South Sudan National Dialogue, vol 1 of 5

South Sudan’s National Dialogue, announced by President Salva Kiir Mayardit in December 2016 and launched on 22 May 2017, was intended as an open, free and transparent forum in which the people of South Sudan could debate issues of public concern. The numerous documents generated through the National Dialogue include reports on various consultations by the steering committee’s subcommittees, and from the regional and national conferences that formed part of the process.

The documents have been arranged into five volumes:

Volume 1: The Background

Volume 2: The Consultations

Volume 3: The Regional Conferences

Volume 4: Special Studies and Thematic Issues

Volume 5: The National Conference

Volume 1

The Background

Volume 2

The Consultations

Volume 3

The Regional Conferences

Volume 4

Special Studies and Thematic Issues

Volume 5

The National Conference

Foreword to the National Dialogue Reports

There is a popular saying that success has many midwives. The fact that the initiative for South Sudan’s National Dialogue is now claimed by, and is attributed to, numerous individuals and institutions is a mark of its remarkable success.

But it is also evidence of the fact that it triggered a wellknown indigenous African propensity for dialogue. The core of this cultural characteristic is that Africans traditionally sat under a shaded tree and engaged in an allinclusive discussion of public issues. But the true champion of South Sudan’s National Dialogue is President Salva Kiir Mayardit who adopted the idea, acted upon it, gave it full political and material support, and made sure that people were free to speak their minds without any intimidation, harassment or inhibition.

When the president first announced his initiative for the National Dialogue in December 2016, and then launched the steering committee on 22 May 2017, no one questioned it as a matter of principle. The only concern expressed was whether the process was genuine or a political ploy by the president to polish his image and that of his regime. However, the fact that the process was co-chaired by two highly respected political leaders and statesmen, Abel Alier Wai Kwai and Angelo Beda Bangberu, provided sound ground for raised expectations of integrity and credibility. From the start, and based on the experiences of national dialogues in other countries, it was agreed that the prospects of success depended on the extent to which the principles of inclusivity, credibility, transparency and integrity were observed.

Although the cleavages of the war constrained inclusivity, and the armed factions did not participate, these principles were indeed meticulously honoured. After the Revitalized Peace Agreement was concluded and signed on 12 September 2018, all the parties joined the National Dialogue. One faction of the opposition, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-in-Opposition (SPLM-IO), later withdrew, ostensibly opting to remain in the opposition. Virtually all the parties agreed that the coverage of issues, findings and recommendations of the National Dialogue represent the will of all the people of South Sudan, irrespective of political affiliation. It can be said that in a political climate of pervasive conflict, political tensions and the constraints of both objective and internalized insecurity, the National Dialogue opened a page of appreciable freedom of speech that the president consistently encouraged and supported. The president repeatedly said that the National Dialogue was never

intended to be a net or bait on a hook to catch the opponents of government, but was meant to be a genuinely open, free and transparent process. The National Dialogue is not meant to be a framework for the government to dialogue within itself, but a forum for the people of South Sudan to debate issues of public concern. And indeed, for over four years, the people spoke at various levels with remarkable candor and courage. That alone was a great success.

The National Dialogue was launched by the president at the same time that the process to revitalize the 2015 peace agreement that ended the 2013 conflict was undertaken by regional and international mediators. The two processes were seen by the president as complementary and mutually reinforcing. And indeed, the two initiatives significantly contributed to the peace process from opposite perspectives of the spectrum. One was initiated and supported by regional and international actors and had the leverage of their political and material backing. The other was home grown and therefore enjoyed the legitimacy and dignity of national sovereignty. Although the latter received much-appreciated financial support from the government of Japan and from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), as well as other in-kind contributions from several different external sources, it mainly depended on internal financial support from the government of South Sudan, with no strings attached. Another element of complementarity of the two processes was that one was largely topdown and the other bottom-up. Although the resulting agreement from the top-down process covered all areas of governance and state-building, the focus of mediation was on ending the violence through power-sharing and security arrangements to support that objective. The other bottom-up process covered all the geographical regions, with a few exceptions dictated by insecurity of the war conditions, and comprehensively addressed all the problems facing the country.

The numerous documents generated by the National Dialogue have been clustered into five volumes covering the reports of the subcommittees’ consultations and the regional and national conferences, as well as a range of thematic issues. The process began with an initial phase of open debates by the steering committee, followed

by a preparatory phase involving lessons from other national dialogues and operational procedures for field consultations. After that phase, 15 subcommittees were formed to cover the grassroots in the former 10 states, with additional subcommittees on the two ‘Special Administrative Areas of Abyei and Pibor’, and three other subcommittees on the thematic issues of ‘Security’, the ‘National Capital’ and ‘Refugees and International Outreach’. These subcommittees conducted their consultations and reported to the steering committee. The process then moved on to three regional conferences and ended with a national conference.

Volume 1 comprises background information including a note on the concept of the National Dialogue initiative by the president; lessons learned from other national dialogues; procedural issues relating to the framework and guidelines for the National Dialogue consultations; and the formation of the 15 subcommittees and their reports. The subcommittees were formed on the basis of the 10 states clustered under the three greater regions of Bahr el Ghazal, Equatoria and Upper Nile, the two administrative areas of Abyei and Pibor, and three thematic issues covering the national capital, security, and refugees.

Volume 2 comprises the grassroots consultations conducted in the former 10 states clustered under the three greater regions of Bahr el Ghazal, Equatoria and Upper Nile; the two administrative areas of Abyei and Pibor; and three thematic issues covering the national capital, security and refugees.

Volume 3 includes reports from three regional conferences of the greater regions of Bahr el Ghazal, Equatoria and Upper Nile.

Volume 4 comprises special studies and thematic issues: an appeal for action on Abyei; an appeal for international support for elections; building a shared vision for the new nation; a call for national action and establishing a permanent national constitution; recommendaions for national reconciliation; completing the implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement; establishing a South Sudan land policy and administration; establishing a foreign policy for South Sudan; and developing a mechanism for the implementation of the recommendations of the National Dialogue.

Volume 5 comprises the outcome documents of the National Dialogue Conference on: governance transformation; rehabilitation of and and kick-starting South Sudan’s economy; security sector reforms; and recommendations for social cohesion. The documents include the final resolutions of the national conference and a communique.

The reports of the National Dialogue were submitted to the president of the Republic of South Sudan by the leadership and the secretariat on 10 May 2021 with a covering note signed by the two co-chairs and the rapporteur. The president graciously received the reports with lavish praise for the work and success of the National Dialogue, and pledged to ensure the credible implementation of the recommendations.

And indeed, it can be stated with justification that the work of the National Dialogue and its outcome far exceeded the expectations of those who initiated it. The process was initially envisaged to take months, specifically three to four months. It took more than three years, verging on four. The process can be said to have acquired a life of its own that imposed itself on the nation and even on the leadership that initiated it. The outcome now has its own independent identity as a national product collectively owned by the people of South Sudan. And the implementation of its recommendations can no longer be the obligation of the president and his government alone, but a collective challenge to the nation as a whole with the support of international partners as needed. The relevant clusters of the Government of National Unity and their ministries and other specialized entities should now select those recommendations pertinent to their mandates and act on their implementation.

The value of the documents of the National Dialogue is multifaceted and can be utilized to serve objectives within a short-, medium- and long-term time frame. They represent the documentation of a process that can serve the country’s immediate needs for action in the areas covered. They also provide records for scholars and researchers of history, politics, sociology, development and nation-building for generations to come.

The National Dialogue has successfully accomplished the task to which it was assigned. We reiterate our profound gratitude to all those who supported the process and contributed to its success. Implementing the recommendations of the National Dialogue should not be seen as a wholesale one-time action, but a process and a guiding road map in which elements can be selected and acted upon as separate pieces in the quest for comprehensively pursuing peace, security, stability, development and prosperity for the country for the foreseeable future.

Bona Malwal Madut Rapporteur

Francis Mading Deng Deputy Rapporteur and Spokesperson

The President’s Concept Note

December 2016

The President’s Concept Note

This concept note was drafted by President Salva Kiir Mayardit of the Republic of South Sudan in December 2016. It briefly outlines his vision, objectives and proposal for the South Sudan National Dialogue.

In my capacity as the president of the Republic of South Sudan, I feel a great responsibility to protect and preserve the unity of the people of South Sudan and end their suffering. In fulfilment of this responsibility, I am initiating the process of a National Dialogue. As you are aware, our country descended into political crisis in 2013, following an attempt by some senior members of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) to seize power militarily, a move that was in total contradiction of our constitution and our liberation ideals. The political crisis was immediately followed by extreme violence that shook the foundation of our young republic. As a result of these developments, our country is deeply divided and the continuing conflict is threatening to tear it asunder. As your president, I bear the greatest responsibility for uniting our people. National unity is the ultimate means through which we can preserve, protect and restore the integrity of our country. National unity is a function of dialogue and consensus.

In pursuit of national unity and reconciliation, my government has undertaken many efforts to bring the conflict to an end and to create a favourable environment to rebuild national consensus. These efforts resulted in the Intra-SPLM Arusha Agreement and the Agreement on the Resolution of Conflict in South Sudan (ARCSS). While these agreements have to a large extent addressed many political issues, fundamental questions remain that require a much broader forum. Both the Arusha Agreement and ARCSS have narrowly addressed the power and military nexus of the conflict, the next stage requires the participation of a broader South Sudanese polity in order to fully restore peace and tranquility in the country. All these factors have compelled me to initiate a process of national dialogue.

DEFINING THE NATIONAL DIALOGUE

The National Dialogue is both a forum and a process through which the people of South Sudan shall gather to redefine the basis of their unity as it relates to nationhood, to the redefinition of citizenship and of belonging, to the restructuring of the state, to renegotiating of the social

contract and to the revitalization of their aspirations for development and membership in the world of nations. In my view, a successful National Dialogue can only be realized if and when all the people of South Sudan have broadly participated, agreed and accepted its agenda and outcomes.

For this to be realized the process of the National Dialogue must be seen as credible, genuine and open to all the peoples of South Sudan, and it should have reliable guarantees for its outcomes to be accepted and implemented. For the process to be credible, I am throwing the full weight of the government behind it, but the government will not lead or control the process. The government strongly believes in a South Sudanese-led process, and so we will identify persons of consensus who have stature and possess integrity to steer the process. My government will guarantee safety and freedom of the actors who participate in the National Dialogue, including those who are currently out of the country, some of whom are opposed to the current government.

In order for the government to throw its weight behind the National Dialogue, it is important that there is an acceptable agenda and a set of parameters to guide this national process. One of the parameters is for all stakeholders to accept the fact that the National Dialogue is situated within the framework of the Peace Agreement (ARCSS). Doing this is certainly critical, as it would ensure that its proceedings would not contravene the terms of the agreement. However, the proceedings should augment and enrich the agreement. This is important because without the Peace Agreement the National Dialogue would be chaotic.

OBJECTIVES OF THE NATIONAL DIALOGUE

The broader objectives of the National Dialogue are to end all violent conflicts in South Sudan, to build national consensus and to save the country from disintegration and foreign interference. To achieve the aforementioned overarching objectives, the specific objectives are to: 1. End political and communal violence in the country and resolve how to properly transform the military.

2. Redefine and re-establish a stronger national unity (including redefining citizenship, belonging, residency and political participation).

3. Restructure the state and negotiate a social contract between the citizens and their government. (This would involve addressing the nature of federalism, tackling the rising conflicts over land and the federalization of political decisions affecting party structures.)

4. Settle issues of diversity (which would include dealing with fear of political domination and addressing issues of the national army, civil service and foreign service).

5. Resolve issues related to resources sharing and allocation. (These include land ownership and management; communal and states land disputes; oil, gas and minerals; and taxes.)

6. Settle social disputes and sources of conflict (cattle raiding and rustling, child abduction, communal violence related to marriages, territory, murder and other matters relating to cattle, and human migration).

7. Set the stage for an integrated and inclusive national development strategy.

8. Agree on steps and guarantees to ensure safe, fair, free and peaceful elections and a peaceful transition in 2018.

9. Agree on a strategy to return internally displaced persons and refugees to their homes.

10. Develop a framework for national peace, healing and reconciliation.

STEPS LEADING TO THE NATIONAL DIALOGUE

In order to ensure integrity of the National Dialogue process it should follow specific steps to merit credibility, acceptability and robustness of its outcome. The following steps should lead to the National Dialogue:

1. Following passage by the National Council of Ministers, I will officially launch the start of the National Dialogue.

2. As your president, I will personally be the patron of the National Dialogue.

3. A national committee of eminent personalities and persons of consensus will be constituted to lead the process of National Dialogue.

4. The committee is tasked primarily with developing its agenda and facilitating the process.

5. The committee will have the freedom to invite experts and eminent persons internationally to help facilitate the process with a secretariat made up of the three nationally based think tanks (the Sudd Institute, Ebony Center, and the Center for Peace and Development at the University of Juba) and the Council of Churches.

6. Stakeholders will be identified both within and outside the country. Once the list of the stakeholders

is established, the committee shall share the agenda for the National Dialogue with the stakeholders who will be given a time frame to respond to the agenda.

7. Once the agenda for the National Dialogue is accepted, the next step will be to issue a schedule or a timetable for the process. This will be a series of activities at the grassroots level and at the regional level, that would culminate with a national conference to be held in Juba.

STAGES OF THE NATIONAL DIALOGUE

The National Dialogue shall undergo three different stages. The first phase shall largely deal with grassroots consultations. The broader aim of these consultations would be to map out grievances that are unique to each community and ones that encompass a broader spectrum in order to deal with these issues at an appropriate level.

The second step is to convene regional peace conferences. These regional peace conferences shall bring communities in each region together to discuss and resolve outstanding intercommunal conflicts and pass resolutions that shall be forwarded to the national conference as necessary. The objective of these conferences is to initiate a dialogue at the grassroots level, particularly among the border communities, which certainly have unique and localized disputes that should to be resolved at that level. In each conference, major issues shall be identified, discussed and resolved, and those resolutions shall be adopted by states, while matters that pertain to the competences of the national government will be forwarded to the national conference.

The third and final stage is the convening of the national conference. The national conference shall tackle remaining issues that are not addressed in the subnational processes, which would have direct bearing on national cohesion. This last stage should deal with the adoption of resolutions reached therein, and with the

Figure 1: The flow of the National Dialogue across different stages

dissemination of the same at different subnational levels, as deemed necessary. Equally, at the national level, some resolutions should be forwarded to different processes, such as the constitutional conference on peace, healing and reconciliation, among other bodies, for consideration and inclusion therein.

CONCLUSION

Fellow citizens, I want to conclude by calling upon all the stakeholders in the country to fully embrace peace, and

Salva Kiir Mayardit

President

of

the Republic of South Sudan

December 2016

to seize this opportunity to embrace a dialogue with one another. I strongly believe that doing this will certainly set our great country on the right path, on a course that ensures we address our differences in a non-violent manner. Peace is within our reach, but we must accept that the responsibility to restore peace in South Sudan rests with us, the people of South Sudan. We should not despair and we should not give up on our hopes for a better future.

Together, we will reclaim the greatness of our country and the unity of its people. May the Almighty God bless the Republic of South Sudan and its people.

October 2017

Document 1 of the South Sudan National Dialogue Steering Committee: Preliminary Report

October 2017

The president of the Republic of South Sudan, General Salva Kiir Mayardit, launched the National Dialogue Steering Committee on 22 May 2017 when he swore in the 109 members that he had earlier announced in December 2016. The presidential decree also included a secretariat of 17 representatives from some of the country’s universities, research and think-tank organizations who were assigned dual roles, both as the National Dialogue Secretariat and as the manager of its accounts.

OBJECTIVES OF THE NATIONAL DIALOGUE

The broader objectives of the National Dialogue are to end all violent conflicts in South Sudan; build a national consensus; and save the country from disintegration and foreign interference. To achieve the aforementioned overarching objectives, the following specific actions are called to:

1. End political and communal violence in the country and resolve the question of how to properly transform the military.

2. Redefine and re-establish a stronger sense of national unity (including redefining citizenship, belonging, residency and political participation).

3. Restructure the state and negotiate the social contract between the citizens and their government. This includes addressing the nature of federalism; tackling the rising conflicts over land, viability, belonging and border issues; and the federation of political decisions affecting party structures.

4. Settle issues of diversity, including dealing with fear of political domination, and addressing issues concerning the national army, civil service and foreign service.

5. Resolve issues related to resource sharing and allocation, including land ownership and management; communal and state land disputes; oil, gas and minerals; and taxes.

6. Settle social disputes and sources of conflict (cattle raiding and rustling; child abduction; communal violence related to marriages, territory, murder and cattle; and human migration-related matters).

7. Set a stage for an integrated and inclusive national development strategy.

8. Agree on steps and guarantees to ensure safe, fair, free and peaceful elections and a peaceful transition in 2018.

9. Agree on a strategy to return internally displaced persons and refugees to their homes.

10. Develop a framework for national peace, healing and reconciliation.

Most of the above 10 points of the presidential decree setting up the assignment for the National Dialogue are not just political, they are also legal and constitutional issues. One should bear in mind that although the institutional functions of the South Sudanese state are dysfunctional, a consequence of the political failure to uphold and impose the agreed structures to implement them, the National Dialogue Steering Committee can only make recommendations in its final report about how the young state of South Sudan deals with these matters. If there is a need for constitutional and legal action, then such a recommendation will require legal steps to be taken to realize such action on the ground.

A good example of the first institutional failure was the ruling party’s decision that Juba would become the national capital of South Sudan. From the outset those governing the young state should have indicated how much land around Juba was part of the national capital and reached agreement with the traditional owners of that land. The acquisition of that land by the new government should have been legally undertaken, similar to the concept of eminent domain in British common law. Subsequently,

the government should then have allotted land according to the purposes it deemed necessary.

Instead, the citizens of South Sudan, who by necessity needed to be around their national capital, dealt only with traditional landowners around Juba regarding land that had not yet become nationalized since the requisite legal institutions had not yet been established de jure. The question of the national capital of South Sudan has, therefore, now become one of the major factors in the dispute in the young South Sudanese state. Is the capital of the Republic of South Sudan staying in Juba or is it moving elsewhere? And is the answer to such a question part of the National Dialogue’s mandate to resolve, or to recommend as to how to resolve it?

The steering committee convened as a plenary for the entire month of June 2017, starting on Tuesday, 23 May 2017, and continuing to Thursday, 26 June 2017. During this month, the plenary allowed each member who wanted to speak to go on for as long as half of an hour, to say what they thought had gone wrong with South Sudan since July 2005, the beginning of the six-year interim period, following the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in Nairobi, Kenya, on 9 January 2005. Since that time, South Sudan has experienced a series of political and security traumas that have culminated in a bloody civil conflict that started on 15 December 2013 and which continues to rage, even while the National Dialogue, the subject of this preliminary report, is taking place.

The president of the Republic of South Sudan, in initiating the National Dialogue, had announced publicly that he wanted the country’s members to feel free to say whatever they thought had gone wrong in their country, and to recommend what they thought was the way forward for the country. In an act of personal contrition, President Salva Kiir Mayardit apologized for mistakes the government of the young country may have committed under his leadership, and asked for public forgiveness. The president withdrew from personally being the patron of the National Dialogue, which he had announced in his presidential decree of December 2016. The president then subsequently superseded that December 2016 decree with a new order of April 2017.

It is a well-established truth that any level of corruption limits and deters all types of investment, domestic or foreign, from being made in the country. Without question, determined and effective action is now urgently required to overcome malfeasance, if South Sudan has any chance of extricating itself from the deep pit that its political leadership has cast the country in. The National Dialogue Steering Committee can help this young and resource-rich country to climb out of the pit it has been thrown into by just a single political movement and one leadership. Since it is this same leadership that now feels the urge, at

least as personified by the president, to do something to extricate the country from its current baleful condition, the role of this dialogue forum must be to point out the facts and to point the way out of the crisis through clear and credible recommendations.

Most members of the National Dialogue Steering Committee, if not all, seem to have taken the president at his word and appreciate the noble gesture of establishing the National Dialogue. The president’s urge for the freedom to speak and his pledge for non- interference in the work of the National Dialogue, seems to have encouraged members of the steering committee to speak out extremely freely. They hope that their recommendations will be taken equally seriously when they present them to the president.

This is not a final report and will not, therefore, contain recommendations arising from interventions by individual members of the National Dialogue Steering Committee. Such recommendations and guidelines will hopefully be formulated and be contained in the final report and recommendations of the steering committee when it is finally completed.

Furthermore, the National Dialogue Steering Committee has now formed into 15 regional subcommittees, which, at the time of preparing this preliminary report, would be touring the countryside of South Sudan. The subcommittees will hopefully have recorded evidence of what the public think has gone wrong with our country and its political system. All this will constitute the final document of the first National Dialogue of South Sudan.

Apart from the internal regional subcommittees within South Sudan, the National Dialogue Steering Committee has also set up two subcommittees to visit a number of African countries to talk to leaders of South Sudan’s opposition political groups that have not responded to the call for the National Dialogue. This includes individuals whose names are included in the presidential decree as members of the National Dialogue Steering Committee, but who have not yet responded to the invitation, or who have responded negatively.

The first delegation, led by one of the co-chairs of the National Dialogue Steering Committee, the Hon. Angelo Beda, visited the Republic of South Africa. In their meetings, the government of the Republic of South Africa had indicated its support for the National Dialogue and encouraged the South Sudanese to carry on with their national dialogue, whatever the problems confronting the process may be. The deputy president of South Africa at that time, Cyril Ramaphosa, took some pride in the fact that they in South Africa had resorted to a national dialogue too, which encouraged every South African to arrive at the resolution of their political differences.

As part of the seminars that the South Sudan National Dialogue Steering Committee organized for the entire

month of July, members learned and took notes from the experiences of other countries. Several of the speakers at these July seminars in Juba were from South Africa. They outlined to the National Dialogue Steering Committee of South Sudan, how South Africa went about its own national dialogue. The July seminars also included experiences of national dialogues from countries such as Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania, as well as that of the United Nations.

Details of the reports of all the delegations of the South Sudan National Dialogue Steering Committee, who had visited some African countries where some opposition South Sudanese reside, will be made in writing to the plenary of the National Dialogue Steering Committee and will comprise part of its final report.

On launching the National Dialogue Steering Committee in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, on Monday, 22 May 2017, President Salva Kiir Mayardit had announced to the South Sudanese public and to the world at large that former First Vice-President of South Sudan, Riek Machar Teny, was free to nominate his armed movement’s representatives to come to Juba in order to join the National Dialogue. The president further announced that, for security reasons, the physical presence in Juba of Riek Machar himself was not desirable for the time being. This presidential pronouncement about national security and Dr. Machar’s role meant that the current National Dialogue’s contacts with Riek Machar were restricted to only persuading Dr. Machar to appoint a delegation of his movement to join the National Dialogue deliberations in Juba.

Although the National Dialogue was established and the steering committee appointed by President Salva Kiir Mayardit of the Republic of South Sudan and should therefore abide by this his presidential directive, the steering committee, nevertheless, took the view that, for its work to succeed, it must listen to the views of every South Sudanese considered part of the current national problem facing our country. Doctor Riek Machar Teny is one of the national political leaders whose point of view the steering committee remained ever ready to listen to. But Dr. Riek Machar refused to meet the delegation of the National Dialogue Steering Committee. This report will not delve into what this refusal by Dr. Riek Machar, or any other South Sudanese opposition political leader, will mean to the National Dialogue, a national forum which is already talking to most other aggrieved South Sudanese inside the country and/or abroad.

The National Dialogue subcommittees that are visiting foreign countries to talk to South Sudanese opposition political leaders, also have the added responsibility of talking to the governments and political leaders of the countries they visit to explain to the leaders of these

countries what the National Dialogue, initiated by the president of South Sudan, is all about. Indeed, to be able to meet with the South Sudanese leaders abroad, it was important, from the point of view of the National Dialogue Steering Committee, to contact and meet the former First Vice-President of the Republic of South Sudan, Riek Machar Teny, and to invite him to nominate members of his movement to join the National Dialogue back home in Juba. This had not been possible at the time of writing this report, because discussions on this matter are still ongoing.

However, from the outset of this preliminary report, it is important to underscore that the objective of the National Dialogue cannot be achieved if all the warring parties of South Sudan do not commit themselves to peace in South Sudan through dialogue, not just among themselves over sharing power, but also on how to bring peace to South Sudan through dialogue. The National Dialogue cannot apportion power to the warring parties in our country. But if those, who also carry guns with the objective of taking power by force, can commit themselves to discussing how power can and should be attained in South Sudan in the future, such a stance will go some way to achieving peace for our people. It is a peace that has been scuffled by the notion that power in South Sudan can only be taken away by force from those who were elected to that power by the people of South Sudan, and who are now being subjected to the agony of an armed power struggle.

It is also necessary and important to note that, for those who say the National Dialogue should be inclusive, every South Sudanese who regards himself/herself as an active, engaged citizen must be included. Indeed, we feel that it is precisely the objective of the National Dialogue Steering Committee to include as many South Sudanese as possible in order to discuss the failures of the system of governance of South Sudan, and to agree on how to overhaul the failed system. In that regard, the members of the National Dialogue know that they cannot become successful unless it is inclusive. And if the current National Dialogue in South Sudan does not become inclusive, it will not be because it has not tried to include everybody. It will be because of the refusal of some leaders of our community not to conduct dialogue with their brethren, unless they first accede to power through war, through the barrels of a gun.

A second delegation of the National Dialogue Steering Committee visited East Africa – Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda – to contact and meet the leadership of the former political detainees. The leaders of the former detainees are known to move between the capitals of the three countries and the National Dialogue was prepared to meet this group anywhere in any of the three countries they chose. That contact has successfully already taken

place and the report of the National Dialogue Contact Committee will be discussed by the steering committee in its forthcoming session.

Some of these former detainees had been included in the original list of the National Dialogue Steering Committee, first announced by the president of the Republic of South Sudan in December 2016. They had remained on the second list of April 2017. At least two of these former detainees had publicly turned down their appointment to the steering committee. The reasons for this were political and so the National Dialogue Steering Committee sought to engage the entire leadership of the former detainees, since the president’s notion for initiating the National Dialogue was to discuss all the political issues confronting the country, with a view to finding political consensus that might restore peace and unity among the people of South Sudan. The leadership of the former detainees had, in fact, accepted the principle of national dialogue as the only way of resolving the political issues over which the citizens of one country differ.

The delegation of the National Dialogue Steering Committee, which went to East Africa to meet the former political detainees was the same delegation that went to South Africa, led by the co-chair, the Hon. Angelo Beda Bangberu.

A third delegation, which travelled to Khartoum, was led by the Deputy Chair, the Hon. Gabriel Yoal Dok.

The delegation to Khartoum was tricky. Although President Salva Kiir Mayardit had been continuously encouraging the steering committee to contact any South Sudanese political leadership that may help bring peace to South Sudan, it was very noticeable that while the president mentioned Riek Machar Teny by name, as one of the opposition political leaders who could send a delegation of his political movement to Juba to take part in the deliberations of the National Dialogue, the president said nothing about the political and military opponents based in Khartoum. This is because there is almost a universal belief in South Sudan that Khartoum is the only neighbouring capital of South Sudan that is arming and using the South Sudanese armed dissidents to destabilize South Sudan.

Khartoum, naturally, also makes its own charges against Juba, accusing the Government of South Sudan of supporting Khartoum’s dissidents. In spite of all these sensitivities, the leadership of the National Dialogue Steering Committee thought it was important not to leave any South Sudanese out of the National Dialogue, and not provide any dissident leadership of South Sudan with the excuse of having been excluded from the National Dialogue and to continue to cause disturbances in South Sudan, when their views could be heard and become part of a solution to the current national predicament.

At the time of writing this report, the delegation to Khartoum had just returned to Juba. The reports of all the subcommittees of the National Dialogue Steering Committee will first be delivered to the next plenary session of the steering committee and are, therefore, not part of this report.

It needs to be mentioned that apart from the many armed dissident opponents of the government of South Sudan being housed by Khartoum, neighbouring Sudan is also hosting a large number of South Sudanese refugees who have had to flee to neighbouring Sudan in the north from the current security and social predicament confronting the government in Juba. This is not to speak about the large numbers of South Sudanese who had never even thought of returning to South Sudan from their very long sojourn in northern Sudan since all those long years of the Sudanese civil war between the South and the North, before South Sudan finally gained its independence from Sudan, through the CPA of 2005. Because of the political dysfunction of the young Republic of South Sudan, many of its citizens are in Sudan and elsewhere.

The fourth delegation of the National Dialogue Steering Committee that was to travel abroad is the Refugees and International Outreach Subcommittee. The National Dialogue Steering Committee had set up a total of 15 subcommittees; 10 of these will travel to all the regions of South Sudan, to hold meetings and discussions in the town halls, court centres and village meeting grounds, to listen to public opinion of the South Sudanese on the current predicament that the young country faces. The plenary of the National Dialogue Steering Committee will convene again in early October to listen to all the reports of both the contact delegations to Africa and to the regions of South Sudan, and to consider its next step.

A final delegation of the National Dialogue Steering Committee was to visit Addis Ababa, the capital of neighbouring Ethiopia in August. Ethiopia is the current chair of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), and its capital, Addis Ababa hosts the seat of the Organization of African Union (AU). As a continental organization, the AU is supposed to play an important leadership role in trying to maintain peace in Africa. The IGAD had been instrumental as a regional block in mediating and bringing about an end to a long 21-year civil war in Sudan in the late 1990s and in the early 2000s. It mediated the CPA between Khartoum and South Sudan. It was also IGAD that orchestrated the current peace agreement, whose implementation in Juba resulted in the current interim government of national unity there, whose national leadership has initiated the current National Dialogue, which this steering committee is managing.

The National Dialogue Steering Committee has, therefore, resolved that it would keep both IGAD and

the AU and indeed the government of South Sudan’s neighbouring Ethiopia informed of what is going on in the South Sudanese National Dialogue. The first delegation of the National Dialogue, under the leadership of the National Dialogue co-chair, the Hon. Angelo Beda Bangberu, was also to visit Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, to conduct all these extremely necessary and important contacts even before it visited South Africa. However, because contact and the arrangements with South Africa were organized more rapidly than was possible with Addis Ababa, the delegation of the National Dialogue Steering Committee first went to South Africa. It subsequently visited Ethiopia.

The next important subcommittee of the National Dialogue Steering Committee is that for contact with South Sudanese refugees abroad. Chaired by the Hon. Deng Dau, this subcommittee is to visit South Sudan’s neighbouring countries, to where South Sudanese refugees fled from the current conflict in the country since 2013. This subcommittee will confine its role to visiting refugee camps in countries neighbouring South Sudan – Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan and Uganda.

The confinement of this subcommittee only to Africa is based on the evidence that no South Sudanese refugees from the current conflict in South Sudan are thought to have fled beyond Africa. South Sudanese residents elsewhere, beyond the neighbouring countries to South Sudan, are refugees of the 21-year war with northern Sudan. These earlier refugees of the 21-year civil war with northern Sudan, when the country was still one entity, left the continent of Africa for resettlement as refugees of that old war. These South Sudanese travelled outside the continent of Africa on organized resettlement programmes to many of the world’s developed countries outside Africa, under what was then known as the Refugee Resettlement Programme. Some of these original citizens of South Sudan are now well-established citizens of these generous foreign countries around the world, to whom South Sudan is most grateful.

Some of the citizens of South Sudan living in these other countries may have been caught up in the unfortunate and sad events of December 2013 in South Sudan while visiting the country. They were evacuated from South Sudan as foreign nationals and have now returned to the countries of their second citizenship. If so, the National Dialogue Steering Committee considers these citizens of South Sudan as permanently resettled abroad and are no longer refugees. They are, therefore, South Sudanese living in the diaspora, rather than still having the status of South Sudanese refugees.

While the view of the South Sudanese in the diaspora about what is going on at the National Dialogue in the country is as important to the National Dialogue as

the view of any other South Sudanese elsewhere, the National Dialogue Steering Committee is making separate arrangements for contact with this group.

TACKLING THE COMPLEX ISSUES

As the debate within the plenary sessions of the National Dialogue Steering Committee took place in the first full month of June, it became clear that the South Sudanese have entangled themselves in a web of extremely complex issues, and that any attempt to establish a definite time frame within which to conclude the National Dialogue process with tangible, demonstrable results was not possible, let alone easy. It was resolved that members of the steering committee needed to say what they felt was an important step in the entire process.

It was also soon clear that the steering committee was composed of responsible and articulate individuals, some of the most capable individuals of the South Sudanese communities. It was clear no one wanted to keep back anything that needed to be said. Each speaker was allowed as much as half of an hour to speak, or even more if someone needed more time. Only one person took an entire hour to speak. And anything that was said was as clear as it was considerate.

The first plenary session of this National Dialogue Steering Committee has all been recorded, with the speakers’ own voices. This will continue for all plenary sessions of the steering committee that will follow. These will all be transcribed into a hard copy at the end of the process.

This is a historic record of the dark and sad events of South Sudan. Although everyone agrees that these were truly sad events, it is nevertheless the history of South Sudan. The tapes will be preserved and stored after they have been transcribed into a hard, paper copy, which will also be preserved as a document.

There will be a report for any future plenary session of the National Dialogue Steering Committee. The final report of the entire process of the National Dialogue will be the recommendations, drawn up by a specific plenary of the steering committee during an entire plenary session of its own, where the sole task of the plenary members will be to make the final recommendations. The plenary reports of the plenary sessions will form part of the final report.

ENCAPSULATING HISTORY

The political history of South Sudan may be the shortest, in comparison to other more elaborate struggles, for example, those of some of our African brethren. But

the political history of South Sudan, short as it may be, is extremely rich. It includes episodes of internal South Sudanese political conflicts that the leadership of this steering committee deems necessary to encapsulate here, not just as a historic reminder of the long road to nationhood, which no South Sudanese has a right to undermine, destroy or deny. This short, but also elaborate, history, should help the entire people of South Sudan to overcome their current internal impasse.

The 1947 events

By 1920, the British had largely settled onto what they had occupied in East Africa as a result of territorial acquisition or by agreement with the other European colonialists. Northern Sudan was then under Egyptian–British occupation. It became known as the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. But this was really northern Sudan. South Sudan should have remained alone, a desolate territory that no one really wanted. But the misfortune of South Sudan is that the White Nile River flowed through South Sudan for over a thousand miles before it joins the Blue Nile at Khartoum, the Sudanese capital, and formed the one Nile that flows northward to Egypt for at least another one thousand miles.

The British had to reluctantly occupy South Sudan as a protectorate, a loose non-territory really. During this time, the British thought hard about what to do with South Sudan. Northern Sudan was now peaceful and settled by Muslims, largely of Arab stock. The black Africans of northern Sudan, the Nuba and the Ingessana, were peaceful and obedient. They did not cause problems to anyone. The Fur and the other African tribes of Darfur had become Muslims. It was now South Sudan. Not to manage these wild tribes properly could have upset the colonial agenda all over the place.

Up north, beyond northern Sudan, the Egyptians were keen on the water, mainly the sources of the Nile River. The White Nile flows through South Sudan, with its many important tributaries. As partners with the British in larger geopolitical interests elsewhere, the British helped to add South Sudan to northern Sudan, to reassure the Egyptians about the flow of the Nile waters. The British did nothing else to South Sudan.

When the Christian missionaries started some rudimentary system of education in South Sudan, the affinity of the South was to East Africa. The British wanted nothing of this. The interest of Egypt and northern Sudan over South Sudan was too strong to ignore, or to tamper with.

By 1947, the British decided that they could not hold onto South Sudan any longer. The Egyptians were threatening to recognize the unilateral independence of

Sudan. By that time, South Sudan had not become an integral part of northern Sudan.

Britain had abolished slavery at home in England. British colonial territories had to do the same. The British colonial officials in Sudan had to prohibit slavers in northern Sudan from enslaving South Sudanese people. But the politics of national independence caught up faster in northern Sudan than the pacification of South Sudan.

One single colonial official, the colonial civil secretary of Sudan at that time, Sir James Robertson, who had served only in northern Sudan and never in South Sudan, decreed that South Sudan had to become part of Sudan. By June 1947, the colonial civil secretary arrived in Juba in South Sudan, accompanied by his northern Sudanese political friends who had promised him that they would look after the South Sudanese, if Britain decreed that South Sudan was part of northern Sudan.

A delegation of mostly illiterate South Sudanese tribal chiefs were summoned to Juba and told by the colonial civil secretary that South Sudan and northern Sudan would, from June 1947 on, become one country. The illiterate South Sudanese tribal chiefs protested this colonial decision to no avail.

By 1954, a mere seven years after 1947, the British had conceded independence to northern Sudan. A process of decolonization of Sudan was initiated. A national political system was set up for Sudan, with a parliament dominated by northern Sudanese, a council of state headed by a northern Sudanese and a cabinet headed by a northern Sudanese prime minister. No South Sudanese became part of that system, or had been groomed for government or state responsibility over the north and the south.

By August 1955, when it became clear to South Sudanese that they had traded colonial masters – the British for the northern Sudanese – the first South Sudanese war of liberation was started in Torit, Eastern Equatoria, by the South Sudanese unit of the Sudan defence forces. The British did not want to give this first rebellion by South Sudan a political colour. So they called it a mutiny.

Since 1955, until it achieved its independence on 9 July 2011, South Sudan engaged in a continuous political struggle – always against northern Sudan, but sometimes, also internally within itself. The catastrophe which has now befallen the South Sudanese may be its direst, but it is not unique. It is not its first. It can only be hoped that it will be its last.

All young and new countries have their own internal upheavals at the outset. This is not something peculiar to South Sudan only. If all other young countries overcame their early upheavals, and have remained one country and some of them are even now stable and peaceful, South Sudanese should also aspire to their own stability.

With clear minds and clear hearts, South Sudan needs to overcome this latest and its most extreme trauma. Members of the National Dialogue Steering Committee need to keep in mind, as they struggle to find peace for themselves and their community, that South Sudan has not always been a united front politically, even though the extent of the violence never before reached its current pitch, and for which the current National Dialogue is being asked to deal with.

The 1947 Juba Conference

Although the 1947 Juba Conference was a political discourse by South Sudanese political thinkers with British colonial officials to freely determine whether or not to unite with northern Sudan, unity with northern Sudan was in fact a colonial decision, imposed by the colonial power in June 1947. South Sudan really never accepted, willingly, that it had become part of and one country with northern Sudan. Nevertheless, these illiterate South Sudanese did not successfully formulate the problems that would befall this so-called, newly united ‘Sudan’. But the South Sudanese view at the 1947 Juba Conference was also not a united, cohesive one.

There were some educated South Sudanese, who were working as Sudan government officials at the 1947 Juba Conference. Most of them, if not all of them, had quite readily accepted the colonial suggestion of South Sudan becoming one country with northern Sudan. Not in a position to reject their colonial masters’ decision, made in Khartoum before being finally announced in Juba, the South Sudanese traditional chiefs had warned of the problems to follow that fateful colonial decision of 1947, whereby South Sudan and northern Sudan became one country.

The chiefs declared to the colonial authority that they were not one people with the northern Sudanese; they needed a longer political period under colonialism to first develop as a separate people, before they could decide to join with northern Sudan as one country, let alone as one people. But the traditional South Sudanese chief’s voice was not a political voice; it was ignored and the territory was declared one country.

Some of the few educated South Sudanese, who wanted unity with northern Sudan earned some political benefit in the new national set-up in Khartoum, with some becoming ministers of the new national government and others becoming members of parliament.

A weak political party of South Sudan, called the Liberal Party, was hastily established in Juba with the

help of sympathetic British colonial civil administrators in South Sudan. But these novice South Sudanese politicians were easily dispersed in Khartoum; they were recruited and became members of the more experienced, better educated and better funded northern Sudanese political parties.

Even the first armed uprising of South Sudan of August 1955 was not organized or disciplined. This first armed uprising in South Sudan took place in Torit, in Equatoria, without any proper planning so that it could have encompassed the entire South Sudan. Equatoria started the revolt and believed that since it was a just cause, it would succeed. It did not, though, because it was undermined by the silence and peace in both Bahr el Ghazal and the Upper Nile.

One of the most important lessons of the political history of South Sudan is that no military uprising in South Sudan dies without some peace agreement, no matter how long it takes and no matter how weak such an armed movement is. This is an important lesson that the current National Dialogue should bear in mind, as it strives to find peace and national unity for South Sudan. It is also the main reason why those who carry arms among the South Sudanese to fight their way to power through the barrel of a gun should realize that they cannot succeed, and that they should join the National Dialogue to agree on how best to manage the power and governance structures for the South Sudanese people without killing them.

Typical of South Sudanese rebellion, it restarted in the mid-1960s because there had not been a political resolution to the conflict between the North and the South. Again, typical of South Sudan, the political movement, the AnyaNya Liberation Movement, organized a united front that began to articulate the political cause and to pressurize the forces of Khartoum. The political wing of the revived political leadership of South Sudan comprised mainly South Sudanese members of the 1957 parliament, which had been disbanded by the first military regime under General Ibrahim Abboud.

Many disparate events helped South Sudan to articulate its political cause. First, the Abboud regime expelled all the Christian missionaries from South Sudan in 1964. The Catholic Church order of Italian Catholic missionaries of Verona in Italy, known as the Comboni Order, wrote a book about their expulsion from South Sudan, known as The Black Book.1 This publication became a big boost to the liberation cause of South Sudan around the world.

Second, the political leaders of the Anya-Nya Liberation Movement, Joseph Oduho from Equatoria and William Deng Nhial from Bahr el Ghazal, also wrote their book at

1 Verona Fathers, The Black Book of the Sudan on the Expulsion of the Missionaries from South Sudan (Verona, Italy: The Comboni Fathers Press, 1964).

about the same time in the early 1960s, entitled The Case of South Sudan.2

Third, not too long afterwards, the 1967 Six-Day War, between Israel and the Arab states broke out. Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, declared war against Israel and convened an Arab summit in which unity against Israel was confirmed. Israel saw South Sudan as an enemy of Israel’s enemy, Sudan, and the stories of Israeli support for the Anya-Nya Liberation Movement became common news.

The overthrow of the Abboud regime in Khartoum, unfortunately, coincided with the crack in the unity of the political leadership of the South Sudan Liberation Movement – the Anya-Nya Liberation Movement. Always so keen to divide the political movement of South Sudan, and in order to weaken it, the Sudan political movement in Khartoum, particularly the Ansar sect-based Umma Party, under its very young leader at that time, Al-Sadiq al-Mahdi, inspired William Deng Nhial to return to Khartoum on an empty offer of a federal arrangement between South Sudan and northern Sudan. How many times could the northern Sudanese political elite repeat their deception of South Sudan?

With William Deng Nhial now back in the country – albeit only in northern Sudan – an empty debate with northern Sudan ensued. The offer of a federation to the South was not an honest offer. Fortunately, the political debate in Sudan, following the overthrow of the Abboud regime, was open and transparent at this time.

Following the overthrow of the Abboud regime, the South organized itself inside the country into a strong, extremely united, transparent and articulate political movement, the Southern Front. The interim government that took power in Khartoum following the overthrow of the Abboud regime wanted to appease the South to achieve some peace, at least during the 12-month interim period. This would enable the government to manage and run the elections throughout the country at the end of the interim period. Running the elections all over the country during 1965 was the real mandate of that interim government.

The Southern Front declared that it would boycott the 1965 elections in the country, unless there was an agreed political resolution of the political conflict in South Sudan during the interim period. The Southern Front called for a round-table conference to discuss and agree on peace with the North. The interim government organized a round-table conference in Khartoum in March 1965. Addressing the conference, the leader of the Anya-Nya Liberation Movement, Agrey Jaden, called for the separation of the South from the North.

The Southern Front called for the right of South Sudan to self-determine separation from the North. William Deng Nhial’s internal wing, Sudan African National Union (SANU), which was the political wing of the Anya-Nya Liberation Movement that had broken away, talked of federation at the round-table conference. In spite of the presence of other wings of the South Sudan internal political divide, like Santino Deng Teeng’s Unity Party which called for a centralized unitary system of government for Sudan, the political dynamics of the cause of the people of South Sudan were well articulated.

The interesting point to note at that time was that, in spite of the many political groups with multiple political agendas, no one was threatening violence then. At least, no one was threatening internal violence within South Sudan.

Not only did northern Sudan resent the fact that South Sudanese political thinkers had begun to clearly articulate their political ideas about their future, the North began to plan how to violently put down such free political ideas in South Sudan. Unfortunately, some upheaval struck the Anya-Nya Liberation Movement.

Inspired by support from Israel, some South Sudanese political leaders would say that the commander of the Anya-Nya army at that time, Joseph Lagu, overthrew the political wing of the liberation movement, combining both political and military leadership in himself.

At this point, stories that the State of Israel had begun to supply the Anya-Nya army with weapons, and was also training South Sudanese fighters in Israel, began circulating. As anyone might suspect, these stories were very pleasing to the population of the entire South Sudan. Because the political suppression of the South by the North had always been violent, the South Sudanese populace had always preferred military leadership to political leadership. So, Joseph Lagu, the military leader of South Sudan, received overwhelming political support across the entire South Sudan. The liberation of South Sudan was now seen to be proceeding in earnest. Coupled with those military events within the Anya-Nya, the election boycott in the South in 1965, orchestrated by the Southern Front was total.

In northern Sudan, the only choice open to the political leadership was to elect an extremist regime in Khartoum, hostile to the South and which would declare a policy in the South which, in effect, was a policy of committing genocide in South Sudan.

The North appointed Prime Minister Muhammed Ahmad Mahgoub after their elections without the South’s participation. Prime Minister Mahgoub declared that every educated South Sudanese was a rebel. Educated South Sudanese were said to serve in a Sudan government

2

J. Oduho and W. Deng Nhial, The Case of South Sudan (East African Press, 1962).

office in South Sudan during the day, received their salary from the government, with which they supported the Anya-Nya Liberation Movement at night. The government in Khartoum declared the total elimination of educated South Sudanese.

On the night of 9 July 1965, to quote only a few examples, the Sudanese army massacred more than 1,400 South Sudanese civilians in the town of Juba alone. Two days later, on 11 July 1965, all 76 South Sudanese officials of the Sudan Government and many other South Sudanese, who attended a wedding party in Wau town that night, were massacred. The story repeated itself in Warajuok village, near Malakal, in Upper Nile and all over the South. When The Vigilant Newspaper, the media mouthpiece of the South at that point, reported all these horrendous incidents, it was persecuted, closed down and held up in court for more than six months from July 1965 when it first reported the Sudan Government atrocities in South Sudan. This was in order to prevent The Vigilant Newspaper from publishing any more such stories.

By May 1969 there had been so much political upheaval in the country, even in northern Sudan itself, that the political system running the country became untenable. The war in South Sudan was intensifying and the army was worried by stories that the State of Israel had increased its supply of weapons to the South and was training South Sudanese guerrilla fighters in South Sudan. It dawned on northern Sudan that the South might succeed in breaking away from the North by force of arms.

On 25 May 1969, the army had its second political intervention in the politics of Sudan. Colonel Jaafar Mohamed Nimeiri seized power in the country in a military coup. Faced with numerous internal political challenges of his own, even within northern Sudan itself, General Nimeiri signed a peace agreement with the Anya-Nya Liberation Movement in March 1972.

The South attained self-rule under that 1972 Addis Ababa Peace Agreement – a regional autonomy. Like the current situation in South Sudan, which the current National Dialogue Steering Committee is now grappling with, South Sudan self-rule under the 1972 Addis Ababa Peace Agreement faced its own challenges that might serve as points of reference to our current predicament.

For South Sudan, the same type of multifarious equations involving regionalism and tribalism always caused political problems. These political problems may now have just intensified.

Although the solutions to South Sudan’s internal problems never lasted, perhaps because of external factors and/or interventions, the South had always benefited from a retreat and a pause, rather than brinkmanship. Will the current predicament facing us in this National Dialogue be different?

The South Sudanese political leadership of the 1972 Addis Ababa Peace Agreement was a more levelheaded leadership than that today and, in addition, the type of problems the current National Dialogue Steering Committee faces today are much more serious than those then. But one must not approach difficult situations with pessimism.

In the situation of 1972, many issues were not right, but the South faced all of them with some far-sightedness, perhaps because the South knew that the real opponent of South Sudan was northern Sudan which was always lurking there and always ready to take full advantage of an internal feud within South Sudan. As such, a responsible group of South Sudanese political thinkers and leaders, the National Dialogue Steering Committee should always bear in mind that the opponents of South Sudan remain very much alive. They are already taking full advantage of what is currently going on in South Sudan.

In the 1972 Addis Ababa Peace Agreement between Khartoum and the Anya-Nya Liberation Movement, the South Sudanese political parties played hide-andseek with one another. For Jaafar Mohamed Nimeiri, the president of the Republic of Sudan, and the man who decreed the Addis Ababa Peace Agreement into law, his main intention was to achieve a temporary peace with South Sudan for several undeclared reasons: first, to end the war and to deny the State of Israel any presence in South Sudan, a country in too close proximity to its arch-enemy Sudan and the larger Arab world, particularly as regards Egypt and its relationship to the River Nile; and second, with the rampant internal challenges to his regime, Nimeiri wanted both peace and time to consolidate his power over the country.

Jaafar Mohamed Nimeiri’s actions in South Sudan 10 years later – the abrogation of the 1972 Addis Ababa Peace Agreement – had been a long-standing plan of his and never an action of the movement. The leadership of South Sudan needs to always bear in mind that Sudan and its interest in South Sudan are still present and alive. These interests will never die. It is easy to achieve those interests over a feuding opponent in South Sudan.

By 1979, Nimeiri’s agenda towards South Sudan had become clear. The acceleration of his political agenda was enhanced by two main factors: first, his reconciliation with the traditional elements of the political parties of northern Sudan; and, second, and much more importantly, the discovery of oil in South Sudan. The South could not be entrusted with any control of resources and so he signed a peace agreement with his northern opposition, the 1978 Port Sudan Peace Agreement with the National Front. By that act alone, Nimeiri had all but decided to abrogate the 1972 Addis Ababa Peace Agreement with the South. He did so in 1983, after engaging in some

Machiavellian tactics. What he did not know was how quickly South Sudan would unite to face what was an external challenge to the South.

The Anya-Nya leadership was gracious when, in 1972, the administrative management of that 1972 peace agreement was assigned to Abel Alier, one of the co-chairs of this National Dialogue and who at that time was a civilian and not an Anya-Nya Liberation Movement fighter, even though Sudan itself was led by a military dictator, Jaafar Mohamed Nimeiri. That act by the Anya-Nya political and military leadership was a gracious indication that they fought to liberate the country for all their people, not just for themselves. This gracious act by the South Sudan liberation political and military leaders of the AnyaNya was not lost sight of by the South Sudan political leadership that took charge of the political helm.

