Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2014 21:06:19 +0200
South Sudan: From money box to tinder box
Entitlement, fledgling institutions and a lack of accountability have
yielded rampant corruption in the world’s youngest country, South Sudan. How
much did this contribute to ongoing civil war?
By JAMES COPNALL
19/09/2014
The box was half the height of the minister's desk. At the start of the day
it was full to the brim with South Sudanese banknotes.
The national-level official would see 50 people every day, or until the
money ran out, according to someone who worked with him and asked to remain
anonymous. "He would pick a different community or area every day, and give
them money. That's what he saw as his job," his former colleague says.
Many other officials were not so generous: South Sudan's money ended up in
their own pockets. Fuelled by billions of petrodollars from South Sudan's
oilfields, corruption rapidly became one of the defining features of the
state, which declared its independence from Sudan in July 2011. It may even
have contributed to the terrifying civil war in the new country, which broke
out last December.
Although the word "corruption" does not exist in some South Sudanese
languages, the impact of graft has been felt for decades. The united Sudan
was famously corrupt, regularly appearing near the top of corruption
indexes. Southern Sudan was particularly vulnerable. It fought two long and
very damaging wars with Khartoum, increasing poverty rates, halting
development and weakening the few institutions in place.
Rebels from the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) and its political
wing, the Sudanese People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), fought against the
state from 1983-2005 and set up a rudimentary administrative system in the
areas they controlled. This, too, opened many opportunities for enrichment.
The SPLA's top leaders held a fiery meeting in 2004 in Rumbek, a town in
what was then central southern Sudan. Salva Kiir, then the SPLM's deputy
chairman, spoke frankly: "Corruption, as a result of the lack of structures,
has created a lack of accountability which has reached a proportion that
will be difficult to eradicate."
In January 2005, the SPLM signed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA)
with Sudan's ruling National Congress Party. The CPA established southern
Sudan as a semi-autonomous region and gave it almost half of the oil
revenues it produced. The old soldiers came in from their bush headquarters
and began creating the framework of a state.
For many, the opportunity presented by the oil billions was simply too great
to pass up. A scheme to build emergency grain stores ended with many stores
paid for but not built and grain purchased but not delivered. As much as $2
billion was unaccounted for. Government contracts were given in exchange for
kickbacks. A foreign consultant witnessed a senior official at a ministry
receive a brown envelope, count a wedge of cash several centimetres thick,
and then tell the person who had handed him the envelope: "That's fine, you
will get the contract on Monday."
Some money was probably siphoned off to prepare for a possible future
conflict with Khartoum. Some went to communities with ties to a minister or
official. The rest benefited only a few individuals. The 2007 and 2008
auditor-general's reports revealed hundreds of millions of missing dollars.
One example of where those funds disappeared is the education ministry's
"weekend allowance", an amount that could have paid for the monthly salaries
of 855 teachers.
Independence in 2011 did nothing to change the dynamic. South Sudan now had
full control of the oil and there was even more money available to steal.
Humvees and Land Cruisers queued up in the car parks of the new hotels and
restaurants in Juba, the South Sudanese capital. The rest of the country was
largely left to fend for itself.
On May 3rd 2012, less than nine months after the joyous independence
celebrations, Salva Kiir, now the president, wrote a letter to 75
colleagues. "An estimated $4 billion are unaccounted for or, simply put,
stolen by current and former officials, as well as corrupt individuals with
close ties to government officials," he wrote. By some calculations, this
was equivalent to a third of all the oil revenue South Sudan had received
from the CPA from 2005 to independence in 2011. The anguished tone of the
president's letter provided a damning indictment of the SPLM's first few
years in power: "We fought for freedom, justice and equality," it said.
"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."
In part, the rampant corruption came from the sense of entitlement felt by
the rebels who now ran the state. The South Sudanese writer Victor Lugala
used the refrain "Where were you when we were fighting?" to sum up the
disdain of the military elite in Juba. Julia Duany, who for years was a
senior civil servant in the government, is equally damning: "The SPLM
leaders think they have the right to public resources because they fought in
the bush," she says. In part the corruption came from the weaknesses of the
new country: the fragile institutions and lack of real checks and balances.
Sarah Chayes, an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,
a Washington, DC-based think-tank, has studied corruption as a security
threat. "Acute corruption should be understood not as a failure or
distortion of government but as a functioning system in which ruling
networks use selected levers of power to capture specific revenue streams,"
she wrote. "This effort often overshadows activities connected with running
a state."
How much did the widespread graft contribute to the conflict that broke out
in Juba in December 2013 and spread rapidly to several other parts of the
country? Ms Chayes concludes in general terms: "Systematic corruption evokes
indignation in populations, making it a factor in social unrest and
insurgency." The civil servant Mrs Duany believes it certainly played a role
in South Sudan's crisis: "Corruption created this conflict," she says. "The
power struggle is rooted in determining who will maintain control of the
state and its resources."
Riek Machar was South Sudan's vice-president until he was sacked in July
last year. Since December he has been leading a rebel movement. He did not
take up arms because of graft; but Mr Machar says as vice-president he
raised the issues of corruption and the ethnicised civil service repeatedly
in meetings with the president, as part of a series of complaints about the
country's direction. In Mr Machar's telling, Mr Kiir was unable or unwilling
to clamp down on his allies who were enriching themselves illegally and
handing out jobs to cronies. Yet Mr Machar, too, has been accused of
corruption. Like everyone else, he denies the charge.
No individual will step forward to confess his or her criminal acts. But
there is no dispute that corruption among the South Sudanese ruling elite is
widespread. Theft, insecurity and the failure to deliver basic services led
to the weakening of the bond between the people and the politicians.
Growing frustration meant many were prepared to fight, when the time came,
against a government that had forgotten them. "Ministers bought expensive
cars for their children, big houses, some even purchased expensive hotels,
and all without an ounce of shame for what they were doing with public
resources," says David Deng of the South Sudan Law Society. "Now the country
faces famine while the leadership on both sides live comfortably, still
maintaining their families in foreign countries," he adds. "In a place like
South Sudan, awash with guns and with a population traumatised by many years
of war, conflict is bound to ensue."
James Copnall is the author of "A Poisonous Thorn in our Hearts: Sudan and
South Sudan's Bitter and Incomplete Divorce". He has reported from over 20
African countries including Côte d'Ivoire, Morocco, South Sudan and Sudan as
the BBC correspondent.
GGA-Africa-southsudan-subbedm.jpg
Photo: [L] South Sudanese President Salva Kiir speaks during a joint news
conference with his Sudanese counterpart Omar al-Bashir (not pictured),
before Kiir's departure at Khartoum Airport October 9, 2011. [R] South
Sudan's Vice President Riek Machar speaks during a news conference after
meeting north Sudan's Vice President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha in Khartoum, May
30, 2011. Both photos REUTERS/Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah.
(image/jpeg attachment: image001.jpg)