The recent pronouncements by South Sudan’s Vice President Taban Deng Gai regarding the Ilemi Triangle has lingered in the archives of colonial cartography for over a century. Delivered during a cabinet meeting these statements have brought renewed attention to a territorial question that many had assumed was permanently settled if not formally resolved. The Vice President’s metaphorical invocation of the two horns of the bull to describe the cartographic excision of South Sudanese territory has succeeded in capturing regional attention and stirring nationalist sentiment. The gap between assertion and operational capacity brings up questions about the nature of sovereignty in contemporary Africa, the persistence of colonial era boundary disputes and the interplay between domestic politics and foreign policy in weak states.

The Ilemi Triangle contested status derives from a series of administrative lines drawn by British colonial authorities that were never intended to serve as definitive international borders. The foundational document in this cartographic confusion is the 1914 straight parallel which established a theoretical boundary between the Anglo Egyptian Sudan and British East Africa. However subsequent adjustments particularly the lines and patrol lines developed to accommodate the seasonal movements of Turkana pastoralists created a palimpsest of overlapping claims that successive governments have been unable to resolve.

The 1950 Sudanese Patrol Line which Kenya has effectively treated as its de facto northern boundary since the late 1970s presents the most recent colonial era attempt to bring order to this frontier. However it was never formally ratified by all interested parties, leaving the legal status of the triangle perpetually unresolved.

South Sudan inherited Sudan’s claim to the Ilemi Triangle upon its independence in 2011 in which a territorial inheritance that has been guarded in principle but rarely asserted in practice. The legal basis of this claim rests on the principle of uti possidetis juris which is the post colonial norm that newly independent states should inherit the colonial boundaries they possessed at the moment of independence. The application of this principle to the Ilemi Triangle is complicated by the fact that the territory was never clearly and part of Sudan under any recognized boundary line.

Kenya’s position by contrast is grounded in the fact of effective administration. Since the late 1970s under the presidency of Daniel arap Moi Kenya has treated the northern line as its boundary, incorporating the area into its administrative structures, deploying security forces to protect Turkana pastoralists and including the territory in its national mapping exercises. This de facto control maintained through consistent administrative action and security presence over nearly half a century presents a form of prescriptive entitlement that carries weight in the conduct of interstate relations even if it lacks formal diplomatic recognition.

The Vice President’s invocation of the two horns of the bull presents a particularly problematic aspect of his intervention as it reveals either a fundamental misunderstanding of South Sudan’s territorial disputes or a deliberate attempt to conflate separate issues for domestic political consumption. According to Deng Gai’s remarks, the map in question failed to show important areas including the two horns of the bull which he specified as referring to northern regions. He further asserted that the two horns of the bull, one in the eastern area of the Western Bahr el Ghazal should not be there. Horfart an Hasa and Kafia Kingi of our territory have also been cut out by the Kenyan Government.This statement is geographically and politically inaccurate. Kafia Kingi and Hofrat an Nahas are located in Western Bahr el Ghazal on South Sudan’s border with Sudan and have nothing whatsoever to do with Kenya. The conflation of these distinct territorial disputes raises questions about the precision of the Vice President’s understanding of the issues at hand.

The Kafia Kingi roughly 10,000 square kilometer area bordering the Central African Republic and Sudan’s South Darfur state has been the subject of a separate and distinct border dispute between South Sudan and Sudan since the former’s independence. Rich in copper with reported deposits of gold and uranium and serving historically as a haven for smugglers and armed groups including remnants of the Lord’s Resistance Army Kafia Kingi has been largely controlled by Sudan despite South Sudan’s claim based on the 1 January 1956 independence line.The area has also been affected by the conflict in Sudan with reports of Rapid Support Forces activity in the zone amid the ongoing civil war, adding a layer of security complexity to an already contentious territorial claim. Hofrat an Nahas meaning “Copper Hole” in Arabic is a specific location within this broader disputed area notable for its mineral wealth and its symbolic importance in South Sudan’s narrative of territorial integrity.

By attributing the cutting out of Kafia Kingi and Hofrat an Nahas to the Kenyan Government, Deng Gai has committed a factual error that undermines the credibility of his broader territorial narrative. This conflation may serve a purpose allowing him to present a unified front of external encroachment against South Sudan’s territorial integrity but it does not strengthen his case against Kenya. In fact it may weaken it by demonstrating a lack of precision in his understanding of the issues.It is possible that this is a deliberate strategy, intended to paint Kenya as part of a pattern of neighboring states carving up South Sudanese territory. Yet even if this is the intention, the inaccuracy is enough to be noted by informed observers and may ultimately prove counterproductive. The metaphor of the horns of the bull is evocative drawing on South Sudanese pastoralist symbolism and perhaps invoking the rough outline of the country on a map but its analytical value is limited by the conflation it enables.

The least likely scenario with a probability approaching zero given current circumstances is a formal resolution of the dispute favorable to South Sudan. This would require a fundamental shift in the regional balance of power, the emergence of a unified and capable South Sudanese state and a decision by Kenya to cede territory that it has effectively controlled for decades.

Vice President Taban Deng Gai’s recent statements on the Ilemi Triangle while potent present a performance of sovereignty from a position of weakness rather than a genuine challenge to Kenya’s de facto control. The conflation of the Ilemi dispute with the separate issue of Kafia Kingi and Hofrat an Nahas reveals a conceptual confusion that undermines the analytical coherence of his position even as it serves the domestic political purpose of presenting a unified front against external encroachment. Kenya’s administrative control of the Ilemi Triangle maintained consistently since the late 1970s and supported by effective state capacity remains the dominant reality on the ground. South Sudan’s current path of internal division offers little prospect of changing this balance. The Ilemi Triangle will likely remain a zone of ambiguity claimed by one state and administered by another and contested through occasional violence for the foreseeable future.

Samiya Mohammed, Researcher, Horn Review