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South Sudanese poet, author and political commentator

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 Kuir ë Garang  (1980) is a prominent South Sudanese Canadian poet, author, political commentator and publisher. Garang is one of the well-known political writers on South Sudanese political issues with incisively political analysis that are read in South Sudan and East Africa generally. He was born in South Sudan a few years before the beginning of the Sudanese second civil war. He currently lives in Calgary, Alberta where he continues to write and work with immigrant families and youth. He’s published a total of 9 books. He writes on issues of power, leadership and inter-tribal coexistence.

Early Life
Kuir ë Garang was born on May 21, 1980 in the town of Renk in Upper Nile, South Sudan. Because of the Sudanese civil war, he was forced to seek refuge with his family in Ethiopia at the beginning of 1987. His father was arrested by a local SPLA commander, and by the time the family moved to Itang Refugee Camp in West Ethiopia in May of 1987, he was released and living in the refugee camp.

The family lived in Itang R. Camp from 1987 to 1991 when Mengistu Haile Mariam, the then communist leader of Ethiopia, was ousted from power by Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). This reality forced Kuir and his family to move back to Sudan where they moved from one displaced camp to another: Malek in Jonglei State, Yondu near the down of Kaya, Kirwa near the Uganda border, and Mangalatore in now Yei River County. That precarious living condition would continue until 2002.

On his refugee life and love of education, Calgary Herald writes that:

"Then war broke out in Ethiopia, so his family returned to South Sudan. Eventually, Garang convinced his father to let him venture to Kenya, where he heard he could get an education. He spent his high school years at the Kakuma Refugee Camp, which housed survivors escaping turmoil in South Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Rwanda and other areas. His father had suggested he wait out the war at home before getting his education, but Garang was thirsty for knowledge. (Calgary Herald, 2016)"

Education
Garang moved to Kakuma Refugee Camp in North Western Kenya in 1995 where he completed his primary education after it was disrupted in Ethiopia in 1991. Between 1991 and 1995, he attended many makeshift schools in Sudan that had no stability or well-trained teachers as the family had to move from one displace camp another in search of refuge.

In Kakuma, he started at grade seven in 1995, sitting for Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) in 1996. Even with no stable education in displaced camps in Sudan, Garang was one of the few students sponsored by Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) in 1997 to relatively better schools run by the Kenyan government. He first attended Lokitaung Secondary School from 1997 to 1998 after which JRS moved him and his fellow JRS scholars from Lokitaung to Lodwar High School in the town of Lodwar. After successfully finishing his secondary education through Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (K.C.S.E) in 2000, Garang was again one of the few students to be offered a sponsorship by world University Service of Canada (WUSC) Student Refugee Program. He was admitted at McGill University in 2002 where he completed his Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Philosophy in 2007. In 2016, he completed a Masters of Arts in Integrated Studies (MA-IS) with concentration in Cultural Studies and Philosophy.

Political Views
Garang has been writing political commentaries on Sudan and South Sudan since 2002. His political views are nonpartisan, nontribal and solution focused. His writing can be read on Gurtong Trust, Sudan Tribune, South Sudan News Agency, South Sudan Nation, Pachdo, among others. He believes that partisanship and tribally-based writing are the root causes of the South Sudanese problems and the failure to establish sound and functional institutional structures in South Sudan. In his 2013 book, South Sudan Ideologically, he writes:

South Sudan is a society that’s highly and unhelpfully militarized, unnecessarily politicized and uncritically tribalized. Presentation of facts is therefore compromised in favor of either political affiliations or tribal belonging. These two maladies are all internal problems within South Sudan. It’s therefore easy for these ills to blight the people and upset any attempt aimed at establishing impartial and strong institutions. Without strong institutions and cohesive civil population, any initiative intended at spearheading development and economic growth projects will always be thwarted by the ghost of tribal politics. Provision of services therefore becomes impossible as tribal and political allegiances stand in the way of nonpartisan civil service.(South Sudan Ideologically [2015]2013, p.xiii)

While he doesn’t want to wish tribal realities away, he believes that South Sudan can develop a conducive social and political atmosphere without radical partisanship that upset inter-tribal togetherness.

