After many false dawns, South Sudan appears to be heading for normalcy again with Riek Machar taking the oath as deputy to his implacable foe President Salva Kiir.
It was all smiles and handshakes on Saturday as Machar returning from exile swore to become a key part in the new unity government that is still being put together.
Machar’s oath took place as a deadline by the international community approached for both sides to the country’s costly civil war to kick-start the unity government, whose formation scheduled for last year was deferred to February 2020.
Although President Kiir presided over the ceremony at State House in Juba, Machar was the unmistakable man of the moment.
“I want to assure you that we will work together to end your suffering,” the 69-year old said shortly after his swearing-in with four other co-vice presidents including Rebecca Garang, the widow of independence leader John Garang.
“We must forgive one another and reconcile,” said Mr Kiir shortly after hugging and shaking the hand of his old foe.
Honest brokers and others wishing South Sudan well are hoping that it would not be 2016 all over again when fighting flared up between Kiir’s forces and Machar’s men in a battle for supremacy.
Both men had been part of a short-lived power-sharing deal which collapsed, forcing Machar to flee a turbulent Juba only to resurface in South Africa months later.
Understanding the conflict in South Sudan requires shedding light on the uneasy relationship between the two men.
They had worked together for a long time before their mutual distrust of each other surfaced to influence the chain of events which plunged the country into a brutal civil war.
Kiir, a quiet yet abrasive former freedom fighter under the late Garang’s leadership had always been wary of Machar, a Mechanical Engineer trained at the University of Bradford in England in 1984.
Ethnicity plays a bigger than desired role in South Sudanese politics.
Both men belong to the largest ethnicities, Kiir being a Dinka and Machar a Nuer whose allies had sought to exploit the sharp tribal divisions and rivalries that had characterized these two groups, accentuating the conflict along ethnic lines.
“I also appeal to the people of Dinka and Nuer to forgive one another” Kiir said in a conscious attempt to de-escalate the ethnic sensibilities which underlined the controversy over the country’s demarcation of states.
For much of their lives the two men lived parallel lives with the soft-spoken but abrasive Salva Kiir joining Garang’s struggle against Sudan in the country’s second civil war as Machar studied for his PhD in Mechanical Engineering in England in the 1980s.
While Kiir would ascend to the presidency following the leadership vacuum which came after the 2005 helicopter crash that killed Garang, Machar was to live in his shadow for much of the build-up to South Sudan’s independence six years later.
As inaugural vice president under Kiir, Machar had nit hidden his desire to succeed his boss as the political supremo in South Sudan, a prospect dreaded by the president’s allies who fear they will be brutally purged.
With much fanfare, South Sudan gained independence from the rest of Sudan in July 2011 after a bitter independence struggle which only ended when a watershed agreement with Khartoum was signed to this effect.
It was a welcome relief for war-weary South Sudanese whose young population below the age of 40 have known nothing but the mayhem of conflict and its attendant challenges and meant that the world’s newest country cannot yet harness its potential as a serious oil-producing nation.
However barely two years after the rest of the world joined South Sudanese in celebrating the birth of their new nation, fighting erupted in Juba, triggered by a failed coup in December 2013 ostensibly by troops loyal to Machar.
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But Kiir would not be dislodged and the conflict that ensued killed some 400, 000 people and displaced some two million more in and out of the country.
It was a conflict that refused to die after multiple attempts at a long lasting truce spearheaded by the regional Intergovernment Authority on Development (IGAD).
Writing for the African Press Agency over the issue, Sudanese writer Ezaldeen Arbaab says there is still a cloud hanging over the new unity government and the future of the country.
“We should not forget that both sides were under pressure from the international community to form a unity government” Arbaab observes.
“South Sudan’s misfortune is that the two most powerful men in the country are implacable foes and they don’t trust each other” he adds.
“The last time they signed a peace deal and Machar was appointed vice president, this distrust resurfaced and took the form of a dispute and soon after both men went back to war” the Sudanese journalist by training points out.
He says it is as hard as ever to predict how the situation in South Sudan will unfold and whether the unity government will hold for long or even work.
“There is no guarantee that the two men whose political ambitions have been holding a whole country hostage for more than six years now will not go back to armed belligerence once they lose patience with each other again” he opines.
Only time will tell.
But what cannot be disputed in Arbaab’s own words is that “the South Sudanese people are really… really tired of war…they need a long break from this all…they need peace in the real sense”.
He says the presence of peace will allow South Sudanese to turn their attention to waging an effective war on poverty.
WN/as/APA