In “South Sudan’s Fateful Struggle,” Steven Roach presents the history and fundamental causes driving conflict in the world’s youngest country. By considering the role of civil society, the liberation movement, and military patronage, Roach comprehensively details the country’s past and present struggle for peace.

Africa, a continent where a majority of the countries became independent through armed resistance, has witnessed only a few countries successfully transitioning to proper state building after independence. Yet there seems to be no consensus on the nature, limitations, and drivers that are responsible for these trends. Steven Roach’s latest book, South Sudan’s Fateful Struggle: Building Peace in a State of War, offers a brilliant perspective that can help illuminate the barriers to successful post-independence state-building in Africa. Using his interdisciplinary background, Roach, a Professor of International relations at the University of South Florida, has been able to capture important aspects of independence and post-independence struggles that are often ignored or discussed mutedly.

The book looks at South Sudan’s pre- and post-independence experiences, and identifies issues that were overlooked during critical moments in the independence journey, such as the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005. The author argues that such oversight meant prominent issues, including divisions and wrangles in the greater South and within the Sudanese People Liberation Movement (SPLM) in particular, were never resolved. It is these unaddressed challenges that would continue to haunt the world’s youngest nation after independence. The author successfully illustrates how the SPLM, as a critical institution of state formation, transformed from an instrument of stability and governance to an one of violence and patronage at the expense of peace and effective state-building. This transformation and the ensuing tensions between the relatively similar but differentiated themes, I argue, best explains the cause and effect of the South Sudan’s “brutal governance,” or leviathan, akin to a “state of war” as described by the author.

The book further highlights fundamental aspects of South Sudan’s troubles, including the dilemma between building a state and, correspondingly, peace, especially as espoused by the author’s discussion of the dominant role of the SPLM in both. Another important contribution of the book is its focus on the peace deterrent nature of the SPLM through its militarised patronage linkages, which continue to undermine any meaningful peace efforts. Similarly, discussions on the limitation of peace dividends and the statehood process of South Sudan are vital in contextualising the author’s framework. Indeed, as pointed out in the book, efforts to build the South Sudanese state for peace have been hampered by corruption, party infighting, and rebel factionalism mainly originating in the SPLM. The framing of what the author calls the “South-South” wars, which have highly militarised patronage networks within and outside the country, forms the basis of understanding the complexities of the crisis in South Sudan. And given the deep-rooted nature of these divisions, which the author rightfully dates from before independence, one can conclude that contemporary peace efforts need to further explore solutions to these often-overlooked factors.

Methodologically, the author does an excellent job combining different sets of data collected through interviews, surveys, and expert conversations for an accurate understanding of the history of the conflict. This is even more commendable given the challenges the author encountered when collecting data, including outbreaks of violence. Nonetheless, the author offers a comprehensive discussion of the conflict, and the presentation is chronologically superb. Roach lays a solid foundation for the book by finding the basis and gap for the case study in the existing literature before linking the SPLM movement and the greater Sudan armed resistance to Ottoman slavery and British colonial brutality. The book offers its readers an in-depth understanding as to why the Comprehensive Peace framework resulted in a troubled transition with entrenched patronage networks spreading impunity, corruption, injustices, and violating human rights in the newly established state of South Sudan. He raises reader’s hopes in the subsequent revitalised peace processes that mainly sought to accommodate more warring factions and patronage networks. However, he then dashes these hopes by highlighting the challenging work of civil society and the real shortcomings of the enhanced and revitalised power-sharing frameworks. He aptly argues that the revitalised peace frameworks and power sharing deals fall short of truly addressing not just the recurrent armed violence but also the structural violence in society. This is because the peace processes are elitist in nature and with little significant input by the people.

The pivotal role of civil society has been well highlighted, especially in influencing the often-divided government to implement impactful reforms to the peace process. The author recognises the role civil society groups have had in promoting societal justice and accountability to the peace process, including in the implementation of truth and reparations commissions as well as courts for war crimes. Both organised and non-organised informal groupings are largely effective in ensuring a sense of national unity and identity in South Sudan through encouragement and promotion of the rule of law and prosperous governance. The author’s discussion of civil society as a vital component of building peace brings to the light the incomplete nature of the South Sudanese social contract. The weak social contract limits the dividends for peace as factional groupings only seek appropriate tribal and state power through the increasing number of agreements. One can easily observe a general correlation between the increase in the number of rival armed factions and the increase in the number of peace agreements, including revitalised ones. They arguably contribute little to peace, justice, and general accountability.

While the conflict in South Sudan has attracted the attention of policy makers, scholars, and researchers, leading to the impressive gorwht in the policy and academic literatures on the situation in the country, South Sudan’s Fateful Struggle is an eye opener to the many historical and contemporary drivers of the protracted conflict. The book finds its place among the few that offer a unique perspective on how the crisis can be understood and resolved. While the book does not give many insights to the reader on the constructive role played by the external actors, especially in facilitating and anchoring peace, this can be addressed in a separate study. Also, even though the terminological use of “South-South War” is likely be confused with the field’s established South-South analytical frameworks and understandings, such as the Global South or South-South Cooperation, it is still useful in explaining the author’s message to the reader. The book is comprehensive, and I highly recommend it.

This is a book review of Steven C. Roach’s South Sudan’s Fateful Struggle: Building Peace in a State of War (Oxford University Press, 2023). ISBN: 9780190057848.

Dr Israel Nyaburi Nyadera teaches National Security and Strategy at the National Defence College, Kenya. He holds the Swiss Government Excellence Postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding, Geneva Graduate Institute, Switzerland. He is also a 2024 Irregular Warfare Initiative Nonresident fellow, a joint production of Princeton University’s Empirical Studies of Conflict Project and the Modern War Institute at West Point.

This review is published under a Creative Commons License and may be republished with attribution.