President Salva Kiir dissolved South Sudan’s entire transitional government on September 22, ending in a single decree the power-sharing arrangement that has governed the country since the 2018 peace deal. The move came three months before the country’s first national election since independence, scheduled for December 22.
The decree, read out on state broadcaster SSBC, terminated all five vice-presidential offices, dissolved the national legislature and state governments, and dismissed cabinet ministers and local administrators nationwide. Parliament passed the enabling amendments to the National Elections Act the day before, after deliberations that lasted less than 24 hours.
In their place, Kiir appointed a caretaker administration entirely of his own choosing: a presidential adviser, 13 caretaker ministers, 10 state caretaker governors, plus deputy ministers, chief administrators and heads of key national institutions. The new legal framework keeps Kiir in office with his full constitutional powers through the election period — while the collegial vice-presidential structure that had constrained him disappears entirely.
The dissolution followed Kiir’s September 15 removal of the chairperson of the National Elections Commission, made without public explanation.
A documented pattern of family appointments
The caretaker government preserves a structure already built substantially around Kiir’s own family. His son, Major General Atem Salva Kiir, commands the Tiger Division, the elite force responsible for protecting the presidency. His daughter, Adut Salva Kiir, was sworn in last year as Senior Presidential Envoy for Special Programmes, with oversight of government initiatives and investment partnerships — a post previously held by Benjamin Bol Mel, whom Kiir fired as vice president in November 2025.
“It’s a family circle,” one analyst told The East African this month, describing the arrangement. “So there is no transparency.”
Opposition and rights groups respond
Eight opposition parties and civil society organizations sent a joint letter on September 23 to the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and the African Union Commission, declaring that the 2018 Revitalized Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan (R-ARCSS) had failed as a governing framework. The Reconstituted Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission, the body established to oversee that agreement’s implementation, said the country had entered a “critical phase.”
Some analysts and opposition figures have characterized the dissolution as a “parliamentary coup.” Amnesty International, while calling the move toward elections a “decisive step,” warned of the risk of repressive measures and restrictions on civil society as the vote approaches, and called on authorities to protect freedom of expression for journalists and political opponents. The United Nations separately warned that the deepening political crisis could tip the country back into civil war.
The Machar trial continues in parallel
The dissolution unfolds alongside the ongoing trial of Riek Machar, the suspended First Vice President who has been under house arrest since March 2025. Machar and seven co-defendants face charges including treason, murder, terrorism and crimes against humanity, stemming from an attack in Nasir, Upper Nile State, in which prosecutors allege forces aligned with Machar’s Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-in-Opposition (SPLM-IO) and the Nuer-aligned White Army militia killed 257 government soldiers.
The trial has been repeatedly adjourned. Proceedings were paused again this week pending a judicial ruling on defense claims of security threats against Machar’s legal team. Machar’s party has rejected the charges as a “political witch-hunt” and declared the 2018 peace agreement defunct, while continuing armed opposition activity in Upper Nile and Jonglei states.
The human cost
The political crisis is unfolding against one of the world’s most severe humanitarian emergencies. The International Rescue Committee ranks South Sudan third on its 2026 Emergency Watchlist, behind only Sudan and the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
An estimated 10 million people — roughly two-thirds of the population — currently require humanitarian assistance. The UN World Food Programme reported in September that 7.8 million people face acute food insecurity. An earlier classification by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) system found 73,300 people in the catastrophic (Phase 5) category during the April–July lean season — a toll worsened by what officials describe as a “super El Niño” driving drought and crop failure even in the country’s most fertile regions. The country is simultaneously experiencing its largest cholera outbreak on record. Roughly 2.3 million people remain internally displaced, and the ongoing war in neighboring Sudan continues to push refugees and returnees across the border into already strained communities.
The economic backdrop compounds the crisis. Civil servants went unpaid for 8 to 13 months by early this year amid a currency collapse; annual food-price inflation reached 234 percent in the last fiscal year. Oil production has partially recovered from a 2024 pipeline disruption, but South Sudan’s fiscal deficit widened to 6.7 percent of GDP, driven in part by rising spending through the Ministry of Presidential Affairs.
The regional backdrop
South Sudan’s domestic consolidation of power is occurring at a pointed moment in its relationship with the East African Community. The country is currently leading a nationwide public consultation, running September 24 through October 7, on a proposed EAC Political Confederation that would harmonize member states’ foreign policy, defense and monetary systems. Kiir has personally urged regional leaders to accelerate the plan. At the same time, South Sudan has imposed new visa fees on travelers from Kenya, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, directly contradicting its own free-movement commitments under the EAC.
What comes next
South Sudan has not held a national election since gaining independence from Sudan in 2011. Whether the December 22 vote proceeds as planned, and under what conditions, now rests with a caretaker administration answerable only to the president who appointed it.
