Sudan’s Hero Dr. Garang is alive
By James Okuk Solomon
July 30, 2007 — 30th July 2005 was a day which shocked Sudan, Africa and the whole world. It was a dark day for the cronies, the neutrals, and the enemies of the hero of peace and the voice of the poor marginalized Sudanese, Dr. John Garang de Mabior. For his cronies it was a gloomy day that robbed them from the charisma and wisdom they had never ever known. For his enemies it was a dull day that hoaxed them from an opponent who made their lives tactically busy. And for his neutrals, it was a hazy day that fuddled them into wordlessness.
Though it was affirmed by one of his ribs that the equatorial hilly terrain overpowered and crashed the gloomy Ugandan Presidential Chopper, Dr. Garang’s lovers wouldn’t believe it was not a foul play. When they got convinced that he was gone for a mission-of-no-return, they burst out with vengeance against the racial enemy, ‘Jallaba’. They couldn’t bear to leave him die alone without daring more deaths! They went on rampage and became wild like merciless lethal soldiers who knew neither commands nor sand table strategic plans, except the blood of the enemy and associates. Each one of them was tacitly crying “oh my people who will lead me home! Dr. Garang had died, he had not risen and he will not come again.
Bad heaven, my African library had been burnt and smashed by evildoers. Why a hell and which peace! My Moses is gone who shall be my Joshua?” The whole world run up and down with their TVs and Radios to find the Lioness and air her voice and picture live to calm the people to revert the grieving clashes and brutality. Lest, had the widow Rebecca Nyandeng known that Dr. Garang was not her lover alone! His supporters proved to her that she was not the only Lioness who could run wild to avenging her Lion.
Some of his lovers reached the extent of introvertingly avenging on themselves when they failed to get someone to blame directly – traumas, heart attacks, shocks and collapses. The people got blinded, irrationaled and bittered with hatred of the unevidenced killers of the rare iconic SPLM/A Doctor, the malicious Arabs. Nonetheless, with God’s help, SPLM/A top leaders got awakened by the recollective questions: Is it the end of everything? Is SPLM/A dead with the hero Dr. Garang? Are we also dead? Is he not a mortal and a back-to-dust human being? How long shall the grief imprisons us? They took the courage to assemble in New Site and chose the next to their top guerrilla ranks, Commander Salva Kiir Mayardit to get into the unbeatable SPLM/A leadership shoes. Some thoughts the shoes were too big to fit him but by consensus they said ‘he will learn on the job’ and avoided to say ‘he will mess up the job.’
The reference to his history of loggerhead with late Dr. Garang in Rumbek intimidated the ones who might have thought otherwise. He took the lead of SPLM/A vehicle, which he thought would not afford to have a back gear as long as its top leaders remain united and consultative in its steering wheel – no ‘loyalist’, no ‘orphans’ and no ‘Garang’s sons’ – all shall be treated as equal comrades. Before the casket of the Lion was laid underneath to rest and in a public witnessing in Juba town, both the SPLM/A and NCP/SAF Chairmen assured the Lioness that she is not going to miss the lost because they will ever be there to shoulder her and the orphaned kin. Both of them assured the public that they will never kill the CPA but nourish it to its desired end.
Now, in a day like this, someone who has been following political events of Sudan is forced to ask: Is the Lioness Rebecca being pushed to mourn her husband after two years? Is the CPA being killed by cold and slow growth? The answer is ‘No’. Our iconic hero Dr. Garang is still so much alive in so many things – history, archives, names, etc. He lives in the memories of his admirers, dislikers and neutrals. He lives in the CPA and the constitutions of the four levels of Sudan government (though Africa is said to be a graveyard for best constitutions because of attitudes unconstitutionalism). He lives in the regrets and wishes of the disappointed people from the current SPLM/GOSS institutional problems of corruption, tribalism, nepotism, alcoholism, etc. He will always be alive when both unity of the Sudan and separation of Southern Sudan are made attractive by decentralized peace and development of/for/with/in the underdeveloped Sudanese.
*The author is a PhD young student in the University of Nairobi in the area of political philosophy. He can be reached on [email protected]