Deconstructing Yahya Jammeh

By Baba Galleh Jallow

In a speech delivered after he returned to Banjul following a foiled coup
attempt against his regime on December 29, 2014, Gambian ruler Yahya Jammeh
said, among other things, that “Those who advocate and sponsor violence for
regime change should know that they are not only acting in violation of the
human rights and legitimate interests of those affected, but it is also
against the will of the almighty Allah." What a great paradox that Yahya
Jammeh, who habitually disparages and dismissed the very idea of human
rights barely a week earlier, would now talk about “the violation of the
human rights” of those affected, namely, himself. Has Mr. Jammeh forgotten
that back in 1994, he advocated and sponsored violence for regime change
when he forcefully overthrew the government of Sir Dawda Jawara? Did it
only occur to him within the past few days that overthrowing a government
through the barrel of the gun represents a “violation of the human rights
and the legitimate interests of those affected”? Come on Mr. Jammeh, a
brick does not become a brig just because you call it so!

The violent attempt to overthrow Mr. Jammeh did not come as a surprise to
close observers of the Gambian situation. In spite of Jammeh’s denials over
Gambian dissatisfaction, and in spite of the fact that he has repeatedly
won “elections” in 1996, 2001, 2006 and 2011, the reality is that Jammeh’s
government is brutally repressive of dissidents, that he has completely
monopolized the political space to the exclusion of everyone else, and that
his critics and opponents are on the receiving end of an alarming politics
of exclusion which treats them as if they have no right whatsoever to
question or criticize their own government. Since 1994, freedoms of
expression and association have been systematically denied Gambian
citizens. News media houses have been subjected to arson attacks (Radio
1FM, The Independent newspaper), confiscated by the government (Citizen
FM), and banned without explanation (The Independent). Journalists have
been arrested, often tortured and jailed for varying lengths of time
without warrants, without charges and without the slightest respect for
their human rights or the rule of law. They have been murdered in drive-by
shootings (Deyda Hydara), or made to disappear without trace (Chief Ebrima
Manneh), or forced into exile for expressing legitimate opinions on issues
of national concern. Does Jammeh want to tell us that ALL Gambians are
happy with these rampant human rights abuses, including the brutal gunning
down of unarmed, peacefully demonstrating school children on April 10 & 11,
2000?

If only a handful of Gambians are dissatisfied with his record as president
of The Gambia, natural justice requires that their dissatisfaction be given
full legitimate expression. So please stop claiming that Gambians are
totally satisfied with your record as if Gambians were a single monolith, a
single individual who is totally beholden to you. A critical mass of
Gambians know that Jammeh has failed in many crucially important respects,
they are dissatisfied, and they will say so whether Jammeh likes it or not.
That is simply the nature of the constitutional, rights-bound political
dispensation called the Republic of The Gambia which belongs to Jammeh as
much as it belongs to the poorest beggar in Banjul or the most
criminally-minded felon at Mile Two Prison. Citizenship is an irreducible
commodity equally shared by all citizens. It is also an inalienable right
that may not be, that cannot be forcefully denied by the most tyrannical of
regimes. Sovereignty rests with the people and cannot be taken away under
the most repressive of regimes simply because it is a spirit that is
untouchable and unreachable by the walls of a prison, the lashes of the
police or the bullets of the killer squad. And it may not, cannot be
monopolized by any single individual, however powerful they feel.

