This week, the people of Southern Sudan will cast their votes in a historic referendum to determine whether to secede from the North, likely becoming Africa’s newest independent nation, writes Nisrin Elamin. The referendum represents not only a failure by the Sudanese government ‘to make unity a viable option’, but also the complicity and silence of the people of northern Sudan ‘around policies that, if left unchallenged, could ultimately lead to the further fracturing' of the nation, argues Elamin.