Martin Niemöller’s famous saying is well-known. He said, “First they came for the trade unionists. I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”
How does this relate to The Gambia? In a general sense, power uses divisive tactics to preserve itself. It exploits and amplifies differences to redirect attention away from itself. To effectively do that, it must make some people feel safe and immune from its excesses while labeling another group of people as the enemy to justify their abuse. But give it time, and your turn will arrive.
We recall the early days of the Jammeh dictatorship (between 1996 and 2000) when his thuggery maimed many of his opponents. Whenever there was some sort of commotion or unrest, the refrain back then was “moe gaayi UDP la” (It’s Jammeh and the UDP folks). UDP being the United Democratic Party, Jammeh’s main political opponents. Basically, shrugging off state abuse of power because it was not directed towards you.
UDP withstood the worst of the tyranny of that period, but that changed in April 2000.
The April 2000 student massacre was sanctioned by the state, and the tyrant did not care if the students he ordered to be fired upon were the children of folks who supported him. Or of those who supported UDP, PPP, or even independents. He did not care whether they spoke his language or a different language. His brutality shocked the nation, but we moved on.
It did not end with the schoolchildren. Soon career professionals were targeted. Journalists were sent into forced exile, some tortured, disappeared, and murdered. Lawyers defending people he considered his enemies were targeted for assassination, maiming some for life. Innocent people who had nothing to do with politics were murdered out of paranoia, including dozens of stranded West African migrants rounded up and murdered in the dead of night. Prisoners were dragged out of their cells and illegally executed.
Even in Jammeh’s own native Foni, where he goes unopposed election after election, elderly men and women were hauled off into public squares, made to drink poisonous concoctions and humiliated just so Jammeh could flush out imaginary “witches” that he conjured up in his twisted mind.
Members of the security and armed forces of course were not spared. They were set upon each other with accusations of attempting coups. Some were jailed, some tortured, others were executed.
This was the situation in The Gambia for two decades until we finally rid ourselves of the tyrant in 2016. Today, we say “everyone was a victim.” As true as that is, imagine if we acted on principle even in one of those many instances of abuse.
We could all have rallied around the student massacre and voted Jammeh out in the 2001 election on principle that the blood of innocent school children was too sacred to spill. How many lives could have been spared if we did?
But how did he frame his callousness born out of paranoia? He pointed the finger towards the opposition as the instigators of that student march. And that narrative was bought into.
Thankfully though, we eventually acted when it was clear no one was safe. Shortly after his 2016 defeat, when politics seemed to get back on a somewhat normal footing, partisanship appeared and politics of opposing sides entered the arena. Healthy for democracy, but only if substantive. And it was not, for the most part.
In that rivalry, there was the ruling class on one side and the opposition made up of political parties not adequately represented in what was supposed to be a coalition of equals, including a lot of embittered folks dissatisfied at how the aftermath of the tyrant’s ouster was managed.
More specifically, UDP’s candidate became the coalition flagbearer and successor to Jammeh, which meant UDP featured prominently in that government and therefore set its direction. At least that is what some believe. In fact, they labeled it a UDP government. Granted, that claim is open to debate.
From that point on, the new political rivalries that appeared were framed along those lines. With the less restricted political environment as opposed to the days of tyranny, the exchanges got noisy and very personal. If Gambians have one bad trait, it will be our ability to nurse grudges and waiting for an opportunity to be vindictive.
So, in this new political environment, rivalry is built on deep seated animosity shaping discourse along personal feelings and distrust rather than around real issues.
In that intense rivalry, a new refrain appeared aimed at angering those who backed Barrow in 2017 into early 2018. Comments like “you can support this clearly incompetent president; at the end of the day, it is your pregnant women who die on donkey carts attempting to get to a health center” still evoke feelings of anger.
Even though it is true that access to healthcare is almost non-existent for rural folks due to failures of government, it did not take long for the same problem to seep into already existing facilities in urban centers. Everybody, rural or urban, is living the nightmare of a broken health care system across the entire country. Meaning that problem got much worse over the years and spared no one.
For context, the current president Adama Barrow was a member of the UDP. Naturally, his biggest cheerleaders were from UDP. Granted, some of the issues he was called out for very early on were excused by enthusiastic supporters, and that forms part of the problem too.
But you learn as you live. One year into his presidency, cracks started to appear in that relationship with UDP when it was clear he had plans of his own contrary to what he promised. At the first anniversary of Barrow’s swearing-in, he showed up to the celebrations in “Barrow Youth Movement” t-shirts and at once received widespread condemnation, mainly from UDP supporters who saw a replica of Jammeh’s “July 22nd Youth Movement” emerging. The cracks only grew wider from there leading to the eventual divorce and purging of suspected UDP sympathizers from all government affiliated roles in the public service.
This divorce was the perfect opportunity for vindictiveness, and it came. It was presented in arguments that absolved President Adama Barrow of any wrongdoing or personal responsibility but instead blamed UDP for “giving us Barrow.”
If the first criticism of Barrow was a principled one, the fallout with UDP could have been seen as an opportunity to make allies of former rivals and fight against the same ills that were initially condemned and still persist. But that opportunity was squandered.
Some will argue that UDP lost their trust, granted. But what does it say about your principles when that lack of trust in the UDP compels you to walk back from your earlier stance of being a Barrow critic into a Barrow apologist who absolves him of any personal responsibility in the challenges we face? Case in point, Dr. Ismaila Ceesay.
Here we are still nursing residual bitterness leading to defeatist statements like “Barrow can win and we can all suffer.”
At least now we are in agreement that we are all in this together. We win or lose together as a country. That signals less division. But the lingering bitterness and persistent vindictiveness risks widening those divisions. And that is what we need to work on next.
Mankajang 