Let me begin with a disclaimer. Exposing the witting and unwitting unapologetic complicity of Pan Africans of Marxist persuasions of all stripes with brutal crackpot African dictatorships that i intend to labour on here, is not a retrospective act of holier-than- than moral excoriation by a former closet Liberal who ironically did guzzle from the same fountain well of Pan African Marxism. Rather, it should be viewed in the light of historical hindsight, and setting the scorecards straight.
Remarkably, virtually little or nothing has been said, noted or recorded on the shameful complicity of African Leftists [i shall from henceforth refer to Pan African Marxists as Leftists] wittingly or unwittingly in strengthening the hand of the devil that is African repression by mostly Left inclining dictatorships. This remarkable feat in itself speaks something unique of Africa's political, social and economic history since colonialism. That Leftists have dominated and indeed, to a lesser extent continue to dominate social and political discourse in Africa from the heydays of the struggle against the colonial master to post colonial delineation of what it means to be African and the composition of the modern African conscience, is not in doubt. From Nkrumah to Nyerere to Sankara, Leftists have had a grand narrative to tell and indeed did so with a dialectical ingenuity and semantic cuteness that has mesmerised the hearts of generations of Africans this writer included. As with co-related events in history are to do, the demise of Communism in the late 80s and declared bankruptcy of Socialism as a system of economic management, has not spared Pan African Leftists as historians pored over the mess that Bolshevik revolution of 1917 created and events it provoked around the world. Focus of lately has indeed turn towards the extent to which Leftists did form symbiotic relationships with Marxist leaning crack pot dictatorships in Africa which Leftist were outright apologists for. But the attention and scrutiny was and has not assumed a forensic trend that Western Leftists are getting from contemporary historians. At any rate, there seems to be lacking much needed scholarly work on African Leftists shameful complicity with dictatorships in Africa. Well, to my limited knowledge at least. I'm all ears.
That Leftists still resist and indeed make incharitable bawling any attempts to subject their giants like Nkrumah and Nyerere's record to a forensic scrutiny, is a tale-tell sign of a wider conspiracy and concerted effort on their part to illuminate in the best possible light and in veneration the "dictatorial goulash" that Nkrumah and Nyerere's rein really were and how disastrous and at best ill-conceived some of their policies were on Africa. Whenever mention is made of Nkrumah being an enlightened dictator who silenced critics by leaving them to rot in jail and wielding supreme dictatorial powers or Njerere's "Ujamaa" being a catastrophic experiment with the peasants it sought to alleviate out of poverty, it leaves Lefts impervious to demonstration. They will come out with all their legendary ferocity to defend the saintly Nkrumah and Nyerere. In his defence, albeit in a different context, of Nkrumah's enlightened dictatorship, our esteemed friend Halifa Sallah made a crypto-apologetic plea that the period needed Nkrumah operated under needed strong assertive leaders and hence it follows from such logical progression, excesses and trampling of rights is conceivable and indeed prudent. The argument goes thus that in confronting foreign evils, then the stage is set for stifling home critics and it's rationale is sui generis moral. Indeed, Comrade Halifa! You mean political relativism? Seeing this as it is on face, one would be excused for upbraiding Halifa as employing double standards for say the excesses of his bete noire Jawara and his political hero Nkrumah. It is most certainly very rich of him to insist on pooh-poohing Jawara for his excesses when Jawara also lays claims on the same rationale for his authoritarian streaks that Halifa attributes to Nkrumah's dictatorial inclinations. One is left wondering whether to get exculpated by Halifa's yardstick, you must belong to a certain club; the club striped with Marxist colours? If anything, this blatant relativism. Something aplenty in the Leftists stockpile of dialectical ingenuity and semantic cuteness when it comes to defending the worst excesses of their favourite dictators. On Nyerere's catastrophic "Ujamaa" experimentation, they blame it all on Western meddling and sabotage impervious to the ill-conceivedness of forcing peasants against their wills to participate in text-book theories that should be left to see the living daylights in the first place and indeed not part of the peasantry. This ridiculous and absurd fallacy that Africa was and is some communal Utopian peasantry or to employ their favourite parlance, proletarian society that fits well into the Marxian designs of a proletarian society where the living principle would be to, to pinch from Comrade Lenin himself, from each according to his abilities and to each according to his needs; is all part of a well sustained Leftists delusions of grandeur that they drool in when discoursing Africa. Far from it, Africa never was and never will be such proletarian communal socialist society but as is increasing become lucid from anthropological developments, Africa was always a proto-pluralist individualist communities of fate compounded in compassion and the affinity or fealty of kinship that escapes both rugged individualism's narcissism and communitarianism's dull conformist inclination. The fact that Africa continues to be depicted as some communitarian peasant cooperative society resembling Marxian outlooks, speaks tomes of how Leftists in Africa dominate our discourse and how Leftists in the West use Africa as a surrogate for their moral and intellectual frustrations after the decisive and moral repudiation Socialism in the late 80s.
