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