Systemic drivers of South Sudan's cyclical violence: Religious mobilisation amid unaddressed colonial legacies and resource extraction

The Good Friday peace march in South Sudan cannot be separated from the colonial legacies of divide-and-rule that created ethnic administrative units, nor from the post-independence elite's capture of oil revenues—both of which are obscured by a narrative that frames the conflict as a religious or ethnic primordial struggle.

The cyclical violence is sustained by a global arms trade (fuelled by Western and Gulf states) and climate change (exacerbated by extractive industries), while indigenous peace systems like Dinka cattle mediation and Nuer bloodwealth payments are systematically excluded from formal peace processes. Women's networks and youth groups, who have brokered local truces with higher success rates than international interventions, remain underfunded and criminalised, reflecting a broader epistemic violence where indigenous and feminist knowledge is sidelined for 'professional' Western models. The solution lies not in more religious processions but in decolonising governance—integrating customary law into national frameworks, redirecting oil wealth to community-controlled development, and treating climate adaptation as a conflict prevention strategy. Actors like the African Union, regional powers (Uganda, Ethiopia), and international NGOs must cede power to local mediators, while China and Gulf states must account for their roles in financing war economies through resource extraction.