As votes go the decision by South Sudan to secede from the North is pretty conclusive.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/01/30/uk-sudan-referendum-idUKTRE70T0KW20110130
The figures for turnout and majority of 98% and 99% respectively are the sort of numbers one would expect to see for a phony election in a non democratic election and as such are so overwhelming as to be impossible to ignore. Such a one sided vote may make the split easier but there is a number of issues to deal with, and while the people of the south may be overjoyed at the result the issues to be resolved may flare up old tensions that lay behind the war. Whilst ethnic and religious differences can be resolved by separating the people in the two new countries, economic matters may not be as readily solved as the south has most of the oil and the north has the pipeline as well as South Sudan being more arable compared to the desert in the north.
   I heard somebody complaining that we were trying to impose our Western ideology and system of government in the area again after not learning from previous experience of Westerners attempts at "Civilisation" of Africa. The point that African politics was more tribal based and the notion of nations a concept we forced on them, and they don't like the idea of a centralised government in a capital potentially miles from where they live is a little too simplistic. Many people living outside of the capital city fell isolated from the political scene and tribalism is not limited to Africa. All of Europe consisted of tribes until over time they congregated together for a common purpose - often working together to defeat a common foe. The Roman Empire helped in uniting the many disparate tribes and those that did not comply were wiped out but even after it's fall most countries as we know them now were still a congregation of regions. Isolated as we are in the UK from the continent and thus having a common purpose amongst ourselves still saw Saxons, Angles and Celts fighting with each other in Wessex, Mercia, East Anglia and Northumbria until Alfred from Wessex gained dominion over the other areas. After Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland also joined the Union we are now at the stage where we seem to be looking to devolve back ourselves. Scotland has it's own Parliament and there are assemblies in Wales and Northern Ireland. There are calls for a referendum on Cornwall's Independence and regional assemblies have been mooted for the rest of England. This is because despite the advantages of being a larger state with an increased revenue and with greater numbers of people to call on we believe we have lost a sense of identity when in fact it probably never existed. Everybody seems obsessed with this idea of local identity as if their region is any more special than the one next door or the one at the other end of the country. We tell jokes about our near neighbours and look forward to the local derby match when we can jeer at the opposing fans who we presume to be less intelligent, miserly and less happy knowing full well that they think the same of us. In some cases these character types become self perpetuating so that the Yorkshireman who has been brought up to think he has to be forthright and careful with his money fulfills the stereotype and we tick the box and say "See I told you they were like that". However the thousands of others not from that county that also fit those personality traits don't matter as no one is monitoring their behaviour as well as the bad apples from Yorkshire who refuse to conform who will simply be ignored (not literally only nobody will think it worth commenting on them as in "Look at him keeping himself to himself as he gets his round in: how atypical of a Yorksireman).
   Anyway my point, if I actually had one, was that people in Africa are not so different, just at a different stage in their political evolution - and even then not so far: Splitting of countries is so 1990s (apart from Germany who had to go the other way just to be different). We've done tribalism, we've done nations and at the moment we're not quite sure what we want flirting both with devolution and integration into a bigger state (i.e. the European Union) at the same time. Sudan has voted to split and until the possible Independence day in July we can only hope that the process is as smooth as possible and that the name of the new country is something less prosaic than South Sudan.