Towards the Family Nation

(Taken from forthcoming book, Reap the Power: Open Letter to an African Dictator)

 

By Baba Galleh Jallow                                                      

 

Mr. President, if there is one lasting legacy of imperialism in Africa that towers above all the rest, it is the legacy of the nation state. True, nations did exist in Africa long before the Europeans set foot on the continent. But these nations had fluid boundaries that expanded or contracted depending on the power or weakness of their rulers. It was European imperialism, especially of the late nineteenth century – from 1880s onwards, that led to the solidification of political boundaries and the creation of Africa’s current nation-state system. Is it not strange therefore, that we never read in western histories about the west, or hear in western commentaries on the west about the concept of nation building? While that term has become part and parcel of independent Africa’s political lexicon, we never hear it in France, Britain, Portugal, Germany, and Belgium, which had the lion’s share of colonies in Africa. Why is this so?

 

We submit that the very idea of nation building is a contradiction in terms. It is nations (people) that build states (governments), not the other way round. No wonder African countries have been stuck in the rut of underdevelopment and backwardness since they attained their so-called independence from Europe. The three or so generations of African leadership since 1960 have been stuck with this impossible notion of nation-building, and have been unable or unwilling to see that there is something inherently wrong with the very idea. The history of the successful nation state shows that it has always been the nation that builds the state, the people that set up the kind of government they want, and that would be subservient to their will. Perhaps because the nation-state system was imposed on the African people from above, and because the state that took over from the colonial state has not been unduly concerned with changing much of anything in terms of the ruler-ruled dynamic inherited from colonialism, Africa has remained saddled with this impossible notion of nation-building. That this has been a chronic problem, however, is no reason why it should remain so. We are out to help the African people correct this damaging anomaly by advocating an end to ignorant leadership, and by helping groom the kind of enlightened leadership that would enable the nation to build the kind of state that would respect and serve them as they deserve to be respected and served. We suggest that Africans start thinking in terms of state building and to relegate the anomaly that is nation building to the realm of irrelevance where it rightly belongs.

 

We submit Mr. President, that over the past eighteen years, your politics of hostility and insults have polarized our society more than it has ever been. True, during the First Republic, there were often conflicts between supporters of the ruling and opposition parties. But the police and courts generally mediated and settled such conflicts in relatively neutral fashion. Under your government however, our society has been broken up into distinct islands – with those connected to the ruling party enjoying freedom from oppression, and those not connected to the ruling party being constantly criminalized and persecuted. Those sections of the Gambian community known to vote for the president are linked to the center of political power, while those communities seen as opposition sympathizers are left to languish in political limbo. Indeed, you frequently accuse perceived opposition communities of being unpatriotic Gambians who will be denied development, as if the monies expended for such development projects come from your own personal pockets. This is an unhealthy scenario that needs to be corrected as expeditiously as possible. Gambians need the politics of national unity, not the politics of divisiveness and disunity that you have imposed upon them.

 

We appreciate the fact that proving the hypothesis that constructive ideas are the engine of meaningful human development is fraught with difficulties, some insurmountable, but most surmountable given the right kind of motivation. That work must necessarily begin with the acceptance of the fact that human beings are fallible creatures, which in turn, renders every product of their labors – physical and mental – necessarily imperfect and in need of constant revision and improvement. To claim the possibility of a perfect society is to lay claim to human infallibility. But we can aspire for a society that functions more or less like the average African family; a society in which every one considers everyone else and treats everyone else as if they actually belong to the same extended family. In such a society, the president and entire leadership of the country will see themselves as merely popular children chosen by the majority of the people to oversee the proper and orderly conduct of family affairs. Of course, the actualization of such a family-nation will require the guidance of a leadership that is sincere, a leadership that is disciplined, a leadership that will recognize and conduct itself as the children of the nation, a leadership that will be eager to teach but also eager to learn and to drink of the public wisdom; a leadership that will not behave like the infallible and hostile lords and masters of the people. With such a leadership, our society and politics can be transformed in ways that would win universal respect and admiration.

