*Discourse with Dr. Jammeh: Nation Body and Nation Mind*



By Baba Galleh Jallow



Dear Dr. Jammeh, let us first start by asking you to accept our condolences
on the death of your erstwhile friend and mentor, Muammar Gaddafi. Who would
have thought that just about a decade after he conferred upon you the
glorious titles of Grand Commander of the Order of Al-Fatah, the Grand Order
of Bravery, and The African Medal, he would meet with such an inglorious
end? Well, as the adage goes, he who lives by the sword dies by the sword;
he who specializes in inflicting violence on his fellow humans will have
violence inflicted upon him. So it has been in the past; so is it in the
present; so shall it be in the future. It is an immutable law of nature that
humans reap what they sow, a lesson that unfortunately for them and their
victims, dictators and tyrants never learn.



Talking of dictators, you have loudly declared to us that you are a dictator
for development. What exactly did you mean dictator for development? What
development? Whose development? Are you a dictator for development because
Gambians are stupid and you are the only Gambian clever enough to know what
development means and the only one capable of bringing it for Gambians? Or
are you a dictator concerned primarily about the development of your own
personal interests? Since Gambians are not stupid and incapable of bringing
about their own development, we can only imagine that you are a dictator for
your own personal development. And so you proclaim that you are a dictator
for development – your own personal development hiding behind the façade of
national development – a concept we are certain you do not fully understand
and to which we will return shortly.



You see Dr. Jammeh, you are not the first African dictator to proclaim that
you a dictator for development. Guinea’s late dictator Sekou Toure comes
readily to mind. To rebuff claims that his regime was a dictatorship, Toure
argued that all governments were by nature dictatorships. Dictatorship, he
claimed, “is the concentration of powers exercised by a man or group of men
over the whole. . . . If the dictatorship exercised by the governmental
apparatus emanates directly from the whole of the people, this dictatorship
is popular in nature and the state is a democratic state - democracy being
the exercise of national sovereignty by the people.” It was in this sense
that Sekou Toure espoused his paradoxical concept of “democratic
dictatorship” which was a clear contradiction in terms. Having imposed a
dictatorship and assumed a position of infallibility and omnipotence, Sekou
Toure was condemned to live in a world of conspiracies, real and imagined.
Paranoia born of despotism led him into a constant tirade against
imperialism and neocolonialism and “fifth column” elements out to kill him.
Indeed, his voice could daily be heard over Radio Conakry railing against
perceived enemies of the revolution and chanting down imperialism and
neocolonialism. Like all dictators, Sekou Toure routinely “unveiled” alleged
plots against his life which he then used to imprison, kill or exile his
opponents – real or perceived. In the end, he left a country pregnant with
the kind of mayhem and chaos we have seen through the reigns of Lansana
Conteh and Musa Dadis Camara. His dictatorship brought zero development to
Guinea and set the country on a tortuous path to destruction after his
death. Sadly, the saying that history’s greatest lesson is that man never
learns from history has a lot to commend it.



The position of Gambianism is that The Gambia’s one and only legitimate
dictator is the Constitution of the Republic of The Gambia. As two bulls
cannot drink from the same calabash, the lesser and weaker of the two has to
withdraw its horns before they get broken by the stronger force. In our
particular case, you, Dr. Jammeh, are the lesser of the two bulls because
you are a mere mortal, a human being and a fellow citizen like all the rest
of the Gambian community. You can only be a dictator over a country
inhabited by unimaginative nitwits or one that has no constitution and
therefore one in which the rule of law is out of the question. In a country
such as ours where people are intelligent and the Constitution is the
supreme law of the land, there is no room for a personal dictator – of
development or otherwise.



Now Dr. Jammeh, let us turn to the question of development? What exactly is
development? Because of the elusive nature of this concept, Gambianism
believes that it is more profitable to focus on what is there to be
developed rather than what development is. In our conception of what needs
to be developed, we think in terms of two major components of our national
entity: the Nation Body and the Nation Mind. The two complement each other
and neither can develop in a healthy manner without the other.



The Nation Body refers to the economic and physical structures of our
country – the roads, hospitals, banks, schools, hotels, parks, and other
physical infrastructure and financial institutions that facilitates physical
and bureaucratic mobility. The Nation Body would include all the trappings
of modernity, all our documentary institutions, our constitution, our laws,
the media, and that collective Gambian voice that lays legitimate claim to
ownership of the country. Obviously, there is no denying the fact that the
Nation Body needs to be healthy and beautiful – that infrastructure needs to
be built and maintained, that the economy needs to be carefully tended, that
the constitution and laws of the land need to be given supreme respect and
that the collective voice of the nation needs to be given the space it
requires to make itself heard and to contribute its quota to the task of
national wellbeing. We know, Dr. Jammeh, that you have made some progress in
developing some aspects of the Gambian Nation Body. You have built schools
and hospitals and roads. But you have miserably failed to attend to those
facets of the Gambian Nation Body whose blossoming threatens to question
your right to impose yourself as a dictator on the Gambian people. That
needs to be corrected.



The Nation Mind is that which nurtures or drives the healthy development of
the Nation Body. It is manifested in the collective intellectual energies of
the Gambian people. It is expressed in the varied, conflicting or
complimentary views and opinions of the Gambian people. It is the spirit
that animates and is animated by love of country and that sense of true
patriotism which causes people to sacrifice their personal security and even
their lives for the betterment of the whole. It is that most important
aspect of the Gambian Nation that must be given unchallenged priority if we
are ever to rise above the petty obstacles and bottlenecks that hold us back
as a people. Whoever wishes for genuine human progress must selflessly
nurture the Nation Mind, a task that demands more humanity and more honesty
and integrity than could be found in a human dictatorship. This is because
by definition, human dictatorship is always inspired by a selfish desire to
preclude opinions, views and practices that run counter to its own personal
interests.



Now Dr. Jammeh, we would concede that at least one Gambian body has indeed
seen some rather remarkable development since 1994 mostly to the exclusion
of others.  We note that this particular Gambian body has been transformed
from a slender structure with a rugged face and cracked lips to a large
structure with a rotund and oily face that shines even in the darkest of
nights. We note that it now dons neat white caps and flowing robes with
bulging chest pockets, and habitually clutches a tool in one hand and a
weapon in the other ostensibly for security and mystification purposes. We
note that it owns an increasing number of hotels and banks and businesses
and houses and large plots of land – and many other distorted symbols of
Gambian modernity. Unfortunately, we note that its development has been
warped, distorted and one-sided, feeding as it were on a very unhealthy diet
of the blood and sweat of innocent persons and their God-given rights. In
any case, Dr. Jammeh, it is with the development of the Nation Mind – a Mind
that you stand accused of starving – that we are especially concerned about.
God willing, we will elaborate on this theme in our next conversation.


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