By Bubacarr Sankanu, Berlin, Germany
My Dear Mathew K. Jallow:
Sorry if I made you “smoking hot with rage.” It is nothing personal; I can’t just help it. I am too bitter to swallow. Please, next time make sure you have enough water to gulp me down your bowels before even dreaming of chewing me. If you don’t, you will have to sniff me out, purge me out or strangulate yourself!
I have this appeal for you and anyone who wants to risk a civilized and non-violent clash of the brains with me: if you cannot be a fair player with whom I can hug and exchange hands when the fight is over, if you cannot be a sweet student I can teach until the parents/guardians complain, please get crazy glue for your mouth and fingers when I am communicating. I do not have calories to waste on impulsive people who enjoy taking things out of contexts!
If there is anything I have learned to master very well in recent years is that real life politics is totally different from the textbook fantasies being romanticized by some elated political science theorists!
Mathew, in my letter to Jammeh, I said on behalf of those I exchange emails with. I am yet to exchange any email with you so I cannot tell if you are part of the said “bunch of opposition sympathizers, tools of foreign powers or unpatriotic idiots.”
Mathew, whether you bury your head in the sand or not we the citizens have the right to criticise Jammeh and to serve our country. You said, “I have not given Mr Sankanu license to speak for me.” I do not need any license from you to speak my mind or explain the reality to our peoples. Our Gambian Constitution, the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Grundgesetz of the Federal Republic of Germany have unanimously given me “the license to educate” in my personal capacity as a public diplomat. Like I said, it is a free world. You are free to limit your own civic duties to only criticizing, insulting, complaining, fantasising and destroying like an apostle of trouble. It is your chakri.
My own civic duties, as an apostle of peace and a public diplomat, are: to constructively criticize anyone who is legally called President of the Republic of The Gambia and any other person who works in the Service of the Government of The Gambia; to exchange ideas on how to advance our country or find solutions to prevailing crises; to serve my country, in or out of government, when and where necessary; to pay tax and enjoy the essential services of the State; to give love; to seek dialogue; to forgive and reconcile and, to entertain and chill out with my compatriots with no hard feelings.
Mathew, had you understand the uses of a brain, you would have read between the lines of my letter to Jammeh that you do not need a formal job offer or a contract from Yahya Jammeh to realize that you and I, like any other Diaspora Gambian, are de facto already working with Jammeh and his government in advancing our beloved Nation. You followed the footsteps of dishonest intellectuals by avoiding my rock solid arguments on the taxes from remittances.
Record this: anytime you send money or goods to your people in the Gambia, a certain amount of it goes into the Gambia Treasury as direct or indirect tax. It does not matter whether the money is spent on school fees, food or simply saved in the bank. The painful truth is that Jammeh and his government share your hard earned dollars with your family - only if you tell them to bunker the money under the beds or bury it in the soil!
Now tell us, will you stop sending money or goods to your people just because Jammeh and his government will enjoy the fruits of your labour through direct and indirect taxes? The reality hurts. Doesn’t it? If I were rude, I would say you are doing the donkey job to help pay for Jammeh’s luxurious quasi-monarch lifestyle. How do they call it again Pidgin English? Monkey dey work baboon dey chop!
Imagine this scene: Jammeh is taking lunch and an NIA Director prompts in saying “Mr. President, Mathew K. Jallow sent 1000 Dollars to his people. They did shopping and a statutory sales tax totalling 250 dollars has been registered. What should be done with the money?” Jammeh replies “get something for the crocodiles in the zoo…they must be hungry…foolish journalist” and continues grinding the pieces of meat he earlier threw into his mouth! Now even if you cry until your eyeballs belch, what can you do about the hypothetical fact that Jammeh used your adorable green bucks to feed his crocodiles?
Do you know why drunkards and people on habit-forming drugs find it difficult to quit the “high” level? Because the reality sucks, a castle in the air is more comforting! Please Mathew, support us in explaining the reality!
