South Sudan marks decade of independence as pandemic mars jubilation

South Sudan's President Salva Kiir has pledged not to return his country to war as the country marked 10 years of troubled independence with little to rejoice.

"I assure you that I will not return you back to war again. Let us work altogether to recover the lost decade and put our country back to the path of development in this new decade," Kiir said in a televised address marking the milestone on Friday.

He hailed a "new spirit of dialogue" among political rivals and said the Transitional Government of National Unity would focus on economic reforms and improving security.

But on Friday, there was none of the jubilation that greeted statehood, with people told to stay at home because of the coronavirus pandemic. 

Kiir made his speech in front of one of the presidential offices in the capital Juba.

Kiir had warned this week that the cash-strapped state was in no position to celebrate, blaming international sanctions for keeping prosperity out of reach.

The international community has used the anniversary to urge South Sudan's leaders to do more to improve the lot of its 12 million population.

Nearly 400,000 deaths in 7 years 

At midnight on July 9, 2011, raucous celebrations erupted as the world's newest nation was born and the people of South Sudan cheered the end of a decades-long struggle for statehood from Sudan.

But the revelry was short-lived.

Just two years later South Sudan was at war with itself, the task of nation-building forgotten as its liberators tore the country apart, dashing expectations of a glittering future.

Close to 400,000 people would die before a ceasefire was declared in 2018.

But today the country is more fragile than ever, confronting looming starvation, political insecurity, economic ruin and natural calamities.

READ MORE: Civilians killed in disputed Sudanese Abyei region

Country looted rather than rebuilt

"The journey from war to peace has been a long and difficult one and there is still much to be done so that people can exercise the democratic right they earned a decade ago," Nicholas Haysom, the head of the UN mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), said in a statement.

South Sudan enjoyed immense international goodwill and billions of dollars in support when its people voted overwhelmingly in a 2011 referendum to secede from the north.

But its leaders failed to stem corruption and the new South Sudan was looted rather than rebuilt, as huge sums from its vast oil fields were siphoned off and squandered.

The political leaders who led South Sudan to independence — and then back to war — are still in power today, ruling in a tenuous coalition forged under a peace deal.

Weak 'unity' government

The power-sharing arrangement between Kiir, a former military commander from the Dinka ethnic group, and his deputy Riek Machar, a rebel leader from the Nuer people, has kept fighting between their forces largely at bay since the ceasefire in 2018.

The "unity" government they belatedly formed in February 2020 under great international pressure is weak, and safeguards to prevent another war have not been put in place.

Conflict, drought, floods and a record locust plague have ruined harvests and left 60 percent of the population facing severe food shortages.

Of those, 108,000 are on the very edge of famine, the World Food Programme says.