President Salva Kiir and Dr. Riek Machar Unfit to lead peace in South Sudan

A Letter to His Holiness Pope Francis on behalf of the ordinary people of South Sudan

April 5, 2019

The Holy See, Pope Francis

Apostolic Palace, Vatican City

Vatican City State, 00120

Your Holiness Father,

Re: President Salva Kiir and Dr. Riek Machar unfit to lead peace in South Sudan

Appreciating the interest of Your Holy Father in the suffering of our people who immensely endured gross violations of their natural and human rights under President Salva Kiir’s autocratic regime,

Recalling the pastoral letter issued by your Catholic Bishops of South Sudan on 28^th February 2019, urging engagement of the non-signatories in negotiation on a new agreement,

Recognizing the Bishop’s pastoral letter in stressing that peace cannot be made by killing people, and fearing that the current peace mediated by IGAD is fatally flawed,

And therefore urging all stakeholders and friends of South Sudan to collaborate to seek a new peace model, for a change of narrative, for achieving true peace which goes beyond the R-ARCSS,

Remembering the past sacrifice for South Sudan of the Catholic priest, Fr. Saturnino Lohure,

Echoing the Christian cry in the wilderness and voice of the people in Bishop Santo Laku, carrying the cross for the people in our country in true witness to Christ without fear or favour,

Acknowledging the role of the Church in its entirety throughout history, and in liberating Poland and countries in Central America in contemporary times, given nature of the sins committed against God’s people on earth,

Here therefore implore your moral authority Holiness Father to support new negotiations and mediation of the conflict and crisis of governance in South Sudan for the sake of future posterity and sustainable peace in our battered country,

And alerting your Holy See about illegitimacy and the perfidy of the incumbent President Salva Kiir together with the serial First Vice President Dr. Riek Machar Teny, which makes intervention of your Holiness Father the more imperative to save the people and the country from certain disintegration.

National Alliance for Democracy And Freedom Action (South Sudan NADAFA[1]), an alliance advocating on behalf of the ordinary people of South Sudan wishes to appeal directly to your Holy See, to stand up for the oppressed people of the Republic of South Sudan, and not confer legitimacy to President Salva Kiir and Dr. Riek Machar to lead South Sudan again, by giving them a free hand and unconditional audience, during an upcoming retreat scheduled with them in the Vatican State.

The Alliance (South Sudan NADAFA) is imploring Your Holiness to withhold giving credibility and undeserved recognition to failed SPLM leaders to rule again for another three years under the terms of the flawed R-ARCSS. This measure would be in solidarity with and respect for the wishes of ordinary people of the Republic of South Sudan who are victims of SPLM leaders warring. The impunity and corruption with which they ruled the country are in contravention of Christian ethos and principles of justice for which Your Holiness Father have committed your life to humbly serve.

These very leaders you have invited to the Vatican have confessed that they and the ruling SPLM party have lost direction and vision and the ordinary people of the Republic of South Sudan deem them unfit to govern the country, unfit and unworthy to entrust them to lead the peace. President Salva Kiir and Dr. Riek Machar are responsible for corruption in South Sudan.

They are un-Christian in their deeds in public office, and have destroyed livelihoods of thousands of families in South Sudan, and have lost legitimacy. These leaders have not served the country with humility and accountability demanded of those in public office.

The ordinary people are deeply concerned that the warring by them, signing and violating serial peace agreements have become the modus operandi for overstaying in power through sham serial peace agreements with the most recent agreement signed on September 12, 2018, dubbed the R-ARCSS[2]. This agreement is flawed and it was imposed by regional powers to confer legitimacy and another lease of life to the current dictatorial and oppressive tribal government of President Salva Kiir, who has been responsible for a string of massacres of thousands of innocent civilians beginning on 15^th December 2013 and ongoing. President Salva Kiir is responsible for covering the country with blood and violence in a genocidal war against the people, forcing nearly 3 million of them into refuge, over 200,000 living in Protection of Civilian sites (POCs), over 2 million Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), and estimated 400,000 deaths from civil war related causes. This is a monumental and unprecedented failure of leadership that has ripped apart our social fabric and Christian faith. The world cannot remain blinded to the collapsed state in South Sudan as the country is now crippled and faced with certain disintegration if Lt. Gen. Salva Kiir remains president deputised by Dr. Riek Machar for another three years.

