A referendum is to soon take place in the southern Sudan as to whether the south will secede and form an independent nation or whether it will remain part of, what is now, the largest nation-state in Africa.  This referendum is the result of peace talks that brought the North/South civil war in the Sudan to an end.  The implications of this referendum have many people sitting on the edge of their chairs.

Like all African countries, the borders of the Sudan were not the creation of the Sudanese people but instead the result of European—and in this case, British—colonialism.  The borders of the Sudan brought together two very different regions, the north which was largely Arab and Muslim and the south which was largely non-Arab, Christian as well as animist.  As a side note, Darfur, the region in the western Sudan that has been the site of another violent war, has always been mainly Muslim but in that case non-Arab.

Northern Sudan has attempted to dominate the south since independence leading to two separate civil wars.  The first civil war, led in the south by a formation known as the Anyanya, fought during the 1960s until a peace agreement was reached with the national government in Khartoum.  This broke down when Sudanese President Jaafar Numieri, in a desperate attempt to hold onto power, attempted to institute sharia law nationally, thereby violating the peace accord.  The second civil war—which commenced in 1983—was led, in the south, by the Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement/Sudanese People’s Liberation Army, which fought a protracted war until a peace agreement was reached in 2005.

Reports indicate that the SPLM has signaled that it will campaign in favor of secession, and the national government—based in Khartoum—is threatening that they may not recognize the results of the referendum if it leads to secession.  A failure to recognize the results of the referendum if the south votes for independence, will certainly lead to a return to war.

There have been forces which for years have been attempting to tear the Sudan apart.  In the south are found oil reserves, thus making that region important for the both the Khartoum government as well as for various multi-national oil companies.  There have been right-wing Christian organizations that for years have been trying to promote the secession of southern Sudan as part of their vision of a contemporary crusade against Islam.  For these reasons many people are highly skeptical of a separatist impulse.

At the same time, there is no question but that the southern Sudan has been the object of oppression since independence.  Various Khartoum governments have paid little attention to making the Sudanese state truly representative.  Not only have the governments in Khartoum been dominated by Arabs from the north of the Sudan, but they have actually been dominated by a small number of Arab tribes in the north.  On those grounds alone the people of the south should have the unimpeded right to self-determination and this should be respected by the Khartoum government and the international community.

All that said, what does this mean for Africa?  The decision in the early 1960s by African leaders to leave the colonial borders intact has resulted in on-going troubles.  Whether one looks at the Biafra war in Nigeria, Eritrea’s decades long struggle for independence from Ethiopia, or the simmering struggle in the Cameroon (specifically, south Cameroon),  the former colonial borders have united peoples and divided peoples in a haphazard manner, often leading to civil war.  Thus, the challenge on the one hand is to recognize the chaos that has resulted from this hodgepodge at precisely the moment when Africa needs to unite.  In other words, the battles for multi-ethnic democracy—for lack of a better term—must happen simultaneously with the battles to unite the continent.

What does this mean for the Sudan?  The struggle of the peoples of the southern Sudan is not akin to the struggle of the Confederate States of America for “independence.”  It is not, in other words, a reactionary demand of a wealthy, oppressive elite.  The struggle of the people of the southern Sudan has historically been against the regional oppression that they have felt at the hands of the various Khartoum regimes.  The short-sightedness of the various Khartoum regimes have brought the Sudan to the point where it may not be able to hold together.  But any unity of the Sudan, which I believe is preferable, cannot be the unity of a dog owner and a dog tied together by a leash.  It must be a unity that is democratically constructed particularly given the years of domination from the north to which the people of the south Sudan have been subjected.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member, Bill Fletcher, Jr., is a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies, the immediate past president of TransAfricaForum and co-author of, Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path toward Social Justice (University of California Press), which examines the crisis of organized labor in the USA. Click here to contact Mr. Fletcher.