*Discourse with Dr. Jammeh: Starving the Nation Mind*

 By Baba Galleh Jallow



Well Dr. Jammeh, we ended our last conversation by saying that you stand
accused of starving the Gambian Nation Mind. We say this so categorically
because, among other reasons, you have stubbornly been refusing to address
all the unpleasant questions that have arisen in The Gambia since 1994.
Instead of feeding the curious Gambian Mind, you have been shoving all
unpleasant questions under your iron carpet and insisting that contrary to
the evidence of our senses, everything’s been going on just fine under your
watch. You have been slamming forced victories on anything smacking of the
unpleasant, hoping that it would just go away. Perhaps the tragedy of this
situation, Dr. Jammeh, is that the unpleasant is often pleasantly nourishing
food for the mind of society – in our case Gambian Nation Mind. That truth
is characterized as bitter is no mere accident of history. It is why history
happens the way it does. It is why dictators act the way they do: because
they are too meek to stomach the bitter truth that can only set them free
from their delusions of eternal grandeur and their self-destructive
tendencies.



Gambianism advises that you beware the bitter truth, Dr. Jammeh. Disagree
with it, talk back to it, even refuse to personally accept it. But do not
attempt to kill it because you can’t. For truth is a Divine Attribute and he
who seeks to kill it seeks to kill an attribute of the Divine, an
undertaking that is not only hopelessly futile, but borders on the profane
and the sacrilegious. He who recognizes the truth but willfully denies it
denies an attribute of the Divine and therefore is guilty of apostasy. He
who insists on the truth of lies and punishes the truth as lies is a heretic
because he causes that disorder in the world that God so abhors and warns
about in the Holy Books: “Do not cause Disorder in the Earth.” He who thinks
it not important to explain to the less powerful why they are being punished
is guilty of gross injustice and has joined the party of the Devil. Of
course, being of the party of the Devil means losing your powers of
righteous sight and therefore seeing the world through the eyes of evil; it
means losing your capacity to find fault with any of your thoughts and
actions and therefore maintaining supreme confidence that all of your
actions are just and righteous. He who becomes possessed by the great
deceiver runs the risk of being deceived in everything that matters to his
fellow beings if it doesn’t matter to him. Whatever doesn’t seem right to
him must be wrong, and whatever seems wrong for him cannot possibly be right
for anyone else. That is the kind of quagmire into which dictatorship leads;
the kind of quagmire in which, believe it or not, you now find yourself
almost intractably trapped in.  One is almost tempted to say, God save your
soul Dr. Jammeh . . .



Let us propose a few points and examples to back our position that you stand
accused of starving the Gambian Mind. First, could you please note that what
may be unpleasant to you may not necessarily be unpleasant to the Gambian
public? What you see as being against the “national” interest may not
necessarily be against the national interest. It is only so according to
your own, fallible-person estimation. The national interest is too big to be
determined, delineated, and enforced by one man, even by a group of men
constituting an entire government. While people elect leaders and appoint
representatives to talk and act on their behalf, these leaders and
representatives cannot be mandated to exclusively determine what is in the
national interest. They may be right in some cases; but they cannot be right
in all cases. Moreover, their rightness cannot simply be assumed and
imposed; it has to be weighed against other contending views and ideas on
the national interest. The final decision should not be made on the basis of
the pleasant or unpleasant, but on the basis of rational thinking, debate,
and deliberation. What is in the national interest should always be
determined through a process of healthy national discourse, an enlightened
discourse conducted by informed- and even uninformed - members of the
general public. A country is not a compound or a personal estate to be owned
and run according to the whims and caprices of a single individual, which is
what dictatorship does and which is why dictatorships are always fatally
sick political creatures. Mahatma Gandhi sums it up succinctly when he says:
“What may appear as truth to one person will often appear as untruth to
another person. But that need not worry the seeker.” Sadly, a dictator is a
seeker only after his own selfish interests, not the seeker after truth that
Gandhi references. Gandhi also teaches that in any situation of disagreement
or conflict, it is healthy to always remember that each side has some
portion of truth in its possession. The solution to conflicts or
disagreements over matters of common interest is therefore not to impose
forced victories - which are always illusory - but to entertain the
possibility of human error and be willing to concede error – at least in
some cases.  Dictators, unfortunately, are too weak to ever entertain the
possibility of any error on their part. NAPOLEON IS ALWAYS TIGHT! Dang!



