يعتبره نقاد الادب العالمى كاشهر شعراء افريقيا و قلة من الجنوبين قرات شئ عنه او شئ من شعره كما ان اسمه لم يرد فى منهاج التعليم العام السودانى عندما كان السودان موحدا. شاعرنا الكبير غير متفائل على مستقبل بلادنا فى ظل تفشى الفساد و نهب موارد البلاد و هذا جاء فى اخر تصريح له لديلى نيشون الكينية اليوم.
الشاعر و الكاتب العالمى تعبان لو لوينق.
Taban lo Liyong does not speak forcefully. But he is a compelling and prolific speaker, and he takes his time to build his arguments.
“When I go home, people celebrate me as a writer,” says the South Sudanese author whose works include The Last Word, Fixions and Eating Chiefs, but who earned notoriety more than four decades ago after declaring that Kenya was a literary desert. “I ask them: ‘Which of my works have you read?’”
Many probably answer him with blank stares or a stammer. It is unlikely he is widely read in his own country, which only a few years ago emerged from the longest civil war in Africa.
emerged from the longest civil war in Africa.
When I found him sipping extremely black coffee at Dorman’s Yaya Centre in Nairobi, he was scribbling in his notebook, peering at the words through his glasses, which he promptly removed to regard my intrusion.
“When I go back home,” he said, “I want to give the leaders stomach-ache. I want to give them indigestion.” He is unhappy with the corruption that the new leadership of his motherland is propagating. His views echo the words of Desmond Tutu, who has in recent days grown increasingly uneasy with the ruling ANC party of South Africa, which he has described as a good vehicle for fighting for liberation, but an ineffective political party.
Taban is disillusioned that the soldiers who fought for his homeland’s freedom have started pillaging the country’s resources. He doubts that he will still be a celebrated author once he has given the leadership a piece of his mind
But his indictment is not reserved only for South Sudan. Kenyans, he says, were introspective about the post-election violence of 2007-2008. “But in December 2012, the introspection stopped”.
He believes that for the truce between President Uhuru Kenyatta and Deputy President William Ruto to last and trickle to their respective supporters, those who actually took part in the post-election violence must come out and seek forgiveness from the families of their victims across ethnic divides.
“I was in Uganda when World War II ended,” the writer says, taking a walk down memory lane. The Ugandan men, who had taken part in the war, were not immediately re-integrated into their societies. Instead, they were kept in seclusion with only a virgin to cook for them.
It was not until each had confessed to the crimes they had committed during the war that they were accepted back into the fold. But even then, they had to be cleansed to ensure that their sins would not be passed on through their seed.
If Taban had his way, the same would happen with the ordinary Kenyans who actually took up arms against their neighbours in 2007-2008. He fears that unless that is done, the truce will not hold for long as each party will continue keeping their daggers within easy reach.
“Someone has come with a pen and splashed ink on the painting,” the professor of literature says, in an oblique reference to my novel, Different Colours, which uses the motif of a painting as a symbol of the diversity that goes into the making of a nation of diverse ethnicities like Kenya.
“We need to get the ink from the painting.”
And the suspended national introspection must be revived.
And the suspended national introspection must be revived.
“There are two types of prophets,” he says on the role of the writer. Those who see all too clearly what others are seeing, but fail to appreciate; and those who see what the future holds. A writer should have a little of both.
But Taban reserves his greatest respect for the writer who does not seek to conform. His biggest worry — and he says he noted this from East to South Africa — is the obsession with writing books for the school market. He even admonished me against it.
Writers should write books the best way they know how and publishers should publish them without casting one eye on selection by educational authorities.
“Book selectors should go to the market and select the books that already exist, not dummy manuscripts,” he says, confessing that he has many unpublished books of his own. In fact, he adds a caveat: A book that has not been in the market for at least two years must not be considered for selection in schools.
http://www.nation.co.ke/Features/weekend/Why-...-/index.html[/center]
Zakaria Joseph
فيس بوك
تويتر
انستقرام
يوتيوب
بنتيريست