Why Did the 2013 Pseudo-Revolution by the SPLM-IO Fail?
5 min readBy David Mayen Ayarbior, Juba, South Sudan
May 23, 2016 (SSB) — In life there are three kinds of people. There are people who believe in opening the proverbial new page without looking back; people who believe in the same principle of the new page but based on ‘learning from history,’ and those who neither open a new page nor learn from history. The latter are the most dangerous because they are bound to repeat historical mistakes since they are not ready to learn from them. Those who don’t look back may not be as dangerous, but may not be agents of radical (revolutionary) change either. Only those who learn from history to inform their present and future actions are worthy of being called ‘statesmen’.
Even though South Sudan is a relatively ‘new’ country, the country’s claim to deep-rooted glorious historic records has made it a reference of migration routes for many ethnic groups in East Africa. But the history relevant to this article, that from which we must draw applicable lessons to avoid sliding back into the abyss, is indeed that of the ‘new country’ in particular and the SPLM/A in general. And in more specific terms, that of failure to effectively avoid multiple rebellions including the 2013 mutiny and civil war which practically destroyed the old state socio-politically and economically.
The destructive 2013 civil war, its consequent IGAD-led truce and current TGoNU could be seen by political science and revolutionary lenses as being the propeller for the “second republic.” However, it would be delusional to content that the second republic is already with us. It is just in the making. Virtually, it is going to be what the current generation of leaders of South Sudan are going to make out of the transitional period between formation of TGoNU and the 2018 elections. Ironically, it may not be called a product of a revolution because the IOs and FDs, indeed ‘IGs’ have been there before and will still collectively be in control of the post-2018 second republic.
Why is the 2013 upheaval a pseudo-revolution even when it was violent and might have radically transformed South Sudan? The answer may be straightforward. When political scientists talk of ‘revolution’ they, true, refer to a radical transformation of the state. The old state withers away as the new revolutionary state is established in its place. However, the old guard is overthrown by the revolutionaries. They are either executed, imprisoned, exiled or just barred from participating in governance. In summary, the seizer of the state by the new revolutionaries is comprehensive and complete to the extent that the old power is totally neutralized.
Using the above contention as our backdrop, it would be safe to say that the December 2013 attempt to radically change the status quo in South Sudan had fallen short of being a fully-fledged revolution. As I stood listening to some of the SPLM revolutionaries speaking at the ‘SPLM House’ early in December 2013 I thought I was witnessing the beginning of a radical change of South Sudan. However, I had my doubts on whether what I was witnessing was a revolution, simply because almost everyone who was given a chance to say a word as to why ‘[President] Kiir must go’ had been instrumental in the country’s appalling governance since 2015. They were part and parcel of the old state they sought to radically transform.
That notwithstanding, is the question whether there has been a revolution or not really so important? I believe yes, because the internal SPLM feud which was a struggle for state control could be a redirection attempt of the old successful revolution against oppression by Khartoum, but not a revolution in its own right. However, to borrow the contention of one of the speakers at that press conference, the old state was inherited by the new state rather than overthrown. In other words, the SPLM inherited and duplicated the NCP state instead of destroying it. Hence, their internal effort was to destroy the old NCP state and create the SPLM state in its place.
In this case, we could draw a contrast with the October (1917) Russian (Bolshevik) Revolution that overthrew the oppressive monarchial Tsarist state which had ruled by decree and installed in its place a revolutionary (second or socialist) republic ruled by workers’ councils (soviets). A splinter group called the Mensheviks tried to redress the revolution but failed. But they never got back to power as they were politically annihilated, which is not the case in South Sudan.
The lessons we could draw from our own attempt to redress the pre-2013 undesirable status quo is that it produced a different result from that of the October revolution. In our case, considering that our sociopolitical structures are different from those of Russia, France or the United States,’ it was difficult to find ideological basis for forming a formidable revolutionary force against the state. Every attempt to overthrow the state and create a new order in its place, no matter how genuine its initiators conceived it, was bound to degenerate into tribal lines. Hence, revolutionaries of South Sudan must rethink new strategies for facilitating the birth of a new post-2018 (second) Republic of South Sudan without using violence, which will just destroy the foundation for the new state itself.
David Mayen Ayarbior, BA Econ Poli.Science (KIU), MA Int’l Security (JKSIS), LLB (U. London). Author of: House of War (Civil War and State Failure in Africa) 2013. mayen.ayarbior@gmail.com.
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