Special Report: In South Sudan, plunder preserves a fragile peace
By Hereward Holland and Pascal Fletcher
JUBA | Tue Nov 20, 2012 1:23am EST
(Reuters) - Deng Athuai Mawiir knows about the dangers of fighting the
corruption that helps glue this young country together.
In early June a letter by President Salva Kiir, asking some 75 ministers and
officials to return $4 billion of stolen government money, leaked to the
press.
Mawiir, a human rights activist, marched on parliament with a few dozen
fellow activists calling on the president to publish the names of those
suspected of the theft.
A few weeks later, on the evening of July 4, Mawiir was leaving a hotel in
Juba, South Sudan's small and sluggish capital, when a dark green SUV pulled
up. An unknown man offered him a lift and when Mawiir stepped into the
vehicle, someone pulled a bag over his head and tied his hands together,
Mawiir said.
What happened over the following two days underscores the size of the
challenge that faces not just Kiir and his anticorruption push, but South
Sudan's attempt to build itself from scratch.
Just 16 months after breaking away from its old masters in Khartoum, South
Sudan seems caught between principles and pragmatism.
The rulers of the world's newest nation - which Reuters is chronicling in a
series of articles to assess whether it will flourish or struggle - have
fostered a system of patronage and rewards to provide short-term stability
in this vast and ethnically diverse country. But that has fuelled rampant
corruption that undermines the stated ideals of the country's liberators and
its foreign backers.
South Sudan's charismatic liberation hero John Garang often warned against
replacing one set of kleptocratic rulers for another. But Garang didn't live
to see independence and Kiir, his successor, has struggled to exert the same
kind of moral leadership. Where Garang was a forceful rebel leader
intolerant of dissent, Kiir's approach has rested on a careful accommodation
and assimilation of ethnic and political rivals.
He has appointed loyalists to some positions. But to maintain peace and
ensure the independence vote went ahead early last year, he has also given
potential trouble-makers senior posts in the government and the security
services.
At times they have made him look powerless, unable to counter what can be an
overweening sense of entitlement among his own ministers and officials, a
ruling elite made up of former exiles and of civil war veterans now
determined to enjoy the trappings of power.
It is still not clear who kidnapped Mawiir.
The government has denied any link and the Ministry of Justice said it would
not discuss its investigation of the kidnapping.
But four months on, sitting on a plastic garden chair on a bank of the Nile,
Mawiir said he suspects his captors are linked to senior officials angry
with his calls for transparency. His colleagues have received anonymous
threats demanding they stop talking about corruption.
Mawiir's kidnappers took him to a dark room, tied him to a chair and
interrogated him for two days, he said. They denied him food and water. They
slapped and kicked him.
"They said, 'You are talking everywhere about corruption? Who sent you to
us? Where were you when we were fighting?'" Mawiir told Reuters a few days
after his release. They urged him to tell the truth, he said, or he would be
killed.
After two days he was driven out of town and across the Nile, where he was
frog-marched along a path with the bag on his head, his hands tied and a gag
in his mouth. Feeling long grass brush his arms, he assumed he was being
taken to a quiet spot to be killed.
When he heard people approaching, he tried to make a noise and his
kidnappers fled. Mawiir rubbed his head against a tree, ripped a small
eye-hole in the bag and managed to walk to a nearby village and freedom.
Today, Mawiir is undeterred and continues to press for the government to
name the corrupt officials. He faces formidable odds.
EXPATS AND WARRIORS
The land that Kiir and his chiefs rule is oil-rich but laid to waste by
decades of warfare and economic neglect.
Life expectancy is less than 50. Just a quarter of people can read. A young
girl is three times more likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth than still
be in school aged 14, according to the United Nations.
When he first took charge after Garang died in a helicopter crash in July
2005, Kiir, who declined to be interviewed for this story, moved to shore up
his own position and ensure security. South Sudan had just won a measure of
autonomy from Khartoum in a peace deal but if the would-be nation was to
have a chance at independence, Kiir needed to keep the peace.
