John Garang
John Garang led a rebellion in southern Sudan for twenty-two years, argued against independence throughout, and died three weeks after winning the peace. He was born into a Dinka family, orphaned young, educated by relatives and then in Tanzania and the United States, where he took a doctorate in agricultural economics at Iowa State. He was an army officer in 1983 when Khartoum imposed sharia on the whole country and moved to break up southern units. Sent to put down a mutiny at Bor, he joined it instead and formed the Sudan People's Liberation Movement. His position was the unusual part. He did not campaign for a separate southern state; he argued for a New Sudan - a single secular country in which the marginalised periphery, including Darfur and the Nuba mountains, would share power with the Arab centre. That argument kept the movement's Ethiopian backing and made him enemies among separatists in his own ranks, and the split of 1991 with Riek Machar produced fighting between southern factions that killed enormous numbers of civilians. The war ran until the Comprehensive Peace Agreement of January 2005, which gave the south autonomy, a share of the oil revenue and a referendum after six years. He became first vice-president of Sudan in July 2005 and was greeted in Khartoum by a crowd of over a million. Three weeks later his helicopter flew into a mountain in bad weather. Salva Kiir succeeded him, the referendum passed overwhelmingly in 2011, and the country he had argued against came into being.
- Lived: 1945 CE – 2005 CE
- Nationality: Sudanese
- Roles: rebel_leader, politician
