KHARTOUM, 2 August 2005 — John Garang, who led Sudan’s southern rebels for two decades before making peace and joining the government he fought, has died in a helicopter crash, sparking riots and fears for the country’s hard-won stability.
At least 24 people were killed in Khartoum, a policeman said, after rioters torched vehicles and looted shops. Witnesses said southerners, who have long said the northern government discriminated against them, attacked Arabs in the street.
“People have been running all over the streets. The policemen are taking people from the streets. There is fire and smoke,” a Reuters TV witness said.
Garang, 60, a key figure in a January peace deal hailed as a rare success story for Africa, became the country’s first vice president on July 9. He died over the weekend after the Ugandan presidential helicopter he was traveling in went down in bad weather.
Six of Garang’s companions and a crew of seven also died in the crash near the Sudan-Uganda border, Khartoum said yesterday, though a member of the southern Sudan leadership council said 17 bodies were recovered.
Members of Garang’s southern Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) and the government in Khartoum — bitter enemies during the 21-year conflict — both promised to maintain the peace agreement Garang helped bring about.
Just weeks before, he had come north to take his place in government amid a tumultuous popular welcome in Khartoum.
But as news of his death was confirmed yesterday morning, thousands of his southern Sudanese supporters took to the streets of Khartoum in a different mood, wielding knives and bars, looting shops, starting fires and clashing with police.
A Reuters witness saw 12 bodies in a morgue in the capital and a police official said all the dead, which included police, were killed in the rioting. A Khartoum resident earlier said two people had been killed in his street.
“They (southerners) are beating anybody they see who looks like they are Arab,” Swayd Abdullah, a student, told Reuters.
There were reports of riots in the south too.
The Khartoum governor announced a curfew from 6 p.m. until 6 a.m. in the capital.
Garang’s death stunned the region, where Sudan’s neighbors helped negotiate an end to the continent’s longest civil war.
“It’s shocking — the loss of a visionary leader,” Kenya’s Lt. Gen. Lazarus Sumbeiywo, who was the chief mediator in the Sudan peace talks, told Reuters. “My prayer is that the Sudanese will remain level-headed.”
Sudan’s President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir expressed confidence the power-sharing peace accord would remain intact.
“We are confident that the peace agreement will proceed as it was planned,” he said in a televised statement.
At an SPLM news conference in Nairobi, members wept in grief. “Sudan has lost its loved son Dr. John Garang,” said Salva Kiir, deputy leader and Garang’s probable replacement.
“We want to assure everyone that the leadership and all cadres of the SPLM/SPLA (Sudan People’s Liberation Army) will remain united and strive to faithfully implement the comprehensive peace agreement.”
SPLM leaders were heading to New Site in southern Sudan for a crisis meeting. Garang’s body arrived there early yesterday afternoon, a Western diplomat with the SPLM said.
Garang had left Uganda by helicopter late on Saturday to return to Sudan after talks with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni. Various sources in Uganda and Sudan said it appeared his helicopter ran into bad weather, although there was also speculation it had run out of fuel.
The helicopter came down near the remote, mountainous border region, with conflicting reports as to which side it fell on.
Deng Alor, a member of the SPLM’s leadership council, told Reuters from New Site 17 bodies — a higher number than that given by the Sudanese presidency — had been recovered.
“We are not ruling out anything. We have asked Uganda’s aviation authority to look at the flight recorder,” he added.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said yesterday he would appoint a special panel to investigate the weekend crash of Garang’s helicopter.
In addition, Museveni said Uganda had asked a foreign government to look into Saturday’s crash to definitively establish that it was an accident as officials in Kampala have insisted and not the result of sabotage or terrorism.
“I have decided to create a panel of three experts to look into this crash,” Museveni said, adding that the team would be appointed shortly by Uganda’s transport minister.
“We have also approached a certain foreign government to rule out any form of sabotage or terrorism,” he said in a statement read to parliament by Vice President Gilbert Bukenya that did not identify the government involved.
Ugandan and Sudanese officials have said the aircraft was forced to abort a landing at New Site due to poor weather and shortly thereafter crashed in the mountainous region near the convergence of the Ugandan, Kenyan and Sudanese borders.
Museveni’s statement dwelt at length on the safety features of the Russian-built Mi-172 executive chopper that Uganda purchased eight years ago and, according to him, was outfitted with advanced navigation instruments.