However, there is hope to save the country, in an alternative to the flawed R-ARCSS. The Alliance, South Sudan NADAFA has a sustainable peace plan, which meets the call of most hearts of our ordinary people. After a long struggling fighting for justice and rights to be human beings with dignity like any other as made in God’s image, the people are finding themselves living under the brutality of those who were saved by the same moral responsibility from others (of which the Vatican was not an exception). This state of existence in our new country is wrong and inexcusable. The IGAD failures were not only in failed “just and fair conduct of negotiation”, but also in treating the people of South Sudan as business for their own interests, turning blind eyes on or even siding with the regime that has committed cruel human rights abuses known to humanity, and the recent report of UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan is replete with examples and accounts of gross violations.

Your Holiness, impunity should never be rewarded and those who governed with impunity, who are morally bankrupt and are using the flawed R-ARCSS to remain in power at all cost without a new vision for the country, should neither be embraced nor entrusted with the powers of redress for the injustices they themselves have caused. How would they not be held responsible and accountable for these injustices to our people?

Your Holiness, we trust in your moral authority and responsibility. Millions of the people of South Sudan in refugee camps, POCs and IDPs will be very disappointed and dismayed to see that the perpetrators of violence and civil war in our country are rewarded to continue in power, re-installed by R-ARCSS without disruption to their impunity and tribal rule. All Christians, who are the majority of the people in the Republic of South Sudan will be dismayed for continuation of impunity by the hegemonic elites in our country. The hegemonic and corrupt tribal elites who President Salva Kiir, Dr. Riek Machar Teny, and Rebecca Nyandeng represent, as the high priests of the failed SPLM, do not have the trust of our ordinary people in Upper Nile, Equatoria and Bahr el Ghazal and in refugee camps. These so called leaders represent the pain and suffering of the people of South Sudan, as such, they are not fit to represent any one other than themselves.

The R-ARCSS in its current form of exclusive power sharing between SPLM and SSOA[3] elites is unfit for purpose and unfit for the country and its people. It has left the people at the periphery to the total exclusion of decision-making, left in the hands of the elites, who are unelected representatives, to lead Government and occupy a bloated 550-member Parliament of appointees to keep the President and his five (5) Vice Presidents in power over the people for another three (3) years, without accountability for war crimes and crimes against humanity and the people. South Sudan needs a people based peace process. One that puts the people and their constitution making process first in order to repair their social fabric, pick up the pieces of the broken country and freely elect a new leadership under a new constitution. The National Alliance for Democracy And Freedom Action (NADAFA) feels obligated to our ordinary people to plead their case with your Holy Father, to stand with the people of South Sudan.

We sincerely plead with your Holy See to not confer undeserved legitimacy to R-ARCSS, which only prolongs the suffering of our populations under the corrupt and failed leadership of President Salva Kiir, Dr Riek Machar and the conflicted interests of regional IGAD countries, who continue to deny our country and its population a just and sustainable peace, one that addresses the root causes of the civil war in our country. IGAD is not an impartial peace broker, who chooses to stand not with the people of South Sudan, but with a club member, the tribal government of President Salva Kiir.

The scheduled retreat consultations on April 10^th 2019 in the Vatican with President Salva Kiir of SPLM-IG[4], Dr. Riek Machar of SPLM/A-IO[5] and others to bolster a non-existent political will to abide by and implement the R-ARCSS, in our humble view, are capable of persuading both President Kiir and Dr. Riek Machar to step aside now and peacefully from seeking stay in public office. The country and the vast majority of our ordinary people currently living in the refugee camps, the IDPs, and in POCs in Equatoria, Upper Nile and Bahr el Ghazal have no confidence and trust left in the leadership of the country by these failed SPLM leaders, and call on them to leave and vacate office, and let the people pick up the pieces of the country’s destruction by them.

South Sudan NADAFA, the Alliance, remain profoundly concerned that the principal parties to the R-ARCSS suffer from endemic deficit of political will and lack a vision for change and transformation of the country. The current overrun in R-ARCSS and missed key implementation benchmarks echo same failures and reservations to implement ARCSS[6] in 2015 under the same SPLM leaders. President Salva Kiir is known to be executing coerced recruitment of Dinka militia into the army in Gogrial against the will and consent of the local Dinka community elders in Bahr el Ghazal who refused forced recruitment of their sons into the army. This recruitment policy, prohibited by R-ARCSS, poses continuing threats to peace and stability in the country with President Salva Kiir still in power. The way forward within grasp of Your Holiness Father is to persuade the incumbent President, including all corrupt SPLM leaders, who are gathering at the Vatican retreat, to leave office and positions of leadership peacefully, in the interest of the country and its people. This is not an unusual demand to make on the Christian and moral authority of your Holiness Father for the people of South Sudan. It is the best option they could be persuaded to exercise, in a selfless sacrifice to the people and the country.

