Two
scores and two- Gambians have spoken!! By Baaba Sillah mu Sabel
The
making of a tyrant!
Sociologists,
anthropologists and social psychologists
have identified and described in some ways what they call the socialisation
process. Simply put, it means the process by which a young infant is added to
the group. The first or primary unit of socialisation is the family. The child
learns to relate to family members, learns a language, modes of acceptable
behaviour and so on. The next level of socialisation is the school. The child
transfers what he has learnt to the school but is exposed to a more diverse community of contemporaries. He
learns to relate to others, make friends(perhaps lasting friendships) and
learns to share and validate others in pretty much the ways in which he is
accorded his status as an autonomous individual. He learns to play games, team
sports and the like which ultimately bear on his subsequent adult
behaviour. Finally he gets into larger
society. This is the pinnacle of socialisation. He learns to become an adult. A
neighbour, a member of the society.
He
finds rules and regulations enshrined in laws, bye-laws, unspoken rules of
larger society, he learns to play roles,
take responsibility for himself and his responsibilities towards others especially his peer group and beyond including his
(ethnic) loyalties, perform rituals, attend ceremonies and so on. The list is
endless but the important thing is that each autonomous adult, will have learnt
in more or less ways, in time and in space,
why they exist within homes, wards, village communities, town, country,
region, continent and a world citizen. In short, the individual is always in
society and society is always within the individual.
Society
therefore has left an indelible imprint on how the fully-fledged person behaves
within each context(s). Note that in all social intercourse, there are
sanctions levelled at individuals that transgress the set boundaries and those
that conform to the norms are rewarded for their conformity.
Studies
of Ferral children, most notably, the study of the ‘wild boy of Averon’ confirm
all the above. In short, a faulty socialisation process has a colossal impact
on the individual and on society.
In
some instances though, some people, even from childhood flagrantly violate the
set norms. Often, they become misfits and miscreants and society is at a loss
as to what to do with them. In more
organised and resource endowed communities, there are provisions available to
help these individuals most of which do not involve the incarceration of the
individual in institutions of social control. In our society, we learn to
accomodate them as our threshold of tolerance of deviance is higher by default.
This is why the Wolofs have coined-up an apt idiom. «Dof dafaa sangu di sol
paase!»
Consider
the following scenario. A three year old walks into a compound and finds all
the other children playing with their toys. He goes around and grabs all the
toys that the other children are playing with nicely. What conclusions would
you draw from this single act? As an adult, you may just shrug your shoulders
and not read much into the act. Perhaps, you might say that children will be
children.
Consider
the same child at fifteen doing the same thing in different contexts! He will
scale the neighbour’s wall and take whatever he wants. He may go around
shouting and bullying other young people How would you explain this? Again,
consider the same fifteen year old boy at twenty nine years and over doing the
same thing? What conclusions would you draw from the behaviour of the young
man?
Let
us still follow the young man. He has become a soldier and has in his
possession a gun an instrument of coercion and can make people do what he
wants, how he wants it.
He
takes over state power, eliminates his partners and assumes state power. This
was done through the gun in his hand. The
gun continues to give him the power to subvert and subsume the role of the
judiciary, the executive, the legislature and suppresses the freedom of the
forth estate in a democracy. This is not all, he meddles into religion and
declares some of the ancient practices of certain sects illegal. He imprisons
without trial, growls at business people and takes over their businesses. He eliminates competition by raising taxes
while he himself does not pay tax. He coerces the municipalities and
para-statal institutions to turn in their revenues to him and uses state
property and funds to finance his recondite pleasures for himself, his family
and his bunch of lackeys. He could not do it without the gun in his hand.
At
fifty, one would think that he will have mellowed. No! Instead he has reduced
all his escapades and schemes into a fine art. Take another scenario! He
single-handedly withdraws The Gambia’s memberships to the commonwealth and the
International criminal court and declares
the country an Islamic state and tries to forment animosity between one
religion against the other, one ethnic group against the other and even within
families, he will set one hyena to discredit another hyena.
