Land conflict and informal settlements in Juba,South Sudan

Introduction

This article aims to describe and explain conflicts over land in informal settlements in Juba in South Sudan. The increasing level of conflict regarding who had rights to settle in and around the city after the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2005, which ended Sudan’s 22-year second civil war (1983–2005), has been noted by a number of scholars and analysts (Badiey, 2013, 2014; Deng, 2010; Leonardi, 2011). After 2005, unprecedented demand for land was generated by hundreds of thousands of returning refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs), creating huge challenges in a city devastated by civil war. At the same time, as international investors and a large humanitarian aid population flocked to Juba, the economic value of the limited number of formally available plots skyrocketed and poor governance hindered the formation of the institutions necessary to effectively manage the development of urban land. Consequently, the majority of Juba’s new inhabitants, unable to access land legally, settled in the city’s burgeoning informal settlements. In these areas, land disputes frequently erupted, in some instances escalating to violence (Badiey, 2014; McMichael, 2014).

In much of South Sudan, conflicts associated with land are ascribed to ethnicity, in that they are simplistically represented in the news media, by the international aid industry and by political leaders as occurring between groups originating from different areas (see Badiey, 2014; Leonardi, 2011). This was evident in Juba, where struggles for control over the development of land between authorities – the Government of Southern Sudan (GoSS),^1,2 the Central Equatoria State (CES) local government authorities ³ and the traditional authorities of the Bari people on whose ancestral lands Juba is situated – were often ascribed to tensions between two categories of people, ‘Dinka’ and ‘Equatorians’. In this discourse the CES authorities were often presented as representing the interests of ‘Equatorians’, the peoples from the far south of the region in which Juba is situated, of which the Bari people are one. In contrast, the GoSS, which was ruled by the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), was presented as representing the interests of the Dinka, the largest ethnic grouping in South Sudan of people originating from areas further north. Badiey (2013) suggests that, while the GoSS apparently sought to promote an inclusive South Sudanese capital, the increasing number of non-Equatorians in Juba after the CPA undermined the status of Equatorian political elites, who publicly presented themselves as protectors of Bari land rights. The struggles between authorities that emerged undermined the planned development of Juba after the signing of the CPA.

Ethnicity is generally understood as the identification of an individual with a group recognised for having a common language and set of cultural beliefs. In the context of South Sudan, a number of authors have queried popular, simplified ‘ethnic’ categorisations of people. Johnson (2006) attributes these categorisations to British policies implemented during Anglo-Egyptian Condominium rule (1898–1956), which reified differences between ethnic groups and which saw terms such as ‘Dinka’ and ‘Equatorian’ emerge in both the administrative and the anthropological spheres. As a result, the Dinka, for example, are still often presented in the literature and policy documents as a single ethnic group. Johnson argues that they should instead be referred to as the Dinka people, comprised of many socially and distinct ‘tribes’ or ethnic communities. Similarly, Leonardi (2011: 220) laments the fact that tensions in CES are often presented as inevitable conflict between Dinka and Equatorians, noting that the category of ‘Equatorian’ encompasses a number of ethnicities, languages and livelihoods in what was the Province of Equatoria, now divided into the three states of Central, Western and Eastern Equatoria.

Recourse to simplistic notions of ethnicity in the governance of, and contestation over, land in South Sudan after the CPA can be linked to the legal and policy emphasis placed by the GoSS on customary rights to rural land. New legislation – including the Southern Sudan Land Act (2009) and the Local Government Act (2009) – focus on the recognition of community rights to rural land, along with decentralisation of the government apparatus through ten new states created out of South Sudan’s three former provinces. These laws reflect the SPLM’s mantra of ‘The land belongs to the community’, although they are in fact vague on what communal land is and how it is to be administered. Even in Juba and other urban areas, where land within the administrative boundaries is publicly owned, and where property rights are allocated to individuals or legal entities through the issue of leases, conflicts regarding who had the right to settle were often framed by long-term inhabitants identifying as Equatorian and Bari in terms of broader Equatorian, or narrower Bari, community land rights (Badiey, 2014).

In cities in Africa, informal settlements – areas characterised by some combination of insecure tenure, lack of durable housing, insufficient living area and lack of access to adequate water and sanitation facilities – are often associated with land conflict. Their growing prevalence is linked to contemporary processes of rapid urbanisation where individuals, communities, government authorities and commercial or other interests compete for an insufficient amount of legally available and affordable land. Estimates suggest that after the CPA Juba was one of the fastest-growing cities in Africa, with its population trebling to 750,000 in five years (Martin and Mosel, 2011). As a result, between 2005 and 2009 Juba’s built-up area expanded by more than four times to 52 km², largely through the proliferation of informal settlements on land outside its administrative boundaries. There was also a sharp rise in the cost of buying and renting formally demarcated urban plots. As Badiey (2014) notes, the unplanned growth called into question the capacity and authority of the GoSS to not only manage the capital city, but also govern South Sudan.

