The civil war that exploded across South Sudan at the end of 2013 is about more than just who will rule the country. It marks the culmination of a years-long silent crisis in the ruling party, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), a crisis now so deep that the conflict will also determine whether the party will survive at all as a viable political organization and ideology.

‘Peace dividends’ – the perks of governance – helped mask differences within the party from the death of John Garang in 2005 until independence in 2011, as SPLM ruled largely unchallenged over the semi-autonomous south.

After independence, intra-party differences continued to be set aside in order to face the numerous internal and external threats of the period of 2011-2012, in particular the oil shutdown and cross-border military crisis precipitated in large part by the uprising of the party’s own northern adherents, SPLM-North, in the Kordofan and Blue Nile territories.

Yet by April 2013, one year after the border war that resulted in the destruction of the Heglig oil facilities, South Sudan’s oil was again flowing, and that same month the mask of unity was immediately thrown aside: the president decreed his deputy stripped of delegated powers, and three months later removed him altogether.

The ousted vice president, also the deputy party chairman, sought together with his allies in the Political Bureau and National Liberation Council to prepare his candidacy for the chairmanship at an upcoming national party convention.

As explained below, however, these key party organs had atrophied long before the latest crisis even began. If not their legitimacy, they had certainly lost their vitality.

This article seeks to bring light to aspects of the intra-party struggle. Though the focus here is on political matters, a word is first said on the already much discussed question of whether the South Sudan conflict is ‘political’ or ‘ethnic.’

‘Political not ethnic’

The crisis, first of all, cannot be reduced to ‘tribal war,’ as has been repeatedly stressed elsewhere. But it is equally wrong to say simply that the violence is ‘political, not ethnic’; the two in fact cannot be disentangled – ethnicity is itself, in part, a political construct, and conversely, political constituencies are mobilized largely along ethnic lines.

Granted, no single ethnicity is mobilized universally against another, key individuals or even entire constituencies may sit on the opposite side from the rest of their tribesmen, but that is not to say that the factor of ethnicity is irrelevant.

Nor is ‘Western media’ to be blamed for introducing the idea of tribalism as a prime driver in the conflict (e.g., as one New York Times contributor would have it, citing ‘simplistic Western narratives’ as an obstacle to conflict resolution). South Sudanese government officials themselves decry the power of tribalism, and in the opening days of the war they pointed repeatedly to the alleged incitement of one or two tribes against the more than 60 others. Nor do officials shy away from ethnic identifiers and ethnic considerations in their political discourse, press statements, and internal deliberations. In sum, ethnicity in South Sudan is a pervasive part of life, society and politics – it is in the names of the people, in their languages, in their homes and origins, and more often than not slashed across their foreheads too.

Acknowledging the role of ethnic hatred in the events of the last two months may be discomfiting for outside observers, especially in the West where moral pretensions would be challenged by an admission of such a calamity, yet facing this reality is an even harder task for South Sudanese, not least because of the scale and shocking extremity of the crimes that have been committed. It is nonetheless something South Sudanese will have to come to terms with if ever reconciliation is to take place. In fact, part of the reason why an authentic national reconciliation process never took place after the 2005 peace was that the danger was too great that the revelations and retellings involved would prove too great a trauma for the already fragile political and social system to sustain.

SPLM National Liberation Council

Perhaps the most common political analysis of the present South Sudan conflict is that it is a power struggle between President Salva Kiir and his erstwhile vice president, Riek Machar. Though not per se inaccurate, this analysis is itself a reduction, overlooking constitutional and governance factors that helped lead to the crisis, which will not be addressed here, as well as broader questions of political culture and political development within the ruling party SPLM, which is the focus of this article.

As a brief primer for those who might be unfamiliar with the SPLM/A (Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army), the movement’s lionized founder was John Garang, an officer of the Sudanese army who helped lead the Bor mutiny and crossed with defected troops into western Ethiopia, from where he organized a rebellion in South Sudan – and later the Nuba Mountains, southern Blue Nile and Darfur – together with other key founding members such as Salva Kiir Mayardit, then a military intelligence officer in the Sudanese army.

