Tributes to Charles Manyang D’Awuol Padiet: Superstar Sportsman and Accomplished Diplomat

By Atem Yak Atem, Sydney, Australia

Wednesday, November 20, 2019 (PW) — Charles Manyang Awuol Padiet, who has died after a long illness with cancer was one of South Sudan’s prominent public figures. A career diplomat who served for over 40 years, during his youth Manyang was a successful basketball player, who won national and international awards. His death is a big loss to his family, friends, colleagues and his country he has served with distinction. As a former friend of the deceased I join his family and the rest in mourning this great but unassuming personage.

To honour his memory, I recount in this tribute, some memorable phases in his illustrious life studded with achievements and service to his country and its people.

Early years and education

Although Manyang hailed from Duk Padiet the northernmost court centre (the lowest administrative unit after subdistrict) of the former Bor District, much of his schooling took place in towns and regions hundreds and thousands of miles away from his native home. For elementary education he went to Bor town, while his intermediate school was in the far north: Shendi in what was then Northern Province. More about Shendi later in the piece. 

After passing the entrance examination, Manyang went to Wadi Seidna Secondary. Wadi Seidna is a rural setting, not far from Omdurman. There, he was a contemporary of Northern students, some of whom in later years became Sudan’s rulers. The deposed General Omar Bashir was one of them.

At Wadi Seidna, there was also a sizeable number of students from the South. (Among those students were: Isaac Maluk, Biar Deng Biar, Achol Mading Mayen, Simon Kulusika, Mohammed Abdalla Ajak, Bior {Sultan} Ajang Duot, Mayom Deng Atem (years later to become speaker of Upper Nile State’s People’s Regional Assembly in Malakal, and others). 

With that exposure, Manyang was able to interact with students from different cultural, ethnic and regional backgrounds. No doubt, such an introduction to the “outside” world at that tender age, had a positive influence in shaping his worldview, making him in the process more cosmopolitan than most of his colleagues he had left in Southern Sudan.

After Wadi Seidna Manyang went to study law at the University of Khartoum. He graduated with an LL. B in 1972. Several years later Manyang went to acquire postgraduate degrees in the US: an MA in government (public administration and management) from St John’s University, and an LL.M from the University of California, at Berkeley. 

Friends with Buth Diu’s family

Manyang’s father, Awuol Padiet, was a policeman during the Anglo-Egyptian rule of Sudan. In the course of his work Awuol Padiet was able to meet and know each other with some prominent personalities of the day. One of those was Buth Diu, who hailed from the neighbouring Pan-gak, a district inhabited by the majority Nuer. Duk Padiet shares border with the former Pan-gak. In the early 20th century, Monykuer Mabur, chief of the Hol Dinka encouraged intermarriage between his people and their Nuer neighbours as a means of fostering peaceful coexistence in the area. The two communities lived in harmony with one another for many years.

Buth Diu was from a chiefly Gaawar Nuer family. More important than that, Buth was one of the first and few ministers from the South. He is today remembered fondly as the father of self-determination for the people of Southern Sudan. He made that proposal in Juba in 1954 (Douglas H. Johnson, 2014).

In a press interview I conducted with Manyang in 2010, he informed me that it was Buth Diu, who found him a place at Shendi Intermediate School. The minister’s own sons, Charles and Winder were students there. Throughout life, the three were very close friends. Like Manyang, Winder was a nationally acclaimed sportsman. 

Also, at Shendi, one of his schoolmates was Ali Osman Taha, Sudan’s future first vice president, and the man who, together with John Garang, the leader of the SPLM/A, negotiated and signed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, CPA, that ended the country’s second civil war in 2005.

Pride of Southern Sudan

During his student days Charles Manyang, standing at over six feet in height, was an accomplished basketball player at the national and international levels. Manyang was a leading member of the then famous Khartoum- based Catholic Club among other sports associations. Later he became captain of basketball team representing the University of Khartoum. During games in which Charles Manyang took part, fans could be heard chanting their famous refrain “Maniang, Maniang, Maniang” (due to apparent lack of /ny/ sound in Arabic). Overall, the amiable player won the title of National Basketball Team. In his biographical dictionary, Dr Kuyok Abol Kuyok writes that Charles Manyang “won many…. medals in national and international competitions.” (The Notable Firsts, 2015).

After Manyang had become the darling of all the Sudanese in general because of his outstanding achievements in sports, it was natural that fellow Southern Sudanese took his glory a step further: he had become a measure, if not a proof, that citizens hailing from his home region were capable performing wonders in any field in life; only that they had been deliberately denied opportunities. Charles Manyang the basketballer was to Southern Sudanese what the American sportsman, Jesse Owens, who won four gold medals in athletics during Berlin Olympics of 1936 or his fellow American, Wilma Rudolph, the champion athlete to win gold medals in track and field in a row- in 1956 and 1960 Olympic games- were to the African Americans of those years. 

