Hamjatta, I like the way you broke it down to Mr. Manjang about his 'friend'
Mr. Jallow. I also read Mr. Manjang's piece with the same torn emotions you
evinced in your ingenuous/disingenuous dichotomy. When I read his piece I
saw a man that is extremely knowledgeable in what he was saying about
political ideology. Following some of his postings here, one cannot but
admire the intellect and dedication of this man. The services he is
providing to ordinary Gambians cannot go unnoticed. Having said that, I was
sincerely hoping that the man will take the opportunity you gave him in your
earlier piece and redeem himself from the fiasco he committed by declaring
his loyalty to Jallow in Gambian newspapers. By his own admission, he worked
very hard to put together the reply he sent you. Yet, if my memory serves me
right, he used less than three sentences to deal with this Jallow thing.
Frankly, that was the only thing that I was looking for on his piece. As far
as the argument you guys are engaged in regarding political
ideology/theology, I was hoping that everyone involved would take your and
Halifa's truce offer in good faith and debate you at a neutral location some
time in the future. You are all extremely smart and gifted individuals who
in my humble opinion should be using your talents in discourse that is more
meaningful to the masses back home. I must confess that I read through
everything you send. It is just that I would prefer that the material
strictly deal with ways of getting rid of the monster we have back home and
his supporters. So, I respectfully encourage all participants in this debate
to jump at the arrangements being made by Mr. Mboge and debate later. My own
selfish motivations for saying this, is that I greatly value seeing Hamjatta
disparaging Yaya and his cohorts. Coming back to Manjang and Jallow. I
honestly cannot understand how people can put friend and family loyalty in
front of the plight of millions of Gambians. If Manjang shows solidarity to
Jallow because of their friendship, he is in effect siding with evil at the
expense of the Gambian masses. Jallow is working for Yaya. If Jallow is as
sincere as Manjang wants us to believe, then Jallow is not out to sabotage
Yaya. He would want to perform his job to the best of his abilities, being
the sincere and honest man he is. Performing his job to the best of his
abilities means that Jallow will help Yaya perpetuate himself in power. If
we all agree that it is not in the interest of ordinary Gambians that Yaya
stays in power, then we should all refrain from helping him perpetuate
himself. Manjang and Jallow cannot have their cake and eat it at the same
time. If Jallow builds roads that Yaya can brag about and use that to
legitimize rigged elections, then Jallow becomes part of the problem and not
the solution. Remember, at Nuremburg, Hitler was not on trial. It was men
like Goering that were at the dock. It was not a defense to say that 'I was
just Hitler's minister for economic affairs. I did not know that the gold we
were depositing in banks came from the gold teeth of gassed Holocaust
victims. I was just Hitler's minister of works. All I did was build roads
for tanks to cross the eastern front and go massacre millions of Russians in
cold blood.' All these ministers were guilty of conspiracy to commit crimes
against humanity. They were hanged for their crimes. Just like it is absurd
to think that Hitler by himself caused the Holocaust, it is also absurd to
think that Yaya by himself is the architect of the endless misery that is
visited on our people. The man is a moron who did not even finish high
school. He is also a coward of the highest order. Left to him alone, the guy
cannot even run a household. So how did he manage to stay in power for this
long? It is because of people like Jallow and am sorry to say, their friends
and families. To me, these people are even more culpable than the moron.
This logic should be clear to Primary School pupils. It is mind-boggling to
think that sophisticated political activists cannot recognize these truths.
If these people can for one moment look beyond their petty individual self
interests and focus on the plight of the ordinary Gambian, they will realize
that Yaya is evil and they will dissociate themselves from him. People like
Jallow do not deserve the loyalty or respect of anyone, let alone fine
gentlemen like Manjang. Disowning them is not a sign of betrayal or
jealousy. Disowning them is simply saying that you do not want to be
associated with evil in any shape or form. I will say at the top of my voice
that I do NOT have a single friend that is a Yaya supporter, let alone a
Yaya minister. The moment they start dining with the Devil, I disown them
and let them and everyone know of my disapproval of their decision to deal
with the Devil. I do not buy crap from those people. These people will want
to convince you that what they are doing is for the Gambian masses. If they
build roads or bring electricity to the country, the ordinary citizenry will
benefit. That is all crap and a poor excuse to mortgage ones soul to the
Devil for some petty luxuries in return. It is crap because almost all
Gambians will trade those 'developments' for a 'Yaya-less' Gambia. Am sure
Dumo would rather be free from captivity and live a life in Serrekunda where
there are continuous power black-outs and the roads are impassable. You
cannot quantify freedom. All these 'intellectual' prostitutes are fake. They
should just have the decency to come out and say that they are following the
Devil for selfish motives or keep their mouths shut. It is insulting and
sickening for them to come and tell us that they are doing us a favor by
working for Yaya. Would you still be loyal to Jallow if you, Manjang, were
abducted instead of Dumo? Every decent Gambians should put their feet in the
shoes of these victims. That is how you measure the brutality of this
regime. You do not check to see whether they impact you personally. You will
be surprised to know that Yaya never did a single thing to me personally.
