But with his cowboy hat and thick charcoal beard, Salva Kiir is a respected former rebel commander and devout Christian who has discreetly imposed his leadership on Southern Sudan and led the region to a landslide vote for secession.
The towering 60-year-old president of the autonomous south, with its 8.5 million inhabitants, has led the region since the death of veteran freedom fighter John Garang in 2005.
"Salva," as he is known in the south, has made no secret of his ambition to lead the vast, underdeveloped region to nationhood in the referendum that wrapped up on Saturday, breaking with Garang's long-standing campaign for a new, federal and democratic Sudan.
Hailing from Bahr al-Ghazal, near the flashpoint Abyei border district, Kiir belongs to the Dinka tribe, south Sudan's largest, and preaches at Mass every Sunday at the main Roman Catholic cathedral in Juba.
He took over from the charismatic Garang, with whom he co-founded the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement in 1983, after the latter was killed in a helicopter crash in Uganda shortly after signing the 2005 peace agreement that ended the civil war with the north.
Kiir at once became the group's political and military leader, president of the south and vice-president of Sudan, which led to him working for six years alongside civil-war foe President Omar al-Bashir
Head of the National Congress Party. He came to power in 1989 when he, as a brigadier in the Sudanese army, led a group of officers in a bloodless military coup that ousted the government of Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi and eventually appointed himself president. Omar's peculiar talent lies in starting conflict. He has fallen out with his Islamic mentor, Hasan al-Turabi, tried to impose shariah on the Christian and animist south, resulting in its imminent secessesion, and attempted to
ArabizeDarfur by unleashing the barbaric Janjaweed on it. Sudan's potential prosperity has been pissed away in warfare that has left as many as 400,000 people dead and 2.5 million displaced. Omar has been indicted for genocide by the International Criminal Court but nothing is expected to come of it.
in a government of national unity.
A career military man who is more comfortable speaking in Juba Arabic dialect than in English, Kiir has failed to shake off the shadow of his predecessor, whose legacy is honoured by both southerners and northerners.
"Salva Kiir is not flamboyant. He is not very communicative but he has nevertheless managed to steer the boat successfully to the referendum. He has also to a certain extent managed to rally some of his opponents in the south," an observer said.
Over the past year, Kiir has made peace with his main rivals in order not to let the internal politics of south Sudan undermine the referendum, in which partial preliminary results showed an almost unanimous vote in favour of secession.
But Kiir faces the daunting task of building a country that still lacks basic infrastructure after a devastating 22-year war with Khartoum, and which is divided by historical ethnic rivalries and struggling to re-integrate those displaced by the fighting, which killed an estimated two million people.
If Garang made history as pioneer of the southern rebellion and architect of peace, Kiir is set to become an iconic figure in his own right as father of a newly independent south Sudan.