South Sudan: Elites, Ethnicity, Endless Wars and the Stunted State is likely to achieve its objective of stimulating debate about the future of South Sudan as a viable polity. The hope is that readers, through the debate generated by this book, will rediscover the commonality that marked the struggle for freedom, justice, and fraternity, and abandon ethnic ideologies as a means of constructing a modern state in South Sudan. South Sudan: Elites, Ethnicity, Endless Wars and the Stunted State is a must-read for South Sudanese intellectuals who want to reshape the socioeconomic and political development trajectory.
This book is likely to achieve its objective of stimulating debate about the future of South Sudan as a viable polity. Readers, through the debate generated by this book, will rediscover the commonality that marked the struggle for freedom, justice, and fraternity, and abandon ethnic ideologies as a means of constructing a modern state.
Born a Sudanese in the then Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, Peter Adwok Nyaba went to American Mission School at Dolieb Hill. From there he went to Rumbek Secondary School, then one of the two only secondary schools serving the three southern provinces. He studied in the University of Khartoum graduating with a BSc (Hons) in Geology. He worked briefly as a field geologist in the Red Sea Hills, Eastern Sudan, before travelling to Leoben, Austria to participate in UNESCO sponsored course on Mining and Prospecting in the Developing countries. He joined the College of Natural Resources and Environmental Studies in the University of Juba before preceding to undertake postgraduate studies at the Eőtvős Loránd technical University, Budapest, Hungary leading to PhD awarded by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He then taught in Juba and Asmara University. He was a trade unionist, a civil society activist, a revolutionary combatant in the SPLM/A, former member of the SPLM National Liberation Council, Secretary for Mining in the SPLM National Executive Committee. After the war, he represented Upper Nile State for the SPLM in the Council of States in the National Legislature, and became Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research, Government of National Unity, Khartoum. He was then appointed Minister of Higher Education, Science and Technology in the first government of independent Republic of South Sudan. Peter Adwok Nyaba is the author of The Politics of Liberation in South Sudan: An Insider's View, Fountain Publishers, Kampala (1997), a Noma Award winning title for publishing in Africa (1998).He has since authored South Sudan: The State we Aspire to (2010), South Sudan: The crisis of Infancy (2014) and South Sudan: Elites, Ethnicity, Endless Wars and the Stunted State (2019). This autobiography sums up a life spent in the struggle for public good.
This book is both informative and educational in relation to the ongoing South Sudanese conflict. It's informative in the sense that it tells the reader how the current conflict came about and identify the players who are the driving forces behind the South Sudan civil war. The book is also educational in the sense that it tries to prescribe solutions for the resolution of the conflict. It illustrates the challenges of administering a nascent state that came out of a long civil war, only to fall into the same trap by the making of its leader to remain in power permanently. The book also walks readers to look into the events that had made it possible for traditional South Sudanese communities to get involved in the conflict, particularly, the role of traditional civil defense groups (White Army, Mathiang Anyor, Aguelwek, Arrow boys, etc).Hoth Giw Chan, was born in Jiokow town, South Sudan, along the Ethiopian border. He obtained his Bachelor Degree (BA) from Iowa State University (Ames, Iowa), Masters Degree (MPA) from Drake University (Des Moines, Iowa), and a Juris Doctor (J.D.) from the University Of Massachusetts School Of Law (Dartmouth, Massachussetts). He was an adjunct Professor at the Rhode Island College, before moving to South Sudan, where he held various positions, including working with the South Sudan Anti-Corruption Commission, before the war. He also work as an Attorney/Lawyer at Chan & Zuor Law Firm in Juba, South Sudan. Hoth, is a survivor of the December 2013, Nuer genocide in Juba, by the South Sudanese government. Hoth Giw Chan, is a co-author of a book entitled "South Sudan: A Legitimate Struggle (2006)."
