Governor Taban Deng; political discourse of the Dinka minority in Unity State

By Atok Baguoot

The political mileage of the Dinka minority in Unity state has recently undergone an idyllic experience chronicled by repeated events following the sudden relief of a few dominant faces in leadership. The governor of Unity state Gen Taban Deng made a sudden change to the status quo in the political setup of the Panaruu Dinka in a swift time, leaving his longtime friends and associates puzzled in political cold temperatures. He undressed them naked as a reward for their defiance behaviors.

Col Stephen Miabek Lang, the former Parieng County Commissioner, and a chairman of the SPLM party in the county had planted his fame in the area during the years when Movement experienced a split. Parieng County was given the special status of a brigade called the 20^th SPLA Infantry Independent Brigade.  Lang was instrumental under Captain John Mayik Jau whom they together arrested some senior officers who had shown favor with the Nassir faction. While he was still none commission officer (NCO), Lang fought vigorously to ensure the survival of the SPLM. 

 As a great-grandson of Panaruu Dinka paramount chief Bilkuei, Col Lang had shown a face of a scion. He was seen by most of his competitors as a political barracuda. He had been in comfort support of a few elite’ hoi polloi to continue cannibalizing rag-tag challengers who dare to face him. The zeitgeist of Nilotic traditional politics was centered on chiefs and their direct lineages, a leverage Lang had equally capitalized on for a long. 

His influence in the area almost caused him fight with another prominent figure, Brig Gen Benjamin Mijak Dau, former MP to Juba regional Assembly and another face of a scion in Beny-Kur Miakuach lineage.  The two had one time rubbed shoulders over what outsiders saw as a fight for supremacy in the area.  While reflecting on the political organization and cultural setup of the Panaruu Dinka, Col Lang hails from the Kwel section, whereas Brig Gen Dau is from the Awet section. The two sets were administered by their grandfathers as chiefs, so any rift between the two gentlemen could almost invite sensible arguments along that historical background. 

Politics of who brought who 

The innocents in battle with Mr. Lang are people that he nursed into something. Mr. Them Michar Kuol, the former state minister of Education and a former SPLM County Secretary was brought to the realities of politics by Mr. Lang himself. Mr. William Mach Juach, former occupant of the state Youth, Culture and Sports portfolio was another element Lang also lifted from nowhere to head County Council as its speaker and later to ministry. Chief Mialual Minyiel Ayuel is another factor trailing in the scene of the fight yet he has forgotten that he is Lang’s appointee. He had on many occasions, insinuated himself into many arguments in the area, trying to equate his given fortune with constitutional potholders. Chief is just a mere appointee of the incumbent commissioner. His life is barely in the hand of a commissioner. He has no equal to challenge a commissioner in any case, unlike former chiefs elected by clans. Lang had failed to exercise his powers to show him the exit door. 

Governor Deng approached his chessboard, tackling a dreadful game with pawns in favor of rooks and other superiors of the game and he remained a winner before his Panaruu electorates. Under Stephen Mabek Lang as a commissioner since 2005, Parieng had partially become an autocratic entity, with affairs being dominated by one man-the alpha and omega.  If no blessing from him, anything proposed agenda whether in the interest of the proposer or the whole community was doomed to failure. 

Chiefs and few opportunists were central in his administration in a manner of disordered anarchy, meant to serve the interest of governing class. The dim view of such invented-well coined theory was daily and frequent squabbling amongst people. The people Mr. Lang brought closer around him did him the worst which has ousted him in power today. Amongst all the colleagues who had served and still serving the position of county commissionership in Unity state, Lang could still rate the best in handling issues whether internal and external, given that Parieng where he hails edges the North-South volatile border in the oil-rich Unity state, where Panthou/Heglig. 

 The current volatile Southern Kordofan state is afoot to struggle far back to the earlier inception of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement SPLM/A there too. Parieng was the stepping stone for the Nuba people, like the way it is still hosting refugees in Yida. Mr. Lang is a true peace mobilizer, capable of arbitrating in times of great need.

Those who technically helped bring him down are his ill-trusted and fair-weather friends whom he wrongly thought were truly conditional friends one can associate with circumstantially. In a matter of failing to give Caesar what is his and God what is Godly, Mr. Lang preferred Khartoumers to his former SPLA soldiers, including those educated in SPLA-controlled areas. 