Another
scenario is his insatiable drive in buying people who could sing his praises
and perpetuate his legacy. His unbridled obsession to be loved and his love of
titles points to something deeply troubling.
As if this is not enough, he buys all the state of the art limosines and
pays peoples way to the Hajj. People have disappeared without trace and some
have died in custody and their remains were never surrendered to their
families; in spite of all the requests they have made to put their loved ones
to rest and give them a decent burial. I do not plan to catalogue all of his
chicaneries and hurts he has caused the
people of The Gambia among other
families from Ghana and neighbouring Senegaal.
Now!
What can psychologists infer from these behaviours? It is to these that I will
speak to from a psychological viewpoint.
We
can now draw the following conclusions!
His deprived and unhappy childhood has had a
severe and lasting impact on his adult life. We are aware of his origins and it
does not take brain science to make fairly accurate assumptions about his
adolescence in Banjul.
KLEPTOMANIA
Trying
to grab everything within his grasp even at the risk of life and liberty is a
case in point.
Look
at all the land he grabbed! How does one explain his insatiable apetite for
land. Why did he demolish built-up areas and peoples private houses? What did
he get from it?
His
involvement in all the businesses and direct interference in farming are
indications of a person that has not
self-actualised.
PERSONALITY
DISORDER
A
faulty socialisation has meant the total lack of regard for others viewpoints.
His views were always right. Social conventions, graces, etiquette seemed to
have been absent in his relationships with others.
He
could not share. He could give but his overtures always had a prize tag. He
will come back and make demands on you
even if this compromises your person,
your integrity and your position.
He
took responsibility only for himself and at all times, to procure his
interests.
MEGALOMANIA
His
paranoid state never accorded him the possibilities to trust or to build trust
with others. His sadistic love of
power,his mood swings and sudden change of demenour are all well attested,
PERSECUTION
COMPLEX
He
has a persecution complex. His enemies were many and the West was responsible
for his failures. The West, Senegaal, the homosexuals, Imams with minds of
their own are his sworn enemies.
Intellectuals needed to be watched. He established the University to
instill common sense in them, he says.
DELUSIONAL
For
a person in his statue to wake up from his sleep one fine morning and declares
that he cures the AIDS disease; a disease whose cure and bio-chemistry has
eluded the top medical minds in the world. This is a disease that had visited
us for the past thirty years and more and yet Mister Jamme claims to have an antidote
to. Doesn’t this beggar belief? His forays into medicine went beyond curing the
big desease with the small name. The Kanelaay potions cured asthma, diabetes,
hypertension, infertility and you know… possession by evil. The juiciest joke I find about his all in one
concoction to include a handful of ‘blessed, roasted peanuts. If he had asked
my grandmother, she would have told him that ‘boy, all good medicines taste
bitter’.
Already,
enough and too much has been said about the Sheex, the professor, the Doctor,
the Baabili mansa, the Nasiru deen. We will now look at the other side of the
coin. That is you and I! Why did Jamme step into the power mill? Why did we
allow him to rule this country and break into the fabric of the society with
such explosive force and with such irreverence and impunity? What is the
backdrop to his entry and what factors led to ‘July 94?
We
will address these questions but here is a poem I would like to share with you.
Our
Tomorrow
Have
you ever; did you ever live in a land:
Where
dignity and honour play second, third and fourth -fiddle
Where
truckling is the norm rather than the rarity
Where
self-worth becomes self-debasement
Where
Hyenas are paraded to lard the Sovereign’s ego?
Where
fantasy and reality smudge and assume exact sameness?
Where
apparitions become realness?
Where
Falsity is verity
Where
humans imbibe a less than human existence
Where
they have become zombies and unwitting pawns in life’s game of Draughts
Where
their minds have departed from their own bodies and become a cooperative of
unsighted followers
Where
they have become a faceless collectively imprisoned in a permanent childhood.
Where there is a cynical, surrendering
subterfuge in the air
Where
a docile hoard is cowed into bondage and in tumult!
Where
our yesterdays become our tomorrows and our today’s…well …our don’t knows!
To
be continued
