When South Sudan raised its flag in 2011, it symbolized the triumph of self-determination after decades of war. Yet the euphoria of independence masked a fragile state, where weak institutions, deep political divisions, and historical grievances created fertile ground for authoritarian rule. Instead of building a functioning republic, the ruling elite entrenched its power through coercion, patronage, and the systematic erosion of accountability. Under Salva Kiir’s leadership, South Sudan has become a nation defined by death, debt, and deceit—where violence, economic manipulation, and corruption serve not as byproducts of governance, but as deliberate tools of control.
Death as Policy
In Kiir’s mind, real peace means maintaining the same repressive tactics. This is one reason ceasefire deals are often broken almost as soon as they are declared. In December 2013, a simmering political dispute between Kiir and then–Vice President Riek Machar erupted into full-scale war. But this was no ordinary power struggle. Under Kiir’s command, government forces and allied tribal militias carried out mass atrocities, targeting civilians, mostly Nuer, in Juba and across the country. In 2015, the African Union Commission of Inquiry documented massacres, gang rapes, and ethnically targeted killings against women and children. By 2018, nearly 400,000 people had died as a result of Kiir’s fabricated December 2013 coup claim and the July 2016 assassination attempt on Dr. Riek Machar in Juba. The latter was allegedly co-planned with Taban Deng Gai, displacing millions more.
Even during ceasefires, violence persisted, with atrocities by government-backed forces spreading across the country. International organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International reported that government-aligned militias terrorized civilians, burned villages, and forcibly recruited children. Hunger became a weapon, causing millions of internally displaced South Sudanese and refugees in Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, and Sudan to starve because of the government’s deliberate obstruction of humanitarian aid.
This is not chaos; it is statecraft through terror. Death is a deliberate instrument, designed to weaken communities, ensure dependence, and consolidate Kiir’s power.
Debt as a Trap
If death subdues the people, debt enslaves the nation. South Sudan’s oil reserves—over 90% of government revenue—were meant to fund schools, hospitals, and infrastructure. Instead, they have been mortgaged to foreign powers, specifically oil and petroleum companies such as the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), Malaysia’s Petronas, India’s ONGC Videsh, and the Nigerian-owned Oranto Petroleum. The government has repeatedly taken “oil-backed loans” from China and regional financiers, pledging future barrels of crude for cash that rarely reached the public.
By 2022, over 60% of oil output was committed to debt repayment, leaving nothing for development. This is an unsettling reality that most ordinary South Sudanese do not know: their nation’s main resource, oil, is systematically being sold in advance by Juba-based elites solely to enrich themselves.
Salva Kiir himself is at the center of this financial corruption. Reports and investigations—including a UN report dated September 16, 2025—suggest that his family has exploited and profited from government contracts. His son-in-law, Vice President Benjamin Bol Mel, has allegedly siphoned off billions through inflated and incomplete contracts.
Kiir’s manipulation of oil resources extends beyond loans, touching even everyday infrastructure projects.
In September 2018, President Kiir declared that South Sudan’s infrastructure—such as roads—must be built, and that those who constructed them would be paid with barrels of crude oil. Many South Sudanese believed he had found an effective way to minimize corruption. However, that hope was short-lived. It soon became clear that his decision to pay road constructors with oil instead of currency was a carefully crafted looting strategy, designed to deceive the people of South Sudan into believing their president had finally discovered a solution to corruption. Ironically, the entire scheme was an elaborate deception disguised as a moral initiative.
Senior officials allied with Kiir systematically block reforms and accountability, ensuring that personal enrichment outweighs the survival of millions of hunger-trapped South Sudanese. In Kiir’s regime, institutionalized corruption is normalized—a deliberate policy that enriches the elite while roads, hospitals, and schools remain unfinished, and the majority endures grinding poverty.
The consequences of the regime’s actions are catastrophic. The International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) 2025 forecast projects South Sudan’s inflation rate at more than 65%, making the South Sudanese pound nearly worthless, while citizens shoulder debts they never authorized or benefited from. South Sudan operates under a mafia-like regime, with billions vanishing into offshore accounts and opaque Gulf contracts. However, the international system is beginning to understand the gravity of the financial crisis caused by Kiir’s government. In 2024, Qatar National Bank won a $1 billion arbitration case in the U.S., and in 2025, Afreximbank secured a $657 million judgment in a London court. These rulings expose a leadership that borrows recklessly, siphons public funds, and defaults with impunity—a regime whose financial recklessness can no longer hide behind immunity. These cases, both tied to unpaid oil-backed loans, underscore the regime’s pattern of opaque borrowing and default.
