By Lt. Col. Samsudeen Sarr
Dear Editor: Reading the sincere comments of Momar A. Samba in your paper bolted me into this obligatory thought that I hope to share with the young scholar. In having a young curious student like him reading and showing his genuine appreciation of the information contained in my book: Coup D’etat By The Gambia National Army gave me a special satisfaction derived from the understanding that the Gambian readers I had targeted are being hit at a bull’s eye.
Certainly, if I could have it my way every Gambian endowed with the ability and opportunity would read the book with similar compelling enthusiasm expressed by Momar in his opening lines. Even President Jammeh who might find some of the facts in the book offensive to his leaderships and character should try to read the book, and if possible, take some dressing from the relevant areas that affect his job. Gambians at home should be allowed to freely acquire the book, if they could and read it from page one to three hundred without fear of being intimidated, harassed or arrested. And I don’t think it should ever be banned in the country.
However, those who read the book will notice that it is not just about the events of the July 1994 coup and the characters behind it. It is far beyond that; it also encompasses a diverse range of my personal experiences and education both historical and contemporary. It’s as much about the 1994 coup as it is about other things I have learnt about The Gambia, Senegal, Nigeria, Ghana, the USA and the rest of the world.
I think I was adequately patronizing in ensuring that the book is written in a style and format easy to read and understand by all interested individuals. However, my main objective was to reveal the story to those Gambians always obsessed with knowing the basic truth surrounding their beliefs.
Against that background, I could state that my aim so far seem positively reachable with overwhelming feedback from different people expressing their appreciation of the work. Like Momar, most of them acknowledged the enlightenment the book provided them, helping them indeed to have a better understanding of many things, particularly the 1994 coup.
Anyway I must also confess that two negative comments have reached me from sources that helped me to come up with the next part of my discussion.
The first was a mere cynic who spoke to a friend about his refusal to buy or even read the book because I had once served under Jammeh and hadn’t done anything to remove him out of office. It was as far as I was concerned more of a laughable comment than anything else. Remarks like that are usually made by people who hate reading, are too stingy to buy books or are not lucky enough to have friends around them from whom to borrow books and might never return them ever.
Unfortunately for us, Gambians have been plagued by three critical human depravations; i.e., we hate to read and hate to write about things that matter in our lives, a sad reality often culminating to a host of failures for us one of which is the third depravation: living under governments that are grossly incompetent. I think the first two deficiencies have so far cost us the most in that we have lost a lot of great treasure of past knowledge to brilliant minds that died and were buried along with it.
The dogmatic concept entertained for so long in our traditions that historical events could be permanently retained in our minds and transmitted by word of mouth from one generation to another should be urgently replaced by an aggressive posture to write every happening and encourage everyone to adopt a good reading habit. With such exploration reinforced with valuable incentives, I am sure we will soon jump out of our ditch of ignorance where our minds are permanently kept in their primitive constitution. For that critic to say that he wouldn’t read the book because of my past affiliation with the APRC government sounded more like him saying that “I wouldn’t read the book because I hate reading and writing in general and Sarr has suddenly appeared from nowhere reminding me of these nightmares”. I don’t know how he would respond to the topics in the book that covered period in our history that occurred decades before Jammeh came to power. I know for sure that he has never seen anything written about it, because there have never been any; but he might have heard about the incident-from our treasured mouth to mouth conduit- of the first gun-fight between two close friends in Banjul in the 70’s that cost both men their lives and later helped set the stage for the actors that sprung the 1981 Kukoi abortive coup. That subject in my book had nothing to do with my service to the Jammeh government, or did it?
The second criticism came from an ex-officer who feels that the publication of the book was a total betrayal of the military officers of the GNA in that the array of information revealed were better left concealed within the barracks walls but not published in a book. In his case, I think the gentleman is sympathetic to Edward Singhateh who could have killed him like he did to most of his counterparts and peers in the name of a dubious revolution. This person may as well say that I betrayed the members of the Field Force by explaining the details of how Commander Eku Mahoney was gunned down by Mustapha Danso at Fajara Barracks leading to the indictment of Commander Bojang for being the mastermind behind Danso’s murderous action. Anyhow, the erratic officer would never accuse me of any betrayal after reading the book, because they would agree with me that the stories were worth telling in one way or the other.
That brings me to the topic of the ordinary but very few soldiers that emerged as heartless killers since the coup took place. Momar mentioned Musa Jammeh and Kawsu Camara (a.k.a Bombarde), killer characters similar to Batch, Almamo and Kanyi. I have also discussed them in the book but failed to emphasize that these men are not at all bright and could medically be certified as retards. They have always been different from the common soldiers who are God fearing and would not kill for anybody even if their lives depended on it.
