Gordon Muortat Mayen
| Gordon Muortat Mayen | |
|---|---|
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| Personal details | |
| Born | 1922 Karagok (near Rumbek), Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, (Now South Sudan) |
| Died | April 12, 2008 (aged 85–86) Rumbek, Sudan |
| Nationality | South Sudanese |
| Occupation | Politician & Freedom Fighter |
Gordon Muortat Mayen Maborjok (1922–2008) was a South Sudanese veteran politician and a struggler for the rights and freedom of the South Sudanese people. He was the President of the Nile Provisional Government (NPG) which led Anyanya I; Southern Sudan's first armed resistance to Khartoum which started in 1955. Muortat also served as Vice-President of the Southern Front (SF) and Foreign Minister in the Southern Sudan Provisional Government (SSPG).
Gordon Muortat Mayen was born in 1922 at Karagok village 10 miles South East of Rumbek. His father was a local chief of Patiop Clan of the Agar Dinka. Muortat was educated at Akot elementary from 1936-1942. He then attended Loka Nugent Junior Secondary School in Western Equatoria from 1942-1945. In 1951 he was among the first Southern Sudanese to graduate from Sudan Police College and was commissioned to police inspector where he rose through the ranks to become Chief Inspector of Police.
In 1957, Muortat was denied a transfer to the Southern Sudan, so he resigned his position and joined the Sudan Civil Administration. He was appointed assistant district commissioner and served in many places in the Bahr el-Ghazal and Upper Nile provinces. In 1965, under the transitional government of Prime Minister Sirr Al-Khatim Al-Khalifa, Muortat was appointed to be Minister of Works and Mineral Resources in his cabinet. However, when Prime Minister Muhammad Ahmad Mahjub came to office, Muortat was dismissed.
In 1964, Gordon Muortat became one of the founders of the Southern Front (SF), a political party that would represent the rights of the people of Southern Sudan. He headed the Southern Front delegation in the Round Table Conference between the South and North in 1965 and is remembered for demanding that the South be given the right to self-determination. He held this view due to the fact that Southern Sudanese were not involved in the politics which led to the so-called independence of the Sudan from the colonial power in 1956. He therefore argued that South Sudanese must be given the right to determine their political future in a referendum, to be carried out in the South which should be supervised and monitored internationally. This view was also shared by other members of the Southern Front, namely Clement Mboro, Bona Malwal and Hilary Paul Logali. The great massacres of Juba, Wau and all over the South that were carried out by the Sudanese army in July 1965 frustrated and convinced Gordon Muortat that the Northern Arab rulers were not interested in the peaceful resolution of the 'South Sudan Question'. Thus in August 1965 at the meeting of the Southern Front executive committee, he proposed that the party should be dissolved and that the entire committee should move into exile with the objective of merging with the Anyanya political and military wings.
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