NAIROBI, KENYA – Acan Ogwero, 60, leans over her tattered walking stick. For hours, she has been standing in a long, winding queue outside the Nairobi Railway Club, one of the polling stations set up for Sudanese citizens registered to vote in Kenya.
Ogwero has been in Kenya since she was 30. During that time, she says she has watched her country go through a civil war, a lengthy peace agreement and now a vote for separation between the North and South. Ogwero, like many here, says she will cast her vote for separation today. She says casting her ballot is her “walk to freedom.”
Ogwero says she wanted to travel back to her hometown of Juba, the capital of South Sudan. But she has been ill and says she was not up for the journey home. But her determination to see a free South Sudan is strong. Ogwero and more than 15,000 Sudanese registered to vote in Kenya and will continue casting ballots through the week.
“I was here at 6 a.m.,” she says. “I thought I would be among the first people, but to my surprise the queues were long,” she says of voting on the second day the polls were open.
Ogwero is one of thousands of Sudanese nationals who fled to Kenya to escape two-decades of civil war. The journey toward peace in Sudan has been slow. In 2005, Sudan’s government and Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, the leading group from South Sudan, signed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, CPA. This week’s referendum is the final part of the CPA, which was signed in Kenya on Jan. 9, 2005. The CPA ended 21 years of war between successive governments in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital city. Deeply rooted religious and cultural differences between the North and South have resulted in the deaths of more than 2.5 million people. The situation in Darfur, in Sudan’s western region, has only fueled criticism of Khartoum’s government and has been called genocide, as widely reported by international media outlets.
Over the course of the last five years, Sudanese people throughout Africa say this is the week they have been waiting for. Analysts say they expect an overwhelming vote for separation.
In the queue outside the Nairobi Railway Club, the mere mention of the world separation evokes jubilance from the crowd. Still, Ogwero says she knows if South Sudan gains independence the challenges will not be over.
Analysts from Oxfam and the World Bank say that if South Sudan emerges as the world’s newest nation, it will enter independence as one of the poorest nations in the world. And a continued fight over oil and other resources with the North are anticipated.
Ogwero says she lost so many relatives during the years of war that she cannot even remember who among her family and friends are left in Juba. She says while going back home would be painful now, a vote for separation will give her a reason to return.
For the more than four million people from South Sudan registered to vote in 10 states in South Sudan and in eight countries around the world, including Kenya, many says they are looking forward to returning home.
“I will vote for independence,” says Manasseh Dong, a 21-year-old south Sudanese refugee who has lived all his life in Kenya.
Dong says he hopes to go home to Sudan in July, when, if all goes as planned, South Sudan will be inaugurated as the Africa’s newest nation.
Sudan’s President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who has a current International Criminal Court warrant of arrest for war crimes committed in Darfur, Sudan’s controversial western region, has been campaigning for a unity vote. He has, however, pledged to welcome and accept the decision of the majority.
For the vote to count, at least 60 percent of registered voters must cast their ballots. A vote of 51 percent for secession would make south Sudan independent.
Voting will continue throughout the week. Results for the referendum will be announced on Feb. 6. Plans are already being made for an independent South Sudan to become a new nation on July 9.
Until then, Ogwero says she will wait, hope and pray that her homeland will soon be free.