Abstract
South Sudan’s crisis is not simply ethnic but ethical. This article argues that corruption thrives not because of tribes, but because of a system where kinship replaces citizenship and public office becomes private property. It exposes how elites manipulate ethnic loyalties to shield impunity and calls for a new civic order rooted in integrity, merit, and national responsibility. The real struggle is not between communities, but between public ethics and private greed.
Introduction
South Sudan is at a turning point. Beneath tribal slogans lies a deeper crisis, the collapse of public duty into clan loyalty. This essay challenges readers to move beyond blame and see the system for what it is: a network of patronage that benefits a few and impoverishes the many. True change begins with rejecting ethnic shortcuts, naming corruption clearly, and restoring citizenship as a moral and civic responsibility.
Public discourse in South Sudan will not carry the nation forward unless it is anchored in a moral grammar more demanding than the slogans and suspicions that currently dominate it. The two perspectives often voiced, one decrying ethnic monopoly and the other defending against blanket blame, circle a common wound: a hollowed state where institutions serve factional power instead of the public good. What both sides often miss is the deeper ethical failure beneath it all: the strategic collapse of citizenship into kinship, where loyalty to clan is mistaken for duty to the nation.
Blaming or defending entire peoples conceals the architecture of impunity. Corruption in South Sudan is not rooted in ethnicity but in a sophisticated political economy that launders public resources through networks of relatives, bodyguards, schoolmates, and business proxies. These networks exploit ethnic solidarity, but they survive because society tolerates a governance model in which access is traded for silence. Framing the crisis as Jieng versus the rest distracts from the fact that generals, ministers, and political brokers from every group have learned to flourish under the same extractive system.
This brings us to a difficult yet necessary conversation and *(alleged claim)* orbiting around and about the Jieng Council of Elders. The recent reshuffling of vice presidents into subordinate tiers, quietly orchestrated through the JCE’s so-called Strategic Workframe, was not just a bureaucratic adjustment. It was a calculated consolidation of influence designed to insulate a small elite from political accountability. Here, tribalism is not merely a cultural reflex; it has become a governance tactic. Yet the deeper tragedy is not the scheme itself, but our collective unwillingness to challenge its premises. We do not need scapegoats. We need structural scrutiny.
The crisis of statehood is, at its root, a crisis of meaning. We must recover an older understanding of public office, not as an inheritance for one’s kin but as a trust bound by oath. When traffic checkpoints are turned into daily festive sacrifices, it is not just petty corruption. It is the moral inversion of authority. Those sworn to direct the flow of traffic now direct the flow of bribes into private hands. The response cannot be a cosmetic reshuffling of ethnicity. It must be the recovery of public norms, transparent appointments, published budgets, independent audits, and the enforcement of law that spares no rank.
We must also avoid falling into a competition of victimhood. The argument that many ordinary Dinka families suffer just like others is not untrue. It is also not the point. Corruption is always selective, never collective. It enriches a sliver of each ethnic group while deepening the poverty of the majority. But precisely because the presidency and security apparatus are widely perceived as Dinka-led, Dinka intellectuals and elders bear a heavier ethical burden. True leadership in this moment is not defensive. It is reformative. It demands open rejection of tribal patronage, public advocacy for merit-based recruitment, and the dismantling of nepotistic scholarship schemes masked as national policy.
We often invoke the system as though it were a ghost beyond our reach. But systems are upheld by daily choices: by civil servants deciding between duty and self-interest, by officers deciding between protection and predation, by citizens choosing silence over responsibility. The rebuilding of our republic requires a dual transformation, one institutional and one civic. First, laws must be put in place to make corruption expensive and integrity rewarding, through asset declarations, transparent revenue reporting, and prosecutions that reach the top. Second, we must foster a patriotism that sees ethnic identity as cultural heritage, not political capital. As the late Dr Chuba Okadigbo warned, when we make truth and justice subordinate to clan loyalty, we render our education useless.
