Many rumours about Bol Mel concern his alleged affair with Adut. While the European Union compound in Juba enjoys salacious rumours about the supposed details of this relationship, there is less interest in his actual marriages. During the second civil war, the SPLM/A elite consolidated power through strategic marriages (Pinaud, 2016), a pattern Bol Mel followed.
His first wife, Achol Ngongdit, is the daughter of Ngong Aher, the executive chief of the Wundiing chieftaincy in Aweil West. The marriage ended acrimoniously. In late 2023, Achol’s cousin and Bol Mel’s confidante, Diing Aher, orchestrated a reconciliation between them, though Achol had already remarried.
Bol Mel’s second wife, Suzan Yar Maker, also comes from a powerful chiefly family: the Machar Ayijong lineage of the Atuot of Yirol, Lakes state. Maker chairs the Bahr el Ghazal Women’s Union in Kenya and is related to Charles Ciec Mayor, the directorgeneral of the NSS’s ISB, who was one of Bol Mel’s political allies.[1]
Yar Manyuon, his third wife and an Australian–South Sudanese from the Twic Dinka of Jonglei state, represented Bol Mel at a reception following the funeral of Mel Kuol, as well as at other events, including at Freedom Hall, where she gave away a Land Cruiser to the singer Bro Winner, who had praised Bol Mel in his hit song ‘Bol Mel’ (Bro Winner, 2025). In September 2025, Kiir appointed Manyuon director-general in the Ministry of Health.
Bol Mel’s fourth wife, Sarah Peter Nyot Kok, is the daughter of the former Sudanese minister of higher education. In September 2025, she was appointed counsel general in the Ministry of Justice, overseeing the Directorate of Public Prosecution. Shortly after Kok’s appointment, Machar was put on trial for treason for his alleged role in the white armies’ overrunning of a South Sudan People’s Defence Forces (SSPDF) barracks in Nasir county (Craze, forthcoming). In Juba, it is rumoured that Kok will soon be dismissed.
[1] That it was Mayor’s men who arrested Bol Mel indicates that even family ties have their limits.
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