There is a difference between defending a government and defending a president. The first is the ordinary, even necessary, work of a cabinet minister: explaining policy, absorbing criticism of institutions, making the case for decisions taken collectively. The second is something else: the conversion of public office into a personal shield for one man.

A review of Ezekiel Lol Gatkuoth’s public statements since his return to South Sudan’s cabinet suggests he has, with some consistency, chosen the second path. This is not a claim about his private motives, which no outside observer can verify. It is a claim about a pattern in his public record, and about what that pattern costs a country that badly needs functioning institutions rather than a functioning inner circle.

The cases below are only a sample of a much larger record. They suggest a political style in which defending President Salva Kiir personally has become a recurring feature of Gatkuoth’s public interventions, including on matters that fall well outside his ministerial portfolio.

That may be personal devotion. It may also be something more calculated: a working theory of how to survive Juba’s politics, learned through experience. We will come back to that. First, the pattern itself, building towards the clearest example of all: his recent public correction of Vice President Rebecca Nyandeng.

A pattern, not an incident

“No one can overthrow Kiir.” In January 2026, as SPLA-IO forces claimed advances in Upper Nile, Eastern Equatoria and Central Equatoria, Gatkuoth issued a statement saying that Bor, Juba and “all major cities” would not fall, and that the government under Kiir “is not collapsing and it is not going anywhere”. He acknowledged that contested areas had faced “security challenges” while insisting these were minor.

The interesting point is not simply that a minister expressed confidence in his government. It is the way the reassurance was framed. The emphasis was on Kiir’s staying power: the president was “not going anywhere”. The political survival of the individual became the shorthand for the survival of the government.

“Our tribe is Salva Kiir.” During a June-July 2026 tour of Maiwut and Longechuk counties, Gatkuoth reportedly told residents that identity should, in effect, be understood through whoever provides for them financially, concluding that their tribe, in that sense, was the president.

If accurately reported, the statement is striking because it reduces political identity to patronage. Loyalty is not owed primarily to a nation, a constitution, or even a community. It is owed to the person who provides.

That is a particularly revealing formulation in a country where access to state resources and political patronage remain central to how power is exercised.

A threat against a rival. In June 2026, Gatkuoth reportedly said that suspended First Vice President Riek Machar would “die in jail” unless Gatkuoth was no longer in Juba. SPLM-IO’s youth wing described the remark as reckless and called for President Kiir to discipline him.

This statement deserves a pause because it sits oddly with Gatkuoth’s own political history. He was once a senior figure in Machar’s movement, serving as Machar’s chief of staff in the early years of the war before moving towards Kiir’s government through the Taban Deng Gai faction.

The public record does not fully explain how that relationship turned into such open hostility. It may involve personal history that outsiders simply do not know. It may also reflect the political logic of defection: when a politician changes sides, demonstrating that there is no route back can become part of proving loyalty to the new camp.

Whatever the explanation, the substance of the reported remark was not about policy or governance. It was about the fate of the president’s principal political rival. That is another example of Gatkuoth using a ministerial public platform to intervene in a highly personal political contest.

The Nyandeng exchange

This is the case worth dwelling on longest because it is fully on the record in Gatkuoth’s own response.

Vice President Rebecca Nyandeng said publicly that she could go as long as two years without seeing President Kiir. Her remarks were made in a reflective and mournful register, alongside tributes to the late Kosti Manibe and a broader lament that South Sudan had “inflicted on itself” harms that its enemies had never managed to inflict.

Gatkuoth’s public reply did not directly address the substance of Nyandeng’s complaint. Instead, he pointed to the Council of Ministers meeting every Friday and presented this as evidence of collective leadership: ministers sit around the same table, listen to one another, debate important issues, and take responsibility.

But the two things are not the same.

Nyandeng was talking about access to the president. Gatkuoth was talking about attendance at cabinet meetings. A vice president can attend a scheduled cabinet meeting every week and still lack private access to the president when an urgent concern needs to be raised.

Indeed, Gatkuoth’s own explanation raises the question rather than resolving it. He noted that the cabinet agenda is set by the Minister of Cabinet Affairs and approved by the president, and that the government operates under Kiir’s leadership.

That is a description of a system in which the president retains decisive authority over what reaches the cabinet. It does not answer Nyandeng’s complaint about access to him.

This is where the distinction between defending a government and defending a president becomes important. Gatkuoth did not need to accuse Nyandeng of being wrong. He could have acknowledged the distinction between cabinet participation and direct presidential access. Instead, he offered the former as an answer to the latter.

Minister of what, exactly?

There is another detail that makes the pattern difficult to dismiss as ordinary ministerial duty: most of these interventions have little to do with Gatkuoth’s actual portfolio.

