By: Joomay Ndongo Faye

Manipulation of the people to further one’s political cause?

The history of the political development of human societies teaches us that tragedies have often occurred when two of the most prominent political leaders in a social entity put their personal interests above those of their people in their battle for preservation and/or conquest of power. These protagonists begin by identifying the sources of great fear, uncertainty and concern among their people and decide to use them as a rallying point for their camp. Each one poses as the one and only person capable of leading the people to the other shore where the causes that underlie these feelings will disappear thanks to the magician’s stick that only he is able to make good use of. If the institutions of this administrative space are strong enough, this tragedy can lead to their reinforcement, this was the case of the civil war of the United States from 1861 to 1865. Otherwise, it is possible to have an outcome like what is happening in Somalia today.

These two political leaders in Senegal today are President Macky Sall and the undisputed leader of the current Senegalese opposition Ousmane Sonko. These two people must look at themselves in the mirror and ask themselves the following question: would I like historians to attach my name to the decay of the Republic of Senegal?

A historical precedence?

President Macky Sall and those around him are driven by a strong intention to keep power. They use all the means at their disposal, and they are enormous, to prevent any credible candidacy of their opposition to the presidential election of Senegal. First, it was Karim Wade and Khalifa Sall and now it’s Ousmane Sonko. Regarding the first two people mentioned, it was on an accusation of embezzlement and personal use of state funds. I have no data to deny or confirm these accusations. What I do know, however, like any good Senegalese who follows national news religiously, is that there are several people who are not at all concerned by the Senegalese justice system under the Presidency of Macky Sall despite the damning reports on his Administration’s management of the property of the Senegalese State and despite signs of weaponization of the judiciary.

Demonisation of Sonko and PASTEF

In the case of Ousmane Sonko, he was first accused of being a Salafist. Some people who are basically unaware of what Salafism is or are motivated by bad intentions attach this nickname to him to make him seem like a radical Islamist who will put an end to the secularism of our republic and impose Sharia on the Senegalese people as soon as he will accede to the supreme magistracy of the country. For those who don’t know, Salafism was nothing more than a movement to return to the teachings of the Prophet Mohammad (PSL) and the first four Khalifs Abu Bakr (632-634), Omar (634- 644), Ôthman (644-656) and Ali (656-661). In a way, a call for a return to authenticity and a rejection of the divergent interpretations that divided Muslims.

Based on the results of the last legislative elections, it became clear to Macky Sall and his APR and BBY companions that this demonization of Ousmane Sonko and his party, PASTEF (African Patriots of Senegal for Work, Ethics and Fraternity), did not have the desired effect on the Senegalese people. The PASTEF electoral score, which has nothing to envy to those obtained by all the political oppositions that followed one another during the regimes of Senghor, Diouf and Wade, is remarkable. This excellent performance by Ousmane Sonko’s party has certainly sufficiently demonstrated that the latter can indeed defeat any candidate in 2024 put forth by the APR and BBY (Alliance Pour la République) and (Benno Bokk Yaakar).

Since the demonization did not produce the expected result, Macky Sall and his companions who are determined to stay in power had to ask themselves the following question: What can be done to break the momentum of PASTEF and especially Ousmane Sonko in their march which seems to be unshakable towards the conquest of power?

Politically-motivated trials or instrumentalization of the judiciary?

They first brought out the complaint of one of the leaders of Sall’s APR for defamation, accusing Sonko of a false claim that a state audit had revealed mismanagement of funds during the implementation of the Community Agricultural Development Program. Ousmane Sonko was then quickly sentenced to a six-month suspended prison sentence at the end of this trial. Some thought that was enough to put him out of harm’s way to the APR and BBY’s ambition to retain power. But the lack of clarity on the consequences of this verdict on the eligibility of Ousmane Sonko did not put Macky Sall and his companions at ease. Certainly, the law clearly says that this verdict prevents Ousmane Sonko from registering on the electoral lists of Senegal. But given that the latter is already registered and that the law says nothing about eligibility, wanting to ban Ousmane Sonko from running for office in 2024 on the basis of this verdict will not be justifiable and/or credible. Thus, the suspended prison sentence did not effectively preclude him from seeking the presidency according to the articles (L 29 and L 30) of the electoral code.