Abel Alier, the co-chair of this National Dialogue and the first civilian leader of the first regional government of South Sudan, worked closely with General Joseph Lagu, who had then become the military commander of the Sudanese national army in South Sudan. General Joseph Lagu had prepared, first, to look after his AnyaNya guerrilla fighters who had been absorbed into the Sudanese national army before seeking a political position. More than 6,000 Anya-Nya fighters had been absorbed into the national army. Matters worked quite well for South Sudan during the first two years of the Addis Ababa Peace Agreement, because Alier and Lagu worked closely together. They established a political and administrative system for South Sudan, which had not existed before, really out of nothing in terms of budget and resources.

There was no oil revenue for South Sudan to begin with. What Abel Alier and his team did in Juba was to manage poverty, not only for themselves as the regional government of South Sudan but, indeed, for all the people of South Sudan as a whole. The only revenue that Juba received from Khartoum was the salaries of the regional ministers and their officials of the civil service. Abel Alier and his government in Juba structured a tax system from the meagre salaries of their civil servants to be able to provide services for the citizens of South Sudan. It is, unfortunately, important to recall some of these very hard facts in this first document of the National Dialogue Steering Committee because some of these old ingenuities may prove handy, not only in avoiding mistakes in the near future, but also to serve as a guide to showing a way forward for South Sudan out of the current predicament the country finds itself in.

The South Sudan of July 2005 to the present is a wealthy oil country generating revenue. Even though the country is now run down economically, because, as President Salva Kiir Mayardit has courageously put it,

‘due to greed and corruption’, the South needs to find a way out of this predicament. As the National Dialogue Steering Committee, we are all on the spot. We need to think, talk and suggest answers. Having one’s own past in mind could be useful. The above-mentioned passages of past events are a useful reminder to all of us.

The period 1972–1983, the first era of self-rule for South Sudan, was not free from political problems or political quarrels. These quarrels were there aplenty. These problems gave General Nimeiri the opportunity to abrogate the 1972 Addis Ababa Peace Agreement with the South. Our debate as the National Dialogue Steering Committee needs to cast our minds back to the problems of the Addis Ababa Peace Agreement era to see if those problems had solutions that will help us overcome the internal problems of South Sudan of 2013–2017 – the subject of our current National Dialogue.

We may not need to cast our minds back to the 1970s or to the 1980s too much because those mistakes were not only from South Sudan’s side. Indeed, in their political relationship with northern Sudan, these political mistakes had produced a new and more effective fighting force for South Sudan, namely, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), which was formed in 1983, and subsequently fought against the governments of Nimeiri, Sadiq al-Mahdi and President Omar al-Bashir. The outcome of South Sudan’s latest war of liberation with northern Sudan resulted in independence for South Sudan in 2011 – in what was a total liberation.

The South cannot regret such an outcome too much in spite of the current self-inflicted agony. The South must find a way out for itself. This National Dialogue, initiated by the first elected leader of South Sudan, the president of the Republic of South Sudan, is one of the ways out of this harrowing national predicament.

During the period in which the 1972 Addis Ababa Peace Agreement was implemented, the South found solutions to its problems. The people of South Sudan remain the same people. Surely, the same people can and should find their way out of their current problems, especially that it is now an independent country? Notwithstanding the truth, however, that the old opponents of South Sudan are still clearly interfering in the problems of South Sudan with the intent to disrupt, exacerbate tensions and thereby cause further turmoil. One is never independent in this world, unless one acts independently in one’s own best interest, in spite of the many saboteurs and despoilers around one.

When Jaafar Mohamed Nimeiri thought he had sufficiently divided South Sudan and abrogated the 1972 regional autonomy of South Sudan, he was under the erroneous impression that there was no South Sudan left to challenge him again. South Sudan, however, quickly proved Nimeiri wrong. A united South Sudan fought

together under the SPLA and successfully achieved an independent South Sudan.

Now, while it is true that the South Sudanese have spilt too much blood of their own and inflicted too much suffering on their own people since the horrendous events of December 2013, it is also true, judging from the current attitudes of the people of South Sudan, that they want peace and national reconciliation among themselves and they also do not want to lose their hardfought independence and national sovereignty. The National Dialogue ought to find a formula for national reconciliation, peace and national reunification.

MISTAKES THAT LED TO THE CURRENT SITUATION

There are many problems and mistakes that have led our country into the current horrendous situation in which South Sudan finds itself in today. First, the country as a whole and the leadership of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), as the stewards of the liberation of South Sudan, must both collectively and publicly admit that they are responsible for South Sudan’s current predicament. This is a long history of more than 30 years. It started at first, from August 1983, as a liberation movement for 21 years and then as the revolutionary government of South Sudan, a sovereign country, for more than 11 years at the time of writing this report.

The current mistakes started from the six-year interim period, which followed the signing of the CPA (Comprehensive Peace Agreement) in Kenya in January 2005, to five years of independence on 9 July 2011. The public of South Sudan know that the SPLM wanted to rule South Sudan, to decide how and to use the resources of South Sudan as a party with a monopoly hold on power which excluded all other parties from the political decisionmaking process. All the decisions that have brought the country to the sorry state it is in today are made by the SPLM, and the SPLM must take collective responsibility for them. They need not seek a single individual to blame from either among themselves, or from a single tribe of the 64 tribes of South Sudan.

The leadership of the SPLM wants to split hairs, to find who to blame from among their ranks. This is natural. The people of South Sudan have watched it all and know the truth. The classic Marxist communist jargon is so true to the case of South Sudan today: “You cannot deceive all the people all of the time”.

The only person in the SPLM that the people of South Sudan cannot blame for any of the faults and the failures of the government of South Sudan since July 2005 is the late leader of the SPLM, Colonel John Garang de Mabior. This is because fate saw to it that he did not live to set up his

own interim government following the CPA. He died in that fateful helicopter crash in July 2005, only three weeks after taking the oath of office as the South Sudanese first vicepresident of the Republic of Sudan. Had he lived, he would have set up a first interim government of South Sudan that July, which should have remained part of Sudan for six years, until the South voted in a Referendum on SelfDetermination in 2011. The six-year interim period had a very specific agenda to carry out before the Referendum on Self-Determination was conducted in South Sudan; this referendum allowed the people of South Sudan to decide whether to separate or remain part of northern Sudan. The leadership of the SPLM ought to have predicted the outcome for the Referendum on Self-Determination and to have prepared for that outcome during the six long years of the interim period.

Most South Sudanese knew how they were going to cast their vote on the day of the Referendum on SelfDetermination. A political leadership that was charged with and entrusted with the responsibility to manage the affairs of the people should have known this and should have acted accordingly. The SPLM leadership failed to do that. The political movement that was responsible for carrying out the wishes of their people utterly failed.

As an agreement, the CPA had given the people of South Sudan wide options. Under the CPA, if the people of South Sudan wanted to remain as one country with northern Sudan, for whatever reason, the CPA had provided an alternative for a South Sudan that wanted to be part of the North. The CPA provided that the South should have developed its own alternative political system to avoid the Islamic agenda that Khartoum wanted to impose. There is a provision of one country with two political systems in the CPA. Instead of developing the political structures of their own government, which would have become the government system for South Sudan at independence, the ruling political leadership of the SPLM ignored all that. Clearly, this was a political failure that had an impact on the current failure of the new South Sudanese state.

Colonel John Garang de Mabior had himself personally negotiated the CPA and all its provisions, including one country with two political systems. It is unlikely that he could have disowned any of the peace agreement provisions and looked for flimsy excuses, or for someone else to blame.

Although he spent 21 years as the undisputed leader of the SPLM political movement and commander of its army (SPLA) until his death, Colonel John Garang de Mabior’s real and everlasting record and image is that it was he, as the leader of the peace negotiations at Navaisha, Kenya, on behalf of the people of South Sudan, who negotiated and signed the CPA. That peace agreement shared the central government of Sudan between northern Sudan and South Sudan, at the ratio of 50:50. The CPA also shared the oil

revenue accruing from the oilfields of South Sudan, also at the ratio of 50:50 with the North.

For the six years of the interim period, the flow of the South Sudan oil to the world markets was extremely lucrative. What the South did with its 50 percent share of the oil revenue is undoubtedly part of the reasons why South Sudan is where it is in today – facing dire political, economic and social problems. Had Colonel John Garang de Mabior lived, how he would have used the vast sums of the South Sudanese share of the oil revenue on the currently pathetically poor South Sudanese would have been very instructive as to the quality of his leadership in managing the affairs of South Sudan.

The CPA also provided for a system of government for South Sudan during the interim period; South Sudan should have established an autonomous system of government which, already in itself, was akin to independence because it deprived northern Sudan any legal right to question anything that went on in South Sudan, even if the South had voted to remain part of a united Sudan when the South came to exercise its right to self-determination. This was also a well-negotiated section of the CPA, but ignored by the leaders of the SPLM during the implementation of the CPA.

In spite of the failures that have afflicted South Sudan, we must not forget that it was General Salva Kiir Mayardit, our current president of the Republic of South Sudan, who negotiated and signed Protocol Number One, which contains a provision on self-determination. This mighty provision of the CPA was then enshrined in the CPA by Colonel John Garang de Mabior. It is the protocol that delivered the independence of South Sudan.

For six long years of the interim period, the current leaders of the SPLM not only failed, but they deliberately refused, to implement the CPA clause of ‘one country with two political systems’.

The idea of the two systems in one country was that the South should have developed its own system of governance for South Sudan, which would have remained autonomous from the political system in northern Sudan, because the South was opposed to the Islamic system of governance being applied in northern Sudan. This system of governance, under the clause of one country with two political systems was an alternative to independence, in case the people of South Sudan had chosen to vote at their Referendum on Self-Determination to remain a part of northern Sudan. It was a brilliant political alternative, which no serious political thinker should have ignored. The SPLM leaders who were running South Sudan during the interim period dared argue that if Khartoum wanted unity with the South as one country with two systems, it was Khartoum that should come to Juba to develop the alternative system for South Sudan. If this empty

slogan was meant to impress the South and not just to delude it, it failed. No one was impressed. The question now is why did the SPLM leadership delude the people of South Sudan, when they were the rulers of these people?

How the leadership of the SPLM disposed of the vast 50 percent of the oil revenue from South Sudan’s oil exports is now a question that the National Dialogue must find the answer to. This is what President Salva Kiir Mayardit has courageously called greed and corruption. Clearly, the president has repeatedly said publicly that the National Dialogue must recommend a way of addressing corruption and personal greed in the public service of South Sudan. This is probably the most difficult part of the work of the National Dialogue, but one that it must tackle responsibly.

If the leadership of the SPLM had implemented their own desired system of governance when they shared the interim period of six years with the North, not only would the South have had its own system of governance in place at the end of that interim period, with the six years’ experience and practice, it would also have provided for a constitutional system that was well considered and well practised for six years. That constitution would have been put before the people of South Sudan, once they had voted for their own independence as they did in 2011, rather than rushing with a constitution that now represents yet another national problem to resolve and that is an embarrassment.

The SPLM leadership was also independent in its relations with northern Sudan, an obvious permanent neighbour that one needed to manage rather than wish away. Clearly, northern Sudan, a neighbour with nearly 2,000 miles of common border, cannot be wished away. Good neighbourly relations with such a neighbour are a paramount national security priority. With the current predicament of South Sudan and its people, we can now see what a hostile border with northern Sudan does to South Sudan.

Every type of South Sudanese rebel knows he has a free sanctuary in Sudan. Any South Sudanese political leader or political movement must know that the border with northern Sudan is the most important border for South Sudan, not just because the flow of South Sudan’s oil for sale overseas must go through northern Sudan to Port Sudan, at least for now, until the South develops an alternate route for its oil exports, but also because the greatest numbers of the South Sudanese people access northern Sudan than they do any other neighbour of South Sudan.

The political failure during the liberation war to articulate the political cause for which the people of South Sudan were fighting may no longer be part of the current problem of South Sudan. But the fact that a war

was fought to its conclusion without a defined political agenda or a concept for the future is clearly what now makes the personal ambition of individual leaders of the SPLM running South Sudan the cause of such horrendous suffering of millions of its people and the cause of the present political crisis.

This mistake was temporarily overcome by the mere fact that Colonel John Garang de Mabior was a strong leader and had himself been personally responsible for negotiating and signing the right of South Sudan to self-determination as part of the CPA in 2005. The ‘New Sudan’ slogan of the earlier years of the liberation struggle remains an irritant in relations between northern Sudan and our young Republic of South Sudan. It is a mistake that will continue to negatively affect relations between Khartoum and Juba, unless Juba demonstrably clarifies its attitude to this slogan.

The mistake of sloganeering with a ‘New Sudan’ agenda has its own cost, as all political mistakes do. Fortunately, at the time of writing this report, the new military leadership of the South Sudanese army, the SPLA, have recommended a change of name from SPLA to that of ‘South Sudan Defence Forces’. This one small decision may, hopefully, go some way to reassuring northern Sudan that South Sudan has no further ambition of pursuing a ‘New Sudan’ agenda.

As the new leader of a new South Sudanese liberation movement in 1983, the first thing Colonel John Garang de Mabior had in mind was to find weapons to launch his new liberation movement against any regime in power in Khartoum. The South Sudanese leader had Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam, who was then in power in Ethiopia, in mind. The Ethiopian leader himself was at war with his own Eritrean rebels, who wanted to secede from Ethiopia. Eritrea was clearly being supported by Khartoum against Ethiopia, even though Eritrea had clearly and publicly declared that it was fighting Colonel Mengistu to secede from Ethiopia. South Sudan’s liberation movement against Khartoum became handy for Colonel Mengistu to support, tit for tat: ‘your enemy’s enemy is your friend’.

Although Colonel Mengistu knew that the South Sudanese liberation movement against Khartoum was in effect a separatist movement, Colonel John Garang de Mabior did not want to embarrass Colonel Mengistu, so he described his movement to Colonel Mengistu as one fighting to create a ‘New Sudan’ based on equality. No one could dispute such a goal.

Colonel Garang might have avoided the calamity of the political mistake of a ‘New Sudan’, if he had simply called his South Sudan movement ‘a movement for universal equality in Sudan’ and kept the other marginalized regions of northern Sudan removed from the cause of the people of South Sudan. Khartoum would not have had the excuse

to blame Juba for what now goes on in the marginalized areas of northern Sudan.

As it transpired, the marginalized peoples of South Kordofan, the people of the Nuba Mountains, and the people of southern Blue Nile, the Ingessana people, heeded the call for a ‘New Sudan’ literally and seriously and they joined hands with the South to fight Khartoum. In spite of the fact that a protocol of the CPA applies to them, their problem remains unresolved. Since the Ingessana issue is part of the CPA, Juba cannot wish it away and it must normalize its relations with Khartoum in order to implement the CPA protocol for the people of the Nuba Mountains and of southern Blue Nile which can only be attained in cooperation with Khartoum. Otherwise, the two marginalized regions of northern Sudan, who were yesterday’s SPLM, will continue to play a spoil game in the relations between Khartoum and Juba.

Although Colonel John Garang de Mabior also successfully negotiated a way out for the two marginalized regions of northern Sudan, the people of the Nuba Mountains and the people of the Ingessana Hills of southern Blue Nile remain victims of the unfulfilled promise of the CPA. This is one of the failures of the leadership of the SPLM, which must be reversed and made good through restoring normal relationships between Juba and Khartoum, and asking Khartoum to properly implement the CPA protocols pertaining to the Nuba Mountains and the Ingessana people.

Like that of the Abyei Protocol of the CPA, these two protocols need to be implemented. They will not go away until they are fully implemented. The South Sudanese political leadership, enjoying or suffering from the failures of its own national independence, must see to it that the two protocols of the CPA, that of Abyei and that for the Nuba Mountains and Ingessana Hills are implemented. This is another very strong reason for both Khartoum and Juba to maintain good relations, so that all the protocols of the CPA can be properly implemented in good faith.

The Abyei Protocol calls for a plebiscite in Abyei, among the Ngok Dinka people of that area, to decide whether or not they remain part of northern Sudan according to the borders of 1 January 1956 and recognized by the CPA between North and South Sudan, or whether to revert back to South Sudan. The people of the Nuba Mountains and the Ingessana people of southern Blue Nile have a joint protocol of the CPA, which says a far different thing to that of the Ngok Dinka people of Abyei.

The Ingessana Hills and South Kordofan Protocol of the CPA assumed that the peoples of these two areas wanted to remain part of northern Sudan. They had said so repeatedly, even while they were fighting as allies with South Sudan. All they wanted, which is what the CPA protocol gives them, is to consult their people (also a sort

of plebiscite) and for their people to decide the type of autonomous relationship that would exist between these marginalized regions of northern Sudan and the central government of Sudan.

Because mutual relations between Khartoum and the SPLM had not been normal during the six-year interim period, neither of the CPA protocols affecting the three marginalized people of northern Sudan were carried out. These two protocols concerning three marginalized regions of Sudan should have been implemented and their results known before the people of South Sudan voted on their self-determination. It was not done because of the failure of the SPLM leadership orchestrating and taking the lead on these political matters.

The situation between Khartoum on the one hand and the two areas of the Nuba Mountains of South Kordofan and the Ingessana Hills of southern Blue Nile on the other, is now almost back to a situation of war. The situation in Abyei is only slightly different, just because of the United Nations Security Council’s intervention with the deployment of a protection force at Abyei. In spite of that, the two situations need a final peaceful resolution.

As part of the process of finding a way of normalizing the critical humanitarian, social and security situations of our country, everybody concerned with the circumstances in our young country should join the efforts now started by the president of the Republic of South Sudan to find a peaceful way to national reconciliation and national togetherness. It is with this view in mind that this preliminary report of the National Dialogue Steering Committee recounts what its members believe to have gone wrong, right from the inception of the national liberation movement, the SPLM, which, in effect, rules South Sudan.

Due to the failures of the political system that attained liberation and the independence of our country, many of the usual causes of the national divide – tribalism, sectionalism and individual favouritism – have all contrived to create the difficult situation our country is in today. It is a complex, but not an impossible situation to resolve. The first appeal the National Dialogue Steering Committee makes is to the political leadership of the SPLM, as a liberation movement that won independence for South Sudan, although at the same time not assuming that each and everyone of the leaders alone can resolve the current situation of our country. Nor is it a call to exclude others, because some think that those to be excluded are the cause of the problems we face. We must now all unite to resolve our problems and save the lives of our innocent people, who are hapless victims of a war our country cannot afford and which our leaders could have easily avoided.

It is not easy to list all the issues that need to be righted in South Sudan in one report, but a start needs to be

made: tribalism, sectionalism, favouritism, corruption, and individual inability to fulfil assigned duties must top the list of what needs to be put right in South Sudan today. So, this report starts with those issues:

1. The entire country considers itself excluded from the benefits of government and are blaming the SPLM as a ruling party and not just individual leaders or one leader of the SPLM. But there is a naive overall attitude about how the failures can be corrected, which we must avoid.

2. Being a young country, South Sudan enmeshed itself in a lot of problems without cause for that. For instance, why would a young country that had no other means of survival close down its own oil exports for months in order to deny Khartoum an already agreed share of that oil? When the Government of South Sudan decided to resume its oil exports, after it deliberately closed it down for months, not only had its revenue in hand from oil been depleted by the reckless expenditure of the same individuals who closed down the oil exports, international oil prices had plummeted, leaving the Government of South Sudan a financially broke polity.

3. Chaos and conflict have been chronic conditions of this young country since self-rule in July 2005. Lack of discipline, lack of accountability, and corruption all constitute a threat to any nation state, even if the killing and the loss of human life is not included.

It is very clear that, through a sense of both personal entitlement and invincibility, the SPLM as a ruling political party over the people of South Sudan is entrenched and secure in its power; such sentiment has enhanced corruption to the degree it now exists in our country. The recognition that one will not allow a free and fair change of leadership when one is in power has not only resulted in the catastrophe that the young Republic of South Sudan now faces, but has also encouraged violence as the only credible way of changing political leadership and correcting the mistakes of leadership. Unless the political leadership of the SPLM, the ruling party of South Sudan, collectively commit themselves to accepting the peaceful rules for a change of regime in the country through the popular electoral process, it is impossible to perceive of any other way of correcting the malaise the country has been thrown into in its very first steps as a nascent country. We are a young country, we have barely taken the first hesitant steps towards nationhood. We have much successful history to look back to, except for its political leadership’s failure to accept its faults and its failure to permit the country to try again.

In South Sudan today, all the features of public corruption exist, and multiply, because the resources of the state are only in the hands of a very few ruling politicians

and government officials. These features include bribes to state officials, dual pricing of state services and supplies, pay-offs, demanding incentives and benefits before an official can act or sign payment documents for services already rendered to the state, and so on and so forth.

Although South Sudan is a country that is capable of producing much of its own food – if not of meeting its entire needs – the country is now highly dependent on foreign food imports. South Sudanese tax collectors and all of the government employees collude with traders, businesses and individuals with incoming goods to lower the sums collected as taxes. Foreign businesses are scared away from investing in the country because there are too many officials of the Government of South Sudan who want to partner these foreign investors, asking for incredibly high percentages for themselves personally and for the advance payment of these. Only the political leadership could save the young country from this torment, if members of that political leadership were not themselves part of the rampant corruption. If the political leadership of our ruling party closes its eyes to nefarious acts under the few examples cited above and does not call its officials to account, should any South Sudanese be surprised that their country is in the state it is? Nor should any citizen be surprised that the political contest, which brought the country to its knees politically, economically and, indeed, existentially, is still proceeding apace.

Our rulers are not concerned with correcting what has gone wrong. Their individual concern seems only to get to the top of the political ladder in the country and to be the number one wheeler-dealer. Only by accepting collective guilt by all the political leaders of the SPLM, the ruling party of South Sudan, can the country hope for a new start.

TRIBALISM

The ruling party of South Sudan, the SPLM, is a militaristic political system. The current predicaments of South Sudan are based on the fact that the leaders of the SPLM who want to wrest power from the elected current incumbent want to do so through force of arms. Yet because those leaders who want to wrest power by force of arms have not succeeded in providing good governance, the country is in its present dire state.

The political and security situation of South Sudan is so complex that unless the contenders for power commit themselves to a peaceful end to the current conflict, it will be difficult to find a solution. All the political contenders need to renounce the use of force and abide by the process of a change of power through the ballot box.

It is rather illogical to think that because one cannot secure an election having failed to persuade the electorate enough to one’s point of view, that one can only secure power through force.

The critical situation in South Sudan today is due to the fact that every contender for power in South Sudan believes that they have the right to have an army of their own, through which they can vanquish the current national army of the young South Sudanese state. When one adds to the fact that the failure of the political leadership has resulted in the current national army not being reorganized and properly disciplined to obey the rule of law, even in combat, the national army simply becomes a tribal army of the leader in power, whom others want to evict from power by force and are not able to do so, at least for now. The result is that South Sudan now has numerous tribal armies. The National Dialogue needs to end this vicious cycle of internecine strife and urgently find a path to national reconciliation.

One of the most noble decisions the current president of South Sudan made at the beginning of the six-year interim period, at the outset of the implementation of the CPA between 2005 and 2010, was the absorption of all the tribal militias that Khartoum was using against the South during the war of liberation in South Sudan. These were to become part of the army of South Sudan. It was right to integrate these tribal militias into the SPLA, the national army of South Sudan. But if absorbing tribal militias into the national army was a good step, bringing them to South Sudan and leaving them separate from the national army, the SPLA, was a serious mistake. Not only were they still counting themselves as tribal militias, separate from the SPLA, some of them thought that they were larger in numbers than the national army and could overcome and replace the SPLA as the state’s national army, or take power by force.

The second very serious problem now with respect to the national army of South Sudan, is that every ambitious political aspirant to power does not want to accept and respect peace in South Sudan unless and until his forces are also integrated as part of the national army, the SPLA. How many armies do the SPLM leaders of South Sudan want to have in order for its citizens to enjoy peace and tranquillity? These are not rhetorical questions but serious matters that the National Dialogue needs to address.

South Sudan is truly a conglomerate of tribes. Some 64 tribes is the number often quoted for South Sudan. We do not know where the number of 64 tribes originates from. There are probably more tribes in South Sudan than have been accounted for. One or two, or even ten, more tribes to add to the 64 now frequently quoted do not make much difference. A political solution to the current problems of South Sudan that is acceptable

to 64 tribes cannot be reduced by one, two or three tribes that may feel excluded from the count, if that solution is a good solution in itself. But it is now important to include the statistics of the tribes of South Sudan as part of this report.

The problem of tribalism in South Sudan is not a new phenomenon, but the reason it arose in South Sudan in recent times is only because of political failure. Political failure itself is a factor of the lack of a political system. With South Sudanese as a whole having accepted that the SPLM was the leadership that brought about political independence of South Sudan from northern Sudan, the vast majority of the country also accepted that the SPLM should lead the country, not just to freedom, which the people of South Sudan accept the SPLM has done, but also to provide the country and its 12 million citizens (at least) with services and development. This is where public confidence in the SPLM as a ruling party has faltered.

After 11 years at the helm, the SPLM should accept that the judgement of the people of South Sudan is that the SPLM, as the party of independence of South Sudan, was also the dominant if not, indeed, the ruling party of independent South Sudan, and that the SPLM should accept full responsibility for what has gone wrong with South Sudan. The SPLM has not met its responsibility towards the people of South Sudan. This is a party, or a political movement that the people of South Sudan had entrusted with their future, right from the onset of the SPLA as an armed rebellion and the SPLM as a political leadership. It has failed by whatever yardsticks one uses to assess the success or failure of any movement. And the failures are all encompassing. From political, to administrative, security and other realms. It will be a nice human way of attrition, if the entire leadership of the SPLM graciously accepts this guilt. We are talking about political guilt. There are many other shared delinquencies in South Sudan. We can talk about this but, before that, the SPLM should accept that it alone is responsible for what has befallen South Sudan.

While it is understandable that the military leadership of the SPLA and later, of the South Sudan People’s Defence Force (SSPDF), the political leadership of the SPLM failed to recognize and accept that it needed to articulate the political cause of South Sudan, from which the political and even cultural affinity emanates, and not hold on for such a long time to the unattainable political slogan of a ‘New Sudan’. Unfortunately, the ‘New Sudan’ slogan deluded the leadership of the SPLM for a very long time. International pressures were brought to bear on Colonel John Garang de Mabior, as the principal negotiator at Naivasha in Kenya on behalf of the people of South Sudan, to stick only to ‘South Sudan’ when he signed the CPA. However, following his untimely death only

three weeks after taking office, his successors reverted to sloganeering the label of ‘New Sudan’. This was in spite of the fact that Colonel Garang’s succession as the political and military leader of South Sudan was a recognized South Sudanese separatist nationalist, Salva Kiir Mayardit.

Those who were close to Colonel Garang before his death, dominated political decision-making for South Sudan after his death. They decided to undermine and to subvert their own new leadership with which they replaced Colonel Garang. The outcome of the failure of an internally subverted political and military leadership is where South Sudan sits today. A country whose political leadership has failed now finds itself in need of a new political agenda that can rally the disparate communities together again and save the country and its entire people from the brink of disaster, if South Sudan is not already in a disaster. There is no stronger challenge to a national leadership than what President Salva Kiir Mayardit has thrown in the lap of this National Dialogue Steering Committee.

Because of the political leadership’s failure, every political activist or leader of the SPLM political movement now points the finger at one individual, Salva Kiir Mayardit, the president of the Republic of South Sudan. While the individual and personal political failure of President Salva Kiir Mayardit counts more than the mistakes of anyone else within this failed system that he has run for 11 years, common sense cannot accept that just one individual runs a system and that everyone else who had been part of his 11-year-old political system of South Sudan is free from blame. It is so unusual that most of the individuals who have been with President Salva Kiir Mayardit as members of his 11-year-old executive, or in the leadership of his ruling political party, the SPLM, do not think that they share the blame of what has gone wrong with South Sudan under the administration of the SPLM/SPLA since July 2005.

The National Dialogue Steering Committee appeals to the collective leadership of the SPLM as a ruling party to accept collective responsibility. Only then can individual responsibility be assigned, in accordance with individual positions held when things began to go wrong.

One of the most difficult and intricate matters to resolve by the South Sudan National Dialogue is the tribal animosity that the failure of the political system has engendered in South Sudan today. All citizens of any country under the sun are equal before the law of that country and before God. Those who hold political office take personal responsibility to uphold and recognize that fact, and are accountable for their own personal mistakes as individuals. No one tribe in South Sudan or group of tribes can be made, or should be made, to account for the mistakes that their kith and kin make when in power or in government.

Apart from the blanket blame of ethnicity or tribe for mistakes made in government by members of a tribe,

the only way a country like South Sudan can effectively manage its current predicament is to always investigate and look into mistakes made as a result of conflict, and identify and punish those who made these mistakes. All the citizens, without exception, are accountable for their mistakes before the laws of the land. No tribe is going to accept that alone accounts for the mistakes made by their kith and kin who are in power. To accuse and to hold a tribe, or tribes, accountable for the mistakes made by their individual members while in government is to disrupt national unity that is so important in overcoming the current predicament of South Sudan.

There are traditional tribal ways that can be used to resolve some of the conflicts now raging in South Sudan. The problem with the current conflict in South Sudan, which started on 15 December 2013, is that it is a political conflict, within one ruling political party, in which the leadership on both sides of the conflict, or their followers, may have committed atrocities and or even war crimes.

In any war, unfortunately, casualties are never equal. What is best, given the situation of South Sudan, is for the government to set up a body to investigate the atrocities of this most unfortunate bloody civil war and to hold accountable, under the law, those who have committed or even ordered atrocities to be committed.

The National Dialogue can help in bringing about national reconciliation between tribes of South Sudan. But national reconciliation, too, requires the establishment of facts through an investigation of war atrocities. Part of South Sudan’s traditional mode of reconciliation is to pay compensation to individual families and communities who have lost loved ones or property. When the National Dialogue comes to render its recommendations, one of the issues it should, hopefully, consider is how the atrocities of the current war, which started in December 2013 and is still going on, are compensated for, once the facts of the atrocities are discovered and exposed.

South Sudanese tradition has it that tribal war crimes do not elapse with the passage of time. Only when the family and relatives of the deceased are fully compensated according to ethnic, traditional norms do such cases finally come to an end and can be considered closed. The National Dialogue Steering Committee may wish to, and can, recommend the setting up of traditional bodies to deal with such matters before it concludes its work.

GOVERNANCE

When the SPLM/SPLA took over power in South Sudan at the onset of the implementation of the CPA in July 2005, it adopted a system of government that it found operational in the Republic of Sudan, because South Sudan was part of Sudan during the interim period. The Government

of Sudan, with whom the SPLM signed the CPA, had set up what it called a federal system of 26 states. Ten of the 26 states of the Republic of Sudan were in South Sudan. Under the CPA, especially if the SPLM wanted to really establish a truly autonomous region of South Sudan, it could have begun to implement its own system of governance there, irrespective of what system applied to the rest of Sudan. That was precisely the point of the CPA: ‘One country with two political systems’.

The CPA, which was negotiated and signed by Colonel John Garang de Mabior, the long-time leader of the South Sudan liberation movement, provided that South Sudan would have its own political system, different from that of northern Sudan. This came about because the Islamic rulers of northern Sudan, who negotiated and signed the CPA with the SPLM, had refused to give up an Islamic system of government in what was a multicultural, multifaith and multi-ethnic Republic of Sudan.

The idea of a clause in the CPA stipulating one country and two political systems had strong backing. Even if Sudan had remained one country – if the people of South Sudan voted to remain in northern Sudan in their Referendum on Self-Determination when they finally came to exercise it under the CPA in 2011 – South Sudan would have opted to govern itself under a non-Islamic political system. An Islamic system of governance was what the rulers of northern Sudan wanted to impose on the entire territory and peoples of Sudan – South and North.

If the SPLM leadership had implemented its own political system of governance during the six-year interim period of the CPA, they would at least have developed a political system of their own, with which they would have governed South Sudan after independence in 2011. The country would not have remained politically without any system, its current predicament today. Its leaders simply aspired to take power safely for themselves as individuals, for their own personal benefit, without a system of governance to refer to, and thus they failed to create a system of governance for the people of South Sudan.

Six years of an interim period with the SPLM alone in charge as a political movement, without an opposition, is such a long period of time and one that has never before been accorded to any people as an interim period. Most countries of colonial Africa only had four-year interim periods; some much less. This was the only period under which indigenous African political systems were set up under the supervision of the colonial system that was to hand over the country to the Africans. Some of these colonial systems in Africa or elsewhere had only two years of an interim period. Northern Sudan, a perpetual headache for South Sudan, had only two years of an interim period from Britain. All made the best of the two or four years under the supervision and coaching of their colonial masters, who were due to depart at independence;

and colonial Africa has remained independent, a testament to the success of interim periods.

Instead, the South Sudanese political leadership under the SPLM/SPLA squandered its golden chance to create its own system of governance and to prepare itself and its people for self-rule and independence. Unfortunately, the SPLM leadership always proclaimed to the South Sudanese public they had answers to all the nation’s problems. But the SPLM leadership never shared their ostensible knowledge of affairs of state and other nationbuilding matters with their people.

The leadership of the SPLM used such ridiculous arguments during those six years of the interim period, such as: ‘If the northern Sudan wanted to prepare South Sudan for an independent political system based on the Islamic system they were practising in northern Sudan, in order to ensure unity, northern Sudan should do so at its own expense.’ The SPLM as a member of the interim government of Sudan could indeed have used central government resources to install an interim government for South Sudan, but failed to do so. This was at the time when the central government of Sudan was shared by South and northern Sudan.

The oil revenue accruing to Sudan from the oilfields of South Sudan was also being shared at a ratio of 50:50. No one, of course, dared ask the leaders of the SPLM ruling South Sudan the question that if the North was required to use its 50 percent of the oil revenue from the oilfields of the South to build the two political systems, South and the North, what did the SPLM leadership do with its 50 percent of the oil revenue from the South? After 11 years and the problems South Sudan is in, no one need ask such questions anymore. The question the South is now repeatedly asking is, ‘How can the South extricate itself from the dire situation its own political leadership has landed them in?’

The political mistakes of the SPLM rulers of South Sudan during the interim period with northern Sudan are partly responsible for the disaster currently confronting South Sudan. These mistakes are numerous and rampant. They include the failure to properly reconcile with northern Sudan, once the CPA had granted South Sudan the right to exercise self-determination.

It was only a very few uninformed individuals in northern Sudan who had the illusion that South Sudan would vote to remain united with northern Sudan when it came to the exercise of its right to self-determination. Most people in northern Sudan were clear in their minds that South Sudan would never let go the chance to exercise self-determination accorded to it under the CPA, and that the people of South Sudan would definitely vote for independence from northern Sudan.

Without having been prepared for independence by its own political leadership, South Sudan overwhelmingly

voted for independence. It was a situation that one might have expected the SPLM, the ruling party of South Sudan and partner in the interim coalition government of Sudan, to have used to court reconciliation, not only with the ruling partner of northern Sudan, but indeed with the entire North. The SPLM did not.

Of course, in the type of political situation under review here, it is difficult to blame only on one side. The SPLM leadership has always maintained that it was reacting to the misdeeds of Khartoum. The straightforward argument was always that, having achieved the independence of South Sudan with the acquiescence, if not with the North’s full cooperation, as a newly independent country, the South Sudanese political leadership should have done more to court the North to cooperate.

What type of mistake by northern Sudan could have been resolved by the SPLM leadership pulling out of a coalition government of Sudan for three long months, at one point during the interim period of the implementation of the CPA, when it was in the best interest of South Sudan to press on with the implementation of the CPA? Because, that was how, in the end, to arrive at the South exercising its right to self-determination. The North took advantage of the absence of its coalition partner, the SPLM, and made decisions that affected the South adversely, which the SPLM leadership could not change once they decided to return back into the coalition government in Khartoum. At that moment they even failed to explain to the people of South Sudan what had changed to prompt them to return back to the fold of the coalition government in Khartoum.

Once again, how did it benefit South Sudan, when their ruling party, the SPLM, decided to close down its own oil production to punish Khartoum, when the oil revenue was the only source of earnings the government of South Sudan had for carrying out its state activities and rendering services to the people of South Sudan?

Many of these examples are recited in this preliminary report of the National Dialogue Steering Committee to indicate how such mistakes, so frequently repeated, not only constituted a behavioural characteristic that became a pattern of behaviour of SPLM leadership of the young state of South Sudan, but they also indicate how the young state missed its own goal of developing the young and new country and of rendering services to its people.

THE SPLM AND ITS MILITARY STRUCTURES

The SPLM remains the ruling party of South Sudan. No one in the National Dialogue Steering Committee wants to deny that. Therefore, if the outcome of the National Dialogue, which the president of the Republic of South Sudan has initiated, has to be of any value to the people of South Sudan, it is important to point out

these long-standing mistakes of the country’s ruling party. Only by accepting collective failure can the SPLM leadership help the process of reconciliation in the country. National reconciliation cannot take place if all the leaders of the SPLM, the real rulers of South Sudan since the CPA was signed between the South and northern Sudan in January 2005, do not accept their collective faults. A solution also cannot be found to the current predicament of our country, if the leadership of the SPLM, now feuding over power, do not accept the need for reconciliation with one another. The people of South Sudan are not just tools in the hands of the warring and feuding leadership of the SPLM, victims to kill and to starve to death in the pursuit of power by members of the feuding SPLM leadership.

Administratively, the SPLM leadership has continuously failed to administer South Sudan for 11 long years. Not only that, the SPLM leadership deliberately orchestrated tribalism between the people of South Sudan as a way of dodging collective failure. The tribes of South Sudan were living there, long before the current SPLM leadership came to rule them. No South Sudanese tribe had targeted the others. If it is true that South Sudanese tribes, 64 or more of them, have targeted one another – or even if it was true that only one tribe has been guilty of crimes that have afflicted South Sudan under the rule of the SPLM leadership – it must also count as a failure of the SPLM leadership itself.

When South Sudan gained self-rule from northern Sudan in 2005 as part of the CPA, some of the expectations of a new, young and wealthy country by any measure at that time was linked to the belief that the leadership would use the interim period to rehabilitate the country. One such rehabilitation process should have been to bring security for every South Sudanese citizen and then to establish some credible rudimentary services in health and education, for example. It was not beyond the resources of South Sudan at that time to establish a few credible schools in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, where these leaders were now resident, and also to establish at least one specialized hospital capable of treating all the wellknown ailments of South Sudan, without the need for political leaders to use public resources to travel outside South Sudan in order to treat themselves for mundane ailments, like malaria, because the young capital of a new but wealthy country had no such facilities.

Furthermore, because of the failure to provide public services, the political leaders of South Sudan, the SPLM rulers of the country, the majority of whom had their families in exile during the long war, decided this was not their exclusive responsibility. Moreover, they left their families abroad using their foreign residency as an excuse to use South Sudan’s public resources to travel to distant countries, a further affront to their people.

It is such failures that has brought South Sudan its current agony and backwardness. If such shortcomings are not admitted and corrected, it will not be easy to reconcile public opinion in South Sudan to the now warring leadership of the SPLM as a whole, whatever accusations they may trade against each other about who is to blame for the failure and the horrendous affliction the country faces.

Like all new and young countries, South Sudan was born out of a liberation struggle and through a peace agreement in 2005, rather than as a result of a military victory on the battlefield. True, the opponent, the Government of the Republic of Sudan which passed for the government of both South and North, accepted the 2005 peace agreement with the South, because it had become clear that it did not have the capacity to defeat the SPLA, the guerrilla army of South Sudan and, therefore, Khartoum was not able to contain the South through war.

South Sudan also needs to remember that its people enjoyed outstanding international support, because the people of South Sudan – all the people of South Sudan –had struggled for such a long time (50 years since 1947) for their freedom. It was with the overwhelming support of the international community that South Sudan won its independence from the North.

It was the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), with the support of their international partners, who imposed an agenda on Khartoum at the negotiations in Kenya, which stipulated that if Khartoum did not accept a secular state of a single entity, a united Sudan, and Khartoum insisted on unilaterally implementing an Islamic agenda in a multifaith, multicultural Sudan, then the South had the right to self-determination from the North. It was that exercise of self-determination that South Sudan won and allowed it to become an independent country. Those who fought for that independence, the SPLA, and the ruling party of South Sudan, the SPLM, now wanted to put at risk through their failure for nearly 11 years to assiduously administer this new and very young country. It is also the SPLM leadership who are, more importantly, responsible for the country’s current bloody civil war that has put every gain South Sudan had achieved in its long struggle at very serious risk.

THE SPLA, THE NATIONAL ARMY OF SOUTH SUDAN

An army for any country, old or new, is the national defender of the land and provides protection for that country and its citizens. Discipline and obedience to the rule of law

and responsibility for the protection of its citizens are what defines an army; without these attributes no army in the world is worth its salt. It has to be recognized and accepted, therefore, that the biggest failure by the SPLM as the first ruling party of an independent South Sudan is its failure to properly structure the SPLA as the national army of a newly independent South Sudan.

For over 11 years – the six years of the interim period of the CPA and the last five years following the plebiscite on self-determination in January 2011 – South Sudan has an army called the SPLA, together with its various security organs, such as national security, the national police, the national prison forces and all the other armed organs of the South Sudanese state. Those armed services of the young South Sudanese state are supposedly established, but no one in the Government of South Sudan can tell the people of South Sudan and the world, what the size of the SPLA as the national army of South Sudan is today. If anyone tells you a number, it will be a personal estimate, not a number taken from a properly kept register from an organized and disciplined national army. This number rises and falls, depending on who is giving these numbers and the security situation in the country at the time these numbers are cited. Clearly, the SPLA, the national army of South Sudan is now the cause of pain and grief for the ordinary citizen of South Sudan.

For more than 32 years – 21 years of a guerrilla war of liberation and 11 years since the end of the war of freedom for South Sudan – the national army of South Sudan has no one on a pension. Eleven years after freedom, there is no pension system for the army or for anybody else in the country. The excuse has been that there is no pension system for the army and all the security forces of South Sudan yet. Every SPLA member, who has reached a retirement pensionable age has been put on what is called a ‘reserve list’, from where they continue to receive their full salary as officers, men and women on the reserve list of the SPLA, the national army.

No one working in the political system of South Sudan has thought of converting the reserve list of the pensionable army officers, men and women of South Sudan, into a list of pensioners and to organize a proper pension fund and system. Experts could have been brought in from anywhere to help with the setting up of such a pension system, not just for the SPLA as an army, but for the entire public service system of South Sudan. But the SPLM political leadership cannot allow this to happen, because they purport to be all-knowing.

Furthermore, the national army of South Sudan and its police and other armed national services have been inflated by the absorption into these forces of all the militias that were deployed by Khartoum to help it fight the SPLA during the war of liberation. These were tribal militias deployed by Khartoum to fight the SPLA, but they

are South Sudanese nationals. It was, therefore, the right policy of the president of the young republic to absorb them into the national army and other armed services of South Sudan. Otherwise, relations with Khartoum remaining as they currently are, Khartoum would have used these militias to subvert the South. What was wrong with this policy of absorbing the South Sudanese militias who fought the South on behalf of Khartoum was the failure of properly integrating them into the SPLA to bring about an esprit de corps, of sense of belonging to one unified national army

As it turned out, two armies, if not more, came to exist within one army. And since the militias absorbed from Khartoum into the SPLA was done without integrating them, the two armies regarded themselves as separate from one another instead of considering themselves members of the same army, the South Sudan national army. Little wonder then that members of the national army regarded themselves as tribal, rather than nationals belonging to the same national army of the same nation. This was very much underscored by the fact that the bulk of the tribal militias employed by Khartoum during the civil war to fight the SPLA, the South Sudan guerrilla army, were largely from one tribe of South Sudan.

As a result of the sentiment that the national army of South Sudan is a tribal army rather than a national army, the recent political conflict spanning from 2013 to the present, which this National Dialogue is trying to resolve through dialogue and reconciliation, has been turned into a tribal conflict instead of a political one based on political differences within the same ruling SPLM political party. The indiscipline of the SPLA, the national army of South Sudan, has been turned into tribal indiscipline with atrocities by a national army blamed on tribes, whose ethnic personnel may have been responsible for the atrocities, but not as members of a tribe – rather as members of a national army. In this way, South Sudanese tribes, most of whom may also be members of the national army, are blamed as tribes or ethnic communities for the wrongs committed by members of the national army.

Suggestions or recommendations about how the situation can be corrected inside the South Sudanese national army will be included in the recommendations that must arise from this National Dialogue Steering Committee, once its subcommittees have reported back from all the regions of South Sudan.

What needs to be borne in mind, however, is the fact that while the national army can be accused of indiscipline and/or be blamed for atrocities committed during an internal armed conflict, both the blame and the correction of the mistakes made in our young republic need to be laid on the doorsteps of the political

leadership that has made these mistakes and allowed this to happen on their watch. Unlike many in the country, whose political agenda blame individuals, the blame for what has gone wrong in South Sudan must rest with the political leadership of the ruling SPLM as a whole, under whom the mistakes were allowed to become a way of life in South Sudan since July 2005.

In the end, the correction of the mistakes of the national army, like other political mistakes made in the country, need to be resolved as part of an overall political reform and should be treated as part of national reconciliation.

South Sudan will need to have a much smaller sized army from the imprecise hundreds of thousands of soldiers that seem to appear only on the payroll, many of whom do not actually physically exist as human beings. This report must not deal with innuendoes, but the stories from our national army need serious looking into.

While preparing this preliminary report of the National Dialogue Steering Committee, it was announced by the new leadership of the SPLA that the army of South Sudan had taken steps, as part of its own reform considerations, to rename the national army. The National Dialogue Steering Committee hopes that this happens quickly. These matters take time, because they involve both administrative and legal procedures that must be undergone before changes become formalized. However, this is a welcome move on the part of the national army of South Sudan.

The change of name itself, from the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, its name since independence some six years ago, to the South Sudan Defence Force, may go some way towards appeasing relations with Khartoum. The rulers of Khartoum long held the view that Juba had kept the name SPLA for its army as part of an enduring ambition in Juba to continue subverting the regime in Khartoum. After all, there are still active military elements of the SPLA in Sudan. These are the peoples of the Nuba Mountains of South Kordofan and the southern Blue Nile of eastern Sudan who were fighters of the SPLA during the long 21-year civil war and whose CPA protocols to conduct popular consultations among the people of these marginalized communities to determine what type of autonomy or system of government they wanted for administration while remaining part of a united Sudan, has not yet been determined. These people still call themselves ‘SPLA North’. Little wonder that Khartoum is so stalwart in its accusations against the SPLM rulers of South Sudan.

As a political and moral obligation, the ruling SPLM leadership in South Sudan needs to ensure that all the sections of the CPA with the North are implemented. This can only happen after a normalization of relations between Juba and Khartoum, when none of the two still suspects that the other is harbouring grudges or hostility.

This first report of the National Dialogue Steering Committee does not contain recommendations. These will come later, in another report, or as part of the final report.

The National Dialogue Steering Committee cannot decide on what the size of the national army of South Sudan should be. That is the responsibility and the work of the elected government of the day. And it needs to be done through legislation. A reasonable figure may, however, be recommended.

Most countries with a similar population size and territorial dimension as South Sudan have smaller armies than South Sudan currently has. The efficiency and the effectiveness of any national army does not depend its numbers, but on its training, discipline and efficiency. Many countries with the land and population the sizes of South Sudan have armies smaller than 100,000, and are known to be effective and efficient armies.

To reduce the ranks of the SPLA, the army of South Sudan, to below 100,000 personnel, needs to be coupled with other reform measures. Most of the current SPLA officers and privates are veterans of South Sudan’s two wars of liberation, the SPLA and the Anya-Nya wars. The SPLA itself, the latest and the youngest army of South Sudan, has already existed for nearly 40 years, since 1983. By any measure, many of these soldiers, age-wise, qualify for retirement from active service or should be laid off.

No army in the world besides that of South Sudan has a senior officer who remains commander for 11 years or more, the period since South Sudan won its freedom from northern Sudan. This also does not include the 21 years, plus, during which these very distinguished commanders of the national army, who are war heroes in their own right, have remained army officers of our young republic. This is a reform overdue. Failure to reform, as part of the overall well-rounded national reform in all the public fields of life, means the country cannot hope to overcome warlordism in our national army as, indeed, in all fields of state public institutions. Such failures to reform the public service systems of our country breed the type of extreme public corruption our young country has endured.

The political and security problems are compounded by a feeling of privilege and entitlement within the liberation army of South Sudan, the SPLA, and its political leadership, the SPLM, rooted in its successful liberation of the country. It is a palpable feeling of having an inherent right to personally own South Sudan, which has made it difficult to enforce law and order and to inculcate a sense of fairness.

This attitude has also exaggerated tribalism because the national leadership of South Sudan under the SPLM based its decisions on managing the country on individual ability, quality and qualifications. At the very best, the

SPLM leaders of government seem only to look at their SPLA comrades-in-arms, if not their tribal kith and kin, to occupy jobs and responsibilities which an individual may have no qualification and experience for.

As a result, tribalism is rampant in South Sudan and many of the better educated and better qualified South Sudanese do not find jobs, even if they were willing to serve their country and they apply for the jobs. The civil service structure is faulty. It will take time for the public services of South Sudan to reform and undergo a structural transformation that will lead to sustainable development. But reform is the most urgent step the country now needs to undertake to overcome its present predicament.

Reforming and disciplining the SPLA, the army of South Sudan, and the other armed institutions of the state, may in the end prove to be the simplest and the more straightforward reform South Sudan can undertake, if the national political leadership is prepared and intends to carry through reform of the public institutions. This is because the armed institutions of the state are firstly supposed to be trained and disciplined before they can bear arms to protect the civilian population. Typically, if there is a law-and-order breakdown in the armed institutions of the South Sudanese state, then discipline and reform are what should first be engendered in any unit of the armed forces of South Sudan. If the soldiers of the SPLA cannot obey the rule of law being enforced on them by their commanders, then the rule of law will not protect anyone else.

There is widespread contention in South Sudan that the SPLA, the army of South Sudan, is unruly and undisciplined. This is a view that is corroborated by many events for which the SPLA, as an army, is accused of. While this may be an accurate contention, it is not common anywhere in the world that an army without proper training, proper rules, proper disciplinary procedures and proper command structures should be expected to carry out the types of many activities that this liberation army of South Sudan has been called upon so many times to do. While ordinary soldiers of the SPLA, who have committed a criminal offence in the discharge of their duties is answerable before the law for such an offence because ignorance is no excuse for a crime, the responsibility must rest with their commanders, especially if such offences are as a result of direct commands by their commanders.

Many matters have gone wrong in South Sudan, especially after the events of December 2013, when responsible commanders of the SPLA seemed nonexistent at the time of the armed conflict and when crimes, especially against the civilian population, were apparently committed by soldiers under the command of their officers. Instead of labelling a liberation army that has secured independence for the country with blanket accusations,

what needs to be done is for the national government to set up a proper investigation of these matters, so that those who have committed offences face the consequences of their actions.