Besides his inter-tribal togetherness advocacy, Garang also advocates for peace through his YouTube (which was closed down by hackers due to his criticism of the South Sudanese government – he’s now created another YouTube channel) channel and through presentations in South Sudanese conferences.

Racial and Identity Views
Garang believes that the problems that engender racial uneasiness lies in the manner in which antiracism discourse is exercised. Instead of focusing on helpful education, he argues, many anti-racism discourses are either patronizing to the victims of racism, or unhelpfully denigrating to ‘racists’, whom he believes should be assisted in understanding the importance of diversity. Existing anti-racism discourses avoid the trust and make it hard for people to be comfortable with one another.

These are some of ideas he advanced in Is ‘Black’ Really Beautiful? In this book, he rejects the use of color as cultural identities as he believes that these color-identities were not initiated as respectful creation of racial others but ways to put-down non-Europeans. His ideas are meant to remove barriers that prevent people from talking to one another. He believes that people who don’t know one another cannot get along and this reality, he believes, fuels discriminatory factors. In 2016 interview with Calgary Herald, he said that

"In multicultural countries or societies, inter-communal relations are very, very complicated and sometimes people take things at face value….I will give you an example about South Sudanese in Calgary. If people in Canadian society see South Sudanese on TV, it is when they are involved in drugs or crime. Every time. Some people who are not critical would just assume that’s who the people are. My message is that it’s always good to take people on as an individual and realize there is something beyond what we usually see. That is my main message to Canadians: Always try to know someone, and once we know one another it reduces misunderstandings or uneasiness when people come together. (Calgary Herald, 2016)"

Garang strongly believes that identity issues, which are glossed over in mainstream scholarship, should be revisited in order to flesh out historical indignities and 'morals' that have been built into such historically questionable identities. He writes in an essays, "Is 'Black' Really Beauitiful?: An Identity of the African Person"(which also appears in Twilight Murders 2016) that the way people have embraced 'blackness

"... results from the loss of internal ingenuity in the African Person. Everything for and about the African Person comes and is enforced by outsiders. Names and derogatory debasement of the whole humanity of the people have been accepted with remarkable resignation. The fact that blackness was used as an anti-thetical positioning of the African Person on the opposite side of Europeaness has been either forgotten or accepted out of powerlessness. A proud entity has been forged, by the African Person, out of that damning biblical blackness."

Poetry
His poetry is very personal and focuses on his experiences as a refugee and as a minority in Canada. It’s also about love, inclusion, discrimination, politics and other social issues. Here is an example from his 2016 book, Twilight Murders.

HEARTLESSNESS THAT'S SO KIND

I’ve always quarreled with the lonely trees Yeah, madness only comes in degrees I respect all but what’s madness worth? How did your heart turn into stone? But oh, it’s something you’ll figure alone You can take me for what you are We’re all kind if you look from a far I’m a sad man because I’ve chosen to Some flashes of happiness I’ve been through I write so I have to be the dumbest rationalist Humility will make me a sound nationalist But hold on…. there’s heartlessness that’s so kind You can take my hand and you’ll see me smile I’m a box layered up not just for a while My hidden me will shock you in style See yourself in me but know I’m a breed South Sudanese in and out for all my deeds You can doubt that but it’s so true You claim to be good. It isn’t yet untrue You claim to be kind, the heavens now squirm Deep in you is the saddest nymph to confirm I’m a sad man because I’ve opened my eyes I’m a kind man because I let things pass by But hold on…there’s heartlessness that’s so kind You can take me for what you think Then at night you cry looking into the sink I don’t blame you. That’s humaneness in you You can’t hide it…it breathes in kindness too I don’t know how kindness could be so… But hold on…the world always knows*
 * For the goodness inside us all

(From Twilight Murders, Other Poems and Essays, 2016, p.66)