My Good Friend Halifa,
After promising myself not to bring it up again to you in public and
against my will, I have to re-echo again an earlier clarion call I made to
you and other political players in the Gambia soon after the student massacre
of April 10th. and 11th; that this is the period of unity of purpose in
restoring decency and respect to our body polity. Well, it seems the message
is still stuck in the bottle and begs to be set free still.
But first I have a side issue I wish to take up with you here. Each time
you critique Jammeh, one always hear you make parallels with the Jawara
experience. If you lightly chide Jammeh's unprecedented daylight robbery of
our state coffers, you strongly remind us that it has a precedent; Jawara did
it before. If Jammeh has his Crude Oil Saga, Jawara had his own crude oil
arrangements with the Nigerians. If Jammeh had his 10th and 11th. April 2000,
then Jawara had his July 1981. And so the analogies go. By invoking and
juxtaposing these two experiences at each juncture of your critique of
Jammeh, you are not only giving allure to Jammeh apologists who still insist
on Jammeh's legitimacy and well-meaningness, but you also give ammunition to
those who see you as closet apologists of Jammeh. That is not all. By using
this methodology in your critique, you are also helping to clog the arteries
of the mode of our discourse on the political, social and economic future of
the Gambia. Not only is this methodology crude, absurd and obfuscating, but
it also goes on to unwittingly give succour to the poses of Jammeh and those
who still stand by him. These days whenever you point out the atrocities of
Jammeh especially on April 10th. and 11th., his supporters will always remind
you of July 1981 as if these two very ugly episodes can be compared by even
the most crude comparative method that exists. Your militantly anti-Jawara
rhetorics hasn't died still 6 years after Jawara had gone from the political
stage. Six years after we said tata to Jawara, you are still invoking the old
crannies and ironies that represented Jawara's years. This has a blinder;
that of clouding your mental horizon to glaring new social, political and
economic realities. It is now commonplace now for you to hear from Gambians
who still remember your fiery and noble criticisms of Jawara to say
explicitly that Halifa Sallah's slashing knife that he cuts down the mighty
and powerful in the past, has become blunt today. Whilst I would not
subscribe to some of the unkind criticisms they have levelled against you, I
would be explicit in saying that your inherently and militantly anti Jawara
sentiments has turned you into a low risk and soft critic of Jammeh. But that
is hardly why I write to you today and I do not want to risk another debate
on that issue.
It has been said again and again that for an effective legal assault on
the tyranny that is Jammeh through constitutional means, those who oppose him
must stick together through thick and thin for they have a common lethal
enemy that divided, they would have to move literally mountains to peacefully
eject Jammeh into the dustbin where he rightly belongs. Not only is this the
most glaring reality in the Gambia today, but it's raison d'être is not only
moral but patriotic and measures to whatever Pan African sentiments one
subscribes to. There is another interesting side to this; that is it's
Realpolitik. Yes, Realpolitik has been and is still scorned by moralists and
idealists alike as a corruptible phenomenon to the body politic and only a
short termist palliative that can only lead to increment in problems it seeks
to eradicate in the first place. However, it's efficiency and strategic
importance in moments like the Gambia is living cannot be stated in lines but
in sentences and perhaps columns. Realpolitik states that in a moment like
this, ideals, rules, principles and the rest of our quarrels are eschewed as
a means to an end. The end being in restoring decency and respect in our body
polity without which it would be foolhardy for one to expect to pursue one's
ideals and visions within the framework of institutionality and legality.
So Realpolitik is the means and decency and respect in our body politic
the end. This is pragmatism in the face of tyranny. It requires those who
sincerely wish the Gambia well and belief that Jammeh only means trouble, to
reconcile their differences in the name of restoring decency and respect that
the Gambia has known before. If you belief, as you poignantly told me
earlier, that this is a time to share, then your vehemence of the tragic
shooting of our brothers and sisters during the April 10th. and 11th.
massacre, should suffice for you to reconcile your doubts about the other
players in the political arena with your opposition to the tyranny that
Jammeh represents. This doesn't mean one has eternally given up on moral
disagreements with other parties or life long held principles. No. Rather it
is respite in the name of an end that would bring decency and respect without
which one cannot peacefully co-exist with others who have opposing ideals.
And yes it is unmistakably Realpolitik. But so what? Realpolitik can be the
only Zeitgeist in these harrowing times of our country's history. Let me
irredeemably determinist here. It is inevitable for us to fall back on
Realpolitik to salvage our country before it gets too late.
It is a known fact that one of most detrimental things that has become
fundamentally part of the African psyche, the "inevitability" mentality [or
as the brave Saul Khan puts it, "Yallah Bahna" syndrome] has some of the most
debilitating effects on Africans to rise up against tyranny since
independence from the colonial master. Indeed as the critic Bernard Berenson
put it some 57 years ago at the height of Nazism/Fascism, the war and its
roots causes, has led him far from the doctrine, lapped up in his youth about
the inevitability of events.........he then went on to say explicitly that:"i
believe less and less in these more than doubtful and certainly dangerous
dogmas, which tend to make us accept whatever happens as irresistible and
foolhardy to oppose." Berenson's scepticism and wisdom aside, if as we all
believe that the Gambia is a sovereign nation and that we are the masters of
her destiny, then it is morally incumbent on us all to join hands to defeat
whatever seeks to deprive our future generations and the present a place to
call home. This is the Zeitgeist of the moment and yes it calls for none
other than Realpolitik; bending the rules if need be and embracing others we
might not agree with but wish to co-exist with. The rhetoric of this moment
should be an alliance of Gambian patriots to regain their country of birth.
And another thing. As I counselled you earlier of your attempts to engage
this gov't in a civil discourse after the April events, I will repeat again
that it will amount to zilch for the struggle to keep on writing endless
letters to them each time they renege on promise. In fact it only acts to
unwittingly help these goons to cover their backs more as soon as you point
out their lapses. It's been three months now and we are yet to see anything
done about those who callously shot at our children and the hierarchy that
gave the orders. Instead these hooligans and sadists still prowl the
corridors of society whilst the victims are still in pain. The UDP gets
ambushed, a thug loses his life and less than 48 hours they have charged
people with the murder. Things are deteriorating by the hour. Mass dead of
the night arrests and abductions are becoming the order of the day. If
politicians like yourself on the ground don't exploit the situation and form
a coalition to combat these trends, then armed and other reactionary groups
will by the default carry out your responsibilities for you. That would be
the ultimate betrayal of the People and indeed unforgivable.
As it is I'm just shattered and nursing a nasty headache after a horrible
day. So I will break it here and anticipate your usual warm response. I hope
you wouldn't decipher this as another means of a "pinprick" distracting your
attention from the bigger picture. But then is there a bigger picture than
that of constructing a dialogue on how one can rid the Gambia of the
metastasizing cancer that is Jammeh?
Hamjatta Kanteh
hkanteh
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