Not a single thing was seized from me. I was not jailed for a single day.
But I hate the vermin with a passion because of what he has done to The
Gambia and continues to do to the Gambians. That should be the focus. Not
our personal experiences. What would you say to someone that wants to
overlook all the havoc Yaya has done because Yaya is his friend? Would you
not be offended if that person comes to G_L and say that Yaya was a sincere
and honest person? And that person goes further to say that it was justified
for Yaya to order the shooting of innocent children in order to protect
Gamtel installations. This Jallow guy is a fake. I would not paint all Moja
activists with the same brush, but I cannot understand how you could not
detect this opportunist in your midst. I visited Sweden in 1987 around the
same time the Gambian 'Local' downtown was being shut down by the
authorities. During that visit, I also saw tapes showing Moja activists on
Swedish TV narrating the sufferings they underwent in the aftermath of the
1981 coup. I empathized with them and agreed that they were really
railroaded by a callous regime at the time. One would have thought that
people like that would know better than associating themselves with a regime
that is far more brutal than the one that victimized them in the '80s. The
only thing decent Gambians can offer people like Jallow is, advise for them
to wake up from their slumber and resign from their diabolic posts before
they stain their hands with more blood of innocent Gambians. When they
resign and repent, we will forgive them and welcome them to the struggle.
How can anyone separate Yaya from the people that work with him and say that
Yaya is evil but his supporters are fine? That is illogical. It sounds as
dumb as when people used to say that Jawara is OK but his ministers were
bad. That is ridiculous. If you are a good person, you do not associate
yourself with evil people and help them perpetrate their evil deeds. People
that continue to grease this rotten engine should not be tolerated. Where
does Jallow stand on the abduction of his comrade? Where does Jallow stand
on the UDP ambush? Where does he stand on massacre of our children on April
10 and 11? That should be the benchmark and not whether Jallow still make
personal phone calls to former comrades. If Jallow is sticking with Yaya in
order to feed his family and be driven in an official vehicle and enjoy
other petty luxuries, let him have the decency to come out and say so. We
will just identify him as a person that believes that selling oneself for
money is justifiable; i.e. there is nothing wrong in prostitution. That is
all. Tolerating these people sends them a wrong message. No, it is not all
right that these vermin help perpetuate Yaya and massacre our children just
to be able to feed their own families. I would rather leave a cozy job in
Gambia and come to the U.S. with my whole family and flip burgers than help
perpetuate Yaya. The reason I would confidently do that, is my strong sense
of justice and recognition that the jobs we would be leaving are not that
cozy after all. Yaya can fire Jallow tomorrow if Yaya wants to. So why
mortgage your soul to the Devil for such an unsecured job? On the other
hand, people that detected the Devil from day one and said they do not want
to have anything to do with him are now laughing at the opportunists that
stayed on. There would be more laughter soon. Yeah, those people started off
flipping burgers in the U.S. But you know what? They took their trial in
good faith and persevered in their belief in good over evil. Guess what now?
They are doing extremely well now and they still refuse to worship the
Devil. That is what God fearing people do. They do not just jump at the
first (usually easier and satanic) option and then hope and pray that the
people they trampled on in their selfish pursuits will forgive them.
Forgiveness comes after repentance. Not the other way round.
KB



>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: Reply To Mr Ousman Manjang
>Date: Tue, 1 Aug 2000 21:49:50 -0700
>
>Dear Mr Manjang,
>
>To be brutally honest with you, i found your last mail to be both
>disingenuous and ingenuous. Disingenuous, with Sarjo Jallow's shameful
>complicity in the making of the evil in the Gambia, you chose to absolve
>him despite the preponderance of evidence that he is in this together with
>Jammeh and his thugs. Ingenuous, because unlike many professing Pan African
>Marxists, you chose to be frank and admitted that Marxism at any rate, in
>Africa was a bumbling mis-adventure. In this mail, i should like to deal
>with both strands of thought for i think they deserve our attention and
>indeed, there is a corollary which fittingly should help explain something
>of what you aptly called in your mail as the "African Condition".
