Opinion| Beyond survival: Can South Sudan’s December 2026 elections build a politics of peace, service and accountability?
For a civil servant who has waited months for a salary, an election is not merely about candidates and party symbols. It is about whether the next government will restore the value of work. For a mother displaced by fighting in Jonglei, Upper Nile, or one of the Equatorias, democracy is not simply the opportunity to place a ballot in a box. It is the assurance that she can return home without fear. For young people facing unemployment, political exclusion, and an uncertain future, elections must offer more than another competition among familiar elites. They must create a path towards meaningful participation, jobs, and national belonging.
South Sudan’s general elections are scheduled for 22 December 2026, potentially becoming the country’s first national vote since independence in 2011. The significance of that moment cannot be overstated. After years of transitional arrangements, extensions, elite negotiations, and incomplete reforms, citizens may finally have an opportunity to determine who governs them.
But an election date alone does not create democracy.
The central question is therefore not simply whether South Sudan will hold elections. It is about whether the elections can move the country from a politics of survival to one of service, accountability, and peaceful competition.
That transformation is possible. But it is not guaranteed.
A ballot arrives while the nation is under strain.
The approaching elections come at a time when the ordinary South Sudanese household is confronting an extraordinary combination of economic, security, and humanitarian pressures.
The World Bank reports that civil servants had accumulated between eight and thirteen months of salary arrears by January 2026. It also reports exceptionally high food inflation, while depreciation of the South Sudanese pound, fiscal stress, and reduced aid have pushed more citizens into extreme poverty.
These are not merely economic statistics. They describe the daily experience of families reducing meals, withdrawing children from school, postponing medical treatment, and selling productive assets to survive.
At the same time, more than 7.8 million people were projected to experience crisis-level hunger or worse between April and July 2026. An election held in such an environment cannot ignore the relationship between economic desperation and political stability.
The security picture is equally troubling. A United Nations report issued in April 2026 described instability and violence across Greater Upper Nile, Greater Equatoria and Greater Bahr el-Ghazal, including armed clashes, intercommunal violence, cattle raids and significant civilian displacement. In July, the Reconstituted Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission also expressed concern about renewed fighting in Jonglei State and called for an immediate cessation of hostilities.
These realities expose the danger of treating elections as an isolated technical exercise. Ballot papers, registration centres and polling stations cannot by themselves overcome fear, hunger, mistrust and armed political competition.
The elections must therefore be approached as a comprehensive national peacebuilding process.
What does move beyond survival mean?
Since independence, much of South Sudanese politics has revolved around survival.
Political leaders have struggled to retain positions. Parties have struggled to preserve influence within transitional arrangements. Armed groups have struggled to maintain territory and bargaining power. Communities have organized for protection in the absence of trusted institutions. Citizens have struggled simply to obtain food, medicine, education, and personal security.
Survival politics rewards loyalty more than competence. It treats public institutions as instruments for distributing power rather than delivering services. It encourages political actors to view the success of others as a threat to their own existence.
Democratic politics should operate differently.
In a functioning electoral system, parties compete by presenting alternative programmes for improving people’s lives. Governments are judged according to roads constructed, schools functioning, hospitals supplied, salaries paid, communities protected, and public resources properly managed.
The opposition should not be treated as an enemy of the state. The government should not be treated as an authority that can only be removed through violence. Citizens should not have to belong to a particular ethnic group, military network, or political faction to enjoy their rights.
Moving beyond survival, therefore, means replacing the politics of fear with the politics of performance.
The December election can begin that journey – but only if five essential tests are met.
First test: Can the parties silence the guns?
No credible election can be organized while political competition is accompanied by military confrontation.
The 2018 Revitalized Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan established the permanent ceasefire, transitional security arrangements, and unification of forces as foundations for a peaceful transition. Yet RJMEC reported in May 2026 that no progress had been recorded on transitional security arrangements during the first quarter of the year and that ceasefire violations and serious monitoring constraints persisted.
This is perhaps the most serious threat to the elections.
Where political actors maintain separate armed loyalties, losing an election may be perceived not as a temporary political setback but as an existential danger. That perception increases the risk of intimidation before voting, violence during campaigning, and rejection of results afterwards.
