Joseph Lagu, a military officer who led southern Sudan’s war for independence from Sudan in the 1960s and who, after negotiating autonomy in 1972, became one of Sudan’s top political leaders and diplomats, died on Tuesday in Juba, the capital of South Sudan. He was 94.
Salva Kiir, the president of South Sudan, which gained full independence in 2011, announced the death in a statement and called for a period of national mourning.
Sudan, the third-largest country in Africa by area, gained its independence from Egypt and Britain in 1956. Power in the country rested with its Arabic-speaking Muslim population in the north, which outraged the darker-skinned Africans of the south.
An independence movement sprang up almost immediately in the south, and soon broke out into open warfare. An estimated 500,000 to one million people died in the nearly 15-year war that followed.
In 1963, Mr. Lagu, who was born in the southern Sudanese state of Equatoria, left his position as an officer in the Sudanese Army to join the rebels. Five years later, he was put in charge of the independence movement’s armed wing, called Anya Nya, which means snake venom in Ma’adi, the prominent language in southern Sudan.
He turned what had been a ragtag, disputatious band of guerrillas into something resembling a professional army. More important, he built ties with Israel, which provided equipment and training. That assistance played a vital role in forcing Sudan to the negotiating table in 1972.
That year, The Los Angeles Times called Mr. Lagu “the most successful guerrilla leader in Africa today.”
The peace talks, held in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa, resulted in an agreement to give southern Sudan significant autonomy over its domestic politics.
Mr. Lagu rejoined the Sudanese Army, where he led efforts to unify the northern and southern militaries.
He served as president of the High Executive Council of Southern Sudan, which administered the region, from 1978 to 1979. He then served as the second vice president of Sudan from 1982 to 1985.
Such roles made him one of the most powerful non-Arab politicians in Sudan. But it also attracted critics who said he elevated the country’s interests over those of his region.
Though he was pushed out of office following a coup in 1985 and moved to Britain for safety, another coup, led by Col. Omar al-Bashir in 1989, brought him back into the fold. He served as a roving ambassador for Sudan from 1988 to 1990 and again from 1992 to 1998. He also served as Sudan’s ambassador to the United Nations from 1990 to 1992.
Though Mr. al-Bashir courted the Islamic fundamentalists in the north and moved to erode southern Sudanese autonomy, Mr. Lagu stood by him, defending him against efforts by the International Criminal Court and other bodies to hold him accountable for human rights abuses.
After Mr. Lagu left his diplomatic post in 1998, he advised southern Sudanese leaders on their push for full independence, among them his daughter Josephine Lagu, who later served as vice president of South Sudan.
Joseph Lagu Yanga was born on Nov. 21, 1931, in Momokwe, a hamlet near the Sudanese border with Uganda. His father, a railway clerk, sent him to missionary schools, and in 1958 he enrolled in Sudan’s military academy.
After graduating in 1960, he received a commission as a second lieutenant and a deployment near Juba, where he became familiar with the southern Sudanese independence movement. Three years later, he joined it.
Mr. Lagu’s survivors include his daughter and more than 10 other children, as well as dozens of grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
After South Sudan won independence in 2011, Mr. Lagu became a sort of elder statesman. He created the Joseph Lagu Foundation to promote girls’ education and train new leaders.
His advice to South Sudan, he said in an interview with The Madi People’s War Chronicles, a historical preservation group, in 2011, was “to give every citizen, no matter what ethnicity, gender, religion” a “sense of belonging.”
The post Joseph Lagu, Who Led Independence Movement in Southern Sudan, Has Died appeared first on New York Times.
