RESPONDING TO SUNTU TOURAY’S REJOINDER

 

Dear Editor:

 

 May I begin by saying happy New Year to all of your readers and pray that 2008 be a better year for The Gambia and the rest of humanity. Now my response to Suntu Touray. I don’t even know how to start this. All I have to say first is that Suntu Touray really cranked me up and I hope he’s buckled up for this special roller coaster ride to The Gambia and back.

By Lt. Colonel Samsudeen Sarr, Ex- Commander GNA

With all honesty, I have never thought Mandinkas like him actually existed if at all he is one and not just another cyber masquerader trying to make all Mandinkas look bad. I have lived, worked and fraternized with Mandinkas at all levels but never have I come in contact with anything like this character. This is a person who dogmatically believes that tribalism like racism is an integral component of our existence, which nobody could do anything about other than to live with it as it is. As a result he treated the subject from an emotional position that betrayed his scheme to discuss logically. That’s always what happens to people who are better off staying silent than saying anything. Almost all his ideas seemed to have come from his heart instead of his head. The contradictions alone were so confusing that in the end, I had to stop and ask my self the same question I always ask when logic cannot help me: What has this guy been smoking?

I want to however start by telling him that contrary to his misconception that nothing could be done about tribalism, I strongly believe that a lot could have been done about it to change its negative effect on people especially, those condemned by history to co-exist indefinitely. I also think that the key to finding a solution to our tribal problem is by accepting the fact that it has a lot to do with colonialism and post-colonial politics than anything one might tend to entertain. While Suntu defines tribalism as a source of comfort and gain, I see it differently and define it as a source of discomfort and losses. It’s only the unscrupulous politicians who by exploiting the uninformed mass about what tribe really means; use it for their comfort and gains. Perhaps Suntu was a politician.

Being born a Mandinka, Wollof, Jola, is the same as being born white or black; to me it’s pure cosmic accidents that has nothing to do with our rights to choose where to spring. If God had given us the chance to choose, I believe all of us would have been born the same because we all would have opted for the best. But our inability to choose where we should be has always been balanced by our ability to look at our selves and change those seemingly natural conditions that hurt more than help us. For instance, I was born in the Gambia by Serere and Wollof parents but when I grew up and eventually realize that living in The Gambia just to hold on to my natural roots hurts more than helps my survivability, I did what I had to do. Now I live in the USA in a surrounding where being a Serere or Wollof is totally irrelevant and I feel far more comfortable here with better gains than where I came from.

My eight-year-old son Samsudeen Sarr Jr. who came to America when he was one and a half years old has been attending public schools in Newark. He comes home from school recounting his experiences with his friends and teachers as if he is just another young American learning and playing in the environment he only knows. He finds it practically impossible to speak Wollof and he hates speaking the language.  When I once asked him why he doesn’t like speaking Wollof, he replied,  “Daddy nobody in my school speaks O-loaf”. That’s how he pronounces Wollof. Even his older brothers Muhamed and Jamil are no longer comfortable speaking Wollof in or out of the house. And since English is what matters here and is the main language for business or success, I keep on encouraging them to improve on it for perfection.

Samsudeen at this time doesn’t know anything about racial prejudice, but surely as he grows older and starts interacting with racially contaminated minds often created by ignorant parents and friends, his understanding of the concept might change. But until then, I think it would help him better to just allow him to grow with the free mind and the understanding we wish him to have- that all humans are equal in the eyes of God. No matter how we are colored, what language we speak, where we are born or what we can or cannot do, good people are found everywhere in the same way as bad people are. We simply have to allow reasoning to guide our behaviors and not irrational emotions. And one more special thing I teach my children which I hope they will grow up to respect, i.e., that Gambia is obviously their heritage but they owe their loyalty to America the country that provided us with sanctuary when we most needed it. They don’t know about those crappy mumbo-jumbo stuffs like the “Domas”, “Buwaas”, “Fangbondis”, and the primitive segregations based on family trade or skill background. Will I teach them about that? Hell No! But yes I will teach them about how opportunistic politicians and scam artist have exploited out ethnic difference for their selfish pursuits.

Anyway with my Suntu, I want him to first understand that I was not defending any Wollof on tribal lines that incited him into digging in for a tribal battle for the Mandinkas. I will repeat, I was clearly talking about COLONIALISM’S bad effects on our tribal difference, a minor difference only noticeable in the diverse local languages we were born to speak. In fact that was the main reason why I focused my piece at Serrekunda and not Banjul where the community appeared more homogenous than in the capital. I also deliberately avoided Banjul because of how politically critical that Island had been as the nucleus of colonial influence within the whole region. I will however wait until I get to the segment about Banjul before elaborating on what I mean.

