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A Country is born
It is final. On July 9th later this year, Southern Sudan will officially become the 193rd independent country of the world.
To say that the results of the referendum held last month to decide whether the citizens of Southern Sudan (they might still choose a new name before July) wanted to go their own way from the North – was overwhelming, would be the understatement of the year. The official results just handed over – and accepted by President Omar al Bashir – confirmed that 98.83% had voted “Yes!”
Sudan had been roiling in unrest from the moment it became independent from Britain in 1956. Africa’s largest country (Algeria will now have that honour), Sudan had been cobbled together by the British without acknowledgement of the aspirations of the peoples within its borders.
Consisting of dozens of tribes, the main macro division was an Arab north that had much affinity with its neighbours such as Egypt on the north, and a south that cleaved to a Christianised and animists peoples of Congo, Kenya. In addition to its social, political and economic domination, the dominant north vigorously pursued an Arabisation and Islamisation policy that produced an inevitable backlash.
Open civil war broke out in 1983 and was only brought to an end in 2005 after two million (mostly from the South) were killed and four million displaced. Since then South Sudan has been quite autonomous and the two sides were supposed to have reached agreement on a number of contentious issues.
These were included in the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) and include security arrangements, borders, nationality, external debts, status of the southerners living in the north and northerners in the south, water but particularly, the sharing of revenue from the oil fields that straddle the north-south border. It is unlikely that these will be settled by July so the new state definitely will have a tumultuous beginning.
However a conciliatory tone has been struck by both Bashir and the leader of South Sudan Sala Kiir. It is obvious that Bashir has been encouraged by the EU, China and the US with the understanding that his indictment by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Sudan’s western Darfur region might be softened somewhat.
But Bashir faces stiff opposition from hardliners in his northern opposition that are concerned about loss of their main source of revenue – oil. The sticker could be the fate of Abyei, an oil-rich district claimed by both north and south.
South Sudan’s leader Salva Kiir for his part has his work also cut out. He will have to replace most of the modern infrastructure of a viable nation lost to the North at the cost of billions.
There is already talk of creating a brand new capital away from their main city of Juba. In addition to tackling a poverty rate of over 50%, he will have to deal with the 200,000 displaced by interethnic and armed conflicts in the South over the past year, as well as possibly up to a million southerners trekking back from the north.
The international community, especially the US and China (which is the main beneficiary of the oil flowing from the Darfur oilfields) have a large role to play in ensuring that the two new states become viable. If, as the US has signalled, Sudan is removed from its list of states that sponsor terrorism, this will be a good start.
Secretary of State Clinton was quite specific in stating that this would happen only when the North “fully implements the 2005 CPA, including reaching a political solution on Abyei and key post-referendum arrangements.” This is a good carrot.
Be as it may, we welcome the development in Sudan and hope that the violence in Darfur will also become a thing of the past. In this International Year for People of African Descent, it is heartening for Africans to begin to solve some of their problems bequeathed by colonialism.
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