This brings me to this debate over Bakary Bunja Dabo (a.k.a BB Dabo). I say it loud: I, Bubacarr Sankanu, native of Sotuma Sere Village in the Upper Region of The Gambia say, BB Darboe was VERY RIGHT in working with Jammeh and the Armed Forces Provisional Ruling Council, AFRPC!” Anyone who is brave enough to prove me wrong should come forward now or keep quite forever!
Governments come and go but the people are always there. It is about time critics learn to differentiate the peoples from those ruling them. Even the almighty United Nations (UN) has realised that its does not make any sense to punish the peoples for the wrongdoings of their corrupt and dictatorial leaders. The so-called smart sanctions are part of a new punitive regime comprising travel ban, asset freezes and indictment as well as naming and shaming of the big kids responsible - without compromising the domestic national interests.
BB Dabo’s 70 days with the defunct AFPRC should be seen in this context and in the lights of our national interests. The coup makers of Friday 22nd July 1994 were junior officers with little or no knowledge of power politics. If BB had not volunteered to show them the insider tip and tricks of the PPP regime, they would have plunged our country into a civil war! Here enters Captain Sana Bairo Sabally. I have nothing personal against Sana. I fully recommend him for rehabilitation and reintegration into our society when he confesses and repents at the right moments to the right people. He can still be useful to our country like any other ex-convict. He has already been punished. The standing fact here is that I was physically present when Sana drove a US$50,000 government vehicle, a Mitsubishi Pajero brand, into the fence of my neighbour in Tallinding, causing unnecessary damage to both public and private property. All for the reason that a taxi driver was not fast enough in clearing the road, for him to pass, after dropping passengers. I think traffic offences are supposed to be punished by the lower courts.
Sana was just minutes away from triggering an Iraq-styled civil and religious war when he humiliated those elders in Gambissara. Though no shots were fired, a number of people who were directly or indirectly involved subsequently lost their lives under mysterious circumstances. There was this misunderstanding between the moderate, traditional, Sunni-Sufi Muslim elders of the Imam Malik School of Thought (Mahdhab el-Maliki) and the new pro-Saudi Wahabi over the construction of a mosque. The spiritual leader of moderate traditionalists (name withheld) once invited me and asked if I could start reporting the saga through the media so the government and the world can help with peaceful mediation, for the matters were getting supernaturally ugly. Being a village boy, I said I needed the permission of my elders since the conflict had metamorphosed into a case of life and death. As expected of our influential African Family Factor, my people discouraged me and vowed to disown me if I go on covering conflict. When I reported my family’s decision to the cleric, he was so understanding and grateful that I felt guilty.
Even though Sana B. Sabally was imprisoned over a so-called palace coup attempt and Sadibou Hydara who accompanied him, died officially of high blood pressure, the fact is that it caused inexperienced Yahya Jammeh a lot of sleepless nights, pains, stress, energy and resources to pacify the angry traditional elders who ended up prevailing. Sana B. Sabally, inadvertently and symbolically, pushed a bayonet into the fresh wounds of a sensitive community. I, personally, do not blame him since he freshly came out of the barracks with no idea about non-violent Public Relationship Management (PRM)!
When I later met the spiritual leader, he told me they blessed and endorsed Jammeh as Jawara’s successor and if he behaves well, he will stay in power for 20 years - this was around 18 months before Chief Dembo Santang Bojang of Brikama led a nationwide delegation to State House crying for Jammeh’s candidacy in the 1996 presidential elections. How could they realise that Jammeh’s transformation into a civilian President was a foregone conclusion? The real kingmakers had already done their job and were just quietly enjoying the election theatre from their village squares - the pens were lifted and papers were dried! For all the other things the lead-cleric told me about Jammeh and his stay in power, my lips are sealed. I consider them to be classified state secrets and I may start analysing them publicly only when Jammeh relinquishes power! Mathew, if you have no idea about the hard realities of life, the challenges of statesmanship and the nitty-gritty of power politics, you should not disrespect the connoisseurs who are, atleast, doing you some favours by, atleast, quenching your thirst for firsthand information with, atleast, the tips of the icebergs through this respectful platform aptly called The Gambia Echo!
