6. The state and statebuilding in South Sudan
6.2. The illegitimate state in South Sudan
Following on from the assessment of the degree to which South Sudan is a hybrid quasi-state that neither provides security to its citizens nor possesses a monopoly of violence on its territory, this chapter is going to look in more detail at the non-security aspects of statehood. As established in the typology of the African state (Ch. 4.1.2), African states are frequently characterized by institutions that function only nominally, regimes that only on paper respond to their citizens, judges that only in theory adhere to the letter of the law. For South Sudan, there were already concerns at the time when the Comprehensive Peace Agreement had just been signed “that the national pattern of governance was likely to be repeated within the South”979 because SPLM institutions lacked transparency, accountability and democratic legitimacy.
Thus, this chapter on the illegitimate state in South Sudan will first of all in 6.2.1 take a look at the performance and reach of modern state institutions like the judiciary and of social services like the health and education sectors. The second part in 6.2.2 will deal with the various components of what is commonly called democratization, which apart from elections refers to constitution-making, freedom of the press and democratic political conduct. In both cases, the progress or lack thereof will be measured against the Government of South Sudan’s own declarations of intent – insofar as that is possible. At the same time, a general assessment of the state of each institution, each substrata of modern statehood will be forwarded based on the available evidence.
6.2.1. The non-performing state: modern state institutions & services in South Sudan The overview over the state of modern state institutions and services in South Sudan will proceed from the general to the specific: starting out in 6.2.1.1 with an overall look at the presence of the state in South Sudan past and present and the state’s capacity to reach its citizens before analyzing three key sectors of modern statehood: 6.2.1.2 inspects the judiciary including customary law, 6.2.1.3 the field of primary to higher education and 6.2.1.4 the health sector. These four sub-sections should furnish an understanding to what extent South Sudan is a performing or a non-performing state.
6.2.1.1. Presence of the state and its institutions
A modern state is largely defined and judged by its citizens on its ability to deliver services to citizens;
services that citizens indirectly pay for through their taxes. South Sudan and, more to the point, South Sudanese have arguably never experienced such a state.
Prior to 2005
Even after the nominal conquest of Sudan in 1821, the Southern areas of contemporary South Sudan were not penetrated for most of the 19th century except by slave raiders, ivory merchants and occasional traders and explorers980. The Mahdiyya affected South Sudan but most of the South was never controlled by the Mahdi or his successor. While there are different perspectives on the violence and cruelty of British colonial rule – the Royal Air Force pioneered indiscriminate aerial
979 Bennett et al. (2010), p. 34.
980 Klein, Martin A. (2009), p. 183.
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bombardment of Nuer areas in the 1920s and 1930s981 – few would argue with Collins’ assessment of British rule in the South as minimal. Very few administrators with even fewer resources meant that
“south of Malakal the Africans were left to their traditional cultures and got on with their lives with minimal interference from the imperial authorities unless they disrupted the peace”982. Outside of the central Gezira region around Khartoum, political control was generally not very tight, which was not simply the result of the later and thinner extension of British control to the South but was also due to the conscious adoption of the policy of indirect rule during the 1920s983. In short, Britain had no interest in setting up a centralized bureaucracy984. The price of relying on a light state structure that granted relative autonomy to local communities was social, political and economic stasis985. Independent Sudan neglected the South for most of its existence and fought a bloody insurgency throughout the 1960s. Two decades of civil war following the resumption of fighting in 1983 and widespread devastation rendered South Sudan at the turn of the century into a “stateless situation [where] one can observe the revitalisation of traditional-political grass-root movements, the development and networking of new forms of political representation, and local and regional institution building”986 and the dominance of international NGOs (so-called INGOs) in the delivery of services to the people. Existing government institutions in South Sudan like the Southern
Coordination Council, the Khartoum government’s official arm in Juba, were very weak as their effective authority only extended over a very limited territorial area987. Hence, writing at the time of the Machakos negotiations in 2002, John Young considered the South arguably less prepared to administer the state than after the signing of the 1972 Addis Ababa Agreement thirty years prior988. During the war, social services and education in rebel-held areas were largely left to international NGOs989 while civil administration – officially instituted separate from the military structure at the SPLM’s 1994 Chukudum Convention990 – suffered from the SPLM’s military culture and John Garang’s
981 Omissi, David E. Air Power and Colonial Control: The Royal Air Force, 1919-1939. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990, p. 159.
982 Collins, Robert O., “Malakal Revisited: Britain in the Southern Sudan after fifty years”, in Collins, Robert O.
Civil Wars & Revolution in the Sudan: Essays on the Sudan, Southern Sudan, and Darfur, 1962-2004. Hollywood:
Tsehai, 2005, pp. 357-366, p. 359.