Kiir built a big tent, bringing in members of the diaspora, many of them
educated abroad and wanting to help build their homeland, as well as
battle-hardened veterans. For instance, the Minister of Roads and Bridges -
charged with building a road network to cover a territory the size of
<
http://www.reuters.com/places/france> France - used to lead rebel efforts
to mine roads and dynamite bridges.
Former enemies of the ruling Sudan People's Liberation Movement were also
handed key positions. One-time foe Riak Machar, for instance, became vice
president.
Sitting behind a large wooden desk in the parliament building, SPLM elder
Wanni Igga, who stepped aside to make way for Machar, explained the need for
compromise. "If we did not put Dr Riak in a top position, he might not have
agreed to reconcile and we (would have) continued to fight ourselves."
While the new leaders know guerrilla warfare, they have no experience of
running a country. One minister described governance as tougher than
fighting.
With no functioning welfare system and few private jobs, the government has
created thousands of positions simply to give people work, according to one
official. The result is a bloated civil service stuffed with workers who
lack the skills and ability to run the world's youngest nation.
Over breakfast at one of Juba's $300-per-night hotels, thrown up quickly and
made from metal shipping containers or prefabricated cabins, Deputy Defence
Minister Majak D'Agoot, a doctor of economics, was frank about the
government's hiring.
"Look at the landscape of the warlords that we have absorbed, without
applying stringent criteria, in the interests of the peace. That buy-in was
necessary," D'Agoot said.
"When you recruit people for the political party there are criteria that
qualify them for leadership positions. They are not necessarily the same
qualifications that make them suitable for a rebel organization whose main
mission is fighting."
"PLEASE ONLY STEAL A MILLION"
Too often, the result is mismanagement and graft.
On a door in the Information Ministry, a "Polite Notice" informs visitors
"that the office of the Deputy Minister does not provide financial support
or give money handouts. Thank you for your understanding."
Such requests are not all that surprising. Under the terms of the 2005 peace
deal, 50 percent of Sudan's petrodollars started flowing south, swamping the
nascent nation of South Sudan with cash.
Some $13 billion on, and now fully independent, Juba is cluttered with
ostentatious off-road vehicles. Shiny multi-story buildings are sprouting
above the tree-line. But the rest of the country has little to show for its
underground treasure.
Critics of the government say the majority of the country's 8.6 million
people have yet to benefit from secession. Lam Akol, a prominent defector
from the ruling SPLM, heads the largest opposition party and believes Kiir's
system of patronage and cronyism is already destroying the nation.
"The money was squandered in Juba and the population saw nothing of it in
terms of basic services and improved security," Akol wrote in a July opinion
piece. "The huge government in South Sudan is not by accident, it is a
reflection of the distribution of patronage and clientelism in the ruling
party."
The government regularly accuses Akol of links to a Khartoum-backed militia.
Akol denies any such connection.
With no financial systems in place and nobody with experience of civilian
rule at the helm, Kiir's apparatchiks have often run the country as they did
their military units, with little accountability.
"There was so much money at the beginning that losing a million here or
there wasn't so bad. There was a joke that if you're going to steal money,
please only steal a million," said Jok Madut Jok, South Sudan's
undersecretary of culture.
Greed is only part of the story. Jok believes many veterans felt a sense of
entitlement. In the first few years after the peace deal, there was also a
commonly held view that Khartoum would never allow secession to go ahead.
Fearing they would be forced to swap their briefcases for ammunition boxes,
many took what they could get.
The attitude was, "'I've fought for 30 years in the bush ... I've got to get
all I can if the war restarts and have to set up my family,'" Jok said.
Transparency watchdog Global Witness says that based on the government's own
figures, more than 30 percent of all oil revenue since semi-autonomy in 2005
has been stolen.
The head of South Sudan's Anti-Corruption Commission, Justice John Gatwech
Lul, describes the first few years after the peace deal as a "no man's
land."
"We started from zero," said Lul. "There were no ministries and no laws.
There was no system. There were no financial forms to restrict you from
using money for whatever."
Even now, Lul told Reuters, Juba lacks the ability to pursue and prosecute
those suspected of corruption.
"GOATS ON THE PAYROLL"
At the National Audit Chamber the extent of the country's financial
mismanagement is obvious.
