Africa: Justice Cannot Wait in South Sudan

South Sudan's leaders have a chance to turn a page in history. They should reject any amnesty and cooperate with investigations, even if it means submitting to a process they can't control.

With a fragile ceasefire barely inked, political and ethnic tensions running high, and tens of thousands of people sheltering in UN compounds across the country, the stakes for South Sudan could not be higher.

On the night of 15 December, a dispute between the country's two leading military commanders-cum-politicians - President Salva Kiir and former Vice President Riek Machar - triggered armed conflict between pro-government troops in favour of Kiir on one side and opposition forces loyal to Machar on the other. The violence started in the capital Juba, but quickly spread to towns across eastern South Sudan.

The long-brewing tensions between the two men had peaked when Kiir dismissed his entire cabinet including Machar in July and in the lead-up to an overdue convention of the ruling Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) in December.

Machar, who had declared his intention to run for president in 2015, and his allies (three of whom also said they would run) had been openly critical of Kiir's chairmanship of the party, and more broadly of his increasingly repressive leadership. Hours after they boycotted the SPLM meeting, soldiers in the presidential guard - or so-called Tiger division - started shooting at each other in events that remain unclear.

Kiir is a member of the Dinka, South Sudan's biggest ethnic group, while Machar is a member of the Nuer, the country's second largest group, and when the fighting in Juba started, it quickly set off a domino effect of military defections by Nuer commanders and clashes between pro-government and rebel forces in several key towns.

On 16 December, Kiir accused Machar of having plotted a coup and detained eleven of his suspected allies, of whom seven have recently been released. On the streets of Juba, the violence took on dangerous ethnic overtones, with Dinka forces in the government openly targeting ethnic Nuer in neighbourhood round-ups and house-to-house searches, killing many in cold blood.

On my recent visit to South Sudan, a 34-year Nuer civil servant, wincing from his still raw gunshot wounds, claimed that on the afternoon of 16 December, Dinka government forces stopped him with his friends, took them to a building used by police and other forces in the Gudele suburb of Juba, locked them in a crowded room with around 200 others, and shot at all them through the windows.