The pending legal case against Ousmane Sonko, his accusation of rape and death threat by Adji Sarr, then became the spare tire. To eliminate the danger that a possible candidacy of Ousmane Sonko represents for the preservation of power by Macky Sall and his companions, everything had to be done so that the verdict of this trial puts him aside. But the dismissal of the rape accusation at the trial by Sitor Ndour and the lack of merit of the evidence presented by Adji Sarr and her lawyers very quickly showed the Prosecutor that a guilty verdict against Ousmane Sonko will not be at all credible in the eyes of public opinion of the Senegalese and global community which are watching this trial like milk on the fire. Thus, knowing that he was going to lose, the prosecutor asked the judge that, if he could not be convicted for what he was accused of, he should be incriminated for the offence of “youth corruption”. Based on the testimonies during the trial, especially that of the young girl who was with Adji Sarr in the massage room and whom the latter had asked to leave to leave her alone with Ousmane Sonko, no self-respecting judge was going to take the offer of the Prosecutor.

Despite these inconsistencies in the presentation of the evidence to prove that Mr. Sonko deserves a conviction by the Senegalese justice, the Judge decided to follow the prosecutor for reasons that only God and himself know. One thing is certain, the lightness of the evidence presented to him and the seriousness of the situation that would be created by a guilty verdict capable of preventing Ousmane Sonko from being a candidate for the presidential election of Senegal in 2024, should have caused the judge to be cautious. Certainly, force must remain with the law. But this force will have to be based on judicial decisions that suffer from no shadow of an objective doubt.

A heavy-handed clampdown on civil disobedience

The other thing that I blame Macky Sall and his companions for is the excessive use of force in the form of selective imprisonments on dubious grounds and which a self-respecting judge would never have approved. The case of Bassirou Diomaye Faye is a typical example. In matters of justice, the procedure is as important as the evidence presented to convict a person. In the case of Diomaye Faye, the police at least violated the procedure. The time at which he was brought to the police station and the absence of an arrest warrant constitutes procedural defects that the judge before whom he was presented had no right to ignore. Outright relaxation should have been his decision the first time he was presented in front of the latter. Not only is Diomaye Faye rotting away in jail with no idea when his trial will be, but the charge on which he was arrested would lack weight before any self-respecting judge who has the smallest grain of desire to prove that what Diomaye Faye said before in his Facebook text was unfounded. To say that a minority of decision-makers within the Senegalese judiciary are corrupt is an undeniable truth. It is, moreover, an evil from which all the judiciaries of the world suffer, regardless of the state of progress of the political development of their countries. No magistrate who respects himself and accepts the rule of law as the lifeblood of the republic would dream of condemning Diomaye Faye on the grounds of insulting the judiciary for having expressed such an opinion which has been a world truth for centuries. PASTEF has, according to its leaders, more than 400 (four hundred) of its members in prison for reasons related to their political activities. Certainly, it is very likely that among the people included in this count of PASTEF members, there are individuals guilty of flagrante delicto of actions having caused material damage. It is, however, no exaggeration to say that the vast majority of these detainees are for what they said. Not seeing these people as political prisoners is certainly more than bizarre behaviour.

What about Ousmane Sonko and PASTEF?

Although my son, Bassirou Diomaye Faye is in the leadership of this party, I must say here that I am not a member of this party. In fact, although being an activist of the Senegalese left, I stopped being involved in a political party because I realized the real limits of their ability to get my country out of the neocolonial abyss.

PASTEF’s political program is certainly commendable, but it should be remembered that this is not new to Senegal. Many political parties were born in this country and had offered excellent programs to the Senegalese people. But for various reasons, they never reached the level of popularity of PASTEF. The two big reasons behind the rapid success of PASTEF are in my humble opinion:

•  The level reached by the lack of hope to find work among a largely skilled and educated Senegalese youth, what economists call mismanagement of the demographic dividend by the Senegalese state.
• The development of social media and the extraordinary ability of the members of the PASTEF communication unit to put them at the service of their cause, where the hype on social networks amplifies “the Sonko effect”.

Is PASTEF and its leadership plunging the country into chaos at all costs?