Auditor General Stephen Wondu's 2007 report - the 2007 and 2008 reports were
released just this year - says $114 million in oil revenue went missing,
enough to import 3,800 heavy duty tractors. The Ministry of Education's
"weekend allowance" was equal to the monthly salaries of 855 teachers. The
Ministry of Health's cash hoard of 3.3 million Sudanese pounds ($1.1
million) could have met the annual salaries of 282 university graduate
nurses.
Wondu sees such transgressions as almost inevitable given the situation in
which the rebels found themselves in 2005. The government inherited a state
without financial and accounting systems, a predatory economy where the
budget had been used to buy people off.
"There were even goats on the payroll," he quipped. "This created an
environment conducive for temptation, a human weakness. Temptation, it's
embedded in all of us. What comes out is the circumstances that surround
us."
South Sudanese, he said, were like the Jews who wandered the desert for
years before better times came. "The only difference was that we had grass
to eat and dirty water to drink, then suddenly $2 billion came not from the
sky but from the ground."
He covered his face with his hands.
"Unfortunately for humanity, we are no exception - except that we had no
systems that can deal with these deviations."
In the best-known case of graft, the "dura saga," the government awarded
contracts to import 7 billion Sudanese pounds (around $2.3 billion) to build
a strategic grain reserve of sorghum, or dura, as the country's staple crop
is known. The companies who won contracts were unregistered and not able to
deliver the ordered quantities, the 2008 auditor's report revealed. Few of
the grain stores were ever built and most of the dura never arrived.
Although not all the contracts were paid, several hundred million dollars
were frittered away, one insider who worked at the ministry of
<
http://www.reuters.com/finance> finance at the time told Reuters.
None of the companies were punished.
Garang seemed to anticipate the problem of corruption. A video taken during
the war years and recently posted on South Sudanese website PaanLuel Wel
shows the rebel leader haranguing his guerrilla forces that a liberation
movement must help everyone and that corruption could ruin things. "There is
no meaning of revolution, unless it makes our people happy," Garang says,
carrying a leader's swagger stick. "Unless the barest of things are not
available to people, then the people will drive us into the sea."
Kiir's letter to his officials was a sign that the new president still
shares the sentiments of his predecessor.
"We fought for freedom, justice and equality," Kiir wrote. "Many of our
friends died to achieve these objectives. Yet, once we got to power, we
forgot what we fought for and began to enrich ourselves at the expense of
our people.
"The credibility of our government is on the line."
HEROES MONUMENT
In many ways, corruption and nepotism hold South Sudan together.
Many Sudanese have long believed that the Dinka, who make up some 40 percent
of the population, dominate to the detriment of other groups.
Kiir, a Dinka like Garang, is credited with making a major effort to build a
diverse cabinet. Vice-President Machar and James Hoth Mai, the head of South
Sudan's army, are Nuer. Pagan Amum, Secretary General of the SPLM and South
Sudan's chief negotiator with Khartoum, is Shilluk.
But even with this careful ethnic balancing act, the perception of a
"Dinkocracy" persists.
A March 2012 report by the Washington-based National Democratic Institute
for International Affairs which drew heavily on the opinions of ordinary
South Sudanese found that "Tribalism in government work is pervasive ...
even though often denied."
In his office, Jok, the culture undersecretary, explains another way the
rivalries hurt the new nation.
Four Korean-made plaster of Paris models submitted for his review as
potential memorials to the war that killed some two million people lined a
shelf. One showed a giant assault rifle bursting from the earth with
"FREEDOM" written down the barrel.
Another had a giant slab of jagged rock with the chiseled inscription, "To
the Fallen Heroes and Heroines," set behind a soldier cradling the body of
an injured comrade.
Jok, who worked for aid group Save the Children during the war, said he
hated the models. A statue commemorating the war - long a unifying force for
South Sudan's 70 tribes - should glorify everyone, not just fighters from
the Sudan People's Liberation Army, he said.
"Exclusionary policies are the death knell of a country like ours. Those who
feel marginalized will use a gun to get their piece of the pie."
ATTITUDE OF DEFIANCE
Despite violent flare-ups in some parts of the country, the government has
so far papered over splits by focusing on the old enemy in Khartoum. Its
January decision to stop oil production and later to send in troops to
Heglig, a disputed border area, both helped rally the nation.
