This was the day in 1983 when southern Sudanese soldiers of Battalion 105 under the command of Maj. Kerubino Kuanyin Bol staged a mutiny at their garrison in Bor, setting the stage for the launch of more than two decades of civil war in the Sudan.
The mutiny was followed by the defection of Col. Dr. John Garang De Mabior from the Sudanese army.
Dr. Garang later organized these forces, as well as those from Battalion104 under Maj. William Nyuon Bany and others already in the bushes of southern Sudan into the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A).
The SPLM/A fought successive governments in Khartoum until the signing in 2005 of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), a deal that eventually heralded the birth of South Sudan.

By 1983, President Ja’afar Mohammed Numeiri had almost completed unravelling the Addis Ababa Agreement of 1972. He even proceeded further to fragment the southern region and impose Islamic law in the country, setting the stage for renewed conflict with the southerners.
This time around, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), under the leadership of Col. John Garang De Mabior, led the revolution, which now also included disgruntled Sudanese from the Nuba Mountains and the Blue Nile.
The war started out in southern Sudan and soon it engulfed the entire country. It ended 21 years later with the signing in Nairobi, Kenya, of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA).
The CPA enshrined the right of southerners to determine their own destiny in a referendum to be held after a six-year interim period (9 January 2011).
In the internationally-monitored referendum, more than 98 percent of southern Sudanese voted to secede from the North and establish their own country.
And on 9 July 2011, some six months after the plebiscite, southern Sudan was declared an independent state.

This day was set aside to commemorate the tragic death of the SPLM Chairman Dr. John Garang De Mabior in a helicopter crash, as he was returning to southern Sudan from Uganda.
Dr. Garang De Mabior, the founder of the SPLM died just 21 days after being sworn in as First Vice President of the Sudan and President of the Government of Southern Sudan, in line with the Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended more than two decades of conflict between his SPLM/A and successive governments in Khartoum.
In order to honor his memory and sacrifices, the Government of Southern Sudan later declared 30th July as Martyrs’ Day, a day to also remember all those who gave up their lives for the independence of South Sudan.

On this day in 1955, a group of southern Sudanese soldiers staged a mutiny in Torit, Eastern Equatoria. That bold action by a handful of poorly armed soldiers, signalled the beginning of a protracted struggle for independence by southern Sudanese from Sudan.
The war, later led by the Anya Nya freedom fighters under Joseph Lagu, ended with the signing in 1972 of the Addis Ababa Agreement, a deal that granted southerners only limited autonomy.