Date: Sun, 23 Oct 2011 16:38:17 -0500
Subject: [>-<] Discourse with Dr. Jammeh: Nation Body and Nation Mind
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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.