Tributes and Eulogy to Bior-Sultan Ajang Duot: Portrait of a Decent Man

By Atem Yaak Atem, Sydney, Australia

Wednesday, 7 August 2019 (PW) — Engineer Bior-Maror Ajang Duot*, known to friends and family alternatively as Sultan or Bashmahandis (Turkish-Arabic word for chief engineer) to distinguish him from several step brothers sharing the same first name, each with his own distinguishing nickname, passed away on August 5 in the UK where he was receiving treatment for cancer.

Just 24 hours after the tragic loss, his daughter, Awak, rang me to break the news of the unbearable loss. Having steeled herself in the face of the tragedy, Awak narrated how her dad had mustered an exceptional amount of courage which characterised those painful days before the end. She and her mother, Abiong Kelei Malith, told me how the medical team who had been treating him were moved by the dignity which Bior showed from the beginning of his time in hospital till the end. The hospital staff were moved by how stoically their patient had faced the excruciating pain he was enduring, and the solidarity the family and friends had shown during the most difficult time imaginable, the family told me.

Only people who were never close to late Bior would be surprised to learn of that trait: Bior never allowed others to know whatever he was going through whether it was a physical anguish or an emotional distress. To him such experiences were strictly personal and private and he deliberately kept them to himself to spare others from those stressful effects.

Noble soul

That Bior was such a noble soul is borne out by a moving eulogy written for Arabic language newspaper by his friend of more than half a century, Dr Lam Akol. In the tribute, Lam has described late Bior as a person who loved and respected everyone, young or old, and who in turn loved him accordingly, and that he was a very intelligent student, most of the times topping his class in exams, but at the same time remained characteristically modest.

Throughout their lives together as fellow students and later as engineers, Lam says he never saw Bior getting angry with anyone else. That trait is easy to understand: Like the rest of us, Bior did have emotions and feelings; he could also be offended or even angered. But he excelled in having a copious amount of self-control, patience and tolerance. He then employed those qualities to keep at bay the animal instinct in all of us: the tendency to settle a disagreement or displeasure with fisticuffs or to explode with invectives.

Chip off the old block

The old maxim “Like father, like son” applies aptly to Bior Ajang and his father, Ajang Duot Bior. In appearance, both enjoyed towering height, affable looks, soft and soothing voice, which lent them a commanding presence.

As far as personality and attitude went, the two were devout advocates of change. First, a brief outline about Paramount Chief Ajang Duot. Although he was born into a traditional society whose valued shaped his life from childhood to the time he became chief at an early age, Ajang’s wide travels and sojourns within Southern Sudan and beyond had influenced him to admire change and modernisation. He learned a lot during those trips, some of them which took him to many district headquarters, provincial capitals- Juba, Wau and Malakal- as well as Khartoum. The young chief also visited Egypt and England. In 1953 Chief Ajang Duot was among the notables from the former British overseas possessions who were invited to attend the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.

Ajang was convinced that giving formal education to as many children as possible would be one of the best ways to initiate social transformation and progress in Southern Sudan in general and the pastoral societies in particular. With that understanding, he allowed his first-born son, Bior, to go to school. A few years later he followed that by enrolling one of his daughters, Aguet-Adhueng, one of Bior’s step sisters, at a predominantly boy school in Kongor Elementary.

The two decisions almost went against prevailing norms in those days. During the colonial rule, the Government of Sudan ordered chiefs in the Southern provinces, especially the Nilotic communities, to send their children to school. The chiefs in turn, complied by selecting only “expendable” sons, not first born boys or heirs apparent. Ajang believed that education was good for everyone, boys or girls, first born or not. He became one the chiefs who led the way in breaking with the tradition; the rest followed suit.

But Chief Ajang Duot was at the same time conscious that change did not mean total dismantling of customs. Like all modernisers throughout history, Ajang the pragmatist respected some of the values and practices that had passed the test of time and which also were not incompatible with modernity. One of these was the controversial payment of bride wealth in marriage. In the absence of an alternative, he like-minded leaders accepted the custom which they believed would gradually become outmoded under specific future socio-economic conditions. In the meantime, the bride wealth’s role as a glue that bound members of a lineage by way of sharing in a society that did not have a social welfare network for its needy members, could not be dismissed out of hand.

As we read in the rest of the account, Bior followed the footsteps of his progressive father.

Sacrifice for others and tragedies run in the family

Having known Bior from boyhood to the last time we were together in Juba in early 2014, I was hardly surprised to be told of how he bravely managed his trying and final days. He has always been known for remaining calm, whether it was private pain, sorrow or loss. Some of his last words included saying that he had no regrets, knowing that he was leaving behind a lovely and responsible family whose members were capable of looking after themselves well. The story drove me to tears for a second time within 10 hours (I had received the shocking news earlier in the day from Diing Aruei Bol, chairman of Kongor community in Australia).

