In South Sudan, corruption is not a flaw in the system. It is the system. The tragedy lies in the fact that corruption has become the government itself. Under Salva Kiir’s rule, theft has become the primary mechanism of political control, resource distribution, and regime survival. What unfolds here is corrupt governance, engineered by design.
The scale of plunder documented by The Sentry, a Washington-based investigative organisation, defies comprehension. Over more than a decade, its reports and those of a handful of others have recorded staggering theft. According to these investigations, more than $20 billion has been stolen from public coffers in South Sudan.
Pause on that number: $20,000,000,000. The story of South Sudan’s corruption is not best understood through statistics, but through its consequences.
If those twenty billion dollars had been spent on the people, the country would look unrecognisable today. By regional benchmarks, that money could have paved more than 16,000 kilometres of modern roads, almost three times Uganda’s paved network and more than Kenya’s. It could have built over 270 fully equipped hospitals, enough to cover every major town, and more than 200,000 schools, erasing illiteracy for a generation. It could have provided clean water, electricity, and housing for hundreds of thousands of families. Instead of women walking days to reach a crumbling clinic or children learning under trees without books, South Sudanese would be driving on highways, studying in classrooms, and giving birth in safe maternity wards.
Next time, in your family, neighbourhood, or community, when a mother dies in childbirth for want of a clinic. When a child succumbs to malaria for lack of a two-dollar pill. When a family starves in a Protection of Civilians camp. When a girl drops out of school because there are no classrooms, sanitary pads, and toilets to keep her in school, or light to study by. When boys as young as twelve are conscripted because hunger leaves no other option. When farmers abandon their fields because roads are impassable through swamps. When a father buries his wife after she bled to death on the back of a bicycle, miles from the nearest health post. When mothers boil wild leaves while oil revenues vanish abroad. When teachers walk away unpaid, when nurses beg for gloves, when villages drink from muddy rivers and cholera sweeps through communities, when youth with no work drift into militias, when elders die unrecorded in the dust because ambulances never come, remember these names:
President Salva Kiir Mayardit and at least twenty-five members of his family, including his wife Mary Ayen Mayardit and several of his children, Benjamin Bol Mel, Riek Machar Teny, Erik Prince, John Gatwech Lul, Paul Malong Awan, Oyay Deng Ajak, James Hoth Mai, Ngouth Oth Mai, Idro Taban, Salva Mathok Gengdit, Abdelkarim Adam Eisa Mohamed, Abdrashid Ali Ateye, Abud Stephen Thiongkol, Abraham Salva Mathok, Abul Oyay Deng, Achol Paul Malong, Akiko Seyoum Ambaye, Ashraf Seed Ahmed Hussein Ali (also known as Al-Cardinal), Anthony Njoya, Araya Abate, Arop Bol Akot, Awan Paul Malong, Basheer Rateb Said, Bior Ajang Duot, Caleb Akandwanaho (Salim Saleh), Cecilia Achol Malong, Charles Bromel Muwanga, David Yau Yau, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Elijah Aleng Malok, Eva Salva Mathok, Gabriel Jok Riak, Garang Dling Akuong, Garang Majak Bol, George Athor, Gregory Vasili, Hussein Kangave, James Kuehn Chuot, Johnson Olony, Lawrence Lual Malong, Louis Lobong, Malek Reuben Riak, Marial Chanuong Yol Mangok, Martin Isaac Bongomin, Nasir Ratib Said, Nyakon Hoth Mai, Nyamal Gathoth Gatkuoth, Nyandeng Akot Wol, Nyathon Hoth Mai, Peter Gadet Yak, Pieng Deng Kuol, Ravindra Prakash, Robert Anei Salva, Samuel Papity Kalmal, Santino Muong, Sofia Salva, Stephen Aban Kvathi, Su Lianwei, Thierry Leyne, Tokkicha Alemayehu, Yoweri Museveni, Aberham Salva Mathok, Allied Commercial Bank, Atemrot Company, AV8 Helicopters Ltd, Banybith Investment, Bawel Energy & Mining Company Limited, Beck Mining and Petroleum, Bee-5 Petroleum, Boma Corporation Holdings, Boma Exchange Bureau, Bright Star International, Canal Ltd, Car Parking Management & Automatic System Limited, Casic Co., CBS for Multipurpose, Celtiel Communications, Ciec Trading and Investment, Concrete Builders Construction Co. Ltd, Dalbit Petroleum, Dev Rich Investment Holding, Diamond Investment Company, Dorosto Trading & Logistics Co. Ltd, Eco Bus Co. Ltd, ETN Ltd, Exodus Engineering, Farsouth International, GL Max Solutions, Global Services International, Golden Stars Holding Co. Ltd, Greater Bahr el-Ghazal for General Trading Company Ltd, Gumach General, Haks Sudan Limited, Half Moon Enterprises, Heliportugal Co. Ltd, Hoid Establishments Ltd, Hold Investments, Hong Panda for General Trading Co., ITI Company, Jubilee Bank, Kenwun Group Company Limited, King General Trading, KK Coaches, Liberty Construction JV Limited, Link Telecom Services, Loid Investments, LOL Oil Industries Limited, Maltek Consult, Masno Co. Ltd, Mer Forex Bureau, Meta International Trading, Motion Investment Group Co. Ltd, National Credit Bank, National Credit Insurance Ltd., National Depot Petroleum Development Co. Ltd, Nile & Sobat Construction Co. Ltd, Nile Basin for Aviation, Nile Petroleum Corporation (Nilepet), NMVIB Limited, Nova Company Limited, Nyamiel Petroleum, Oasis Transport and Trading Co. Ltd, Ogwani Trading and Multi