From Press Secretary to Critic: A Look Back at Ateny Wek’s Time as Kiir’s Spokesperson

By Mading Ngor

When Ateny Wek Ateny was appointed on 17 November 2013, hardly anyone predicted that he would last for nearly a decade in the position. Here was a guy who clawed his way into the heart of the Presidency by means other than being a pressman. His only qualification was a short stint as a bomb-thrower at the Citizen Newspaper with his “Beating the Drum of Truth” column. In the lead up to his appointment, he wrote an eye-catching article where he berated Presidential press for the failure to mount a robust defense of the President, calling it a ‘conspiracy.’

Viola—a known civil society advocate was tapped to the most coveted position for career journalists. I should hasten to add that I was considered for the position, but luck was on Atenydior’s side.

At the start of Ateny’s tenure in 2013, I found myself in his office to set up his Skype and Gmail to get us prepared for an interview on Aljazeera Stream. We maintained some modicum of respect and friendship throughout his time as presidential spokesman. The gloves are off this week after Ateny Wek aggressed me in a comment on his wall, followed by an article published yesterday morning titled; “My Response to Mr. Mading Ngor Akec Kuai’s disparaging statement against me, in Hon. Michael Makuei’s Defense!” In his piece, Ateny’s core argument is twofold: Defense of his record and laying of claims and personal attacks against me and Hon. Michael Makuei.

A Look Back at Ateny Wek’s Time as Kiir’s Spokesperson Ateny

Wek Ateny is right to pride himself of his record as the first and longest serving press secretary to President Salva Kiir. He embraced the press with an open arm and held countless press conferences during his tenure at a critical period straddling two wars in 2013 and 2016. That’s all about my friend’s achievement as a presidential spokesman.

Truth be told, Ateny Wek is not a media practitioner in a technical sense of the word as he hasn’t formally studied journalism. His obscure media background is to blame for the collapse of the well-funded Juba Telegraph shortly after assuming office. He was famous for his confident projection of hollow, reckless and inarticulate utterances in media appearances.

Dr. John Garang used to refer to such a checkered approach as a “phenomenon which is difficult to comprehend but is working.

” Ateny’s reign of corruption was legendary, limitless and unconstrained as Kiir’s spokesman. While he was expected to grant access to the press in the highest office, he preferred to facilitate beauty queens’ appointments with the Head of State as all roads led to his desk.

With the exception of a one-time heavily scripted and hastily organized SSBC interview with the President by Hon. Moyiga Nduru, Ateny curtailed local media access to the President to shield his insecurities, a fact responsible for his longevity in office.

At his apex, he felt assured that his god of Atenydior could enable him to trample on anyone and anything on his way. His vast influence around the President positioned him as a top-notch lobbyist who got people in and out of government. He made money by facilitating foreign journalists to interview Gen. Salva Kiir Mayardit.

Ateny’s moral bankruptcy saw him prey on many vulnerable families by virtue of his proximity to the ‘Al-mighty’ and unfettered access to hard currency. Ateny shattered many loving families in a glaring abuse of power as the Baltasar Ebang Engonga of South Sudan. He robbed a war hero of his wife in Kampala, Uganda; threatened to kill him and overlooked that she left a child behind, amongst other egregious human rights abuses he committed in office.

As press secretary, he used to dole out “decree-reading contracts” like Dura to ladies he had interest in, either directly or through one of his boys’ coordination at SSBC. After Ateny was mired in a scandal in his first and second foreign trips with the President in 2013 and was barred from further travels with the President abroad. Not to be undone with DSAs, Ateny was accused of collecting “per-diem” from assigned reporters on Presidential trips.

Domestically or internationally, Ateny’s period at the helm of the presidential press unit was dotted with missteps and false-starts. Had Ateny been a conventional office holder, his ineptitude would have disqualified him on day one.

In one of his biggest international press scandals of his time in 2016, Ateny forwarded an unauthorized Op-Ed for New York Times in the names of President Kiir and Vice President Riek Machar, forcing NYT to apologize.

From Press Secretary to Critic

I am pleased to meet Mr. Ateny Wek at the battle-front after more than two cold years out of the Presidency. The ground is now levelled since he no longer has the ear of the President. In the same token, I must welcome your back, my friend, to the ordinary world where life is harsh and brutish. Ever since your disappointment as press secretary, I have watched you spin in both directions like a washer machine or better yet, like an afflicted Chol Muong weighing a visit to his daughter’s and son’s homes at the same time!

I am not taken aback that your delicate dance of supporting the government and criticizing it at the same time has landed you on the Government Spokesman, Hon. Michael Makuei Lueth. As press secretary, you scarcely saw Makuei as your superior and so are many of his detractors who see him as an object of hate who must be ousted from his position.

Remember being famously quoted that you can “hit Makuei” with Bol Wek to underscore your bullishness Xon cin kueth apei? (When you were tipsy with cash.)

