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Taban Deng Gai is a South Sudanese politician who has been one of the Vice Presidents of South Sudan in the unity government since February 2020. He served as the First Vice President of South Sudan from 23 July 2016 to February 2020. He was mining minister before being appointed as acting first vice president.

Biography

Born around 1950 in the village of Kerial in what is today Unity State, Deng is an ethnic Nuer. He self-identifies as member of the Jikany subgroup of the Nuer, even though his home village was a Leek Nuer settlement. According to journalist Fred Oluoch, he is also of partial Arab descent.

Taban Deng Gai is closely connteced to the family of Riek Machar, being the latter’s brother-in-law as well as the cousin of Machar’s wife Angelina Teny. In course of the Second Sudanese Civil War, he served as administrator of the refugee camp of Itang, as head of the SPLA’s relief wing in Nasir, and as Machar’s quartermaster. When Machar’s loyalists split from the SPLA (Mainstream) and formed the SPLA-Nasir, Deng acted as the main intermediary between the latter and the Sudanese government. SPLA-Nasir eventually came to a tenative agreement with the Sudanese government, and its political wing took part in southern Sudanese politics. Deng was consequently elected governor of Unity State, resulting in tensions between Machar and another local pro-government militia leader, Paulino Matip Nhial, which escalated in violence from 1998 to 1999.

He again served as governor of Unity State from 30 September 2005. In the April 2010 elections the state electoral body announced that Taban Deng Gai won by 137,662 votes, beating his cousin and runner-up Angelina Teny who won 63,561 votes. The results were heavily disputed, with Teny accusing Deng of having used militants to intimidate her supporters. The election contributed to the estrangement of Deng from Teny, and, by extension, from Machar. When the South Sudanese Civil War broke out, Deng initially joined the SPLM-IO rebels of Riek Machar, and became the latter’s second-in-command. Following the Battle of Juba (2016), however, Deng defected back to the government to replace Machar as First Vice President. A substantial number of insurgents followed him, and became known as the Juba faction of the SPLM/A-IO. They subsequently began to fight alongside the government force against Machar’s loyalists, resulting in Deng being regarded as “traitor” by other rebels.

Sanctions

In January 2020, The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Deng “for his involvement in serious human rights abuse, including the disappearance and deaths of civilians.” Deng has however refuted the allegations that he is involved in any human rights abuse in South Sudan, describing himself as a “man of peace.”

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