Sacrifice, even laying one’s own life for others, runs in the family. Bior’s grandfather, Duot Bior, who was leader of Kongor Wut (wut in Dink is a group of clans) was killed in battle in 1908. In 1967 Bior’s father, Paramount Chief Ajang Duot, was murdered by the Government of Sudan. (More about that later).

Earlier before the assassination of his father, Bior’s stepbrother, Bior-Töör and several of his cousins, were among the young men who sold some of their cattle and travelled to the Southern Sudan-Congo border to buy arms from Simba, the moribund Congolese rebel group. As a military organisation, Anya Nya did not have a reliable source of weapons, so they had to rely mostly on rifles captured during raids on police outposts or taken by defecting Southern policemen and soldiers in the Sudan Armed Forces, SAF.

School contemporaries

Bior and I were distant relatives (my mother, Nyanluak Bior, was a member of Paan e Bior, Bior’s clan) as well as contemporaries in school and later at the University of Khartoum. We went to school in the same year when he enrolled for Bor Elementary School, 75 miles, south-east of the then Kongor Court Centre where I joined Class Naught in what was known as Bush School.

At the time, Sudan operated two different educational systems: National Pattern in which Arabic was the language of instruction from elementary to intermediate level while in the system known as Southern Pattern, children received lessons in the African vernaculars- in my case it was Dinka-for the first two years. From third year elementary onwards, English took over as the medium of teaching, and what was labelled as Special Arabic was offered as an ordinary subject.

The boys who were selected with Bior by the commissioner of Bor District included his cousin, Kon Bior Duot (later to take the name William); Lual Acuek Lual Deng (Tito) and Arok Thon Arok. (Lual never used their Christian names Bior -Charles).

As I have already quoted- in a separate piece- from the eloquent tribute by Lam Akol in which he recalls knowing Bior as a very talented pupil, nearly always among the top performing classmates. Before the government opened more intermediate and secondary schools all over the country, even some of the cleverest students who scored high marks still failed to be admitted to the next phase of education or a place at centres of higher education due to limited available places. But for Bior who was very good at mathematics, a subject which makes a difference because it is a universally acknowledged fact that not all students find its mastery easy, he was able to effortlessly sail through, first to an intermediate school, which was also in Bor, then to Wadi Seidna Secondary School, a short distance north of Omdurman. That school was one of the top secondary schools in the whole country, with Rumbek, Wadi Seidna, Hantoub and Khor Taggat, coming in that order of the highest percentage of students achieving the Sudan School Certificate and acceptance at the University of Khartoum, the only high centre of learning of the day.

Ajang and colleagues under army arrest

While attending school, Bior, his family and indeed the people of Southern Sudan, were hit by a tragedy when Paramount Chief of Bor Dinka, Ajang Duot Bior, was brutally assassinated by a contingent of SAF stationed in the area. That was in February 1967. Chief Ajang was among the 24 chiefs cut by the bullets. Among the leaders who died in the carnage was Chief Parmena Bul Koch, a tough-talking and courageous politician, who before the overthrow of parliamentary system by the army in 1958, was an elected MP representing the area.

In his political memoir, Southern Sudan: Too Many Agreements Dishonoured, the former president of Southern Sudan, and one of South Sudan’s venerated elder statesmen, Abel Alier, has recorded that former Paramount Chief Ajang Duot Bior was “a great and fine man.” In February 1967, Alier had gone to Bor town, headquarters of the district with the same name, where the chiefs were being held at the army garrison. The book states the chiefs had been charged “with aiding the Anya-nya.”

It is worth reiterating here that Anya Nya’s declared objective was to separate the region from the rest of the country. That call for separation was branded as treason by governments that came and went in Khartoum.

Efforts to save the chiefs

As an advocate, Moulana Abel Alier who previously had successfully defended other Southern Sudanese, including Catholic priests, on similar charges, was going to work for the chiefs’ release. In that case, the situation was different and more complicated. The arrest of the chiefs came immediately after the visit to Bor town, where the prime minister of Sudan, Sadiq el Mahdi visited the grave of an army officer killed by the Anya Nya guerrillas. Lieutenant Zuheir Bayoumi, the officer died in an ambush laid several miles outside the garrison. The clash between the rebels and government forces had occurred more than two years before the prime minister’s visit to Bor town. Both Sadiq el Mahdi and Lt Bayoumi hailed from Abu Rof, a suburb of Omdurman. The behaviour of the head of the Sudan’s government signalled to the SAF in Bor to take a hard-line on the chiefs; naturally driven by a desire for vengeance.

Under the circumstance, recourse to law could not change the heart of stone. Alier himself had on arrival met the officer commanding the garrison, who bluntly told him “this is our law”, by which he meant the revolver he was dangling before the advocate. If that was not unsettling enough, the officer added “I can shoot you dead if I want to and no one could save you.”

