Debating Ideas reflects the values and editorial ethos of the African Arguments book series, publishing engaged, often radical, scholarship, original and activist writing from within the African continent and beyond. It offers debates and engagements, contexts and controversies, and reviews and responses flowing from the African Arguments books. It is edited and managed by the International African Institute, hosted at SOAS University of London, the owners of the book series of the same name.
Look at South Sudan and ask yourself the question: is the world's 'newest country' really ruled any differently than it was under previous regimes? Let's take the past 120 years or so. We'll start with 1899 to 1956, when the region that is now South Sudan was under British-led colonial occupation. Then let's shift to the waves of rebel rule that took place during the internal wars that took shape within the region from the early 1960s to 2005. We'll wrap things up from 2005, when the series of peace agreements that set the ball rolling for the country's 2011 independence took shape, to the present.
Where does all this lead us? In 'Of Rule not Revenue: South Sudan's Revenue Complex from Colonial, Rebel, to Independent Rule, 1899 to 2023' , I illustrate that rather than significant ruptures in patterns of rule in the now independent region, we see continuities. Tracing revenue is the key to identifying and tracking this overarching interrelationship between 1899 to the present. From British-led rule, rebel rule, into still on-going independent rule, rulers have predominantly financed themselves using revenue that is obtained from outside of the country instead of bargaining with citizens to obtain revenue from domestic taxes. Throughout each of these timeframes, rather than invest in a welfare state, rulers have coercively taxed everyday people to subsidise their often deeply self-interested rule. My analysis consequently illustrates that though things might have seemingly changed with each ruler, the experience of rule as extortionate and predatory has largely remained unchanged because of how rulers have financed themselves.
Let's explore these timeframes in more detail to see how my argument inverts the tired cliché that because South Sudan is a 'new' sovereign state, how the country is ruled must have also transformed. My findings are based upon a review of South Sudanese and Sudanese national archives, British colonial archives, and over 200 interviews conducted throughout South Sudan over roughly three years in collaboration with the
Now begin with the European colonial occupation of South Sudan as part of the British-led Anglo-Egyptian Condominium. The colonial administration, like every other colonial regime, was obsessed with revenue raising and taxation from the time it began in 1899 to 1956 when then-unified Sudan decolonised. Leading British colonial thinkers essentially argued taxes were the glue that bound difficult-to-rule nomadic and pastoralist peoples to the nascent state. All chiefs and other types of customary authorities had to report to the colonial regime and their loyalty or performance was determined by their ability to collect taxes. Taxes were taken from people who often complained of their own destitution even though colonial rulers used export revenue, largely from cotton, rather than taxation revenue to pay for their administration. Even if the money communities in what is now South Sudan paid in taxes was negligible to the national government, rulers insisted upon coercively collecting taxes as a means of asserting colonial ideas of order.
When the first wave of rebel movements emerged in the region that is now South Sudan in the early 1960s just after then-unified Sudan became independent, these expensive wars were financed from internationalised sources. Interviews from across South Sudan highlight how rebel rulers paid for their wars through external support from patrons that included neighbouring states like Ethiopia and Uganda, and governments further afield such as Israel. Rebels also manipulated international aid from countries such as the USA to their advantage. Populations in the region were still often heavily taxed in kind, rather than monetarily. Livestock, grain, and in the most harrowing of circumstances, individual boys and men were forcibly conscripted into fighting the war as a 'tax'.
Today, the country is overwhelmingly dependent on oil revenues and unfortunately, much of the evidence points to business as usual that benefits those who rule rather than a shift into a golden era of shared prosperity for most South Sudanese. A mix of colonial and rebel predatory revenue raising practices endure. For instance, over a decade ago the current president admitted that billions of dollars of oil revenue had disappeared and more has almost certainly been stolen since. Rather than contributing to public spending to finance a welfare state project, the money that the country generates supports its military and security services. Meanwhile, international aid largely finances the country's health and education sectors. Practically, underpaid and irregularly paid public servants are given license to predate upon South Sudanese people to make up for salaries that in recent years have been so low that a month's wage would barely pay for a single, modest, meal.
So where does this leave us? Crucially, none of this was predestined; change, despite over a century of extortionate patterns of rule, always remains possible. Firstly, as war increasingly impacts more of our world, we need to think carefully about the contents of peace agreements and the technocratic economic policies that typically and often necessarily emerge in their wake. South Sudan's peace agreements contain plenty of language calling for fiscal transparency. Yet there are few provisions for practically engaging with South Sudanese communities. The result is a series of peace agreements that have effectively rewarded belligerents for fighting the war with a seat at the table. The most well-meaning transparency initiatives have done little to make the country's finances legible to the public. The way South Sudan's wars have been financed through external sources is also indicative of a broader pattern of contemporary war-making and is not unique.
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Within South Sudan, there is more work to be done to demystify seemingly elite and technocratic language of public finances, which can be dry as the paper it's printed on. As we have seen in neighbouring Sudan before war in the country began in 2023, civic groups can powerfully hold coercive rulers to account by deciphering even the most mysterious government budget. Much like South Sudan, the sprawling Sudanese national security apparatus has ensnared businesses within their tendrils and continues to enrich itself even in the current conflict. Prior to the last military coup in 2021 and before the ongoing conflict emerged, Sudanese civil society did the diligent work of placing deeply sensitive questions about who 'owns' public finances at the heart of the popular civic and democratic processes. In so doing, they challenged the military's cartel-like dominance of Sudan's private sector. South Sudanese civil society might find this kind of exercise useful as a starting point.
Matthew Sterling Benson is a social and economic historian of Africa in the Conflict and Civicness Research Group at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) where he is also the Sudans Research Director. Matthew is currently writing a book manuscript examining the history of revenue and different forms of often coercive rule in the Sudans.
