IN a stunning move that lays bare the succession crisis consuming South Sudan, President Salva Kiir has dismissed Benjamin Bol Mel as vice president and deputy leader of the ruling party, severing ties with the man widely rumoured to be his own preferred successor. The decree, read on state television, provided no explanation for the firing.
The dramatic dismissal of Bol Mel – appointed as one of the country’s five vice presidents just nine months ago – came alongside the firing of the central bank governor and the head of the revenue authority, both seen as close allies of the ousted vice president. Kiir also stripped Bol Mel of his general’s rank, to which he had promoted him only in September.
The move followed hours of fevered speculation in Juba after the security detail in front of Bol Mel’s residence was visibly reduced, sources told Reuters. By nightfall, South Sudan’s precarious political order had been upended once again.
The dismissal caps a week of extraordinary turbulence. Just days earlier, Kiir fired his finance minister – the eighth such dismissal since 2020 – in what had seemed like another routine reshuffle. But Wednesday’s purge of Bol Mel and his financial power base reveals something far more existential: a succession struggle breaking into the open with potentially catastrophic consequences.
No official reason was given for any of the dismissals. None was needed. In South Sudan, cabinet positions have become little more than rotating prizes in an elaborate political survival game, with ministerial tenure measured in weeks rather than months. But Wednesday’s purge transcends the usual patterns of patronage management. By firing his presumed heir, Kiir has either eliminated a rival or bowed to pressure from competing factions – and neither scenario bodes well for stability.
The finance portfolio’s revolving door is particularly devastating because it sits at the nexus of South Sudan’s multiple crises. The ministry controls access to oil revenues – the country’s primary resource – and manages relationships with international donors who provide the lifeline of humanitarian assistance. Yet no minister has lasted long enough to implement coherent economic policy, build institutional capacity, or establish the sustained relationships necessary for effective governance.
Barnaba Bak Chol himself is no stranger to this pattern. He previously held the finance minister position for approximately six months before being fired in March 2024. His reinstatement, like the recent return of General Paul Nang Majok as Chief of Defence Forces just three months after being dismissed, epitomises the dizzying instability that has come to define South Sudan’s political landscape.
A Government in Permanent Transition
Fourteen years after independence from Sudan, South Sudan remains trapped in what analysts describe as a permanent transition. Kiir, now 74, has presided over a government officially labelled “transitional” since 2011 – a designation that has become a euphemism for constitutional paralysis. Elections, the basic mechanism of democratic renewal, have been postponed twice, leaving the country in suspended political animation.
The patterns have become predictable in their unpredictability. Military commanders are appointed and dismissed with bewildering frequency. Cabinet positions rotate like musical chairs designed less for governance than for managing competing power centres. Each reshuffle temporarily satisfies one faction while alienating another, creating a perpetual cycle of grievance and realignment.
Analysts interpret these constant shake-ups as Kiir’s strategy for consolidating power while balancing various ethnic and political factions. The finance ministry, with its control over state resources, becomes a particularly valuable bargaining chip in this endless negotiation.
But whatever tactical merits this approach offers for presidential survival, it has proven strategically disastrous for the nation. Institutions cannot develop when leadership changes every few months. Economic policy cannot be implemented when ministers are dismissed mid-programme. Development plans cannot materialise when government counterparts are gone before projects begin.
The Hollowing Out of Peace
The treatment of First Vice President Riek Machar throws into sharp relief the hollowness of South Sudan’s peace architecture. Machar, Kiir’s main rival during the devastating 2013-2018 civil war that killed an estimated 400,000 people, was charged earlier this year with treason, murder, and crimes against humanity. The government placed him under house arrest in March and began his trial last month.
The 2018 peace and power-sharing agreement that ended the civil war was supposed to represent a new chapter – a framework for transitioning from armed conflict to political competition. Instead, it has become clear that the agreement was less a genuine settlement than a temporary ceasefire between implacable enemies.
