Remembering Job Mading Deng Akur, a Veteran of the Anya Nya War of liberation in South Sudan

Job Mading Deng Remembered

By Atem Yaak Atem, Sydney, Australia

Monday, October 24, 2022 (PW) — On October 7, Job Mading Deng Akur, a veteran of the Anya Nya War of Liberation, passed away in Juba. By his own reckoning, he was born in 1927, so on that report, he was 95 years old on departure.

Mading is said to have begun his education at Baidit-also known as Many e Deng- village school- and proceeded to Malek Elementary School. According to his family, Mading soon joined the Sudan military. From the same sources, he was a non-commissioned officer with the rank of sergeant major when he defected to Anya Nya in the early 1960s.

Family of widespread branches

Job Mading was the second son of Deng Akur Ateng/Akuur Atɛ̈ŋ* from Alian Wut and Atong Leek Bior Gar/Biöör Gaar from Angakuei/Aŋakuëi Wut, both sections which are now part of the Bor County. Mading was second to sister Adut, the future wife of Amos Agok from Pakeer/Pakëër Wut. Amos Agok/Agɔɔk Atem and Job Mading were comrades in arms after joining Anya Nya in the early 1960s. Amos Agok later became one of the prominent Anya Nya commanders during Sudan’s first civil war, hence a comrade in arms with his brother-in-law Job Mading, hence a comrade in arms. The other siblings were Aluel/Aluɛɛl and Achol, and three sons- Mading, Alier/Aliɛɛr and Ateng. Aluel was the wife of Malual Aguer/Aguër Diing from Awulian Wut. Their children include Abul Malual, the wife of this writer, hence his ties with Paan Deng Akur Ateng and Paan Leek Bior Gar. Mading’s aunt, Angeth/Aŋeth Ateng was married to Deng Ador/Adöör from Awulian, whose daughters were married men from various parts of the district. Angeth’s daughter, Arok/Arɔk Deng Ador was married to Deng Lual from Dachuek/Dacueek Wut.

This concise account of Job Mading’s extended family line would not be complete without a few words about his mother Atong Leek, the widely respected matriarch, who gained fame for generosity and tough discipline.

I longed to meet that grand iron lady, who happened be grandmother of my wife Abul Malual. The other reason was because my role models have always been principled people who believe that a job must be done diligently and to a successful conclusion. From the stories I had heard about Atong Leek, I was convinced that she epitomised those characteristics.

While I was in charge of relief operation in Bor town in 1989, the time Atongdit was staying in Makuach area, north east of the time, I decided to visit her. On my trip I was accompanied by my work counterpart, an Ethiopian national working in the area for the children programme, UNICEP. We drove to Kapat/Kapäät, where we met and were welcomed by Bishop Nathaniel Garang Anyieth. We were informed that Atongdit lived at nearby Makuach. As we were preparing to drive to the village, a heavy tropical downpour began without warning. With the clayey soil of the Upper Nile region, going there under the condition was just impossible. My Ethiopian colleague and I had to return to our base at Pakuau/Pakuäu at the outskirts of Bor town.

Two weeks later I was transferred to Torit. I missed seeing Atong Leek. I was upset. A few months later we received the news of her departure; she was in her late nineties. Three years later Abul and I had our third child, a baby girl. I advised her godfather (according to Dinka tradition naming a child is a responsibility of a grandfather, paternal uncle or in their absence, an elder from the lineage advise for the choose of a name) to name the child after her great grandmother, Atong Leek. And he readily endorsed the name as both appropriate and auspicious. And that is how Atong Atem got her name. In Dinka, Atong means a female born in wartime; a male becomes Tong/Tɔŋ.

About Any Nya

Anya Nya and its successor, the SPLM/A as liberation movements are poles apart when discussing the environments each operated in and the means for the objectives, they had set for themselves to pursue and achieve. The former lacked nearly everything its members needed for their mission, while on the other hand, the latter had nearly the right conditions and the means to be used in the execution of the liberation struggle.

The Anya Nya guerrillas, whose presence as a military wing of the Southern political activism began to be felt in 1963 after a hiatus of eight years following the August 18, 1955, Torit mutiny. Many South Sudanese credit that rebellion as the expression of anger by the people of what is now South Sudan- against policies of exclusion and neglect of the former subnational entity- by the ruling class from Northern Sudan.

After the mutiny had been crushed, its masterminds court-marshalled and executed by firing squad, some of the survivors went to their home areas to resurface in the early 1960s as the core of what later became known as Anya Nya- name of snake venom in Madi language, whose pronunciation and writing are said to have been corrupted in Lotuho, both of Eastern Equatoria.

From 1963 onwards the main groups who constituted the majority of the guerrilla army were police and miliary personnel defectors from the government, intermediate and secondary school students, junior civil servants, and in the case of Upper Nile and Bahr el Ghazal young men from cattle camps.

The other party in the conflict was the Government of Sudan represented by the Sudan Armed Forces. Since Sudan’s ruling class restricted admission of citizens from Southern Sudan into the military, particularly the military college, the bulk of the fighting force deployed in the South were from the North were the majority of soldiers- privates and non-commissioned officers (NCOs) were drawn from Darfur and Nuba Mountains, were all Muslim by faith, while their commanding officers hailed from Central and Northern Sudan respectively. The government bought its war materiel from Western- G3 rifle from the former Federal Republic of Germany and the dreaded Bren machine guns, from the former Czechoslovakia. Anya Nya, on the other hand, depended on rifles from defecting Southern police personnel and from SAF. Insignificant external military support to the Anya Nya rebels came from the State of Israel. Such supplies reached the Southern rebels through Uganda. After the rise of General Idi Amin in that country, he changed course after befriending Muamar Gaddafi of Libya. Because of that development, those arms were channelled through Ethiopia- a country that has always supported the people of South Sudan regardless of the ideology and personality of the rulers in Addis Ababa. Those arms were few and of most of those the Israeli army captured from their Arab belligerents following the Six-Day War in June 19. The Israeli main interest in the armed conflict was because of the Government of Sudan to ally itself with “frontline” Arab states, despite the fact Sudan and Israel don’t share a border. In other words, the support for Anya Nya was to pin down Sudan; it was not for religious purposes as some Southern Sudanese tended to buy that line.