Our country, like the overwhelming majority of African countries, is sitting on a social time bomb: Mismanagement by their State, for structural reasons, of the Demographic Dividend or in other words the inability of the State/country to create optimal conditions for the absorption of the vast majority of well-educated and skilled young people who enter the labour market each year.

Opinion leaders, be they politicians, religious, or civil society in the country, will have to do everything to not be the cause of the production of the spark that can set off this bomb. Political leaders must absolutely refrain, in their efforts to conquer or retain power, from giving our youth, at the height of their frustration, any reason to express their anger against the government by resorting to violence. Rather than doing everything to prevent this bomb from exploding and setting the Senegalese society ablaze with all the harmful consequences that this can cause for the country and the Sahel region, Ousmane Sonko and his supporters seem to be taking advantage of the despair of Senegalese youth to accede to power as quickly as possible. The development of the culture of the “GATSA GATSA” attitude is a danger for Senegal. It is a tactic that can certainly be used to mobilize a youth disoriented by the perverse effects of the non-viability and vulnerability of the overwhelming majority of African states, but it is a way of digging the grave of the political current that uses it to gain power.

In a republic, only the state has the right to use violence. It goes without saying that many crooked politicians have abused the trust of their people and resorted to an ill-holy use of violence, but the only justifiable and sustainable reaction to such abuse that is meted out to the citizens of a democratic republic is the ballot, as long as that franchise option is made available – not a club, a machete, a Molotov cocktail or whatever.

The absence of a condemnation of the acts of vandalism and chaos that have arisen each time Ousmane Sonko has been treated in a way that his supporters perceive as an abuse of power is disturbing to me. Ousmane Sonko, who aspires to the supreme office of our country, should be the first to unreservedly condemn this expression of a total lack of civism. Any other attitude, silence or encouragement makes the leaders of PASTEF the chief gravediggers of any possibility of governing in peace when the Senegalese people entrust them with the heavy task of managing their state. What these thugs do not know is that it is themselves and their families who will pay through taxes and loans in the name of Senegal, the damage they are causing, especially the destruction of public properties and critical social assets directly benefitting the ordinary people, like the Sheikh Anta Diop University. A Pulaar proverb that was shared with me by a Pulaar teacher friend who lives here in upstate New York says that “So ñiiwa ene habaa e ñiwaako hudo booretee” (when two elephants fight it’s the grass that suffers regardless of the outcome of the battle, regardless of who is right or wrong”. It is the Senegalese baadolo who will pay the price for the violent confrontations between Macky Sall and Ousmane Sonko through the dozens of avoidable casualties but also through taxes, cuts in state social services and many other ways.

A warning and concluding recommendations

To conclude I would say this: It is long overdue for the Duo Macky Sall-Ousmane Sonko to come to their senses for the higher interest of the Senegalese nation but also for the Africans who use Senegal as an example to prove to their compatriots that the Democratic Republic is possible in Africa south of the Sahara. The sages of my Wolof cousins say that “alal du doy, doylu moy alal”. President Macky Sall and his companions must carefully weigh this Wolof saying and significantly reduce their intention to keep power to preserve their material interests. With regard to Ousmane Sonko and some of his “Yewi Askan Wi” coalition partners, it is important to take ownership of this lesson that world political history has taught us: you will lose power by the way in which you acquired it.

The tragedy always ends with the death of one of the two protagonists who are stuck in it. The socio-economic and material damage for Senegal will be incalculable if Macky Sall and Ousmane Sonko know the outcome of the vast majority of tragedies. It is time, Mr. President of the Republic, to remind you that by entrusting you alone with the right to exercise violence, the Senegalese people did not want you to use this right for your personal gain and/or those of your companions. Over to you Ousmane Sonko, I advise you to do everything to avoid jeopardizing the governability of Senegal by the elected people.

We are only at the beginning of this already very painful play for the families who have lost one of their own in the violent demonstrations linked to it. You two can avoid a more tragic end in Senegal by making the peace of the brave. President Sall, make it clear to your companions who fear losing the privileges that come with the maintenance of power by the APR/BBY that nothing is eternal, especially the advantages linked to accession to power in a democratic republic. Ousmane Sonko, tell the members of PASTEF and your coalition supporters that without a culture of respect for public goods and the rejection of any recourse to violence, whatever the injustices committed by those in power, no party or coalition that reaches the top of our country’s political pyramid will be able to benefit from the climate of social peace without which economic prosperity is impossible.

