Why you should expect more blood and tears from Juba

South Sudan has reached a precipice, and may tip off any time from now, the underlying cause being reluctance of the sitting dictator to engender a culture of equity in resource sharing.

This time round, the viciousness is evident in the pace at which soldiers from both sides of the partisan divide are getting mowed down.

A little history is important. The mysterious deaths of comrade Kerubino Bol, and Emma Machar, the ex-wife Dr Machar, and many other senior members of SPLM, have been used to cast aspersions on the nationalist credentials of the late Dr John Garang. In fact, Dr Machar’s on-and-off dalliance with Khartoum during the war was attributed to this intolerant character.

Besides, Dr Garang was constantly accused of favoring his Dinka tribe, especially the Dinka Bor sub-tribe to which he belonged. Thus, most of the scholarships that he managed to secure from friendly countries in the West went to this sub - tribe. Just like most African leaders had done in their own countries, Garang prepared his sub-tribe to dominate others when South Sudan ultimately attained her political independence.

Naturally, this overt favoritism of the Dinka Bor by Garang only managed to earn them distrust and hostility from other communities. The rivalry between Dr Garang’s Dinka, and Dr Machar’s Nuer, which is the second largest tribe in South Sudan intensified.

As the Dinka Bor were facilitated to go to school abroad, the Nuer swelled the army ranks. The 1991 massacre of the Dinka Bor by suspected Machar loyalists, has therefore been explained against this background. It also explains why at the time of first public disagreement between Dr Machar and President Kiir following the former’s dismissal from the position of 1st Vice President, the Nuer comprised about 64% of the entire Military personnel of South Sudan, thereby complicating matters for the President.

The international community appears to have a convergence on the fact that there was absolutely no evidence of a coup-de-tat planned by Dr Machar against the president and his government. Instead, the president was trying to use the excuse of a coup to salvage his reputation which had dipped, and do a quick purge to remove Dr Machar from the ranks of SPLM, thereby obliterating any real threat of competition for the topmost office in the land. All these backfired after tens of thousands of South Sudanese lost their lives in an avoidable needless war.

For starters, the kinship ties between Dinka and Nuer are very elaborate, and their languages are mutually intelligible. Up to early 20th Century the two existed as one large community called the Dinka - Nuer.

Their fights are mainly precipitated by struggle over resources. Dr Garang never lived long enough as president to resolve these differences. President Kiir appears incapable of doing much. The IGAD and EAC to which South Sudan belongs have such huge vested interests in the country that they neither have the legitimacy nor the objectivity to mediate in a conflict involving a head of state and a “rebel”. Worse still, the collective position of the African Union on internal dissent is well documented.

Obviously, the solution to the South Sudan conflict cannot come from outside the country. The underlying causes of the conflicts can be exhaustively addressed only when those who control the instruments of state power appreciate that the country belongs to all South Sudanese, and begin to embrace the policy of inclusiveness in resource distribution.

The writer is a scholar and corporate governance expert