TWENTY potential future leaders of Southern Sudan will embark on a three-year programme in leadership at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University next week.

The co-ordinator of the leadership project is Savo Heleta, who will receive his MA (cum laude) in Conflict, Transformation and Management at an NMMU graduation ceremony on Thursday.

Heleta, who focused his research on the conflict in Sudan‘s troubled Darfur region, said the leadership project was run by the NMMU‘s conflict management department and development studies department and was funded by the Africa Educational Trust in London.

“The students, who are (senior) government officials, will start with orientation next week,” he said.

The project will run over three years, with students only attending classes for two months every year.

“Since they work they‘ll study for two months, go back home to work and then come back. The aim is to develop leaders for Southern Sudan because of the past war there was an educational shortage there.”

The 20 students are due to land in Port Elizabeth early next week.

Heleta‘s own horrific experiences of war-time conflict helped him approach his masters research, which dealt with the Darfur conflict from the perspective of the rebel Justice and Equality Movement.

His study critically explored the aims and perspectives of this group, currently Darfur‘s most powerful rebel movement.

Heleta used information gathered first-hand from interviews with representatives of the rebel movement, along with additional data about the ongoing strife.

In his book Not My Turn to Die – Memoirs of a Broken Childhood in Bosnia, Heleta, 30, described how he and his family survived the Bosnian war which had started in Gorazde in 1992. They were arrested, detained and starved, but escaped the city in 1994 by swimming along the freezing Drina River.

The war ended at the end of 1995.

Heleta‘s book, which was published in March last year, is now being used by students in the US as a basis for research initiatives.

He said once the conflict in Darfur was resolved he would move onto something else. “I have already looked at conflict in Rwanda and Zimbabwe and can apply my conflict research to any country.

“Conflict, transformation and management is a field I‘d like to work in. I want to get my PhD and be a researcher and practitioner in this field.”