South Sudan's Security Bill: a Menace to Order and Society

A look at the rise of impunity in South Sudan

That is what it is, indeed. In October 2014, the National Legislative Assembly of the Republic of South Sudan passed the Security Bill by a narrow margin in a parliament sitting marked by lack of adherence to due conduct of business, all at a time of national crisis.

The Bill itself is South Sudan’s version of Ian Flemming's “License to kill”, crafted with cinematic proportions that dwarf commonsense. Considered draconian and reminiscent of Khartoum’s security heavy-handedness, it gives sweeping powers to security organs to arrest and detain without warrant and seize property without reason. This unpopular Bill literally authorizes South Sudan’s security apparatus to criminalize anyone found blinking or breathing without prior knowledge of the State. To paraphrase this, one could be arrested on suspicion of being alive!

It is evident that either powerful elements in President Salva Kiir’s government are ill-disposed to, or the whole establishment of the ruling party, SPLM/SPLA, have set on foot the systematic and sustained persecution of their political opponents and the entire citizenry of South Sudan by default. By definition, the Bill considers everybody other than ‘those on good terms’ with the security establishment as enemy of the State. It is, therefore, enacted to serve the interest of few people and to act as a device to pay off old scores. This will be made abundantly possible by the fact that the entire security apparatus lacks both character and competence in the discharge of its duties. The army, SPLA, is another good example of how indiscipline and impunity can be a dangerous combination that could cause state collapse. There is not much athleticism or skill involved in the posture of South Sudan’s security organs. Everybody is just loaded onto the catapult. That is how they earn their keep!

Proponents of this mishap make parade of their heroic status and always assume that they know what is best for this country and how best to protect its interests. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Many South Sudanese have had other observations to parallel effect. In fact, if anything, South Sudan’s National Intelligence & Security Service (NISS) has neither the will nor the mind to be reasonably law-abiding and reflect the legalistic and strategic dispensation of its national mandate. The entire intelligence community in this country is spending its enthusiasm more in words than in deeds. If one were not to lean on the side of caution, one would say South Sudan’s security establishment is deficient in critical acumen. This could be exaggerated to the point of derangement!

Violence is fast overwhelming South Sudan.  The whole country is wasting away in measured bouts of collapse that can only fetch us failed statehood. The christening is right and proper. Some of the driving sense of urgency that surrounds calls for South Sudan’s security sector reform is constructed by the abusive and repressive culture of our security agents and intelligence officials. They are hooked into carrying out with impunity acts of intimidation, coercion, harassment and assassination. That has set them up to fail miserably; at which they take their anger out on opposition figures, activists, writers and other actors in the civil society realm. The man in the street is not spared, too. Locals are getting strewn along the path of the ‘security machinery’. My brilliant high school colleague, Engineer John Louis Secondus, was one of many high profile cases of disappearance. The renowned writer, Isaiah Abraham paid the ultimate price for his provocative writings. The list is long. Security organs club together and weigh in against innocent ordinary citizens of this country.

This sterling record of failure to respect and protect people of South Sudan will eventually come at a steep political price for the current leadership or what passes for one. As soon as President Kiir signs the Bill into law, he will fire the imagination of those brutes at the helm of South Sudan’s security establishment. Crafted without the citizen in mind, the Bill is set to galvanize the ruthless and inefficient NISS to a higher pitch of frenzy. It is their license to kill at random and at will. The political leadership holding sway is starting a proliferation of oppression against the world’s youngest nation at a time when its people yearn for peace and prosperity. The ordeal lies in the lack of political maturity and responsibility which exposes South Sudanese at any moment and in any part of the country, to discrimination, criminalization, intimidation and assassination. The Security Bill in its present text and spirit is a menace to order and society.

This country is in dire need of a leadership that will spare it the bondage of fear. The grassroots in South Sudan are calling for a new leadership that beats a path straight to upholding the basic human rights of its own people instead of lighting fire under dissidents and opponents. I would like to appeal to friends of South Sudan in the region and beyond to rattle their tin-cans in the ears of this country’s current leadership so as to stop what will become a dolorous lament in the future. The world must act to bring to a halt and reverse this Security Bill which wants to parcel our people off into clueless designations of ‘enemies of the State’. If the community of nations allows South Sudan to curl up in a heinous security crackdown on its sons and daughters, it must be prepared to cough up billions to fix the malady later. South Sudan is still within seconds of reach; something can be done about this worthless bill. South Sudan itself must understand that a bill with these proportions of unchecked powers and measures, could be its undoing. The country can sink like a bomb in metered doses if it keeps its friends at arm’s length over the unpopular and draconian bill. If the pattern holds and the joy riders of ‘national security’ overrun the fortress of sanity, the Security Bill will turn South Sudan into smoldering ash sooner or later. In the process, it will strip the political leadership off its paint, nuts and bolts down to the frame. It is not hard to see why. The ongoing conflict is in part the making of the security establishment.

The elites think they can bury voices of dissent in the bottom of this Bill; whose topography is flecked with struggle and death for ‘anti-government elements’. But if they take a bird’s eye view of the grave matter in question, they will realize that the Bill will burn all around the rim of power. Lawlessness and insecurity will crop up more in the presence of the Bill than in its absence, hard evidence from history says so. So, if this makes the hypothesis of ‘national security’ easier to hold, it doubles the duty to explain its necessity. The elites have a little time left to battle to give it up.

South Sudanese thinkers and opinion makers should rise up and promote critical dialogue and knowledge about important national issues like this through drawing together the political texts of the discourse into some order. They must strain every intellectual muscle to attain this. Or else, they will have to deal with the blow-back when impunity spreads like gangrene!

We the people are the ones who live the daily grind of politics in this country. History has shown that our people place freedom upper most in their aspirations. We will move heaven and earth to be free and prosperous. We cannot imagine our lives any other way!