Activities Co. Ltd, One World Telecom SS, Oxygen General Trading, Pan-African Petrogas and Mining Ltd, Planet Holdings Ltd, Quality Pharmaceutical, R&B General Trading, Rapi Com Construction, Robert Medical Services, Royal Mining and Engineering Co., Samara Place PTY Ltd, Sekoko Mobile, Sekoko Power SS Ltd, Sekoko Resources, Sobat Airlines, Sobat Development Company Ltd, Soldan International General Trading, South Enterprises General Trading Co. Ltd, South Guards Security, South Rasaan Petroleum Enterprise Co. Ltd, South Sudan Media Alliance Ltd, Sudd Bureau de Change PLC, Sudd Petroleum, Sunrays Co. Ltd, Thiet Company Ltd, ULKA Co. Ltd, Ungland Milk-Purpose & Investment, United Commercial Bank, Wakou Transport & Investment Co. Ltd, Wara Wara Investment Company, WTEL Company Ltd, Xuxin Mining Industry Ltd, Yojo Communication & Investment Company Ltd, Zenith Company Limited, and Zanozi Limited, ABMC Thai-South Sudan Construction Company Limited (also known as ABMC or Aggregate Building Materials Construction), Home and Away Ltd., ARC Resources Corporation Ltd. (also styled as African Resource Corporation or ARC Limited Group), Winners Construction Company Limited, Save Nation Co. Ltd., Equip Logistics Co. Ltd., Arc Engineering and Construction, Sliwana Diamond General Trading in the UAE, and Amuk for Trading and Investment Co. Ltd.
According to The Sentry and other credible investigations, these individuals and entities are alleged to have siphoned away South Sudan’s money, money that could have built hospitals, schools, roads, electricity grids, clean water systems, and decent housing, the very services missing from the lives of millions today. Those mansions in Nairobi, Kampala, and Melbourne stand as grotesque monuments to the roads not paved, the schools not opened, and the lives cut short.
This cast of characters is depressingly familiar, with Kiir at the centre of the system. The system functions with deliberate intent: oversight bodies like the Anti-Corruption Commission were starved of resources and stripped of prosecutorial power, while audit reports were systematically buried. In Kiir’s system of loot, cabinet reshuffles became revolving doors, with nearly 2,000 ministers and officials appointed and dismissed under Kiir to spread spoils and block rivals from consolidating power. Even peace agreements followed the same logic, reduced to frameworks for carving ministries into loot portfolios.
South Sudan is not poor. It is a victim of theft, calculated, systematic, and breathtaking in scale.
Salva Kiir’s selection and survival in power rest on looting and on using the stolen wealth to buy loyalty, coerce rivals, or eliminate opponents. His title of “President” is a hollow mask for his true role: Thief in Chief. He applies the constitution as a tool of discretion, not constraint. He neuters independent oversight. The looting pyramid, meticulously documented by The Sentry and corroborated by international auditors, journalists, and even Kiir’s admissions, defines his rule.
His system thrives on patronage networks where loyalty is rewarded with impunity and opportunities for graft. Hunger, displacement, and illiteracy serve a political purpose. A population kept desperate and dependent is too weak to mount a challenge. This is the Strategy of Poverty. Hungry people cannot organise. A sick person cannot resist. A displaced person cannot vote.
Meanwhile, international vultures circled. American mercenary Erik Prince and his Frontier Services Group secured $329 million in contracts with Kiir’s government. The $2 billion “dura saga” paid politically connected firms for grain that never arrived, diverting famine relief into private pockets.
Salva Kiir’s theft went beyond money; it stripped South Sudan of its future. Corruption is not a problem under his government. It is his only policy. His defenders say he rails against graft, but the record shows he enables it. Auditor General reports gather dust. The $4 billion plea yielded spectacle but not accountability. Sanctioned cronies are promoted. Oversight failure is not an accident. It is the strategy itself.
The world must stop treating this regime as a government. It is a criminal enterprise masquerading as a state. Every handshake, every dollar of aid without strict accountability, every delayed sanction, is complicity. The arithmetic of this tragedy is brutally simple: every million stolen equals a kilometre of road not built, ten schools that never open, a clinic without power, a child’s life lost.
Until there is genuine accountability for Salva Kiir Mayardit, his family, his inner circle, and their foreign enablers, South Sudan will remain a stolen nation. Its people will continue to pay the price of corruption with their futures.
The Thief-in-Chief must be seen for what he is. And he must be stopped. Every day Salva Kiir remains in power, South Sudanese pay twice: once in cash, through oil mortgaged to opaque debts and ghost budgets, and again in dignity, through salaries unpaid, clinics unfunded, schools unbuilt, and lives suspended in camps and exile. Each day of impunity equals another day of agony for twelve million people.
The writer, Dr. Remember Miamingi, is a human rights lawyer, governance specialist, and advisor to the Reclaim Campaign. He has worked extensively across Africa on transitional justice, human rights, and civic engagement.
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.