Leadership, Nation-building and War in South Sudan; The Problems of Statehood and Collective Will

The African Leadership Centre (ALC) is pleased to announce our next (online) research seminar on Tuesday 22, November 2022 at 09:30 – 11:00 AM GMT/ 12:30-14:00 PM EAT

The session will host a seminar presentation on a book titled ‘Leadership, Nation-building and War in South Sudan; The Problems of Statehood and Collective Will' authored by Dr. Sonja Theron

About the book

The book challenges the notion that the continued violence of South Sudan's nation-building process can be reduced to either identity difference or the fault of individual leaders. Rather, it uses the leadership process to understand the complex progressions and relationships that have characterized South Sudan's nation-building trajectory. The book argues that the core driving force behind the current conflict in South Sudan can be found not in ethnicity, the “resource curse” or power struggle, but in a set of destructive relationships that have fueled violence and oppression in the country for the better part of a century. This cyclical leadership process has entrapped the country in an increasingly destructive and contradictory nation-building process that continues to spiral and disintegrate.

About the speakers 

• Speaker: Dr. Sonja Theron, Lecturer Department of Political Sciences, Programme Director: Research, Centre for Mediation in Africa Faculty of Humanities, and Senior Associate Fellow, African Leadership Centre
• Discussant: Dr. Remember Miamingi, South Sudanese human rights and governance expert presently based at the Centre for Human Rights, Faculty of Law, University of Pretoria, Republic of South Africa
• Chair: Shuvai Nyoni, Executive Director ALC, King’s College London

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