South Sudan was born in 2011 with the promise of freedom. Rich in oil and carrying the hopes of millions, the new nation should have prioritized schools, hospitals, and infrastructure to secure a brighter future. Instead, it quickly descended into a harsh reality. According to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights’ report on South Sudan, released on September 16, 2025, the country’s leaders systematically plundered the state’s wealth. Key figures—including President Salva Kiir, his family, his ally Benjamin Bol Mel, and successive senior officials—turned the state into their personal empire and institutionalized predatory tactics, effectively making it official policy. What unfolded was not merely poor governance or inexperience but the deliberate capture of the nation by its leaders, where predation supplanted public service and theft became the norm.
From independence onward, South Sudan’s vast oil revenues, worth billions of dollars, were diverted into the hands of a few elites. Funds meant for national development were redirected into companies controlled by Kiir’s family and inner circle.
The 2019 Oil-for-Roads program illustrates this betrayal. Marketed as a cornerstone of development, the program was essentially a scheme to divert billions of dollars from public use. According to UN findings, the government redirected at least $2.2 billion, with 77% ($1.7 billion) going directly to firms controlled by Benjamin Bol between 2021 and 2024, leaving only 23% ($500 million) for his associates or for poorly executed programs. This cunning policy left promised roads unfinished and communities isolated. Meanwhile, Kiir and his inner circle enriched themselves. Kiir, his family, Bol Mel, and their associates have looted South Sudan into ruin. They plundered the nation’s coffers with perverse audacity, brazenly amassing personal wealth with utter disregard for ethics. What began as state capture has morphed into systemic corruption and now reaches the level of grand theft—through oil-for-roads schemes and Bol Mel’s contracts. There is no doubt that impunity is deeply rooted, and any reasonable South Sudanese knows the country is politically and economically doomed under Kiir’s regime.
Even more damning was the allocation of public health resources. As the report shows, the President’s private medical unit received greater funding than the entire national health system combined. This left ordinary South Sudanese suffering in collapsed, poorly funded clinics, without access to vaccines, and vulnerable to preventable diseases. The moral bankruptcy of these decisions is staggering, as they sacrificed the lives of citizens to further the interests of and protect the leaders.
This misuse of power did not exist in a vacuum; it was sustained by brutality and fear. Security forces, acting under top leadership, carried out extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detention, sexual violence, and forced displacement in oil-producing communities. Journalists and civil society groups seeking accountability were silenced, and parliamentary oversight committees were deliberately stripped of power. Repression was not incidental but intentional, shielding theft from scrutiny and allowing Kiir, his family, and allies to enrich themselves at the expense of the South Sudanese people. This explains why the President and his allies ignore efforts to prevent disease, minimize hunger, or halt state collapse—they face no consequences and care only about lining their own pockets. Kiir’s regime is notorious not only for looting billions from a starving nation but also for committing appalling atrocities without repercussions. Under Kiir’s political doctrine, corruption and violence are inseparable, leaving millions to suffer while the elite enrich themselves without fear or consequence.
At the center of this system stands President Kiir, ruling over a state where power is inseparable from plunder. His family exploited procurement systems, his ally Benjamin Bol siphoned billions through inflated and unfinished contracts, and senior officials worked together to dismantle accountability mechanisms. Every decision by this network was a deliberate choice to prioritize personal enrichment over the survival of millions of South Sudanese. Morally and logically, their actions are indefensible.
South Sudan’s government has long masked theft and mismanagement behind a veneer of legitimacy. Yet even the most entrenched corruption cannot evade accountability forever. In 2024, Qatar National Bank sued the government in a U.S. court over a $1 billion arbitration award. Afreximbank sued the regime in a London court shortly afterward, in early 2025, for failing to repay $657 million. Both courts ruled in favor of the banks, delivering a severe blow to President Kiir’s government. These cases expose a leadership that borrows recklessly, siphons public funds, and defaults with impunity—clear evidence that the world is beginning to catch up with South Sudan’s architects of plunder. And this is only the beginning. The international community now fully recognizes the government’s financial recklessness, signaling that heightened scrutiny and accountability are inevitable.
Yet the government routinely resorts to deceit whenever confronted by serious internal or external pressure. Justice Minister Joseph Geng swiftly distorted the UN report, dismissing its findings as mere consequences of post-conflict conditions, falling oil prices, and climate change—rather than acknowledging the leadership’s deliberate misconduct. Information Minister Michael Makuei Lueth reinforced this line, declaring the UN report unsubstantiated and lacking evidence. Together, the Justice and Information Ministers revealed the regime’s true aim: not to confront reality, but to conceal it. The government cannot hide behind systemic, structural, or historical explanations for this rampant corruption; it is the regime and its allies who knowingly orchestrated it. Claiming otherwise is nothing short of a classic joke. This is not mere incompetence; it is deliberate betrayal by design.
The UN report presents overwhelming evidence. It makes it impossible for South Sudan’s leaders to justify stealing billions while children go hungry, schools remain incomplete, and hospitals remain empty. This scale of abuse is not mere mismanagement—it is a deliberate denial of life and dignity to an entire nation. Every excuse they make crumbles under scrutiny. While their people starved, these leaders enriched themselves. They built private clinics, sent their children to foreign schools, and bought luxury homes in Uganda and Kenya, even as the public health system decayed. They secured fortunes for their families while communities were left to walk on broken roads. This is leadership without conscience.
In Kiir’s South Sudan, the lesson is clear: corruption, violence, and impunity are inseparable. The ongoing conflict, absence of peace, and deep ethnic divisions are no accidents. They result directly from Kiir’s elite enrichment policy. The international community, regional leaders, and global institutions must confront this betrayal for what it truly is. Transparency, accountability, and prosecution are not optional; they are urgent moral imperatives. The people of South Sudan deserve to reclaim their nation, seized by a predatory few, whose treachery turned the dream of independence into a shockingly heinous, unrelenting nightmare. It is a calculated calamity inflicted on millions for nothing more than personal gain.
The writer, Duop Chak Wuol, is an analyst, critical writer, and former editor-in-chief of the South Sudan News Agency. He is a graduate of the University of Colorado and focuses on geopolitics, security, and social issues in South Sudan and the broader East African region. His work has appeared in leading regional and international outlets, including AllAfrica, Radio Tamazuj, The Independent (Uganda), The Arab Weekly, The Standard (Kenya), The Chronicle (Ghana), Addis Standard (Ethiopia), and Sudan Tribune. In August 2017, the Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation highlighted his article on Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s role in Ethiopia’s economic transformation. He currently focuses on emerging security dynamics, including tensions over the Nile waters and foreign involvement in conflicts in South Sudan and Sudan. He can be reached at duop282@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.