Enough Is Enough: NAS calls on South Sudan’s workers – organise, resist, and reclaim your dignity!

The struggle for your rights and dignity is part and parcel of our struggle – Gen Thomas Cirillo

For decades under Salva Kiir’s regime, South Sudan’s workers have been robbed of their wages, their dignity, and their rights. On International Workers’ Day, the National Salvation Front (NAS) is drawing a line: the exploitation must end, and it is calling on every worker in the country to stand up and fight back.

In a defiant Labour Day message issued on 1 May 2026 from NAS General Headquarters, Compatriot Thomas Cirillo Swaka, Chairman and Commander-in-Chief, honoured the courage of South Sudan’s working people and condemned the Juba regime’s systematic abuse of the very citizens it claims to govern.

“The workers of South Sudan continue to suffer from deprivation of their rights and abuse of their dignity,” Compatriot Cirillo declared. “Their lives have become a daily endurance of inflated taxes, extortions, low wages, unhealthy and unsafe working environments and unpaid salaries.”

This is not a crisis of misfortune. It is a crisis of power, and NAS is naming those responsible.

The Workers the Regime Has Forgotten

While Juba’s elites accumulate wealth and political appointments, a different South Sudan endures in silence. NAS refuses to let that silence go unnoticed.

The Labour Day message paid direct tribute to those the regime has abandoned: the woman at her market stall, working from dawn to dusk to keep her children in school; the construction labourer swinging a hammer so his family can eat; and the civil servant – educated, dedicated, essential – who has not seen a salary in months, yet is still expected to show up, stay quiet, and serve.

“They are the bedrocks of our families and the unsung heroes of our country,” the message stated.

These workers are not statistics. They are the backbone of South Sudan, and they are being bled dry.

A Regime That Preys on Its Own People

The NAS message laid bare the reality facing working South Sudanese: extortionate taxation, rampant extraction by those in uniform and in office, wages that cannot sustain life, workplaces that are dangerous and unregulated, and most damning of all, salaries simply not paid.

Civil servants across the country have been “intimidated and subdued to work without salaries,” the statement said. This is not negligence. It is a deliberate system in which workers are coerced into labour while the regime pockets the resources meant for their pay.

For years, this has been the lived reality for tens of thousands of South Sudanese. NAS says it will not pretend otherwise.

Rise Up: The Call to Organise

Compatriot Cirillo’s message was not merely a tribute – it was a mobilisation. NAS issued a clear and urgent call to every worker in South Sudan: organise, unite, and demand what is yours.

“The Leadership of the National Salvation Front (NAS) calls on workers in South Sudan to organise and struggle for their rights in the country,” the message stated.

This is the language of a movement that sees workers’ rights not as a side issue, but as central to the liberation of South Sudan. NAS pledged that its own struggle and the struggle of working people are one and the same – and that it will not relent until every worker lives with full rights and dignity.

“The struggle for your rights and dignity is part and parcel of our struggle,” Compatriot Cirillo said, “and we too will not relent in this struggle until you live with full rights and dignity.”

South Sudan’s workers have carried this country on their backs long enough. The time to organise is now.

….we too will not relent in this struggle until you live with full rights and dignity.

Happy Workers’ Day