Dr. John Garang: The Founding Father of South Sudan

Dr. John Garang de Mabior (1945–2005) was a revolutionary leader and economist who led the Sudan People’s Liberation Army for over two decades, playing a key role in the peace process that paved the way for South Sudan’s independence. 

Below are some of his most notable quotes that we could go through as a people to reflect on his dreams, visions and ideas for this country to see where we are and/or where we are headed/where we have failed. Enjoy! 

1. “I joined the movement with total commitment and dedication. I’ve resolved to give the ultimate sacrifice, my life, for I’m bound by nothing else but duty and commitment to Africa and the African people.”

2. “A nation is not created by God but by people and it doesn’t go to church on Sundays neither does it go to mosque on Fridays.”

3. “Let us unite against ethnic, religious and racial divides to restore personal dignity for all. Let us reject being mere spectators in life, to becoming masters of our own destiny.”

4. “The SPLM is a forum in which citizens shall have a right to ask their government representatives; where are the hospitals, the school buildings and the roads you promised to construct. The SPLM is a forum in which citizens have a right to report a member of the SPLA to face justice in the court of law if he has committed crimes against civilians.”

5. “Our struggle for dignity, freedom, democracy and good governance…our struggle for justice and equality for all irrespective of their tribe, ethnic group, race, religion or gender are indications that nobody is anybody’s majority and nobody is anybody’s minority.”

6. “Peace will bless us once more with hearing the happy giggling of children and the enchanting ululation of women who are excited in happiness for one reason or another.”

7. “Africa must unite not as a continent but as a nation for therein lies our collective survival as a people.”

8. “People accuse me of killing our sons and eating up people’s farm produces for nothing, but let me tell you this, our blood will be shed because I hate oppression and marginalization of our people but I’ll not even enjoy the fruits of this struggle. There are people sleeping comfortably right now; they don’t know the hunger or the sound of a gun. After our job is done that generation will take over; they will cut a large piece of land with pangas and sell it cheaply for a bottle of beer.”

9. “Women in Sudan, as everywhere in the world, are the marginalized of the marginalized, whose suffering goes beyond description. The Sudanese rural woman, for example, wakes up at five o’clock in the morning to walk five kilometers just to get five gallons of water after five hours walk, spends another five hours working on the family farm and five more hours making the family meal and then she goes to sleep.”

10. “With this peace agreement, we’ve ended the longest war in Africa – 39 years of two wars since August 1955 out of fifty years of our independence. And if we add the 11 years of Anyanya 2, then Sudan had been at war within itself for 49 years, which is the whole of its independence period.”

11. “The SPLM vision, policy and slogan shall be to take the towns to people in the countryside rather than people to towns, where they end up in slums as happened in many countries with the consequent deterioration in their quality of life.”

12. By the end of the six year Interim Period I want Southern Sudan to be earning at least two billion dollars from oil revenues, two billion dollars from tourism, at least six billion dollars from agriculture and other enterprises, so that we have annual revenues of at least ten billion dollars. All this requires peace and stability all over Southern Sudan. Over the six years I want Southern Sudan transformed into the heaven on earth of Africa….” Dr. John Garage De Mabior, June 30, 2005. 

13. I and those who joined me in the bush and fought for more than twenty years, have brought to you CPA in a golden plate. Our mission is accomplished. It is now your turn, especially those who did not have a chance to experience bush life. When the time comes to vote at the referendum, it is your golden choice to determine your fate. Would you like to vote to be second class citizens in your own country? It is absolutely your choice —Dr. John Garang speaking to South Sudanese in Rumbek, May 15, 2005, about the just-signed CPA and the right choice to be made by the South Sudanese in the then forthcoming referendum which, unfortunately, he didn’t had a chance  participated in.

14. “Something must be rotten in Arabs’ culture that is why Chinese came and left you behind, Russians came and left you behind, Canadians came and left you behind and Americans came and left you behind”—Dr. John Garang commenting on Arab’s violent war of Jihad and unwarranted public incitement and war propaganda.

