Land, political subjectivity and conflict in post-CPA Southern Sudan

Abstract

While South Sudan's independence formally marks the beginning of a new era, the recent relapse into violence raises important questions about the continuous impact of the post-colonial trajectories through which the country has become defined. This article discusses such impact by asking about the kind of political subjectivity which has emerged in post-Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) South Sudan, by exploring the tri-partite relationship between political subjectivity, government and land. Through a reconstruction of major reform processes in local and land governance, the article demonstrates that questions of political subjectivity and land remained closely interlinked in post-CPA South Sudan. Moreover, they have also proven particularly relevant the country's post-war development agenda, as well as for the continued conflicts which characterize South Sudan's first years of independence. The article explores how communal land tenure limited the state's and private actors' access to land, as well as the government's authority over economic development. Changes in land practice since the CPA however have shaped a political subject, which could be shepherded towards socio-economic transformation through a distinctly post-colonial apparatus of governance. Moreover, the specific post-colonial traits of subjectivity also provided resources on which resistance to the state could be mobilized, and this affected the dynamics of conflict in post-CPA South Sudan.