But on tribalism, I will say this. If governments in Africa including of course Gambia had adopted a unifying policy towards antagonistic tribal groups, by perhaps finding a legal framework or even creating Ministries purposely to work on an intelligent effort to find what could best bring understanding amongst us then I bet, within a short time we will all be one people with no more dead weights to carry on our shoulders..

It’s similar to the concept I tried to promote in my book concerning coups in African armies. I have suggested that the causes and effects of coups should be included in syllabuses of all our military schools instead of treating the subject like taboo. Nothing of it is discussed in any military school; yet it is the most troubling phenomenon in Africa’s postcolonial military camps.

 However, whether Suntu is aware of it or not, there is a natural or Godly process that is slowly but surely bringing us closer together as humans than he might realize, catalyzed by positive events and good people. That’s why I think with an honest approach free of political greed and banditry; African governments could find the blueprint to help propel that natural process.

I couldn’t help laughing when I read about Suntu’s interesting story about the Christening ceremony he attended or fabricated in the UK. Can you imagine that this man’s barometer of measuring the level of tribal tolerance or bias in people is by counting in numbers how many in one tribe are WILLING to speak the dialect of another tribe? He tries to peddle the same false notion that the Wollofs are UNWILLING to speak the Mandinka language when many Mandinkas learn to speak Wollof, which he concludes borders tribal prejudice. I have heard that one before and I think I will next explain the rude encounter I once had with Dr.? Momodou S.K. Manneh whose behavior must have emanated from such ill-conceived ideas.

But how then did Suntu view the Mandinkas at the Christening ceremony that could not but only spoke the Wollof dialect?  That must have been his horror of 2007. He tried to rationalize the actions taken out of what I suspect was share hopelessness but I could imagine him going home with a frustration-induced indigestion.

I was however itching to tell him this. In a decade or so, he might find English alone being spoken by the same Gambians in similar venues and congregations. So he better starts growing up.

But again, since I don’t know anything about Suntu, I have the right to think that he could be anyone calling him self that name including the possibility that he is in fact Dr. Manneh or his disciple still mesmerizing the minds of the gullible.

As a teacher in The Gambia I was once directed to our Parliamentary Secretary Ministry of Education who then happened to be Dr. Manneh. I had urgently needed him to sign my passport application form which Omar Jallow (O.J.) our MP then would have easily done if he had not travel abroad. After missing Mr. Manneh in his office, some one told me that he was seen at the Quadrangle and that’s where I met him leaving an office. I greeted him in English and he stopped and looked at me with so much intensity that I thought there was something seriously wrong about him or me. He wouldn’t say a word. I still went ahead and explained to him, still in English, what I wanted from him. He started walking away and speaking Mandinka. I apologized to Manneh I couldn’t speak the language. That was what did it. The man snapped at me before the eyes of a big crowd telling me to get out of his face and wait for O.J to sign the document for me. I couldn’t understand his behavior although I was later told that he was generally very impatient with most people and would sometimes use physical force just to make a point. Thank God he never hit me but I had believed at one point that he was close to doing so in that angry look. Certainly, I would have showed him that in Serrekunda, the first thing a boy had to learn was how to defend himself against bullies.

However with Suntu arguing that Wollofs UNWILLING to speak Mandinka should be classified as tribally bias, he has translated into words the very twisted concept that I suspected triggered the actions of Dr? Manneh.

Read this question from Suntu that might help one understand his mindset better: “Now in the Gambia how many percentage of Wolof speaks a language other than Wolof?” The British were in charge of The Gambia for three hundred years yet it was easier for lightening strike and kill dozens of Gambians than to see one English Man or woman speaking any of our local languages. Was that ever an issue with the Suntus? I doubt it. Let’s go down to the Akus, the freed slaves brought to Banjul by the British. They were the first Western-educated ones to work with the European settlers when the Wolof worked as simple laborers.