From 1983-1991, Garang maintained a close alliance with the Ethiopian Derg regime led by Mengistu Haile Mariam, who was motivated to destabilize the Sudanese government because it backed Eritrean separatists. The SPLM/A relied on the Ethiopian government for weapons, training, rear bases, as well as key strategic initiatives such as Radio SPLA. In turn, they adopted also the political idiom and ideology of the Derg.

A number of observers have described SPLM/A’s adoption of Ethiopian Marxist rhetoric as merely tactical, much as the party’s unionism was said to be in part merely a concession to its patron Mengistu who was then battling Eritrean separatism. This analysis ignores the obvious influence of Ethiopian Marxism on the formal structure of the party, as well as its less studied influence on political culture, leadership styles and tactics.

Ethiopia’s Derg, which means ‘Committee’ in the Ge’ez language, was backed by the Soviet Union, Cuba and other Warsaw Bloc countries in the 1970s and 1980s and was perhaps the best armed government in Africa. Given SPLM/A’s proximity to Ethiopia and its need for backers at the time of its founding, it is not surprising that the movement developed certain affinities to the ruling party there.

SPLM historical documents, for example, explicitly describe the National Liberation Council and National Executive Council as the ‘central’ (and legislative) and ‘executive’ committees of the SPLM, respectively. As the Ethiopian Worker’s Party Political Bureau was nominally accountable to its Central Committee, and the Soviet Politburo likewise accountable to the largely symbolic Central Committee, so too was the SPLM executive organ (NEC) accountable to its central committee (NLC). 

SPLM National Convention

In all three political parties, a yet more titular role was played by the party congresses, which were meant to elect the central committees. In the SPLM 2008 constitution, the NLC is defined as ‘the second highest organ of the Party,’ with the National Convention being the highest organ, in much the same way as the Soviet Central Committee was accountable to and elected by the party Congress.

In harmony with this political tradition, John Garang famously declared at the Chukudum Convention in 1994, “This convention is sovereign,” acknowledging the supremacy of the convention in representing the proletariat, or, in Garangist terms, the marginalized peoples of the New Sudan.

Just how abstract and impractical was this political arrangement is demonstrated by the fact that this first SPLM/A convention was held only ten years after the foundation of the movement, with the next one in Juba not until 14 years later, in 2008. Practically, in the absence of regular conventions and NLC meetings, the chairman and the other executives controlled the affairs of the movement, its direction and policies, with little space for deliberation or oversight.

For many such officials engaged in the day-to-day affairs of the movement, and later in the state itself, there has always been a certain undercurrent of disdain for the window dressing of conventions, councils and elections. This has to do with the origins and development of the movement: As in Ethiopia, these deliberative organs developed only later in the history of the movement, and not at the outset, when the revolution was first launched at the initiative of officers of the existing regime.

Nonetheless, even in 2013 enormous symbolic significance was still attached to the Convention, and its delay (it was meant to be held five years after the May 2008 Convention) had a major impact. Kiir, in his capacity as SPLM chairman, appealed to the primacy of the National Convention as justification for his declaration in November that the Politburo and NLC had become defunct organs, saying, “We were supposed to hold a convention in May, this year. Mish yau nihaya bita khamsa sanawaat? (Haven’t the five years already come to an end?). Do you think that today the structures still have the legitimacy to continue functioning? No, SPLM has dissolved itself alone.”

More controversially, the chairman continued saying, “Only office of the chairman is the only one that cannot be dissolved, nobody can dissolve it. And now I have all the powers to set up committees to start reorganization from the grassroots. When we talk about the National Liberation Council, or we talk about the Political Bureau, all these things are outdated.”

Failure of the supreme party organs

Hence, in the weeks and days before the shooting started on 15 December, the chairman of the party found himself at odds with members of the Political Bureau and Liberation Council, first over the legitimacy of their own positions, and second over the preparations for the upcoming convention.

The group of politicians associated with Riek Machar on 8 December issued a statement saying “the Chairman unconstitutionally dissolved key SPLM organs namely the Political Bureau and the National Liberation Council and the National and States Secretariats on account that their mandates had
expired in May 2013.”

“He has already instructed the State Governors 
(instead of the State SPLM Secretariats), to appoint their preferred delegates to the SPLM 3rd National Convention scheduled for February
 2014,” the statement added. “The intention is to sideline and prevent SPLM historical leaders
 and cadres categorized as ‘potential competitors’ from participation 
in the Convention.”

