Sudan’s crucial north-south trade under threat — traveling to Aweil to learn more about the thoughts of northern traders in the south, now that independence is imminent.
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Sudan
Juba, not the most animated of “cities”, became a bustle of foreign correspondents from the world-over during these early weeks of January 2011. The media’s plat du jour. Although when voting was over, a rather stale taste was left in the mouths of many. The circus rolled into town, and then wondered what it was doing here.
When I arrived in early December, I was issued with press card number 60. The day before voting started, the Southern Sudanese Referendum Bureau had issued around 2000. Juba was exploding with media.
What passes for a quality hotel room in Juba is invariably a container—the porta-kabins of building sites in Europe—which go for ludicrous sums. For those of us on a freelance budget, we were sharing tents or small rooms for the same sum with which I lived in a rather nice Haussmannian apartment in Paris. The starting rates for a container were $80 a night; mediocre meals were $10. Me, I was on the rice-and-beans diet; $1 a pop. Hand-washing laundry in water fresh from the Nile, I was reminded that this is indeed one of Africa’s least developed regions, despite the oases of luxury afforded to NGO, UN and media workers.
The story—the birth of a nation, or a variant thereupon—is strong. In the five decades following independence from British colonisation, the north & south were engaged in civil war for all but 11 years. That ended in 2005 with the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, which included the right to self-determination; the reason that we all find ourself here in January 2011.
The act itself, though, is not the most scintillating of events. Three million people putting a ballot in a box. The first day, full of colour, was quite a spectacle. Queues had already formed at sunrise; traditional dance troops & joyous voters filled the grounds of the primary voting station in Africa’s soon-to-be newest capital. But following that, what was there really to cover? We engaged in feature stories, capitalising on the media spot-light for Sudan to cover other issues. A seasoned war-photographer with whom I was acquainted was bored out of his mind. “This story is fucking dead.” The clashes or unrest that some predicted, did not arrive. And happily so for the Sudanese.
What’s more, a senator in the US was shot, Tunisia ousted its president, and Australia was ravaged by floods. The calm pace of the “final walk to freedom” was lost in the chaos.
Now, the circus is packing up its tents and leaving. Many will be in Uganda for the forthcoming elections. But come July 9th, the day of independence, Juba will be buzzing again. The beer flowing to the agency expense accounts.
A morning of few surprises
Making a tour of voting centre this morning, the day after polls closed in South Sudan’s independence referendum, sheets of paper announced the counts of each station.
I was surprised at how fast, and efficient, the process had been.
In my local voting centre, over 95% of cast ballots were for independence. Out of 1915 papers in the urn, only 82 were marked for unity.
If this trend continues elsewhere throughout the country, South Sudan will be decidedly independent on July 9th.
It has been a long week in Juba this week, covering South Sudan’s historic voting in their independence referendum. From the jubilant celebrations as voting opened, to the empty voting centres that characterised the last few days.
The ballot boxes were sealed for the final time, and locked away as staff took some repose as the heavy sun set. Armed police guarded the container where they rested, before being brought out under electric light, and tipped open onto the counting tables amid much protocol.
From where we stood behind a small cordon, the ballots seemed to be ubiquitously marked with a thumb-print next to the open-palm symbol of secession.
During the civil war that ravaged Sudan for decades, many of the people of the south became displaced, either internally within the south, fleeing to the north, or to neighbouring countries before becoming refugees overseas.
As South Sudan votes for their independence from the north, thousands are now returning, coming on boats up the river Nile to Juba, before traveling back to their native states.
Several times a week, barges would arrive in Juba’s port, laden with people and what belongings they could carry with them for the arduous journey taking over two weeks along the crocodile-infested Nile as mosquitos swarm overhead.
Some settle in Juba, but for many, their journey is not yet over. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees and the International Organisation for Migration have been organising buses to transport people back to neighbouring states.
On this, the final day of voting in South Sudan, a dawn departure saw hundreds leave for Torit in neighbouring Eastern Equatoria state, their belongings loaded into huge trucks that would follow in convoy.
For many of these people, the future of their nation-state would be decided by their countrymen, the week of voting taking place as they either sailed the Nile, or sat stranded in the port.