After serving for more than three years as the Acting Chairman of the Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission, now a reconstituted body, Augustino Njoroge reflects on unfinished tasks, regrets, and major accomplishments during his term of office.

From lack of political will in finalizing the peace process to complex factional disparities among parties to the Revitalized Transitional Government of National Unity, Mr. Njoroge tells City Review’s Sheila Ponnie how the peace process has been hindered from the initial phase and the role played by IGAD and the Reconstituted Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission (RJMEC) in steering the wheel of the peace process to the path of success.

Sheila Ponnie: It’s been 6 years that you have been at the helm of the RJMEC having succeeded Festus Mogae, the Former President of Botswana. What was it like being the Chairperson of the monitoring body?

Augustino Njoroge: I have been with JMEC and now RJMEC. It’s been both a challenge and also satisfying to support the peace process through the leadership of a commission like RJMEC whose mandate is to monitor how the agreement is going, evaluate it and provide oversights.

There have been two agreements, the first agreement was called Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan (ARCSS) and later changed to the Revitalized Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict the South Sudan (R-ARCSS). As a Deputy to Festus Mogae, I was able to assist him to monitor that particular agreement which was very difficult to implement because the Transitional Government of National Unity that was supposed to implement had reservations. 

In 2016 there was fighting in J1 with a lot of causalities that ended with one major partner, Dr. Riek [Machar] being forced out of the country.   Although Taban Deng Gai came in to replace him, the [SPLM]-IO party did not not recognize him as a replacement for Machar. So, we ended up with two factions, one faction for SPLM-IO Machar and SPLM-IO Taban.

It became difficult to implement the peace agreement.  Dr. Riek would ask what agreement are you trying to have implemented when am out of the country? It got to a stage where the agreement was said to be dead but Mogae said “no it is not dead but at least it was in the ICU (Internal Care Unit). Festus was able to convince IGAD Heads of State and Government that there was need to revitalize the agreement because the way it was, even the permanent ceasefire [agreement] was violated.

We had what we called the High Level Revitalization Forum (HLRF), which started well and in December 2017 we were able to come with an agreement for the cessation of hostilities and that set the stage to allow for this HLRF to take place and the parties that were fighting accepted to stop the fight.

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We were able to get the cessation of hostiles and I would say the reason for having the forum was first to stop the fighting, number two; to have inclusivity because it was found that there was no inclusivity in the earlier agreement of 2015 and number to be able to review the time line because the agreement of 2015 was running out of time. This was discussed at the forum and we started by mapping all the political parties that were interested and those who also had fighting groups, who they were and after that to be able to get them all together in Addis [Ababa] to be able to talk about the peace agreement and bringing peace in the Republic of South Sudan.

Looking back to the 2015 peace process, how instrumental was the role of the Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission?

This agreement had its own issues and the government, especially, had 14 reservations and there was no political will to implement the agreement. It got to a stage where it was no longer implementable because Dr. Riek and Kiir disagreed and fighting broke out. So, I would say RJMEC was instrumental in the revitalization of the now R-ARCSS 2018. It didn’t face any objection from the parties and we were happy that finally we had an agreement that was implementable and I still believe that this is an agreement that can be implementable.

However, as in most agreements, you must have political will for it to succeed because without that you would end up not implementing it as intended by those who wrote it.

I want to appreciate the work done by IGAD for starting the term, the task force that was able to sit down and revitalize the old agreement to make it implementable and I must say I was happy to see the signing of the revitalized agreement in 2018 after the near collapse of the first one because it meant a lot. I saw the return of hope for the people of South Sudan and the return of permanent cease fire that was going to hold and it is still holding up to now and that is very important, it means that people are not killing each other. The permanent cease fire is holding and the various political parties are not fighting.

What for you has been the most memorable moment as chairperson of R-JMEC?

The most memorable moment for me was that signing, the fact that the parties agreed to have an agreement and the hope that it brought to the people of South Sudan, the hope that it brought of having peace and security to me is very memorable because those hopes were getting lost even with the peace agreement of 2015.  People were losing hope. The signing of a new one brought hope. This is one of the times that I will always remember.

The peace process of South Sudan has been a long one, sometimes challenging, requiring compromises and striking balances. Can you share with the reader at least three key takeaway lessons?

Yes, I think the first one I would start with is governance; it looked like the political leaders were fighting for power and in every sense be it for parliamentary seats, power-sharing, what percentage what group will take. This started all the way from the HRF, during that forum you could see it and this is what informed what is in the agreement today.  It has not been easy and also the issue of the number of states still in power-sharing; how many states will a certain clan or tribe have. They were initially 10 states and there was a suggestion from [SPLM]-IO to have 21 states, the government came up with 32 states and brought issues of boundaries before we finally needed up with ten states.