In those days it was virtually impossible to find Akus who could speak any local language despite their active mediating roles between the whiles and the indigenes. Yet almost all the Wolofs in Banjul had to learn how to speak the Aku language in order to reach the “Toubabs”. As time went by the Wolof soon discovered that they could get rid of the Aku middleman to access the Toubab directly by going to school and learning his language. P.S. Njie, I. M. Garba Jahumpa and Rev. J.C. Faye were among the first sons of those Wollof laborers who pioneered the school going opportunity in Banjul. Naturally, Wollofs being the majority on the Island made the community grew with their culture and language. In short, the Wollof Language became the de-facto commercial language with all new immigrants using it for trade and business. It was therefore, all about chasing what the Toubab had to offer, the same things that attracted other tribes to Banjul. Mandinkas, Fulas, Jolas, name it; all came to Banjul to find something from the British settlers. There were the Lebanese as well who for a long time dominated the business industry especially, the peanut trade. The Mauritanians, Guineans, Malians and Senegalese were also later attracted to the vibrant economic growth of the Island. Before long, everybody who wasn’t comfortable with speaking English or Aku, made efforts to learn the Wolof language. Alhagie Yorma Jallow the Banjul trader who adopted President Jawara from Barajally and brought him to Banjul for his Western Education was a Wolof-speaking Fula. The Geregaras were Sarahullehs, Alhagie Modou Musa Njie the richest man in Banjul before independence was a Fulla. It goes on and on like that as we study the people who lived in Banjul and built their success in a British settlement peopled by Wolof speaking Gambians. But don’t get me wrong; it was still the Akus who lived the most fulfilled lives in Banjul. Statistically they were richer, had the most luxurious buildings and were closer to the British Governor locally called the King of Banjul (a.k.a. Banjul Mansa).

However it was natural that when the Mandinkas, Fullas, Jolas, Sarahullehs surged into Banjul just before independence, few Wolofs saw the need to learn any of those languages while Wollof was lingua franca for survival on the British-colonized island of Bathurst that we now called Banjul.

The same demographics that gave us the British who couldn’t speak the local languages were those that gave us few Akus who spoke Wollof, some Wolofs who spoke Mandinka and perhaps fewer Mandinkas who spoke Jola, Fulla, Sarahulleh or Manjago. Does Suntu know that most Jolas for instance, speak fluent Mandinka with far fewer Mandinkas speaking Jola? What about Jolas who can speak Sarahulleh? Are there any? 

You see it’s all about necessity. If it were necessary for me to speak any language that I know will benefit me, I will certainly be WILLINIG to study and speak it in the fastest possible time. Gambians who went to the Soviet Union or China had to learn those languages in six months otherwise, they risked failing and being sent home. Did you ever stop to analyze this situation? But to study a language that has no important bearing to one’s survival in this modern world is like a bad dream that only our conning politicians could interpret as tactically useful.

Having said that, I would now like to walk our readers through the sequence of Suntu Touray’ paragraphs. I think I have duly covered everything about the first two paragraphs. In the third paragraph however, he started by cautioning me to refrain from naming private Gambian individuals in the debate, referring, I guess, to those mentioned in my article. From what I know about those mentioned, Jawara, Jammeh, Saho, Manneh and Dibba, I believe their names will go down in the annals of Gambian political history, as nothing short of public figures. Perhaps the only person close to fitting the profile of a private individual in the article was Mr. Haidara Ceesay whom by considering his status then as a Principal Education Officer could also qualify as a public figure in the eyes of many especially, those of us who were Education students at the time. Nonetheless, it’s my impression that political surroundings hinged on cult personality like we always had in The Gambia, excluding the names of the active leaders of the political parties or their cronies, simply defeat the purpose of any debate initiated for improvement. That’s why if one has been keeping track of the rise and fall of political parties in The Gambia, before and after independence, one would notice the pattern I am talking about. For example PS Njie was UP, Garba Jahumpa, Muslim Congress Alliance Party, Sheriff Dibba NCP, and Jawara PPP. When the parties they led lost them, the whole foundation on which they were built collapsed like a house of cards.

However, I must make it crystal clear to him that I am not quite bothered when it comes to looking for flaws in my past or present conduct. If his threatening statement to probe into my past professional and private life was made to intimidate me, I am afraid he didn’t do a good job with that cheap shot. So let him tell it or shove it.

I don’t know anything about Mr. Touray, where he comes from or whether he even exists in reality. But I am Sheriff Samsudeen Sarr and my photos say so.

B.B. Dabo "Virtuous & Noble" Says Sarr

For Suntu to advise me not to be mentioning names of private individuals I considered being public ones, and then turn around to use the name of Bakary Dabo, the gentle man from Dumbuto; another public figure to bolster a fatally flawed argument was at best disingenuous. I never mentioned anything about Mr. Bakary Dabo in anyway or form. And believe it or not, I have never had any encounter with him or know someone who does to make me even think that he was the likes of Manneh, Saho and Dibba. The way I put it, tribal politics, and the main theme of my discussion is, I argued, usually perpetrated by scam artist and I sincerely believe that Bakary Bunja Dabo is too conscientious and noble to fall in that category. I don’t think Suntu Touray was fair to Dabo, the readers or me to vaguely state that the man was on similar situations a victim of offensive allegations based on his tribal affinity.

