This article examines urban land conflict in a fragile post-war context, drawing on fieldwork carried out in three informal settlements in Juba, the ‘new’ capital of South Sudan. After the signing of Sudan’s Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005, Juba experienced unprecedented population growth, accompanied by the expansion and proliferation of informal settlements in which land disputes were erupting, in some instances escalating to violence. Contributing to the recent literature on South Sudan that critiques the framing of land conflict in ethnic terms, this article shows that ethnic tensions were not the primary drivers of land conflicts in the informal settlements under study. Using a political economy framework, it adds a new dimension to understandings of land conflict in Juba by identifying the exploitative terms on which powerful figures such as informal settlement leaders, public officials, military actors and local chiefs intervened in informal land transactions at the expense of poorer informal settlement inhabitants. Land conflict was not merely an outcome of these interventions, but also created opportunities for a range of actors to exploit vulnerable inhabitants.

It is often assumed that violence diminishes after civil war, but in fact urban areas can turn into highly violent places with the end of open hostilities. The new forms of violence that can emerge are widespread but poorly understood and have been attributed to a range of factors including rapid urbanization, lack of economic development, continuing ethnic tensions and poverty. This paper examines urban violence in Juba, the "new" capital of Southern Sudan, through the lens of informal urban land access. The city experienced rapid population growth and an increase in land-associated violence after open hostilities with the north of Sudan ended in 2005. While the literature tends to emphasize the role of such actors as (ex-)combatants and unemployed and disenchanted urban youth in urban violence after war, the analysis presented here aims to demonstrate the complexity of the underlying causes of land violence and the opportunism of a range of civilian and military actors seeking to benefit from the fluid post-war context.KeywoRdS Africa / ethnic conflict / informal settlements / post-conflict / urban land / urban violence