South Sudan’s Polluted Oilfields: The Modern Laboratory of Induced Birth Defects and Premature Death Among Communities

South Sudan, a country with ever-bellicose leadership, is busily constituting committees to resettle the internally displaced population. This off-target idea comes amidst searing ethnic conflict within the Shilluk Kingdom in Upper Nile State. Humanitarian agencies have documented massive displacement, with over three thousand IDPs crossing to the East banks of the Nile River, a region already drawn in horrific oil pollution. Little does the world know about this appalling situation; of mothers giving birth to physically deformed children.

In 2011 the ruling SPLM enacted a dictatorial constitution that placed unchecked powers in the hand of President Salva Kiir to rule with a presidential decree. Presidential decree excludes many in the governance. Heads of oversight institutions are mere appointees of the president. Despite the horrific effects of pollution, These sickening happenings never troubled Juba. The Chinese National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) and Malaysian (Petronas), the primary benefactors monopolized the oil industry with shoddy technologies. The consortium gave little or zero attention to environmental safety and protection. These shoddy technologies deployed to extract crude oil have greatly exacerbated environmental pollution. Crude spills, and overheated pipes which always explode emit flumes of poisonous smoke, besides poor disposal of wastes, and direct exposure to toxic chemicals.

Populations living along oilfields are constantly affected by this unhealthy human-engineered catastrophe. The danger inflicted is different from what science may struggle to investigate. It only requires a political decision to remedy the impacts. Chinese oil companies have perfected bribery to evade accountability. The duty of care by using friendly technologies to protect the environment is relegated to the mercies of heaven. Communities that depend on stagnant water for consumption, unabatedly, grapple with preventable dangers. To these poor rural folks, independence means a switch of guards from Khartoum to Juba. This is a virtuous cycle. The same communities who once endured the hell of scorch earth policy under Islamic regimes have again found themselves in just another cycle of endless misfortunes. This time, the hazard of oil contamination. This human-induced disaster simply resulted in a rise in cases of stillbirths, deformed births, cancerous diseases besides other strange infections in both human and domestic animals. These unfortunate happenings turned the oilfields into a laboratory clone for modern birth defects.

Bungled Petroleum Law

In 2012, South Sudan enacted a Petroleum Act which preconditioned the establishment of a National Petroleum and Gas Commission, a body supposed to report to the President, the National Legislative Assembly, and the Council of States. The law urges partners to conduct businesses in a manner that ensures a high level of health and safety, maintained, and further developed in accordance with technological developments, best international practices, and applicable laws on health, safety, and labor. This law, with its toothless body, remains the beauty of paper. The Office of the President through national security calls the shot. As commonly known autocrats depend on trusted intelligence machinery for decision-making, a fact which normally frustrates accountability and transparency. The international best practice is basically a mere curtain dressing to hoodwink the population. The truth is the amount of money dashed out for bribery.  

The government of South Sudan feigns a lack of knowledge about this startling situation. In any case, officials are complacent. This tacit policy outlook only favours the Chinese oil companies; consequently, the Chinese are never ready to reevaluate the technologies assigned. Victims are not compensated. The principle of compensation is completely compromised because of the negative role government officials played in the process. The Chinese companies always emerged winners at the expense of poor locals. The role of the United Nations Environment agencies is muted. The government obstructs every effort to conduct investigations. With climate change, South Sudan’s huge unsalaried military forces depend on the forest for a living. The forest is being cut at a wider scale without plans for reafforestation.  

Recently, Malaysian Petronas, another important partner in the consortium pulled out of the South Sudan oil industry. The consortium never talked about cleaning up the polluted environment. Pollution has affected every aspect of the lives of the local people. The communities who depended on surface water, also have their arable rich black cotton soil compromised. The Dinka and Nuer people whose lands are polluted are both semi-nomadic herders and farmers. Their livestock has not been spared. The same deformed births noticed in human beings are equally seen in domestic livestock.  

The corrupt regime in Juba always descends heavily with brute force on voices that call for environmental auditing or any sort of accountability. Liberal voices have dwindled due to the heavy-handedness of the regime. The political landscape is draconian for the press. No local news agency can risk publishing anything about pollution. Local community activists who dared to challenge the regime were either brutally suppressed, forced to silence or bribed off. Few considered hard-headed ones have been forced into exile. The regime is protective to create a conducive environment for the oil companies to operate without hindrances from local people. The regime frustrates every little effort including the idea to compensate victims. Parents and guardians of victims are threatened to abandon cases. According to some witnesses, security operatives equate compensation of victims to acceptance of the existence of pollution. One victim who was taken overseas for medical examination had his parents threatened for revealing the medical findings.

South Sudan’s dubious oil policies

The dubious investment policies only favour the regime’s kleptocrats and its Chinese partners. Disappointingly, these policies mirror Beijing’s grand strategy of promoting an authoritarian single-party model of governance. South Sudan’s ruling SPLM has established close political links with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). As the famous Dinka proverb says, “Scratch my back and I will do yours”, Beijing, which is cultivating political influent on the continent of Africa, has found a willing friend in the SPLM, a party whose top leadership has been sanctioned by the West due to war crimes and crimes against humanity. These two willing parties struck a perfect marriage glued by a common ideology – autocracy and totalitarianism.

The most important takeaway is the rapid demise of a dream to realize democratic governance in a strategic country like South Sudan. After the former autonomous region seceded in 2011, the burden of being a bridge between the Middle East and Africa immediately fell on South Sudan. The Chinese are not only investing in the oil industry, but the fact that this politically strategic country continues to wallow in bad governance offers the Chinese a paradigm to experiment with its single-party governance system using its opaqued investment policies as a stepping-stone. The only thing the Chinese could offer in return is the guns the regime used to suppress dissenting voices.

By Atok Dan