THE EXECUTIVE

The second sphere where reform is urgently needed is in executive power. Under the order of things in South Sudan the elected head of state – the president of the Republic of South Sudan – is the chief executive. It is the president who hires and fires members of the executive. He appoints members of his cabinet and they are answerable to him for the discharge of their functions to which he has appointed them. The president appoints and replaces the national political appointees as a matter of law. Unfortunately, the extent of the presidential appointees is very far ranging in South Sudan. These include all departmental heads, the auxiliary heads of para-government institutions, all under-secretaries and all the directors of government departments. The head of state makes such appointments based on the recommendations of his cabinet ministers. This should require that the cabinet minister who recommends the appointment of an under-secretary, a department head or a director of that department, is responsible for the smooth functioning of that public institution. The president of South Sudan cannot personally oversee all government departments, others do it on his behalf. Those others are responsible and accountable for the mistakes and the failure of their departments and not the president. They should be blamed for these failures.

The reason why corruption in the public institutions of South Sudan is so extreme and pervasive is that everyone, from a cabinet minister and down the ladder of national responsibility, has decided that only the president of South Sudan and no one else is responsible for the smooth functioning of all the institutions of state. For his part, the president has unfortunately not exercised the rule of accountability vis-à-vis his own action or vis-à-vis of those he has appointed to public responsibility. No public accountability means that people appointed to positions of public responsibility have behaved in such a manner that they are not answerable to anyone in the young Republic of South Sudan. Everyone then behaves like the president who has appointed them, as there is no accountability.

Even when the president of South Sudan is sufficiently swayed to point an accusatory finger at those he may suspect of public misdemeanours, such as when he publicly accused former cabinet ministers and senior members of his ruling SPLM party of misappropriation of public funds, the president failed to follow up on these public

accusations with a proper investigation to exonerate the innocent and punish the guilty. The result is that the public of South Sudan and indeed the world at large is made to believe that no one makes anyone accountable for public misdemeanours in South Sudan.

We have talked about the SPLA as a national army in this report. One of the worst failures of the South Sudan army, the SPLA, is the lack of proper training and discipline. The attitude of all soldiers is that their power lies in the barrel of the gun that they carry. If they are not properly trained and properly disciplined to understand that the gun is an instrument of the soldier’s responsibility towards the society that he is supposed to protect and to serve, the soldier will not know that they metaphorically share the ownership of that gun with the ordinary civilian: the soldier’s duty is to protect the ordinary citizen with the gun in their hand. The soldier is prohibited by law to threaten any citizen, let alone to molest citizens at gunpoint. Lack of rigorous training and discipline leads the soldier to commit excesses that can lead to war crimes, even in a civil political conflict, like the one currently taking place in South Sudan.

Several factors – reducing the size of the SPLA; making the size of the national army affordably commensurate with the resources of the country; training and disciplining officers and soldiers to rigorously obey the laws of the land and to respect their fellow citizens – can enhance national reconciliation and forgiveness of past mistakes that may have been committed by some members of the national army against some citizens, or groups of citizens, during the current armed conflict in South Sudan.

What is required in South Sudan is total reform of all the public services, not just the army, to bring about accountability. An intelligent and forthright community will concede its mistakes, past or present, and work to correct them. The National Dialogue Steering Committee hopes that the South Sudanese community is such a community.

FOREIGN SERVICE OF SOUTH SUDAN

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is one of the most important of the state’s public institutions and is worth singling out in this report as needing both reform and recasting. There is no South Sudanese representation in the world that does not need reconsideration. The number of South Sudan’s foreign missions is much too large, and all are overstaffed. No young nation like South Sudan ever had the ambition to be diplomatically represented in every corner of the world. Diplomatic representation abroad is one of the costliest representations to any country. It needs to be reduced to an affordable number and size.

If the extremely large number of South Sudanese diplomats are such effective representatives of our country abroad, a representation the country clearly cannot afford in terms of costs, then these skilful diplomats are also capable of helping the country pull up its straps and therefore need to be reassigned to other duties at home.

South Sudan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs does not only need administrative reform, its foreign policy needs clarity as to the objectives of its missions abroad. A young country like ours does not need just mere representation abroad; the mission of South Sudan’s foreign representation is to sell itself abroad. More than five years after independence, not a single South Sudan mission abroad can be said to have performed one tenth of its responsibility. This needs to change.

Of course, because of dwindling resources at home, these young diplomats dispatched all over the world go for many months without salaries. It is nothing short of a disgrace. This must change.

THE JUDICIARY AS AN ARM OF LAW AND ORDER

In South Sudan now, it is not easy to identify a public institution that might serve as an example of a state institution that is free from blame or indeed from mismanagement, even the national judiciary. In the week before the president of South Sudan declared the National Dialogue launched, in April 2017, the entire judiciary was closed down by a national strike of judges from every tier of the justice apparatus. Although the president immediately intervened, and set up a committee to investigate the complaint of the judges, the judges still continued their strike insisting that they first needed to receive a satisfactory answer to their demands from the president of the Republic of South Sudan before they ended their protest.

Some of the glaring failures of the judiciary system include the fact that the judiciary was allowed to continue with the same system that was operating when South Sudan was still unified with northern Sudan. It was a judicial system governed by Islamic law. The judiciary has two investigating branches: the police; and the prosecutor, called ‘Wakil al Niaba’ in Arabic. In the Islamic system of northern Sudan, the police open a case, arrest the accused, investigate them and then hand over their investigation to the investigative attorney, who prepares the case and then prosecutes the case before a judge.

In South Sudan, where there is an overwhelming absence of police to arrest and to investigate cases; as a result, citizens go directly to the investigating judge many times. Some of these investigating judges sometimes order

the arrest of the accused. They even pass judgement and fine citizens with large sums of money or cattle without referring to the trial judge of the judiciary. Many stories about the corruption of the judicial system of South Sudan are commonplace in rural South Sudan.

How judges are appointed or removed, and stories of corruption and malpractice in the South Sudanese judiciary are as rampant as the stories of public corruption elsewhere in the country. That a young country like South Sudan could carry on for more than five months without a functioning judiciary, because of a strike by its judges, is the manifestation of a state close to anarchy.

THE LEGISLATURE

On paper, the parliament of South Sudan is a functioning entity. But how its formation came to be tells the story of a legislature that cannot be relied upon to formulate laws that inspire the public confidence of its citizens. The membership of this South Sudan national legislature has been so inflated with unelected members that it is impossible to know whether the appointed members of the National Assembly of South Sudan are greater in number than the elected members.

The National Assembly of South Sudan and its upper house, the Council of State, were elected in 2010 to legally and legislatively prepare the country for the Referendum on Self-Determination a year later, in January 2011. Because this is the body that prepared the country for the referendum that led to independence in July 2011, it is perhaps not apt to comment in the National Dialogue about what happened in those 2010 parliamentary elections. It would be as if the National Dialogue was questioning the legitimacy of the election results that brought about independence. What needs to be stated very clearly, however, is how the next elections to the future parliament of South Sudan should be conducted. This is an important aspect of the type of reforms the country now urgently needs.

Unfortunately, while the present Parliament of South Sudan remains in power, one must hope that it will be able to adopt and pass the reforms needed for the country to achieve its national reconciliation based on the National Dialogue Steering Committee’s recommendations. These will be presented to the president of the Republic of South Sudan who set up the National Dialogue.

The current parliament has been inflated with unelected members since the start of the current conflict, which set us down the road of self-destruction. The president wanted to avert a catastrophe by establishing the National Dialogue Steering Committee. This means that, since the national government which set up the

National Dialogue is also the body that formed the present national parliament, it is likely that the next parliament will retain the same membership as the present parliament after the next elections.

While it is true that the national parliament of any country is a reflection of its nationalities and while the current parliament of South Sudan is a replica of the many rebellions that have afflicted the country since its independence in 2011, it is also true that the same parliament represented the political and ethnic opinion of South Sudan which elected it in 2010. The present Parliament of South Sudan represents the various warring factions that fought each other since South Sudan became independent on 9 July 2011. Anyone who took up arms in South Sudan since December 2013, claiming to fight to gain power in Juba by force of arms and who signed a peace agreement and has joined the government of South Sudan, has also demanded to be represented in parliament. Thus the leaders of the many rebellions have now been appointed to the present legislature.

Many of the current revolutionary members of the South Sudan National Assembly were not elected or appointed members of the Parliament of South Sudan at the time of the last elections in 2010. Only elected members of the opposition who ran away with the opposition to revolt against the state should have been allowed to resume their seats in parliament after the 2015 peace agreement. But those who acquired their parliamentary membership through armed rebellion have as much legitimacy as those elected in 2010. For the country to respect its legislature, the future parliament should not be tampered with by inflating its membership with appointments.

CIVIL SERVICE AND INDISCIPLINE

It is now a universally accepted fact that corruption is rampant in South Sudan, because of the indiscipline that permeates the public service of the country. How civil servants are recruited is unclear. There is no accountability and public servants compete with traders, merchants and business people in the marketplace, as if they too were traders. Army generals are known to contract with their own military establishment and/or departments of the state for the supply of goods and services thereto. Police are cautioned against taking action against corrupt merchants in South Sudan because these merchants are business partners to generals commanding the national army. Individuals need to be given choice, either to be public servants and respect the rules of public service, or to be traders.

Even if the National Dialogue recommends to the president of the Republic of South Sudan ways and

methods of reforming the public service, it will be a very hard-fought battle to get the members of the security services of South Sudan to cooperate with the outcome of the National Dialogue. This is an important cautionary warning because it will have been a waste of time, effort and resources if the recommendations of this National Dialogue do not amount to anything but words on paper.

Allowing unelected members to flood the national Parliament of South Sudan in order to achieve peace has undermined the legitimacy and the authenticity of this institution.

However, the president of South Sudan, when appointing this National Dialogue Steering Committee, has said that every individual should do everything in their power to bring peace and national reconciliation among the people of South Sudan. And so it is. Any compromise for peace is worth all the missteps on the way to peace and national reconciliation.

Parliamentary elections are a specific step and action in a true democracy. It is not a political step that can be easily usurped, even by an elected president, in order to attain peace or to achieve any political purpose. The power of any legislature is that its number is fixed by law, according to the population of the country. Altering the membership of a national legislature should be done by abiding by the laws and rules governing the legislature.

When a democratic legislature allows a president to appoint unelected members to an elected parliament, the idea, normally, especially for the countries of the developing world, is to provide the national legislature (parliament) with a list of talented individuals that the electorate may have not elected into parliament, such as lawyers, economists and other technical professionals that the parliament may require. Usually such appointments do not exceed 10 percent of the elected membership.

What happened in the Parliament of South Sudan is that the inflation of the number of the appointed members has made parliament look like an institution for political bargaining between the contesting political leaders of the ruling party, the SPLM. The fact that rebellion in South Sudan is rewarded by positions at all levels of state have made rebellion in South Sudan the easiest way to attain power. It has also totally undermined parliamentary democracy.

Parliamentary and presidential elections are the only power in the hands of the electorate; it is the people’s only power in a democracy. To dilute the powers of the presidency after the due electoral process and to inflate the membership of a democratically elected legislature by so many appointments is the best way of undermining any democracy. The feuding leadership of the ruling party of South Sudan, the SPLM, have totally undermined South Sudan’s democracy by attaining peace through this process

among themselves. This is an action that seems to tell the people that their vote and their opinion in regulating the function of the political process in the country is not of any great import.

At the very least, perhaps, the leadership of the SPLM, which has landed the people of South Sudan in today’s terrible state of affairs, will finally reconcile, forgive each other and return the people of South Sudan to peace and a normal life. By any measure, it is already too much of a price to extract from one’s people. But to the people of South Sudan, if their rulers grant them peace through the process of reconciliation, it will have been a price worth paying.

THE MEDIA

Like the country it serves, South Sudan’s media services is young and made up of individuals who may have trained as journalists and have requisite qualifications, but have very little experience. Of course, if the media in South Sudan had started off playing its role as a free and independent media when the country gained its independence, it may have earned its own credentials as a free and independent media. As it turned out, the managers of the young media of South Sudan wanted to favour the SPLM, the ruling party of South Sudan, to the extent that some of the media personnel were mouthpieces for the government, putting out government propaganda, or disinformation, that had no basis in reality whatsoever.

Placed in that type of a situation, the media loses credibility. This lack of credibility went on until the SPLM leadership split in the civil strife that set South Sudan on the path where it finds itself today. Members of the South Sudanese media have taken sides and are no longer guided by a search for the truth, the cardinal principle of the media. Many organs of the South Sudanese media do not want to know the truth. They create their own truth.

As the media split, the truth itself became the victim; content was not based on objective reporting of the facts, but reflected the diverging realities of contending political ideas. The exaggerations and hyperbole in storytelling favourable to one party and which served the cause of one’s own side has become the order of the day. It is the truth that has become a victim in South Sudan.

The best example of the media situation in South Sudan is that of some independent media organs. They joined the opposition, decided not to recognize the elected government of South Sudan still in power in Juba, even though it was now under an armed challenge supported by some media factions. The elected president of South Sudan was now known to the media supporting the armed opposition as the head of the regime in Juba, no longer the first elected president of South Sudan.

The media failure in South Sudan is a shared failure of those who ran the political system in the country and those who led the media.

It is not possible to defend the attitude of any political system that targets the media, blaming the media as the cause of its political problems with the electorate of the country. The media in South Sudan had been targeted in the course of the bloody internal conflict that has afflicted the country since December 2013. Many members of the South Sudanese media had been targeted and a number of South Sudanese journalists have lost their lives, victims of their own opinion. Those wielding the state machinery responsible for such atrocities have been shielded by the conflict, because they belong to the ruling party. This needs to change. A country that chains its media, loses its own independence by default.

But the main problem of media, both the print media – newspapers and other media publications – and the broadcast media – radio and television – is the lack of independent sources of funding. It is said that whoever pays the bill, calls the shots. This is so true of the current media of South Sudan. No one pays the bill of any media without establishing the operational policy of that media. As long as the institutions that manage and run the state of South Sudan are not yet clearly defined by law and are feuding and fighting among themselves, the media will remain the easiest target for blame, if not for physical assault.

The political system that runs South Sudan and the various institutions of the state have not yet begun to function as public institutions the way they do in better organized states and democracies of the world. South Sudan needs to get its house in order in this regard. Perhaps the National Dialogue Steering Committee can recommend a solution to create an independent media in the country, when it sends its final recommendations to the body that set it up, the presidency of the Republic of South Sudan.

Most developing countries, especially in Africa, actively contributed to setting up an independent media that proved successful. South Sudan can follow such examples by making a public declaration and recognizing contribution in favour of an independent media, if the National Dialogue makes a credible recommendation that calls for a regulated code of media conduct and not an imposed code.

In new states like South Sudan, national state security apparatuses are normally the subject of accusations of media muzzling. But the security state apparatus of South Sudan is part of the failure of the government to reform its army, state security and police for over 11 years. The state security apparatus, like the army and police, need legal and operational restructuring reforms. One

does not blame an institution of state that one has not undergone reform or restructuring. Like the army and the police, the state security apparatus of South Sudan needs revamping before one can make them accountable for any wrong deeds.

As a conclusion to this section on the media, the National Dialogue Steering Committee wishes to appeal to the South Sudanese men and women of the South Sudanese media: The steering committee hopes that men and women of the media want to restore peace to their country one way or another. Although members of the South Sudanese media may not like the way this National Dialogue has been set up, the only responsibility assigned to the National Dialogue is to attempt to get the people of South Sudan to reconcile among themselves.

We cannot believe that our media likes the catastrophic situation that afflicts our country today. Even if you are a member of the opposition wing of the ruling party, the SPLM-in-Opposition, we cannot believe that you would like to see the type of killing and destruction that has beset our country. We cannot believe that as members of the South Sudanese media, you would want the current armed conflict in our country to go on until your side attains power over the dead bodies of South Sudanese citizens. Please join the call for a return to peace in our country. That is the only objective of the National Dialogue.

The unanimous call for peace in South Sudan by all its citizens that are not carrying arms and who are therefore not warmongers – and we assume the South Sudanese media is not – may help all of us to instil a sense of shame in our own warlords and bring them to the peace table. These warlords have brought our country and its people to the deplorable state in which we are all in.

There is no substitute for the voice of the country’s media as a mouthpiece for peace. Attaining peace will save the lives of our dying innocent civilians, and not signify support for any party of war, government or opposition. We cannot believe that you, members of the South Sudanese media, think that this very unjust war over power should go on until the side you may perhaps favour wins. We therefore call upon you, not necessarily to support the current National Dialogue, but to campaign for a return to peace in our country, to save whoever is still alive among our innocent citizens.

As we conclude this appeal to you, all the members of the South Sudanese media, we leave you alone with your conscience to decide whether this horrendous war should go on – with the loss of many more innocent South Sudanese lives until you achieve the change of government – or we end this bloody war in the interest of our innocent people and find other peaceful ways of challenging or changing government.

POLITICAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE REFORM

One of the most serious failures of the state structures of South Sudan regards the political and administrative realms. The system under which the current state of South Sudan is organized and is being administered is not an indigenous political and administrative system. It is still that system which the South inherited from Khartoum in 2005, at the beginning of the implementation of the CPA. This is a system that Khartoum put together when it was toying with the idea of an Islamic state of Sudan which included South Sudan.

At the time when South Sudan became independent, in July 2011, the administrative structures which South Sudan inherited from Khartoum should have ended. These have not; up to the time of writing this preliminary report of the steering committee, the administrative structures are the same. This is perhaps why the decreeing of 32 states and the Abyei and Boma administrative areas by the president attracted such universal support across the country, except among the armed opposition groups who are in natural opposition to government.

The debate about administrative reforms in South Sudan is long overdue. Perhaps now, when the National Dialogue is taking place, is the appropriate time to resolve this debate. What type of a political system do the people of South Sudan aspire to? Should the political system inherited from Khartoum involving 10 states be reinstated and sustained, even if the country transforms the 10 states into federal states? The entire question of a federation or any other system of governance needs to be seriously discussed, especially at the time when the ugly head of tribalism has reared so high. Can South Sudan afford a federal system based on tribes – 64 of them? This is not by any means a rhetorical question.

The 32 states, Abyei and the Boma administrative area formulated by the president of South Sudan are popular entities for most rural people of the country. This is the fulfilment of the ruling SPLM party revolutionary slogan of taking power to the people. But everything has a price. These many states come at a time of near bankruptcy in the country and they may not succeed in fulfilling the objective for which they were set up! There are a large number of state governors of these 32 states that have not even arrived to the designated new state capitals because there are no public buildings to house them and their local officials, and the central government in Juba, in its current state of finances, cannot afford to assist these new states.

There are also various local conflicts that have arisen from the creation of these new administrative centres of South Sudan. The National Dialogue Steering Committee needs to seriously consider the predicament of the new

states in its recommendations and link this to a governance system that it wants to recommend to the president. It is clear that decentralized system of public administration is the preferred system of governance, not only because it brings the government closer to the people – a revolutionary SPLM political slogan par excellence – but mainly because the rendering of services to the ordinary citizen is simpler and easier done by the decentralized local official than by central government. With the current breakdown of law and order in South Sudan, an effective form of administrative decentralization can become the optimum way to deliver services to citizens and administer the citizens while maintaining national security in the country. This system of localized decentralization has worked elsewhere when it is efficiently run.

However, confederation, federation or decentralization in general is not a guarantee of success in terms of bringing good governance to a country like South Sudan. Tribalism has become a serious problem that needs to be overcome through an effective system of decentralization. But there is no way South Sudan can assuage the litany of tribal complaints solely by decentralization. Domination, against which most communities of South Sudan have complained, does not only happen because the central government is dominated by only one or two tribes. Political domination can happen at any level of government within a state like South Sudan, where there is close to 70 ethnic communities. There are small tribes in South Sudan – so small that their ethnic population may not be large enough to be represented even at a regional level, no matter how devolved power is to the region of such a small tribe. There will always be room to dominate someone if the rules governing both representation and participation are not broad enough to provide universal representation.

After what has happened to South Sudan since December 2013, all regional ideas about decentralization must be properly scrutinized. Who in the traditional three regions of South Sudan – Bahr el Ghazal, Equatoria and Upper Nile – can now accept South Sudan be represented by anyone coming from another region? Every locality in South Sudan now seems to want to represent themselves, rather than be represented by others. While this is perhaps taking the notion of rebellion to extremes, the minimalist political system that the South Sudanese are, by and large, aspiring for is a decentralized political system where every ethnicity is represented. This is not such an easy circle to square, but one on which the National Dialogue must have a point of view.

A well-studied and planned federation has enough leverage and room to accommodate the current strong zeal for ethnicity, without sundering the structures that protect this united state of one diverse people. Such a system must recognize ethnicity as the hallmark of the

cohesiveness of the people of South Sudan, which by definition rejects the marginalization of other groups.

Tribalism, or to use a kinder word, ethnicity, in South Sudan has become an important political phenomenon of national politics, one that the National Dialogue Steering Committee must find some way of dealing with when it formulates recommendations at the end of its work.

One of the many mistakes that have compounded the problem of tribalism in South Sudan is the fact that there is no established liberalized political way of arriving at political power and political decision-making. Ambitious politicians inspire their kith and kin to support them as a way of vying for power. There is nothing wrong with that, as long as it is peaceful and law abiding. The problem arises when an ethnic community, large or small, thinks that it has the ability to change power by the force of arms. This is what has brought South Sudan into the horrendous state it is in today. Neither the government, nor the opposition parties challenging it, have the ability to control their undisciplined forces, or have the resources and the means to discipline and control their very unruly forces. While the state has the responsibility and duty to keep law and order, this is not necessarily what its forces actually do on the battlefields of South Sudan. Innocent South Sudanese civilians become the target of atrocities from both sides.

South Sudan cannot afford tribal politics. It must evolve into a liberal democratic system of governance that allows every individual ambitious politician in the country, with the right qualifications, the opportunity to seek power and realize it, without resorting to violence.

In a South Sudan comprised of about 70 tribes or ethnic groups, the only way for minority tribes to achieve power is to encourage liberal democracy of a multiparty system. This worked in South Sudan at least twice before, even when it was still under the political control of northern Sudan. The history of liberal politics of South Sudan is, of course, short because of the long control by the North. But the 10-year government era following the 1972 Addis Ababa Peace Agreement in South Sudan taught South Sudanese some lessons in multiparty democracy, and can serve as a good example on how democracy avoids violence and allows the winner of the day a chance to take power and be judged by their political record when in power.

After the 1972 Addis Ababa Peace Agreement, which granted South Sudan regional self-rule, the manner in which the South chose its leaders had seemed to be distorted by Khartoum when it decided to appoint the first head of the executive for South Sudan without a political process in the South or without involving South Sudanese political movements. The South, however, elected to tolerate that first political mistake by Khartoum so it would not disrupt the young peace in South Sudan, the

outcome of the peace agreement with northern Sudan that ended 17 years of civil war with the North.

However, during the two-year interim period arising from the Addis Ababa Peace Agreement, before the first election of the political system in South Sudan, the leadership of South Sudan, as the same leadership that orchestrated the peace agreement between the South and the North and became the first political leadership to establish the autonomy of South Sudan, was keen that political power in South Sudan be exercised only through the consent of the people of South Sudan. Elections were organized in South Sudan in order to stabilize the transfer of political power through popular elections.

Although the interim political leadership of South Sudan, which took the country through an exemplary and peaceful political transition, had run and won the 1976 and first South Sudan regional elections, it was replaced by the election that followed in 1978. Patience and allowing time are the main hallmarks of a peaceful democratic process. War is not.

Unfortunately, those 1978 elections totally destabilized politics in South Sudan and provided Khartoum with a window for intervention. Two more elections followed in quick succession because of the political upheavals that ensued following the 1978 elections and because of Khartoum’s strategic interest to destabilize political life in South Sudan.

The position of Khartoum was always to hold to the colonial notion that South Sudanese were not capable of ruling themselves and running their own affairs. Thus the colonial mindset led to the annexation of South Sudan by northern Sudan. This political fallacy seems now to be confirmed by the current SPLM rulers of South Sudan.

After only four short years of political independence in 2011, the South seems to have proved colonialism right. South Sudan is now in a dire state of political instability. Will the South Sudanese allow this negative – indeed, ugly – impression of themselves to remain as its real record? Or can the National Dialogue, initiated by the first democratically elected president of this young republic, save their country?

The political issues are clear. We have tried to outline some of them in this report. It ought not be too difficult to set out where and how the country got it so wrong after only a short four years of independence, attained after a long and bloody struggle of more than 50 years. The mistakes made are clear. Correcting them should also not be too difficult if the leaders of the SPLM, the rulers of the young South Sudan today, whose internal power conflict brought the country to its current sorry state want to reconcile to save their people from this agony.

This first document of the National Dialogue Steering Committee is the first effort towards national

reconciliation, peace and national unity. The report has unfortunately dealt largely with the mistakes of our recent past. One needs to accept one’s mistakes before one begins to correct them.

Only those holding political power can correct any mistakes they made. The history of self-rule in South Sudan is a short history. The same rulers of the young Republic of South Sudan are the same rulers who initiated this National Dialogue. The National Dialogue Steering Committee has adopted this first document. If it adds its recommendations to what will become a final report to the president of the Republic of South Sudan, who set up this national undertaking, the question to ask must be: Will the government carry out and implement the recommendations of the National Dialogue which it has initiated? This question arises because of a sense of self-doubt that has afflicted South Sudan. Self-doubt has arisen from a failure by this young country to run its own affairs since independence in July 2011, a failure that has caused the suffering, destruction and loss of life of many South Sudanese citizens.

NATIVE ADMINISTRATION

Colonialism had made use of tribal chiefdoms and native administrations as a credible agent of local administration for law and order, justice and fairness. This system, the only means of administering tribal communities, has been weakened by politics and two rebellions in South Sudan since independence from colonial rule in 1956.

It was necessary for the two liberation movements of South Sudan, the Anya-Nya Liberation Movement and the SPLA, to have access to the resources in the hands of the local chiefs and communities for the liberation to survive and prosper. Now, the native administration needs to be revitalized, reformed, supported and encouraged. They will be especially helpful in the collection of illegal arms from those who carry these weapons and use them to cause insecurity and commit crimes against and among the communities.

The chief knows who the strangers are within their communities, who the troublemakers are and how to deal with them. The native chiefs are a credible agent of state and should be reformed and supported.

National Dialogue Steering Committee

The

May 2018

Acronyms and abbreviations

ANC African National Congress (South Africa)

AU African Union

CMI International Crises Management

EU European Union

IGAD Intergovernmental Authority on Development

ITI In Transformation Initiative

NDS National Dialogue Secretariat

NDSC National Dialogue Steering Committee

NGO non-governmental organization

NP National Party (South Africa)

SPLA Sudan People’s Liberation Army

SPLA-IO Sudan People’s Liberation Army-in-Opposition

SPLM Sudan People’s Liberation Movement

SPLM–IO Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-in-Opposition

SSBC South Sudan Broadcasting Corporation

SSP South Sudanese pounds

UN-MSU United Nations Mediation Support Unit

UNDP United Nations Development Programme

UNMISS United Nations Mission in South Sudan

USIP United States Institute of Peace

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge our deep appreciation to the Transitional Government of National Unity (TGoNU), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), the Berghof Foundation, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), the African Union (AU) and the Governments of Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, South Africa, Germany and Japan for the extensive help they provided in realizing the different phases of this important National Dialogue project.

Since the inauguration of the South Sudan National Dialogue in May 2017, many other institutions and individuals have contributed effectively to the success of the process. We thank them for their steadfast support. It is our hope that the remaining phases will receive similar contributions from all stakeholders. We are thankful in advance for their interest and generosity.

Foreword

When His Excellency President Salva Kiir Mayardit first announced his initiative for the National Dialogue in December 2016, and then launched the National Dialogue Steering Committee on 22 May 2017 no one questioned it as a matter of principle. The only concern expressed was whether the process would be inclusive, credible and transparent, which are necessary elements for the success of any national dialogue.

Since then the process has demonstrated beyond any doubt that it has lived up to these principles. Inclusivity, however, requires a positive response from all concerned. All relevant South Sudanese nationals may be invited to join and the door opened to all, but if some refuse to join, then the responsibility for the failure to achieve inclusivity must be placed where it belongs.

The president has repeatedly said that National Dialogue was never intended to be a net or bait on a hook to catch the opponents of the government, but was meant to be a genuinely open, free and transparent process. The National Dialogue is not a forum for the government to dialogue within itself, but for the people of South Sudan to speak among themselves. And for over a year now, they have spoken at various levels, beginning with the initial phase of open debates by the steering committee, followed by the preparatory phase involving lessons from other national dialogues and operational procedures for field consultations. Fifteen subcommittees were formed to cover the grassroots in the former 10 states, with additional subcommittees on the two special administrative areas of Abyei and Bor, and three other subcommittees on security, the national capital, and refugees and international outreach. These subcommittees have conducted their consultations and reported to the steering committee. The process is now set to move forward to the regional conferences and then a national conference.

Document 1 of the steering committee – the previous report in this volume – provides an overview of the critical elements of the crises facing the country in the functioning of the three branches of government and their related institutions and organs. While it does not offer solutions to the problems it identifies, it points the way to possible remedies. Document 2 covers the genesis of the National Dialogue initiative; the creation of the steering committee; the process by which the subcommittees were established; how the initiative has been informed by the experiences of other national dialogues; and preparations for the practical method of conducting the targeted consultations. The next set of documents will comprise the reports of the 15 subcommittees, which will provide materials for the regional conferences that will in turn prepare the documents to be submitted for the consideration at the national conference, the last stage in the National Dialogue process. It goes without saying that the enduring value of the National Dialogue lies in the documentation of the process, whether as materials for the consideration of the conferences or as a record of what was done for posterity and future researchers in the history of South Sudan. We therefore acknowledge with deep appreciation the role of the secretariat and all those who have contributed to the preparation and publication of this and other documents of the National Dialogue.

Ambassador Dr. Francis Mading Deng

1 Introduction

The main objectives of this Document 2 are twofold: (i) to provide the context in which the South Sudan National Dialogue was conceptualized; and (ii) to share with the wider public the summary of the reflections of the members of the steering committee in a plenary format during the first month after launching its work.

The idea of the National Dialogue in its recent international context with respect to South Sudan is credited to the Development Policy Forum (DPF), which is managed by the Ebony Center for Strategic Studies. The DPF is a web-based forum consisting of 375 members of which South Sudanese nationals constitute about 99 percent. On 19 July 2014, the DPF organized its monthly discourse on the theme, ‘A Conceptual Framework for Resolving the Crisis of Governance and Leadership in South Sudan’.

The consensus that emerged from the July 2014 DPF discourse was that political dysfunctionality is one of the key challenges facing South Sudan and its viability as a state. The background paper for the DPF debate used two analytical tools to articulate the nature of the crisis: a three-circle Venn diagram and a fragility trap. It highlighted that, for nine years, the leaders of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) now in conflict did nothing to improve the plight of their citizens. It predicted then that the proposed Transitional Government of National Unity (TGoNU), led by the same actors, would ensure that South Sudan remained in the vicious cycle of fragility for years to come. Instead, what was needed was an Interim Government of South Sudan (IGSS) that would be guided by an overarching vision of sustained peace, economic growth and poverty eradication

The framework presented to the DPF proposed to resolve the stated problem through a three-pronged approach: (i) sustained peace through direct talks between the warring parties; (ii) national dialogue through a multistakeholder forum to discuss six key issues/challenges facing South Sudan; and (iii) intra-SPLM dialogue on the underlying causes of political dysfunctionality within the ruling party that in turn triggered violent conflict on 15 December 2013.

Two years later – on 22 October 2016 – another DPF discourse was organized on the necessity for national dialogue in South Sudan in the light of the unfortunate events of 8 July 2016. All of the political parties in South Sudan, including those in the Transitional Government

of National Unity, were invited to present their views on the idea of a national dialogue. Secretaries-general represented the respective parties. In this regard, the acting secretary-general of the SPLM was subsequently debriefed by her leadership, a debriefing that led President Salva Kiir Mayardit to inform the governors of states in their meeting on 24 October 2016 about his intention to initiate the South Sudan National Dialogue.

The rest of this introductory chapter is organized into two sections on: (i) the announcement of the National Dialogue initiative; and (ii) the inauguration of the National Dialogue Steering Committee.

1.1 FORMATION OF THE SOUTH SUDAN NATIONAL DIALOGUE STEERING COMMITTEE

The president addressed the South Sudanese nation on 14 December 2016 at a joint session of the National Legislature, an address in which he outlined the key objectives of National Dialogue. The speech of the president was essentially a soul-searching, personal reflection in which he acknowledged the nature and magnitude of the crisis on the people of South Sudan. The president expressed a number of concerns in the following passages:

Like all of you, I am deeply concerned about the current direction our country is taking. I am particularly concerned about the recent reports of rising hatred, divisions and tensions, all of which are rapidly eating our social fabrics away.

He continued:

I am deeply concerned about the parents who can no longer feed their children because of our shrinking economy.

The president concluded:

I am also concerned about the growing number of street children and women who have lost everything due to the ongoing political situation. I am deeply concerned that all our citizens are distraught over the current political conflict and drastically declining economy.

In the light of the above stated concerns, the president initiated the National Dialogue process, passionately stating:

Remember, dialogue has been a hallmark of our liberation struggle. We had always used dialogue as a mechanism to manage our differences and to recommit ourselves to our unity of purpose and resolve to set our people free. The SPLM first entered dialogue with the members of Anya-Nya 2, a process that consolidated the unity of the South Sudanese in their struggle. When the movement split in 1991, we held the first national convention in Chukudum in 1994, where we recommitted ourselves to our unity as a measure to achieve our liberation objectives.

The president gave a series of examples of dialogue in our history, such as the Wunlit Peace Initiative (1999); the Rumbek SPLM general leadership internal debate (November 2004); the South-South Dialogue (2005); and the All South Sudanese Political Parties’ Conference (2010). Hence, the president declared that the:

National Dialogue is both a forum and process through which the people of South Sudan can gather to redefine the basis of their unity as it relates to nationhood, citizenship and a sense of belonging.

Three broad objectives of the National Dialogue were specified in the speech, as: (i) ending violent conflicts in South Sudan; (ii) reconstituting national consensus; and (iii) preventing the country from disintegration and ushering in a new era of peace, stability, and prosperity. These were to be achieved through the following 10 specific objectives:

1. End all forms of violence in the country.

2. Redefine and re-establish stronger national unity.

3. Strengthen the social contract between the citizens and their state.

4. Address issues of diversity.

5. Agree on a mechanism for allocating and sharing resources.

6. Settle historical disputes and sources of conflict among communities.

7. Set a stage for an integrated and inclusive national development strategy and economic recovery.

8. Agree on steps and guarantees to ensure safe, free, fair and peaceful elections and a post-election transition in 2018.

9. Agree on a strategy to return internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees to their homes.

10. Develop a framework for national peace, healing and reconciliation.

The president subsequently issued a concept note on the same day he addressed the nation from the National Legislature (see page 7 of this volume). The President’s Concept Note outlined, among other things, the sequencing of the steps in the process of the National Dialogue through three main levels (see Figure 1 below): grassroots consultations; regional conferences or dialogue forums; and finally a national dialogue forum or conference.

Figure 1: The flow of the National Dialogue process across different stages

Source: The President’s Concept Note

2 Activities of the steering committee

2.1 SETTING THE AGENDA FOR THE NATIONAL DIALOGUE STEERING COMMITTEE

2.1.1 Context

The steering committee leadership and its secretariat put together a procedural package in preparation for their convening and which would be working within a given period. As such, a 30-day workplan was developed to guide the steering committee in its sittings.

In reference to Republican Order N0. 08/2017 (dated 25 April 2017) for the Reconstitution of the National Dialogue Steering Committee that directed the work of the steering committee to commence with immediate effect once signed by the president. The rapporteur and his deputies, assisted by the secretariat, had the task of immediately preparing the groundwork of the steering committee. The leadership of the steering committee directed the secretariat, through procedural guidelines, to prepare a workplan. The workplan was only for the first 30 days of the National Dialogue and it marked the beginning of the formal preparatory stage of the process.

2.1.2

Procedural guidelines for the workplan

1. The weekly sessions of the steering committee were between Monday and Thursday each week. The sessions began between 9 a.m. every morning and carried on for four hours each day, with a half of an hour’s break. There were no evening sessions for obvious reasons.

2. Our country is inflicted by many ills that have all become exacerbated by the bloody civil war:

i. Our country is now at its prime rainy season; people are cultivating. Members of the National Dialogue Steering Committee are leaders in their own right, who need to attend to some of the disturbing social problems in their local communities during this season. They are also heads of their families, not immune from the social problems affecting the country. They need time to themselves to attend to some of these problems.

ii. Communication and means of transport and contacts are not easy in our country, especially

during the rainy season, war and famine. The leadership and the secretariat will evaluate during this first recess, from their compilation of the work already covered by the first session, how much more work needs to be done, before compiling their final report of the National Dialogue.

iii. During this first session of the National Dialogue and throughout the period of recess, the steering committee will contact any members of the our society who may still have reasons for staying away from the National Dialogue and still need convincing to join the National Dialogue. Such contact has already started and should go on during the sessions of the National Dialogue and during the recess.

It is the conviction of this steering committee that every South Sudanese leader, including those who want to ascend to power in our state by whatever means, want peace for themselves and for their country. As the steering committee for this vital National Dialogue, we will do our best to persuade any of our leaders to join us in dialogue and to state their grievances clearly, in the hope that this forum finds a collective way out of our problems and to end this bloody conflict that has already killed so many of our people and ebbed so much of our national energy and spirit.

3. Although the president of South Sudan, who set up the National Dialogue Steering Committee, has not limited us to a specific mandate and time, our bleeding community has some hope of deliverance on our work here. The steering committee prepares and discusses the agenda and process of the National Dialogue, which will be presented to the president and the stakeholders.

4. The Second Session of the National Dialogue Steering Committee should reconvene for its second and longer session from Monday, 11 September to Thursday, 26 October 2017.

2.1.3 First week of the secretariat meeting (23–26

May 2017)

To prepare the process of the National Dialogue in the country, the secretariat was charged with the responsibility of organizing programmes for the steering committee. This preparation was based on the contribution that members of the secretariat would bring on board with their technical expertise. The secretariat and the leadership collectively agreed that the National Dialogue Steering Committee’s first session would last for 30 days, working four days a week for four hours a day. A complete workplan based on procedural guidelines was developed. For easy reading, the procedural guidelines are summarized in the following four action points, which would in turn guide the plenary of the steering committee to:

Table

week

1. Prepare the procedures.

2. Map the places for consultations.

3. Form the subcommittees of the steering committee.

4. It is proposed, in the background procedural documents as part of this agenda, that each member of the steering committee will take the floor, at the time of their choice, and outline in 30 minutes what they view as the causes of the problems facing our country. As such, these would be presented as a general debate and/or personal presentation.

The above four-point agenda was in turn formulated into weekly activities of the steering committee, as outlined in Tables 1–4.

(Monday, 29 May – Thursday, 1 June 2017)

Discussion of the procedures

Tuesday, 30 May 2017 1. Mapping places and stakeholders for consultation 2. Coffee/tea break 3. General debate

Wednesday, 31 May 2017

Thursday, 1 June 2017

1. Formation of subcommittees of the steering committee

2. Coffee/tea break

3. Formation of subcommittees of the steering committee (continued)

1. Formation of subcommittees of the steering committee (continued)

2. Coffee/tea break

3. Formation of subcommittees of the steering committee (continued)

Table 2: Second week of work (Monday, 5 May – Thursday, 8 June 2017)

Monday, 5 June 2017

Tuesday, 6 June2017

Wednesday, 7 June 2017

Thursday, 8 June 2017

1. General debate: Consultation of key stakeholders (civil society)

2. Coffee/tea break

3. General debate: Consultation of key stakeholders (women’s groups)

1. General debate: Consultation of key stakeholders (youth groups)

2. Coffee/tea break

3. General debate: Consultation of key stakeholders (workers’ unions)

1. General debate – Consultation of key stakeholders (political parties )

2. Coffee/tea break

3. General debate – Consultation of key stakeholders (regular forces)

1. Discussion of the results of consultations with stakeholders

2. Coffee/tea break

3. Discussion of the results of consultations with stakeholders (continued)

09:00–11:00 11:00–11:30 11:30–13:30

09:00–11:00 11:00–11:30 11:30–13:30

09:00–11:00 11:00–11:30 11:30–13:30

09:00–11:00 11:00–11:30 11:30–13:30

09:00–11:00 11:00–11:30 11:30–13:30

09:00–11:00 11:00–11:30 11:30–13:30

1: First

of work

Table 3: Third week of work (Monday, 12 June – Thursday, 15 June 2017)

Day of the week Activity

Monday, 12 June 2017

Tuesday, 13 June 2017

Wednesday, 14 June 2017

Thursday, 15 June 2017

1. Discussion of the results of consultations with stakeholders (continued)

2. Coffee/tea break

3. Discussion of the results of consultations with stakeholders (continued)

1. General debate: Discussion of the root causes of the crises in the country

2. Coffee/tea break

3. General debate: Discussion of the root causes of the crises in the country (continued)

1. General debate: Discussion of the root causes of the crises in the country (continued)

2. Coffee/tea break

3. General debate: Discussion of the root causes of the crises in the country (continued)

Meetings of subcommittees and working groups

Table 4: Fourth week of work (Monday, 19 June – Thursday, 22 June 2017)

of

Monday, 19 June 2017

Tuesday, 20 June 2017

Wednesday, 21 June 2017

Thursday, 22 June 2017

09:00–11:00 11:00–11:30 11:30–13:30

09:00–11:00 11:00–11:30 11:30–13:30

09:00–11:00 11:00–11:30 11:30–13:30

To be determined by the leadership of each group in consultation with members and NDSC leadership

Meetings of subcommittees and working groups (continued) To be determined by the leadership of each group in consultation with members and NDSC leadership

Meetings of subcommittees and working groups (continued) To be determined by the leadership of each group in consultation with members and NDSC leadership

1. Plenary session to determine dates of subcommittee visits to the regions

2. Coffee/tea break

3. Plenary session to determine dates of subcommittee visits to the regions (continued)

4. Recess for three months to the beginning of the next plenary session (11 September 2017 – 2 November 2017)

1. Plenary session to determine dates of subcommittee visits to the regions (continued)

2. Coffee/tea break

3. Plenary session to determine dates of subcommittee visits to the regions (continued

2.1.4 First sitting of the steering committee and preliminary debates

The first plenary of the National Dialogue Steering Committee marked the first crucial days of confidencebuilding and trust that the members needed among themselves to begin their work on behalf of national interest. To carry out their activities, the members of the steering committee had to design and agree upon the procedures. The sittings followed a particular pattern.

Date: Monday, 29 May 2017

Time: 9:30–13:30

Venue: Freedom Hall

Agenda

09:00–11:00 11:00–11:30 11:30–13:30

09:00–11:00 11:00–11:30 11:30–13:30

1. Adoption of the statements of co-chairs at the swearing-in ceremony

2. Adoption of the workplan

3. Any other business

Co-chair the Hon. Angelo Beda called the meeting to order. The master of ceremonies (MC), Bishop Samuel Peni, welcomed all of the members of the South Sudan National Dialogue Steering Committee and introduced the programme of its first meeting. The opening prayers were said by a Christian priest and a Muslim cleric. The MC then handed over the microphone to the rapporteur, the Hon. Bona Malwal Madut, who passed it on to co-chair H.E. Abel Alier, who subsequently declared the meeting open after a few remarks.

The preliminary debate: Identifying issues for dialogue in the country

There is always a starting point, a spot where South Sudanese leaders in the steering committee, knowing where the country was at that time, accepted in their own right to seek a lasting solution for the people of South Sudan through the National Dialogue. Members of the steering committee began to debate among themselves on the root causes of problems that wrecked the country.

The view of the general public on these debates generated various reactions. Some saw steering committee members battling among themselves with issues of the country. To others, these debates were a real beginning of lasting peace in the country, as they were open to each other. Media houses televised and broadcast the debates in their entirety. To face problems in the country, all levels of interaction and exchange had to be head-on and spoken with sincerity and truth. The steering committee was the convener of the whole process.

Members of the steering committee debating among themselves were also involved in an exercise and learning process, as they would carry out consultations at grassroots. Later on in the field, during grassroots consultations, they would have gained confidence and acquired the art of managing dialogue of citizens throughout the country, among whom they were only to record citizens’ grievances and concerns. At the early days of the debate by members of the steering committee issues emerged as the debates raged on. The debates encompassed all areas of concern in the country and beyond.

Key

points of the debates

While the members of the steering committee went on with their debates, key points emerged. These points were identified by them as factors that caused war, fragmented the South Sudanese social fabric and increased violence among themselves. Points that came out in relation to the objectives of National Dialogue were as follows:

1. Power struggles among politicians.

2. Objectives of the South Sudan National Dialogue.

3. Stakeholders.

4. Diversity; misunderstanding of ethnicity and tribes.

5. Governance system.

6. Issues of areas such as Abyei, Kafiya Kingi and Hufra Al Nihas.

7. Reconciliation among communities – the Wunlit and South-South dialogues.

Summary of emerging issues in the debates

Issues of concern that members identified as fuelling conflicts and differences among the citizens of South Sudan were outlined with precision in the plenary. These issues recurred in the debates in such a manner that they have to be listed as a basis for conflict identification. The emerging key points of the first day include:

1. The need to respect the rule of law.

2. Institutional reforms and transformation of the civil service, security sector and judiciary.

3. Land reform.

4. Addressing corruption.

5. Inclusive governance.

6. Election preparedness.

7. Demobilization and disarmament.

8. The need to define the system of governance to be adopted (constitutionalism).

9. National healing and reconciliation.

10. The need to build a national identity.

Date: Tuesday, 30 May 2017

Time: 9:30–13:30

Venue: Freedom Hall

Summary of proceedings the second day

The emerging key points of the second day include:

1. Divisions within the SPLM starting from the second convention.

2. The constitution, and the need to draft the permanent version, which has been delayed for over 10 years.

3. Good governance relating to accountability and transparency; delivery of services; and revival of policies on agriculture, vocational schools, among others.

4. Security sector reform, relating to the issues of army discipline and a pension system for army veterans.

5. Revisit the national focus that was set during the liberation period prior to independence.

6. Relations between a particular tribe or ethnic group and the state.

7. Rule of law and abuse of the justice system.

8. Representation of the persons with disabilities.

9. Communal problems, farmers and cattle keepers.

10. Inclusion of Dr. Riek Machar and other armed groups, and IDPs and the refugees in the process.

11. Relations between SPLM as a party and SPLA (Sudan People’s Liberation Army) as the army.

12. The need to change the name of the army from ‘SPLA’.

Date: Wednesday, 31 May 2017

Time: 9:30–13:30

Venue: Freedom Hall

Summary of the proceedings the third day

The meeting was called to order by deputy co-chair, the Hon. Gabriel Yuol Dok. The deputy rapporteur, Amb. Dr. Francis Mading Deng, clarified the nature of the discussions the steering committee was holding, as some members still felt confused in regard to the ongoing debate. He then went on to summarize the emerging points from the previous day’s discussions.

Emerging key points on day three were the following:

1. Create a conducive environment for dialogue through a follow-up on the decree of the president on the release of political detainees by visiting the national security service detention facility, the military intelligence prison in Bilpam and the national prison to ascertain from the lists in these institutions the number of those released.

2. Budget of the National Dialogue should be made public for the citizens to know.

3. Rule of law should be followed regarding the execution of sentences from the judiciary to avoid chaos and confusion.

4. Too many army generals without qualifications as such results in leadership struggles.

5. Role of Parliament as an oversight body.

6. Separation of powers between the National Government and the state governments.

7. Land grabbing.

8. Protection of women and children.

9. Acknowledgement and reward to women for their roles in the struggle for independence.

10. Army killing unarmed civilians (women and children).

11. Military weapons in the hands of civilians.

12. Federalism.

13. Consultations to involve Riek, Lam, Olony, Thomas Cirilo, Bakasoro, Wau Group and others.

14. Comprehensive security strategy to clear confusion in the roles of the police, national security and army.

15. The Council of Elders is formed from the educated elite and influential politicians with little connection to the grassroots.

16. Internal division within the SPLM.

17. Need for reconciliation and forgiveness.

Date: Thursday, 1 June 2017

Time: 9:30 -13:30

Venue: Freedom Hall

Summary of the proceedings the fourth day

Emerging key points on day four were the following:

1. Inter-ethnic conflict

• Dialogue between the Nuer and Dinka to be supported by other ethnic groups.

• The need to build confidence and interethnic relations.

2. Food insecurity

• Tractors are without ploughs.

3. National army

• Lack of proper training of the SPLA after the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) of 2005.

• Army personnel are staying in civilian residential areas instead of in barracks.

4. Corruption.

5. Women’s issues, including rape, defilement, displacement, killings, early marriage.

6. Priority of education and health.

7. Execution of the rule of law.

8. Cattle rustling.

9. No implementation of the Agreement on the Resolution of Conflict in South Sudan, 2015 (ARCSS).

10. Appointment of unqualified personnel to senior positions in the government.

11. The question of independent management of the funds of the National Dialogue Steering Committee.

12. The need to include the armed groups.

13. The question of constitutional review.

14. The question of building a national identity.

15. The problem of economic crisis:

• Devaluation of the South Sudanese Pound.

• Alternative sources of revenue.

• Development of the private sector.

• Foreigners running businesses in the country.

16. Identification of the stakeholders according to the President’s Concept Note:

• Criteria of selection of the members.

• Developing a questionnaire.

17. Setting up subcommittees.

18. Ideological paralysis after 2005 (within the ruling party).

19. The system of governance after 2005.

20. The problem of power struggles.

21. Land issues:

• Taking of ancestral lands.

• Land grabbing.

• Fighting over land.

2.2 IDENTIFICATION OF STAKEHOLDERS AND CRITERIA FOR THEIR SELECTION

In the third week of the steering committee’s activity, the plenary debated on how to identify who were to be consulted or which institutions were to be approached for dialogue in the country and abroad. At the end of the debate, it was agreed that the dialogue process would always involve everyone, so that a nascent country emerging out of long history of liberation struggle would have a sustainable future.

The identified stakeholders are listed below with others later to be found by specific subcommittees based on their presence on the ground with the people. There were unique issues that had to be tackled by appropriate stakeholders. Subcommittees, too, had their priorities with their stakeholders during consultations. This is what inclusivity and transparency meant in the process of the National Dialogue.

2.2.1 Stakeholders in the country

1. National Executive

2. National Assembly, Council of the States and state legislative assemblies

3. State and local governments

4. The judiciary

5. People with special needs

6. Professional associations

7. Business community

8. Political parties

9. Faith-based institutions

10. Traditional leadership

11. Women

12. Youth

13. Civil society leaders

14. Military and security services

15. Internally displaced persons

16. Armed groups, including Aguelek.

2.2.2 Opposition leaders and armed groups outside the country

1. Dr. Riek Machar’s loyalists, SPLM-in-Opposition (SPLM-IO)

2. Former detainees

3. National Democratic Movement (Dr. Lam Akol)

4. National Salvation Front (Gen. Thomas Cirilo)

5. Federal Democratic Party (Changson Chang)

6. People’s Democratic Movement (Dr. Dario Hakim Moi)

7. Bakasoro Group

8. All the other armed groups whose leadership are not identified

9. Refugees.

2.3 FORMATION OF THE 15 SUBCOMMITTEES

During 12–15 June 2017, the steering committee deliberated on the formation of the subcommittees. The subcommittees were to be formed from members of the steering committee with the mandate of consultations with stakeholders.

