Caution advised in South Sudan

Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa announced last week “the guns of war have now been silenced” in South Sudan.

That was a remarkably bold and unequivocal statement, given the past history of efforts to end the very nasty civil war which erupted in the world’s newest country in December 2013.

It is true he should know what he is talking about. He has been President Jacob Zuma’s special envoy to South Sudan for the better part of two years.

As such, he has been closely involved in one aspect of the peace efforts in South Sudan: the inter-party initiative by the ANC and Tanzania’s ruling CCM party, to reconcile the split factions of South Sudan’s ruling Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM).

It was a fallout within the party, mainly between President Salva Kiir and his deputy, Riek Machar, which sparked the fighting that very quickly became a very bloody tribal war between Kiir’s Dinka people and Machar’s Nuer.

Ramaphosa made his bold prediction after attending the extraordinary national convention of the SPLM in the capital, Juba, last week.

Ramaphosa seemed particularly encouraged by his success in persuading the leaders of the two opposition SPLM factions – the SPLM in Opposition (Machar’s faction) and SPLM (former detainees), an intermediate faction which did not take up arms – who had proposed to boycott the convention, to attend it after all. He had also consulted with them and Kiir.

He had been assured by all of them that the latest ceasefire was permanent.

It is true that there has been a breakthrough, with the rival factions agreeing on Thursday at last to form the transitional government of national unity which had been envisaged in an August 2015 peace agreement. The factions have since agreed on the allocation of ministries among them in that government.

The transitional government is scheduled to govern the country for 30 months, to prepare the ground, including mending the terrible divisions caused by more than two years of fighting, for elections to be held in a conducive atmosphere for a new democratic government.

So, on the face of it, things look good. But caution is still advised.

Just a few days before the deal was sealed, the International Crisis Group (ICG) was warning that “Yet again, the world’s newest country is at risk of descending into full-blown civil war. The peace agreement reached between the government and the largest armed opposition group in August after intensive African-led mediation is on the brink of collapse.”

It said that in the absence of real reconciliation within the SPLM, independent armed groups outside the deal were proliferating.

The ICG urged the external mediators involved in the peace efforts – mainly the regional intergovernmental body IGAD – to intensify their efforts to bring the warring factions back to the peace table. And that is what happened.

And so this peace agreement looks more hopeful than any others so far.

But much could still trip it up, not least the deep mistrust between Kiir and Machar which has been greatly aggravated by the cruelty and barbarity of the two years of brutal warfare.

The report of the commission of inquiry into human rights abuses during the first months of the fighting, commissioned by the AU and led by former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo, has chronicled appalling crimes on both sides, including cannibalism, torture and mass rape.

A hybrid court is to be set up to try these offences. The proceedings of that court rip the scabs off wounds that are far from being healed.

Alternatively both Kiir and Machar could conveniently decide to stifle the court’s activities, since both of them are implicated. That would be a grievous blow to justice and the longer term prospects of peace.

So two cheers for the peace. But it may be a little premature for Ramaphosa to be declaring, Neville Chamberlain style, on his return from Juba, that he and his colleagues have secured “peace in our time”.