For many Southern Sudanese, superstar sportspersons among them became symbols of public pride and consolation. Among these sports icons were retired soccer player and school coach, Isaac Eli; basketballer Michael Benjamin Lwoki, and his sister, Vivian; Zita Issa the young school girl from western Bahr el Ghazal, who in mid-1970s became the reigning champion of the Arab world in athletics; and of course Charles Manyang Awuol at the top of the best players from Southern Sudan. In the years to come there would be Manute Bol, another famous basketballer who made name for the country while he was playing the USA.

(In fact, high achievers among Southern Sudanese in other disciplines such as education, were granted status of “national” heroes. One of those was Peter Mario, the student from Rumbek Secondary School who topped the Sudan School Certificate in 1965 with nine distinctions, a feat that forced a government minister in Khartoum to fly to Uganda to return the student who had fled the country to seek refugee there after the Juba and Wau massacres of that year).

Student leader and the politics of the time

Such exposure was largely to account for Manyang’s attitude as someone with an open mind and tolerance, two of the attributes casual observers would easily notice in his private as well as public life. That Manyang had leadership qualities was not in doubt. 

While an undergraduate at the University of Khartoum, Manyang was elected president of Bor Union of Students, Bus for short. Bus was an umbrella organisation by students from the district attending intermediate and secondary schools, and tertiary institutions of education all over the country. They numbered several thousands of students. At the time of Manyang’s election, Rumbek Secondary and Juba Commercial had been relocated to Omdurman and Khartoum respectively, because of the war in the South. The capital was also where all the centres of higher education in the country were based. 

Bus played an active part in social and political affairs of the community at home in the South or in the diaspora, mainly Khartoum, Blue Nile Province in jobs on agricultural projects, and in Halfa Gedida in Kassala Province, where the former inhabitants of the submerged Nubia by waters from the newly constructed Aswan Dam were being resettled. There was also a big community of displaced persons from the district in Damazin, who had gone there to work at the dam construction site in Roseires near the Ethiopian- Sudanese border. 

For the Bus members, like the rest of the members from their district or Southern Sudan of the day, the main concern was what was known as the Problem of Southern Sudan. Armed conflict between the rebels of Anya Nya and the government army was raging in the South. Politically, the South had two main political parties, Southern Front, and Sudan African National Union, Sanu. (Unity Party was so insignificant and universally despised so much that no self-respecting Southern Sudanese had an appetite to join it. The organisation was rightly seen as a mouthpiece for the dominant and ruling Northern parties. Sudan Communist Party had within its leadership ranks Joseph Garang and Gabriel Achuoth Deng. Most of other members from the South, mostly students and workers feared making their affiliation to the SCP public for fear of ostracisation. The SCP was also perceived by Southern Sudanese as another Northern outfit). 

Under that situation, Bus had to toe the political tight rope carefully; it had to declare itself as a non-political entity although, tackling problems that were political were part of everyday life for individuals and the community as a whole. Publicly, the organisation advertised itself as non-partisan, meaning that it was not a wing of any of the rival political parties. Aware of that situation, Manyang and his team, as was the practice of his predecessors, worked hard to promote tolerance among the members and within the wider society.

That principle came under test during the nationwide parliamentary elections of 1968. Since campaigning and polling took place during school holidays, students went to their home areas to support candidates of their choice. Interestingly, a close look at social effects of party affiliation within the Bor community, it revealed that there were cases of siblings and other family members who belonged to opposing political organisations, yet they (the relatives) lived and worked amicably when faced with problems that were outside party politics.

However, it should not be forgotten that Bus, like any other human organisation, often experienced internal wrangling, much of it stemming from clash of personality and power struggle within the leadership. A case in point happened during Manyang’s presidency. A meeting of the general assembly was called to resolve differences. Approached with civility and level-headedness the differences were resolved in a 12 hour-long meeting held in Omdurman in 1968. Although accusations and counter arguments were initially heated, common sense ultimately prevailed.  Credit for the success of what was seen as reconciliation within the student body, was went to Manyang’s leadership style characterised by patience and fairness.

Bus and the diaspora community 

Because of the civil war and the catastrophic floods of the early 1960s which had displaced many inhabitants of northern part of the district, families with their children had gone to the North. Young men among the displaced, found manual jobs in factories in Khartoum North’s industrial area. The floods also had caused another problem: the spread of Schistosomiasis (Bilharzia) especially among children. The infected persons were sent to Khartoum to seek treatment while staying with relatives who were already there. 

