Working with communities in Bahr el-Ghazal, Southern Sudan

Obituary - Sudan Democratic Gazette

"Tim Atiep" Ranald Boyle-last DC of Gogrial-is dead
The death occurred in Scotland on Friday 17th September 1999 of Ranald Hugh Montgomerie Boyle, DSC, otherwise known to the Dinka people of Southern Sudan as "Tim Atiep-the tree with cool shade". He was the last British District Commissioner of Gogrial in Bahr el-Ghazal. He died at 78 years of age of a lung disease that was never fully diagnosed. His health had been failing rapidly in the days before his death.

Ranald Boyle was educated at Wellington College, where he was in the racquets pair in 1939 and captain in 1939-40. He was an history exhibitioner at Exeter College, Oxford and took a BA degree before entering the Royal Navy Voluntary Reserves in 1941. He served as a sub lieutenant in the Channel convoys and during the Dieppe raid (on his 21st birthday) was severely wounded when the ship was attacked by a dive-bomber. He then served in special operations in the Mediterranean, based at Bastia, Corsica, landing and picking up agents from enemy occupied territory. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross (D S C) in 1949 for gallantry, enterprise and undaunted devotion to duty in hazardous operations. He was an accomplished linguist and a man of strong principles who was not afraid to speak his mind.

Tim Atiep had a distinguished career as a soldier and later as an administrator, a journalist, a diplomat and a businessman. But his relationship with the Dinka people of Gogrial was the love affair that dominated his life and he never gave up working for the people of Southern Sudan, of which Gogrial district and its people are and integral part, until his death. Ranald Boyle joined the colonial service of Sudan after the end of the Second World War and he was posted to Gogrial in 1948. He was the last British District Commissioner there. He resigned in 1953 in protest against the British policy of merging Southern Sudan with Northern Sudan as one country; saying that he could not possibly hand over the administration of the Dinka people of Gogrial to a Northern Sudanese, whom he accurately predicted could never fairly administer the South. In spite of his departure, his links to the people of Gogrial grew stronger even as he pursued other careers. He has often returned to visit Gogrial, even in the middle of the current bloody civil war. His last visit to Gogrial was in 1994, where his son, Fergus Boyle (Deng), was working as the Save the Children Fund's relief representative there. Tim Atiep saw some of the destruction caused to his old district by the National Islamic Front (N IF) regime and their agents like Kerubino Kuanyin Bol, who was rampaging through Gogrial while Tim Atiep was visiting the area.

So committed was he to the cause of freedom for Southern Sudan that he campaigned relentlessly for the British government to alter its policies on Sudan. Ranald Boyle, like the rest of the South, held Britain responsible for much of the suffering the region had endured because it had forced the incompatible North and South together as a nation without regard to the human costs. He had wanted the British government to recognise the right of Southern Sudan to self-determination long before that policy became the main contention in the South-North negotiations. He wrote endless letters to every British Foreign Secretary since the 1960s, asking for a reversal of the British policy towards Southern Sudan. He told this reporter once that he would continue to make a nuisance of himself at the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office as long as he lived-or until there was a change of policy towards Southern Sudan. And so he did.

While Southern Sudanese continue to die in their millions without much protest from Britain-which has taken an admirable hard line in Kosovo and East Timor-Tim Atiep has unfortunately not survived to see a change of British policy on Sudan-if they ever will be one.

On leaving the Sudan Colonial Service, Ranald Boyle built an impressive career; initially as a freelance journalist, writing much on Sudan, which he kept up even while he pursued other careers. He rejoined the British Colonial Service and was posted to Kenya in 1956. When Kenya became independent in 1963, Tim Atiep joined the British Foreign Service and was posted to the embassy in Khartoum between 1969 and 1970. When he retired from the diplomatic service he started a new career in business, beginning with a brief period of one year with the Iraqi Petroleum Company in the Middle East.

On returning to Britain with a wife and seven children and no job, he found his Arabic language skills and knowledge of Middle Eastern affairs in demand and joined Hambro's Bank, becoming in 1975 a director of Hambro's Holdings.

In 1981 he became the London representative for the Arab Banking Corporation (ABC) and then from 1982-in order to avoid retirement-worked as a consultant and adviser to the Emir of Qatar, until he finally retired in 1996. He was a member of the Royal Company of Archers, the Queen's Bodyguard for Scotland.

As a young and energetic District Commissioner in Gogrial, Ranald Boyle loved trekking on foot or horseback across the entire district. He was fond of hunting and was an excellent squash player, a game he gave up only very recently because of ill-health. For years, if Ranald Boyle gave one an appointment at his London flat in Dolphin Square, it would inevitably only follow an afternoon game of squash. Fortunately, Tim Atiep and I have seen much more of each other during the last 10 years that we have both lived in England than at any time since we long ago became friends.

Ranald Boyle took a personal interest in my education at an early stage. In 1952, my father-who at first it seemed to accept that I might make something out of my education-decided that I had to leave my studies at Bussere Intermediate School outside Wau Town and return home to lead my age group in the community's traditional rituals of initiation into manhood. I was summoned from school and walked back home some 109 miles. On learning that I had been taken out of school to be initiated, Tim Atiep travelled some 85 miles on horseback in the middle of the rainy season to return me to school. I owe him an enormous debt for that. It is in this context that I and my family, who have come to know him personally through this close lifetime friendship, have sustained a true family loss and will deeply miss Tim Atiep. A memorial service will be held in London; it's date, time and place will be announced in our next edition.

Bona Malwal Sudan Democratic Gazette 19th October 1999

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