The Fall of the Animal Kingdom: A Satire of South Sudan’s Post-Independence Tragedy

By PaanLuel Wël, Juba, South Sudan

Prelude: The Kingdom Before the Fall

Saturday, 05 April 2025 (PW) — This is a tragicomic story of the fall of the Animal Kingdom, staring Hyenas in Hats, Monkeys in Suits, and Kangaroos in Robes. When the liberators become looters, and justice becomes a kangaroo court, freedom isn’t won, it’s leased. And when a nation fights for 60 years to free itself from outsiders, only to be ruled by insiders who act like foreigners, you don’t have a republic. You have a well-dressed zoo.

Long before borders were drawn on maps and before flags were stitched together by treaties, there existed a land called Kush, a rugged, defiant, sun-drenched stretch of plains, swamps, and spirit. Its animals were proud and wild, but not without memory. They remembered the times of foreign chains.

First came the Bears from the North, a mix of Turkish and Anglo-Egyptian beasts in polished boots and polished lies. They promised civilization but brought subjugation, taxation and gunpowder. The animals fought them. Then came the Mahdi Beasts, bearing swords and Koran wrapped in Arabic, offering Islamization in exchange for identity. The animals fought them too.

In 1955, even before their northern neighbors celebrated freedom from colonial rule, the Southern beasts had already revolted in Torit. The great Anyanya warriors rose, teeth bared, demanding equality and justice. After 17 years, they achieved a shaky peace, Addis Ababa Accord, but it was a peace deal written in disappearing ink.

By 1983, the ink had faded, and the flames reignited. The SPLM/SPLA, a new generation of beastly warriors, stormed the land, roaring for liberation. For 22 years, they bled in the bush. They dined on roots and gunpowder. But when the dust settled in 2005, the Comprehensive Peace Agreement was signed. In 2011, they finally raised a new flag. South Sudan was born.

But the tragedy didn’t end there, didn’t remain there. The liberators didn’t hang up their rifles, they sharpened them for internal use. And so begins our safari into absurdity…

The Reign of the Hyenas: Revolution with Receipts

When the new nation of Kush emerged in 2011, the animals didn’t vote for change, they voted for peace. At the helm stood the Hyena, a veteran of the jungle war, now cloaked in presidential dignity and an impossibly wide cowboy hat. He was surrounded by a pack, wartime comrades turned statesmen, who spoke in the language of revolution but acted like winners of a lottery.

Instead of building schools, they built mansions. Instead of roads, they paved escape routes for stolen oil money. Ministries became grazing fields for the politically connected. The oil wells, once symbols of self-determination, became personal bank accounts. Anyone who asked where the billions went was either jailed, exiled, or found themselves spontaneously unemployed.

Meanwhile, the countryside burned, not from foreign invasion, but from cattle raiders, local tribal militias, and the complete absence of a functioning state. Armed groups mushroomed like fungus after rain, each claiming to be a reformist, but mostly just hungry.

The hyenas couldn’t even feed their own soldiers, so they outsourced national defense to Uganda’s UPDF. Independence had been won, only to subcontract sovereignty to the nearest bidder. South Sudan had liberated itself from Khartoum, only to be colonized by its own stomachs.

The Monkeys’ Unity: Banana Republic Diplomacy

After the hyenas had chewed through the national budget and unity began to crack like dry bark, a new group swung onto the stage: the Monkeys. These monkeys weren’t outsiders, they were old enemies turned reluctant roommates. Led by the Monkey-in-Chief, the SPLM-IO joined hands, at least in theory, with the Alpha Hyena’s SPLM-IG to form a (Revitalized) Government of National Unity.

It was marketed as a bold new chapter. Reform. Peace. A banana for every citizen! At first, there was hope. Guns quieted. Smiles appeared. The animals began dreaming again. Then, mysteriously, all the bananas vanished. Corruption returned, not as a disease, but as the national sport. Each side looted faster, fearing the other might grab more. Ministries became party offices. Reforms were discussed, sure, but mostly as topics for conferences in Pyramid hotels.

As the animals starved, the Monkey leaders grew plump, swinging from one peace workshop to the next, sipping donor-funded smoothies while preaching anti-corruption on PowerPoint slides. Accountability? Only if it didn’t include them. The Monkeys, it turned out, weren’t there to govern. They were there to perform, and the animals were paying to watch.

The Kangaroos of Justice: Courtroom Comedy Hour

As disillusionment deepened, and the Kingdom looked more like a failed zoo experiment, a new group emerged from the thickets, the Kangaroos, in the aftermath of Nasir debacle. They wear robes. They speak in Latin. They hold gavels and summon press conferences. They claim they would restore order through justice.

But instead of prosecuting the oil-thirsty hyenas or the banana-hoarding monkeys, they turned their attention to the Monkey-in-Chief. Their goal? To put him before a court and hold him accountable for the sins of the White Army in Nasir.

And what of the others? The ones who had embezzled billions, orchestrated massacres, and turned ministries into vending machines? Well, they were busy attending “peace celebrations” and launching their children’s real estate empires in Dubai.

Finale: The Kingdom in Ruins

Now, the Kingdom lies divided, its animals either in refugee camps, IDP camps, UN POC, underground resistance, or trapped in an eternal state of waiting. Meanwhile, the animals pray for a real leader. One who doesn’t chew budgets, swing away from responsibility, or bounce around in legal limbo. But until then, the national anthem is mostly just background music to another day of national disillusionment.

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