Inside the world's next nation

As South Sudan heads for independence, there's a disturbing disparity between hope and reality.

Juba's main landmark is making itself redundant. A digital clocktower on the city's central roundabout counts down the remaining days, minutes and hours of the five years from the peace deal that ended the civil war to the referendum on secession.

On Monday the display will reach zero and the south of Sudan will begin voting in a process expected to create a new country and put the defunct clock at the centre of the world's newest capital city.

There is little doubt that the result will be an overwhelming vote in favour of splitting Africa's largest country in two.

What is less clear is what kind of country is being delivered.

South Sudan's moment of choice is happening in an atmosphere of impossible expectation and its legion of doubters believe the globe's first "pre-failed state" is being ushered into existence.

Each of the roads emanating from the central roundabout is dominated by the same billboard. It calls on voters to "honour the sacrifice" of the 2.5 million who died in a 22-year civil war. A white strip underneath makes it clear, showing a voter's thumbprint next to the words "dignity" and "separation".

Away from the high rhetoric, the emerging capital offers a more messy and realistic insight into what's in store as a previously isolated and largely pre-modern swathe of Africa embarks on an unprecedented experiment in internationally sponsored state building. After five years of relative autonomy, much of the elite still live and work in tents or converted shipping containers and a South Sudanese girl is more likely to die in childbirth than finish school.

It's a city in which the Hummer recreational vehicles of the nouveaux riche throng the dust roads, foreign security contractors play by the poolside of a mountain lodge, and international aid workers dine on octopus salad on the terrace of a popular Greek restaurant. The new lords of Juba have already retreated behind high walls and razor wire.

Salva Kiir Mayardit, South Sudan's presumptive president and current head of the interim Government, is not one of the container dwellers. His presidential residence is the largest of the concrete palaces that have mushroomed on a hill near the main United Nations compound.

The team that worked on its refurbishment ahead of a reception for UN staff, western diplomats and VIPs including the actor George Clooney, were sent to Dubai with more than a million dollars in cash to pick up furniture that struck the right note of opulence. They came back, according to one witness, with chandeliers and a wooden throne.

The man who is supposed to be the closest Juba has to a king is Dennis Daramola - a rotund 54-year-old with a gold-braided cap and a carved walking stick. He is chief of the Bari people and customary law dictates that all land belongs to its traditional inhabitants, which in Juba means the Bari.

Presiding over his ramshackle customary court where suitors come to settle everything from debts to marriage disputes, he's happy to admit "this land thing has made me a big man in Juba". These days his "court" is inundated with cases of land grabbing as "big interests" exploit a legal vacuum.

"We are the indigenous and we should benefit as well, otherwise there will be trouble," he warns. Estimates of the numbers living in Juba have reached 800,000, a four-fold increase on its wartime population. Already huge disparities scar the dream of independence.

For thousands of young girls drawn to the prospective capital, the journey ends at Gumbo business centre. What looks like a collection of small shacks and roadside stalls across the Juba bridge is in fact one of the largest of a new and expanding set of industrial-scale brothels.

Inside, as many as 600 girls, some only 13, are housed in something akin to a giant cattle shed. A series of corrugated iron barns each centred around a bar houses girls in individual cells the size of a single bed, with a curtain for privacy.

Sex here is sold in "shots" or "rounds", depending on how long customers spend with the girls. A shot is about £2 ($4.20).

One of the girls tried living rough in Juba but decided to come to Gumbo after being gang raped. "If I'm going to be raped I may as well be paid for it," she said.

The younger girls are more popular and many carry teddy bears and call their regular clients "boyfriend" in order to drum up custom. But life expectancy is short. HIV infection rates among the women over 25 are nearly total. Gumbo is now part of the thriving service sector in Juba where there are at least six equivalent brothels with more than 2000 girls.

The would-be capital is often talked about as though it didn't exist before the 2005 peace deal. The corrugated iron that clads its stalls, shacks and homes has not had time to rust. But the trading post established by Alexandrian Greeks on the White Nile in 1922 does have history, some of which survives amid the ruins of Juba Hotel.

This once grand accommodation of domed chalets is now a squatters' camp full of charcoal fires, where washing hangs from trees and soldiers play dominoes beside a derelict pool. In 1947 it was the setting for a conference called by Britain to decide on an independent Sudan. Baak Mariak, a historian who camps with a friend in one of the chalets, recounts the city's story. "The southern chiefs determined on the first day to split from the north. But that night they were drunk and given bags of coins by the northerners - the next day they called for a federation."

Mariak blames that party for everything, including two civil wars. "The British warned the chiefs that there would be consequences."

Like everything else in Juba, progress has been slow and the future remains uncertain.

SHAPING SUDAN

What is the referendum for?

Sudan was mired for 22 years in a civil war that pitted the Arab and Muslim-dominated north against the predominantly animist and Christian south. In 2005, a peace deal ended the fighting and gave a five-year period of grace before allowing the south to vote on possible secession.

What does this mean for Darfur?

The west of Sudan is not part of the referendum. The Darfur uprising against Khartoum began during the dying throes of the north-south civil war and was not part of the 2005 peace deal. Separate international negotiations for a settlement for Western Sudan continue while some observers worry that the focus on the southern referendum has robbed momentum from the Darfur issue. There are also widespread fears that the Government of ICC-indicted Omar al-Bashir will launch a fresh crackdown in Darfur if the south votes to secede.

What happens to Sudan's oil?

Most of Sudan's oil lies to the south but the only pipeline runs through the north. In the short term, this is likely to mean South Sudan will pay for its independence in the form of punitive contracts to "transport" its share of the oil.

Will there be a new country next week?

No. Voting begins on Monday and goes on for a week. If more than 60 per cent vote for separation then a six-month transition will begin.

- INDEPENDENT