This article addresses the social and political implications of wartime and post-war resource capture in South Sudan. It argues that predation by armed groups during the second civil war (1983–2005) initiated a process of dominant class formation, and demonstrates how, through various strategies of resource capture and kinship networks, commanders from the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) and other factions formed a new aristocracy – a “dominant class” that thinks of itself as “the best”….