Playbook of a Tyrant

By Mustapha K Darboe

On July 20, disgruntled soldiers led by a young man later to be known as Saikou Manneh, who staged a protest against the government were disarmed, detained but later set free.
The country's president, Jakali Sanneh, was away. Behind the country's State House docked a military ship by Babylonia.
Their mission was a joint military exercise with soldiers of Kanan, so they claimed. Except that the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, President Sanneh, was not aware of this exercise.
The journey of how one of post-independent Africa's earliest democracies was thrown into a dictatorship has begun.
Rarely has one written a book to portray tyranny, a system established, sustained and ruined by the same fear that created it, as the Playbook of a Tyrant

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Apr 23, 2018
• ISBN: 9781387763870

Book preview

Playbook of a Tyrant

Playbook of a Tyrant

By

By Mustapha K Darboe

Copyright

Copyright © 2018 by Mustapha K Darboe

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

First Printing: 2018

ISBN 978-1-387-76387-0

http://www.torchongambia.wordpress.com/

Acknowledgement

This book would not have been completed without support of close associates like Talibeh Hydara, editor at The Standard newspaper, RFI correspondent to Gambia Claire Bargeles, Absa Samba, Donald H May and Saikou Jammeh, the secretary general of the Gambia Press Union.

These people have been very helpful throughout the writing process of this book.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to all the people who have lost their lives fighting to end dictatorship in The Gambia. To late Solo Sandeng, Deyda Hydara, Chief Ebrima Manneh, Kebuteh Jaffuneh, Solo Kurumah, Kanyi Ba Kanyi, Syngle Nyassi, Dr Boro Susso and all those who have fought to keep the republic alive. 

Author’s note:

The Playbook of a Tyrant is a story of one of 21st Century Africa’s most absurd old-school dictatorship. The book tells the story of a young military leader who has come to power through coup and entrenched himself through use of force and torture.

The book captures the reign of terror, perhaps, Africa’s most bizarre one since Amin of Uganda. The story is told through the struggle of one man who had to risk his life and family to confront the brutality of a tyrant.

The main character in the novel, Khalid, was a trained lawyer and a revolutionary who ended up in journalism. His life story, as told in the book, embodies the two decades fight against tyranny.

Inspired by the military dictatorship that The Gambia faced from 1994 to 2016, the book is the first complete story that tells how the old-school ruler came to power, entrenched himself and also sought to explain the influence that certain global powers might have had on his coup.

The book explains how the often ridiculous power structure of dictatorship that is based on lies and deception is built, sustain until its inevitable self-destruction. The story is built on facts the author gathered about the autocratic ruler through close aides and military men who have served him.

The Book which used a different setting and characters, explains how a little known man, who has never held public office, has won an entrenched dictator at polls and the security risk that follows.

Playbook of a Tyrant

Clock in Kanan, an island country, would soon strike 9pm. The beautiful birds of the small nation had run to their nests but in Tabat, where Khalid Ceesay sat before his TV screen at his house near the ocean, both present and future are by any understanding devoid of promise.

Kanan was a country that had gained independence as a multi-party democracy and remained stable and fairly buoyant through decades of hard work. At least its people were able to afford food.

But that democracy and everything it represented was dethroned and the country was consumed in an old-school sit-tightism. The once proud nation then descended from the normal to the absurd in everything that bemused even the pessimists.

Khalid needed a small distraction from the television. As he pondered the unfortunate odds of his country, he turned to stare at the waves clapping against the shores. It was dark but the water bubbles were still visible at a distance from his house. 

This is beautiful, he thought. But what was to happen stands aloof from that natural beauty of the land. Nature is always beautiful but man is always horrible, a thought that left him quivering with cold.

The country was to witness a television confession of some ‘anti-revolutionary’ elements who reportedly had attempted to overthrow their ‘legitimate government’. Everyone would be glued to a television set.

Such moments inspire fear in people. Khalid is no exception.

A man of impeccable character and high moral standing, Khalid had studied law and graduated at the age of 20. But unlike most of his colleagues, money is not his motivation in anything he does. After doing the bar at the Kananian Law School, which he finished with exceptional grades, fighting broke out in his country and he was part of it.