However, although the proliferation of informal settlements is often regarded as an outcome of state incapacity, other recent literature sees informality as instrumental to exploitation (Fox, 2014; Kreibich, 2012; Roy, 2005, 2009). Using evidence from an empirical study that sought to understand how ordinary people (that is the low-income urban majority) access land in Juba, this article suggests that examining land conflict in informal settlements from a political economy perspective provides useful insights for understanding urban land conflict. It contributes to the recent literature which argues that South Sudan’s, and Juba’s, land problems are not primarily ethnic in nature (Badiey, 2013, 2014; Johnson, 2006; Leonardi, 2011, 2013). The article suggests that, while ethnic identity plays an important role in the ability of people to find land in informal settlements in Juba, it was not in fact a primary driver of land conflict. Rather, categories such as ‘Equatorian’, ‘Bari’ and ‘Dinka’ were reified and used to further the interests of certain powerful actors, such as settlement leaders, public officials working in both the GoSS and the CES local government, military actors in the SPLA, and Bari chiefs, as they intervened in informal land transactions and formal demarcation processes. In practice, agreements between powerful actors sometimes cut across categories such as ‘Equatorian’ and ‘Dinka’. Ultimately, what underpinned land conflict in the settlements under study was the fact that both newcomers and poorer long-term inhabitants were increasingly disadvantaged in the competition for secure access to urban land, regardless of their ethnicity, or whether they were categorised by other locals as ‘Dinka’ or ‘Equatorian’.

Land conflict and the instrumental nature of informal land access

Land conflict can be understood as competitive struggles between individuals, communities, state authorities and commercial or other interests for access to or control over the benefits that can be obtained from a specific area of land. For informal settlement inhabitants, the fundamental benefits obtained from land relate to basic human needs such as providing a site for shelter, as well as important socio-cultural benefits such as access to community.

A general political economy framework suggests that the development of informal settlements reflects the relations between those at the bottom of the socioeconomic hierarchy and the rest of urban society. The formation of informal settlements and policies towards them create opportunities for individuals to exercise power and for capital accumulation (Zhang, 2011). For example, regularisation of informal settlements can be used by urban authorities to capture the exchange value of urban space at the expense of its use value, with little concern for the needs of low-income groups (Harvey, 2007). Some scholars suggest that the existence of informal settlements should not be regarded simply as an outcome of state incapacity, but as integral to the state’s urban management approach. Roy, for example, suggests that informality should be regarded as a mode of governance, rather than a sector falling outside the purview of the state. The state, she asserts, may use informality as an instrument of accumulation and authority, enabling it to arbitrarily allocate land for elite forms of urban development, in the process placing itself outside the law (Roy, 2009: 81).

Building on this, Kreibich (2012) suggests that in urban areas lacking effective local government institutions, the social, non-statutory institutions that control property rights and land use come under mounting pressure from increasing housing density and land values. As a result, these non-statutory institutions may eventually be overruled by powerful individuals and groups, through their appropriation or the instigation of protection rackets. Research into ‘land mafias’ (Kreibich, 2012), ‘land racketeering’ (Fox, 2014), and ‘slum real estate’ (Gulyani and Talukdar, 2008) identifies the actors involved in attempts to control informal settlement land and housing, as well as the economic benefits such attempts can generate. Fox (2014: 198) argues that such activities are part of the ‘political economy logic’ that underpins urban underdevelopment, which suggests that in contexts where formal channels of land access have failed to keep pace with urban growth, certain actors (‘elites’) are privileged, for example in terms of their ability to secure access to urban land and/or their ability to generate opportunities for rent-seeking behaviour.

As Obala and Mattingly (2013) elaborate, the role of ethnicity in urban land conflicts has received scant attention in the literature. In their own study, they consider the connections between ethnicity, corruption and urban land conflict in Nairobi, Kenya. In their view, ethnicity has played a significant role in land conflict and corruption, with networks being used amongst individuals or groups of the same ethnicity to gain a competitive advantage in land access. Nevertheless, the role of ethnicity in urban land conflict appears to be ambiguous. They found that even when competitors for land were members of the same ethnic group, competition for urban land nourished existing rivalries between ethnic groups. They suggest that this was to do with ‘real or imagined ethnic favouritism’ in the allocation of land and ‘probably because bitterness grew against both those who paid and those who received bribes and favours’ (Obala and Mattingly, 2013: 11–12). They note that politicians also seized on tensions between ethnic groups in order to obtain votes, by offering their support to the claims made by particular ethnic groups, which in turn increased tensions. They also found that ethnic identity had little relevance for the poorest, who were consistently at a disadvantage in land conflicts.

