South Sudan’s VIPs Series (Part I): The Turbulent Political Journey of Dr. Lam Akol Ajawin

By Malith Kur, Montreal, Canada

Thursday, April 9, 2020 (PW) — In this “VIP” series, I am examining and narrating the history of political activities of some South Sudanese politicians who have made both positive and negative impacts on political transitions in South Sudan. It is essential that we pause, examine, and understand the contributions that the current political players have made toward political developments in South Sudan. I begin with Dr. Lam Akol Ajawin, not because he is one of the most controversial and sometimes dangerous politicians in South Sudan. He is one of the most skillfully divisive figures, who is loyal, not even to the country. Perhaps he is faithful to the Shilluk Kingdom.

We have observed since 1991 that Lam creates one organization, leaves it in a state of confusion, and jumps to another one. Politically, he is someone who cannot be trusted. But I have not discovered so far why some South Sudanese follow or form political alliances with him. More often than not, he offers no clear political vision to guide his followers. I am not acting here as Dr. Lam’s biographer, but this brief chronological tour of his political journey, since he joined the SPLM/A in the mid-1980s, gives us an idea of what kind of politician he is. We should observe here what he has achieved other than encouraging and promoting political chaos in South Sudan.

Lam’s SPLM/A Membership

Dr. Lam joined the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) in 1986. He quickly rose to the high command of the movement because of different factors. Lam’s academic credentials increased his chances of promotion. The SPLM/A was craving for intellectuals from different parts of South Sudan and other marginalized areas to support its vision of building “New Sudan,” and Lam fits this criterion.  Secondly, Dr. Lam’s ethnic background was also an essential factor for the SPLM/A. The movement was portrayed politically in Khartoum as a Dinka rebellion to deter other communities from joining it. The presence of influential figures from different communities within the SPLM/A hierarchy contradicted Khartoum’s propaganda that cast the SPLM as a tribal movement. Third, the SPLM had hoped that Lam would encourage as many Shilluk as possible to join the SPLM. But that was not the case because few Shilluks eventually joined the struggle.

However, in the late 1980s, Lam played a decisive role as a spokesman of the movement.  He clearly articulated the vision of New Sudan to the outside world. But the political demise of the Eastern Bloc began to weaken the SPLM/A traditional allies. This development precipitated the collapse of Mengistu Haile Mariam’s regime in Ethiopia. The fall of Mengistu’s government in Ethiopia left the SPLM/A with very few allies in the region. It also awakened hidden political tensions that existed within the SPLM/A hierarchy since 1983. This tension exploded in August 1991 when Dr. Riek Machar, Dr. Lam Akol, and Gordon Kong declared in Nasir a coup against John Garang.

Indeed, Lam was an essential architect of the coup against John Garang. He was a leading founding member of the Nasir faction, which had the intention to dismantle the SPLM/A. They nearly succeeded. The Nasir faction that Machar and Lam led planned and mounted vicious attacks on civilians in Bor and other areas to weaken military and political support for John Garang. The coup did not remove Garang from the leadership of the SPLM, but Riek and Lam’s militias massacred thousands of civilians in Bor communities and looted properties. Riek and Lam ordered their militias to massacre civilians in Bor to punish John Garang, but they were unknowingly writing the certificate of their political and military failure.

The Nasir faction of the SPLM/A was dissolved and renamed SPLM/A-United in 1993 to accommodate other disgruntled groups within the main SPLM/A. However, things were not going well between Dr. Lam and Riek Machar at this stage. Therefore, Machar removed Lam from the SPLM/A-United. Yet, Lam went ahead and formed his faction of the SPLM/A United, which negotiated in 1997 the Fashoda Peace Agreement with the National Islamic Front (NIF) in Khartoum.

Lam Akol and Fashoda Peace Agreement

In September1997, Lam signed the Fashoda Peace Agreement with the Bashir Islamist regime. The King of Shilluk mediated that agreement, which granted Lam and his supporters some legal status and political space to operate in Sudan but without any details or guarantees for its implementation. The Fashoda agreement was a one-page vague document that carried little political value. It was like the agreement that Riek Machar had signed in April of the same year with the National Islamic Front. None of these agreements was ever implemented. They were abandoned in 2002 because Islamists under Bashir were tightening their grip on power and would not entertain arrangements that did not support their vision of Sudan.

Lam Akol had no choice but to return in 2002 to SPLM/A under John Garang, which he had worked hard to destroy in the 1990s. Lam is a political opportunist. He returned to the SPLM/A when he saw things were moving well both politically and militarily. The Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between the Government of Sudan and SPLM/A, which brought the new political situation in Sudan, was already beginning to take shape. The CPA was signed in 2005, allowing the SPLM/A to enter a power-sharing arrangement with Bashir ‘s National Congress Party. Dr. Lam became a Foreign Minister in the central government representing the SPLM. However, he returned to his previous political moods and never followed the SPLM’s directives. For that reason, he was replaced with Deng Aloor Kuol. That move led to Lam’s resignation from the SPLM and formed the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement for Democratic Change (SPLM-DC).

Lam Akol and SPLM-DC

When Dr. Lam lost his job as a Foreign Minister of Sudan on the SPLM ticket, he moved quickly to form the SPLM-DC in 2009. In 2010, he contested the presidency of the Government of Southern Sudan, but he lost to Salva Kiir. The SPLM-DC gained 7% of the votes and won only four parliamentary seats, mainly in the Shilluk areas. After Lam lost the election, he campaigned against the referendum in Southern Sudan. He wanted the referendum postponed for ten years, a move which would have rendered the whole exercise unthinkable a decade later. The logic behind Lam’s stance to delay the referendum was to punish South Sudanese because they did not vote for him. But it was a futile attempt on his part, for no one in Southern Sudan at that time could accept the possibility of delaying the referendum even for one hour, leave alone for ten years.

