Following its independence in 2011, South Sudan was expected to emerge as a modelAfrican state rising from the depths of historical marginalization to build democratic institutions, reflective of its vast cultural, social, and ethnic diversity.
However, the years following independence have revealed a reproduction of the same patterns of authoritarianism, political violence, and societal fragmentation—only now in more acute and complex forms.
French political thinker Jean-François Bayart, in his book; The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly, provides a profound a framework for understanding the South Sudan crisis. Bayart argues that the ruling elites in postcolonial African states do not build modern states, but recycle colonial instruments of control—through patronage, clientelism, and violence—leading to fragile authoritarian entities devoid of institutional cohesion and national legitimacy.
Bayart defines fragmented sovereignty as a condition where functional and political divisions exist within the state. Decision-making centers multiply, political, military, and regional powers compete for control, and state institutions weaken in favor of pre-state loyalties (such as tribe or clan). South Sudan embodies this condition in its most vivid form.
Instead of institutional unification post-independence, the state fragmented into networks of ethnic and regional interests. The tribe became the operative unit of political decision-making, and the chief emerged as the exclusive intermediary between the state and his community.
Consequently:
- The national army was disintegrated into ethnic formations, each representing a specific region or tribe, making the prospect of building a unified national military nearly impossible.
- Ministries and high offices were distributed through regional quota systems rather than merit, initially to appease diverse groups, but later becoming a mechanism to buy political loyalty.
- The old centralist model—borrowed from Sudan—was reimposed, where power is concentrated in the presidency and governance is exercised as spoils, while the peripheries and local communities are excluded from decision-making.
As Bayart emphasizes, many African elites did not struggle for the creation of new states, but for positions within the apparatus of the colonial state, aiming to appropriate its power for the benefit of their own groups. The Southern Sudanese elite followed the same pattern. Rather than establishing a political system that breaks from the legacy of control practised in old Sudan, they:
- Monopolized political decision-making within a narrow group of leaders from the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), which failed to transform into a modern civic party and retained its military-regional character.
- Marketed tribal discourse as a substitute for citizenship, using ethnic loyalties as the basis for wealth and power distribution, and deploying the narrative of “victimhood” as a political bargaining chip.
- Expanded patronage networks within all state institutions—from security to judiciary to education—transforming them into tools for regime survival rather than instruments of public service.
This inheritance of the colonial state was neither innocent nor accidental—it was deliberate and strategically calculated to preserve narrow tribal and power-based equilibria, thus reproducing the political system from within the crisis rather than resolving it.
One of the most alarming aspects of South Sudan’s post-independence experience is the absence of a unifying national narrative. Independence offered an opportunity to redefine the state as a collective project beyond the binary of “liberation from the North” toward “building national selfhood.” Yet what occurred was:
- The liberation discourse was emptied of substance, reduced to a slogan without a clear political or economic program.
- There was no inclusive developmental discourse to reflect the collective aspirations of the people. Instead, discourses of revenge, victimhood, and discrimination dominated.
- A unified South Sudanese identity was never constructed. Local identities remained the dominant reference for belonging, shifting the conflict from North/ South to South/South dynamics.
According to Bayart, this failure is not incidental. It is the logical result of a clientelist mode of rule that displaces inclusive national narratives in favor of the victor’s story, the dominant tribe, and the ruling network.
Confronted with this reality, there is an urgent need for a new political project that re-establishes the South Sudanese state on institutional and legal foundations and breaks with the logic of spoils and ethnic representation. Such a project could be built upon the following pillars:
1-Drafting a new social contract based on citizenship, criminalizing ethnic and political discrimination in employment and public services, and linking rights to national—not regional—belonging.
2-Restructuring the army and security organs on strict professional foundations, ending fragmentation, and imposing a unified national doctrine that ensures institutional loyalty to the constitution, not to a tribe or leader.
3-Implementing genuine—not cosmetic—decentralization, ensuring that power and resources are meaningfully shared with states and local communities, and monitored by independent local legislatures.
4-Empowering youth and civil society through leadership development programs, promoting media independence, and creating national dialogue platforms around identity, economy, and state-building.
5-Reforming the economy by reducing reliance on oil and channeling resources into productive sectors such as industry, agriculture, livestock, and vocational education.
South Sudan does not need more armed leaders; it needs a new civil elite—educated, conscious, and rooted in the values of the modern state. This elite must break its silence and reshape political discourse based on reason, not emotion; institutions, not loyalties. A state cannot be governed from the bush, and no authority founded on weapons—not law—can be legitimate.
South Sudan’s reality proves that the notion of “fragmented sovereignty” is not a mere theory—it is a lived reality, evident in political disintegration, institutional collapse, and the dominance of tribe and gun over law and constitution. Yet, overcoming this crisis is not impossible—provided that we acknowledge the failure of the current elite and begin anew through a national political project that restores the value of citizenship, justice, and state-building.
South Sudan today needs not a recycled rhetoric—but a rebuilt state.
This will only be achieved when vision defeats spoils, reason outshines the gun, and citizenship triumphs over tribalism.
The author, Samuel Peter Oyay, is a South Sudanese political activist, strategist, and commentator with over two decades of experience in governance and management. He can be reached on samualjago@yahoo.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.