South Sudan NADAFA calls on your Holiness Father to stand up in support of the masses of our ordinary people who look to you to bless their demand for new negotiation to reach a just and sustainable peace in South Sudan without Salva Kiir and Riek Machar, which addresses the root causes of conflict, and one that puts the people and constitution making process first.

There are high expectations placed on the follow up visit to the Vatican for a retreat in Rome by President Salva Kiir and Dr. Riek Machar, in as far as there a likely opportunity for your Holiness Father to persuade them to leave power peacefully now than at any other time. However, we believe that the incumbent President and the visiting team of R-ARCSS signatories, of themselves alone, offer no new hope, other than to detract attention away from the looming crisis of R-ARCSS failure to meet key deadlines and implementation benchmarks in May 2019.

These signatories of the flawed R-ARCSS hope that the retreat, temporarily, deflects attention of the people of South Sudan from ongoing atrocities, murders, and killing on 17^th March 2019 of 15 innocent citizens, women and children, and human rights abuses by armed Dinka men who are operating with impunity under Kiir’s Government lately in Kuajino county in Wau Luwo lands.

As things stand your Holiness Father, we reiterate that our country is at a crossroads, R-ARCSS has failed, and IGAD too has consistently failed as an impartial mediator for the conflict in South Sudan, siding with Salva Kiir’s Government while the conflict rages on.

The ordinary people of South Sudan, however, trust in your Holiness Father, and making no prejudgement but believe your Holiness Father will stand with them at this acute cross roads, looking to your moral authority to intervene in the interest of the people, siding with their aspirations for a just and sustainable peace in their country without President Kiir and Riek in power.

South Sudan NADAFA wishes to appeal to your support, Holiness Father, for an alternative new way forward, which we avail to you as a blueprint with this letter to lend it Your Holiness support. In this regard, for your information, South Sudan NADAFA appeals to the Secretary General of the United Nations and the Security Council to:

Appoint a UN Special Envoy for South Sudan, whose mandate would be to take over mediation of the conflict from IGAD and to mediate impartially to reach a just and sustainable peace which addresses the root causes of conflict in South Sudan;
Provide support for the establishment of an escrow account for South Sudan oil revenues under international supervision mechanisms until a new peace agreement is reached which puts the people and constitution making process first;
Further to the recommendation on escrow account on oil revenues, the recent report by the UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan has established that oil companies, through Nile Petroleum, contribute to the perpetration of crimes against humanity and war crimes, hence the proceeds from oil sale should be sequestered into the escrow account,
Mobilize international support for the new peace process under a UN Envoy, together with Troika countries, international partners forum and the Vatican.
Support constitution making and state building efforts in South Sudan to encourage cohesion and minimize the risk of state disintegration under the incumbent tribal Jieng Council of Elders tribal and kleptocratic Government

In the event that President Salva Kiir fails to cooperate with the new peace processes, the UN and international community should impose sanctions and consequences on the tribal regime in Juba, declaring it a pariah state without a legitimate government. The world community, AU and the UN should intervene to assume the responsibility to protect (R2P) the people of South Sudan from atrocious human rights abuses by the illegitimate tribal government in Juba, which to date continues to commit massacres against civilians with impunity, perpetrating crimes against humanity and war crimes.

We have attached South Sudan NADAFA Blueprint, along with a recent article by Dr. Carol Berger, an independent assessment, which describes in substantive details how President Kiir premeditated and planned the current war in South Sudan, hence cannot therefore be trusted with ending it. The ordinary people of the Republic of South Sudan thank your Holiness Father for your courage and empathy for them and toward humanity. Trusting in your, Holiness Father, intervention and authority to prevail over the incumbents to leave power peacefully in South Sudan.

Holy Father, please accept assurances of our highest esteem

Dr. Hakim Dario, press@pdm-rss.org

Interim Chair, The National Alliance for Democracy And Freedom Action / South Sudan NADAFA

[1] National Alliance for Democracy And Freedom Action

[2] Revitalized – Agreement for Resolution of Conflict in South Sudan

[3] South Sudan Opposition Alliance

[4] Sudan People’s Liberation Movement – In Government

[5] Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army – In Opposition

[6] Agreement for Resolution of Conflict in South Sudan – 2015

Media Authority suspends Al-Watan Newspaper Unlawfully

Media Authority Suspends Al-Watan Newspaper Unlawfully

Press Statement for Immediate Release March 28^th 2019

The Media Authority was established in South Sudan by the Media Authority Act, 2013 which was passed without provisions for licensing the media in the country

PDM has learned with great dismay of the action by the Media Authority to suspend Al-Watan Newspaper, claiming that the newspaper had failed to fulfill its operating license terms! The requirement of licensing media outlets originated in the Sudan Press and Publications Act, 2004 which was superseded by the Media Authority Act 2013, Access to Information Act, 2013 and South Sudan Broadcasting Act, 2013.