As we return to examining more of Leftists complicity in strengthening the hand of the devil, we need look no further than recent memories of Zimbabwe and the Gambia. When Mugabe faced the biggest test of his domination of Zimbabwean politics since independence, cannily he returned to what African despots especially those on the Left do best: rehearsing the litany of colonial injustice, the White-Black dichotomy, anti-Capitalism and militantly anti-Liberal. Somehow, these rehearsal of these manages to get despots off the hook of Leftists vehemence for embracing moderation and preaching compromise or reforms. It is interesting in Mugabe's case that he fought the liberation struggle as some sort of Pan African Marxist who doesn't even contemplate reconciliation and tolerance for the racially riven society Zimbabwe was and still is. Yet, upon taking charge of Zimbabwe and neutralising his opponents, he seemed to be moderate; preaching reconciliation, toleration and dropping his Leftists anti- West chants. This turned his his Leftist comrades against him, excoriating and denouncing him as another Western stooge taking African down the drain. As with all selfish, authoritarian and blind African leaders presiding over bloated bureaucracies, bulging corrupt state institutions and pseudo-democratic capitalist orders the foolishly call democracy, the plastered cracks began to turn peel and turned into huge deficits that suffice to say laid them bare to vulnerabilities that hitherto they had managed to handle quite well by unleashing state sponsored thuggery on opponents. Our friend Mugabe found himself in a similar situation in the run up to the 2000 elections. And like the the beguiling Leftist salesman he is, he began rehearsing the usual litany of the past that almost always strikes a chord with Pan African Leftists. So he took up the issue of land reforms, which he neglected out of sheer incompetence since independence and turned the elections into those who like White people to hold the illegally acquired lands and those who wish to return the lands to the peasants. Depicting the opposition in the former camp whilst he and his self appointed veterans in the latter. Tacitly sanctioning the murder and physical abuse of both White and Black opponents, Mugabe presided over a reign of terror whilst reason took backstage. In this, he found as he rightly calculated, a former constituency running into his arms; Leftists. Whilst the violence continued abated, Mugabe did nothing to stop this orgy of mob justice and preferred instead to stoke up the fire to cover up his own incompetence and failure to deliver to his poor suffering fellow Zimbabweans who suffered so much under both him and the colonial master. Instead of Leftists condemning these revulsive inhumane acts of terrorism by Mugabe and his thugs, they applauded gleefully that White farmers had it coming to them. Indeed, they queried whether this was not the same modus operandi the farms in question were ill-gotten when Europeans landed in Africa? And so two wrongs add up to a right the logic goes. Another display of political relativism. One would have thought for all their worldly sophistication, Leftists would see through Mugabe's revulsive and tacky ploys and that he doesn't give a rat's tummy about the suffering peasants who had suffered so much . If anything, logic and experience demonstrates that such emotionally charged mob justice that Mugabe was encouraging will never solve an intricate problem like the lands issue. Again Leftists were impervious to such logic and experience, letting their prejudices and bigotry rule their heads as they shamelessly supplied intellectual muscle to a crack-pot like Mugabe.
Of recent memories of Leftists giving allure to dictatorships in Africa, perhaps the Gambia is the clearest avatar and most unique of such shameful complicity. When in July 1994, the PPP was dislodged by soldiers after more than three decades in charge, the first to dance on the PPP's grave were Leftists. As the days turned into weeks, weeks into months and months into an anniversary, Leftists were blatantly and without any remorse began to supply intellectual muscle to another crackpot dictatorship. The more Jammeh rehearses the old Leftists litany of anti-West, anti-moderation, anti-freedom and the rest of the usual crannies, the more he became endeared to the Leftists who had campaigned relentlessly to see to the "debourgoeisification" of the Gambia and the end of the tyranny of Jawara but to no avail. What makes Jammeh case unique however, is that by his actions, he is not a Marxist or in essence an ideologue conscious Pan Africa Leftist. At any rate guaging by his rhetorics, Jammeh is infact a largely an inchoate social and political conservative who knows how to exploit the prejudices and emotions of Pan Africanism especially of the Leftist kind. Hence in their large numbers, they joined Jammeh's administration. Today, Jammeh's biggest intellectual defenders were all in their youth, militant Pan African Leftists who had cut their teeth in the radical politics of the 60s, 70s and 80s. From Sedat Jobe to Cheyassin Secka to Saja Taal to Tamsir Jallow to Sarjo and that is to mention but the top hierarchy. The former interestingly enough, was or one assumes still a member of MOJA-G. That members of a movement that espouses and proselytizes social justice and liberty can ingratiate themselves within the most Fascist regime and indeed the most potential powder keg of regional implosion in the Senegambian region is a manifestation of the complicity of Leftists and their betrayal of Africa and the African people. Most importantly it exposes a blatantand basic hypocrisy and opportunism of the Left; that they can have standards when it suits their purposes. Curiously enough, as i was perusing the Gambian papers online, a news item caught my attention. It was an interview that the Independent had with Sarjo Jallow's comrade Mr Ousman Manjang. In that interview, Mr Manjang stated amongst others that he saw no political opportunism in Jallow working for regime that in defiance of humanity cold bloodedly shoot school children demonstrating their disgust of the APRC. That his comrade is merely a civil servant functionary like else. Indeed, Mr Manjang! Sarjo is just another intellectual prostitute who have betrayed everything that you and others stood up for in the 70s and 80s. How can you say that when the regime that Sarjo serves as an official mouth piece abducted and indeed still refuses to set free a former comrade, Mr Dumo Sarhor? If Jallow is not another intellectual prostitute that this prehistoric government is stuffed with, then you remain impervious to demonstrating how unfortunate some of your colleagues have besmirched the virtuous and noble causes you sacrificed for.
