To retry to put the origin of this article in perspective, I need to
reiterate that it is basically a response to Mr. Hamjatta Kanteh's risible
and even contemptuous remarks about MOJA. It seeks to explain the historical
circumstances which produced MOJA (in episode 1), while also highlighting a
little of MOJA's work and its ideological identity. It is definitely not a
history of the movement. But it is impossible to present a synopsis of
MOJA's identity without contextualizing it with the concurrent history of
various PPP governments. While I must immediately assert that I cannot do
justice to this history here, I am convinced that appreciation of the
inherent weaknesses of the Gambian state throughout Jawara's rule, not only
explain the emergence of Yahya Jammeh, but by implication, helps to explain
if only partly, the recent victory of the APRC in the presidential
elections. The penduline swings of Yahya Jammeh between the extremes of
tyranny and that of scheming benevolence indicate a despondent urge to
coerce into submission a population long ghettoized by a montrously feeble
state apparatus.
Because you cannot have capitalism without capital (read CNN) and because
Gambia's economy is recked not by Sidia Jatta's sociology but Mendy's
economic policies (a fact that Buharry ought to have pointed out to
Hamjatta), (policies inherited from Jawara's government), one must perhaps
look for alternative ways at empowering Gambians, the majority of whom have
always been rendered marginal except in times of crisis.
In the last episode, I tried to describe the objective conditions within the
Gambian polity that neccessitated the emergence of MOJA and other radical
political organizations in our country; and how the corrupt, unyielding,
discredited and ideationally destitute rule of the PPP government led to the
bloody rebellion headed by Kukoi Samba Sanyang.
But even before the rebellion, MOJA's fate had already been sealed by a
release from the office of the President immediately banning MOJA and the
Gambia Socialist Revolutionary Labour Party. This was on October 31, 1980,
nine months before the Kukoi rebellion and eleven months after MOJA's
founding.
The banning order was issued in an effort to clamp down on elements
suspected of involvement in a shooting incident at Bakau police depot that
resulted to the death of Mr. Eku Mahoney, a senior officer at the barracks,
and eventually, to the execution of Mustapha Danso for the former's death.
Unfortunately, adventurist elements in MOJA had earlier gone on a campaign
spree in Banjul and some urban centres spraying alarming graffiti on walls,
reading: "Long Live MOJA-G"; "Down with the Jawara Regime"; "No Justice No
Peace", and so on. The effect was dramatic. MOJA had in less than one year
succeeded in sending a chilling message of doom to those in power while its
name became associated with militiant opposition to the status quo
throughout the country. Because MOJA had not even authored a constitution at
the time, its message was solely based on a particular organizational
preamble concretely spelling out the attributes of the oppressive order
orchestrated from Banjul and the acute need to militate and orgnaise
practically against it. While this was obviously important for MOJA's
popularity, it was the underlying, widespread mass discontent with the
regime that accounted for its attractiveness.
What I particularly found very interesting in those early days of
organisation-building inside MOJA was how, through debates and discussions
in small groups, ideological issues were thrashed out systematically: the
question of coups d'etat, guerilla warfare, different forms of terrorism
(from the Illitirati, to the Chinese Tongs, to modernday distortions like
the Brigate Ross, and Baadar-Meinhoff), armed struggle; all these were
discused, even if inexhaustively, and rejected as viable forms of
organisational alternatives capable of bringing about lasting social change
in Gambia.
