On Nov 12, 2013 10:51 PM, "Baba Galleh Jallow" <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

>  *Jammeh and the Colonial Legacy*
>
> By Baba Galleh Jallow
>
> Once again Yahya Jammeh has been shown riding his favorite horse, with his
> favorite whip in hand, whacking angrily away at colonialism and claiming
> that colonialism did not bring anything to The Gambia. He fumes that
> Britain did not build more than one school and one hospital in the country
> over a period of 400 years of colonial rule. It is a known fact that if you
> repeat a lie often enough, it becomes a truth in your own mind. I say this
> because contrary to Jammeh’s frequent ranting about 400 years of
> colonialism, British colonial rule in The Gambia lasted a mere 76 years.
> While British and other Europeans had traded with Gambian merchants as
> early as the 1580s, The Gambia became a British crown colony only in 1889,
> and attained her independence in 1965 - exactly 76 years later. So it is
> absolutely not true that Gambia was colonized for 400 years as Mr. Jammeh
> would have us believe. Furthermore, anyone with the slightest sense of
> history knows that colonialism was not in Africa to develop the continent
> but to serve the selfish interests of the colonizers. It was an inherently
> extractive and exploitative regime. So this is no news at all. Expecting
> development from colonialism is foolish and Mr. Jammeh would be better
> advised to stop beating a dead horse and blaming colonialism for the mess
> that he and other so-called leaders of post-colonial Africa have created
> and continue to create for their hostage peoples. Africans wanted
> independence; they got it. It is their responsibility to develop their
> countries and stop blaming the past.
>
> But before we proceed, it might be well to remind Mr. Jammeh that he does
> owe a lot to colonialism. For one thing, if he must reject all things
> colonial, he must start by refusing to speak or write the English language.
> He must then repudiate the territorial boundaries of The Gambia and draw
> new ones since these boundaries are totally a colonial creation. Then he
> must abandon the institutions and structures that make up the state he
> rules over – the Cabinet, the Legislature, the Judiciary – as all of these
> are products of the colonial regime. He must then do away with the flag and
> the coat of arms, both of which are typically colonial inventions. He must
> abstain from his beloved practice of mounting the so-called guard of honor,
> a very colonial spectacle that he loves so much that his cheeks literally
> tremble with excitement as he stiffly marches and surveys the troops at the
> airport and elsewhere. Then he must proceed further to abandon State House,
> which is the former residence of the colonial governor, and disband the
> police, also inventions of colonial rule. And then he must demolish the
> Mile Two, Jeshwang, and Janjangbureh prisons because the prison as an
> institution remains one of the most obnoxious legacies of colonial rule.
> Pre-colonial Africa did not have walled prisons guarded over by prison
> wardens and now so beloved of Mr. Jammeh because he uses them to eliminate
> his opponents. When next he talks about what colonialism has done or not
> done in Africa, he should not forget to thank them for what he calls his
> own five-star hotel – Mile Two Prisons. He must also thank them for
> bringing the uniformed army and the gun into Africa, the two pillars upon
> which his tyrannical regime squarely rests.
>
> Perhaps more important than all of the above is Jammeh’s undying love
> affair with the biggest and worst legacies of colonialism – tyranny,
> oppression and financial exploitation. If we place his nonexistent 400
> years of British colonial oppression on one scale and 20 years of Jammeh
> oppression on the other, Jammeh oppression will far outweigh colonial
> oppression by vast margins. Jammeh has killed and tortured and jailed and
> fired and disgraced and otherwise tormented more Gambians in 20 years than
> the British colonial regime had done in 400 nonexistent years of colonial
> rule. And since colonial rule made no pretense at upholding human rights
> and the rule of law, Jammeh’s total disregard for the rights and dignities
> of his own ostensibly decolonized and independent people is all the more
> shameful. Does Jammeh know that in post 1994 Gambia, some elders have
> demanded to know when all this independence would end?
>
> If Jammeh prides himself in doing for Gambia what colonialism had failed
> to do, he must undertake to do the single most important thing colonialism
> failed to do: that is, politically empower the entirety of the Gambian
> population; eradicate mental poverty and political powerlessness by a
> rigorous regime of political education that will place power firmly in the
> hands of the people; cure the majority of Gambians’ erroneous perceptions
> of rulers as God-ordained; turn the Gambian people into one large sea of
> enlightened citizens who will vote for their leaders not based on tribal
> affinities or ignorant presuppositions, but on the grounds of informed
> choices and the potential for good, effective and ethical leadership; Find
> words to replace Mansa Kunda because there is no such thing as Mansa Kunda
> in today’s Gambia. Colonialism certainly was not interested in empowering
> the people or teaching them what they need to know in order to make
> informed choices. And since Jammeh pretends to be better than the colonial
> rulers, that is the first thing he should do. The infrastructural
> developments he likes to brag and pound his chest about are utterly
> insignificant compared to the people they are supposed to serve. If he
> truly cares for the Gambian people, he should build them instead, rather
> than waste millions of dollars building white elephant projects.
>
> But of course, bad leaders and tyrants like Jammeh prefer to build
> lifeless structures than to build living and intelligent beings. The
> lifeless roads and schools and other structures he likes to brag about will
> never question his authority or try to hold him accountable. But he perhaps
> knows that an intelligent and politically conscious population will not
> tolerate the kinds of utter nonsense he utters or the unethical activities
> he engages in. That is why he has banned newspapers and killed journalists;
> and that is why he cannot tolerate the idea of anyone talking about human
> rights, the rule of law and democracy in The Gambia. And finally, Jammeh is
> a personification of the oppressive legacy of colonial rule. His regime is
> a form of internal colonialism that thrives on the oppression, tyranny and
> the exploitation of Gambia’s resources – both human and material – for his
> own selfish gratification. So when he engages in whipping the horse of
> colonialism, he is actually engaged in earnest psychological
> self-flagellation.
>
>
>
>
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