To my brothers and sisters who brandish the argument that Ousmane Sonko and the PASTEF will destroy our republic if they come to power, I would say this: you think in that manner because you either have a negative subjective attitude towards Ousmane Sonko and/or PASTEF or a limited knowledge of the history of democracy. First, you have no proof of the intentions that you attribute to Ousmane Sonko and his party. Second, even if Ousmane Sonko had these intentions, it is up to the Senegalese people to decide whether or not they trust him to occupy the highest office in their country. Any intention to snatch this decision from the Senegalese people, whatever the means used to do so, constitutes a danger to the peaceful political development of the Senegalese Republic and must therefore be vigorously condemned. Replacing the Senegalese people in the process of choosing the person to whom they will hand over the Presidency of the Republic in 2024 is neither less nor more than an administrative coup d’état and therefore a constitutional crime against our republic.

Diomaye Ndongo Faye

Consultant in Political Strategy Development

Princeton, New Jersey, United States

APPRECIATION

By: Cherno Baba Jallow

My uncle Alhaji Yaya Jallow, who died early Saturday morning in Old Yundum, after a long battle with hypertension, was everything that uncles are known for: supportive, caring, inspirational and amiable.

Uncles, it’s often said, are like junior fathers, and particularly in the absence of the paternal parent. But unlike fathers, who could be stern and authoritative, uncles tend to be genial and broad-minded. They have soft spots for their nieces and nephews. They give you avenues for self-expression, the kind you don’t usually get from your father.

Uncle Yaya was, by nature, mild-mannered. He was generally quiet and easy-going. He made me feel comfortable talking to him and expressing myself. He would say to me: ‘so what do you think?’ ‘Ok, it’s up to you.’

He was born in Basse Santa-su on February 9, 1949, two years after the nationalist leader Edward Francis Small won his first direct election to the colonial legislative council. He was the third and youngest child in a small family household. My late mum Mariama Jallow preceded him in birth. And Uncle Mamadou Naphew Jallow, a veterinarian by profession, was the firstborn. Just as in birth, the three siblings died in successive order. Uncle Naphew was the first to go, then Mummy and now Uncle Yaya. Of the three of them, he lived the longest. He was 74.

Uncle Yaya attended St. George’s Primary School in Basse Mansajang Kunda. He later attended Armitage High School in Georgetown, now called Jangjangbureh. When he left school, Uncle worked in government, beginning as a junior clerk. He was once stationed in Jenoi, Mansakonko, in the Lower River Region. He also worked as an auditor with the Internal Audit department and as an accountant in various ministries in Banjul. He became a principal accountant, his last stint in government before going on an early retirement. He also did occasional collaborative work with the African Development Bank.

Uncle Yaya was an embodiment of honesty and integrity in public service as well as in his daily dealings with the people. At both professional and personal levels, he demonstrated impeccable character, and you couldn’t help but be awed by a man with a deep sense of right and wrong, and with an unwavering commitment to his conscience and to ethical standards. High-minded public servants, like him, were an oceanic supply in The Gambia Civil Service in the days of old. They don’t mint them anymore in today’s Gambia.

After my parents, Uncle Yaya was the most instrumental in my formative years. He was the one who paid my way throughout high school. He allocated me a monthly allowance during my high school days in Banjul. He made sure I had everything I needed or wanted for school.

A voracious reader himself, Uncle Yaya helped firm up my reading appetites and curiosities during the years I stayed with him in Serekunda. He was a regular reader of the-long defunct Africa Now magazine, a London-based pioneering publication on African news and commentary and on Africa’s place in global affairs between the 1960s and 80s. When I joined him from Basse, I found piles of old copies of the magazine stashed inside the house. I burrowed through them all, introducing myself to the writings of the magazine’s legendary Nigerian editor Peter Enahoro and his colleagues, the Ghanaian Cameroun Doudou, the Kenyan Phillip Ochieng and the Tanzanian Abdourahman Babu, a former economic planning minister under Julius Nyerere. Those were seasoned writers and analysts on post-colonial Africa.