15. “Imagine a traveler walking into your cattle camp one evening; you welcome him warmly, give him milk to drink and the best bed to sleep on. He stays with you for an indefinite period and when you tell him that he has overstayed his welcome and was time for him to go, he claims that it was your fault to let him stay so long anyway and demands a share of your cattle: would you allow him to do so?”—Dr. John Garang speaking to a crowd of Dinka herdsmen in 1998 about the  arrival and occupation of the Sudan by the Arabs. 

16. “The SPLM is a forum in which citizens shall have right to ask their government representatives where are the hospital and school buildings, and roads you promised to construct? The SPLM is a forum in which citizens have right to report a member of the SPLA to face justice in the court of law if he/she has committed a crime against civilians?” – Dr. John Garang

17. These days, democracy is so beaten up that even if the devil says he is democratic, people will listen to him. We in the SPLA are the victims of our own image and success. SPLA is a tool to bring about a democratic society and a tool should not be democratic– He said this when SPLA had many internal disputes-1991

    Like a ram, for anything successful to happen, people must go back, back in order to go forward  – Dr. John Garang

18. "If we take over this country, we shall start with Agriculture to finance exploration of oil, but if we start with oil, we will be corrupt and lazy" ~ John Garang, 1993, Natinga.

19. The old Sudan has really been based on a fiction, on deception… The new Sudan begins with the movement now, because there should be no ‘faasil’ [*interval] between the movement and new Sudan. It is the movement that merges [and develops] into the new Sudan… Nothing falls from the sky.

20. Our vision of Sudan is to create from the historical Sudan, from the contemporary Sudan, a New Sudan in which all nationalities, all the religious groups, coexist. There must be a commonality to all those groups with which all of them identify. 
    – (from a seminar with John Garang de Mabior at the Brookings Institution, Washington DC, 9 June 1989 – on a short visit to the USA)

21. We have a general problem with international economy. There are advanced capitalist and advanced socialist economies. there is Third World, the so-called Third World, made up of poor countries.

22. We conclude by reiterating that the slogans of the SPLA are “National Unity”, “Socialism”, “Autonomy”, where and when necessary, and “Religious Freedom”. Our belief in and commitment to these slogans are irrevocable – (1984)

23. ‎We give these examples without bitterness, we only state them as facts. There is no bitterness at all because we are serious. We are serious about the formation of a new Sudan, a new civilization that will contribute to the Arab world and to the African world and to the human civilization. Civilization is nobody’s property. Cross-fertilization of civlization has happened historically and we are not going to separate whose civilization this and this is, it may be inseperable. But at this stage of our development we need to form a new Sudan in which we use our resources, our vast resources, our vast manpower – more than one million of them are abroad. They are running the economies of other societies. We are convinced that without these sectarianisms we can form a new Sudan. 
    -( from the Statement by John Garang de Mabior at the opening session of the preliminary dialogue between SPLM/SPLA and the Nationa Alliance for National Salvation, held at Koka Dam, 20 March 1986)

24. I present to this historic conference that our major problem is that the Sudan has been looking and is still looking for its soul, for its true identity. Failing to find it (because they do not look inside of the Sudan, they look outside), some take refuge in Arabism, and failing in this, they find refuge in Islam as a uniting factor. Others get frustrated as they fail to discover how they can become Arabs when their creator thought otherwise, and they take refuge in separation. In all of these, there is a lot of mystification and distortion to suit the various sectarian interests… In the process of national formation in the Sudan, we need to throw away all these sectarianisms and look deep inside our country and the experience of others… I present that we can form a unique Sudanese civilization that does not have to take refuge anywhere. 

25. How do we move forward? Europe has reached a consumerist society. Underdeveloped countries are now aspiring to consumerism. This is unattainable because the necessary base, economic base, is not there to support a consumer society; the consumer society of the west had its own history of development. A similar thing can be said about socialist economies. That is, having a certain level of development and wanting a certain level of consumption. This is a basic contradiction, and symptoms abound in socialist countries as to how to achieve the same quality of life that has been achieved by the capitalist world. 
    The issue is really how to organize our resources, so that we start grass-roots level development and be self-reliant. Our development is going from cities to rural areas. I envisage development going from rural areas to cities, so that I don’t have a problem of people demonstrating for wheat bread when there is grain produced locally, when there dura, when there is sorghum. The lifestyle that has been reached Europe and we aspire to is simply untenable.
    – (9 June 1989, Brookings Institution, Washington DC)

