Situation in South Sudan ‘totally unacceptable’

Events in South Sudan, where hundreds died in four days of fierce fighting between forces loyal to the country’s rival leaders, are “totally unacceptable”, African Union Commission president Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma said Wednesday.

“What is happening again in South Sudan is totally unacceptable,” she said in Rwanda’s capital Kigali ahead of an AU summit due to begin Sunday.

“Governments and leadership are there to protect the vulnerable, to serve the people, not to prey on them and be the cause of their suffering,” Dlamini-Zuma said.

“Hardly two months after the formation of this government of national unity, the belligerents are back in the trenches and the people of South Sudan, instead of celebrating five years of independence, once again are barricaded in their homes or must flee like sheep before the wolves,” she said.

This weekend’s summit will be overshadowed by the ongoing conflict in South Sudan and the protracted political crisis in Burundi, both of which have made the AU appear weak and ineffectual.