Debt in South Sudan is more than mismanagement; it is a tool of control—mortgaging the nation’s future, cementing elite loyalty, and trapping citizens in poverty.
Deceit as Governance
Kiir often portrays himself as the nation’s father and the guardian of its sovereignty. The reality is starkly different. Every promise of reform has been hollow. The 2015 peace agreement was violated within days or weeks; the implementation of the 2018 revitalized agreement has been deliberately obstructed by Kiir himself, and elections have been repeatedly delayed under the pretext of “instability”—instability that Kiir himself perpetuates.
In Kiir’s South Sudan, crises are not accidental—they are manufactured.
This manipulation is evident in his treatment of political rivals, particularly Dr. Riek Machar and Gen. Johnson Olony. Kiir’s cunning policies are not new; they are deeply rooted in his vindictiveness toward perceived political rivals—particularly Dr. Riek Machar. When Machar proposed a national reconciliation in early 2013, Kiir and his allies accused him of trying to promote himself politically.
His deceptive strategy did not end there. When Machar appointed Lieutenant General Johnson Olony as governor of Upper Nile State in June 2020, Kiir rejected the appointment in July 2020, claiming that Olony was working against peace. This was despite the 2018 Revitalized Peace Agreement, which allows opposition signatories to appoint representatives to local, regional, and national posts according to the specified power-sharing ratios.
Kiir has long been widely regarded as a calculating leader. In April 2015, elements of his national security apparatus assassinated General Bwogo Olieu, a deputy to Johnson Olony in the Agwelek militia leadership. Even though Agwelek was fighting alongside Kiir’s regime forces against the rebels at that time, the killing of Gen. Bwogo was reportedly planned by the government to weaken Olony’s power and influence. This led Gen. Johnson Olony to join the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army-In Opposition (SPLM/A-IO) in June 2015.
After behind-the-scenes negotiations that began in December 2022 between Shilluk King Kwongo Dak Padiet and President Kiir, Gen. Johnson Olony returned to Juba in May 2023 and met with Kiir the following month. In January 2025, as Kiir sought to sideline opposition leaders he viewed as threats to his rule, he appointed Olony as Assistant Chief of Defence Forces for Disarmament and Mobilization. Evidence suggests this move was not about Olony working against peace, given that Kiir had rejected his appointment as governor of Upper Nile State in 2020. Rather, it appears Kiir sought to prevent Olony from remaining part of the SPLM/A-IO led by Machar, a classic case of deceit in sheep’s clothing. By controlling oil contracts and public resources, Kiir enriches allies, cements loyalty, and justifies his destructive policies. In his government, corruption is tolerated not because it is inevitable, but because it ensures complicity among his trusted allies.
In South Sudan, deceit is not a flaw of governance—it is governance, evident in the deliberate obstruction of peace agreements and the targeted elimination of rivals. It is a system built to manipulate perception, entrench inequality, and cement authoritarian control.
President Kiir’s persistent obstruction of the peace process is not only a product of his internal strategies of death, debt, and deceit but is also reinforced by external patronage, particularly from Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, who supports Kiir militarily and diplomatically. This move strengthened Kiir’s grip on power, shielding his regime from both regional and international accountability. This alliance exacerbates the structural imbalances that prevent multilateral institutions and neighboring actors from enforcing a lasting peace. Breaking this cycle requires a coordinated regional strategy that prioritizes collective accountability over bilateral patronage and dismantles the networks of authority and corruption that sustain authoritarian rule in Juba.
The Inescapable Verdict
Salva Kiir may appear in history as one of the military generals who led South Sudan to independence, but the lived reality of its citizens tells a far harsher truth. Under his rule, death is weaponized, debt is leveraged to enslave, and deceit drives every decision.
The evidence is everywhere: graves in the Upper Nile and Equatoria regions, refugee camps overflowing with the displaced, hospitals and schools left to crumble, and coffers emptied for personal gain. Ordinary South Sudanese bear the cost of policies designed to enrich a narrow elite while the majority suffers hunger, displacement, ethnic divisions, and insecurity.
Even the international community is catching up. Court rulings in the U.S. and the United Kingdom show that financial impunity can no longer shield Kiir’s regime. Yet without radical reform, the architecture of power—built on violence, corruption, and deceit—continues to strangle the world’s youngest nation.
History will not remember Salva Kiir for the flag raised in 2011, but for the enduring human suffering, fractured economy, and broken promises that his rule has left behind. In South Sudan, death, debt, and deceit are deliberate, not accidental. Kiir—a seeming prophet of appalling atrocities—has effectively transformed South Sudan into the Republic of Graves.
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.