Mathew Mading Riak (1936-2001)

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