The multi-million dollar question is: will you morally and materially risk a civil war simply because your principles, oppose unconstitutional transfer of power?
Modern history has it that after World War II the elites of the German Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP) or the Nazis were prosecuted through the Nuremberg trials. However, when the United States wanted to transform Germany into a strong Capitalist front against Communism through their Marshall Plan, they pardoned and reintegrated some of the best brains that repented their crimes. Some were mandated with the task of teaching the children the dangers of racism, dictatorship and arrogance. Others were called to support the younger generation in building a democratic federal social market economy, which resulted, to the legendary Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle) with the perpetual global consumer attraction to Mercedes Benz and the brand “Made In Germany”.
If you want to seriously build, rebuild or reform a nation, you MUST and SHOULD re-commission some of the old guards. Nelson Mandela and the new black elites of South Africa did not push the white architects and beneficiaries of the Apartheid system into the sea as feared by some fanatical thinkers. Their Truth and Reconciliation programme apart, they are constantly encouraging the so-called “wicked whites” to transfer technological and economic power to the exploited and impoverished indigenes through the Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) programme. Political liberation without economic empowerment is meaningless. The people and the taxpayers of any given political economy have the right to enjoy the essential services in their state irrespective of who their first citizen is.
Therefore, BB Darboe, by accepting the AFPRC invitation, did what the nurses did when they returned to the hospitals after the July 22nd takeover. BB did what the police did when they returned to constabulary duties. BB did what the teachers did when they returned to the classrooms. BB did what the market women and the farmers did when they continue feeding the nation. BB did what Halifa Sallah did when he became Member of our National Assembly and worked alongside a Jammeh-led Executive. BB did what Dominic Mendy did when he formulated our national development Vision 2020 and the manifesto of the ruling APRC party. BB did what I will do when Mother Gambia specifically asks for the content of my brain!
In fact, if I should meet BB Dabo and Dominic Mendy, I would buy cola nuts and request them to adopt me. BB as my political mentor and Dominic as my technocratic idol!
We will not abandon the innocent Gambians simply because you Mathew say the tenant of State House is “a corrupt, divisive, egomaniacal, Machiavellian and incompetent murderer.” If you do not have the guts to go and democratically kick him out, I assume you are a democrat, please stop barking. I have heard and watched lions roaring round the clock! You may try to find out how the realities of life transformed mbarodi (lion) Lamin Waa Juwara into a perfect Tobaski ram. Should I say into a thanks-giving turkey?
Women, Sensuality and Me
You wrote “the way and manner he is characterizing women in his writings is both demeaning and condescending”. For the records, I kindly requested the Editor to keep publishing my email and contact details so those who feel offended but shy to come out, can reprimand me directly.
To date Mathew, you are the first and only woman to say you “feel very offended” by my romantic style. I have to call you a woman for, if you can become “smoking hot” like a chimney for no sensible reason, you can as well turn into a fire-spitting matriarch overnight!
It is clear, thanks to our different upbringings, that our ways of promoting, celebrating and glorifying femininity and beauty are totally different. If I am right you had missionary training. I respect the Holy Trinity so I would not dwell into the canons, dogma and dictates of the Holy Sea (The Vatican) on the status of women.
My own formative years, from the cradle to the common entrance exams, were sandwiched in love and beauty. This is in contrast to the general perception of my conservative ethnic extraction. As a kid, whenever I am spanked for nerving the grown-ups, I would rush to my elegant paternal grandmother and aunts. I would be wondering over the unspoilt and exceptional beauty of my grand mom while she consoled me with nice stories. I would tell myself, if I did not find a girl who is 100% physically and mentally like her, I would remain a bachelor-for-life.
