Hamjatta,

A friend called me up yesterday asking if I had seen your posting on MOJA-G,
Gamsem and my humble self. I would not have known about it because I have
not bothered to look up on what is on this list for about two months now.
And if it had not been for your slanderous assault on GAMSEM I would have
perhaps merely browsed through but certainly not stooped so low as to
attempt to react on this list to any thing you write. When last year you
started a debate with me on Marx and your Popperist nonsense and then
abruptly and unilaterally withdrew because it was "not relevant". I ceased
to take you seriously knowing fully well the type of guy you are. I can
smell the likes of you from  kilometres away. It is not that you care or are
serious about the contents of ideas, the exercise of objective scientific
enquiry or in the free exchange of opinions. The polemical storms you raise
are not from the rigours of the quest for social truth and facts but the
pubertal need to attract attention. I have no time for such. If you are in
need of a baby-sitter you will have to look around for it elsewhere.

You now claim in your later posting that it was just some sort of a
journalistic provocation-cum-enquiry and yet you laid out your case so
uncritically from some so-called sources. What nonsense? Your choice of
words like "treacherous, disreputable and deplorable " sound to me more like
your usual spoiled-brat complex than someone engaged in any enquiry. What
state funds is GAMSEM milking? When? How much? From which particular
department of state? Which unimpeachable source says that "the splinter
group formed around Manjang is very much informally involved with the APRC
and Jallow is their contact man"? Who are the others in my splinter-group?
How are we "involved" with the APRC? Why the need to hold this involvement
informal and not fully formal and open? You wrote: " When the NGO runs out
of cash or needs new contracts to be in business, Sarjo uses his position of
influence as Secretary of State to hand Manjang government contracts." What
type of contracts are you talking about: building? cleansing? consultancy?
Why didn't you name one? You claimed one of your sources chanced upon me
looking for contracts at Sarjo's office, which of Sarjo's offices? when? how
would your source know I was looking for a contract? Are you familiar with
the procedures for getting government contracts? All your claims are false
and if you fail to attempt to come forth with facts to substantiate your
wild allegations, I will conclude that you are also a blatant lair. In fact
I was hoping and waiting to meet you at a MRDG-UK meeting that I had been
told would be held at the Athlone Street venue, Camden, London,  yesterday.
This in order to sort out earlier allegations you had made and without
knowing that you are indeed engaged in fresh and even more ridiculous  ones.
All of your allegations are false and I tend to think you know they are.

For the information of other list members GAMSEM (Gambians for
Self-employment) is a co-operative apex of over 116 multi-purpose grass-root
cooperatives. It is one of three apex organisations ( others being NACCUG
and FACS) that today constitute the mainstream of the country's cooperative
sector. Two successor projects sponsored by Swedish-based agencies and
organisations have helped setup GAMSEM between 1994 and 2000. The Federation
is today on its own managing its affairs with its own locally-earned
resources. GAMSEM has helps member societies with numerous micro-projects in
the fields of horticulture, literacy & numeracy, fishing, farming,
agric-input procurement, micro-business, marketing, exports, skills
training, Job-hunters club activities, etc. It aims to be a vehicle for
empowering the powerless and the marginalised; an enterprise of the poor and
the disadvantaged;  a tool of the downtrodden in their efforts at
self-organisation  and the dream to take matters affecting their lives in
their own hands.

In these efforts and in accord with cooperative principles, GAMSEM has to be
politically non-partisan free from all the artificial divides like ethnicism
that only serve to divide the poor and perpetuate their sufferings. In
Brufut and Gambisara, Tambasansang and Brikama-Darsilami, as in many other
places GAMSEM has helped avert politically based divisions to restore unity
within disadvantaged communities.In all of GAMSEM's national and divisional
communitiesd can be found people belonging or sympathetic to all the
political parties of the Gambia. This is not only tolerated but even
encouraged as long as the non-partisan character of the federation is
recognised.

All these are naturally not only irritants to the likes of Mr. Kanteh and
his pro-capitalist mentors who see hateful socialistic traits in all efforts
by poor people to organise themselves, but also by jealous politicians (in
or outside state-power)who want to have all community initiatives within the
orbit of their influences. GAMSEM has for long being the object of all sorts
of suspicions by politicians in or out of power. Its premises had been
raided, properties to the value of D500 000 siezed by the NIA and allied
thugs, its oficial registration withheld from 1994 to 1999 and its workers
harassed and picked up and illegally detained.

But GAMSEM has also had lot of support from the Government of the Gambia in
the form duty waivers, allocation of land  and a grant of over D60 000 for
the construction of a multi-purpose workshop. None of these was sought or
got through the auspices of any person or institution. GAMSEM has never
applied for or got any contract from the Government of the Gambia. On behalf
of a cooperative of tailors we have applied and failed to get  a tender for
the supply of uniforms to the Gambia Civil Aviation Corporation in 1997; on
behalf of a team of unemployed we have applied and failed in getting a
tender for the runing of a canteen at the RVH (if I remeber well in 1999).
Gamsem is a member of the Task Force on both Cooperative Reform and
Employment Policy. For the development of an organic fertiliser product,
Gamsem has sought and got the cooperation of the National Agricultural
Research Institute (NARI) in 1997. If this is collaborationist, we are proud
of that,  knowing all these resources belong to the Gambian tax payers and
that they are being used prudently to address the legitmate needs of our
members.

