South Sudan’s Liberation Struggle Supplanted by Autocracy

JUBA , SOUTH SUDAN - Ten years after gaining independence, some South Sudanese say their struggle for liberation has been supplanted by an autocratic system of government led by the nation’s ruling party, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM).

Many of them complain about a lack of freedom to exercise their rights. They accuse the SPLM and President Salva Kiir of doing very little to protect open political space. They and some analysts also blame the SPLM party for a power struggle that turned into a five-and-a-half year civil war. Deng Mading, the acting SPLM information secretary, admits some in the party’s leadership helped plunge the country into conflict but does not think the SPLM as a whole is to blame for South Sudan’s current rash of problems. “I will argue that the individuals’ behavior within the SPLM brought a problem into SPLM as an institution,” he told "South Sudan in Focus," “but the SPLM as an institution on the other side of the argument, it is still like it was in 1983.”