>
>Either you were engaging Gambia-L in semantic sophistry or relativist games
>but your declaration of "trust and confidence in SOS Sarjo Jallow's
>sincerity and personal integrity" is very disingenuous. By this
>declaration, you are tacitly sanctioning his continued participation in a
>regime that has defied all human benevolence in its acts of repression
>against the Gambian people. This is a regime that in broad day-light shot
>at point blank with live ammunition, school children and a kid as young as
>three in defiance of all perceptions of civility. A regime notorious for
>its murders, abductions and terrorising of innocent civilians since the
>first day it usurped power from the Gambian people. Without any signs of
>remorse after the brutalities of April 10 and 11, it is still repressing,
>terrorising and threatening Gambians with "six feet deep". A gov't that
>engages in day-light robbery of our State coffers, money laundering other
>vices you would have best left with the New York Mafiosi. Yet, in the face
>of these incriminating evidences, your friend Sarjo still serves [without
>resigning] as the official mouth piece of such a gov't, peddling endless
>lies and supplying intellectual muscle to a nonsense crack-pot like Jammeh
>and you still wheeze with all honesty that Sarjo is "sincere" and still
>having "personal integrity"? I suppose relativism has suddenly dented the
>meanings of "sincerity" and "integrity". Some "integrity" and "sincerity".
>You want people with "personal integrity" and "sincerity", go have a quiet
>word with Pa Sallah Jagne who upon realising how crack-pot Jammeh is,
>placed his pen down and called it quits. If Sarjo Jallow or another
>intellectual prostitute in the Jammeh gov't want us to believe their
>"sincerity" and "personal integrity", they should have all thrown their
>pens in Jammeh's face after April 10 and 11. Yet they have stuck with him
>through thick and thin supplying intellectual muscle to the most brutal
>crack-pot regime in Africa. Yet, you of all people wish us to believe you
>are sincere with your declaration that Jallow still has "sincerity " and
>"personal integrity"? This, after your comrade Dumo Sarho had been abducted
>and still locked up for conniving in an imaginary putsch against the State?
>Her poor forlorn wife running up and down the country trying to seek his
>release but to no avail? Were these what you MOJA-G people were opposing
>during the Jawara days? Is this your interpretation of social justice and
>liberty? One would be excused for extrapolating here that MOJA-G was just
>against the establishment then because it wasn't favourable to their
>selfish interests and when they had their opportunity didn't hesitate to
>join a more repressive regime than Jawara's.
>
>Frankly, one would have thought that an unrepentant, immoral, illegal,
>brutal and crack-pot Fascist regime like the APRC which has literally
>engaged in all that MOJA-G claimed it abhorrs: From daylight robbery of
>gov't coffers to the murder, maiming and terrorising of innocent Gambians;
>would have spurred MOJA-G to join the fray and condemn this gov't as a
>tyranny.  Where is MOJA-G activism in the wake of all these barbarity and
>when a colleague is illegally incarcerated as a prisoner of conscience?
>Yet, we have you, Mr. Ousman Manjang, a former Spokesman for MOJA-G, making
>soft and low risk criticisms of this barbaric regime. Calling a comrade of
>yours who is another intellectual prostitute to this regime as "sincere"
>and having "personal integrity" is an insult to the suffering Gambian
>people. Put bluntly, Sarjo Jallow is another intellectual prostitute and
>have sold his soul to the devil of Kaninlai. Put bluntly, MOJA-G is part of
>the establishment. An establishment unrivalled in the annals of Gambian
>history as barbaric, repressive and totalitarian.
>
>I want to believe you are honest and do share our sense of justice. If you
>are still for liberty and social justice, then you owe it to yourself, the
>Gambian people and humanity in general to disavow your endorsement of Sarjo
>Jallow and join the fray against the tyrannous evil that Jammeh really is.
>Or you can still maintain your disingenuous stance of fence-sitting and
>drool about Sarjo's imagined "sincerity" and "personal integrity". The
>choice ultimately will be yours. It will be a choice us in the opposition
>will respect. The point has to be made though that by endorsing Jallow's
>"personal integrity" and "sincerity", you are by extension endorsing the
>repressive, brutal and crack-pot gov't he whores his intellect to. I will
>repeat to you that we have reached a point in the struggle where no-one can
>have it both ways. Either you are with Jammeh or you are against him and
>join in the war Gambians have declared against him. Just as you have the
>absolute imperative of deeming  see fit where you belong, so do we have
>every right of interpreting such choice. And do please excuse my bluntness.
>I feel i need to take this off my chest.


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