Ominously, the Machar group concluded, “This is a very dangerous move and is likely to plunge 
the party and the country into the abyss.” From the office of the Deputy Chairman, the response by a group of pro-Kiir political bureau and NLC members foreshadowed later developments. It declared as ‘rebellion’ the expression of public dissent, questioning why they would be “addressing the public on the eve of a meeting of the National Liberation Council, the highest organ of the party between Conventions, instead of doing so in that official gathering.”

In a sign that a deep party breach had already come, the Kiir group further inferred that the politicians who had made the press statement were no longer members – or, certainly, no longer worthy of being members – of the Political Bureau or National Liberation Council, owing to their violation of ‘organizational discipline.’ Taking dissent to the press and to the public, it should be noted, was no normal political move. It ran counter to the culture of discretion and deliberate lack of transparency that SPLM/A veterans learnt through the war years in Sudan and from the Leninist methods of the Derg. For the party loyalists supporting Kiir, Machar’s move was deeply offensive, threatening to bring matters that were rightly the concern only of veteran party cadres into the public view.

Disagreements over the selection of delegates, the timing and leadership of the organizing of the convention therefore helped precipitate the crisis that broke on 15 December. Party leaders found that the two nominally highest organs of the party, the NLC and Convention, had atrophied to such an extent that they could not even be convened without crisis, let alone proceed to deliberations of party business. In the end, all pretense as to the primacy of these high consultative organs of the party was lost, marking the start of the open and violent power struggle that continues today.

Executive prerogative

At the heart of this crisis is also disagreement as to the extent of the powers of the SPLM Chairman, who is also President of the Republic. Though none of the constitutional or legal questions will be addressed here directly, the point here is that the question of executive prerogative is a significant dimension of the present South Sudan crisis.

In his speech at Freedom Hall on 15 February, President Salva Kiir explained the historic role of the chairman in the party: “Our position was that leadership must be centered in one person. And we chose our leader. That was Dr. John Garang. Now when John was the chairman of the SPLM and was the commander-in-chief of the army, orders were one always. He will give orders, and orders would be implemented immediately. That was how we prosecuted the war.”

Kiir was describing the authority granted to the party chairman according to the SPLM/A practices and structures. Documents such as the resolutions of the first SPLM/A National Convention at Chukudum in 1994 provide the chairman of the movement with executive and even legislative powers, allowing him to pass orders “which shall have the force of law” and which only subsequently would be confirmed by other organs of the party. The chairman also appointed the chief justice, and though he had no other explicit judicial powers, as commander-in-chief he was involved in the exercise of military justice. Not only the chairman but also his representatives in the states, commanders, and other officers of the movement enjoyed considerable executive prerogative.

Drafters of the South Sudanese constitution included provisions that attempted to accommodate this aspect of the political culture, for example endowing the president with the constitutional authority to remove his vice president and entire cabinet – a prerogative he exercised in July last year – or to appoint caretaker governors, remove governors in case of emergency, etc.

But by its very nature, executive prerogative defies restraint by law. The executive is not meant to break the law, but he is to act in situations that are not provided for by the law. And since South Sudan is a society in which much law is not widely known or universally applied, and where some critical matters have yet to be legislated upon at all, this gives executives considerably more power than elsewhere might be provided for by the letter.

Compounding this dynamic is the factor mentioned already briefly above, which is that the party cadres, and the chairman in particular, are meant to be inscrutable to a certain degree. Their decrees, for instance, are generally issued without explanation and with little or no discussion, and their movements, plans and projects are generally shared with few.

In any case, executive prerogative is not only a feature of the ruling party, but also one of the society at large. As any familiar with the country are aware, the zul kabir (‘big man’) at any function is given deference, and in any organization or office typically afforded much discretion in terms of his decision-making powers.

At this stage, the most obvious political question to most South Sudanese is which ‘zul kabir’ they want to be president – Kiir, Machar, or neither. Locally, this question is playing out in contests for positions such as governor or commissioner as well. The stage play over who becomes ‘big man’, however, should not obscure also the questions as to what the position of ‘big man’ also means, and whether limitations are placed on such positions or not. 

Exaggeration of Western influence

Western countries such as Norway, the United Kingdom and the United States – sometimes referred to as the ‘Troika’ owing to their joint coordination of Sudan policy – are often credited for their leadership role in the CPA mediation and later in the September accords that ended the post-independence oil crisis between Khartoum and Juba.

