After more than 56 years waiting, After Years of Struggle, South Sudan Becomes a New Nation

[Saalax]

Written by NYTimes

Jul 09, 2011 at 12:05 PM

 

Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

President Salva Kiir gathered with leaders from around the world to celebrate South Sudans independence.

 

 

A new nation was being born in what used to be a forlorn, war-racked patch of Africa and to many, it seemed nothing short of miraculous. After more than five decades of an underdog, guerilla struggle and two million lives lost, the Republic of South Sudan, Africa’s 54th state, was about to declare its independence in front of a who’s who of Africa, including the president of the country letting it go: Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan, a war crimes suspect.

 

Many of those who turned out to celebrate, overcome with emotion, spoke of their fathers, mothers, sons and daughters killed in the long struggle to break free from the Arab-dominated north.

 

“My whole body feels happy,” said George Garang, an English teacher who lost his father, grandfather and 11 brothers in the war.

 

By sunrise, the crowds were surging through the streets of Juba, the capital, to the government quarter, where the declaration of independence would be read aloud. Thousands of commandos lined the freshly painted curbs, tiger patches on their arms, assault rifles in their hands. This nation is being built on a guerilla army — the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, whose field commanders are now South Sudan’s political leaders — and the amount of firepower here is unnerving.

 

By 9 a.m., the sun was dangerous. The faces, necks and arms of the people packed thousands deep around a parade stand built for the occasion were glazed with sweat. A woman abruptly slumped to the dirt and was whisked away.

 

“She fainted because she’s happy,” said a man in the crowd. “There will be many others today.”

 

In a column of black polished steel, one brand new Mercedes after another, came the African leaders: Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s president; Jacob Zuma, South Africa’s; Meles Zenawi, prime minister of Ethiopia; Teodoro Obiang, Equatorial Guinea’s president and chairman of the African Union; Mwai Kibaki, Kenya’s president; and Yoweri Museveni, president of Uganda, among others.

 

But, almost inexplicably, it was Mr. Bashir, who for years prosecuted a vicious war to keep the south from splitting off and to prevent this very day from happening, who drew the loudest burst of applause when his motorcade rolled in.

 

“It is not happiness,” explained Daniel Atem, dressed in suit and tie for the occasion, a mini-flag flying from his lapel. “If you are talking to your enemy, you cannot say you are bad.” But, he added, “you know what is in your heart.”

 

From the mid-1950s, even before Sudan shook off its colonial yoke in 1956, the southern Sudanese were chafing for more rights. Sudan had an unusually clear fault line, reinforced by British colonizers, with the southern third mostly animist and Christian and the northern part majority Muslim and long dominated by Arabs.

 

The southern struggle blew up into a full-fledged rebellion in the 1960s and then again in the 1980s, and the Sudanese government responded brutally, bombing villages and unleashing Arab militias that massacred civilians and enslaved southern Sudanese children. Many of the same scorched earth tactics associated with the crisis in Darfur, in Sudan’s west, in the mid-2000s, were tried and tested long before that here in southern Sudan. (The International Criminal Court has indicted Mr. Bashir on genocide charges for the Darfur massacres.)

 

The central government also sowed divisions among the southerners, turning ethnic groups against each other. Some of the most unspeakable violence, like the Bor massacre in 1991 when toddlers were impaled on fence posts, was internecine.

 

Christian groups had been championing the southern Sudanese since the 19th century. And their advocacy efforts paid off in 2000 when George W. Bush was elected president of the United States. He elevated Sudan to the top of his foreign policy agenda and in 2005, the American government pushed the southern rebels and the central government to sign a comprehensive peace agreement, which guaranteed the southerners the right to secede.

 

On Saturday, one man held up a sign that said Thank You George Bush.

 

The American-backed treaty set the stage for a referendum this January in which southerners voted by 98.8 percent for independence.

 

At 1:20 p.m. on Saturday, the southerners officially proclaimed their freedom.

 

“Recalling the long and heroic struggle of our people,” began the assembly Speaker, James Wani Igga.

 

A few minutes later, the flag of Sudan was lowered and the new South Sudan flag (actually quite similar, plus a star) was raised. The masses exploded in one loud roar.

 

“Mabrook Janoob Sudan!” they yelled. “Congratulations South Sudan!”

 

South Sudan’s president, Salva Kiir, wearing his signature black cowboy hat given to him by President Bush, signed the interim constitution. Then the speeches began.

 

This is a beautiful day for Africa,” said Joseph Deiss, president of the United Nations’ general assembly. “This is a remarkable achievement, a longstanding conflict has been stopped.”

