By Malith Alier, Sydney, Australia
Tuesday, June 18, 2019 (PW) — I wanted to have a different title for this piece but because I found another piece on wordpress.com authored in remembrance of another person of the same name as our John, I had no choice but to follow the lead. The similarities may not be striking but the first names and the titles have a perfect symmetry one can’t ignore. Well, Dr. John Garang is a character many will cite in political discourse maybe until the end of the earth/world.
We’re right now in June and July the month Dr. John perished on the fateful chopper crash on the mountains close to Uganda. John was heading to his beloved Newsite between Narus and Ngatinga in what is now known as Kapoeta State. When the news broke that evening of the 29 July 2005, I was putting final touches to my studies at Murdoch University in Western Australia.
I didn’t, as an individual believed that what was unfolding before the world was going to have a long lasting impact for another generation in South Sudan. The news was mildly headlined as ” A helicopter Carrying Sudan’s First Vice President has Disappeared.” Has disappeared, what a joke?” Many rhetorical questions came forth chief among them was why did the chopper leave Entebbe Airport for the bushes of Southern Sudan late in the evening?
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