by Majok Marier
JOHN GARANG AND THE SPLA
John Garang was the leader of the Sudanese Peoples’ Liberation Army, the military arm of the Sudanese Peoples’ Liberation Movement. The SPLA is a rebel army that fought the Second Sudanese Civil War and which is now the military force of the nation of South Sudan. The civil war displaced Majok and an estimated 4 million and killed 2 million Sudanese over the period 1983–2005.1 Garang was a Dinka from Bor County who had been orphaned at the age of 10 in a village in which he said no one could read. A relative paid for his education in schools in Wau and Rumbek.2
He wanted to join the Anyana, rebels in Sudan’s first civil war in 1962, but was convinced to go to secondary school in Tanzania. Afterwards, he received a scholarship to Grinnell College in Iowa and earned a bachelor’s degree. He returned to join Anyana, and in 1972 at war’s end was absorbed into the Sudanese Army. He rose to the rank of colonel and graduated from the U.S. Infantry Officers School at Fort Benning, Georgia.
Later, he took a four-year leave of absence to acquire a master’s degree in agricultural economics and then a Ph.D. in economics at Iowa State University.
He defected with his men after 500 southern troops in Bor revolted over being ordered north by the Sudanese Army. He emerged two months later as head of the SPLA.3 During the second civil war, there was a split in the SPLA. Atrocities occurred on both sides. Riek Machar, leader of a large faction in SPLA, accused the SPLA of employing child soldiers. Their treatment and the use of the refugee camps for recruiting these soldiers has been a source of dispute.4
Garang was very articulate with an excellent mastery of English and Western ideas, as well as Arabic and Dinka languages. He was interviewed by Scott Simon on National Public Radio in early 2005 just after the SPLA and Sudan completed extensive negotiations that resulted in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement that has guided relationships between Sudan and South Sudan ever since. Because a major provision of the CPA was to allow for the vote on the question of South Sudan’s independence, some of Garang’s comments revolved around how this very undeveloped new country would change with its new status. Speaking like the agricultural economist he was, Garang outlined ideas for development.5
Already, 6,000 families had changed farming practices, using hoes and plows converted from vehicles, tanks, and military equipment abandoned in the war-torn areas. Instead of humans tilling farms by hand, now the revered bulls were pulling plows. Garang said production had increased from two acres to 10 acres, “a five-fold increase per family.”
He discussed other parts of a plan to build a new economy based on South Sudan’s pastoralist culture:
• Introduce new seed technologies in order to improve food supplies for families and produce surplus for market.
• Rather than wait for new energy technologies, use solar and wind power to bring electricity to villages.
• Establish small-scale dams on the many rivers in the area; electrify rural towns with 5–10 megawatt dams.
• Instead of building a consumerist society, as others with large oil deposits had, use oil in South Sudan to grow agriculture.
• Build rural towns and make them the focus of the new economy rather than creating cities that would drain the rural areas of their population.
“We have well thought-out strategies, once peace is achieved, to use,” he said. “We will use oil in southern Sudan to literally fuel agriculture. That’s the only way people can benefit, especially having suffered from the past 21 years of war. We’ll also avoid the rural-urban split where people from the countryside flee to the cities without the skills. They end up in slums…. So rather than to encourage people to go to towns, our policy will be to take towns to people by building rural towns and making them focuses for development.”
Garang pointed to the enormous size of Sudan as well as its offshoot, South Sudan, and characterized the challenge to build infrastructure in an area where none existed. He compared the new country’s size to the area of the combined nearby countries of Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi.
“Yet since the time of Adam and Eve, there has never been a single tarmac road in southern Sudan,” he said. “So we will use the oil money to build infrastructure, to concentrate on rural development, and provide social services to our people. [We need to build roads] so that there is movement of people, goods and services and so that the domestic market functions.
“And we’ll connect this with the region as well as the international community to look for markets. For the last 20 years, I’ve been looking for guns and bullets to fight the war; now I’ll be looking for markets for our produce of our families.” He asked Simon, “In the United States, what would you want? We produce the best sesame seeds. I was having breakfast at the hotel and I noted the bread had sesame seeds.” He laughed, saying, “Now I’ll flood America with sesame seeds. We will not use pesticides and fertilizers; this is virgin land.”6
After the war, Garang became the first Christian and the first southern Sudanese to hold a high position in the Sudanese government. Following the Comprehensive Peace Agreement being negotiated and taking effect, Garang became vice president in the new Unity Government on July 9, 2005, and president of southern Sudan. The new nation was shocked when he died with a dozen aides in a helicopter crash on July 30, 2005. There was rioting among southern Sudanese living in Khartoum and Juba that killed 130 people.7
At the time of the crash, Garang was returning from Uganda where he was involved in talks with the government. The helicopter belonged to the Ugandan president, an ally of Garang in the civil war. Generally there has been no conclusion about what happened. He was replaced by Salva Kiir, who had been in the higher command structure in the SPLA.8
Garang’s death set the stage for a strong vote for independence five and a half years later, on January 9, 2011, when the peace agreement called for southern Sudanese to decide between unity with or separation from Sudan. The vote, for which Lost Boys and other Sudanese living in the United States traveled to voting centers in several cities to cast their ballots, was overwhelmingly for creating a separate South Sudan.