PDM recalls that when the democratic media bills were tabled in the National Legislative Assembly and passed into Acts of Parliament in June, July and August 2013, none of the three Acts provided for licensing of the media and journalism in South Sudan. It was Michael Makuei Lueth who wanted to introduce licensing of media outlets and journalists in South Sudan, and AMDISS fought and advocated hard to defeat Makuei’s proposals for licensing the media.

It has now come into public knowledge that the Minister of Information & Broadcasting and President Salva Kiir Government’s spokesperson is the same individual who proposed media and journalists licensing in South Sudan. There is however no public evidence of the Media Authority Act, 2013 having undergone any amendments since it was passed in 2013.

The apparent introduction of media and journalists licensing by Minister Michael Makuei in South Sudan without Parliamentary oversight is grossly unlawful abuse of power, and constitutes a criminal liability in public office.

The only requirement of licensing in South Sudan applied only to Television and Radio broadcasting services, which depended on radio frequencies as a scarce resource. In order to operate, all other non-broadcast media outlets needed only to meet the requirement of registration as a business.

Minister Michael Makuei and Hon Deng Tiel, Chair of Parliamentary Legislation and Legal Committee at the time the Media Authority Act, 2013 was passed by the Parliament, would be held responsible and criminally liable for abuse of office to amend the provisions of the Media Authority Act 2013 to give it new interpretation and effect of licensing media outlets in South Sudan.

PDM has access to the text of the Media Authority Act, 2013, Access to Information Act, 2013, and South Sudan Broadcasting Corporation Act, 2013, copies of which were served to AMDISS by Hon Joy Kwaje MP when the media legislation bills were passed into Acts of Parliament.

The requirement imposed on the media outlets in South Sudan by the incumbent government to operate under annually renewable license is unlawful, and is non-compliant with the authentic Media Authority Act, 2013 as passed by the Parliament.

South Sudan is today run under the whim and dictatorship of the duo, President Salva Kiir and Michael Makuei Lueth, who continue to operate the National Congress’ Press and Publications 2004 Act in South Sudan to oppress the media and extinguish the democratic rights of our people.

President Salva Kiir’s dictatorship must end soon for the country to free itself from his tyranny, corruption and impunity. PDM calls on the masses of our people in Equatoria, Upper Nile and Bahr al Ghazal to join in NADAFA of our country from the tyranny of President Salva Kiir, President Michael Makeui and impunity of the Jieng Council of Elders.

Lives At Stake, no peace in sight – Book Review

Lives At Stake,

South Sudan During the Liberation Struggle

By Halle Jorn Hanssen

ISBN: 978-82-91385-61-7

Book Review:

By Hakim Dario, PhD

Book Review Author contact: press@pdm-rss.org

Date: 11^th February 2019

I read this book and kept going over it, gripped by the wealth of details, inside view and revealing information that I never knew about before. I read the book several times, found it to be motivating for action to bridge the deficit that is so well depicted in what the liberation struggle leaders did not accomplish for their people.

The author Halle Jorn Hanssen, described the challenges that faced SPLM/A during the struggle, and later the deficits in their leaders political will that emerged, and which still persist to dash the aspirations for democracy development in South Sudan. I recommend the book as a valuable resource to build knowledge and gain appreciation of the context for critical challenges in the life of the new nation and needing to navigate towards democracy and peace building.

We are indebted to Halle Hanssen for sharing and recording something of the SPLM/A liberation struggle history in stories that shed light and increased knowledge of contemporary South Sudanese and future posterity of what went on during the liberation struggle. It clearly also said something about what still remains of the struggle for “new democracy, development and social justice in the newest state” on the continent.. Hanssen’s efforts to share his knowledge will not be in vain, as we all take stock and pick up the pieces to try stitch things that have fallen apart together again, to mend the broken social fabric in South Sudan, perhaps in the making of a new democratic social contract that will hold the country together and prevent its destruction by the liberators turned tribal kleptocrats.

Lives At Stake comes in a volume of 600 pages of narratives, inundated with many stories by many of the actors who played a part in the act, in weaving together what became the unique story of SPLM/A, their friends and partners in NPA and USAID, the crucial roles they played in the liberation struggle, and the journey through the early 1980s to the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005 and afterwards reaching the promise land but then only to give it away. The book depicts how the liberation struggle which held so much promise, quickly morphed into a disappointing moral decay, the subsequent collapse of the SPLM from that decay and with it, in the author’s view, the unthinkable destruction of the state of South Sudan by none other than those same leaders who fought for its liberation.