 

Perhaps. But South Sudan — Texas-sized and with around 8 million people — is already plagued by ethnic tensions and rebellions. More than a half dozen renegade groups are already battling the government, some with thousands of fighters. And relations with the north, its former nemesis, are still dicey. Negotiators have yet to agree on a formula to split the revenue from the south’s oilfields, which have kept the economies of both south and north Sudan afloat. And Mr. Bashir’s army has been pounding southern-allied rebels who have refusing to disarm just north of the border in the Nuba Mountains, which some analysts worry could drag the whole region back into a full-scale war.

 

This is why Mr. Bashir’s presence here was such a curiosity. He did sign the peace agreement in 2005 and many southerners, however mixed their feelings are, are grateful to him for that.

 

He seemed in a magnanimous mood on Saturday.

 

“This moment came through peace,” Mr. Bashir said. “We must respect it.”

 

He even thanked the United Nations for its hard work and said he wanted to bring peace in Darfur, though he did slip in, “Sudan’s unity would have been better,” but “I convinced myself that unity shouldn’t be through war.”

 

Mr. Kiir then shared a few words.

 

“We have waited for more than 56 years for this,” he said. “It is a dream that has come true.”

 

“This land has seen untold suffering and death,” he added, somberly. “We have been bombed enslaved and treated worse than a refugee in our own country. We have to forgive, though we will not forget.”

 

The independence ceremony then wrapped up much in the way the struggle began: with a barrage of very loud cannon shots. The crowd pumped their fists in the air and hollered, “South Sudan, oh yay!”

[Saalax]

South Sudan celebrates a sweet separation

The world's newest republic enjoyed its independence day, but bitterness over the long struggle for freedom lingers on

 

Xan Rice in Juba

The Observer, Sunday 10 July 2011

Article history

 

 

 

A man with his face painted in the colours of the South Sudan flag at the Independence Day ceremony in Juba. Photograph: Goran Tomasevic/REUTERS

David Morbe had paint on his jeans, his shirt, his hands and the frames of his black-rimmed glasses. Beads of sweat clung to his forehead and ran down his back, past the inch-long shrapnel scar.

 

Chisel in hand, he walked slowly around the base of his giant sculpture, carefully inspecting the detail on the eagle crest in front, and the name inscribed on the back – John Garang de Mabior.

 

Morbe knew that nothing he created would ever be as important as the four-metre tall statue of South Sudan's liberation hero that he and his two fellow sculptors had conceived and built.

 

It was Friday evening in Juba, the southern capital. In a matter of hours, tens of thousands of people, virtually all of whom had suffered in some way during nearly 40 years of conflict since the end of colonial rule, would surround the statue on this dirt field to celebrate the birth of their nation, after a tragic false start 55 years ago. "The independence of Sudan back then was the beginning of slavery in South Sudan," said Morbe, 35, as the sun began to set. "This is going to be the real independence for our people."

 

The moment arrived shortly after noon in sweltering heat on Saturday. Watched by dozens of heads of state, including Sudan's Omar al-Bashir, the south's wartime enemy, southern president Salva Kiir – black suit, black tie, black cowboy hat – unveiled Morbe's statue to huge cheers. Christian and Muslim leaders said prayers, and Sudan's national anthem played.

 

"That's the last one [that we sing], the end!" shouted a government official gleefully in the VIP stands.

 

A man dressed as the Statue of Liberty held a sign that read: "Free at last. Republic of South Sudan."

 

Soldiers and traditional dance troupes paraded by before the Speaker of the southern parliament read the independence proclamation. The Sudanese flag was lowered, and the flag of South Sudan raised. Kiir took the oath of office. The north-south, Arab-non-Muslim divide that has always existed in Sudan was made official; the country split in two.

 

"We congratulate our brothers in the south for the establishment of their new state," said Bashir, taking to the podium. "The will of the people of the south has to be respected."

 

Congratulations flooded in from afar. David Cameron, who was represented by Britain's foreign secretary, William Hague, said it was "an historic day, for South Sudan and the whole of Africa".

 

"Reaching this moment has required leadership and statesmanship from all sides. The actions of the government in Khartoum in recognising South Sudan's independence have been significant, and I hope that today marks the beginning of a new and peaceful chapter in relations between north and south."

 

The US president, Barack Obama, granted South Sudan immediate recognition as an independent state. "Today is a reminder that, after the darkness of war, the light of a new dawn is possible," he said.