The daunting situation, however, did not stop the Alier, who himself has nerves made of steel, took the case to the officer commanding the forces in the whole Southern Sudan at their HQs in Juba. Although the senior officer was more polite and diplomatic than his uncouth subordinate commanding government forces at Bor, a decision had already been taken, probably in Khartoum, to eliminate the chiefs. (Alier, Abel, Southern Sudan: Too Many Agreements Dishonoured, Reading, Ithaca Press, 2003 p.19).

Student as Sultan

Being the elder son of late Chief Ajang Duot, Bior was asked by the clan to succeed his father. To respect the decision of the elders, Bior accepted the responsibility. But sooner pressure, including from the Northern administrator of the district, began to mount on the elders to release the young man to allow him to complete his studies, which they argued would serve the people better in the future. The clan relented and Bior went back to school. One of his cousins, Kornelio Duot Bior, succeeded Ajang Duot as chief.

After returning to classroom, Bior later sat for the Sudan School Certificate and passed with distinction one in all the subjects he had taken. With that, he qualified for a place at the University of Khartoum. Contrary to popular expectations that he would have applied to study medicine or law, he instead chose engineering. At the time, the most thought after field of study was medicine as doctors ranked highest in social standing; becoming a lawyer was also a favourite career to many students in general and from chiefly families in particular. Bior surprised nearly everyone with his choice of engineering. His decision was a statement about the personality of Bior: taking a path based on reason rather being carried away by popular sentiments or keeping up with the Joneses. He knew engineering was an important profession whether in developed countries or in an emerging society such as Southern Sudan, a territory in dire need of innovation and construction.

Student politics

Few Southern Sudanese could afford to be indifferent when the government in Khartoum was denying some its full citizens their full rights. Successive regimes dominated by the Northern sectarian parties were at the same time committing dreadful human rights violations in their attempt to crush the insurgency in the South. The policies which discriminated against citizens from the South on racial and religious grounds had bred opposition and resistance among the region’s intelligentsia, mostly civil servants and students who either joined the Anya Nya insurgents or became card-bearing members of two the main Southern parties: Southern Front and Sudan African National Union, Sanu, which were operating within the country. The former called for the right of the people of South to determine their future in a referendum, while the latter stood for a federal system of rule all over the country. Bior was a staunch member of Southern Front.

Bior’s student days, especially at secondary and university level, were characterised by region-wide unrest in the South. At the University of Khartoum, he was once an executive member of the African Nationalist Front, ANF, a militant organisation for students from Southern Sudan. Membership of ANF’s executive committee was not a dancing party; on policies relating to the South, differences and heated exchanges between the students and the government of the day were commonplace as illustrated by the episode that follows here.

While visiting Egypt in 1971, President Jaafar Nimeiri told a newspaper there that what was known as the Southern Problem was complicated by the fact that the territory’s inhabitants were-in his words- were a people without culture or history.

Those remarks immediately provoked anger among the students from the South at the University of Khartoum. In response to the statement, the leadership of ANF met to write a strongly worded protest letter to the president. Bior was one of the authors who included the late Victoria Yaar Arol, the first woman from the South to receive a university education.

It was obvious that President Nimeiri would be extremely displeased with the contents of the letter which went as far as questioning whether he really understood the meaning of history and culture. (The night while the rejoinder was being prepared a member of the ANF executive, fearing for the consequences from the daring rebuke to the head of state, resigned from the body).

In a twist of irony, Nimeiri nearly proved the students right when during a tense meeting with the ANF representatives, he enquired how they came to know about the contents of his statement. When the students told him that the insulting remarks were carried by the Arabic language Al Ahram daily newspaper, the president retorted “And do you folks understand Arabic?”

The question flew in the face of the obvious. As the vice chancellor of the country’s public universities, the president should have known that there were several Southern Sudanese studying for degrees including postgraduate degrees in classical Arabic while others had graduated from the same field and that he must have handed them their paper qualifications during previous convocation ceremonies. Arabic, too, was the official language of Sudan and a compulsory subject taught to all students countrywide; grant of Sudan School Certificate was conditional on a candidate passing Arabic.

Transfer to the South

After graduating as a mechanical engineer from the University of Khartoum in 1975, Bior was employed by Sudan Railways head office at Atbara in the extreme northern part of Sudan. Atbara has always been the headquarters of Sudan Railways. Rail and river transport operated under one system. Since railway did not extend to the South either seasonal roads or none in some parts, river transport was the main link between the two parts of the country. Boats ply the Kosti-Juba route.

Atbara was also the centre of railway workers’ trade union, who had a powerful body that was affiliated to the Sudan Communist Party, SCP. Any government that ignored the interests of the union and its workers was doing that at its own peril. SCP was the biggest and the most powerful Marxist-Leninist party in the Middle East and the whole Africa until the coming to power of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1989.