One of the domestic chores Uncle Yaya assigned me during my student days with him was to, once in a while, prepare for him a summary of the African news from the BBC’s flagship Focus on Africa program in the evenings. He would read through my summaries, or he would ask me to recall the news on that day’s events around Africa.

On one afternoon in 1995, agents of the then National Intelligence Agency (NIA) picked up several staffers of The Daily Observer. I was among them. The managing director, too. The BBC’s Focus on Africa announced something like this…. “almost the entire staff at the Gambian Daily Observer was today taken to the country’s national intelligence headquarters for questioning.’’ I knew Uncle Yaya would know about it because he religiously listened to the BBC. When I got home, he had been eagerly waiting for me. He sounded very worried. ‘’So, what happened?,’’ he asked. “Were you among those picked up?’’

Uncle Yaya was always worried for me, but he was understanding. He knew I wanted to be a reporter. When I told him in late 1994 that I was quitting my government job at the Agriculture Ministry for a reporting offer at The Observer, he didn’t raise any objections. He and his late childhood friend and namesake, Alhaji Yaya Jallow, the then Permanent Secretary at Agriculture and formerly deputy leader of the United Democratic Party, had helped me secure that job at the ministry. But I wasn’t happy there. The job wasn’t challenging enough.

As a regular reader of my writings, Uncle Yaya was an occasional critic. ‘’Cherno, you know, you like to use a lot of big words,’’ he would scold me, and he would occasionally consult a copy of the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary in the house.

In December 2016, and during the height of the Gambian political impasse following the electoral defeat of the former dictator Yahya Jammeh, Uncle Yaya led the family to the Senegalese border town of Manda Diouane, west of Madina Gounass and a 30-minute bicycle ride to the Gambian border. I had been waiting for them, having arrived from Conakry, the capital of Guinea.

It was the first time in 20 years that I had seen my family. My parents weren’t on the trip. They had died during my exile years in America.

It was the happiest of family reunions. But Uncle Yaya wasn’t satisfied. “I am very happy to see you Cherno,” he said, barely able to contain his emotions. “But I would be happier if we met inside The Gambia one fine day,’’ he added.

We did in 2019.

Dear Mr. President, 

If I write to you about the current situation of our country, will you read? If I speak to you about the direction our nation is heading, will you listen? If I tell you what our people are going through, will it soften your heart? If I tell you about the pains and sufferings of my people, your people and our people, will it be enough for you to do something? 

Greetings from this nobody who voted you into office from where it all began – at a time when we knew so little. We could not see beyond salvation from tyranny, bigotry, tribalism, dictatorship, torture, and extra-judicial incarcerations and killings. We went to the polls and entrusted you with our nation because we had little a choice but to trust you despite how little we knew you. We looked up to you and hailed you as our messiah. You gave us your word that you were just going to be a transitional president; you told us the three years was what you would stick to, but little did we know you would never be better than your words. You took our power and use it against us; you chose the Constitution instead of your moral duty to keep the promise you made to us. Despite all that, we remained calm and supported you to complete the term. After five years of struggle, we put you back in office because of circumstances beyond the control of most electorates. We sat hoping to see the trend change, but unfortunately, it kept escalating.

Let us face it now; Mr. President, your silence is killing; your inaction is unconstitutional, and [the way] you handle the suffering of innocent Gambians. Gambia has become a country where the cost of living is penetrating the skies. Imagine waking up one morning and discovering that the prices of bread, rice, oil and other basic food items have sky-rocketed by over 40%. Imagine waking up one morning and finding out that your transportation cost spiked by over 100%. Imagine waking up one morning and your landlord tells you from the distance, “hey! I have doubled the rent of this house. If you cannot afford it, you look for somewhere else?” As a father, who is employed by your government on wages that can barely get him food for a month, he must meet his professional obligation of reporting to work even if it takes spending 50% of his embarrassing salary on transport, he struggles to feed, shelter and school his children while the tax he pays is used to pay you handsomely, clothe you elegantly, feed you nutritiously, protect you highly, house you heavenly, and school your children lavishly. The same system that is supposed to be regulated by your constitutional orders and powers is affecting his mental health badly, taking away his happiness completely, frustrating him uncontrollably, depressing him deeply and killing him slowly. He would have no choice but to beg or worship people just to survive. If that fails, he will inevitably steal from us as a nation just to make a living. Hence, corruption and bribery become institutionalized. If no one is informing you rightly, Mr. President, I am doing it for absolutely free.