Eventhough MOJA did not reject parliamentary democracy as an institutional
neccessity in a neo-colonial setting, it accepted it only as a means within
the wider objective of the struggle for popular democracy. The reasoning
towards this approach is simple and powerful: democracy as it is known and
practiced in the West relies fundamentally on the orgnanisational and
administrative foundations of a literate society. For a constitutional
authority to enact and ordain laws for the benefit of a population that can
neither write nor read and understand the language of such legislative
texts, makes a mockery of the whole idea of democracy. Governnance itself
rests essentially on the question of the distribution and exercise of
political power; but since this power itself rests on a particular level of
mastery of the English language (we were a British colony, weren't we?), the
majority of the entire population of the Gambia is by fiat, prevented from
true participation in the democratic process. So a Westminster inspired
institution such as the parliament is not just geographically alien. It is
as much a historical implant as a cultural aberration. (It is this alien
nature of the three branches of government in the newly independent
colonies, that made both capitalist and left-orientated administrations to
practically throw away not only the constitutions on which they rested, but
made the state itself an abstraction that was useful only if its resources
could be pillaged in parastatals, SOEs (state owned enterprises), national
airlines, universities, development programmes, and other economic
instituitons, while its security apparatus was used basically to violently
repress political opponents and to suppress all forms of dissent. Because
African nations were still in the process of formation from contesting and
often mutually suspicious ethnic groupings, the state and its institutions
were seen to belong to nobody, making "national" resources easy prey for
dubious politicians and unscrupolous "wabenzi").
MOJA therefore felt that to balance and to minimise the brutal effects of
this gross maldistribution of power, it was vital that grassroots
organisations be built everywhere, based on democratic methods, so as to
address the basic needs and immediate concerns of the people as an inroad
towards bringing them within the administrative orbit of the state.
MOJA's banning and the fact that it's leadership was forced into exile
following the traumatic and devastating effects of the July '81 rebellion
meant that its entire organisational edifice was forced underground. The
sense of loss and bereavement was such as to disorient the national psyche.
The bloody rebellion and its violent suppression by Senegalese forces in
less than a week was akin to nothing in Gambian's entire history. Up to a
thousand Gambians may have died, but certainly two thousand were rounded up
and locked in various detention centres around the country. The declared
state of emergency was used as licence for the police and Senegalese
soldiers to behave as wanton criminals. Not only were many completely
innocent people detained, but many of these suffered paralysis as a result
of severe and inhumane torture. Twelve young men suffocated to death after
forcing more than thirty of them into a police cell designed for no more
than ten. Many more were to die while in detention. The country was placed
under emergency rule but it was also under foreign military occupation.
One would have thought that after such a bloody nightmare and political
turmoil in the land and the image of the ruling party in tatters, president
Jawara would finally dedicate his intellectual energies to critically
analyse and perhaps alter his own attitude toward the people he ruled. But
as Koro Sallah explained in an interview with West Africa magazine some time
in late 1982, instead of setting up a commission on people that were missing
and unaccounted for, Jawara established a commission on damaged and missing
property.
While pretending that its policies had no relations to Kukoi's claims for
legitimising the uprising, the government admitted that corruption "has
assumed epidemic proportions" and so quickly legislated in December 1982 the
" Evaluation of Assets and Properties and Prevention of Corrupt Practices
Act " as part of a general effort at renewal and house-cleaning. In a
parallel move this renewal also consisted of waves of seismic changes in the
PPP's political hierarchy following its electoral victory months earlier.
(Sir Alieu Sulayman Jack, Famara Wassa Touray, Hausum Janneh, Lamin Saho,
all were either removed from office, or found their names abruptly left out
from the new cabinet). A Commission to Evaluate Assets and Properties was
set up and the President selected three people to man it.
But before this important but pretentious piece of legislation came into
force, the very first institution set up by the regime, the External Aid
Commission, had already become a nest of corrupt practices. Foreign
governments had donated millions of dalasi in a bid to help the nation on
its efforts at reconstruction. But no sooner had funds been earmarked for
specific programmes (in compensating the Senegalese military effort to
reinstate the President, for example) than damaging reports of the
disappearance of six million dalasi from the funds hit a baffled population.
Though Mr. Ebou Taal was tried and imprisoned on account of this huge stint,
circumstantial evidence pointed to the involvement of the Presidential
household itself. Another two-and-a-half million dalasis disappeared between
the Central Bank and the Customs. (I cannot remember the outcome of the
investigation that ensued).
