South Sudanese finally spoken
By
Steve Paterno
January 23, 2011 — In recent months, the officials of National Congress Party (NCP) were ironically claiming that Southerners will opt for the unity of the country through the referendum vote. President Omar al-Bashir who is leading the pack declared that “unity is the probable outcome for the South if it is given freedom of choice in a fair, free election.” Foreign Minister Ali Karti also echoed the same line, when in an interviewed with Asharq Al-Awsat in September of 2010; he claimed that “if the referendum is free and fair, we believe the majority of Southerners will vote for unity.”
Such claims, of course, have no real truth behind them. The successive regimes in Khartoum always create false impression of unity of the country, while the actual fact is that the basis or sentiment of such unity is non existent. In 2007, I wrote an article, highlighting South Sudanese resentful sentiments against the Northern Sudanese base on the hostile experiences that the country endured. My article never sat well with some in the North. However, an honest Northerner wrote to me that he was impressed by the naked truth that I was able to reveal in print. He went on to assert that “in fact, Northerners have been cheated by the successive governments of the Sudan who have always manipulated facts, trying to make us believe that the majority of Southerners are pro-North, that they would like to live with us under the roof of a one country, and that those who are claiming the cessation of the South are a small minority motivated by their own interest or are serving a foreign agenda.” He concluded that “given the chance, Southerners would not hesitate to choose the separation from the North.”
In the history of Sudan, Southerners have never been given a free choice to decide on the question of unity and separation. Interestingly though, the Northern Sudanese often cite the Juba Conference of 1947, as a confirmation of South Sudanese unity with the North. This of course is falsification of history to further the agenda of Northerners, because the Juba Conference of 1947, was never about the resolution of unity or separation of Country. The resolution to unite Sudan was reached at Sudan Administrative Conference in 1946, where Southern Sudanese were neither represented nor consulted. The Northerners who were in the Advisory Council and participated in the conference, manipulated the outcome of the proceeding and it was resolved that: “The policy of the Sudan Government regarding the Southern Sudan is to act upon the facts that the peoples of Southern Sudan are distinctly African and Negroid, but that geography and economics combine (so far as can be foreseen at the present time) to render them inextricably bound for future development to the Middle East and Arabs of the Northern Sudan.”
It is for the first time in history of Sudan that the people of South Sudan, through the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) are allowed to decide on their self-determination. As a result, the people of South Sudan have expressed themselves in overwhelming majority that indeed they are for the separation of South Sudan. The six-year interim period is not enough to make unity attractive to the people who unity is not in their DNA strand. Even though few South Sudanese voted for unity, those votes must be put into perspective. Some of those unity votes are made through honest or technical mistakes. Fox example, some voters honestly believed that the two hands combined together symbolizes unity of Southerners. Others, in state of panic, decided to mark their ballots wrongly, just as people commit mistakes in unmarked or invalid ballots. Therefore, the actual vote for unity is far less than those reported officially. The international observers are there to attest to the credibility of the vote in favor of all South Sudanese.
South Sudan has gone and we must all content with that and embrace the new nation of these people who never have a state–the people of South Sudan.
Steve Paterno is the author of The Rev. Fr. Saturnino Lohure, A Romain Catholic Priest Turned Rebel. He can be reached at [email protected]