Writing isn’t about fame or money

By Isaiah Abraham

September 7, 2009 — Writing like any other profession carries responsibility and a code of conduct to follow; but generally its a bumpy discipline that is constantly unpredictable and you can understand it why its always an up and down. This is partly due to its foundation based on hunches and hypothesis. So, what am saying? For the past few years, I have had weird and unruly moments like any other writer on this career. But few days ago a pugnacious chap called me after he bloodied his nose on one of my articles, somewhere I don’t know. He never introduced himself or his topic of contention but asked me whether its me or someone else. When he got my name, he quickly quizzed what tribe am I and when I mumbled he soared with is tirade using somewhat fluent English, sandwiched between his nose and ultra male tone. The man never gave me space or time, as he bombarded my ears with every negative adjective you could think of in the book. Interestingly, I felt amused and never hang it up, until his phone goes a hitched probably due to his air time or satisfied after spending nearly 10 minutes calling me names of animals punctuated by his ‘channel f’ (dialect) with some frequent words that sound like ‘amok’, ‘guat’, ‘nyagat’ ‘monyjur’ and ‘jong’. You can figure what tribe is he from, don’t you?

Though I didn’t follow up clearly his point of argument, as I would have best done it/imagine, one thing was deduced and clearly could be his case, that I had interfered with ‘their’ status quo and had to stop it. I later however learned that he actually lost his job on the assumption that probably one of my articles had contributed to his lost of job. Sincerely am used to such moments and nothing against him as a person. He may have looked at some of our articles we often write here and ran with a conclusion that we are anti government of the people of the South Sudan. I sympathize with him.

But some of these brethren in fact are of the mentality that we are targeting their people or tribe and the leader they think is doing his best. But one thing they forget and that they should know is that writers at our stage aren’t for it to soil others reputation if they deserved. There is nothing moreover that the President should based his actions on websites ideas. Who are we that the big man should solely take our advice face value, does he has time really to read what is being posted here? He has a lot to do and there are others doing the advisory work for him. If any of our message coincide with the event or decision then that is just by chance and the writers aren’t to blame.

Writers don’t report either, that is the work of the reporters, we opinionate and opinion aren’t infallible or gospel in themselves; we pursue the ‘why’ animal, while reporters are after ‘what’ and ‘how’. We go beneath the stated and that is a big difference. In the process of grappling up with the underlines, we might commit errors and that is the fallacy of writing. The reader could take it or reject it and nothing will change from the opinion as people aren’t the same. I for one don’t write to get recognize or do it for political recognition; there is nothing like becoming politician from writing. These are different world. Who are we then? We are what we do. We publish evidences and the truth isn’t necessarily the point why we write. We are mirrors, always on the front line to state why this happening happened and try our best to disclose hazy matters of national concern. We appeal to the emotions and we have a small role to play in the society. We simply influence or reinforce decisions. We care less about any reward in return.

Sometime a mocker accused us of being jealous because we didn’t get space in the government. That we are an arm of the National Congress Party (NCP). A catch small phrase often use to whip sympathy and cast others are anti patriots. That is a million off the mark! The president can’t appoint everyone in the government, it doesn’t work like that. If we are discontented with his work as head of our government we will say it and if he miraculously changes, well and good. We lived within our little means and the government can’t take everybody on board. I don’t know further Dr. Mustafa Ishmael, Gutbi Al Mahdi, Ali Ahmed Yasiin, Dr. Mohamed Mandour, Dr. Azhari Al Tigani, Dr. Ali Nafia among other stalwarts of the NCP. Non knows the color of their teeth apart from what the media fixed it before us. The North generally will have to prove to the South their seriousness before we forget the past. These days they are talking nicely and we should be forgiving them if they allow our people to go for plebiscite unobstructed; for now no! They are our enemies!!! Two million lives is enough to hate these people.

But why should anyone use that lame scape goat and a victim card against his own people? When the SPLM-DC calls for change, reorganization and democratization of the SPLM we hurriedly brand them as traitors, the same propaganda we had used against everyone virtually who disagreed with the system. Can we learned to be accommodative and flexible and only at odd (defensive) if the criticism is unjustified. Every voice that is contrary to system must not be brushed as nothing. Our work as writers is to magnified those voices once we see their positive impact on the society and that is exactly our job. Let’s not masked the failed leadership in Juba for the sake of it or ran to our tribe instead we should be constructive in our debate. Yes the few positive things we see around can’t add up to the expectations. This is an inescapable fact.

We need a viable governance strategy that work (that can be seen working). A person to nurture this idea is another; the very one who will take us into a journey with a firm grip on what he wants to do now and in the next few years to come. Someone who will blend our rich diversity and resources and make something out for the next generation. We don’t care who that person would be or where he will come from, but only if he has the required credentials to take us through. Our father Dr. John Garang had laid a concrete foundation and we must be careful not to waste it away; we need a right architect who could build on it with tangible durable steps. These are issues on the table at the moment, and if that qualify us to be labeled traitors, fine, we aren’t pliable to get cowed and nothing will go between us and our keyboards on these areas, never!

Isaiah Abraham lives in Juba; he’s on [email protected]