It was no ordinary fight. It was a fight for freedom from Britania, a kingdom of white supremacists who had colonized Kanan and denied her people freedom. Freedom is quite a precious commodity for which he would willingly die fighting for.

He submitted his name and was soon recruited into the revolutionary army. A lanky man, tough in his prime, Khalid’s ultimate aim was to free his country of domination. His aspirations were realized but fate handed him another fight to win, also for freedom, though that was a fight with a brother.

He is a person who loves no fight and yet he would fight all of his life. He would later fight with a pen after the task of the gun was done. His fate would bring him up against a mysterious herbalist and saint.

But like all wise men who are true revolutionaries, he knew that a fight on strong conviction is a fight that must be won, or if not won then the stories that must be told after you are dead must be that you stood your ground until death took you away. Khalid would fight with passion as a foot soldier and write with passion as a journalist.

Defeat in any fight is normal and acceptable except in a fight to save one’s nation— in such a circumstance, there are only two acceptable outcomes: victory or fight to death, Khalid would tell his colleagues when they were being recruited into a revolutionary army against Britania.

That was more than 20 years ago. Now he was an old man in his late sixties and right before him on the screen was a soldier, a criminal who claimed to be a savior. The country has fallen into the hands of a young military man who deceived many. But Khalid could see the storm coming.

Abandoned revolution

Memory of spring unkind

At least not to men of the land

Heroes came from afar

In arms chanting freedom

Searching in the dark

Of the traitors there hidden

Abandoned revolution

Alas, God turns his back

Devil overcomes the good

The attack is repelled

And the traitor hailed

The system sustained

Lucky fighters in jail died

In a small run-down nation like Kanan that survives on hope, just a little uncertainty sends down brown lives. But with a tyrant at the helm, the nation have got to get use to fear.

Such were the times. Kananian got into the night with rumours that the State House was attacked and the tyrant, a former military leader Saikou Manneh, has survived it.

In Kanan, a small nation with 1.9 million inhabitants, information spread so fast. Everyone knew what awaits the nation after an attack on Manneh.

Desperate people would behold the sky as if it held the answers. The night, as were the day, became long as if the rules of the cosmos have changed.

Minute after minute, the near-eternal silence of the small country began breaking. The coup makers, as it were, would be paraded before the national television to confess their crimes. Standard procedure in Kanan.

All tyrants like ‘setting example’.

The interior ministry has just issued a press release ordering people to remain indoors. Near the country’s State House, in the capital, the crackdown was more intense. So-called traitors and counter-revolutionaries were being rounded up.

After confirming the story on the national television, the interior ministry showed what they claimed were guns of the attackers packed on the back of a Toyota van.

The attackers have come with these very dangerous arms to destroy this country, kill everybody and overthrow the democratically elected Government of HE President Saikou Manneh, a tall, slim girl reading the ministry’s press statement stated.

However, even as the state TV reports that there was an aborted coup, skeptics who know Manneh have already dismissed the claims. He reportedly used such tricks to weed men he considered to be disloyal in the army and other security forces.

At around 11pm, the Khalid sat up straight in his chair. Now the television has got his undivided attention.

In a military uniform, Manneh appeared on the national television vowing that he would kill all the enemies and counter-revolutionary elements who want to retard the progress of this prosperous country.

After the ten-minute televised speech at night, even his most vocal critics didn’t doubt a word he said. He was capable of all types of horror that can be meted out to humans.

With the confession spared for the following day, the national television spent the world night on propaganda as to what the coup makers would have done and also speculating the major powers behind the coup.

Trepidation

Life was no fun

The ruler was gun

God was gun

But lives lived by gun

Trepidation

People were daunted

Executive excesses abundant

Limitations and priorities violated

Truth went into oblivion

Trepidation

Voices of crying people caged

But even voices of God

Giving birth to revolution

The throne would eventually fall

The night was long. The suspense as to who the coup makers were had survived the darkness.

Withholding the names of the so call coup makers, observers said, was deliberate because everything Manneh does is meant to haul maximum fear out of people.

Everyone can be kept on edge as to who next will have a share in Manneh’s madness. But he would not keep people waiting for the second day. At noon, the allege coup maker have appeared before the television camera. 

