Rebellion is often condemned before it is examined. People treat peaceful order, even when it conceals deep injustice, as legitimate by default. This assumption is comforting, but flawed. History shows too many moments when obedience preserved cruelty and so-called stability protected exploitation rather than people. The central question is not whether rebellion is dangerous—it almost always is—but whether submission has become morally indefensible.
In South Sudan, this question is no longer theoretical. Years of political fragmentation, ethnic targeting, and obstruction of peace, combined with successive governments’ failure to uphold basic rights, have created a state in which obedience amounts to complicity in widespread suffering. Despite the 2018 Revitalized Peace Agreement, meant to end years of armed conflict and form a unity government, its implementation has stalled, key security reforms remain unmet, and trust between political factions has collapsed, with the main opposition leaders, including the suspended First Vice President Dr. Riek Machar, detained.
Communities in Upper Nile, Jonglei, and Unity States continue to endure systematic attacks, starvation, displacement, and denial of justice. Renewed clashes in Jonglei State’s Nyirol, Akobo, and Urol Counties have killed scores of civilians and displaced tens of thousands. Under these circumstances, the revitalized agreement has become a false peace—protecting entrenched power rather than citizens, and endorsing premature December 2026 elections that can only take place once all peace provisions are fully implemented.
Resistance by marginalized groups is not mere insurgency; it is a justified response to a system that has long blocked accountability and reform. To label such resistance as criminal, terrorist, or reckless creates the illusion of peace while ignoring the collapse of the very framework meant to ensure it.
Political deceit often glorifies peace as if it were unquestionably good, while ignoring the harsh realities behind it. Violence is condemned outright, yet state-sanctioned injustice is tolerated without scrutiny. A society can appear calm while remaining deeply unjust, and a state can maintain order while systematically stripping citizens of their fundamental rights. In South Sudan, repeated ceasefires and peace agreements have failed to shield citizens from attacks, land seizures, and political exclusion. The outward symbols of peace—negotiated deals, diplomatic statements, international endorsements—serve entrenched power far more than ordinary South Sudanese citizens. Stability exists on the surface, but it comes at the cost of those it claims to protect. In this context, resistance is not a threat to peace; it is a moral imperative, necessary to restore justice and secure the political, security, and economic reforms the country desperately needs.
Glorifying peaceful appearances often silences moral critique, a tactic that warrants scrutiny. Describing moral critique as “destabilizing” serves as a rhetorical shield used to protect failing systems from scrutiny. Stability that depends on fear, silence, and impunity is not peace—it is deferred conflict. This argument does not undermine peace; rather, it challenges a version of order that has repeatedly failed to protect civilians or enforce accountability. Peace processes, regional mediation, and security arrangements derive legitimacy from outcomes, not from their state-managed procedural existence. When a government preserves power while citizens remain exposed to violence and exclusion, questioning its moral adequacy is not destabilization—it is responsibility. What truly destabilizes societies such as South Sudan is the normalization of a government’s oppression or injustice under the guise of stability or justice—exactly what Kiir’s regime has done and continues to do to this day.
Critics focus on rebellion’s short-term costs while overlooking why people are compelled to resist oppression. History indeed records uprisings that caused immense destruction. Yet in South Sudan, the price of continued submission—persistent attacks, displacement, famine, and fractured communities—far exceeds the calculated risks of resisting oppression. When the state itself is the source of insecurity, as is the case with Kiir’s regime, violence is no longer born of rebellion alone—it is the inevitable product of entrenched injustice. Here, rebellion is not simply warfare; it is armed resistance that is measured, deliberate, and morally compelled. In this context, people or groups who take up arms against the South Sudanese government are not fighting for the sake of rebellion; they can no longer endure the suffering inflicted by the government. For them, taking up arms is necessary to safeguard their lives and communities.
