Joseph Lagu

Lagu was treated at Karen Hospital in Nairobi, Kenya, in mid 2023 for an undisclosed condition. On 24 October 2026 his family announced that he was receiving treatment at a hospital in Juba and asked the public to pray for his recovery. He died in Juba on 27 October 2026. President Salva Kiir, who was in Russia for the Russia Africa summit, announced the death, which statements described as peaceful and occurring that afternoon. Most reports gave his age as 94; Eye Radio reported 95 and English Wikipedia 96 because of differing birth dates. No cause of death has been made public. Kiir declared national mourning, ordered flags at half mast at home and at South Sudan's missions abroad until the burial, and said he would personally attend a state funeral. Funeral and burial arrangements had not been announced at the time of writing.

Joseph Lagu Yanga was born on 21 November 1931, the date given by the Joseph Lagu Foundation and repeated in obituaries by Radio Tamazuj and Eye Radio, in Momokwe, a small settlement in Moli in the northern Ma'di area, roughly 120 km from Juba. The area is now part of Magwi County in Eastern Equatoria State, South Sudan. He belonged to the Ma'di people. Some reference works, including English Wikipedia, give a birth date of 26 November 1929, so his exact age has been reported as 94, 95 or 96. He grew up in southern Sudan under Anglo-Egyptian rule, in the years before the Torit mutiny of August 1955 opened the first Sudanese civil war.

Lagu attended primary school in Malek and secondary school in Rumbek, then one of the leading schools of the south. He won a place to study law at the University of Khartoum but chose a military career instead, entering the Military College in Omdurman. He graduated in May 1960 and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Sudanese Army, posted to the 10th Brigade of the Northern Command. He was later selected to attend the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in the United Kingdom but declined.

Anyanya. On 4 June 1963 Lagu defected from the Sudanese Army and joined the southern resistance. That year he became its military leader and named the fighters Anyanya, after a deadly poison. He reinvigorated a rebellion that had been running since 1955 and, by January 1971, had taken overall control of the southern movement and founded its political arm, the Southern Sudan Liberation Movement (SSLM). Junior officers under his command included John Garang, recruited in 1970, and Salva Kiir. He sought foreign support, notably from Israel.

The Addis Ababa Agreement. In 1972 the SSLM and the government of President Gaafar Nimeiry signed the Addis Ababa Agreement under the auspices of Emperor Haile Selassie. It ended the seventeen year war, granted the south regional autonomy under a High Executive Council, and integrated Anyanya into the army, police and civil service. Lagu rejoined the army as a major general to manage the merger and became commander of the Southern Division in Juba. He later rose to lieutenant general.

Politics. In 1978 he left the military and was elected President of the High Executive Council of the Southern Sudan Autonomous Region by popular vote, serving from February 1978 to July 1979. In 1982 Nimeiry appointed him Second Vice President of Sudan, a post he held until Nimeiry was overthrown in 1985. As vice president he received United States Vice President George H. W. Bush in Khartoum and represented Sudan at the Moscow funeral of Soviet leader Konstantin Chernenko.

Diplomacy. After a period in Britain he was appointed roving ambassador by Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi in 1989 and kept the role under Omar al-Bashir. From September 1990 to January 1992 he was Sudan's Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York, then returned to roving duties. In 1998 he declined appointment as presidential adviser to al-Bashir and asked to be relieved of all official duties so he could speak independently. After the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement he declined the same offer again and instead backed the Government of Southern Sudan's push for self-determination, becoming special presidential adviser to Salva Kiir ahead of the 2011 referendum. He retired from active public service after independence.

Lagu's first marriage broke down during the years he spent fighting in the bush. After the war he met Amna, a young teacher in Juba, and they married on Christmas Day 1972. Amna, known in South Sudan as Mama Amuna, was born in the south to an Arab father and a southern mother. The couple had four children, raised as Christians who also carried Muslim names from their mother. Lagu was a lifelong Anglican. After the 1985 coup the family settled in Ealing, west London, where Amna worked as a dinner lady at her children's primary school. In December 2020 Lagu and Amna were both admitted to a London hospital with Covid-19. He recovered, but Amna died on 10 January 2021, aged 78. Their son Professor Benedict Sebit Lagu, an ICT specialist and dean of computer science at the University of Juba, died in Egypt on 30 September 2025. His daughter Josephine Lagu is a South Sudanese politician who has served as a vice president in the Transitional Government of National Unity. In later life Lagu lived in Juba and spent time with family in the UK.

Lagu spent his life arguing for southern self rule, first by arms and then through negotiation. In later years he reflected openly on the weaknesses of the deal he signed. Speaking in Khartoum in January 2009, he said the Addis Ababa Agreement was not a Quran or a Bible, admitted it had been a mistake to sign it without guarantees, and urged the ruling National Congress Party and the SPLM to cooperate so the Comprehensive Peace Agreement would not be eroded the same way. He was a strong advocate of decentralisation within the south. His Christian faith and his marriage to a Muslim shaped a lifelong interest in reconciliation, which he pursued through Moral Re-Armament (Initiatives of Change). The Joseph Lagu Foundation quotes him urging originality of thought rather than copying others.

Lagu is regarded as the first leader to unite southern Sudan's armed struggle under one command and to win it regional autonomy. The Addis Ababa Agreement gave the south roughly a decade of peace and its first self governing institutions, which historians see as a forerunner of the arrangements that led to independence in 2011. Several of the men who later led the SPLM/A, including John Garang and Salva Kiir, served under him. His wartime outreach to Israel is credited as the start of Israeli and South Sudanese relations. President Kiir called him one of the most significant figures in South Sudan's history and ordered national mourning on his death. The Joseph Lagu Foundation, launched by his family in November 2022, continues work in education, leadership development, community empowerment and humanitarian aid.

Lagu held the military rank of lieutenant general and was widely addressed as Gen. Joseph Lagu. On his death President Salva Kiir declared national mourning, ordered all national flags in South Sudan and at its diplomatic missions abroad to fly at half mast until his burial, and announced a state funeral. Specific state decorations awarded to him are not detailed in the sources consulted for this page.

Lagu's memoir, Sudan: Odyssey Through a State from Ruin to Hope, was completed and published in 2006 and recounts the first civil war, the Addis Ababa talks and his public career. In 1981 he published the pamphlet Decentralisation: A Necessity for the Southern Provinces of the Sudan. He gave many interviews to South Sudanese broadcasters in later life, including recorded accounts of the 1955 Torit mutiny and of the history of the armed struggle, several of which appear in the videos on this page.

Lagu's record drew criticism as well as praise. His 1981 decentralisation pamphlet, which argued that the Southern Region should be divided and questioned the balance of Dinka and non Dinka officials in government, is closely associated with Kokora, the redivision of the south that Nimeiry imposed by decree in June 1983. Critics argue that Kokora divided southerners and helped Nimeiry dismantle the Addis Ababa settlement, a step that contributed to the second civil war. Some southerners also faulted Lagu for accepting the 1972 agreement without stronger guarantees, a point he himself conceded in 2009, when he also drew criticism for opposing the International Criminal Court's indictment of Omar al-Bashir.