There was concern by the community leaders as well as Bus members that such a large number of citizens living in a society with alien ways of life would cause problems to the migrant communities, specifically citizens from Southern Sudan. 

In conjunction with the community leaders living the capital city, Bus leadership was constantly meeting and urging migrants from their district to embrace living in families as the best way to preserve their norms and practices, especially culture and language.

Partly as a response to that appeal, the community used to stage wrestling matches in the morning and dancing in the afternoon every Friday, the official day of rest. Parents with school-age children were helped to enroll them in various localities where they lived, while adults who could not read and write were encouraged to attend literacy classes in social clubs, most of them operated by churches. 

It is not surprising that some of the children who attended school in the North later progressed to secondary school or even university, where they obtained degrees; some of the former adults who were introduced to literacy late in life, progressed to the extent they later qualified for junior government jobs back in the South. Diaspora community leaders and Bus leadership under Charles Manyang, no doubt played an active part in those commendable social programmes. 

Diplomatic service and the quest for justice

After graduation with a law degree Charles Manyang first worked with the Ministry of Youth and Sports. After about two years, he shifted to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a diplomat. Dr Mansour Khalid, a lawyer and a career diplomat himself, as minister, changed the policy which since independence in 1956 had made the department a near monopoly of Northern Sudanese. Under his supervision, Southern Sudanese applicants were accepted in in record numbers. (In 2010 when I hinted to Dr Mansour Khalid that the unprecedented intake of Southern Sudanese happened as an affirmative action, he emphatically denied the suggestion. Southern Sudanese candidates who were taken, in his words, “were among the best”. They were selected on merit, he said). 

Indeed, Manyang and his colleagues, who were appointed as third secretaries, began their service at the ministry’s headquarters in Khartoum; soon they were deployed to the United States (Washington and New York, the UN headquarters), Geneva and other world’s capitals where they gained on the job experience in diplomacy and international relations. Such postings also gave the young diplomats the opportunity to enrol for postgraduate degrees.

Diplomats’ dilemma

Rise to ambassadorial post did not take long for the diligent and mild-mannered Charles Manyang. His postings as ambassador took him to Nordic countries (based in Oslo), China and Tanzania. At the time Manyang was ambassador, the second civil war was already raging between the Government of Sudan and the rebels of the SPLM/A, largely a Southern movement. In broad terms the armed conflict pitted the South, Manyang’s home region, against the central government in Khartoum. In a war seen as a result of grievances by a party in an unequal society, there were bound to be very few bystanders especially government employees. 

The ranks of SPLM/A, for example, was made up of former government soldiers, civil servants, students, politicians and so forth. Would diplomats from the South in the service of the government in Khartoum continue to serve while fellow Southerners in other branches of government had deserted their positions? Such a question presented diplomats such as Manyang with a moral problem. Should they continue to serve a state which many people saw as oppressing their own people or should they quit and join the armed opposition? Alternatively, should they serve the “two masters” at the same time, as it were?

There were no simple answers to those questions. It was a veritable dilemma for principled individuals, the category to which Manyang belonged. Fortunately, he and like-minded fellow diplomats from the South did not have to agonise over what to do: the system of rule in Sudan was largely responsible for creating indefensible conditions that largely antagonise a section of citizenry to take up arms against the central government. 

That there was a case of misrule and injustice to be made by other Sudanese against the government of the day was attested by some liberal Northern Sudanese who joined the rebels of the SPLM/A. Those dissidents included personalities such as Mansour Khalid, the former foreign minister under Nimeiri. Even during peace talks between government representatives and the rebels, Khartoum side admitted, although using vague terms, that errors had been committed (only that colonial rule and the national regimes that took over after independence were sometimes singled out for blame).

Way out of the fix: justification found

It was not only Ambassador Charles Manyang who was in a fix over which side in the conflict to support. While many Southern Sudanese diplomats were generally sympathetic with the SPLM/A or took risk to secretly support its cause, there were others who sided with the Government of Sudan. (Information available at the time stated that there were two envoys- none of them a professional diplomat- from the South, who publicly supported the government in Khartoum, and accordingly waged a hostile media campaign against the SPLM/A and its agenda and leaders).  

For Manyang and some of his colleagues who clandestinely backed the SPLM/A, the story is illustrated by the following account. 

In 1986, a diplomat from the South working with the Government of Sudan, who was on an official visit to Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, met some senior SPM/A officials. An exchange of information about the movement, its activities and peace plan, took place. However, towards the end of the friendly and frank conversation, the SPLA officers told the diplomat to defect to their ranks. The ambassador was surprised and wanted to know what the SPLM/A would gain if he left his post to become one of them. 