Bior enjoyed his job in the North. He, however, did not stay there for a long time. The South was by then having its own government. There was pressure on the region’s young people with necessary skills and experience working away from home to return and contribute to the its development and in the provision of social services to their people.

Bior went to Juba, the regional capital and was employed by the Regional Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Production and Forestry. Seemingly an odd place for an engineer, the ministry assigned him to Project Development Unit, PDU, a United Nations funded department. Bior was lucky in that the director general of the ministry, Dr David Bassiouni, a competent, hardworking a respected civil servant, was going to encourage the young engineer to realise his potential. At the PDU, Bior worked with both Sudanese nationals and expatriates, some of them at senior management level. Bior soon, as expected impressed his colleagues as demonstrated he was a quick learner and a trustworthy team member. As we will see later, the ministry sent him for a further advanced course in management in the UK after three years of continuous service.

Marriage

With a secure job, it was then time for him to start a family. His choice of young and charming wife, Abiong Kelei Malith, was warmly welcomed by his large family. Parmena Kelei Malith, Bior’s father in law, was a retired public administrator who by the time had become a member of People’s Regional Assembly, Southern Sudan’s legislative organ.

Within a short time Bior introduced me to his father in law. For lack of a better word, I would say I became a friend of the former administrator who was held in high esteem by his peers as well as his community. Kelei Malith supported my writing, which was not always the case with some senior members of the establishment who held contrary views. The legislator argued that a servile press would send the government to sleep. He was one of the elders from the area who understood the role of the media in informing and educating the public. Professionally and on personal level, Parmena Kelei Malith was one of my role models. Through Bior and Parmena Kelei I had become almost a member of his large and friendly family.

Regional and national politics

Although the system of rule in Khartoum was military-cum-one party state, which had banned the rest of political parties on coming to power in a military coup in 1969, the autonomous Southern Region enjoyed what amounted to a full-fledged democratic governance; with a relatively wider democratic space absent almost in all sub-Saharan Africa. In the South no one was barred from contesting election- as was the case in the rest of the country- because of political affiliation. In the South banned parties such as Sanu, Southern Front or the former Anya Nya political wing, Southern Sudan Liberation Movement, SSLM, fielded candidates in elections to contest seats in the People Regional Assembly, or the presidency of High Executive Council.

Another facet of the democratic life in the Southern Region was the People’s Regional Assembly frequently investigated the executive and its members for suspected abuses of office. For example, when the speaker tried to take side with the executive while some investigation on alleged corruption by two government ministers was going on, the legislators sacked him after accusing him of having lost his independence as an umpire.

This vibrant public life attracted young graduates. Some of former our college mates were in the Regional Assembly and a few in the executive or as provincial commissioners (status of a governor today). Some members of our constituency looked to Bior as someone who would represent their interests effectively in the Assembly. He could resign his job in the civil service and contest the seat.

There were problems, however. Bior who had stuck with his old party, Southern Front, shine or rain, would have problems as the constituency was predominantly Sanu. Although his personality could beat the odds, there was another problem which was moral in nature. Unlike other parts of Southern Sudan where graduates were elected literally immediately the day they graduated, Bor was a different case. For the electoral seat that was known as Bor North Constituency there was a “long queue” of older public figures still active in politics.

These included, but not limited to previous or the serving MP, among them were: Jonathan Malual Leek, Mading de Garang, Mark Atem Awuol, Nikanora M. Aguer, Kedhekia Chol Aguer. To Bior and a few members of his younger generation from the area, joining the fray to compete against people who were regarded as elder brothers or uncles (in South Sudan, this word does not necessarily denote blood relationship but someone who is of similar age group with one’s own father), was deemed disrespectful and bad manners. Because of those considerations, Bior who would have made an excellent legislator, delayed the idea and concentrated on his job as a civil servant, a position in which he would be able to serve in a region in dire need of socio-economic development and provision of basic social services.

Four years later his diligence and satisfactory performance earned him nomination for advanced course in management in the UK. A year afterwards his young family, consisting of wife, Abiong and their two children, Awak and Ajang, joined him in the UK.

Sudan second civil war of 1983 to 2005

When the second civil war broke out in 1983, Ajang’s family had seven sons carrying arms as soldiers in the SPLA. Among those sons was Bior-Aswad Ajang Duot, the general who later became the first under-secretary of the ministry of defence of the independent South Sudan.

Bior-Sultan was a founding member of the SPLM/A chapter in the UK. The chapter was in charge of diplomacy and soliciting humanitarian assistance for the civilian populations affected by the war and natural disasters in Southern Sudan. But before the emergence of the SPLM/A, Bior was already deeply involved in the politics of liberation.

