The
Real July 22nd Revolution – C Section: Free the Ideas
By Baba Galleh Jallow
The real July 22nd revolution asks why
Yahya Jammeh waited fifteen years before deciding to embark on a massive effort
to rid The Gambia of alleged witches. We neither affirm nor deny the existence
of witches. But we do know for sure that belief in witchcraft has been part and
parcel of the human and Gambian imaginary since time immemorial. We know that
belief in witchcraft exists in all cultures of the world - western, eastern,
and otherwise. In the West, persons suspected of witchcraft have historically
been branded for enhanced visibility; the Salem witch hunts are still fresh in
the historical memory. Long before our great, great grand ancestors were alive,
long before The Gambia became a physical and geographical expression on the
coast of West Africa, long before Yahya Jammeh was born, a belief in witchcraft
existed in our society and continues to carry similar substance across our
ethnic and religious identities. The Fula, the Wollof, the Mandinka, the Jola,
the Serere, the Manjako equally believe that there are indeed people who are
witches capable of vicariously ‘eating’ their fellow beings.
The Real July 22nd revolution therefore
demands to know why Yahya Jammeh did not embark on his witch-hunt back in 1994,
or some years thereafter? If witches
were such an evil presence that they required importing witch hunters from
abroad to help wipe them out, why did Yahya Jammeh not deal with such an evil
earlier than he did? All along, as far as Yahya Jammeh’s thinking is concerned,
witches had been ‘eating’ people. But not until these witches dared to eat a
relative of Yahya Jammeh – presumably his beloved aunt – did Yahya Jammeh get
enraged and imported witch hunters from Guinea to eradicate the evil scourge
once and for all. In Yahya Jammeh’s arrogant mind, those evil witches attacked
his aunt because they were out to get him. He thus determined to show them that
he could hunt and smoke them all out, humiliate them, and deal drastically with
them; to teach them a lesson that they will never forget. He did not care if
only one witch or several witches were responsible for eating his aunt. He
would eradicate the entire evil race of witches off the face of the earth. And
so he unleashed those terrifying witch hunters clad in the colors of blood,
escorted by fierce-looking armed soldiers, upon masses of innocent villagers,
among whom being identified as a witch is purely and simply the worst thing
that could ever happen to a person. Formerly respected elders - religious and
secular, well regarded men, women, and children, were “identified” as witches,
forced to drink strange concoctions, and submitted to such public humiliation
as they would never recover from. Some died in the process. Quietly, Yahya
Jammeh gloated over his victory against the evil creatures that ate his aunt in
order to get to him. That Yahya Jammeh has become a sorry victim of hubris is
amply demonstrated by this bizarre episode. Only a mind afflicted with hubris
can purport to wage a war on the world of spirits. The man who grabs his weapon
and purports to venture forth to meet and defeat spirits in the spiritual world
is a man who has lost touch with reality. A powerful man who feels so angry by
the alleged attack of witches on his aunt that he decides to eradicate witches
has his power literally oozing from his eyes, his ears, his nostrils, and every
pore on his head. What impudence is it to vow to defeat a phenomenon you are
not even sure exists! Suffice it to say that having inflicted severe pain on
some innocent souls who can never be definitively identified as real witches,
he was forced to retreat in humiliating defeat, having merely succeeded in
foisting yet another heavy badge of dishonor onto his already over burdened
shoulders.
The real July 22nd revolution does not
deny that under Yahya Jammeh’s stewardship, The Gambia has seen some
significant improvements in infrastructure. His government has built roads,
bridges, schools, hospitals, markets and other structures were there were none –
from Gambian taxpayers money. These too will be his legacy. But Yahya Jammeh
refuses to accept the fact that development is not all about building
structures. Yes, structures are important because they might make life easier
for the people. But holding them up as the be all and end all of development
betrays a tragic misconception and misrepresentation of our national priorities.
The spirit of true development resides in the pace of the advancement of human
civilization, the collective improvement of the people’s awareness of, and
control over their environments – social, cultural, and political. Alongside
all the talk about patriotism should prevail a rational national consciousness
imbued with genuine patriotism, not the parochial kind that defines only Jammeh
supporters as patriots.
Yahya Jammeh has nurtured and presides over a severe
political pathology that operates only in oppositional terms and that is
devastatingly divisive and debilitating in its social effects. Witness his
brazenly coercive warning to the villagers of Njaba Kunda and Salikenye that if
they don’t vote for him in the 2011 elections, they will not get any development.
