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Lawrence Modi Tombe
Like many of my peers, I grew up in Sudan during the political turmoil of the 1950s and the first North-South Civil War that ended in 1972. These childhood experiences greatly influenced our view of Sudan after independence.
For this reason, I experienced the political storms of Sudan in the 1950s, starting in 1953 when my father left government service to join politics. At the time, I attended Kato Primary School with my colleagues (Charles Bakhit, Stans Awad, John Jumi, Marc Loro, Marcelo Longyan). As Charles said, all schools in Juba and throughout South Sudan were closed before the rebellion broke out in 1955, which we did not know at the time.
This military rebellion, known as the Torit Rebellion, was the beginning of the first civil war in South Sudan. During those childhood years, I had a deep understanding of the causes of that armed uprising. It was only later that I gradually realized its seriousness. Before that, my generation was rudely introduced to the causes of that serious armed uprising while growing up. As we all know, the root cause of this conflict lies in the complete control of the Northern rulers over Sudanese politics/governance from the beginning of the autonomy period in 1953 until independence in 2004.
We know that one of the main triggers of the Torit rebellion was Ismail Azari inciting senior northern Sudanese government officials in the south to take brutal measures against southern political leaders and inform citizens of measures aimed at suppressing the then-voice of the South for a federation. Stories circulating in South Sudan at the time claimed that Azari’s message was received in encrypted form at the Juba Telegraph Office. Although the telegram was marked as top secret, it was stolen from the postmaster’s drawer, spirited away, deciphered by Reuben Yacobo (a southern clerk at the post office), and translated into English by Fraser Ako, a civil servant at the provincial headquarters (Mudoria). During those childhood years, I knew Fraser Ako very well, as he was a football star during his advanced studies at the Juba Training Centre (JTC).
Fraser handed the decrypted contents to the “Juba Secret Committee” led by veteran politicians Daniel Jumi and Marco Roume. Whether or not Azari’s message was a forgery as claimed by northern rulers in Khartoum, the telegram was widely politicized in the South – and the widespread circulation of the document heightened North-South tensions that led to the outbreak of the Torit Rebellion on August 18, 1955. In those early childhood years, my generation could not understand the politics surrounding the telegram, even as Azari’s tense message continued to flash through our young brains. I remember the disturbing news clearly and realized that South Sudan was about to fall into turmoil.
On August 18, 1955, a military rebellion broke out in Torit, and the town of Juba was emptied. As the fighting escalated and the resulting insecurity forced the town’s residents to flee to their respective villages for safety. My family fled to Gondokoro (my uncle’s village) for safety. When we fled to the countryside, my father was away as he was caught up in a political conflict.
We remained in Ilibari (Kondokoro) during the height of the military uprising and did not return to Juba until October 1955, when normalcy had returned to the city.
In November 1955, after I returned to Juba, my elder brother, the late Wani Tombe, was born. Although Wani Tombe’s arrival was a cause for joy and excitement during that difficult period, the insecurity in South Sudan made it difficult for our family to lead a normal life. However, in the first quarter of 1956, normalcy returned to Juba.
After the Torit army rebellion in 1955, the citizens of Juba began to witness convoys of trucks arriving in town, carrying military veterans who had participated in the rebellion as prisoners for military trials, which was worrying and sad. The transportation of captured soldiers from Eastern Equatoria to Juba was a daily occurrence until the second quarter of 1956. The arrival of our imprisoned heroes attracted large crowds to the Juba Ferry-Malakiya Road to witness this heart-wrenching scene. It was a painful experience that is still deeply imprinted in my mind.
Veterans imprisoned in Juba Prison were tried by a military tribunal housed in the Juba Town Council Hall – which became the Jubek State Council in the years following the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. The entire high-walled prison and administrative premises around the Juba District Headquarters were cordoned off with barbed wire to hold the veterans. Heavily armed northern soldiers guarded the fenced area during the fabricated military tribunals. Anyone nearby during the military tribunals saw rows of heroic warriors – dressed in beautiful 2nd Battalion uniforms – parading from the prison to the town hall for the military tribunal show. Out of childish curiosity, I and other children went many times to witness first-hand the imprisoned veterans being sent to the military tribunal and returned to prison after summary trials. One can never forget those sad and painful events!
