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John Garang

 
Mideast & N. Africa Encyclopedia: John Garang
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1945 -

Sudanese advocate for the Bor Dinka people.

Born in Wagkulei, John Garang is from the Bor Dinka people in the southern Sudan and the most influential advocate on their behalf in the face of the Khartoum government. He was educated at Catholic mission schools in southern Sudan and graduated from high school in Tanzania. In 1970 he joined the southern resistance movement, AnyNya, which was later incorporated into the Sudanese armed forces (after the Addis Ababa negotiated peace in 1972). He rose to the rank of colonel in the Sudanese army.

Garang received his bachelor of science degree from Grinnell College in Iowa in 1971 and later returned to the United States for military training at Fort Benning, Georgia. In 1981 he earned a Ph.D. in economics from Iowa State University, focusing on economic development of the southern Sudan. Garang taught at the University of Khartoum and the Khartoum military academy.

The Addis Ababa peace accords broke down after Islamic law was made state law in Sudan. Garang was sent to the south in 1983 to put down the mutinies of southern officers led by Kerubino Kwanyin and William Bany. Instead he joined the revolt and he and a group of other officers and civilians founded the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), of which he became chairman, and the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), of which he became commander. Garang was responding to attempts by the Sudanese government under Muhammad Jaʿfar Numeiri to eliminate local autonomy in southern Sudan, which had been agreed to in Addis Ababa in 1972. Garang favored a federal relationship between the southern regions and the government in Khartoum, and also objected to Khartoum's decision to divide the previously united southern region along ethnic lines. He opposed the imposition in September 1983 of shariʿa, or Islamic law, on the non-Muslim south. Garang wrote later that in founding the SPLM his aim was "to create a socialist system that affords democratic and human rights to all nationalities and guarantees freedom of religion, beliefs and outlooks." His movement was quickly categorized as being communist and secessionist, although he denied the validity of both labels.

At various times Garang received support from Libya (until 1985), from Ethiopia (until the fall of Mengistu Haile Mariam in 1991), and newly independent Eritrea on Sudan's eastern border, especially under the rule of Isaias Afwerki. Garang found it difficult to attain political unity among his followers because of their diverse ethnic loyalties; for example, he sought to divide the Nuer from the Dinka but in doing so intensified the war. He has also had personal conflicts with his commanders. In the protracted civil war against the Sudan government in Khartoum, neither side has been able to win in this war of attrition, nor has peace been successfully negotiated.

In 1989 an Islamist military regime backed by the National Islamic Front and its leader, Hasan alTurabi, became intransigent on the issue of removing shariʿa as state law. Still not seeking secession, Garang tried to make southern Sudan a world political issue. In this effort he was helped by U.S. Congressperson Mickey Leland, who welcomed him to congressional hearings on Sudan in July 1989. But Leland died in a plane accident shortly afterward. During the 1990s southern Sudan was in the international limelight because of severe food shortages and famine; displacement of humans and loss of life estimated at one to two million persons; the "lost boys," young refugees resettled in the United States; and allegations about the revival of slavery. Since 1995 Garang has been military commander of the opposition National Democratic Alliance forces in Ethiopia and Eritrea, as well as remaining head of the SPLM.

Bibliography

Garang, John. The Call for Democracy in Sudan, 2d revised edition, edited by Mansour Khalid. New York; London: Kegan Paul, 1992.

"John De Mabior Garang." In Historical Dictionary of the Sudan, 3d edition, edited by Richard A. Lobban, Jr., Robert S. Kramer, and Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban. Lanham, MD, and London: Scarecrow Press, 2002.