The subcommittee working groups would carry the task of resolving the problems of South Sudan through careful listening, recording of grievances and tabling them for grassroots, regional and national conferences with a given mandate. Selection of the subcommittees followed certain guidelines regarding:

• Regional representation

• Inclusivity

• Technical knowledge of specialized committees

• Size of subcommittees, which would comprise five members, including the chair.

The leadership of the National Dialogue, in collaboration with honourable members of the steering committee, issued procedures concerning:

• Nominations of candidates

• Seconding of candidates

• Registering of names to regions and specialized committees by members.

Following the order of leadership in the subcommittees, heads of the subcommittees were identified, nominated and confirmed by the entire membership of the steering committee sitting. The following steering committee members were selected to head various subcommittees on the first day. After registration, with the members present in the hall, the following subcommittees heads were formed:

1. Central Equatoria Subcommittee

Chair: Hon. Clement Wani Konga

2. Eastern Equatoria Subcommittee

Chair: Hon. Nartisio Loluke Manir

3. Western Equatoria Subcommittee

Chair: Hon. Pascal Bandindi Uru

4. Western Bahr el Ghazal Subcommittee

Chair: Dr. Adil Athanasio Surur

5. Warrap Subcommittee

Chair: Hon. Joseph Lual Acuil

6. Northern Bahr el Ghazal Subcommittee

Chair: Hon. Kuol Athian Mawien

7. Lakes Subcommittee

Chair: Hon. Dr. Precillia Nyanyang Joseph

8. Jonglei Subcommittee

Chair: Hon. Chuol Rambang

9. Upper Nile Subcommittee

Chair: Hon. Simon Kun Puoch

10. Unity Subcommittee

Chair: Hon. Manasseh Magok Rundial

11. Abyei Subcommittee

Chair: Gen. Pieng Deng Kuol

12. Boma Subcommittee

Chair: Hon. Baba Medan Konyi

13. Headquarters Subcommittee

Chair: Hon. Jasmin Samuel

14. Security Subcommittee

Chair: Gen. James Hoth Mai

15. Refugees and International Outreach

Chair: Hon. Deng Dau Deng

The final compositions of subcommittees with full membership lists follow below in Tables 5–19.

Table 5: Membership of the Headquarters Subcommittee

Table 6: Members of the Security Subcommittee

2.4 WORKPLANS OF THE SUBCOMMITTEES

2.4.1 Further identification of stakeholders and workplans by subcommittees

To properly prepare itself and organize a list of stakeholders and days of conducting consultations in the field, each subcommittee further went on to meet separately. This action gave them more opportunity to organize themselves and co-opt some additional support teams to help them while on mission.

2.4.2 Headquarters Subcommittee

Stakeholders

• Executive

• Legislature (the speaker)

• Political parties

• Consultations with ‘former detainees’ who are within the Transitional Government of National Unity (TGoNU)

• Political detainees, follow up with the decision of their release

• Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission (JMEC), Ceasefire and Transitional Security Arrangements Monitoring Mechanism (CTSAMM)

• Non-governmental organizations (NGOs), international non-governmental organizations (INGOs)

• Civil society

• Academia

• Professional organizations (for lawyers, doctors, engineers, teachers, etc.)

• Youth organizations

• Women’s organization

• Faith-based groups

• Community leaders

• Governors (some of whom often stay in Juba)

• Financial institutions, including foreign ones

• South Sudan Chambers of Commerce

• Protection of civilians sites

• People with special needs

• Vulnerable groups and humanitarian agents.

Budget and activities

More time was needed to translate our activities into figures.

2.4.3

Security Subcommittee

Stakeholders

• SPLA (combined defence force), police service, wildlife, national security, fire brigade, prisons, etc.

• SPLA-IO (Sudan People’s Liberation Army-inOpposition) and all other armed groups.

Locations

Khartoum, Addis Ababa, Kampala, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and other places within South Sudan.

Modes of transport

Land, air, river.

Unforeseen expenses

Personnel: five members, secretary and documentation.

2.4.4

Refugees and International Outreach Subcommittee

Methodology

1. A letter addressed to the chair

2. Draft plan of action

3. Budget.

Involved

Media, refugee expert and community mobilizers.

Terms of reference

• President’s Concept Note on National Dialogue

• Speech of President Salva Kiir Mayardit

• Speeches of the co-chairs at the inauguration of the National Dialogue.

Objectives

• To end political conflict in the Republic of South Sudan; and

• To provide refugees with a platform for attaining peace.

Stakeholders

1. Refugees

• Government, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), community leaders, camp leaders, teachers, business communities, sports organizations, and people with special needs.

2. Diaspora

• Government, youth, academia, women’s groups, community leaders

3. Influential personalities.

Budget

There was no guide. Laptop, recorder and flip chart required.

Itinerary

1. Uganda

Accessible refugee camps. There are about nine camps of South Sudanese refugees in Uganda with 900,000 people.

2. Kenya

About 7,000 refugees at various camps, including Kakuma, Dadab and others.

3. Ethiopia

Most of the refugees are in the western part of the country. There about nine camps in Ethiopia in Dima, Asosa, Panyido and elsewhere with about 9,000 people.

4. Sudan

About 477,000 South Sudanese refugees live in 17 camps in Sudan, mainly in Khartoum, Kosti, Kordofan and Darfur.

5. Egypt

South Sudanese refugees who live in Egypt are urban refugees. There are no camps.

6. Democratic Republic of the Congo

There are two camps in the Democratic Republic of the Congo that host South Sudanese refugees.

International outreach

USA

• Washington, Omaha and Maine, with about 73,000 in the South Sudanese diaspora.

Canada

• Calgary, Alberta.

Australia

• Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, have about 35,000 South Sudanese living there.

Europe

Brussels will be centre of meeting South Sudanese who live in Europe. There are 10 locations in Europe.

Travels to meet stakeholders

Uganda: Visits begin in July, with meetings with the government and United Nations (UN), and at nine camps in Uganda.

Kenya: Meeting the government, UN and going to four refugee camps in Kenya.

Ethiopia: Meeting South Sudanese ambassador, government, UN and refugees in western Ethiopia.

Sudan

Egypt: 24 August – 29 August 2017

Democratic Republic of the Congo

USA: 1 Sept – 18 Sept 2017; meet with Friends of South Sudan and lobby groups.

Canada

Europe: Brussels, in September 2017, to meet with lobby groups and sports bodies.

Australia: Meet with lobby groups in Canberra.

Finally, we need to co-opt additional members in the group, especially those familiar with the regions. Refugees are bitter, they need peace.

2.4.5 Upper Nile Subcommittee

Upper Nile comprises five states. It is a very large region inhabited by five major ethnic groups. The last population count (2008) was 964,000 people, but it is now home to about 1.3 million people. Communication is primarily in the Arabic language.

Areas for activities

Akoka, Baliet, Kikon, Kodok, Longichut, Maban, Madion, Maiwut, Malakal, Malut, Manyo, Nasir, Panyikango, Pigi, Renk, Wulang.

Accessibility

Air, land, river.

Stakeholders

• Executive

• Parliament

• Local government

• Political parties

• Internally displaced persons

• Women’s groups

• Youth groups

• Individuals

• Chiefs.

Logistics

Accommodation is not available. We shall budget that as we go along. We shall come out with an estimated budget. Time frame will be provided and detailed. We need to reach these places. It is our duty to talk to our people. We need media personnel, a secretary, video camera, torches, batteries, recorder and security. It is a volatile region. We need to put precautions in place. There are price fluctuations. Rainy season is upon us in Upper Nile. We need nets, sheets, cells, power banks, etc.

2.4.6 Boma Subcommittee

Area

The area is composed of six locations:

1. Boma

2. Pibor

3. Likwangole

4. Gumruk

5. Berdet

6. Pochalla.

Transport Air, land.

Stakeholders

• Executive and local government

• Youth groups

• Women’s groups

• Chiefs

• Political parties

• Business communities.

Time frame

• The committee will take 27 days to complete its work.

• Accommodation is hard in the area.

Budget

Total proposed budget.

2.4.7 Unity Subcommittee

The Hon. Manasseh Magok Rundial (Chair)

• There are three states in Unity with several counties.

• Vision

• Mission

• Get views of all people to reconcile those involved in crises.

Stakeholders

• Executive

• Refugees

• Internally displaced persons in protection of civilians sites

• Civil society

• Political parties

• Women’s groups

• Youth groups

• Teachers.

Support staff

• Security

• Secretary

• Media.

Target

Meet at least 1,500 people in each place.

Budget

The subcommittee should have a hotline with the steering committee leadership.

2.4.8 Warrap Subcommittee

The Hon. Joseph Lual Acuil (Chair)

The area comprises the three states of Tonj, Gogrial and Twic. Each location will host the subcommittee for 10 days.

Locations

• Tonj (Jieng, Bongo)

• Twic (Ajakwac, Aweng and Mayen Abun, among others)

• Gogrial (Alek, Kwajok, Lietnhom, Luanyaker, Panacier and Panliet, among others).

Stakeholders

• Executive

• Chiefs

• Community leaders

• Youth groups

• Women’s groups

• Internally displaced persons

• Gelweng

• Political leaders

• Civil servants

• Business communities

• Religious leaders

• Regular army who left their assignment posts.

Travel

There should be health clearance before the subcommittee travels in the area. This is a precautionary measure only.

Funds

• Five cars for travel, air, media personnel, secretary and security.

• There will be 35 meetings conducted in the locations mentioned. Food, water, soft drinks and accommodation will all be covered. Duration of the consultations will be 35 days.

Budget

It is the work that is important. We appreciate our president for making this great step and by appointing us to the steering committee. Our objectives are not different from that of the president. We have a questionnaire organized according to the president’s objectives.

2.4.9 Northern Bahr el Ghazal Subcommittee

The Hon. Kuol Athian Mawien (Chair)

• There will be debate and consultations in many of the towns in the three locations of Aweil, Aweil East and Lol.

Stakeholders

• Executive

• Assembly

• Women’s groups

• Youth groups

• Workers’ unions

• Business communities

• Farmers’ unions

• Chiefs

• Local government

• Religious leaders

• Political parties

• Teachers.

Logistics

• Air and land travel

• Secretary, journalists and equipment (recorder, video camera, files) will be required, as well as accommodation, meals, water, tea, etc.

2.4.10 Lakes Subcommittee

Benjamin Majak Dau (Member)

Gok, Western Lakes, Eastern Lakes are the major areas for the Lakes Subcommittee. The subcommittee will use air and land to access the area to cover 32 counties. Assembly of stakeholders will be held in 20 locations.

Stakeholders

• Executive

• Legislature

• Judiciary

• Business communities

• Political parties

• Faith-based groups

• Traditional leaders

• NGOs

• Organized forces

• Internally displaced persons

• Welweng youth.

Services

• 20 meetings

• Media, secretary, information technology and security personnel.

Budget

• First aid is required.

• This region has been disturbed by internal communal conflicts for a long time. Once the problems of this community are solved, it will help the country nationwide.

2.4.11 Western Equatoria Subcommittee

There are four states in former Western Equatoria: Amadi, Gbudue, Meridi and Tombura that comprise the Western Equatoria Subcommittee’s area. The Democratic Republic of the Congo ambassador will join the subcommittee.

Key activities

Use the President’s Concept Note on the National Dialogue.

Stakeholders

• County commissioners

• Local government

• Traditional leaders

• Civil servants

• Religious leaders

• Political parties

• Syndicated organizations

• Security organs

• Armed groups that have reached agreement with the government already.

• Refugees

• Internally displaced persons.

Transport Air and land.

Budget

Transport, daily subsistence allowance, cultural promotion to bring peace.

Logistics

• Security, secretary, recorder, hall, generator, first aid, accommodation. Medical doctor to manage the drugs or paramedics.

• A total of 35 counties will be covered in the exercise. Security analysis will be done by local authority before each travel. County headquarters will be used for activities. Mvolo is isolated from Meridi. The United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) can be asked to assist in transporting the team to the location. The success of the National Dialogue Steering Committee is the success of peace in South Sudan.

2.4.12 Central Equatoria Subcommittee

The area of Central Equatoria is composed of Jubek, Terekeka and Yei River states. There are 34 counties. There is one city council and one town municipality.

Steps taken

Activities and budget have been defined.

Stakeholders

Government, all those accountable to local government.

Assembly

• Political parties

• Musicians and artists.

Logistics

• Halls, cars, daily subsistence allowance, accommodation, air time.

• Central Equatoria has an advantage of having roads, but there are challenges of insecurity along highways.

• It is necessary to maintain freedom of speech at grassroots; suspicions are still there.

Methodology

• Meetings

• Consultations

• Qualitative information

• Involvement and ownership of the process by the people.

Budget

• Meeting

• Publicity (radio, TV)

• Transport.

Jurisdiction

The subcommittee will operate with institutions that are within operational level of state government.

2.4.13 Eastern Equatoria Subcommittee

We appreciate the president for releasing all political detainees. We appealed to armed groups to respond to the president’s call for peace and they should adhere to the amnesty President Salva Kiir Mayardit gave them. We expressed deep sorrow for violations of the ceasefire in Torit and on the Juba–Nimule road. We are perturbed by reports of hunger and the breakdown in social fabric. Population of the area stood at 995,000 in the 2008 census. Total area of Eastern Equatoria is 74,000 square kilometres with 91 percent of the population being rural, 24 percent adult and 50 percent living below the poverty line.

Objectives

Gathered from the President’s Concept Note and speeches of the co-chairs. It is the role of the state government and communities to protect and facilitate the subcommittee.

Stakeholders

• Civil society

• Teachers

• Eminent personalities

• Political parties

• Government institutions

• Security overview from organized forces. If opportunity allows, armed groups can be heard.

Activities

• Launch the National Dialogue at state level

• Consultations

• Public outreach

• Twenty-two mini-conferences will be held

• Visits to Torit, Kapoeta.

Expected output

• Political transformation

• Security

• Internally displaced persons and returning refugees

• Reconciliation and resolutions be implemented

• List of delegates to the National Dialogue Conference will be provided

• Grassroots yearning for peace.

Constraints

• Hunger, insecurity, population migration

• Budget

• A period of 2 months and 12 days will be used for the consultations and debate. Members to be co-opted in the steering committee. Two secretaries will be needed, media, daily subsistence allowances, drivers. UNMISS to be engaged to assist in logistics.

• Communications will require Thuraya (satellite phones) at some locations. Editing software to be provided.

2.5 INPUT OF THE VICE-PRESIDENT ON THE NATIONAL DIALOGUE

On Tuesday, 6 June 2017, the National Dialogue leadership, headed by the Hon. Angelo Beda, the co-chair, welcomed South Sudan’s vice-president, H.E. Dr. James Wani Igga, at Freedom Hall. In his welcoming remarks, the Hon. Angelo Beda said to the vice-president, “You are welcome to the National Dialogue Steering Committee. We are profoundly

honoured to welcome you to address your people.” The Hon. Angelo Beda then asked all honourable members of the committee to stand up and welcome H.E. Dr. James Wani.

To the plenary, H.E. Dr. James Wani Igga encouraged the members of the steering committee to remain committed in their mission to the people of South Sudan. He addressed them before his lecture in these words:

I thank the leadership of the National Dialogue for organizing this presentation. I congratulate all of you comrades in this steering committee for the trust the president gave you. Definitely it is a heavy stone put on your shoulders. Carry it for the good of our people; this is a cross given to you to carry. It is for the service of your people and country. You are making history and legacy for yourself. You should be proud of yourselves; your exercise here should not be in vain. I believe most of you are intellectuals and politicians of this country. Navigate your people out of this situation for our country is torn by conflict. Only the leadership can bring it to an end through your brainstorming. The public is happy now when the dialogue opened with this freedom to speak out: your task here is to test the waters.

The vice-president then presented a lecture on key prerequisites for success of the National Dialogue, which is summarized below.

2.5.1 National Dialogue Conference from a technical perspective: Key prerequisites for National Dialogue success

A lecture presented by H.E. the Vice-President Lt. Gen. Dr. James Wani Igga

National dialogue is an instrument which can lead to:

1. Conflict resolution;

2. Political transformation;

3. Peaceful coexistence; and

4. Opening-up of the political space for the participation of civil society.

The national authority’s tasks are to create a vision for the National Dialogue Conference, its organization and facilitation.

Key prerequisites for a successful national dialogue are:

1. Inclusivity;

2. Transparency and public participation;

3. A credible convener;

4. An agenda that addresses the root causes of conflict;

5. A clear mandate and appropriately tailored structure, rules and procedures;

6. Cautions for international support to a successful national dialogue; and

7. Agreed mechanisms for implementation of outcomes.

Examples of national dialogue conferences include:

1. Kenya, 2004: Boma Conference on Constitutional Reform.

2. Senegal, 2008–2009: It engaged the diaspora (in France, USA and Canada).

3. Tunisia, 2013–2014: Attended by the general workers union (UGTT), the employers union (UTICA), the Tunisian Bar Association and Tunisian League for Human Rights (LTDH). This coalition was seen as credible by the majority of the Tunisian people.

4. Yemen : Although Yemen’s National Dialogue Conference had a far-reaching agenda, it failed to produce consensus on the highly contentious issues of federalism and financial and political mechanisms; and this failure led to the fuelling of the current civilian conflict in Yemen.

5. The Sudan, 10 October 2015: Following the completion of the first stage of Sudan’s National Dialogue Conference, launched on 10 October 2015, the six committees embarked on their assignments immediately on 11 October 2015, the day after the meeting. The process is further outlined below.

National secretary-general of Sudan’s dialogue

All documents were stamped by the secretary-general’s seal and were locked in the safe of the dialogue’s general secretariat. A small committee was set up and was tasked with the job of compiling all of recommendations made by the six committees in a matrix that would ease the process of dealing with them in the general assembly. The small committee presented its proposal for the matrix. It placed all the recommendations of consensus from all committees in one matrix under the title ‘Consensus points across committees’. In another matrix, it placed all of majority views under the title, ‘Majority views across committees’. In the third matrix, it placed all of the disputed views under the title, ‘Disputed views across committees’.

Recommendations of the Committee of Peace and Unity

1. General amnesty and release of the individuals –military and civilians – who were detained or tried because of the conflicts.

2. Immediate cessation of hostilities and permanent ceasefire. More recommendations were also given.

Recommendations of the Economic Committee

1. Realization of peace and political stability.

2. Drawing up a clear investment plan and the activation of work in accordance with the same. More recommendations also followed.

Recommendations of the Identity Committee

1. Recognition of elements that bring the Sudanese together, of who belongs to the geographical area called Sudan and their Sudanese identity.

2. Sudanese identity is the total integrated multi-faith, -cultural, -linguistic and -ethnic diversity of the entire peoples of the Sudan. More recommendations came up.

National Dialogue Conference in Tanzania

During implementation of the Joint Assistance Strategy for Tanzania (2006–2011), and as jointly agreed with the development partners, the government integrated MKUKUTA (Tanzania’s National Strategy for Growth and Reduction of Poverty), the public expenditure review and the general budget support dialogue into one dialogue structure with the aim of reducing overlaps and duplication of the three processes, as well as the associated transaction costs of these, while at the same time fostering cooperation and building synergy under government leadership.

To guide the engagement, a division of labour within the government and among development partners was also jointly agreed.

2.6 SEMINARS: LEARNING FROM THE EXPERIENCES OF OTHERS, THEIR SUCCESSES AND FAILURES

South Sudan’s National Dialogue is being conducted for the first time in the country nationally. Throughout its struggle for freedom, the people of South Sudan continuously dialogued among themselves with the aim of moving way forward to achieve peace of some form. In June 2017, members of the steering committee participated in seminars that saw them learning from other counties that conducted similar exercises in achieving peace through dialogue. Many technical experts were brought to share their experiences. Partners to the National Dialogue process in the country were present at the beginning of the seminars and at the end of the exercise.

Opening session

Monday, 3 July 2016

Dembesh Hotel, Juba

Time: 9:00

2.6.1 Dignitaries

H.E. Kiya Masahiko, Japanese ambassador to South Sudan

The success of the National Dialogue will bring great credibility and support to the country. The government is taking up the challenge of making reforms. This seminar is fully supported by the Japanese. The National Dialogue, however, is not the only thing to bring peace and security is equally important. Japan, through UNMISS, will support the Joint Integrated Police, while UNMISS will oversee the Regional Protection Force. Germany and Japan are supporting the recovery process in the country. Projects in Aweil and other areas in the country will be supported by Japan where you will see tangible results in communities.

H.E. Johannes Lehne, German ambassador to South Sudan

It is a great pleasure for me to attend this opening session of the series of seminars. I express deep appreciation for the fact that you have shown that it is a serious enterprise. You, as South Sudanese, believe that you can achieve peace. Our support together with Japan and the United Nations will continue to support you.

I encourage your endeavour as you have started the seminars to prepare you to deal with serious documentation of issues emanating from the people. I wish you success in your enterprise.

The Hon. Angelo Beda, co-chair of the National Dialogue Steering Committee

Honourable members of the National Dialogue Steering Committee, I welcome you, Ambassadors of Japan and Germany. This is part of our plan. People think we were debating already because the debates were successful. The media is to be commended for its good coverage. Our principles of inclusivity and transparency are to be maintained.

These seminars are not trainings. Like all African counties, we fought enough. The SPLA effort to liberate this country is historic. It was necessary to have independence. To shed blood and lose people is difficult, but it was an important phase. It is more difficult to undertake nation-building. After three years with jubilation, we came down, broken. We

supported the leadership to go up. Important action on reaching an agreement is needed. Many African counties face the same problems. In liberation people die, we are not the exception. Let us not cry. This seminar is for this. We thank UNDP for bringing us experts. We are going to shape the future of our children.

The war has spread from towns to villages. Let us spend days to listen to people. Let all things be written down. We shall compile everything about us here. Thanks to the German and Japanese ambassadors, I have now opened this seminar. We need true experiences, successful ones with similar examples.

Dr. Kamil Kamaluddeen, UNDP Country Director

I shall speak from the UNDP perspective. The experience and conversation is important. What has worked and what has not worked are all important to learn. I’m a Nigerian and was old enough to witness civil war. War does not resolve itself. I worked in Liberia during the war, and after. I know that crisis was very bad.

The National Dialogue is to be taken very seriously. I congratulate you all. It is a great responsibility. You are making your knowledge and experience available. It is a responsibility to serve, not to be served. We need to put everything on the table.

For UNDP, this is one of the best moments for us. This should give you more inspiration. We can’t waste that moment. This conversation will take us to the next level. It has not been easy, but doable. Sometimes we have to reach outside the national borders to be inclusive.

Credibility is who we are and how we organize ourselves. How to do things and how we structure the National Dialogue. Credibility is putting issues on the table.

For UNDP, the integrity of the process is important. The independence of talks is important. There are good and bad talks in a dialogue. Bring them together. Openness and comprehensiveness should converge. Conclusion and recommendations should be brought forward.

Experiences: Those of Tunisia, Yemen, Algeria, Burundi, among others, will show us how we shall approach dialogue. Dialogue is an internal process but it is enabling. For the last one month, I have been seeing positive things happening. Let’s give this a chance. Let us have everyone on board. By using the process you are making the constituencies prevail, let people have an opportunity to take part in the process. All stakeholders are important. A practical enabling environment is needed. That leverage is key to success. We have to reach out to all parties. I want the National Dialogue Steering Committee to do their work and be capable of unlocking the shackles.

2.6.2

Timetable

(Copies were provided in the folders. See Table 20.)

Rules

• Phones on off or silent.

• Punctuality.

• Raise hands for questions or to excuse oneself.

• Respect for views.

• Ask questions, do not waste time.

• Respect all rules.

2.6.3

Expectations

1. Skills acquired to effectively facilitate dialogue.

2. Realization of all members of the steering committee that they are one team with one objective.

3. Learn key principles of national dialogue.

4. Subcommittees should ensure inclusivity.

5. The steering committee will have acquired mixed methodologies and techniques.

6. All political prisoners are released.

7. Harmonized methodologies.

8. Successful dialogue and peace.

2.6.4

Concept Note

(Provided to all National Dialogue Steering Committee members.)

Dr. Lual A. Deng

We want you to operationalize the booklet. There are steps on page 10. Process: Top-to-bottom approach that the president mentioned according to his concept note; the steering committee will have a bottom-up approach.

Table 20: Seminars programme of activities, 3–25 July 2017

Date Time Session activity

DAY 1

Monday, 03 July 2017

DAY 2

Tuesday, 04 July 2017

and resource person(s)

08:30–9:00 Registration Plenary NDS

09:00–10:00

• Welcoming by Lual A. Deng

• Remarks by H.E. the ambassador of Japan

• Remarks by H.E. the ambassador of Germany

• Remark by United Nations representative (DSRSG/RC/HC/RR)

• Opening remarks by the Hon. co-chair of the National Dialogue Steering Committee Plenary NDS

10:00–10:30 Health break

10:00–10:30

• Participants’ introduction

• Seminar rules

• Expectation levelling Plenary

10:30–2:00 Operationalization of the concept note: From concept to action

Group work, group plenary presentation, facilitator plenary presentation and plenary discussion

UNDP/UNMISS/ NDS

UNDP/UNMISS/ NDS

08:30–9:00 Registration Plenary NDS

09:00–11:00 The key principles of a national dialogue Group work, group plenary presentation, facilitator plenary presentation and plenary discussion

11:00–11:30 Health break

11:30–02:00 The key principles of a national dialogue Group work, group plenary presentation, facilitator plenary presentation and plenary discussion

02:00– Lunch break and end of session

DAY 3

Wednesday, 05 July 2017

UNDP, USIP, CMI, Berghof Foundation, NDS

UNDP, USIP, CMI, Berghof Foundation, NDS

08:30–9:00 Registration Plenary NDS

09:00–11:00 The key principles of a national dialogue Group work, group plenary presentation, facilitator plenary presentation and plenary discussion

11:00–11:30 Health break

11:30–02:00 The key principles of a national dialogue Group work, group plenary presentation, facilitator plenary presentation and plenary discussion

02:00– Lunch break and end of session

UNDP, USIP, CMI, Berghof Foundation, NDS

UNDP, USIP, CMI, Berghof Foundation

08:30–9:00 Registration Plenary NDS

09:00–11:00

DAY 4

Thursday, 06 July 2017

Lessons and experiences in the implementation of national dialogue from other countries

11:00–11:30 Health break

11:30–02:00

Lessons and experiences in the implementation of national dialogue from other countries

02:00– Lunch break and end of session

Facilitator plenary presentation, Q&A, plenary discussion UNDP, UN-MSU

Facilitator plenary presentation, Q&A, plenary discussion UNDP, UN-MSU

08:30–9:00 Registration Plenary NDS

09:00–11:00

DAY 5

Friday, 07 July 2017

Lessons and experiences in the implementation of national dialogue from other countries

11:00–11:30 Health break

11:30–02:00

Lessons and experiences in the implementation of national dialogue from other countries

02:00– Lunch break and end of session

Facilitator plenary presentation, Q&A, plenary discussion UNDP, UN-MSU

Facilitator plenary presentation, Q&A, plenary discussion UNDP, UN-MSU

08:30–9:00 Registration Plenary NDS

09:00–11:00

DAY 6

Monday, 17 July 2017

Lessons and experiences in the implementation of national dialogue from other countries

11:00–11:30 Health break

11:30–02:00

Lessons and experiences in the implementation of national dialogue from other countries

02:00– Lunch break and end of session

Facilitator plenary presentation, Q&A, plenary discussion UNDP, UN-MSU

Facilitator plenary presentation, Q&A, plenary discussion UNDP, UN-MSU

08:30–9:00 Registration Plenary NDS

09:00–11:00

DAY 7

Tuesday, 18 July 2017

Lessons and experiences in the implementation of national dialogue from other countries

11:00–11:30 Health break

11:30–02:00

Lessons and experiences in the implementation of national dialogue from other countries

02:00– Lunch break and end of session

Facilitator plenary presentation, Q&A, plenary discussion UNDP, UN-MSU

Facilitator plenary presentation, Q&A, plenary discussion UNDP, UN-MSU

08:30–9:00 Registration Plenary NDS

09:00–11:00

DAY 8

Wednesday, 19 July 2017

Practical skills on mediation and conduct of national dialogue

11:00–11:30 Health break

11:30–02:00

Practical skills on mediation and conduct of national dialogue

02:00– Lunch break and end of session

Group work, group plenary presentation, facilitator plenary presentation, role play, plenary discussion UNDP, UN-MSU

Group work, group plenary presentation, facilitator plenary presentation, role play, plenary discussion

08:30–9:00 Registration Plenary NDS

09:00–11:00

DAY 9

Thursday, 20 July 2017

UN-MSU

Practical skills on mediation and conduct of national dialogue

11:00–11:30 Health break

11:30–02:00

Practical skills on mediation and conduct of national dialogue

02:00– Lunch break and end of session

Group work, group plenary presentation, facilitator plenary presentation, role play, plenary discussion UNDP, UN-MSU

Group work, group plenary presentation, facilitator plenary presentation, role play, plenary discussion

08:30–9:00 Registration Plenary NDS

09:00–11:00

DAY 10

Friday, 21 July 2017

DAY 11

Monday, 24 July 2017

Practical skills on mediation and conduct of national dialogue

11:00–11:30 Health break

11:30–02:00

Practical skills on mediation and conduct of national dialogue

02:00– Lunch break and end of session

Group work, group plenary presentation, facilitator plenary presentation, role play, plenary discussion

Group work, group plenary presentation, facilitator plenary presentation, role play, plenary discussion

UN-MSU

UNDP, UN-MSU

08:30–9:00 Registration Plenary NDS

09:00–11:00

Practical skills on mediation and conduct of national dialogue

11:00–11:30 Health break

11:30–02:00

Practical skills on mediation and conduct of national dialogue

02:00– Lunch break and end of session

Group work, group plenary presentation, facilitator plenary presentation, role play, plenary discussion

Group work, group plenary presentation, facilitator plenary presentation, role play, plenary discussion

UNDP, UN-MSU

UNDP, UN-MSU

08:30–9:00 Registration Plenary NDS

09:00–11:00

DAY 12 Tuesday, 25 July 2017

Practical skills on facilitation of grassroots consultation

11:00–11:30 Health break

11:30–01:45

Practical skills on facilitation of grassroots consultation

01:45–02:00 Closing remark

02:00– Lunch break and end of session

2.6.5 Learning from experiences of others: successes and failures

1. Yemen National Dialogue Conference

By Catherine Shin, UNMISS

1. Background

• Yemen is one of the countries affected by the Arab Spring that started in January 2011.

• There was deep national divide, economic hardships; insurgency in the north towards Saudi Arabian borders with the Houthis, Al-Qaeda; central government controlled only two-thirds of the country and secessionists were in southern part of the country.

2. International intervention

• The Security Council wanted a unified Yemen.

• Yemen National Dialogue came about as an agreement brokered by the UN and the Gulf Co-operation Council.

• President Ali Abdullah Saleh was in power for over 30 years. The city was dived into three parts.

• Ali Mohsen wanted to succeed President Ali Abdullah Saleh. The country was at the brink of a civil war.

• In November 2011, an agreement was reached. The Gulf Co-operation Council with international actors got involved. Ali Abdullah Saleh never wanted to sign the peace agreement. UN was meeting actors in the conflict, especially political constituencies. There was serious shuttle diplomacy. Ali Saleh and opposition leaders met under UN auspices for five days to reach an agreement. The NDC was anchored after the agreement.

Agenda issues

• Southern issue

Group work, group plenary presentation, facilitator plenary presentation, role play, plenary discussion

Group work, group plenary presentation, facilitator plenary presentation, role play, plenary discussion

• Sa’ada issue

• Transparent justice

• State-building

• Good governance

• Military and security

• Special entities

• Rights and freedoms

• Development.

UN-MSU

UN-MSU

There were things that happened at a technical level. The agreement was between political elites. Other political groups were not present.

Committee

• The preparatory committee was expanded from 25 to 50 members;

• It comprised women, youth and leaders;

• Breakdown: 30 percent women, 20 percent youth;

• To keep them was negotiated outside the room;

• Fifty percent Southerners;

• There were 565 delegates;

• Nine working groups; and

• The committee made 1,800 recommendations.

Process

It lasted for 6 months. The UN worked closely with Yemenis.

Implementation

It was clearly laid out for action.

Limitations

• Political involvement and active citizens views;

• It lasted for 10 months instead of the planned 6 months;

• Houthis and Southern issues;

• What the delegates agreed with the president was not agreeable to with them;

• Inclusivity was important;

• Women and youth blocks could have made a difference but they belonged to their political elites and constituencies;

• Role of political will;

• National dialogue will always reflect balance of power, Southerners and Houthis;

• It was a lesson and critical experience.

2. Burundi experience

By Lisa Reefke, UNMISS Political Affairs Officer

Background

• In 2015 the ruling National Council for the Defence of Democracy – Forces for the Defence of Democracy (CNDD-FDD) political party decided to extend the president’s term of office to a third term which was unconstitutional. This action sparked conflict with protests.

• In May 2015, the court found that the two-term limit only applied for popularly elected presidential mandates. The decision, which was allegedly passed under government pressure after the vice-president of the court fled the country, enabled the president to circumvent the constitutional term limits. Following the decision of the court, and a failed coup attempt led by a former ally of the president, Nkurunziza won a third presidential term in July 2015 in which all the major political parties boycotted the elections, amid widespread protests. Many people fled the country. Violence, arrests and torture of opposition party members occurred. The youth wing of the ruling party allied to government security forces and unleashed fear among the population. Growing demand by the African Union, United Nations and regional bodies sought an engagement based on dialogue.

The Commission of Inter-Burundian Dialogue

Key features of the dialogue were:

• On 12 May, the president appointed 15 members of a commission in charge of proposing the draft amendment to the constitution.

• The commission had six months, that could be extended once for two months, to identify and analyse all the various provisions to be amended, and propose them to the government.

• The terms of reference of the commission were twofold: firstly, to conduct public debates on social, political and peace consolidation, and security and economic development related issues; and secondly, to assess the following instruments: the Arusha Agreement, the constitution, the Comprehensive Cease-Fire Agreement and the Charter of National Unity.

Process

Dialogue took place in four phases (levels of governance):

• A bottom-up approach was used.

• Stakeholders: National Assembly, security, political parties, civil society, students, media, among others.

Session on the ground: Two to three hours were allocated for consultations. Up to 100 participants were allowed. The question asked was, “What can be done to achieve peace in Burundi?”

• Ideas were written on papers and collected by the Commission of Inter-Burundian Dialogue for documentation.

• Oral presentations were given to stakeholders for recording, and the identification of participants were made.

• Participants who spoke did so on their behalf.

• State media covered the proceedings.

• At the commune level, participation was very high.

• In October 2015, the 86-page report was handed over to President Pierre Nkurunziza, containing 26,000 opinions and suggestions, a sample from more than 10 million Burundians. The parliament received the report for information purposes.

Key recommendations

• Constitutional amendment done (e.g., abolition of president’s term limit, security, political parties act, ethnic composition).

• In March 2017, the president issued constitutional review for amendment.

Personal observation

Link to principles:

1. Credible convener; the commission was operated under President Pierre Nkurunziza.

2. Inclusivity and participation; lawyers, civil servants, and interaction of the commission with the diaspora was limited:

• Violence subsided.

• The president issued a decree to release 2,500 detainees whose crimes were limited to certain levels.

• Displacement continued.

• There was a lack of respect of freedom of speech with fear of reprisals, as open deliberations were covered by state media.

• How is the Inter-Burundi Dialogue linked with other processes? It runs parallel with the Arusha Agreement.

Burundi (past experience)

By Ambassador Nicholas Bwakira, consultant for International Crises Management (CMI)

Background

I participated in repatriating refugees in South Sudan after the 1972 Accord and worked for the Office of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). Your determination to solve your problems is very important. Belgium divided the population of Burundi during colonialism. They used a divide-and-rule policy that they inherited from the Germans. They killed the King of Rwanda and Patrice Lumumba in Katanga; the Crown Prince was assassinated by a paid Greek assassin. The party after independence did not articulate aspirations of the people for which they fought colonialism. The liberation party divided up into groups. The Union for National Progress (UPRONA) went to the elections divided. In 1962, independence came and in 1965 a coup attempt by Hutus followed. Repressions came. The army took power in 1966 when a republic was created. The army was created from one region in the south in Tutsi heartland (1966–1993)

Landmark

In 1993 landmark elections took place. President Melchior Ndadaye (28 March 1953 – 21 October 21 1993) was assassinated. Major crises ensued, followed by the Rwandan genocide in 1994. The African Union and UN had support, but took time to intervene. Salim Ahmed Salim invited President Julius Nyerere to bring together the conflicting political parties. Pierre Buyoya had taken power. Hutus organized a rebellion. There was a feeling that sides were being taken. There were three parallel forums for peace in Burundi to be mediated:

1. Julius Nyerere;

2. St. Ejidio; and

3. Internal forces who were in Arusha, Tanzania.

Nyerere died and Mandela took over after 1999. The AU, European Union (EU) and United States were mobilized to avoid the Rwanda genocide scenario. After 2000 an agreement was signed based on key principles:

1. No head of state will preside for more than two terms.

2. Transition to be followed with good representation of the Tutsi–Hutu–Batwa when the National Council for the Defence of Democracy (CNDD) won elections.

3. Power-sharing was to be reflected at the presidency.

4. Security sector to be reformed (police and army, 50 percent representation).

5. Justice to be independent. No interference.

6. Political parties to have functioning roles.

7. Human rights and media freedom to be respected.

For 10 years matters worked well. Crises came because principles were violated by the sitting president who wanted a third term. He tried in parliament and failed to amend the constitution. the parliament was under pressure. The electoral commissioner fled into exile. Later on, the constitutional court came up with an interpretation to the parliament that, ‘the president was not elected twice’ based on the Arusha Agreement. The national assembly and senate were notified.

• The AU said the constitutional court violated the constitution;

• Members of the defence forces were being removed at will by the president;

• Torture and executions took place;

• Over 400,000 refugees were in exile; and

• Opposition members are out of the country.

What can be done?

The Arusha Agreement is there, but if elites can agree, peace will come to Burundi. The issues are:

1. Fear of executions based on ethnicity or region;

2. Power-sharing; and

3. Resource-sharing.

3. Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet

By Lealem Berhanu, UNDP Senior Programme Adviser

Background

• Population: 11.4 million as of July 2017, based on the latest UN estimates.

• Tunisia achieved independence from France on 20 March 1956 with Habib Bourguiba as prime minister. A year later, Tunisia was declared a republic, with Bourguiba as the first president.

• In November 1987, doctors declared Bourguiba unfit to rule and, in a bloodless coup d’état, Prime Minister Zine El Abidine Ben Ali assumed the presidency in accordance with the Tunisian Constitution.

• The anniversary of Ben Ali’s succession, 7 November, was celebrated as a national holiday. He was consistently re-elected with enormous majorities every five years; the last being 25 October 2009, until he fled the country amid popular unrest in January 2011.

Post-revolution Tunisia (since 2011)

• The Tunisian Revolution was an intensive campaign of civil resistance that was triggered by high unemployment, food inflation, corruption, a lack of freedom of speech and other political freedoms, and poor living conditions.

• The protests inspired the Arab Spring, a wave of similar actions throughout the Arab world. The catalyst for mass demonstrations was the death of Mohamed

Bouazizi, a 26-year-old Tunisian street vendor, who set himself afire on 17 December 2010 in protest at the confiscation of his wares and the humiliation inflicted on him by a municipal official.

• Anger and violence intensified following Bouazizi’s death on 4 January 2011, ultimately leading longtime President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali to resign and flee the country on 14 January 2011, after 23 years in power.

Protests continued to ban the ruling party and the eviction of all its members from the transitional government formed by Mohammed Ghannouchi.

• On 23 October 2011 elections to a constituent assembly was held and the Ennahda Movement, formerly banned under the Ben Ali regime, won a plurality of 89 seats out of a total of 217, although it failed to gain an absolute majority.

• Ennahda was therefore forced to enter into a coalition with two smaller, more secular and socially democratic partners – the Congrès pour la République (CPR) which is a centre-left secular party and the Forum Démocratique pour le Travail et les Libertés (FDTL), also known as Ettakatol) which is social democratic party – to form an interim ‘troika’ government.

• This allowed Ennahda to build on the 89 of a potential 217 seats. Its coalition partners won 29 and 20 seats (CPR and Ettatol, respectively).

• On 12 December 2011, former dissident and veteran human rights activist Moncef Marzouki was elected president.

• On 6 February 2013, Chokri Belaid, the leader of the leftist opposition and prominent critic of Ennahda, was assassinated.

Regional and international situation

• At the regional level, Tunisia is experiencing the consequences of the economic downturn in southern Europe, which makes it difficult for it to attract new investments, and complicates the economic situation.

• The opening of the Tunisian border with Libya has increased security threats against the transitional process, as weapons used in recent armed attacks came from Libya, and all participants in these operations have been to Libya for training.

• Algeria, the large neighbour, believes and advised that the delay in finding a political solution will facilitate the spread of the insurgency and increase threats to Algeria.

• The regional climate, notably the ousting of Mohamed Morsi in Egypt and the chaos in Libya, likely encouraged Ennahda to make greater concessions in search of a consensus.

Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet

• The political debate was near a dead end, and nonpolitical actors had to step in to find a solution. Civil society would step in and forge a national dialogue initiative to prevent Tunisia’s transition to democracy from failing: the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet was constituted on that premise.

• The objective of the ‘National Dialogue’ was to facilitate a peaceful and constructive agreement on a stable transitional government as an exit to the political crisis that was threatening to derail the democratic transition.

• The Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet (Quartet du Dialogue National) is a group of four organizations that were central in the attempts to build a pluralistic democracy in Tunisia in the wake of the Tunisian Revolution of 2011. The quartet was formed in the summer of 2013.

Dialogue Quartet comprises the following civil society organizations in Tunisia:

• The Tunisian General Labour Union (UGTT, Union Générale Tunisienne du Travail);

• The Tunisian Confederation of Industry, Trade and Handicrafts (UTICA,  Union Tunisienne de l’Industrie, du Commerce et de l’Artisanat);

• The Tunisian Human Rights League (LTDH, La Ligue Tunisienne pour la Défense des Droits de l’Homme); and

• The Tunisian Order of Lawyers (Ordre National des Avocats de Tunisie).

• On 9 October 2015, the quartet was awarded the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize for its work:

• Intense negotiations continued while the country remained paralysed. Then, on 17 September 2013, a document, entitled ‘Initiative of Civil Society Organizations for the Resolution of the Political Crisis’, was released by the Quartet.

• This document, also known as the ‘road map’, had four main points:

• The resignation of the Ennahda-led government;

• Establishment of a caretaker, an ‘independent technocratic’ government;

• The creation of a new independent election commission; and

• Revisions to and approval of the draft constitution.

• The document also outlined in detail the agreements which would emerge from this ‘dialogue’ and the timing of the next steps in the transition process.

• Further, the Quartet’s role was not only limited to the launch and management of the dialogue, but was also expanded to include the follow-up of the implementation of the agreed upon ‘road map’.

• The Quartet envisaged the creation of a national dialogue process incorporating all political parties represented in the National Constituent Assembly, to achieve the milestones in the road map.

• The road map envisaged three parallel streams: constitutional, electoral and governmental.

• The constitutional stream envisaged the recommencement of the work of the National Constitutional Assembly and its finalization of the constitution.

• The electoral stream required the selection of members of the independent electoral commission, the finalization of the electoral code, and the fixing of the date for the next elections. All these tasks were to be completed in “a maximum of four weeks after the first meeting of the national dialogue process”.

• This timeline was not only unrealistic, but technically impossible. For example, the road map envisaged the adoption of an electoral code before the constitution, without recognizing that the exact system of government decided upon in the constitution would have a profound impact on the drafting of the electoral law.

• The timing of the governmental stream was similarly optimistic, for example: the selection of an independent figure to lead a technocratic government within one week; the formation of a technocratic government within two weeks of his designation; and the resignation of the current government, a maximum of two weeks from the first meeting of the national dialogue.

• It also proved the most technically problematic because the deadline for the resignation of the incumbent government was delinked from the other steps, theoretically necessitating that the government resign without the new government being in place and without guarantees regarding the date of Tunisia’s next democratic elections.

• Ennahda immediately announced its ‘reservations’ concerning the initiative, but not an outright rejection. It and its coalition partners were concerned about the impartiality of the Quartet and feared a ‘soft coup’, in which a technocratic ‘caretaker’ government would postpone elections and remain in power indefinitely.

• Each political party had to accept the road map if it wanted to participate in the negotiations. Twenty-one parties from both sides signed the road map agreement initiated by the Quartet, making the national dialogue possible.

• The national dialogue included all political parties with elected assembly members, on the basis of one representative member from each party, whatever its electoral share. Citizens’ interests and concerns were

represented in different ways and through different channels.

Indicators of success

• The new constitution was approved by the National Constitutional Assembly on 26 January 2014, receiving 200 votes out of 216. The constitution enshrines Tunisia’s Muslim identity; it does not mention Sharia law. The document guarantees equality between men and women, and commits the state to protect women’s rights. It also contains numerous provisions protecting citizens’ rights, such as freedom from torture and the right to due process.

• Free and fair elections for the National Constitutional Assembly were conducted in October 2014. According to the accounts of both local and international observers they were, overall, ‘an outstanding success’: competitive, inclusive, transparent and credible.

• With the holding of these elections, Tunisia officially cleared what is conventionally considered the minimal bar of democratic transition.

• A presidential election was held in Tunisia on 23 November 2014, a month after the parliamentary election. It was the first free and fair presidential election since the country gained independence in 1956, and the first regular presidential election after the Tunisian Revolution of 2011 and the adoption of the constitution in January 2014.

• Among other milestones achieved, Tunisia passed new press laws in November 2011 that considerably expanded and protected the freedom of the fourth estate (the press and the profession of journalism).

• Leading parties finally achieved consensus on the country’s political structure – a mixed presidential/ parliamentary system – in April 2013.

• The Constitutional Assembly finally succeeded in cobbling together a new constitution in June 2013, which, although not perfect with respect to its protection of liberal ideals, creates a solid foundation, sufficient for moving forward toward new elections and further political negotiations.

• Beyond these institutional milestones, Tunisia’s future trajectory over the past three years reveals a pattern of compromise, accommodation and pragmatism among Tunisia’s ideologically divided political elite that is auspicious for the future of democracy.

Drivers of democracy in Tunisia

• The military: First among the factors that have favoured democratic progress in Tunisia involves the character of the Tunisian military. In Tunisia, for a variety of historical reasons, the military developed into an apolitical and professional entity not invested

in the survival of Ben Ali’s regime. As a result, it did not oppose the fall of the autocrat and indeed refused to use lethal force to sustain Ben Ali’s rule when mass protests erupted in 2010–2011.

• The elite: The second factor that has proven key to Tunisia’s progress towards democratization concerns the matter of elite commitment. In the case of Tunisia’s critical juncture, when Ben Ali’s regime was suddenly brought down by a surge of popular protest, the country was blessed with elites committed to democratization.

• Inclusiveness: The third factor that has favoured democratization’s progress in Tunisia has been the political elite’s commitment to the principle and practice of inclusiveness.

• Dialogue: The fourth factor that has bolstered the process of democratization in Tunisia is the elite’s commitment to dialogue. Endless discussion, while enervating and sometimes exasperating, often proves the key to bridge building, to keeping people on board and to cobbling together working coalitions and compromises.

• Planning and luck: Democratization in Tunisia was also helped along by the providential results of its first election – itself the product of clever institutional engineering along with a dash of good luck. Tunisia’s first elections, by all accounts largely free and fair, denied a majority to any single party.

• Civil society: The sixth factor that has fostered the progress of democratization in Tunisia resides in the country’s robust civil society. Civil society has abetted democratization in two crucial ways: first, by playing watchdog – keeping track of the regime’s performance and holding its feet to the fire when it strays too far from democratic and liberal ideals – and second, by facilitating dialogue and compromise across political divides when ‘normal politics’ within Tunisia’s formal political institutions hits an impasse.

Lessons learned from Tunisia

1. Dialogue is not a substitute for strategy

• Dialogue is not a panacea; sometimes other solutions will work best.

• Dialogue is a tool that needs to be incorporated into a wider, longer term political strategy.

2. National ownership is collective ownership

Government ownership is not synonymous with national ownership:

• It is not about who convenes, but how the process is implemented;

• It involves inclusiveness, participation, balance and fairness; and

• National ownership is key, from design to implementation.

3. Civil society is a strategic partner

• In contexts of relatively weak or dysfunctional government institutions, civil society can play multiple roles, from convener to technical expert.

• CSOP became the ‘critical agent’ for the national dialogue implementation process: generating demand, mobilizing support, providing input.

4. Strong methodology, strong results

Successful dialogues combined the following:

• A strong political mandate

• Research and dialogue methods

• Capable technical secretariat

• Dialogue methodologies: mix and match

• Learn from best and worst practices; don’t copy.

5. Plan for the outcomes

Best dialogues design a follow-up strategy, building on the outcomes to ensure further impact.

4. Central African Republic (CAR) experience By Susan Stigant, Director, Africa Program, United States Institute of Peace

Background

• Cycle of conflicts engulfed CAR for a long time with coups and rebellions.

• The last government came through dialogue processes. It had three national dialogues conducted in CAR.

• Deep violence broke along religious lines. Muslims and Christians fought with most Muslims taking refuge outside. A regional body brokered peace in CAR.

• Lessons learned in 2015 made dialogue an acceptable process.

CAR national dialogue

1. Brazzaville forum: It brought ceasefire through regional disarmament, demobilization and reintegration. Not all armed groups came on-board by July 2014.

2. Popular consultations: Government went out to ask citizens what they wanted.

3. Bangui Conference: Eight thousand people participated in consultations.

4. Implementation committee was set up.

Recommendations

Mandate, decisions and guidelines from international groups were set out.

Stages

• Popular consultations were done by 30 committees.

• Sixteen prefectures of CAR participated. A central committee coordinated implementation. The peace and social committee were involved. Sometimes views were seen as those of the 30 committees.

Listening

• Nineteen thousand people participated, including women, youth, armed groups, and committees were established to draft agreement.

• The Bangui forum was attended by 800, although intended for 500 people only.

• Other groups appeared and added to the number. It took seven days. Speeches were delivered. A republican declaration was drafted.

Lessons learned

• Preparation

• Positivity

• Bangui forum created sense of hope

• Consultation was owned

• Inclusivity was for decision-making

• Clear road map.

Challenges

• Time was insufficient

• Decades of discord

• Refugees were not reached

• Consultations did not create culture of expectations

• Implementation, momentum was lost

• Outcomes yet to be implemented

• CAR not yet at peace; violence persists and armed groups are present in six prefectures of the country.

