Per historian Robert O. Collins, he was "a token southern minister and reliable sycophant in every government from 1954 to 1964".
[1] Santino Deng Teng was born in 1922 at Makwan Kiir, belonging to the Dinka Paliet group in Aweil District.
[2][4][5] Santino Deng Teng was re-elected to parliament in the 1958 Sudanese parliamentary election, after which he was named Minister of Animal Resources.
[2] He retained his post as Minister of Animal Resources in the cabinet of the Ibrahim Abboud military junta in November 1958.
[10] At the time of the 1965 Round Table Conference between Northern and Southern leaders, Santino belonged to a minority group among the Southerners, the Other Shades of Opinion grouping (sponsored by Northern leaders) which favoured a decentralized Sudanese state rather than federalism.