Riek Machar, Leader, SPLM in Opposition HARDtalk

Now it's time for HARDtalk.

Welcome to HARDtalk, I'm Stephen Sackur.

For the people of South Sudan, five years of independent nationhood

have brought little more than impoverishment,

violence and suffering.

The world's newest nation is again racked by internal

conflict - more than a million people have been forced

from their homes and the country's president, Salva Kiir,

and his nemesis, Riek Machar, are again at each other's throats.

My guest today is vice president turned rebel leader,

Riek Machar.

Has South Sudan been betrayed by its leaders?

Riek Machar, in Johannesburg.

Welcome to HARDtalk.

Thank you for having me.

I think it's fair to say that your country's

independent history, five and a half years of it, has been

disfigured by one relationship.

That is, your relationship with President Salva Kiir.

You have been in confrontation for much of your

nation's independent life.

It looks as though the confrontation has

ended with Salva Kiir victorious.

Would you accept that?

Well, I don't think the issue is the relationship

between me and President Salva Kiir.

It is the politics, the difference in opinion,

the difference in running the country, the difference

in charting a way forward for our country.

I don't think Salva Kiir is victorious because

the country is at war.

Nobody can be victorious when the war is raging.

And when over one million people have been...

..have gone to refuge, and over 2 million have been

displaced internally,

and there is so much humanitarian need in the country,

so nobody can be victorious in such a situation.

I only use the word because I consider your

current position.

Here you sit in South Africa, you have been banned from your own

country, it seems that none of the neighbouring countries

want to offer you refuge, the South Africans have told

you to get out of their country as soon as possible.

You look like a man who has lost the confrontation.

I have not been banned in my country.

Yes, I heard a statement being made, but it is just

impossible for them to ban me, for the Juba government

to ban me in my country.

I live in the liberated areas.

I could live in Equatoria, I could live in Bar el Ghazal,

I could live in Upper Nile.

The government says you are a terrorist,

they will arrest you if you go back, and nowhere, it seems, is safe for

you right now.

South Sudan is safe for me.

I am not in exile.

I have not requested any asylum from any country.

I'm only visiting to have a medical checkup with my doctor

here in South Africa.

Once this is over, I'll go back to South Sudan

and live there as I used to live there before I went to Juba.

There is some mystery about this health condition of yours.

You of course had to flee South Sudan

after the violent events of July, 2016, when you were in

the presidential palace, when violence erupted and you claim

there was an assassination attempt on you, and you

and your close support were forced out of Juba.

I think you claim you walked for more than 30 days to get

to the DRC, the Democratic Republic of Congo.

What exactly happened to you, and indeed your

health, at that time?

Well, let's start with my health.

I am physically fit, ready to walk 500 miles again.

What happened in the Republican Palace, I was called

in for a meeting, I didn't know it was a set-up.

We went through the meeting, in the middle of the meeting

we heard bullets outside the palace and inside the palace.

It went on for nearly 40 minutes.

Those who were fighting themselves in the end controlled the situation

and we addressed the population, that this situation is brought under

control and it will be investigated.

But then, a day later, my forces, a very small force,

was attacked by the SPLA and we were pushed out of Juba.

During that time I used to speak to President Salva,

so that both of us could control our forces,

but he couldn't control his forces.

We were pushed out, I had to walk 37 days, up to

the forests of DRC, where I was extricated by the UN

to a more civilised life.

And were you shot at any point?

Do you have gunshot wounds?

No, I wasn't shot.

I only had a knee slippage.

A knee slippage.

Well, it seems to be quite problematic, because you claim

to receive health treatment in various places since,

including now in Johannesburg.

It seems to me that your biggest problem isn't your

health, your biggest problem is that some key

allies have abandoned you and thrown in their lot

with President Salva Kiir.

Well, three of our members in the SPLM did that,

but our political bureau is intact.

We easily met in Khartoum.

And we made resolutions, one of these resolutions

is declaring the fact that the agreement has

collapsed and that the transitional government has also collapsed,

but we are looking for a political solution, which would

resuscitate the agreement.

The defection of three people...

They are not just three people.

The current deputy to Salva Kiir, vice president, is a man

that you regarded as a key ally, but when he saw

what happened to you he basically made a calculation.

You've lost the credibility, the aura of power,

and he decided, your former ally, to throw in his lot with Salva Kiir,

which comes back to this issue,

to many people in South Sudan it looks as though you have lost.

In actual fact he is the one who has lost because the leadership is with

me, the Army is with me, the SPLM-IO,

and also the commander-in-chief of the SPLM-IO.

He has lost, he has no base, no support, no army to control.

So I haven't lost anything.

It's Salva Kiir and Taban Deng who have made the country lose

the peace that we wanted to implement.

