Juba, South Sudan
Reuters
Pope Francis will lead prayers at the mausoleum of South Sudanese liberation hero John Garang on Saturday, an acknowledgement of the importance for the world’s youngest nation of perhaps the one leader who could ensure unity.
Garang was killed in a helicopter crash in July, 2005, less than a month after becoming president of the autonomous Southern Sudan region, which he had led in a rebellion against Sudan’s central government for two decades.
A soldier holds a portrait of the late former Sudan People’s Liberation Army/Movement leader John Garang at the New Site village in southern Sudan on 4th August, 2005. PICTURE: Reuters/Radu Sigheti/File photo.
The mostly Christian and animist south voted in a referendum six years later to secede from the mostly Muslim north.
When South Sudan became independent on 9th July, 2011, tens of thousands flocked to Garang’s mausoleum in the new capital of Juba to celebrate.
POPE, ARCHBISHOP AND MODERATOR TO MEET PEOPLE DISPLACED BY WAR IN SOUTH SUDAN
Pope Francis, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Church of Scotland Moderator will meet people displaced by war in South Sudan and hear their stories on Saturday in one of the high points of their visit to the struggling African nation.
The three Christian leaders, on an unprecedented “pilgrimage of peace”, will later take part in an open-air ecumenical prayer vigil at a mausoleum for South Sudan’s liberation hero John Garang, with 50,000 people expected to attend.
The joint visit by leaders of the Roman Catholic, Anglican and Reformed traditions is the first of its kind in Christian history.
South Sudan, the world’s newest country, broke away from Sudan in 2011 but plunged into civil war in 2013 with ethnic groups turning on each other. Despite a 2018 peace deal between the two main antagonists, bouts of inter-ethnic fighting have continued to kill and displace large numbers of civilians.
There are 2.2 million internally displaced people in South Sudan, out of a total population of about 11.6 million, and another 2.3 million have fled the country as refugees, according to the United Nations.
Extreme poverty and hunger are rife, with two thirds of the population needing humanitarian assistance as a result of conflict as well as three years of catastrophic floods.
South Sudan is predominantly Christian and tens of thousands of people lined the streets of the capital Juba to welcome the Pope with singing, drumming and ululations on Friday when he arrived from a visit to Democratic Republic of Congo.
In a strongly worded speech to South Sudan’s leaders including its previously warring President Salva Kiir and Vice-President Riek Machar, Francis implored them to renounce violence, ethnic hatred and corruption.
“No more of this!” he said. “No more bloodshed, no more conflicts, no more violence and mutual recriminations about who is responsible for it.”
At the same event, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby said he was grieved that violence had continued after the 2018 peace deal and a 2019 gathering at the Vatican during which the Pope knelt to kiss the feet of the warring leaders, begging them to bring peace to South Sudan.
“When I remember the commitments that were made by you in 2019 I am grieved. I am sad that we still hear of such tragedy. We hoped and prayed for more. We expected more. You promised more,” Welby told the assembled leaders.
“We cannot pick and choose parts of a peace agreement. Every part must by done by every person and that costs much,” he said, adding: “It is within your reach.”
In his own speech, Kiir said his government was firmly committed to consolidating peace in South Sudan.
– PHILIP PULLELLA and WAAKHE SIMON WUDU, Juba, South Sudan/Reuters
But his charisma and political acumen would be sorely missed in the ensuing years, as the country descended into civil war.
“We did not vote for separation to fight among ourselves. I don’t think this was what Garang was fighting for,” said John Manja, 33, a motorbike taxi driver in Juba.
Hundreds of thousands of people died as a result of the war, which was fought largely along ethnic lines, and resulting hunger and disease from 2013-2018.
The Pope’s visit is aimed in part at shoring up a 2018 peace deal that has reduced violence but seen crucial provisions delayed or ignored altogether, fanning fears of a return to full-scale war.
In the latest indication of the precarious state of the peace, 27 people were killed in Central Equatoria state on Thursday, the day before the Pope arrived in the country, in tit-for-tat violence between herders and members of a militia, a county official said.
Inspired by liberation theology
Garang, a US-trained economics graduate whose garrulous personality matched his more than six-foot, 90 kilogram frame, did not champion secession. He advocated a unified, secular Sudan in which the south enjoyed considerable autonomy.
Despite being baptised at an early age in the Anglican church, Garang embraced diverse Christian teachings, his son, Mabior, told Reuters.
“He was inspired by a liberation theology similar to that of the Catholic priests and bishops of Latin America,” Mabior said.
Garang began his career as a fighter with separatist rebels in the south before being conscripted into the Sudanese army after a 1972 peace deal.
He rose his way up to colonel but left to lead the rebellion that spread when President Jaafar Nimeiri tried to impose sharia law across Sudan in 1982.
Garang rallied South Sudan’s disparate ethnic groups behind a common cause. The fighting ended with a 2005 peace deal in which the south won significant autonomy and the right to decide its future in a referendum six years later.
Although some critics accused Garang of spending too much in foreign capitals or complained that his genial demeanour masked a ruthless streak, his death might have robbed the country of its greatest force for unity.
Conflict broke out in December, 2013, when President Salva Kiir, whom Garang had appointed as his deputy two weeks before his death, fell out with First Vice President Riek Machar.
Garang’s widow, Rebecca, is one of South Sudan’s five vice presidents, along with Machar, in a unity government formed after the 2018 peace deal.
Today’s leaders have to build on his legacy, she said in an interview this week.
“He has brought us freedom and he told us that I have delivered this [on] the golden plate,” she said.
“It is for us who are alive to see what to do with it.”
