Sudan Man: deconstructing a George Forbes feature story

This report is a deconstruction of a feature article “Our Man in Sudan” by Cameron Stewart from the Weekend Australian Magazine on 15-16 September, 2007. The article is about Australian citizen George Forbes who achieved media headlines when he faced the death penalty after being charged with murder in Southern Sudan. After three months, the news story ended when a higher court eventually overruled a lower court sentence and Forbes returned to freedom in Australia.

Cameron Stewart’s 3,600 word article tells Forbes’s story in feature format. It was
presented as the second of five feature articles in the magazine that weekend and was billed on the front of the magazine as “How I survived a living hell in an African jail”. The article is an example of a news feature that is simultaneously a backgrounder and a historical feature. It is an in-depth of a story that made recent news and takes advantage of the fact there is already public interest in the subject matter.

Stewart’s story is a meticulous timeline of events especially while the case in front of the Sudanese courts. Stewart had to piece together events that were taking place simultaneously in several theatres of action. Stewart’s sources of information included his newspaper’s clippings file of the initial news story and the knowledge he gained from detailed interviews with Forbes. Stewart also gathers information and quotes from six other key actors: a politician, a diplomat, a lawyer, a barrister, a pastor and a medical scientist.

The one key question Stewart asks in his article is “Why hadn’t (Forbes) run
when he had the chance?” It is the only question asked by the journalist that ends up in the article. Stewart asks this question so he can set up a detailed account of Forbes selfless actions to protect the men working for him and the consequences of this action. It is an open question designed to get more than a few words for a satisfactory answer. Forbes himself drives the narrative forward with his complex answer to the question.

Because Stewart opened his account with a narrative of a dramatic incident in the story, when the outcome is uncertain, the feature is obliged to convey the story’s theme early. But he moves forward to the present tense of the interview before giving a potted thumbnail of the story in paragraphs 6 to 8. Only then does Stewart settle in to a chronological account of the story before returning to the interview setting at the end.

Stewart goes for a “gotcha” lead to grab the reader’s attention. It is a suspense lead, playing with readers expectations and withholding information. Why is there a dead man next to Forbes and why would Forbes be next? The reader wants to know more. The last paragraph of the article is a ‘looking ahead’ closer where the reader is invited to project ahead to coming circumstances.

The article takes its style and tone from the stark accompanying picture of Forbes next to a noose in a cell-like room. It also owes a lot to the ‘cloak and dagger’ nature of the article’s misleading title “Our Man in Sudan” (with its connotations of Graham Greene and espionage). Forbes is not a spy or a government employee. Nevertheless it establishes a sombre tone that is suitable for the seriousness of the story.

The use of quotes from Forbes is designed to flesh out his personality. We hear of Forbes administering an antibiotic to a dying man, showing a sense of humour as he discusses “Monty Python moments” and his “few bad apples” quote shows his native optimism. Len Granato calls these anecdotes “the heart and soul of the feature story and demonstrate attitude and outlook".

Southern Sudan, Dia, and George Forbes

On Mayday, six men were charged of murder in Southern Sudan. They were three Sudanese: Joseph Dut, Isaac Chol, and Matur Maher and three Kenyans: Bernard Alumasa Mheri, James Munyao Mbithi and George Forbes. The last man, Forbes, also has Australian nationality. The men work for a Kenyan construction company in the southern Sudan town of Rumbek. They were charged over the killing of Ukrainian Mykola Serebrenikov, who worked as a flight engineer for another firm.

The Ukrainian man was found hanged from a towel rack at the Kenyan construction company's property. Several locals had chased him to the site and he was allowed in. Two independent post-mortem reports (one done in Kenya) concluded that Serebrenikov’s death was suicide. But the judge believed otherwise and said it was murder. His judgement was based on the testimony of Awan Gol, the deputy state governor, who said he had seen the body of the Ukrainian and he was suspicious about the towel rack from which he was found hanging. "It was not a high place where he could hang himself, his knees were on the ground, and his hands on the ground," he said.

The judge remanded the six men to appear in court on 7 May in Rumbek. The city of Rumbek does not belong to Sudan itself but rather Southern Sudan, officially a “semi-autonomous southern region” but unofficially the second city of a new country. Then Kenya launched a protest about the detention of its citizens despite an autopsy report done in Nairobi showing it was suicide. The Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) spokesman Major General Kuol Deim Kuol dismissed the Kenya autopsy and refuted their claims that SPLA soldiers are harassing Kenyan nationals working and doing business in Southern Sudan. He claimed that three Kenyans killed 15km inside Southern Sudan were in fact “Kenyans bandits”.

Meanwhile the Australian media jumped on the case of the third suspect George Forbes. Forbes was born in Kenya but migrated to Australia 20 years ago. He lived in Sydney and Brisbane before travelling to Sudan. On 26 April, the Sydney Morning Herald quoted a Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade spokesman who gave the facts of the case. “An Australian man has faced a Sudan court charged with murder and failing to prevent suicide.” Australia had no-one inside Southern Sudan and was relying on British contacts inside the country to see if they could make contact with Forbes.


The Fairfax press described Forbes as 45 and an employee of Trax International Construction. It mentioned five other arrests. Serebrenikov, the Ukrainian engineer, was found hanged in a bathroom at Trax's compound. If found guilty of murder, the six men could all be sentenced to death.

When the case came to trial on 7 May, the judge heard the evidence and said he would give his verdict on 18 May. There are three possible outcomes. They are: death by hanging, life imprisonment, or the payment of dia to the victim's family. Dia is bloody money that is institutionalised in the Sudanese law that Southern Sudan has inherited. One of Forbes’ relatives in Rumbek for the trial was directed by the judge to conduct talks with Serebrenikov's family about financial compensation. Under Sudanese customary law, dia is paid in the form of cattle, at the rate of 31 cows for one human life. The judge said they should find out what Serebrenikov’s family want. But that might not be easy to do. Rumbek is a long way from Kiev. The judge challenged the men to produce a member of the Ukrainian's man’s family in court which they were unable to do.

Meanwhile, the Australian ambassador to Egypt, Robert Bowker came to Rumbek to attend the trial. A former Associate Professor in the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies, the Middle East and Central Asia at the Australian National University, Bowker is probably aware that the trial may not be foremost in Rumbek’s priorities.

The town was initially chosen to be the new country’s capital but was overtaken by Juba. With a population of less than 100,000, Rumbek's facilities remain poor. The city was destroyed by two decades of civil war with Khartoum’s central Government that left 1.5 million dead. Here, people live in traditional thatched huts and hardly anyone has electricity or running water. But there is a sense of optimism as the city tries to pick up the pieces of peacetime.

The trial of the six men rumbles on.