Peace and discord in Sudan

A single mother of five who supports her family by breaking boulders into rocks with a metal spike stands in the baking sun and rattles off a familiar list of problems: a government that does nothing for the poor, harassment by security forces, ethnic discrimination.

Such complaints were common during the 21-year civil war that pitted Sudan’s Islamic regime in Khartoum against animist and Christian rebels in this long-neglected pocket of Africa, which still stands out for its scarcity of paved roads, electricity and clean water.

But Vicki Joseph, 35, isn’t denouncing exploitation by the regime up north. Her anger is aimed at fellow southerners.

Two years after winning autonomy for southern Sudan in a landmark peace deal, rebels who for decades fought against marginalization now are in government and face similar complaints from their own people about inaction, corruption, tribalism and police brutality.

Here in the southern capital, dual worlds are beginning to emerge. In one part of town, government ministers and wealthy business owners are renovating two-story houses once owned by Sudanese Arabs and their supporters. Agricultural fields and mud huts on the city’s edge are being cleared away for large new brick homes with tiled roofs.

Other government officials live in $200-a-night hotels and tented camps, with wireless Internet and air-conditioning. At the new Home and Away business center, the well-to-do sip glasses of merlot or eat $15 sandwiches of smoked ham and brie.

Meanwhile, conditions in some of Juba’s slums are worse than those in refugee camps in Darfur, with piles of trash and shabby mud huts with roofs of rusted metal scraps and rags. Although the government in the south has received nearly $3 billion in oil revenue over the last two years, public infrastructure is largely unchanged in Juba. Dirt roads turn into mud pools at the first rain. Schools lack walls and teachers recently went on strike over the lack of pay.

“Nothing has changed for me,” Joseph said, standing hunched over a laundry pail in one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods. Joseph, who makes a few dollars a day breaking the boulders, applied for a new government job as a messenger but was turned down, she said, because she’s from a minority tribe.

But when she looks around the city where she was born, Joseph can see dividends of the peace deal. Shiny white SUVs splatter mud as they speed by. Construction crews build hotels, supermarkets and restaurants Joseph can’t afford to go to. Down the road, government ministries are renovated with marble floors and cherry-stained wood paneling.

“Is that where all our money is going?” she said. “I thought we were supposed to be equal. I thought the government was going to end the suffering.”

Leaders of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, the former rebel army that now runs the regional government of southern Sudan, acknowledged the people’s frustration, but defended their record, noting that southern Sudan is one of Africa’s least-developed regions.

“There has been more development in the last two years than what had happened in the last 50 years,” said Pagan Amum, the group’s secretary-general.

The local economy is booming, he said, fueled largely by private investment and humanitarian assistance. The number of hotel rooms in Juba has risen to 5,000, and the number of cars and trucks has increased from 14 to more than 30,000. Cellphone service is rolling out and three cities offer limited electricity.

The government’s biggest contribution to the economy has been jobs, with nearly 300,000 employees. Since southerners took charge, average monthly salaries rose from $50 to about $500.

“I can always tell when the government paychecks come out because my sales soar,” said cellphone vendor Adam Zakariya.

But the prosperity isn’t trickling down to everyone, critics say. So far the primary beneficiaries are foreign investors, rich entrepreneurs and government officials. The best jobs are snapped up by members of the biggest tribes and returnees who had fled to the West.

Lillias Yabu’s family never had the chance to escape. Instead, they struggled in a small city near the border with Uganda. Her mother cooked for rebel soldiers; her father helped smuggle arms. The family lost three young men in battle.

“During the war, we were all united to fight the Arabs,” said Yabu, 33, a mother of six. “But as soon as the peace was signed, people started dividing. Now the ruling clans get all the jobs. We get nothing.”

Government leaders say feelings of disenfranchisement are an unfortunate and unavoidable part of the south’s transformation into a democratic, market-based economy. It will take time, they say, for southerners to adjust to the new environment.

“Before, we were all in the same boat,” said Riek Machar, vice president of southern Sudan. “South Sudan has never had haves and have-nots.”

Manuel Ware, 27, an unemployed accountant, embodies the hopelessness many here express. “What’s the point,” he said with a shrug recently, sitting in the early afternoon as his friends slowly got drunk.

His initial excitement about the new government faded after he was turned down five times for a variety of jobs. He blamed tribalism, saying government jobs were going chiefly to those from the Dinka and Nuer tribes, or those associated with the ministries’ top officials.

“They just look at my name and that’s the end of it,” he said.

With 150 tribes, ethnic tensions are nothing new in the south. But tribal clashes over the last year have been the deadliest in decades, experts say. Most are triggered by competition for land and cattle, but there’s a growing resentment over how the south’s newfound power and wealth are being divvied up.

“Dinkas feel as if they are higher than everybody else,” said Lino Luo, 43, a local chief.

Rebecca Garang, the widow of SPLM founder John Garang, said the frustration was rooted in economic disparities.

“It’s poverty, not tribalism,” Garang said. But she acknowledged that the southern government got off to a rocky start and is still recovering from the death of her husband, a charismatic leader who died in a helicopter crash weeks after the peace deal’s implementation.

“We started on the wrong foot,” she said. “We put people in the wrong place.”

Corruption has become a major problem. Three government committees and a British auditor are investigating allegations. The finance minister and several aides recently were fired amid a contracts scandal in which services allegedly were never delivered and the government might have paid twice the market price for a fleet of new cars.

The government payroll is also bloated with thousands of “ghost” employees and children of government workers, officials said.

SPLM Chairman Salva Kiir, president of the south and first vice president in the national government, has begun speaking out against tribalism and reshuffling ministers.

Rebecca Garang lost her ministry in the shuffle. She now serves as a presidential advisor for gender and human rights.

She said the government’s next big challenge was to reform the security forces. About 40% of the south’s $1.4-billion annual budget goes to the former rebel militia to turn it into a modern army. But some soldiers are having trouble making the transition to peacetime.

Garang’s office has received numerous complaints about drunken, disorderly soldiers attacking and robbing citizens they were assigned to protect. The land commission is investigating hundreds of disputes involving soldiers or SPLM commanders accused of seizing property. And this month, Dinka soldiers killed three police officers while trying to free a friend who was being held on suspicion of murder.

Rape, in particular, is a growing problem, Garang said.

She and other officials are seeking help from international experts to train former rebels about human rights and rule of law. They also want troops to undergo psychological counseling, saying many are coping with the trauma of the two-decade civil war and abuse they suffered at the hands of northern troops.

“People who were oppressed are now exercising power for the first time,” said the SPLM’s Amum. “They still have a wartime mentality. And people have a tendency to internalize the practices of their oppressors.

“We must work on this. But it’s a problem of transition, not of policy.”

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edmund.sanders@latimes.com