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Subject:
From:
chernob jallow <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
The Gambia and related-issues mailing list <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Thu, 25 Nov 1999 16:28:12 PST
Content-Type:
text/plain
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Note: A tight schedule with my classes distracted me from Gambia-L. Hence
the brief delay in responding to your response.
                      -----------------

Well. It's been quite an exciting literary cross-fire. It ought to be. It is
nice to provoke a debate. Nicer still, when a proliferation of comments and
ideas follow, and when these comments and ideas - their comicality or
illogicality notwithstanding - are given due recognition and
acknowledgement.

I must say that I am a bit titillated by your arguments this time. It is a
better alternative from your earlier comments that were so  dogmatically
Pan-Africanist, misleading and lacking objectivity, that it was tempting to
toss your rejoinder to Ayittey's article aside. I said that you argued your
points from the position of a Pan Africanist, and you said you argued yours
from polemics.

Polemics? Please! Beauty, they say, lies in the eyes of the beholder. You
are entitled to your own opinion, even wrong opinions. But honestly, there
is nothing seriously polemical about your article. Well, wait: your
condemnation of colonialism for not leaving behind productive bases for
independent African countries shimmer out for acknowledgement. You wrote:
"....it was the colonial multinational corporations which controlled imports
and exports, mines, plantations and industrial establishments. What could
such people do to create a national economy?"

But here, you simply landed yourself on common ground, marshalling familiar
evidence known to everyone even a primary six pupil. The rest of your
article is akin to sauerkraut ice-cream - a mishmash of incompatible
ingredients - ranging from your regurgitation of history without analytical
connectivity, to fault-mongering, blame-shifting on American leaders,
reeking of irrelevant thinking, to your so-called "dialogue with Nyerere,"
mouth-watering with plaudits and eulogies.

Your Pan Africanism, not polemics, summoned your wit to urge Ayittey and
others to find ways of salvaging Africa from its political and economic
morass. You wished: "so-called intellectuals like Dr. George Ayittey have
the responsibility of examining this net in which Africa finds itself and
come up with ideas which can facilitate the liberation of the African
continent rather than engage in this empty quackery which those who
controlled us yesterday still occupy us with, thus depriving us of being the
architects of our own destiny."

You then harped on Nkrumah's wish for an Economic Commission for Africa, and
Lumumba's clarion call for an African renaissance, and you went the whole
hog, accusing African scholars of reading "without sincerety and honesty,"
the works of Nkrumah, Nyerere, Frantz Fanon, Cabral, and "reading the works
of those who have plagiarized what has been written by many pioneers of the
national liberation movement..." Are you a polemicist or a Pan Africanist
here?

I am flattered by your self-trumpeting plaudits. You enthused: " I have
succeeded in achieving precisely what I set out to achieve. This is
confirmed by the back-tracking that Ayittey has made in his response to my
challenge."  But if you had taken your time, tempered your effusiveness with
restraint, and re-read Ayittey's and Shirima's article, you would have
realized that your celebration of self-congratulation is simply hogwash.

The back-tracking in Ayittey, in your thinking, is summed up in this
addendum of his: " No African would deny that the first generation of
leaders strove gallantly and endured personal hardships to win independence
from colonial rule. They were hailed as heroes by their people and the
international community. We made this point in our piece. BUT in country
after country, these leaders proceeded to establish brutal regimes, violated
the civil rights of their own people and looted their economies. Nyerere was
an exception, which we also said in our article." And you conclude: "The new
element here is the emphasis that Nyerere is an exception. That is my
point." But what's wrong with your vision? Need I more proof why you have
let your emotionalism traumatise your objectivity in this issue, making you
impervious to even visible things?

Re-read Ayittey's and Shirima's article. They write: "Although Julius
Nyerere belonged to this generation of African leaders, he did not display
their egregious and megalomaniac excesses. He was not personally corrupt and
his living style modest - a rare and refreshing exception among African
leaders." They continue: "Nyerere was also among the very few African heads
of state who relinquished political power voluntarily." Is Ayittey and
co-writer not emphasizing Nyerere's exceptional qualities?

Ayittey wrote that clarification to energize your mind to the fact you had
completely taken his argument on this issue, out of context. This is why I
said earlier on that your initial rejoinder to Ayittey's and Shirima's
article had misleading effects. You write: " They say in their paper that it
is criminally irresponsible for people to accord the Nkrumahs and Nyereres
the respect that is being given to them by those who knew their
contributions." That is false.

The co-writers didn't say anything close to that. They write: "To
continuously celebrate them (Nkrumahs and Nyereres, insertion mine), without
a hint of of the unspeakable misery they bequeathed to their people is
criminally irresponsible." Ayittey and Shirima is not  urging us not to
celebrate the achievements of the Nkrumahs and Nyereres. They are aware of
their heroism but at the same time urging us not to lose sight of the fact
of their failures and shortcomings.