As a matter being against principle, Mr. Lang might have opted for pragmatism. Few could see him as a person short of a theorized struggle. He favored working with those who were in northern Sudan during those nasty hours of struggle. Former comrades who inhibited trenches with him went to cold, forced to accept the realities of continuing with hunger when those who fattened CVs with war stories while far away were well placed to guide affairs of the county, a place where there is something to lick hands hereafter. 

As it says, a person who inherited a deceased brother's wife can never tell how weird it was to have brought that woman to the house. The majority of those Mr. Lang opted to work with setting his house ablaze. Logically, they did it because they had never known how dark and pungent the smell was in the bunkers to soldiers in the struggle. The bond of Yester years amongst the Khartoumers Lang has stretched hand to work with was how people roamed displaced camps of the rump state of Sudan’s city. Lang lacks that bond with them. He would have had more nostalgic stories with his former soldiers he fought rifle battles with and used experiences of the bush to usher in a new political dispensation. After all, the rural setup of Parieng County were people that Mr. Lang had served during their difficult time, so forging a meaningful remedy for resolving problems would have been a natural phenomenon less laborious. 

Instead of appreciating Mr. Lang to have wholeheartedly accommodated them, they pitched into a situation of waging an internal struggle to oust him. The applicable theory here is that the parasite has killed the host, Mr. Lang is removed but they have also removed themselves, meaning they killed themselves unknowingly with the host. 

Mr. Lang might have been foolhardy because he had allowed the formation of powerbase clique in his administration by opportunists who had nothing to offer other than serving themselves on the expenses of people who had tolerated wars and sufferings long enough. Second, to that, he had allowed his generosity to have been tampered by those he had single-handedly helped ascended into leadership despite the strain opposition the community had toward them. If eight out of ten members of parliament representing Parieng in the national assembly in Juba and state assemblies were all from the north during the war, common sense can question such imbalance.  Mr. Lang did it out of favor. It is a generosity gone unrecognized. The end justifies the means. 

Agents of change in Parieng County

Like his predecessor, Angelo Mijok Gatdet Deng, the new County Commissioner was a former SPLA Red Army child soldier who has the concept of struggle at chest.  Deng went to Bush as an immature boy and ascended in both military and education to the rank of military captain and a graduate of University in Uganda. Deng was also wounded in the late 1990s in the SPLA Kurmuk offensive while commanding forces.

 Unlike Commissioner Deng, Thon Miabek Deng, minister of Youth, Sports and Culture was amongst the students who left universities in Khartoum on the eve of peace negotiations in 20002-2003, joining the SPLA military camps in Nuba Mountains and New Sudan Brigade-NDA in Eastern Sudan. Deng is a trained SPLA disciplined soldier though he has never had his baptism of fire. Whereas the person of Angelo Chol Dengwei, the new occupant of the state Education portfolio is an educationist who professed SPLM membership. The commonest in newly lifted trio leaders is the age and education. Three of them are young men in their thirties of birthdate if they are to celebrate birthdays like kids.

Now the ball is rolling in their court whether the change will be effected or they will let all the brouhaha of the event goes to dogs and Panaruu goes back to bickering. 

The political evolution of Panaruu People in Unity state; SPLA struggle

Practically, Dinka formed a minority in two counties of Biem-nom and Parieng.  Panaruu Dinka always features dominant, overshadowing another colleague of Ruweng Dinka, their next of kin. In fact, Panaruu Dinka took the central stage of Unity state politics after the 1991 SPLM split of Torit and Nassir factions.  Parieng had vehemently stood their ground in support of the SPLM John Garang Torit mainstream despite the fact that it lacks the numerical influence to turn things either way. During those years, mentioning the name of Dr. John Garang and his SPLM in Unity state was something of a shame. Few who could do it in other Nuer counties in Unity state were out of courage and one is always ready to lose life. Parieng was the only place SPLM was alive. It had leeward off the Nuba Mountains from direct attack by SPLM opposing groups in Bentiu. All these fateful events didn’t come from blue, Col Lang and a few other officers in Parieng devoted energies to letting them happen. 

This is precisely the cycle that Gen Deng has broken. Anybody familiar with the politics of the Panaruu Dinka would be forced to term it as daybreak and the end of a new beginning of forming another clique if there was nothing learned from the former.  It is this politics of glory seeking and sycophancy that they had intended to drag Gen Deng into so that they continue with the immunity of leadership.