The parties to the R-ARCSS should therefore recommit publicly and jointly to the permanent ceasefire. Security forces must remain politically neutral, protect all candidates and communities, and operate under a unified command structure.
Election security should not mean militarizing the electoral process. It should mean protecting citizens’ freedom to assemble, campaign, speak, and vote without intimidation.
A joint national election-security plan should identify potential flashpoints, regulate the deployment of armed forces, establish early-warning mechanisms and create rapid-response arrangements involving state authorities, traditional leaders, women, youth, civil society and peace monitors.
Attention must be given to cattle-raiding corridors, disputed grazing areas, and communities affected by cycles of revenge. These conflicts are often described as local or traditional, but during an election, they can easily become politicized.
Peace must begin in the counties, payams, cattle camps, and border communities – not only in Juba.
Second test: Will the elections include all political voices?
An election cannot unify the country when important political constituencies believe that the rules were designed without them.
RJMEC has warned that proposed changes to the peace agreement must not undermine its supremacy and integrity. It has also emphasized the need for inclusive dialogue among all signatory parties on matters relating to elections and the completion of the transition.
This disagreement must be addressed through dialogue, not unilateral decision-making.
South Sudan does not need complete agreement on every political issue before elections. Democracy itself exists because citizens and political parties disagree. However, there must be a minimum agreement on the rules of competition.
Before campaigning formally begins, the parties should negotiate a binding electoral code of conduct covering political freedoms, campaign access, hate speech, use of state resources, security-force neutrality, dispute resolution, and acceptance of lawful results.
The process should include the government, all signatories to the R-ARCSS, non-signatory political groups willing to pursue peaceful politics, civil society, faith-based institutions, women’s representatives, youth, traditional authorities, displaced people, and persons with disabilities.
Women and young people should not be invited merely to endorse decisions already made by senior politicians. They must participate in designing the electoral process, monitoring its implementation, and shaping party programmes.
Political inclusion is not a favour to the opposition. It is an investment in the legitimacy of the state.
Third test: Can institutions earn public confidence?
South Sudan’s National Elections Commission and related institutions carry an enormous responsibility. They must conduct voter registration, operationalize constituencies, educate citizens, recruit and train election officials, distribute materials, and announce results across a vast country with limited infrastructure and insecurity.
UNMISS has supported training intended to strengthen electoral readiness, but legal, technical, and financial preparation remains critical.
The electoral institutions must receive adequate and timely funding. However, funding alone will not guarantee credibility. Decisions should be transparent, publicly explained, and applied consistently.
Voter registration must be accessible to citizens in rural areas, pastoral communities, displacement sites, and neighbouring countries where possible under the law. Special arrangements will be needed for people who have lost identification documents or been displaced from their home constituencies.
Civic education should be conducted in national and local languages. Citizens need to understand what positions are being contested, how to register, how to vote, and how to report violations.
Domestic observers, journalists, and accredited international observers should have meaningful access to all stages of the process – not only on polling day.
Results must be published transparently, polling station by polling station, so that parties and citizens can independently verify the national totals.
Electoral disputes should be resolved by credible courts and legally constituted mechanisms. Judges handling disputes must be independent, protected, and provided with clear procedures and strict timelines.
A trusted dispute-resolution system can prevent political disagreement from returning to the battlefield.
Fourth test: Will political parties address the economic experiences of people?
Campaigns will lose public confidence if they focus only on personalities, liberation histories, and accusations against rivals while ignoring the cost of living.
The economic crisis should be at the centre of the electoral debate.
Parties should explain how they will pay salary arrears, stabilize the currency, control unbudgeted expenditure, improve oil-revenue transparency, and direct more resources towards health, education, water, roads, and agriculture.
South Sudan remains highly dependent on oil revenues and vulnerable to disruptions affecting export infrastructure through Sudan. The World Bank has called for stronger public financial management, economic diversification, and greater investment in infrastructure and human capital. The 2026 public finance review found that spending remained heavily concentrated in administration, security and the rule of law while health, education and social protection were severely underfunded.
The next government, regardless of which party leads it, should adopt a transparent national recovery programme based on several immediate commitments:
Public servants, teachers, health workers, and organized forces should be paid regularly through verified payroll systems.
