By Changkouth Bouth
South Sudan’s independence in 2011 gave its people a country of their own. It did not automatically give them institutions strong enough to restrain those who governed it.
That distinction matters when we look back at December 2013. The outbreak of war is often told through the confrontation that erupted in Juba that month. But a country does not lose its ability to resolve political disputes peacefully in a single night. The warning signs had accumulated for years.
Between the 2005 peace agreement and the end of 2013, South Sudan’s leaders had the opportunity to turn a liberation movement into a government answerable to citizens. The country instead entered independence with unresolved questions about who controlled public resources, how political differences would be settled and whether state security institutions served the public or those in power.
The warning in the missing money
In 2012, President Salva Kiir wrote to current and former officials seeking the return of an estimated US$4 billion in public funds. The figure was an allegation in the president’s appeal, not the result of a completed public accounting of each recipient and transaction. A later US State Department human-rights report said government sources reported no recovery or further action following the letter. A World Bank policy note also recorded the letter.
For citizens, the central issue was larger than the figure itself. If a president could publicly describe a loss on that scale, what institutions could investigate it, recover the money and explain to the public what had happened?
That question went to the heart of the new state. Independence had promised schools, clinics, roads and accountable government. Public finance would determine whether those promises became services or remained speeches.
Fear narrowed the space for scrutiny
Journalists and civic voices also faced pressure before the war. Human Rights Watch documented intimidation and unlawful detention of journalists over their reporting in the early years of independence. When reporters fear the consequences of asking questions, the public loses one of its ways to test official claims.
Political leaders can still speak of unity while criticism becomes harder to express. That is part of the illusion of power: a government may appear strong because dissent is quiet, even as trust in its institutions weakens.
Fear cannot settle a dispute about public money, political leadership or the direction of a country. It can only make those disputes less visible until they become harder to contain.
A political crisis without strong guardrails
By 2013, divisions within the ruling SPLM had sharpened. The removal of the cabinet in July became a major moment in that struggle. In my book, I describe it as the point at which the country’s remaining political guardrails looked dangerously weak. That is my interpretation of a longer process, not a claim that one decision alone caused the war.
A resilient political system needs rules and institutions that remain credible when powerful people disagree. It needs room for open debate, an independent press, meaningful legislative oversight and security forces whose duty is to the country rather than a faction.
Without those safeguards, every disagreement at the top can become a question of survival. Rivals may cease to trust political procedures, while citizens have little assurance that the state will protect them if the dispute turns violent.
The lesson still facing Juba
This history matters because the temptation to measure power by appointments, decrees and control of institutions has not disappeared. Those measures tell us who holds office. They tell us far less about whether public money is accounted for, whether criticism is safe, or whether ordinary people can rely on the state.
The test of government is what happens when citizens ask where the money went. It is what happens when a journalist questions an official decision, when political rivals disagree, and when a family needs a functioning clinic or school.
South Sudan did not reach December 2013 without warning. The country had warnings about corruption, civic freedom and the fragility of political institutions. Taking those warnings seriously now is one way to honour the people who paid for their neglect.