When my mother was about to rejoin my dad in the Democratic Republic of The Congo (ex-Zaire) where I did my nursery school (she took me home so I can study my roots and culture), later transferred me to her parents for care. I found myself in a warm extended family compound with countless maternal grandfathers and uncles who appeared to have entered into a competition for beautiful wives. From their commercial expeditions to Senegal, the two Guineas, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, the two Congos and other countries, they returned with wives of unchallenged beauty. You can only make a choice by closing your eyes! As a sweet grandson and a lovely nephew, I felt literarily like a child in a candy shop with graceful grandmothers and attractive aunts pampering me in exchange. I grew literarily enjoying the beautiful side of life and I can confidently say that I became a metro-sexual long before David Beckham of the U.K. made this refreshing lifestyle known to the common man!
By destiny or coincidence, I passed through Sukuta Secondary and Nusrat High Schools closely interacting with open-minded, cute and sensual female students who are fans of the Mills & Boon romance books, the movies, Whitney Houston/R Kelly songs and everything romantic without decadence. By the way, I love Christian gospel music in spite of being Muslim as it turns me on sensually. If I should be going to church, I would be reading the ladies, not the bible and I think the Father on duty would accept my confession!
Later at The Gambia Radio and Television Services (GRTS) I happened to be the only male staff in the newsroom, over a long period, counting out the technocratic Bora Mboge who was busy as head of our department. The elegant Jainaba Nyang abruptly replaced him. Jainaba looks exactly like one of my beautiful aunts from Senegal. So I can talk about women, sensuality, style, image, love and sexology without having any hidden agenda. They are normal to me like when one talks about the news, the weather or Attaya/green tea. The trend continues in my current role as star maker (film producer)!
In fact I have a commentary on sexuality education and our African society but I am yet to submit it to The Echo’s Editor for the fact that the stagnant dogma has enslaved the minds of some sexually frustrated people who would never understand my explanations - dogma is the end of thoughts. Once you talk romantic, their minds go pornographic. Upon the Editor and the readers’ request, I will submit the piece for possible publication.
Mathew, if we are to compare and contrast our current social responsibilities, I can say that I am doing more in promoting and empowering our womenfolk than you are. If you visit my website at the bottom of this rejoinder, you will see that I designed it to suit my taste for beauty, romance and perfection. If you scroll down, you will see that I have an Africana Village Queen programme. I am not into this 50-50-emancipation nonsense. I only want to encourage, in line with my Panafricanist agenda, our ladies to be proud of their natural African beauty without using skin-bleaching creams or imitating Euro-American beauty ideals. Seconding this is the African Village Queens’ College of Fashion and Design. The name justifies the goal.
As you are reading this piece, I am producing a film against the discrimination of sick women. It will be followed by another movie on Female Genital Mutilation or FGM - I hate this brutal practice just like the way a snail hates running! The script is ready and I have already short-listed the actors and actresses from Ghana and Nigeria…keep following the news.
Again on my romantic writing style, I got requests from women professors who asked for my permission to be using my pieces in their academic work. I got emails from other women who thanked me for “bringing softness and love into this chauvinistic world!” The concerned progressive women have symbolically peered and knighted me with their encouraging emails. The Arabic meaning of my name Abubakr, which mean father of the spinster, is helping me remain liberal and caring!
For more on why I used “big girls” or “bad girls” see my point under “Aggressive world” later.
Appeasing Jammeh?
My dear Mathew, you said I have “chosen to appease Jammeh in one posting after the other”. Do you honestly think I am a political or an intellectual pimp who would be wasting the valuable time of this respectful Editor with pro-Jammeh lullabies? If I want to “open a direct line of communication with Yahya Jammeh”, it is as easy for me as licking ice cream. There is no discord between Yahya Jammeh and myself. My previous working relations with him and his government were based purely on technocratic merit and our national interest.
I am not a bluff, just clarifying. I made use of my rural trainings on modesty and humility and applied for a low-level assistant job at GRTS. During the interview, I was found to be overqualified and was eventually recommended for a higher job. I wanted to serve my country until retirement but changed my mind for these three reasons: one, the in-fights, interferences and spying were getting inhuman. That famous Daily Observer Newspaper report on the exodus of staff from GRTS confirms the rot behind the glamour; two, to my family, the prices I was paying for my celebrity/public figure role - insults, character assassinations, scandals, rumours and funny offers - were too much for my age. They prevailed on me to quit. You know must of us Africans are lucky as we are trained not to be self-centred but to respect and prioritize the collective wishes of our big families; and three, the confused TV executives did not know what to do with my energy, capabilities and passion for civic education.