Yahya Jammeh has anointed himself the sole dispenser of national development,
as if development were a commodity to be actually doled out at his personal
discretion. Those who dare to vote for another party of their choice are
stigmatized, criminalized, and rudely crowded out of the national interest.
They are turned alien in their own homeland simply because they dare to support
another candidate. Yahya Jammeh has turned the Gambian people into fear-ridden,
dysfunctional and passive observers and recipients of development on one hand,
and helpless consumers of verbal indignities on the other.
The real July 22nd revolution recognizes
that Yahya Jammeh prefers to preside over an untutored national consciousness,
to borrow a poignant phrase from Edward Said. Yahya Jammeh stands accused of
putting under preventive detention the spirit of Gambian discourse. The
executive instrument he has deployed to detain Gambian ideas – whatever its
origin and rationale – must expeditiously be repealed in the name of the
supreme national interest, which is the overall well being of the Gambian
citizen. We say with a great scholar of jurisprudence that the only title
higher than that of president is that of Citizen, and Yahya Jammeh cannot
abrogate to himself the power to jeopardize the well being of the Gambian
citizen. He needs to realize that he is merely a primus inter pares, a first
among equals in the Gambian community. He is nothing more than a mere trustee of
the supreme national interest. The Gambian presidency may not be, cannot be,
reduced to the personal property of any single Gambian. It is a collective
heritage, equally owned by all Gambians.
The supreme national interest demands that Yahya
Jammeh frees Gambian ideas from the preventive detention he has arbitrarily
placed them. The supreme national interest demands that Yahya Jammeh enables
that environment of healthy debate and discourse that is an absolute
prerequisite for the advancement of any society. Claiming negative African
essentialisms and hiding behind the tired bogey of national security to muzzle
our national consciousness is no longer acceptable. What urgently needs to be
built in The Gambia is yes, physical infrastructure; but also yes – a much bigger
yes, a high level of political consciousness that represents the only national
gateway to civilizational advancement. An elaborate infrastructure of the mind
that will illuminate the path to a unique, Gambian civilizational progress is
what Gambia most urgently needs.
That Yahya Jammeh stands rightfully accused of a
deliberate impoverishment of Gambian culture and consciousness is amply demonstrated
by his unjust banning and seizure of Citizen FM radio on the frivolous grounds
that it had violated an old colonial law – The Telegraph Act of 1913. In spite
of his frequent and cluesless ranting against colonialism and western
imperialism, Yahya Jammeh still invited a malignant colonial ghost to come help
him arrest, interrogate, charge, condemn, and forever silence what was perhaps
independent Gambia’s most significant medium of cultural expression. Just like
the witches who ‘ate’ his aunt, Yahya Jammeh saw Citizen FM’s translation of
the news and opinions from the national newspapers as an affront to his supreme
authority; as another malicious weapon deployed to fight against his government,
even though the translated papers included the Gambia Daily, the official
government mouthpiece. It was hardly tolerable to Yahya Jammeh that the reading
public had access to the news and opinions expressed in the private press that
was out to tarnish his image, sabotage his plans, and purport to tell him how
to run his government. For him, The Gambia has been reduced to a government of
which he is the supreme ruler and commander.
That Citizen FM’s translation of the newspapers into
the local languages struck a significant cord in the Gambian social imaginary
was immediately apparent. When the translation sessions began, small groups of
people could be seen everywhere gathered around small transistors, listening
intently. Virtually all sets are tuned to Citizen FM as a population starved of
civic knowledge listened in rapture, its spirit feeling a sweet awakening.
Yahya Jammeh put an abrupt stop to it. Knowing that the more people know what’s
going on around them, the more questions they tend to ask, and determined to
keep the Gambian people unquestioning dummies who will continue to rationalize
his great power and glory through the myth of divine favor, Yahya Jammeh
inflicted a hideous wound on the national psyche by unjustly silencing Citizen
FM. A society that knows little and asks nothing about its state is a sick
society. A state that forbids frank national discourse is an unpatriotic state guilty
of treason against both itself and its people.
The real July 22nd revolution says with
another great scholar of jurisprudence that freedom of speech may only be curtailed
when the speech in question represents a clear and present danger to society.
Hardly a day passes by when Yahya Jammeh does not make such a speech. “No coup
can remove me” is a current example. Suffice it to say that they eye never sees
the stick that plucks it. We warm with Solon the philosopher that tyranny is a
very high place from which there is no easy way down. The real July 22nd
revolution urgently calls upon Yahya Jammeh to free the ideas so that they can
help redeem The Gambia from an unhealthy, unsustainable, and potentially
precarious state of being.