Editorial
“The hope lives on
and the
dream shall never die”
.
By Mathew K Jallow, Associate Editor
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a simple step. This week’s convergence of female voices on Maafanta.com around an issue that has paralyzed the Gambian male psyche, typifies the frustration engendered by our anemic response to the murderous regime of Yahya Jammeh. The eye-catching title of this editorial, which is borrowed from a Maafanta.com article authored by the intrepid Sigga Jagne, is illustrative of the frustration and hopelessness Gambians feel about the cannibalization of our political system. But more importantly, our pathetic inability to do something, anything; about it, lends credence to what Baboucarr Sankanu would rightly theorize as religion’s role in the perversion of our natural instincts and determination to fight for the security of our inalienable freedoms and liberties.
Mathew K. Jallow
.
The flight from our miserable circumstances represent a real failure to rationalize our predicament at every layer of the discourse; the failure to wrap our minds around the underbelly of the deadly problems that continue to consume our country; the failure to articulate and address the insidiousness of this man-made life-altering political menace; and the failure to imbue our consciences with sufficient doses of will-power and courage to take back charge of the destiny of our country. Most Gambians, rather than take courage and determination from atrocities committed by Yahya Jammeh and his regime, are frozen in time into a sense of apathy by the string of disappearances, tortures, incarcerations, murders and execution, and the traumatizing carnage that took the lives of two dozen Gambian students back in April 2000. The brutality of that fateful day continues to paralyze Gambians into a state of dispassionate, and often of fatal abstraction of reality, and in the process, given Yahya Jammeh the space he carved to further consolidate his strangle-hold on the political and economic life of our country. Those who fight back in every way possible, through every medium available, often go to bed agonizing over the fact that the echoes of their voices are perpetually drifting into the melancholic solitude of the vast, emptiness of the political wilderness. But, these challenges notwithstanding, the distillation of the circumstances surrounding our failures to live up to our collective moral obligations, has birthed a new front in the struggle to salvage our country from the tragic over-reach of the misguided policies, politics and governance of Jammeh’s regime. This potent addition to the chorus of voices engaged in the political discourse, symbolizes the opening of a new front in the perennial struggle for the liberation of our country. A critical mass of competing female voices could fortify the standing of the vocal few, and be a catalyst in the creation of a riot of defiant voices that we need to succeed in the fight for the heart and soul of our country. Gambian women have a long history of defying the stereotypical casting imposed on them by religion and society, in order to break with tradition and make themselves heard and visible in what has exclusively been a male dominated political environment. The brain-child of Fatou Jaw-Manneh, “Operation Girls Catch Yahya” or (OGCY) is, for our time, a bold novel idea of defiant inclusiveness, but as the nifty Ndey Tapha-Sosseh reminds us, the ladies of Maafanta.com are following a tradition that goes back some decades; a reminder of the many still unknown and un-researched institutions, which venerable Gambian women founded so long ago; Florence Mahoney, Mrs. Cecilia Cole and the ageless Bijou Peters among many others. Today, with the exception of Ms. Amie Joof-Cole, many of the successors of these pioneers have fallen silent and invisible at a time the pull of their charismas, the draw of their presence, the weight of their rich experiences and the credibility of their voices could make significant differences in advancing causes for the development of Gambian society. As a new generation of women leaders, like the phoenix, slowly and boldly rise from the ashes of the July 22nd 1994 catastrophe, the inspirations they draw from their predecessors has the potential to offset the pathological fear that has stunted their male counterparts for an awfully long period of time. The idea of Gambian women coalescing around the same social, economic and political issues that have persistently haunted their male counterparts could breathe a distinctive new dimension of life to the challenging, if not vexing political discourse. And as the country inches slowly towards a show-down with Yahya Jammeh and his regime, it is not a moment too soon for the new crop of liberated Gambian women to move boldly from the periphery actor roles assigned them by the limitations of culture and religious biases, to assume significant, dynamic frontline roles at every level of Gambian society. This gravitation towards true equality in gender roles in the political arena will potentially sophisticate Gambian society and domesticate our men folk into recognizing the important station women must hold in our society. There is a lot of definitive empirical and anecdotal evidence that correlates women’s participation in the social discourse with economic success in all African societies. The need to break from the convention that limits women’s roles is, therefore, in itself both compelling and makes confederating with our female activists all the more necessary and perhaps even inevitable. After all, this is not a new concept that would pose a treat to the egos of the men-folk, if anything else; it will help detract from the redundant generalities of self-interest, inclinations towards tribal hegemony, and other narrowly defined preferences that have nothing constructive to offer to the broader Gambian society. The focalization of our broad menu of objectives around a narrow, well-defined platform, and the galvanizing potentials of the advantage of gender, are strong incentives to cheer another groundbreaking Gambian women organ, which is more than just symbolism and rhetoric, but the true rebirth of a new dawn in the checkered life of Gambian politics and history. The diversity of new female voices; Amie Joof-Cole, Fatou Jaw-Manneh, Jabou Joh, Sigga Jagne, Ndey Tapha-Sosseh, Sarata Jabbi-Dibba, and not the least, Aisha; among a few others, is a welcome addition to the debate about the future of our country. Hopefully, the fence-sitters at home and abroad will be motivated by the broad coalition of female voices to join the battle of a life-time; not to dogmatize the political challenges facing our country, but to help offer practical solutions so as to move our country forward and out of murderous clutches of Yahya Jammeh and his regime of thugs, murderers, drug-dealers, criminals, semi-educated and barely literate system bureaucrats. And to quote that venerable and iconic liberal lion, the late Senator Edward Kennedy, with the role women can play in our political sphere; “hope lives on and the dream shall never die.”