After completing his postgraduate studies at Cranefield School of Management in the UK in early 1980s, Bior and some Southern Sudanese students and exiles living there formed the Sudan Revolutionary Congress, SRC. The formation of that opposition body came as a result of the rapidly deteriorating political situation back home, especially in the self-governing Southern Region.

Since reconciling with the opposition National Front formed by the sectarian Northern political parties, mainly Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), Umma Party and the Muslim Brotherhood led by Hassan el Turabi, President Jaafar Nimeiri embarked on dismantling the Addis Ababa Agreement of 1972, a precondition his former enemies had demanded. To make the situation worse for the South, power struggle the region’s bickering leaders, and being opportunistically fanned by Khartoum, made it inevitable that it was time the crisis in the South needed an urgent and radical solution that should end the perennial conflict once and for all.

To many among Southern intelligentsia, secession was the most favoured option. And the reality of the situation was that such an objective could only be achieved by means of an armed struggle. Under the circumstances obtaining then, there was no shortage of leaders and young people who were prepared to sacrifice their lives for the motherland; what was missing was the kind of leadership to articulate and turn the vision into a tangible reality.

There were several underground groups, each with its agenda for action, but due to the repressive nature of the regime in the country, public debate on options was out of the question. That meant even groups with similar perceptions had no forums from where views could be exchanged and shared. One of those underground groupings was Sudan Revolutionary Congress.

Trip to Libya

The leadership of the SRC, travelled in 1983 to Libya to ask for weapons from the government of the Libyan leader, Muamar Gaddafi, who was on war-footing with Nimeiri and his rule. Bior was among those leaders of SRC who successfully obtained their request. The visit of a delegation of the newly formed SPLM/A changed the situation when the Libyans learned the two organisations shared similar visions and agendas. The military supplies where then channelled to the SPLM/A which had in the interim emerged as one organisation with a guerrilla army. For its part, SRC members voluntarily dissolved their organisation and joined the SPLM. Some of the former members of SRC was transformed into an SPLM chapter in the UK and Northern Ireland while others flew Africa and went straight to the bush as political commissars or SPLA combatants.

Relevance and utility of history

Despite being science inclined, Bior read widely, whether it was history, the best from the world literature, current and international affairs, literature of liberation movements all over the world and the writings of their leaders, biographies of world’s outstanding generals and statesmen through the centuries. He devoured and digested the knowledge therein. He loved company whose members discussed ideas. It was one of the reasons he maintained friendly relationship with elders and people of experience as well as everyone else regardless of age and social status, ethnicity, region, political ideology or creed. One would not be wrong if one were to apply the word “erudite” to describe him.

Such knowledge to him was not just a pastime; it offered all human beings lessons that could find relevance and utility in some situations centuries after the events and principal protagonists.

I remember him on one occasion when he narrated the case of the Barmakids (Baramikah in Arabic), an influential Persian (Iranian today) family who were allies of the Abbasid dynasty under Harun el Rashid, the fifth Khalifa (from 786 to 809 CE). The Baramikah came to be seen as the culprits for whatever went wrong in the system. They later paid a high price for that.

The moral was that as far as an exercise of political power is concerned, little has changed for all human societies since the dawn of civilisation and regardless of cultures and parts of the world, whether Western, Oriental, African or any other society. He conceived history as full of useful lessons for anyone regardless of the era, part of the world or prevailing culture in which they live. He concluded that it was the responsibility of the modern societies and their leaders to avoid mistakes of the past and instead practise what could be relevant and safely replicated from the bygone eras.

Sound perceptive

Getting closer home, I learned a lot from his profound understanding of what can be called psychology of power. As I was on my way to fly out from London to the SPLM/A head office in Africa in May 1984, Bior asked me to call him before I boarded the aircraft. Using the landline telephone, I rang him. He was at his home in Cranefield in the United Kingdom. He came straight with the message: advice.

Since March that year the head office of the newly formed SPLM/A were asking me to report home immediately to take charge of a clandestine radio station, which they said was ready to begin broadcasting only that it did not have an experienced journalist to plan and direct its operations.

As I was winding my postgraduate studies within two months, I had requested that I should be allowed to finish before I could go to Africa as I was already a member of the SPLM. That request was sceptically received; there was an insinuation in some circles that I was not patriotic enough for not abandoning the research and turning up immediately. On the other hand, the idea that I appeared to be one of the most wanted (in the positive sense of the word) persons within the members, gave some of the colleague the feeling that I was being singled out for what they erroneous thought to be a favour, raising a further question: why me?

Within the week during which I had handed the dissertation to my supervisor I was on my way to Southern Sudan via Ethiopia.

Bior understood the matter differently or rather correctly: there was nothing special about me from the perspective of the headquarters; and that I was not the most favoured member of the movement. To him the headquarters just wanted me to carry out a specific task and that they had trust and confidence in me that I would do job to the best of my ability and their expectations. In that there was nothing wrong, he said. But there was a caveat. And that was at the heart of the message he wanted to give me before departure.

