A bureaucratic bungle that left South Australia without polling stations in a crucial independence referendum has got the Sudanese community fuming, SBS's Karen Ashford reports.
Hundreds of South Australian-based Sudanese are making the long - and expensive - journey to Melbourne to cast a vote in this weekend's South Sudan Independence referendum.
A petition fraudulently claiming to be from community leaders excluded SA from its list of proposed sites for polling booths, meaning Sudanese who want to vote will need to go interstate to do so.
But some community members say the chance to have a say on their nation's future is worth the travel hassle.
"My vote is so important because to me it is historical and it allows me to contribute to the problem of southern Sudan - to solve the suffering, the slavery and the injustices the people of southern Sudan have gone through," John Agala told SBS.
"Only one chance. We are not going to be giving up any more. Enough is enough. We are advocating for separation, no unity," Paulo Jwokdoch Kwajakwan from the Referendum Task Force says.
But for others, the logistics of travelling interstate are just too much.
"I work for 30 hours and I go to uni part-time and this is also very stressful for me and I got two girls that I have to look after and I don't have somebody to leave them either," single mother Agnes Achao tells SBS.
"Financially sometime I can't afford it [a bus ticket]. And also I can't drive a car," she says.
If the referendum is successful, it would effectively split Africa's largest nation in two: into the Arab-Muslim north and the resource rich Christian and animist south.
Sudan has faced years of turmoil, including a long-running civil war that has killed more than two million people.
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