The referendum went ahead as scheduled. Dr. Lam voted for unity, but his vote would not change the final choice that over ninety percent of South Sudanese made. South Sudanese voted in favor of independence. The overwhelming majority that stood for independence irritated Lam.  However, he had no choice but to accept the verdict of the people. Dr. Lam reluctantly accepted the results of the referendum. However, he remained in self-imposed exile in Khartoum. Lam came back to Juba a few months before the events of 2013. Perhaps he had an idea of what was going on within the SPLM. Soon after he arrived in South Sudan, the power struggle within the SPLM rank and file degenerated into open armed conflict.

Lam Akol seized the opportunity to throw way the SPLM-DC and create another party that would comply with the rhetoric of war. He formed a rebellion under the new movement that he called “National Democratic Movement (NDM).” Lam’s party became part of the 2015 peace agreement between the warring factions of the SPLM, which gave him the Ministry of Agriculture in the transitional government of national unity. But he resigned from his ministerial post when the deal collapsed in July 2016. Lam returned to Khartoum.  Once again, he joined the IGAD initiative to revitalize the peace agreement.

South Sudan Opposition Alliance (SSOA) and the Revitalized Peace Agreement

The Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and other international bodies offered to help in the revitalization of the peace agreement. This process brought into the equation new political players. Other parties that were not known entered the peace negotiations. Lam saw an opportunity to widen his political influence. He encouraged the creation of an alliance with those smaller parties to form a significant political bloc. Hence SSOA was born. Dr. Lam Akol and leaders of other little unknown armed and unarmed opposition movements founded the South Sudan Opposition Alliance (SSOA) in Ethiopia in Feb 2018. They established this alliance to gain recognition from IGAD and other South Sudan’s peace sponsors such as the Troika nations (the US, UK, and Norway) and the European Union. It was also useful for them to present a united position at the peace negotiations with the government.

The new opposition alliance chose the former Minister of Youth and Culture Gabriel Changson as its leader. It became a powerful voice in the revitalized peace negotiations, and South Sudanese saw it as a potential credible opposition that would demand political accountability in the country. But it was not long before cracks began to appear among its members. Symptoms of the common political disease that affects South Sudanese political actors—power struggle—started to infect its leaders. This problem became so severe that some groups within the alliance opted out of the peace process, hoping that they would find another way of entering negotiations with the government. Hence an LRA-style splinter SSOA emerged under the leadership of Thomas Chirilo. This group is now rigging havoc in the Central Equatoria region, abducting women and children.

The remaining members of the alliance signed the revitalized peace agreement, which offered SSOA a share in the government of national unity. SSOA got a vice president and some ministerial positions to fill. The position of the vice president became a source of political contention within the new opposition coalition. Different influential individuals wanted this position for themselves. The people vying for this position within SSOA were Dr. Lam Akol Ajawin, former Governor of Western Equatoria Bakosoro, among others. Lam made many attempts to change the political calculus in his favor within the group. He initiated an election to bring in new leadership. He was hoping that his supporters would gain the upper hand and take over the alliance.

He proposed late Peter Gatdet to replace Gabriel Changson as the new leader of SSOA. The political calculation here was that the Nuer factions within SSOA would favor Lam over Bakasoro or another person interested in the position of vice president. Lam forced an uninclusive election that brought Gatdet as a leader of the alliance. Lam Akol reasoned that Nuers have already crowded the presidency, and those under Peter Gatdet would stand with him to take the position of the vice president. But things did not turn out as Lam contemplated them. More cracks appeared in the alliance, and Gabriel Changson declared null and void the election of Peter Gatdet as chairman of SSOA. The worse of all happened before the alliance settled its political nightmares. Peter Gatdet died in Khartoum as his primary backer, Bashir found his feet in hot water in Khartoum.

Those events paralyzed SSOA, and when the time came to choose someone to represent them at the Revitalized Government of National Unity (R-TGONU), they failed to reach a consensus. Since they could not agree to choose one among them, they allowed President Kiir to appoint one person among them, and they would abide by such a choice. So Kiir chose Imam Ayii as vice president representing SSOA at the presidency. This development has irritated Lam, and his next political moves could be potentially devastating to SSOA. The political problems that are currently besetting SSOA did not come out of blue. There is a history here. Dr. Lam Akol is an arrogant political figure. Any political organization in which he becomes an influential player is often doomed to fail. The history narrated above shows that all the political organizations in which Dr. Lam participated have collapsed except the main SPLM/A. The SPLM/A under John Garang had specific objectives and vision, which were far more powerful for Lam to dismantle.

But for SSOA to survive Lam’s political onslaught, it must revise what it stands for, or it will not last that long. Lam is now furious about the failure of SSOA to allow him to assume the position of vice president. Like his previous alliances, he wants to dismantle SSOA. Lam’s move to criticize his political allies in recent weeks has not come to me as a surprise. He is not a stable political figure. He entered the SPLM twice and left through the back door. In the same manner, he abandoned the political organizations he helped create, such as SPLM-Nasir, SPLM-United, SPLM-DC, and now there is no reason why he should not leave SSOA since things did not go his way.

The question that remains unanswered is that people clearly understand the cunning behaviors of Dr. Lam Akol. Yet, they allow him to deceive them into following the path of his destructive policies. It is time for political players in South Sudan to be careful about political dealings they make with Lam Akol. He has nothing to offer but supporting destructive political ideas because his loyalty is not for South Sudan. He made all the attempts before 2011 to derail the independence referendum. Lam failed to stop it.  But he will do everything possible to undermine the political stability of South Sudan.

The author, Malith Kur, is a South Sudanese Canadian and can be reached via his email: malith.kur@mail.mcgill.ca

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