Garang : Last of Africa’s liberation chiefs

Editorial, The New Vision

August 2, 2005 — The passing of John Garang in rather tragic circumstances is a shock to many who follow African politics.

For a man who spent the better part of his life risking it before enemy bullet to have gone down the way he did, to the vagaries of weather, is probably not what many would have expected.

But then again, none of us has any say or control in how we shall depart from this world, so we can only focus on the hither and now. As the head of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), Garang was the embodiment of the aspirations of southern Sudanese peoples, racially African, and politically and socially marginalized.

And in leading the SPLM in what was, until a few months ago, Africa’s longest civil war, he was the last of Africa’s liberation chiefs.

Rather in the mould of Nyerere in Tanzania, Mozambique’s Eduardo Mondlane and Samora Machel, Angola’s Jonas Savimbi (while still fighting Portuguese colonialists), Nelson Mandela in South Africa, our Yoweri Museveni, and Gamal Abdul Nasir in Egypt, Garang was a larger-than-life figure whose personality and personal convictions tend to shape the destiny of nations.

How far his legacy will last remains to be seen. It is obviously to Sudan’s eternal advantage that he passed away after signing that peace deal with the government in Khartoum, and that the new political dispensation has been worked out and accepted. Had he died in the midst of battle, it would be difficult to know what direction the liberation war would have taken.

But the peace process is still at a precarious stage. Already southern Sudanese are rioting, protesting their hero’s passing. President Umar Bashir has a delicate balancing act to play, and so would Garang’s successor as vice-president, who will almost certainly come from the SPLM.

All Sudanese, Africans and the world community should ensure that Garang’s death does not scuttle the peace.