Dear Mr. Kanteh,

Sorry, it took some time before I could access my mail and see your angry
response to my rejoinder to your brilliant piece on marxism and the African
Left. I have also seen the reactions of Mr. Dampha and Saidykhan supporting your
position on my stand on SOS Jallow. I repeat I will not be drawn into a any
debate on this matter  right now. Suffice to say the following: I was approached
for an interview by the Independent Newpaper after I wrote a letter to all the
papers asking for the immediate release of Dumo Sarho. In that interview, I was
quoted as saying:

"Asked how he feels about his former MOJA colleagues now in the APRC, Mr.
Manjang said given the political impasse MOJA is trapped in today, I respect
ex-members' rights to opt for alternative political organisation. EX-MOJA
members are to be found in all political parties today and I understand that.
What I consider a betrayal is the membership of former members in organisations
like the July 22nd Movement and Youth Action Groups that in 1996 campaigned for
"no elections" and that continue to engage in political thuggery. This he said
is a clear betrayal of some of the fundamental tenets of MOJA's political
thought.
On former activist Momodou Sarjo Jallow's appointment as Secretary of State in
the APRC government Mr. Manjang expressed his strong confidence in Mr. Jallow's
sincerity and integrity. Mr. Jallow , he said "was in the civil service
immediately prior to his appointment as Secretary of State. So it is just a
continuation of the service he was doing for the Gambia Government" Furthermore,
Mr. Manjang explained, "unlike me, Mr. Jallow has always been supportive of the
politics of the AFPRC/APRC and it was only logical for him to join them, which
is a far cry from political opportunism"
Gentlemen, I must say I still stand by these words no matter what amount of
abusive tirades anyone may care to heap on me. I can understand your infuriation
but do not agree with your conclusions. I must again say I am sorry, Mr. Dampha,
but I cannot shift the ideological discussion to a more "neutral" place in
London because I cannot afford to go to London to iron out issues with anyone
just now. I must also say that I do not believe that the discourse with Mr.
Kanteh is anything resembling a hooha that warrants a "truce". We are simply
comparing our beliefs on issues that some of us think are relevant to the
present day condition of our nation and its people. I know there are  others who
believe such discussions are too far-fetched from the realities of the day. This
difference is not surprising. A growing trend of current political "thought" is
the "death of ideologies". This belief easily fits into the perspective of
people extremely "pissed of with " certain political situations and are in a
hurry to put an end to such situations. I do not see either Mr. Kanteh's
"militant anti-marxism"  or my effort to give the other side of the story as
something "irrelevant" or totally out-of-the-way. Granted, it is not directly a
ticket to Mecca, but a talk over whether to travel to Rome or to Mecca. We can
wait until we reach the ticket desk at the airport before deciding, or we can
decide before reaching the airport. I don't think we are in such hurry that we
can't stop to think. We do not want to wait until we are high up in the air
before we realize that the journey to salivation is in fact in another flight
speeding towards the opposite direction, do we?

Coming to Mr. Kanteh: Yes I agree that if we keep this debate too "technical",
we will not only loose our "audience", we will also loose our bearings; which we
sure do need if it is going to be of any relevance to the present situation in
The Gambia. But allow me to say just this: Yes, Marx took much of his stuff from
others. Marx himself never said he made it up all by himself. In fact he never
went ut to propound an ideology, a belief system or any orthodoxy.  He was oft
quoted as saying `"All I know I am not a Marxist." Yes you are right, Marx was a
Hegelian in his student days and never stopped to be one. What he did was to
strip Hegelian Dialectics of its obscurantist leanings to reconcile it with
Historical Materialism which was also critiqued for Feurbach's Monism.  He
further critically analysed the Fabians and Proudhon's Property is Theft and the
thoughts of other anarcho syndicalists of his time. From his acclaimed chronicle
of the French Revolution (Class Struggle in France and the Paris Commune) and
his Critique of The Gother Progamme) he was able to extend the scope of
philosophy into the realm of the political and social sciences and to show the
power and quality of his analytical method. The discoveries in the natural
sciences that came in the wake of the Industrial Revolution in Europe, the
genius of Engel's works in scientific investigation,  and English economic
theory, all went to help build a systematic paradigm. To say Marx was
"unoriginal"  and stole from Newton's theories is to miss its essence. There is
much more than catches the eye, incidental semblances are here been mistaken for
conformity in substance. Discoveries in the scientific world are hardly done
originally. Most, if no all,  scientific advances leap from established
platforms  Mr. Kanteh sorry for getting this "technical" because that was where
I found the gist of your argument. When it comes to its relevance to the African
condition you have only cited a couple of post colonial African failures in
Ghana, Tanzania and Zimbabwe, which I thought we had agreed were akin to the
unexceptional "Rightist" post-colonial African states as much as to the
"Leftist" ones..

At the dawn of Independence, Mr. Kanteh, the choices faced by the nascent
African State was straightforward enough. The native propertied classes had long
been annihilated as an economic force. What remained was a newly created elite
who came to power empty handed. Deformed socio-economic units that were created
to be only part of the peripheries of huge predator-economies were suddenly
severed from the center had the option of either "re-attaching" or going it
alone. The second option was however fraught with lots of formidable stumbling
blocks: For the first economies inherited the burden of carrying bureaucracies
that were inherently expansive while being shockingly unproductive. Fresh
capital was needed while there was little that could be mobilized from within.
Even a great deal of the domestic resources available could hardly be called
anything other than "dead capital" because they were tied in herds of
status-cattle, virgine bush land and weak and distorted market forces in an
economy that was . A "capitalisation" campaign based on persuasion would take
considerable time before it could overcome traditions as old and deep-rooted as
the hills. To draw up and implement a hierarchy of priority areas for
investment-tageting required a kind of discipline and organisationalism that
hardly existed in the post-colonial state. To reattach meant surrender and
neo-colonialism that even its pursuers never openly claimed. To move forward, or
even to keep intact the heritage of the departing colonialists African states
needed to identify sources of investment capital. This was the big question,
where is to be got from and who will implement the investments? How would you
have handled such a situation Mr. Kanteh?

Regards
Ousman Manjang
Hamjatta Kanteh wrote
:

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