Now with my soft language, I am simply learning to be compassionate and diplomatic, not appeasing. I quoted the example of our Prophet Muhammed (PBUH) to help explain that there is nothing wrong with peaceful dialogue. The Prophet was waging a holy war (Jihad) against, and at the same time negotiating peace with, the pagan elites of Mecca. It does not mean when someone is your adversary or competitor, blood must ooze anytime you see eye to eye. The fact that a boy and girl who spend most of their time fighting and quarrelling with each other can fall in love and eventually marry or build a family, shows how beautiful love, reconciliation, compassion and dialogue are. Confrontation breeds nothing but confrontation.
Mathew, I have been following your tirades through most of the online Gambian newspapers and cannot see the impacts on the ground in The Gambia. May you please show us the results of your aggressive and confrontational style? Have you succeeded in scaring Jammeh out of power? Have you succeeded in keeping the democratic opposition at home united? Have you succeed in mentoring the dissidents in Senegal? Have you succeeded in convincing the government to drop or re-write one or two controversial policies?
Jammeh’s Brother-In-Dictatorship!
Mathew you said “If the editorial decision rests solely on me, Mr. Sankanu’s articles will never see the lights of day on this paper. There are enough grounds to censor his and I would do so in a heartbeat”. Mathew, thanks to God, we are no longer in the age of the Inquisition when the works of geniuses like Loeanardo Da Vinci would be censored or indexed. I am sure you would have volunteered to be the papal hangman of Leonard and made mankind miss the pleasures of using his blueprints for aircraft technology (aerodynamics) and other conveniences of life invented by Da Vinci. Can you tell the readers how you can be accusing Jammeh of strangulating free speech in The Gambia when you are glorifying censorship? I thank God once more that the conscientious Editor of The Gambia Echo, who introduced me to the journalism trade, already knows about my romantic style of writing.
Mathew, it appears as if you are sleeping the changes around you. You said I might take my “corrupted ideas and thinkings elsewhere for publication”. We now live in the age of the TIMEs (Telecommunication, Information, Media and Entertainment) Industries. One does not need the budget of The Coca Cola Company to get his message out. One does not need to sleep with say, the president of CNN, Al Jazeera or BBC to reach his target audience! The alternatives are infinite. As Emilia, the Ethiopia-Scandinavian artiste sings, “I am a big, big girl in a big, big world. It’s not a big, big thing…if you leave me…!”
You earlier said “no offence to Mr. Sankanu, but I must say that I find most of his postings lacking in substance and value”. I am not at all offended as I fully respect your freedom of expression. I am a liberal-moderate Muslim and can co-exist with all kinds of people, from the angelic nurse to the bloody cannibal. I am just wondering how you can be bullying Jammeh for intolerance when you are not ready to even stomach other people’s views.
You titled your piece “Requiem For Yahya Jammeh’s Regime”. Interestingly Jammeh also tagged his 40th election victory celebration as requiem for the dead opposition. Are you following my analyses? You appear to be overtaking Jammeh in waywardness. You are using the cover of journalism to commit crimes you are accusing Jammeh of!
Based on these realities, I have to sentence you for irresponsibility and moral hypocrisy! You have proven beyond all reasonable doubts that you are Jammeh’s twin brother-in-dictatorship. You have the right to appeal my verdict. Until the time you are able to render my arguments in this article useless like chaff in the wind, you do not have the moral credibility to insult Jammeh or any other leader in this world, from the powerful George Bush of the U.S. to weak Ramos Horta of East Timor, without presenting hard facts!
You cannot be pointing at the dirt and stench in other people’s backyards when pigs are having a picnic in your own bedroom - no offence to the genuine pig farmers!
