The Riddle of Dumo Sarho
"I realized I could come home without facing any harassment or suspicion."
Said who? Dumo Sarho.
Dumo, that quintessential MOJA activist and symbol of surreptitious
revolutionary resistance against political decrepitude in the days of old,
must be wondering, disillusioned actually, about the everydayness of mass
hopelessness in The Gambia, a consequence of bad governance mired in huge
political and economic bankruptcies.
History, with its zigs and zags, meandering in and around lives and
societies, renders a fine prism through which to observe what is still
stagnant, what has shifted, what is in the process of becoming. From the day
Dumo returned to The Gambia in 1994 after almost a decade of exile, to
current times, a lot of history has passed, urging us to recast some of our
previous perceptions into fresher shapes, displacing old-held shibboleths,
and compelling us to be avidly ponderous over the future.
Dumo must be in the same frame of mind, more so when he now languishes in
detention. In a lengthy interview with this writer in 1995, Dumo like most
Gambians, was euphoric about the suddenness of "political changes" in The
Gambia in the aftermath of the toppling of the septuagenarian Sir Dawda
Jawara. His plans to visit The Gambia "became more actual on the occasion of
the fall of Jawara. I realized I could come home without facing any
harassment or suspicion," he averred. He added, "What I have observed is
that we are not here faced with a military dictatorship;here we have a group
of soldiers who have invited the participation of patriotic Gambians towards
restructuring The Gambia."
But those were the early days of the coup when Jammeh seemed a
populist-man-of-the-people, collecting bouquets of praise here and
galvanizing nationalistic fervour there. However, 1994 is not 2000. It is
now simply anachronistic to call the APRC government populist;it is far from
it. Rather, it is teetering on the brink of full dictatorship if it already
hasn't. Which comes at a time when authoritarianism throughout the world is
in full retreat, from the collapse of the Greek junta and the two Iberian
dictatorships in the 1970s to Mobutu in the 1990s.
With Dumo and countless other examples, The Gambia is experiencing the
deleterious effects of irresponsible leadership, unprecedented and
unstoppable in its wont to create havoc and for once, total cataclysm. In
his detention cell, Dumo reckons history repeating itself - almost. When he
joined MOJA in 1979, he was already undergoing sedition trials. "I was
allegedly suspected of distributing an underground newsletter called the
Voice of the Future. Eight witnesses were brought against me, but the whole
thing was a blackmail." Dumo had already spent two weeks in detention
without charge.
In 1981, he was rearrested and detained after being suspected of having
participated in the July 1981 rebellion and instigating people to take up
revolutionary ideas. "It was a horrible time for me at the Banjul police
station. I was flogged to the point of death!" He spent 14 months at Mile
Two Prisons. "It was a physical and psychological torture for many of us who
were there." Temporal arrests from 1982 to 1983 for alleged subversive
activities sent Dumo to detention again. With his passport seized by
presidential order following yet two other arrests in October and November
of 1985, Dumo was finally sent packing. "My political activities were
practically operational... this made the security forces very uncomfortable
with my presence, which resulted in a spate of arrests for me, and for
everyone around me."
So what is that about Dumo that makes him a stormy petrel of Gambian
politics never mind he remains practically disconnected from it? Dumo's
plight is his own self: His presence in the midst of society that is reeling
under massive political decadence puts him in the watch of those in
leadership. Dumo, a superlative combination of brains and guts, exudes
contempt for dictatorship; that has made him prone to a rash of government
allegations of subversive activities throughout his chequered career as a
political activist.
Dumo's detention becomes another riddle in fathoming Jammeh's phantom coups.
Opposing lawyers have been sparring over the constitutionality or lack of,
of his continued detention without trial. His embattled wife and
organization are waging publicity campaigns to secure his release. Petitions
are being written on his behalf. Dumo, the long-bearded,
confidence-brimming, unpretentious activist, is putting in more trenchant
tones, the barbarity of the APRC government. He succeeds in doing so by
being abducted, thrown into a detention cell and forced to languish. There.
Cherno Baba Jallow
Detroit, MI
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