Difference between Anya Nya and SPLA

Unlike the SPLA which had radio communication sets, which made communication and command possible in areas of operations, anti-air missiles (surface to air missiles SAM 7) that its forces used for devasting effect in bringing down SAF aircraft, trucks for transportation of war materiel and personnel and later, tanks their forces captured from SAF following their rout from garrisons they had lost to the rebels. SPLA training camps were adequately supplied with food, thanks to the support of a neighbouring country. Anya Nya food was at best precarious.

Anya Nya fighters lacked basic military equipment. In the field of communication, its members had to send their urgent messages via what they called scouts, who would walk for days and even weeks before they reached their destinations, and by the time of their arrival, the urgency of message had become history.

The third source was the former Belgian Congo, which descended into a near anarchy soon after the attainment of independence from Belgium in 1960. The defeated Congolese left wing rebels known as Simba (or Lion in Kiswahili), fled the country and ran towards their country’s border with Southern Sudan- today’s Western Equatoria State) and began to sell their arms at throwaway prices, which was music to the ears of Anya Nya.

Job Mading, like most of the Anya Nya fighters, received further military training in guerrilla tactics Equatoria and travelled to the border with Congo to buy arms there from the defeated Congolese guerrillas known as Simbas (Lions in Kiswahili). The cattle-owning people from Upper Nile Province sold their livestock and used the money for buying arms at the border. Students and young men from cattle camps from those areas went to buy guns from the Congo. Other groups of fighters within the Anya Nya ranks consisted of students, junior civil servants and members of police forces who had defected with their rifles.

Anya Nya contingent in the former Bor District was an effective fighting machinery. In January 1965 a government military convoy left Bor town to hunt the “outlaws” as the government referred Anya Nya, came under an ambush laid by Anya Nya at Malual-Chaat about 7 kilometres from the district headquarters. The officer, a first lieutenant and the entire force were decimated. Soon afterwards SAF wreaked havoc on the civilians as measure for vengeance.

Trip to the Congo

According to the information obtained from his family, Job Mading was one of the soldiers who travelled to the border area to buy weapons from the disbanded Congolese rebels. His wife, Yom Gai, says the time Mading left for Western Equatoria they had just been married. It was in the early 1960s. She has added that she was praying for his safety and that of his comrades. Her prayers were answered: such trips were hazardous and some members of Anya Nya lost their lives on the way to and from the Congo since criminals had infiltrated the Simba. The border area where the sale of arms was taking place was a lawless one.

As expected, the war Anya Nya was waging against the Government of Sudan was a fight between Goliath and David. But the determination and readiness of Anya Nya guerrillas to sacrifice their lives for the people kept the fire burning until the Addis Ababa Agreement of 1972 that gave the South a limited regional autonomy.

Although the members of the bush army were deployed in their home districts, their training took place mainly in Equatoria, mainly in Okiny-Kibul and Morata, because its terrain- forests and hills- provided suitable camouflage to the rebels and a hindrance to the enemy. And since the region also shares borders with four foreign countries that was an additional security factor for the Sudanese rebels.

Integration of Anya Nya members into the national army

In accordance with the term of the agreement most former Anya Nya fighters- six thousand of them- were integrated into SAF. Others were assigned to wildlife service, roads and the like. According to the information from the family, Job Mading was assigned to the department of road. He did not stay there for long. He took up to framing as well as operating a shop among the Mundari people who became good friends with him.

When the second civil war broke out in 1983, Mading supported the resumption of the armed struggle, which he believed would accomplish what he and his colleagues had half achieved. He later moved to refugee camp in Ethiopia, where he played a prominent role as community leader, a role in which he often dispensed advice to both civilians as well as members of the fighting force.

A private citizen

With the end of the war in 2005, Job Mading continued to live as a private citizen while raising his families (three wives) and their children, some of them who are university graduates and with stable jobs.

Veterans from Anya Nya, the class the late Job Mading belonged, now have become an endangered species due to old age and vagaries that are the share of citizens of a poor society. Most of them have been living in complete obscurity- not seen nor heard since the South Sudan achieved independence eleven years ago. One living example is that of General Martin Mawien, a veteran of the two wars, who recently was found living at the outskirts of Juba and in poor health.

Clubs for veterans

Recently a friend floated to me the idea that the policies of the Government of Australia and community look after their war veterans should be copied in areas such as the establishment in South Sudan structures similar to the RSL- Returned Service Leagues (social clubs), which are also open to other members of society. In such establishments, where veterans as well as other members of the public spend their time chatting with each, sipping beverages and subsided meals or play indoor games and other entertainment activities such as use of computers or simply watch TV programmes for those without sets at home.

To create such public facilities would not be beyond the capacity of diasporan South Sudanese. Since this group (living abroad) of citizens has often come to the aid of their compatriots- at the time of dire need- at home by means of remittance to mitigate the problems caused natural disasters such as war and floods, contribution towards projects that will improve the lives of the country’s war veterans and other vulnerable elders is feasible and commendable. It can be done.

Names marked with * indicate how they are written and pronounced in Dinka.

Atem Yaak Atem is a South Sudanese journalist, writer and translator.

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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