News and vignettes
Viewing entries in
Sudan
As the week of voting in South Sudan’s independence referendum drags through to the fifth day, Juba seems to become increasingly ambivalent to the whole affair. The ninth of January was their day, when voting began amid emphatic celebrations.
Whilst a week is needed for voting in many of the rural areas, whose population makes up much of the state, the voting centres of Juba emptied out, with only a trickle of people voting every day.
“Every vote counts,” announce billboards around Juba, “if you have registered, make sure you go to vote”. There is no doubt in Southern Sudan that of those that vote, many more than the required 50% + 1 will opt for secession. There was some concern surrounding a clause in the peace agreement stipulating that over 60% of those registered must turn-out, but by mid-week, the ruling party had announced that the turn-out had already been reached.
For members of “My Referendum for Freedom”, an organisation originally started by a member of the south Sudan diaspora in Australia, getting people to vote meant much more than just a clause in an agreement: this was their chance to determine their future.
During the week of voting, these volunteers climbed into the back of pick-up trucks, armed with a microphone and loudspeakers, exclaiming to people that if they are registered, they should exercise their right to vote, and voice their opinion. They organised buses to transport people from remote communities to polling stations, believing that a truly democratic vote should not be influenced by people’s means to pay for long journeys.
“I got here at two o’clock in the morning” said one man, clutching his voter registration card at dawn outside the University of Juba. He had been to vote the previous day, but the queues were too long, full of southern Sudanese voters eager to imprint their finger next to a symbol representing secession. When the doors opened on this second day of voting, lines of people waited to make their mark.
The scene at the end of the day, however, was somewhat different. In Southern Sudan’s capital, the staff at the voting centres sat under the shade of mango trees, attending to a trickle of voters. It seemed as if Juba had voted in the first day and a half.
After an immense day of voting in Juba, filled with people celebrating, the polling stations came to close. It was scheduled for 5pm, but with rules stipulating that all those in the queue should have the opportunity to cast their ballot, many centres were still inking voters’ fingers much later.
Many believed that vast numbers of people did not realise that they could vote throughout the entire week — the 9th of January had become so symbolic in the talk of freedom. Or perhaps people’s enthusiasm meant that the citizens of southern Sudan were so keen to participate on this first day that they would patiently pass their day queuing under the unforgiving Sudanese sun.
In any case, when the ballot boxes were closed with their numbered seals, the translucent plastic urns were full of folded slips bearing the stamp of the Southern Sudan Referendum Commission.
For us, it means a long night of editing & filing images, rehydrating & somehow digesting what we have witnessed this nation undertake today. This is history.
Some never believed that this day would come. But today it had arrived, and the citizens of southern Sudan met it en-masse, clutching their laminated voter registration cards. People had queued for hours, lines having formed since before sunrise on this historic day, the 9th January 2011, the day prescribed in the peace agreement of 2005 decreeing southern Sudan’s right to self-determination.
The voting process was laborious, taking up to seven minutes per voter. Protocol was followed; nobody wanted to risk arriving at this moment and giving anyone any cause to question its undertaking.
Voters showed their registration card, checked their name from a list and impressing a finger-print on the form, then receiving their ballot paper. Walking to the cardboard voting booths, a yellow curtain guarded their privacy (although nobody spoke of anything but secession), and then the slip was meticulously folded and cast in the plastic urns. Finally, their finger dipped in purple ink, they left.
In one voting station in Juba, elderly women ululated as they walked away from their cast ballot, the queues never failing to applaud these people whose lives had existed through decades of civil war.