You know what, in America they have a phrase -

"What goes around comes around".

Maybe that applies to you, because you have been, as you would

see it, betrayed by Taban Deng, you have also been

betrayed by some of your military officers who have thrown

in their lot with Salva Kiir's forces, and you yourself in the past

have been accused of betrayal.

In 2013 you betrayed John Garang in the 90s and started cooperating

with the Khartoum government, and in 2013

were accused of betraying Salva Kiir and plotting a coup against him.

So I come back to this point, what goes around comes around.

Well, first of all, there are no military commanders

that have gone with Taban Deng Gai.

As for 1991, we had a point of difference,

we had political differences.

We made a declaration in Nasser for the people of South Sudan

to be accorded the right of self-determination,

in an internationally supervised referendum, and this is

what happened.

And we called for democracy, respect of human right,

at that time.

That was not a betrayal.

And what succeeded today is the fact that by 2011 the people

of South Sudan, they declared independence after a referendum.

It was conducted in January 2011.

So that means that in the battle of ideas we succeeded.

We created South Sudan.

And South Sudan is now an independent state.

It wasn't a betrayal.

In 2013, I never betrayed Salva Kiir,

Salva Kiir attacked my residence, as he did again in 2016.

And in actual fact he is the one who has betrayed me,

the confidence that I had in him, he shattered it.

We have spoken before and you know that Salva Kiir accuses

you of treachery, and you accuse him of breaking promises and treachery.

All I would say to you is that people looking at your situation

from the outside look at your career from the 1990s to the present day

and they see a man who is politically very capable but also

a man who has, time after time,

appeared to put personal interests above the interests of his country,

and that seems to be what you are doing again today

by declaring war on the government in Juba,

the government of your own country, because you know that by doing so

you will prolong the agony and suffering of the 12 million

South Sudanese people.

In 1991 we declared to the whole world that South Sudan

deserve to exercise the right of self-determination.

This is a normal principle.

In 2013, and actually before 2013, while I was in

government, from the independence, we were debating the better forms

of governance in our country.

We were discussing corruption, I raised those issues.

The president didn't like that.

Let's not get stuck too much in the past.

You have put the interests of yourself

above your government by declaring war on

the government, knowing that that will mean prolonged suffering

for your people.

I have not declared war against the government.

What has happened is that the government declared

war against us.

The attempted assassination.

And also, the continuous pursuit, military pursuit, against us,

by ground forces, and by air, up to the Congo.

Now, this was an intentional...

..an intention to kill me.

There is no personal interests that I had in all these events that

you are enumerating.

1991, self-determination.

2013, reforms, which resulted in the agreement of 2015.

I'm looking at a statement of yours from September 25th

where you say that you are declaring war

on the regime, you call it a rogue regime, and your SPLA-IO

statement says:

We will wage a popular armed resistance against

the authoritarian fascist regime of President Salva Kiir.

So come on, let's be honest.

You have declared war on this government and you

know what that will bring.

I'm also being honest to you.

The war was started by Salva Kiir on 8 July, and he has continued it,

even when I was in the Congo, and it has been on.

What we are doing is reacting, and we're staging a resistance

against the regime,

which we truly call a dictatorship, and it is a fascist regime, yes.

Well, the international community looks in on what is happening

in South Sudan, and they are absolutely appalled by what they see

from all sides, frankly, but they are appalled

by the statement that I have just read out,

that came from your side.

They condemned it and they said, quote, "further fighting will not

solve South Sudan's pressing political and economic challenges.

It will only increase the suffering of the people,

worsen the humanitarian crisis, and further

inflame ethnic tension."

That is the truth, is it not?

And you will have to bear responsibility for that.

Well, I did not start the war.

It was started by Salva Kiir.

Salva Kiir, he is the legitimate, recognised leader of your country.

You were his vice president.

You chose to flee.

You chose to once again take up rebel military operations.

And you have chosen to call him a fascist and declare war upon him.

I repeat, you will have to bear responsibility for the consequences.

Stephen, when I was attacked, I was the first vice president

of the Republic.

Is there a country where a vice president would be attacked

by government troops?

This happened to me, it happened to me in my residence,

and for three days.

And I was pleading to him to stop his troops,

to control his troops.

He didn't control them.

And the attacks continued for 37 days.

If he knew that I had moved away from the capital,

why would he pursue me with ground troops, with air force,

using MI-24 helicopter gunships, daily bombardment, using four

helicopters at a time...

Do you care about the suffering of the people of your country?

Do you care about the egregious human rights abuses that have been

committed by both your forces and the forces

of the government, led by Salva Kiir,

or do you simply not think about the people of your country?

Stephen, I care a lot.

