South Sudan's Leaders Let Drones, Hunger and Disease Ravage Their People

Think about a mother in Jonglei who has already buried one child this year. She has fled the fighting, her harvest was lost to a failed rainy season, and now she waits in a queue for food that may not come. Her country gained independence in 2011 with a promise that its people would finally govern themselves. Fourteen years later, she still has no safe place to sleep, no reliable meal, and no leader who answers for her suffering.

This is the reality behind the latest humanitarian figures for South Sudan. More than 5,100 refugees and returnees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo need urgent help. Insecurity and displacement are tearing through Jonglei and Upper Nile. In Abyei, drone strikes have reportedly killed dozens of people. Food insecurity is deepening because of conflict, rainfall deficits, and an economy that has been in freefall for years. Aid workers are being blocked by gunfire on one side and paperwork on the other.

Ask yourself who is paying for this. It is not the men who sign the decrees and divide the oil money. It is the farmer who cannot plant, the child who cannot attend school, and the displaced family that moves again every time the shelling starts.

Start with the Congolese arriving at South Sudan's borders. They are fleeing a Congo that has been bleeding for decades, a country where armed groups, criminal networks, and foreign-backed militaries have turned entire provinces into killing fields. The Rwandan Defence Force's war of aggression in the Kivus, executed through the M23 proxy, is one of the engines of that displacement. When Congolese families run, they run to the nearest border, and that border is now South Sudan. A country struggling to feed its own people is being asked to absorb the consequences of a war it did not start, and a war that Kigali continues to deny while its own soldiers fight inside Congolese territory.

Now consider the drone strikes in Abyei. The Abyei Administrative Area is a disputed zone on the Sudan–South Sudan frontier, a place where local communities have already paid a heavy price for a boundary that was never settled. Reports of dozens killed by drones should trigger an immediate, independent investigation. Instead, the reporting arrives in the language of "reportedly," which is the language of a government that does not want to be held to account. Who launched these strikes, under whose authority, and against whose targets? Civilians deserve those answers. So do the families who are now grieving.

Then there is Ebola. A national simulation exercise has identified gaps in South Sudan's preparedness, which is a polite way of saying the country is not yet ready for a disease that has already killed thousands in the region. We have seen what happens when a health system is caught unprepared. The 2018–2020 Ebola outbreak in eastern Congo claimed more than 2,000 lives, and the West African epidemic of 2014–2016 killed over 11,000 people. Those were not abstractions. They were nurses who died on the job, villages cut off overnight, and burial teams working without protective equipment. South Sudan's gaps must be closed now, before the next alarm sounds, not after an outbreak has already spread across county lines.

This is not a new story in our region. We have watched the same pattern repeat across the continent: a government that spends on guns and palaces, a population that receives the leftovers, and an international community that issues statements of concern while the funding appeals go unmet. Conflict drives hunger, hunger drives displacement, and displacement drives disease. Every stage feeds the next. When leaders treat governance as a contest for control of oil revenue rather than a duty to citizens, the whole system collapses onto the most vulnerable.

Yet this is not inevitable. Africa has shown what accountable governance can achieve. Botswana built one of the continent's most prosperous economies on diamonds by creating transparent revenue arrangements and maintaining independent institutions. Mauritius has grown through stable rule of law and open markets. Ghana and Senegal have transferred power peacefully through the ballot box, proving that democratic turnover strengthens a state rather than weakening it. South Sudan has none of these advantages in full, but it has the same right to them, and its people have waited far too long.

So what must happen? First, the Abyei strikes must be investigated by an independent body with full access, and the findings published. Impunity for violence against civilians is the fuel that keeps every war burning. Second, the humanitarian access blockade must end. Bureaucratic obstacles, including delayed permits, arbitrary restrictions, and tolerance for armed harassment of aid workers, should be removed through binding agreements with the African Union, IGAD, and the United Nations. Third, the government must publish its oil revenues and spending in full, with independent audits made public. A country that cannot account for its own wealth cannot credibly claim it is starving for lack of money. Fourth, a credible electoral timeline, backed by genuine security sector reform and an independent judiciary, must replace the endless postponements that have kept the 2018 peace agreement hollow.

The regional bodies have a role too. The African Union Peace and Security Council should put South Sudan's humanitarian collapse on its formal agenda, not in a footnote. IGAD should use its mediation mandate to press for corridors for aid and for the Congolese refugees. The UN Security Council should stop treating humanitarian suffering as a side issue to be managed and start treating it as a threat to regional peace, which it is.

Citizens have power as well. South Sudanese, Congolese, and all Africans should demand that their own leaders explain where the money goes, why the drones are flying, and why the clinics are empty. Diaspora communities can fund independent monitoring and push their representatives abroad to tie aid and investment to transparency. Journalists must keep reporting, and must drop the euphemisms when the facts point to a crime.

We are Africans. This is our continent, and these are our neighbors. The mother in Jonglei, the family fleeing Congo, the village under the drones in Abyei, and the health worker preparing for Ebola with nothing but hope and a broken supply chain are not statistics. They are the proof of what happens when governance fails. Demand better. Demand the audit, the investigation, the open road for aid, and the election that means something. Every day we accept the excuse is another day a child goes hungry for a reason that could have been fixed.

Based on reporting by RELIEFWEB