 

In the huge crowd, where boys held up paper flags and women ululated, emotions were barely contained. "This is very great actually," said Taifa Kuer, a finance ministry official who, at the age of seven, became one of Sudan's famous "Lost Boys", marching for a month to Ethiopia before returning to fight for the rebel cause when he was just 14. "We have prepared for the next generation so they won't suffer like we had to."

 

Like many elated southerners, Kuer seemed stunned that the day had in fact arrived, which was perhaps unsurprising, given the mistrust that has existed between the north and south. Indeed, when Bashir and the then rebel leader Garang signed a peace deal to end the second, 21-year-long civil war in 2005, many doubted it would last. The agreement allowed for a six-year interim period where the south would govern itself, and have an equal share with the north of the revenues from the oil produced from beneath its own soil. The prize at the end of the transition was a vote for southerners on unity or secession. Garang advocated unity – the southern struggle was a struggle for marginalised people all over Sudan, he argued – but when he was killed in a helicopter crash just a few months after the peace deal the notion of unity died with him. In the referendum in January, 99% of voters chose secession.

 

The results spoke less of southern unity – there are dozens of ethnic groups in the south, and no real collective identity – than a desperate desire to rid themselves of the decades-long oppression and marginalisation by the northern government.

 

When it achieved independence from Britain in 1956, Sudan was two distinct regions and peoples joined into one: a dry, Arab-dominated north, and a more lush, ethnically African south.

 

The tension and suspicions were already rife; indeed, southern rebels had already taken up arms the year before, fearing, correctly, that the Arab leaders in Khartoum would exploit and abuse them.

 

Charity Yuyada, 68, who watched the ceremony on television in Juba because she was "too old" to attend in person, remembered being forced to take school classes in Arabic rather than English. "That made us hate that language and the [Arab] people," she said.

 

That first war lasted 17 years, and claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. Yuyada spent two and half years living in the bush. Peace lasted from 1972 to 1983, before Garang launched a new rebellion led by his Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA).

 

So heavy was the fighting in the countryside that Yuyada was forced to move to Juba, which was held by northern forces. When the SPLA launched attacks on the city in 1990, Yuyada moved to Khartoum for safety. She stayed there, a second-class citizen separated from her extended family, until this January, when she returned to Juba a day before the referendum.

 

"In that 21 years of war we had lost hope of freedom," she said. "I'm so happy we are separating."

 

But her excitement could not hide her lingering bitterness, which was also plain to see in the town centre. Among the many banners offering positive messages for the new country's future, there was this poem, printed on a banner sponsored by the Ministry of Energy and Mining:

 

Our independence south is our separate house

 

That embrace all the southerners

 

To live freely in the bush

 

Africans with our own traditions

 

Herders after cows

 

Farmers in the fields

 

Fisherman along the Nile

 

Hunters in the jungle

 

Illiterate with the goat leathers

 

Backwards with the bird feathers

 

Much better than to be scholars, Under the Arabs' domination"

 

Morbe, the sculptor, had in fact been a scholar under Arab domination. He was born and raised in Juba, suffering the shrapnel wound during the SPLA offensive on the city in the early 1990s. "It was a terrible time here during the war, not possible to describe," he said. "But we bore it."

 

He was desperate to join the rebels, but it proved extremely difficult, since nobody was allowed to leave Juba without the permission of the northern government. So he concentrated on his studies, and in 2002 he won at place in the fine arts programme at Sudan University of Science and Technology, in Khartoum. On graduation, he wanted to take up a teaching post, but was denied "because I am a southern and I am not Muslim", he said.

 

Instead, he returned to the south, finding work as a teaching assistant at Juba University's arts faculty. Last year, together with two other southern fine arts graduates, Anthony Gordon and Emmanuel Mateayo, he came up with the idea of a giant sculpture to commemorate the new nation.

 

After presenting the proposal to the government's council of ministers, they received the go-ahead and a budget – and the news that the statue would be the centrepiece of the independence celebrations. "I am so proud to have been part of this moment," Morbe said. "This day that we have wished for."

[Jacaylbaro]

Next: Somaliland

[Xaaji Xunjuf]

free at last congratulations to the people of south sudan

[Liibaan]

Excellent Job, South Sudan People Rejected the Colonial Map of Anglo-Sudan Colony

 

For 112 years [1899-2011], people of South Sudan were fighting against the colonial map of Anglo-Sudan Colony, finally they win their independence. Similarly for 76, years, people of Awdal, Maakhir and SSC people were fighting against the colonial map of British Somali colony, and in 1960, they received their independence and united with their Somali bothers/sisters to establish United Somalia Republic.

[Xaaji Xunjuf]

The people of awdal 26 june

 

 

[Nina Fox]

Congratulations to my fellow Africans. They deserve it.