Oil revenues and major public contracts should be published and subjected to independent audit.
Agriculture and livestock production should receive serious investment so that South Sudan becomes less dependent on imported food.
Roads, river transport, telecommunications, and electricity should be treated as economic foundations rather than political rewards.
Young people should have access to vocational training, enterprise financing, and labour-intensive public works.
States and counties should receive predictable transfers so that citizens experience government services outside the capital.
Elections should give South Sudanese citizens the power to compare these programmes and punish failure peacefully at the next ballot.
Fifth test: Can winners govern responsibly and losers remain secure?
The greatest democratic test may come after the results are announced.
South Sudanese political culture must reject the belief that winning an election gives one group ownership of the state. Victory should provide a temporary mandate to govern under the Constitution and the law – not permanent control over national resources and institutions.
Similarly, losing an election should not mean political elimination, physical insecurity, or exclusion from national life.
Parties should agree before polling that legitimate opposition will be protected. Parliament must be allowed to scrutinize government decisions. Civil society and the media must be free to investigate public affairs. Political leaders should be able to criticize the government without being treated as enemies.
The elected leadership should also provide a clear post-election roadmap for completing unfinished national tasks, including the permanent constitution, security-sector reform, transitional justice, reconciliation, and strengthening the judiciary.
RJMEC and the African Union have emphasized that the R-ARCSS remains the central framework for lasting peace. The election should therefore mark the democratic transformation of the peace agreement – not its abandonment.
A national compact before December
South Sudan does not have to choose between another indefinite transition and elections conducted at any cost.
A third path is available: maintain the commitment to elections while urgently constructing the minimum political, security, legal, and economic conditions necessary for credibility.
The Presidency and leaders of the R-ARCSS parties should convene a nationally witnessed compact with measurable commitments.
The compact should include an immediate cessation of hostilities; unrestricted humanitarian access; political and civic freedoms; adequate financing for electoral institutions; transparent voter registration; neutrality of organized forces; protection of candidates and journalists; a binding electoral code of conduct; credible dispute-resolution arrangements; and a joint commitment to accept verified results.
Implementation should be reviewed publicly every month. Citizens should know which commitments have been completed, which remain outstanding, and who is responsible for delays.
Regional and international partners – including IGAD, the African Union, the United Nations and guarantors of the peace agreement – should coordinate their support around these nationally agreed benchmarks. Their role should not be to select South Sudan’s leaders. It should be to help protect the right of South Sudanese citizens to select their own leaders peacefully.
The election must become a promise of a different country
December 2026 could become one of the most important moments in South Sudan’s history.
It could be remembered as the moment when political legitimacy began to flow from citizens rather than military strength, elite appointments, or transitional negotiations.
It could create a government with a direct public mandate and an opposition with a legitimate constitutional role.
It could encourage parties to compete over policies for agriculture, education, healthcare, infrastructure, security, and employment.
But the election could also deepen division if it is conducted amid violence, exclusion, institutional weakness, and economic desperation.
The responsibility therefore rests with every party to the R-ARCSS, every political organization, every security institution, and every national leader.
The government must create an environment in which it can be challenged peacefully. The opposition must offer credible programmes and renounce violence. Security forces must defend the Constitution rather than political interests. Communities must resist ethnic mobilization and hate speech. Citizens must demand policies rather than gifts and slogans. Regional and international partners must support national institutions without replacing South Sudanese ownership.
The real measure of success will not be the number of ballot boxes distributed or the size of campaign crowds.
Success will be measured by whether a woman can vote without fear, whether a defeated candidate can accept the result and campaign again, whether a teacher receives a salary, whether a pastoralist and farmer can resolve a dispute without violence, and whether a young South Sudanese can imagine a future built through education and work rather than political connections or armed mobilization.
South Sudan’s elections must not simply determine who survives politically.
They must determine whether the nation itself can finally move beyond survival – and begin building a politics of peace, dignity, service and shared prosperity.
Alexander Makuach Kuol is a South Sudanese humanitarian and development professional. He can be reached via alexxy11@yahoo.com.
The views expressed in ‘opinion’ articles published by Radio Tamazuj are solely those of the writer. The veracity of any claims made is the responsibility of the author, not Radio Tamazuj.