He made it clear that he had more use to the SPLM/A being where he was than he would be if he were to join them physically, adding that as a man who was over fifty years of age, military training and combat would be out of question for him. 

What he did not reveal, however, was that he had translated the SPLM’s manifesto into French; had it printed and disseminated in the Europe and in francophone Africa, all at his personal expenses. It was his personal initiative; nobody within the movement had asked him to do that. There were other things he did for the SPLM/A in a similar fashion, but which he did not want to disclose. Was there anything wrong with that? Was the implied question the diplomat politely declined to utter aloud. 

A new superclass

Age factor was not the only reason barring persons like the diplomat- whose words I have paraphrased- from joining the SPLM/A. A major factor was an open secret about the prevailing mindset among the soldiers of nearly all ranks.

 As a way of motivating the lower echelon of the SPLA fighting forces, their commanders at training centres instilled in them that a trained soldier was more important and must deserve more respect than their civilian counterparts within the movement.  For their part, most of the soldiers developed a condescending attitude towards civilians, whom they described as muatiniin, Arabic word for citizens. 

There was no explanation why only civilians could be citizens or nationals, but the arrogance behind that attitude claimed that a civilian, including a civilian head of state was junior to an army private! (Majority of world’s heads of state who are ex-officio commanders in chief of their national armies have always been non-military. That fact has not changed). 

In practical terms, no matter how senior an SPLM office-holder could be, an SPLA soldier whatever their ranks, would not accept an order from a muatin (a citizen/civilian). The history of the SPLM/A provides irrefutable examples to support this claim. 

The unnamed ambassador, one would affirm, was speaking on behalf of his colleagues that included Manyang, who worked behind closed doors in many ways to advance the cause the SPLM/A was fighting for. It was common knowledge within the movement’s inner circles that Manyang had been marked by Khartoum for his sympathy and even clandestine assistance to the rebels. His recall from Tanzania was widely attributed to the government’s suspicion that he was promoting the rebels’ agenda. 

From retirement to the new nation’s undersecretary

After the signing of the CPA in 2005, Ambassador Charles Manyang Awuol was appointed undersecretary at the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs in the government of national unity in Khartoum. A little while before the South voted for succession in 2011 Manyang had reached the mandatory retirement age. But following the creation of the first government of the independent South Sudan that year, the veteran diplomat was judged the most qualified to head the new Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Juba. 

A source who asked not be named has told me that it was Nhial Deng Nhial, the first minister for Foreign Affairs of the newly created department, who was instrumental in the recall of Ambassador Charles Manyang Awuol from retirement to become the founding undersecretary. By coincidence, Nhial and Manyang in their respective student days, shared two things in common: each of them was a previous basketball player at the Catholic Basketball Club. The other commonality was that the two were law graduates from the University of Khartoum, more than 10 years apart. 

Portrait of a revered personality

Following his passing, moving tributes have been made by members of his extensive family, friends and colleagues. An appreciation by the governor of Jonglei State- where the deceased served as speaker- Maker Thiong, formerly a contemporary of the diplomat, described Manyang as an honest man. Anyone who had an opportunity to know late Manyang will readily agree with that statement. The departed was a person of solid integrity, whether in his private or public dealings. 

One of the most detailed tributes about the venerated father, diplomat, intellectual, and much more, has been published by his daughter, Anyieth D’Awol. Her father, she wrote on social media, was a progressive person, who respected and supported women, youth and everyone else. But the most memorable observation Anyieth has made about the father she adored, was his modus operandi. She has written, her dad “never forced his position but explained it and influenced decisions that way”. No doubt, that was a feature of a born diplomat.

Remembering a dear friend

To start with, I have to mention that late Charles Manyang Awuol and I shared love of reading as a lifelong interest. Areas of interest being history, biographies, literature, current affairs. We also happened to share devotees of the sanctity of nature (in South Sudan the majority of people talk of wildlife) and its preservation. For these reasons, Manyang used to be a regular reader of my columns carried by newspapers at different times. For my part, I relied heavily on his opinion on my writing. He was my barometer since I took his views serious simply because he would tell the truth without mincing words. 

Having been friends with Manyang for years what struck me as extraordinary about him was his unaffected modesty, a trait that would put to shame anyone thirsting for self-importance and recognition. His humility was an expression of deep conviction arising from his inner self. In 2010, just as an example, when I requested an interview for his profile, he was at first hesitant. The reason was clear: he feared that being a friend I might overblow his portrait, a prospect that would, in his words, embarrass him. I assured him that as he was a public figure, my readers had a right to know who he was, not what I wanted to present to them from a personal perspective; after all, with his life story full of verifiable achievements and wide-ranging experience in diplomacy and international relations, embellishing or fabricating who he was would be redundant even if one intended to engage in that unprofessional act.