• Most armed groups did not sign up to disarm, demobilize and reintegrate.

5. UN experiences with mediation as means to resolve conflicts

By Roxaneh Bazergan, Senior Political Affairs Officer, Team Leader, Mediation Support Unit, Department of Political Affairs, United Nations

What options have been tried by the UN in recent years?

The UN’s Department of Political Affairs uses mediation as a means to resolve conflicts across the world.

Key characteristics

National dialogue is a loose terminology: It can be a meeting of few people, or it can be about conflict. It is important to have ownership of national dialogue. Looking into African model, all are anchored to suit dialogue:

1. Enabling environment

• No hostilities

• Access and security

• Central African Republic, Mali, Burundi and Tunisia.

2. Stability

• People to engage on social contract.

3. Freedom of speech

4. Confidence-building , including a sense of trust, inclusivity, capacity with grassroots influence; for example, in CAR, 28 teams went out for consultations to ensure diversity of people and opinions and it brought about good governance, peace and security, and socioeconomic development.

5. Transparency

6. Credibility

• Power dynamics, perception

7. Convener, 1991 Mali, CAR-External convener, Democratic Republic of Congo External, then Church

8. Broader framework: What will happen after the conversation? Different mechanisms of implementation.

9. Success: What do you want to move and change? Sequence of issues, immediate, longer terms. People need to feel some tangible results. Sense of ownership and involvement.

2.6.6 Question: What are the key principles of the South Sudan National Dialogue?

Answers (reporting)

Time: 12:30

Group Four

Secretary of the group, the Hon. Tulio Odongi Ayahu

Key principles of National Dialogue are as follows:

1. Need for political will

2. Conducive atmosphere

3. Transparency, public participation, free media

4. Inclusivity

5. Credible convener

6. Clear agenda

7. Agreed mechanism for implementation of outcome.

Group Two

Secretary of the group, the Hon. Mary Puru Michael

Key principles of National Dialogue are as follows:

1. Inclusivity

2. Honesty and sincerity

3. Transparency

4. Freedom of expression and opinion

5. Impartiality (should not take sides)

6. Nationalism

7. Trust

8. Law and order for National Dialogue

9. Commitment to implementing the end results

10. Non-discrimination (in regards to sex, religion and tribes)

11. Immunity of members (members not to be targeted )

12. Cooperation

13. Mutual respect

14. Decisions will be taken by consensus

15. Conducive environment.

Group One

Secretary of the group, Bishop Samuel Peni

Key principles of National Dialogue are as follows:

1. Recognize that there is a problem

2. Consult with the stakeholders

3. The leader of the nation (the president) initiates the process and appoints a convener and a committee

4. Create awareness among the nation

5. Include all stakeholders

6. Call for tolerance

7. Respect for each other’s opinions and be prepared to compromise

8. Values needed: Transparency, honesty, integrity, accountability, justice, openness, good listening and responsibility

9. It has to be national

10. Every stakeholder to identify with the nation rather than the tribe

11. Conduct National Dialogue after grassroots consultations.

Group Three

Secretary of the group, Dr. Priscilla Nyanyang Joseph

Key principles of National Dialogue are as follows: Definitions of terms should be given as guidelines for members of the steering committee.

1. Inclusivity, preparation – process, inclusive of all issues.

2. Transparency and public participation (regional and international)

3. Credible convener (impartial, trustworthy, honesty and has integrity)

4. Agenda that addresses the root causes of the conflict (conducive, enabling environment, devoid of threats and no encroachment on the rights of the people)

5. Clear mandate, structure, rules and procedures

6. Agreed mechanism for implementation of the outcome.

2.6.7

Group work

Group One

Q. Please discuss in your group the guidelines (dos and don’ts) for facilitating grassroots dialogue/consultations

Names

1. Hon. Baba Medan Konyi

2. Hon. Luciano Thomas Abdalla

3. Dr. Stephen Abraham Yar

4. Ngundeng Moses Geir

5. Hon. Munira Abdel Wahab

6. Hon. Garang Deng Aguer

7. Arthur Agany Pooli

8. Hon. Grace Abalang

9. Angee Beatrice George

10. Benjamin Majak

Answers

Dos

1. Meet authorities at destinations for consultations

2. Clear objectives to everyone

3. Speak less, hear more

4. Prepare a timetable and/or schedule of programme

5. Transparency

6. Identify stakeholders

7. Confidentiality

Don’ts

1. No affiliation to particular stakeholders

2. Omit hate speeches

3. No limitation

8. No intimidation

9. No interruption

10. Do not use offensive language

11. No judgement

Group Two

Q.1 Please discuss in your group the guidelines (dos and don’ts) for facilitating grassroots dialogue/consultations

Names

1. Hon. Gabriel Roric Jur

2. Hon. Michael Mario Dhuor

3. Hon. Jasmine Samuel

4. Dr. Adil Athanasius Surur

5. Hon. Nartisio Loluke Manir

6. Hon. Monica Ayen Maguat

7. Rev. Matthew Mathiang Deang

8. Hon. Chuol Rambang Luoth

9. Tabitha Gwang Awok

10. Joseph Nyok Abiel

11. Hon. Tulio Odongi Ayahu

12. Prof. Paul Ladu Bureng

13. Dr. Riak Gok Majok

14. Priscilla Joseph Kuch

15. Hon. Manasseh Magok Rundial

Answers

Dos

1. Inclusive and participatory

2. Letter of introduction of the subcommittees from the steering committee co-chair to the grassroots stakeholders

3. Neutrality during discussions with stakeholders, including:

• Meet differently

• Security for both stakeholders and subcommittee

• Language barriers need translation

4. Respect culture

5. Logistics

Don’ts

1. Abusive language

2. Assurance from authorities on the ground before meeting with stakeholders

3. Media coverage: video to be asked for if needed by stakeholders

4. Allow free expression of stakeholders

5. Be sympathetic, tolerant and console them before introducing the agenda

Group Three

Q. Please discuss in your group the guidelines (dos and don’ts) for facilitating grassroots dialogue/consultations

Names

1. Hon. Kuol Athiann Mawien

2. Dr. Haruun Ruun

3. King Wilson Peni Rikito

4. Festo Simon Lesuk

5. Lual Deng Khon

6. Donald Azo Mona

7. Dr. John Ruach Jal Wang

8. Stewart Soroba

9. Nyaruach Pal Gai

10. Amb. Rene Ilume Tembele

11. Dr. Kuot Mawien Kuot

12. Hon. Pascal Bandindi Uru

13. Hon. John Marik Makur

Answers

Dos

1. Openness of the process

2. Freedom of expression

3. Inclusivity

4. Sensitization

5. Clear agenda for coordination, facilitation, logistics

6. Encouragement of effective participation expected

7. Promotion of nationalism, compromise and consensus

8. Conducive atmosphere – free from threats

9. Credible convener – impartiality, neutrality

10. Agreed agenda mechanism for expected outcome

Don’ts

1. Do not mix mandate

2. Avoid conflict of interests

3. Do not impose restrictions

4. No hindrance to freedom of expression

5. Avoid exclusion

6. Do not create limitation of knowledge

7. No hidden agenda

8. No restriction of participants

9. Do not encourage ethno-identity

10. No intimidation or harassment of stakeholders

11. Avoid incredibility

12. Will not bring forward what stakeholders did not agree upon

2.7 PREPARATION FOR CONSULTATIONS IN THE FIELD

2.7.1 Group work

1. Organizing regional conferences (main exercise)

Purpose of exercise

Practise the skills for planning and facilitating effective consultations and deliberations beyond the community level. The focus will be on process and not substance.

Activity:

• Conveners from the three groups will meet and plan the conference, proposing an agenda and procedures for delegates to adopt.

• Delegates will continue their preparations for the conference focusing on process issues.

2. Documentation

Purpose of exercise

To consider the best ways of recording and making use of the outcome of broad consultations

Activities:

• Each group to make recommendations on the arrangements for documentation, including the best formats for reporting the outcome of community consultations.

• Conveners should propose a system for documenting the deliberations and decisions of their regional conference too.

3. Media and public information (Handbook pp. 121–125)

Purpose of exercise

To practise and share experiences on how members of the steering committee can promote the National Dialogue to the public.

Activities:

• Preparation of press briefings on last week’s three consultations and forthcoming regional conference (delegates and conveners, respectively).

• Participation in end-of-conference press briefing.

• A short external presentation on public information principles and practice.

4. Exercise in: (i) implementing the outcome of community deliberations; and (ii) preparations for the regional conference

Some suggestions: Members will have to generate appropriate additional or alternative proposals

1. Implementing outcomes of community consultations:

• Identify the issues that are to be addressed in the communities.

• Propose modalities for resolving the issues and what assistance the steering committee might provide to the community.

• Any other matters.

2. Develop proposals and rationales for the following:

• Agenda items for the regional conference (Berghof Handbook for Conflict Transformation (BH), 3.1. p. 68)

• Selection criteria: Who should participate at the regional conference? Which constituencies? How can the participation of women be secured? (BH, 3.2–3.4).

• Selection of chair or moderator of the regional conference.

• Working committees of the regional conference should be thematic and practical; discuss roles, if any, of the subcommittees.

• Identify preparations required on thematic issues.

• Decision-making and deliberation procedures and rules should be drafted.

• Any other issues.

Exercise

Tuesday 25 July 2017

Freedom Hall, Juba

Time: 10:00

Group work presentation

Preparatory session for the Greater Equatoria Regional Conference of the National Dialogue, Juba, South Sudan

1. Proposed agenda for the regional conference

1.1. Committee agrees that agenda shall be drawn from the 10 objectives of the President’s Concept Note of the South Sudan Dialogue (December 2016), clustered as follows:

• Security

• System of governance

• Power struggle

• Communal conflicts

• Democracy

• National economy

• Boundaries, borders, land issues

• National identity.

1.2. Specify issues as raised from grassroots under each cluster as in 1.1 above. The National Dialogue in South Sudan is geared towards fundamental change as reflected in the mandate and objectives of the National Dialogue. Therefore the agenda of the National Dialogue is broader in scope based on all issues identified by stakeholders at the grassroots and regional levels, and also aims to enhance the implementation of the 2015 Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan (ARCSS):

• System of governance

• Governance

• Security

• Power struggles

• Communal conflicts

• Democracy

• National economy

• National unity

• Land issues, boundaries, borders

• Corruption, tribalism, nepotism.

2. Selection criteria

Identify who will participate at the regional conferences. The President’s Concept Note of the South Sudan National Dialogue (December 2016) states, “In my view, a successful National Dialogue can only be realized if and when all the people of South Sudan have broadly participated, agreed and accepted its agenda outcomes. For this to be realized, the process of National Dialogue must be seen as credible, genuine and open to all the people of South Sudan ...”.

2.1. Criteria of selection

• It shall be inclusive of all stakeholders at the grassroots and regional levels.

• At least 30 percent must be women delegates reflecting each institution of stakeholders.

• At least 20 percent should be youth.

• Marginalized groups, such as people with disabilities, should be represented.

• Representation will be inclusive and effective.

• Representation will reflect expectations and aspirations of the people.

• Stakeholders should be able to articulate issues of concern without fear and without partisanship, and subscribe to solutions.

• Representatives should be persons of standing and respect. (All the delegates have won the confidence of the people and certainly have satisfied the criteria as such.)

2.2. Determining the number of delegates at the regional conferences should be based on agreedupon equal representation from each state; i.e., 500 × 3 = 1,500 delegates. The delegates should comprise:

• Delegates from the grassroots selected from participants to the National Dialogue based on the stakeholders

• Representatives to the conference by virtue of office

• People of high integrity

• Friends from the international community, the region and individuals.

3. Selection of the chair and moderator of the South Sudan National Dialogue

It is proposed that the chair is from the conveners and is:

• A person of respect and integrity

• Non-partial/independent

• Committed and bound by oath

• Accountable to the conference (and leadership of the steering committee)

• A suggested member of the steering committee, not from the convener/organizers?

• Has voting or no voting rights?

4. Working committees

4.1. Coordination committees to provide general guidance, advice and direction/solutions to matters that come up:

• Approves and releases resources to technical committees

• Coordinates with the subcommittee or steering committee leadership

• Coordinates and liaises with government and local administration for welfare and security issues relating to the process

• Ensures documentation is well protected and reporting and communication are well organized and handled.

4.2. Technical committees are needed for:

• Organizing

• Finance

• Accommodation and catering

• Logistics

• Security and protocol

• Documentation and material development (secretariat)

• Communications and media.

5. Preparation on thematic issues

• Secretariat to prepare background papers on thematic issues.

6. Decision-making and deliberations, procedures and rules

• Decision-making by consensus.

• Rules and procedures include:

• Language to be English and Arabic

• One meeting

• Mobile phones switched off or to silence

• Observe punctuality

• Observe time limit (five minutes)

• Arms not allowed in conference hall.

7. Any other business

Overall workplan, October 2017

To have a developed workplan is to accomplish the objectives of the steering committee. Following serious preparations by the 15 subcommittees, the workplan was developed to guide members of the steering committee. The documents and working papers guide, coordinate and provide references to conduct scientific consultations. While conducting grassroots consultations, a regional dialogue forum and national conference, the steering committee needed to know the specific number of designated stakeholders and their locations.

Table 21: Goals and objectives of the National Dialogue

Goal 1: Conduct grassroots consultations

To conduct dialogue conferences in 80 counties

This process starts in October 2017 and continues until December 2017

To conduct 12 regional conferences

December 2017 and January 2018

The views of ordinary South Sudanese and their voices will be heard, problems will be identified and solutions proposed; delegates to the regional conference will be selected

Key

Based on the deliberations of the steering committee, results of local and regional conferences the agenda for the National Dialogue Conference will be drafted

Key

Selection of delegates completed, draft agenda agreed upon and other assurances in place

February–March 2017

Views of the delegates from grassroots will be heard on regional and national issues; recommendations to the National Dialogue Conference will be passed; and delegates to the national conference selected

Outline of the main issues that require consensus for the stakeholders to discuss and resolve

Records of proceedings of the regional conferences by the secretariat

March–May 2017

Discussions and resolution of key national issues; consensus built

The draft agenda of the National Dialogue Conference Steering committee

Concept note and the resolutions of grassroots and regional consultations

This shall follow successful conduct of local and regional conferences

Steering committee leadership and the delegates Shall follow regional consultation and regional conferences

Goal 2: Conduct the regional conferences

Goal 3: Draft the agenda for National Dialogue Conference

Goal 4: Organize and convene the National Dialogue Conference

Table 22: Percentage allocation of delegates by constituency at local dialogue forum at grassroots level1

1. Women

Women will hold their own congress (mini-dialogues at payam level) to deliberate on the 10 objectives of the National Dialogue, then elect their delegates to the local dialogue forum, which will be at the county level

2. Youth 25 Youth2 will hold their own congress (mini-dialogues at payam level) to deliberate on the 10 objectives of the National Dialogue, then elect their delegates to the local dialogue forum, which will be at the county level

3. Political parties, MPs and councillors 12 The convener (i.e., subcommittee) is free to divide this allocation among the three categories –political parties, MPs (national and state) and councillors 4. Traditional

7. Farmers and pastoralists

8.

9.

All farmers in areas where there are no herds and vice versa, or a combination thereof

The subcommittees have the freedom to determine the number of stakeholders (or constituencies) within their own regions. But this must be within the total number of 100 delegates per local dialogue forum, which is a binding constraint.

The total number of delegates to the National Dialogue Forum is 1,200, of which 996 will be come

from 12 regional dialogue forums based on the formula given in Table 23 below. The formula is based on the number of counties per region, as defined in 2008. The three subcommittees – National Capital, Security and International Outreach and Refugees – will determine the distribution of the remaining 204 delegates of NDF.

Table 23: Distribution of delegates by region and local dialogue forum

1 It is assumed that there will be 80

The

Table 24: Implementation schedule of the dialogue forums at local, regional and national levels

Schedule of implementation of local and regional dialogue forums

Leg One: September 2017

Leg Two: November 2017

The start date of this leg would depend on:

1. Lessons learnt from Leg One;

2. Availability of resources; and

3. Intervening factors, such as accessibility, security, etc.

Leg Three: January 2018

Leg Four (final): 12 February 2018 – 10 March 2018

composed of:

6 in Central Equatoria; 2. 5 in Northern Bahr el Ghazal; 3. 5 in Upper Nile State

In all the remaining 64 counties

Central Equatoria Regional Dialogue Forum and Northern Bahr el Ghazal Regional Dialogue Forum

Convening of the National Dialogue Forum

2.8 APPROVAL OF THE WORKING DOCUMENTS

Following preliminary debates, seminars and its preparations, the National Dialogue Steering Committee now needed to start turning its attention to the working documents. In September 2017, the steering committee approved the following working documents:

1. Guide for co-chairs’ keynote addresses (Annex 1)

2. Declaration of intent (Annex 2)

3. Guiding questions for regional and local consultations (Annex 3)

4. Financial regulations (Annex 4).

These documents are to be used to guide the grassroots consultations, regional conference forums and the national conference, and throughout the period of the National Dialogue. All the documents are in the annexes of this document.

Number of local dialogue forums convened

Number of regional dialogue forums convened

3 Activities of the leadership of the National Dialogue

3.1 CORRESPONDENCE

1. Government institutions

The leadership communicated with the Ministry of Information, Communications Technology and Postal Services so that they could allow national and international media houses to provide full, unhindered coverage of the entire process of the National Dialogue. The leadership also communicated with the security organs to implement the presidential directive of releasing all political detainees, allowing freedom of expression and guaranteeing the safety of the participants of the National Dialogue.

The leadership also requested the Ministry Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation to facilitate communications with the various countries where South Sudanese refugees and members of the opposition were based.

2. Opposition groups

The leadership sent a series of letters to the various oppositions leaders and requested them to embrace the spirit of the National Dialogue and to invite members to participate in the process to ensure the element of inclusivity was met. The members of the opposition groups were also asked how they would want the National Dialogue to be structured to produce tangible results for the South Sudanese people.

3. Diplomatic missions accredited to South Sudan

The leadership sent letters and invited the missions accredited to South Sudan for weekly meetings. The objectives of these meetings was to explain the vision, mission and objectives of the National Dialogue and the importance of the international community’s support to the locally driven process.

4. Regional governments and international institutions

The leadership wrote a number of letters to UNDP, UNMISS, IGAD and the AU so that they could understand the role and objectives of the National Dialogue in the search for peace in the Republic of

South Sudan. The international community was encouraged to engage the armed oppositions by convincing them to join the National Dialogue process.

3.2 IN-COUNTRY CONSULTATION MEETINGS

• Foreign missions

The foreign missions were encouraged to support the process and use their leverage on the various non-state actors to convince them to join the National Dialogue process.

• UNMISS

The leadership needed guidance and support from the international community. UNMISS would provide enough confidence on behalf of the international community in Juba.

• UNDP

The leadership requested the UNDP to lend its expertise of financial management so that it could manage the donor funding coming in for the National Dialogue process. This measure was taken in order to bring trust and credibility to the process for potential donors who may be sceptical.

• IGAD

The leadership informed IGAD that there were synergies between the National Dialogue, the revitalization process and the reunification of the SPLM. This was because all the processes were aimed at bringing ceasefire and a lasting peace between the warring parties and other opposition groups. This process should be supported.

• Troika and others

They were informed that the leadership would share the road map of the National Dialogue with all partners and interested parties. They were also informed that the secretariat had set up a website to share information with the public.

3.3 CONSULTATIONS WITH NATIONAL INSTITUTIONS

The leadership of the National Dialogue briefed various ministers of the Transitional Government of National Unity so that they could support the vision and mission of the National Dialogue. The leadership met with the minister of information, communications technology and postal services, the undersecretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation and the director general.

3.4 MISSION ABROAD: LEADERSHIP CONSULTATIONS WITH STAKEHOLDERS ABROAD

The steering committee, after serious preparations, began contacts with various stakeholders abroad. In these consultations, the principles of the National Dialogue – such as inclusivity, transparency and credibility –featured prominently in the consultations. With most of the opposition groups, refugees and citizens of South Sudan taking refuge in neighbouring counties, Kenya, Ethiopia, Sudan, Uganda, CAR, DRC and South Africa were prioritized locations for the steering committee. The itinerary in each country took some days with consultations beginning with South Sudan’s embassy officials, host governments, UN agencies and the South Sudanese themselves.

3.4.1 Ethiopia: Meeting with South Sudan ambassador to Ethiopia and embassy staff members, 28 July 2017

Objective: To pave the way for the Refugee and International Outreach Committee by informing the South Sudanese refugees and communities who are in Addis Ababa about the National Dialogue.

Ambassador James P. Morgan on his part briefed and informed the delegation that there were two main big camps with a huge population in Addis Ababa, and said that presently it would not be easy to mobilize a substantial number of people for a meeting for the following reasons:

• Big gatherings are not allowed in Addis Ababa for the past one year, because of the state of emergency. However, if a letter requesting a big gathering was written and sent in advance before the delegation arrived in Addis, there would have been possibilities of conducting the meeting.

• South Sudanese here in Addis Ababa are living far away from the town and their situation is exceedingly unfavourable in terms of transportation and this

requires proper planning on how they should be transported to the meeting venues.

Alternatively, Ambassador Morgan accepted to arrange for a limited number of people who would represent South Sudanese communities in Addis Ababa to meet with delegation on 29 July 2017 at the embassy. The ambassador however, pledged his support for the National Dialogue and suggested that South Sudan needed to solicit friends from the region and internationally.

In conclusion, he talked about the reopening of the borders between South Sudan and Ethiopia and said the government should make proper engagement and organize a joint conference between neighbouring South Sudan governors and Ethiopian governors.

On 29 July 2017 a meeting was arranged between the National Dialogue delegation and the South Sudanese at South Sudan Embassy in Addis Ababa. The meeting commenced with an opening prayer, followed by opening remarks from the Hon. Gabriel Yoal Dok, the head of the delegation. He appreciated and thanked the community members for taking their time to meet with the delegation.

The team leader further explained the objectives of the National Dialogue and how far the steering committee had gone with its work. He went further by saying that it was indisputable that there was an August 2015 peace agreement that the government and SPLM/A-IO-Juba were implementing, but recognized that some of the issues were not addressed, for instance, cattle rustling and child abduction. Also people were still fighting and rebelling although we had signed a peace agreement. Therefore, he stressed that it was a very wise decision for the president to declare the National Dialogue and to use it to address and solve their differences.

He noted,

This National Dialogue is for us to solve our problems by ourselves not by others and we believe that it is better we dialogue among ourselves and frankly air out all our grievances. This delegation is not here to dialogue, but is here to inform you that there is a Refugees and International Outreach Subcommittee that will visit you soon for consultation and to listen to your views and opinions.

The representatives of the communities were 13 people from South Sudanese communities and among them were youth leaders, elders and the leader of SPLM Women’s League, and two women plus six staff members from the South Sudan Embassy.

In the discussion they acknowledged that the South Sudanese have a tendency of blocking the truth and elders do not like hearing the truth, and that is why it is

always hard for youth to exercise the right to freedom of expression. Our problem is we hate ourselves. However we are not rejecting the National Dialogue, but we need to talk and dialogue among ourselves and solve our problems by ourselves. We should not destroy South Sudan because of the individual interests of political and military leaders. We should all protect our country for the sake of the people of South Sudan and its future.

Recommendations and concerns

• National dialogue should come after a genuine peace in South Sudan, because we have to forgive ourselves first; dialogue afterwards.

• The Refugees and International Outreach Subcommittee should include faith-based organizations (churches), refugees, women, youth and distinct people from other parts of South Sudan.

• Issues of corruption, nepotism and looting the resources of the country should stop.

• Respect for the rule of law and supreme law of the land (constitution) should be address.

• Leaders should be sincere and truthful in everything.

• The fact that other tribes claim to be better than others tribes must stop.

• The issue of tribalism and nepotism in employment must stop. Putting the right person in the right place should be the guiding principle

• Governance is bad. Developing a new system of governance should be in the National Dialogue Conference agenda.

• MPs should select the head of state (president).

Conclusion

A member of the community reiterated that South Sudan is bigger than everyone. Therefore, Dr. Riek Machar should not presume to think that South Sudan would not be South Sudan if he is not part of any political set up.

3.4.2 Kenya

Preparation for Kenya involved a meeting in Juba between a delegation of the steering committee and former detainees.

Airport Plaza Hotel, Juba 14 May 2017

In attendance

1. Amb. Dr. Francis Mading Deng, Deputy Rapporteur

2. Hon. Betty A. Ogwaro, Member of the Steering Committee

3. Hon. Dr. Lual Deng, Coordinator

4. Abraham A. Awolich, Secretariat

5. Hon. Deng Alor Kuol, Former Detainee

6. Hon. John Luk Jok, Former Detainee

7. Hon. Madut Biar, Former Detainee

Agenda: Discussion to assess the position of former detainees in the National Dialogue

Introduction

After the announcement of the president of South Sudan, in December 2016, about the National Dialogue and in April 2017 on the members and leadership of the National Dialogue and of the steering committee, there was a lapse when the appointed members were waiting for the date of the swearing in. Some members of the leadership thought it would be a good idea to start consulting members of the opposition in order to engage them in the National Dialogue once it was launched. One such group of members were the former detainees. This was because former detainees, although part of the government, had a different ideology. Some of them, who were appointed to the steering committee, declined taking up the positions, yet others among them accepted to become part of the steering committee.

The leadership thought it would be a good idea to begin the consultations in preparation of the work of the steering committee. With this in mind, Ambassador Dr. Francis Mading Deng, the deputy rapporteur, led a team to meet with former detainees who were in Juba.

Dr. Francis Deng gave an opening remark. He first of all appreciated the former detainees, headed by the Hon. Deng Alor Kuol, for accepting to meet the members of the steering committee, although the swearing in, had not yet taken place. He commented that when his name was announced as a member of the leadership of the National Dialogue, he was not sure of his participation in this process. However, when he met the Hon. Pagan Amum, a former detainee, Pagan encouraged him to participate in the process of the National Dialogue provided that the dialogue did not become a monologue. Therefore, Dr. Francis said, the aim was to meet with former detainees as a group, including talking with their colleagues in Nairobi too, in order to consult with them on the National Dialogue. Ambassador Dr. Francis explained that the consultation would include those in opposition whether they were inside or outside the country.

The Hon. Deng Alor then responded by thanking Amb. Francis and the team for calling the meeting. He commented that the meeting was part of a dialogue. The Hon. Deng then went on the elaborate the position of the former detainees on the National Dialogue as follows.

Firstly, he said that the idea of National Dialogue was a noble idea and it was the former detainees’ initiative. The former detainees had developed and shared the document with the president three weeks before the president announced the National Dialogue process. He went on to emphasize that the situation in the country could only be resolved through a dialogue and this was consistent with the former detainees’ position of not

expressing themselves through violence, and not joining Dr. Riek Machar’s opposition group.

Secondly, in order to have a meaningful dialogue, there must be a conducive environment, such as a cessation of hostilities and freedom of expression without intimidation, to cite two examples. Part of the reason some of their colleagues left Juba was simply because the peace agreement was not being implemented. Therefore, the aim of the National Dialogue would have been to find an agreement on how to implement the peace agreement. He added that some of their colleagues were being harassed. The Hon. Deng also commented that their group who were outside the country had always wanted to meet the president of South Sudan, but this has not happened. If the president had met them, part of their fears would have been allayed. The Hon. Deng noted with concern that even those who lived in Juba were not allowed to meet with their colleagues in order to compare notes and come out with a position.

On the issue of being part of the steering committee, the Hon. Deng said that it was not a matter of being on the steering committee, the selection of members to represent each group should have been done through the stakeholders so that each stakeholder could select their own representatives. The Hon. Deng Alor added that he had sought President Museveni’s support to ask Dr. Riek’s representatives in Khartoum, as well as the Equatoria leaders who were fighting to join the National Dialogue. The Hon. Alor noted, “This is because we really want to end the conflict. The government was wrong in nominating the people, including members of other groups. This is also connected to the security guarantees of the members and this has to be done through consultations.”

He further said that they did not think this would be a government project, rather a collective effort by all the parties.

It was their hope that the Kenyan experience led by Kofi Annan would have been ideal adding that the steering committee would be made up of seven members nominated by all the parties. The former detainees commented that the current steering committee was huge and wondered whether this was done to influence the selection of the participants or the outcome. They commented that when the president started the consultations, the former detainees were completely blacked out – only the president and his two deputies met and decided on the National Dialogue. When some of the former detainees were named, they only saw it on television. That was why some of their colleagues declined to participate.

In addition, the former detainees commented that they had thought that the president was going to consult all the parties that were signatories to the peace agreement so as to collectively conceive this process. They cautioned that the role of the president in the

National Dialogue should be clearly defined because it had consequences on the dialogue’s outcome. It was their understanding that the president’s role was to facilitate the National Dialogue, but not to control it. Other details, such as decision-making mechanisms, could be proposed by the secretariat.

Suggestions by the former detainees

The former detainees made some suggestions, as follows:

1. The best way to proceed with the dialogue was to consult all the parties, including those carrying arms, including Dr. Riek Machar, although he may not be able to participate personally at this stage but could send representatives as we don’t think the SPLM in government and the SPLM-IO should monopolize this process.

2. For the dialogue to be held inside the country, there must be some guarantees including the deployment of the Regional Protection Force, or the president himself should send out invitations to those outside the country. Since it is known that the government does not want the Regional Protection Force, and if they cannot do this, then the government should allow the implementation of the transitional security arrangement.

3. It is obvious that the government is on the offensive. With this knowledge, it is difficult to deal with colleagues who are outside the country who fear for their lives.

4. A ceasefire should be a precondition for the National Dialogue to succeed.

5. They all agree the need for the National Dialogue, but there are people on the steering committee that people are objecting to. Procedurally, we have started on the wrong foot.

6. That there should be two stages of the National Dialogue. Phase I should start outside the country at least to get the views of all the political forces. Phase II should then take place inside the country. This would give everybody a chance to participate.

7. The National Dialogue process should oversee the formation of a government of technocrats in order to allow the political parties to prepare for elections after two years. The issue is, how do we go forward in the right way.

8. It would be better if the government invited someone from the African Union to organize the National Dialogue (the convener), or else the National Dialogue done in Sudan could be an example that South Sudan could adopt, for example. President al-Bashir appointed only seven members from the opposition and seven from the government. This would be sufficient to carry out the work with other members co-opted on the way.

9. There should be a consultative document that could be amended by the stakeholders.

10. The parties should declare a ceasefire to allow for the National Dialogue process to be carried out without hindrance. On this it would be useful to organize a ceasefire meeting with the armed groups.

11. That there should be agenda items and then people can add and subtract from the document.

12. The issue of implementation should be proposed by the steering committee and then it can be discussed.

13. The National Dialogue comes as a rescue to our country, however, it needs political will.

14. On the issue of inclusivity, they commented that reconstitution of the committee would not be necessary if the committee was expanded in a manner that reflected proper representation of other parties.

15. Former detainees believe that the isolation of Dr. Riek is illogical. It is recommended that the steering committee confronts this issue.

Response of the steering committee

The team thanked everyone for the seriousness with which the former detainees had responded to the call for the meeting, which was indicative of their interest and seriousness. It was important to move away from idealism to pragmatism.

The steering committee could totally undo what has already been done by the president, including some of their concerns about the committee and lack of consultation.

Dr. Francis noted:

While we recognize the concerns raised, it is important to try and move forward with the process. Our hope is that some of these concerns you have raised could be addressed as we move forward. Particularly, we need to address the most practical issues of making this process successful. More importantly, let us use this process as an opportunity to try and resolve the ongoing crisis on our own.

Dr. Francis commented that some of the mistakes made so far in this process were rectifiable. For example, the question of the size of the committee could be addressed by breaking up the committee into thematic groups to reduce the crowd.

On the issue of conducting the process in phases, Dr. Francis also commented that it was possible and noted:

In fact, the process should be at the family level all the way up and we should be open to discussions outside the country. We are all tired of the situation the country is facing and when we talk to women, we feel very sad about their condition. We should prepare our minds with the idea that dialogue may

not be aimed at addressing a particular issue, we should just be prepared for the broader question of the dialogue culture in our country. The elders who are selected to lead this process care about their own legacy and so they should be able to manage this process with a sense of independence. It is our belief that this process is stakeholder driven and so each group should appoint their own representatives as delegates to the National Dialogue Conference.

We have to think of multiple venues during the consultative process, but the final national conference should be held inside the country in Juba. On the steering committee, it should be added to by the other political parties.

Dr. Francis ended by saying that the idea that a ceasefire would be a precondition for the National Dialogue might be a challenging proposition, and so ceasefires may have to be considered in specific locations.

3.4.3 Meeting of the steering committee delegation to Nairobi with former detainees Ole Sereni Hotel, Nairobi 24 July 2017

Agenda: Consultation with former detainees on the National Dialogue of South Sudan

In attendance

1. Dr. Cirino Hiteng, Former Detainee

2. Hon. Kosti Manibe, Former Detainee

3. Dr. Majak Agoot, Former Detainee

4. Hon. Angelo Beda, Co-Chair and Team Leader

5. Amb. Francis Mading Deng, Deputy Rapporteur

6. Hon. Betty Achan, Member of the Leadership

7. Prof. Paul Lado Bureng, Member of the Steering Committee

8. Abraham Awolich, Secretariat

9. Patricia William, Support Staff

Opening remarks by the Hon. Angelo Beda

The Hon. Angelo thanked the team for positively responding to the call for a meeting by the leadership of the steering committee. He went on to explain that they were here because of the crisis facing South Sudan. He noted, “I am from the older generation and what we see in South Sudan was not happening during the 1972 agreement.” He went on,

When this crisis broke out as a fight between President Salva Kiir and Riek Machar, we thought it was going to be a limited conflict and that it was going to be easily contained. This spread across the Upper Nile, then to Equatoria and then to Bahr el Ghazal. Roads

are closed everywhere and the crisis is spreading and it appears that there is no end in sight. This is the reason those around the president put pressure on him to embrace the National Dialogue.

The Hon. Angelo continued and elaborated,

During the inauguration of our committee we made statements demanding release of political prisoners and the declaration of [a] ceasefire. We are coming here because we want the National Dialogue to be inclusive.

He explained that the steering committee were simply steering the process and they were not the body with which to dialogue. He sought their opinion on the National Dialogue and request that the former detainees go further to send their representatives to join the dialogue so that it could go in the direction they all wanted.

The Hon. Angelo informed the former detainees that the leadership had reached out to Dr. Riek Machar and he refused to see them, claiming that he wanted a mediated settlement. The Hon. Angelo said,

We are not against a negotiated settlement and we are not against the 2015 Peace Agreement, we would be really happy if it could be implemented successfully. However, we recognize that the crisis we are facing needs the building of consensus among the people of South Sudan.

The Hon. Angelo went further to explain what the steering committee has done so far. It was inaugurated in May 2017, formed 15 subcommittees of which 12 would go to the former 10 states plus Abyei and Pibor. At the time of the meeting, the members of the steering committee were getting to learn, with the help of the UNDP, about the experiences of other countries with their national dialogues. The subcommittees would be sent to the grassroots as soon as possible. He said, “We are not coming to negotiate with you. We came here to listen to your views on the National Dialogue and we will take these views home.” The Hon. Angelo informed the team that they should also send their members to participate in the National Dialogue.

The National Dialogue was an opportunity to bring this crisis to an end, and he said,

We are serious that this process has the potential to bring to solution to the current crisis. We have to insist on it, having all the good qualities of inclusivity, integrity, credibility and transparency. Now if the process goes well and it comes out with very strong recommendations, the question that remains

pertinent is the question of implementation, which we all have to think about. This process has to be seen comprehensively in terms of addressing the issues.

He also commented that they, the steering committee members, did not want to be presumptuous to say that they could solve the problem, but it would also be wrong to say that they could not do anything to solve this problem.

The Hon. Angelo urged the former detainees,

Listen to our people at the grassroots. The type of violence we have in the country is the worst type because we are not fighting an enemy; it is a brother’s fight. This is the concern of the National Dialogue and it is an attempt to stop this violence. To achieve this, we must have top-down and bottom-up approach. You all fought for this country and to leave it to the hyenas to roam all over it is what is painful for some of us. Obviously, the peace agreement was not an inclusive process, it was for a few and it has not stopped the violence. I am really appealing on the side of those who are suffering for us to try and end the conflict.

The former detainees’ opening statements

The Hon. Kosti Manibe responded on behalf of the former detainees. He structured the approach of the consultation to start with opening statements, raise questions and then to have a second round where the discussions could be narrowed down to specifics.

He started by thanking the Hon. Beda for all the inputs put on the table. He said some of them move them quite a bit. Unlike the Hon. Angelo and the team they, the former detainees, had been outside South Sudan for quite some time. He continued to comment that they had a lot of respect since 2005, but now they have lost that respect because of what we South Sudanese have done to ourselves. He noted,

There are people in our country who insist that the problem must remain and those who speak about this problem are seen as the problem. This problem started as a political problem and so the solution has to be political. A military solution is impractical. The situation in South Sudan is so unpredictable, and so something that was relevant yesterday may be irrelevant today.

The Hon. Manibe commented further,

Some may be aware that towards the end of last year, November to be exact, the former detainees had put their ideas on the table in what they called

the ‘road map to peace’. This was in anticipation of the IGAD meeting. Later IGAD foreign ministers met and resolved to send an intervention force. But it was watered down in Kigali to a protection force and got watered down further in New York until it has not seen the light of the day.

The former detainees then proposed a round table to revive the agreement or if it could not be revived, it could be renegotiated. We see the round table more or less the same as the National Dialogue. The president saw this document and he was angry that we came up with this document and that former detainees are working against him and want to send him to jail. In the view of the former detainees, there were a number issues that concerned us during the announcement of the National Dialogue. However, the relaunch of the process in May was reassuring and hearing from the co-chairs, but these assurances were nullified when the president said that Riek Machar cannot be part of the process. When the president expanded the committee, he appointed people without consultation. This sent a wrong signal on our side that the president is everything and we feel that the committee may not be able to act independent of the wishes of the president. The president may allow people to talk, but the machinery will do what the president wants in the end.

On setting up a steering committee, the Hon. Manibe said,

When you are setting up a steering committee, it is the body that deals with the basic work and so when you come to the conference, it is usually an endorsement. In a situation where you are bringing together divergent groups fighting one another, you don’t select their representatives. The steering committee can either be independent or neutral, or it should be made up of the representatives of the parties. The same is true for the parties. Then you have to agree on the agenda and the size of the whole conference and then the selection has to be by the groups among themselves. This is how they thought the steering committee should have been selected. If you are a referee, you cannot be the one to select the players for the team. Then you have to agree on the rules of procedure.

The Hon. Kosti agreed with the Hon. Beda that they needed to rescue the country and so the most urgent item of the agenda should be how to end the war. That there were many things that could be done by the government, such has releasing detainees and observing a ceasefire. The government had the obligation to send the right messages to the rest by doing the right things.

If the co-chairs and the steering committee could help in correcting this, no one was against the National Dialogue by working with the president to allay the fears. He related that Museveni last time wondered how to rescue South Sudan and he proposed that the political forces should go to the people of South Sudan to choose their next leader. Museveni also said that there could never be stability in South Sudan if the national security agencies were not national in character.

The Hon. Kosti noted,

So, let us begin with ending the war and then with the reform of the security system in the country, then you can go to the grassroots. Part of the reason we the former detainees have not pulled out of the government is that we don’t want the government to collapse. If it collapses, who is going to pick up the pieces? It is better we suffer the criticism and prevent any collapse. The pertinent question we ought to address is: What is the problem? This is a critical analytical question that would allow us to get to the bottom.

In 2011, following a successful referendum and a declaration of independence, we were born with a very clean slate. After independence, we wanted to lay a concrete foundation for our unity and we organized that consultative all political parties meeting in 2010, but the SPLM did not take this matter seriously. Therefore, we got our independence without a proper social contract. Thus, the fundamental problem in South Sudan is not that there is a conflict, it is that there is no leadership to terminate the conflict However, it is better late than never, we are now trying to solve the problem.

The mindset of the leadership in the country is the challenge. For example, the leadership in Juba thinks that the war is over and so the National Dialogue is therefore an attempt to consolidate peace. We the former detainees disagree; the war is ongoing and so it is what the National Dialogue should aim at ending. Once the war is ended, then we can dialogue to build the social contract that we missed. Now if you look at these frames of minds, you will find a serious problem. What you [the steering committee] are trying to do now should have been done before the process commenced.

Part of the reason why Dr. Riek Machar did not meet you is because he sees you as illegitimate because it is one party which appointed you. Many other parties have similar views of your legitimacy. The

president’s approach has hurt the process. What is urgent is that the war must end, but we are not sure the National Dialogue can end the war. You need different mechanisms and instruments to bring the parties to an agreement and the National Dialogue should be an intermediate to long-term solution to discuss governance.

The Hon. Manibe said that they were allowing for discussion on this and perhaps, as we continue to keep this process with many reservations, hopefully, the configuration will change. They are not throwing away the baby with the bath water, but the baby is not clean!

He advised that the steering committee focuses on ending the war and that ending the war required a different mechanism.

He said that they were forced to be in exile because there was no conducive environment because although the president had declared a ceasefire, fighting was ongoing and there were even reports that Uganda warplanes bombed the Northern Upper Nile. He suggested that to make the National Dialogue legitimate required new ideas to be taken up. However, the struggle now was how to convince all the stakeholders and to make the process acceptable to all the stakeholders. The Hon. Kosti recommended that the steering committee should go back to the drawing table in order to bring people to the table.

The former detainees proposed that the steering committee organize a consultative meeting for all the groups outside the country to get joint consensus among the groups outside the country after consultations with these groups.

The former detainees asked whether the steering committee were ready to reconstitute saying that the committee should be opened to all these options, including the possibility of reconstitution.

They cautioned that many groups may not be able to come to Juba until they cleared the ground for all to come to Juba. The idea of a bottom-up approach would never work because there was an ongoing war. He noted, “The crisis after all was not created by ordinary people, it was caused by the leaders. In our last meeting in Kampala,” he said, “the president wants my colleagues to go back to Juba saying that everything is normal. This is not true!”

The Hon. Manibe asserted that they truly were for ending the conflict and it was a question of how. He commented, “We may look smart. You look at us, we may look smart wearing ties, but we are not happy, we are suffering from the inside. We want to go home and live in our country.”

He went on to say that the steering committee should be open to all these options, including the possibility of reconstitution and one of the things could be done immediately was for the president to order his commanders to observe the unilateral ceasefire. However, went on to

say that the reconstitution of the committee would not be necessary if the committee was expanded in a manner that reflected proper representation of other parties. Let the government enable Ceasefire and Transitional Security Arrangements Monitoring Mechanism (CTSAMM) to do their work of monitoring the ceasefire.

The release of prisoners would be good for the process, he added. The question of freedom of press was critical. In addition, the reinstatement of judges and addressing their concerns was important. Let alone the security of the citizen which was paramount – let people feel safe. He added that the question of living conditions in the country should be addressed. Besides, he said, the issue of indiscipline within the security forces was critical and the president should address this and hold those responsible accountable.

On the mechanisms of the National Dialogue, the Hon. Manibe said that there was a need for an agenda and the narrower the agenda, the better. He personally thought that the agenda should focus on ending the war. To end the conflict, the question of a ceasefire was important and that meant getting everyone on the table.

He mentioned that Dr. Riek Machar as a leader of the group could not be isolated. He said,

It would be useful to organize a ceasefire meeting with the armed groups for inclusivity. The idea of a comprehensive ceasefire is vital because most peace agreements in most civil conflicts are ceasefire agreements. In 2016, the conflict in Juba completely dismantled the ceasefire mechanism. No one is willing to issue a death certificate on the agreement, but without a ceasefire, there is no agreement. The reason why we want the president to implement the unilateral ceasefire is because it will put the armed opposition in a difficult moral dilemma. Because this gesture would say that, although the government has the capacity to deal with the rebellion, it is willing to limit its activities because it is not at a military advantage.

A comprehensive ceasefire would come about by marrying two approaches together. That is, the National Dialogue approach and the IGAD revitalization process could bring a ceasefire. Once this is achieved, then the implementation mechanism should be developed, including penalties for those who violate the agreement.

He acknowledged that the politics of the ceasefire were precisely the issues that the National Dialogue should address. He said he saw the National Dialogue leading to the making of the permanent constitution and we should be able to answer many questions about our country.

The Hon. Kosti then explained about the meeting that took place in Kampala. He said that the meeting was the initiative of President Salva Kiir, who wants to reconcile with Mama Rebecca and the former detainees. He noted,

We thought that the president was genuine and we think he has goodwill and we have reciprocated this by telling him that we are willing to reconcile. However, the issues of trust are not resolved in one session.

He concluded by saying that the grievance of the former detainees is that the president took their power and gave it away and that is why many people were unhappy with the president.

Response of Amb. Francis Mading Deng

Ambassador Francis made two general comments. First, that he was glad the former detainees were zeroing in on substantive issues. He then said,

What we need to balance is, how do we undo all that has already been done in order to accommodate your concerns? Perhaps we have to recognize that we cannot undo what the president has done thus far, but we can find a way forward from where we are.

The other point is that of the SPLM against everyone else. The SPLM, on one hand, is the party that brought us independence and it is the party that brought the conflict at the same time. Some of us, we think the reunification of the SPLM is critical, which brings up another question. I see two categories of the former detainees’ suggestions: One is a list of what the former detainees would have done with the National Dialogue if they had it their way. Then, there are practical matters relating to how we can move the process forward.

Response of the Hon. Angelo Beda

The Hon. Beda said,

There are things we can do and we are going to talk to the president about respecting the unilateral ceasefire and there should be some transparency on this issue. We also want to press the government to release the political prisoners. However, the question is, how do we achieve ceasefire from the other side. So let us talk about practical matters that we can achieve. First, we cannot tell the president to stop unknown gunmen. On the issue of the dissolution of the committee, that is not practical. What can be done is to bring more people on board.

In conclusion, the Hon. Angelo Beda appreciated the representatives of the former detainees who met with the team and urged them to consider joining the National Dialogue, “because all of us want to silence the guns.”

3.4.4 Khartoum: National Dialogue delegation to Khartoum

The delegation headed by the Hon. Gabriel Yoal Dok flew to Khartoum-Sudan from South Sudan-Juba on 20 July on transit through Addis Ababa and subsequently landed in Khartoum on 21 July 2017.

Objectives

1. To operationalize the principle of inclusivity and reach out to the stakeholders;

2. To meet the National Democratic Movement (NDM) under the chairship of Dr. Lam Akol;

3. To learn from the experiences of the Sudan’s National Dialogue;

4. To enlighten the South Sudanese community in Khartoum and pave the way for the Committee for Refugee and International Outreach.

With these clear objectives, the delegation had a briefing meeting on 22 July with the South Sudan Ambassador to Khartoum and the staffs of the Embassy. The meeting was called to order by the team leader, the Hon. Gabriel Yoal Dok, and explained the purpose of the visit, predominantly the concept of the National Dialogue.

The Ambassador on his capacity briefed the delegation about the general situation in Sudan and the population of South Sudanese. Some of the crucial issues that were brought to the attention of the team were the campaign of the anti-peace elements in social media.

The propaganda includes:

1. South Sudanese in Khartoum believed that the National Dialogue delegation has come with money to convince the opposition to return to Juba and join the government.

2. They think National Dialogue is a strategy for the government to manoeuvre on how to remain in power.

The ambassador informed the delegation on the demographic locations of South Sudanese population which scattered in 38 displaced camps in Khartoum State with a population of around 180,000 people. He reiterated that their status is very miserable, owing to the fact that the Sudan government does not recognize South Sudanese in Khartoum as refugee nor as citizens.

3.4.5 Meeting with the National Democratic Movement (NDM) in Khartoum, Sudan

Grand Holiday Villa Hotel, Khartoum 23 July 2017

The group representing the National Democratic Movement (NDM) was headed by Secretary General, Mr. David Tut and four other members.

The objective of the meeting was to consult with the NDM and solicit their views on the National Dialogue.

The meeting commenced with opening prayers from Rev. Simon. Subsequently, the Hon. Gabriel Yoal Dok, who headed the National Dialogue delegation, explained the objectives of the National Dialogue and how far the steering committee had come in terms of progress. He then expressed his appreciation to the leader of the NDM, Dr. Lam Akol, for sending the NDM team to meet the delegation.

Mr. David Tut praised the National Dialogue Steering Committee for their efforts in reaching out to the stakeholders. He further asserted that their group was a movement and not a party and the movement believed in the need for the National Dialogue and, further, that if the leaders of South Sudan had thought of national conversation from the start of the crisis, South Sudan would have not reached this level of crisis.

Mr. David Tut went through the correspondence that was exchanged between the National Dialogue’s co-chair and the chair of the National Democratic Movement. He then referred to the NDM press release of 15 December 2016, the NDM position paper which was entitled, ‘The Way Out’, and to the joint statement of the opposition groups dated 30 April 2017.

The position of National Democratic Movement on National Dialogue

1. President Salva Kiir Mayardit caused the ongoing armed conflict by continuously violating the Agreement on the Resolution of Conflict in South Sudan (ARCSS) since October 2015 and eventually abrogating it in July 2016. Thus, he had no moral authority to call for a process intended to resolve the causes of the same conflict, let alone be its patron.

2. The legal and constitutional basis of the Transitional Government of National Unity that was presided over by Salva Kiir was solely derived from ARCSS. Therefore, its abrogation brought into question the legitimacy of the current government in South Sudan.

3. The National Dialogue was announced with the onset of government’s dry-season military offensive and relaunched together with a unilateral ceasefire declaration at the end of that military campaign. Therefore, it was fairly obvious that it was intended

to gain military advantage on the ground while hoodwinking the world into believing that the government was seriously pursuing peace.

4. Whereas the concept of the National Dialogue was one of the ways a country could choose to deal with the root causes of its problems, a credible dialogue cannot take place while the war is raging, as is the case in South Sudan now. It can only be meaningful when the country is enjoying peace. Therefore, the timing of the present call for the National Dialogue is the wrong one.

5. All the objectives spelled out in President Kiir’s speech before the Transitional National Legislative Assembly, except the first, were a mixture of matters related to the constitution-making process and issues to be discussed under Transitional Justice that were clearly dealt with under Chapters V and VI of the ARCSS. Hence, these objectives could be achieved with the full and faithful implementation of the peace agreement. In this context, it was obvious that the National Dialogue of Salva Kiir was meant to sidestep or replace ARCSS.

The venue of the launched of National Dialogue was not neutral. It was the epicentre of violence where thousands of innocent people were massacred; politicians and journalists who were pursuing peaceful expression of opinion were murdered, imprisoned, tortured, harassed or denied free movement; and from which many patriots ran away for their lives.

Conclusion

On the basis of the above six points, Secretary General Tut reiterated that the NDM did not see any useful purpose to be served by the Juba National Dialogue. He further proclaimed that the only way forward was for the stakeholders to agree on a new inclusive political process to take place outside of South Sudan in order to address the root causes of the ongoing armed conflict and to bring peace to the war-torn country. Then and only then, under a peaceful atmosphere, could national dialogue be considered.

