Mr. Sidibeh, listen to your pathetic whimpers. You whine about my (although
you did NOT muster the courage to address me directly) use of strong
language and turn around and describe me as a ‘professional scavenger’ among
other things. Do you know what ‘scavenger’ means in the dictionary I use?
Inter alia it means an ‘animal feeding on dead and decaying matter’. Granted
it can also translate to ‘one who scavenges’ meaning ‘to search through
refuse’. What is stopping me from giving this word my own interpretation and
getting all worked up about you choice of word?

We have an emergency back home with a mad man loose in our midst, and all
you do is bury your head in the sand and obsess about things that happened
way in the past and you can do NOTHING about them now. Theorizing as if you
want to write a history book. When I find time after the elections, I will
read through your garbage thoroughly and take you on the misrepresentations
you made there about the PPP record. Until then, I shall be dealing with
more urgent matters facing our people. I shall be talking about our children
that were slaughtered in broad daylight by trigger-happy thugs acting on
Yaya’s orders. I shall be talking about YOUR comrade’s illegal
incarceration. I shall NOT make up stories about price hikes during the PPP
regime but would instead focus on Yaya and his cohorts that have bastardized
our economy.

Watch this space. I will come back to you later. In the mean time, just do
your thing about PPP and quit whining about my choice of words and making
ridiculous and sinister predictions about what effect those words might have
on Gambian villagers that CANNOT read my words. If your idea of a ‘decent
G_L’ is one that people exchange goofy stories about what they heard on
‘Radio Kankang’ decades ago, be my guest and continue on your nostalgic
storytelling. Others like myself will just call it as we see it unfolding on
the ground. So long as you are NOT accusing me of LYING, I can live with
your whimpers for now.
KB



>From: Modou Sidibeh <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Gambia and related-issues mailing list
><[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: A MOJA CASEFILE
>Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2001 13:44:22 +0200
>
>Hi Everyone,
>
>    The severity of the provocating statements by Mr. Hamjatta Kanteh have
>prompted me to find time to post to the list the present response. Not just
>that I felt particularly affected by Mr. Kanteh's remarks about MOJA, but
>this would also accord me the opportunity to clear the air and attempt to
>place MOJA's current torpor in perspective while ceasing the time to
>comment
>on related matters that have in one way or another affected emotions on the
>list. Much of the mud-slinging here is understandably a refelction of
>current tensions on the ground in Gambia where feelings are running on high
>voltage. But there has been an obvious crusade to stifle debate, stultify
>important questions, by a marauding band of storm-troopers, on a mission
>not
>only to oust the Jammeh dictatorship (a question that all progressive
>Gambians should support) but to replace his regime by one whose identity
>must demand serious questioning, even if i should say we better vote them
>in
>by voting the APRC out. The language has been inflammatory, sometimes
>abusive, always repelling and disengaging, furious and arrogant,sweeping
>and
>essentialist, almost fundamentalist; moron, vermin, filth, garbage - the
>vocabulary of professional scavengers. In sweeping out Jammeh, simple
>decency was also being swept away from Gambia-L. In such a climate
>responsible discourse is impossible. My libertarian position is averse to
>any attempt at policing words, but in societies were democratic
>institutions
>are yet to take strong roots, the deployment of irresponsible language in
>the course of discussions simply razes to the ground genuine attempts to
>focus on issues, saps away enthusiasm and drains away emotional energies,
>opening up the terrain for demagogues, instead of enabling understanding
>and
>enhancing knowledge. If seemingly educated Gambians can engage in so much
>verbal violence can we genuinely claim innocence if the electoral campaign
>degenearates into communal violence, into civil strife?
>
>Yet the choice is easy if you, like myself, speak or write from the bunker
>"security" of your  European or American home: irrespective of who wins the
>elections, the majority of Gambian peasants, workers, the poor and
>marginalised and the voiceless, will for years and years to come yearn for
>basic Human Rights, for democracy, and for freedom from poverty, and  for
>lives capable of some measure of dignity. So our concern, in my view
>(obviously!) ought to be focused beyond this important but transitional
>elections - and that should include even those fellow travellers who have
>declared they would have signed off from this list come October 19th.