The message I received at Heathrow (London airport) was of this essence: Please bear in mind that this burning interest in you may be sincere but don’t forget that what is uppermost in their thinking and calculation is your skills. He paused for seconds to add: Once your mission is accomplished don’t be surprised to found yourself being ditched under any pretext, even suddenly becoming unwanted. End of the message.

Wishing me well and safe flight, he signed off.

Twice forewarned

When I arrived at the headquarters, there was no radio or any meaningful preparation; my job was then to start virtually from scratch. Instead of asking questions, I began to recall some recent message about what was in store for me in Africa.

Four years later when the station was a viable and successful reality, its founder who had been crowned the “commander of the unconventional battalion” was not only elbowed out in the manner of a medicine whose user-by date has expired; he had even become the butt of cruel jokes and tales laced with malice and falsehoods.

The advice he gave me was nothing but stating the obvious based on his experience; he was being prescient or farsighted. That ability to correctly predict behaviour or possible future action, based on past experience and accumulated data, is what others call wisdom. Since his modesty would not allow him to accept an accolade-being wise-he might have dismissed the credit: it was not wisdom on his side, but an application of available facts projected onto possible future scenarios dictated by inward and outward forces (centripetal and centrifugal, to use technical terms) that are typical of power and its use or abuse.

As a greenhorn in such matters and rather naïve, I had learned a valuable lesson. In fact, earlier before the gem of advice by phone, I had listened to Bior while he and the other two friends and I had a serious discussion in Wales. The informal scrutiny centred on the future of the then burgeoning rebel movement, the SPLM/A.

I still vividly remember Bior’s prediction. He told us that by the time the movement would win recognition and support at home, within the region and from the international community- and in the process mustering resources, power and prestige, he posited that some people, complete strangers, would appear out of the blue, to ingratiate themselves to the leaders of the rebellion, mainly for personal gains. He went on to speculate that such individuals would try to antagonise persons they considered to be potential rivals, and to isolate the leaders from the public, making it difficult for others to have access to the leadership.

As a cabal committed to protecting their own narrow interests at the expense of the public, the cronies whose main expertise would be, for example, badmouthing and bearing false witness against perceived adversaries, would target colleagues with skills, integrity and competence they awfully lacked, he concluded.

We entirely agreed with his speculation but I do not remember that any of us ever listening to him or taking his words with any degree of seriousness they deserved. Until one faced the er… bad guys in person several years later. Did one relax his guard? I do not think there was anything possible under the circumstances one would have done to prevent the triumph of malevolence over decency. That is the nature of public life, which certainly does not have a manual on survival skills for all players.

On the surface one would be tempted to conclude that the pieces of advice he gave had an element of cynicism. To me, the answer is an emphatic NO. Bior was never a pessimist; instead he strongly believed that there is goodness in everyone of us as long as one gives themselves time to think long and hard about the consequences of an action one intends to carry out. In his personal capacity, Bior had an army of colleagues, friends and relatives who admired his personality and his leadership style. The same loads of good people always wished him well and success. They were among the thousands who turned up to pay their last respects during the funeral services in Juba and Kongor. But like any other human being, Bior did not lack a handful of elements who secretly coveted his admirable qualities or those who even tried to oust him from his assignment. That is life.

Protecting other people’s reputation

In his public and private life, Bior put premium on the sanctity of a person’s reputation. In line with that ethic, he shunned groups that relished idol talk that smeared other people’s reputation. A typical example here will suffice. In early 1990s, William Kon Bior took a sabbatical from the SPLM/A to return to university for a fourth time, to study for a doctorate in Divinity. The talk of the town, mainly in the Kenyan capital Nairobi, was that what Kon Bior was doing was to short circuit, as it were, to become a bishop within the Episcopal Church of Sudan, ESC. Bior Ajang who knew the facts better than others went out of his way to debunk the spinners of the slanderous tale: Kon’s intention was to study theology so as to gain a deeper understanding of one of the important roots of the Western civilisation which is deeply rooted in Judaeo-Christian legacy, he told those who cared to be corrected.

Time later proved Bior Ajang was right. After achieving his doctorate in Divinity from Scotland, Dr William Kon Bior returned to Africa. At the end of the war in 2005, he established a private law firm in Juba, a practice that had nothing to do with things ecclesiastical. Dr William Kon Bior, another fount immense intellect, died three years ago; another huge loss to South Sudan.

Caring family

At the family level, Bior Ajang’s home was open to anyone in need of emotional and other needs. I recall an event in which Bior and his kind wife, Abiong Parmena Kelei, received very young sons of William Kon Bior into their home at Cranefield, England in 1982. This was after their mother, Achol Mading de Garang, had fallen sick while at the final stage of pregnancy. She was later admitted into a hospital in Cardiff.

