I subscribe to Mr. Sanneh's comments on this very interesting report, which,
sa I see it, is also an analysis of the situation in The Gambia today. Mr.
Sidibeh, this piece is so very true of what obtains in Gambian society
today, that I have recommended it to my daughters to read. One is a
sociology student and should derive much knowledge from the exposé.
Thanks

Dr. Jeng

----- Original Message -----
From: "abdoukarim sanneh" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, August 13, 2005 6:57 PM
Subject: Re: Kanilai Cocktail - II


> Mr Sidibeh thanks for what I will call first class information about
> events folding back home. It seems Gambia is heading as a fail state. It
> is greed that have takeover our country Gambia is a captive state. Reading
> your comments indicate a devastating indictment of the corruption to which
> our political leaders have succumbed. Another state of fear is the erosion
> of religious tolerant may God guide our Nation.
> Best regards!
> Abdoukarim Sanneh
>
> Momodou S Sidibeh <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> ...But Gambia's population density is one of the highest in Africa.
> Arable land is small and it is uncontrollably being decommissioned out
> of agricultural production. I raised the issue with a senior government
> official, who simply responded as a matter of fact, that there is no
> planning
>
> LAND GRABBING
>
> Yet it is swathes of fertile farmland that is routinely sized up and cut
> out for dwellings. Amidst all the frenzy, it is one of the commonest
> harbingers of conflict: We are all familiar with the showdown between
> Taff Construction and the people of Brufut. But there are a myriad of
> others, less publicised conflicts such as the violent showdown that
> resulted with the incarceration of many villagers from Jambangjaly; the
> ongoing(?) court case between the people of Kartong and some Bajo Kunda
> elders in Gunjur, and that between the people of Kiti and President
> Jammeh. There are fraud cases where land owners sold a particular plot
> to numerous buyers; and instances involving plots that are stolen and
> then resold to the highest bidder by chiefs who turn out to be
> unmitigated crooks. I have heard about cases where fraudsters use
> Microsoft Word to produce exact replicas of Certificates of Ownership
> issued by the area councils. So the Brikama Area Council changed
> tactics, making sure that such certificates are signed in red by a
> supervisor(?) of lands who simultaneously accords each certificate with
> a unique Item number, to be entered in the surveys registry - a kind of
> database that maps a name to a particular Item number and site plan.
> The incredible struggle for land that I witnessed at the Brikama Area
> Council is disturbing, to put it very mildly. A surveyor confirmed that
> there tiny office is always in a state of invasion. It is packed with
> applicants processing site maps to be registered before they obtain a
> certificate of ownership which allows them to begin construction work on
> their plots. So there is a permanent construction boom all over the
> place. Foreign investors, Gambian workers and professionals abroad,
> sarahuli and fula businessmen, "ashobi" mammies (who grew rich through
> import of clothing from China and Dubai or by marketing fish and other
> Gambian consumer goods in the west), property developers, are all
> engaged in the grinding contest for land, to own it, develop it, settle
> on it. Some use it as fixed capital and as a secure source of income.
> Others buy land for pure speculation. They develop it, sell it at 100
> percent profit, and move on to the next piece of real estate, often
> using the services of private agents. In hard times, there are always
> willing sellers, usually desperate farmers who, facing ruin, procure
> capital by selling the last thing they own. The construction industry is
> undoubtedly one of the most lucrative in the country. Both Gambian and
> foreign-owned construction and property development firms compete for
> contracts: Govinda and Sons, Boto Construction, Gigo Construction ltd.,
> Fams, Kana and Sons Construction, Ocean Properties, Value Engineering,
> Taff Construction and myriads of self-employed contractors, masons, who
> with the advantage of experience and skill negotiate building contracts
> for themselves. But as mentioned, there is little or no planning.
