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May 29, 2008

Corruption stunts growth of new nation

by Leanne Larmondin
The Anglican Journal
Special to Presbyterian News Service

PACONG, Southern Sudan — The cover of the pamphlet makes you want to look away: a naked child — perhaps a teenager — holds a younger child whose skin is stretched taut over his bones. The smaller child is obviously starving, his eyes downcast. The tagline under the photo reads, “Corruption Cripples Development!”

It is an image that a Western aid agency would never consider using in its communications, but this is how the nascent Government of South Sudan (GOSS) is trying combat the rampant corruption in post-war south Sudan: by connecting corrupt practices directly with the suffering of Sudanese people.

The GOSS considers corruption one of the major obstacles to both peace and good government. Many people in south Sudan complain that the benefits of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, signed in 2005 by the Khartoum-based government in the north and the 10 states of south Sudan, have not trickled down to Sudanese at the grassroots level, due in part to corruption.

Citizens and members of the government of south Sudan believe the north is cheated them out of revenues for their natural resources, especially oil.

But the corruption is homegrown, too.

Stories abound of “phantom” civil servants who collect government salaries but do not work and teachers who are unpaid for months at a time.

One government ministry reportedly tried to solve the problem by locking the ministry office doors and paying only those staff who were present and accounted for on a particular day.

“It is not a good feeling for those who work in our schools,” says school administrator at Wulu, in the Lakes State of south Sudan. “The people in the counties say it is the state’s fault, the state says it is GOSS, GOSS blames Khartoum. I don’t know if these (teachers) will want to continue.”

In response to the problem of corruption — a problem not limited to countries in the Global South ­— the government created the Southern Sudan Anti-Corruption Commission.

The commission reminds southern Sudanese that corruption is their “common enemy” and is damaging to the growth of their nation.

Leanne Larmondin in editor of The Anglican Journal, the newspaper of the Anglican Church in Canada. With financial support from the Presbyterian News Service she recently accompanied a World Council of Churches delegation to visit religious leaders in Sudan.