Is Adut Salva Kiir a proverbial wolf in a sheep's clothing?

President Salva (left) and Adut Salva Kiir (Right)

When Adut Salva Kiir was appointed President Kiir's special envoy for special programs in August of 2025, many of us received her appointment with high hope. We overlooked the nepotistic element. We had good reason. She promised to be different. What stood out for me was her promise to South Sudanese Gen Zs and all the voiceless South Sudanese.

 At the time Kenyan Gen Zs were protesting the high cost of living in Kenya.  She duly told South Sudanese young people that they had the right to express their grievances without fear of reprisal. That was the first time a high-ranking official had said something like that. Protests are taboo in South Sudan. For the powers that be, protests reek of revolution. 

But Adut appeared different, almost presidential. She pledged with that beguiling soft-spoken voice that she is

"representing those who served our nation. I'm representing the vulnerable. I'm representing those that have unspoken voices. I'm representing our fathers, their struggle. I'm representing a nation that had high hopes. And I don't take it lightly." 

How could one not like that?

There was good reason to hope that Adut would be strategically and politically different. She had lived in Australia, a relatively freer society, a society in which institutionalism and the rule of law are very accented. She appeared to know the value of reasonable disagreements and the logic of political and civil space. She even said she would have "an open-door policy. You can come to my office and I will listen." 

There is more. 

And more importantly, she said she was "open to criticism as well. I may not like it all, but I will take it in." 

It seemed like the dawn of a new day. But we were too optimistic.

Private reports and social media engagements by people very close to the first family and J1 informants are painting a different picture. Adut was only wearing a mask of amiability, of magnanimity. 

As things stand now, Adut, it seems, is no longer interested in service provision and national development. She wants to be Adut the wielder of unbridled power, an unaccountable power. 

She has been, apparently, sucked into power politics. She is no longer someone who is interested in changing South Sudan for better. She is interested in power as South Sudan's heiress apparent. 

Mabior Riiny Lual, a former MP in the South Sudan's transitional legislative assembly as an opposition figure, wrote on his Facebook account on May 25 that Adut was about to have herself decreed into office as Vice President for economic cluster and the first deputy chairperson of SPLM, the ruling party in South Sudan. 

This means she would replace Dr. James Wani Igga. Vice President Wani is now the first deputy chairperson of SPLM and the Vice President in charge of economic cluster.

This means the SPLM and the presidency would be led by father and daughter. But there seems to be an obstacle to her ascendancy. 

In my recent conversation with Mabior on KuirthiyTV, Mabior also mentioned that Adut is the one who does not want the former Vice President, Dr. Benjamin Bol Mel, to be released from detention. According to Mabior, Adut threatened to commit suicide if Dr. Bol Mel is released.

In South Sudan the problem is the system, not capacity or the character of the people.

Photo: ICRC Audio Visual Archives

The youth in South Sudan have no people-centered mentorship. As things stand now, they have been introduced to development-retarding systems of self-enrichment. The system is tribalist, militarist, elitist, and neo-patrimonial.  

This is paucity of leadership. In The Trouble With Nigeria, Chinua Achebe noted aptly that:

 "The trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership. There is nothing basically wrong with the Nigerian character. There is nothing wrong with the Nigerian land or climate or water or air or anything else. The Nigerian problem is the unwillingness or inability ofits leaders to rise to the responsibility, to the challenge of personal example which are the hallmarks of true leadership." 

What Achebe said of Nigeria is also true of South Sudan today. But South Sudan has excellent leaders, or potentially excellent leaders.

 The main challenge is that these leaders are not given the chance to show what they can do. Some have been fenced off completely from government positions. Others have been decreed into offices and then removed without enough time to operationalize their institutional agenda. 

The problem in South Sudan, therefore, is the system.

As I have stressed, and I have discussed this extensively with guests on KuirthiyTV, the problem in South Sudan is not lack of capacity, necessarily. The problem is lack of an institutional set-up that can make South Sudanese with skills show what they can provide in the context of state-building.  Lack of capacity is a short-term problem. 

A state that is serious about development and provision of services to the its people can make use of human capital within and outside the country. Provisionally, the government can hire experts from foreign countries to help with capacity building until the local work force is able to take over successfully and efficiently.

So capacity isn't the main problem. The paucity of leadership is the main problem. 

Those in charge of decision-making in the country see those with skills as threats. Governance and leadership has  become about what the elite can get not how the country and her people can benefit. 

This attitude has made vital institutions that make the country functional in the interest of the people virtually useless in South Sudan. The media is basically toothless. The parliament is either the president's rubber stamp, or it utterly ineffectual. The security sector has become a military wing of the ruling party, SPLM. It's political. And in some cases, it becomes tribalized. 

Such a system feeds avariciously on neo-patrimonialism and elitist reciprocity. Outside this system, no one matters. You either support this system or you look away from their entrenched siphoning of resources. 

It is therefore unnecessary for decision-makers to employ people with effective skills and a good moral compass; those who cannot give in to graft and corruption to advance their political and economic future.

Good leaders are disruptive to graft systems and neo-patrimonialism. What President Kiir  rationalizes as a search for the right person to fix the failure of the economy in South Sudan is rather a rejection of potential system disruptors. 

The problem in South Sudan is not only self-inflicted; it continues to be exacerbated by the very leaders who created it. 

What is tragic is that those who created this crisis do not suffer the consequences of their decisions, or indecisions. There is therefore no incentives for them to fix the economy, security and ethnic relations for South Sudan to prosper. 

The youth and the younger generation are therefore being introduced to a culture that will make changing the trajectory of development nearly impossible. 

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Kuir ë Garang (PhD) is the editor of The Philosophical Refugee.