By this time MOJA exiles in Scandinavia and other countries in Europe had
already established communication channels with members elsewhere and
started to work producing propaganda material giving its opinion on events
and the extremely difficult circumstances occasioned by the state of
emergency and the effective transformation of Gambia into a a police state.
To escape rising unemployment and for fear of persecution at home, droves of
Gambian youth left the country desperately searching for refuge in Europe
and elsewhere. Not only were members of the official opposition rounded up
and detained (nearly the entire leadership of the NCP were tucked away at
Mile Two) but hundreds of people coming from villages native to members of
Kukoi's 12 man National Council of the Revolution were arrested and detained
as well. Those youth who could flee in time before the newly established spy
network could reach them made it through the Cassamance to other
destinations. According to MOJA estimates, some 20,000 Gambians had by 1985
settled in rural communities in Spain working as farm hands in the most
degrading circumstances. In the meantime MOJA's Secretariat in Stockholm
remained innundated with official requests from lawyers all over Europe to
attest to the membership in the movement of asylum seekers.
MOJA had started publishing "Balang-Baa" (Resistance), its official organ of
information and opinion, and continued an intensified campaign for the
release of all unlawfully detained persons including those who were declared
prisoners of conscience by Amnesty International and other Human Rights
organisations. It raised international concern for the condition of those
found by the tribunal and the courts to be guilty of treason; while in
Sweden it solicited the authorities on behalf of those Gambians, who though
not politically active previously, risked persecution if sent home. In its
new-year messages starting from January 1983, MOJA agitated against the
Senegambian Confederation urging the population to demand subjecting the
issue to a referendum. But perhaps MOJA's most important propaganda effort
that established it as a serious intellectual and political alternative to
PPP rule was a two-part article written by Ousman Manjang that was published
in West Africa Magazine sometime in 1983. (I cannot recall precisely when).
It was labelled "Nation-building in the Gambia". The regime found the
article so devastating of its image that the Ministry of Information was
ordered to buy loose copies everywhere and incinerate them out of
circulation.
The publication of Nation Building in The Gambia was soon followed by a
documentary made by MOJA and filmed by famous Swedish film maker Lasse
Westman. The regime responded by sending a high-powered delegation (headed
by the Minister for Information and Tourism?) to Sweden to protest against
showing the film, a move that produced the unintended effect. Thousands of
Scandinavian holiday makers cancelled trips to the Gambia catapulting the
tourist industry into a crisis it never before experienced. the regime
however succeeded in partly isolating MOJA by harrassing Gambian holiday
makers from Sweden. People who were associated in any way to known MOJA
members were detained and subjected to all sorts of intimidation at Yundum
airport.
Most of its energy however, was spent in running the Stockholm-based
Organisation of Gambians in Sweden, an engagement that proved to be as much
a blessing as an abomination. Instead of consuming itself with political
work it took it upon itself to administer and run this organisation making
it one of the most respected immigrant associations in Sweden.
The limitations of underground work at home and exile on the other hand were
eventually to severely hamper MOJA's growth as a political organisation in
Gambia. While it was able to engage its members in limited ideological
training, it failed to implement with rigour measures that would have curbed
sectarian tendencies emerging within its exiled wing.
True, MOJA's Programme for the National Democratic Revolution drew heavily
from the Marxist tradition of orgnasation building, yet it would be
misleading to call MOJA a marxist organisation. Not only did some of its
prominent members rejected calling themselves Marxists, everybody realised
that membership in the movement had to be based on criteria other than
ideological affiliation to grand and imported schemes designed by Karl Marx
and Frederik Engels, antedating independent Gambia by over a hundred years .
(I remember in the Spring of 1986 being referred to by one comrade as a
disappointing reactionary because I maintained that the states within the
former Soviet Union were in effect colonies of Russia. Some three years ago
in an argument with Halifa Sallah and Saiks on this list I argued why both
Marx and Lenin were blue-blooded racists).
