The New York Times congratulated movie actor George Clooney, an ardent campaigner for Southern Sudanese independence, on his victory, though many African people thought that the Sudanese people might have more rightly been at the center of the South’s Independence Day story.
Others emphasized the U.S. and allies’ interest in managing Sudan’s vast oil reserves. AfrobeatRadio’s Ann Garrison has more.

The newly independent nation of South Sudan celebrated its independence from Sudan last Saturday and Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir traveled to the new nation’s capitol, Juba, to congratulate the Southern Sudanese people, but fighting continues in the border states, and many fear that South Sudan’s Independence Day may have been the calm before the storm, because negotiations about sharing oil revenues and the demarcation of borders, broke down before the celebrations. KPFA’s Ann Garrison has more.

South Sudan Facts and Figures:

Population: 7.5-9.7 million
Size: 619,745 sq km (239,285 sq miles) – larger than Spain and Portugal combined
Major languages: English, Arabic (both official), Juba Arabic, Dinka
Religion: Traditional and a Christian minority
Main export: Oil

Ethiopian troops are in the oil rich, contested Sudanese Abyei region, in accordance with a new UN Security Council resolution invoking sovereign nations “responsibility to protect” vulnerable populations from genocide and mass atrocities, if their own governments aren’t protecting them. But, human rights investigators say that the Security Council is ignoring Ethiopia’s own genocide, in the Ogaden Basin, and, that the West is funding it.

To understand why one must start with knowing the stance of the late John Garang, father of the southern Sudanese resistance and founder of the Sudan Peoples Liberation Army (SPLA) and its political wing, the Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement (SPLM), which today is the de facto government of newly independent South Sudan.

Reflecting on the context behind South Sudan’s exercise in self-determination and the potential sources of political violence following the country’s independence, Mahmood Mamdani explores Sudan’s longer-term historical experience – the role of imposed administrative identities under the colonial system, migration, religion, slavery and the emergence of a politicised Islam – and the contemporary challenges around rethinking political citizenship.