A year ago she stepped on campus the first lady of Southern Sudan. Now, sadly, the lady they call “Madam”, comes to Iowa State a widow.

“I greet you all. I really don’t know what to tell you today, because last year I came here with our dear leader,” Rebecca Nyandeng de Mabior began. “I was sitting here, and he was standing in front of you. Today, I came alone to tell you that I love you.”

Her remarks drew applause from a packed Sun Room in the Memorial Union, prompting an audience member to stand up and yell, “New Sudan, hey. [Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, hey.” The crowd echoed after him.

Students came from as far as Washington and South Dakota to hear her speak Saturday.

Four days ago she was having dinner with President Bush and his wife at the White House before the State of the Union address.

Nyandeng de Mabior, currently the Minister of Roads and Transportation for the Southern Sudanese government, is the widow of John Garang de Mabior, ISU alumnus who died in a helicopter crash three weeks after he became the vice president of Sudan. He was responsible for the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, which ended Sudan’s 22-year-old civil war between the North and South of Sudan, and also gave the south religious and political autonomy.

Rebecca Nyandeng de Mabior has now become the charismatic leader of the liberation movement, a woman many Sudanese students refer to as their mother – or quite simply, Madam.

Her appearance and speech were coordinated by the department of economics and the South Sudanese Student Union.

“My dear compatriots, life in Juba and Southern Sudan is beginning to take shape. Juba is not the Juba you used to know,” she continued. “Juba was like a dead town. People were traumatized and people were killed. Juba was like a graveyard, but now Juba is taking shape.”

She said there is progress in the implementation of the peace agreement. Two different governments have been formed: The Government of National Unity and the Government of Southern Sudan. Two different assemblies have also been formed: Assembly of the North and Assembly of Southern Sudan.

There is still disagreement on some aspects of the peace agreement. Nyandeng said the oil revenue sharing is not being bunkered as expected. However, she said she is very determined, because “the CPA is my new husband.”

“I told the people at the funeral, ‘If you kill a lion, you will see what the lioness can do,'” she said. “I am not afraid of anything. I am not afraid of even death, because I have nothing left except my people. I want to guard the CPA and make the people of Southern Sudan experience the freedom and dignity they have been yearning for many years.”

The death of her husband has also given her new strength.

The spark that now brightens many lives in Sudan, was lit many years ago at 1235 Hawthorn Court (now Frederiksen Court), where Nyandeng lived while she was with her husband at Iowa State.