Presidents came and went in Khartoum, the seat of the Sudanese government located in the mainly Arab and Muslim north. In the south, Dr John Garang de Mabior endured on and on, eclipsing his rivals and seeing through new-fangled political plot after another. For his staying power, Garang has been likened to the Angolan rebel Unita leader Jonas Savimbi. But unlike Savimbi and many other seasoned rebel leaders, Garang's life struggle promises to be well worth the while.

The story is told of one of the Sudan government's earliest offers of a political settlement in 1984, only a year into the Garang-led rebellion, that revealed his true character early on.

Gaafar al-Nimeiri, then president of Sudan was eager to open talks with the Sudan People's Liberation Army in order to close oil drilling contracts in the south. The then well-known head of Lonrho, Tiny Rowland, who was financing SPLA and also had an interest in the oil contracts was sent to relay the offer to Garang: He would be appointed Sudan vice-president and SPLA would get six cabinet posts.

To Rowlands chagrin, Garang rejected the offer out of hand. A few months later, President Nimeiri was overthrown by generals while on a visit to Washington.

Today, 20 years later, Garang is well on his way to Khartoum - possibly as First Vice-President - but on his own terms.

Garang was born into the Dinka, the largest ethnic group in the largest African country. Through countless seasons of war and turmoil, his life has been marked by a persistence and consistency that is unequalled in the East Africa region. For his staying power and ability to lead battles in the frontlines, Dr John Garang de Mabior has been likened to the Angolan rebel Unita leader Jonas Savimbi.

But unlike Savimbi and many other seasoned rebel leaders, Garang's life struggle promises to be well worth the while. When the history of the New Sudan - peaceful and prosperous - is finally written, Garang's role will no doubt occupy an important place as will the decades-old civil war that has left close to two million Sudanese men, women and children dead. It was a war between the largely Christian south and the mainly Arabic and Muslim north. But there is more to the war. The north-south conflict and hostility between the two sides is grounded in religious, cultural and language differences.

With the exception of a fragile peace lasting a mere 11 years which was arrived at between southern Sudan insurgents (that came to be known as Anyanya) and the Sudan government at the OAU headquarters in Addis Ababa in 1972, southern Sudan has been a battlefield. The Khartoum government soon went against the agreement which called on all Sudanese to co-exist peacefully as one nation. The short lived peace ended in 1983 with fresh insurgencies in the south. Here, Garang, a colonel in the Sudanese army came into full view.

John Garang had been serving as a government officer in the Khartoum government under Gaafar Mohamed el-Nimeiri in 1983. Then he was sent to the Bor region to quell a mutiny of about 500 southern soldiers who were resisting their transfer to the north. This became the opportunity that changed John Garang's life and Sudan's course of history.

Instead of quelling the small mutiny, he encouraged other soldiers in the south to follow suit and rebel against the Khartoum government. He championed himself as the leader of these insurgents. This marked the birth of the Sudan People's Liberation Army, SPLA and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement, SPLM. Thanks to President Nimeiri's recent imposition of Islamic Shari'a law in the Sudan, Garang's supporters grew by the day. A civil war that has outlived all others in Africa and gone on to become Africa's longest-running was under way.

And thus began a life of dodging bullets and staying as shadowy as possible, both for the SPLA and for its leader.

Still very little is known of the early life of the man whose huge physical appearance commands attention.

Nearing his 59th birthday, Garang was born in 1945 to a Dinka Christian family. His family lived at Bor in the Jonglei province of southern Sudan. He attended high school at the Magamba Secondary School in Lushoto Tanzania. In 1964, Garang joined the Grinell college in Grinell, Iowa, USA. He graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Economics from Grinell. He later trained at a military academy in Georgia, before joining Iowa State University for an advanced degree in Economics.

Those that worked with him at this time, either as colleagues or as lecturers remember him fondly.

"Garang was one of about 20 African students at Grinell college in the 60s," said Jack Dawson, a friend and former lecturer. "They were the first of their generation to receive university degrees. They all knew they were headed back to high offices in their countries."

Garang has himself credited Grinell as being an important influence in his life and in his fight for peace in the Sudan. "Maybe it's the liberal values of Grinell College that have been talking in me," Garang is quoted as having said during a visit to Grinell.

Having returned to home after his studies, Garang became a research associate in the department of Economics and Rural Economy at the university of Dar es Salaam. It was while here that he met and became friends with Uganda's president Yoweri Museveni, who was studying at the college. But after only a short while, Garang went back to the Sudan. In 1970, he joined the Anyanya movement, a southern Sudanese rebellion against the government in Khartoum. But the Anyanya insurgency died with the signing of the 1972 Addis Ababa accords between the government and the rebels. The accord guaranteed the south Sudanese autonomy.

Most of the soldiers in Anyanya were absorbed and given positions in the government army. John Garang was one among many. He rose to the rank of a commander in the 105th Infantry Battalion in just four years. From 1982 to 1983, Garang was appointed the economic adviser to the Military Agricultural Corporation. At the same time, he was the deputy director at the Military Research Branch at the Sudan Army General Headquarters in Khartoum.

It was in 1983 that he broke away from the government. He joined Maj-Gen Dr Kerubino Bol in founding the SPLA and SPLM. Garang said he was fighting to take over Khartoum so that he may "liberate the north Sudanese.. and just as Khartoum is laying claim to my territory, so i must do over Khartoum".

When the SPLA declared war, the Khartoum government had insisted that it was in charge of the whole country and that it could drill oil in the south with or without the consent of the local people. This was against the Addis Ababa agreement.