Gambian opposition parties have to seek police permission, which is often
denied, in order to hold rallies and address their supporters. Gambian
government ministers, civil servants, and military personnel are sacked and
often arrested and jailed without the slightest explanation as to what
crimes they had committed against the laws of The Gambia or for the most
trivial of non-reasons, at the personal whims of Jammeh. As we write, some
prominent Muslim elders are being held in jail and tried in a lawless
“court of law” for performing their religious ceremony at the moment they
believed was the most appropriate for it, because Jammeh had ordered the
entire country to perform this ceremony on a particular day. To add insult
to injury, a lot of Gambian courts are now manned by Nigerian judges and
magistrates (commonly known as mercenary judges) some of whom are of
dubious legal credentials and some of whom do whatever they think Jammeh
would like them to do. So there is a lot of dissatisfaction among Gambians,
civilian and military, and one can safely predict that since
constitutionally mandated avenues of change are virtually closed in
Jammeh’s Gambia, more violent attempts to overthrow his repressive regime
will happen because Jammeh will not start respecting the rights of Gambians
anytime soon. The only human right he recognizes is his “right” to rule the
country for as long as he possibly can, for a “billion years” as he likes
to put it, because he is totally insensitive to the virtue of political
sharing of the state that nature imposes upon him. The All Mighty Allah he
likes so much to cite frowns upon injustice of any kind, especially of the
kind inflicted on their own people by power-drunk rulers like Jammeh. He
certainly can take that to Allah’s bank.

Jammeh’s reference to “the violation of the human rights of affected
individuals” (himself) as in the quote above is part of a bigger aspect of
his selective appropriation of the institutions and structures of the
nation-state system. He cites human rights or the rule of law only under
two particular circumstances: One, when it suits his personal interests to
do so, as in the quote above. And two, when he blames the West for
allegedly meddling in the affairs of what he considers his personal
country. He ignores constitutional provisions whenever they clash with his
personal interests and cites them whenever they serve his personal
interests.  This pattern points to an extremely selfish political character
common to insecure dictators everywhere. It also demonstrates Jammeh’s
tendency to pose as the very personification of the Gambian nation-state.
For example, a couple of weeks ago when he was asked in a TV interview why
he criticizes the West when they assist The Gambia in the building of roads
etc., Jammeh blurted, among other incoherencies:

 “Where did they help us? They are not helping me. If the West refunds to
Africa what they have looted for the past 400 years plus 25% interest… They
are not giving us any aid. They are giving us something that is
infinitesimal compared to what they have taken from us. So they are not
giving me any aid. They are not making me any favors. Let them give back to
me what they have taken for 400 hundred years and see whether I will ask
them for anything. They are not giving me aid. In fact that is even an
insult. If you take a bull and give me only the horns and you tell me you
are helping me...that is an insult.”

In the above paragraph, Jammeh freely moves from “us” to “me” as if us
(Gambia) and me (Jammeh) are one and the same entity. The idea of “I am the
state” is a common staple of power-drunk dictators. They get so mentally
blinded by power that they lose the ability to see themselves as
individuals separate from the institutional character of the state. Another
extreme example of this tendency was greatly inflated in Mobutu Sese Seko,
with whom Jammeh shares a striking mental resemblance. When at the height
of his power Mobutu was asked about his vast fortune as head of state of a
poor country like Zaire, he shot right back at the journalist: “Is this
what you call fortune? What about the fortune King Leopold of Belgium stole
from us? What about the fortune the Belgian colonialists stole from us?”
(See the documentary, *Mobutu: Roi du Zaire*). Also, when he founded his
Popular Movement for the Revolution (MPR) Mobutu insisted that all citizens
of Zaire – dead, alive and unborn – were part of his party. Not to support
the MPR literally meant total exclusion from the space of Zairean
citizenship. Like Jammeh, Mobutu practiced a virulent politics of exclusion
which was the cardinal practice of the colonial regimes they like to blame
for their extremely damaging political blunders. Jammeh goes even further
by equating himself with Africa because the so-called and totally
non-existent 400 years of colonial rule and the billions the West stole
from us did not come from what we know as The Gambia alone. In fact, the
entity called Gambia is a relatively recent entity in African history. It
is certainly not 400 years old.