I turn to the recent literature on South Sudan, which suggests the need to adopt a critical stance on attempts to ascribe land-associated conflicts to ethnicity. For example, in Leonardi’s (2011) view, the portrayal of land conflicts as ‘tribal’ obscures shared fears amongst communities about the disrupting effects of commodification and monetisation on social relations and productive economies. Instead, she suggests, land conflicts reflect attempts by individuals and communities to retain control over local resources. In research on access to land and livelihoods in two towns in Eastern Equatoria, Walreat (2011) suggests that, although narratives of Dinka versus Equatorians were prevalent amongst the towns’ inhabitants, competition over land was not in fact about Dinka versus Equatorians. Instead, underpinning land conflict was the varying ability of individuals to access resources, including land and financial capital, and the extent to which this was facilitated by military and/or political connections. She argues that what was occurring was ‘ultimately a process of class formation, although veiled by the dominant discourse of ethnicity’ (Walreat, 2011: 8). In the case of Juba, Badiey (2014) builds on Leonardi’s analysis to argue that the identities of ‘Dinka’ and ‘Equatorian’, which ‘are so often employed as natural and opposed, are spurious categorisations’ (p. 9), suggesting that the land rights issue in Juba was not about ‘Equatorians’ and ‘Dinka’ but about the difference between newcomers and sons of the soil/autochthons and the rights of the latter (the Bari) to use traditional land allocation mechanisms. This situation, she asserts, was used by leaders in the CES government, who presented themselves as protectors of Bari land rights as they sought to retain their political status within the new Southern state headed by the SPLM/A-ruled GoSS.

This article applies these insights in order to explain conflicts that arose as informal settlement inhabitants sought to meet their need for secure access to land. First, explanations for land conflict should concern the strategies low-income urban inhabitants adopt as they seek to meet one of their most basic needs – that of secure access to land. Second, while the formation and development of informal settlements can be linked to the inability of Juba’s governing authorities to provide sufficient affordable legal housing, they also provide opportunities for those with power and capital to benefit. Third, the recent literature on South Sudan suggests the need to scrutinise prevalent ‘ethnic’ narratives about the nature and causes of conflict over land, which may obfuscate rather than reveal the real nature and roots of the conflicts. As will be detailed, land conflicts in the case study settlements were not underpinned by tensions between ‘Equatorians’ and ‘Dinka’. However, nor can they be explained by tensions between autochthons (the Bari) and newcomers, as Badiey (2014) suggests. Rather, it will be argued that land conflict in the settlements under study was the result of the growing exploitation of low-income urban inhabitants as the economic benefits to be obtained from land increased.

Informal settlements in Juba

Informal settlements in Juba – which generally refer to areas where residential plots have not been formally demarcated and allocated through the issue of leases – are not a recent phenomenon. The land policies of the British during Anglo-Egyptian Condominium rule were used to restrict the migration of indigenous people to towns and the distribution of urban land was controlled through a highly centralised and discretionary leasehold system. ⁴ This prevented those lacking the necessary financial capital and government connections from obtaining a leasehold plot (Leonardi, 2011; Post, 1996; Serels, 2007). While the British had established Juba as a small garrison in the 1920s and limited its population growth, Sudan’s independence in 1956 brought the lifting of movement controls to urban areas. Juba, the largest town in the Southern region, with a population of 10,600 at the time (Mills, 1985), grew and the first substantial informal areas formed in the 1960s. The city’s population expanded swiftly in the 1970s, when it became the seat of the first Southern Regional Government, an outcome of the 1972 Addis Ababa Agreement that ended the first civil war (1955–1972). By this time, its population was estimated to be around 25,000. As government employees and those keen to benefit from its burgeoning economy moved to Juba, the urban authorities proved unable to ensure a ready supply of leasehold plots. Informal settlements proliferated and by 1979, of 22,000 recorded buildings in Juba, fewer than 15% were considered to be permanent and only a small number had been erected on plots officially allocated by the urban authorities (Mills, 1985).

By 1983, Juba’s population was estimated to have reached 155,100. ⁵ Its growth stalled with the onset of the second civil war, which saw many people flee the city. During the subsequent devastating years of war, Juba was a government-held garrison town, while the surrounding rural areas were held by rebel groups. Its population increased as a result of an influx of IDPs, mainly from elsewhere in Equatoria. By the time of the CPA the number of informal settlements had increased dramatically and it was estimated that 163,442 residents and 87,000 IDPs lived in Juba (USAID, 2005).

Following the CPA, Juba’s population continued to grow rapidly, and a land policy to address urban development issues became urgent. However, the Southern Sudan Land Commission, which held the responsibility for developing such a policy, lacked the necessary resources to fulfil its remit and the issue of urban land received comparatively little attention. The Land Act (2009) nullified existing laws. It stipulates that rural land is owned by local communities and managed in accordance with customary law. ⁶ However, the Act lacks detail and does not define what constitutes ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ land. As a result, within Juba’s administrative boundaries formal land development was still regulated according to the Town Land Scheme of 1947 introduced by the British. Similarly, although the Local Government Act (2009) contains provision for city or municipal councils, in 2010 urban areas in South Sudan were still administered largely based on rural administrative structures. Thus, local government in Juba was situated beneath the state-level government then county administration in the regional hierarchy, and was comprised of payam and quarter council administrative units. Juba was located in Juba County and three payams comprised the local government units for the city itself (Juba Town, Kator and Munuki).

By 2010, the proliferation of informal settlements had created conflicts of interest between their inhabitants and the struggling CES government. Notwithstanding their role in providing shelter for IDPs and returnees, including many ‘Equatorians’, informal settlements were officially regarded by the CES government as illegitimate. Military-supported demolitions of informal settlements and forced evictions of their residents were the main means by which the CES government sought to free up land for urban development, forcing tens of thousands of people from their homes, even though such actions violated the provisions of the Land Act (2009) in a number of ways.