A highly educated man, Garang set the tone for SPLA members to achieve education. According to Majok, SPLA was known to promote those who had schooling, and that caused the children in his villages to seek education as well. And that was a great deal of the reason they wanted to resettle in the United States.
Left behind in Sudan was a view of my country as it headed toward the vote for independence. Especially since the death of John Garang, I don’t think anyone thought the vote could be anything but for separation. All in southern Sudan were excited about the new country. People were newly serious about doing things to build the country. I still have my goal of trying to provide a well that the people can use to pump and store water to greatly ease the life of people in the villages, where most people in southern Sudan live. There are many, many other projects that are needed to build the infrastructure for a new country.
In 2009 and 2010, I kept working as I had, and I also increased my activities with the Lost Boys in Clarkston who are Dinka. Stephen Chol Bayok is the chairman of the Rumbek community in Atlanta. I am deputy chairman. That means that any members of our community, primarily Agar Dinka tribe members, who need assistance with apartment problems, raising bail, illness and other matters go to the chairman or deputy for assistance. They in turn try to raise funds among the members, and if needed, present a request to the churches that have been so helpful to the Lost Boys and the Sudanese community.
Stephen moved out of town. After a great deal of effort, which you can read in his story included here, Stephen succeeded in gaining a bachelor’s degree in management from Clayton State University. His goal was to pursue a career in teaching by getting a provisional certificate—that’s a program in Georgia where teachers with bachelor’s degrees other than in education can teach and work on their teaching credentials through education courses in college in the evenings.
It w
as difficult for Stephen to find a job in teaching, and after a lot of applications, he decided he had best earn money to make the traditional Dinka marriage. He traveled to Oklahoma to work in a meatpacking plant there. He fortunately was not in the area where they killed the animals but where they butchered and packaged cuts of meat for market. What that meant was he was no longer present in Georgia to lead the meetings and projects of the Dinka Rumbek community here. So I, the deputy, stepped in; there were many meetings where we needed to be represented, and there were activities I needed to initiate. Stephen has never lost the title of chairman; it stays with him.
I am also deputy to the chairman of another organization, the Lost Boys in Atlanta (this includes men from all tribes). The chairman is Bol Deng Bol, and I assist him.
At the same time that I was working to earn the bride-wealth and leading Lost Boys efforts, Gini Eagen introduced me to Estelle Ford-Williamson, now my coauthor, about the possibility of a book. My goal with the book was to tell our story to as many people as possible to draw attention to the problem of conflict in our country and to the problems of refugee camps. And I wanted to earn enough to build that water system back in my village and perhaps be able to go to school full time to learn geology.
My trip back to Sudan in 2010 featured my first flight on Ethiopian Air Lines. This meant that I flew into a city I’d never seen but had heard of all my life—Addis Ababa. When I was growing up, most of the trade in our part of Sudan had come from the east, from Ethiopia. At that time, there was great contact between the leader of the SPLA, John Garang, and Mengistu, the dictator of Ethiopia, so commerce between the two was strong. After the rebels deposed Mengistu, then the close association with the SPLA ceased (that’s when we fled Pinyudo Refugee Camp and experienced the Gilo River massacre). Nevertheless, after the CPA, commercial contacts resumed, and on this 2010 trip, I was able to fly Ethiopian Air Lines from Dulles in Washington, D.C., to Rome for a fuel stop, and then to Addis Ababa. I then flew on to Juba and then Rumbek in the single-engine airplane. I was beginning to feel like a world traveler by this time.
On this trip to Sudan, my family had now moved again, back to my father’s original village of Billing Daldiar. Even though my father had died and I don’t remember him, the family is expected to know his family and to be part of his family. So that is where my younger brother is located with his wives and children. My older brother lives in Rumbek during the week, and lives in Billing Daldiar with his family on the weekend. My sister and her family live in Rumbek, although they are frequently in Billing Daldiar as well.
For sure, they were on hand to greet me again, and my elder brother, Malual, had prepared a list of girls he thought would be suitable for me. So while I visited with the family and helped in the cattle keeping, he was telling me the names of some good girls, as I had asked him to do. And I was considering the list. I arranged to meet each of the girls at dances and such gatherings.
Agar Dinka youth at traditional dance for New Year 2009, Rumbek area, South Sudan.
I definitely had a first-choice girl, and that was Ajok. I had met her at her parents’ home in the past, before I was interested in her. My brother knew her best friend, the other girl who used to go around with her. So she was not completely new to me.
Now according to Dinka custom, the suitor is not allowed to visit in the girl’s home. You see her out and about in the village, often after traditional dances that go on in the evening. You ask to speak to her, and you say that you want to propose marriage to her. And then she says she will think about it. And for you to come tomorrow. What that means is, “Let’s get to know each other,” and “You know the process—I need to check you out, and my family needs to check you out.”
