The Three-Eyed Watchman - Who and what is a hero?
Juba, South Sudan - If you want to ride through a hundred comments or to write ten articles a day, just idly but not lazily stroll on Juba streets or any streets of the ten "tent cities" of Southern Sudan.
Was this piece not hijacked by the hottest topic of the day, it was going to be about Laziness versus Idleness, carrying the title: ˜Which career is hot; which is not?" This was aroused in me by a comment from my former schoolmate, now well placed in the government. Seeing me bringing him and other customers bottles of soda and beer in one of the tent hotels along the Nile on Good Friday, the chap giggled, "Look at you, fallen from the top to the tail of the nation; from commanding presidents and residents in newspapers and radios to this!" When I said I was idle, they said I was lazy. I regretted not their insult but their result, that is, my master shouted at me that I was lazily chatting away his money, another count of my laziness added to my attempt to go for Good Friday march during the busiest money-minting slot of the season, Easter.
While on the way back from my attempt to go to church, I dropped the story of idleness or laziness and picked up this hotter one: who and what is a hero, especially when I bumped into a pair of rugged and ragged guys, one of them one-legged, made lamb by landmine, and the other two-legged but made lame by drunkenness, thumbing their chests to every passerby in crippled Arabic aided with Dinka terms such as "Yecu". "Look not at us like this; we are the heroes of this nation. Like your Jesus whom you are going to praise in the church, we are the Jesuses of this country," the unsung heroes boasted, not minding what the goodness attached by Christians to this particular Friday is all about.
Today is Good Friday. It is good because somebody good died on it. About a thousand years back before 2,000 years ago, the Holy Bible foretold of one man made scapegoat, or a lamb for sacrifice.
Assuming this New Sudan Vision website is our New Sudan Mission worship site, let's have our first reading from the OT's book of Isaiah, chapter 53, verses 3 through 7:
3. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief:
4. Surely he has borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows:
5. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities:
6. and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.
7. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he openeth not his mouth:
he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb,
so he openeth not his mouth.
But if anybody wounded or anything nailed for the good of others on any good Tuesday or Friday is to declare himself, herself, itself a hero as such, then why wouldn't we regard the timber and zink nailed on our roofs to protect our heads heroes? My most haunting puzzle in Sudan nowadays, in addition to the definition of who and what is a hero, is ˜who actually should be a hero among all the survivors of the contemporary Sudan? And are real heroes supposed to be still alive, to blow their own trumpet?
In this article, especially in and for the case of Sudan, I am not intending to preach or define heroism, because the term has too wide a scope, not only in its definition, but also and more so in its application, that I may run short of space, terms and time here. If I had to adapt the dictionary or philosopher's terms and description of a hero or its parallel, heroine, I might not have enough space and time. Therefore, it is comforting, in my own opinion, to save my space and my reader's time by putting the definition of a hero into two words: a ˜Life Donor" (see the poem: ˜The Blood Donors of Africa", below). That again will raise conflict in the reader's mind; conflict for the context, the content, the cause, the course and the time for which life is offered. Sudan has a long unexcavated history: not documented for either political or literary hindrances. This untapped past is loaded with lots of heroes, hibernating in oblivion.
So who is a hero? Do not expect a satisfactory answer from me alone. Is it an old man who voluntarily jumped into a log fire in protests against the bad regime or a paramount chief beheaded in a dubious suspicion of covering up the Anya-nya bad boys? A mother starved to death after donating her security (food and children) to the freedom movement, or a newborn baby buried by a much dreaded Antonov bomb in a displaced people's camp? A magician killed in the act of predicting the enemy and directing the fighters or a priest shot offering morale and moral services in the trenches? A commander felled down in the lead of his troops or a soldier blown up by a landmine on the rescue or recce mission? A freedom fighter condemned to death by firing squad or the one killed in a friendly fire accident? A native civilian exposed to a war-related famine and epidemic or a foreign aid worker killed in humanitarian mission? An animal killed in the war or a plant licked up by a shell fire? A protective wall leveled down to expose the enemy troops or a water body contaminated with explosives? The list is endless; endless because it is still being loaded with more heroes and heroines from Darfur, Abyei, Jonglei, Warrap, and here and there.
But then, the worrying question is: will all these and other categories of heroism qualify for the Sudan Heroes Encyclopedia in our modern history? If yes or no, then what are the criteria used for determining a freedom contributor whose act is deemed heroic?
Obviously, in our present context, a heroic act should have a lot to do with nationalism. A hero should be or should have been voluntary, courageous and sacrificial towards a noble cause. A villain is the opposite thereof. However, there are, in the history of Sudan, those who have played both cards “ heroes and villains in the same game. Do we include them in the history of heroism and celebrate them on the heroes' day? Well, due to the length and complexity of the Sudanese liberation struggle, some individuals who initially appeared to have united and ignited the campaign engine eventually turned out to be doing the opposite, though under excusable circumstances. To be fair, their action of heroism and villainy should be put on the balance. But my personal stance is that the fact that they initiated the war makes them heroes of our liberty, hence the heirs of this peace should hold them martyrs, for were it not because of our quest for freedom, they would not turn villains and died, anyway.
So there is not enough justification for labeling the likes of the late Kerubino Kuanyin Bol and William Nyuon Bany, and many others traitors and excluding them from the list of the heroes. For in revolutionary politics, a today's hero is a tomorrow's villain, and vice versa. That is typical of our African politics. Was Kwame Nkrumah not labeled 'dictator' and overthrown? What about Robert Mugabe? Not forgetting our John Garang, the most condemned devil in the first decade, and most praised savior in the second decade of the Sudanese liberation struggle. That is why there is a sense in Machiaveli's principle of "the end justifies the means" or his paradoxical statement “ the ultimate truth is penultimately a falsehood" what appears to be a wrong in the beginning is always the truth in the end.
I have every reason to cut short this piece and cram it into the poetic nutshell as follows from my own anthology entitled: The Black Christs of Africa: Chapter 1; Heroism and Nationalism,
Poem 1
The Black Christs of Africa
You, O saviours, I salute
With due honours absolute
To you, whether here on earth,
Or who weather there in the hearth.
No vain salvation with blood.
We the heirs of your vein flood
Believe our crises have been atoned
By you our Christs that have been stoned.
Being black is not being blank.
Our Herods crucified our heroes,
But their Bloc cann't block the Black.
Hail Martyrs, to heaven your souls sail,
As we here in Africa
Remain heir in a free care,
Our redeemers, it's you we owe.
Our Motherland, it's you we own.
Our murderland, it's us you awe.
NB: As poem 1 talks of nationalism, poem 2 talks of martyrdom, redemption through blood, that our Jesuses shed on the political, economic and social Calvary in the Sudan. Look at the same poem of the same title at a different angle:
Poem 2
The Blood Donors of Africa
The donors of blood
Are redeemers of life,
Of patients who cry flood
In bitter search for sweet life.
Before they breathe last, get floored,
On their earth death beds, they strive.
He who drains a vein,
To irrigate the dry life,
Is no daring saviour in vain.
Our land is a hospital of strife,
Where bloody bannered war vans
Are burned with a million donors of life.
Blood's the cocoon of life
And they that offer blood,
Donate with it their own life.
The rivers and floods of blood,
With multitudes of Christly life,
Have redeemed our beloved Bilad
El-Sudan.
