By Da One
A nation suffering from bipolar disorder!
We are acting as if we can’t recognize ourselves in Jola, Mandika, Wollof, Fulani and all our beautiful languages. If that won’t be the case, why do we choose to speak English exclusively at all the deliberations and sittings of all the commissions that are established by the current administration?
The testimonies at the TRRC are for the Gambian people to know all what happened from 22nd July up to the period Yahya Jammeh went into exile after losing the 2017 presidential elections.
The interesting thing though, is that less than 50 percent of Gambians have any agency in the English language. That means they can’t read, understand and write this language in equal measure.
These are the people in the majority and these are the people the commissions are out to deliver the truth to. What is this obsession with a colonial and an imperial language? Is this not a means and a way of “self enslavement” we are perpetrating on ourselves and our people?
We can’t talk about people’s power when the people dare not speak their own languages in spaces of power, bureaucracy and officialdom. A government committing cultural and language genocide on its people is only good enough for the dustbin.
Yours in the service of The Gambia and Afrikka, I remain.