> While a property developer like Taff Construction can negotiate for huge
> chunks of real estate with dwellings, paved roads, school, mosque, and
> utility supplies all planned professionally, land that is developed on
> the outskirts of say, Serrekunda usually add to the uncontrolled
> expansion of the town while overloading further, already inadequate
> water supplies and the available electric grid capacity. From Old
> Jeshwang southwards to Sukuta and eastwards to Tabokoto, one simply
> traverses a single sprawling township covering all of Serrekunda,
> Nemakunku, Wellingara, Sanchaba Sulay Jobe, Kotu, Dippakunda, Kololi,
> Manjai and Bakoteh. Chicago, Monte Carlo, Piccadilly are all labelled
> after particular areas inside Serrekunda or in one of its numerous
> suburbs. Few of the roads to these suburbs from central Serrekunda are
> paved but are mostly wide streets with huge ditches covered in sand and
> uncollected, garbage. Drivers unfamiliar with the territory are easy
> prey for six, seven year old kids who eke a subsistence form the chaos.
> They would dig large holes in the sand, create sporadic dunes around
> them and gleefully watch unsuspecting drivers get stuck. You would
> disembark your car, beg for help and they would rush to your rescue.
> You will be so grateful that you would compensate them with a ten dalasi
> note. That is enough for a whole "taapa laapa", which is sliced in the
> middle and stuffed with mayonnaise, potatoes, and a greasy kind of
> chocolate cream. This is the popular lunch or supper for urban kids in
> Gambia.
>
> As mentioned earlier, driving from Sukuta to Serrekunda is a nightmare
> of a safari ride. At the Sukuta junction from Brusubi, the road assumes
> a 100% degradation of quality. The road here is almost exclusively used
> by "gele-gele", large minivans so old and rusty they ought to have been
> commissioned out of traffic but are fiercely maintained on the roads by
> their owners. Every one dalasi counts. The gele-gele deposits you at
> Tippa garage, just across the Bakoteh bridge. The notorious garbage dump
> is just a stone throw away, and it is constantly smouldering. Smoke from
> it is not dense, but it settles over the entire suburb as a huge
> blanket, poisoning the air and irritating lungs and eyes.
>
> RELIGIOUS REVIVAL
> One thing that is impossible to miss is the preponderance of mosques and
> churches all over the entire municipality of Kanifing, though the latter
> are much less numerous than the former. Muslim/Arabic schools have
> multiplied and girls and young women with head dresses (hijab) are a
> pretty common sight. But I also observed that many young men seem to
> have become more religious than they previously were, and most of the
> mosques are equipped with loudspeaker systems to better summon believers
> to prayer. The stentorian calls of the muezzin, especially for the early
> morning (fajr) prayer is an obvious inconvenience to non-muslims (and to
> many muslims as well) but no one hardly complains. Not openly, at any
> rate, except for one European settler. According to my cousin, Buba,
> this middle-aged westerner found the frequent loud calls to prayer so
> disturbing that he walked to the mosque and begged the Imam to instruct
> the muezzin to lower the output volume from the speakers. He complained
> that he is forced to wake up from his sleep as early as 5 a.m everyday.
> Well, the imam did not take his plea into consideration but explained to
> him that the louder the system, the better for the faithful! To
> everyone's amazement, every time the afternoon prayer is called, the man
> would march to the street corner, place his hands on top of his head and
> begin weeping and wailing at the top of his voice. People laughed
> themselves to tears in disbelief!
> Many muslims complain that Sunday mass and other services from some
> churches (where the congregation is mostly nigerian and other immigrant
> groups) are even noisier. The services always end in drumming and
> singing, on very high decibels.
> [I learnt that some three ramadans ago, eid -el-fitr fell on a Sunday.
> While muslims were at the prayer ground they felt genuinely disturbed by
> the drumming and singing from a nearby church. In spite of numerous
> appeals for a calmer service to the priest, a compromise could not be
> reached. So the muslims went to attack members of the congregation.
> Fortunately, by the time they reached the church, the entire
> congregation had melted away in fear].
