Observations on the Law Enforcement Agencies in South Sudan
3 min read
The caretaker Mayor of Juba City Council, Emmanuel Khamis Richard, who is also the Lainya County Commissioner
By Deng Awur Wenyin, Juba, South Sudan
Sunday, 08 October 2023 (PW) — The ‘Law Enforcement Agencies’ is a topic in the course of Introduction to Law in the School of Law at the University of Juba. The agencies are outlined in the South Sudan Constitution and detailed in relevant legislation pieces.
These agencies are mainly the police, prison wardens, wildlife wardens, and fire brigade (civil defense) wardens. These agencies enforce the law in the form of orders, directives or decisions.
The police will arrest a suspect; the prison warden will lock in the prison a convicted and sentenced accused; the wildlife warden will arrest a suspected poacher, etc.
Last September this year (2023) an acting mayor of Juba City was phone–photographed chasing and slapping a woman hawker in a main street. That action caused an uproar, and the city activists found fertile soil to sow all seeds of criticism.
Legally and administratively, a government official can make decisions, but it isn’t him / her to implement them. By law someone is employed to implement or execute the decisions. That is called enforcement, which means that such a person has been given powers to enforce the law i.e. to execute.
In a judicial process, for instance, a judge can order someone to be arrested, but the Judge doesn’t go out to enforce the arrest. The police will carry out the arrest. Later on, the Judge can convict and sentence the accused to prison. The convict will be handed to the prison authorities.
This means that the decision process and enforcement process are distinct but complementary. The act the acting mayor committed raised many questions about the type of people appointed to government positions.
For those who follow social media, newspapers and local FM radios, the citizens claim that administration and political appointments aren’t based on merits. Still, people are appointed to positions when they are relatives, in-laws, friends, business partners, associates or political allies.
Technical qualifications are just ignored. A mayor or an administrative officer should make decisions in his/her office, and then a lesser authority will walk to the street to enforce the decisions, but not through fighting.
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