Federalism in South Sudan: Risks and Potential Benefits

Federalism in South Sudan: Risks and Potential Benefits

By Joseph de Tuombuk*

The ongoing insurrection against an elected government in Juba has exacted an immeasurable toll on the people of South Sudan. The economic cost of the war are easy to understand: lost revenue, diversion of meager resources from productive activities to destructive enterprise; farmers driven from producing food to receiving food aid; lost lives and the list is endless.

However, what is hard to measure is where South Sudan would have been five years from now had this inexplicable conflict been averted through political dialogue. Faced with the horrifying consequences of war, our leaders are realizing that it is incumbent upon them to solve this problem in ways that will create conditions for lasting national cohesion and the shedding of our skin deep tribal allegiances. Our leaders should seek all possible ways to address the root causes of the conflict so that the current and many generations to come can enjoy the fruit of this effort.

South Sudan is not unique in its quick and tragic descend into armed conflict. When leaders fail to study the internal dynamics of their nations, it is easy to undertake a policy that unwittingly creates a bigger problem than it was designed to solve. Our leaders, either by ignorance or lack of grasp of our rather fragile and uneasy tribal accommodation, failed to prepare ground for future singular national identity.

It turned out that the only thing that united us was our collective distrust of jallaba. Our forefathers went to the 1947 Juba Conference acutely aware that they were in a weaker position to compete with well-educated and politically savvy northern elite. They made a simple demand: let South enjoy its autonomy and determine its political relations with North through a federal arrangement.

The demand for federal arrangement was motivated by fear of northern hegemony, or to put it in another way, we feared that the Arab would dominate politics, trample over our religious rights, and simply spread the policy of Arabization that the British had managed to curtail by governing southern provinces as a separate entity. Today, this historical legacy still permeates the every aspect of debate over federal arrangement. Can we design a purely federal system of government that achieves the following: a) rigorously promote a single national identity? B) Aggressively protect the right of minority tribes and accommodate their political inclusion? C) Could there be safeguards against a quick and nasty degeneration into regionalized politics?

When our political parties (more like the SPLM really) enacted the transitional national constitution (TNC), there was an opportunity to explore federal arrangement. Every legislator faced this opportunity cost. Those leaders currently clamoring for federal arrangement could have promoted this idea at the time, but they favored a strong central government with weak state governments. They believed at the time that it was not in the nation’s interest to divide the country into regionalized states, where some states are over 90% Dinka (Lakes, Warrap) and others well over 80% equatorial tribes (WES, EES, CES). To some extent, these fears were justified. Creating a poorly designed federal arrangement would have polarized our already fragile tribally-based politics.

The compromise was a strong central government with some semi-federal 10 states that would deal with its uniquely local issues. In theory, each state elects its government, including governors. However, the reality has been that central government has intervened in removing governors through an expansive interpretation of ‘national security needs’ clause of TNC. This created a situation where the governors were an extension of central authorities rather than accountable to their state institutions. Governors began to look like they served at the pleasure of central government rather than the local electorate. The state governments not only had to deal with constant fear of uninvited central government’s intervention; they also had no real source of funds other than transfers from the central government. These transfers were used to some extent to exert control over the affairs of states. The agreed upon relationship between states and the central government was no longer working as envisioned, thereby causing leaders to resuscitate the federal debate.

Given these inherent weaknesses in our current quasi-federal arrangement, it becomes imperative to revisit the issue of purely federal system of government that would allow our people to have more say in how they are governed and realignment of accountability. Instead of states being more answerable to the central authorities, they should be attuned to the needs of the electorate. With a rigorous and enforceable design, a purely federal system of government will allow the central government to focus exclusively on projects of national significance such as national highway and railway system, establishment of national and state universities, national security from external threats and to some extent internal spoilers, and many other functions that each individual state would find exceedingly difficult to achieve on its own.

While there are many benefits associated with a well-designed federal arrangement, there are potential risks. One is that such an arrangement would amplify our tribal differences and could create a situation where politics is defined as a contest among tribes rather than political parties. It would create a sense of distrust for central government policies that might be viewed as favoring particular states with strong federal presence by virtue of their numerical advantage such as the Dinka and Nuer. In other words, Upper Nile and Jonglei migh dominate federal government while Equatoria might be disenfranchised.

There might also be issues with an uneven economic development or resource sharing. Currently we have two states accounting for huge percentage of national revenues: Unity and Upper Nile and potentially Jonglei. These are the oil states. Other states are endowed with rich agricultural lands and stable security environment that they could feed the other states where insecurity hampers productive activities. If the oil states argue that they should not subsidize budgets in non-oil producing states, we could have a situation where this issue could polarize politics and contribute to weakening of a strong national identity.

As with anything in life, our desire for a federal arrangement could be beneficial but is not without risks. How we manage the risks is key to whether we can build a strong and vibrant federal South Sudan, or dig ourselves into more trouble than we bargained for. The key to managing risk is understanding what motivates those pushing for federalism. What are their real intentions? Do they really care about a strong national identity that trumps tribal scars, or are have they truly realized that our current quasi-federal arrangement is not working and therefore the need to redesign a system of government in South Sudan.

We could potentially design a flawed system that creates perennial instability in our country and that could be exploited by opportunistic leaders for their selfish political gains. Riek Machar, the leader of an armed insurrection, has already smelled the opportunity to enlist pro-federal Equatorians by pushing the federal debate into the current negotiations. It is not the first time this issue has been debated and Riek should not claim a credit. However, Riek’s motives are highly suspicious as he seems to pounce on the reluctance on part of Kiir’s administration to embrace federalism.

These are the risk we must guard against in our drive to establish a system of government that addresses our diverse population while forging a strong national identity. Notwithstanding these risk, we should not shy away from federalism simply because it can lead to more divisions among our people. We should work set up one that does its best to withstand any ill intention by parochial political leaders. By embracing federal system of government, the government could potentially take off the negotiating table an issue that is a powerful recruiting tool for Riek and band of insurgents. After all, agreeing on the issue of federalism is the easy part; setting up one that works best is the real hard work.

*The author is a South Sudanese residing in the United States. He can be reached at joe.tuombuk@gmail.com. All views represented are those of the author and not this website.