Whose lives are at stake?

The book makes no room for ambiguity; the Sudanese state and successive Arab and Islamic centric governments in Khartoum since 1956 took turns to put the lives of the African people who live there and in South Sudan at stake. The state repression and violation of their human rights and dignity was systemic. The new state that just emerged with great expectations in South Sudan to negate the former’s vices is unfortunately no different; on the contrary it’s equally (unexpectedly) repressive and destructive to the people who live there. A repressive state begetting another of its kind, resulting in two countries with same repressive, autocratic and dictatorial system, one in Khartoum and another hatched in Juba by kleptocrats. The aptly named, so called “the two Sudans” are one and same kind dictatorship. Such is the conundrum that, the book contended, has now befallen the very people whose lives are at stake with little or no change in suffering under an oppressive regime of their own. After putting in a decent struggle, the end product and result is the same as the one before it for the people in the two Sudans living under dictatorships.

The author, Halle Hanssen, who chronicled political developments in our turbulent continent for many years as the African foreign news reporter and correspondent for Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation in Nairobi, was not just well placed but also well connected with the liberation struggle leaders on one hand, and Norway Labour Party political leaders on the other. It’s nowhere possible to have a more credible source for the stories that inundated the book than the eye of the reporter. And who later took on the powerful position of Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA) Secretary General in 1992, with decisions for political solidarity and humanitarian support for the people whose lives are at stake in Sudan and their liberation struggle against systemic oppression by successive Khartoum regimes. The critical role that was played by NPA on the ground, in support for the people behind the frontlines in the liberation struggle was an embodiment of decisions of NPA solidarity with the oppressed, not just in South Sudan, but throughout the continent.

NPA’s solidarity with the people whose lives were at risk was realized and embodied in projects to build NPA hospital and medical training facility in Chukudum, in Yei, and Akot. This is beside the delivery of food aid and supplies to relief thousands at risk when hunger and starvation struck periodically in many parts of South Sudan over the years. The menace of bombings by Khartoum was constant, Yei hospital and Chukudum did not escape Antonov bombing raids and many lives lost. The stories are varied and countless, replete with heroic actions, and risk taking while NPA remained undeterred by immense challenges to stand with the liberation struggle through thick and thin until the CPA[1] was signed in 2005.

It’s inconceivable that Norwegian Government Leaders, and later the US Congressmen who followed in their foot steps would have made successful fact finding field missions into South Sudan and Nuba mountains in the vast SPLA controlled territories without the facilitation and services of NPA on the ground and also in the air to fly in food, medical supplies, or VIP visitors who trekked to South Sudan. Throughout NPA’s relief work on the ground, the freedom fighters were provided a lifeline, knowing that there was medical care available in the event that they were injured in the front lines and would be taken to hospital in Chukudum or Yei for treatment.

The visitors on fact finding missions to the territories under SPLM/A control included the US Special Envoy for Sudan and South Sudan, Mr. John Danforth, Norway Minister for Development Cooperation and Human Rights, Hilde Frafjord Johnson, Dutch Minister for Development Cooperation Jan Pronk, Executive Director of US Committee on Refugees Roger Winter and later Assistant USAID Administrator, the world-famous Brazilian photographer Sebastiao Salgado, amongst other celebrities.

John Garang’s enduring phone bills

The stories are not also without a lighter and humorous ring to them. One such enduring story is that of John Garang’s satellite phone and payment of its bills, which ran into millions of Norwegian Krona (NOK) at expense of the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (NMFA). At one point, John Garang’s phone was cut for unpaid bills, and was barred from making further calls before nearly a 600,000 NOK bill was paid, which was well beyond the cost of a few calls to Oslo. This cut or disconnection occurred in the middle of a developing battle in the SPLA front lines, which left the SPLA C-in-C furious and without communication to coordinate the battle and give instructions to commanders in the middle of a large military battlefield and operations as Garang protested! So NPA had to “pay the bill as fast as possible”, considering the C-in-C was sure that the other party “NMFA” was the party responsible for settling the bills but broke its promise.

The story had it that the phone could only be used in connection with peace negotiations, and the NMFA reserved the right to turn it on and off, to which SPLM agreed.

While otherwise usage by John Garang was not part of the terms and conditions of the agreement for the phone, still NPA and NMFA had to be creative in settlement of the phone bills running into a few (3 to 5) millions NOK, in solidarity and support for the struggle of the people whose lives are at stake. The enduring rebel was able to carry on using the sat phone unperturbed, and out with the terms and conditions, with airtime cost still paid for at NMFA expense, or times at NPA’s expense.