Your misleading allusions continue: After quoting Nyerere verbatim on
leadership, you concluded: "This is what Nyerere said on 1 January 1968 at a
seminar organized by university students. Now we may ask: can this be the
words of a tyrant?" You gave the wrong impression of Ayittey and Shirima
tagging Nyerere a tyrant. Again, quoting Nyerere verbatim on freedom, you
concluded: "Now we may ask: can someone who wanted to be a megalomaniac
utter such statements?" Your utterance of "megalomaniac" has origins rooted
in this part of Ayittey's and Shirima's article: "Although Julius Nyerere
belonged to this generation of African leaders, he did not display their
egregious and MEGALOMANIAC(emphasis mine)excesses." How does your allusion
square up with this?

You see, I am sifting through the debris of your article, separating fib
from fact, myth from reality, blindness from clarity, which if lumped into a
mixture can find easy access to gullible minds. I am enjoying the trouble to
do all this, lest misinformation and subjectivity cloud our collective
insight.

You said that your "objective was not to refute facts, but to refute the
interpretation of those facts that put Nyerere in a negative light." The
reality is, you can't refute anything in Ayittey's and Shirima's article.
And you have now reduced your so-called polemics to an interpretation of the
"interpretation of those facts" that put Nyerere in a bad light. Nyerere in
a negative light? Who cares if his shortcomings and failures put him so?
Again, you are miffed at the contents of the co-writers' article that you
can't refute, and which put Nyerere in a "negative light" that you don't
like. Reference to his positives in Ayittey's and Shirima's article don't
shimmer into your view. You are not interested. You are worried about the
"interpretation of those facts that put Nyerere in a negative light." Whoa!

But let's stretch your interpretation of facts further. First, you take
issue with the caption of the article, NYERERE: A Saint or A Knave? And: you
define the words, Saint and Knave. And: you want Ayittey and colleague to be
conclusive in their assessement of Nyerere's legacy. Call him a Saint or a
Knave, you seem to argue. That failing, you find their position absurd. In
sheer immaturity of thinking, piffling analysis, you conclude: "....if we
rely on the evidence that Ayittey and Shirima have given and which you have
quoted from(the positives and negatives of Nyerere, insertion mine),
we would have to conclude that Nyerere is both a saint and a knave. Nothing
can be more ridiculous than such a conclusion."

Plunging us into such semantics minutiae cannot deviate us from the contents
of Ayittey's and Shirima's article. Nyerere had his good and bad sides. He
wasn't all-saintly, or all-knavely. His legacy is impressive here,
unimpressive there. Apparently, you can't grasp this fact of reality. Your
worry over Nyerere being cast in a "negative light" by his own failures and
shortcomings, is worst than ridiculous. I hereby state: your defence of
Nyerere is an infatuatioin, and like every other infatuation, you are
seduced by the pleasures of his achievements, and blinded to the extremities
of his shortcomings.

Objectivity is never attainable like that. The mentality you have tossed
into your so-called polemics is called fanaticism. Someday, you may be able
or willing to come to terms with not only Nyerere's achievements or his Pan
Africanism, but also his abject failures. It wasn't encouraging that your
initial rejoinder to Ayittey's and Shirima's article was all-embracing,
all-appreciative of the Nyereres and the Nkrumahs, and without a scintilla
of dissent over their policies.  This is why people like me do not buy this
kind of Pan- Africanism. And we make no fetish of the personalities of
Nkrumah or Nyerere or any other for that time. We are both in agreement and
dissonance over their policies. The fact that they were Africans or strove
hard to wrest independence from the Colonialists matters less to me.

Worrying over Nyerere being cast in a bad light, or sifting through the
semantics of what is saintly or knavish about Nyerere, or Kamuzu Banda being
mentioned in an article about Nyerere, which gives you the hackneyed
imagination that Nyerere is being equated with the Hastings Bandas can only
emphasize why people like me can find you so intellectually trifling,
delusionally imaginative. And this is intellectual sophistication? Please!

Your fixation on my vocabulary never ceases to entertain me. Time was when
out of trifling imagination, you deluded yourself into thinking that all I
do is to fish out for words in a dictionary and paste them into my writings.
Here again, you are being inundated with my language. You write: "It is
indeed true that language is the tongue of the mind and proficiency or
eloquence in the use of language is of aesthetic value. Fine language,
however, tends to lose its finess when it is not tempered by substance." Let
me add this: when ideological myopia, intellectual sloppiness,
self-perpetuated delusions are being preyed upon by the candour, precision
and truthfullness of arguments, it can bring an unintended effect of
spawning cynicism and obscurantism into the minds of message-recipients,
making them impervious to the essentiality of lessons. So need I wonder why
you keep hammering at and yammering about, my "flowery language?"

But I am pleased for one thing about your response: "Frankly speaking," you
write,"I do enjoy your interventions. It strikes me that you have a right
approach to freedom of expression. You seem to believe that everyone has the
right to speak about anything and everything....." This is a positive
back-tracking from your soap-box oratory, earlier this year. Recall what you
said: Cherno Baba, we have closed many mouths in The Gambia, and we are very
confident that before the end of this debate you will put your foot in your
mouth.

Translation: your ideological invincibility has crushed many, and will spare
no-one. Well. Indication is, your self-perpetuating delusion of ideological
grandeur is being gradually disciplined by the grace of humility. And
understanding. There.

I rest my case. Thanks for the correspondence.

Best regards,
Cherno B. Jallow
Detroit, MI













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