Conclusion

While diplomatic attention focuses on the December election, in Northern Bahr el Ghazal, some think the party in charge of the state has already changed from the SPLM to the NCP. As one young Malual Dinka man interviewed for this Situation Update reflected, ‘I sometimes wonder why we fought for so long, only to be ruled by the very people we fought against’.^[1] In Northern Bahr el Ghazal, the NCP-backed leaders that ran the militias that displaced tens of thousands during the second Sudanese civil war have entrenched their control of the state, exploiting the precarity of the economy to conscript and exploit its labour force, while profiting from the devastation of the Sudanese civil war.

It is commonly said that Northern Bahr el Ghazal is a one-party state, dominated by the SPLM, without meaningful opposition candidates. The situation is graver than that: it is a no-party state. An elite, allied to Sudanese security elites to the north and Kiir’s regime to the south, switches its party colours at will, exploiting South Sudan’s formal political architecture, to maximize its control of lucrative border trade. This elite’s roots lie in the NCP, and current political winds will see it take up the red banner of the SPLM. December’s election is another opportunity for this elite to further consolidate power. Changing these dynamics would be a longterm process, and would involve empowering the young women and men of Northern Bahr el Ghazal, who desperately want a chance to determine their own future.

^[1] Telephone interview with a Malual Dinka informant, name withheld, January 2024.