Background
Joseph Lagu was born on November 21, 1931, son of a schoolmaster in the deep south of Equatoria Province in the Madi tribal village of Moli, 40 miles from Nimule.
Joseph Lagu was born on November 21, 1931, son of a schoolmaster in the deep south of Equatoria Province in the Madi tribal village of Moli, 40 miles from Nimule.
Educated at the Church Mission School at Akot, then at intermediate school at Loka, and finally at Rumbek Secondary School. His good school record enabled him to gain entrance in July 1958 to the Military College at Omdurman for training as an officer.
After passing out as an officer in May 1960 Lagu was posted as a second lieutenant to Northern Command at Shendi, 100 miles north of Khartoum.
His next posting to Juba brought him in contact with Major-General Nimeri, then a major at the garrison. It was Nimeri who was games officer at Juba, teaching the lieutenants to play tennis.
Oppression of black Africans in South Sudan by their Arab brothers from the North drove Lagu to desert from the army. He was due to take a course in England on military law. Instead he took his family to their home in the South and joined the liberation movement on June 4, 1963.
Just over four months later on September 19, 1963, Lagu launched the first attack of the new freedom fighters. The first two years were difficult because the Anya-Nya lacked modern weapons. But the collapse of the Simba uprising in neighbouring Zaire in 1965 was a blessing for Lagu’s guerrillas because they acquired the arms of the fleeing Simbas.
In the next seven years until the ceasefire Lagu mounted increasingly ambitious attacks, ambushing convoys of vehicles and blowing up roads and bridges. Although he claimed to have a liberation army of 7,000 men, its effective strength was rarely over 2,000. He organised daring raids to capture modern Russian equipment from the Sudanese army and arranged for a secret supply of new Israeli weapons across the bush trail from the southernmost border.
His clever use of mobile strike forces against command posts in the South made it hard for the Sudanese army to take effective counter-measures even with the help of planes and helicopters. Harrying the Sudanese army and hemming them in to their fortified camps, ensured that the liberation movement did not have to sue for peace, but could negotiate an honourable settlement.
Lagu kept in the background during the negotiations in Addis Ababa in November 1971 and February 1972. It was only after long cunsultations with his field commanders, cautiously examining every clause of the agreement, that he emerged for the ratification ceremony on March 27, 1972, in the Ethiopian capital in the presence of Emperor Haile Selassie.
Brilliant tactician in guerrilla warfare, who created a formidable fighting force in South Sudan out of a ragged assortment of desperadoes armed initially with only spears, bows and arrows. Slightly built with a wispy beard, a man of intense dedication with deep Christian principles and strong anti-Communist views.
Spouse Amna, National of Sudan.