>
>
>One thing that would have helped us to better understand MOJA-G's positions
>on current Gambian issues and what it's response would be to various
>questions, is the determination of MOJA-G's existence and how this
>existence
>is perceived and understood to the extent that it affects current national
>issues with a modicum of authority. In a number of interviews with several
>media outlets in the past, Ousman Manjang reiterated the position that
>MOJA-G "could be down but not out"; i.e for all practical purposes it is in
>paralysis but has not been declared dead by those members who see
>themselves
>as being in a position to issue it a death certificate; as an organisation
>MOJA-G is completely bed-ridden and can therefore no longer address issues
>with the sort of authority it once had. While it is possible for individual
>members to challenge this position  (a consequence of MOJA-G's
>organisational strucutre) a great majority of those who were once active in
>MOJA-G both in Gambia and overseas should uphold the view expressed by Mr.
>Manjang in his interviews. A spin-off from this condition is the simple
>conclusion that whoever responds to any enquiry, even provocative ones, on
>MOJA-G can simply be advancing nothing more than personal views. Granted
>naturally that such a view, however biased or inadequate, perhaps may be
>preferable to no view at all. That notwithstanding, it is not at all
>simplistic to question Mr. Hamjatta Kanteh's motives for the provocation,
>given that he directly addressed an organisation he knew quite well, was no
>longer active in any meaningful way. But for the sake of intellectual
>integrity, I would take Mr. Kanteh's interest as expresssions of genuine
>concern for the issues he raised.
>
>
>
>Like most political organisations, those individuals who in 1979 decided to
>found MOJA-G had their motives for doing so deeply buried in the political
>and social history of their country. Gambia was by all means a neo-colonial
>state with a tiny economy dominated by the state and its institutions.
>There
>were only a handful of relatively large  business houses a significant
>number of which were either owned by foreign interests or naturalised
>Asian,
>Lebanese and Syrian nationals: Maurel & Prom, Shyben Madi & Sons,
>Chellarams, Sonar Stores, The Madis (who were the former owners of the
>Atlantic Hotel), B. Hocheimy and Sons, CFAO amongst others. Many of these
>companies have their roots in Gambia's colonial past and they entrenched
>their presence in the neo-colonial economy by slowly but gradually
>promoting
>Gambians into junior managerial positions. Also active in the commmerical
>sector were basic commodities import enterprises such as Momodou Musa Njai
>&
>Sons and Mbye Njai & Sons and a few other indegenous Gambian family
>businesses. Fewer still were involved in the groundnut trade, while retail
>outlets of consumer goods remained almost entirely in the hands of
>Mauretanian moors. Eventhough the private sector was expanding, especially
>the hotel industry, most employed Gambians were under the payroll of the
>state; a condition which easily prompted the government to militate
>repressively against the legitimate demands of organised labour. Added to
>these, and perhaps more importantly, was the presence of foreign controlled
>commercial cartels in the form of banks, construction companies, insurance
>brokers all in symbiotic relations with a Gambian class of parasitic
>politicians and petit-bougeiosie.
>
>
>The international oil crises of 1973 dealt a heavy blow to the Gambian
>economy but the effects of recession were exacerbated by gross government
>incompetence and mismanagement. To pay for increased fuel cost the
>government raised import duties on basic consumer goods, an exercise that
>ate away wage increases of the past years. The prices of commodities soared
>while the the producer price of groundnuts continued to fall. The poor
>peasants in order to compensate for their lost in revenue, charged urban
>dwellers more cash for locally produced agricultural goods. Backs that were
>already laden with the burden of unaffordable food imports faced the added
>terror of artificially created shortages. For the urban workers, price
>hikes
>largely incurred as a result of cascading import duties on basic goods
>meant
>a sharp fall in the value of real wages. To keep revenues at a constant
>level the government embarked on a programme of mass lay-offs while in some
>cases it keept wages low by threatening to hold back on permanent
>employment
>status for workers.  Labour unrest followed, culminating in one strike
>action after the other. The government responded by banning the powerful
>Workers Union followed by the arrest and trial of many of its leaders in
>1976/77. The lay offs and the stagnation of wages in all sectors of the
>economy led to an increase in the crime rate, followed by rampant
>prostitution and  drug abuse amongst the urban youth. Eventhough the
>government was partly right in blamimg the oil crises and the sahelian
>drought for the contry's economic woes, its continued import of luxury
>goods, and the incessantly huge volumes of air travel overseas by
>government
>officials (including the president himself) shattered any veneer of
>credibility it had. Yet this state of affairs was the beginning of a
>downward spiral never before known in the barely ten-year old independant
>West African state.