Using more than a decade's worth of fieldwork in South Sudan, Clémence Pinaud here explores the relationship between predatory wealth accumulation, state formation, and a form of racism—extreme ethnic group entitlement—that has the potential to result in genocide. War and Genocide in South Sudan traces the rise of a predatory state during civil war in southern Sudan and its transformation into a violent Dinka ethnocracy after the region's formal independence. That new state, Pinaud argues, waged genocide against non-Dinka civilians in 2013-2017. During a civil war that wrecked the region between 1983 and 2005, the predominantly Dinka Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) practiced ethnically exclusive and predatory wealth accumulation. Its actions fostered extreme group entitlement and profoundly shaped the rebel state. Ethnic group entitlement eventually grew into an ideology of ethnic supremacy. After that war ended, the semi-autonomous state turned into a violent and predatory ethnocracy—a process accelerated by independence in 2011. The rise of exclusionary nationalism, a new security landscape, and inter-ethnic political competition contributed to the start of a new round of civil war in 2013, in which the recently founded state unleashed violence against nearly all non-Dinka ethnic groups. Pinaud investigates three campaigns waged by the South Sudan government in 2013–2017 and concludes they were genocidal—they sought to destroy non-Dinka target groups. She demonstrates how the perpetrators' sense of group entitlement culminated in land-grabs that amounted to a genocidal conquest echoing the imperialist origins of modern genocides. Thanks to generous funding from TOME, the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access volumes from Cornell Open (cornellpress.cornell.edu/cornell-open) and other repositories.
When asked in 2016 if he would step down as President of South Sudan, Salva Kiir replied 'my exit could spark genocide.' Kiir's words exemplify how fear and the threat of mass violence have become central to the politics of South Sudan. As South Sudanese analyst Daniel Akech Thiong shows, it is this politics that lies at the heart of the country's seemingly intractable civil war. In this book, Akech Thiong explores the origins of South Sudan's politics of fear. Weaving together social, economic and cultural factors into a comprehensive framework, he reveal how the country's elites have exploited ethnic divisions as a means of mobilising support and securing their grip on power, in the process triggering violent conflict. He also considers the ways in which this politics of fear takes root among the wider populace, exploring the role of corruption, social media, and state coercion in spreading hatred and fostering mass violence. As regimes across Africa and around the world become increasingly reliant on their own politics of fear, Akech Thiong's book offers novel insight into a growing phenomenon with implications far beyond South Sudan.
This handbook provides critical analyses of the theory and practices of small arms proliferation and its impact on conflicts and organized violence in Africa. It examines the terrains, institutions, factors and actors that drive armed conflict and arms proliferation, and further explores the nature, scope, and dynamics of conflicts across the continent, as well as the extent to which these conflicts are exacerbated by the proliferation of small arms. The volume features rich analyses by contributors who are acquainted with, and widely experienced in, the formal and informal structures of arms proliferation and control, and their repercussions on violence, instability and insecurity across Africa. The chapters dissect the challenges of small arms and light weapons in Africa with a view to understanding roots causes and drivers, and generating a fresh body of analyses that adds value to the existing conversation on conflict management and peacebuilding in Africa. With contributions from scholars, development practitioners, defence and security professionals and civil society activists, the handbook seeks to serve as a reference for students, researchers, and policy makers on small arms proliferation, control and regulation; defence and security practitioners; and those involved in countering violence and managing conflicts in Africa.
A convenient veil is drawn over the many issues facing the majority of citizens on a daily basis as a result of the so-called free market. One is left with an impression that we live in a glorious utopia in which the crusaders of international capitalism continue in their quest to make life peaceful and better for all of humanity. It is also a world which has been at peace for 70 years with no ideological or economic conflict and in which all of humanity live their lives in harmony, benefiting from the fruits of globalization. This claim is nothing less than the rearrangement of the deck chairs on the Titanic, where the Titanic is actually the Global Economic & Financial System (GE&FS), storming its way through all countries and causing untold human suffering engineered by global pathocrats. In this book Professor Tatah Mentan dissects human suffering from multidimensional crises such as terrorism, population-explosion, denial of human rights, economic inequality, racial discrimination, ideological extremism, religious intolerance, social injustice, ecological imbalance, consumerism, oppression of the weak, and so on. He then calls for a radical global ethics that expects us to realize our roles and duties regarding global peace. It includes the role and ideals of educationalists, the duties of scientists, philosophers, and thinkers, the inculcation of human values such as nonviolence and love.
Winner of the Noma Award for Publishing in Africa 1998. The jury cited the book as "a pioneering text, the most important book to have appeared to date about the struggle for African national liberation in the Sudan. It is a first-class inside story of the history of the civil war of the past fifteen years, told with passion and commitment. Its stature, ringing significance and contribution to knowledge make it a powerful and unique book." The process of liberation in south Sudan has been rocky since 1955. Successive governments in Khartoum have broken promises and agreements relating to governance of the south, and the northern establishment has manipulated the situation to perpetuate northern hegemony, and to speed up the process of Islamisation in the south. This study from an activist in the politics of liberation in the south addresses relevant issues such as the objectives of the armed struggle, and the reasons for so long a struggle; the contradictions of the political leaders in the south; the repercussions of the Nasir coup of 1991, and the prospects for the SPLM/A struggle.
