“Sabotage in Suits: The Hidden Hands Behind South Sudan’s Cash Crisis”
print 500ssp and 1000ssp to ease portability of money in South Sudan
By Dr. Sunday de John, Nairobi, Kenya
South Sudan is not at war with nature. There is no natural disaster that has ever occurred except flooding in some parts of the country. There have been no earthquakes threatening to destroy cities and no locusts descending upon the fields causing famines. Despite this, the South Sudanese people are crying as if the heavens have fallen. The suffering of our people, although not apparently visible, is brutal. Man-made wars since 2013 have been eating away at the country. The endemic corruption and conflict of interests have contributed significantly to these wars. Food crops have seen a reduction in local production due to insecurity. Hatred across the social divide has sprouted, and now the country, from the urban cities to rural setups with a few exceptions, is suffering from a manufactured cash crisis that has gripped the nation like the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) siege of the Gaza Strip.
Civil servants and other salaried national actors have remained unpaid for more than a year and the system to pay them regularly has dissolved with markets now operating in a state of limbo. There is no liquidity. The country is theoretically unable to pay debts, internally and so externally. This is the shortest and most comprehensive definition of bankruptcy. While the economy is vibrant on paper, it is paralyzed in an actual sense. There is no cash, and even if salaries were paid through bank transfers and other electronic mechanisms, it is only virtual money with no legal tender, and considering most citizens have no purchasing power, it is reduced to a negligible point. This can be plainly put as suffocation of families.
With my uncensored and unsolicited analysis, I can fearlessly infer that this situation is not an accident. It is a deliberate act of sabotage. Situations of this kind happened in other countries and even in Sudan, where political actors meticulously crafted malicious plans such as purchasing huge quantities of sugar and flour and drowning them in the river Nile or hiding huge sums of cash in homes or burying them underground to undermine the governments. This is deprivation for consumers, who in turn blame the government and express wrath in the form of unrest, such as popular uprising or other means of dissent. This hypothesis can be true for the case of South Sudan. There are some political actors who can do the same in the Republic of South Sudan, burying South Sudanese pounds under their beds and creating cash deficiency as a way of undermining the government of President Salva Kiir Mayardit with an intention of inciting further national discontent.
It goes without saying that since the establishment of the Revitalized Government of National Unity, brought about by the R-ARCSS, the country has been descending into a perilous experiment. The agreement, which was brokered to ensure the return of national stability, has in fact turned out to be a poisoned gift that brought together bad faith actors into the center of power who are now effectively holding the economy hostage. Any government formed out of an agreement never works sincerely or harmoniously. The actors usually serve their hidden agenda in the shadows, and the public unwillingly does their deeds.
The case of South Sudan is even more despicable. The cluster system established through the agreement is now made up of governance, economics, service delivery, infrastructure, gender and youth, but it has failed to deliver the intended synergy. It has instead fostered dysfunctionality. This can be justified by the fact that ministries that once operated with clear mandates have now been reduced to mere waiting rooms.
Institutions such as the Ministry of Finance and Planning, the Ministry of Trade and Industry, the Ministry of Petroleum, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, Livestock, and Fisheries, the Central Bank, and the Revenue Authority are no longer authorized to act independently. They have been clustered and served with duplicated leaders who are either not sincere or crippled by international sanctions. Now any significant decision, regardless of its urgency, must be approved by a cluster head, typically through a simple phone call that at times lacks transparency or a sense of urgency. The outcome of this duplication is stagnation. The economy cannot function without someone else’s permission. Responsibility has become obscured by layers of artificial authority, and as alleged, some of these heads of clusters can divert the entire national revenue even from the source, such as the sales of crude oil or collection of non-oil revenue like taxes.
When I think deeply, I ask myself several questions, some of which are these ones: Why are citizens expressing distress if these clusters were intended to promote national unity? Why is it so difficult to access funds from banks when no natural disaster has devastated the South Sudan pound? Why are teachers and civil servants leaving their offices empty-handed each month while those with political connections deplete state resources? The answers to these questions suggest that there is a quiet war being waged from within. It is possible that certain political actors with powerful allies both inside and outside the government are hoarding cash, freezing institutional operations, and draining the formal economy. Their goal could be to erode public trust in the president and in the state while creating the illusion of total collapse.
These saboteurs are successful in their schemes; they have manipulated liquidity, flooded the black market, and destabilized the pound by promoting reliance on foreign currencies. Inside Juba, some restaurants and hotels charge for their services in dollars. This is the work of those who are organizing chaos in boardrooms and government offices; they are not actors in the battlefields. The masters of these malicious plans are hiding behind their titles and suits. They are using gestures and concealed communication to suggest to the citizens that the government has failed. In essence, they are the ones who have strangled the system. They are the ones paralyzing budget execution, delaying salary payments, obstructing service delivery, and manipulating inflation for their political gain. They are thriving and making a fortune on the suffering of the innocent citizens. In their minds there is only one objective: a regime change through the economic hardship directed at the citizens.
Viewing it objectively, one can recommend that this bad situation must not be allowed to persist because South Sudanese deserve better. As a nation, we need to accept President Salva Kiir Mayardit’s assertion that those he entrusted with responsibility are the ones failing him, and the list is long, and we also need to understand that our suffering is not merely the result of poor leadership but a longstanding and well-coordinated perfidy.
Despite the schemer’s work, President Salva Kiir is still in possession of the authority and mandate to address this decay. He can, without difficulty, reverse some of his decisions and right the things in the interest of the national development. Some of his appointments have gone well against international norms, like putting the sanctioned individuals at positions of power. People do not just get sanctioned; they first commit offenses that attract international wrath, like siphoning off billions of dollars through questionable contracts and under false pretense of national development. If the money is found not beneficial to the citizens, like what we have witnessed with the lack of payment to civil servants because the money has been wired to private accounts, the sanctions come.
It is because of such individuals that the international banks and other monetary institutions have withdrawn from supporting South Sudan’s development. We might not fear American sanctions, but those that deal with us, like international banks and monetary policy institutions, we fear violating their rules. We indirectly harm ourselves through unwise, tough headedness. For these reasons, I implore President Salva Kiir Mayardit to deprive the saboteurs of their grand goal by liberating the Central Bank of South Sudan and other institutions from political influence. Economic institutions, if run by professionals with technical expertise without interference from the above and especially by the cluster heads, can do better.
It is also incumbent upon the president to identify those who are using their positions within the state to inflict suffering on innocent citizens, and when identified, they ought to be dismissed and then held accountable. The situation created by the unavailability of cash superimposed on widespread insecurity, dissent of elites, and the international community’s dissatisfaction with our situation is above mere economic emergency; it poses a national security threat. Many are already saying that the era of quiet diplomacy should end and that the saboteurs are not hidden from the public view. They are easily identifiable in that they have specific addresses and offices and that their mission is one of betrayal and therefore must be ended.
The suffering of the citizens is real. The instigators of the treachery are also real. Above all, the president is real and can end the suffering with a stroke of a pen. He should not remain silent because if he remains silent, the concept of South Sudan can be hurt further or even crumble.
Until then, yours truly, Mr. Teetotaler!
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