Some argue that change must occur through dialogue and institutions. In theory, this is true: dialogue requires sincerity, and institutions demand accountability. But in South Sudan, repeated calls for negotiation have produced only performative concessions, while key institutions fail to enforce the law or protect citizens. Dialogue intended to achieve reform did not fail by accident—Salva Kiir has systematically impeded it. Blaming or asking the oppressed to wait longer amid persistent suffering is not prudence; it is complicity. Resistance arises because the state refuses to uphold the reform stipulated in the agreement and resorts to killing its own citizens.
This is a moral argument, not a technocratic policy manual. Political transitions are not pre-designed under conditions of repression; they unfold through struggles, negotiations, and the restoration of political and civic spaces. What must precede institutional design is moral clarity about what is no longer acceptable.
It is widely recognized that Salva Kiir’s policies fail to meet the needs of ordinary South Sudanese. The principles are explicit: civilian supremacy over armed power, impartial accountability for all actors, restoration of lawful and democratic institutions, and reconciliation rooted in justice rather than deliberate silence.
Demanding a fully formed post-rebellion architecture before acknowledging the moral collapse of the present order is not sound reasoning—it is a strategy for indefinite delay and a means of preserving the existing system. History shows that unjust systems fall because their legitimacy erodes, not because their critics first perfect the successor state.
In the mind of Kiir’s regime, rebellion is the source of South Sudan’s problems and the reason the young nation is torn apart. Yet fragmentation does not begin with resistance; it begins when citizenship is hollowed out, laws are applied unevenly, selective morality is enforced as policy, and loyalty is prioritized over justice. In such a context, those in power deliberately deflect responsibility by dividing communities along ethnic and political lines. Rebellion exposes these divisions rather than creating them, seeking genuine cohesion through accountability. Unity built on exclusion and silence is no unity at all.
The crisis in South Sudan did not stem from too much resistance, but from prolonged tolerance of impunity. Appeals to unity or peace often mask injustice, demanding silence instead of accountability. This imbalance erodes the moral bond between rulers and the ruled, leaving obedience without legitimacy. Under these circumstances, rebellion is not only justified but unavoidable, stemming from the state’s repeated failure to safeguard citizens and uphold impartial justice. To remain passive under this increasingly authoritarian grip is to accept constant political intimidation, the silencing of dissent, and complicity in the regime’s ongoing destructive military campaign in the country.
While rebellion inevitably brings suffering, it can be ethically justified when all lawful options are blocked, demanding careful moral judgment and disciplined action. Those taking up arms act from necessity, seeking to restore justice rather than exact vengeance. In this context, where the government relies on appalling crimes to instill fear in the people it governs, morality in the minds of those who rebel becomes constrained.
A morally justified rebellion arises only when the state becomes the source of injustice and renders reform impossible. It does not endorse actors who target civilians or exploit communities, as such conduct forfeits moral legitimacy and reinforces the need for disciplined, accountable resistance. Abuses committed by fragmented armed actors do not invalidate the injustice that compelled resistance; rather, they reinforce the necessity of discipline, restraint, and accountability as ethical obligations, not optional virtues. To collapse cause into conduct is to confuse why resistance emerges with how it must be constrained.
History judges societies by their commitment to confronting injustice, not by empty denunciations of violence. In South Sudan, rebellion born of failed governance is not disorder—it is a moral correction, a necessary and just resistance recognized by history, ethics, and conscience alike. When peace serves power rather than people, it is an illusion; under such conditions, resistance is a moral imperative to restore justice and accountable governance.
The writer, Duop Chak Wuol, is an analyst, critical writer, and former editor-in-chief of the South Sudan News Agency. He is a graduate of the University of Colorado, focusing on geopolitics, security, and social issues in South Sudan and the broader East African region. His work has appeared in leading regional and international outlets, including AllAfrica, Radio Tamazuj, The Independent (Uganda), The Arab Weekly, The Standard (Kenya), The Chronicle (Ghana), Addis Standard (Ethiopia), and Sudan Tribune. In 2017, the Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation (EBC) highlighted his article on Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s role in Ethiopia’s economic transformation. He can be reached at duop282@gmail.com.
The views expressed in ‘opinion’ articles published by Radio Tamazuj are solely those of the writer. The veracity of any claims made is the responsibility of the author, not Radio Tamazuj.