Can Federalism Save South Sudan?

By Henry Srebrnik, [Fredericton, NB] Daily Gleaner

On Christmas Day Pope Francis I, Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, and John Chalmers, former moderator of the Church of Scotland, sent a message to the leaders of war-torn South Sudan, asking them to keep their promise to form a transitional government early in 2020.

Last November President Salva Kiir and former Vice President Riek Machar delayed forming a unity government.

The country is mostly Christian, and a stable peace would enable the pope to visit this coming February.

South Sudan is gripped by a civil war along ethnic lines that broke out in 2013, following Kiir’s accusations that Machar was plotting a coup d’état.

South Sudan’s 11 million people are divided into at least 64 ethnic groups, the largest being the Dinkas, who constitute about 35 per cent of the population and predominate in government. The second largest are the Nuers, at more than 15 per cent.

Machar’s removal, along with other cabinet members from the ruling Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, sent shock waves across South Sudan.

The reason things turned from a political crisis to a war was because the army was a collection of ethnically based armed units, organized around personal loyalty to their commanders.

There were already in place ethnically based grievances and narratives of fear, which meant that when fighting broke out, people fled to their fellow ethnics for security.

Machar, not having Kiir’s resources, fell back upon ethnic mobilization. He called upon his Nuer militia to mobilize against Kiir, who in turn sought the loyalty of his Dinka followers.

The issue of ethnic conflicts in South Sudan is far from new. When it was part of Sudan, ideologues from northern Sudan had often, and quite successfully, used ethnic fault lines as a wedge to divide and frustrate the people of southern Sudan’s quest for justice, equality and freedom.

The result was a series of vicious inter-ethnic struggles for power and political control in southern Sudan, especially among the Dinkas, Nuers, and, most recently, the Chollos.  So even with independence, communities continue to engage in ethnic violence.

Prior to 2015, South Sudan was divided into 10 states which it inherited from Khartoum at independence in 2011, but since then the number has grown to 32, mostly formed along ethnic lines.

The creation of the new states by Kiir are only the latest events in a long history of debate and practice on how to divide South Sudan administratively.

Federalism has once again become a central issue in political debate in South Sudan. It can put an end to conflicts resulting from unequal distribution of power and resources, by preventing a few ethnic groups from dominating political life in South Sudan.

A federal structure, as political scientist Daniel Elazar asserted in his 1994 text Federal Systems Around the World, “allows a minority within large domains to be considered a majority within a smaller territorial subunit.”

Within the subunit, that minority turned majority can exercise a range of powers to protect its special needs, and the entities themselves are entitled to various forms of representation in, or influence over, federal institutions at the centre.

Where possible, each ethnic group is granted some form of political autonomy. Ethnic federalism has been viewed as an important consideration in multi-ethnic federal states around the world.

South Sudan needs to quickly come up with a constitutional solution to its current situation. Aside from oil, the country relies heavily on the export of natural resources such as timber, a number of metals, diamonds and limestone. Agriculture is the other cornerstone of the economy. Other than oil, none of these bring in much revenue.

South Sudan’s infrastructure is severely underdeveloped, with no electricity or running water in numerous villages, and a lack of decent road networks and support for the internet.

The civil war has been a human catastrophe which has resulted in hunger and malnutrition. Some seven million people face acute food shortages, while more than 20,000 are close to famine, the World Food Programme warned last year.

Perhaps ethnic antipathy could have been mitigated had South Sudan’s leaders from the start created a more accommodating political system. Not having done so, they are now enmeshed in a horrific civil war.