I live with the people.

It's Salva Kiir who is not living with the people.

I live with the people, daily.

I know what happens to them.

Let's take the example of Juba.

What happened, what the government troops did to the American car,

with people in it, they sprayed it with over 100 bullets,

in broad daylight.

What happened to that NGO's compound?

Which was attacked by more than a platoon, a company.

These are events that happened just recently that people

don't talk about.

What is happening in Equatoria now?

People are being killed, raped, they're being displaced.

A country like Uganda is receiving, daily,

thousands, and also countries like Ethiopia and Sudan

are receiving a lot of people.

These are the actions of government.

Not the actions of the SPLM-IO.

Listen, I promise you that we are endeavouring to put allegations

of abuses that have been made against the government forces,

to senior government officials.

That is my job, I will be doing that.

But right now I have got you on my programme,

and I need to put some of the allegations

of terrible abuses by your forces on the ground direct to you.

And I remember very well, when we spoke...

Yes.

Hang on, when we spoke in the spring of 2014

you promised me you were serious about respecting the rights

of the people of your country,

There had just been a terrible incident in Bentiu were allegations

suggested that your troops had massacred more than 280 people

in a marketplace and in a mosque, and you said to me,

we will investigate.

It turns out that right now you have conducted no proper investigation

into those allegations against your own forces.

Stephen, this allegation was investigated by an international

organisation.

When they showed me their investigation,

I agreed with it, and I said we would execute

their recommendations.

So this is a matter which was done in 2014.

And by the way, let me remind you, that incident happened before

we created SPLM/SPLA-IO.

It happened on April 15th,

before we met in Nasser to create SPLM/SPLA-IO.

So do you acknowledge...?

Hang on, I don't think you have ever said this in public before.

Are you now acknowledging what the UN mission in South Sudan

has said for a long time, that there is very compelling

evidence, they say, that around 287 people were massacred in a mosque

by your forces?

Are you now saying, yes, it is true?

And what have you done to the perpetrators?

I told you, this was investigated by an international organisation.

We looked at the report, we pinned it down to a group

of people, we know them.

However, many of them are now dead, because of the conflict.

So that, we never denied it.

But we told you, look, at that time, the SPLM/SPLA-IO

was not yet formed.

It was formed in Nasser in April, towards the middle of April.

And the incident happened days before the formation

of the SPLM/SPLA-IO.

But because the forces joined us, we accepted

to responsibility at that time.

But let me also remind you.

Since that time, what have you heard that the SPLM/SPLA-IO

forces have done?

None.

All right, well, listen, let's move on.

We don't have much time.

There are two key questions I need to put to you,

one is about the international presence in South Sudan,

The UN seems ready to send another 4,000 troops to join the 12,000

in the UN mission.

Salva Kiir's government is reluctant,

but apparently has agreed to it happening, but it has

not happened yet.

In your opinion, does the international community need

to send those 4,000 extra troops, and indeed more, to truly offer some

protection to the people of your country?

Well, we were the first to call for deployment of a third force.

And actually, on 11 July, we were the first to call for it.

By that time, though, we felt the deployment might take

a long time, because of debates within the EU and the UN that

might take time.

Now that the decision has been made this is good,

we welcome it.

However, it will not be effective, only if the peace agreement

is resuscitated, and the transitional government,

the transitional government of national unity,

is reinstituted and reconstituted.

What is your intention now?

Are you determined...

You say you can find safe areas, you can go back home

whenever you want.

So are you going to go back home?

Because I just look at one of the words of one of the most

respected analysts of South Sudan, Jok Madut Jok, who says

the best scenario of the country

is an impossible one, it is simply to get Riek Machar

and Salva Kiir to retire from politics so we can get them out

of the way, and get a caretaker government and fresh elections.

So will you return, get out of the way?

I am going to return to South Sudan.

Half of South Sudan is a liberated area controlled by the SPLM/SPLA-IO.

When?

Now.

the peace agreement.

As soon as I leave this country.

The peace agreement has been abrogated and collapsed,

so a road map for taking South Sudan to a democratic state

where elections would be held in 2018.

Now, because President Salva Kiir does not want democratic

and transparent and fair elections to be conducted,

he attacked us, he has restarted

the war.

But I am hoping that wise leaders in the region,

and in Africa, and the rest of the world, will throw up

a political process which will bring about peace again,

and the resuscitation of the peace agreement,

and the reconstitution of the transitional government

of national unity.

Well, we will keep watching the situation with great interest.

But for now we have run out of time.

Riek Machar, I thank you very much for being on Hardtalk.

Thank you, Stephen, thank you very much.

Hello again, good morning.

If you managed to dodge the showers yesterday,

it was quite warm in the sunshine.