The Rise and Fall of SPLM/SPLA Leadership provides lively and descriptive narratives of key leaders of the South Sudanese revolutions, with special attention to the debates and issues that make South Sudan's history relevant to both contemporary South Sudanese and wider audiences.
Author Daniel Wuor Joak, an influential South Sudanese politician, illuminates the historical significances of South Sudan's social, political, and economic affairs within the wider context of Sudan-an extraordinary achievement, given the multiplicity of peoples and regions and the complexity of tribal rivalries within the country.
The title of this book refers to the nine founding members of the Sudanese People's Liberation Movement and its army. Their rise and fall should serve as a reminder of the shortcomings of the leaders who planted the seeds of disharmony from the onset of the struggle for South Sudanese independence.
With its freedom won on July 9, 2011, South Sudan's people know the stakes are high, should this nascent nation fail to manage its own affairs responsibly. For this reason, the issues that damaged the liberation movement need to be understood and resolved by members of all sixty-four united tribes to avoid lapsing back into an oppressed state.
About the Author: Daniel Wuor Joak was born in 1962 in Ngangore Payam, Ulang County, Upper Nile State, South Sudan.
In 1984 he joined the South Sudan liberation struggle in Ethiopia, but by July 1985, he had arrived in Norway for resettlement as a refugee. There, he continued his political activism and studied business administration and international marketing at the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration.
In 2002, he went to Kenya and established the African Centre for Human Advocacy, which provided humanitarian aid in Ulang County during wartime. After the Comprehensive Peace Agreement was signed in January 2005, he became an MP representing Ulang constituency in the South Sudan Legislative Assembly, and in 2013 he became the Minister of Education Science and Technology for Upper Nile State.
In 2013, after war broke out again, he returned to Norway, where he resides with his family and continues his political activism.