The former fighters sentenced to death were shot at the foot of Korok Hill on the Juba-Yei road. I later learned that among the rebel soldiers killed at the foot of the hill were more than 300 soldiers including Lieutenant Rinaldo Loyelo, the leader of the Torit military uprising. During these heartbreaking killings, the citizens of Juba town heard the echoes of gunfire every day in agony as our national heroes fell, paying the ultimate price for the freedom of South Sudan. Many citizens in the town wept openly at the tragic end of our heroes. In those young years, I found myself immersed in the rhythm and pain of the liberation struggle, and my generation experienced the brutal struggle during the war years. In the early stages of my growth, I wondered why our freedom fighters surrendered so easily to the enemy, only to end up on death row like they did. At the time, I had no idea of the complex circumstances of our freedom fighters surrendering to the enemy. The people of South Sudan at that time were equally disappointed with the total surrender of the southern army and wondered why their heroes laid down their arms so easily and did not fight with the Sudanese government forces. Many factors led to these fatal hesitations. The answer to these questions lies in the complete trust that the southerners had in the colonial government. For this reason, the people of South Sudan believed that Britain, a Christian country, supported the Christian cause in South Sudan, which was a huge mistake that still haunts us today.
The naive and casual view of our relationship with Britain was our Achilles’ heel in the liberation struggle in the following years. The last British colonial governor of Sudan, Sir Alexander Knox Helm (1954-1955), took advantage of this blind trust and persuaded Rinaldo and the rest of No. 2 Company to surrender. Loilo accepted this fatal temptation and surrendered to the Northern Army in Torit. Sir Knox Helm persuaded the loyal freedom fighter to surrender by telling him that Prime Minister Ismail Azari had promised a full and fair investigation and amnesty for Rinaldo Loilo and his soldiers if they surrendered unconditionally. Sir Knox gave Azari an assurance on his false testimony. Together, the outgoing colonial ruler and Sudan’s new ruler laid the foundation for the North’s domination of politics and power in post-independence Sudan.
Despite the serious consequences of the Governor’s telegram, Rinaldo surrendered and signed the surrender terms on August 28, 1955. Most of the rebel soldiers surrendered en masse. Most of the 1,770 soldiers of Company 2 who were imprisoned due to these deadly surrender terms were sent directly to the Juba Military Court for trial. Rinaldo Loyelo and other FAPLA soldiers were sentenced to death for these empty promises and accounts.
Sadly, there was conspicuously absent from the telegram any clause to exonerate the rebels. After these false assurances given by Sir Knox Helm, Lt. Col. Royello and all the fighters of No. 2 Company Battalion were not pardoned. They were all sentenced to death or cruel punishments and the Southern Army Command was subsequently disbanded. The jailed veterans were sent to the notorious Suakin Prison in northern Sudan to serve sentences ranging from 10 to 30 years. Most of the jailed veterans died in captivity due to the brutal treatment, harsh prison life and extreme weather conditions in northern Sudan. Many of our political leaders were imprisoned including Clement Mboro who was imprisoned in Juba Prison from 1960 to 1962.
The people of South Sudan paid a heavy price for their false hopes in so-called external friends who allowed northerners to rule Sudan without the participation of southerners. These well-planned plots against the South were the reason why the South Sudanese chose armed struggle to chart their political future. The unfounded trust in “our British friends” was a costly mistake that resulted in a large number of casualties and set back the liberation struggle of South Sudan at that time. The first civil war I experienced during my childhood reminded me of what life was like for us South Sudanese children growing up in that insecure environment. The extreme power exclusion that the Southerners experienced from the late 1940s until the autonomy period was the political development that led to the civil war that lasted for 17 years from 1955 to 1972.
I salute all the heroes of the 1955 Army uprising who paid with their lives for our freedom and set a nation-state agenda that has yet to be realized. Their revolutionary legacy will remain with us forever.
This article is excerpted from Lawrence Thom’s autobiography, Story of My Life – A Memoir.
The author was born in Juba and received his early education in South Sudan in the 1950s and early 1960s, before continuing his education in Uganda, where he graduated from Makerere University with a Bachelor of Education (Honours) in 1972. Returning to Sudan in 1973, he served in the Sudanese public service from 1973 until 1993.
He has served as a Cabinet Minister, a Member of Parliament and a senior civil servant, experiencing public sector governance from three perspectives. Tombe left the diplomatic service in 1993 after four years as Ambassador to Sudan in Romania. He exposed the human rights violations of Omar al-Bashir’s military regime to the world and successfully sought asylum in the UK.
After the ratification of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005, Mr. Tombe worked in the private sector in the new nation-building process; he then spent a year and a half as a governance advisor to the Government of South Sudan from 2014 to mid-2015.
In 1994, he co-founded the Skills Organization of South Sudan (SKILLS).
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