By 1986 the SPLA was estimated to have 12,500 armed men, organised into 12 battalions and equipped with small arms and a few mortars, according to Sudan specialists who have been monitoring the war. By 1989 the SPLA's strength had reached 20,000 to 30,000 and rose to between 50,000 to 60,000 in 1990s.

Today, Dr Garang's SPLA controls much of the southern third of the country including pockets of territory in central and eastern Sudan.

But much of the conflict that SPLA has had to deal with has also been within its framework as much as it has been from the government soldiers. The movement has split into factions over the years. Ironically, one reason that split the movement into factions was the cause for which it was fighting. Dr Garang believed, and has maintained to date, that the goal of the SPLA should be to fight for a united secular Sudan with power sharing between the north and the south.

Other leaders within the SPLA including Maj-Gen Kerubino Bol and Col Dr Riek Machar wanted the south to secede and claim independence. The two left the movement and formed their own rebel groups which later signed peace treaties with the government. But Maj-Gen Kerubino Bol left the government side not long after.

Dr Garang survived all this. He stayed put and maintained his position, in spite of the opposition and the fact that most southerners would rather be independent from the north. He believed a united Sudan was the best option for Sudan. He outwitted everyone else by being cunning and staying one step ahead of the rest.

The distinguished rebel leader has survived several attempts on his life too. Soon after Maj-Gen Kerubino Bol had left the government, there was an attempt on Garang's life at his Nairobi home in November 1998. Men believed to have been supporters of Maj-Gen Bol raided Garang's house in a Nairobi suburb but they ran into an alert security. The two sides engaged into a 30-minute gun fight that left at least one man dead. Dr Garang escaped unhurt.

Nairobi has been Garang's home for a long while. He lives in the rich Lavington suburb, though at one time during his exile in Nairobi he lived in the nearby Kawangware slums. His life of luxury has been cause for disapproving murmurs within the ranks of SPLA. He lives in a modern home complete with powerful telecommunications equipment and luxury items enjoyed only by the rich and almost unheard of in southern Sudan.

In many parts of the south, there are no roads, no schools, no hospitals and no cash economy. But perhaps the same luxury could have tugged at his heart and made him change tactics, opting for dialogue, instead of war, with the government. After all, Nairobi has also been the scene of peace talks and agreements that have put his country on the path to lasting peace.

Feelings against the rebel leader, who has a PhD in Agricultural Economics, have been mixed. Most people have praised Dr Garang for having kept the movement together throughout the turbulent times these two past decades. But some have seen him as cold and aloof. He has been praised for championing the cause of the southern Sudanese and yet had been scolded for massive abuse of human rights by his (SPLA) men in the south.

"It's rather difficult to warm up to the man," said Peter Moszynski, a Sudan specialist who has covered the war for a long time.

But Gill Lusk, the deputy editor of Africa Confidential who has interviewed Dr Garang on several occasions describes him as a proud man. "He's a man with charisma and his leadership qualities are quite obvious," said Ms Lusk to the BBC News Online. She went on to say that Garang is very much a professional military man who believes he is clever.

"He likes grand ideas and has a great sense of humour," said Ms Lusk.

He also does not take his chances as one can tell from the type of security around him wherever he travels.

Of the his great attributes, the greatest has been consistency.

"He has consistently carried on the fight for his southern Sudanese people," said Peter Verney, the editor of Sudan and Independent Information Services. This trait came through especially when he was offered the position of the Vice President while still fresh in the struggle. "Through Tiny Rowland, (the founder of the Lonrho Investments), president Gaamar Nimeiri relayed the message to John Garang that he could become the vice president of Sudan if he would give up his rebellion," says Deborah Scroggins, in her book Emmas War. "Garang turned down the offer."

Tiny Rowland sighed many years later: "Garang is an extremely difficult chap".

It is this consistency that has seen Garang and the SPLA fight against the governments of Nimeiri, Sadiq al-Mahdi, (who took over from Nimeiri but refused to abolish the Islamic shari'a law as SPLA had demanded) and the current government of Omar el-Bashir. But president Bashir has come to an agreement with Dr Garang. The Government and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) have signed three key protocols paving the way to a comprehensive peace agreement ending 21years of civil war.

The protocols signed in Nairobi on May 26, settle the administration of oil-rich Abyei, the Nuba Mountains and Southern Blue Nile as well as setting post-war power sharing arrangements.

Having varied from Marxism to Christian ideologies, John Garang and SPLA drew a lot of support from Christian fundamentalists in the US and Britain.

"The SPLA has definitely changed quite a lot over the years for the better," said Gill Lusk.

According to Sudan specialists, Dr Garang too has changed in his approach and relations with his people. Peter Verney thinks that he has now become more approachable, more of a politician, even a statesman. But whether it is genuine or just good PR, the change with the colonel will undoubtedly come in handy with the expected changes in the Sudan system of government.

The road to where he is at right now has been long and rough. Most Sudanese think that it was nothing short of a miracle that could bring the north and the south around a table and come to an agreement.

Perhaps the saying by Charles Blair stands true, that the greatness of a man is determined by the cause he lives for and the price he is willing to pay for its achievement. Dr Garang, an ordinary man, married to Rebecca Nyandeng with whom they have three children, has done the extra ordinary by going the extra mile in the struggle for what he believed in. It is not over until it's over, and although many lives have been lost, the cause that John Garang de Mabior and his colleagues in the fight have lived for is the greatest reward for the people of southern Sudan.

Many southerners believed in an obscure context of the Bible's Isaiah chapter 18. In this, God declares "woes on the land that is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia... a land whose people are terrible from their beginning hitherto.... a land whose rivers have spoiled it..." But the end of the text holds a promise of the "terrible people" coming together. Perhaps the good book will make good the prophecy.

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