At the time, William Kon was in Sudan where he had gone to sort out matters related to his scholarship. The family and I at the time lived in a hostel in town outside the Welsh capital, Cardiff. There were other families living in the same hostel. Some of these guests were families and their spouses preparing to study at colleges in Cardiff still looking for rented accommodation in the city or at university villages. One of these was a Sierra Leonean couple.

In the absence of Achol and Kon I had to take care of the kids. That was not an easy responsibility for me, having never done that before. Luckily enough, the Sierra Leonean lady came to my rescue, helping with chores such as feeding, washing, dressing and taking them to bed.

A couple of days later, Bior and Abiong rang me with a request that I take the children to Cranefield to be with their own kids. With a good Samaritan in the person of a vicar, who was friends with Kon’s family we drove the children to Cranefield where they were received warmly. They totally felt at home with their young cousins, uncle and aunt. It was after the return of William from Sudan when their two sons were taken back to Cardiff.

Several years after this event, there was a repeat of a similar situation: Bior and family taking charge of the children of a relative; this time the children had been orphaned by their mother. The kids in question were two young sons of Arok Thon Arok, a senior member of the SPLM/A leadership whose wife had died suddenly in Ethiopia. Bior offered to take in the boys. Arok travelled to the United Kingdom with them. While in the UK the children received everything they needed: a family environment, love, schooling and even sometimes preferential treatment over their cousins, the hosts.

Children in parent’s footsteps

Like parents like children, this maxim could equally apply to the children of Bior Ajang and his wife Abiong Kelei. After the end of the Sudan’s armed conflict, Awak, the couple’s eldest child, launched a-not-for-profit outfit that acquired books to be sold at very low prices to South Sudanese. Acquisition of knowledge and reading for leisure as well as a source to enrich people’s lives had been negatively affected by the war; instead of brain, logic and persuasion the gun and its lethal use had unfortunately become, symbolically and sometimes in practice, the staple of authority and its exercise.

With the advent of peace and independence, that culture had to change. Now was the time for public to have access to books they could own and read at home. Leaves Bookshop, located in Juba, was born, thanks to the efforts of Awak Bior Ajang. Leaves also encouraged and hosted book launches and public lectures by outstanding intellectuals such as Dr Francis Mading Deng and preeminent South Sudan’s writer, Prof Taban lo Liyong. That was a welcomed development in a society where war had interrupted and almost pushed cultural activities and creative intellectual exchange to the margins of both private and public life of the new nation.

Not to be left out of the efforts to service the public, Aguet, one of Awak’s younger sisters, initiated a column in an English language weekly newspaper published in Juba those days. Although still a teenager at the time, Aguet’s informative and entertaining column was characterised by the depth of her deep understanding and presentation of the subjects she covered that as the editor of Pioneer, which carried her pieces, was convinced that the opinion writer could be mistaken for a person either in their late thirties or early forties. Very mature.

Understanding cross cultural factors

Two of Bior’s children went to the UK when they were under five years of age while the rest of them were born there. This means their cultural outlook is more British than South Sudanese. When some of them went to South Sudan after 2005, the time the war had effectively ended, some of their relatives, especially those in rural Kongor, their father’s native home, began to ask: why were they not speaking Dinka fluently or not at all; why were they doing this or not doing that, and so forth. Bior the father, answered those questions with an illustration. Assuming, he told those relatives, a very young child [Caucasian] from Europe, for example was, taken to Majak (village- Bior’s birthplace- which is at the edge of a wilderness extending to the Sudd) to live and grow up there, speaking Dinka, playing with Dinka children and doing everything the Dinka do by way of behaviour, singing and the like. Now take such a child to Europe where they were born. How would such a child fit in the European ways of life?

“Now we can now understand!” was the response the relatives.

Bior was speaking for his children but also for the rest of those South Sudanese, as well as others from the rest of the world, mainly Africa who have accompanied their parents when they migrated to settle in West- North America, Europe, Australia or New Zealand or were born in their new homes, away from parents’ native lands.

Keeping a balance between two different cultures is not easy. In acknowledging that fact, Bior told a gathering of Dinka community members in Juba that mothers with children living in the West should be given a credit for their role in bringing up responsible and well behaved children. He was speaking at a reception held by the Kongor community in honour of my family and me. And by that he was giving credit to my wife who was with four of our children during a party that was held at the residence of his step brother, General Bior-Aswad in early 2013. By extension Bior, was speaking about the experience of the rest of South Sudanese parents, including single mothers, living in their adopted homes in the Western world or the Middle East.

