. When these stakeholders were brought on board, they came up with very important, strong, and logical proposals about how the Tumaini could become a solution to the problems of South Sudan. One of the things that they proposed was that instead of another power-sharing which doesn’t solve any problems, because it has no reason why we should have another power-sharing where those four or five opposition, political, and military leaders can just join the government and the country remains the same. What is it going to bring to have a power-sharing agreement where those of Paul Malong and Pagan just return to Juba and the situation remains the same and people will still suffer? Corruption will continue, violence will continue and nothing will happen. So, instead of doing that, the stakeholders said let us do it differently this time so that we can come up with a solution that addresses the fundamental problems of the state, including the establishment of the state which has not been done even since the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA).
The state of South Sudan has not been established in terms of its institutions, constitution, a system of governance, term limit, powers of the president, what kind of parliament are we going to have, this was not done. So, the stakeholders at Tumaini said this is now the opportunity for us to sit together as South Sudanese to address these fundamental issues of a state and the fundamental issues of governance. This is a great opportunity, and thanks to the president of South Sudan and the president of Kenya, for coming up with this idea. This will now help the South Sudanese to sit together and say what is wrong with South Sudan. Why is South Sudan constantly in conflict? Why is South Sudan underdeveloped? Why is South Sudan facing famine? Why is South Sudan not able to respond to climate change and extreme weather conditions such as flooding that is affecting our people now? Why is South Sudan a country of many resources unable to take care of its citizens? What is wrong with that? Let us address that in a constitutional conference and in that conference, we will address all the problems that have been plaguing South Sudan since the beginning.
When these proposals were brought, the government delegation led by somebody called Albino Mathem and people like Information Minister Michael Makuei Lueth, and Akol Paul who is a senior member of the SPLM, and the rest of them panicked and did not like that proposal. They thought their card was to simply go to Nairobi and agree with those opposition leaders and put them on the plane and bring them to Juba and South Sudan can now claim to have achieved the comprehensive peace process. Even the Kenyan mediation was convinced that another power-sharing was not going to help in anything.
Let us take advantage of this moment when we are together and explore the questions about why South Sudan is constantly failing. However, the government delegation does not like that. Even when Michael Makuei tended to agree with that comprehensive solution proposal, he is now being increasingly threatened and marginalized by some forces within Juba, especially those who were working for the extension. So, the extension happened in the middle of the Nairobi peace talks. What was the point of having peace talks if you were planning to extend the interim period in the first place? You could have just extended that on your own without making it look like you are consulting the people of South Sudan.