Southern Sudan Secedes, Northern Sudan Cracks (1)

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

This topic was originally slated for last Sunday for its proximity to the time the date slated for the southern Sudan to cast their votes to either remain as part of Sudan as a country the mission General John Grang the first Sudanese rebel leader sacrificed his life for, or secede to form a country on their own. After last week’s digression, which lead us to touch on some general issues that has to do with symbolic presence of important African names and titles in Sudan and the political manipulations of the current Sudanese government, let us today try to look at what it means to the southerners decide their fate themselves today.

9^th January marks the most important date in modern history of southern Sudan for it came to put permanent stop to the about fifty years of war, poverty, humiliation, lack of education, embarrassing lack of social infrastructure and the general fate of second class citizenship of a whole people whose region produced the life wire of the economy of the country. It brought the end to the northern exploitation of the south in all ramifications of life. A northern Sudanese friend remembered with melancholy how northern petty traders in addition to the government engaged in their  own version of exploitation when they set up their business in the south. Buyer is normally made to pay twice for a pair of shoes;  being made to negotiate and buy each one of the two pairs differently and independently.  He would also be made to buy padlock and pay separately for the three spare keys of the same padlock; making him to pay four times for the same padlock. These may sound funny,  but they were the realities of what happened in the relationship between the southern Sudan  and the northern Sudan as well as between the southerners and the northerners. The government at one hand of the continuum making it impossible for the southerners to have equal dealings with northerners.

Judging from the public opinion both inside and outside Sudan, it is clear that the result of the referendum is a definitive secession of the southern Sudan from the North. Nobody seems to expect the south to change its mind for the continuation of the united Sudan. Not even the central government nor the northerners who blew the trumpet of unity thought in their wildest imagination that the southerners will decide in favor of the unity. The simple reason for this unanimous agreement is simple and not farfetched.  That there are no bases for the unity is undeniable for anyone.

There can always be friendship as they say, when there is assumption of equality. This assumption of equality has never been there right from the word go between the southern Sudan and the northern Sudan. When the European left the Sudanese to rule themselves in 1958, he left them with the concentration of education in the north. Unfortunately for the south, no effort was made by the central government which happened to be naturally dominated by northern elites to educate them . no interest was shown to their education for which reason they remain in their current state of sub citizens of Sudan despite the fact that the oil which claims an important part of the economy of Sudan flows on the soil of the south.

When the assumption of equality is absent, marriage of convenience can still be possible in the existence of common interest, common goal and mutual benefits. That is what should have been the bases for the continuity of the Sudanese unity. Who is strategic enough from among the government officials to realize how much potentiality Sudan has as a single indivisible country, however very simple to realize. The largest country in both Africa and Arab world and 10^th the world over in terms of land mass, bordering nine different countries and Red Sea, with River Nile flowing in three directions on its soil. But that mustn’t be maintained at the expense of the well being of millions of people simply because they have different physical features from the ruling individuals.