The Shadow State captures South Sudan’s Democracy

By Tito Tong John, Nairobi, Kenya

Friday, 01 September 2023 (PW) — In politics, democracy is captured when a few individuals or sections of a supposedly democratic polity can systematically appropriate to themselves the institutions, processes, and dividends of democratic governance.

In other ways, democracy capture expands the idea of ‘’ state capture’’ to include all political institutions and democratic activities, including civil society and the media. This is widely used in many places to refer to the undue influence of special interest groups over state institutions.

What is striking about this process is the well-structured networks encompassing a broad range of individuals, from the government to the security forces, traditional leaders, private businesses, state-owned enterprises, and their family members.

According to a separate view, South Sudanese intellectuals Ustaz Abraham Akech Awolich and Ateny Wek Ateny, what distinguishes these actors is their privileged “access to the inner sanctum of power to make decisions”.

With this view, I admire their previous debate about the audio of Gen Aleu Ayieny Aleu, which moved around in many social media groups. My elderly and intellectual friend Abraham Awolich describes South Sudan’s leadership as being led by the shadows.

One helpful way of conceptualizing these networks is the idea of the shadow state, developed by the influential political thinker Abraham Awolich.

For Ustaz Abraham Awolich, a shadow state is effectively a system of governance in which a form of parallel government is established by a coalition of the president, militias, security agencies, local intermediaries, and foreign companies.

In extreme versions, such as South Sudan, real power no longer lies in official government institutions such as the legislature. This shadow state is characterized by private armies and a severely limited, almost imaginary, formal state.

More recently, intellectuals have identified manifestations of the shadow state in countries not in the middle of civil war and with more robust formal political systems. Good examples include Botswana and Zambia.

In these cases, the shadow state is more oriented towards hampering the activities of opposition parties and ensuring impunity for its members. The shape and resilience of unelected power networks also vary in significant ways.

In South Sudan, the shadow state is run by an axis of leadership families, a “military aristocracy,” and interlocutors in the business community.

In South Sudan, the government has exploited the legal system’s weaknesses, the judiciary, and the legislature to expand its power. Through this process, he has turned the state’s most vibrant democracies into a near political monopoly.

It is, therefore, essential to map the shadow state on a case-by-case basis because no two networks are the same. The differences between them reveal who holds power.

Here, I would love to give some input about the consequences of the Shadow state having a negative impact on democracy and accountability in South Sudan. But the damage they do goes well beyond this. It undermines inclusive development through three related processes:

• Creating a culture of impunity, which facilitates corruption and diverts resources from productive investments
• Manipulating government expenditure and other public resources and opportunities to sustain patronage networks and ensure the shadow state’s political survival
• Creating monopolistic or oligopolistic conditions that increase prices and enable companies with links to the shadow state to make excessive profits.

The result is that resources and investments are systematically diverted into private hands. In South Sudan, companies in league with the ruling party, the SPLM, and the military have used these connections to establish near-monopolies in critical sectors of the economy that exploit the public. In one case, this led to severe fuel shortages that artificially inflated prices in the country.

In conclusion, when added to the billions of dollars lost through straightforward corruption, theft, and fraud, it is clear that these processes represent one of the most significant barriers to inclusive development in South Sudan. Unless these networks are challenged, they will continue to keep citizens in poverty while enriching those connected to the shadow state in South Sudan.

The author, Tito Tong, holds a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the Catholic University of Eastern Africa in Nairobi, Kenya. He is pursuing a Master of Business Administration with a specialisation in Human Resources at the same institution. Previously, he worked with multiple radio institutions affiliated with the Catholic Radio Network in South Sudan. If you want to get in touch with him, you can reach him via email at tongkhamisa446@gmail.com.

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