By Isaac Chol Aguer<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
What falls from above is always carried by the ground. <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n That\u2019s a universal law no government or council can break. In South Sudan, we\u2019ve perfected the role of the ground \u2014 enduring every sudden decision, power struggle, and tax initiative.<\/p>\n But \u2014 to be fair \u2014 not everything that falls from the sky is bad. Sometimes good things land too, bringing real improvements and opening closed doors.<\/p>\n The latest clash wasn\u2019t about war or peace, but about who gets to milk the suffering citizens. The Central Equatoria State Government (CES) and the South Sudan Revenue Authority (SSRA). Who has the right to collect revenue from the exhausted public.<\/p>\n The SSRA \u2014 in a burst of zeal \u2014 decided to divide Juba into ten tax collection zones without glancing at the constitution or consulting the CES government and the Juba City Council. The CES cabinet officially condemned this unilateral move in its latest session, declaring it unconstitutional and lacking consultation.<\/p>\n We\u2019re no strangers to taxation here. The Juba municipality is an old master in squeezing money. It once confiscated a widow\u2019s chairs in Konyo-Konyo market or shut down an orphan\u2019s kiosk for failing to pay the so-called \u201cMayer service fee\u201d \u2014 a Mayer whose main concern is preserving his prestige, expanding his motorcade, and keeping his car spotless.<\/p>\n This obsession with taxation has sparked grassroots responses. In Nyakuron, for example, as soon as the rain falls, local youths patch a rickety wooden bridge and demand a thousand pounds to cross. Unpaid? You swim.<\/p>\n Then there\u2019s Malakia Street \u2014 a road devoured by rain every season. Every year, idle youths fill it with dirt and gravel and wait for a penny from passing boda-boda riders and luxury car drivers.<\/p>\n The real burden falls not on the merchants \u2014 they simply raise prices. If taxes go up, so does your morning cup of tea. In Juba, tea has become a precise gauge of taxation \u2014 the more tax zones, the more expensive your cup of tea.<\/p>\n The problem isn\u2019t taxation or revenue itself. It\u2019s that people pay and receive nothing in return. No paved roads. No drainage. No services. Everyone rushes to collect money, while the citizens rush to avoid wading through ankle-deep rainwater.<\/p>\n A country emerging from war shouldn\u2019t become a tax collector with no services. Real nations are built on fairness before taxes, and services before levies.<\/p>\n May God guide those in power to turn revenue battles into a competition to serve people \u2014 not a race to divide tax zones. Perhaps one day, we\u2019ll live in a nation that taxes to serve, not to punish the poor.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Isaac Chol Aguer What falls from above is always carried by the ground. That\u2019s a universal law no government or council can break. In South Sudan, we\u2019ve perfected the role of the ground \u2014 enduring every sudden decision, power struggle, and tax initiative. But \u2014 to be fair[Read More…]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":37204,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[87,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oped","category-politics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Isaac-Aguer-1-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37285"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37285\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37286,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37285\/revisions\/37286"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nBetween whom?<\/p>\n
\nAnd what\u2019s at stake?<\/p>\n