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WASHINGTON — Fifty thousand words, three video documentaries, six pages of graphs and maps, and scores of devastating pictures published Monday on VICE.com provide vivid scenes of the deadly problems facing the world’s newest country.
Robert Young Pelton traveled to South Sudan this year to find rebel leader and former South Sudan Vice President Riek Machar, who is hiding in the deep bush of South Sudan. The story of how he did it gives readers an unprecedented ground-level view of the carnage.
Accompanied by war photographer and documentary filmmaker Tim Freccia, Pelton had to pay more than $15,000 to be flown into South Sudan’s rebel-held territory, an area even the most daring reporters and pilots are avoiding. Their story shows not only country’s violent spiral toward failed statehood, but also gives readers nuanced background information in an attempt to explain why South Sudan is where it is today:
Do not believe almost anything you read or hear about Africa, especially concerning the continent’s cultural sensitivity, ethnic peculiarities, or borders. The source of this information usually has an agenda, is an outright bigot or moron, or has some misguided notion of how African salvation might eventually occur at some wholly imagined point in the future. Forget everything and just be honest: Greater Africa is a country, or is at least treated as one by most of the world, no matter how politically incorrect it may be to plainly state such a thing. It’s a market and a marketing hook; it’s a carefully analyzed genre of the fashion, music, and travel industries; and above all else, it is and always has been a singular obsession of the West. It’s the place somebody is always trying to save.
Pelton believes that understanding background information is crucial. And that populist videos like Kony 2012 that go viral don’t give viewers an accurate picture.
Pelton said in an email interview that information without context is meaningless. But by providing context in his stories, smart, informed people are able to then form smart and informed opinions.
“Awareness of war, death or even cancer hasn’t done much. It’s only the marketing aspect of fundraising which is only the gateway to action,” Pelton said. “I like to focus on action and let that develop awareness and support. Passive social media allows us to stare through the wrong end of the binocular. Be informed, take action, rally people to your cause.”
Machot Lat Thiep, a former child soldier and Lost Boy who escaped genocide in South Sudan once before, also accompanied Pelton and Freccia. Machot works at a Costco in Seattle, where he lives with his family. In many ways, though, he’s never really left South Sudan. He went back because he wants to save his country, but even a former child soldier wasn’t prepared for the deadly realities facing his people.
“Machot wants to run for governor of Unity State,” Pelton said of Machot’s role in his story. “Failing that he wants to show his fellow South Sudanese that violence is not the only way. He has seen South Sudan in many modes. This was one of the more violent.”
Pelton’s story and Freccia’s photos make up the entire latest issue of VICE, a first for the magazine.
“While the magazine has published innumerable issues devoted to single topics and themes—from art to humor to war crimes in Syria—this is the first time all of its 130 pages have been filled by just two contributors,” said Cappi Williamson, Vice’s communications manager, in a press release last week.
Williamson wrote that the story idea originated with Pelton, “who in early January pitched VICE a long-form story about traveling to South Sudan with Machot Lat Thiep, 32, a former Lost Boy and current manager of a Seattle Costco. Machot had returned to his homeland a year earlier to help put together a new constitution. It had been a jubilant and triumphant trip for the former child solider.”
This time around, jubilance wasn’t a part of the story. Check out the full text here.