In spite of their strategic impact in this regard, the interventions by the Troika in fact influenced the political development of South Sudan comparatively little. Rather, the key formative and transitional political experiences of the SPLM/A leaders were in Mengistu’s Ethiopia, as already described, and in Khartoum, both under Nimeiri as members of the regional and national governments and military, and later under Bashir as members of the Unity Government during the pre-independence CPA period.

The later patronage of Western backers, in particular the United States, helped change the strategic situation but not, in the end, the political culture of SPLM/A. Nor did it forge the kind of deep and enduring economic and cultural ties that the South shares with Sudan in particular. And for all their CPA-era flattery of US, the older members of SPLM/A probably will never forget that for years the Carter and Reagan Administrations backed successive Khartoum governments, in a bid to counter Soviet influence in Libya and Ethiopia, during the very same years that the movement was working closely with the Ethiopians.

Even during the post-9/11 US surge in the region under the George W. Bush Administration, which featured US backing for the CPA process and later overt defense cooperation, the SPLM/A leadership generally understood that this was done more out of hostility to militant political Islam in the Sudan rather than because of any political affinity to the movement.

The influence of Western backers in the political development of the SPLM/A was thus never as profound as that of the Ethiopian and Sudanese regimes themselves. Of course, the influence of the former was not entirely negligible – key leaders lived and studied in the US, UK or elsewhere, for instance, including John Garang and Riek Machar. Moreover, donor-backed governance projects and technical advisors conceptually and practically influenced developments in legislation, law enforcement, military organization, education and other sectors, especially since the end of the last civil war in 2005.

Yet it seems that these limitations were misunderstood in Washington, where the sychophantic press had lauded the United States government for ‘midwifing’ South Sudan to independence, exaggerating the American role in the decades-long independence struggle. Hence in Washington, from the outset of the crisis in December it was wrongly assumed that American power might influence a peaceful solution. As quoted in The New York Times, a White House foreign policy official said in early January, “None of us is naïve; this is a real and profound crisis. But we’ve got a long history, and we’ve got some leverage.”

In fact, there was no leverage. Nor was SPLM/A ever ‘midwifed’ by anyone; it has never fully come to trust the West, it remains in uneasy brotherhood with the Sudan’s NCP, and its isolation and paranoia are only growing. This is a party that is more accurately described as the orphaned child of the Derg, the regime whose collapse in 1991 sent the party into military catastrophe, made all the worse by the near simultaneous betrayal of the SPLA-Nasir faction then led by Riek Machar.

Momentum of the crisis

The country is now reliving the trauma of that crisis. The political structures, political culture and political idiom borrowed from the Derg regime during the first years of the SPLM/A rebellion were never formally renounced, not even after the Ethiopian regime’s collapse, nor were alternatives actively sought and endorsed, though Sudanese, Western and indigenous political influences in part filled the void.

Remarkably, instead, the foundational revolutionary myths adopted in Ethiopia were preserved, and political development within the SPLM/A continued along the same lines at the Chukudum National Convention in 1994. The same were reiterated at the second national convention in Juba in 2008, albeit with less conviction, and were being rehearsed yet again with significant confusion and cynicism, in the months and days prior to the crisis started 15 December.

This ongoing crisis has vastly eroded public trust in South Sudan’s ruling party, now divided and yet again at war. Events of the crisis increasingly have their own momentum and generally defy political logic: the capture of Leer, the continued detention of the four ‘coup plotters,’ the brutalities just committed in Malakal.

With the humanitarian crisis deepening and the economy on the brink, the failure of the political order becomes increasingly impossible to deny. At this stage not only is there little left of civil society, but indeed great danger to civil authority, civil order, justice and law more broadly. In some areas indeed these have already vanished entirely, and there we have seen atrocities.

In such circumstances, whatever remains of genuine political process, of civil society, of responsible governance of any kind, of youth and women and church voices, remain significant, less because they can control the course of events now than that they may be the only ones left picking up the pieces when this is all over. 

By Daniel van Oudenaren

File photo: A large crowd waves the new South Sudan flag during the unveiling of a statue of the late John Garang, Independence Day, 9 July 2011 (Roberto Schmidt/AFP)