The meeting concluded after the two teams shared lunch together and socialized during the tea break.

3.4.6 Meeting with Mr. Hamid Mohamed Momtaz, the former head of the Sudan National Dialogue, and the Secretary of Political Relations of the National Congress Party 24 July 2017

The objective of the meeting was to share Mr. Hamid Momtaz’s experiences of the Sudan National Dialogue. The meeting was called to order by the team leader of the delegation of the National Dialogue Steering

Committee. He introduced the members of the delegation and then deliberated the purpose of the visit to Khartoum. On a separate note, Mr. Momtaz went through the whole process of the Sudan National Dialogue, by explaining the challenges faced by the dialogue and how they overcame them.

He reiterated that, in 2014, President al-Bashir invited all the political parties, including the ruling National Congress Party (NCP), the armed groups of the Sudan Revolutionary Front (SRF), traditional opposition parties, youth and women’s groups, as well as the international community, to engage in an internal dialogue process.

Mr. Momtaz shared the experience on how he and the National Dialogue team managed the discussion by creating committees based on agreed themes. The delegates represented all the political parties including, women, youth, and the armed groups. He went on and reiterated that Sudan refused the interferences of any foreign bodies and the dialogue process was conducted and concluded inclusively of nationals only. Immediately following the call for the National Dialogue, the high coordinative committee established the following committees, said Mr. Momtaz:

1. The High Coordinative Committee, headed by the president and membership of leaders of political parties and armed groups.

2. The Secretariat-General, directed by Professor Hashim Ali Salem.

3. The Conference Committees that consisted of six main thematic subcommittees:

• Peace and Unity Committee

• Economy Committee

• Foreign Relations Committee

• Freedom and Basic Rights Committee

• Identity Committee

• Governance Issues and Dialogue Outcomes Committee.

Mr. Momtaz further said that there were experts assigned to each thematic committee, in addition to a very competent secretariat to record all the audiovisual and written notations. One of the most important aspects of the Sudan National Dialogue was the creation of a conducive environment for confidence-building, which included the following:

• Releasing all political prisoners;

• Ensuring political freedoms and complete freedom of expression;

• Avoiding hate speech and media bickering between the parties involved in the dialogue;

• Giving necessary assurances of personal safety for armsholders to engage in dialogue with a comprehensive ceasefire and full security arrangements; and

• Ensuring that the judiciary was the concerned authority with all that related to the issues of publishing and expression with non-recourse to exempt procedures during the dialogue.

“For productive discussion, several basic principles were developed by the organizers, which included well-defined themes and transparency, not to mention commitment to the implementation of the outputs”, said Mr. Momtaz. The Sudan National Dialogue also created an implementation body that was headed by Sudan’s president with membership of all the leaders of the political parties, oppositions and commanders of the armed groups. This body met every three months to monitor and evaluate the implementation of the dialogue’s outcomes.

Conclusion

He concluded by saying that, the Sudan National Dialogue concluded with 994 recommendations, with which he handed copies of the recommendations to the delegation. It was a political agreement between the parties involved in the peace process in Sudan.

3.4.7 Meeting with Chollo Community Council and intellectuals

24 July 2017

Khartoum

The National Dialogue delegation met with a team representing the Chollo Community Council, and intellectuals. The objective was to listen to the council’s grievances, and consult them on their views towards the National Dialogue.

The chair of the Chollo Community Council asserted that the primary objective of council, “is to restore the Shilluk’s land.”

The council’s chairperson questioned the ability of the National Dialogue Steering Committee to fix the current governance system. He further asked whether the National Dialogue effort was to constitute a new system of governance or otherwise. Who would the National Dialogue subcommittee meet when they went to the states (i.e., Malakal) to consult with the grassroots population? He asserted that most of the Shilluk were displaced and further explained that the formation of the new states was the main cause of the crisis in the Shilluk’s land, owing to the fact that the Shilluk’s land was grabbed from them and given to the Dinka.

The government in the state was supporting the Dinka community against the Shilluk community and the decree of the president to return to the ‘1/1/1956 interstate border’ was not implemented. Currently, the Shilluk were displaced from their ancestral land and were residing in the displaced persons’ camps.

According to the Chollo Community Council, the cause of the conflict in Malakal was the formation of the tribal bodies/entities. Therefore, they called for the president to cancel and abolish all tribal bodies and return the Shilluk land to the community. The council members also raised concerns about the ongoing displacement of the Shilluk tribe; they said that, it was impossible to be a national without a nation. They stressed the need for the clarification of the boundaries between the Chollo and the Dinka in the area. The council members also insisted on the implementation of the Agreement on the Resolution of Conflict in South Sudan (ARCSS) first before initiating a National Dialogue. They said, “The Southerners fought with the Arabs for the land. How come today the same Southerners are grabbing land from their fellow Southerners?” This was not acceptable and should be stopped.

Conclusion

The council members said, “To have peace among the communities in South Sudan, the South Sudanese need to agree first on the land issues and sign an official agreement in that regard, and then they can have a dialogue.” Their final remark was that the National Dialogue should take place after the full implementation of the peace agreement.

3.4.8 Meeting with South Sudanese traditional chiefs

25 July 2017 Khartoum

Ten local leaders (sultans) representing the 10 old states of South Sudan, plus chiefs from Abyei administrative area met with the National Dialogue delegation. The objective of the meeting was to consult with the local chiefs on the National Dialogue and pave the way for the Refugees and International Outreach Subcommittee. The team was led by Sultan Maroof, who gave a briefing on the conditions of South Sudanese residing in the displaced camps on the outskirts of Khartoum.

Summary of the points raised:

• The population of South Sudanese in Sudan could constitute a new nation in a new country, and includes 27, 000 students in different universities.

• South Sudanese citizens in Khartoum faced an identity crisis, they were not recognized as refugees or as citizens of Sudan.

• Ten chiefs from Khartoum must be included in the steering committee to represent the population in Khartoum.

• The government should grant the protection of citizens’ human rights throughout the National Dialogue.

• Restoring the authorities of the local leaders (sultans) as their primary objective was human development.

• South Sudanese were displaced in 38 camps around Khartoum and were suffering from hunger and unemployment.

• The chiefs were calling for an election as they wanted to elect a person who could solve their problems and avoid conflict and competition among the leaders.

• There was massive displacement in Malakal that caused a large number of people to seek refuge in Khartoum, with the result that there was no development in the area now.

• There was no respect for God-given human rights in South Sudan, and the citizens did not feel secure and protected.

• The most important outcome of this National Dialogue was supposed to ensure human rights for all.

• The South Sudan Embassy in Khartoum had no connection with the displaced population in the camps.

• They needed peace and security in South Sudan before they could think of returning to the country.

• The South Sudanese chiefs in Khartoum were calling for democracy in the country.

• The chiefs were working voluntarily under severe conditions and looking after 180,000 displaced people in the camps.

• Most Southerners were there in the camps since 2005 after the Comprehensive Peace Agreement was signed. They were promised to be repatriated to South Sudan but this promise never happened.

• They were ready for the National Dialogue, but they needed the discussion to be taken seriously in a very transparent and honest manner.

• The poor citizens of South Sudan were the ones paying the price of the current conflict between the top leaders in the country.

• The SPLM was responsible for the current crisis in South Sudan, and they considered South Sudanese in Khartoum as their enemies. The government led by the SPLM needed to respect South Sudanese who were working in Khartoum.

Conclusion

The chiefs concluded with the following recommendations:

1. South Sudanese residing in Khartoum voted for independence but were now suffering because of the separation and were completely forgotten and left to die in the camps in Sudan. They had also experienced separation from their families and they must be appointed in the National Dialogue Steering Committee to represent their views.

2. There must be an effective mechanism to ensure the participation of those who are carrying guns to stop unnecessary bloodshed.

3. The government should fight administrative corruption, tribalism and nepotism.

4. The condition in the camps were not suitable for raising children, let alone going to school; South Sudan was losing an entire generation that was not getting an education.

5. This National Dialogue must be inclusive to end the war in the country.

6. The government must compromise on some issues to allow the National Dialogue to succeed.

7. If there was no security, then there would be no development. The government should make sure the country was secure and safe.

8. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs should send an ambassador who had a military background to succeed the mission in Khartoum.

3.4.9 Meeting with the minister of the Federal Governance Chamber

26 July 2017 Federal Governance Chamber Khartoum

The delegation paid a courtesy visit to the Federal Governance Chamber, where they met Dr. Faisal Hassan Ibrahim, the minister of federal governance. He warmly welcomed the delegation and provided valuable advice regarding the inclusion of all stakeholders in the National Dialogue process. The objective of the meeting was to follow up on a letter sent by the co-chair to meet with Sudan government officials regarding South Sudan’s National Dialogue.

Dr. Ibrahim said that the Sudan National Dialogue included the signatories of the peace agreements; the armed movements who agreed to participate in the discussion; 50 patriotic and prominent national figures that were acceptable to all parties; and all political parties or movements were represented by a person and a deputy.

He also strongly cautioned the interference of foreign bodies in the dialogue process. He said the Sudan National Dialogue was 100 percent Sudanese, which built confidence among the participants. He continued to say that the ruling party should bear the responsibility of creating a conducive environment for the success of the dialogue. In addition, the minister reiterated that for the dialogue to succeed there must be trust and forgiveness.

The minister explained the mechanism used to manage the conference committee. Each committee was formed based on the agreed themes. For example, the Peace and Unity Committee was one of the themes and was headed

by an expert on the topic. The delegates discussed the issues of concern and submitted their recommendations to the Higher Coordinative Committee (known as ‘7+7’) before it was presented at the National Dialogue Conference for discussion and approval.

The Higher Coordinative Committee (7+7), which was composed of seven leaders (or their representatives) of the political parties forming the government and an equal number of leaders (or their representatives) of the opposition parties. The number could be increased equally if the two sides agreed to it.

Dr. Ibrahim also emphasized the importance of the seminars and lectures on the issues to be discussed for further understanding of the topics to be discussed. He said the Sudan National Dialogue had two paths:

1. Societal dialogue: This discussed social issues, including women, youth, peaceful co-existence, tribalism, local chiefs and the diaspora.

2. Political dialogue: This discussed governance system and other policy issues, including development, the system of governance, and other matters.

He further said that heads of the subcommittees were the only individuals to speak to the press to avoid confusion.

The minister advised the delegation to outline the road map of the dialogue clearly and to have a competent secretariat specialized in documentation – audiovisual and written formats – and, most importantly, to classify all the collected data based on agreed themes. All data should be reviewed and comply with the recommendations, and should be presented to the National Dialogue Conference for approval.

The outcome of the Sudan National Dialogue then became a national document that required all stakeholders to sign and abide by.

Conclusion

Dr. Faisal concluded by outlining some of the changes that occurred based on the outcomes of the Sudan National Dialogue, as follows:

1. Formation of a new and inclusive government;

2. A unified internal front; and

3. Improvement in the Sudan’s foreign relations.

The minister said that, it took three years from the conception of the Sudan National Dialogue to the implementation phase, which was expected to end in 2020 with a constitutional review and election. He then wished the South Sudan National Dialogue delegation success.

3.4.10 Meeting with representatives of South Sudanese communities

26 July 2017

Khartoum

The objective of the meeting was to share the concept of the National Dialogue with the South Sudanese community in Khartoum.

South Sudanese community members welcomed the idea of the National Dialogue and expressed concerns on the principle of inclusivity of the dialogue. They said it should not be inclusive solely of intellectuals, opposition leaders, but should involve all the stakeholders.

The South Sudanese community members asked about the peace agreement implementation and whether the national dialogue is to replace the agreement. The community members shared views on how the national dialogue is supposed to be conducted with regards to inclusivity and transparency. Furthermore, they said that the community members should be included in the steering committee to share the plight of South Sudanese living in the displacement camps around Khartoum. They reiterated that women and children were the most affected population, as they lived in a very miserable condition in the displaced persons camps and their children were not enrolled in schools. South Sudanese women in Khartoum were the breadwinners of their families; they were working as housekeepers in the houses of the Arabs to feed their children. Men were working in construction, and some had gone back to Juba leaving their families to suffer.

Other women were selling local homemade liquor; this was very risky, owing to the fact that, when they were caught by the police, they went to jail for three months and would have to pay a penalty of SSP 3,000, equivalent to $150 as a fine.

Conclusion

The meeting concluded with the following recommendations:

1. South Sudanese should respect one another in order to realize sustainable peace in the country.

2. The Refugees and International Outreach Subcommittee should visit South Sudanese women in Sudan’s prisons and camps.

3. The South Sudanese should vigorously and seriously fight corruption at all levels.

4. The suffering of the South Sudanese women in Sudan’s prisons should be brought to the attention of the First Lady of the Republic of South Sudan and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

3.4.11 Ethiopia: National Dialogue delegation to Addis Ababa

On 27 July 2017 the National Dialogue delegation flew to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, from Khartoum. The team consisted of the deputy co-chair, the Hon. Gabriel Yoal Dok, as the head of delegation, deputy rapporteur, Dr. William Othwon and the Hon. Mary Wani as members of the National Dialogue leadership. On 28 July 2017 the delegation received a very warm welcome at Bole International Airport and a subsequent fruitful briefing by the Ambassador of South Sudan to Ethiopia. The ambassador briefed the team about the general situation of South Sudanese who were taking refuge in Addis Ababa.

On a separate note, the head of the delegation the Hon. Gabriel thanked the ambassador for the warm welcome and subsequent amazing receptions. The team leader comprehensively explained the purpose of the visit and elaborated to the ambassador the three main stages of the National Dialogue, i.e., grassroots consultations, regional conferences and a national conference. Furthermore, he also briefed the ambassador and his staff about the Khartoum consultative meeting with the group of National Democratic Movement (NDM) representatives under the leadership of Dr. Lam Akol, and about the correspondence with Gen. Thomas Cirrilo Swaka, the leader of the National Salvation Front (NAS), and about his rejection to meet with the delegation.

Hon. Gabriel reiterated that he was optimistic that Gen. Thomas Cirilo would join the National Dialogue and that the leadership of National Dialogue must persist in persuading him to join the process, due to the fact that the people of South Sudan believed that the National Dialogue would bring peace to their country, and believed that the IGAD-brokered peace agreement did not address the root causes of the conflict in the country.

In addition, the delegation briefed the ambassador about the National Dialogue structures and the strategy to conduct consultative meetings in all parts of South Sudan in order to operationalize the principle of inclusivity of all the stakeholders for the purposes of transparency. Ultimately, he requested the ambassador if it was possible to organize a meeting with South Sudanese refugees and communities in Addis Ababa.

3.4.12 South Africa: A strategy meeting of the steering committee delegation to South Africa

South Sudan Embassy, Pretoria 29 June 2017

In attendance

1. Hon. Angelo Beda, Co-Chair and Head of Delegation

2. Amb. Francis Deng, Deputy Rapporteur, Deputy Head of Delegation

3. Hon. Betty Achan Ogwaro, Member

4. Hon. Rev. Matthew Mathiang Deang, Member

5. Hon. Lily Albino Akol Akol, Member

6. King Wilson Peni Rikitong Gbudwe, Member

7. Mr. Abraham Awolich, Secretary

8. Mr. Gore Anthony, Reporter

9. Mr. James Deng Reak Ruei, Camera Operator

10. Amb. John Simon Yor, Deputy Head of Mission, South Sudan

The meeting was opened with a prayer by Rev. Matthew Mathiang. The head of the delegation, the Hon. Angelo Beda, opened the meeting by asking the members what the strategy should be when the delegation meets the deputy president of South Africa. He went ahead to suggest that the delegation should introduce its mission to him and thereafter introduce the National Dialogue. He proposed that the delegation would acknowledge the letter that was sent to the South African deputy president as the basis of the mission. Therefore, the delegation should essentially ask him to arrange a meeting between the delegation and Dr. Riek Machar.

In response, Dr. Francis Deng, the deputy head of the delegation, began by saying that although he was one of those who was ambivalent about coming to South Africa, in retrospect he thought the decision to come was wise, and so he had been very focused on how to make the best of it. He felt,

We could not be talking about reaching out to people outside the country, we had to actually act on it and so our presence in South Africa was a clear indication that we meant our words about reaching out. I believe that we should approach South Africa with several messages in mind. This should include our letter to South Africa about meeting Riek.

Second, he suggested that they must brief South Africans about their progress. Before coming here, they had met the Norwegian Special Envoy to South Sudan to discuss the National Dialogue and pertinent issues related to the search for peace in the country. Dr. Deng noted,

In our discussion, we warned him about not creating so many venues to discuss South Sudan as these initiatives would be competing with the National Dialogue. We told him that if the Norwegians want to convene any meeting for the purposes of peace, it has to be done in collaboration with the National Dialogue Steering Committee. He seemed to have agreed, but he could have been diplomatic or courteous about it.

On talking to the deputy president, Dr. Francis proposed that it should be the chair to give him a brief overview of the work they had done so far on the National Dialogue. A word about where they were heading with this process would be valuable, then they would have to wait for his reactions. They could handle any questions that might arise from the discussion.

When it came to talking to Dr. Riek Machar, Dr. Francis commented that the delegation should be aware of the fact that Dr. Riek’s thoughts were that there are two paths: a national dialogue or a negotiated settlement. Amb. Francis added,

We can emphasize with the fact that while he may see them as separate, we do not necessarily think that there is any conflict between the two. From there they can see how he reacts and we can take it up from there.

Hon. Lily Akol part felt positive about the mission to South Africa. She urged the team that the decision on whether Dr. Riek should be part of the National Dialogue should be left up to him (Dr. Riek). That is to say, Dr. Riek should be approached, but he should be the one to say he did not want the National Dialogue. She emphasized that the duty of the steering committee was to talk about substantive issues once they had gone through the National Dialogue. She wondered if there was anything that could be done to tone down the negative rhetoric against Dr. Riek because this was part of the process. Dr. Riek would not want to be seen as someone who did not want peace and therefore he should be approached, she concluded.

Rev. Matthew commented that actually, the dialogue process was started by Dr. Riek himself when he met the former president of Botswana and told him that he wanted a dialogue. Father Matthew stated further,

So this is not going to be a new thing for Dr. Riek. When the SPLA broke up into the Nasir and Torit factions, the church initiated a grassroots initiative which united the people of South Sudan. I am not surprised that Riek wants the problem resolved first. This is because it is not about him, it is about the Nuers who feel that they were fought by 64 tribes in South Sudan.

Father Matthew cautioned that even if Dr. Riek was to go back to Juba as a regular citizen, fighting would not stop because the problem had to be addressed first. In Nuer culture, if someone was killed, one could not stop until there was a blood compensation. He noted,

... before that you were still enemies. In the agreement, Chapter 5 was very important for the victims to see accountability. So, Dr. Riek’s reaction is not negative, but we will take up his suggestions. It is not our work to end the problem now, but let us take his views. We will not ask him to go to Juba, but we will invite him to support the dialogue and request that he allows his people to participate. When we talk about Dr. Riek’s fate, what about the fate of the people he leads? The agreement is good, but who can implement it? If you think Taban can implement it, then Riek will not accept it.

King Wilson Peni Rikito Gbudwe started by thanking God for taking the team through all the way from Juba to South Africa and noted, “We have reached a country where Dr. Riek Machar was staying.” King Wilson advised that the mandate accorded to the steering committee was about to kick off and the people who were suffering were looking to the steering committee. He said that he was a strong traditional leader from the SPLM party and was going face Dr. Riek Machar, who fought his people and his government. “How am I going to face him?”, he asked. He suggested that the team should strategize, and that diplomacy was important. He requested the team to pray to the Almighty God to guide them so peace could prevail for the people of South Sudan.

Hon. Betty Ogwaro commented that it was important to be diplomatic and wise about approaching the case, as they were in South Africa, to see to it that the team dialogued with Dr. Riek so that all the episodes and displacements should stop. She commented that Rev. Matthew talked about Nuer being bitter and feeling that they were being fought against, but it was every tribe that felt that way. The main thing now was how to end the violence. She noted,

Compensation is a very difficult thing and if we bring it up, we may be running into a cycle of endless discussions. Let’s leave this for now and move forward. Our main reason is to engage Dr. Riek. While Rev. Matthew’s point about violence continuing after Riek’s return is valid, there is also an argument that if he denounces violence and we continue to dialogue, all this would stop. Let’s listen to him. We may not have answers for him, but let’s get his views first.

Hon. Angelo Beda then responded:

We have now expressed our views. We know what to tell the deputy president. We are not saying we are going to solve all the problems, we are saying that the National Dialogue will debate all things with the hope of resolving them. Many people feel aggrieved by the situation in the country, and we must listen to all this. If we see Dr. Riek, we would have achieved our objective. We will exchange views with him and we intend not to take him to Juba. We want to silence the guns and bring peace to South Sudan, and this is the purpose of this initiative. My question is: Can we go further? Riek might ask about his fate, what should we tell him? I don’t want to give my view before I hear your views.

Dr. Francis Deng also commented,

This discussion is really good. I want to respond to your question and to touch on all the points raised thus far. I do not endorse any specific recommendations, such as issues of compensation now. President Museveni said during Garang’s funeral that people don’t just go to war to kill and to be killed, but they have serious grievances. I am saying this to say that we want to go to Dr. Riek not as a body that is against Dr. Riek, but as a body that is attempting to hear his grievances. What is important is for his voice to be heard and to return at a time when he can come home with pride.

In response, the Hon. Beda said,

The agreement we have signed is very difficult to implement because the Equatorians say that it creates an army of Nuer and Dinka, leaving others out. The National Dialogue is not mediation and not negotiation. It is a process that gathers a large section of the people to reach a consensus on many issues that may lead to both political and social change. I want us to be clear on how to talk to the deputy president; if we are lucky to meet Dr. Riek, what our approach should be. We will introduce the work that we are doing and ask him to participate.

Rev. Matthew said further on that the negative propaganda, his eldest daughter told him: that Nuers, who were outside the country, criticized him as Nuer weu, and so they were asking how Dr. Riek would receive him.

Dr. Francis Deng responded:

We are here as a neutral body consulting a leader of a faction. We must also indicate that we are also

consulting the president and Taban as stakeholders. How do we assure our leaders that in the end they will all be winners and not victims of this process?

On the issue of a ceasefire Dr. Francis wondered, if ceasefire was requested, how would Dr. Riek react?

Hon. Betty Ogwaro reminded the team of what the co-chair has been saying: that the government was a stakeholder and so they (the team) had to consult with the government also. She continued,

We have to bring up the point about negative propaganda and ask the government to tone it down. We have to have a thick skin when meeting Dr. Riek, especially as Rev. Matthew and Lily could be challenged.

Hon. Beda noted,

We are going to ask Dr. Riek to declare a unilateral ceasefire and for him to announce a ceasefire. If we hear something positive from Dr. Riek, we may ask the president to give a general amnesty. Taban once mentioned that he could step down if Dr. Riek returned. We could ask him whether he still holds the same view.

Rev. Matthew noted,

Dr. Riek says that he is not fighting, he says he is on the defensive.

Hon. Beda said,

If Dr. Riek announces a ceasefire, we are going to appoint a committee to monitor the ceasefire and to study who is violating it.

Having listened to the contribution of the members, Ambassador Yor, the deputy head of the delegation, commented,

I am glad you are here engaged in this process. Our role here at the embassy is to facilitate your work. At this stage, you can call it brainstorming with Dr. Riek and take his views. The next round may be that you can come back and discuss substance with him. This is how we see it.

He also asked whether the committee would take advantage of their stay here by meeting different institutions, to which the Hon. Beda said it would be a good idea.

The meeting then ended.

3.4.13 Meeting of the delegation with the deputy president of South Africa

Luthuli House

African National Congress (ANC) Headquarters

South Africa

1 July 2017

The deputy president welcomed the team to Luthuli House, the ANC headquarters. He explained that the ANC was busy at their policy conference which put him under time pressure, but he could still afford a short meeting with the National Dialogue team.

Hon. Angelo Beda then had this to say,

Thank you, Your Excellency, for allowing us to meet you. My delegation and I have come here to brief you about the situation in South Sudan. We are members of the South Sudan National Dialogue Steering Committee. South Sudan is in crisis. That is why we are here because we were selected to lead the National Dialogue process. We have come here to brief you about our work, and South Africa is invited to send a representative to the steering committee. This process is very important and so we want everybody to be included. This includes Dr. Riek Machar and so we have come here to reach out to you and to seek your permission to talk to Dr. Riek Machar. We know that Dr. Riek Machar has declined to see us. We also came to seek advice ... [on national dialogue from] ... the South African Truth and Reconciliation Committee.

Amb. Francis commented that when the president had declared the National Dialogue process, he was serious.

Amb. Deng noted,

So when we say it must be inclusive, it has to be so it can succeed. We know this is a national agenda, but we also know our own existence is a result of support our African brothers provided to us. This is the basis upon which we came to consult with you.

Hon. Betty Ogwaro then commented,

We are grateful that you are able to afford us some of your time. Our country is bleeding, and we are crying for help. When the president announced the National Dialogue to end the crisis, the issue of inclusivity became important. That is why we are here to try to meet with Dr. Riek, and we hope you can organize a meeting for us. We cannot give up because he has refused, and so we are still hopeful that we would be able to meet him. The president has given people the freedom to speak their minds and he announced amnesty for political prisoners who should be released

soon. The president announced a unilateral ceasefire; we hope that Dr. Riek and the other actors can reciprocate this action of the president.

The statement of the deputy president of South Africa

Thank you so much colleagues. It is a real honour to hear the briefing of the work that you are undertaking. President Salva Kiir briefed me about this process before it started. We supported him, and we informed him that it is a very positive initiative. We said that we are prepared to participate as the ANC, and CCM [Chama Cha Mapinduzi] as guarantors of the Arusha Agreement. We gave the president maximum support for the National Dialogue. I am particularly pleased that the process has kicked off and that you are set up to conduct this process. Any assistance you need, we will offer it. As a young nation, the future of your country is crafted on the basis of A national dialogue. In our case, the process was led by eminent judges and they brought us together. We then agreed on a democratic constitution and this is how we brought down the horror of the apartheid system. The dialogue process was open, transparent, and people broadly participated. That is why we will be behind you because we believe that this is the right way we can properly address the problems facing South Sudan.

On Dr. Riek Machar, he is a mercurial figure, he might change his mind one day, particularly when he sees that the process is moving forward. I can tell you that Riek Machar is not detained, but he was rejected by many countries. He went to Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Sudan, Ethiopia and many other countries and he was rejected. Hence, he returned to South Africa and that is why we are keeping him here. He is a major propagandist and so he has been claiming that we have detained him. We will be talking to him and when he is ready, we will inform you.

On sharing our experiences, we will share our lessons. The experiences that we have acquired from South Africa. We were in trenches together with the SPLA and so we are duty bound to support you fully. We will organize on our end how best to share our experiences and may do this through seminars or workshops. So you know, we are involved in another dialogue in Lesotho because they are experiencing their own challenges. Our doors are open to you and we will give you our support. South Sudan is a very important country to us and so we will do all we can without necessarily expecting anything in return.

Hon. Beda then thanked the deputy president and the meeting ended

3.4.14 Geneva: South Sudan National Dialogue

Presented by Betty Ogwaro to the Side Event on South Sudan at the 68th Session of the Executive Committee

Geneva

2 October 2017

Introduction

I am grateful to the High Commission for Refugees for inviting me to this important Executive Committee meeting to explain about the National Dialogue of South Sudan. South Sudan’s National Dialogue was announced by the president of the Republic of South Sudan on 14 December 2016. It is a unique process, one that is different from the other national dialogues of other countries. It is a home-grown process for South Sudanese to dialogue among themselves with the aim of ending all forms of violence, redefining and re-establishing national unity, and strengthening the social contract between the citizens and the government. It is also to address diversity, settle historical disputes and set the stage for an integrated and inclusive national development strategy and economic recovery. Its core values lie in inclusiveness, transparency, freedom of speech, equity and integrity.

The process will be conducted in three stages:

• Broad grassroots consultations

• Regional conferences within the former three greater regions of Equatoria, Upper Nile and Bahr el Ghazal

• A national conference at the capital, Juba.

Chronological events to date:

14 Dec 2016, The president of the Republic of South Sudan Salva Kiir announced the National Dialogue initiative.  The initiative was discussed and approved by Parliament.

22 May 2017, the steering committee members were sworn in and began to prepare.

June:

• The president relinquished patronage of the National Dialogue to the leadership of the steering committee.

• The steering committee held an open, free, heated, frank and transparent plenary debate.  There was no harassment or intimidation from any security sector or government agent.

• In an effort for inclusivity, a delegation led by Hon. Angelo Beda, visited South Africa in an attempt to meet with Dr. Riek Machar. They did not meet with Riek, but the delegation met and had fruitful discussions with the deputy president of South Africa, H.E. Cyril Ramaphosa. The deputy president reaffirmed the

strong support of his country to the National Dialogue and offered to share the experiences of South Africa that are pertinent to the challenges facing South Sudan.

July: The subcommittees attended seminars which were organized to prepare them for conducting consultations and also to learn from other national dialogues. The seminars were supported by UNDP and UNMISS.

August:

• The steering committee divided itself into 15 subcommittees and each subcommittee prepared its workplan which was presented and passed by the whole steering committee.

• Another delegation of the National Dialogue visited Khartoum to consult with Dr. Lam Akol and other opposition leaders, and Addis Ababa to meet the South Sudanese there. The effort was to attempt to reach all opposition leaders wherever they were.

September:

• The Security Subcommittee had two days consultations with the security sector. The results opened ways for the release of political prisoners.

• The Headquarters Subcommittee started grassroots consultations with various organized groups based in Juba.

• The steering committee developed and passed several documents, including guidelines for conducting grassroots consultations and conferences; financial management and procurement systems; and many other guiding principle documents.

October:

• Three of the subcommittees were set to start the first leg of grassroots consultations.

• The Refugees and International Outreach Subcommittee will reach out to those in refugee camps in Uganda and Kenya.

• Another leadership delegation is to visit Addis Ababa to consult with the leaders of the AU, IGAD, the Government of Ethiopia and South Sudanese groups who are there.

Collateral benefits attained at the moment:

• Release of a number of political prisoners in Juba (31+), Wau, Yei and Torit.

• Voluntary return of armed group in Magwi County (Acholi Corridor).

• Voluntary returns of armed group in Wau.

• Awareness-raising through media has encouraged citizens to call on the National Dialogue Steering Committee with their issues, for example, the judiciary.

Challenges

• Funding.

• Fear of the security organs by the community, regardless of the assurances given by the president on freedom of expression.

• National disasters may delay the process.

• Insecurity in some areas may not allow some communities to be consulted.

• Absence of the international media to cover the process.

It is important to note that:

• Firstly, the government initiated the process of the National Dialogue but relinquished its power totally to the steering committee.

• Secondly, the National Dialogue is legal to us South Sudanese, although its outcome does not result in legal actions against those who violate any part of it.

• Thirdly, the National Dialogue does not replace or compete with, but complements the peace agreement that was signed in Addis Ababa in 2015.  The process is meant to go further to address issues that the peace agreement has not and possibly cannot address. It is to be inclusive of all the parties and of a broad range of constituencies, as well as of South Sudanese issues from grassroots to the national level. It includes the international community because they are stakeholders.

• Thirdly, the international community must recognize that we in South Sudan share with them the same concern for the suffering of our people, the urgent need to bring it to a speedy end and to restore peace, security and stability for our country.

• We welcome all efforts in that direction, as well as revitalization, reunification of the SPLM and any other mediation efforts.

• The real issue is how best to pursue this goal collaboratively in order to enhance our collective capacity and effectiveness.

• Any hostile voices against the international community should not be interpreted as expressing the official position of the Government or of South Sudan’s public opinion.

I believe that the National Dialogue process has so far been observing the principles of inclusivity, credibility and transparency which have been widely advocated as crucial to the success of any national dialogue, and so the prospects of success are quite promising. If the momentum and integrity which the process has so far demonstrated are maintained through the regional and grassroots consultations, and continue on to the national conference that will formulate the final recommendations, then the only remaining challenge will be one of implementation.

Four months since the National Dialogue was officially launched, people are beginning to understand it. Though the road ahead is rough, tough and with many challenges, the members of the steering committee are committed and determined to move our country forward to a peaceful country where the guns have to be silent.

I appeal to all South Sudanese and the international community to support the National Dialogue in order to achieve sustainable peace and stability in the country. In this connection, I take this opportunity to appeal to donor communities to contribute resources for the success of this process and also to use their influence to urge those who are still holding out to join this noble peace process.

Finally, I wish to express my sincere thanks to the Government of South Sudan for setting up this independent body, to the international community, UNDP, UNMISS, the UN human rights and humanitarian agencies, the Troika, AU, IGAD, EU, China, Japan, Germany and all other regional and international partners for their tireless support, efforts and commitment to see a prosperous South Sudan. We appreciate their genuine concerns about the situation in South Sudan and the assistance provided to our people.

Thank you for listening.

Betty Ogwaro Member of National Dialogue Juba

3.5 RETREAT IN CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA

Address by Hon. Angelo Beda

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank and express our appreciation to the office of the deputy president of the Republic of South Africa, H.E Cyril Ramaphosa, for accepting the request from the leadership of the National Dialogue Steering Committee to organize the working retreat. Our gratitude also goes to the In Transformation Initiative (ITI) for providing the logistics, accommodation and catering. Our appreciation also goes to the United Nations for sourcing the consultants. We thank South African Embassy in South Sudan for the issuance of the visas on time.

We give special thanks to Mr. Roelf Meyer, Mr. Ebrahim Ebrahim, Mr. Johnny de Lange, Mr. Ivor Jenkins and Ms. Patience Zonge for sharing their vast experiences of the South African National Dialogue, especially that of ANC and National Party negotiations that led to the democratic transformation of the country, the truth and reconciliation process, and peacebuilding. We would like to express our appreciation to Frederick John Packer and Philip Barnabas Afako for guiding the process and

sharing their experiences on national dialogues from around the world.

Many thanks to Ms. Catherine Shin and Ms. Friederike Bubenzer for facilitating the process and for taking the minutes of the deliberations that form the core part of the retreat programme.

Our gratitude also goes to Ambassador Phillip Natana and Embassy Protocol Officer Peter Bior Alier of the South Sudan Embassy in South Africa. Their dedication in welcoming the steering committee on its arrival at midnight and in organizing their safe transfer to an overnight hotel and in seeing them off at Johannesburg airport on Friday, 13 October equally at the late hours of past 1.00 a.m. in the morning underscores how much our Embassy in South Africa is committed to its duty and country.

Foreword

South Sudan’s National Dialogue was announced by the president of the Republic of South Sudan on 14 December 2016. It is a unique process which is different from the national dialogues of other countries. It is a home-grown process for South Sudanese to dialogue among themselves with the aim to end all forms of violence, redefine and re-establish national unity, and strengthen the social contract between the citizens and the government. It is also to address diversity, settle historical disputes and set the stage for integrated and inclusive national development strategy and economic recovery. Its core values lie in inclusiveness, transparency, freedom of speech, equity and integrity. The dialogue process will be conducted in three stages. The first stage is the broad grassroots consultations which will include the refugees, Internally displaced persons and the diaspora. Issues raised at this level will be categorized and discussed further at the regional conferences (Equatoria, Upper Nile and Bahr el Ghazal regions). The issues identified at this level will further be filtered and categorized into various thematic areas and be discussed at the national conference (Juba level).The outcome of the dialogue will be then resolved for implementation.

On behalf of the steering committee members, I would like to thank President of the Republic of South Sudan, H.E. Salva Kiir Mayardit, for initiating the National Dialogue and appointing the members of the steering committee to steer the process forward. I sincerely believe that the outcome of this process is very important for attaining peace and stability in our country. I appeal to every South Sudanese to get involved because it is our home-grown process for a home-grown and genuine peace.

I would like to thank the Government of South Sudan, Government of South Africa, the United Nations especially UNDP and UNMISS, the diplomatic missions in South Sudan, IGAD and the AU for supporting us in the preparation of this process with encouragement, material

and financial support. I encourage all those who have not yet joined the others in supporting the process to do so in whatever way they can.

In pursuit of reconciliation, unity and peace I urge all South Sudanese to join us in this noble journey to peace.

Hon. Angelo Beda Co-Chair National Dialogue Steering Committee

Executive summary

Since the National Dialogue Steering Committee members were sworn in by the president on 22 May 2017, they immediately embarked on preparations to kick-start the South Sudan National Dialogue which is a unique process different from the other national dialogues of other countries. Preparations included understanding the objectives of the National Dialogue and the experiences of other countries that went through similar processes and developing their own rules and regulations.

Therefore, co-chair the Hon. Angelo Beda requested that the South African deputy president, H.E. Cyril Ramaphosa, who is also Special Envoy to South Sudan, to help the leadership in understanding and developing its own procedures. Pleasantly, the deputy president invited the leadership and some of the chairs of subcommittees and the leadership of the secretariat for a working retreat in South Africa (see Table 25 for a list of delegates). The retreat was sponsored by the office of the deputy president, H.E. Cyril Ramaphosa, in collaboration with In Transformation Initiative (ITI), and support from the United Nations which provided consultants to guide the workshops. This retreat was held at the Boschendal Wine Estate Retreat Centre in Western Cape Province.

The aim of the retreat was to reflect on the urgent need for dialogue and its contribution towards peace in South Sudan; conceptualization of the National Dialogue process; and to enable the members of the delegation to learn from the rich South African experience of engagement, management and transformation of a torn society to a peaceful, prosperous one with acceptance of each other.

Therefore, on 9 October 2017, a team of 22 members of the South Sudan National Dialogue Steering Committee travelled to South Africa for a four-day working retreat (Table 25). The team listened to the experiences of the South African dialogue and of other dialogues from around the world. The committee then revisited the workplan which was produced by the secretariat, the steering committee and any other available documents produced so far by the steering committee that intended to move the process ahead. These included the rules and regulations, the road map and others. They also discussed the type of documents that were still needed in order to drive the process. The committee returned to South Sudan on 13 October, more

aware of their responsibilities. The co-chair of the steering committee wholeheartedly thanked the deputy president of South Africa for his support and the support of the South African Government to the people of South Sudan and to the National Dialogue Steering Committee.

Introduction

South Sudan’s National Dialogue was announced by the president of the Republic of South Sudan on 14 December 2016. It is a unique process which is different from the other national dialogues of other countries. It is a home-grown process for South Sudanese to dialogue among themselves with the aim to end all forms of violence, redefine and re-establish national unity and strengthen the social contract between the citizens and the government. It is also to address diversity, settle historical disputes and set the stage for an integrated and inclusive national development strategy and economic recovery. Its core values lie in inclusiveness, transparency, freedom of speech, equity and integrity.

On the 14 Dec 2016, the president of the Republic of South Sudan, H.E. Salva Kiir Mayardit, announced the National Dialogue initiative.  On 22 May 2017, the steering committee members were sworn in. Firstly, they held an open, free, heated, frank and transparent plenary debate in order to understand their mandate and to prepare to work together.

In an effort for inclusivity, a delegation led by Hon. Angelo Beda, visited South Africa in an attempt to meet with Dr. Riek Machar. While in South Africa, the delegation met and had fruitful discussions with the deputy president of South Africa, H.E. Cyril Ramaphosa. The deputy president reaffirmed the strong support of his country to South Sudan’s National Dialogue and offered to share the experiences of South Africa that are pertinent to the challenges facing South Sudan. It was at this meeting that co-chair the Hon. Angelo Beda requested that indeed the leadership of the steering committee would very much appreciate the help of the office of the deputy president to enable them gain knowledge from South African and other experiences around the world. It was also to prepare them to understand the task they were entrusted to carry out. In late September, the office of the deputy president invited the extended leadership of the National Dialogue Steering Committee for a retreat in South Africa.

On the 9 October 2017, a delegation of 22 members of the South Sudan National Dialogue Steering Committee travelled to Cape Town in South Africa for a four-day working retreat. The retreat was sponsored by South Africa through the office of the deputy president H.E. Cyril Ramaphosa, who is also special envoy to South Sudan, and it was hosted by In Transformation Initiative (ITI), a South African non-governmental organization (NGO). The NGO supported this important event both in logistics

and organization. The UN and ITI provided consultants who guided the work. This important retreat was held on the farm at Boschendal Wine Estate Retreat Centre, located near Franschoek, a town in the winelands of the Western Cape Province.

The team listened to the experiences of South Africa’s dialogue and of other dialogues from around the world. The steering committee then revisited the workplan which was produced by the secretariat and also examined other available documents produced so far by the steering committee intended to move the process ahead. These included the rules and regulations, the road map and others. Documents that are still needed in order to drive the process were also highlighted.

Aims and objectives of the retreat

1. To reflect on the urgency for dialogue towards peace in South Sudan;

2. To conceptualize the National Dialogue process;

3. To review the strategic road map of the National Dialogue process;

4. To understand the roles of the steering committee in achieving peace, prosperity and transformation justice in South Sudan;

5. To enable the members of the delegation to learn from the rich South African experience of engagement and dialogue; and

6. To enable the members of the delegation to learn how the South African processes were managed.

Methodology

Both presentations, panel discussions and group discussions were used (see Table 26 for the agenda).

DAY 1: 10 October 2017

Session 1: Experience of the South Africa dialogue

Presented by Roelf Meyer and Johnny de Lange

Roelf Meyer welcomed the participants to the retreat on behalf of the host, the special envoy for South Sudan and deputy president of South Africa, H.E. Cyril Ramaphosa. He explained that the retreat idea came up as a request from co-chair of the National Dialogue Steering Committee, the Hon. Angelo Beda, to him during his visit to South Sudan in July. The special envoy extended the invitation to provide a space for the steering committee leadership to discuss issues and the way forward on the process.

Mr. Roelf Meyer and Mr. Johnny de Lange shared their memories of the South African dialogue, explaining the roles they played after being enemies for a long time. They were on opposing sides of the South African conflict. Mr. Meyer spoke of his experience as the chief negotiator for the National Party (NP) government during the settlement

of the conflict. Mr. Meyer said that he was a minister in the apartheid government, but at one point it occurred to him that what was being done to the majority African was not right, and therefore he began to seek resolutions to the problem. He also reflected that he was part of the exercise from the start to the end.

Mr. Meyer said that for a dialogue to succeed there should be political will. He recalled that Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, the leader of the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), was not willing to either engage nor dialogue with the NP of President Frederik Willem de Klerk. He sat on the sidelines for the dialogue and it was difficult to do any negotiations; however, President F.W. de Klerk’s willingness made a difference.

Mr. Meyer commented that 30 years ago the ANC and the ruling party (the NP) were enemies. By the 1980s the country was on the brink of a civil war. No one expected any solution to the crisis. However, they went through a journey to overcome an almost impossible impasse to reach a peaceful settlement. Two people from the opposing sides – the current deputy president, H.E. Cyril Ramaphosa, who was the ANC’s secretary-general and H.E. Roelf Meyer, who was minister of foreign affairs for the South African government – moved the process forward.

Points of success in the South African negotiations Johnny de Lange shared his experiences with the participants from his intimate involvement during their six-year negotiations. The three main principles that contributed to the success of their process are explained below.

1. Inclusivity

The first important aspect of the engagement is inclusivity. This means, getting everybody to the table. Inclusivity also means that all parties should show interest in being part of the process. In this regard Mr. Meyer said that although President Mandela was the aggrieved party, he still ensured that everybody was engaged in the dialogue process, even those from the opposite side or party. Mr. Mandela recognized that it was difficult for people to understand the process if they were not part of it from the beginning. He set up the groundwork for engagement which preceded the engagement which came later.

All persuasions, even the homeland leaders from the past were invited to come and participate in the national dialogue. Initially, not everybody agreed to the process, he said. When some of the political parties withdrew from the process, they were still allowed to return to the process so their seats were kept unoccupied and those named, but unoccupied chairs, were always placed around the table. The South African process also made special place for the participation of

women and youth in the dialogue – one-third of the national council comprised women. It is also important to note that after success, the information should be taken back to the communities.

Meyer advised that for South Sudan, the ordinary people should be involved. Let them say what they want although it is well known that they all want PEACE. They should point out to those leaders, who do not want to be part of the dialogue, that they are holding South Sudan hostages of peace.

ANC was a broad-based front from the most dedicated Marxist to a very conservative traditionalist. It was not easy with all the differences. By being inclusive in the process that is how people started talking the same language and through practise and activism in our campaigns.

2. Building relations and trust with opponents

Both the ANC and the NP made efforts to know, respect and understand each other. This was important to work towards a common goal with counterparts. Meyer explained that there is no easy recipe but one has to find common ground and to develop sufficient consent for decision-making. Sufficient consent meant that if the majority agrees to something, then one could move on; but, still, it has to be democratic.

Trust is another very important aspect of dialogue. While personalities are important, dialogue has to be done in a conducive environment. It is important to find mechanisms to build trust. Working in teams from both sides helps in building trust. It is also useful to create an informal channel where leaders in the negotiation from both sides can meet and talk.

3. Taking ownership and responsibility; defending it

The team were made to understand that the people of South Africa built their own solutions – they were not imposed or introduced from outside. The two sides faced each other even during breakdowns and failures. The people have to know the difference between a national dialogue and a negotiation for democratic governance. Because a process is as important as the outcome, even when it takes time, it is very important that the people of the country accept it and get involved. In the end, people will be proud to have been part of it.

Every single political party was part of the process, which was painful. It was important that no one could say they did not have input into the process. That is important for the results in the end, whether one is in a negotiated process or a national dialogue – what is central is that everyone has a chance to give their input. With the ANC, this was relevant to two things:

(i) negotiations with the opposition; and (ii) an internal concurrent process to take things forward.

It is important to note too that the international community is also important and that it is necessary to get advice from them and others; however, one has to remember that everybody has their other agenda or gains to make. One lesson for ownership is that ‘for peace to happen, you become your enemy’s keeper’.

Johannes (Johnny) de Lange is the chair of the ANC parliamentary study group and a member of the ANC negotiating team in the constitutional assembly. Johnny de Lange, who was a leader in the ANC and the former chair of the justice committee, former chair of water and environment and former deputy minister of justice, provided the ANC perspective on the negotiation process. He related that in the short term the South African process can be viewed differently to that of South Sudan, but in the long run the same principles can be applied as they are similar processes of transitional justice. It was stressed that “the process of the dialogue is as important as the outcome itself.” It was also stressed that the process is something that the people should accept, and it is not simply a quick deal amongst the elites. It does not matter if it takes time or if one takes two steps forward and three steps back, it is important that people understand and accept it.

The South African national dialogue process

According to Meyer, just like the current situation in South Sudan, South Africa has a history of violence and the situation was dire – even close to Cape Town where hundreds of people were killed by machetes. Guns proliferated everywhere. Bombs went off in Johannesburg with hundreds of people killed; and Chris Hani was killed by the right wing at a very delicate stage. The question was how to create trust in a situation where the country was on the brink of exploding.

From the ANC perspective, Meyer said, the government had all the levers of power (finance and so on); even with transitional arrangements, the major part of government was in the one group’s hands. Both the ANC and the NP found that they were under fire so they decided that they would negotiate themselves out of the problems. They did not have international mediators. At the end of the day, if they couldn’t get a settlement from the NP then it would not be a lasting solution. It was important for them to sort out the problem as other people all have their own agendas.

Mr. Meyer further commented that the process of bringing peace was not easy, that there were huge difficulties that could arise in the process. He said that when Chris Hani was killed they had to go to their own structures to make peace. He went on to say that one

needed to think about one’s mandate and purpose and think, as well, how to drive the process and get over the difficulties.

In the South African case he said, they thought about their ultimate goal and what they wanted to achieve, which to them was majority rule. Meyer commented on the importance of setting a goal to which he said,

Once you set your goal, then you could agree on compromises in order to achieve that goal. It is important to get over the process. It must be principled and must in no way comprise your final goal.

Explaining further, Meyer emphasized the issue of grassroots consultation. He reiterated that the ANC had a broad and scattered base which included the diaspora, internal resistance (United Democratic Front, UDF), ANC underground structures, grassroots and others. It was important to put all those differences in perspectives to put a vision of majority rule forward. The ANC could not achieve their goals without inclusivity and grassroots outreach. It is important to note that a deal could be made just between two leaders. People who were not part of the structures needed to understand what one was doing. The ANC had branches to go to the communities to explain the negotiation process to the people, even when they became a constituent assembly. Still, it was important to explain to the people. Notably, South Africa has 11 languages.

Explaining all the above, Meyer, however, commented that there was a need to create South Sudanese mechanisms to help the process. ANC negotiations involved two broad groups – the government and the ANC. They realized that they needed to find a way to make decisions, otherwise the process would get bogged down among 30–40 parties. They then developed a ‘sufficient consensus’ mechanism and their sessions were chaired by judges.

The issue of trust is very important in dialogue situations, Meyer asserted. He explained that trust has to do with the make-up of the individuals. Meyer noted that Cyril Ramaphosa had good personal interactions from which trust grew and filtered into the whole process. To this he said, “ Personalities are important .” Trust could only be built in a conducive environment – that one needed personalities to move the process. As such, Meyer and Ramaphosa became ‘the channel’. Sometimes a difficult decision would come up, for example, negotiating around languages. If they couldn’t resolve the matter during negotiations they would refer the matter to The Channel. The Channel talked to each other until they found a solution to the matter and took the matter back to the parties. An informal channel was absolutely vital to any transitional justice process, he said. It needed senior persons who could take the responsibility for political problems and who had the mandate to take decisions.

For a few years, South Africa gave Nelson Mandela to the world. His greatest legacy was not just him, but the fact that a negotiation was conducted. From a situation of civil war there was no greater legacy a nation can give itself. South Africa too had a situation where they were killing each other, and they finally sat down and sorted out the problems and moved forward. That was the greatest legacy left by the negotiators.

The whole Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) process did not exist anywhere in the world. The TRC gave a lot of ordinary people a safe space to come and say, ‘This is what happened to me!” Thus, it was important to give space to ordinary people to share their sufferings and experiences.

Mr. Meyer commented further that, it had to be realized that people were going to start from different points. With the ANC, they had different schools of thoughts coming together (from exiles, underground movements, prison, diaspora, the UDF, trade unions, NGOs, different political practices and structures).

An important point is that the process is as important as the outcome – how one gets people involved is how one takes people with one. A lot comes from the desired outcome. If one wants peace – this goal has to be put in front of the South Sudanese often and they are to be put on the spot.

Points to remember:

• Negotiations: Mr. Meyer commented that the ANC always had a policy for negotiation – however, the NP did not have one. At some point there was huge international pressure put on South Africa. The fighting intensified in-country and internal channels were opening for interaction to start negotiations. Madiba took a decision on his own, without leadership, to start negotiating. Opportunities then opened up and circumstances gave momentum and a way forward.

