South Sudan marks ten years of independence from Sudan this Friday with little fanfare, as the world’s newest country faces economic chaos and a hunger crisis, three years after the end of a devastating civil war.
There will be none of the joyous scenes in the streets of the capital, Juba, that accompanied the historic moment on 9 July 2011, when South Sudan formally declared its independence from Khartoum.
Government ministers at a cabinet meeting on Wednesday raised concerns about anniversary events being held in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Deputy Information Minister Baba Medan told reporters that president Salva Kiir “directs that the public, the citizens of South Sudan, celebrate in their own houses,”
Kiir is to address the public via a television and radio address.
From joy to chaos
South Sudan received billions of dollars in financial support when the population voted overwhelmingly in a 2011 referendum to secede from the north after a decades-long fight for statehood.
But two years later, tensions over control between President Salva Kiir and his deputy Riek Machar exploded, with their supporters opening fire on each other.
The civil war lasted five years, and was fought along ethnic lines. Nearly 400,000 people died, and another four million, a third of the entire population, were displaced.
The conflict ruined South Sudan’s emerging economy, and today basic services are in short supply, financed almost entirely by foreign aid.
Hunger
A currency crisis, and runaway inflation, has made day-to-day living difficult, and droughts, floods and locusts have destroyed harvest seasons.
South Sudan is experiencing its worst hunger crisis since independenceSome 60 percent of the population faces severe food shortages, and more than 100,000 people are close to famine, according to the the UN World Food Programme.
Kiir, who rules the country with Machar in a fragile unity government, blamed international sanctions for keeping South Sudan poor and depriving the state of revenue.
“This is why we are not celebrating the tenth anniversary the way the people would have wanted it to be,” he told Kenyan broadcaster Citizen TV on Wednesday.
The independence anniversary has been marked only a few times since independence, with the last formal celebrations in 2014.