In the government ministries complex, a collection of two-storey buildings
flanked by dust-blanketed roads, a billboard proclaims "Forgive them, Oh
Lord, All the Oppressors" - an apparent reference to the Khartoum
government.
Ministers and other officials still regularly use the word "war" in relation
to Khartoum.
"In fact we are still in a state of war ... for 54 years, we have been like
this," said Jacob Aligo, Minister of Finance and Economic Development for
Central Equatoria State, as he justified the government's decision to shut
oil output.
"It is better for us to suffer for a bit, than to be enjoying (life) in
humiliation," said Aligo, advocating a spirit of sacrifice constantly evoked
by South Sudan's military and political elite.
When it comes to those officials themselves, though, it's a different story.
Just days after the government announced belt-tightening measures in May,
ministries took delivery of another batch of gleaming luxury SUVs, according
to diplomats and aid officials in Juba.
Privately, some senior members of the foreign development community in South
Sudan question the ability of Kiir and his cabinet.
"This is not a revolutionary movement that has taken power, this is a
rag-tag bunch of boys with guns that have never administered anything," said
one senior development official, who asked not to be named.
A government insider, speaking at an isolated hotel lodge in the shadow of
Juba's craggy "Jebel Kujur" hill, said it was the international community
and its myriad aid agencies and development consultants who really run South
Sudan.
Ministries are full of advisers. It was the international community, the
source said, who recommended the government offer high salaries and perks to
tempt educated members of the diaspora home.
The country's diplomatic naiveté is now eroding its friendships. The
position of the SPLM, for years a darling of many donors, may be slipping.
Kiir's decision to turn off the oil without telling his western backers
infuriated them. When he sent troops into Heglig it drew the first censure
of the new government from the United Nations.
"Heglig blew it for them ... the Americans were pissed," one foreign
development expert said.
"A CULTURE OF IMPUNITY"
Some government officials give the impression of earnest commitment and
interest in their tasks, which by any measure are huge.
The Ministry of Roads and Bridges has an ambitious plan to team up with
foreign partners to build a network of 3,000 km (1,800 miles) of tarmac
roads in five years.
"Roads are No. 1, the top priority," says Deputy Roads and Bridges Minister
Simon Mijok, showing off a map of South Sudan with Chinese characters
scribbled in pencil above local place names - symbols of the hope the newly
independent nation has placed in its powerful Asian economic backer.
"I was a lecturer in history at the University of Juba, I'm now lecturing in
the history of roads," he said with a wry smile.
Contrary to mainstream development thinking, such challenges may be best met
by turning a blind eye to corruption, some argue.
Chris Blattman, assistant professor of political science at New York-based
Columbia University, believes Western governments and aid groups focus too
much on corruption, giving it unhelpful prominence over issues such as
political stability and property rights.
"How do you hold a country together? Either with inclusive and
representative institutions, or by repression, or through patronage. South
Sudan will develop these institutions over 10, 20, 30, 40 or 50 years,"
Blattman said.
"In the meantime, they can either be thugs or repressive or violent, or they
can use a little patronage - and I'd prefer the latter over the former."
But others say that to maintain stability South Sudan's leaders need to
become more accountable.
Days after human rights campaigner Mawiir was released, beaten but alive,
his colleagues received death threats by text message and by phone.
Ateny Wek, spokesman for the Civil Society Alliance, said he was threatened
with the same treatment as Mawiir unless he stopped his regular columns in
local newspapers. He has kept writing.
"There has been a culture of impunity since the creation of southern Sudan,"
Wek said. "Some people have lived, and continue to live, above the law."
Like many other liberation movements across the continent, the SPLM risks
losing support if it doesn't reform, said speaker of Parliament Igga.
If people "see us as not fighting corruption with all our teeth and nails in
a genuine manner, we might allow other political parties to capture power,"
Igga said.
"We can keep the militias at bay with our army. But you cannot keep the
whole population at bay."
(Edited by Simon Robinson)
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Received on Tue Nov 20 2012 - 17:33:07 EST