However, with these killers they had often projected the rogue image that send the clear signal or invitation to their superiors to give them any nasty tasks legal or not. In fact, they absolutely lack the basic human ability to differentiate legality from illegality. That is why I have explained in my book with numerous examples the threat they could equally pose to their masters as the ones they pose to the targets they are assigned to destroy. Kabila was one of the classic ones quoted in which a very useful killer guard kept very close to the corridor of power snapped and turned his weapon to his master.
Remember Sanneh in one of the chapters? He was the State Guard Commander who on Jammeh’s blessing almost shot and killed Edward Singhateh in late 1996. If Singhateh hadn’t chickened out of the confrontation that Saturday morning, Sanneh with the support of Almamo would have killed the butcher. It would have been good riddance to me anyway.
But Almamo was later killed and Sanneh by pure luck escaped the death trap that had nearly taken his life that night. Now he is languishing at Mile II Prisons on two decades of prison term for trying to “topple” Jammeh.
Our failure to document these events that I tried to do in the form of my book could die and be buried with our generation like so many important events in the country did in the past.
I want to pause here and share with the readers a true story my father once told me when I was very young growing in Serekunda. It was about one Modou Kabou who was publicly hanged at the McCarthy Square (now 22nd July Square) in the late 30’s by the British who were ruling The Gambia at the time.
My father was a first hand witness to what happened. The man, he said was a strange farmer who had lived very close to our family compound. One night, he used a machete to kill his wife and mutilated her body while his children stood screaming at their father to stop killing their mother. My father was among those who broke down the house door and rescued the children. Everybody in the country had called for the death penalty during the trial period conducted exclusively by the British.
The reason he gave for killing his wife was that the woman was a spy sent by some unknown creatures to take important information from him. After his death sentence verdict was read to the jubilation of the crowd that came to witness the trial, he was, according to my father, asked to make his last statement before being taken for hanging.
He asked for one thing: he demanded that his children be brought to him so that he could kill them as well. His reasoning? To protect them from any social stigma that would later haunt them as off springs of a father who killed their mother and was publicly hanged. He didn’t want his kids to live through what he thought was a permanent social insult.
At the time my father told me the story I was too young, too primitive and too ignorant to reason anything out of it. So I was like the masses. I was equally happy that the strange evil Modou Kabou was hanged for killing his wife. That was long ago when I had still believed in what they had said about my uncle “Dawda”. He had one morning suddenly collapsed in his veranda and was in a deep coma for a couple of days. When he regained consciousness, to everyone’s shock, his left frontal jaw dropped way lower than the right side with his left eye permanently shut. “The Arfang” of the family was consulted about the mystery. It was always the “Arfang” first before the Dispenser at the street corner whose most potent medicine was Aspro tablets.
“Arfang” however convinced everybody that Uncle Dawda was slapped by the evil devil residing at the baobab tree near the mosque. Seeing that baobab tree everyday of my life and wondering where the bastard’s bedroom was where he could be planning to slap me too had haunted me for years.
For the rest of his life, my poor uncle had spent all his resources on one talisman after the other hoping that his disfigured jaw will one day adjust itself to normalcy. It never happened. By the time we grew up to realize that he was hit by a mild stroke, he had suffered a major one and died from three days of coma. “Arfang” would have interpreted that I believe, as a brick dropped by the devil on Uncle Dawda’s head from the apex of the tree.
Back to the sad story of Modou Kabou, with education and broader exposure I was able to later conclude that the imperial government merely hanged a mad man who had lost all his senses and needed nothing but medical help. Did the British know that and played with the sentiments of the indigenes? Or were they as ignorant at that time as the “subjects” they were governing on the Queen’s Mission? The last statement sound more appealing to me but I will leave that to conjecture. This story however would be the first time to be heard by many Gambians from reading it here because I can’t remember it being written anywhere in our history. Yet I could bet that if the story was published with all its details narrated, some of us will still refuse to read it with all kinds of excuses for not doing so.
My father died with his part of the experience he had gathered from that special event. There may still be some few old people in Serekunda who might vaguely remember the story but it is apparent that it will soon be buried with all of them gone very soon.
I didn’t want the same thing that happened to my father to happen to me, especially when I know that the events I was going to write about were seriously misunderstood by a lot of people who though they had perfectly understood what had happened.
Perhaps, it is already too late for this generation to recover from this chronic ailment of hating to read and write; but I know from the depth of my heart that the future generation will be appreciative of the fact that one of us took the trouble to document such a story called Coup D’etat By The Gambia National Army. Until then I hope dynamic young men like Momar will keep the flag flying.
As for going back home, I really don’t know about that. There is nothing like waking up everyday knowing that there is no bimbo Head of State within close proximity that could get up from a dream with voices from the Quran commanding him to do this or that to his people. And last but not the least I don’t ever, ever, ever want my children to grow up knowing anything about “Arfang”. The Almighty God, king of the universe is enough for them. Wish all of you a happy Ramadan.