Land conflict and informal settlements in Juba, South Sudan

Abstract

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.

Urban land conflict in the Global South: Towards an analytical framework

“…However, in practice informality is more widespread and complex: governments and political actors often use it as a means of exerting power and extracting rents, riding roughshod over residents' rights to land in the name of progress or modernity, or to reinforce patron-client relationships that are instrumental in maintaining political power and legitimacy (for example in India, see Roy, 2009;Shatkin and Vidyarthi, 2014). Similar complex relationships between actors at different levels and the instrumental use of informality in the exercise of power are revealed by McMichael's analysis of Juba and Rigon's of a settlement in Nairobi in this issue (McMichael, 2016;Rigon, 2016).…”

Rule of whose law? The geography of authority in Juba, South Sudan

“…The expropriation, demarcation and allocation of land around Juba for profit and power by political and military elites has been rightly criticised – not least by Juba's residents – as a process of greed and exploitation (McMichael 2014: 339). McMichael (2016: 2721) emphasises 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 … Creat[ing] opportunities for a range of actors to exploit vulnerable inhabitants.…”

“…This study builds on recent work on land rights, legal pluralism and public authority (Meagher et al 2014; Schomerus & De Vries 2014; Pendle 2015; Hoffmann et al 2016; Lund 2016; Schouten 2016; Justin & De Vries 2017; Tapscott 2017; Twijnstra & Titeca 2016). It looks at how Juba is regulated and managed by bodies and individuals who have been established, and rooted themselves, as arbitrators and administrators in the city; and whose careers, investments and connections span state and local government, military and security positions, and private entrepreneurship (drawing on Badiey 2013, 2014; McMichael 2014, 2016). It takes up where studies of pluralism and hybridity have reached in dissolving boundaries between civil and military, state and non-state, and customary and statutory laws and rule of law (following Jackson 2017: 256, 264).…”

First there were 10: the case for and against South Sudan's new states using discourse analysis and argumentation theory

“…Already constituting a ‘social capital’ (Deng 2010) and ‘powerful bond and a prime marker of identity’ (Frahm 2015: 253), ethnic ties are further politicised and mobilised (Roessler 2016), particularly in such times in South Sudan, for the benefit of political elites. Though as McMichael (2016) argues, not every land conflict in the South Sudanese context originates in ethnic differences, the compounding of the social links ethnic identities nurture, coupled with the political mobilisation and involvement of those identities, may explain this divide.…”