The sharp rise in the cost of land and housing offered actors within Juba’s governing authorities and Bari customary leaders on the city’s outskirts economic incentives for the demolition and redevelopment of informal settlements. The ambiguous land governance situation in the city, the result of its status as both regional and CES capital, meant that actors in both the GoSS and CES authorities claimed the right to develop land in and around it. This situation derived from the controversial decision to locate the region’s capital in Juba. During the 11 years of Southern Regional Government rule, Juba had been the scene of tensions between Dinka politicians and politicians from Equatoria province. Perceiving that the Southern Regional Government was biased in favour of the interests of Dinka politicians, politicians from the smaller Equatorian ethnic groups sought to retain their status and lobbied for korkora, or ‘redivision’ of the region along the boundaries of its three former Condominium provinces of Equatoria, Bahr el Ghazal and Upper Nile. Despite the proposal’s rejection by the Southern Regional Assembly in 1981, Gaafar Nimeiri, then President of Sudan, divided the region regardless, once again reducing southern autonomy. This move was among the many triggers of the second civil war (Johnson, 2006). By the time of the CPA in 2005, the approach favoured by the SPLM was to develop a new city in Ramciel, an undeveloped area in the centre of the region. Some believe the critical factor in the decision to locate the capital in Juba instead was its potential to defuse ethnic tension, with its location in CES intended as a gesture of inclusiveness by the SPLM-led GoSS (Deng, 2010). Others suggest that the decision was due to pressure from international donors and the fact that Juba, because of its historic status as a capital, had some infrastructure in a region suffering from decades of war (Martin and Mosel, 2011).

As actors in Juba’s controlling authorities competed over who had the right to develop land, the unclear situation created opportunities for a range of actors to garner economic benefits at the settlement level. The three case studies discussed below provide accounts of how ‘ordinary people’ both benefited and suffered from the fluid and ambiguous context as contestation over land increased.

Methods and background to land access in the case study settlements

The case studies presented are based on doctoral dissertation work carried out in Juba from January to December 2010. The research adopted an extended case study approach (Burawoy, 1998) in order to examine the changing mechanisms of land access and control in three of Juba’s informal settlements, which had developed at different times in the city’s 90-year history. At the city level, an understanding of the interests of various actors in, and their actions towards, informal settlement inhabitants were derived primarily from interviews with officials in the GoSS and CES governments. At the settlement level, the research relied heavily on interviews, group discussions and observation. The sensitive setting obstructed the generation of sampling frames in order to conduct random sample surveys, as had originally been intended. Instead, a survey of around 100 plot-holders selected at random was carried out in each settlement. ⁷ The data obtained did not allow inferences to be made, but they did enable contextual elaboration regarding informal land access. Owing to the sensitive nature of the context, informants are anonymous, and settlements are referred to by the pseudonyms of Greenacre, Riverside and Newplace. References to ethnic or group identities are based on how interviewees identified themselves or how they referred to specific groups.

As outlined in McMichael (2014), settlement of the case study areas followed the city’s growth trajectory. Greenacre and Riverside were both located on public land within Juba, and emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, respectively. Newplace formed after the signing of the CPA and was located on what had been rural land on the edge of Juba. Initially settlement by households in the three areas was self-governing, but as the populations grew, early-comers formed groups to manage community affairs – referred to as quarter councils in Greenacre and Riverside and as a popular committee in the case of Newplace. These informal organisations coordinated matters amongst settlement inhabitants and were consulted in the case of disputes that could not be resolved between inhabitants, including land disputes. They also represented the settlements in relations with local government in all three areas, and Bari leaders in the case of Newplace.

The mechanisms by which individuals accessed land in these settlements varied – some people sought and occupied unused land by seeking permission from Bari leaders, some bought land or accommodation, some rented plots or accommodation and others were given or lent land by family or friends. In all instances, family or co-ethnic networks were crucial in finding a place to live. This in part related to the unofficial nature of the settlements, which meant that there was no generally accessible information regarding available plots and people had therefore to rely on their own networks to identify available land. In addition, many people had limited means of subsistence and so relied on the help of family or community members to establish themselves in the city. As a result, patterns of settlement in the three areas tended to be clustered along ethnic lines. In Newplace, for example, there were areas referred to by inhabitants as ‘the Moro area’, ‘the Kuku area’ and ‘the Acholi area’, representing different ethnic groups with their origins in the Equatorian states. In the survey, around two-fifths of plot-holders lived next to the plot of another family member, two-thirds lived next to someone from the same place of origin and almost three-quarters lived next to someone from the same ethnic group.

Until the mid 2000s, the informal institutions controlling land had generally been successful in facilitating the peaceful co-existence of various different groups. However, the increase in population after the signing of the CPA led to mounting pressure on these institutions, as well as a rise in informal cash-based mechanisms of obtaining access to land, such as tenancy arrangements and land purchase. The number of avenues for acquiring plots also declined as some actors, especially military and settlement leaders, began to monopolise land. The use of violence by individuals as a way of accessing land became increasingly prevalent, especially in Greenacre and Riverside, where soldiers were reported by inhabitants to be resorting to violence. Land-grabbing by soldiers was presented by many non-Dinka settlement inhabitants as a source of conflict with Dinka people, in part attributed to the latter’s perceived dominance in the SPLA. However, in fact a large number of the soldiers in the settlements were not of Dinka origin ⁸ and soldiers involved in the cases of land-associated violence investigated were not necessarily Dinka people (McMichael, 2014).

