Journal of
African Studies and Development

  • Abbreviation: J. Afr. Stud. Dev
  • Language: English
  • ISSN: 2141-2189
  • DOI: 10.5897/JASD
  • Start Year: 2009
  • Published Articles: 240

Article in Press

The South Sudan avoidable civil conflict: towards the renaissance of a nascent nation devastated by self-imposed war

Prince Pius Imiera

  •  Received: 17 June 2019
  •  Accepted: 07 October 2019
Sudan future may have already been written long before its independence. Sudan gained independence in 1956 from the Egyptian and British colonial administration. Ever since that period, Sudan has been characterized by internal conflict and tensions. There has been unending ethnic, cultural, religious, political and economic divisions between the North and the South of Sudan. As a result of these divisions and imbalances, the first North-South civil war broke out in 1955 and ended in 1972. Following the independence of South Sudan in 2011, nascent state-building and development efforts were reversed catastrophically by a political power struggle within the country’s ruling party (the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, the “SPLM”) when on December 16th 2013 the President of the Republic of South Sudan, Salvatore Kiir Mayardit, appeared on state television in military uniform to announce that he had successfully put down a coup attempt in the capital, Juba. Hundreds of thousands of innocent South Sudanese have fled their father land due to the fight between two old and egocentric individuals, a fight the South Sudanese do not know the cause. The South Sudanese have become refugees in neighboring countries of Kenya, Uganda etc. The research questions the article looks at are: what are the dynamics of the conflict in South Sudan since independence? what was the origin of the war? are there any international interests and political intricacies in the conflict? what is way forward for South Sudan and are there any possible and practicable solutions to the war? Are there any lessons from the Nigeria, Syria and Lebanese civil war for South Sudan?

Keywords: South Sudan, civil war, conflict, Comprehensive Peace Agreement, international actors.