Contradictions of Sudanese Yen for Freedom
By Odongi IbaluKirram
August 25, 2006 — It should come as no surprise that we are witnessing ghastly and totally contradictory: off the wall moments in Sudanese quest for freedom. Demanding that people ditch obtaining information about their country from electronic newspapers (internet based sources) is clearly a woozy neo-marxist urge. What right has the antagonistic provincial minister to demand servile obedience from (Sudanese) students? We are no less entitled to make him understand that his outdated views have no place in a future Sudan we all are striving to build.
Every government leader fears the press or the media in general. One needs only to consider the apparent comments of Napoleon Bonaparte to figure out why media freedom is constantly under attack: “one journalist is far lethal, to dictator’s interests, than scores of soldiers with bayonets.”
To think the capital enemies of Sudanese people strictly are those wearing hats labeled “Northern Sudan Chief Monsters” is to miss wholly the moral of Sudanese political game story. Look there is a man Lokulenge Lole the prototypical bulldozer of ‘free Sudan’ with the title Dr under his belt, perhaps that means ‘Dump reckless’.
Just when the father of Islamo-fascism, Hassan al-Turabi, who for years trampled on natives views and advocated—labored successfully for barrel democracy as a means to reserve Sudan solely as a property for immigrant communities finally returned back to earth with a bump: Muslims can marry non-Arabs, infidels, aren’t nothing wrong and Sudan must now be rule by Sudanese; how ironic then that a government (GoSS) lead by the poster-boys of ‘Free Sudan’ just emerging in from the cold resort instead to his archaic leadership values and tactics. It is interesting being Sudanese; we always have rogue leaders in abundance. What’s hindering us from exporting them to places where they are rarely available anyway?
Those who arrogantly presume to know and diktat how we (in Sudan) should all live and behave have not reached end of the road: they have nothing but scorn for our freedom aspirations. When they attack; curtail our right of free expression and impose intellectual curfew on us it is call top-down leadership excellence. But what about bottom-up leadership guidance listens their sneering tone: who told you it is permitted! Oh, so the traffic flows only one way? Now it is understandable why our poor students in Nairobi, Kenya were fed with a diet of lies—sensationalistic disinformation and misinformation in moment of desperation and foolhardiness—it is to de-enlighten and categorically fail the would-be leaders and intellectual members of Sudanese community.
You see those who pledged their efforts to liberate Sudan have once again been proven wrong. To be politically correct the SPLM lead struggle is indeed about ‘cliques’ freedom and prosperity’, it has nothing to do with setting our people free from economic and political bondage… Somebody ought to bear responsibility for waging an artificial democratic revolution!
Remember you have no right to be resentful or grumble — your role, as a mere citizen is limited to unquestionable consenting — if you understand these gentlemen convoluted language and national agenda, solecisms.
A radio station, Liberty FM, was shut down yet by another anti-freedom provincial minister in GoSS, but the president was too busy, blind, unfortunately to notice such brutish technicality, under the pretext that it actually operated without proper license. But we must read the gist or moral of the story between the lines.
It is in the public interest that government is true to type. The last thing any Sudanese would do is to surrender his right to hold those in position of authority accountable for their actions. Public office is not for personal glorification, if government employee’s are unable to measure up, —can’t serve peoples interest accordingly, Mr. Minister, they ought to ship out (consider private life, safe from journalistic salvo, perhaps) or shape up, pure and simple.
Unless the minister’s suggesting what he’s involved in is a sacrosanct family affair requiring non external interferences not a peoples enterprise, then his disgruntlement with informed and concerned citizens’ criticism is justified. Alas! We cannot allow, definitely, government by the fools, for the fools and of the fools to prescribe how we desire our future to be like.
The arrival of Internet is greeted, from Khartoum to Havana and from Juba to Gambia, with suspicion and disdain for the simple reason that unlike radio, television and physical newspapers dictators can’t gag it easily when their views and devilish feat is challenged. But information is power, without it society is almost disabled, brought to a standstill. Without information we cannot make well-informed decisions.
What then is the point of the minister? What alternative sources of information is he offering us since he ridicules the role of Internet in reporting accurate news if not the already distrusted radio? No, the minister meant we must be unformed; he wants his government to carry on, dare I say, mismanaging every aspect of our society unchecked.
Gone are the days when traditional media in Sudan is tamed so to relay views exclusively representative of barbarians and war criminals. We have nothing to fear. We must reject, outright, the calculations of those special-interest groups attempting to impress upon us the moral Sudanese majority their odious thinking.
We ought to heed late American president, Thomas Jefferson forewarning: “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance”. We either confront enemies of freedom in Sudan, represented by the person of Lokule uneducated sentiment, head-on, dislodge… Or they would consume us and set our country on the wrong — already long distressful path.
Such a call may be considered too radical, may even be frown upon by enthusiasts of military misrule in Sudan, but there really is no other way for us to uphold our freedom. Extreme situations require extremely radical answers. Every act these freedom assassins commit set our country backward by a big margin. Surely we had enough; let’s then shout a complete end to them. Together we can do it. We can drive Sudan to a society of peace, freedom and democracy, if enough of us are willing to exert pressure.
To that section of us too sick, maybe deliberately, to realize it is being lead astray by mafiosi we say thanks for accepting and signing your country’s death warrant. Proceed so religiously in digging your grave in-defense of short-mindedness posed by villains within the elephant group like lamp to the slaughter. We are neither frustrated small clans as you maintain—but continue being naïve, nor are we, wastrels, too unintelligent to disturb peace if there genuinely was such a humdinger of political concord afforded to Sudanese ultimately. We prefer a responsible government. Period.
* Odongi IbaluKirram is a South African based Sudanese journalist he can be reached [email protected]