The biggest surprise however came from the PDOIS/Foroyaa elites who wittingly and unwittingly have given this barbaric regime both comfort and allure to their poses. For reasons perhaps best known to themselves, they appointed themselves resident intellectuals of a so called transition process, continuously tossing about favourable feelers to Jammeh and even openly calling upon him to stand for elections to legalise himself. This, in the face of massive evidence of Jammeh's treachery. As if these were not enough, engaged in intellectually shoddy and pseudo-scientific pretentious "investigation" into the murder of Koro Ceesay and the question of the Gambia's missing millions siphoned off to Switzerland by Jammeh of which the New African Magazine did a very lucid reporting of. From ferocious critics of Jawara, they metamorphosed into low risk and soft critics of the Jammeh era. An era unrivalled in the annals of our history as barbaric and despotic. Anytime they make feeble attempts to critique Jammeh, there is always the Jawara experience which they incessantly parade alongside Jammeh's excesses. Their shameful complicity in strengthening the hand of Jammeh is a stark emphasis of what i earlier called the relativism they employ when it serves their ideological stripes and purposes. My indictments stand.
The question naturally arises why ideologues like Leftists who claim they are for social justice and Liberty would break their orthodoxy and embrace the devil? Apart from the blatant hypocrisy and opportunism, there is a fundamental moral truth to be taught here: that Marxists of all shades and persuasion are a strange hybrid. Perhaps, as has become lucid after the extensive post-mortem of socialism after it's demise, anything that frolics and drools in Utopias, will never be realised with persuasion or reason. Only violent revolutions and dictatorships are capable of stitching together their incongruent ideals. It is in the atavistic instincts of Marxists to jump into the same bed with creatures like Jammeh revulsive as this might be. There is no doubt that dictatorships and Marxian modes of achieving their ends beat in unison and are certainly no strange bed-fellows. In dictatorships, they have eventually found ventilation valves for their moral, intellectual and political frustrations after the demise, bankruptcy, decline and repudiation of Marxism of all manifestations. And the the shameful complicity of Leftists in strengthening the hand of the devil in Africa should not be viewed in isolation of what other Leftist apologists of Bolshevik Russia's purges, Stalin Gulags and other Left leaning political crimes against humanity. From the Webbs of the Fabian Society to Lukacs, prominent Left Wing scholars have denied the existence of Gulags and other forms of repression in Communist Russia and outrightly condemned such reports as Liberal propaganda. The break up however of the Soviet Union has proven the point: Communism has numerically exterminated more than the Nazis ever did.
In the attempt to choreograph Leftists shameful complicity in repression in Africa, there are fundamental moral truths to be grasped by all:
1. All Utopias or attempts at implementing them as we have witnessed or learned in history are invariably achieved through only force and dictatorial mechanisms Persuasion and reason have no place in Socialism and other world Utopias.
2. That contrary to Leftists propaganda and delusions of grandeur, Africa was never that avatar of Socialist peasant society.
3. Moral and intellectual frustrations of Leftists have incredibly made them turn to despotic political orders, finding in them surrogate ventilation outlets and conduits to hopelessly keep alive their bankrupt worldviews.
4. It goes without saying, that it is about time the enfeebling Socialist consensus on Africa is challenged and finally laid to rest.
To be sure, not all Leftists traded their souls to the devil to keep alive their repudiated and bankrupt worldviews. However, the shameful complicity of Leftists in strengthening the hand of devils like Jammeh and Mugabe needs to be exposed and if anything, show signs of remorse for such complicity. A Leftist self flagellation for their shameful complicity in African woes is long over due.
Hamjatta Kanteh