By Ajak Deng Chiengkou
29 Jan 2026
In 2026, South Sudan will reach a political moment that demands honesty rather than nostalgia. For the first time in modern history, a political movement founded by South Sudanese has existed continuously for forty-two years. The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, formed in 1983, spent twenty-one years as a liberation movement and a further twenty-one years associated with governance.
Longevity, however, is not an achievement. It is a responsibility.
President Salva Kiir Mayardit assumed leadership of the SPLM and the Government of Southern Sudan in August 2005, following the death of Dr John Garang de Mabior in late July of that year. Garang’s national leadership was brief, but his ideological vision shaped the movement’s moral foundation. Kiir’s leadership, by contrast, has spanned two decades of state power, independence, internal conflict, peace agreements, and political fragmentation.
If elections proceed in 2026, the SPLM will return to the people seeking a renewed mandate. Not as a liberation movement. Not as a historical symbol. But as a governing political family, asking for trust.
In this essay, the SPLM is not treated as a single party. It is treated as a political lineage. Today, the SPLM exists in multiple forms, in government, in opposition, among former detainees, and within other splinter formations. These factions are not outsiders. They are cadres shaped by the same liberation culture and still claiming the same political inheritance. Their fragmentation reflects a deeper crisis of direction.
The SPLM emerged in 1983 with a clear political claim. The Sudanese state ruled through coercion, decrees, militarisation, and exclusion. Southern citizens were denied equal citizenship, development, and dignity. The SPLM promised an alternative political order grounded in freedom, development, and the protection of indigenous societies. This promise became a moral contract with civilians who bore the cost of war.
Yet historical honesty requires acknowledging complexity. Before 1983, particularly during the Southern Sudan Autonomous Region after the 1972 Addis Ababa Agreement, the South experienced periods of institutional functionality. Under the High Executive Council, administrative systems operated with relative consistency. Judges, teachers, police officers, and civil servants were deployed across towns. Infrastructure such as the Juba Nile Bridge was built during this era.
This does not redeem the old Sudanese state. It establishes a benchmark. When the SPLM argued that the existing system was unacceptable and that it could deliver a better one, it accepted the burden of proof. That burden did not end with independence.
One of the SPLM’s deepest failures has been its inability to manage political disagreement without violence. Internal splits hardened into armed confrontations and later into communal fractures. These divisions normalised the idea that political competition could be settled through force rather than institutions. The social wounds remain visible today.
When the war ended in 2005, the SPLM inherited a historic opportunity. It possessed legitimacy, international goodwill, and resources. Citizens expected safety, services, justice, and dignity. They expected the movement that condemned authoritarianism to build accountable institutions.
Instead, many of the practices the SPLM once criticised reappeared in South Sudan. Power became personalised. Institutions weakened. Politics became securitised. Rivalry turned violent. Civilians were displaced not by Khartoum, but by South Sudanese factions still operating under the SPLM banner.
This is the central contradiction.
Today, insecurity persists. Access to functioning hospitals remains limited. Schools struggle to deliver quality education. Employment is often mediated through loyalty rather than merit. Borders remain porous and contested. These are not abstract policy failures. They are lived realities.
A critical democratic question, therefore, remains unanswered. If the Sudanese government could allow William Deng Nhial and SANU to contest politically in the 1960s, will opponents of the ruling SPLM be granted equal democratic space today? Will they receive equal airtime on SSBC and equal freedom on the campaign trail, without intimidation or restriction? If not, how does that align with the democratic principles the SPLM once demanded?
As South Sudan approaches 2026’s election, the argument for continued SPLM leadership cannot rest on history alone. It must be measured.
Are civilians safer today than they were at the beginning of the post-2005 period?
Is there a national health system that ordinary citizens can rely on?
Have schools been built, protected, staffed, and improved at scale?
Is public employment based on competence or factional allegiance?
Are borders demarcated, governed, and protected through law and institutions?
These are not hostile questions. They are governance questions.
An election year should prioritise dialogue and reconciliation. Yet rhetoric remains divisive and trust fragile. A movement that promised freedom cannot credibly govern through intimidation. A movement that promised unity cannot mobilise communities against one another. A movement that promised development cannot rely on liberation history alone.
The SPLM’s role in liberation will always be part of South Sudan’s national story. But liberation history is not a lifetime permit to rule. It is an obligation to deliver the state that was promised.
In 2026, the SPLM, in all its factions, must present a credible record, a coherent vision, and a believable case for trust. Without that, history will judge the movement not by how long it lasted, but by what it failed to become.
South Sudan will not be asking for perfection.
It will be asking for proof. And proof is the only argument that lasts.
