Thanks, and Appreciation to All Well-wishers for Their Proposal: May Your Best Wishes Come to Pass!
By DENGDIT AYOK
Dear honourable readership, I wish to speak out in response to unofficial nomination or proposal proposed yesterday by many people whom I have considered to be my well-wishers, after examining and evaluating their honourable intentions.
Please sit calmly as you take a sip of your tea or coffee, while reading my mind in this piece. I am not umindful of the fact that in the world of digital media, people don’t like lengthy writings, so, kindly bear with me if you find this piece to be a lengthy one. I thank you very kindly for your pause and attention.
Following the relieve of veteran Journalist and Amb. David Amuor Majur, from his position as the Press Secretary in the Office of His Excellency the President yesterday, Tuesday, February 03, 2026, we published the news of his relieve in our online Freedom newspaper, shortly after a press release was issued by the Minister of Presidential Affairs, Hon. Africano Mande Gedima, in accordance with the latest government’s protocols of relieving civil servants such as undersecretaries, chairpersons of national commissions/bureaus or chambers, and others through letters sent and submitted to them individually, or through publication in the government gazette which is expected soon, rather than announcing it on South Sudan Broadcasting Cooperation (SSBC) as it used to be in the recent past.
Amb. Amuor was relieved and no replacement was named. The replacement is pending as consultations are still ongoing. After we had published it in our newspaper for public knowledge, many online nominations started to appear, and many journalists and political activists were proposed for possible appointment.
The names I came across included the Red Army member, and a promising young leader, Sgt. Agel Ring Machar, Dr. Emmanuel Sunday de John, a Red Army member and a very promising young leader, the great SSBC news anchor, Madam Rejoice Tio Samson, Amb. Apuk Ayuel Mayen, former spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Sebit William, a verteran Journalist at Miraya Radio, Gabriel Joseph Shadar, a senior Miraya Radio Journalist and a linguist, Ajou Mareng, who formerly worked in the Office of the President as SSBC reporter, Maal Maker Thiong, a former photographer in the Office of the President, and many other great journalists of our country.
I was among the nominees or the proposed ones to the position of the Press Secretary in the Office of our President. I didn’t know about my unofficial nomination for appointment into the position until I received a phone call from my cousin, Garang Garang Chimir, (Garang Garang Manyay), informing me that the position of the Press Secretary in the Office of the Head of State, has remained vacant following the relieved of the Sudan Radio Service veteran Journalist (now Eye Radio), Amb. David Amuor, and that many people were proposed online for consideration and that my name has appeared among them.
I wasn’t surprised, but I considered the matter as unofficial nomination, and a wish that signifies a beginning of a national call for public service through the great citizens of our country and well-wishers.
As I was examining and contemplating this unofficial nomination, I came to the conclusion that this is not the first time to be nominated to this position. I have been unofficially nominated and proposed several times by many people since I came back from Egypt via Ethiopia in June 2024.
People kept saying to me: “You made a wise decision to come back to the country. Welcome back, and we wish that the President will one day consider you for appointment as his Press Secretary”.
People kept repeating this wherever I meet them, under trees in tea places, in Juba restaurants, and in the middle of conversations from one time to another.
Having been offline yesterday from 11:00 A.M up to 2:00 P.M, I opened my data, and I saw the online nominations and proposals. I saw my name proposed by those who know my worth and my abilities and wish to see me getting an opportunity to serve in our government.
Waiting to hear my reaction, I told my cousin, Garang Manyay Jr, that this is just an online proposal by my well-wishers. Nevertheless, should it pleases His Excellency, the President, to appoint me into this position, I would gladly accept the appointment to serve the nation and the President. And as someone who always consider myself to be honest in words and deeds, I mean what I am saying here. I don’t shy away from saying publicly what I believe in, I always articulate my views and beliefs publicly, without fear or favour, whenever a situation require me to do so.
I am qualified for the position and I have wealth of experience in journalism since 2007 to the present time, in Khartoum Monitor newspaper, under its Chief Editor and Chairman Board of Directors, the late Alfred Taban Logune, Prof. Adam Chalong, Dr. Sunday de John Along Ayur, who mentored me and Prof. Abenego Akok Kachuol who once commended me after reading my eulogy for one of our late leaders, Dr. Samson L. Kwaje when he passed away.
In addition to my work at Khartoum Monitor, I also worked for Almasier Arabic and English Destiny newspapers in Juba, Almaugif Arabic daily, Wehadatuna Arabic newspaper in Egypt and now Freedom online newspaper.
It would be an honour to work with my President Salva Kiir Mayardit, if appointed. I consider him a father of our nation and a great friend to my family, particularly, my late father, Ayok Deng Agor Wol, who told me a lot about him since their youthful days in Kuajok Intermediate School in the early 1960s and his work with him during the national liberation struggle for our nation in the SPLM/SPLA. My father, a vet doctor by profession, was a junior SPLA Officer who worked under Commander Salva Kiir Mayardit as his adjutant.
As children in Ethiopia in Itang, around 1989–1991, we used to be taken to the house of Commander Salva Kiir Mayardit who was most of the time in the front lines fighting for our freedom in a private car. In his house, we played, had fun and memories, some of which I am narrating here.