Pundits, columnists, and digital citizens alike must reject the lazy comfort of ethnic shortcuts. Let us critique the contract, the policy, and the budget line. Let us name officials, not tribes. Likewise, we must retire the reflex of interpreting critique as ethnic hostility. When the government fails, it is not the community being condemned. It is a public trust being broken.
African philosophy reminds us that time is experienced not as a linear progression but as Sasa, the living present, and Zamani, the deep past. But the future, as philosopher John Mbiti argues, is elusive unless willed into being. South Sudan’s future will not emerge through the ticking of time but through a conscious revolt of conscience. That future begins when civil servants demand fair and timely pay through functioning unions, when security forces defend rather than exploit, when elders challenge the corrupt order rather than rationalize it, and when youth mobilize not for ethnic supremacy but for shared investments in schools, roads, hospitals, electricity, and peace.
In the final analysis, the real contest is neither Dinka versus the other sixty-three nations nor government versus opposition. It is a struggle between public-interest ethics and predatory self-interest. Until we name the crisis in those terms and act upon it, the carousel of blame will continue to turn, and each community will in time taste the bitter fruit of a republic mismanaged like a private estate, with its dividends handed to outsiders while rightful citizens go empty-handed.
Nelson Mandela taught us that poverty is never an accident. Like slavery and apartheid, it is man-made and can be unmade by human action. In South Sudan, poverty is not merely the outcome of conflict. It is a design, sustained by a political elite that weaponises deprivation to subdue the public and advance its agenda. Let us then, across all sixty-four nations, forge a higher covenant: that power is stewardship, that citizenship outranks kinship, and that no system, however entrenched, can endure once a people decide to despise corruption more than they fear change.
The way forward
1. Institutionalize Transparency and Accountability
South Sudan’s leadership should prioritize the publication of oil revenues, national budgets, and audit reports to build public trust. All senior government officials must be required to declare their assets annually, and an independent Anti-Corruption Tribunal should be established to investigate and prosecute high-level graft. Transparency must become the standard, not the exception.
2. Reform Public Service and Scholarship Allocation
Merit-based recruitment must replace nepotism in public institutions. An independent body should oversee civil service appointments and government-funded scholarships, ensuring fair and transparent selection processes. This will promote inclusivity, reduce ethnic tensions, and restore credibility in state institutions.
3. Promote Civic Education and National Unity
A nationwide civic education campaign should be launched to reorient public understanding of citizenship, patriotism, and public service. Schools, media platforms, religious institutions, and local leaders should be engaged to promote values of integrity, unity, and accountability over tribal loyalty and ethnic mobilization.
4. Professionalize the Security Sector
Security institutions must be reformed to serve citizens rather than political or ethnic interests. Biometric registration and a unified payroll system will eliminate ghost soldiers and clan-based militias. Accountability mechanisms should be strengthened to address abuses, including extortion at checkpoints and the misuse of arms and authority.
5. Strengthen Local Governance and Civil Society Oversight
Local government structures and independent unions should be empowered to oversee service delivery and ensure that citizens have a voice in budget planning and implementation. Civil society organizations must be supported to hold authorities accountable and promote ethical leadership at all levels.
Conclusion
South Sudan’s crisis is not rooted in tribe but in a failure of ethics and public responsibility. The deliberate collapse of citizenship into kinship has allowed a narrow elite to capture the state, institutionalize poverty, and deflect blame through ethnic narratives. True national renewal will not come through ethnic reshuffling or rhetorical unity but through a collective decision to rebuild the republic on the principles of stewardship, justice, and accountability. When citizens begin to value integrity above convenience, and when leaders place service above self-preservation, South Sudan’s long-awaited dawn will cease to be a hope and become a reality.
The writer, Kpiosa Charles, is a South Sudanese development practitioner with over a decade of expertise in leadership, policy formulation, and research. He currently serves as Executive Director of Infinite Research and Development Institute and President of the South Sudan China Alumni Association. He can be reached via kpiosairdf@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.