THE peaceful conclusion of the referendum in Southern Sudan is soothing news to those who expected violence would mar the exercise. It is cheery news in a continent that has consistently proved its inability to reach consensus through the ballot box.

With troubles bisecting Sudan for years, complicated with the attacks by government sponsored militia in Darfur, it appeared impossible that Southern Sudan stood a chance of conducting a peaceful referendum on its independence.

The government in Khartoum opposed the southern independence movement for years. The struggles pre-dated Sudan’s independence in 1955. Connivance between Egypt and Britain, Sudan’s colonial lords, produced a country that ignored the fears of the South, which wanted a federal system that will permit its autonomy, culture and religion.

Without considering these fears, Sudan got independence with the infusion of two diverse entities. The struggles for survival for the South began immediately. It was bloody and tied down the development of Africa’s largest country, by land mass.

Sudan wasted 39 years of its first 50 years (until the 2005 peace agreement) in civil wars as the South pressed its case. Factional leadership produced un-coordinated result for the South’s efforts until 1971, when former army lieutenant Joseph Lagu gathered all the guerrilla groups under his Southern Sudan Liberation Movement, SSLM.  The Addis Ababa agreement in 1972 granted the South some defined powers with a regional capital in Juba.

The relative peace was broken with the discovery of oil and the imposition of Sharia law throughout Sudan in 1978.  The wars, by some accounts, must have claimed about three million lives in the South.

John Garang, possibly Africa’s most educated guerrilla fighter, he held Ph.d in Agricultural Economics, joined the war in 1962, but the commanders thought he was too young and asked him to return to school.  While on a mission to quell a rebellion in Southern Sudan in 1983, he turned his guns on the central government and began the next 22 years of the war as the leader of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army.

Garang was appointed first vice-president, when the war ended and he supported a united Sudan. He died controversially, at 60, in a crash aboard a Ugandan presidential helicopter.  The Sudanese said it was unaware of who Garang was meeting.

The South’s quest for independence appeared doomed with the demise of Garang, but even in the South, it was becoming obvious that his stand on a united Sudan did not enjoy the support of his people, except if he was playing politics.

Nobody needs any further doubts about the determination of the peoples of Southern Sudan to have their own country. The overwhelming support for independence and its peaceful conduct should be great lessons for other African countries where colonial legacies are creating conflicts.

There are too many ethnic conflicts round the continents, many wars, and religious differences that referenda like the one conducted in Sudan could resolve. Those countries should not pass through 39 years of wars, like Sudan, before freeing the creative and innovative abilities of their peoples.