Moving to the road traffic accidents causing countless untimely tragic deaths of people, it saddens me to know that almost every week a person suffers, in The Gambia, from road traffic accidents. The last time I checked the literature, it was indicated that the Gambia’s roads are safer than that of only seven out of the 195 countries in the world today. Mathematically, this means that approximately 96% per cent of the world’s population is safer using roads than Gambians are. A lot of manly men and industrious women lost their lives, and their only crime was using our roads. Your Excellency, this is another urgent matter that needs timely intervention to flatten the curves on the statistical graphs of this undesired data.

Your Excellency, the current state of our nation, is affecting our productivity. High attrition rate: all the talented young people of this beloved nation are moving abroad to use their knowledge and skills for better pay and enhanced conditions of living for themselves and their families. This emanates from the lack of hope for meaningful employment opportunities with above-average job satisfaction. As a result of the poor quality of life, the number of senior citizens developing hypertension is escalating; and the figures of working group people that die preventable deaths are alarming. These effects put further pressure on our health system and depress our economy. Your Excellency, your effective intervention, will serve as a beacon of hope for our beloved nation, The Gambia.

Your Excellency, I do not intend to disrespect you even though writing to a person in power about serious national concerns in this country is considered disrespectful, what I want us to achieve together is a better Gambia- a Gambia where the government governs the people, and not a few groups of business owners ruling and exploiting the masses; a Gambia with not just a constitution, but enforcement of the law; a Gambia with price control, rent regulation and traffic monitoring; a system that will make you leave a legacy, rather than a miserable history. Therefore, I am your well-wisher.

Your Excellency, the situation is becoming increasingly unbearable, and the opinion of the public is swaying fast from your direction. I understand you are a peaceful person, but if your definition of peace is to leave every citizen to do as he or she pleases, then there is a fundamental problem. Therefore, it is time to put a stop to the looming household ‘foodlessness’, national ‘youthlessness’ and societal ‘houselessness’. These devastating situations, if not mitigated, have the potential to break people, rob them of their sanity and patience, kill their hearts of humanity, and reform them into ruthless revolutionary movements that no power in the world can tame. Your Excellency, prevention is better than cure. I wish these words do not run down the drain. Long live!

Yours faithfully,
Ousman Sparo Touray.

Photo: Lady Aja Fanta Basse Sanyang and Sir Farimang Singhateh, Courtesy of the Singhateh/Jawara family.

In Communion with Lady Aja Fanta Basse. While researching my ‘Communion with History’ series, I discovered that Lady Fanta Basse, the first Gambian-born First Lady and wife of the last Governor General of the Gambia, Sir Farimang Singhateh, is alive and currently residing in Bakoteh with her family. This piqued my interest, so I reached out to a couple of journalist friends to inquire if they knew anything about her or if they knew anyone who had interviewed her. However, they all responded that they had no information on her, and some were even unaware of Sir Farimang’s role in our nation’s history, let alone Lady Fanta Basse’s. 

Nonetheless, her granddaughters kindly facilitated a FaceTime call, allowing me to be in the presence of the first Gambian-born First Lady — a political activist from an era predating the social media phenomenon. Lady Fanta Basse, a woman older than my nation by a whole generation and then some, informed me that while she couldn’t recall the exact year and date of her birth, she was born in Georgetown, McCarthy Island, as she referred to it, to Tenengba Conteh and Banding Sanyang.

As a researcher, I came fully prepared, having conducted extensive research on her years as a PPP stalwart, political activist, philanthropist, and First Lady. Following the Western tradition of structured interviewing, I was trained to prepare questions in advance and adhere to the script — asking questions and expecting answers, then following up to clarify any discrepancies or significant points. However, during my conversation with Lady Fanta Basse, she reminded me of the beauty of oral traditions, specifically praise-singing, as a means of narrating history. The First Lady illuminated this age-old tradition, breathing life into history.

