John Garang de Mabior

The SPLM knows full well that it must depend on its own army to protect it, a pillar of the philosophy of the late Commander in Chief, Colonel John Garang de Mabior...

Its construction was halted in 1983 by attacks by the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (now the Southern government army) though, armed with his PhD in agriculture, the late SPLA chief, Colonel John Garang de Mabior, greatly favoured the Egyptian-backed project...

Years of fighting ensued between Riek’s Nuer and the mostly Dinka forces of the SPLA Mainstream leader, the late John Garang de Mabior...

This was fed by the ecstatic welcome for the late SPLM Chairman, John Garang de Mabior, in Khartoum in July 2005 and the fact that many Northerners embrace his vision of a ‘New Sudan’, politically secular and giving some of the Nile Valley elite’s power to the country’s marginalised peoples...

There is still, though, a group in the SPLM that believes in the New Sudan that lay at the core of the CPA for many of its foreign architects, who counted on John Garang to carry this through...

As a result, the majority of the army, once dominated by Dinka, is made up of Nuer, at least according to the Chief of Defence Staff, James Hoth Mai, himself a Nuer, albeit a loyalist of the late SPLM/A chief, Colonel John Garang de Mabior...

Efforts to bring the SSDF into the SPLA had repeatedly failed because John Garang feared that such large numbers of Nuer would undermine the dominance of his own Bor Dinka clan...

Rek Dinka from northern Bahr el Ghazal, Salva was in Anyanya before joining the SPLA at its birth as a major; he later became Chief of Defence Staff, but was never part of John Garang de Mabior’s inner clique...

This fits with the SPLM's re-emphasis on the 'New Sudan' beloved of its late leader, John Garang de Mabior (AC Vol 50 No 20)...

' It is assumed that if the referendum takes place in 2011 despite NCP blocking, Southerners will overwhelmingly vote for independence, yet some in the SPLM still want John Garang de Mabior's'New Sudan', as do many Northerners...

Many still believe that the helicopter crash which killed SPLM Chairman John Garang de Mabior in 2005 was no accident and there is fear that his successor, GOSS President and national Vice-President Salva Kiir Mayardit, could be the next target...

The message for Northerners is: 'You thought John Garang was your saviour, but the SPLM now cannot save you...

That is why the NIF, carefully rebranded as the National Congress Party (NCP), confounded forecasters, from Egypt to Eritrea to the late Colonel John Garang de Mabior, who taunted Brigadier General Omer Hassan Ahmed el Beshir as a 'junior rebel' (AC Vol 30 Nos 15 & 16)...