 

We understand of course, that our country is embedded within a world socio-economic and political context with which we have to deal intelligently. We note, with remarkable regret, that your government is not dealing at all intelligently with this wider world socio-economic and political context. Just like you see our national society as consisting of friends on one side and enemies on the other, so you see the international community of nations and actors as composed of friends on one side and enemies on the other. Totally oblivious to the lessons of history and the beauties of universal camaraderie, you project your hostile domestic politics (not policies) onto the international environment and are given to frequent raves and rants about the undemocratic nature of the west and how you would not allow the west to come re-colonize us. Indeed, it would have been funny had it not been so tragic to hear you loudly boast that you will turn The Gambia into a superpower, which means turning a country less than the size of the smallest state in the United States, into a nation as powerful as the United States. Of course, turning The Gambia into such a super power means turning The Gambia into a country that sends spaceships to the moon, that explores the planet Mars, and that does an unending gamut of things that tiny Gambia, by mere definition, can never and should never aspire to do if only because it has more urgent priorities.

 

We submit that The Gambia can indeed be transformed into some kind of super power - a cultural superpower; not a super power of rubber and metal, because these things are prohibitively expensive and we need more rice; but a superpower whose commanding presence will be felt not in the size of its land or its budget, but in the beauty of its social and political norms, values and political conditions. The kind of intellectual and moral energy that needs to be expended in order to achieve such a cultural superpower can only be generated in an environment of healthy civility and mutual respect between and among all members of society, regardless of status. Certainly, because all human beings love to be treated with respect, Gambians will not be averse to the idea of universal mutual respect; they will not be averse to recognizing and conducting themselves as members of one large extended family. They will especially cherish the honor of being treated like respected elders, parents and relatives wherever they go, especially at police and military check points where they are currently treated like the helpless subjects of an alien despotism. And they will certainly cherish the privilege of treating government officials of all ranks – from the president to the policeman – as their loving children and siblings. All this, of course, is conceivable only in an environment in which the rule of law is judiciously upheld. The state as the child of the nation does not mean that the laws of the land will be left unenforced. It merely means that there will be no unjust laws, only just laws that will be properly enforced and fully respected by the law enforcers themselves. A law maker should not be a law breaker.

 

We recognize that bringing about the kind of positive fundamental transformation needed in our country will take more than a mere change of individual leadership or government. It demands a fundamental transformation of the national mindset itself. Africa’s post-independence leaders sought the economic and political kingdoms and ignored human kind’s most valuable possession – the human mind. Because they refused to seek the kingdom of the mind, they failed to achieve either the economic or the political kingdoms. They not only put the cart before the horse; they put themselves before both cart and horse. Hence our continent’s baffling and profound failure over the past several decades of independence.

 

The type of positive and sustainable political transformation we envisage requires a homegrown, cohesive, and workable political ideology whose tenets and principles will readily be understood by all citizens.  We believe that an ideology of the family-nation has the potential to work well in The Gambia and elsewhere in Africa. As we have suggested above, its basic tenet is that the people are the parents of the nation; the leaders are the children of the nation. There should be conscious and well-coordinated efforts at transposing traditional African family values onto our political systems, institutions, and practices. If government officials and civil servants are seen by the people, and see themselves as the disciplined children of the family-nation, they will be constrained to do things that will have adverse effects on the country. There exists a wealth of ideas within our nation body to help in transforming our country into one big family to which every citizen belongs, not by force or coercion, but by a process of enlightenment that will bring out the best of our collective consciousness and make the politics of mutual respect and tolerance the cornerstone of our body politic and national life. Of course, we know that every idea and every ideology is always undergoing a process of evolution. And so we will keep an open mind, be ready to listen to new ideas, and be willing, even eager, to let the ideology of the family-nation evolve to its highest possible standards. This, we believe, may be achieved through the agency of the Nation School, whose properties we propose to examine next.