I’m not here to defend Minister Michael Makuei. However, I only want to nudge you to your mischaracterization of him as a “Spoiled Son of SPLM.” Makuei, like the late Dr. John Garang, whom you once dismissed as Father of the Nation in a dawn column in 2016, is one of the fathers of the SPLM. It’s you, Ateny Wek, who is an adopted spoiled son of SPLM.

On the whole, I sympathize with you, my brother Ateny Wek. Ever since you lost power you have been on a speaking-spree or a talkathon; whether funeral, wedding or Atenydior deity ceremony, you have literally been everywhere and nowhere. Ku jok angot ke ken yot (Atendior deity has yet to catch fire!).

Let’s now go somewhere to address the meat of your claims about me.

Michael Makuei as a Ladder. You opined that my media would have not kicked off the ground if I wasn’t being “spoon fed” by Hon. Michael Makuei. As Minister of Information, no media house can claim to prosper without developing good relations with the Ministry for one reason or another. However, as you acknowledged in your yesterday’s article, I am a professional in my own right as an award-winning journalist who can make ends meet where meritocracy is given a chance. Before I started my company in 2014, I was both Bloomberg and BBC Correspondent and I was doing very well without a taste of petrodollars. Yet, for the love of the country, I jettisoned the world press for local entrepreneurship.

It took me nearly a decade before I could establish Terab Radio (87.6) through thick and thin and the struggle continues up to date. That I have achieved some milestone wasn’t automatic case of being “given” without effort and sacrifice as you have simplified in your comment. As no one is an island, small trees must climb on the big trees to reach the sun as Chinua Achebe once wrote in one of his books but that doesn’t mean that one can’t use his conscience to make an independent judgement.

On the Old Radio Juba Building. It’s true that I waged a vigorous campaign to house my FM station at the Old Radio Juba for much of 2022. For one, the Old Radio Juba premises was occupied by squatters for a decade and was infested by armed men along a road frequented by the President and many other VIPs. It took my efforts with authorities to remove squatters and other criminals from the Old Radio Juba compound. Following my efforts at clearing the premises, I was temporarily given permission to operate in one of the halls at the premises for the duration of my two-year partnership with the Ministry of Information, Communication Technology and Postal Services. While I began to renovate parts of the building to commence my work, I thought against expanding the renovation without a long-term mandate.

The Minister, Hon. Michael Makuei, didn’t approve of my long-term lease in the area, leave alone him and I am going to you to lobby you for your support. What a tall tale!

The Old Radio Juba is the sole property of the Ministry of Information and if Makuei wanted to lease it to my company, he would have done so as the concerned Minister in a blink of an eye. To the contrary, it’s me who reached out to you, Hon. Marial Benjamin and others in the hope of gaining Presidential support for a long-term lease for Terab Radio to be premised at the Old Radio Juba.

When my strategy didn’t bear fruit, I gave up the fight and moved my station to my house in Lologo II near Freedom Bridge.

The Quest for Press Secretary Job

It’s a dream of every pressman to be a press secretary at one point in one’s career, albeit a presidential one. As I have indicated above, I was nominated in 2013 when Ateny Wek was successfully crowned as the press secretary.

In my discussion with Ateny in 2014 in his office after he went to release me from NSS prison in Juba town, he made a few memorable revelations to me. One, Ateny told me that he wasn’t the best person for the press secretary job upon his appointment in 2013 although he said he was fortunate to get the opportunity.

Dreaming aloud then, he told me that his goal was to strive to get Salva Kiir elected and subsequently “tell him to appoint the best person as press secretary. Mading Ngor is the best person for the position.” I must have murmured to myself then that “you are a liar” but I kept it to myself, or did I? I knew that my friend Ateny Wek wanted to bait me but I didn’t take the bait, I believe.

The second revelation that Ateny told me was that a memo was drafted by Gen. Bol Wek Agoth, the Chief Administrator at the time, for me to replace him as press secretary. “It’s me who frustrated it,” he told me triumphantly. Although comfortable as Ateny Wek was in his own skin, he got paranoid overtime about losing his job to the extent that my mere visit to J1 in his waning days used to attract gossip and was analyzed in myriad ways.

Short of clocking a decade, Ateny was finally sacked in August 2022, giving way too many aspirants like me to vie for the position. Ateny had expressed his support for my candidature, having expressed his confidence in me from time to time as an object of terror for him.

While my team and I ran a tough campaign to replace Ateny Wek Ateny, Hon. Lily Adhieu Manyiel Ayuel was slipped in from behind. Like Ateny, she wasn’t the best person for the job as a non-journalist, but she won the confidence of the Most-High.

Having failed the first time with endorsement of Hon. Ateny Wek to be appointed press secretary to succeed him, why would I lobby Ateny again to replace Hon. Lily Adhieu when he ain’t hot any longer? Yukku yith luel e Nhialic nyin thon e wur. Let’s say the truth in front of God my brother. Good riddance!