Prologue
Every age must face its own form of war. Ours is not fought with rifles or grenades but with rumours, videos, and posts. The front line is no longer the border; it is the timeline. The soldiers are not trained in barracks but born in comment sections. A nation that once feared invasion now fears confusion. The question that haunts every society is simple yet profound: who controls the story? For whoever controls the story controls the mind, and whoever controls the mind controls the future.
The age of noise
Ours is a generation that no longer waits for the morning news. Truth now travels through fibre and air faster than any journalist can breathe. A single click spreads a thousand lies, each dressed in the robes of conviction. The great promise of social media was freedom, connection, and voice. Instead, it has birthed a wilderness of sound where gossip wears the gown of gospel and anger is the loudest prayer.
In Juba, in Nairobi, in Kampala, in every place where a smartphone lights a dim room, citizens scroll themselves into agitation. The screen has become the new battlefield, and the war is not for land or power but for attention. Facebook and TikTok are the new courts of public opinion where everyone is both judge and executioner. The verdicts are instant, the evidence irrelevant, and the damage permanent.
These platforms were once celebrated as instruments of liberation. They gave a voice to the voiceless, a stage to the forgotten, and a mirror to the marginalised. But freedom without discipline is an illness. The same technology that was meant to unite has turned into an amplifier of division. The more furious the post, the more the algorithm rewards it. Outrage has become currency, and truth its first casualty.
In the villages and cities of South Sudan, stories no longer come from newsrooms but from timelines. A man in Juba learns of a government appointment from a rumour; a student in Kampala hears of a coup from a meme; a nurse in Nairobi reads of her own community’s supposed plot through a post crafted by a stranger. By the time the truth arrives, it finds the minds of men already occupied.
This is the age of noise. Everyone speaks, but no one listens. Institutions are mocked, experts are doubted, and the loudest fools are crowned prophets. Nations cannot think in peace because the mob never sleeps. Beneath this chaos lies a quieter tragedy: the death of professionalism.
Once, to be a journalist was to be a student of evidence. One verified, cross-checked, edited, and accounted for every word. The pen was a moral instrument, the reporter the custodian of truth. Today, the gatekeepers are gone, and in their place stand the digital pretenders, men and women who learned that an inflammatory post earns more applause than an accurate one.
The digital pretenders
The age of the pretender began the day applause became more valuable than accuracy. The moment a man realised that he could type from his bedroom and command a crowd, he abandoned humility for hysteria. He discovered that anger travels faster than evidence and that moral outrage requires no credentials. With a smartphone, a SIM card, and a bruised ego, anyone could become a prophet.
In Nairobi, Juba, Kampala, and other restless cities, this new species of communicator found his stage. He had neither editor nor code of ethics, only followers hungry for drama. He fed them exaggeration disguised as insight and suspicion dressed as analysis. He learned quickly that to thrive online, one must offend, for outrage is oxygen in the digital jungle.
He called himself a journalist because the title sounded noble. But journalism is not a costume; it is a discipline. It demands restraint, patience, and a willingness to be proven wrong. The pretender has none of these virtues. He writes first and thinks later, if at all. His paragraphs are weapons, not arguments. He does not inform; he incites.
They multiplied because the soil was fertile. The collapse of editorial structures and the hunger for recognition created a perfect storm. Some were once assistants at donor-funded projects. They attended workshops where the foreign trainers spoke of freedom but not of responsibility. When the grants dried up, they stayed behind, jobless yet convinced of their importance. With USAID and other funding bodies scaling down and the Voice of America losing its regional grip, the stipends vanished. What remained was hunger and the memory of applause.
A few among them found new patrons. They began to sell narratives the way a mercenary sells loyalty. They wrote for whoever could pay, praising today’s politician and destroying tomorrows. Their feeds became instruments of blackmail. One post to ruin a name, another to retract it for a price. Thus, a small economy of lies was born, and its currency was reputation.
The weaponisation of words
When words lose their innocence, they become weapons. In our time, the battlefield is the human mind. The combatants are not soldiers but storytellers, and their bullets are sentences. The war they wage is for belief, not territory. A careless post can revive old wounds, a manipulated video can inflame new grievances, and an edited image can turn neighbours into enemies.
In the digital age, hate speech and misinformation travel faster than reason. A post written in Nairobi before breakfast can ignite anger in Juba by noon. A short clip on TikTok can undo years of reconciliation work in a single afternoon. The algorithms that power these platforms are indifferent to consequence. They understand only engagement, and engagement thrives on anger.
What was once a conversation has become psychological warfare. Whoever controls the story controls perception, and whoever controls perception controls the nation. When citizens believe their leaders are devils or saints without proof, when truth becomes relative and emotion becomes evidence, a country ceases to think. It only reacts.
This corrosion of trust is deliberate. Misinformation need not persuade; it only needs to exhaust. When people can no longer tell truth from falsehood, they surrender to apathy. In that fatigue, manipulators thrive. The nation begins to fracture not through confrontation but through confusion.
To resist this war requires both vigilance and virtue. Platforms must strengthen hate-speech detection and act on reports swiftly and impartially. Governments must craft laws that punish deliberate deceit without silencing legitimate dissent. Civil society must educate, and citizens must practise scepticism. The fight for the mind must begin with the discipline of truth.
The donor collapse and the marketplace of lies
Every generation produces its tricksters. Ours came with smartphones and borrowed vocabularies of activism. When foreign donors poured money into media projects, they found willing recruits. For years, workshops, training sessions, and travel stipends flowed freely. Many of the recruits learned only the performance of credibility.