983 Daly, Martin W. Imperial Sudan: the Anglo-Egyptian condominium, 1934-56. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
984 Wai, Dunstan M., “Pax Britannica and the Southern Sudan: The View from the Theatre”, African Affairs, Vol.
79, No. 316, 1980, pp. 375-395, p. 376.
985 Woodward, Peter. Sudan 1898-1989: The Unstable State. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1990, pp. 48-49.
986 Riehl, Volker. Who is Ruling in South Sudan? The Role of NGOs in Rebuilding Socio-Political Order. Uppsala:
Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, Studies on Emergency and Disaster Relief, Report No. 9, 2001, p. 6.
987 Haslie, Anita and Borchgrevink, Axel. International Engagement in Sudan after the CPA: Report on the piloting of OECD/DAC’s ‘Principles for Good International Engagement in Fragile States’ for the Case of Sudan.
Oslo: Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, Report No. 714, January 2007, p. 24.
988 Young, John, “Le SPLM/SPLA et le gouvernement du Sud-Soudan”, Politique Africaine, No. 88, December 2002, pp. 103-119, p. 113.
989 Local NGOs meanwhile were typically chaired by former SPLA members and the SPLM/A made sure that their organizations of choice were picked as collaborators for foreign organizations and donors.Reno, William,
“Complex Operations in Weak and Failing States: The Sudan Rebel Perspective”, Prism, Vol. 1, No. 2, March 2010, pp. 111-122, p. 117.
990 Chol, Timothy Tot. Civil Authority in the New Sudan: Organization, Functions and Problems. Presentation at the Conference on Civil Society & the Organization of Civil Authority in the New Sudan, April 1996. For a very detailed account of the Chukudum Convention, its preparation and afterlife, seeRolandsen, Øystein H.
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personalized style of leadership and aversion to delegate authority991. Whereas some credit the SPLM’s ability to control a large rural population to its introduction of civil administration and concomitant course reversal from a reliance on external support and expropriation of civilians992, LeRiche and Arnold rightly state that “*d+espite its revolutionary zeal and ostensibly progressive form, the SPLA/M has never emphasised civil administration or even basic development, preferring to view itself as a national movement for reform rather than a nascent Southern government”993. And as Blunt observed in 2003, appointments to positions in the civilian administration were not based on merit but on military rank and reputation994.
The SPLM’s lack of institutionalization during the war against Khartoum and other militias can be considered understandable because administrative concerns had to play second fiddle to the overall objective of fighting and winning militarily995. This prioritization of military concerns over the
interests of the population the SPLM/A claimed to be fighting for is illustrated by the organization’s conduct during the 1998 famine when the SPLM/A was accused of diverting food aid from civilians to soldiers996. Such criticism notwithstanding, the SPLM/A was generally successful in getting
transnational NGOs to support its attempts at establishing administrative capacity while restricting the SPLM/A’s own (low-cost) role to managing the service provision by other actors997. Operation Lifeline Sudan, for example, that provided relief during much of the war was in part a response to appeals made by the SPLM/A since 1985998. The situation in the garrison towns and surrounding areas that were held by the Khartoum government largely mirrored the SPLM’s reliance on
international NGOs, save for a few years in the mid-1990s when Islamic organizations sponsored by the NIF-government sought to combine care with proselytization999.
Since 2005
Thence, the question is to what extent matters have changed and evolved since autonomous rule in the South begun in 2005. Since 2005, the International Organization for Migration has tracked more than 2.5 million returnees to South Sudan1000, and 50.6% of the population was found to live beneath Guerrilla government: political changes in the Southern Sudan during the 1990s. Uppsala: Nordiska
Afrikainstitutet, 2005.
991 Young, John (2002), p. 112, 110.
992 Ali, Ali Abdel Gadir; Elbadawi, Ibrahim A. and El-Batahani, Atta, “Sudan’s Civil War. Why has it prevailed for so long?”, in Collier, Paul and Sambanis, Nicholas (eds.) Understanding Civil War: Evidence and Analysis (Volume 1: Africa). Washington: The World Bank, 2005, pp. 193-219, p. 203.
993 LeRiche, Matthew and Arnold, Matthew B. South Sudan: From Revolution to Independence. London: Hurst, 2012, p. 219.
994 Blunt, Peter, “Governance conditions, roles and capacity-building needs in the rebel-held areas of Southern Sudan”, Public Administration and Development, Vol. 23, No. 2, 2003, pp. 125-139, p. 133.
995 Ambrosetti (2011), p. 15.
996 Harragin, Simon, “Relief and an Understanding of Local Knowledge: The Case of Southern Sudan”, in Rao, Vijayendra and Walton, Michael (eds.) Culture and Public Action. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004, pp.
307-327, p. 315.
997 Mampilly, Zachariah Cherian. Rebel Rulers: Insurgent Governance and Civilian Life during War. Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 2011, pp. 131-132.
