South Sudan reported 27 people were killed in battles between cattle herders and insurrectionist militia fighters on Thursday, just one day before the scheduled arrival of Pope Francis during his tour of Africa.
South Sudanese officials said fighters from a rebel militia, most likely the National Salvation Front (NAS), attacked a herding community in the Central Equatoria province, killing six people. The herding community also blamed the NAS.
The herders retaliated later on Thursday, killing 21 civilians, including five children and a pregnant woman.
“The attack was a sheer revenge attack after an unknown armed group launched an assault on the camps in a hit-and-run mission. Among those gunned down are 21 farmers and 6 herdsmen while two youths escaped with injuries,” Kajo-Keji County Commissioner Phanuel Dumo told Africa’s Daily Monitor on Friday.
The NAS denied involvement in the initial attack on the cattle herders. The Daily Monitor quoted local officials who thought the assault might have been perpetrated by farmers feuding with the herders over land, and while farmers interviewed by the Daily Monitor admitted they were angry with the herders and gave them a February 1 deadline to clear off the land, the farmers insisted they did not kill the six herders on Thursday morning.
South Sudanese officials denounced the much less ambiguously guilty herders for their retaliatory attack and agreed that the herdsmen were trespassing on land belonging to farming communities.
“I condemn the barbaric and systematic killing of innocent civilians and I send my deepest condolences and sympathies to the grieved families, the people of Kajo-keji and central equatorial state at large,” said Central Equatoria Governor Emmanuel Adil Anthony.
“I reiterate the government resolution to implement the presidential orders of unconditional return of the problematic armed cattle herders to their areas of origin. This will bring peace in our communities if implemented,” Anthony said.
Archbishop Justin Welby of Canterbury, who is traveling with Pope Francis, denounced the violence and appealed to all of South Sudan’s warring factions to “come together for a just peace.”
Pope Francis has been planning to visit majority-Catholic South Sudan for years but was delayed by instability on the ground, problems with his knee, and the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic. He finally arrived on Friday from the previous stop on his “Pilgrimage of Peace,” the Democratic Republic of Congo, where he was enthusiastically received.
“No more destruction. It is time to build,” Francis said upon arriving in the South Sudanese capital of Juba.
“History itself will remember you if you work for the benefit of this people that you have been called to serve. Future generations will either venerate your names or cancel their memory, based on what you now do,” he said.
Francis acknowledged one of the worst problems facing South Sudan is corruption, which he described as “the inequitable distribution of funds, secret schemes to get rich, patronage deals, lack of transparency.”
The pope actually apologized for his “blunt and direct” remarks and corruption, which he delivered while sitting next to South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir.
Kiir, 71, is the only president to date of South Sudan, which broke away from majority-Muslim Sudan in 2011. During his first meeting with Francis at the Vatican in 2019, the pope took the extraordinary step of kneeling and kissing Kiir’s feet, along with those of his political and tribal rival Riek Machar, and betting them to make peace.
The embassies of the U.K., Norway, and the United States warned on Thursday that widespread violence could break out across South Sudan during the papal visit, possibly escalating into outright civil war.
“We note with grave concern indications of preparation for renewed fighting in Upper Nile State. South Sudanese transitional leaders and political actors in Juba have a responsibility to act to prevent this and to find peaceful and sustainable solutions,” said U.S. Ambassador to South Sudan Michael Adler.