In theory, the satellite phone was intended only for communication with NMFA contacts in Norway for bilateral consultations related to peace negotiation initiative. NMFA needed to consult with John Garang in the field on urgent issues or developments, there was no other means to reach him without a satellite phone paid for by NMFA, which ended up being used as a modern day Facebook and essential tool of the C-in-C for field work as well as connectivity with the outside world.

The SPLM/A and its struggle is hugely indebted to the people of Norway and NPA in particular, who were and still are the true friends of the peoples whose Lives are At Stake.

Murderous business continuing in Juba, lives are at stake indeed

Paradoxically now lives are at stake from the systemic corruption, oppression and kleptocratic rule of Salva Kiir’s regime in Juba. The book is very scathing about the introduction of what the author described as Kiir’s regime fundamentally undemocratic security laws that were approved by the Parliament in 2014, that gave notorious security operatives in Kiir’s government a free hand to continue a murderous business in Juba and South Sudan. This has cast dark clouds over the new state, and the president is held responsible for the dangerous spiral of death that is destroying the state of South Sudan.

The infamous Marial Nour Jok, a notorious security operative in Kiir’s government merited a special appearance in the narrative, for his part in the 2013 massacre of ethnic Nuers, with approval of the President, and many other disappearances and gross human rights abuses committed by Marial Jok in Juba and during the liberation struggle, including ordering execution of three catholic nuns in a school in Akot accused to be spies, and who narrowly escaped death at his hands when another commander was quickly dispatched (after an alert was raised) together with Dan Eiffe[2] to rescue the catholic nuns from execution the following morning. Marial Nour Jok had dug holes in the ground for the three to stay over night with only their heads left out for air awaiting their fate the following morning. Had the execution of the nuns gone ahead, SPLM and the entire liberation struggle could have been in tatters from the resulting condemnation of Marial Nour Jok’s barbarism and unfettered brutality, which has continued to rear its ugly head under the brutal regime of Salva Kiir. It is only in Kiir’s government that operatives with such brutal record as Marial are not banished, but given a free hand to operate outside of the rule of law and rewarded for their unrestrained, unfettered and inconceivable impunity.

Standing in the way of building democratic institutions in the two Sudans

It’s not like there were no genuine efforts between 2005–2013 to develop democratic institutions, the author noted. The NCP’s dictatorial Islamic state that came to power in the 1989 coup ’de tat was not made for democratic reforms in the country when it enacted the oppressive Press and Publications Act 2004, into law just before the CPA was signed in 2005. The needed reforms to create the legal and professional base for freedom of expression and independent media in the two Sudans, which was non-existent, met with resistance and sabotage by highly placed people in NCP[3], and also most surprisingly by highly placed people in SPLM and Government of South Sudan. The author was at pains to explain how this happened and why.

The Consortium for Freedom of Expression and Democratic Media Legislation in Sudan[4] was conceived after many prior consultations with SPLM Leadership and civil society groups both local and international, as a project to assist efforts of democratic transformation in the “two Sudans”, particularly so in the new democracy that was promising to emerge in South Sudan, anticipated by the author to be the “showcase counterpart to the dictatorship” of NCP in the other Sudan.

The close relation between the Consortium and Government of South Sudan leadership, which was fostered by the late Dr. Samson Kwaje, the Minister of Information & Broadcasting since 2005, was suddenly hit by “some chilly head wind in 2008”; when Kwaje was moved from his post by the President to become the Minister of Agriculture. Mr. Gabriel Changson Chang from UDSF [5] was his replacement to carry SPLM flagship democratic transformation policy in Government, which foundation was laid by Dr. Kwaje in the media policy passed by the SSLA[6] in 2007 and adopted by the Government for subsequent media legislation six years later on in 2013, instead of the original six months schedule planned by the outgoing Dr. Kwaje to enact democratic media laws in South Sudan.

In the mean time, as a University colleague Lako Logali, the then senior legal advisor in the Justice Ministry stated in a meeting on the status quo, the Press and Publication 2004 Laws adopted by NCP before the CPA, were still valid and applicable in South Sudan until the Assembly passed new laws. The SPLM leadership and President Salva Kiir was neither in a hurry nor in great haste to enact any new democratic media laws. They were comfortable with either, the status quo NCP press laws 2004, or operating without laws after 22 years of liberation struggle for freedom and democracy, liberty, justice and equality. Mr. Lako Logali technically speaking, was somewhat right that as long as new media bills were not passed, the NCP laws from 2004 were still the only valid laws in force. Those too were the views of some key SPLM members in Kiir’s government. There was therefore need to prioritize the enactment of new media bills in South Sudan, and AMDISS pressed the Government for this in 2009 with draft media legislation bills; the Right to Information, Public Service Broadcaster, Independent Broadcasting Authority and Media Self-regulation. The author of this book review was at the time AMDISS[7] Secretary & Executive Director, who led media legislation advocacy in the Parliament, which he continued until the media bills were enacted by the National Legislative Assembly into Acts of Parliament[8] in 2013, just before the 15^th December 2013 debacle and crisis which triggered the first two years civil war 2013 – 2015.

