An Open Letter to Prof. Taban Lo-Liyong: A Professor of English and Literature at the University of Juba in South Sudan

The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born. In this interregnum, a great variety of morbid symptoms appear – Antonio Gransci.

By Deng’Kur Mading, Juba, South Sudan

Saturday, February 15, 2020 (PW) — My Dear Professor, as a long-serving and most acclaimed Professor in the field of creative art, one would be foolishly oblivious to underrate your tangible and outstanding intellectual achievement both in shaping the African literary tradition and transforming the lives of heterogenous generations across international borders. This could be attributed, of course, to your vast knowledge in literature, history, geography, and to some extent, politics. Equally important, your most inspirational academic prowess and its concomitant and enormous experience cannot be detailed in a few lines. That would tantamount to a hollow ridicule and inconsiderate deprivation.

Your great service, as many people would agree, has indeed created beyond an imaginative form, a great many right-thinking members of the society whose ensuing characters, approaches and acts would rather be more preferable than their educators’. I wish to also recognize, dear Sir, your great endeavors exerted for mental liberation of the people of South Sudan through the hard times our people borne the worst carnage ever inflicted on innocent civilians for more than two decades. There is much praise for an indisputable morale of your professional standing and intellectual work.

Our country must be very proud to have one great poet in your person whose distinguishable caliber would defy any description etched in a downward trajectory. As your student, I still have a judicious reservation that great writers could write-in sweepingly for a purpose so inversely obvious. It has taken me quite a while now to settle a haunting debate between oneself as to whether I should or not write to you on the matter of your recent Open Letter addressed to President Donald Trump’s Special Delegation to South Sudan; led by the envoy Hon. Tibor P. Nagy. I must thank for finally releasing the hatred you have carried against your own countrymen since 1960s.

It is, however, without any bit of doubt that the import of your letter was to get the United States of America and more particularly, the Republican party government to exterminate or assist in the extermination of the whole Dinka people regardless of their classes in terms of access to power, other people’s lands or national resources. That it is one of the loudest voices that South Sudan’s persistent problems cannot be wholly attributed to guerrilla war-fare but also to lack of steady intellectual direction – that vindictive thoughts and wishes would only be executed by the innocent, illiterate masses even with much ease. And would later become the underlying cause of the past and present South Sudanese problems. This stirs the thought as to why some education of the past can really provide an aloof settlement of the issues of the time.

Dear Sir, notwithstanding the above, I wish to respectfully and candidly inform you that in my latest discovery exists two Taban Lo Liyongs; the one in the foregoing description and another tribal led warrior in your Letter recently addressed to the US President Donald Trump through special team which was published by many news outlets including Juba Monitor (Jan. 29 Vol. 9, Issue No. 1865).

I would, to some extent, agree with you on the basis of your argument. However, I would rather disagree with you on the means. The imagined 99% on whose behalf you wrote would as well be divided over an approach you would want the rest of the 63 tribes with the help of American Republican government address land, social and political matters. One thing you need to know Sir, is that there are most Dinka families – some of us – who have gained nothing from the current government; are struggling between paying monthly rents in Juba suburbs and acquiring daily meals just to make a living. Some, without any perceptible option, live in the poorest university hostels the world has ever known not by choice but simply because most of them lost their fathers during that very same liberation struggle you referred to with less attention to details, and would want to, at least, acquire average education in order to take care of the larger bereft families.

These are the very Dinka who, by inference, find themselves unjustifiably ostracized from what you call “suffering of heterogenous 99%”. What you mean by domination by having, for instance, the President and most generals hail from Dinka and Nuer tribes for that purpose, to an outsider’s mind, is what Juba development means to a village man simply at the sight of the most expensive hotels in the name of Pyramid, Crown and many more. There must be something ultra-ingenious between the Dinka tribal domination narrative and the hard reality we face on the ground here as the most suffering citizens of South Sudan. One must clearly protest in this sweeping dilemma.

However, on the matter of character and approach employed by a few leaders, land grabbing, physical politics and all that, you will recall, dear Sir, that no amount of situation or education is capable of producing the best intellectual out of a best guerrilla. Where you find a few existing, there are always subtle nuances. Even in the case of our Ph.Ds, would be a perception misplaced for not a single one is free from excessive guilt. Nonetheless, in this confusion, the field of pure academia remains the only visible hope for our country and people, now and in the long run. It is very unfortunate to discover that this only worthy field is now being seriously tested by your most acclaimed pen.

Your letter, dear Sir, has left the ground uneven and set such undesirable atmosphere in a sense that a few would betray their emotions, in one way or another in furtherance of such prejudiced views as are necessary for creating more inaccessible, harsh, unpatriotic tribal enclaves. Stupidity for that purpose would be our international reputation, ethnic sentiments our character and war, our immediate, preferable alternative in addressing our own matters. Does all these suffice well to justifying the reason why millions of South Sudanese lives from the Nuer, the Madi, the Bari, the Dinka, the Muru, the Azande, the Taposa, the Chollo and many more were lost! Whether it is literal or metaphorical, the basis of the solid outcry in our country is real and substantial. This could have been reflected in your voice as a Professor who has sacrificed his entire life in an effort to transform many lives by presenting some material with intellectual judgment without missing the real target which is, obviously, those sitting at the heart of the government and who have collectively contributed in crafting a very unsuccessfully story of that government.

When we express such observations Sir, it is because our generation finds itself in oblivion. Why would a nation so hardly won subject itself to harsh tribal hatred, senseless wars, segregation and outright rejection of its own? For how long shall our people subject themselves to suffering without purpose and future without hope! Even in the mighty intellectual profession, one does not see the spirit of national unity! Instead, a Professor of vast knowledge and wisdom of old age, calls for genocide against his own people. This, we must reject!

As a generation of South Sudanese students with 21^st century education, we stand firm and solid in outright rejection of your hateful and inciteful ideas and wish to assure you that we shall work together as different generation of South Sudanese in love and in solidarity to rewrite history of violence and break loose from the reigns of ethnic sentiments and tribal hatred. In the most obedient and solid assurance, our generation totally rejects being students of your ill-tempered philosophy!

I thank you indeed for your indulgence.

Your Faithful Student,

Deng’Kur Mading

3^rd Year Student of Law

University of Juba

Email Address:  mdengkur@gmail.com

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