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| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| Momodou |
Posted - 30 Sep 2026 : 12:35:11
*Old Man Musing*
THE TRIBAL AUCTION: An Indictment Of The Merchants Of Blood Who Would Sell The Gambia By The Tribe For The Upcoming National Elections In December 2026) !!!
- How Empty Men With Empty Heads Found A Full Market In Our Wounds
There is a moment in the life of every small republic when politics runs out of ideas and returns to blood.
We have reached that moment.
As December approaches — that early December when Gambians will once again walk alone into a booth to decide alone before history — our politicians, having nothing of substance to offer, having no blueprint for rice, no model for jobs, no plan for hospitals, no honest accounting of the billions borrowed and the promises broken, have reached into the oldest, dirtiest drawer in African politics and pulled out the tribal card.
It is not new.
It is not clever.
It is not Gambian.
It is the final confession of intellectual bankruptcy.
When a man cannot feed you, he will tell you who ate your food.
When a man cannot build you a school, he will tell you which tribe owns the school.
When a man has no concept, he sells you a cousin.
This is the politics of the empty calabash making the loudest noise.
I. Anatomy Of The Transaction: How Tribe Is Traded
Let us understand, with precision — as Mohamedan School taught me — how this ugly trade works.
-Step One: Invent A Threat:
No Gambian farmer in Kiang woke up this morning hating his Fula neighbour.
No Mandinka woman in Brikama refused to sell fish to a Wolof customer.
We have lived, intermarried, named children after each other, wept at each other's funerals for centuries.
The politician must therefore invent what does not exist.
He must whisper: "They are coming for you. Your tribe is in danger. If you do not vote for me — your tribesman — they will take your land."
Danger sells better than development. Fear is faster than thought.
-Step Two: Privatize The State By Tribe.
He then tells you the state is not a republic.
It is a cake.
And cake must be cut by tribe.
“Vote your own, chop your own."
Ministry for us, Embassy for them, contract for our boys.
Thus he converts citizenship — which is a covenant with the constitution — into “kabilo” (tribe/clan) membership — which is a covenant with his stomach.
He does not say:
“I will make the Ministry of Agriculture work."
He says:
“I will give the Ministry of Agriculture to our people."
As if a Mandinka Permanent Secretary automatically grows more rice than a Jola one.
As if corruption becomes “halal” (permissible/lawful) when it is done by your cousin.
This is not empowerment.
It is embezzlement with an ethnic excuse.
-Step Three: Make Betrayal Look Like Loyalty.
This is the most diabolical part.
He tells the young man:
“If you defend your tribe's thief, you are loyal."
He makes “dyamfa”(betrayal) look like duty.
He tells you that to question your own kinsman who stole is to betray your blood.
Thus he recruits you as a human shield for his theft.
You defend him on Facebook, you fight your neighbour on WhatsApp, you break a lifelong friendship at the “bantaba” — all to protect a man who would not give you his car to take your mother to hospital, but who gladly gives you his tribe to take your mind to prison.
You thought you were defending tribe.
You were defending his impunity.
II. What Tribe Actually Is — And What These Merchants Pretend It Is
Let the Old Man, who has lived among tribes from Darfur to Banjul, define what tribe is.
Tribe is language.
Tribe is drum.
Tribe is how you name your child, how you pound your staple food, how you greet an elder, how you mourn.
Tribe is culture — beautiful, varied, sacred.
It is not a procurement method.
No tribe in The Gambia has a superior blueprint for macroeconomic stability.
No tribe has a gene for honest accounting.
No tribe has a monopoly on patriotism or a patent on theft.
Mandinka did not invent integrity.
Fula did not invent hard work.
Wolof did not invent business.
Jola did not invent bravery.
Serahuleh did not invent thrift.
Manjago did not invent fishing.
Aku or Oku Marabout did not invent education.
These virtues live in individuals, not in tribes.
And, in like manner, vices also live in individuals and not in tribes.
When a politician says "Vote tribe," he insults tribe.
He reduces a thousand-year culture to a ballot trick.
He takes the kora, the tam-tam, the baobab proverb, and he makes each a poster.
The Gambian who truly loves his tribe builds a school in his village and opens it to all tribes.
The merchant who loves only himself builds a tribal wall around his corruption and calls it culture.
Know the difference.
III. The Price List — What Tribal Politics Really Costs
You think tribal politics is free?
Let me do the accounting that the Ministry of Finance will never do — just as I tried to do in my earlier piece titled:
“The Eclipse of Conscience”.
A vote cast for rice expires by morning.
A vote cast for tribe expires the nation.
Because once you vote tribe, you have licensed every tribe to vote tribe.
And then the smallest tribe loses forever.
And then the competent person loses to the incompetent cousin. And then the hospital has a tribalist, not a doctor.
And then your child dies — not because the tribe that killed him hated you, but because the tribe you voted for could not heal him.
This is not theory.
It is Africa's bloodiest mathematics.
IV. The Sobering Mirrors — Lessons From Elsewhere, For All and Sundry
Let the reader who thinks "It cannot happen here" look into these mirrors.
For The Gambia is not immune.
