Cherno,
Your defence of your position is admirable. Halifa's declaration about
shutting up critics in the Gambia is what gets to me. Just b/c people don't
have the time or the resources to go back and forth w/ him doesn't mean that
they've "put their foot in their mouth." But I guess when you live in your
own little universe, you're bound to see the regular world through some
peculiar prizm. Excellent response, anyway.
Saul Saidykhan
>From: chernob jallow <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Gambia and related-issues mailing list
><[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Memo to Halifa
>Date: Thu, 25 Nov 1999 16:28:12 PST
>
>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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