In short MOJA was basically a democratic organisation aiming to implement a
revolutionary programme that used marxism as an important but insufficient
instrument and guide for social analysis and organisation. A leftist
organisation it was. But this was one that valued and regarded paramount the
concrete historical experiences of the Gambian nation as the arbiter of its
social and economic agenda. From the very beginning, MOJA emphasised that it
alone does not have all the answers to Gambia's woes. It believed strongly
that social truth was that which can be ascertained through practice; which
is not to say that theory had no place in its politcal thinking. On the
contrary, practice in the past has itself produced a huge body of theory
that should be used to guide the direction of change. MOJA believes that it
not only should study and understand Michael Porter and Paul Krugman, it
needs also to study and understand Adebayo Adedeji, Claude Ake, Gunnar
Myrdal and Amartya Sen; that it not only should look for answers in Sweden
and Taiwan, but more importantly, it must look towards Botswana and
especially the Indian state of Kerala, a third-world "nation" boasting of
98% literacy, a life expectancy rivalling that of Canada, all achieved
through secular policy reforms implemented mostly by democratically elected
successive communist party governments since the mid 1950s. (If you have
never heard of Kerala, consult your nearest CIA office).
MOJA became paralised because it failed to address organisational problems
within its leadership in Sweden. Neglect, and the hope that these would
disappear in time, led to a breakdown in the early 90s. By the time the PPP
government lifted the ban on MOJA in late 1992, it had already been engaged
in implememting measures with the aim of correcting its organisational
troubles.
This effort at regrouping suffered its most severe setback partly because it
failed to involve the collective in initially carrying out projects in
Gambia that the movement agreed upon after the lifting of the ban. Though
a breakdown appeared imminent at the time of the AFPRC coup in July 1994, I
have no doubts whatsoever, that some members deliberately "enhanced" the
process of disintegration in order to provide for themselves sufficiently
leeway to cross the river in order to ride the Jammeh bandwagon. (They
could always hypocritically maintain that since there was no MOJA, they had
the option of going wherever revolution was being made).
Even in that crisis period, MOJA declared its opposition to the coup as a
matter of principle but it would grant critical support to the AFPRC
takeover.
Personal animosity developed amidst mutual charges of treachery and
opportunism. Some members vowed never again to associate with certain
others. The level of disillusionment knew no bounds as certain members felt
genuinely betrayed by an incredibly mandarin leadership.
These are the circumstances that obtained in MOJA when Dumo Sarho, for
instance, travelled to Gambia to work on a project owned by Boka Loho (an
NGO). Tensions amongst members were such that both Ousman Manjang and Dumo
Sarho could shuttle into and out of Stockholm without many former comrades
seeing them or knowing of their itinerary.
True, individual members, including myself, probably could have reacted more
loudly and agitated more vehemently for the release of Sarho from unlawful
detention, but to charge MOJA for not doing anything in his behalf is simply
silly and grossly unfair.
On the other hand, I want to opine that MOJA included a group of very
energetic and intelligent Gambians whose pride (a foolish one though) is
what has delayed its long overdue regrouping. I am sure that there still is
a chance to assume the mantle of struggle for a democratic Gambia. Hamjatta
wrote of back-stabbing, and treachery as a bane of the left. But where does
betrayal and treachery not occur in human enterprises engaged in the
struggle for and exercise of power? Inside the ANC? Amongst the Tories? In
the Clinton White House? Or in corporate boardrooms? Who on this list is
unaware of bitter quarrels amongst academics villifying one another for a
professorship? As I wrote once in the past, problems of organising Africans
is an inevitable payload on any ship sailing toward true democracy.
Some quarrels can help accelerate progress? That of Leibnitz and Newton? Or
perhaps that of Soyinka and Mazrui?
Momodou S Sidibeh,
Stockholm/Kartong
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