Dr John Garang de Mabior (June 23, 1945 – July 30, 2005) was the First Vice President of Sudan and former leader of the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army.
A member of the Dinka ethnic group, Garang was born into a poor family in Wanglei village in Bor, Sudan, in the upper Nile region of Sudan (currently Jonglei State). An orphan by the age of ten, he had his fees for school paid by a relative, going to schools in Wau and then Rumbek. In 1962 h...
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Dr John Garang de Mabior (June 23, 1945 – July 30, 2005) was the First Vice President of Sudan and former leader of the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army.
A member of the Dinka ethnic group, Garang was born into a poor family in Wanglei village in Bor, Sudan, in the upper Nile region of Sudan (currently Jonglei State). An orphan by the age of ten, he had his fees for school paid by a relative, going to schools in Wau and then Rumbek. In 1962 he joined the first Sudanese civil war, but because he was so young, the leaders encouraged him and others his age to seek an education. Because of the ongoing fighting, Garang was forced to attend his secondary education in Tanzania. After winning a scholarship, he went on to earn a B.A. in economics in 1969 from Grinnell College in Iowa, USA. He was known there for his bookishness. He was offered another scholarship to pursue graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley, but chose to return to Tanzania and study East African...
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