DUBAI—I don’t deny that I wish I were a citizen of the Republic of South Sudan to enjoy the emotional moments of national pride alongside my friends and brothers in the newly-born state on Super Saturday, July 9th.
The 193rd member of the United Nations is now a reality. Congratulations!
The winds of freedom have blown and our old friend ‘Mango Zembiri’ in the southern city of Yambio is at last free. When we were young students in the late fifties and early sixties — only about three to four years after the British occupiers left the country — we were told that we are all brothers, Muslims, Christians and those who were non-religious.
And there was no difference between the Arabised North and the African South.Ali Abdul Latif, who led the first modern military liberation movement against the British rule in 1924, the White Brigade, was an army officer from the South.
And when he was captured, and brought up for justice, he had to defend himself against the charges levelled on him:
Q: What’s your name?
A: Ali Abdul Latif.
What’s your nationality?
Sudanese.
I mean to which tribe you belong?
It doesn’t matter. We are all Sudanese living in one nation and working together for one objective, that is to drive you outside our country.
You are talkative.
Did you forget that we have come here to liberate you from slavery?
Get out of my country and leave me a slave as I have had to be. Ironically, while the Egyptians say that the Arabs were born to a Pharaoh woman, that’s Ismail’s mother Hajir, the dark people of North Sudan say they are pure Arabs who have descended from Yemeni, Hijazi, Iraqi, Egyptian and Moroccan grandfathers!
They never admit that the rich history of the Nile valley is theirs. It is from this paradoxical argument that the problems of Sudan were born.
The Egyptians have two faces; they address the world from the pride of their rich ancient history and at the same time they speak to the Arab world in their fluent Arabic tongue.After the announcement of the referendum result, a leading figure of the ruling party in the North was quoted as saying: “We are now a pure Arab nation!”
The successive governments since Independence in 1956 have failed to improve the living conditions of the people in Darfour, the Nuba mountains and the Blue Nile regions, let alone the South.
Therefore, the people from these ‘marginalised parts’, as they call themselves, remained at the bottom of the social hierarchy of our society.
It may be said that no development in the South was possible because rebellion broke out even before the departure of the colonial forces in 1956.
And while this is partially true in the case of Southern Sudan, it doesn’t work when it comes to the rest parts of the country?
No one can deny the very fact that the country’s little wealth remained concentrated in the hands of the merchants and intellectual groups from the North.
The people from the western and south-eastern regions who migrated to the North had to work as housemaids and low-paid workers to support themselves. And this is even worse than slavery.
In Al Jazira, the country’s richest agricultural region, the so-called Arabs own the land but they never cultivate it. All the workers are the poor people of Darfour and southern Kordofan.
And what about Islam? Did the introduction of the so-called Islamic laws by late Jafar Numairi add more oil to the already burning fire?
Let me quote at this point one of the prominent leaders of the rebellions who put it like this, “Should the government have implemented the Islamic Shariah in 1983 as Omer Ibn Abdul Aziz did, Southern Sudan would have not parted ways with the North.”
However, this is not every-thing. Now, the South is free, but will this solve the problem of our brother Mango Zembiri?
The real problem is that educated people from the poor parts of Sudan who are leading the armed movements, including the Sudan People Liberation Movement (SPLM) which brought independence to the South, are not less indifferent or corrupt than their counterparts in the North.
And hence, the problem will perpetuate at a smaller scale and both South and North Sudan will remain vulnerable to more sub-divisions, into smaller entities, or at their best fall into an endless chaos.
The ultimate beneficiaries will be the Kenyans who have appraised the situation and have managed to take advantage of the obvious opportunity. Now, say, after three years all the oil exports of the South as well as its imports will pass through Kenya which has constructed a purpose-built port on the Indian Ocean.
This is due to the failure of the government in the North to accommodate the changing situation and arrange for an acceptable agreement with the Southerners to use the oil facilities and pipelines in the North. Not to forget, that the Southerners would definitely prefer to fall in the hands of an outside power than to remain under the mercy of their old masters.
All in all, we have failed to live together as one nation and unfortunately we will fail again to live separately in two neighbouring countries.
It’s an endless story of dislike, ha-tred and bitterness that would persist with biased political culture and understanding.
We, in the North and the South, have to prepare ourselves for an absolutely black future. We have been crying from the time of unity, and now the time has come to cry at separation.
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