Statecraft & Independence
Peerless
John Garang
1945 – 2005
Led the movement that won South Sudan its independence
Peerless is level 1 of 4 in the South Sudan Hall of Fame: changed the field itself. Tell the country's story without them and the story breaks. See how the levels work.
Why they are here
He led the SPLM through twenty-two years of war and signed the peace that made South Sudan possible, then died in a helicopter crash three weeks after taking office.
John Garang de Mabior was orphaned young in Bor, put through school by relatives, and took a degree at Grinnell College in Iowa and a doctorate in agricultural economics at Iowa State, writing on the development of the Sudanese south.
He was a colonel in the Sudanese army in 1983 when he was sent to Bor to put down a mutiny by southern soldiers. He joined it instead, and founded the Sudan People's Liberation Movement and its army. The war that followed ran twenty-two years and killed something on the order of two million people, most of them civilians and most of them from hunger and disease.
Garang's own position was not secession. He argued for a New Sudan — one country, secular, democratic, in which the periphery was not governed as a colony of Khartoum — and held that line against commanders who wanted independence, at the cost of a damaging split in 1991. The Comprehensive Peace Agreement he signed in January 2005 ended the war, gave the south autonomy, and promised the referendum that, six years later, made it a country.
He was sworn in as First Vice-President of Sudan on 9 July 2005. On 30 July his helicopter went down in the Imatong mountains returning from Uganda, killing him. South Sudan voted for independence in 2011 with his widow among its leaders and his argument about how to hold the country together unresolved.
He was a colonel in the Sudanese army in 1983 when he was sent to Bor to put down a mutiny by southern soldiers. He joined it instead, and founded the Sudan People's Liberation Movement and its army. The war that followed ran twenty-two years and killed something on the order of two million people, most of them civilians and most of them from hunger and disease.
Garang's own position was not secession. He argued for a New Sudan — one country, secular, democratic, in which the periphery was not governed as a colony of Khartoum — and held that line against commanders who wanted independence, at the cost of a damaging split in 1991. The Comprehensive Peace Agreement he signed in January 2005 ended the war, gave the south autonomy, and promised the referendum that, six years later, made it a country.
He was sworn in as First Vice-President of Sudan on 9 July 2005. On 30 July his helicopter went down in the Imatong mountains returning from Uganda, killing him. South Sudan voted for independence in 2011 with his widow among its leaders and his argument about how to hold the country together unresolved.
- Wikipedia — John Garang
- United Nations Security Council — Statement on the death of John Garang
- Council on Foreign Relations — Ten Years Later: Taking Stock of Sudan's Comprehensive Peace Agreement
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