By Lt. Col. Samsudeen Sarr Rtd
Africa-Press – Gambia. In the end, the alliance of Barrow and Darboe—a marriage of political convenience, however toxic—steamrolled the reformist hopes of PDOIS. Mr Sallah quietly abandoned the presidential stage, content to seek refuge in legislative politics. He and comrades like Mr Sedia Jatta returned to the National Assembly, dreaming of constitutional reform. But in truth, their presence there has been like a candle in a storm—valiant, but insufficient.
In 2021, Halifa Sallah bid farewell to presidential politics. His exit was met with respectful applause, a dignified contrast to Lawyer Darboe’s obstinate refusal to exit the stage. And yet, the party he led so long failed to name a successor. Despite his proclaimed retirement, Mr Sallah remained the party’s ever-present figurehead—white “haftan” always—occupying space that might have been used to cultivate new leadership.
Then came 2024. The political earthquake in Senegal, with Ousmane Sonko and PASTEF tearing down the old order and erecting a new one, rekindled a familiar longing among Gambians. A yearning for a Sonko-like figure—bold, unbought, unbowed—who could tear through the cobwebs of complacency. Could Halifa Sallah have been that figure, had he not stepped aside? The question now looms large: has the Senegalese revolution stirred something dormant in him?
Sonko’s rise began with a sacrifice—a principled stand that cost him his job, when he dared to lift the veil on corruption in Macky Sall’s regime. A mirror image of that courage was seen in Alagie Mamadi Kurang, who was thrown out of the Janneh Commission after challenging the integrity of the asset recovery process. Both men stood alone. Both spoke truth to power. And both paid the price. Gambians respect that.
And yet, where was Mr Sallah in those moments of moral reckoning? Absent. Silent. Passive. As Mr Kurang took to podiums and airwaves to denounce the moral bankruptcy of both NPP and UDP—branding them twin engines of a broken political machine—Mr Sallah remained cloaked in quietude. Kurang called it “hibernation.” Others called it complicity. And whispers persist: that Sallah’s silence was purchased during a discreet visit to Dakar, perhaps persuaded by former President Macky Sall to let Barrow govern unchallenged.
Whether true or not, such rumours demand more than dignified silence—they demand a reckoning. The people deserve to know why one of their sharpest minds chose to watch rather than speak.
And now, in a twist worthy of political theatre, Mr Kurang has stepped boldly onto centrestage, confronting Mr Sallah on live television, engaging him not with disrespect but with principle. That confrontation marked more than just a generational shift—it was a transfer of moral authority. Sallah, the philosopher-statesman, may have laid the intellectual groundwork, but Kurang is ready to build the house.
If PDOIS still clings to its revolutionary ideals—if the fire hasn’t entirely gone out—it must seriously consider throwing its weight behind Alagie Mamadi Kurang in the run-up to the 2026 elections. He represents not just youth, but a fierce clarity of purpose. He is unencumbered by nostalgia, unafraid to name names, unwilling to dance around truth.
Beyond Kurang, the rest of the field is a political wasteland—career opportunists and recycled regime-chasers with no soul, no vision. If this is the choice, then Gambians might as well hand Barrow a third term. But if the winds of true change are to blow across the River Gambia, the people must rally behind those who confront power—not those who tiptoe around it.
That said, I cannot draw the curtain on this discourse without confronting Mr Kurang’s most egregious historical misstep: the ill-conceived conflation of British colonial rule in The Gambia—from 1889 to 1989—with the sinister and brutal regime of Apartheid. Such a comparison is not only historically erroneous, but it also distorts the truth in a way that borders on intellectual vandalism. Painting colonial rule as “Apartheid” abolished merely by extending the vote to the provinces was no more than a populist slogan—a calculated manoeuvre to stoke rural indignation and turn it against urban Gambians, particularly the denizens of Bathurst, now Banjul.
Let us be clear: the British did not descend upon The Gambia in 1889 with the express purpose of uplifting the native population. Their involvement dates back to the 17th century, but it was in 1889 that they formally stamped their imperial authority, declaring The Gambia a Crown Colony. From their seat of power in Bathurst, they orchestrated an elaborate charade of “indirect rule,” puppeteering traditional chiefs in the provinces to give a local face to foreign dominion. Their real interest? Economic plunder—chiefly, the mass production and export of groundnuts. As for the wellbeing of the Gambian people? That was an afterthought, if considered at all. Public infrastructure, education, and healthcare languished in the shadows of British neglect.
To their credit, the colonialists did introduce Western-style governance, a formal judiciary, rudimentary education, and modern medicine—but always with an eye on imperial convenience, never humanitarian compassion. This duality was laid bare in 1943 when US President Franklin D Roosevelt visited The Gambia during World War II. What he witnessed in Bathurst shocked him to his core: a city drowned in filth, choked by poverty, and stripped of dignity. He famously described it as “the most deplorable slum” he had ever set eyes on. That moment of disillusionment helped kindle his later support for the global wave of decolonisation.
So, let us not be misled: what gripped The Gambia was not Apartheid, but the cold, calculating grip of classic British colonialism—callous, extractive, and indifferent. The marginalisation of the rural population was not the doing of urban Gambians, but the result of British administrative design, which prioritised control and exploitation over equity and inclusion.
But history did not stand still. The emergence of brilliant, Western-educated minds like Sir Dawda Kairaba Jawara and the rise of the People’s Protectorate Party—later renamed the People’s Progressive Party—signalled the dawn of change. These visionaries awakened political consciousness, fostered national unity, and rallied for self-rule. Guided by their leadership and buoyed by global winds of decolonisation, The Gambia achieved its independence with dignity and peace on February 18, 1965.
Now, to equate this colonial experience—oppressive though it was—with the horror that was Apartheid in South Africa is to trample on the sanctity of both histories. Apartheid was a system of legalised dehumanisation, imposed by a white minority determined to preserve racial supremacy at all costs. From 1948 to 1994, it bled South Africa dry with forced removals, brutal policing, segregated education, and the absolute denial of fundamental rights to the Black majority. It was a regime so monstrous that the world rose in unified condemnation, and only the moral courage of Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress could bring it to an end. To muddle this with The Gambia’s colonial past is to blur the sharp edges of two distinct historical realities—each painful, but each with its own contours, causes, and consequences. Historical truth must not be sacrificed on the altar of political convenience. Let us honour the past by remembering it rightly.
Source: The Standard Newspaper | Gambia
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