The Importance of Praise-Singing and Oral Tradition. As the conversation progressed, I set aside my prepared questions and let Lady Fanta Basse guide the discussion. She enthralled me with her rendition of “Farimang Singhateh, Kambano Nata: Kodo Keta Sang-jio Tee” (Farimang Singhateh, the young man, has arrived — money has turned to rain). Through our conversation, I discovered her deep affection for her beloved husband, Sir Farimang, evident in her recollection and performance of praise songs dedicated to him. It was a language of love, a captivating blend of spontaneity and tradition. Despite the weight of memory and the passage of time, there were things she could express through song that she found difficult to articulate, compelling me to decipher meaning and read between the lines of her melodic stanzas.

Interwoven with the praise-singing for Sir Farimang, Lady Fanta Basse would intermittently reminisce about their life before moving to the State House when “the Queen of England” appointed Sir Farimang as the Governor General of the Gambia. She recounted their time in Georgetown prior to the grandeur and ceremony, as well as their family home on 48 Grant St., Banjul.

“Farimang Singhateh, Kambano Nata.” By the time I interviewed the First Lady, she was already a nonagenarian, burdened with the weight of memories that come with her age. However, she vividly recalled various aspects of Sir Farimang’s life, most of which were passed down through oral tradition — praise singing and poetry. For instance, she explained how the youth of Georgetown revered and admired Sir Farimang, recalling the chants and songs they would sing for him.

While I didn’t need anyone to emphasize the importance and necessity of praise-singing and oral tradition in storytelling, as it is arguably the oldest form of history, a reminder is always valuable in our world of ivory towers and modern modes of communication for preserving historical records. Drawing inspiration from the brilliant composer and poet Muhammed Fairouz, I would assert that Lady Fanta Basse reminded me of the timeless presence of praise-singing and oral tradition in human existence. It has accompanied humanity since time immemorial, entwined with our society from the very inception of our journey.

Separating praise-singing and oral tradition from societal aspirations — the utilitarian uses of singing in our cultures, be it marching off to war, celebrating the harvest, serenading loved ones with “Farimang Singhateh, Kambano Nata,” or lulling a child to sleep with a lullaby-like “Ayo Neneh” — is, therefore, ahistorical. Thus, through this communion with history and the remarkable Lady Fanta Basse, I was reminded of the inherent storytelling nature of our lives, connecting us to the past and future of our society, transcending the tumultuous present.

This conversation left me with a renewed appreciation for the importance of praise-singing and oral tradition as powerful and necessary tools for preserving history. It reinforced the central role of oral tradition in African history and its resilience in upholding itself through praise-singing.

For Posterity. It is my hope that our society, encompassing our education system, national television, and radio, will undertake the study, preservation, and widespread narration of the lives of such important individuals in our society, documenting their stories for posterity. Unfortunately, The Gambia is one of those countries where the stories of its first native-born head of state and the First Lady have been obscured by time and imagination, largely absent from our collective memory and history books.

Thus, as I highlighted in the initial piece of the “In Communion with History” series, my journey of discovery, research, and storytelling is an endeavour to document and catalogue not only my personal history but also that of our society for future generations. It places me in conversation with both the living and the deceased, connecting the present generation with those preceding it and those yet to be born.

Farimang La Muso Nata. Throughout our conversation, Lady Fanta Basse, like many of our elderly, prayed for my well-being. Now that she belongs to the ages and can no longer offer her prayers, it is incumbent upon me to return the favour. Therefore, may Sir Farimang warmly welcome Lady Fanta Basse to the highest realms of heaven with the evocative words, “Fanta Basse, Farimang La Muso Nata” (Fanta Basse, Farimang’s wife, has arrived).

So Long, First Lady. My heartfelt condolences go to the Singhateh/Jawara family, particularly her granddaughters, Chilel Jawara and Fanta Jawara, who graciously organized and facilitated this meeting with their remarkable grandmother.

Rest in Peace and farewell, First Lady — Godspeed!

Sulayman Njie, PhD

Dallas, Texas

05.18.2023