Moreover, we were often elated and entertained by the SPLA victories through SPLA music band whenever a town was captured during our days in Itang and in Torit later. Whenever the SPLA capture areas like Jokou, Malual Gahoth, Nasir, Kapoeta, Torit, Kurmuk and Gizan in the Blue Nile region, there were celebrations. In the liberated areas inside Southern Sudan, celebrations for the liberation of the areas that were once under the Sudan government were shown through gunfires into the air. Some of those victories used to be played to us through the video tapes in President Salva Kiir’s house in Itang.
I had also known Commander Salva Kiir Mayardit, in his Itang house, as a great footballer. We saw him playing football within the large fence of his house in Itang. I had seen him playing football displaying his skills in dogding his opponents in the play ground and running forward with the ball to score quick goals, thereby triggering feelings of jubilation in his team mates.
As children, we used to see him slim and very tall with a thick healthy hair on his head and a long remarkable beards on his chin and lower cheeks of his face, that was never shaved in those days. It was a common style in those days for many SPLA commanders, starting from the Chairman and C-in-C, Dr. John Garang de Mabior, followed by his junior commanders to the pravites to grow and keep long beards. We used to hear from soldiers that the top SPLA Commanders have taken a vow not to shave their beards until the Sudan was completely liberated from the Arabs suppression, injustices and subjugation!
Also as children, we weren’t sure whether that was true or not, but we admired the idea as we were fond of soldiers, guns, and the liberation war through many stories we heard from the mouths of soldiers and elders around us, and from what we used to see on daily basis in those days.
As children, being around soldiers in those days was an admirable glory as were growing up in military revolutionary areas in Itang, Dima, Pochalla, Kapoeta, Torit, Rumbek and Gogrial before I finally leave Gogrial for Khartoum in August 1996 for school.
In those video tapes, that were played to us in Salva Kiir’s Itang house, we saw the glorious SPLA history in the making and which became engraved in our minds since those days of childhood.
In those videos, we watched Commander Salva Kiir Mayardit giving his last orders to the SPLA forces to attack, storm Rumbek and capture it in November of 1989. In those videos, Commander Salva Kiir (now President of our country) was speaking in eloquent Arabic that we could not understand because we didn’t know Arabic language at that tender age, but thank God our father who was the translator translating the orders of his commander, became a language mediator of a language barrier between us and Commander Sava Kiir.
In those video tapes, Salva Kiir and our dad weren’t just speaking to the SPLA soldiers who were about to go to the battle, but equally to those soldiers and us their children who were watching their liberation efforts at the front lines and who didn’t understand or speak Arabic language then, but only our mother tongue.
In those video tapes, we saw our dad also translating to the late Gen. Dominic Dim Deng during their preparations to attack Rumbek and capture it. We also saw other liberation war veterans like Gen. Aleu Ayieny Aleu, Gen. William Deng Garang Beny, Gen. Garang Mabil Deng, and many other SPLA war veterans.
Thanks and appreciation to brother Jangdit Deng Ajok, who preserved one of those videos on his YouTube channel until I discover it in 2018, and made me proud of our history and the contributions of my dad in the liberation struggle, thereby renewing my memories as I saw those videos with my elder brother Majook in President Salva Kiir’s house in Itang around 1989–1991. I decided to attach segments of those vidoes with this piece.
In 2006, in Khartoum, my father asked me to accompany him to the Republican Palace in Khartoum. I didn’t have a clue of why we were going to the Republican Palace, but I was happy to enter it for the first time. Arriving at the main gate of the Republican Palace, our vehicle stopped for a routine security check up, my father informed them that he was the Speaker of Warrap State Legislative Assembly, and that he was coming to meet the First Vice President and President of the Government of Southern Sudan, Gen. Salva Kiir Mayardit, on an official duty, showing them his official ID card, and they respectfully welcomed us into the Palace.
While seated at the inner reception in the Office, President Salva Kiir himself humbly came and joyfully and friendly greeted my dad and greeted me too. I remained at the reception as two of them went into his office. Later on my father came back and we left.
My dad and my other mother, Asunta Apadha Ngong Kuel Majok, had always spoke highly of Commanders Salva Kiir Mayardit and John Garang de Mabior, and other SPLA Commanders, as our family members are entirely and unwavering loyal to the SPLM.
Being a devoted Catholic Christian, my dad used to tell us that there are things which he had considered the foundation of our family: Believing in God as the Creator of universe and all living none-living things, worshipping him through the Catholic Christian teachings, and finally the SPLM/A as a political tool for the emancipation of our people and nation building. He used to tell us: Whoever is not with me in these three things which are the principles for this house, should leave my house.
We were all believers in God, and still we are, His followers through the Roman Catholic teachings, and members of the SPLM/A in that young age. However, we missed our dad following his demise on Saturday, February 25, 2011. He was our teacher, mentor, example in the liberation politics and values of life as he was also a teacher to many in the entire Gogrial. I am narrating this brief background to connect the past to the present.
In conclusion, there are many qualified Journalists in the country be appointed into this position, however, should His Excellency, the President, consider me for appointment in this position, I am ready to work with him and under his guidance. Likewise, should the chance go to a different colleague in media fraternity, I would consider it as his or her appointed time to serve our nation.
I wholeheatedly appreciate all my well-wishers for their best wishes for me in suggesting me for a possible plan or action. Should their wishes come true in the present time, that shall be good, but if not, those best wishes will surely come to fruition someday.
May God bless the South Sudan people 🇸🇸
May God bless our President.
DENGDIT AYOK DENG AGOR
Journalist and Media Practitioner
Juba – South Sudan
Wednesday, February 04, 2026
Email: dengditayok88@gmail.com
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