In Remembrance of Dr. John
By Malith Alier, Sydney, Australia
Tuesday, June 18, 2019 (PW) — I wanted to have a different title for this piece but because I found another piece on wordpress.com authored in remembrance of another person of the same name as our John, I had no choice but to follow the lead. The similarities may not be striking but the first names and the titles have a perfect symmetry one can’t ignore. Well, Dr. John Garang is a character many will cite in political discourse maybe until the end of the earth/world.
We’re right now in June and July the month Dr. John perished on the fateful chopper crash on the mountains close to Uganda. John was heading to his beloved Newsite between Narus and Ngatinga in what is now known as Kapoeta State. When the news broke that evening of the 29 July 2005, I was putting final touches to my studies at Murdoch University in Western Australia.
I didn’t, as an individual believed that what was unfolding before the world was going to have a long lasting impact for another generation in South Sudan. The news was mildly headlined as ” A helicopter Carrying Sudan’s First Vice President has Disappeared.” Has disappeared, what a joke?” Many rhetorical questions came forth chief among them was why did the chopper leave Entebbe Airport for the bushes of Southern Sudan late in the evening?
Many questions including this are still unanswered to this day. This signaled that a greater power determined to destroy South Sudan had a hand in this calamity. The highly anticipated investigation carried out into the chopper crash are kept-god-knows-where in the universe. May be they will be released 50 or 100 years from now when all of us are on the other side of the planet. We might not hear or learn about it.
Dr. John had many rare qualities you can’t easily find today in Sudan or South Sudan. He was what some people called larger than life. I understand why some South Sudanese called him ‘Moses.’ Our Moses had no Joshua! Belief it or not. He was simply a different Moses – not the Isrealites’ one.
Dr. John walked the jungles of southern Sudan for more than 20 years without tiring. He walked the capitals of the world and never left without something to support his cause and that of his people. John encouraged, clothed, fed, trained, and armed his troops from without. Every year of the war he came up with new weapons, new plans and new strategies.
I like this video on youtube where John himself told trainees to go out and create something where there is nothing. This was what exactly he did right from 1983 to the time of signing agreement in 2005. I strongly believed even before the war he had planned for it.
Dr. John made great friends everywhere. He made friends in Africa and the rest of the continents except Antarctica!
Dr. John had a great sense of humour. He would make everyone laugh wherever he went especially his demoralized troops on the battlefields.
Dr. John was consistent with his vision for the future. New Sudan! Where is it now, nobody knows.
Dr. John was never corrupt. He married only one wife. Some of his junior commanders married tens or even hundreds.
On the untimely demise of Dr. John Garang, the great singer, Panchol Deng Ajang has this song; “Cok Thou ku ca Wuo Bei Baai” translated “Even if you died, You have brought us Home”
The alternative, what would have happened had John passed while we were still in the jungle?
The Dr. John was an intellectual, liberator, soldier, economist, general, statesman, teacher, hero etc. He was so many things to so many people.
Happy Remembrance Day!
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