John Garang de Mabior

' It is assumed that if the referendum takes place in 2011 despite NCP blocking Southerners will overwhelmingly vote for independence yet some in the SPLM still want John Garang de Mabior's'New Sudan' as do many Northerners...

Many still believe that the helicopter crash which killed SPLM Chairman John Garang de Mabior in 2005 was no accident and there is fear that his successor GOSS President and national Vice-President Salva Kiir Mayardit could be the next target...

The message for Northerners is: 'You thought John Garang was your saviour but the SPLM now cannot save you...

That is why the NIF carefully rebranded as the National Congress Party (NCP) confounded forecasters from Egypt to Eritrea to the late Colonel John Garang de Mabior who taunted Brigadier General Omer Hassan Ahmed el Beshir as a 'junior rebel' (AC Vol 30 Nos 15 & 16)...

Nhial was a confidant of the late SPLM Chairman John Garang de Mabior as Minister of SPLA Affairs (Defence) and is the son of one of Garang's heroes the leading politician William Deng Nhial who was assassinated by the troops of El Sadig el Mahdi's government in May 1968...

As things stand though there is little prospect of the change required for Colonel John Garang's vision of a 'New Sudan' despite May's SPLM convention deciding to stand in national elections on a unitarist ticket...

The choice of Nhial a Tonj Dinka is seen as a return of John Garang de Mabior's old guard largely marginalised after the 2005 death of the SPLM's chief proponent of a politically secular united 'New Sudan'...

Like Lam Akol Deng was chosen by the SPLM but unlike Lam he had not split from its late Chairman Colonel John Garang de Mabior and is not cosy with the NC...

The then First Vice-President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha and the late Sudan People's Liberation Movement Chairman Colonel John Garang de Mabior signed the Principles of Agreement on Abyei on 26 May 2004 in Naivasha Kenya...

The late SPLM/A leader Colonel John Garang de Mabior insisted this was 'just the same as self-determination' not a claim widely believed by the area's Nuba majority...

Although John Garang fought to have the area ­ along with Southern Blue Nile and Abyei ­ considered part of the South in the CPA negotiations with Khartoum the NC-NIF objected that these areas were part of the north (which they officially are)...

Young contends that the current crisis is due to the process's narrow approach limited definition of peace a focus on the North-South dimension without due attention to the regime Darfur or other factors a refusal to involve other political parties and civil society treating the media as a threat to the process and leaving the CPA to secret negotiations between John Garang and Ali Osman Mohamed Taha...

Though he (and Riek Machar Teny Dhurgon) broke with the late John Garang de Mabior in 1991 later ending up in the NIF regime's fold the SPLM brought him back to get former dissidents into the big tent...