• Good leaders: South Africans were lucky, he said,

We had good leaders. International icons that could help move that forward. Very few countries have that advantage. Mandela, De Klerk, Roelf, Cyril. What really needs to happen in [such] processes is that, any South Sudanese who is not a part of national dialogue, should feel that they are the outcasts. You as the National Dialogue Steering Committee have to drive a campaign and process that makes the process indispensable! You have to find levers to get people to participate. If there are other leaders such as church leaders who are still not part of the process, they should be encouraged to join. All should be part of the process, not just political leaders. Every South Sudanese should be the voice of the National Dialogue.

• Grassroots people: These groups of stakeholders are key to this process. With the ANC if something didn’t work, they went back to the people – as ordinary people are important. It is the people who need to say who is missing at the table. If certain people are not part of the dialogue now – their demands need to be addressed – and mechanisms on how to interact with them on the issues need to be established.

Session 2: The urgency for dialogue towards peace in South Sudan

Address by Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa

After greetings, Cyril Ramaphosa expressed his pleasure at welcoming the members of the steering committee leadership and the secretariat who accompanied them. He further said that he had the opportunity to visit South Sudan many times – and spent much time and moments talking to President Salva Kiir and the broader leadership of various entities and parties. He commented that it was painful to see the situation in South Sudan. As South Africans, he said, they had witnessed a new country rising from ashes of colonialism and developing as a country. He said,

We felt kinship with South Sudan as we also emerged as a new country recently and we decided consciously as a country to deploy as many resources as possible, including sharing our own experiences. Our bonds with south Sudan are deep and we remain hopeful that South Sudan will recover. Since Arusha, where this process started, we have been very supportive of this process. We are hopeful that South Sudan will recover and be a successful country – that is why we are so engaged.

He then applauded the team for being a part of this National Dialogue process. He said that the team had been asked and had taken on a challenging task – and on their shoulders, the future of South Sudan rested. He noted, “From our perspective, as South Africans, we have developed a culture of sharing our experience. It is up to those interlocutors in their own countries to take from our experience and do as they wish with it.” Cyril Ramaphosa then explained that he met Roelf Meyer in the trenches of peacemaking in South Africa and that Ebrahim was a comrade from his early times in the ANC. He further explained that Johnny de Lange had also been a close comrade for many years and was involved in the negotiation process for many years. He noted, “You are spoilt for choice; you have people here who are really good at what they do.”

H.E. Ramaphosa then elaborated 10 secrets of their success, of which he said, “When I turn 100 years old, I

will publish a book called ‘The 10 secrets of our success on our journey moving towards the SA of our dreams’.” The 10 secrets follow below.

The first secret

The realization that we had a crisis as a country and that we needed to find a solution. That in itself was a major breakthrough. Sometimes you can live through problems and never realize that you have a problem; like someone who is ill and has lots of pains but doesn’t realize there is a real problem. That was when we began to develop the secret that got us to where we are. It was a collective realization that the country was in crisis. Our interlocutor was the NP, which also realized that it had a problem and that the crisis required a solution. Once that had happened, we were able to move forward. Both sides realized they could not defeat each other.

Over time they both thought they’d defeat the other (the ANC thought that through MK [uMkhonto we Sizwe, its armed wing] it would make the country ungovernable; and the NP had a picture in their heads that they would defeat the ANC and that the ANC would be brought to its knees). We also needed to have an honest assessment of ourselves. Once you realize you have that kind of crisis you have to lead from the front. Mandela was in prison; he told his jailers that the crisis would never be solved unless you talk to the ANC. Tambo was still in exile and realized that options for solving the problem might well be imposed on South Africa. Both realized they had to negotiate. The NP was also going through catharsis and saw an opportunity when the Berlin wall fell; they did an assessment of the balance of forces that we have got to talk to.

The second secret

Accept that this crisis could only be solved through negotiations . It was the only way. It led to an irrevocable commitment from both sides. Deep in our hearts we knew this was the only way, he said. It needed brave leaders who could lead from the front and be able to convince their followers that resolving the problems through negotiations was the only way to go. [We] also realized that developments around the world showed that we couldn’t solve issues through war. Zimbabwe and Namibia were brought to peace through negotiations; the world would put pressure on us to do things this way.

Generally, ordinary people do not like violence, they prefer solving problems through dialogue. War and violence are wasteful; see what it has done to South Sudan. The war has destroyed the country and the economy. For that reason, our commitment to solving the crisis in South Sudan must also be irrevocable. War breeds hatred; it breaks down nations and makes people hate one another and it makes it difficult to engender reconciliation. So, it is important that the commitment to reconciliation be irrevocable.

The third secret

Agreeing on who the protagonists are. Who matters in as far as resolving the problems of the country? These are the entities that must sit down and negotiate this peace. These must not be lovey goodfeeling interlocutors; rather they must be those who have been at each other’s throats and who must sit down and negotiate their peace. That process must be underlined by trust and respect. Without trust, there will be no way of resolving the problems and the challenges. Trust has to be built. Leaders must respect one another in their leadership positions and what they represent.

I met Roelf at a friend’s farm after which I quickly informed Mandela. Mandela encouraged our meeting, encouraged us to build trust, to spend time together. At the same time trust was being developed between Mandela and F.W. [de Klerk]. It was important that you knew you were working with someone that would stick to the agreement that you had made. When that got violated between F.W. and Mandela, things were shaken up. But Roelf and I trusted each other. But protagonists should never undermine one another; acknowledge that we need one another in the peace- building process. Do not try and destroy the other one; prop each other up.

The fourth secret

Develop a shared set of objectives and values and principles where you agree as protagonists what the strategic objectives are that you have in mind to resolve the crisis. What are the values that you want to subscribe to: Rule of law, respect for human rights, etc. Principles, such as a constitution that is democratic. In South Africa we set out constitutional principles. They were like a condition precedent to enter the negotiations and on which a framework could be built on which we could take South Africa forward. Know the destination of your journey or else you could be going anywhere.

The fifth secret

There is no problem without a solution. Roelf and Cyril were the filter and we agreed that there was no problem without a solution. We would send issues to our joint committees to discuss – often we had to fight and argue but we always knew that a solution would have to be found, which we would then send to our principals. That was a commitment to peace. When Roelf knew I was committed to peace and vice versa; it was like magic.

The sixth secret

Be inclusive. This means setting up the process in an institutional way. It can’t be just an agreement between friends. Seek to be as inclusive as possible. If it isn’t, it won’t be possible. Reach out to everyone and as much as possible. In any conflict, there are key protagonists; the key ones are those that will deliver the peace. But an institutional base must be built that will bring everyone together. We knew we had to build ‘sufficient consensus’ but also within the process in order to move forward. You have to bring those who are reluctant and doubtful along. Peace-building is a difficult task.

The seventh secret

Expect setbacks and reversals. There will always be contradictions. Once you’ve agreed on all the other secrets, the pillars will support the process that you are involved in. So, you can still rely on the goodwill and the process that you have established. Sometimes the process can come to a standstill or a collapse and you’ll have to start all over again. Keep momentum. Reversals do take place and there will be collapse, but it does not mean that you stop or that there is nothing further that can be done. Peace-building can be a thankless task; your own people might reject you. It’s important to be as honest as possible; even when dealing with and communicating difficult issues.

The eighth secret

Mobilize support to achieve objectives – locally among the people. Negotiations should never happen in secret; they must be as open and transparent as possible. People want to know what is being negotiated; the more there is openness and transparency, the more there is trust. Mobilize other role players who might not be around the table, such as the soccer perdition, the cattle association; the women’s sewing club, the churches, among others.

Mobilization and spreading the message as much as possible amongst key important role players, no matter how little they are, is key. It is their future; it is about them. We had outreach teams when we did our constitution and we invited people to write in; we got millions of inputs and people felt that their input had been made. Look at book by Hassan Ebrahim. Mobilize the international community; no country is an island. Mobilize your friends and those who are neutral and those who are your enemies. Share the story.

The ninth secret

Craft a clear story about what the future is. To be able to say this is what the future looks like, this is where we are going, underpinned by our principles and values ... sell that future to the people. In South Africa we were fortunate because we had a two-stage joinery: First, an interim constitution that started showcasing what the future would look like in 1993. Then the elections in ’94; thereafter in 1996 we adopted our constitution, which showcased to the world what kind of a country South Africa would be.

The tenth secret

To implement the agreements and the arrangements that have been crafted. Some might be unpalatable. Like in South Africa, the TRC to deal with the past on both sides since 1960 and to craft an institutional mechanism that would underpin and guide that process, such as amnesty, pardons, etc. The real test was implementing this. Conflicts that have gone through trauma and war need processes such as a TRC where the truth is told. We also had to craft and deliver on dealing with those people who had worked in the system and who had been part of the machinery. Should we fire the whole lot? So, we gave a guarantee that people would not be fired, on the basis of an agreement that had to be implemented. There has to be give and take. Being prepared for that is key; there will be trade-offs. Through that a peace was able to be built.

Cyril Ramaphosa asked:

Did we make mistakes? Yes, of course. We missed certain things but, in the end, we are human, we do make mistakes. The critical question I will write about when I am 100 is did we take South Africa forward or did we leave South Africa stuck? Is our victory owned by South Africans? Has this brought us to where

we are? Right now, we are still on a journey to deal with our past and perfect our vision of a prosperous South Africa. We are not yet there but we have put building blocks in place, such as the constitution and durable institutions. We have this as a covenant. In the end, to demonstrate that this is owned by the people of South Africa, the people of South Africa use the constitution to their own effect; the people use it and take the state on to the courts and most of the time they win.

Mr. Ramaphosa commented that many people around the world saw the South African crisis as being intractable and thought this would never be solved; that Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela would stay in jail and the ANC would never be unbanned. But there was this commitment that led to the recognition that if we had a crisis we needed to talk amongst ourselves; the problem was then resolved.

Mr. Ramaphosa continued to explain that the problem of South Sudan right now seemed intractable. They (H.E. Ramaphosa inclusive) had tried so much – IGAD, Arusha Declaration and more.

He added,

But we can solve this. I am a total believer that this is a crisis that can be solved. I come from a process that looked unsolvable. When we started our process, I always knew we would be successful. The same is true for Roelf. It requires you, as actors in this, to believe that it is going to be successful. You need to stay committed. My inspiration comes from Walter Sisulu who was in prison for 27 years with Nelson Mandela.

When he came out I asked him, ‘Was there any moment when you were in prison that [you thought] we would never be successful, were you ever depressed?’ He said, ‘No, I was never ever depressed and hopeless. I always knew we would be successful and that we would emerge victorious.’ That inspired me. When we got into the negotiation process, I knew we would be successful.

“Be optimistic,” he advised. “The seeds of success are buried in your current crisis,” he explained. He also suggested that the South Sudanese team should find their own secrets that would make their process successful. “Once they are identified, stick with them,” he asserted. “Through the negotiation process South Africans were able to collectively take South Africa forward,” he continued.

He concluded,

This success, this victory is owned by the people of South Africa. This is what brought us to where

we are. We are still on a journey to deal with our past. To perfect what we always envisaged and envisioned as a prosperous and successful South Africa – we are by no means there but we have put the building blocks in place: we have produced a durable constitution, and durable institutions that have been built up – institutions that are there to support this pact that we have put together. Your problems may seem intractable … but they can be solved. I am a believer that this is a crisis that can be solved. I am encouraged by seeing you as part of the dialogue process, having myself emerged from a process that many people thought could not be solved. When we started our own process, I never thought we would not be successful. I always knew we would be successful.

After the presentation, co-chair Angelo Beda thanked the deputy president on behalf of the leadership for his efforts and support, including his facilitation with their outreach to Dr. Riek Machar which they hoped would continue. Co-chair Beda then presented the deputy president with a copy of the steering committee’s preliminary report.

DAY

2: Wednesday, 11 October 2017

Session 3: Managing the politics and exploring organizational matters

Presented by Mr. Roelf Meyer and Mr. Ebrahim Ebrahim

Meyer and Ebrahim used the experiences of the South African dialogue to describe, prioritize and analyse the role of the South Sudan National Dialogue in moving forward towards a common vision and emphasizing the points below:

1. Inclusivity: “We had a similar experience of opening the process to those who did not want to take part. The table was always open for him, but we had Mr. Buthelezi who did not want to engage and who sat on the sidelines. He eventually came and joined. De Lange yesterday said, ‘make yourselves indispensable’ – if you create trust with the people, at some point people will join.” Deputy President Ramaphosa also said, “On the South African side we would keep trying to persuade others to join. Keep on doing the right thing so you make yourselves indispensable.”

2. Leadership: “We were fortunate in South Africa to have leaders on both sides who were able to move the process.”

3. Ownership: Deputy President Ramaphosa elaborated on the question of ownership, “Yes, you can listen to advice. We did. We had advice – even from the UN

Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali – but we moved our process by ourselves.”

4. Commitment: Commitment to the people is needed.

5. Paradigm shift – vision:

In South Africa, we had a situation where we faced international sanctions through the UN and other multilateral bodies and through bilateral relations applying punitive measures against us. The economy was giving in. In addition, I had an internal paradigm shift. As a young lawyer, I saw how the laws on the books were wrong, purely discriminatory. My paradigm shift encompassed both the intellectual desire for change but also something felt at the soul, the heart, level. It included emotional change as well as intellectual. In our case, after the breakdown in negotiations after which Ramaphosa reached out to me ... for the next three months we talked non-stop and out of those talks came the new joint vision of what is it that we wanted from the future – a statement not of what we wanted to protect from the past, but something forward looking.

What was wrong in the South African system was the thinking of superiority versus inferiority. That was the underlying basis of racism in our country and in the rest of the continent. Recognizing individual rights on an equal basis for all – was our simple vision. That’s the foundation of our constitution – ultimately it means majority rules, but fundamental value is recognition of equal basis of rights. It was the result of catharsis – especially when the negotiations were totally broken-down. It forced us to think what we want from the future. This links to what is it that you want in South Sudan? We know what has happened up until now. Now, what is your vision from here onwards for you for your children?

Session 4: Presentation

Presented by Mr. Ebrahim Ebrahim

Roelf Meyer introduced Mr. Ebrahim. He said Ebrahim, a South African, was a member of the ANC from an early age. He spent 17 years in prison as a political prisoner. Meyer said he was deputy minister of police at the time. Later when he worked in Mandela’s cabinet in the Government of National Unity as the minister of constitutional affairs, he had the opportunity to exchange with Ebrahim on numerous occasions. Ebrahim never brought up the past or what was done to him, Meyer said.

After the break, Ebrahim then narrated that he joined the liberation movement at a very young age. He was arrested and sentenced to 17 years in prison. He

spent 15 years on Robben Island and was released with restricted movement. He left the country and took refuge in Swaziland, but he was kidnapped and brought back to South Africa by the security officers of South Africa and was sentenced to another 20 years in prison. He noted, “However, judges from the Supreme Court ruled that my abduction was illegal and I was eventually released.”

Ebrahim praised the ANC that it was always a liberation movement – it was connected to the people. Ebrahim explained that in 1955 they adopted the Freedom Charter outlining their vision after consulting the people. They consulted for two years on what the people wanted for freedom. After two years, a congress was held and the charter was adopted. He said,

The PAC [Pan Africanist Congress of Azania] was banned, ANC was banned, but we collected leaders from churches and other places and had a big conference. Churches were there. I was responsible for establishing what was called a patriotic front – we went to the people, football clubs, women’s groups and so on. Our first meeting was in Durban organized by the ANC and PAC with 96 organizations that met in Durban (including Ramaphosa).

Military struggle does not bring peace

Ebrahim continued to explain that when the ANC formed an armed wing, they were clear that it was not a military struggle that was going to liberate them. Ebrahim said,

We didn’t even have the terrain to work from. We recognized the struggle was political – and the military was to support the political struggle. The ANC is democratic. In Zimbabwe when congress meets, they elect the president – then the president appoints the political bureau and central committee. You can’t do that in the ANC – everyone has to be elected from the president down. Mandela was elected because he had the support from the party. You need to have strong political formation and strong links to the masses to have a negotiated political solution. Struggle ultimately becomes a political struggle and not just an armed military struggle.

Nelson Mandela wanted a majority rule. There was no compromise to that and it was – one person one vote. At the same time we must address the fears and concerns of the white minority community. Mandela was always consulting with people – he never acted alone as a leader – that gave him the strength to move on. The people were with him. That is an important lesson. His style was democratic in nature.

Session 5: Learning from other international models of national dialogues

Presented by John Packer

Mr. Packer explained that he has worked for 30 years in transition countries. National dialogue as a concept/ idea has gained ‘fashion’ in last few years, and especially after the Arab Spring, as a means of solving problems. However, he said, the basic idea was not new. The South African formal national dialogue was an experience that addressed the question of how do we live together. Packer explained that this was a profound political question. What was the means by which we could live together. There was a Norwegian sociologist who distinguished between negative peace – where there was an absence of war – to positive peace, where one self-generated sustainable peace and development. It was easy to imagine what we were against – i.e., mobilizing against oppression – but it was difficult to mobilize around an abstract notion of peace and development.

Mr. Packer explained that there was no one solution that fits every context and every dialogue must be fit for the unique situation and unique context. There were certain elements that were identified as critical elements from lessons learned. He said that the Berghof ‘National Dialogue Handbook’ outlines some of these. He went on further to explain that a national dialogue was an ad-hoc arrangement usually attached to a crisis (war to peace; authoritarian to democratic governance; unstable to stable; economic or other crises), with the crisis serving as a challenging moment where decisions needed to be taken.

He noted,

It’s a way of talking and living together in the longterm in some kind of institutionalized form. One can think around the design of a process to lead to decisions (dialogic, scope, scale). It’s important to incorporate an element of comprehension – so people hear each other and mutually understand each other. It also needs to provide problem-solving around the fears and aspirations of the people, and to structure it. Another point is the scope of it – is it countrywide or state-wide? National dialogues are often used as an instrument of transition. It is one type of instrument that brings in ideas and perspectives and synthesizes them to help with transitions. In the 1980s, French West Africa held a number of them (often controlled and preconstructed) in the 1990s in Latin America and in other parts of Africa, and after the Arab Spring in the Middle East.

Preparations/planning are key: While there is no prescription, there are certain elements that normally

go into the design of a process (see handout), including: mandate (carefully considered to have legitimacy), norms or principles. What is the principle basis of their conduct? This people need to know, issues (if we say it is all things, we cannot exclude generally held views), outreach and trajectory (implementation options).

Key element is decision making: How do you design the decision-making structure? How to manage dispute resolution? How to manage differences? What is the connection between decision-making and participation? Forward thinking: It is an important necessity to move from the past perspective of looking backwards to moving forward with a constructive and creative approach. A constructive forward-looking orientation is essential. As Johnny de Lange mentioned, process is as important as the outcome.

Questions

After the presentation, there were questions and answers. Members asked some questions, such as:

1. What power did national dialogue have to build a conducive environment?

2. What mechanisms were there to provide other contexts of how a national dialogue is implemented? For example, if people had strong views of the regime, then how did you trust that regime to undertake those recommendations? Was there another avenue outside of recommendations?

3. Who on the continent wanted us to succeed? How did we overcome spoilers in the region knowing that we were not an island – six countries surround us?

4. We have a culture of revenge in South Sudan because of intercommunal violence. How do you work towards an outcome that leads the country forward given our history and culture of revenge?

5. Are there prerequisites and who/what are the enablers that can help the National Dialogue of South Sudan and be adopted by our process? What are the things that can be put in place to make the National Dialogue succeed? For example, in reaching out to refugees and the diaspora in a situation where you have 2 million refugees and 1.5 million in the diaspora, what is the best mechanism to reach out, to select the participants, to address the issue of spoilers and politically motivated voices?

6. On the question of inclusion/exclusion, in your own experience do you know of a situation where it would be wise to exclude some people or institutions for the greater good of the process? Or at one point to include them later or use a different process to deal with that issue?

7. What strategy or tactic does one use in a complex situation such as that of South Sudan?

8. When we have a dialogue as an institutionalized way to deal with problems, what is the general time frame? When it started, we said 3–4 months; now its lengthened. When do we see the end game? How long does a dialogue take?

9. During a dialogue, the issue of egos will arise and a process could break down. Are there any practical steps that you can offer to address the ego question and to resuscitate a process when it breaks down?

Responses

• National dialogue: Agree with you that national dialogue is the ‘heart’, from the perspective of legitimacy and the will of the people. Then national dialogue is inescapable and fundamental, undoubtedly more representative and inclusive than any other part. National dialogue is an important central part of broader processes. South Sudan, your process will be unique.

• On the question of non-participants and hold-outs: In your context, it requires an exercise of judgement from your side. What I would suggest is that it would be detrimental for people’s lives to live in a situation of paralysis without any momentum. People need to have a sense of hope that something is moving. Oftentimes spoilers instrument their hold-out. There are ways to design it by going forward by holding the door open. What that means is something you have to create.

• Are there prerequisites? What I would say is that your chances of success are greater the more prepared your process is. Investment in thinking through and specifically preparing – not only the approach, but also the rules – to start a process without knowing the rules first, is a recipe for disaster. Really thinking through every moment to prepare is a prerequisite – the problems and the challenges. You should have some of the money to cover the costs. With regard to refugees and the diaspora, it is not unique, but a large problem in South Sudan. Technology has improved options; there are a lot of ways to selecting and choosing. That subject is such an important question and it would take days for us to discuss selection options. Who is actually participating? – that goes to legitimacy. You want authentic voices, authentic representatives.

• How much power does the National Dialogue have? This is politics. I would suggest that you expand your understanding of power. Soft power: the will of the people is power. You have moral power. And another power often underestimated is the power of ideas. Ideas are powerful. Political will is not something that just happens – it’s a process that is generated. The national dialogue at this stage is a reflection of certain political will. Whether the outcomes are

mandatory or binding does not necessarily dictate what is powerful. Look at the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is not binding, but remains powerful. Look at the substance. Dr. Deng issued many recommendations that were very powerful when he was with the UN because his position and ideas resonated around the world.

• Cautionary note: National dialogue is not a panacea and it cannot solve all problems. It is important to manage expectations and it can be a highly transformative process.

• Egos and breakdown: You need to plan for these. What are the mechanisms and channels that can address breakdown (dispute resolution) and irreconcilable differences? Thinking around egos and face-saving measures is important. What are the confidencebuilding measures that you can put into place?

• Giving voice: There is a recognition of legitimacy in giving voice – it has a cathartic element, the element of exchanging views which leads to a negotiating phase. We’ve heard now how to move forward – (catharsis, exchange, solution, conclusion and a ceremonial element).

• Cost of exclusion: Don’t underestimate the cost of exclusion.

Session 6: Describing, prioritizing and analysing the role of the South Sudan National Dialogue towards a common vision

Group work

The participants broke up into three groups and the following issues were addressed:

• Expectations: What the team expected of the retreat

• Objectives.

After the lunch break, group work continued and looked at:

• Shared vision

• List of priorities

• SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis.

Session 7: Harmonizing the steering committee and secretariat

• Ways to enhance harmonization of the work of the steering committee and secretariat. (This work would be continued in Juba.)

At 16:00, group work continued to discuss:

• The oversight and management role of the National Dialogue – structures, responsibilities and powers to be used in successfully managing the process.

At 16:00, there was a panel discussion around the questions:

• What can make the vision happen or not happen? What makes the realization strong? What are the opportunities, threats and weaknesses? (This work would be continued in Juba.)

DAY 3: 12 October 2017

Session 1: The way forward

1. Unpacking the SWOT analysis; panel discussion The morning was spent on the SWOT analysis, mainly the weaknesses and threats, which are the two most important factors to deal with. This exercise is to be completed in Juba with the secretariat and steering committee.

2. Synergies on guidelines, rules and procedures, strategy around principles and report formatting and structure for each dialogue phase (The existing guidelines would be worked on further in Juba.)

3. Group work on how to address key priority areas

4. Clear roles of the leadership and the secretariat, and how to harmonize them:

• Policy-making and management of the National Dialogue process.

• Internal rules and regulations; and who does what with regards to leadership, subcommittees and the secretariat.

• Clearly define all roles, especially those of the leadership and ensure there are accountability structures.

• Strengthen oversight role.

5. How to stop the violence?

• Conduct an exercise to map the conflict areas.

• Identify conflicting groups.

• Identify and work with parallel structures and efforts.

• Determine responses.

• Engage different groups.

6. How to include meaningful gender and youth perspectives in the National Dialogue:

• Consult the implementation policy as per the national policy (25 percent women participants) and constitution.

• Look into the participation deficiency of women.

• Conduct a gender analysis of the National Dialogue process.

• Reach out to organizations working on gender issues.

• Ensure the consultation process adheres to the mandate and includes women and youth.

7. A clear and strategic road map for the roles of the steering committee and the process – what are the tools needed and how to overcome potential difficulties?

The road map consists of three key areas:

• Grassroots consultations

• Regional consultations

• National conference.

8. Tools that exist to assist in the realization of the road map:

• Quarterly progress reports already exist.

• All 15 subcommittees already have workplans.

• Communication and feedback strategy exists (see Document 1).

• A website will be launched soon containing general information about the National Dialogue, videos and press releases.

• Consensus-building mechanisms.

9. A road map to address inclusivity issues (i.e., the opposition and other groups):

• What is inclusivity? The idea that citizens who have different views can be brought together to develop a common understanding.

• Can we be more inclusive?

• Who needs to participate? Everyone is welcome, always, the door is open.

• Are all the necessary issues on the table?

• Everyone should feel represented.

• Get people to sign up to the process.

10. Clear understanding of the other processes happening with regards to the peace process (i.e., Chapter 5, church processes, regional processes and so on):

• Designate a liaison person (rapporteur and secretariat) to identify all ongoing processes and build synergy and harmonize relationships with them.

• Prevent duplication and contraction.

11. Strategy for reporting and next steps after the consultation phase:

• Grassroots consultations led by the steering committee; reports compiled; analysis to identify next steps with view to developing agenda for regional conference.

12. How to make the National Dialogue process indispensable and how to bring in the international media:

• Open, transparent and inclusive process that mobiles the masses.

• Ensure communication to local and international media.

• Create interest by following a thorough and efficient approach and make the process credible. This will lead to it becoming indispensable.

• Guarantee freedom of expression.

13. Implementation mechanism options:

• The mandate of the steering committee is twofold: agenda development and facilitating the process of developing the agenda.

• It is too soon to develop an implementation process as this will be determined by the outcome of the national conference.

• The nature of the implementation will be determined by the participants of the national conference.

• There are a few possibilities for this: the executive is mandated to implement or an act of parliament is passed that enables implementation or a new body is created that oversees implementation.

Session 2: Group deliberation on the expectations

Group One

1. Identify the enablers (church or traditional leaders).

2. Sustain international outreach (regular briefing of IGAD, AU and other international organizations).

3. Implement a communication strategy.

4. Follow a bottom-up, grassroots approach.

5. Embrace the power of ideas (Document 1 on generating debates – negative and positive).

6. Adopt a framework for engagement that maintains a maximum degree of flexibility.

7. Harmonized leadership.

8. National ownership (home ground).

9. Effective resource mobilization.

10. Long traditional culture of dialogue.

11. Government responds to the National Dialogue (release of political prisoners).

12. An independent steering committee.

Group Two

1. Identify how to stop violence:

i. Types of violence (political and criminal)

ii. Map out violent areas

iii. Identify the actors perpetuating violence.

iv. Develop structures:

• Create peace councils

• Create peace committees

• Individuals contact actors.

v. Strengthened community policing, neighbourhood watch, etc. and reduced violence.

Panel discussions

How will the grassroots consultation be carried out?

1. Select

2. Conduct

3. Report

4. Analyse

5. Synthesize.

Recordings

1. Follow up

2. Regional conferences

3. Local issues.

Resolutions

1. The need to develop a logical framework.

2. A list of expected documents

3. The need to develop a flow chart

4. An organogram.

Advice

1. Ensure that the international community is not given a reason not to support the process.

2. South Sudanese should manage their own process.

DAY 4: 13 October

Tour of seaside and travel back to Juba

DAY 5: 14

Table 25: List of

at Cape Town retreat

Time Agenda

Facilitator/ moderator

14:30 Sharing experiences from South Africa and plenary discussions Roelf Meyer and Johnny de Lange

16:30 Tea break

17:00 ‘The urgency for dialogue towards peace in South Sudan’ Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa

19:30 Dinner

Wednesday, 11 October: Managing the politics and exploring organizational matters

08:00 Breakfast

09:00 Plenary:

Describing, prioritizing and analysing the role of the South Sudan National Dialogue: Towards a common vision

Roelf Meyer

11:00 Tea break Resort

11:30 Learning from other international models of National Dialogues John Packer

12:00

Describing, prioritizing and analysing the role of the South Sudan National Dialogue: Towards a common vision Group Discussions

14:00 Discussing the oversight and management role of the National Dialogue – structures, responsibilities and powers to be used in successfully managing the process Group Discussions

13:00 Lunch break

14:00 Discussing the oversight and management role of the National Dialogue – structures, responsibilities and powers to be used in successfully managing the process

16:00 Tea break

16:30 Develop ways to enhance harmonization of the work of the steering committee and secretariat

17:00 Exploring options for the implementation of the dialogue’s outcomes, including through existing mechanisms and processes

19:30 Dinner

Thursday, 12 October: The way forward

08:00 Breakfast

Time Agenda Facilitator/ moderator

09:00

Synergies on guidelines, rules and procedures, strategy around principles, and report formatting and structure for each dialogue phase

11:00 Tea break Resort

11:30

Discussion on the plan for the National Dialogue. Listing the entire required next steps to ensure full functionality of the process

13:00 Lunch break

14:00 How to mobilize all the stakeholders and communities towards a common vision

15:30 Tea break

16:00 Finalizing an agreed concise statement of the collective vision of the National Dialogue. Prepare a media statement. Wrapping up all loose ends.

17:30 Co-chair statement and vote of thanks 19:00 Dinner

Friday, 13 October: Experiencing Cape Town and return to Juba

07:00 Breakfast Resort

07:30 Check out

09:00 Departure for Cape Town

13:00 Lunch break

14:00 Visiting Waterfront

17:00 Departure for the airport

21:00 Return to Juba via Johannesburg and Nairobi

Statements and declarations

Statement 1: Public Statement, 12 October 2017

On the generous invitation of the deputy president of the Republic of South Africa, H.E. Cyril Ramaphosa, the leadership of South Sudan National Dialogue Steering Committee delegation, under the leadership of co-chair Hon. Angelo Beda, arrived in South Africa on 10 October, together with members of the steering committee and secretariat. Our entire group was invited to spend four days of retreat, brainstorming and reflecting on our role as the leadership of the National Dialogue Steering Committee.

We were hosted by the In Transformation Initiative (ITI) at Boschendal Wine Estate Retreat Centre in Cape Town.

Deputy President Ramaphosa was kind and generous to open our retreat near the beautiful city of Cape Town and spend the entire evening with us, in spite of his extremely busy schedule. He delivered a beautiful, generous and educative statement to us in which he restated his personal and his country’s commitment to friendship and support for South Sudan.

As we have always and repeatedly emphasized to our traumatized people, that the doors of the National Dialogue are open to all South Sudanese and will not be closed to any South Sudanese political leader. The visiting members of the National Dialogue Steering Committee leadership once again requested the South African deputy president to help persuade Dr. Riek Machar Teny, the leader of the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Army in Opposition (SPLA-IO), who is currently still based in South Africa, to meet us in an effort to persuade him to send his organization’s delegation to the National Dialogue. This was, in spite of the fact that the National Dialogue Steering Committee had previously sent a delegation to Dr. Machar in June this year, when the National Dialogue was first launched by the president of our republic and Dr. Riek had also refused to meet our delegation then.

Regrettably, this time again, we have just received word back from Deputy President Ramaphosa’s office, that Dr. Machar has again turned down our request to meet him. In spite of this latest turn down by our brother and son of South Sudan, Dr. Riek Machar Teny, we wish, by this statement, to reassure our downtrodden people, that the doors of the National Dialogue remain open to Dr. Machar and to any other South Sudanese political and military leader, who has a point of view that may enhance the process of the National Dialogue leading to peace, security, reconciliation and national unity for all the people of our beloved young Republic of South Sudan. We will, therefore, continue to knock at his door and plead with him to talk to us, as managers of this extremely important process for our country.

May God Almighty endow all of us with love for one another and with the spirit of peace and forgiveness at all times, instead of this bloody war that has devastated our country and people.

Long live the people of South Sudan.

Hon. Angelo Beda

National Dialogue Steering Committee Leadership

Thursday, 12 October, 2017

Cape Town,

The Republic of South Africa

Statement 2: Boschendal Statement, 12 October 2017

Immediately after the steering committee members of the National Dialogue were sworn in by the president of the Republic in May, 2017, a series of seminars was organized with international partners through which they were presented with the experiences of other countries that had conducted national dialogues. One of the experiences covered was that of South Africa. In this regard, Roelf Meyer, who had been the Chief Negotiator for the National Party and counterpart to Cyril Ramaphosa of the ANC in the process that ended apartheid, made a very effective and deeply moving presentation.

In the discussions with the leadership that followed Meyer’s presentation, the possibility of organizing a retreat in South Africa to consider its experience in greater depth was raised, and Meyer offered to help explore that prospect. Following the orientation seminars, a delegation of the National Dialogue, led by the co-chair, the Hon. Angelo Beda, visited South Africa in the hope of meeting Dr. Riek Machar Teny, the principal leader of the armed opposition faction of the SPLM/A.

Although Riek Machar declined to meet the delegation, he welcomed the principle of the National Dialogue. The delegation had a very constructive discussion with the deputy president of South Africa, His Excellency Cyril Ramaphosa, who is also his country’s Special Envoy on South Sudan. The deputy president reaffirmed the unwavering support of South Africa for the National Dialogue as a fully inclusive process. He also offered to share with the steering committee more details of the South African experience to explore possible lessons that might be relevant to South Sudan’s National Dialogue.

The leadership of the steering committee subsequently received an invitation from the deputy president in which he offered to host a retreat to discuss the South African experience and ways of supporting and reinforcing the South Sudan National Dialogue. The retreat was held at the serene Boschendal facility outside Cape Town which proved ideally suited for the purpose. Moderated by Roelf Meyer, who once again presented some of the highlights of the South African experience, the retreat was addressed by the deputy president who gave a detailed, frank, moving and effective presentation. The deputy president not only provided relevant insights into the South African negotiations that led to the end of apartheid and the achievement of a democratic South Africa, but also demonstrated his firm commitment to supporting the National Dialogue and to the cause of peace, security and stability in South Sudan.

Very effective and useful presentations were also made by ANC leaders Johnny de Lange and Ebrahim Ebrahim, who also shared aspects of the South African experience. UN technical experts also made conceptual contributions

with enlightening illustrations from the experiences of other countries.

The retreat provided the opportunity for the leadership and the secretariat of the steering committee to take stock of the process thus far, reflect on the inspiring experience of South Africa and relevant lessons. The leaders of the National Dialogue reaffirmed their commitment to maintain the momentum so far demonstrated by the steering committee in its work, and the determination to move forward with confidence in the success of the National Dialogue to bring peace, security, stability, development and prosperity to their country. Members of the steering committee reiterated their commitment to the principles of inclusivity, credibility, integrity and transparency of the process. They once again reached out to Riek Machar, using the good offices of the deputy president. However, Riek Machar declined to meet with them,

The leadership of the steering committee resolved to continue their efforts to reach out to Riek Machar and other opposition leaders aimed at comprehensively building trust and national consensus. The Committee also committed itself to pursue with diligence and confidence the work of the National Dialogue to a successful conclusion. The leadership resolved further that while they will continue to reach out for support from the international community and benefit from the complementarity and synergy with all other initiatives, including the IGAD Revitalization of the 2015 Peace Agreement, and the efforts toward the reunification of the SPLM, the leadership emphasized the full ownership of the National Dialogue by the South Sudanese. Members of the steering committee recognized that while the National Dialogue is an ongoing process of managing differences and conflicts within the society, the current dialogue initiative envisages a phased process that aims to help the country to: bring an immediate end to the violence; mediate intercommunal conflicts at the regional and state levels; and continue to cultivate a culture of ongoing dialogue for preventing, managing, and resolving conflicts throughout the country.

One of the inspiring ideas presented at the retreat is that the process is as important as the outcome, and that the process must continue to strive toward inclusivity, credibility, transparency and consensus-building within the country. The leadership also affirmed their determination to reach out to international partners who are equally concerned about the suffering inflicted by the war on the masses of innocent civilians and its devastating impact on the country and are committed to help the people of South Sudan to bring a speedy end to this devastating violence.

Members of the steering committee would like to convey their deep gratitude to His Excellency, Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, and to Roelf Meyer, for taking the initiative to convene the retreat, and to all those who

contributed to its organization and success. The steering committee members feel strongly that the retreat has energized them to continue their work with vigour and greater momentum to bring a speedy end to the violence that is tearing their country apart; to restore peace and security; to exploit the vast resources of the country to accelerate socio-economic development for the benefit of the people of South Sudan; and to promote the process of nation-building and international legitimacy.

Boschendal Declaration, 12 October 2017

We, the members of the National Dialogue Steering Committee, as well as its leadership and secretariat, having met at a retreat during 10–12 October 2017, at Boschendal, South Africa, express our deep appreciation and gratitude to His Excellency Cyril Ramaphosa, deputy president of South Africa, for generously inviting us and hosting the retreat, and to all those who contributed to its appreciable success. We would like to register our profound appreciation for the moving and inspiring presentation by the deputy president sharing the experience of South Africa in the negotiations that led to the end of apartheid and establishment of the democratic South Africa.

We also listened with deep appreciation to accounts of the concept and practice of national dialogues and the experiences of other countries from which we learned a great deal. The retreat once more reminded us of the importance of the principles of inclusivity, credibility, integrity and transparency as necessary conditions for success, and the need to bridge performance and perceptions about adherence to these principles.

We acknowledge the consistent affirmation of His Excellency, Salva Kiir Mayardit, the president of the Republic of South Sudan, that he is firmly committed to the independence and freedom of the steering committee in fulfilling its mandate. We the members of the steering committee hereby reaffirm our commitment to the inclusivity, credibility and transparency of the process and we will continue to reach out to opposition leaders outside the country and leave open the door and the seats around the table for the involvement for all those who choose to join the process.

The National Dialogue is a national process aiming to bring peace to South Sudan. The dialogue is owned by the people of South Sudan, and primarily supported by internal resources. We acknowledge the importance of international partnership, both politically and materially, and will continue to engage potential partners on developing effective strategies for ensuring the success of the National Dialogue. We welcome goodwill and support from all sources.

It is recognized that achieving inclusivity and ending the ongoing violence are key objectives that require constant attention. Despite the obstacles and challenges

facing the process, we remain unwaveringly determined to pursue our efforts with diligence and confidence in the integrity of our efforts and commitment to bringing an early end to the violence that is causing so much suffering and death to our people and inflicting unprecedented devastation on our country.

In this regard, we realize that the National Dialogue is a phased process reinforcing and consolidating an ongoing culture of dialogue as a means of preventing, managing and resolving conflicts at all levels, from local to national. We are determined to engage all leaders at local, national, regional and international levels in this process.

Group work at the retreat on how to address key priority areas

Session 1

1. Clear roles of the leadership and the secretariat and how to harmonize them:

• Policy-making and management of the National Development process

• Internal rules and regulations; who does what with regards to leadership, the subcommittees and secretariat

• Clearly define all roles, especially that of the leadership, and ensure there are accountability structures

• Strengthen oversight role.

2. How to stop the violence?

• Conduct a mapping of the conflict areas

• Identify conflicting groups

• Identify and work with parallel structures and efforts

• Determine responses

• Engage different groups.

3. How to include meaningful gender and youth perspectives in the National Dialogue:

• Consult implementation policy as per the national policy (25 percent women participants) and the constitution

• Look into the participation deficiency of women

• Conduct a gender analysis of the National Dialogue process

• Reach out to organizations working on gender issues

• Ensure the consultation process adheres to mandate and includes women and youth.

4. A clear and strategic road map on the role of the steering committee and the National Dialogue process: What are the tools needed and how to overcome potential difficulties:

The road map already exists and consists of three key areas:

i. Grassroots consultations

ii. Regional consultations

iii. National conference,

Tools that exist to assist in the realization of the road map:

• Quarterly progress reports already exist

• All 15 subcommittees already have workplans

• Communication and feedback strategy exists (see Document 1)

• Website will be launched soon containing general information about National Dialogue, videos and press releases

• Consensus-building mechanisms.

5. A road map to address inclusivity issues (i.e., the opposition and other groups):

• What is inclusivity? The idea that citizens who have different view can be brought together to develop a common understanding.

• Can we be more inclusive?

• Who needs to participate? Everyone is welcome, always, the door is open.

• Are all the necessary issues on the table?

• Everyone should feel represented.

• Get people to sign up to the process.

6. Clear understanding of the other processes happening with regards to the peace process (i.e., Chapter 5, church processes, regional processes and so on):

• Designate a liaison person (rapporteur and secretariat) to identify all ongoing processes and build synergy and harmonize relationship with them.

• Prevent duplication and contraction.

7. Strategy for reporting and next steps from the consultation phase:

Grassroots consultations led by the steering committee, reports compiled, analysis to identify next steps with view to developing agenda for regional conference

8. How to make the National Dialogue process indispensable and how to bring in the international media:

• Open, transparent and inclusive process that mobilizes the masses.

• Ensure communication to local and international media.

• Create interest by following a thorough and efficient approach and make the process credible. This will lead to it becoming indispensable.

• Guarantee freedom of expression.

9. Implementation mechanism options:

• The mandate of the steering committee is twofold: agenda development and facilitating the process of developing the agenda.

• It is too soon to develop an implementation process as this will be determined by the outcome of the national conference.

• The nature of implementation will be determined by the participants of the national conference.

• There are a few possibilities for this:

• The executive is mandated to implement or

• An act of parliament is passed that enables implementation or

• A new body is created that oversees implementation.

Session 2

Group deliberation on ways to stop violence:

1. Map out areas of violence.

2. Identify the actors perpetuating violence.

3. Structures (creating peace councils and peace committees, and get individuals to contact actors).

4. Strengthen the community policing and neighbourhood watch.

5. Identify the enablers (church or traditional leaders).

6. Sustain international outreach (regular briefing to international organizations).

7. Design a clear communication strategy.

8. Power of ideas (Document 1 and generating debates, both negative and positive).

9. Identify the framework for engagement that maintains a maximum degree of flexibility.

10. Harmonize leadership.

11. Effective resource mobilization.

12. Use the long tradition and culture of dialogue.

13. Ensure a government response to the National Dialogue (release of political prisoners).

14. Maintain independence of the steering committee.

3.6 LEADERSHIP VISIT TO EGYPT

The leadership of the South Sudan National Dialogue was invited by the government of the Arab Republic of Egypt through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to visit for the period 25–28 February 2018. In Cairo they had meetings with officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Egyptian Agency for Partnership Development and the Cairo Centre for Conflict and Peacekeeping in Africa (CCCA). They held meetings with members of Parliament and visited the Nasir Academy for Military Science.

In all these meetings the Egyptian government pledged support for peace and unity in South Sudan with whatever means at their disposal. The chair of the delegation thanked the people of Egypt and its government for their cordial welcome and unceasing support to South Sudan. He urged the Egyptian government to put more effort in for peace in South Sudan due to its influential position in the region and in the international community.

Finally, the delegation met the Sudanese community in Cairo at the Ma’aadi Holy Family Catholic Church. It is worth mentioning the important role played by the South Sudanese diplomat in Cairo, H.E. Ambassador Nyadak Joshua, who facilitated all the meetings in collaboration with the Egyptian counterparts. The delegation returned to Juba on 28 February.

4 Activities of the secretariat

4.1 INTERNAL ORGANIZATION OF THE SECRETARIAT INTO UNITS

Provisional terms of reference and structure of the secretariat of the National Dialogue Steering Committee

Given that the RO27/2016 is silent about the terms of reference for the secretariat of the National Dialogue Steering Committee, it is imperative that terms of reference are formulated, as follows:

1. To provide technical backstopping (e.g., preparation of policy briefs) to the patron and his advisers in their overall oversight of the South Sudan National Dialogue process.

2. To provide technical backstopping (e.g., preparation of analysis, taking minutes of meetings, etc.) to the steering committee to effectively perform its terms of reference.

3. To prepare the budget for South Sudan National Dialogue process and assist the steering committee in the mobilization of resources from both domestic and external sources.

4. To manage the budget of the South Sudan National Dialogue through a credible international accounting firm.

5. To manage day-to-day operations related to the National Dialogue.

6. To document the process of National Dialogue in text, audio and visual.

7. To conduct research and public opinion polling regarding items of the National Dialogue agenda.

8. To mobilize additional resources (human, material, financial and technical) to ensure successful conduct of the National Dialogue.

9. To publish and disseminate resolutions of the dialogue processes.

10. To keep the people of South Sudan informed about the National Dialogue process through sustained media outreach, such as print, television, radio, social media and other media.

The secretariat will be structured as follows:

1. A coordinator with two deputies;

2. Research Unit;

3. Finance and Administration Unit;

4. Communications and Information Unit;

5. Documentation and Resolutions Unit; and

6. Operations and Logistics Unit.

Since the leadership of the South Sudan National Dialogue has not been able to give a final approval of the structure and terms of the secretariat, a provisional arrangement is hereby established.

The draft administrative structure of the National Dialogue Secretariat and provisional assignment of members of the secretariat

The provisional coordinator is Dr. Lual A Deng to be deputized by Prof. Leben Moro and Mr. Abraham Awolich. Members are provisionally assigned, but they have the right to select their respective units that meet their interests, qualifications and experiences. Terms of reference for individuals and units are being prepared with technical backstopping from UNDP. It is recommended that the administrative structure of the secretariat be organized under the following five units:

Research Unit

1. Dr. Leben Moro (Deputy Coordinator and Head of Unit)

2. Zechariah Diing Akol (Deputy)

3. Bishop Samuel Enosa Peni

Finance and Administration Unit

1. Abraham Akech Awolich, Deputy Coordinator and Head of Unit

2. John Juan Dong (Deputy)

3. Mohamed Morjan

Operations Unit

1. Deng Gai Gatluak (Head)

2. Angok Acuil (Deputy)

3. Akol Makeer

Communications Unit

1. Alfred Taban (Head)

2. Kuot Maluil Adec

3. Vincent Mark Wanga

4. Gore Anthony (from South Sudan Broadcasting Corporation)

5. Bhakita Abiem (from South Sudan Broadcasting Corporation)

Documentation Unit

1. Rev. Dr. Matthew Pagan (Head)

2. Rev. Dr. John Oryem (Deputy)

3. Deng Malok Aleng

4. William Dogumo

5. Placido Martin

6. Monica Dhokben

4.2 DEVELOPMENT OF THE TERMS OF REFERENCE FOR EACH UNIT

Each unit of the secretariat is operating with guidelines to accomplish intended objectives of the National Dialogue. Various units’ guidelines were drawn up to suit the specific performance of the whole Steering Committee that operates under the leadership of the co-chairs of the National Dialogue Steering Committee.

4.2.1 Guidelines for the Documentation Unit

The Documentation Unit was set up since the first meeting of the steering committee on 29 May 2017 and has documented all the activities since then. The Documentation Unit was given the responsibility of ensuring that all the proceedings of the National Dialogue Steering Committee were recorded and documented, and are responsible for disseminating agendas for meetings and resolutions of the dialogue processes.

Structure and composition

• Head of Documentation Unit

• Deputy Head of the Documentation Unit

• Recording secretaries

• Printing and photocopy office

• Editors’ office

• Archive and filing office

• Publication office.

Duties and responsibilities

• Efficiently record and document procedures of the National Dialogue Steering Committee in digital copies, audio-video recordings and photographic images.

• Save soft copies of the daily, weekly and monthly activities of the National Dialogue.

• Document consultation activities of the subcommittees at the various levels – local, regional and national –whether through writing, photography, or audio or video recordings.

• Document, archive and preserve all the information.

• Document the workplan for grassroots consultations (activities and budget).

• Typing, photocopying, scanning, downloading, printing and filing of information.

• Ensure confidentiality and control of vital information.

• Develop strategies and approaches for documentation.

• Classify and record all information related to conference documents and files.

• Develop a system for filing away and accessing conference documents.

• Collect documents on the activities of the various units, group activities and information in separate databases.

• Maintain the confidentiality of particular documents, while also providing document summaries to the chairs of working groups where needed.

• Collaborate with other units.

• Participate in the preparation of weekly and monthly reports, and produce final reports.

Functions and activities

• Record the minutes of the sittings.

• Type and photocopy.

• Edit and produce publications.

• File and archive.

• Produce reports and briefs.

• Take daily attendance of the steering committee meetings.

• Draft correspondence for the leadership of the National Dialogue.

• Assist other units to document their activities.

• Liaise with other units to provide the items required for the unit.

• Produce a budget for the unit’s activities.

• Co-opt more personnel for documentation.

• Participate in and document the various activities of the National Dialogue, such as seminars, workshops, conferences and talks.

• Maintain reports and other relevant documents from the leadership, Steering Committee and various units.

• Plan, monitor and evaluation of the process of documentation of the National Dialogue activities.

Qualifications required

• Master’s or bachelor’s degree in social sciences or any other relevant field.

• Good communication and presentation skills, analytical and interpersonal abilities, and written communication skills.

• Fluency in written English and Arabic.

• Knowledge of the Internet and modern communication systems.

• Knowledgeable in designing and operationalization of documentation systems.

• Computer proficiency with high level of familiarity with database management programmes and commonly

used packages like Microsoft Word, Excel and Power Point.

• Experience in office management.

Functions and responsibilities of sections and personnel within the Documentation Unit

1. Head of unit

The prime role of the head of the Documentation Unit is to provide leadership and guidance. The head is required to lead, manage and develop the unit to ensure it achieves the highest possible standards of excellence in all its activities. He/she will be supported by a deputy head, and by colleagues from within the unit.

The heads of all units are required to exercise leadership, demonstrate vision and empower others in order to deliver the agreed products and services according to the strategy of the steering committee and secretariat. It is recognized that the methods by which heads of units carry out their duties and the extent of delegation, will depend on factors such as the size and nature of the unit and the personal approach of the individual head.

Specifically, the role will include the following:

• Being responsible and accountable for setting and advancing the strategy of the unit, in line with secretariat and National Dialogue Steering Committee strategic plans and direction;

• Being an active member of the secretariat and contribute to the overall leadership and management of the National Dialogue Steering Committee;

• As heads of the unit, carry functional responsibility for specific, agreed cross-cutting secretariat areas;

• Developing and sustaining appropriate structures for management, consultation, decision-making and communication with the members of the unit, the secretariat and steering committee members;

• Promoting and representing the unit and the secretariat both internally and externally;

• Ensuring that National Dialogue Steering Committee policies and procedures are implemented;

• Ensuring that staff performance is managed appropriately and in a way that is consistent with the expectations of the National Dialogue Steering Committee policies, and that fair workload allocation processes are in place;

• Ensuring all staff have access to the necessary support to enable them to contribute fully and develop their skills and experience;

• Engendering a culture of excellence, cooperation and respect both within and beyond the unit;

• Making effective use of all staffing resources and seek opportunities for collaboration and joint working with others beyond the unit and beyond the secretariat;

• Ensuring unit members are included as appropriate in the various decision-making forums within the unit;

• Ensuring a safe and healthy environment for unit members that is in full compliance with health and safety requirements of South Sudan;

• Taking responsibility for devolved budgets and complying with National Dialogue Steering Committee’s financial regulations;

• Managing income and expenditure in order to promote financial sustainability of the unit;

• Ensuring adherence by all unit members with the financial regulations and other financial operating procedures and regulations of the National Dialogue Steering Committee;

• Ensuring that equipment and facilities under the unit’s control are properly maintained and serviced as required;

• Ensuring all activities are carried out to the highest possible standards by putting in place the necessary evaluation and monitoring procedures to ensure both compliance and improvement –such procedures will include minute-taking, filing, processing and production of documents; and

• Complying with auditing, quality assurance and risk management procedures, both internal and external.