Growing land conflict might appear to simply relate to increasing competition over land amongst antagonistic groups. However, as Kreibich (2012) indicates, when vital assets such as land are contested, informal processes that previously controlled land delivery may be overruled by those seeking to benefit from the situation. In particular, the informal status of people’s land rights can leave them open to exploitation. By 2010, formal land development, often preceded by forced evictions, was having an impact on informal settlement inhabitants, who virtually all wanted formal rights to the land on which they were living. ⁹

During the scoping study for the fieldwork, it was noted that settlements throughout Juba had formed demarcation committees, suggesting that they were becoming a common phenomenon throughout the city. Informal settlement inhabitants generally (at least initially) supported the formation of such committees in their areas as a means of obtaining leasehold rights. The stated aim of these committees was to lobby various CES government institutions for formal demarcation and, once this was approved, to liaise with the CES Ministry of Physical Infrastructure (MPI) and its Survey Department regarding the registration of settlement inhabitants and allocation of formal plots.

The case studies show how, to varying extents, actors inside and outside the settlements used demarcation committee formation to consolidate power over land and at the same time exploit vulnerable people. As will be substantiated below, some settlement leaders seized on apparent tensions between ‘Dinka’ and ‘Equatorians’ to protect their own turf, effectively providing protection – at least in the short-term – for people they could control or exploit. This in turn enabled them to maintain or expand their own informal land access through the activities of the demarcation committees by levying fees and evicting people when they could not pay.

Case 1: Greenacre

Greenacre formed in the 1960s, when publicly owned land was allocated by the County Commissioner, under vague arrangements, to a local government department for employee housing. The local government department did not intervene in the management of the settlement, so that although it was dominated initially by people originating from the former Equatoria Province who worked for the department, it developed to be ethnically diverse with many of its inhabitants working elsewhere. For example, an early group of settlers comprised around half a dozen Dinka families who had migrated to Juba as a result of dislocations due to floods in the Sudd from 1961–1963. After the Addis Ababa Agreement, and throughout the 1970s, Greenacre’s population continued to grow as inhabitants’ relatives and friends moved to Juba seeking work. A market developed and a group of Mundari ¹⁰ established a small camp on the edge of the settlement, which they used as they passed through Juba to sell cattle. A further major wave of settlement occurred when more Dinka households moved into the area after being forcibly evicted from land earmarked for the expansion of Juba’s airport. Nevertheless, the community remained relatively small, with only 100 or so households.

By the time of the CPA, people originating from the three Equatorian states dominated plot-holdings. Korkora and the outbreak of the second civil war caused all but one of the original Dinka households to leave the settlement, as many in the Dinka community felt compelled to either leave Juba with their families or to join the SPLA. Although the escalation of the war saw some inhabitants leave, hundreds of IDPs – predominantly from around Juba and other parts of Equatoria – settled in the area, accommodating themselves on spare parcels of land and on the roads that had run through the settlement.

By the start of 2010, the demographic composition of the settlement had again changed, as returnees and other newcomers to Juba (re-)accessed land in the settlement. Tensions between returnees and long-term inhabitants were conspicuous, along with threats of violence, which in some cases escalated into actual violence (McMichael, 2014). In particular, long-term inhabitants complained about the number of Dinka trying to claim back their pre-war plots. As more newcomers arrived, many longer-term residents agreed that IDPs – most of whom had chosen to stay put rather than return to their areas of origin – should remain. This was partly based on the recognition by many pre-war inhabitants of their own role in having allowed the IDPs to settle in the first place; however, a view also prevailed that IDPs acted as a buffer against Dinka newcomers and returnees. A woman who rented out rooms on her plot explained that ‘You never rent to a Dinka. They won’t pay you. They just grab your land. It’s better that these people stay so that the Dinka can’t come here’. ¹¹

Meanwhile, the settlement’s quarter council, which was comprised of long-term inhabitants originating from throughout the Equatorian states, had become the focal point for attempts by the settlement’s inhabitants to obtain formal rights to the land on which they were living. A demarcation committee was formed in 2009, made up of four pre-war Bari settlers working in nearby CES government institutions. A registration process was carried out in the second half of 2010, organised by the committee. All current plot-holders were eligible to be registered, with the exception of those renting plots (although it was not clear if the ‘owners’ of these plots were included instead). With the exception of Mundari residents, who had to pay SDG150 (around US$65) each to their headman, ¹² plot-holders did not pay for registration.