Painful loss

Having been a long-time friend of Bior, I have lost a very dear and trusted friend, indeed a dependable confidante. Each time I was grappling with a problem that required taking a hard and sometimes an unpleasant decision, Bior, who together with my family and a few other friends, would be privy to the issue at hand. And always, his wise and measured counsel was always the right course of action. One of the reasons why I valued his advice was that he freely gave knowing that I needed and would do me good. Family, friends and associates trusted him with confidences because he was such a decent person who kept anything confidential in the way a bank keeps valuables in its vaults. At this juncture I would end this tribute with a story that links up what appears to be an admirable attribute that appears to run in the family (to be followed by a reflection).

One of Bior’s paternal uncles is reported to have told friend a very long time ago “Kë tɔ̈u në agɔ̈ndï yic e dhiëi yetök yen abï yeen yök”, which literally means “What is in my chest will be known only to the white ant”. The meaning is that he would carry to the grave all the secrets that he had.

Purpose to live for: a reflection

As young and ambitious state employees we were proud to be part of a budding public service which was being confidently built by very experienced administrators who had trained and served under the system introduced into the country at the beginning of 20th century by the famous Sudan Political Service. That elite class was made up of Oxbridge graduates with military backgrounds. They evolved the best administrative structures and practices unique to Sudan.

As future public administration leaders being developed for future roles, our generation sincerely believed we were going to be heirs to our bosses and their wealth of experience they were imparting to us. That we were receiving an appropriate coaching from the right mentors, and that our generation was part of a foundation being laid for an efficient, effective and stable system of management became clear to this writer during his visits and sojourns in West Africa (in several Anglophone and Francophone countries) in early 1990s.

After making a careful and objective comparison between our subnational entity, the self-governing Southern Region of Sudan, and those independent states of West African, it was clear that South Sudan of the day was at the top as far as performance, transparency and the diligence of the civil servants were taken into account.

Bior, the rest of our colleagues and I had a reason to live for: our families and a life of service to the people. It is obvious that anyone who has a purpose in life, such as bringing up a family and serving one’s country and its citizens has every reason to be happy. We were very happy and full of hope for the future.

It was that goal that drove us and the rest of fellow Southern Sudanese to engage in the struggle for justice, regardless of whether one was a member of a secret cell affiliated to the movement; a clergyman informing the world about the persecution the people were going through; an SPLA soldier; a family in rural Southern Sudan contributing their livestock to feed the freedom fighters; a doctor caring for the wounded a guerrilla soldier; a widow looking after children following the death of their father at the war front; a poet composing and chanting freedom anthem; a singer boosting the morale of the combatants; or those who cast their YES votes in February 2011; those in the Arab Gulf sending money for medicines; comrades soliciting relief assistance to feed victims of war and natural catastrophes, and many more contributing in diverse ways…they all played a part for the realisation of our impendence.

Bior has gone too early but in his life busy he contributed to his country and its people in different capacities and in a fulfilling manner. It always pleased him to help and make others happy or when he was able to ease their pain; or when he brought consolation to the grieving; divisions based on ethnicity, language or dialect, culture, geography, age, gender or social status, appalled Bior; on the plus side, love of fellow humans and compatriots governed his life and actions.

Bior lived for a purpose and that was to love and serve all people and his country, which he did with distinction.

Fare thee well, Biöör-Töŋkëër.

Late Bior Ajang Duot was a contemporary at school and university of the author. The two were very close friends. This is an abridged tribute. The full text will be published in the near future.

*Bior Ajang Duot: The Dinka transliteration of personal and place names currently in use is not always a good guide to their pronunciation. For example, these three names have long vowels /oo/ and /aa/ respectively instead of short ones /o/ and /a/. Ideally, Bior would be Bioor (Biöör), Ajaang (Ajääŋ) and Duoot (Duɔ̈ɔ̈t), respectively. Other names such as Awak and Aguet appearing in this piece, too, are pronounced with long vowels: Awaak and Agueet, respectively.

Atem Yaak Atem is the former deputy minister for information in Juba and a veteran South Sudanese journalist who was the founding director, chief editor, and trainer of Radio SPLA (1984-1991). He studied Master of Education at University of Wales; Advanced Journalism at International Institute of Journalism, West Berlin and Journalism at Khartoum Institute of Mass Communications. He was also the editor in chief of Southern Sudan monthly magazine (1977-1982), SPLM/A newsletter (1986-1988), Horn of Africa Vision magazine (1997-2000), The Pioneer weekly newspaper (2010-2011), as well as the Nile Mirror (1975-1977) when its chief editor Kosti Manibe had travelled abroad on duty. As a senior journalist, he was also a prominent columnist and contributor to the SPLM/Update (1993-1996), and the Sudan Mirror (2003-2005). He is the author of a new book, “Jungle Chronicles and Other Writings: Recollections of a South Sudanese“, a four-volume memoir, of which Jungle Chronicle is the first installment.

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