[Qaranki]

'Liibaan';733052 wrote:

Excellent Job, South Sudan People Rejected the Colonial Map of Anglo-Sudan Colony

 

For 112 years [1899-2011], people of South Sudan were fighting against the colonial map of Anglo-Sudan Colony, finally they win their independence. Similarly for 76, years, people of Awdal, Maakhir and SSC people were fighting against the colonial map of British Somali colony, and in 1960, they received their independence and united with their Somali bothers/sisters to establish United Somalia Republic.

Isn't modern day Somalia a colonial construct as is Djibouti?

 

I mean if colonial borders in the Somali peninsula had been eradicated why do Kenya and Ethiopia still own their pieces of Somalia?

[Liibaan]

Qaranki;733067 wrote:

Isn't modern day Somalia a colonial construct as is Djibouti?

 

I mean if colonial borders in the Somali peninsula had been eradicated why do Kenya and Ethiopia still own their pieces of Somalia?

Alhamdulilaah, the colonial borders in the Somali Penisula were partially eradicated, and still some colonial borders are left to be eradicated in the near future Insha Allah. Similar to people of South Sudan, NFD People and ONLF/Western Somalia People have a right to gain their freedom and independence.

 

United Somalia is NOT a colonial construct, in 1960 Somali people created their own new country and they eliminated the fake colonial borders placed by European colonials between the most homogeneous people in the world - the brotherly Somali people who share kinship, religion, language, culture, etc. Somalia doesn't recognize the fake borders between Somalia vs. Ethiopia and Somalia vs. Kenya.

[Xaaji Xunjuf]

Somalia doesn't recognize the fake borders between Somalia vs. Ethiopia and Somalia vs. Kenya.

Are you sure about that?

[Qaranki]

'Liibaan';733070 wrote:

Alhamdulilaah, the colonial borders in the Somali Penisula were partially eradicated, and still some colonial borders are left to be eradicated in the near future Insha Allah. Similar to people of Sudan, NFD People and ONLF/Western Somalia People have a right to gain their freedom and independence.

 

United Somalia is NOT a colonial construct, in 1960 Somali people created their own new country and they eliminated the fake colonial borders placed by European colonials between the most homogeneous people in the world - the brotherly Somali people who share kinship, religion, language, culture, etc. Somalia doesn't recognize the fake borders between Somalia vs. Ethiopia and Somalia vs. Kenya.

And Djibouti?

[Liibaan]

Qaranki;733079 wrote:

And Djibouti?

If people of Djibouti want to join Somalia, and unite with their Somali brothers/sisters they are more than welcome. If Djibouti people want to their own little state that is fine as well. If people of Northwest Triangle [Hargeisa, Burco, & Barbara] want to remain part of United Somalia, they are welcome. If Northwest Triangle want to have their own Little Clan-State and take with them their 3 towns that is fine as well.

 

The fact is Awdal, Maakhir, Sool, Sanaag, Cayn, SSC People want to remain as an Integral Part of United Somalia, and they have Human Rights like Self-Determination. If people of Awdal, Maakhir, Sool, Sanaag, Vayn, SSC want to have own little states, they have a right to do so as well, because the most important thing is SELF-DETERMINATION.

 

 

No ONE in the World today cares about fake and ancient colonial maps/borders: The newly Recognized and Independent South Sudan is Good Example that colonial maps/borders are irrational and irrelevant, Only insignificant, narrow minded, and small group with Slave Mentality who worship their former colonial slave masters, care about the fake colonial maps/borders. But the majority of Somali and African who are peace and freedom people hate the fake colonial maps/borders.

 

For 112 years, South Sudanese people were fighting against fake and unjust fake colonial borders, finally they gained their freedom. Only July 9, 2011, all countries of the World, United Nations, and all international community recognized South Sudan based on Solely SELF-DETERMINATION of people, NOT on the basis of fake colonial border. The World recognized the South Sudan Republic, the same day when the new Republic declared its independence from North Sudan.

[Jacaylbaro]

Somalia doesn't recognize the fake borders between Somalia vs. Ethiopia and Somalia vs. Kenya.

Waa Chaos dee ... Those Somalis in Kenya & Ethiopia do not want to join the chaotic Somalia. Someone who cannot unite one city aka Muqdisho is dreaming bit to unite all Somalis. Start with your neighborhood first and show me what u can do ....... then u can convince others.

[Abwaan]

For some of us, Sudan baaba Soomaaliya la noqon rabta! Hold on folks...bahasha dhulka dhiga. Somalia is Somalia, Not SUDAN!