The responsibility of sharing of these 10 states also almost brought to a hold the implementation of the peace process, but luckily this is being sorted out now and am informed, of course that the 10 states have been shared, we call it responsibility sharing but others tend to call it power sharing. Except for Upper Nile State, the other 9 have been concluded and the sharing of the deputy governors, the speakers the ministers is ongoing and I hear it will soon be resolved. This is one area that has caused the ups and downs in this agreement.

The second take away is security. From the very beginning, the issue of transitional security arrangement was of a concern as you know in the previous agreement where we ended up with two Commanders-in-Chief, we had President Slava Kiir as a Commander-in-Chief, Dr. Machar as a commander in chief and everyone said this was a mistake, it should not have happened.

So, when it came to crafting the revitalized agreement, there was caution not to end up with two commanders like 2015 and when it was agreed that we will have unification of various forces, all organized forces were to be unified the agreement provides that those troops after unification will all fall under one commander-in-Chief. What happened is that the unification has not been finalized and the troops that have not been unified are failing to submit again to their Commanders-in-Chief and this is what the agreement provides, and it is not good to still have, up to now, with so many months down the line, to have troops that are not answerable to one unitary Commander-in-Chief.

What this means is that the unification process should have been seen as a priority but it has suffered lack of political will again, it has not moved as was expected and the extension of the pre-transitional periods did not help although the unification was brought as a priority to the transitional period, I am afraid it hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves. Transitional security arrangement in this practical agreement is more important than most people have seen. If you do not resolve the transitional security arrangement, unify all the forces under one Commander-in-Chief and redeploy them under one Commander-in-Chief and you have other troops that are not under one command, you will continue to have a problem with the agreement. This is an area that is tricky that I have come to find and I say this is a security issue that they should look in to. But up to today we do not have any unified forces. There was an arrangement for having 8300 thousand necessary unified forces even before the Revitalized Transitional Government of National Unity. It was agreed that time was not enough and the SPLM-IO who were insisting in that number of 83000 necessary unified forces finally accepted to have the R-TGoNU formed and that this matter would be given a priority.

 Sorry to say there hasn’t been enough financing and political will to get this unification finalized and as I said, there hasn’t been any single army that has been unified.  It is an important issue that even as I live it will get their attention of being financed and that the first phase will be completed and soon we will have troops graduating and being redeployed.

Let’s talk about your tenure. You took over from Festus Mogae at a time when the region as a whole felt they were duty-bound to help South Sudan find lasting peace. Do you have any areas of regret or disappointment?

I have no regrets; my expectations were that by now the implementation would be far ahead.  Then the phase of the implementation is what I feel could have been faster. Why are we still where we are and not farther? This agreement has got an implementation matrix that this action will be done at this particular time and this particular person, and all these are already worked out by RJMEC. It has already been given to the RTGoNU, it is or it was expected that the RTGoNU. It was for R-TGoNU to take up that matrix and implement it and we would have been farther than where we are in the implementation of this agreement. There are very many things that are still outstanding and my call is that the RTGoNU should implement this, we still have the Transitional National Legislative Assemble not reconstituted, the parties have not forwarded their names to the National Constitution Amendment Committee.

What piece of advice do you leave for your predecessor?  

I have already told him because I already handed over to him. The big one is that he should not give up because what expectations he may have now even if they do not come out as he expected, he should not give up because the agreement is the only document that if followed, will get South Sudanese out of the conflict and be in peace.

Although the communal violence is not part of the peace agreement, it has become very serious and in my view the presidency should take this inter-communal fights seriously and have political dialogues within the communities for them to understand that it is not the fighting that will resolve their issues. 

Dialogue even from the villages is what is going to resolve and bring total peace because we are talking about peace according to the peace agreement but the communal fightings like what is happening in Jogolei, Wau, and Tonj fighting should not be occurring.  The leadership and especially the presidency should come up on how to get the population of South Sudan to think of dialogue to solve their issues and not to fight. Dialogue is what is going to bring peace to this country and this peace should not only be in Juba.

People are almost losing hope in the country. There should be dissemination of what this peace is all about so that it is owned by the citizens of this nation so that they can see the peace right in the village and it should be taken by the RTGoUN all the way to the village.  This is what I can say in brief and I have a lot of hope in the peace in this country.  I want to thank the people of South Sudan and I wish them God’s Mercy.

Interview recording and transcription by Sheila Ponnie for The City Review

Edited by Charles Lotara