The leading critic of the democratic media legislation bills in SPLM and in the Government of South Sudan, was none other than Michael Makuei Lueth, who at one point and single-handedly as Justice Minister introduced amendments in the draft media bills with provisions for licensing journalists and media outlets in the country, and criminalizing defamation offenses. AMDISS has had to intervene with a strong letter of protest to President Salva Kiir for the unilateral actions of Justice Minister Lueth to introduce amendments in South Sudan media legislation of exact same provisions, which were in conformity with NCP’s 2004 press laws. A critique of Minister Lueth’s infamous amendments was published in Media Policy, Legislation and Legal Framework[9]. This has helped reverse most of Minister Lueth’s inspired changes for repression of freedom of expression and media censorship in South Sudan.

Later with the advent of the 5 years civil war since 2013, and with Michael Makuei Lueth in charge as Minister of Information & Broadcasting, the enemy of democracy is all too obvious. Under Lueth and President Kiir, it is no surprise that repression of democracy, the media and freedom of expression is rearing its ugly head and continuing in South Sudan. The opponents of democracy are succeeding, to maintain validity of the media laws in suspense indefinitely, and the NCP’s 2004 laws are the ones still in force in South Sudan in conformity with Lueth’s and Kiir’s wishes., exactly 13 years after the CPA was signed, and 7 years after South Sudan independence!

The “two Sudans” are alike, and who would have thought that leaders of the liberation struggle in South would be united with NCP stalwarts in oppression and violation of basic human rights in their own country. Isaiah Abraham and many journalists paid the ultimate price with their own lives, victims of impunity and unknown gunmen of the ruling mafia in Juba. This deadly fate of the media climate was cultivated by Michael Makuei Lueth, who was anti democratic media bills in 2009, had failed to enact laws which license journalism and media, and which criminalize defamation. However, Lueth finally succeeded more than any other reactionary and autocratic SPLM politician to making the media laws dead and lifeless statutes in today’s Jieng Council of Elders governed South Sudan.

SPLM authoritarian socialism turned tribal and primitive kind of ideology

There is no denying, the author contended, that Dr. John Garang had an impressive gravitas of academic and military credentials, which helped steer the SPLM/A ship through turbulent times. The ship, when it lost its captain who gave it direction, nonetheless had all the resources and more opportunities at its disposal to manage and sail through the local storms, which were self inflicted from 2005 to 2013. The ship lost party and institution building opportunities from its legacy of 1994 Chukudum and second 2008 Juba conventions. It was approaching shores of the new emerging democracy in Africa in 2011 with an interim constitution that is needlessly cultivating early in the new democracy authoritarian and dictatorial powers in the hands of the President. The opportunities were lost to lay a foundation for economic recovery and development policy and with that the political will for democratic transformation ended and turned tribal and primitive. The Dura saga, plunder of national coffers, stolen billions by the list of 75 SPLM senior government officials, endless impunity in the emergent South Sudan, have all conspired to break up SPLM and with it the country’s destruction, presided over by war lords and kleptocrats, and for that the responsibility lay with Salva Kiir and his insider circle of confidants, tribesmen and women.

The author of Lives At Stake recalls travelling to Juba on President Salva Kiir’s invitation for a meeting on 21^st October 2013 to mediate the intra-SPLM conflict, and met with the President and 40 other people inside and outside SPLM before leaving Juba on 29^th October. The mediation mission outcomes and recommendations were documented in a 20 pages report, which concluded and firmly urged the Norwegian Labour Party and Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (NMFA) for action that:

“ if nothing was done by the International Community to take measures that would deescalate the SPLM conflict, South Sudan could be thrown into violent conflict and war again”.

In October 2013 as a mediator invited by the President, the author Halle Hanssen and Salva Kiir between them had 22 years of friendship since they first met in 1992.

It was thus paradoxical the mediation had failed at a critical time, with disastrous consequences for the country. The responsibility for mediation failure, Mr. Hanssen contended, lay with President Kiir and the inner circle surrounding and advising him in Juba. Salva had already recruited and trained 3,000 Mathiang Anyoor Dinka militia from his state of Warrap, and attached them to Presidential Guards in Juba ready for a show down with Riek and the Nuers. The clock was running down to explode the myth of SPLM and it did.