The fact that the country’s second-ranking official can be charged with treason while still nominally holding office reveals the complete breakdown of any meaningful constitutional order. It demonstrates that power-sharing arrangements exist only as long as they serve the interests of those with guns.
The Human Cost
While South Sudan’s leaders play deadly games of political chess, the population endures catastrophic suffering. The nation remains one of the poorest on earth despite significant oil resources. Basic services are virtually non-existent across vast swathes of territory. Millions have been displaced by repeated cycles of violence.
The connection between political instability and human suffering is direct and devastating. Development cannot occur in constant upheaval. International donors cannot plan long-term programmes when government counterparts change every few months. Economic investment is impossible when property rights depend on the whims of whoever currently holds power. Peace dividends cannot materialise when peace itself remains forever provisional.
A recent United Nations investigation accused South Sudanese leaders of “systematic looting” of the nation’s wealth for personal gain. When state institutions exist primarily as vehicles for elite enrichment rather than public service, instability becomes not a problem to be solved but a feature to be managed. The constant circulation of positions allows different factions to take turns at the feeding trough while ensuring no one accumulates enough stable power to challenge the system itself.
The Succession Question Explodes
What had been whispered speculation about presidential succession has now erupted into a full-blown political crisis. Bol Mel’s rapid rise—from Kiir’s alleged “principal financial advisor” (a characterisation the president’s office denied when the US imposed sanctions on Bol Mel in 2017) to general in September to vice president in February—signalled to many observers that the 74-year-old president was grooming his replacement.
But that apparent anointing drew sharp pushback from political and security elites in Juba who saw themselves sidelined in the succession sweepstakes. Bol Mel’s wealth and influence, derived from his control over lucrative government contracts and alleged systematic corruption, made him a formidable but controversial figure. A UN report in September accused companies affiliated with him of receiving $1.7 billion for road construction work that was never completed—charges to which he has never directly responded.
His dismissal suggests that Kiir either capitulated to pressure from rival factions or concluded that his chosen successor had accumulated too much independent power. Either interpretation points to the same dangerous reality: South Sudan has no established mechanism for peaceful leadership transition, and the jockeying for position has become openly destabilising.
The timing is particularly ominous. Fighting between forces loyal to Kiir and various armed groups has been escalating in recent months. Machar’s arrest and ongoing trial are one factor stoking the violence. The purge of Bol Mel and his financial network—occurring just as questions swirl about who controls the country’s oil revenues and international aid flows—risks opening new fronts in this complex power struggle.
A Vicious Circle with No Exit
South Sudan finds itself at a critical inflexion point. Political instability prevents the development of functional institutions. The absence of functional institutions makes violence and personal rule the default mechanisms of power. Reliance on violence and personal rule generates constant instability. And so the cycle continues.
But the dismissal of Bol Mel represents something more dangerous than the usual churning of positions. It signals that the succession question – long the unspoken crisis beneath South Sudan’s visible dysfunction – can no longer be managed through backroom deals and factional balancing. The struggle for who succeeds Kiir has moved from shadow manoeuvring to open purges, and the country’s fragile peace hangs in the balance.
Breaking this cycle would require precisely what seems most impossible: a sustained period of political stability during which institutions could develop capacity, peace dividends could materialise, and the population could begin to see governance as something other than organised predation. But achieving such stability would require current leadership to accept constraints on their own power and genuine power-sharing arrangements – the very things their entire political strategy is designed to prevent.
The dismissal of Athian Diing Athian after just two months is thus more than a curious administrative decision. It is a symbol of everything that keeps South Sudan trapped: the prioritisation of elite political management over institutional development, the treatment of cabinet positions as patronage tools rather than professional positions, the absence of any stable framework for governance, and the fundamental inability of current leadership to imagine a political system not centred on their personal survival.
Until these patterns change – until stability becomes more valuable than constant reshuffling, until institutions matter more than individuals, until the nation’s future takes precedence over elite enrichment – South Sudan will continue its tragic lurch from crisis to crisis. And lasting peace, the dream that animated independence and that the people so desperately need, will remain as distant as ever.
