If you are a truth-teller, put your hand on your chest and say Long live me. Truth-tellers never die! They only visit heaven to refill their cylinders of truth-telling and come back fresh. In a wise community, a truth-teller is a blessing, but in a foolish community, a truth-teller is a curse.
It does not kill to tell the truth. I speak my mind. Wherever I go, I speak my mind. I know the truth hurts, but deception hurts more. Why would I hurt more with deception than to hurt less with truth? I say what people fear to say. Yes, so many people do not like it, but I like it. They are not me and so, what they do not like should not be what I do not like too. I’m me, I like what I like, and I do not like what I do not like.
In a foolish community where people comfort themselves with lies, a truth-teller is victimized, hated, isolated, betrayed and assassinated to give lying a self-contained room. As a truth-teller goes missing, the whole community loses direction. Instead of going to the north, the community goes to the south. Instead of going to the east, the community goes to the west.
Nobody takes courage to point at the right direction as lies have deformed people to call a spade a shovel and a shovel a spade. Nobody tells the truth because truth-tellers are executed. The community moves in darkness and unfortunately, it falls into an ambush, is caught, has its eyes tied with a piece of black cloth and is shot dead. But before it is shot dead, the ambusher declares himself as Mr. Backwardness. A community where a truth-teller is deemed a curse always moves in a retrograde direction.
In a community where a truth-teller is a blessing, a truth-teller is celebrated, followed, prayed for and consulted wherever necessary. No member of the community prospers at the expense of another. South Sudan tops the list of underdeveloped countries, and the major contributing factor is the fact that public offices are occupied by the graduates of the school of lies.
They see a cow and call it a donkey, but no one comes out and says it is not a donkey, it is a cow. One of them says democracy is a bad system of governance, but no one stands up and says democracy propels countries closer to their final destinations.
If there were leaders who tell the truth, what would prevent them from telling the economic cluster that you are too incompetent to recover the economy and that, you should give a chance to others? If there were leaders who tell the truth, what would prevent them from telling the presidency that the problem is not in the Ministry of Finance and Planning, the problem is in the presidency? You may appoint a hundred ministers of Finance and Planning and the situation will remain the same.
If there were leaders who tell the truth, why did it take them almost one and a half decades since independence and no leader has ever written a resignation letter, citing deviation from the truth as a trigger? If there were leaders who tell the truth, what would prevent them from telling the presidency that the debts we have are enough and that, we should not again borrow even a coin from someone?
No leader tells the truth, all of them are comforting themselves with lies. A truth-teller is like a candle; he burns himself to give others light to see the way forward. I end by citing John F. Kennedy “The goal of education is the advancement of knowledge and the dissemination of truth.”
The author is a medical student, University of Juba.