Jean Ping, the chair of the Addis Ababa-based Commission of the Africa Union, recently criticised the likely outcome of next year’s referendum by the people of south Sudan on the restoration of their independence. Ping told a French radio station interviewer that he feared that the Sudan was “sitting on a powder keg” and that a “yes” vote for south Sudanese freedom could have “catastrophic” consequences: “Will the independence of Southern Sudan not lead other players in Darfur and in other places, which are currently not asking for independence, to seek independence as Southern Sudan will have done?”
These are shocking and sad comments made by such a highly placed African public official. It is not certain how much of the Sudan’s recent history, especially the 1956 post-British conquest epoch, that Ping is familiar with. The 2011 referendum that he refers to is in fact a crucial feature of the terms of the 2005 cessation of the north-south Sudanese war that had been waged for 22 years. 1.5-2million Sudanese, overwhelming majority of them southerners, were killed during this war. South Sudan has long resisted its totally subject sociopolitical status, occasioned by the British hand-over of supreme political power to the minority Arab north Sudanese population on the eve of the formal termination of its occupation of the Sudan in January 1956. We mustn’t fail to recall that James Robertson, the outgoing British occupation governor in Khartoum who sealed the infamous Sudan deal, flew southwest to Nigeria, another conglomeration of British-occupied African peoples and states, and crafted and sealed yet another “post-conquest” albatross in Africa in October 1960.
The 2011 referendum is therefore an historic opportunity for Africans in south Sudan to regain their freedom. Africans, elsewhere in the Sudan and indeed anywhere else on the continent, who similarly wish to exercise their freedom to be free from the burden of subjugation, cannot be stopped by any interests and calculations. Freedom is inalienable. No one should fear freedom – and its consequences.
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When I read this Jean Ping's comments few days ago, something told me that he had Biafrans in mind. It is obvious that the British did a very wicked job in making sure that African countries remain in conflict long after they must've stepped aside. It was not meant to be a freedom for development but rather to let the dogs of war out on the people.
ReplyDeleteWhat they did in Sudan was wickedly repeated in Nigeria and we are still suffering it to this day. The war is never over until this evil is reversed by every means possible. We cannot be held down forever it is just a matter of time before we regain our freedom. Nigeria's case today is a clear vindication of the Igbo and the rest of Biafra who lost more than 3 million of its people during the genocidal war that was declared on her civil population by Britain, Soviet Union and the Arab countries using Nigerians as a front.
Today, the chicken is coming home to roost for all those that supported injustice against Igbo people. The blood of our people slain during that 30 months of war of elimination, will continue to cry out for justice to be done for all the crimes committed against freedom seeking but oppressed people of Biafra.
Freedom
ReplyDeleteJean Ping is just typical of all the enemies of Africa. These people are the way they are either because they are ignorant of history, mischievious or naive. Most times I would want to think they are just being naive, not willing to be different maybe thinking that the only way to appear educated is when you can stand on the side of distortion and untruth because some mischievious-guided people are saying the same thing. But the truth is that the destiny of the whole race is at stake and we cannot continue to build on the foundation of lies and deceits on which the modern African nation states are presently constructed. Right now Africa is in urgent need for a rethinking.
Osita