By Mathew K Jallow
In the short space of little over two and half decades, the clamor for political independence had become a continent-wide movement that significantly altered global politics and the political dynamics between the colonized and colonizers. For post-colonial Africa, it was a revolutionary era that ushered in hopeful signs, which quickly degenerated into the tyrannical recolonization of a continent. On a February 18thday, in 1965, I was one of many students who witnessed the lowering of Great Britain’s Union Jack for the very last time, and the ascension, in its place, of a newly independent Gambian flag. Like everyone else around me, I applauded enthusiastically when Hon. David Kairaba Jawara took to the podium as Gambia’s first Prime Minister. In those early days, I later learnt, the political pundits gave this dusty, little backwater country no chance to succeed as a standalone political entity. The groundwork was set for the fiery speculations about possible political confederation with French-speaking neighboring Senegal. But, Gambia’s Sir David K Jawara had a different vision, and his solutions to the country’s resources drought, persevered to move the goalpost from political and economic experimentation, to a country that provided academics to US and Europe, and bureaucrats to United Nations and its ancillary bodies. By 1994, the public face of the Gambia was not whether the country could survive the challenging viability test as an independent entity, but on how remarkably the new government had proved Gambia’s resilience to difficult external circumstances, far beyond the pessimism of the pundits and prophets of doom.
The breadth of Gambia’s political liberties and expansion of opportunities, under Sir Dawda K Jawara, unleashed the creative ingenuity of citizens and mitigated the lack of natural resources. There was a time, not so very long ago, when February 18, of each year, aroused the patriotic passions and recommitted citizens to each other and to the state’s wellbeing. Independence Day was worth celebrating. The reasons to laugh were plentiful. And a nation with such vibrant citizenry projected itself as the champion of human and civil rights. But, that was then. And this is now. The tail end of the uneventful colonial era and the first three decades of independence are starkly different from the last twenty years of political repression. The independent anniversaries, since 1994, have failed miserably to release the passion of a nation and galvanize citizens’ resolve to advance Gambia towards a cause of political and economic modernity. The vehemence with which the military regime has skirted all the protocols of good governance, has baffled both Gambians and the international community, causing the concentration citizens’ collective efforts to necessary political change. In the two decades since Yahya Jammeh came to power, Gambia has developed a subculture, which apart from being alien to Gambian values, has impeded the country’s acceptance into the community of civilized nations. And unlike the past nineteen years, this is Gambia’s Golden Jubilee independence anniversary year; an anniversary that is albeit a meaningless milestone characterized by complete subordination to brutal state power. Every independence anniversary since 1994 has been an absurd celebration of contradictions that made a mockery of the concept of independence from colonial domination.
And today, as the Gambia’s prisons fill up beyond acceptable capacities, the death toll mounts exponentially, the forced disappearances increase, and more Gambians flee to the safety of faraway friendly nations, this year’s celebration of independence, like all past years, is clearly a denial of the existence and prevalence of state sanctioned terror. But it is also the negation of the political circumstances that have brought the Gambia down on its knees, and into a state of complete dysfunction and on the brink of economic bankruptcy and political disintegration. The Gambia’s disastrous human rights records aside, Yahya Jammeh, as a citizen of the Casamance, totally lacks fidelity to Gambians and the Gambian state, justifying his removal by any necessary means. The Gambia’s historic democratic experiment and characterization as the “smiling coast of Africa,” which Gambians have proudly sold to the international community for close to three decades, have, with the advent of military rule, plunged this once universally recognized and regionally renowned peaceful country into the dark depths of Africa’s pariah nation. For even by Africa’s standards of state sanctioned brutality, Gambia’s regime stands out as particularly ruthless. The Gambia’s slow drift into political tyrant and tribal bigotry have long condemned the regime to an inevitable confrontation with an unforgiving population. After twenty years of greed and criminal incompetence, Yahya Jammeh’s regime ought now to simply pack up and leave. The heinous crimes and incompetence of the regime cannot be undone. Independence celebration or not, it cannot not get better. It will get worst. After twenty years, Yahya Jammeh now rules by subverting the constitution. It is time to leave so peace can once again return to a traumatized population.