JULY 22^nd WAS NOT A REVOLUTION!!

 By Baba Galleh Jallow

On July 22, 1994, a group of soldiers of the Gambia National Army overthrew the thirty-year old regime of Sir Dawda Jawara and set up the Armed Forces Provisional Ruling Council (AFPRC). Two years later, the members of the Armed Forces Provisional Ruling Council decided to retire from the army and turn the Council into a political party - the Alliance for Patriotic Reorientation and Construction (APRC). The almost identical abbreviations of AFPRC and APRC raised some eyebrows and started crystallizing doubts as to whether anything had changed – whether in fact there had been a transition from a military to a civilian regime. More gloomily, it tended to crystallize fears that what was loudly hailed as a revolution carried out by self-proclaimed “soldiers with a difference” was just another African military appropriation of civilian functions in governance.

It was not long before Gambia's “soldiers with a difference” cured the people of any illusions that they were any different from other African soldiers in power. What Gambia had in the first two years after the coup was the typical military regime - complete with zooming jeeps full of gun-totting soldiers in dark glasses, total disregard for human rights and the rule of law, frequent outbursts of alleged coup attempts, a growing number of still-birthed investigations into criminal acts such as the gruesome murder of AFPRC Finance minister Ousman Koro Ceesay and the increasing disempowerment of the civilian population in tandem with the increasing empowerment of the military. The “transformation” of the AFPRC into the APRC did not change a thing as far as the over-riding dominance of the rulers over the ruled was concerned. If anything, it worsened; which is why in spite of all the fashionable protestations of patriotism and the dubbing of the July 22^nd, 1994 coup as a revolution, I find it justifiable to say categorically that July 22^nd was NOT a revolution by any stretch of the imagination. It was a military takeover, pure and simple, whose leader, fifteen years later, continues to rule that country with an iron hand and to exhibit all the characteristic features of a military dictator. We now live in a world that no longer allows for blanket condemnations and the shooting around of unsubstantiated allegations and denials. We live in a world in which it is absolutely imperative that allegations and denials, like claims and protestations, are backed up with empirically verifiable evidence. There is nothing in the Gambia government’s record that justifies it being called a revolutionary government. A revolution should have a well-defined ideology. Jammeh’s APRC has none.

Literally speaking, revolution means fundamental change. Whether it is a scientific revolution involving the dismantling of established scientific paradigms or a revolution of a political nature involving the dismantling of established political institutions, the essential mark of a revolution is fundamental change, change for the better. The conflict that occurs at the time of a political revolution is a mortal conflict, which does not necessarily mean the loss of human lives, but which certainly means the radical displacement of one political system or paradigm (presumably a backward one) by another political system or paradigm (presumably a progressive one). The absence of this radical shift in political paradigms is a sure sign of a pseudo revolution, such as the one being trumpeted out by the reactionary regime of Gambia’s Yahya Jammeh. A true revolution comes to liberate a people, not subject them to further oppression, oppression far worse than they suffered under the ousted political dispensation.

Can we honestly say that there has been a radical change of political system and culture – habits, attitudes, behaviors, rules, understandings –  in The Gambia since July 22^nd 1994? Can we honestly say that voting patterns have changed since 1994? Can we say that the sick Mansa mentality (the divine right of kings) that characterized the days of Sir Dawda Jawara has been replaced by better perceptions of government and governance since 1994? Has the Gambia’s political “mind” changed since 1994? Are Gambians better off today than they were fifteen years ago? Are Gambians more liberated from political subjugation and the politics of fear today than they were in 1994? The answer to all these questions is clearly, NO. If anything has changed in terms of political practice, it has changed for the worse: A fairly tolerant and cultured dispensation has been replaced by a dispensation that thrives on naked intimidation, coercion, persecution, the bullying of opponents and critics, opposition to political enlightenment and change, and a troubling politics of total exclusion and powercracy in which all power belongs to the powerful and the powerless are left to either crawl like defeated and mute reptiles, to swallow their pride and become sycophants, or to leave their country, or get jailed or killed for expressing their opinions on matters of national interest.

If July 22^nd brought any change to The Gambia, it is merely a change in the faces of the people who run that country. Such change is not adequate to bestow the honor of revolution on the July 22^nd coup, whatever Mr. Jammeh and his train of denial choose to believe. Gambian history of the late 20th century will never archive July 22^nd 1994 as a revolution. It will be called what is was, and remains: a military hostage taking of the Gambian nation that not only failed to keep its promises to the Gambian people, but that continues to thrive on the emasculation and subjugation of the Gambian people and the squandering of Gambia’s meager resources for the personal aggrandizement of the president.