26. The process of development in the advanced capitalist countries took a historical route which we will not follow. It is a history of expansion by those countries to the rest of the world. Europe expanded out to America, eventually to Africa, Asia. There was quantitative accumulation of wealth from other parts of Europe; these are historical realities. The development of Europe, the industrialization of Europe was not an easy affair. It involved colonialism, it had involved exploitation including that of child labour. The Labour Party in Britain, for example, struggled for the rights of workers. The working day was progressively reduced until it has become 8 hours now. 
    Now, we have a situation when you have the industrialized west having reached this stage as a result of lots of difficulties, internally and outside in the colonies. We are in a situation where the Third World has lots of linkages with the advanced capitalist countries. The issue is how do we delink and move forward to establish an industrialized society. In Africa, we cannot go out to colonize other places; this is out of the question; there is nobody else to colonize. 

27. The education process is going on. Every day people are getting educated into the situation by the dynamics of the situation itself. – (1989)

28. "It this case of mine is taken to God, I will win this case."

29. States are made to serve people; governments are established to protect the citizens of a state against external enemies and internal wrongdoers. It is on these grounds that people surrender their right and power to self-defense to the government of the state in which they live. But when the whole machinery of the State, and the powers of the Government, are turned against a whole group of the society on the grounds of racial, tribal or religious prejudices, then the victims have the right to take back the powers they have surrendered, and to defend themselves. The basis of statehood, and of unity, can only be general acceptance by the participants if justice, equality, egalitarianism, freedom and social development are the practices of governments, and not only being beamed out as mere texts enshrined in constitutions. Surely, when more than twelve million people have become convinced that they are rejected in a country in which they live, and that there is no longer any basis for unity between them and other groups of people, then unity has already ceased to exist. You cannot kill thousands of people, and keep killing more, in the name of unity. There is no unity between the dead and those who killed them; and, worse still, there is no unity in slavery and domination.”

30. If you get knowledge, you can't keep your knowledge away from people seeking help, ... These are our people.

31. We have a saying in our dialect: When a hero dies in the village, people cannot cry,

32. The Islamic Arab agenda is the cause of the [civil] war and the cause of the suffering. It is a choice between slavery and freedom. What is life worth to be at peace when you are a slave in your own country? …. The engine which drives the war is injustice.

33. "Arabism cannot unite us; Africanism that's opposed to Arabism cannot unite us; Islam cannot unite us;

    Christianity cannot unite us. But Sudanism can unite us, because it's the common house. So let's drop this crazy idea, that all of us must be Arabs."

34. Knowledge is power, power to live a decent life, Power to earn a decent income, Power that brings you respect and dignity. When knowledge can bestow the power for so many things, why should it be restricted to a few who have the advantage of wealth? Knowledge needs to be free for all those who deserve it, and what a person deserves should be decided by an individual‘s capability and intelligence and not by wealth.

35. Providing free education would enable students to concentrate on learning and gaining more through the education, instead of struggling with the payment of tuition fees and meeting other expenses. When the focus shifts to learning it leads to empowerment of the youth to work towards an increasingly intellectual society.

36. Free education would lead to more educated people. More educated people in the society leads to overall improvement in the quality of life in the society. Through better employment and elimination of the struggle for basic needs, people would concentrate on the higher aspects of life, such as improving administration and management of issues that impact the society in general. Therefore free education would have a very positive impact on the overall quality and thinking in the society.

37. More educated people would mean better governance from the grassroots to the national level. Educated people would make better choices in electing their representatives and are better equipped to question corruption and misuse of power. Therefore, education is not only the remedy for the ills of unequal wealth, but also the remedy for the ills that plague our administration and governments. By making education free, we prod our society towards the path of better governance.

38. Intelligence and talent are not the forte of the wealthy alone. There is lot of untapped and undiscovered talent and intelligence lying covered under impoverishment and destitution. Free education opens the doors of opportunities to these talented people. Through free education, we can ensure that the talented and intelligent can gain the assurance of a better tomorrow through maximizing their academic potentials.