Opinion| Elections cannot create peace; peace makes elections work

I sometimes wonder what is ringing in the minds of some educated members and supporters of the SPLM-IG when they insist that elections are the only road to ending rebellion and violence in South Sudan. Is this an argument grounded in political feasibility, or merely in the arithmetic of retaining power?

I do not oppose elections. I oppose reckless elections, elections conducted in a country where guns remain more trusted than institutions, where the peace agreement remains substantially unimplemented, where political space is shrinking, and where the very institutions expected to manage electoral competition have not acquired the independence and legitimacy necessary to command national confidence.

History should make us cautious. From the violent electoral crises that accompanied Africa’s post-independence political transitions to Angola, Uganda, Kenya, Côte d’Ivoire, Burundi, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe and elsewhere, elections have sometimes become not the exit from conflict but its ignition point. In Angola, a disputed 1992 election shattered the Bicesse peace process and returned the country to devastating war. Côte d’Ivoire’s 2010 disputed presidential election produced a deadly confrontation. Kenya’s disputed elections in 1992 and 2007 exposed how electoral competition can become communal violence when institutions are weak and political identity is heavily mobilised.

Uganda’s history offers another uncomfortable lesson. The disputed 1980 election was followed by the Bush War. Whatever one thinks of the subsequent political history, the lesson is unmistakable: when citizens conclude that the ballot box cannot deliver justice, some will look beyond the ballot box.

South Sudan has an even more immediate warning. The 2010 elections in the then semi-autonomous Southern Sudan were followed by armed rebellions associated with disputed electoral outcomes, including those of George Athor and David Yau Yau. We therefore do not need to import a foreign theory of electoral violence into South Sudan; we have experienced its symptoms before.

Today, the warning signs are considerably more dangerous. The UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan reported 407 ceasefire violations between August 2025 and January 2026 and warned in August 2026 that rushing towards elections without essential safeguards could deepen conflict and increase the risk of atrocity crimes. Its warning is not partisan propaganda. It is an institutional alarm bell.

The central question, therefore, is not whether South Sudanese deserve elections. Of course we do. The question is whether elections conducted under present conditions will produce legitimate political competition or simply convert existing armed and ethnic divisions into an electoral battlefield.

The SPLM-IG’s argument that elections will end rebellion reverses the natural order of political transition. Elections do not manufacture peace; peace manufactures peaceful elections. Elections are a mechanism for transferring or renewing political authority. They are not a substitute for security-sector reform, constitutional legitimacy, political inclusion, independent institutions, civic freedoms, accountability and an agreed political settlement.

South Sudan’s violence is not created by the absence of a ballot paper. It is rooted in a deeper political economy of power: exclusion, patronage, corruption, militarised politics, institutional weakness, impunity and competition over state resources. Putting ballot boxes into such an environment without first repairing the political house is like putting a new roof on a burning building.

I therefore find it deeply troubling when political calculations are presented as political wisdom. Those who benefit from the present distribution of power may see elections as an opportunity; ordinary South Sudanese may experience them as a trigger. The feasibility of an election cannot be measured by the government’s desire to hold it. It must be measured by the country’s capacity to survive it.

The African Union, IGAD, the United Nations Security Council and the Troika must understand this distinction. They should not wait for South Sudan to explode before declaring that the explosion was foreseeable. Prevention is better than cure. If the warning signs are already written on the electoral walls, international diplomacy must not become the ambulance waiting at the bottom of the cliff.

The R-ARCSS was not designed merely to carry South Sudan towards a date on the electoral calendar. It was designed to create the conditions in which political competition could become peaceful and legitimate. Security arrangements, constitutional reforms, institutional reforms, civic and political freedoms, electoral preparedness and inclusive political participation are therefore not bureaucratic obstacles to elections; they are the foundations of elections.

I reject the dangerous assumption that South Sudan must be used as a political laboratory to test whether elections can somehow end a war while the war is still being fought. The African Union and its partners did not support South Sudan’s independence so that its people could become experimental subjects in a theory of conflict resolution.

South Sudan is not the property of the SPLM-IG, nor of any other political organisation. No party possesses a divine entitlement to govern the country indefinitely, and no government can invoke state sovereignty as a licence to preserve conditions that threaten its own citizens, regional stability and international peace and security.

If elections are conducted before the necessary safeguards are established and violence follows, the question will not simply be who pulled the trigger? It will also be who saw the trigger being loaded and chose to proceed anyway? That is the question the African Union, the C5, IGAD, the United Nations Security Council and the Troika must answer before South Sudanese are asked to enter another political contest with weapons still within reach.

In summary, I want elections. I want democracy. I want the people of South Sudan to choose their government freely. But I want something more fundamental first: a country capable of surviving the choice.

The writer, Juol Nhomngek Daniel, is a South Sudanese constitutional lawyer, academic and political figure. He studied law at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda. He is an independent legal researcher and constitutional expert and serves as a lecturer and Deputy Dean of the College of Law at Starford International University in Juba. He is also a member of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-in-Opposition (SPLM-IO).

The views expressed in ‘opinion’ articles published by Radio Tamazuj are solely those of the writer. The veracity of any claims made is the responsibility of the author, not Radio Tamazuj.

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