No country indeed is.
-Lesson One: Rwanda, 1994.
Hutu and Tutsi lived together, intermarried, shared churches, shared beer.
For decades, politicians told Hutus that Tutsis were cockroaches coming to take their land.
Radio Mille Collines turned tribe into a license to kill.
In 100 days, 800,000 dead — neighbours killing neighbours with machetes, teachers killing students whose names they knew.
Rwanda was not a land of ancient hatred.
It was a land of modern politicians who found hatred useful.
They too said:
“It is just politics.
It is just the tribal card."
Until the card became a coffin.
The lesson: No one ever thinks it will go that far. Until it does.
-Lesson Two: Yugoslavia, 1991-1995.
Serb, Croat, Bosniak — they spoke the same language.
They were indistinguishable to an outsider.
Politicians, having lost communism's ideology, found nationalism's drug.
Milosevic said: "Wherever a Serb lives is Serbia."
Tudjman said:
“Croatia for Croats."
Sarajevo, where Muslims and Christians had shared coffee for 400 years, became a sniper's alley.
The lesson: When a politician has no future to sell, he sells you a past that never existed.
-Lesson Three: Kenya, 2007-2008.
Kikuyu, Luo, Kalenjin — the most educated, most entrepreneurial nation in East Africa.
Election of December 2007.
Politicians, with no agricultural policy to debate, debated tribe.
“Our turn to eat" —
It's Our Turn To Eat.
1,200 dead, 600,000 displaced.
The same politicians who incited them were seen later shaking hands on television and sharing ministries. But the dead stayed dead.
The lesson: The merchants of tribe always eat together after they have made you fight over crumbs.
-Lesson Four: The Civilized World's Warning — America, Europe.
In America, they said "Make America Great Again" but meant "Make My Tribe Afraid Again."
In Brexit Britain, they said "Take Back Control" but meant "Blame The Foreigner."
In both of these most industrialized democracies, tribal politics did not bring jobs.
It, instead, brought division, and division brought stagnation.
The lesson: Tribe is not an African problem.
It is a human problem when men with empty heads find a full market in fear.
Civilization is not immunity.
Vigilance is.
- Conclusion: The Sovereign Remedy — The Tribe Of Conscience
So what shall we do in December 2026?
The Old Man, born at Long Street, formed at Mohamedan School in our good old Bathurst/Banjul, who has chaired ceasefire commissions where tribe killed tribe, now offers this final verdict, this sovereign remedy, these sobering life lessons:
-Refuse The Auction.
When a politician comes to you and says "Your tribe is in danger," ask him: "From what?
From your failure to build a hospital?
From your failure to account for D50 million?
My tribe is not in danger from my neighbour.
My tribe is in danger from your incompetence."
Do not buy what he sells.
And what he cannot sell, he cannot use.
-Remember The Intermarriage.
Go home tonight.
Look at your own family album of old photos.
Your sister married a Wolof.
Your cousin's child is half Fula.
Your best friend is Jola.
Your grandmother was Serahuleh or Tukulor, a Haarpulaar like mine.
Which part of them will you kill when you vote tribe?
The Gambia is already intermarried.
Tribal politics is therefore not just retrograde.
It is incestuous suicide.
-Vote Character, Not Cousin.
In the booth, alone before history, ask not: "What tribe is he?"
Ask:
- What did he refuse to destroy?
- How many judges did he refuse to bribe?
- How many cousins did he refuse to employ over qualified strangers?
- How many times did he tell his own tribe the truth when the truth hurt?
A man who builds a highway while destroying justice has built a faster road to hell.
Vote for the man who builds justice, even if his tribe is not yours.
For justice will protect your tribe when he is gone.
-Join The Tribe That Has No Tribe.
There is one tribe that has never fought another tribe.
It is the Tribe of Conscience.
It has no language, but all languages understand it.
It has no village, but every village needs it.
It has no drum, but its beat is in every heart that refuses to be bought.
Join that tribe in December 2026.
For in the final analysis, a politician can only play the tribal card if you are willing to be a playing card in his hands.
Do not be a card.
Be a citizen.
When they come with tribalism, answer with patriotism.
When they come with "us vs them," answer with "we — the Gambian people."
When they offer you a cousin, ask for a country.
For nations do not die because their tribes hate each other.
Nations die because their citizens allow politicians to teach them to hate each other for profit.
Let this December then be the December that we refused.
Let this generation be the generation that told the merchants of blood:
“You may auction your conscience. You will not auction our Gambia.
Our river is one.
Our flag is one.
Our future is one.
And we — Mandinka, Wolof, Fula, Jola, Peul, Sarahuleh, Manjago, Aku, Oku Marabout, Serere, Bambara — we are therefore one people, indivisible, not for sale by tribe, not for sale by price, not for sale at all."
Dixit …. The Old Man has spoken.
Let the reader understand — and let the reader now vote as a Gambian, not as a tribesman.
Hassan Gibril
(A Fellow Gambian Compatriot, Who Has Seen What Tribe Has Done In Both Sudan And South Sudan And Therefore Now Refuses To See It In His Beloved Native Gambia) |
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