998 Minear, Larry and Abuom, Tabyiegen Agnes. Humanitarianism Under Siege: A Critical Review of Operation Lifeline Sudan. Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press, 1991, p. 136.
999 Kevlihan, Robert. Aid, Insurgencies and Conflict Transformation: When Greed is Good. Milton Park and New York: Routledge, 2013, pp. 60-61.
1000 International Organization for Migration. IOM Border Management Newsletter: South Sudan. March 2012, p. 3.
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the national poverty line – a step up from the 90% of the population thought to have lived on less than a dollar a day in 20041001. After decades of war, the South’s infrastructure is decrepit and a massive obstacle for the government to reach its citizens1002. The average speed at which cargo traverses South Sudan was calculated at 6.4 km per hour or roughly equivalent to a horse-drawn cart1003. Unknown numbers of landmines continue to maim citizens and disrupt access to many areas, in particular in the North of the country near the border with Sudan1004. In October 2013, UNMAS (United Nations Mine Action Service) reported that there remained 642 hazardous areas of varying sizes1005.
One of the South Sudanese state’s problems is that it is hardly present outside of the capital Juba and the ten state capitals, with a significant disconnect developing between farmers in rural areas and the government1006. According to the 2008 census, 83% of South Sudanese still live in rural areas1007. Getting from place to place is a major issue, in particular during the rainy season, as there are very few all-weather roads (and only 50km of tarmac roads1008) apart from the lone American-built highway connecting Juba to Nimule on the Ugandan border. Some progress has been made in building roads into rural areas but grave local discrepancies remain: decent all-weather roads can be found in Northern Bahr al Ghazal compared to hardly any in Jonglei1009. “At the local level, the government often consists of little more than a handful of overstretched employees, working out of thatched-roofed buildings with no power, vehicles, communication, or regular salaries”1010. That physical presence matters a lot is shown by a study that describes how the visible presence of the state via administrative buildings was received very positively by residents whereas South Sudanese from areas where such buildings were nonexistent strongly criticized their absence1011. In other words, successful statebuilding also means the building of state buildings.
Skilled, experienced and motivated staff to man the administration also appears to be missing in large enough numbers. The 2005 Joint Assessment Mission that accompanied the CPA negotiations
1001 The Republic of Sudan National Population Council. Sudan Millennium Development Goals Progress Report 2010. Khartoum, December 2010, p. 14.
1002 Antwi-Boateng and O’Mahony (2008), p. 152. The Joint Assessment Mission also recognized lack of
infrastructure as the impediment to citizens’ access to services. Joint Assessment Mission (JAM) Sudan. Volume 1: Framework for Sustained Peace, Development and Poverty Eradication. March 18, 2005, p. 18.
1003 Ranganathan, Rupa and Briceño-Garmendia, Cecilia M. South Sudan’s Infrastructure: A Continental Perspective. Washington, DC: World Bank, 2011, p. 10.
1004 City Press, “South Sudan digs up its buried death”, 24 February 2013,
http://www.citypress.co.za/politics/south-sudan-digs-up-its-buried-death/ (accessed: 24 February 2013);
McNeish, Hannah, “Relentless Use of Landmines in South Sudan Sparks Fear”, Voice of America, 21 November 2011,
http://www.voanews.com/content/relentless-use-of-landmines-in-south-sudan-sparks-fear-134349963/159204.html (accessed: 24 February 2013).
1005 UNMAS South Sudan. Mine Action Newsletter. October 2013,
http://unmas.createsend1.com/t/ViewEmail/j/AFFE896FD4286D10/5BB5F59C34A964350F8C96E86323F7F9 (accessed: 25 March 2014).
1006 OECD (2011), p. 34.
1007 Government of the Republic of South Sudan. South Sudan Development Plan 2011-2013: Realising freedom, equality, justice, peace and prosperity for all. Juba, August 2011, p. 13.
1008 Mailer and Poole (2010), p. 17.
1009 Maxwell, Daniel; Gelsdorf, Kirsten and Santschi, Martina. Livelihoods, basic services and social protection in South Sudan. London: Secure Livelihoods Research Consortium, Working Paper No. 1, July 2012, p. 21.
1010 Mailer and Poole (2010), p. 21.
1011 Reeves, Richard. Peace and Conflict Assessment of South Sudan 2012. London: International Alert, 2012, p.
62.
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and set out targets for the development of state capacity and service delivery has been criticized as an unprioritised wish-list that overestimated implementation capacity on the ground1012. In its present state, the GoSS is effectively unable to carry out many of what are nominally its government functions without assistance from external sources1013. And that is in spite of the fact that service delivery often remains the domain of NGOs while several key state functions such as accounting, procurement and auditing have been delegated to non-state agencies1014.