Change of ‘career’

In 2013, less than two years from the birth of South Sudan as an independent country, a cabinet shakeup saw the arrival of a new minister at the Foreign Affairs. Soon, Ambassador Charles Manyang was replaced in the job by a former prison officer. Still in good health and ready to serve, Manyang, who always believed that working for a government was a service in which the employee has to give more rather than for pure benefit, decided to prepare for self-employment or a form of transition now known as active ageing. To him it was not yet time for him to go it alone. 

Before his private plans had taken shape, Jonglei, his home state offered him a seat in their legislative body. Soon, the former diplomat was selected as the speaker of the legislature, a job for which he was well suited since his impartiality was one of his brands. Nevertheless, opinions varied, with some contending that the most appropriate place for the urbane internationalist was in the national capital, where experts, academics or institutions seeking professional advice would benefit from his invaluable service. 

For his part, Manyang, any assignment would do as long as it counted as a service to the people. Late Charles Manyang fully agreed with the advice from the Sudanese poet, Ahmed Mohammed Salih, who was also the composer of the national anthem of Sudan. On the eve of the country’s independence, the distinguished poet warned members of Sudan’s political class: “[N]ot to make positions of power a thing of value among yourselves.”

It was while he was a speaker in Bor, the capital of Jonglei State, when he became ill. He was taken to Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, for treatment. It was there where he passed away.

Looking back: cherished memories

The list of things Manyang could be proud of is very long. As a skilled basketball player; thousands of fans mobbed him, and a lot of people loved him for having given his country a good name; as an undergraduate, his intellectual prowess qualified him for the unofficial club known colloquially as “the Cultured Ones” (among them diplomats Isaac Odhong La, Achol Deng, Francis Kuol Aloor, Joseph Muthabier- with the exception of the last named, all were law graduates. They predeceased Manyang). As an individual, he was endowed with chiselled features.

Manyang’s life was a model of spotless integrity. Coupled with that was he loved his job and held deep respect for anyone he worked with, whether senior or junior. As an industrious, conscientious and competent operator, Manyang was a trustworthy public servant who believed in the sanctity of public property and its protection from abuse by the unscrupulous public servants. 

His long service abroad took Manyang to nearly all the breadth and length of the world. During those travels and sojourns, he was able to see the wonders of the world, ancient or modern; he was and experienced the wonders of science and modern technology as well as seeing the other destitute half of our world, in Asia, South America, the Middle East, Oceania, Africa or even in the streets of the developed and affluent world; sprawled on pavements, hungry, cold and in rags. He empathised with them and felt their pang of their pain. 

Through his postings he brushed shoulders with, conversed and dined with some of the world’s greats, among them adored leaders such as Mwalimu Julius Nyerere of Tanzania or Madiba Nelson Mandela the saint of national reconciliation and forgiveness from South Africa; or with some who were not really great; while at the other spectrum, there were hosts of Mobuto Sese Seko of the former Zaire, or Nigerian Sani Abacha, presidents who were … (one will have to fill in whatever epithets one would fancy). Manyang had seen it all; the beautiful or eyesore; the good or the Iagos of this world; the joy or sorrow; despair and hope.

On a personal plane, Charles Manyang Awuol was a happily married man and a loving husband; beloved father; doting grandfather and dear uncle to all his nephews and nieces. In short he had everything to live for, and therefore he was a person who had virtually everything one would want in life, with the single exception, though: material wealth. One can vouch for that last fact. 

Gone too soon

By the time of his passing Manyang was just 69 years old. Over the last 60 years or so, life of an average middle class person all over the world has improved to the extent that 70 is now similar to what being 40 was some 150 years ago. Many people in the same group are now living to 90 and beyond on average (for example, former American academic and former secretary of State, Dr Henry Kissinger who is 96 years old still attends international conferences). 

A sizeable number of persons with valuable expertise past retirement age are leading healthy and active lives. In this respect, Manyang died too young; a sad loss to his family, friends, colleagues and the country and its people he loved and served without reservation. 

In the public sphere, Ambassador Charles Manyang Awuol would still be around giving and receiving from loved ones, while at the same time would still serve his country for the next 15 to 20 years. 

Public areas his passing has deprived of his contribution from his accumulated wealth of experience and wisdom are some too many to list although mentoring young diplomats would rank first.

What a loss!

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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