Unless the ceasefire signed on 23 January holds and peace is restored in South Sudan, the whole region is set to experience rising political and economic uncertainty.
“The South Sudan crisis is not going to end tomorrow. It is quite a complex issue,” said Aidan Eyakuze, associate regional director of the Dar es Salaam office of the Society for International Development.
The chairman of the East African Business Council, Vimal Shah, agrees. “This sort of situation takes us back one or two years, or even three years.”
With hostilities intact and mutual suspicions running deep, chances are that it will take some time for the ceasefire to hold and mutual trust to be cultivated. This is especially true because the rebels’ demands have not been addressed and it may seem that the military pressure brought about by losing all major towns may have forced them to agree to the ceasefire.
Moreover, the rebels are a loose coalition and it is feared that some of the groups may opt to continue fighting. Following the ceasefire, in fact, the government has said rebel forces were still engaging its troops in some areas.
But this cannot be for long, Shah says. “War is not permanent. I don’t believe that in today’s world, war is sustainable for a long time,” he said. (see separate Q&A)
The losses suffered by East African-owned businesses operating in South Sudan are huge, many having been looted and the owners forced to flee.
Kaplich Barsito, spokesman for Kenya’s Ministry of East African Affairs, Commerce and Tourism, said that these losses cut across all sectors – retail, transporters, distributors and banks.
Despite this situation, a few businesses have struggled to remain open. KCB Bank released a statement in mid-January stating that most of its branches were offering services. Only three branches remained closed in Bor, Bentiu and Malakal, KCB Bank South Sudan Board chairlady Charity Muya-Ngaruiya said.
The war will have direct repercussions for East African people and economies as well. The whole region was caught flat-footed, and initial efforts by the international community were targeted at getting their own nationals out. Ugandan troops quickly moved in to secure the airport and other strategic areas, although later reports indicated that they had joined the fighting in support of President Salva Kiir.
The expected influx of refugees from the war will increase the strain on regional countries and especially border communities, which could also lead to local skirmishes and general insecurity. This is why regional governments may not be enthusiastic about receiving hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of refugees who would be created if the latest conflict in South Sudan is not contained expeditiously.
“Kenya already has a big problem with refugees from Somalia. That is why there is a programme of getting them to return home. Any additional refugees will be a big strain on resources, which is why the government and the region is investing heavily in finding a peaceful solution so as to prevent an influx,” said Barsito.
But Eyakuze says these countries should be preparing themselves to receive refugees. “We can’t protect ourselves. We have always been for our entire history receiving refugees and victims of violence. Instead of protecting ourselves, which is a parochial or even xenophobic reaction, we should be preparing ourselves to accommodate the refugees. This is a reality of the region in its entire independence history.”
Still, the priority remains seeking a peaceful settlement through direct talks. This has been the aim of the initiative by the regional Inter-Governmental Authority on Development, which has been hosting talks with both sides in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. The team of mediators is led by Kenya’s Gen (rtd) Lazarus Sumbeiywo and Ethiopia’s Seyoum Mesfin.
Beyond the immediate resolution of the conflict, however, lie long-term issues about the whole region’s stability. Shah, who is also the chairman of the Kenya Private Sector Alliance and chief executive officer of Bidco Oil Refineries, said that this will be better achieved with a larger regional entity. “Instead of one or two or four tribes, we will now be talking about countries.”
According to Eyakuze, inclusion into a larger bloc can actually help to stabilize a country and the region as a whole. “When a bloc of countries like the EAC wants to invite South Sudan, it actually makes sense. Burundi has been through a lot of struggle, and we know the history of Rwanda. They both joined the regional integration process in part to stabilize their countries and to give them some advantage by being part of a larger bloc. Whether that has been achieved or not is a question for another day.”
The crisis will also affect regional infrastructure projects that were planned with South Sudan in mind. “If Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya were planning to use South Sudanese oil or land as a reason for building joint infrastructure, I think they will have to put their plans on hold for a while until this conflict is resolved. The plans were made at a time of optimism and high expectations of stability of the country. That will take months if not years,” said Eyakuze.
The Director of Infrastructure at the EAC, Philip Wambugu, agrees with this view. “When the assessment for the project was done, South Sudan was peaceful. Because it is a very critical country for concluding agreements for construction, a lot of things will have to be held up. For example, right now you cannot invite investors for a conference touching on the pipeline without South Sudan. The raw material to be transported on the pipeline is oil, so without South Sudan some of these aspects of the project will have to stop.”
But not everyone shares the view that the projects should stop. “Whoever starts ruling, they will need the infrastructure, so that demand is always going to be there. So, we need to go on with it. We can’t stop those projects,” said Shah.
The conflict in South Sudan has also brought debate on issues of integration to the fore. The EAC has been championing faster integration, especially among the so-called coalition of the willing made up of Rwanda, Kenya and Uganda. South Sudan’s application for membership has been pending and was being viewed favourably, hence its involvement in joint infrastructure projects.
That application will now obviously have to wait. “The priority is to see peace and normalcy return to South Sudan,” said Barsito.
In the case of South Sudan, however, Eyakuze feels that the process of bringing it into the EAC was a bit hasty as the country “has many more issues to deal with.” These issues have to do with internal political arrangements and ethnic competition once the common enemy, Khartoum, had been defeated. The country went through decades of armed struggle between the south and the north before Kenya’s critical role in brokering the Comprehensive Peace Agreement that led to an independent state.
And many East Africans will perhaps see the turn of events in Juba as vindicating Tanzania’s position that the pace of integration among the five Partner States should not be hastened. This may sound a contradiction considering that the country is itself the result of integration between Zanzibar and Tanganyika, which came together shortly after independence to form one united republic.
Tanzania, which has had a relatively stable history of transfer of power, may be wary of being swallowed up with other nations that have not had that kind of history. This is underpinned by the fact that the whole constitutional dispensation of the region is in flux. “So, internally these countries are debating their own internal social contracts. Adding a debate of now a regional social contract is complicating matters both domestically and regionally,” said Eyakuze.
Moreover, some analysts feel that the issue about Tanzania dragging its feet is often the case of turning a molehill into a mountain. Intra-regional trade is on the increase. The movement in terms of connectivity, transport and financial transactions is also in the right direction, they say.
“I think some of the actions that Tanzania has taken to express its displeasure and to resist faster integration can be questioned, but I think the sentiments behind it are valid and worth deeper exploration,” said Eyakuze.
On the other hand, these are issues that are creating frustration among businesspeople in the region. Recently, for instance, Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda allowed the use of national identity cards for cross-border movement of citizens, to the exclusion of Tanzania and Burundi. Tanzania has been asking for more time to introduce national ID cards. “How many years have we been talking about this same subject? When were ID cards discussed? Many, many years ago. Until today, no progress has been made,” said Shah.
Regarding the single tourist visa, Tanzania has said it wants agreement on a revenue-sharing formula, saying it stands to lose visa fees from the hundreds of thousands of tourists who enter the country through Kenya. The coalition of the willing have already overcome this hurdle and agreed on a revenue-sharing formula.
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