> But what I found as a matter of interest, is the wave of muslim
> missionaries from the middle east or north Africa that make house to
> house calls to recruit young muslims into more militant participation in
> the religion. They are called the "maraca", and most of them are thought
> to come from Morocco. They come as "missionaries", present their
> credentials to local imams and live practically in the mosque. They can
> be seen in groups going from one compound to the next. I have also met
> young Gambians who dream of nothing other than receiving religious
> instruction in Pakistan. All of these social tendencies perhaps are
> matters of grave concern given that most Gambians would stick to a
> moderate form of Islam that upholds religious tolerance as a basic
> principle of cultural life. There are many reasons that one can advance
> as the causes of the upsurge of religious interest amongst Gambians. One
> is simply that material depravation compels people to seek refuge in
> spiritualism. And the present government has failed to lighten the
> burden of depravation for the great majority of the population. Poverty
> might make people pray harder, but it also forces people to abdicate
> their moral responsibilities towards the rest of society. The levels of
> violent crime, rampant dishonesty, spectacular forms of robbery, armies
> of pickpockets (at ferry terminals, they say) have all become legion.
> Added to these is the shameless stealing of public funds, the vicious
> corruption in public and business life, the open begging by even
> security personnel at the airport. People are desperately poor, yet they
> would do almost anything to pretend otherwise. Some go about town with a
> spoon in their pocket, just in case good fortune guides them to a naming
> ceremony or a funeral - where there is free food. In contrast, ceremony
> organisers are increasingly soliciting the services of catering
> companies because most of the meat and condiments are stolen by cooks,
> if the preparations are done at home. The neighbours must not know that
> you have nothing to cook today, so you light upt a fire under your
> cooking pot anyway, even if all you are boiling is water! If you hang
> your laundry to dry you have to sit and watch unless you want them to
> slowly disappear over the fence. People will steal your bricks(!) unless
> you have somebody watch them. Some even dare still from the President!
> While in Gambia in April, a comic strip was in heavy rotation all over
> town. Just before Tobaski, the president, provided a large number of
> salesmen with hundreds of sheep to be sold at cut down prices as a way
> of mitigating the financial burden on many Moslem families. One such
> salesman quickly sold all is herd of more than twenty sheep, packed a
> bag, and took off with the President's money! Feeling himself as victim
> of a rude scam, Mr. President went on national television to deliver a
> stern warning to the fugitive, who had by then apparently disappeared
> from Gambian soil].
>
> The mobile revolution has taken Gambia by storm. Even grandmothers now
> would ask for a cell phone, even where they have problems paying the
> electricity and water bill. If you have one, you are a princess. But if
> you have two, you show everybody that you are the local queen (or king
> for that matter). Cell phone theft is an epidemic, now earning thieves
> stiff sentences in jail.
> [My banker friend thought he mysteriously lost his cell phone. When he
> eventually called the number a voice simply explained to him that he had
> been looking for a phone for over a year, until finally god provided him
> with one, and that he obviously would not get his phone back. When he
> called again, the voice warned him, "bu ma yabb!"].
> Worse is that the mobile telephone operators skim huge profits from the
> pockets of Africans. This is one reason why investments in Africa give
> the greatest returns in profits than anywhere else on earth. Africell
> pre-paid cards, for instance are valid for only two months. It simply
> means that you HAVE TO use your credit (and buy another again) within
> that period or forfeit it. In Sweden prepaid credits have a validity of
> one year. Added to that, its network is often jammed for most of the day
> (from 14.00 - 23.00), so that one is forced to place calls in the
> mornings or late at night. Despite the lousy service, the company has
> the temerity to apologise every time your call fails to get through.
> Network extension work is the culprit, they say. But they would not
> imagine extending the life span of the credit card as compensation! This
> is the sort of unethical exploitation consumers must organise against.
> But in Gambia, they do not exist(?). Similarly, even the middle classes
> complain about unpayable electricity and water bills. But most of them
> simply buy their own generators from MP Trading, an Indian(?) owned
> hardware superstore on Kairaba Avenue. The poor do not have that option,
> and are too busy being hungry to think of organising a consumer boycott
> of Nawec, as a way to force down prices.
