The Indian-British novelist Salman Rushdie, one of my favourite writers, turned much of the Middle East against him by writing a book critical of Islamic extremism.
‘The Satanic Verses’ was not just a novel, it was a provocation.
Whether one agrees with it or not is beside the point.
What matters is what Rushdie revealed about the role of the writer in society.
In that book, he describes the poet’s task as one “to name the unnamable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world and stop it from going to sleep”.
It is a striking definition, recognising the non-neutral role of writing, the interventionalist role of writing.
Yet writers should also be defined by what comes after that act of naming.
A writer should claim the world, carry it on their shoulders, and still be able to sleep peacefully at night while knowing that their activism disguised in words was thoughtful, deliberate and necessary to alter the world into a better direction.
SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER
This understanding of responsibility is not unique to Rushdie.
The Palestinian-American intellectual Edward Said argued in ‘Representations of the Intellectual’ that the writer’s role is to “speak truth to power”.
A writer who accepts the problems of the past, present and tries to form a perfect future.
A South African facilitator, Bandile Sizani, once remarked that the significance of a speaker should be evident from their first sentence.
Words, in other words, are never innocent.
They introduce us. They frame us.
They tell the listener what kind of intellectual and moral encounter they are about to enter.
For this reason, words should be honestly calculated.
One must decide what kind of coat the world should wear after reading them.
The same principle applies to writing, particularly opinion writing.
Opinion articles, commonly referred to as op-eds, occupy a unique and powerful space.
They are not academic papers, yet they influence public understanding.
They are not news reports, yet they shape how news is interpreted.
Because of this position, op-eds should not merely express opinion. They should carry weight.
And weight does not come from emotion alone.
An opinion that is not supported by engagement with facts, studies, history or credible public information risks becoming a performance rather than an argument.
Emotion may draw attention but it is research that earns trust.
This is a trap I have fallen into myself. And it is one I see many emerging Namibian opinion writers fall into as well.
MEETING STANDARDS
Our newspapers are increasingly filled with strong feelings of anger, frustration and disappointment.
Those feelings are not accompanied by the intellectual labour required to persuade readers who do not already agree.
That does not mean emotion should be excluded.
Writing without feeling is lifeless and emotion is disciplined by research. It forces the writer to slow down, to verify and question their own assumptions before demanding agreement from others.
Opinion writing becomes valuable when it shows that the writer has done more than react but that they have thought.
Aristotle understood it in ‘Rhetoric’ with his artistic proofs (Ethos, Pathos, and Logos) and the Pew Research Centre substantiated it by researching and finding out that audiences are more likely to trust opinion writing when arguments are supported by verifiable facts and data.
An example could be seen when Junias David, a thought leader, carelessly pointed out in one of his articles that “statistics indicate that single parent households, more so those led by women, contribute significantly to food insecurity” but failed to specify the statistics and the reason to why they are so.
He made all mothers look like bad mothers. He ultimately failed to meet the standard of careful, evidence-based commentary that George Orwell champions in ‘Why I Write’.
This is especially important in a society like ours, where public discourse plays a role in shaping democracy itself.
ETHICAL OBLIGATIONS
In the end, opinion writing is not about winning arguments.
It is about contributing to public understanding. It is about recognising that words, once published, do not belong to the writer anymore they belong to the society that must live with them.
Rushdie understood this risk. So did Orwell. So do many writers who write knowing that words can unsettle, provoke and disturb.
But disturbance without discipline is irresponsible.
If opinion writing is to mean anything, it is to inform, to challenge and shape rather than merely vent, then research must be treated not as an optional extra but as an ethical obligation.
- Shonena Nathanael is an English and linguistics student, an activist and a Programme for Young Politicians in Africa (PYPA) graduate.
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