Gambia: Our Struggle Is Not Over

Erstveröffentlicht: 
10.05.2017

(JollofNews) – Freedom is not an event; it is a constant struggle between exploiter and exploited, between the privileged​ few and the lumpen proletariat.

 

Election is not an event. After the voting, the counting and the announcement of the winner, accountable work begins; the demand for human rights, its respect and fulfillment starts.

Independence Day is not just an event. It should be a moment for national reflection and introspection; for rekindling of nationalism and citizenship; for examination of where we are as a nation and where we want to be; for renewal of national pledge; for remembrance…. Every day must be Independence Day, to aspire for independence in interdependent world; to remain sovereign as a citizen.

May Day is not event, to play, to eat and to dance at gala…. The worker’s life is a continuous struggle for survival, for dignity, for recognition and respect, for decent work environment. To make such a struggle an event, to mark once annually, with pomp and ceremony and all the razzmatazz, when the morrow will not change a bit, is a mockery to the condition of the worker, a sham of a solidarity between capital and labour, a tacit support for the continued exploitation of labour and the widening of inequality.

Freedom, liberty, sovereignty, respect for human right, accountability, dignity are not events celebrated and forgotten for another day, for another event; they are not trophies to be won and kept and polished once in a while to maintin their brilliance. They are a continuous struggle, to fight and win every day. To keep them require inexhaustible energy, selfless sacrifice, indescribable commitment, eternal vigilance and great drive.

Every struggle gives birth to a new class of exploiters, bourgeois, upstarts, elite and new privileges…. The new class of exploiters assume the new privileges.. Only a continuous struggle and eternal vigilance will make them respect and uphold the freedom of the masses.

Our struggle is not event. GambiaHasDecided is a battle cry for the struggle, for the foot soldier of freedom, not just a slogan on t-shirts. Our freedom is not a trophy; it is an affirmation of a collective will which says “never again”.

Elections are over, politics is dull. May Day is over, the worker has gone back to the rut. When politics is dull, democracy is in danger…. When a people are event oriented, they live each day as it comes and are seldom motivated to either change their lives or ask why their lives are how they are…. They do not act; they are acted upon.

By Njundu Drammeh