He is Minister of Public Service and Human Resource Development. His responsibilities include public-service reform, administrative capacity and the management of the civil service. His ministry has also been involved in efforts to improve civil-service registration, payroll management and related administrative systems.

There is therefore legitimate work for him to defend and explain.

But the controversies that have most visibly defined his recent political interventions have concerned military control of cities, political identity and patronage in Upper Nile, the fate of a detained First Vice President and the relationship between a vice president and the head of state.

A minister speaking outside his portfolio occasionally is normal. A minister repeatedly using his public platform to intervene in the president’s political and personal battles is something different.

Others have noticed the same tension. A civil society activist publicly urged Gatkuoth to focus on ensuring civil servants’ salaries are paid promptly and on reforming the public service sector, accusing him of becoming a “busybody” on issues outside his responsibilities while problems within the sector persist.

The criticism is not that a minister should remain silent on national affairs. Ministers are political actors as well as administrators. The question is what they choose to spend their political capital defending.

That is the more interesting question in Gatkuoth’s case.

What makes the pattern notable, not just partisan

Ministers everywhere are expected to defend their governments. What distinguishes Gatkuoth’s recent record is that the object of defence repeatedly narrows from the government, the peace process or the institution of the presidency to Salva Kiir personally: his authority, his political survival, his rivals and, in the Nyandeng episode, his accessibility.

A minister publicly correcting a sitting vice president on a matter concerning her own access to the president is not routine cabinet discipline. Nor is a minister publicly discussing the fate of the president’s principal political rival in terms of whether that rival will “die in jail”.

It is possible to interpret these statements as simple government messaging. But the cumulative pattern is harder to explain that way.

There is another important point. Gatkuoth is not a junior official who has spent his entire political career inside Kiir’s government. His own history gives him experience of competing political centres and opposition politics. That makes his present posture more interesting, not less.

Why would a politician behave this way?

Gatkuoth’s political history provides a plausible, though not conclusive, explanation.

He was a senior SPLM diplomat before the war and joined Riek Machar’s SPLM-IO after the fighting began in December 2013. He subsequently moved into the Taban Deng Gai faction, which became an important vehicle for breaking away from Machar’s movement and joining the government camp.

He became Minister of Petroleum in 2016 and was removed from that position in 2019. He has now returned to the cabinet in 2026 as Minister of Public Service and Human Resource Development.

The important point is not simply that he changed sides. South Sudanese politics has produced many such shifts. The question is what political base remains after making them.

Gatkuoth’s route back into government ran through rapprochement with the Kiir camp. The Taban faction did not become a durable independent political base, and his political fortunes have subsequently been tied once again to the government.

That history makes one interpretation plausible: visible loyalty to Kiir may be less a matter of personality than a rational strategy for political survival.

A politician who has already left Kiir’s orbit, failed to establish a durable independent base, and then returned to government may have strong incentives to demonstrate that his allegiance is no longer in question. In such a situation, public loyalty can become political currency.

This does not prove that Gatkuoth’s statements are calculated in this way. Nor does it establish what he privately believes. It does, however, provide a more convincing explanation for the pattern than simply dismissing him as a naturally sycophantic politician.

Perhaps the more uncomfortable possibility is that he understands the system perfectly well.

The case for concern

Set the individual aside, and the pattern still matters.

South Sudan is in the middle of a fragile political transition, with elections repeatedly delayed, armed opposition still active in parts of the country, and state institutions struggling to establish public confidence. In such an environment, senior officials have a particular responsibility to distinguish the government from the individual who temporarily occupies the presidency.

When a cabinet minister’s reflex is to reassure the public that Kiir personally is not going anywhere, to describe political identity through the person who provides financial support, to publicly threaten the president’s principal rival, or to recast a vice president’s complaint about presidential access as a question already solved by cabinet meetings, something larger than one politician’s style is being revealed.

It is the narrowing of politics around the individual.

That is dangerous because institutions cannot become stronger when loyalty to the person at the top is treated as the same thing as loyalty to the state. A government can survive criticism. A functioning state needs officials who are willing to describe problems honestly, including problems involving the people at the top.

Gatkuoth has been inside this system, outside it and back inside it again. He is therefore unusually well positioned to understand how power in Juba moves.

That is precisely why his present posture deserves scrutiny.

The question is not whether Ezekiel Lol Gatkuoth is loyal to Salva Kiir. He plainly presents himself as such.

The more important question is what happens to a government when loyalty to the president becomes more politically valuable than loyalty to the institutions the president is supposed to lead.

That is no longer a question about one minister. It is a question about the kind of state South Sudan is becoming.

The writer, Sokiri Lo Poni, is a concerned South Sudanese. He can be reached via Sokiril8@gmail.com.

The views expressed in ‘opinion’ articles published by Radio Tamazuj are solely those of the writer. The veracity of any claims made is the responsibility of the author, not Radio Tamazuj.