Quarter council members, some of whom held multiple plots in the settlement, sought to ensure that they and other long-term inhabitants would continue to dominate plot-holdings in the settlement, and fuelled tensions over land. In a group discussion with the committee members, the situation they presented was that many Dinka were soldiers and so had a high propensity to use violence. Additionally, they stated that a large Dinka population would endanger their demands for formal plot allocation to Equatorian inhabitants. In an attempt to control the numbers of newcomers, they explained how, in any disputes that arose, they were refusing to acknowledge Dinka returnees’ claims to their pre-war plots. This was in stark contrast to their treatment of other returnees, whose claims they acknowledged and who they helped to regain their pre-war plots from IDPs, generally successfully.

In fact, despite the registration exercise, demarcation committee members stated in interviews that they would not support the allocation of plots to Equatorian inhabitants in general, as they recognised that there would not be enough formally demarcated plots for all of the current inhabitants. The demarcation committee did not provide much information to inhabitants regarding its activities, but its stated policy was that leasehold plots should be allocated on the basis of length of residence, with priority given to those who had resided longest in the settlement or who had inherited plots. Thus, by the end of 2010 dividing lines between Equatorian long-term inhabitants and IDPs were coming to the fore. These growing tensions were in turn used by the demarcation committee to justify their continued failure to provide information to inhabitants regarding the demarcation process.

The case of Greenacre shows how an apparent desire to protect the land rights of ‘Equatorians’, which appeared as ethnic competition over land, in fact masked protection of ‘one’s own turf’ by settlement leaders, as they sought to exclude newcomers and those who had settled during the war from the formal land allocation process. Instead, it seems that settlement leaders capitalised on tensions between Equatorian and Dinka categories of people in contriving to ensure that they, and other long-term inhabitants, dominated land-holdings in the settlement. Unlike the other two case study areas detailed below, however, the demarcation committee did not use the prospect of demarcation to obtain money from people. Greenacre’s leaders had held their positions for many years, and cooperated at least with longer-term inhabitants, to whom they were accountable. Perhaps the necessary incentives or opportunities for external actors to interfere in the functioning of the settlement were absent, as the CES MPI had not yet commenced formal demarcation activities. In addition, some of the settlement’s leaders had senior positions in CES local government institutions, which may have allowed them to obtain privileged information, placing them in a strong position to maintain their control over land in the settlement.

Case 2: Riverside

Since its establishment in the 1970s, Riverside had contained an ethnically diverse population from all over the region, as well as Bari indigenous to the area. A significant number of soldiers associated with a nearby military unit and their families also took up residence in the settlement. Like Greenacre, the second civil war resulted in an influx of IDPs to the area. However, the settlement lacked a cohesive leadership, its affairs being managed by the headmen of the various ethnic communities, who deferred to payam and traditional authorities outside the settlement to resolve issues that they were unable to address. This perhaps reflects the area’s fluid and diverse population, in part a result of its location near the urban boundary and Juba’s frontline during the war. To complicate matters, soldiers and their families referred to their commanders or the Military Court in cases of disputes, rather than to settlement leaders.

As the settlement’s population grew from 2007 onwards, tensions over land increased and, similarly to Greenacre, were framed by inhabitants in interviews according to the narrative of Dinka versus Equatorians. In Riverside this was reinforced by the activities of some soldiers, who used their physical presence as well as their weapons to intimidate civilians and evict people from their homes (McMichael, 2014). From the perspective of the civilian headmen, the army should have accommodated soldiers in the military unit. However, ‘rank and file’ soldiers, including those of Dinka origin, complained that plots were not provided for them and their families. In fact, they did not live on much of the land they had appropriated. Rather, during the fieldwork period, SPLA commanders, assisted by their men, took over some areas of land and started renting out plots to civilian inhabitants (McMichael, 2014). The Officer in Command of the military unit was reluctant to intervene and interpreted requests by the settlement leadership to mark the boundary of the military unit, and restrict soldiers to it, as an ethnic bias against non-Bari:

The community leaders have complained and we’re putting up a fence to make the boundary clear, but they can’t stop soldiers from living in Juba and now they are complaining that the boundary is wrong. You know these Bari are a big problem – this is the capital but they don’t want us here.

As tensions over land increased, both civilian and military inhabitants wanted formal rights to their plots. Road development had occurred in nearby areas throughout 2010, and it was thought that this might precede plot demarcation. The CES Legislative Assembly representative, who was a Bari from the area, saw an opportunity to garner support for his election campaign through a promise to bring formal land rights to the people of Riverside. He established and chaired a demarcation committee comprised of the settlement’s four youth group leaders and two other long-term inhabitants. ¹³ As in Greenacre, this committee implemented a registration process within the settlement in the second half of 2010, to support a purported demarcation exercise. Each youth group collected a payment of SDG150 (around US$65 ¹⁴ ) from plot-holders in their area, a substantial fee for both civilian and military inhabitants. The fee, they maintained, was to cover the costs of the registration exercise and to pay Survey Department staff for demarcation of the area. ¹⁵ Demarcation committee members asserted that everyone was included in the process and that vulnerable groups, such as female heads of household and elderly plot-holders, were being treated leniently. Nevertheless, reports from settlement inhabitants suggested that harassment and threats of eviction meant that even the poorest had little alternative but to pay if they wished to remain in their homes.