To the great dismay of the GoSS, NGOs generally operate parallel implementation channels independent of South Sudan’s state structures due to the latter’s lack of capacity to perform1015. Although most of the government’s wrath is in truth directed at the United Nations “because the agencies that are contesting governance in South Sudan at a meaningful level are UN organizations and the World Bank, not INGOs”1016. But the lack of oversight also works in the opposite direction as far from all development projects run and funded by foreign NGOs are actually useful to the
supposed beneficiary, the South Sudanese1017. On a more fundamental level, foreign NGOs tend to operate with normative assumptions about the role of the state that are strongly based on the state as it exists in the West1018.
Quality and training of government staff is also a major concern. An internal GoSS evaluation of state capacity found that the civil service was not able to do the job it is supposed and expected to1019 and a UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) report found that half of all positions in
government ministries remain to be filled, 50% of public servants only have elementary education compared to only 5% with a graduate degree and many lack work experience and adequate knowledge of English, the official working language1020. This appears to be a repeat of the situation after the 1972 Addis Ababa Peace Agreement when there was not enough qualified staff to fill administrative positions in the Southern Regional Government1021. A USAID study corroborates these findings: the high degree of illiteracy among members of the civil service in combination with the lack of a common language of administration severely constrains the administration’s capacity to act and deliver1022. Even the new head of the armed forces, Paul Malong (appointed in 2014), is believed to
1012 International Dialogue on Peacebuilding and Statebuilding. Synthesis Report: Key findings from country consultations in Burundi, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, and Timor-Leste. Dili, Timor-Leste, 9-10 April 2010, p. 24.
1013 Davies, Fiona. Contracting out core government functions and services in Southern Sudan. Discussion Paper, Joint AfDB/PDG Conference on Contracting Out Core Government Functions and Services in Post-Conflict and Fragile Situations, Tunis, June 2009, pp. 18-19.
1014 Ibid, p. 6.
1015OECD (2011), p. 33.
1016 Grawert, Elke, “The Aid Business in South Sudan after the Comprehensive Peace Agreement”, in Bass, Hans-Heinrich; Knedlik, Tobias; Meyn, Mareike and Wiegand-Kottisch, Maren (eds.) Economic Systems in a Changing World Economy. Berlin: LIT, 2007, pp. 387-402, p. 398.
1017 Marriage, Zoë, “The Comfort of Denial: External Assistance in Southern Sudan”, Development and Change, Vol. 37, No. 3, 2006, pp. 479-500.
1018 Gunnarsen, Liv Inken and Søndergaard, Tine. NGOs and Fragile States – An analysis on how Danish NGOs have adopted the international agenda on Fragile States and the role they play in South Sudan in relation to this agenda. Dissertation, International Development Studies, University of Roskilde, Spring 2010.
1019 Larson, Greg; Ajak, Peter Biar and Pritchett, Lant. South Sudan’s Capability Trap: Building a State with Disruptive Innovation. Cambridge: Center for International Development at Harvard University, Working Paper No. 268, October 2013, p. 8.
1020 Luwangwa, Francis. State Building in South Sudan: The UNDP Experience. Juba: UNDP, 2010, p. 7.
1021 Kasfir (1977), p. 155.
1022 USAID (2009), p. 8.
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be unable to read and write1023. Moreover, ministries and other government bodies are typically characterized by a division between former SPLA fighters (often in positions of leadership), former members of the administration in Khartoum and younger foreign-educated returnees1024. Tension arises from the fact that the latter appear to be doing most of the work and with their expertise are seen as a challenge to less educated and less hardworking higher-ups1025.
One of the underlying factors for the lack of visible progress in governmental services is that given the limited budgetary resources, South Sudan faces a trade-off between development and
security1026. Spending sufficiently on both posts is currently not in the books and the fragile security situation, the SPLM’s military culture and the risk of alienating the army all tilt the scales in the army’s favour1027. A game-theoretical study actually went to great lengths to show that in the run-up to the referendum, excessive militarization and brinkmanship were perfectly rational choices for the governments in Juba and Khartoum1028. Recent events confirm that brewing discontent in the army is not an empty fear but a very dangerous proposition indeed. In 2014, wounded soldiers hurled stones at cars and blocked traffic in Juba to underline their demand that unpaid wages be paid
immediately1029. In this context, a quantitative study of 75 South Sudanese counties for the period from 2006-2010 found a fascinating correlation between the level of state personnel and levels of violence. The lowest levels of violence were found both in those counties with the most and in those without any state manpower, indicating that in those places where the state was only present in small, insufficient numbers, state presence actually led to more violence than where the state had stayed out altogether1030.
6.2.1.2. Judicial system
As already pointed out above, insecurity in South Sudan is partly driven by a vicious circle of citizens
As already pointed out above, insecurity in South Sudan is partly driven by a vicious circle of citizens