But in alluding to Mr. Dabo’s virtuous name while defending characters such as Manneh, Dibba and Saho, I could sense him trying to mislead Mr. Dabo’s sympathizers and any innocent reader for that matter into falling for his corrupted theory that portrays me as another Wollof hounding a special group of Mandinka icons. Please leave Mr. Bakary Dabo out of it. Please leave Bakary Dabo alone!

I will in fact, from now on stop mentioning Nafa Saho because the man has died and all I would say is to pray for him to rest in eternal peace. But for Manneh and Dibba, these politicians like many Gambian politicians were all phony but dangerously effective until recently. As a matter of fact, Manneh according to those who knew well never had a doctorate degree; yet for years now he has been pretending to be a Doctor. If Suntu or anyone could furnish me with details of where he got his PhD, I will be happy to confirm it in the USA and share the information with the rest of his doubters.

Suntu’s fifth paragraph brought to light another flawed element in his thought process. This is where he tried to explain what was true and speculative in my narrative concerning the founders of the PPP. And this is how he started: “Similarly, the Mandinkas from the outer boundary of greater Banjul were not seen to be included in the clique that was existing among the founders of UP.”  Unless Suntou calls it a wrong choice of word, in referring to the members of the UP as a clique, a word that connotes, a small exclusive circle of people usually snobbish or narrow coterie, then I will be left with no choice but to brand him a very dangerous protagonist. By the weight of that arrogant statement Suntou has indirectly confirmed the statement in my article that the PPP surge was predicated on tribal lines. I guess that was what he was referring to when he said that some of my narratives are true and others speculative. He then tried to explain what was speculative with a feeble proposition that the PPP though founded by the provincial people was equally composed of “Fulas, Sarahulleh and Wollofs from the provinces”. That was one statement contradicting another in the same paragraph; a common pattern when one wants to talk with two mouths.

 He further acknowledged “Jawara was seen to abandon the core members of the Gambian community that helped brought him to power”. Could this guy kindly tell me who these abandoned core members of the Gambian community were? And better still I will very much appreciate if he could elaborate on the manner these unidentified members were abandoned. I wrote that the NCP headed by Dibba broke away from Jawara because of the similar reasons Suntu stated. I gave the reasons I knew then as Jawara not Mandinka enough. In fact, I understand it was Sheriff Ceesay who broke away first but was unable to go too far because Dibba who was very comfortable at the time and was supposed to go with him betrayed him. That may be a wrong story but unless I learn about a different version, I will continue holding on to it. Another story I gathered in the past about the PPP pioneers falling apart was that during their campaign in the provinces, they had promised the masses that after victory they would throw away the Wolofs from Banjul and have them replaced by the Mandinka electorate. And when the promise failed, the voters felt betrayed. Any different story out there is indeed welcomed. Vague statements like that of Suntu’s “Jawara was seen to abandon the core members of the Gambian community that helped brought him to power”, are not good enough. That’s typical stonewalling

There is one more question I have always been dying to ask about the beginning of the PPP. How was Jawara who came to Banjul as a child, got raised and educated there, converted to Christianity and married an Aku Christian woman got chosen as the PPP leader when the main target of the party was to burst the Banjul clique? But I almost forgot that Suntu was referring to the Wolofs and not the Akus, Fullas, Sarahullehs or the other tribes that were also living on the Island.

One more question. Is it true that when Jawara later re-converted to Islam, divorced his Aku Christian wife and married the daughter of the richest man in Banjul who was a Fulla, his political opponents viewed that as a betrayal of the core values of the party?  Because I understand the Modou Musa Njie family was always incorrectly labeled as Wolof and not the Fulla it was.

But since the debate is just starting, I may by the end of it get all my facts straight for my next book.

For Suntu’s records, I wish to share with him the truth that the UP headed by PS Njie was not all a clique of Wolofs. P.S. Njie or the UP also had a large number of Fullas, and Jolas. My parent for his information never supported PS Njie. They were I.M. Garba Jahumpa’s loyalists because he was Muslim and PS Njie Christian.

Perhaps with all the animosity some of us thought existed between Njie and Jawara, the duo congregated on Sunday Mass and afterwards toasted for the health of the Island of Bathurst.