Jammeh knows that he no longer really enjoys political legitimacy both in
his own mind and in the reality of Gambian political history. He will of
course deny the fact in public; but deep in his mind, he knows that he has
no moral authority to be president of The Gambia twenty years after he
promised to step down only after a two-year transition period and twenty
years after he declared that “in fact, ten years is too much” for anyone to
stay in power after his solemn, God-witnessed oath to make sure that there
are term limits in the new Gambian constitution. As a Gambian, Jammeh had
the right to contest the presidency in 1996 like everyone else. But he has
no right to occupy the institution of the Gambian presidency as if it is
his own personal domain, to the exclusion of everyone else, and to
insultingly declare to anyone who cares to listen that “he will rule the
Gambia for a billion years.” He certainly would, if he could. Fortunately,
he cannot rule the country for even a hundred years simply because he will
not live that long or if he does, he would have been so old and shriveled,
so physically depleted that he could not don his grand boubous and drag
himself, his sword and his worry beads around anymore. So he is just being
characteristically rude and contemptuous of Gambians when he brags that he
will rule The Gambia for a billion years.

A couple of days after the December 29 incident, BBC journalists repeatedly
asked me in an interview why people are trying to violently overthrow
Jammeh when the Gambian people keep voting for him in presidential
elections. This question is part of the almost normalized culture of
political exceptionalism so common in Western political, social and media
circles – the idea that in Africa, it is okay for one man to keep winning
elections over and over and over again even though such a scenario may not
even be contemplated in western countries, however popular or successful a
leader is. The longer and more complex answer to why people like Jammeh
keep winning elections in spite of their terrible leadership incapacities
has to do with the nature of Gambian and by extension African political
cultures, which have remained virtually unchanged from the precolonial
period to date. Evidence of this political culture is displayed in the use
of such terms as Mansa Kunda and its equivalents in other Gambian-African
languages to describe constitutional governments, in the widespread belief
that a Mansa (president) is appointed by God, and in the equally erroneous
idea that to oppose a Mansa (president) is to oppose the will of God. In a
similar vein, the majority of Gambians do not directly attribute their
poverty and suffering to Yahya Jammeh or his government. If you ask the
average villager in rural Gambia why they are poor, why they couldn’t
afford money to send their children to school or buy a bag of rice, they
will likely point to Allah rather than to the poor leadership and bad
governance of Yahya Jammeh. And until and unless there is a radical
transformation of this political culture which will bring it into line with
the new constitutional dispensation that rules their lives, many Gambians
will continue voting for Jammeh. The sad reality is that free and fair
elections in the true sense of the term is not possible within the context
of our current political culture. We need a mind revolution that will
politically empower Gambians and enable them to hold their leaders
accountable and kick them out through the ballot box if they lose their
political legitimacy. In the absence of an empowered people, dictators will
continue to abuse our rights and justifiably angry people will continue
attempting to remove them through the barrel of the gun.

But an unchanged political culture is just one side of the answer to the
BBC’s question as to why people keep electing Jammeh. The issue is really
not whether Jammeh keeps winning elections. The issue is whether he should
keep running for office in the first place, whether it is right and just
for one man to monopolize the leadership of our country to the exclusion of
all other citizens who have equal rights to lead the country if they so
desire and if they get the popular mandate to do so. It is from this
particular perspective that Jammeh no longer enjoys either the political or
the moral legitimacy to remain head of state of The Gambia. Like I said, he
might deny it all he likes in his public utterances. But deep inside his
mind, he knows that his continued occupation of the Gambian presidency is
illegitimate, since it is based on a lie he told the Gambian people 20
years ago; namely, that he will make sure that there is a presidential term
limit of two five-year terms; that in fact - and these are his direct words
- “ten years is too much” for any president to stay in power in The Gambia.
Well, Mr. Jammeh, how about 20 years for too long?

Of course, it is a waste of time to ask Jammeh to reform his ways. Or to
investigate the many brutal crimes against Gambians committed under his
watch and often by his own orders. So we are left with the sad realization
that as violence has been used in the past to try kicking him out of power,
so will violence be used again, and again, and again for the same purpose
of kicking him out of power. So we brace ourselves for inevitable bloodshed
in our dear country and pray only that the causalities be as minimal as
possible.


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