Statecraft & Independence
Landmark
Rebecca Nyandeng De Mabior
born 1956
Vice-President, and the Mother of the Nation
Landmark is level 2 of 4 in the South Sudan Hall of Fame: a first that opened a door, or the pre-eminent figure of their generation in this country. See how the levels work.
Why they are here
Widow of John Garang and a political figure in her own right, known across South Sudan as the Mother of the Nation, and a vice-president in the unity government.
Rebecca Nyandeng Chol trained as a social worker and married John Garang in 1977, six years before he founded the Sudan People's Liberation Movement.
She was not a spectator to the war. She organised for the movement, worked on the welfare of soldiers' families and of the displaced, and founded schools and programmes for the children the fighting had orphaned — including a girls' education effort at a time when almost no southern Sudanese girls were in school.
When Garang died in a helicopter crash three weeks after the peace agreement made him First Vice-President of Sudan, she publicly urged calm as Juba erupted, and that intervention is widely credited with preventing the deal from collapsing at the moment it was most fragile. She served as a minister in the government of Southern Sudan and then as an adviser to the president.
She broke with Salva Kiir as the country slid into civil war in 2013 and spent years in opposition, and under the revitalised peace agreement of 2020 she became one of South Sudan's vice-presidents, with the gender and youth portfolio. She is called Mama Rebecca, and the Mother of the Nation, across the country.
She was not a spectator to the war. She organised for the movement, worked on the welfare of soldiers' families and of the displaced, and founded schools and programmes for the children the fighting had orphaned — including a girls' education effort at a time when almost no southern Sudanese girls were in school.
When Garang died in a helicopter crash three weeks after the peace agreement made him First Vice-President of Sudan, she publicly urged calm as Juba erupted, and that intervention is widely credited with preventing the deal from collapsing at the moment it was most fragile. She served as a minister in the government of Southern Sudan and then as an adviser to the president.
She broke with Salva Kiir as the country slid into civil war in 2013 and spent years in opposition, and under the revitalised peace agreement of 2020 she became one of South Sudan's vice-presidents, with the gender and youth portfolio. She is called Mama Rebecca, and the Mother of the Nation, across the country.
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