I will at this point refresh the minds of our readers on the history of The Gambia and its political evolution especially, during the colonial period. That’s the only way we could put matters in their proper perspective and clean our minds of this toxic junk.

I know that for selfish pursuits some of us have been harboring a lot of inaccurate oral history that either ignored the importance of colonialism in our country or refused to consider its relevant in our post-colonial political activities. If Suntu Touray again has anything different from what had been written about the history of The Gambia or Banjul, originally called Bathurst, I strongly encourage him to share the information with us. One never knows, he might be keeping huge stories from perhaps Jali Mama Tamba that we may not know about. Till then, I guess we will simply settle for the written version in the history books.

Historical records indicate that up to 1807, the year slavery was abolished in The Gambia; the source of revenue was from the Atlantic slave trade, exclusively run by the Europeans. However, in 1816, through what was documented as a Treaty with the King of Kombo, Mansa Tomany Bojang, the British explorer Captain Alexander Grant obtained what was known as the sandy beach of Bathurst Island. In 1818, the British established the first civil government on the Island with only 700 people living there. The Wollof speaking people on the Island were brought there from Senegal purely to provide labor force for the British. However, between 1821 and 1892 the colony was administered from Sierra Leone with the “Akus”, the freed slaves being the key partners of the British. But it was not until 1843 when The Gambia was officially declared a British Crown Colony.

The British gradually planned the town, and built it to their specification and administered it up to February 18, 1965. Up to 1943 however, the British treated the inhabitants as nothing but slaves. Thier approach towards the people might have come from a special visit made to Banjul by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1943. He was on his way to meet British wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill in Casablanca for war strategy planning against NAZI Germany during World War 11. Roosevelt’s son Elliott, a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army Air Corps was there and had kept a diary of the conversation he had had with his father.

This following text is a verbatim reproduction of the statement made by Roosevelt about what he saw in Bathurst.

“I must tell Churchill what I found out about this British Gambia today”, he told Elliot.

“This morning at about eight-thirty, we drove through Bathurst to the Airfield.” (Elliott notes it was here that his father began speaking with “real feeling in his voice”) “The natives were just getting to work. In rags…. glum looking…. They told us the natives would look happier around noontime, when the sun should have burned off the dew and the chill. I was told the prevailing wages for these men was one and nine. One shilling nine pence. Less than 50 cents”

“An hour?” Elliott asked.

“A day! Fifty cents a day! Besides which, they’re given a half-cup rice. Dirt. Disease. Very high mortality rate. I asked. Life expectancy-you’d never guess what it is. Twenty-six years. Those people were treated worst than the livestock. Their cattle live longer!”

The entire story was published by American Heritage magazine, authored by Donald Wright.

This is as recent as in 1943. President Roosevelt was touched by the deplorable conditions he saw in Bathurst that he even discussed with Churchill, the “Organization of the United Nations” should play in “bringing education, raise the standard of living, improving the health conditions of all the backward, depressed colonial areas of the world…”

Before closing for now, I would take a look at two more issues Suntu has raised. One was the confrontational position he took when he said: “One thing though, every one account you gave about a prominent Mandinka showing tribalist sentiment someone will march that with a prominent Wolof showing an even bigger tribalist sentiment”. Well, I have narrated specific encounters or experiences with a political con Mr. Momodou Manneh. Can he get someone to march that with a bigger one?  Momodou Manneh’s activities in the Badibous and Jokadou, against Mandikas if investigated, may send him to Mile II. Yes, we have the evidence of brutality against pregnant women, opposition candidates and people he just did not like or feared. Please get me the address of the University he got his PHD degree for verification.

Yes Suntu was right in saying that the Mandinkas opposed Jawara more than any ethnic group. Nobody disputes that; what baffles me however, is why that whole opposition force with all cylinders pumping for steam never translated into any success. Pap CheYassin Secka, Koro Sallah, Sam Sarr, Sedia Jatta (a mélange of Fula and Mandinka) and Halifa Sallah were not Mandikas and they didn’t do badly against Jawara anyway. Oh, I almost forgot; where does Suntu rate Kukoi the super warrior?  He didn’t do too badly either. Yes I must acknowledge that he only spoke Mandinka during the 1981 coup; but he was Jola, right?

I can however add something that might make Suntu exultant about Mandinkas opposing Jawara, i.e., the 1994 coup was exclusively planned by Mandinkas and 90% of those who took part in the operation that made it a success were Mandinka soldiers. Jammeh just stole the loot from them.  

I will shelve the topic on Jawara Vs. Jammeh human rights record for my next paper.

Till then, I look forward to hearing from Suntu Soon.