Jeffrey Fleishman
THEY walked in their best clothes past villages and down dirt roads until they came to the church to redraw the map of Africa.
Carrying walking sticks and memories of those lost in decades of bloodshed, they came to a polling station to mark a moment in history and begin a chance for reinvention in one of the poorest corners of the continent. They cast their ballots for independence as a children’s choir sang from a radio and a goat-skin drum thumped in the distance.
“This ends our slavery at the hands of the Arabs,” said Kasimiro Mogga Joseph, a priest at the All Saints Roman Catholic Church. “The Arabs considered us animals. They wanted this land, but not its people. Being a priest, you feel the difficulties of your parishioners. They came to us crying and suffering during the war. We took them to hospitals and gave them hope.”
Nearly four million mostly Christian and animist southern Sudanese are expected to vote overwhelmingly this week to secede from the predominantly Muslim and Arab-led north. The anticipated outcome, to be announced early next month, would divide Africa’s largest nation and officially close a civil war that claimed two million lives before a 2005 peace treaty.
The week has already seen violence, with tribal clashes between Misseriya Arabs and Ngok Dinka in the disputed district of Abyei, on the oil-rich north-south border, killing at least eight people. But fears of another round of heavy fighting between northern and southern armies have eased in recent weeks.
Those at the threshold of the world’s newest country danced and sang in the southern capital, Juba, waving banners across deserts and bushlands dotted with thatched huts and cattle herds. Posters depicting Jesus, guerilla heroes and southern President Salva Kiir urged voters to choose independence.
Voters were not deterred by having to stand in line for hours in the sun. “I arrived here at 4am and still I have not voted,” said one man. “I will come back tonight and camp out to make sure I get to vote tomorrow.”
Yet a precarious future awaits the south, where disease and malnutrition are widespread and 85 per cent of the population is illiterate. According to Oxfam, a 15-year-old girl in the south is more likely to die in childbirth than finish primary school.
Sudanese President Omar Bashir, facing international pressure not to return to war, has said he would accept the results of the referendum. But in comments on the weekend Mr Bashir, who is wanted for war crimes in the western region of Darfur, said the south “does not have the ability to provide for its citizens or create a state or authority”.
Even as visits from former US president Jimmy Carter and actor George Clooney offered a sense of hope, the problems of the south could be seen in children selling charcoal in the dust and women with hammers breaking rocks for gravel roads.
The south’s legacy of colonialism, ethnic hatred and destitution can be glimpsed along the narrow paths of Mugoro that wind below the tin roof of All Saints Church, built by Italian and Austrian missionaries in 1919. Months before British and Egyptian rule of Sudan ended in 1956, north and south began what would stretch into generations of fighting.
Above the pews are bullet-shattered windows. The parish lacks running water, electricity, schools and clinics. The sick rely on Laura Keji, a medicine woman who roams the forest searching for roots, leaves and bark to grind into potions.
“This vote for independence is a day of fulfilment,” said priest James Lodu. “We had to fight for our identity. Now, we have to build a nation. The churches will bring the needs of the people to the new government . . . We need health services and to improve agriculture. We are farming with hoes; we want machines.”
North and south may break apart politically but will be, at least temporarily, bound by nature and need. The south, governed by the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, generates 80 per cent of the country’s oil output. But it needs northern-controlled pipelines to reach the shipping ports on the Red Sea. The two sides now share oil revenues, a pact that could be rewritten in coming years.
“I’ve been waiting for 20 years to cast this ballot,” said Martin Laku, who checked the open palm symbol signifying independence instead of the clasped hands for unity. “This freedom will improve our land. It will change my life. Businesses and factories will come, and I will get a job.”
Sidonia Rose chewed a sprig of sugar cane after she voted. She was 13 when northern soldiers and militias trundled away and peace came to the villages. “During the war, the Arabs held the nation,” she said. “They slaughtered our men and women like goats. My father was beaten until he stopped breathing.”
Sephriana Keji slipped her ballot into a plastic box and dipped her finger in ink. “With this freedom, we must forgive those who abused us,” she said. “We must free our hearts.”
Source: www.The Australian.com.au