2. Deputy head of unit

The function of the deputy head of the Documentation Unit is required to assist the head of the unit to lead, manage and develop the unit to ensure it achieves the highest possible standards of excellence in all its activities.

Responsibilities and duties will include the following:

• Recording minutes and preparing the agenda for meetings of the secretariat and steering committee;

• Ensuring all the personnel in the unit are performing their key functions of recording all the proceedings of the National Dialogue Steering Committee;

• Sending the daily minutes of proceedings to the head of the unit for onward transmission to the members of the secretariat;

• Ensuring all the tools and resources for the performance of the unit are in place;

• Coordinating support staff activities; and

• Arranging for and assigning departmental space, facilities and equipment.

3. Executive secretary

Duties and responsibilities include the following:

• Managing clerical support to the leadership of the National Dialogue Steering Committee (typing, printing, photocopying and scanning);

• Coordinating the reports that go to other offices and service areas;

• Implementing administrative policies;

• Maintaining an efficient system of records; and

• Sending minutes and resolutions to the deputy head of the unit for proofreading and onward transmission to the head of the unit for sharing with the secretariat.

4. Assistant executive secretary

Duties and responsibilities include the following:

• Recording minutes of the various meetings of the secretariat and steering committee; and

• Sending minutes and resolutions to the executive secretary for proofreading and onward transmission to the deputy head of the unit for sharing with the head of unit and the secretariat.

5. Files, records and archives manager

Duties and responsibilities include the following:

• Creating, organizing, maintaining and retrieving the records, and maintaining the records system;

• Managing clerical support to the members of the National Dialogue Steering Committee (typing, printing, photocopying and scanning);

• Strategically coordinating information resources (physical and digital formats); and

• Being aware of what information is being created in the organization, where it is located, managing access and ensuring security.

6. Assistant records and archives manager

Duties and responsibilities include the following:

• Assisting the records manager in execution of his/ her duties;

• Maintaining records in a manner that ensures timely, efficient and accurate retrieval of needed information;

• Providing the right records to the right person at the right time (3Rs);

• Organizing an efficient and intuitive set of methods (clear access and retrieval policy and system);

• Protecting valuable records from being lost, corrupted or stolen; and

• Maintaining records for an appropriate time (costeffective storage and maintenance).

4.2.2 Guidelines and terms of reference for the Operations and Logistics Unit

A reliable procurement system should be designed for speed, efficiency and accuracy. Yet despite all precautions, problems ranging from human error to organizational shortcomings, the procurement system can still have a negative effect on purchasing ability.

Duties and responsibilities

1. Purchase the necessary materials and prepare all offices and departments for the National Dialogue.

2. Issue National Dialogue identity cards to members, employees, security personnel and members of the media.

3. Handle and distribute invitations, and transfer and receive members at opening ceremonies.

4. Facilitate the execution of tasks by working group members, including those of group coordinators and rapporteurs.

5. Provide means of transportation for conference members.

Structure and operations

The Operations and Logistics Unit comprises the following:

1. Mr. Deng Gai Gatluak: Head of Operations and Logistics

2. Mr. Angok Achuil Deng: Deputy of Operations and Logistics

3. Mr. Jany Lok Riek: Activities and Purchasing Officer

4. Ms. Ayuen Maguot Ngot : Transportation and Accommodation Officer

5. Ms. Clara Achok Wuol: Events and Hall Management Officer

6. Mr. Emmanuel Edward Adiako: Protocol and ID Cards Issuance Officer

7. Mr. Akol Maker Gatluak: Operations Officer

Terms of reference

Protocol and ID card issuance officer:

1. Collecting information on conference participants, including individuals’ photographs;

2. Issuing identity cards to steering committee and secretariat members, employees, volunteers, security personnel and members of the media; and

3. Coordinating with human resources department in the case of modifying or omitting some errors in papers.

Activities and purchasing officer:

1. Receiving orders from other units of the secretariat, through the head of operation and logistics unit;

2. Reviewing purchase applications to ensure usability of potential purchases;

3. Communicating and coordinating with suppliers to obtain the best prices for goods and services;

4. Coordinating with partners/donors (i.e., UNDP, UNMISS, etc.) in coordination with the head of the unit with regards to purchase terms;

5. Following up with partners with regards to payment processes; and

6. Completing all necessary procedures with suppliers of National Dialogue materials and equipment.

Transportation and accommodation officer:

1. Keeping a regular inventory of buses, cars and available drivers;

2. Coordinating with National Dialogue security personnel, as well as Freedom Hall Security, main security checkpoints from the main entrance leading to the hall, and security agents stationed at the conference’s main site;

3. Transporting conference participants and ensuring the presence of volunteers and security guards around all buses at times of arrival and departure;

4. Preparing buses and cars to be used for the transport of conference participants in the event of an emergency; and

5. Coordinating with the events and hall manager to provide meals for volunteers, drivers and security personnel.

Events and hall management officer:

1. Coordinating communication and efforts between all providers of services to Steering Committee members, employees and guest services;

2. Receiving and handling all department application forms in preparation for National Dialogue events;

3. Coordinating matters involving events, activities, meetings, guests and the use of halls with working group rapporteurs;

4. Facilitating the efforts of all working groups and group coordinators;

5. Preparing and submitting paperwork dealing with working group and group coordinator needs;

6. Acting in the capacity of a secretary for working group chairpersons;

7. Coordinating with the activities coordinator when making logistical arrangements;

8. Regulating the movement of members of the media in coordination with the protocol and security officers; and

9. Submitting a daily report to the activities and purchasing coordinator or the unit.

4.2.3 Guidelines and terms of reference for the Finance and Administration Unit

All the secretariat units shall comply with procurement procedures on administrative and financial matters through the guidelines below.

A. Administration

1. The recruitment of personnel is handled by the Finance and Administration Unit in collaboration with respective units and with approval from the coordinator of the secretariat.

2. Any unit seeking to recruit a new member shall seek approval from the Finance and Administration Unit in writing.

3. The recruitment guidelines are being developed by the Finance and Administration Unit in collaboration with the heads of units for supporting staff to the subcommittees.

4. The recruitment process shall follow a competitive process that gives all the people of South Sudan equal opportunity. Regional, ethnic and gender representation should be given due consideration, but not above and beyond the ability of an individual to perform the task for which they are being recruited.

5. A public announcement would go out seeking those who are interested to support subcommittees in documentation and finance functions.

6. The heads of units will form the committee that shall review and select the best fit applicants.

7. Each unit shall develop job descriptions for recruits. For example, what are the daily functions of a documentation officer? The job descriptions should be developed by each unit and passed to the Finance and Administration Unit for review and approval.

8. Following the recruitment process, there shall be orientation tailored towards each functionality. For example, the Finance and Administration Unit would be responsible to give orientation to those who shall handle finances in the field and give them appropriate forms for accountability.

9. The current staff, co-opted to the units, shall be reviewed to make sure that they have the appropriate capacities to deliver the products of the National Dialogue.

10. All staff seeking leave of absence for more than two days shall seek permission, in writing, through their heads of units. The heads of units should consult the coordinator and the deputy coordinator of the secretariat before such permission is granted.

11. Similarly, any sickness that might keep a member of the secretariat away for more than three days will need to be in writing and accompanied by medical records.

12. All members of the secretariat shall fill a monthly time sheet, recording their daily activities related to the National Dialogue. This is a far more effective tool in tracking activities of staff than an attendance sheet.

13. Time sheets would have to be approved by the heads of units and forwarded to the Finance and Administration Unit before monthly payments are processed.

14. All staff complaints, whether regarding payments or other administrative matters, must come through

heads of units to the Finance and Administration Unit in writing.

15. The deputy coordinator of the secretariat, who is in charge of the Finance and Administration Unit and the Operations and Logistics Unit, will have the power to transfer or terminate individuals from any department, who have proven unable to carry out their duties, provided such action is taken in consultation with the coordinator of the secretariat.

16. Any member of the secretariat suspected of engaging in unethical, corrupt or criminal activities shall be reported to the Finance and Administration Unit for appropriate administrative measures.

17. All members, including those appointed by decrees, are subject to dismissal if found guilty of conflict of interest, breach of contract, corruption, unethical behaviour or taking actions that undermine the National Dialogue process.

18. The Finance and Administration Unit shall take any other appropriate actions to ensure smooth functioning of the secretariat and to protect the welfare of staff.

B. Financial procedures

1. In order for the Finance and Administration Unit to develop a computerized financial management system, there is a need to urgently pass the budget.

2. Before the budget is passed, the Finance and Administration Unit will not accept any request for payment that has not been authorized.

3. For any payment to be authorized, especially from the secretariat, a request for activity should come through the head of the appropriate unit addressed to the coordinator of the secretariat, who shall then pass it to the Finance and Administration Unit.

4. For payments related to the leadership and the steering committee members, the request should be addressed to the rapporteur or his designate who shall approve it and pass it to the coordinator, down to the finance unit.

5. All actions that commit the National Dialogue to any financial obligation, must be in writing and follow the steps as indicated above.

6. Any bill presented to the finance unit that does not have any proper authorization and documentation will be returned to the submitting unit until such proper documentation and authorization is obtained.

7. The finance unit shall pay clients or vendors directly.

8. Any staff member that is given an operational advance must complete an operational cash advance form and must clear this advance by completing an operational expense report form by presenting receipts or other evidences of payment.

9. Any recurring bills must have proper authorization and documentation.

10. The finance unit shall not discuss any financial matters in general meetings, except when a financial report is being presented.

11. Any claims of unpaid bills should be presented in writing to the finance unit and there would be no reason to discuss such matters in an open meeting.

12. An individual request for assistance cannot be handled at the level of finance unit, all such requests should go to the coordinator for members of the secretariat and to the co-chair and the rapporteur in the case of steering committee members. Any request outside these parameters must be addressed directly to the co-chair and the rapporteur.

C. Procurement

1. Procurement is all centralized and so any unit wanting to procure any equipment, service or asset must undergo two approval processes. The first approval that must be sought is a request to procure the service, asset or equipment. Once this is approved, the process goes to the procurement unit to seek quotations; depending on the amount, three quotations are then taken to the Finance unit and a vendor is selected and approved, and then the funds will be released to the procurement unit.

2. The procurement unit will then go to the market to procure the equipment, service or asset.

3. The procurement unit must present both the service, asset or equipment to the requesting unit, which must then confirm in writing that this was the asset requested and agreed.

4. The procurement unit, after purchasing, must then clear the operational cash advance with the finance unit by presenting receipts or other proof of payments to the finance officer.

5. If for any reason there is a balance left over from the operation advance, this amount must be return to the chest (safe) or the bank with proper documentation, including payment voucher, signed operational cash advance form, and operational expense report form supported by receipts of payment.

6. If for any reason the procurement officer overspent the operational cash advance, the officer shall be reimbursed provided that such overspending was approved prior to such spending. The approval must be in writing if such overspending is above 500 South Sudanese pounds.

7. The finance unit cannot and shall not release funds for any procurement done without prior documented approval.

8. The finance unit cannot and shall not pay for any procurement that did not follow the prescribed and approved processes.

4.2.4 Guidelines and terms of reference for the Communications and Information Unit

The success of the National Dialogue depends on effective and efficient communication and creating awareness among the stakeholders on the National Dialogue processes and progress.

The Communications and Information Unit is a bridge between the steering committee and the public. It passes information from the steering committee to the public and collects public opinion from the public and shares it with the leadership, secretariat and with the steering committee. It ensures that all the National Dialogue activities are well covered and relay it to the public through television, FM radios and along other channels of communication for the purposes of transparency, openness and accountability, and hence allowing recording of the National Dialogue processes and activities.

The Communications and Information Unit is crosscutting between all the units of the leadership, secretariat and steering committee.

Terms of reference

• Ensure that all the National Dialogue programmes and activities are all covered and relayed on television, radio and through other channels of communications.

• Ensure that the general public is well informed about the National Dialogues processes and activities.

• Manage the National Dialogue website and other communication tools and equipment.

• Organize programmes and activities on television, radio and through other avenues in order to create awareness and educate the public on the benefits of the National Dialogue.

• Provide a link between all the media houses, artistes and the public and the National Dialogue Steering Committee.

• Ensure accurate reporting and correct any misinformation about the National Dialogue processes and activities.

• Outsource (recruit) three video camera-persons and three reporters either from South Sudan Broadcasting Corporation (SSBC) or Equator Broadcasting Corporation (EBC), or anywhere, to go with the three subcommittees.

• Recruit and set up guidelines and job descriptions for media personnel.

• Provide all the necessary equipment and tools to crews covering the consultation processes at the grassroots.

• Set up guidelines and communication strategies for the National Dialogue.

• Prepare budget for publicity, awareness and to educate the public during the launch and consultation processes at the grassroots, regional and national forums and conferences.

Required qualifications

The incumbent must:

• Have a degree or diploma in mass communication and/ or journalism

• Be a professional journalist

• Follow a journalism and/or media and code of ethics and conduct

• Be ethical

• Be disciplined

• Be punctual

• Be mature in decision-making in terms of what to cover/report and what not to cover

• Be well conversant with the local culture and ethics

• Respect the cultures and norms of the local area

• Be fluent in both Arabic and English languages; and it would be an added advantage to know the local language.

Job description

1. Cover and document all the session and discussions.

2. Cover meetings with chiefs, women’s groups, youth groups, farmers and business communities.

3. Transmit news items from the field to headquarters on a daily basis.

4. Conduct interviews with stakeholders (chiefs, women, youth, community leaders, business communities, farmers, etc.).

5. Assist the heads of subcommittees in organizing talk shows on local radio in the area every evening.

6. Three artists, two already exist (Salva and Emmanuel) but there is need to add one more

7. Liaise with the local artist on the ground to organize road walk national Dialogue awareness through songs

8. Organize open air theatres.

9. Ensure that all the sound systems are in place.

10. Entertain people with National Dialogue songs during interludes.

11. Organize poems, drama and music.

12. Organize other activities during the sessions.

Tools and equipment

Purchase the following items or equipment for effective and efficient coverage of the National Dialogue process and activities:

• Video cameras for all the subcommittees

• A functional recorder for all the subcommittees

• Still cameras for all the subcommittees (for taking photographs)

• Hard disk for storing information

• Video camera tapes

• Batteries for both video cameras and recorders

• Memory cards

• Flash disks

• Plan B: Hire video cameras and recorders, etc.

Structure

1. Hon. Alfred Taban, Head of Unit

2. Mr. Vincent M. Wanga, Deputy Head of Unit

3. Miss Suzy Anthonio, Media Liaison

4. Mr. Chan Del, International Media Liaison

5. Mrs. Tereza Ali Gore, Publicity

6. Mr. Gore Anthony, SSBC English Reporter

7. Mr. Majak Bulabek, SSBC Arabic Reporter

8. Mr. Deng Tut, SSBC Camera Operator for English News

9. Mr. Samuel Abut, SSBC Camera Operator for Arabic News

10. Mr. Laku Pitia, SSBC English News Editor

11. Mr. Silliman Majak, SSBC Arabic News Editor

12. Mr. Joseph Agrab, SSBC Radio News Editor and Producer

13. Mr. Sunday Edward, SSBC Radio English News Editor and Producer

Media engagement and publicity

The Media and Communications Unit of the National Dialogue Secretariat did a tremendously great thing by bringing the objectives of the National Dialogue, as expounded in the President’s Concept Note, closer to the public and partners. Through active engagements, honourable members of the steering committee from all subcommittees participated in radio and television shows.

So far the public have been yearning to know more about the stages of the National Dialogue to allow them to get involved. The leadership of the steering committee, too, is using the media to reach out to all stakeholders where views are recorded to facilitate collection of points that will formulate agenda for the National Dialogue.

The most-observed activities of the National Dialogue are the public debates that are streamed live without editing or interruptions from any government institution. Interactive radio programmes and the presentation of the National Dialogue’s objectives by members of the steering committee gave assurance to the public that the process is indeed inclusive, transparent and credible. In October 2017, the steering committee officially launched the website (ssnationaldialogue.org); it is expected that suggestions will be received on the website, especially from the diaspora community and all South Sudanese, including partners who have access to the Internet.

Messages

1. “The National Dialogue is both a forum and a process through which the people of South Sudan shall gather to redefine the basis of their unity as it relates to nationhood,” (President’s Concept Note, page 11)

2. “The National Dialogue is an opportunity for the people of South Sudan to learn from their past and current experiences and forge the way forward for peace and prosperity, sustainable development, to co-exist

together and accept each other as one people and one nation.”

3. “National Dialogue is indispensable.”

4. “National Dialogue is an opportunity and means for lasting peace in South Sudan.”

5. “Our vision is viable and prosperous: our South Sudanese state at peace with itself and its neighbours.”

6. “The National Dialogue and the Revitalization [Peace Agreement] are not competing, but complement each other to stop war and suffering among the people of South Sudan, so that South Sudan can join the peaceful Nations of the world.”

Radio programmes

Bakhita 91.8 FM Radio: (Wednesday, 12–14 July 2017, 5:00–6:00 p.m.)

Bakhita FM presenters: Mr. Damian and Wasuk Julia

Guest speakers:

1. Dr. Priscilla Joseph Kuch

2. Hon. Mogod Maker Mayindi

SSBC 105 FM Radio (Thursday, 13 July 2017, 4:00–5:00 p.m.)

SSBC radio moderators: Mr. Owiro Joseph and Mr. Joseph Agrab

Guest speakers:

1. Hon. Nartisio Loluke Manir

2. Hon. Tabitha Gwang Awok

Miraya 101 FM Radio (Thursday, 13 July 2017, 6:00–7:00 p.m.)

Miraya FM presenters: Mr. Gabriel Joseph Shadar and Sani Martin

Guest speakers:

1. Dr. Albino Bol Dhieu

2. Mr. Deng Gai

3. Rev. Dr. Simon Ngor Awejok

Eye Radio 98.6 FM (Friday, 14 July 2017, 4:00–5:00 p.m.)

Eye Radio Presenters: Mr. Koang and Daniel Denis

Guest speakers:

1. Hon. Lual Deng Khon

2. Gen. Pieng Deng Kuol

3. Mr. Kalisto Lado Faustino

Workplan

1. Design symbol, logo, slogan and letterhead for the National Dialogue. The logo and the slogan will appear on the letterhead and the official seal of the National

Dialogue leadership’s, secretariat’s and steering committee’s official communications.

2. Produce the official stamp (seal) for the leadership, secretariat and all the committees formed.

3. Production of badges for the leadership, secretariat, steering committee, protocol and catering team, members of the press, security and drivers. Production of stickers for the leadership, secretariat, steering committee, protocol and catering team, members of the press and security vehicles.

4. Print 12 banners for the major roundabouts in Juba city.

5. Put National Dialogue message on 10 billboards in Juba city.

6. Put one billboard at all the entry points to South Sudan – airports, Nadapal, Nimule, Kaya, Bazi, Yambio, Ezo, Source Yubu, Aweil and Renk entry points.

7. Put banners with the National Dialogue messages in all the states in South Sudan and Abyei administrative area.

8. Produce T-shirts, caps, scarves, pens and diaries for publicity of the National Dialogue.

9. Mobilize our local artists to compose songs and poems for the National Dialogue, about peace and reconciliation, in the major local languages in South Sudan.

10. Buy at least one hour in 13 FM radio studios in the former 10 states and in Juba city to cover the programmes and activities of the National Dialogue for talk shows and National Dialogue debates in the local languages.

11. Liaise with the international media: BBC, Al Jazeera, CNN, VOA, CGTN, DW Radio, RFI, Sudan Tribune, NewsNow.co.uk, Radio Tamazug and some FM radio stations in Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda which cover the refugee camps to play South Sudan National Dialogue programmes, activities and talk shows.

12. Have regular or monthly meetings with all the foreign embassies and all the international NGOs stationed in Juba in order to update them on the process, progress and challenges of the National Dialogue, and to win their support and funds for the National Dialogue.

13. Conduct daily and weekly media briefings (press conferences) in order to update the general public and the region about the progress of the National Dialogue.

14. Create official telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and a website for the National Dialogue; also open up official accounts on: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and blogs where statements can be published and/or

respond to, and to update and clarify issues concerning the National Dialogue process, programmes and progress. This will enable the people in the diaspora to send in their views to the leadership and the secretariat and items to be added into the agenda.

15. Set one day for the general parade all over the country in support of the National Dialogue. The march should involve members of the press (SSBC television and FM radio stations), women’s groups, youth groups, civil society, different cultural associations (dancing groups), religious societies, working groups, business and students. In Juba, the venue should be at Dr. John Garang Mausoleum and the guest of honour should be the two co-chairs. Invite all the foreign embassies, all NGOs and all UN organizations in Juba. On that day the co-chairs will explain to the audiences the meaning and importance of conducting the National Dialogue so that we can resolve all our differences peacefully; explain to the general public what we have been doing here at Freedom Hall for the last month and the processes of the National Dialogue; appeal to all the oppositions groups and armed rebels to join the National Dialogue; and also appeal to donors to support the National Dialogue so that we can solve our problems peacefully.

16. National Dialogue marathon rally in all state capitals.

17. Literary and art events (National Dialogue Peace and Reconciliation poetry, short story and artwork competitions).

18. Cultural dances and composition of songs in support of the National Dialogue.

4.3 PROVIDING TECHNICAL BACKSTOPPING TO THE LEADERSHIP AND STEERING COMMITTEE

The secretariat of the National Dialogue Steering Committee is composed of members that were appointed from reputable think tanks in the Republic of South Sudan. The secretariat is headed by a coordinator, deputies and heads of various units. The primary role of the secretariat is to see that the steering committee runs smoothly. The steering committee and the leadership is linked by the secretariat that plans and see that functions and duties of each body are properly executed. The plenary and leader rely much on the full support and cooperation of the secretariat that organizes meetings, seminars, appointments, travel, among other activities. The overall operation of the steering committee is carried out by the secretariat in full coordination with the leadership.

4.4 RESOURCE MOBILIZATION AND MANAGEMENT

There are four main categories of fundraising, as explained below.

Office space

It is our view that there should be no need to rent a building for the steering committee and secretariat. We are proposing that Freedom Hall and its surrounding area be used to construct a simple, but durable office block and a presidential hall (to be called the ‘National Dialogue Hall’) which could seat up to 1,000 people. The office block could be completed within 30 days if effectively supervised, so that all members of the steering committee and secretariat could be accommodated by the first week of March 2017.

Resources for this project would be raised from:

1. Oil operating companies, i.e., those under Dar Petroleum Operating Company (DPOC), such as Petronas, CNPC and ONG. It would be appropriate for the secretariat to present this idea to Nile Petroleum at a meeting chaired by Hon. Mayiik.

2. China, through its contingent army unit within UNMISS, could be asked to assist in the construction of the office block.

3. The Japanese Embassy could also be asked to assist.

4. Some members of our business community will be asked to provide in-kind contributions in the form of building materials.

Cash contributions

The steering committee would strongly recommend that financial resources be pooled into a single account/fund to be managed by an independent fund manager – preferably an international firm, such as Deloitte, Ernst and Young, or KPMG, etc. – so as to provide credibility, which would in turn attract funding from the donor community. It would also eliminate the usual suspicion by the South Sudanese elite about our ability to manage resources. The following have to be contacted urgently:

1. The government for its own contribution;

2. Personal letters from the president carried by the Hon. Mayiik Ayii Deng to the leaders of the Gulf States, especially Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar and Kuwait, as well as Turkey, Nigeria, Angola, South Africa and Botswana;

3. Through invitation to Dr. Anis Haggar to come to Juba to meet the president;

4. Through invitation to the DAL Group to come to Juba to meet the president;

5. Through invitation to Mo Ibrahim to come to Juba to meet the president;

6. South Sudan Bankers Association;

7. Baak Mayen and Makiir Gai;

8. Through invitation to the Egyptian coptic billionaire to come to Juba and meet the president.

9. African Development Bank (AfDB) letter to be sent to by the president carried by the minister of finance;

10. South Sudan Business Union;

11. Chamber of Commerce;

12. Development partners, such as Germany, Holland, Troika, Switzerland and Denmark;

13. Any other sources.

Technical backstopping

The following would be sources of technical support:

1. Help would be sought in the areas of communication, public relations, newsletters, television and FM radio shows;

2. Preparation of policy briefs;

3. Taking of notes and minutes, and summarizing meetings of the steering committee; and

4. Closed-door seminars and workshops.

In-kind contributions

The secretariat would also like to examine the possibility of in-kind contributions of some important items and sources:

1. Used cars, furniture, computers, printers, scanners, photocopy machines, etc.

2. Hotel rooms for use by members of the steering committee who might not be living in Juba. A meeting will be organized with hotel managers/owners to assess their occupancy rates. An excess room could be given to the secretariat on a daily basis, but if the hotel is fully booked on a particular day, then those rooms would have to be given back to the hotel. So, let us say we could ask each and every hotel to give five rooms from the excess capacity. However, when Steering Committee members occupy those rooms, they must pay for meals, laundry, and any other extras.

3. Empty seats on flights from and to Juba on the following airlines: Golden Wing, Badir, Tarco, KQ, 540, Ethiopian, Air Rwanda, Fly Dubai and Egypt Air.

5 The way forward

Since its announcement on 14 December 2016 by the president of South Sudan, H.E. Salva Kiir Mayardit, South Sudan’s National Dialogue process has taken root in the country.

The steering committee, under the leadership of the co-chairs, H.E. Abel Alier Kwai and Hon. Angelo Beda, has so far witnessed great progress in identifying stakeholders, locations and in guiding all partners to get involved through one way or another in support of the process of peace, healing and reconciliation in the country.

The National Dialogue Steering Committee after its formal inauguration on 29 May 2017 organized itself into a working body. In June, the steering committee listened and learned from the experiences of other countries that underwent the arduous process of dialogue and achieved lasting peace in their countries. By learning from others, the steering committee is placed in a better position to reap the fruits of the National Dialogue in South Sudan.  The people of South Sudan have not enjoyed peace, as all the generations have dedicated their energies to achieving dignified independence for the people of the region once known as Southern Sudan.

In September 2017, the steering committee formed 15 subcommittees that became working groups. The regional subcommittees were tasked to go out to the grassroots and listen to the grievances of the people of South Sudan. Other specialized subcommittees, too, were assigned the same task of gathering views from South Sudanese and recording suggestions on how to resolve the problems of South Sudan once and for all.

Members of the steering committee are eminent South Sudanese personalities who served the country throughout their lives at various stages. The majority of the members are still actively involved in running the affairs of the country in various institutions, private or public. Initial debates among the members of the steering committee generated much interest not only for themselves, but to the members of the public that kept a close eye on them.

The people of South Sudan have for the first time started to talk among themselves about their problems; they are encouraged through the process of the National Dialogue to find their own solutions, rather than foreign solutions, to their own problems. Confidence is building, and trust and belief, based on past experiences that saw South Sudanese resolve differences among themselves without intervention from outsiders.

The National Dialogue is at a critical moment. With subcommittees finalizing their grassroots consultations and writing their reports, much logistical and human resources are required to complete the process. The subcommittees have reached out to all corners of the country for consultations. The Refugees and International Outreach Subcommittee and Security Subcommittee have listened to the views of their stakeholders and are gathering their views and concrete suggestions to resolve the issues that took these refugees out of their homeland.

The leadership of the National Dialogue is thankful to the people of South Sudan, foreign missions, the UN agencies and the international community for their unwavering support to the steering committee. The remaining stages of the National Dialogue include regional forums and finally a national conference where agendas formulated during grassroots and regional consultations will be discussed. The South Sudan National Dialogue is expected to save the country from perpetual conflict of various natures and guide the nation through its transition to the best governing system that the people themselves will choose. Unexploited resources and an abundance of wealth require collective management so that generations will benefit from what is endowed to them. Peace and reconciliation leads to a sustainable economy and progress among other nations.

Annexes

ANNEX 1: GUIDE FOR CO-CHAIRS’ KEYNOTE ADDRESSES AT CONSULTATION MEETINGS

We are members of the National Dialogue Steering Committee, established on 14 December 2016 and reconstituted in April 2017 by the president of the Republic of South Sudan through Order No. 08/2017; we swore an oath on 22 May 2017. Our mission is to develop the agenda of the National Dialogue, a process that requires your participation. The intention of this mission is to involve a broad spectrum of South Sudanese stakeholders to fully restore peace and tranquillity in our country. We are here to conduct consultations as widely as possible to give you the opportunity to air your views about the problems of our country and propose possible solutions for restoring peace.

You are the stakeholders in the deliberations of the National Dialogue on all issues and questions you feel have affected you and/or have led to all forms of conflict in South Sudan. You are the stakeholders of the National Dialogue that provide answers to questions regarding a peaceful end to all forms of conflict in South Sudan. Our sincere appeal to you is to express yourselves honestly, truthfully and freely, without fear of intimidation.

The purpose of our mission is to facilitate the process of the National Dialogue; to consult with you; to listen to you; and to document your concerns about the state of affairs in our country, South Sudan, from your own perspectives. Your views, proposals and agenda for peace will contribute to fixing the problems of South Sudan in order to achieve durable and just peace.

The President’s Concept Note presents the objectives to be achieved by the National Dialogue. The overriding goals to be pursued through these objectives focus on the search for comprehensive peace, unity, stability and development. While the objectives stated in the concept note lay out the normative framework for the consultations, they do not formulate the precise questions to guide the dialogue at all levels: local, regional and national.

The issues flagged here are not intended to be restrictive, but are mere guidelines that can be adapted to the particular context of each consultation as deemed appropriate. Therefore, our deliberations should debate important national questions, and propose solutions to them. Matters to be debated rotate around the points enumerated here, but are not limited to them:

1. Promotion of a South Sudanese identity and recognition of diversity as a strength of the people of South Sudan.

Adopted on 26 September 2017

2. Engagement with local governments and traditional authorities in the search for peaceful coexistence among different communities and ethnic groups in South Sudan.

3. Striving to end conditions that enhance politics of violence and rebellions, and transform the security sector to ensure the maintenance of peace, justice, human rights, law and order.

4. Redefining, re-establishing and promoting stronger national unity that embraces accountability, tolerance, and transparency in the country.

5. Restructuring the state and national institutions to induce renegotiation of social contract between citizens and their government.

6. Issues related to equitable distribution of natural resources and setting the stage for an integrated and inclusive national development strategy.

7. Proposing steps and guarantees that ensure safe, fair, free and peaceful democratic national elections between competing political parties.

8. Seeking agreement on a strategy intended to develop a framework for national peace, reconciliation and national healing.

9. Debating on a strategy to return internally displaced persons in protection of civilians sites and church compounds, and refugees, to their homes in South Sudan.

10. Commitment to the creation of a credible high-level body and mechanisms for the implementation of resolutions and outcomes of the National Dialogue.

11. Identifying positive national values and international norms to be included in a national constitution reflecting the true character and aspirations of all South Sudanese people.

Our esteemed stakeholders, your honest and truthful contributions to these national questions with full freedom and without fear or prejudice will ensure the success of the National Dialogue. We are convinced beyond any reasonable doubt that the success of the National Dialogue depends on observing the principles of inclusivity, credibility, transparency and integrity of the process. The leadership and members of the National Dialogue Steering Committee firmly stand by these principles and will do all within the powers granted and vested by this national call, as initiated by the president of the Republic of South Sudan, to ensure that the process achieves its cardinal objectives.

ANNEX 2: DECLARATION OF INTENT

We, members of the National Dialogue Steering Committee, acknowledge the establishment of the National Dialogue concept by the president of the Republic of South Sudan on 14 December 2016 and a swearing-in on 22 May 2017 as both the forum and process to form the basis of the social contract between the people of South Sudan, and their government.

We acknowledge, that efforts to pursue national unity and reconciliation were undertaken in the past to create a conducive environment to build national consensus through the Agreement on the Resolution of Conflict in South Sudan (ARCSS) signed on 15 August 2015, and other efforts for peace undertaken by other stakeholders.

We recognize, that the agreements had addressed political problems in the superstructure of the state, while fundamental issues that require public participation of broader South Sudanese communities to restore peace and reconciliation remain in peripheries of the polity and unfinished.

We aim, with the involvement of all stakeholders in the three stages of the National Dialogue, to ensure wider consultations for mapping out grievances unique to each community that are to be addressed at the local forums (counties), the regional peace conferences (groups of states) and at the national conference in order to tackle remaining issues that have not been addressed at subnational levels.

We emphasize, that the foundation of our activities in the pursuit of peace and reconciliation is based on the noble principles of inclusivity; impartiality; credible, clear and agreed agenda; public participation; transparency; and commitment to and ownership of the National Dialogue and its cherished outcomes.

We are guided by the objectives of the National Dialogue in our endeavour to end all forms of conflict; constitute national consensus; and to save our country from disintegration and foreign interference. All of these objectives constitute our ultimate intended outcomes of the process of National Dialogue.

Therefore, we members of the South Sudan National Dialogue Steering Committee declare our intention to

facilitate the building process of the national consensus on and not limited to the following objectives:

1. To promote South Sudanese identity and recognize diversity as a strength of the people of South Sudan.

2. To promote peaceful coexistence among different ethnic groups in South Sudan.

3. To strive for ending conditions that enhance the politics of violence and rebellions, and to transform the security sector to ensure maintenance of peace, justice, human rights, law and order.

4. To redefine, re-establish and promote stronger national unity that embraces accountability, tolerance and transparency in the country.

5. To foster restructuring of the state and national institutions to induce renegotiation of social contract between citizens and their government.

6. To foster resolutions to issues related to the equitable distribution of natural resources and to setting the stage for an integrated and inclusive national development strategy.

7. To agree on steps and guarantees that ensure safe, fair, free and peaceful democratic national elections between competing political parties.

8. To agree on a strategy intended to develop a framework for national peace, healing and reconciliation.

9. To agree on a strategy to return internally displaced persons and refugees to their homes.

10. To ensure commitment to the creation of a credible, high-level body and mechanisms for the implementation of resolutions and outcomes of the National Dialogue.

11. To ensure that, besides international norms, positive national values are identified and included into a national constitution reflecting the true character and aspirations of all South Sudanese people.

We call on all South Sudanese stakeholders to participate in the deliberations of the National Dialogue to bring peace, unity and prosperity to our people.

Members of the National Dialogue Steering Committee adopt this declaration in Juba on 19 September 2017

ANNEX 3: GUIDING QUESTIONS FOR REGIONAL AND LOCAL CONSULTATIONS

The President’s Concept Note presents the objectives to be achieved by the National Dialogue. The overriding goals to be pursued through these objectives focus on comprehensive peace, unity, security, stability and development towards prosperity for the country. The concept note stipulates specific measures to be taken toward these goals. While the objectives stated in the President’s Concept Note lay out the normative framework for the consultations, they do not formulate the precise questions to guide the dialogue at all levels: regional, local, and national. The questions proposed here are not intended to provide restrictive straitjackets, but are merely guidelines that can be adapted to the particular context of each consultation as appropriate:

1. In your opinion, what do you think is the fundamental problem of South Sudan? What could be done to resolve this issue?

2. What in your view are the root causes of the communal and intercommunal conflicts that are devastating the country?

3. What would you propose as a permanent solution to these causes?

4. In your opinion, what were the ideals, goals and objectives for which the people of South Sudan struggled for over half a century?

5. As the SPLM/A was the champion of the struggle of the people of South Sudan, what did you see as the vision they had for an independent country and to what extent did you agree with that vision?

6. As the party and army that assumed the leadership of the country at independence, why do you think the SPLM/A failed to implement the vision it had set for the country?

Adopted on 14 September 2017

7. Why do you think the people of South Sudan did not realize the vision for the nation and the system of government they had envisioned for their independent country?

8. If you had it your way, what system of government would you have envisaged for the people of South Sudan after independence?

9. Do you think it is possible for the SPLM as the dominant party in the government to reform itself, revitalize its vision for the country and to pursue its original objectives, perhaps with the necessary adaptation to meet the needs of the country?

10. In your opinion, how can South Sudan promote multiparty democracy and ensure free, fair and credible competitive elections?

11. What do you believe the people of South Sudan need to do to address the political and economic crises confronting the country, and to achieve the objectives stipulated for the National Dialogue?

12. What else would you advise the National Dialogue to do in order to ensure its success in achieving its desired goals and objectives.

Please answer these questions with full freedom and without fear or prejudice. Also, please remember that the success of the National Dialogue depends on observing the principles of inclusivity, credibility, transparency and integrity. The leadership and the National Dialogue Steering Committee firmly stand by these principles and will do all that they can, within the powers granted them by the president of the Republic of South Sudan, to ensure that they are adhered to.

ANNEX 4: FINANCIAL REGULATIONS

Introduction

The aims of these financial regulations are to guide the management of public and partners’ resources provided to the National Dialogue Steering Committee. These financial regulations reflect and offer a practical guide to financial management systems in the Republic of South Sudan and standard financial regulations that would be acceptable worldwide. The guidelines answer questions: Why financial regulations? Who designed the regulations? Who uses them? Whom do these regulations serve? How are they used?

These regulations have been designed by the National Dialogue Steering Committee to promote a sound financial management system that is grounded on the principles of accountability, transparency and cost-effectiveness in the management of National Dialogue Steering Committee’s resources.

These regulations provide mechanisms and procedures on the receipt, payment and procurement of assets and services provided to the steering committee and the subcommittees of the National Dialogue.

The purpose of these regulations are to:

1. Course the steering committee to open accounts with the National Bank of South Sudan or mandated commercial banks;

2. Identify and assign in the line of authority who shall administer funds and the cashier to handle cash of the steering committee and subcommittees;

3. Provide procedures on record-keeping of funds received and spent;

4. Provide a time frame for reporting the income and expenditure of funds;

5. Provide procedures on how receipts and vouchers are kept; and

6. Ensure that points 1–5 above shall adhere to the South Sudan Financial Management and Accountability Act of 2011 and best international practices.

Chapter One: Preliminary provisions

1. Title and commencement

These regulations shall be cited as ‘The National Dialogue Steering Committee Financial Regulations, 2017’ and shall come into force upon signature by the co-chair of the National Dialogue Steering Committee.

2. Repeal and saving

In the event of conflict of regulations between these regulations and previous regulations, the provisions of these regulations shall prevail provided that any

order or decision taken by the previous regulations shall continue.

Upon the effective date of these regulations, any other laws inconsistent with the provisions of these laws shall cease to operate in the National Dialogue Steering Committee, unless not compliant with provisions of these Regulations, the South Sudan Financial Act of 2009 and South Sudan Procurement Act of 2008.

3. Authority and application

These regulations shall be applicable only to the National Dialogue Steering Committee and subcommittees within and beyond the territory of the Republic South Sudan.

4. Interpretations

4.1 Accounting officer means the rapporteur official in charge of administration and finance of the National Dialogue

4.2 Administrative areas means former administrative areas of Abyei and Pibor.

4.3 Budget means planned revenue collection and expenditure over a period of time.

4.4 Budget ceiling means the total amount allocated to each spending agency in a given fiscal year

4.5 Bank means the Bank of South Sudan or its chartered banks.

4.6 Head means the chairperson of the subcommittee.

4.7 Constitution means the Transitional Constitution of the Republic of South Sudan.

4.8 Co-chair means the convener of the South Sudan National Dialogue Steering Committee.

4.9 County means the administrative area level below the state as they stood in 2008.

4.10 Financial regulations means financial regulations governing the funds of the National Dialogue Steering Committee.

4.11 Fiscal year means a period of twelve months beginning 1 July and ending 30 June of the following year.

4.12 Headquarters Subcommittee means the National Capital Subcommittee.

4.13 Leadership means the co-chair, two deputy co-chairs, rapporteur, two deputy rapporteurs, and other appointed members of the leadership.

4.14 National Dialogue means the South Sudan National Dialogue for the people of South Sudan.

4.15 President means the president of the Republic of South Sudan.

4.16 Public funds means public money in the custody of the spending agency for the benefit of public.

4.17 Rapporteur means the rapporteur of the South Sudan National Dialogue Steering Committee.

4.18 Regions means the former 10 states of South Sudan and two administrative areas.

4.19 Reserve funds mean the money which is not allocated to any spending committee or subcommittee to meet (unforeseen) future obligations of the South Sudan National Dialogue Steering Committee.

4.20 Steering committee means the National Dialogue Steering Committee.

4.21 Secretariat means the technical team and support staff to the South Sudan National Dialogue Steering Committee.

4.22 Spending agency means any committee or subcommittee of the South Sudan National Dialogue.

4.23 Stakeholders means the identified broader participants of the South Sudan National Dialogue.

4.24 State means any newly created state differed.

4.25 Subcommittee means one of the 15 subcommittees of the South Sudan National Dialogue Steering Committee.

5. Overall goal

These regulations shall promote sound financial management system of the National Dialogue Steering Committee and subcommittees and shall ensure its credible control, accountability and transparency in the utilization of finances.

6. Objectives

In the application of these regulations, the following objectives shall be observed and pursued:

6.1 To establish an account for the South Sudan National Dialogue Steering Committee in the Bank of South Sudan or any commercial bank;

6.2 To establish a record system for incoming and outgoing funds in the designated books of accounts;

6.3 To establish a filing system for all transactions, vouchers and financial documents for purposes of tracking transactions, reporting and auditing;

6.4 To establish a procurement system to ensure proper tendering practices in the utilization of public and partners’ funds by the South Sudan National Dialogue Steering Committee.

Chapter Two 7. Sources of these regulations

The sources of these regulations shall be the:

7.1 Public Financial Management and Accountability Act of 2011;

7.2 Public Procurement Act of 2008; and

7.3 Best international practices.

8. System of accounting

The steering committee shall apply the single-entry system of accounting.

9. Account(s) of the National Dialogue Steering Committee

9.1 There shall be an account opened in the name of the South Sudan National Dialogue Steering Committee at the Bank of South Sudan and any commercial bank.

9.2 The co-chair shall authorize two primary signatories and two alternatives to sign the cheques and other financial documents.

9.3 The official in charge of accounts in the steering committee shall provide the co-chair/leadership with a credit note in case of remittances either from the government or from the partners.

9.4 Any withdrawal from the steering committee or subcommittee funds shall be subject to the approval of the co-chair or deputy co-chair, or the head of the subcommittee in case of a subcommittee.

9.5 The rapporteur, as the official in charge of accounts of the National Dialogue Steering Committee, shall provide the co-chair or leadership with a bank statement either attached to the monthly report or on request of the co-chair or leadership.

9.6 All cheques issued for withdrawal of cash shall be accompanied with an authorization letter from the leadership of the steering committee or the leadership of a subcommittee.

9.7 Every cheque issued for withdrawal of steering committee funds shall bear the signatures of the three authorized officials.

9.8 Any requisition for payment out of the steering committee’s bank account shall be by accompanied by supporting documents.

10. Cash receipts

10.1 The National Dialogue administration shall be provided with credit advice by the Bank of South Sudan or its successor after remittance of funds in its account and thereafter recorded in the relevant book(s) of account for accountability purposes.

10.2 All cash received by the cashier shall be put in the safe for safe custody; the cashier or treasurer

will issue a receipt in financial form (FF) with three copies. The original copy is delivered to the payer, the second copy is delivered to the official in charge of the institution account and the third copy is kept with the cashier in a receipts file after it is recorded in the cash book (FF No. 39).

Payment from National Dialogue funds 11. Payment methods

11.1 Any payment from the steering committee or subcommittee funds shall either be by cheque or in cash bearing an authorization document from the authority to the incurred expenditure.

11.2 All payments from the steering committee funds shall be strictly effected in accordance with the approved budget line items.

12. Payments

12.1 A requisition for payment shall be accompanied by supporting documents from the client or agency to the incurred expenditure.

12.2 All cash payments from the chest of the National Dialogue Steering Committee or subcommittee funds shall be accompanied by Payment Order FF No. 40 (PO) duplicated in three copies. One copy will go to the payee, the second copy to the accountant and the third copy remains with the cashier in the designated file for expenditures after it is recorded in the cash book.

12.3 All payments from National Dialogue Steering Committee or subcommittee funds shall be effected by the cashier only in line with an approved budget line item.

12.4 Every payment or withdrawal from the bank shall be done within limits established by the approved budget.

12.5 Every voucher for all forms of payment shall be filled and kept with the cashier for accounting purposes.

12.6 The leadership shall authorize payments from the reserve funds after obtaining approval from the steering committee.

12.7 Without prejudice to subregulation (6) above, the leadership of the steering committee may authorize payments from the reserve funds to cater for any other emergency, subject to approval by the steering committee.

12.8 All funds allocated to subcommittees’ field activities shall be transferred or paid to the respective heads of the subcommittees to manage and to ensure implementation of their respective workplans and report back expenditures incurred in the implementation of their activities.

13. Payment limits

There shall be a limit for authorization attached to the South Sudan National Dialogue Steering Committee expenditures.

13.1 The leadership of the steering committee under resolution from the leadership of the steering committee shall approve an amount not exceeding the sum of SSP 2,500,000m; any amounts above SSP 2,500,000m shall be approved by the extended leadership (to be defined).

13.2 The head of a subcommittee, with resolution from his team, shall approve the amount not exceeding SSP 1,000,000.

13.3 The head of the secretariat shall approve the amount not exceeding the sum of SSP 50,000.

13.4 The official in charge of finances and logistics shall approve the amount not exceeding SSP 30,000.

Chapter Three: Budget elements, procedure and principles

14. Elements of the budget

14.1 The co-chair shall ensure the budget is presented to the steering committee through the rapporteur for consultation.

14.2 The budget estimates of the steering committee shall consider the allocated funds to the National Dialogue Steering Committee and pledges from the donors and partners.

14.3 All income and expenditures shall be budgeted and shall be approved by the steering committee.

14.4 All the budgets of the subcommittees shall be approved first by the relevant subcommittee and thereafter presented to the rapporteur for integration into the steering committee’s budget.

14.5 The budget may include the reserve funds upon approval of the steering committee.

14.6 All the spending units of the National Dialogue Steering Committee shall adhere to the budget ceiling fixed by the expanded leadership.

15.

Principles of the budget

15.1 The National Dialogue Steering Committee shall ensure transparency and accountability for resource management.

15.2 To ensure accountability and transparency in the utilization of public funds, the detailed forecast of proposed incomes and expenditures shall be reflected in the report to be presented to the auditors and partners.

16. Reserve funds

16.1 Reserve funds shall be applied to the steering committee as part of budgetary allocations to

finance future expenditure obligations of the steering committee, subject to the approval of the steering committee.

16.2 The reserve funds shall be used only after the accounting officer justifies the expenditure and it is scrutinized by the steering committee.

Chapter Four: Reporting and auditing 17. Reports

The reporting system of the steering committee shall be categorized as follows:

17.1 The rapporteur shall present, to the leadership of the steering committee and the donors, a monthly expenditure report, accompanied by a bank statement after the end of every monthly payment to ensure accountability and monitoring of the institutional funds proper use as per budgetary allocation.

17.2 The head of the subcommittee’s funds shall compile its monthly and quarterly expenditure reports and present it to the steering committee, the secretariat and partners to ensure accountability of subcommittee funds as allocated in the budget.

18. Internal audit

Internal audits shall supervise and process the steering committee’s financial documents on a daily basis and in accordance with South Sudan standards, and relevant South Sudan laws, and the National Dialogue Steering Committee’s by-laws set by the committee’s leadership. The internal audit team will perform the following:

18.1 Preliminary audits will be performed before funds are released to ensure that spending is done in accordance with the co-chairs’ financial by-laws and budget, as well as the steering committee’s schedules.

18.2 Carry out audits before and after funds are released.

18.3 Spot audits ordered by the leadership of the steering committee. Auditing might also be carried out by a competent external auditing firm on the financial books when necessary.

Chapter Five: Miscellaneous provisions

19. Accounting procedures, standards and fiscal accountability

19.1 All levels of the National Dialogue Steering Committee shall comply with South Sudan laws, public sector accounting standards, best practices and fiscal accountability to ensure that public funds are allocated and expended in accordance with the budget of the respective level of the National Dialogue committee and subcommittees.

19.2 All levels of the National Dialogue Steering Committee shall hold all funds receives in public accounts in the Bank of South Sudan and other commercial banks in the case of subcommittees, subject to scrutiny and accountability by the steering committee and internal auditors.

20. Management of partners’

or donors’ funds

20.1 All spending units of the steering committee who receive donor or partner funding shall apply the financial guidelines of the funding agency on the basis that the funding partner provides the spending committee or subcommittee with its financial guidelines.

20.2 The external funds of the committee or subcommittees that form part of the steering committee’s budgetary allocations shall be managed in accordance with the provisions of these regulations.

21. Currency

21.1 The budget of the steering committee shall be made in South Sudanese pounds (SSP).

21.2 Without prejudice to the provisions of regulation 20.1, above, the steering committee may make budget in hard currency due to inflation or devaluation of local currency and to ensure access to partners funds in hard currency.

22. Offences

22.1 An official commits an offence if he or she uses public funds to serve his or her own interest without approval from the relevant authority.

22.2 An official commits an offence if he or she unilaterally opens an account in the name of the steering committee in any commercial bank or uses or deposits public funds into his or her private account.

22.3 An official commits an offence if he or she fails to execute functions and duties imposed upon him or her under the provisions of these regulations.

22.4 An official commits an offence if he or she fails to declare a conflict of interest in a business concern.

23. Penalties

23.1 Whoever commits an offence under the provisions of these regulations and under any other applied laws in the country shall be dealt with in accordance to the law.

23.2 Where a government official acted deliberately and as result causes damage or destroys the asset of the steering committee, he or she shall be liable to

pay the cost equivalent to the damaged property and may be liable to administrative action.

24. Supremacy of these regulations

In the event of any conflict in the interpretation and or implementation of the provisions of these regulations

Hon. Angelo Beda

Co-chair, National Dialogue Steering Committee September 2017, Juba

with any other applicable laws, the provisions of these regulations prevail thereof.

25. Amendment of these regulations

These financial regulations, shall not be amended unless, the proposed amendment is approved by the National Dialogue Steering Committee.

The South Sudan National Dialogue process was supported by the Government of Japan and the United Nations Development Programme.

The publication of South Sudan National Dialogue Volumes 1 to 5 was supported by the United Nations Development Programme.