Folks,

I must admit that I am very angry. So angry I am afraid I will not be
able to write anything sensible. But kindly allow me to say a few things
before you read the nobel lecture delivered by this year's nobel
laureate in literature, Harold Pinter.
We in Stockholm have the privelege of being around the nobel festivities
and other media events surrounding it. There is always a round-table
discussion with some of the world's greatest literary minds chaired by a
great friend of Africa, Per Westberg, who is also a member of the
Swedish Academy. Per Westberg has not only written a lot on African
literature, he had been quite active in the anti-apartheid struggle, and
has good friends  amongst ANC leaders.
A few years ago, he chaired such a high profile discussion in honour of
V. S. Naipaul who was in the company of other nobel laureates Nadine
Gordimer, Gunther Grass, and Seamus Heaney. While the entire team
expressed the awesome cruelty of the U.S drumbeating for war against
Iraq and its deliberate drowning of the entire world in a relentless
misinformation and disinformation campaign demonising Saddam Hussein,
our third-world nobel laureate was twisting in his chair admitting
almost literally that he has no capacity to understand oppression.
Instead of summoning an arsenal of repulsion against the imminent
destruction of Mesopotamian civilisation, and the consequental slaughter
of innocent Iraqis, V.S. Naipaul sat there, severely perturbed and
wrinkled by the horrendous destruction of the Buddha statues in the
sandstone cliffs of Bamiyan by the Taliban. The contrasting cast was
cinematic. Gunther Grass threatend that he would become angry unless
V.S.N opened his literary eyes to the real evil consuming the world!
V.S.Naipaul made me so sick all my plans for christmas that winter
simply melted into the snow. Two things that consoled me were the
memories of Stephen Hawking's assertion that some people get the nobel
prize for all sorts of things, and that of Edward Said labelling Naipaul
a novelist of imperialism.

Harold Pinter's  lecture  reminds  one of the possibilites of a
revolutionary  Nicaragua, but also  offers  a concrete perspective of
the struggle for democracy  in Gambia. So my anger has its roots not so
much in what the APRC government is robbing us of, (that is sufficiently
clear to even the blind amongst us), but to how the NADD leadership has
resolved to manage the revolutionary situation that obtains at home.
What does Sidia Jatta mean by his reasons for not agitating for a
nation-wide peaceful demonstration aginst the arrest of the other
leaders? That Jammeh is luring the people to demonstrate in order to
oblige in the opportunity to shoot them? Is NADD admitting that our
liberation lies in the hands of Jammeh? Does empowering the people mean
playing by Jammeh's rule book until his conscience balks? He denies NADD
a peaceful rally(!). So we take him to court and verdict turns out in
NADD's favour. Do we then rally or demonstrate, as he would have upheld
his sinister plans to shoot us down? Come on folks, what is happening here?

We must support NADD even more than ever before. But let us frankly and
unequivocally and respectfully tell NADD that loyalty should not be
equated with silence! With less anger and with a little more time, I
will discuss these questions eventually; and I hope you also start
thinking about where we are going.

Harold Pinter's Nobel lecture:

http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/2005/pinter-lecture.html


Cheers,
Momodou S Sidibeh

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