South Sudan: Off to war in a football shirt - and to church in Sunday best

The men who govern here today were, during that era, the rebels doing their best to starve the place into submission. For years, every gallon of petrol, every bullet and every loaf of bread consumed in Juba had to be flown in from Khartoum, like a mini Berlin Airlift.

The rebels finally entered Juba after they won the titanic battle for independence in 2005. The birth of South Sudan in 2011 began the city’s brief heyday as a young national capital. Barely two years later, South Sudan’s civil war broke out in December 2013 – and the new country has been tearing itself apart ever since. But there is one consolation: Juba has survived even worse in the past.

When rebels burn down a village in South Sudan, traditional war parties – not the army – often set off to find the raiders. I happened to arrive in the town of Wangkei soon after a rebel attack^[1]. A tell-tale pillar of black smoke rose into the sky a mile or two away.

As I watched, a war party of 30 young men loped past, determined to exact revenge. They were armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles – and most wore brightly coloured football shirts – but they were heading out to do battle in a way that had not otherwise changed for millennia.

Something else that has not changed in this vast country, almost untouched by the forces of development, is the difficulty attached to travelling long distances. If there are roads, they are often vulnerable to ambush or in terrible condition – or both. Going by air is the only option, but useable runways are in short supply, particularly during the rainy season.

The only way for me to reach Unity State in the far north was on board a United Nations helicopter flown by three cheerful Russians.

For most of the 90-minute flight, an emerald plain unfolded beneath us, criss-crossed by marshland and tributaries of the White Nile. There was no sign of human habitation – not a hut and not a track. From the air, large expanses of South Sudan still resemble a virgin land.

Juba is overwhelmingly Christian, and dressing in your Sunday best here really means something. At St Theresa Catholic Cathedral, the congregation filled every wooden pew – and all of the extra plastic seats in the aisles. Even so, the crowd of worshippers overflowed from the nave to the cathedral steps.

References

1. ^{^} I happened to arrive in the town of Wangkei soon after a rebel attack (www.telegraph.co.uk)