It was with much celebration that Survey Department staff, who turned up one day, were greeted. Those who had paid the registration fee to the demarcation committee believed that they would soon have documents for their land. The standard fee necessary to support the demarcation process had been paid to the Survey Department staff. ¹⁶ They also asked for additional money for the hire of a global positioning system, ¹⁷ but the demarcation committee were unable to afford this. A large crowd gathered around the team as they set about marking out where the main road was going to be. They promised to come back one weekend soon and start the plot demarcation process.

However, weeks passed, and by the end of 2010 they had not returned. The word going around Riverside was that the Legislative Assembly member was a dishonest man. While it was not possible to ascertain his level of involvement in the activities of the initial demarcation committee, the perception was that he had taken money from people but now was nowhere to be seen. In the meantime, another demarcation committee with links to the payam administration had formed. ¹⁸

Despite a narrative of Equatorian versus Dinka, the case of Riverside shows how the ability to access land had little to do with this and had more to do with the problems vulnerable informal settlement inhabitants had in accessing the necessary financial resources to pay registration fees or to rent land through the growing rental market. Military actors used their ability to intimidate civilians to accumulate land from which they then obtained economic benefits through renting out plots. At the same time, in an atmosphere of intimidation and violence, well-connected inhabitants within the settlement and public officials outside the settlement were able to use a purported demarcation exercise to extract money from settlement inhabitants.

Case 3: Newplace

Newplace was one of four settlements on land just outside Juba’s administrative boundary where formal surveying and demarcation activities by Survey Department staff were occurring on the ground at the time of the study. According to officials in the CES MPI, agreement had been reached with Bari traditional authorities for the land to be developed as part of the expansion and development of Juba, primarily to provide housing for CES government employees. MPI officials noted that this agreement had been especially difficult to achieve, bemoaning the fact that the chiefs were always fighting amongst themselves. Indeed, there were competing claims amongst Bari chiefs regarding who had legitimate authority to liaise with CES government authorities with respect to the development of rural land. These related in particular to the role of the paramount chief, whose position was disputed and who was not a member of the Bari clan which occupied the area concerned.

The first settlers had come to Newplace in 2005, seeking permission to settle from Bari traditional authorities and paying them a small tribute. As one Bari chief recounted, at the time land was plentiful, and as long as people sought permission and respected the fact that the Bari owned the land, there was no problem. ¹⁹ As plans evolved to formally develop the area, Newplace became heavily populated. A major wave of settlement occurred in 2009 at the time of large-scale forced evictions elsewhere in Juba. ²⁰

As in Greenacre, practices existed to exclude Dinka from settling in the area. Inhabitants reported that they had been ordered by the Bari authorities, via the settlement’s Popular Committee, not to allow Dinka to settle. To justify these attitudes, the customary authorities claimed that they were unable to manage (or coerce) Dinka settlers because many were soldiers and had a propensity to use violence. ²¹

In Newplace, complaints from inhabitants regarding land conflicts were rife. Especially common were land disputes between inhabitants and settlement leaders. There were many reports of settlement leaders forcing inhabitants to downsize their plots and then selling off the parcels of land created to newcomers. This can be linked to the demarcation activities of the Survey Department, which had created incentives for outsiders to obtain land in the area. A chance encounter with a GoSS official, who was accompanied by a broker for ‘the Bari chief’ of the settlement, gave the following account: ²²

I will pay a maximum of US$2000 for a plot, as I might lose the investment. […] I’m going to rent [out] the plot until I get a title, then I will build a proper house on it. By having a [house] already, it strengthens the application once there is demarcation.

In this increasingly uncertain context, Newplace’s inhabitants supported the formation of a demarcation committee. The committee was comprised of returnees from Khartoum who, although Bari, were not from the area itself. It was not the first demarcation committee in the settlement. According to a number of inhabitants, in 2007 an earlier committee had formed. This consisted of a group of Bari men who purported to be local chiefs and who had collected SDG25 (about US$10) from each household, before disappearing. Another demarcation committee then formed, made up of first-comers to the settlement. In 2009, this committee also carried out a registration process, registering 632 households at a charge of SDG250 (US$110) each. ²³ However, once again no further activities followed, and it was alleged that the committee’s members had used the substantial funds raised to build themselves houses.

The demarcation committee active at the time of the research had also collected money from plot-holders, amounting to SDG175 (~US$75) per plot, although people renting plots were excluded from the process. The demarcation committee chairman, who also headed the Popular Committee, reported that 2000 households had registered and confirmed that the committee had collected SDG350,000 (~US$150,000). Although he only outlined the intended use of a small proportion of the funds raised, he stated that these were required to meet the fees charged by CES Survey Department staff (thousands of dollars), to pay actors in the SPLA who provided bulldozers and soldiers to carry out evictions and demolitions, and to cover the tribute demanded by the Bari authorities. It was not possible to ascertain how many people’s homes were demolished, but throughout the second half of 2010 the demolition of houses was observed where roads had been demarcated by the Survey Department. Interviews with some evictees suggested that the demarcation committee members had referred people to local Bari chiefs so that they could buy a replacement plot in another nearby settlement. The members were alleged to have charged them a brokerage for this service.