To further argue our point, we propose to cite the case of Baboucarr Gaye of
Citizen FM. We trust you remember that back in 1998, Gaye was charged under
an old colonial law of 1913 – 1914 of failure to register his radio station.
He was dragged to court by your government and in the final verdict, he was
declared guilty. His popular and hard-earned radio station and newspaper
were confiscated by your government, and Gaye spent the rest of his life
trying in vain to regain his rightful property. He died with the pain of
unjust dispossession in his heart, and perhaps tears in his eyes. You must
know, Dr. Jammeh, that what you did to Baboucarr Gaye is inexcusable by any
standards of the imagination. It was a clear case of brutal state-bullying
of an innocent and enterprising Gambian.



We all know, Dr. Jammeh, that Baboucarr Gaye was not punished because he
failed to register under the outmoded Telegraph Act of 1913-14. We all know
that he was punished because he so loved the Gambian people and so
identified with the sorry plight of the illiterate Gambian masses that he
sought a way of helping them out by lifting up the oppressive veil of
everyday “ignorance” that tormented their minds. There is no doubt that
Gambians would like to know what their sons and daughters, their brothers
and sisters and other relatives, their fellow countrymen are writing in the
newspapers. So that when he started translating the newspapers – including
government publications – into the local languages, Baboucarr Gaye was
motivated not by a desire to oppose you or your government, which he had all
the right to do, but by a desire to help feed the starving mind of the
Gambian Nation. The groundbreaking popularity of the news translation
program series was so palpable that at the times it aired, a certain silence
descended upon Banjul, Serekunda and throughout the Greater Banjul Area.
Small clusters of people – men, women and children – could be seen in small
groups all over town surrounding a transistor and intently listening to the
newspaper coverage in the vernacular. The starving Gambian Mind had
instantly recognized its food and eagerly partook of it at every possible
opportunity. But then, suddenly, you were stricken by crippling paranoia
born of the prospect of a national awakening. And since you cared more for
your personal safety that the health, safety and enlightened progress of the
Gambian people, you thoughtlessly pounced upon Baboucarr Gaye and closed
Citizen FM. Not finding any law in the contemporary books under which you
could forge a charge and manufacture a conviction, you turned to the books
of the colonial regime that you so purportedly hate, and settled for the
Telegraph Act of 1913-14 to snuff out the light that had begun shining on
the Gambian Nation.



By silencing Citizen FM, you demonstrated your utter lack of interest in the
enlightenment of the Gambian Nation. You would rather rule over a Nation of
uninformed illiterates. You would rather not the vast majority of Gambians
know what the papers are saying about you and your government. You would
rather not the vast majority of Gambian people know that you or your
government have done something deserving of some form of criticism, deserved
or undeserved. You were so obsessed with your personal interest that you
could not see that the newspapers also wrote about many other events and
issues of world historical significance that had nothing to do with you or
your government and that the people were interested in learning about. In
ruthlessly silencing Citizen FM, you stand accused of denying the Gambian
people a free opportunity to become not only better enlightened citizens,
but also more alive to their local and global environments, and more alive
and empowered as human beings. What Baboucarr Gaye tried to do was open the
world up to that majority of Gambians for whom the written word represents
an oppressive and suffocating world they could never hope to penetrate
without the benefit of translation. But no, having an enlightened Gambian
citizenry would rob you of the privilege of maintaining the socially useful
lie of divine kingship with which you continue to baffle them. The image of
Mansa Jammeh must remain perpetually untainted by impudent questions. Only
questions of adoration and adulation with their attendant visions of an
all-powerful, all-generous, all-righteous and never-mistaken, never-wrong
monarch of legendary proportions must be allowed to invade the ears of our
illiterate masses. The image you seek, Dr. Jammeh, is the image of the
Divine and should not be sought by an ordinary mortal. So beware!

As you can see Dr. Jammeh, the problem of Baboucarr Gaye and Citizen FM –
like many other unpleasant issues that litter the landscape of your regime –
is just too big to be swept under the carpet and forgotten. You may have
killed the medium, but the truth that the medium spoke cannot be killed
because, as we indicated earlier, Truth is of the Divine Essence. Having
once been assimilated into the essence of the Gambian Nation Mind, the truth
of Citizen FM will always remain part of the Gambian Nation Mind. Long after
all of us are gone, the story of Baboucarr Gaye and Citizen FM will be
remembered and studied, and guilty verdicts will ceaselessly be announced
against you.

So help you God.


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