Background
Enoch was born on January 1, 1934, at Kongor in the Bor district of the Upper Nile Province.
Enoch was born on January 1, 1934, at Kongor in the Bor district of the Upper Nile Province.
Educated at the Anglican Church Mission School at Malek, then at Atar Junior School, near Malakal. Later at Rumbek Secondary School he was a pupil alongside Joseph Lagu, subsequently Commander-in-Chief of the Anya-Nya forces.
His first job was in 1959 with the Malakal Printing Press, run by American missionaries of the United Presbyterian Church, who sent him to study typography in England from 1961 to 1963 at Manchester College of Science and Technology. In January 1963 he became a founder member of the Sudan African National Union and began publishing “The Voice of Southern Sudan”.
On his return home in July 1963 he became manager of the Spearhead Press at Malakal and edited the missionaries’ monthly magazine “Light”. He also worked with the underground movement and took part in the government’s conference on the South in March 1965.
When security forces began rounding up “southern rebels” he fled on July 18, 1965, travelling 1,000 miles by bus, train and foot over winding mountain tracks at Gondar to seek asylum in Ethiopia, where he stayed until January 1967. He went on to Zambia, first as a student at the African Literature Centre at Kitwe and then four months later as a teacher. In September 1969 he got a scholarship to, London University’s Institute of Education to study publishing. In London he helped found the South Sudan Association, launched the “Grass Curtain” in March 1970, and became external affairs director of the South Sudan Liberation Movement.
By November 1971 he had taken enough soundings to recommend the opening of negotiations with the Khartoum government. In the next three months he played a major part in ensuring that a final settlement was reached on February 27, 1972, at Addis Ababa. He ended his exile soon afterwards to take up his information post at Juba.
Torchbearer for self-government in the South and one of the main negotiators of the Addis Ababa peace agreement in February 1972. A towering figure among Sudanese exiles for many years, he was director of the South Sudan Association in London.
Talented as an international advocate of the liberation movement on radio and television, he applied his skill as journalist and typographer in publishing a quarterly in London called “Grass Curtain”. In exile he travelled regularly in Europe and East Africa, keeping in touch with field commanders, friendly governments and the World Council of Churches.