>
> THE POWER ELITE
>
> So everyone is busy, like worker termites, to make ends meets even when
> there are no ends in the first place. There is a constant debilitating
> class struggle, that some economist will tell you, drives the engine of
> growth. But in Gambia, this engine grinds to rubble the dreams and
> dignity of much of the population. The wheels keep spinning primarily
> because it has been legitimised by a power elite, whose representation
> of public hopes, whose very existence as symbols of class and power, the
> people see as the ultimate reflection of their own aspirations. There is
> thus a general absence of outrage, especially when there is an endless
> supply willing executioners of every plot or policy hatched at State
> House or Kanilai. Because most of the ministers are nominated
> technocrats, President Jammeh hardly incurs any political backlash from
> any constituency when these ministers are sent packing like failed
> students. And they keep on coming, pulled in by the allure of office and
> the spoils of power.
> To be addressed as minister, to travel first class, to hold council with
> the President, to be part of his numerous entourages, to have a personal
> chauffeur at your behest, to represent and radiate power with all its
> mysteries is not a petty, negligible vocation. Most men and women will
> kill for it. And indeed many will abandon more lucrative executive
> positions just for a momentary bask in the floodlights of official
> power. The very call from the president is intoxicating. Few will eschew
> any second thoughts, and all doubts and moments of indecision vanish at
> a wink. Opportunism sets in, like rigor mortis, numbing every bit of
> sense that was once so deeply repulsive to corrupt behaviour. They
> persuade themselves that this must be destiny fulfilled, the answer to
> all secret prayers, the highpoint of eclipsing jealous, and now
> insignificant rivals; becoming minister is the ultimate job in the land,
> the office they were born to occupy. A power perspective holds sway over
> their representation of themselves, and this facilitates the
> rationalisation of ones conduct. You convince yourself that this was
> what the revolution was all about, that you must have exceptional
> qualities (else, why would you have been called in the first place) and
> therefore capable of affecting historical processes; that you can indeed
> make significant contributions and even cure all that is diseased in the
> party's policy and the president's outlook; that history would prove you
> right. One convinces oneself that the call to official duty overrides
> everything else; that one must not only answer up when called but it is
> in fact a national duty to do so; the mission of a minister is foremost
> to serve the nation and in an environment where almost everything is
> going wrong, it becomes a mission to save the country. That is a job
> more important than what Barclays or ADB will ever pay you for. All
> those ideas and theories scooped up through years of university training
> take instant flight; escaping into the esoteric world of books.
> Ensconced in the virtues of office, they seldom imagine the perils of
> office, and like true decadent servants one routinely hears
> well-educated ministers echoing so much ego-driven nonsense over Gambian
> television. From the murder of Ousman Koro Ceesay through the April 2000
> massacre to the gangsterist elimination of Deyda Hydara, it has always
> been some secretary of state who appeals for calm, who supplicates the
> public for information, who questions the logic of obvious government
> complicity before the President's poorly veiled insults, masked as moral
> indignation over these crimes, crackles over the airwaves.
>
> All rational calculations, obvious reconnections with reality that the
> present government is not serving the national interest, that the job of
> minister has been transformed into a mere anecdote, that his regime
> presided over the murder of more than a dozen Gambian youth, that all
> his ministers past and present have in the course of their tenure of
> office become pathological cowards, without a mind of their own, all
> these facts escape the calculations of the man called upon to become the
> next power broker. Oh, indeed there are exceptions!
> In the public psyche the president has become synonymous with the state.
> He buys buses for schools, funds pilgrims to Mecca, openly buys votes,
> spreads largesse to footballers, personally intervenes in the economy to
> effect prices - our own ubiquitous George Soros, denies oppositional
> constituencies access to development aid and publicly financed projects,
> calls our most respected political leaders donkeys, fires and hires
> senior government officials and ministers as often as Imelda Marcus
> changed shoes (she had three thousand pairs), has his fingers and toes
> in every lucrative business in the land: construction, transport, land
> speculation, sand-mining, import-and export of rice, tourism, currency
> speculation (he owns a mountain of treasury bonds), and farming! In
> spite of all his Billahi Wallahi Tallahi, all he could imagine to fight
> corruption is to send some of his ministers to a commission.
>
> Under such circumstances, not to support NADD in its drive to defeat the
> APRC regime, is a betrayal more severe than the tyranny it seeks to
> unseat.
>
>
> Cheers
> Sidibeh.
>
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