في الذكرى الأولى لرحيله: سلام على قرنق وعلى السودان الجديد، ليس رثاء وإنما استنهاض للهمم

That would be a tribute fitting for Garang

*A death in Sudan*
The New York Times
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 3, 2005

John Garang became Sudan's first vice president three weeks ago, on July
9. More than a million Sudanese showed up to salute him when he joined
his old enemy, President Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir, to sign a new
constitution. Garang's ascendance, along with the peace deal it brought,
was hailed as a rare success story in Africa, one that could mark the
end of more than two decades of war. There was also hope that the unity
government between the largely Christian and animist south and the
Muslim north might eventually be able to extend the newly
cobbled-together peace between the north and south to the western
territory, which includes Darfur.

It is tragic that these hopes have already been dashed. The death of
Garang over the weekend in a helicopter crash spawned some of the worst
rioting in Khartoum in years, prompting the government to announce a
dusk-to-dawn curfew. The situation is frustrating for Sudan's neighbors,
which recently helped negotiate the end to the conflict, Africa's
longest civil war. It is heartbreaking for the Sudanese people,
particularly in the south, Garang's region, who believed that an end to
their years of turmoil was at hand.

It really doesn't have to be like this. Garang's death doesn't have to
tear the peace deal asunder. To salvage the situation, Garang's party,
the Sudan People's Liberation Movement, needs to choose a worthy
successor. Garang's widow, Rebecca, has thrown in her lot with the
party's deputy leader, Salva Kiir. Kiir lacks Garang's charisma, but
it's time for the Sudanese - and indeed, for Africans as a whole - to
stop pinning their hopes on magnetic strongmen, and instead empower the
democratic institutions the continent desperately needs. That would be a
fitting tribute for Garang, a rebel leader who spent his life giving a
voice to the millions in southern Sudan who couldn't make themselves heard.