Deng Majok succeeded his father Kwol Arob, as Paramount Chief of the Ngok Dinka of Abyei in 1943 and reigned until his death in 1969. He is widely recognized as one of the most prominent tribal leaders who contributed effectively to the maintenance of peace, security and stability in Sudan s volatile North-South border area, where warrior African and Arab tribes come in contact, interact, and often clash in competition over scarce natural resources. Working in close partnership with his Arab counterpart, Babo Nimir, Paramount Chief of the Missiriya Arab tribes, Deng Majok succeeded remarkably in ensuring peaceful coexistence and cooperation between the two communities. Deng Majok was also an innovator who brought to his area the benefits of the market economy, health care, veterinary services, modern education, and a credible administration of justice. But perhaps the most unique aspect of Deng Majok s life was his profile as a family man. He married over two hundred wives from all sections of his tribe and from the neighboring Southern tribes. With an estimated average of four children per wife, and with his widows continuing to bear children to his name after his death through the custom of levitate, Deng Majok has close to a thousand children. Even more striking is the strict code of conduct he imposed on his vast family based on idealized principles of unity, harmony, solidarity and absolute intolerance of jealousy among family members. Deng Majok was however deeply tormented by an agonizing power struggle against his father who favored as his successor a younger half-brother, Deng Makuei (also known as Deng Abot), from another wife whom he considered senior to Deng Majok's mother despite the ambiguities in the order of their marriages. The struggle ended with Deng Majok plotting with his Arab friends and the British administrators to force his father into retirement and install him as the Paramount Chief. Throughout his life, Deng Majok strove painstakingly to prove beyond any doubt that he was the most qualified for the leadership. The biography of Deng Majok is written by his scholar-diplomat-statesman son who has been highly commended for successfully maintaining a precarious balance between devotion to his father and remarkable objectivity. This is the story of a truly outstanding man, whose varied life experiences make for intriguing, painful and engaging reading. As the author convincingly substantiates, The Man Called Deng Majok, is indeed a tale of glory and tragedy.

The civil war that has intermittently raged in the Sudan since independence in 1956 is, according to Francis Deng, a conflict of contrasting and seemingly incompatible identities in the Northern and Southern parts of the country. Identity is seen as a function of how people identify themselves and are identified in racial, ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and religious terms. The identity question related to how such concepts determine or influence participation and distribution in the political, economic, social, and cultural life of the country. War of Visions aims at shedding light on the anomalies of the identity conflict. The competing models in the Sudan are the Arab-Islamic mold of the North, representing two-thirds of the country in territory and population, and the remaining Southern third, which is indigenously African in race, ethnicity, culture, and religion, with an educated Christianized elite. But although the North is popularly defined as racially Arab, the people are a hybrid of Arab and African elements, with the African physical characteristics predominating in most tribal groups. This configuration is the result of a historical process that stratified races, cultures, and religions, and fostered a "passing" into the Arab-Islamic mold that discriminated against the African race and cultures. The outcome of this process is a polarization that is based more on myth than on the realities of the situation. The identity crisis has been further complicated by the fact that Northerners want to fashion the country on the basis of their Arab- Islamic identity, while the South is decidedly resistant. Francis Deng presents three alternative approaches to the identity crisis. First, he argues that by bringing to the surface the realities of the African elements of identity in the North-- thereby revealing characteristics shared by all Sudanese--a new basis for the creation of a common identity could be established that fosters equitable

This book—part memoir, part political statement—examines the influence of the author’s maternal and paternal ancestry on his life. Delving into the rich history of Francis Mading Deng’s heritage, Blood of Two Streams acts as a bridge to cross-cultural understanding and multidisciplinary connection between the personal, the communal, and the universal.

The inspiring story of three young Sudanese boys who were driven from their homes by civil war and began an epic odyssey of survival, facing life-threatening perils, ultimately finding their way to a new life in America. Between 1987 and 1989, Alepho, Benjamin, and Benson, like tens of thousands of young boys, took flight from the massacres of Sudan's civil war. They became known as the Lost Boys. With little more than the clothes on their backs, sometimes not even that, they streamed out over Sudan in search of refuge. Their journey led them first to Ethiopia and then, driven back into Sudan, toward Kenya. They walked nearly one thousand miles, sustained only by the sheer will to live. They Poured Fire on Us from the Sky is the three boys' account of that unimaginable journey. With the candor and the purity of their child's-eye-vision, Alephonsian, Benjamin, and Benson recall by turns: how they endured the hunger and strength-sapping illnesses-dysentery, malaria, and yellow fever; how they dodged the life-threatening predators-lions, snakes, crocodiles and soldiers alike-that dogged their footsteps; and how they grappled with a war that threatened continually to overwhelm them. Their story is a lyrical, captivating, timeless portrait of a childhood hurled into wartime and how they had the good fortune and belief in themselves to survive.

This anthology contains a variety of Southern perspectives on human rights and contemporary issues relating to Islam, African custom, constitution making and abuses of the language of human rights.

First published in 2006. The innovative work by Francis Deng, the noted scholar, diplomat, legal expert and author, moves the study of negotiation out of the limited traditional context of industrial relations and resituates it in the broader arena of negotiating human relations, drawing on his childhood experiences, inter-racial and cross-cultural encounters at home and abroad, and incidents from his diplomatic career.