Then came the drought. The change in Washington cut the river at its source. With the Trump administration’s withdrawal from generous media funding, USAID projects shrank and Voice of America scaled down. The flow of dollars that had sustained the illusion of professionalism dried up. The elbow exercises stopped, the hotel seminars ended, and the playboy pundits found themselves jobless, stranded between ego and poverty.
A few adapted with dignity. Many others could not survive without the applause. They turned to the only market still open: the marketplace of lies. Their feeds became arenas of slander. They targeted whoever held office, not to inform the public but to bait followers and sponsors. The more offensive the post, the greater the engagement. Engagement could be monetised.
These are not anonymous trolls hiding behind avatars. They are visible, loud, and self-satisfied. They sign their names beneath falsehoods and bask in the chaos they create. The collapse of donor funding revealed who had substance and who had been propped up by per diems. Without stipends, the impostors showed their true colours. Their pages became markets where reputations are auctioned. They gossip about leaders in the morning and demand jobs in the evening. They dress blackmail as commentary and call it courage.
But the price of this theatre is public trust. Each lie corrodes belief in institutions. The journalist’s duty is to serve truth; the pretender aims to serve himself. Journalism has been emptied of honour and filled with noise. A nation that rewards deception soon loses the ability to distinguish liberty from licence.
The security dimension
A state may survive drought, rebellion, or economic ruin, but it cannot survive the death of trust. Once citizens no longer believe in one another, armies cannot defend them, and laws cannot unite them. The decay of truth is a national-security crisis. What begins as gossip on Facebook or as a quick joke on TikTok ends as paralysis in government and suspicion among neighbours.
Every rumour that paints one group as conspirators and another as victims functions as a small act of sabotage. Each viral lie erodes social cohesion. It is information warfare in slow motion. The cost is measurable: resources diverted to crisis management, courts flooded with defamation suits, and investors frightened away. A nation that loses faith in truth becomes easy to manipulate.
To reverse this decline, the state must regard information integrity as a pillar of defence. Ministries of communication must coordinate with civil society to monitor hate speech and misinformation, not to silence criticism but to prevent incitement. Laws must protect journalists who report with evidence and penalise those who fabricate for profit. Technology companies must act swiftly on verified reports of hate speech and make their moderation transparent. Education must teach the young to verify before believing. The defence of truth is the defence of the state itself.
The road to restoration
Every sickness reveals its cure. The infection that now plagues public life is a failure of instruction, regulation, and conscience. If noise has conquered the nation, it must be answered by knowledge and virtue.
Education is the first pillar. Media literacy must become as ordinary as arithmetic. Children should be taught to ask who wrote a message, who benefits from it, and whether it bears the mark of evidence. Universities must restore ethics to journalism, reminding students that truth is not decoration but a foundation.
Regulation is the second pillar. Freedom of expression is sacred, yet it depends on structure. The right to publish must be matched by the duty to verify. Media councils should act as independent guardians of standards. The courts must provide swift remedies for defamation. A lie should never cost less to spread than the truth costs to produce.
Civic culture is the third pillar. Citizens must recover the habit of scepticism. Before forwarding a message, they should pause as a doctor pauses before prescribing a drug. They must remember that every share is an act, and every act has a consequence. Professional journalists must reclaim their dignity, editors must mentor, and donors must fund pedagogy rather than publicity.
Faith institutions can reinforce this ethic, teaching that to share a lie is to share guilt. Technology companies must redesign their systems to reward reliability rather than rage. The moral pillar is the final one: every citizen must know that truth is not a luxury but a defence. Without it, no government can govern, and no community can coexist.
The creed of truth
Every civilisation is built first in the mind. Truth is its invisible architecture. With words, we make promises, record laws, and tell our history. When words lose meaning, promises break, laws crumble, and history is forgotten. That is why every republic must defend truth more fiercely than territory. The enemy that destroys from within is not the critic but the liar.
A culture of honesty is the strongest fortress any nation can build. Its stones are the habits of verification, its gates the discipline of listening, its towers the courage to admit error. The army may guard the borders, but it is the truth that guards the conscience of the land.
Facebook and TikTok have made everyone a publisher, yet few are trained to be reporters. The power once confined to editors is now in the hands of millions, and with power comes duty. Each post, each share, each comment is an act of authorship. Freedom of expression cannot survive in a wilderness of lies; it needs a landscape of trust.
The future belongs to those who can think quietly amid the noise. They will rebuild the moral grammar of speech and remind their nations that facts are sacred. To verify before believing is an act of loyalty. To refuse to spread unproven claims is an act of service. The defence of truth does not belong to journalists alone; it belongs to all who speak and listen.
Let every newsroom remember its calling. Let every platform recall its duty. Let every school teach the sanctity of evidence. Let every home become a small academy of honesty. A nation that honours truth will not fear the future. Its words will heal where once they harmed.
The creed of truth is simple. To speak with accuracy. To listen with humility. To write with conscience. To share only what builds. To correct with grace. To remember that freedom without truth is chaos and that truth without freedom is silence. Between them lies the harmony of a civilised people.
When this harmony returns, when the screens cease to shout and the citizens begin to think again, South Sudan and her neighbours will discover that their greatest resource was never oil or aid or power. It was language itself, redeemed and restored to honesty. Then the age of noise will end, and the age of understanding will begin.
Finis…Pinis…’Baká…Acï kɔ̈ɔ̈r, tok.
The writer, Sokiri Lojuan Lojökudu, is a concerned South Sudanese citizen.
The views expressed in ‘opinion’ articles published by Radio Tamazuj are solely those of the writer. The veracity of any claims made is the responsibility of the author, not Radio Tamazuj.