Lobong uses a variety of strategies to maintain his rule. He has spread his political coalition across the putative divisions of South Sudan’s political parties, allowing him to maximize the positions he can control under the terms of the R-ARCSS (Craze and Markó, 2022). For instance, in Kapoeta South county, the commissioner, Paul Lokale, is a close associate of Lobong, despite being from the South Sudan Opposition Alliance (SSOA), putatively an opposition group. The previous commissioner, Angelo Lominate, also from the SSOA, was dismissed in March 2024, due to his disputes with Lobong over revenue collection in Kapoeta town. Rather than build itself up as an independent political movement, the SSOA functions as an arm of the SPLM.
Since 2018, Lobong has deepened his economic control of the state and isolated SPLM-IO politicians. The commissionership of Kapoeta East, Lobong’s home county, was given to the SPLM-IO, but commissioner Angelo Abdalla has remained relatively powerless, given Lobong’s dominance. Lobong has also appointed mayors and executive directors to undercut SPLM-IO appointments, effectively creating rival administrations across the state. The situation is most marked in Torit, where the SPLM-IO controls one half of the town and the mayor, Mustafa Albino, a Lobong loyalist, controls the other half. Elsewhere, Lobong’s loyalists have secured control of the border crossings at Nimule and Nadapal. Some fees paid at these border crossings—which, aside from oil, likely constitute the most lucrative source of revenue in South Sudan—go to the National Revenue Authority, but much of the income from these fees is paid to local and state officials, both formally and informally, and much does not enter the state’s official accounts, and instead goes directly into the pockets of the elite around Lobong.[1]
The formal process of county creation in Eastern Equatoria has allowed Lobong to fragment the opposition by intensifying ethnic divisions. Until the signing of the CPA, Eastern Equatoria comprised two districts: Torit and Kapoeta. The latter was then divided into two (Kapoeta and Budi), before Kapoeta became three separate counties.[2] At each stage of this process administrative boundaries were made a function of ethnic identity, with political positions and the location of county capitals seen as a question of ethnic ‘possession’. Lobong used this process to appoint loyalists and set his opponents against one another. As politics became ethnic, ethnicity itself became political (Craze, 2013).
In July 2023, Lobong created the Imehejek Administrative Area, in violation of the terms of the R-ARCSS. The area’s creation was designed to solve long-standing contentions between the Lopit and Pari over the name of Lafon/Lopa county, from which the administrative area was carved out. Underneath contentions over nomenclature lay political concerns: the name of the county was held to indicate the county headquarters, and thus the locus for money that should have come from state coffers. The name of Lafon/Lopa became a zero-sum competition: if the county had been called Lafon, then the administrative centre should have been in Lafon, dominated by the Pari, whereas if it had been called Lopa, it should have been in Imehejek, a Lopit area. With the creation of the administrative area, Lobong has carved out two mono-ethnic areas, each directly answerable to him. The creation of the administrative area has essentialized ethnic difference to the detriment of the Pari and Lopit peoples, who have many crosscutting ties, but to the benefit of Lobong, who can more easily control communities directly answerable to him for funds and positions.
Along with his exploitation of the formal architecture of the state, Lobong has enhanced his control of Eastern Equatoria by using kinship ties to build up strategic alliances. He has strengthened his relationship to Bor Dinka communities through his first wife, Semira Ayen Althaeb, while he has reinforced his links to the Lotuko elite through his marriage to Josephine Ifita, the chairperson of the State Revenue Authority. A third marriage, to Natalina Lucy, consolidated ties to the Madi, a group otherwise relatively hostile to the SPLM.
The support built from such strategic kinship ties is supplemented by payouts to customary authorities. For instance, the acquiescence of Didinga traditional authorities to Lobong’s reign is purchased with revenue from gold mining in Ngauro, which erodes the constituency of the SPLM-IO deputy governor, Mary Alphonse Lodira. Potential rivals are also appeased with positions. In March 2024, at Lobong’s behest, Kiir removed Sarafino Maira Jamus, the speaker of the state parliament, and replaced him with the popular politician Charles Odwar Okech, who had been rumoured to be mulling a run against Lobong in the now-delayed December 2024 elections. Those who cannot be bought are replaced. In March 2024, Kiir fired Emmanuel Lolimo, the Kapoeta North county commissioner, because he had drawn too close to one of Lobong’s principal Toposa political rivals—and sometimes ally—Josephine Napon, the national minister of environment and forestry.
Areas of the state that Lobong cannot control are deliberately marginalized or destabilized. Ikotos county was given an SPLM-IO commissioner, and since this decision, Lobong has undermined the opposition’s capacity to govern the mountainous county by starving it of funds. Lobong and Peter Lokeng Lotone, the state minister of local government and law enforcement, who is a Logir from Ikotos, have also stirred up intercommunal fighting between Lango clans in Ikotos. The Logir have recently carried out raids—including in September 2024—in both Ikotos and Budi counties, and have allegedly received state support to do so. These raids have created a zone of chaos and instability that is not the opposite of governance, but the very means by which the state has rendered such SPLM-IO areas ungovernable: creating disorder is the form governance takes.
Lobong’s rule is guaranteed by his support from the political elite in Juba. Such connections are finessed by shared interests in Eastern Equatoria’s goldmining sector. Kapoeta—which includes Lobong’s home village of Namurunyang—contains the largest gold deposits in South Sudan and employs between 10,000 and 60,000 people as artisanal miners. Gold buyers—often Somali, Kenyan, or Ugandan—report having to pay up to 50 per cent of their income to politicians in the Kapoeta area (Hunter and Opala, 2023) in return for protection in what is essentially an unregulated market. Many of the companies registered to mine gold are linked to Juba’s elite, including to the second vice-president, James Wani Igga, and members of Salva Kiir’s family (The Sentry, 2020). Those involved in reaping the benefits of the gold trade encompass Obuto Mamur Mete, the longserving Lotuko minister of national security. After Mamur visited Kapoeta at the end of 2023 with a heavily armed escort, however, the relationship between Mamur and Lobong reportedly became strained due to disagreements over payouts from the gold sector.[3]
Lobong maintains generally cordial relations with the SSPDF in the state, and with the National Security Service (NSS), which has been tasked with guarding key gold-mining sites. Some SSPDF commanders, including the 2nd Brigade commander, Kulang Tarif Chuol, are involved in teak logging, with the connivance of the governor; others are involved in gold mining.[4] Lobong supplemented these forces by recruiting 1,400 police officers, who graduated in June 2024. This force will be deployed to control crucial border areas, and is loyal to Lobong.[5] It has been formed in violation of the terms of the R-ARCSS, which commits the government to refrain from new recruitment. That the police service was chosen as a vehicle for this forced reflects a nation-wide trend for politicians to build up the police service as a counterweight to the NSS (Small Arms Survey, 2024, p. 7).
Lobong has thus created a durable form of rule predicated on creating an elite coalition via marriage ties, the politicization of ethnic differences, and the disbursement of gold revenues. This coalition is backed up by support from Juba. Such a predatory form of rule, however, has not won Lobong much support among the communities of Eastern Equatoria.
[1] Author telephone interviews with state political personnel, names withheld, August–September 2024. For details of gold smuggling across the border, see Enough Project (2020); Hunter et. al (2021); Hunter and Opala (2023); and The Sentry (2020).
[2] Budi is populated by two ethnic groups: the Buya and Didinga.
[3] Author telephone interviews with Eastern Equatorian informants, September 2024.
[4] Author telephone interviews with Eastern Equatorian informants, September 2024.
[5] Author telephone interviews with security service personnel, Juba and Torit, September 2024.
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