— PAUL MARTIN, UPDATED BY CAROLYN FLUEHR-LOBBAN

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Wikipedia: John Garang
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John Garang de Mabior

In office
January 9, 2005 – July 30, 2005
Vice President Salva Kiir
Succeeded by Salva Kiir
In office
January 9, 2005 – July 30, 2005
President Omar al-Bashir
Preceded by Ali Osman Taha
Succeeded by Salva Kiir
Vacant until August 11, 2005
Born June 23, 1945
Bor (Jonglei, Sudan)
Died July 30, 2005 (aged 60)
New Site (Southern Sudan, Sudan)
Political party SPLM
Spouse(s) Rebecca Nyandeng De Mabior

Dr John Garang de Mabior (June 23, 1945 – July 30, 2005) was the First Vice President of Sudan and former leader of the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army.

Contents

Early years

A member of the Dinka ethnic group, Garang was born into a poor family in Wanglei village in Bor, Sudan, in the upper Nile region of Sudan (currently Jonglei State). An orphan by the age of ten, he had his fees for school paid by a relative, going to schools in Wau and then Rumbek. In 1962 he joined the first Sudanese civil war, but because he was so young, the leaders encouraged him and others his age to seek an education. Because of the ongoing fighting, Garang was forced to attend his secondary education in Tanzania. After winning a scholarship, he went on to earn a B.A. in economics in 1969 from Grinnell College in Iowa, USA. He was known there for his bookishness. He was offered another scholarship to pursue graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley, but chose to return to Tanzania and study East African agricultural economics as a Thomas J. Watson Fellow at the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM). At UDSM, he was a member of the University Students' African Revolutionary Front. However, Garang soon decided to return to Sudan and join the rebels.[citation needed] There is much erroneous reporting that Garang met and befriended Yoweri Museveni, future president of Uganda, at this time; while both Garang and Museveni were students at UDSM in the 1960s, they did not attend at the same time.[1]

The civil war ended with the Addis Ababa agreement of 1972 and Garang, like many rebels, was absorbed into the Sudanese military. For eleven years, he was a career soldier and rose from the rank of captain to colonel after taking the Infantry Officers Advanced Course at Fort Benning, Georgia. During this period he took four years academic leave and received a master's degree in agricultural economics and a Ph.D. in economics at Iowa State University, after writing a thesis on the agricultural development of Southern Sudan. By 1983, Col. Garang was serving as senior instructor in the military academy in Wadi Sayedna 21 km from the centre of ( Omdurman)where he instructed the cadiets for more than 4 years and later he nominated to serve in the military researches department in the Army HQ in khartoum.

Rebel leader

In 1983, Garang went to Bor, ostensibly to mediate with about 500 southern government soldiers in battalion 105 who were resisting being rotated to posts in the north. However, Garang was already part of a conspiracy among some officers in the Southern Command arranging for the defection of battalion 105 to the anti-government rebels. When the government attacked Bor in May and the battalion pulled out, Garang went by an alternate route to join them in the rebel stronghold in Ethiopia. By the end of July, Garang had brought over 3000 rebel soldiers under his control through the newly-created Sudan People's Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/M), which was opposed to military rule and Islamic dominance of the country, and encouraged other army garrisons to mutiny against the Islamic law imposed on the country by the government.[2] This action marked the commonly agreed upon beginning of the Second Sudanese Civil War, which resulted in one and half million deaths over twenty years of conflict. Although Garang was Christian and most of southern Sudan is non-Muslim (mostly animist), he did not initially focus on the religious aspects of the war.

The SPLA gained the backing of Libya, Uganda and Ethiopia. Garang and his army controlled a large part of the southern regions of the country, named New Sudan. He claimed his troops' courage comes from "the conviction that we are fighting a just cause. That is something North Sudan and its people don't have." Critics suggested financial motivations to his rebellion, noting that much of Sudan's oil wealth lies in the south of the country.

Garang in a crowd of supporters

Garang refused to participate in the 1985 interim government or 1986 elections, remaining a rebel leader. However, the SPLA and government signed a peace agreement on 9 January 2005 in Nairobi, Kenya. On 9 July 2005, he was sworn in as vice-president, the second most powerful person in the country, following a ceremony in which he and President Omar al-Bashir signed a power-sharing constitution. He also became the administrative head of a southern Sudan with limited autonomy for the six years before a scheduled referendum of possible secession. No Christian or southerner had ever held such a high government post. Commenting after the ceremony, Garang stated, "I congratulate the Sudanese people, this is not my peace or the peace of al-Bashir, it is the peace of the Sudanese people."

