South Sudan Secedes

The upcoming referendum is a choice between being a second-class in your own country, or a free person in your independent state.

(BBC, January 5, 2011)

This was the rather loaded way Salva Kiir, the presumptive president of Africa’s newest state, framed the choice the predominantly Christian-animists of South Sudan faced in last month’s referendum on secession from their Muslim compatriots in the north.

Kiir is a very charismatic former rebel leader who fancies himself more John Wayne than Jonas Savimbi – complete with his decidedly un-African penchant for wearing cowboy hats.

And, evidently, he had little to worry about. For according to the final results of this referendum, which were published on Monday, 98.83 percent of his fellow southerners voted to become free persons in their own independent state.  This effectively ratifies the 2005 peace treaty that ended Africa’s longest civil war (of 22 years), during which two million Sudanese were killed and four million displaced.

Indeed, one cannot help but be encouraged by the grace with which their erstwhile oppressors in the north are accepting the south’s decision to secede.  For here is the official reaction Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir offered in an address to the nation on state TV:

Today we received these results and we accept and welcome these results because they represent the will of the southern people.

(Tehran Times, February 9, 2011)

In fact the results are being welcomed worldwide. President Obama heralded the outcome by announcing that the United States intends to recognize the south as a sovereign nation in July, noting that:

After decades of conflict, the images of millions of southern Sudanese voters deciding their own future was an inspiration to the world and another step forward in Africa’s long journey toward justice and democracy.

(whitehouse.gov, February 9, 2011)

What looms, however, may cause the southerners’ Independence Day, which they will mark on July 9, to turn into a pyrrhic celebration.

Because, even though both sides are expressing words of mutual recognition and respect, lingering mutual enmity and mistrust are bound to rear their ugly heads over the next five months as they negotiate terms for sharing Sudan’s all-important oil revenues as well as the final border demarcation….

Not to mention that, just as Tunisians inspired Egyptians to launch their own revolution (giving rise to the Arab Spring), these southerners might inspire Darfurians in the west to seek independence too. What’s more, this budding “African Spring” might lead to sectarian and religious wars all over the Continent, which could result in redrawing borders to status quo ante the Berlin Conference of 1884-5 when European powers carved Africa into colonies.

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir became the first sitting head of state to have a warrant issued for his arrest.  The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued it pursuant to an indictment against him for war crimes and crimes against humanity, all stemming from the atrocities Arab Muslims perpetrated against black Africans over the past six years in the Darfur region of Sudan.

(Arresting Bashir?…, The iPINIONS Journal, March 5, 2009)

But any further reference to Darfur and other looming conflicts might risk raining on South Sudan’s independence parade.  Therefore, I shall suffice to join the chorus of those heralding this formation of an African state, not by European colonial powers, but by Africans themselves. (In this respect, they are following the path pioneered by Eritreans in 1993 when 99.83 percent of them voted to secede from Ethiopia and founded the independent state of Eritrea.)

I just hope and pray these southerners – who are composed of all kinds of Black tribes – can avoid the kind of tribal conflicts that continue to beset so many other countries in Africa. Especially since Kiir is exhibiting all of the dictatorial traits in South Sudan today that Hosni Mubarak exhibited in Egypt 30 years ago.

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