So when she said she was going to think about it, that was not a commitment, but it was okay to talk to her and it meant that we were “dating,” as Westerners would call it, but our culture just calls it getting to know each other. Over time, we would have walks together, but I would not go to her house, and I would not eat in her house. Everybody else could eat there, but the man seeking marriage would not eat there.
It was the duty for everyone related to me, or knowing me, to talk to her on my behalf. That’s everyone’s role. If my brother would go and meet her, he’d talk to her on behalf of me. When she sees one of my relatives, she is to speak to them, as she has to respect them because she is going to be one of the family. So it’s not only me who goes up and talks to her, it’s everybody who’s close to me.
She has a right to say no, and then we go to another girl later. Also, her parents can say no. In the meantime, they will be checking out our family, and we will be checking out theirs. Good family is very important, as these villages are small and problems are known by everyone. We ask around: Do they have a lot of trouble in the family, like quarreling, separation of the parents, or the kinds of things that would mark them? If they have all those kinds of things, we will say no, we are not going to that family. You need strong family who are respectful and do the right thing. If the family doesn’t work, or they are tattlers, that could end a marriage in the making. In a marriage, the groom gives a lot of cows. If you separate with the lady, you have to demand that you take your cows back. So you can see that everyone in each family has a lot invested, reputation-wise, and bride-wealth-wise, in each marriage.
I arrived in Rumbek and before too long, I talked to Ajok, and she said we could discuss it. She went to other people to check me out. Is this Majok a good person? They didn’t know me as a person, but only by name, because I had been in the refugee camps for 14 years. But they knew of me, knew I was in the United States. What information they had came from my elder brother mostly. Ajok talked to other girls who were close to her, and her family asked their friends. In the several weeks long process of us getting to know each other, she held her opinions; she was encouraging, but not committing. As to the question, did I sing to her? I must confess, no. I did not sing to her. Singing is what a traditional Dinka man does for the woman he wants to marry. All those hours singing songs we made up on our long journey to Ethiopia, taking our minds off having no food, no water, and no safety—they served me well at the time. But I did talk to Ajok a great deal. Maybe she liked me because of that.
Parents like this long period of discussion because it allows them to get to know the man. They are concerned that a man may just be playing with their daughter, and they don’t want that. In my case, as it was likely my wife would live in the United States, they needed to know that I would take care of her; their greatest fear was that I would not take care of her and that we might separate in America.
Boys and girls at cattle camp near River Na’am, South Sudan, December, 2008.
The other thing, and the most important thing, that I did in Sudan is that I bought cows. I selected beautiful cows in order to make the deal of our marriage more attractive to her family. I recognized that her whole family would be involved with this; all uncles, brothers, father, mother—they all had to be satisfied with the offering of cows. Similarly, I had to go to each of my relatives to ask if they would contribute toward my bride-price. The cattle were generally kept together by our family in the cattle camp—my younger brother Abol was responsible for keeping the cattle, along with my nephews and cousins. But each cow in the herd had someone as an owner. We knew our cows by their markings, and often we decorated them with our own markings.
When I returned to Georgia, Ajok and I had an understanding that we thought we might like to marry, but the negotiation for the cows was the next step. I left this to my elder brother Malual, as he was the male head of our family, and he had done this successfully twice before, with my uncles’ help. And the uncles helped him as well.
The actual cattle negotiation with the family is a three-day affair. The family of the bride comes out to the cattle camp in the morning. They have to see how many cows you have, and how many of what quality we can produce for them. My brother called me in January 2011. They were d
emanding that they had to have 89 cows, but my brother offered 50. They were not happy with that. They made a counter-offer of 60. I had 20 cows myself, my brother brought his seven cows, and then uncles contributed. Everyone has to contribute something, so everyone has some investment in this marriage. Then everyone else in her family, they come in the evening and everyone prepares food and eats together. In the morning our family killed a bull for them. It took a while to get the offer sealed, but the eating together and killing a bull kind of seals the deal. The gathering in the evening is where the talks continue. You hope the talks keep going and don’t stop so that you can reach a settlement. It’s true that in Sudan, the woman and the price that is paid for her enhances her value in Dinka culture. All this is about her value to me and my family.
As a deal is being negotiated, the cows offered and accepted are on display in the camp. Once an agreement is reached, all the other cows are released. So when people come in the evening, they can see what cows are being exchanged. When my brother told me we were still apart in the negotiations, I called other people to help. In fact, Judy Maves assisted from Atlanta by talking to a friend in Sudan whom she’d helped a great deal, and he contributed cash so I could buy two more cows!
In fact, just about the time of the marriage, the bride’s family continued to negotiate with my brother, and said they would need 25 more cows. We reached agreement that we will provide these in the future. We could still marry, but they would get 25 more as our cattle herd grows in future.