The United States State Department argued that Garang's presence in the government would have helped solve the Darfur conflict in western Sudan, but others consider these claims "excessively optimistic". [3]

Death

In late July 2005, Garang died after the Ugandan presidential Mi-172 helicopter he was flying in crashed. He had been returning from a meeting in Rwakitura with long-time ally President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda. Sudanese state television initially reported that Garang's craft had landed safely, but Abdel Basset Sabdarat, the country's Information Minister, went on TV hours later to deny the report. Soon afterwards, a statement released by the office of Sudanese President Omar el-Bashir confirmed that a Ugandan presidential helicopter crashed into "a mountain range in southern Sudan because of poor visibility and this resulted in the death of Dr. John Garang DeMabior, six of his colleagues and seven Ugandan crew members." [1] His body was flown to New Site, a southern Sudanese settlement near the scene of the crash, where former rebel fighters and civilian supporters gathered to pay their respects to Garang. Garang's funeral took place on August 3 in Juba.[4] His widow Rebecca Nyandeng De Mabior promised to continue his work stating "In our culture we say, if you kill the lion, you see what the lioness will do."[5]

There are a number of e-mail scams making the rounds, claiming to be from John Garang's relatives, asking for help the release Garang's legacy of millions by offering the recipient a 20% share of the total sum. Some scams use the names Rebecca Nyandeng De Mabior, his widow, or Anok Garang, Anok John Garang, Ayiik Garang, or Pamela John Garang, and claim to be Garang's daughters. These are of course scams.

Questions about death

Garang waving shortly before his death.

Both the Sudanese government and the head of the SPLA blamed the weather for the accident. There are, however, doubts as to the truth of this, especially amongst the rank-and-file of the SPLA. Yoweri Museveni, the Ugandan president, claims that the possibility of "external factors" having played a role could not be eliminated.[citation needed]

Effect on peace

Considered instrumental in ending the civil war, the effect of Garang's death upon the peace deal is uncertain. The government declared three days of national mourning, which did not stop large scale rioting in Khartoum which killed at least 24 as youths from southern Sudan attacked northern Sudanese and clashed with security forces. After three days of violence, the death toll had risen to 84 [2]. Unrest was also reported in other parts of the country. Leading members of the SPLM, including Garang's successor Salva Kiir Mayardit, stated that the peace process would continue. Analysts suggested that the death could result in anything from a new democratic openness in the SPLA, which some have criticized for being overly dominated by Garang, to an outbreak of open warfare between the various southern factions that Garang had brought together.

Partial bibliography of his publications

Garang, John 1987 John Garang Speaks. M. Khalid, ed. London: Kegan Paul International.

See also

References

  • Aufstand in der Dreistadt by Thomas Schimidinger in Jungle World Nr.32: August 10 2005; ISSN 1613-0766
  1. ^ Prunier, Gérard (2009). Africa's World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-537420-9. , p. 80
  2. ^ Johnson, D. The Root Causes of Sudan's Civil Wars, Indiana University Press, 2003, pp. 61-2.
  3. ^ Reeves, Eric (2005-08-02). "Untimely Death". The New Republic. http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=w050801&s=reeves080205. 
  4. ^ "Sudan bids rebel leader farewell". BBC News. 2005-08-06. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4126370.stm. 
  5. ^ Wax, Emily (2005-08-30). "Widow of Sudan's Garang Steps In to Continue His Mission". The Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/29/AR2005082901861_pf.html. Retrieved 2007-04-25. 

External links

v • d • e
Presidents of Southern Sudan
John Garang • Salva Kiir Mayardit
 Flag of Southern Sudan

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