Daniel Akech Thiong – författare

In this important, multidisciplinary, open access study, Daniel Akech Thiong shows that the relations between climate disaster, pastoralist migration, and intercommunal conflict in Africa reach farther, both in time and space, than we realize.Focusing on the climate-shock-induced migrations of the Dinka people of South Sudan's Jonglei state into the Equatoria region, Thiong investigates the long-term ecological roots of conflicts among pastoralists, or between pastoralists and agriculturalists, over access shrinking waterholes and grazing zones. In so doing, he not only offers important correctives to prevalent, short-term narratives around individual political conflicts—narratives that provide little fodder for any long-term solutions--but also sheds new light on the role of governance, both national and local, in creating or mitigating the conflicts. Thiong in fact reveals examples of unusual cooperation between diverse ethnic groups amidst climate-change-induced disasters, and these findings shed new light on similar developments elsewhere in Africa, all of which offers new lessons for those who wish to mitigate future clashes related to climate-shock-induced displacement and encourage social stability. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the Bloomsbury Open Collections Library Collective.

When asked in 2016 if he would step down as President of South Sudan, Salva Kiir replied ‘my exit could spark genocide.’ Kiir’s words exemplify how fear and the threat of mass violence have become central to the politics of South Sudan. As South Sudanese analyst Daniel Akech Thiong shows, it is this politics that lies at the heart of the country’s seemingly intractable civil war.In this book, Akech Thiong explores the origins of South Sudan’s politics of fear. Weaving together social, economic and cultural factors into a comprehensive framework, he reveal how the country’s elites have exploited ethnic divisions as a means of mobilising support and securing their grip on power, in the process triggering violent conflict. He also considers the ways in which this politics of fear takes root among the wider populace, exploring the role of corruption, social media, and state coercion in spreading hatred and fostering mass violence. As regimes across Africa and around the world become increasingly reliant on their own politics of fear, Akech Thiong’s book offers novel insight into a growing phenomenon with implications far beyond South Sudan.