Mr. Jammeh, Gambia’s self-styled revolutionary leader, was a poor, scrawny lieutenant at the time of the coup in 1994. He is now a sagging bag of bodily fat and one of the richest men in Africa, or even the world. He owns a zoo of exotic animals imported from foreign lands, a private jet, a palace in his remote home village of Kanilai and countless known and unknown shares and investments in lucrative businesses both at home and abroad. He now insists on being called Doctor and Professor and Sheikh, in addition to the outmoded appellations of His Excellency the President Alhaji this, that, and the other. A revolutionary leader does not wallow in the mud of personal inflation. He does not purport to be a great man, or a man greater than the most humble of his citizens. He should consider himself the willing and lowly shoe, which every beggar in the nation wears when they have nothing else to wear. A revolutionary leader cannot be a big bad bully who preys on the powerlessness of his people. He should not waddle around town wearing strange hats and expensive oversized boubous, and holding strange objects in his hands to appear powerful and mysterious. He should be a humble man, a man steeped in the ways of wisdom, a man who frowns upon luxury and extravagance, and personal displays of opulence. He should be a Mahatma Gandhi. Or a Socrates.

Indeed, July 22^nd is further disqualified from meriting the title of revolution by many other factors, one of which is its dismal failure to open up the Gambian body politic – its dismal failure to bring freedom and the opportunity so Gambians can develop their potentials to the fullest. It has failed to mobilize the most valuable resources of the country – the people – toward the goal of national development. It has instead worsened the politics of exclusion that were a mark of the former regime. It has brought a level of bondage and subjugation that was unthinkable fifteen years ago. Political change cannot be called a revolution if it does not create the conditions for the people to develop their potentials to the fullest and aspire to the very best that their society has to offer.

For instance, the Bolshevik revolution which overthrew the Russian Czar in 1917 was conceived as a revolution, but it ultimately failed because it simply replaced one parochial, intolerant, and dictatorial political dispensation with another. While it claimed to be a Communist revolution, it never went beyond the stage of the overthrow of the so-called bourgeois classes by the so-called proletariat. The final stage of the Communist revolution as envisaged and espoused by Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto never materialized: greed and covetousness made it impossible for the leaders of the Russian revolution to create the free and egalitarian society which was supposed to be the essence of communism. The ideal, according to Marx, was that the dictatorship of the proletariat, the working classes, was simply a transformatory stage in the revolution and would lead ultimately to what has been dubbed a utopia, an unattainable ideal. Certainly, some of Marx’s theories were hardly flawless. But part of Marx’s so-called utopia was, to say the least, feasible. It is that part of the utopia that the American Revolution created for Americans. It is that condition that all governments – revolutionary or not - must create for their citizens. Part of Marx’s dream was of a society in which the state is “an association, in which the free development of each is the condition of the free development of all.” Our point here is not to say that a revolution must be Marxist in order to succeed; but that a revolution must create the conditions for the free development of each and every member of the society to merit the name of a revolution. Mere change of government and leadership fall far short of being a revolution and should not be so-called.

A revolution can only be a revolution if it was conceived and executed as a revolution. Mr. Jammeh and his colleagues in the military before July 1994 needed not only to plan a revolution, but also to have been fully conversant with the concept of revolution itself and to know at least some of the dynamics and underlying principles of a revolution. They needed to be adequately conversant with revolutionary theory and revolutionary practice. In other words, they needed to be much better enlightened than they were then and continue to be now: As a bunch of high school graduates, there was no way that Mr. Jammeh and his colleagues could have understood the profound implications of the concept of revolution. It is one thing to call a military coup a revolution to stroke one’s ego; it is quite another thing to have anyone take you seriously; which, in the final analysis, is what matters. Make believes do not make revolutions. Real good ideas and practices do. Jammeh has neither.

 Finally, some of the very basic things Mr. Jammeh could have done to at least partly qualify for the honor of being called a reformer are these: 

- Mr. Jammeh claimed to have seized power in order to prevent anyone from clinging indefinitely on to power, as Sir Dawda did. Fifteen years later, he still has not limited the number of times he could seek re-election. He has become more power hungry than the president he replaced on July 22, 1994. Indeed, he is now wont to boast, ‘election or no election, I am here to stay.’

- Loosen the government’s control over national radio and television. These media belong to the people, not Mr. Jammeh. The resources used to run these media are either taxpayers’ money, or money borrowed in the name of the Gambian people to be repaid by the Gambian people. So why should Mr. Jammeh monopolize these media to the exclusion of all other political leaders in the country?

- Restore the independence of the Judiciary and respect for the rule of law that he has so ruthlessly ravaged. Sacking over 70 ministers in fifteen years WITHOUT A SINGLE WORD OF EXPLANATION to the Gambian public is hardly worthy of celebration.

 In the final analysis, Jammeh must stop cutting his nose to spite his face by claiming that July 22 1994 was a revolution: IT WAS NOT AND WILL NEVER BE!!

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