By Ater Yuot R. Amogpai
Pilot and police officer
Madding
was born in 1936 in Aher Village, Yirol, Lakes District, Bahr el Ghazal. He was
baptized Mathew in school, but he rarely used his Christian name. After
finishing Loka Intermediate in July 1953, he went to Rumbek Secondary School in
1954. In 1959, he had no problem escaping to Ethiopia via Nasir in Upper Nile.
In Ethiopia he was trained as a pilot with the Ethiopia Air Force. Madding Riak
was the first Southern Sudanese to fly an airplane.
However,
in 1964 Captain Mading Riak returned to Khartoum on the invitation of Hassan
Abbas, the Sudanese minister of defence. He immediately returned to Ethiopia,
where he was discovered as a South Sudanese and was deported to Tanzania. In
Dar es Salaam he continued his journey to Congo. In Congo, in order to acquire
weapons for the Anya nay rebels,
Mathew Mading Riak and some other young Southern Sudanese men decided to join
the Belgium Congo army as mercenaries. Prime Minister Moise Tshombe of Congo
appointed Mathew Mading Riak as a Captain in the Congolese army.
The Anya
nay was so desperate for weapons that they decided to join the Congolese army
as mercenaries in their fight against the Simba (lion) rebels. The Congolese
rebels received enormous armament supplies in late 1964 from many countries,
including Tanzania, China, the Soviet Union, Egypt, and Congo-Brazzaville. This
armament was channeled through Sudan.
A year
later, Mading Riak was among many young Southern Sudanese students offered
scholarships to go to the United States and continue their studies. After
completing a preparatory course at Lincoln University (1965-66), he was offered
a place to study history at the Ohio State University in 1967. In the United
States he worked as a flight instructor for a private aviation company in
California until 1973. Captain Mading Riak has also participated in Vietnam War
as mercenary a US army pilot. He was
shut down and missing for 14 days but found alive.
In 1973
Captain Mading Riak returned to the Sudan hoping to join Sudan Airways, but
instead he took up instructor assignment with East African Airways in Soroti,
Uganda. He finally returned to Sudan in 1974 and joined the High Executive
Council, HEC’s general secretariat as a pilot for the HEC until the dawn of the
kokora in June 1983. In the distribution of the regional government’s assets,
the plane was allotted to Upper Nile, but as a citizen of Yirol, Captain Mading
Riak went to Bahr el Ghazal. In 1986, on the request of Mathew Obur, the
president of the Southern Council in Khartoum, Captain Mading Riak was
appointed as a police officer. He had a police officer’s training course, was
commissioned as a lieutenant colonel, and was assigned to the council.
The
president of the council had planned to procure a plane for his administration.
Mading Riak progressed in the police force to the rank of brigadier in 1992,
when he was purged by the National Islamic Front, NIF’s regime. Mading decided
to join the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, SPLA in 1997. In the movement he
volunteered as a teacher at Mapuordit School. He died at home in Yirol in July
2001.
Adopted
from:
Kuyuk A,
(2015). South Sudan the Notable Firsts, pp. (367-368). Author House, UK