What Next After Jammeh?
Mathew you wrote “Jammeh has no standing, whatsoever, and we are no interested in rehabilitating him, on the contrary, we want him out RIGHT NOW!”
I am not defending Jammeh but it is always easy to torture the computer keyboard and dream of a land of milk and honey with a saint as its leader.
Mathew, if you apply for a job in George W. Bush’s, neo-conservative gang, I am sure they will a gun and other cowboy gadgets. Those gangsters were just dreaming, like you, but over Iraq. They were terrorizing the whole world with “Saddam got to go”. With all their certificates from Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, you name it, they were not intelligent enough to use their brains. They felt too proud and arrogant to study the historical, socio-cultural and geopolitical realities of the Mesopotamian basin. Their obsessive regime change policy had only one ingredient diplomats laughingly coined as Vitamin B(ush) - a mockery of George’s last name. They had no post-invasion plan. They failed to realise that changing a regime is one thing but institutionalizing the people towards the new situation, is another matter. They could not understand that after almost 30 years of suppression, the people of Iraq, like all other victims of dictatorship, would find it difficult to enjoy their new freedom under occupation. A number Iraqis now feel freedom is when they blow themselves up as suicide bombers to impress the virgins in paradise.
Mathew you asked, “if Mr Sankanu cannot redirect his efforts towards the complete destruction of the illegitimate Jammeh regime….” My answer is: I, believe in EVOLUTION not REVOLUTION! The citizens of a country are not animals and you cannot be subjecting them to unnecessary and continuous revolutionary hocus-pocus when the peaceful alternatives to the status quo are not fully exhausted. If your memory serves you well, I told Jammeh that I would not like our country to suffer another economic shock like in the aftermath of his 1994 coup due to poor succession planning. I believe in stability. I will explain more on the economic shocks of the 1994 coup in my next article.
To be honest, I am disappointed in you and all those who are ordering Jammeh’s head for lunch without the will to pay the cooks. I am yet to read these fundamental questions from anyone of you:
- What kind of leader do we want after Jammeh?
- What kind of Gambia should our Third Republic be? Do we need a new Constitution?
- Which kind of economic system is good for our people?
- Our population is growing but the territorial size of our country (about 11000sq. km) is not. How can this affect the balance between land use and environmental preservation (economy versus ecology)? How will it affect our relation with our neighbour Senegal (territorial encroachment, conflict or a new confederation)?
- How should the crimes of the Second Republic be punished, the victims compensated and the perpetrators rehabilitated?
- How should our foreign policy look like?
- Now that the opposition parties are still leaking their wound, which kinds of alternative democratic platforms are there for our people?
- Are the dissidents in Senegal or elsewhere capable of correcting the mistakes of Jammeh’s Administration? I have a commentary on the hysteria over the dissidents. The Editor will receive it later.
I recommend all those who want life to be better after Jammeh to start forming them into a think-thank and start drafting possible answers to these strategic questions. This will save the next government a lot of time and resources. Mathew, you are older than me and you spent more time in journalism than me. I assume you are a colleague of the Editor of The Gambia Echo who is my media mentor. I expected the aforementioned mature questions from you. You have instead confirmed our entertainment industry saying that “age is just a number” and does not always reflect a person’s true potentials, level-headedness or sense of responsibility!
Though you frown on my writings, I would like to congratulate you for your beautiful usage of British Queen Elizabeth’s language. Had you done some music, I would have contracted you as composer for my music label. However, I recommend you start writing goodnight stories for kids. Your melodious usage of syntax and semantics makes you a perfect world-class babysitter!
Mathew, I must admit, the advanced arts of strategic Nation Building and pragmatic Diversity Management appear to be too sophisticated for you. You can continue with your confrontational bulldozer journalism and leave me and my fellow realistic thinkers to play the elite game of productive dialogue and responsible leadership - it is nothing personal, just a fair debate for the sake of Mother Gambia!
Bubacarr Sankanu
Bubacarr@gmx.net
www.afromediafilmtv.net