>
>   Within the state machinery, reports of corruption scandals overtook one
>another as theft, nepotism and bribery exposed the managerial anarchy in
>one
>ministry after another. Sums involved in these scandals measured so
>significantly to the country's GDP that it became impossible to dismiss the
>incidents as isolated cases of unethical administrative practice.
>Corruption
>was, as it now is, a pathological condition in the Gambia, eating into
>departmental budgets, hampering the progress of development projects, and
>impeding the growth of a national moral conscience of her own. By the late
>1970s, paymasters took short cuts out of the country with the salaries of
>workers in briefcases, while their assistant time-keepers drew out salary
>slips for unexisting workers all over the country - even in the Area
>Councils; ambulance services in the country-side came to a standstill
>because of a shortage of petrol, yet PWD drivers would be hosepiping
>gallons
>of fuel into taxis for a dalasi below the market price. Drugs destined for
>the out-patient wards at the RVH found their way into closets of private
>pharmacies, while dispensers switched roles in to qualified medical
>practitioners prescribing all sorts of drugs to illiterate peasants.
>Gambian
>passports and birth certificates were sold to foreigners through the
>services of professional dealers ("dugalanteh katt") and big men could pay
>for immunity from water and elctricity bills; not only did court exhibits
>disappear while in police custody but  well-connected clients could
>purchase
>prosecution files out of existence. Officials would overprice the cost of
>equipment while forging LPOs and purchase orders bled state coffers white.
>In the business sector the acquisition of government contracts became
>synonimous with returning kick-backs to facilitators, while obtaining bank
>loans became impossible without an under-the-counter payment of a
>commission
>to some shoddy loan officer. Issueing loans without sufficient colateral
>became a notorious practice at the Gambia Commercial and Development Bank.
>(Little wonder that it made a laughable operational profit of D20,000 -U$
>2000 - in one particular year)!! (I remember particularly the case of an
>employee -I think a son of Sefo Abu Khan - stealing D87,000? from the NTC;
>and another case of high profile theft from Gambia Airways - some of you
>out
>there must remember?). This, Gambia-Lers, is the phenomenon that the
>students and youth of those days referred to as the "Rat Race".
>
>In the political plane, the country was undergoing tremendous upheavals.
>Jawara, in a shrewed and manipulative move to trim the winds in the sails
>of
>his foremost competitiors in the PPP hierarchy, broke ranks with Sheriff
>Dibba and Sheriff Ceesay. Both Dibba and Ceesay, were, in the eyes of
>Mandinka traditionalists, better qualified to lead the nation, being the
>sons of Chiefs, while Jawara was a mere "farabo" or "karanke" (leather
>worker). Dibba formed the National Convention Party while Ceesay formed the
>Democratic Congress Alliance both opposing the PPP. To humiliate Dibba
>publicly, his former party buddies exposed damaging reports about his
>brother's smuggling activities. Ceesay on the other hand, was made to
>publicly apologise to Jawara on a particular issue (I can't remember
>precisely what). The effect was that the two, who were long-time childhood
>friends became bitter enemies. But the intolerable economic conditions and
>the disintegration of the institutions of state coupled with a rising level
>of discontent within broad cross-sections of the entire population
>generated
>the growth of a political radicalism never before experienced in the
>country. An underground paper secretly dumped at selected junctions in the
>urban centres instantly captured the imagination of the entire student body
>in high schools. Students and the youth simply found their grievances
>concretely articulated in the pages of the newspaper which carried a strong
>streak of left-wing analyses. The appearance of the Voice of The Future
>catapulted an already discredit government into a frantic search for
>scapegoats. Shortly afterwards another radical party, Gambia Socialist
>Revolutionary Party, founded by Pengu George, also appeared on the
>political
>scene.