The book recalls the open letter to President Salva Kiir in June 2013, authored by the renowned American friends of the liberation struggle, John Prendergast[10], prolific writer on Sudan and South Sudan Prof. Eric Reeves, Roger Winter and Senator Ted Dagne, warning against a collapse of democracy under authoritarian leadership of the President, large scale corruption and violations of human rights.

South Africa, and Ethiopia who also dispatched their emissaries to Juba to avert the developing internal conflict, met with indifference and tribal intransigence. It all ended in President Kiir unleashing a private military militia on Nuer civilians. It’s now this militia that is keeping Kiir in power at all cost.

Lessons learned and way forward

The hope of democracy and sustainable peace development in South Sudan

Thabo Mbeki, the former South Africa’s President described the ruling SPLM in Juba as a bunch of kleptocratic tribalists. The Trump administration further indicted President Salva Kiir’s leadership as being “morally bankrupt”. The scathing conclusion of the book is no different. Since the summer of 2013, the SPLM has long ceased to be the leading democratic and progressive political organization in the country, not capable to lead democratic transformation after independence in 2011. President Salva Kiir has literally installed himself as a full time dictator and earned condemnation of world leaders and friends of South Sudan liberation struggle alike; for the abject conditions of human rights abuses, corruption and impunity he created and permitted in the country on his watch. SPLM is without legitimacy, fractured and failed on all counts, and is now without institutional foundations to retain the trust of the people after its leaders massive corruption in Government, which ultimately triggered and imposed a civil war in SPLM and equally in the country. This is occurring whilst the family of the President and relatives and children enjoyed “La Dolce Vita”, owned expensive villas, owned shares and a string of businesses of all trades, and looted public resources with impunity, such as Bol Mel’s infamous ABMC business model.

There is therefore absence and lack of any political will or capacity left in the ruling SPLM, and in this dictatorship and kleptocracy to be the one entrusted with developing genuine democracy and peace in the country when credible democratic institutions are non-existent in all SPLM variants of the IG, FDs or IO kind.

That said, the country is now faced with a huge deficit of democracy and peace development, which puts the people and respect for their dignity and basic human rights first. The burden of democracy development lay not in the SPLM variants of corrupt-elites power sharing governments of the R-ARCSS type or that before it. That burden of democracy and sustainable peace development laid with a radical approach in a future ‘all peoples national alliance for democracy and freedom action’ alternative government, one that shares power equally between the peoples of Equatoria-Upper Nile-Bahr al Ghazal inclusively in all their diverse 64 ethnicities. The alternative is the Peoples NADAFA[11] Government[12] for the country, and that is what’s now most needed to clean the country from endemic corruption, end impunity and kleptocratic rule of SPLM and Salva Kiir that has destroyed the social fabric in South Sudan.

The people’s NADAFA government will mend and repair the social fabric, establish the new social contract that puts the people and their human rights first.

[1] Comprehensive Peace Agreement that was signed in 2005 which ended the war between South and North of Sudan

[2] Dan Eiffe was NPA coordinator in the field, an Irish catholic priest who played a critical role liaising between NPA and President Museveni when SPLM/A faced defeat by the NIF and allied militia forces at Aswua bridge battles in 1992. He played a vital media relations role for NPA and gave witness statements in USA congress in support of the liberation struggle in South Sudan. Later as publisher of Sudan Mirror, he was also a founding member of the Association for Media Development in South Sudan (AMDISS) with great dedication.

[3] National Congress Party

[4] Composed of Association for Media Development in South Sudan (AMDISS), Article 19 in London, International Media Support (IMS) in Copenhagen, Olof Palme International Centre (OPIC) in Stockholm, Khartoum Centre for Human Rights, Environment and Development (KCHRED), Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA)

[5] United Democratic Salvation Front opposition party

[6] South Sudan Legislative Assembly

[7] Hakim Dario PhD, Hon Director and Secretary, AMDISS, 2003 – 2012

[8] Access to Information Act 2013, South Sudan Broadcasting Corporation Act 2013, Media Authority Act 2013, passed in June, August and September 2013. Led by Chair of Parliamentary Committee for Information, Telecommunications and Culture, Hon. Joy Kwaje MP.

[9] Media Policy, Legislation and Legal Framework: By AMDISS Executive Director, Dr. Hakim Dario, 2009

[10] Author of the Sentry corruption reports with George Clooney: War crimes shouldn’t pay

[11] NADAFA abbreviation for National Alliance for Democracy And Freedom Action

[12] Transitional Federal Government of National Unity – TFGoNU

By Hakim Dario Moi, PhD