Infantile radicalists and spoiled brats like Mr. Kanteh cannot sit in the
comfort of their English meadows and expect us to draw our agenda according
to their own prescriptions. Drunk with the eurocentrist sallies of his
gurus, Mr. Kanteh cannot be made to understand the reality on the ground.
Attempts to better the lot of our people cannot be done by state-centered
politics alone. Experiences of recent post-colonial history has shown and
continues to show that state-centered politics can bring no sustainable and
viable reforms of African societies. True we cannot run away from the ugly
misdeeds of current powers that be. WE must confront them over the everyday
abuses, over medium and longterm policies as we move on  but I do not see
the necessity nor feel the need for displaying any political credentials Mr.
Kanteh and his cohorts of the cyber world. His harangue on MOJAimply ignore
therefore.

Regards
Ousman Manjang

>From: Hamjatta Kanteh <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Gambia and related-issues mailing list
><[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Is MOJAG Now In Cahoots With The APRC??!!
>Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2001 15:03:59 EDT
>
>Saiks,
>
>Your bizarrely vacuous objection to my piece failed to grasp and appreciate
>two fundamerntal thrusts about the piece: it was written in the mode of
>journalistic enquiry ala rhetorical speculation and provocation; and
>instead
>of firmly concluding based on evidence, the piece merely treaded very
>cautiously on the basis of the circumstantial evidence tendered therein by
>affirming the subject matter of the piece: Is MOJAG now in cahoots with the
>APRC? Had you grasped and appreciated this fundamental point, you would
>have
>realised the relevance of my provocation-cum-enquiry. This is the first
>point.
>
>Most bizarrely, you wrote of an idyllic MOJAG existence in which the idea
>of
>the movement splintering - as i suggested in my piece - is not mooted; but
>trades on a barbaric falsity. Well,  for all intent and purposes, you
>contradict yourself enormously. According to your own testimony, the two
>prominent members of your movement cited in my piece - Manjang and Sarjo -
>are either no longer in your movement or have remained dormant members.
>That
>admission by itself is enough for one to suggest that all is not idyllic
>about your movement. Stuff is: if you are one big, united and happy family,
>why did Sarjo leave the movement? Why did Manjang - perhaps the most
>articulate and brilliant member of your movement, who as it happened was
>once
>influential to the point of being appointed a spokesperson for your
>movement
>after Jawara lifted the ban on your movement - remain inactive and dormant
>within the movement to the point where you [Saiks] can't even recall when
>he
>was last active as a member? For a very influential MOJAG member like
>Manjang
>to remain inactive over a long period of time would be akin to, say, a very
>prominent member of PDOIS like Halifa Sallah - perhaps Manjang's equivalent
>within that parallel movement - remaining inactive in the politics of
>PDOIS.
>Even if the case remains that there is no splinter group formed from a
>faction within MOJAG, but this idyllic picture you painted of the movement
>is
>purely fictional and a figment of your imagination. I certainly recall that
>Sarjo's wife, Sister Jay or Jainaba Bah, once harangued you on Gambia-L to
>the point where one can read between the lines that there was more to her
>attacks than mere ideological differences. It was a tell-tale factional
>bickering found in most romantic and heady movements professing the
>revolutionary credo.
>
>Anyone who knows anything about the history of revolutionary and romantic
>fringe agitations and or movements, especially those professing to be
>Marxists or leftists of all shades, knows for a fact that what ultimately
>founders these movements is their Achilles heel of internecine
>factionalising. More to the point, these heady and romantic movements
>purporting to be revolutionary are invariably a hot-bed of back-stabbing,
>factionalising and petty personality spats. I believe this to be true of
>MOJAG as things stand. I remain convinced that all is not well with MOJAG
>as
>presently constituted, especially given the curious silence of MOJAG on the
>tragedy unfolding in the Gambia. The chances of the movement splintering
>along the lines i suggested in my piece, is well within reason.
>
>Of course, all of this rests on the presupposition that MOJAG is still
>relevant. As far as most Gambians are concerned, that movement is not only
>a
>spent political force but also on the whole irrelevant. If there is any
>relevance to the movement, it is either for nostalgic purposes as members
>daydream and reflect on the good old days - but sadly, the good old days
>are
>over; and Gambians are not only looking and moving forward with Darbo and
>the
>Alliance, but also have better things to do with their time. Or the other
>relevance of the movement might be in salon politics as the champagne
>Marxists and their ilk sit and talk about their decisively repudiated and
>bankrupt worldview; and chimerically discoursing how to make it relevant
>again to a populace that has moved on forward. In this configuration of
>irrelevant has-beens, MOJAG shall soon be joined by its parallel cousin and
>another soon-to-be spent political force, the PDOIS. This is the second
>point.
>
>As per my accusations of Manjang, i'll let the Brother deny the charges
>before presenting further evidence to attest to the fact that he has done a
>volte-face in his politics.
>
>Hamjatta Kanteh
>
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