>
>On the international stage, Southern Africa was still in Chains. Ian Smith
>was vowing that Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) would be ruled by white
>settlers for another thousand years. The CIA was colluding with the
>Apartheid regime in South Africa destabilising the entire region while
>bankrolling and arming right-wing and mercenary movements bent on
>supressing
>the struggles of African peoples for liberation from colonial and imperial
>domination. Africans were being slaughtered in those countries still under
>colonial rule while in those others which gained formal independence from
>European and American imperialism supported all kinds of covert
>insurgencies
>to destabilise and destroy local experiments at democratisation. Concrete
>support for the struggles of African peoples came from the socialist block
>of countries. Guinea-Bissau was free but still bled profusely from gory
>injuries sustained in the bloody struggle for independence from a viciously
>brutal and fascist Portuguese colonial domination led by Amilcar Cabral;
>Steve Biko had just been killed; while Mandela, Sisulu, Mbeki, Kathrada,
>Luthuli, Waochopi, and many other leaders of the anti-Apartheid struggle
>languished in prison - almost forgotten by the world. In the U.S, African
>Americans waged violent struggles for civil rights and against racial
>oppression and discrimaination. All over the world oppressed peoples were
>fighting for liberation from all kinds of exploitative and opressive
>orders.
>
>This, from my perspective, is how the world looked like (from Kartong,
>anyway) when in December 1979, a group of Gambians concerned with the
>plight
>of their country, and inspired by and informed with the struggles of other
>people for basic Human Rights, decided to form  a political organistion
>called the Movement for Justice in Africa - Gambian section. The choices
>were even then pretty simple, but within a year they were even going to be
>much simpler:
>
>The cleansing services in Banjul collapsed making the invasion of that
>island by swarms of giant mosquitoes a nocturnal nightmare; the irregular
>supplies of electricity and water became even more erratic making life in
>the slums unbearable. During the parliamentary budget session of 1981, the
>Minister of Health admitted that infant mortality rate had risen to a
>horrible 33%!! Almost all the parastatals, GPMB, GUC (Give Us Candles,
>young
>Gambians humurously translatedit), Gambia Ports Authority, Gambia Public
>Transport Corporation, and the Agricultural Development Bank together made
>cumulative losses of more than D30 million -much of this loss incurred
>through theft and various white-collar crimes and the failure of
>departments
>to own to their debts.
>
>In October 1980 six MOJA members found at Koro Sallah's residence in
>Half-Die were arrested by an armed contingent of the Field Force. During an
>intense campaign for their release in March 1981, violent riots broke out
>at
>Yundum Training College and the Anglican Vocational Training Centre for
>better conditions leading to the dismissal of many students and the closure
>of campuses. In April anti-riot police stormed the Albert market to
>suppress
>strikes by market women and stall-keepers against higher stall tax; during
>the same month radio announcers petitioned for better working conditions
>but
>were dismissed despite widesprpead public sympathy for their demands. On
>the
>1st May workers demonstrated at the MacCarthy  Square with their grievances
>scrawled on colourful placards demanding amongst other things that a stop
>be
>placed on the practice of perpetual daily-paid labour. (I was there and no
>other than O J captured the hearts of the workers when he condemned the
>injustices suffered by the workers and promised he would march with them to
>the State House the very next day.
>The president, we later learned, in his characteristic answer to the
>grievances of the workers promised he " would look into it". Later that
>month, dock workers met in one of the town halls, threatening strike action
>for more pay, insurance and pension rights. On June 30, members of the
>workers union defiantly met to rebuild their banned union.
>
>On and on and on continued the struggle for basic rights and rice, for
>better education and against corruption and nepotism, and against a
>decadent
>regime that was leading the country into a dark and dreary abyss. For years
>the PPP government was unable to muster the moral courage to self-criticism
>and lacked any plausible formula to solve the deepening crises. On July 31
>that year all these contradiction exploded into a rebellion led by Samba
>Kukoi.
>That morning about a dozen MOJA members met to deliberate on what to do in
>the circumstances. A majority of them agreed that they would remain calm
>and
>would not as a matter of principle support the coup; but they would arm
>themselves to defend the country in case of any violent Senegalese
>inrtervention. In that fight many of its members died while some
>eventually,
>spent years in detention at Mile II prisons. Others were forced into exile.
>
>MOJA was not a romantic organisation intoxicated with adventurist heroism.
>It was a determined group of people many of whom  sacrified their lives for
>the improvement of the Gambian condition.
>
>(to be continued)
>
>Momodou S Sidibeh
>Stockholm/Kartong
>
>(To avoid confusing me with another Modou Sidibeh on the list kindly note
>that I am neither from Serrekunda nor Gunjur - in case Amadou Janneh
>implies
>otherwise)
>
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