President Kiir, Gen Paul Malong and SPLM-FD (G10) Pay Tributes to the Fallen Hero, Gen. James Ajonga Mawut
4 min readBreaking News: South Sudan’s Chief of Defence Force, Gen. James Ajonga Mawut Unguech dies today, 4.30am, at a military hospital in Cairo, Egypt, after a long illness.
Obituary: Tributes to the SPLA’s Chief of General Staff, Gen. James Ajonga Mawut Unguec Ajonga
By Dr. Jok Madut Jok, USA
April 20, 2018 (SSB) —– I had a really special moment with General James Ajongo Mawut Unguec Ajongo when I interviewed him on video in 2002 at what was called “peace market,” in what was Aweil North County at that time. Then, Northern Bahr el Ghazal as a whole was living in uncertain times, a mix of euphoria of an impending peace between South Sudan and Sudan and continued violence. Susan Rice had visited Marial Baai and al-Bashir government bombed the town hours within her visit. It was later said she was the target, for Khartoum’s wrath against Washington. The Machakos Protocal had just been signed and an air of potential peace was hovering overhead. The Baggara Arab Murahileen had pleaded for peace so that they can access both grazing/water and the peace market, south of the Kiir River. But once the rains started, they attacked the area, all the way to Majak Baai on the river Lol, as they were retreating to their areas in South Darfur. I discussed all these with Comrade Ajongo, then young, vibrant and thin as a rail and one of the most revered and respected SPLA officers, mainly for his courage, leadership and goodness of heart. Many of his soldiers told me that comrade Ajongo has never had a meal by himself for as long as they had known him (this, for those who knew SPLA in those challenging times will understand the meaning of an SPLA officer “not eating by himself”).
Cde Ajongo, by the time I met him, had engaged both the Sudan Armed Forces and the Murahileen, in hard and testing battles in the region, but who remained resolved and committed, making war for those who have never been in it sound like a picnic in the park. His name was only comparable to that of another equally determined officer who went by the name Paul Malong Awan. Ajongo was mainly dealing with the Rizeiqat in Aweil West and North and Malong in Warawar facing the Missiryya in Aweil East.
For years now, i have been intending to show General Ajongo the recording of our conversation we had under a sausage tree near the peace market so many years earlier. But I never got a chance to do so, and it pains me to teh core, that such a moment did not come. It would have been great to see how General Ajongo would have reacted to his ideas as a younger officer of a liberation movement that is now having to prove itself to the people of South Sudan, beyond liberation. Now i won’t get that chance. General Ajongo died on April 20th, 2018, at the Military Hospital in Cairo, Egypt.
However, at least the record is there for his children and grand children to see one day and be proud of what this great man had thought about why he took up arms and what he has been able to accomplish under hard and testing circumstances. May your beautiful soul rest in eternal peace, General James. You have gone too soon and at a moment we still needed professional soldiers of your caliber to see our army become a national army worthy of its name. But you have done your part, sir. In fact, you have done it, South Sudan is now free because of you and countless others of your kind, who gave up their youth for a cause all of us had “wished to live for, and if it should kill [us], a cause for which we were prepared to die,” just to borrow the words of Nelson Mandela. My words are of true broken-heartedness, for us all as a nation, but mostly for your family, immediate and extended.
I know there will be people who are quick to focus on your flaws as a human being, our country being a country at war and all, where the actions of a few good men are often overshadowed by the few who do evil. But these will be people who know very little about what you have done for us all. You descend from a long line of leaders and Mawut Unguec Ajongo, from line of the chiefs of the Jaluo in Aweil, had raised a leader in you, a replica of himself and more. It is the presence of your kind in our midst that gave us hope, that this our nation shall win.
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