The demarcation committee chairman was open about the fact that almost none of the inhabitants who had contributed to the ostensible cost of the process would be allocated plots. A Bari, he argued that the settlers did not have legitimate claims to the land. However, despite claims by local Bari chiefs and the demarcation committee that they were protecting the land rights of locally indigenous Bari, people in this group were also being evicted. As one local Bari man ²⁴ detailed:

The indigenous community, the Bari, once sat down and agreed in principle that the land should be demarcated, but the clan refused later on. I am [of this clan] but have been told [that] the plots that will be here are already gone. I am told this is because the land is now occupied by different tribes who are not originally from here and it is difficult to remove them. There are issues such as the allocation of land to companies, which is done by the chiefs without the consent of the whole community. Also, educated people from Khartoum who live in the community are also involved in this. […] They [the leaders and chiefs] are not acting for the welfare of the clan but for their own self-interest.

The case of Newplace suggests that conflicts over access to land around Juba had less to do with traditional or community rights to land than with the tensions arising between inhabitants and other actors seeking to benefit economically from land. Traditional processes that had controlled land access for both newcomers and local Bari were being overruled and sometimes exploited by those seeking to benefit from the socially and politically fluid context. Actors in the CES MPI and the SPLA appear to have been complicit in this. Although demarcation committee leaders and Bari chiefs implied that they were protecting the land rights of local Bari, the ability to access land was increasingly determined by one’s access to financial resources.

Conclusion

This article examines how land conflict in informal settlements in Juba after the CPA was linked to informality in land access, which was instrumentalised by well-placed actors for their own benefit or that of their supporters, sometimes defined as those from their own ethnic group. In the context of South Sudan and Juba, the prevailing discourse of ethnicity, which distinguished between Dinka, Equatorians and Bari, has a complex and contested history. As other analysts suggest, the prevailing narrative, which portrayed conflict over access to land in terms of the rival claims of Dinka and Equatorians, masked the problems that more vulnerable individuals and, often, local communities (i.e. the Bari) had in maintaining their access to vital livelihood assets, in this instance land. Despite the framing of land conflict along ethnic lines by both settlement leaders and residents, inhabitants of all ethnicities increasingly faced threats to their land claims.

In practice, although land conflicts varied in nature, they had a great deal to do with the functioning of the informal organisations controlling access to land, the occurrence of formal land development activities and the influence of external actors. Land conflicts were immanent to the demarcation committees’ activities, as various actors sought to secure economic benefits from an increasingly uncertain context. In Riverside and Newplace, in particular, the formation of the demarcation committees can be linked to a political economy of rent-seeking. Formal planning processes, involving activities on the ground, were being enforced, to the economic benefit of those inhabitants with knowledge, financial resources and connections to external actors such as traditional authorities, the SPLA and CES public officials.

Land conflict was not only attributable to exploitative practices occurring in the settlements, but also to the ill-defined formal systems relating to urban land development. The lack of legal clarity and an approved urban development plan created ambiguity and opportunities to deceive informal settlement inhabitants, in turn contributing to tensions over land. Through their knowledge and external ties with public officials, the SPLA and, in the case of Newplace, traditional authorities, powerful actors in the settlements were able to benefit from informal settlement inhabitants’ desire for formal land rights. In this situation, coercion, deception and land-associated violence (in the form of forced eviction), justified through the activities of demarcation committees, became powerful tools.

In her study, Walreat (2011) suggests that what is ultimately at stake in competition for urban land is a process of class formation. The findings presented here lend weight to this view. Land conflict in the three case study settlements can be understood within the broader political economy context, where governing authorities were unable and appeared unwilling to provide sufficient affordable legal housing to meet the needs of Juba’s growing population. Land conflicts reflected relations between some of Juba’s most vulnerable urban inhabitants and actors with power – that is, those ‘in the know’, with connections and who were able to use informal settlements as a platform for exercising power and potentially for accumulating capital. Although family and co-ethnic networks continued to be important in accessing land, the ability to gain or maintain that access, even if only in the short-term, was increasingly determined by access to the necessary financial resources and the poor were increasingly disadvantaged in the competition for secure access to land. Informal settlement inhabitants were not oblivious to this situation, but complied with the demands of the demarcation committees because they feared the consequences of not doing so. The failure of the GoSS and CES authorities to provide information about land legislation and urban planning activities, poor residents’ resulting lack of understanding, the generally low levels of coordination within the settlements and the atmosphere of intimidation and violence made it difficult for settlement inhabitants to challenge the activities of demarcation committees and other actors.

In Juba, insufficient attention has been paid to who is benefiting from the poor land governance situation and the implications for land-associated conflicts. Disturbing aspects of the activities of demarcation committee members described by informants in this study include both the large number of these committees across Juba, and the evident but opaque involvement of CES government officials, traditional authorities and the SPLA. In South Sudan, debate continues regarding land reform. However, if informality in land access has become an instrument of accumulation, then formulating new laws and regulations relating to the management of land in and around urban areas will not be enough to reduce land conflict. Ultimately, land conflict in Juba is not only driven by a lack of coherence amongst the authorities responsible for land governance, but is also self-reinforcing because it supports activities that are inimical to more equitable and inclusive urban governance arrangements.