Khalid has already waited for 3 hours being forced to watch Manneh’s ‘revolutionary songs’. The state TV was successfully transformed into a court of law.

A scary, jubilant voice all of a sudden replaced the revolutionary songs. Hello comrades, welcome to this showbiz as if it were a common soap opera. It was his fearful interior minister, John Telewa, a former military man.

Rumours were once circulated that he killed his entire family because his wife made a joke about his boss, President Manneh. He is not a loyalist; he wears the criminal face of the regime.

Today is a day to rejoice, he said, in a comfortable arm chair facing the camera. Telewa’s terrifying muscles were visible even under his hard coat military camouflage.

He carried a holster at each side of his trousers as he beckoned the shackled traitors to seats at his extreme right where the cameraman could comfortably show their faces. Finally, they appeared and the notorious Telewa who is the focal person for the President’s project of terror, was about to finish his job.

It was time for ‘Dark Confession’. The accused have already been tortured and told what to say. Like others before them, they would admit that they are traitors. They would confess that they wanted to destroy the land, kill the President, slaughter and burn babies, legalise the use and trading of hard drugs and advocate gay rights.

The goal of Manneh is always to attract the death penalty for any crime committed, and of course to get the public opinion in support of his criminal enterprise.

They knew very well that the people of Kanan would not want to associate themselves with burning babies and destroying their beautiful landscape.

They also knew the country, with its large population of conservative Muslim, will barely want to have anything to do with people who are advocating for gay rights. The NRF calls this ghastly trick — killing and then condemning the dead — a double-win. With the trick, there is no chance of a popular revolt; the ordinary people start condemning the dead they should have defended, because of the lies wrapped around them by National Revolutionary Front, NRF.

But many people remain suspicious about the confessions. One of the five men paraded before the TV camera could barely hold a gun. He had barely any flesh on his bones. You could literally count his ribs. This couldn’t have been caused by just three days in state custody no matter how horrible it might have been.

And another two men, who were forced to hold the M16 guns they had allegedly used in their attempted coup, visibly were strangers to guns. They could not properly hold them. They were trembling and peeping at the guns in their hands every minute.

There were doubts and questions in their eyes. They could not have yelled This is a joke, because they knew that in a country where joke is the only policy, everything is a joke. So shouting joke will only aggravate the punishment; it is as good as saying nothing.

The remaining two men were still like mannequins. Their eyes were wide open, not blinking. It was as though they saw an angel of death. But actually they did. The fear of death is not just in going through it, the pain of a last gulp, but also in the advance knowledge of it. Knowing you are dying in the next few minutes is as terrifying as death itself.

The confession is done and so was the prosecution. People who are quite vulnerable to the manipulative tactics of the regime have already taken to the streets shouting down with traitors.

But even the smart ones wouldn’t know that the people who were behind the state-staged demonstration against the already condemned men are vuldoves on the payroll of Manneh’s feared National Revolutionary Guards. Vuldove is a new word Khalid used to describe the civilian spies of the NRG.

He said they are trained to pretend to be doves when they are in fact vultures. They tend to have both sides. With citizens they are doves, with the NRG, vultures. That is a routine thing in Kanan. There are spies everywhere pretending to be civilians, and some even pretend to be members of the opposition parties.

They help the NRG identify civilian critics of the regime and then try them in their courts where peoples' fates are predetermined. These courts are halls where President Manneh decides who to jail and who to set free.

Bumped back on the TV screen was John Telewa’s face saying we are vindicated. He knew that nobody believed their drama on the TV except the fools and the sycophants who support them for financial gratification.

Everyone knew they are the traitors themselves and that someday justice will catch up with them. For all the critics, here you heard everything you need to save you from your malicious ignorance, Telewa was saying, and for the international community, we say, justice is served. His arrogance was becoming unbearable and Khalid had already switched off his TV set and went into a nap.

Fear in the air

That Fear

First it was absent

But then it came

Became persistent

Engulfed everyone

And now it is wild

That fear

Took the shape of man

Man behind the throne

Alas, death smells everywhere

Spies and state agents far and near

They smell of fear

That fear

Fear of death

Thus, of fear many left

Ancestral land abandoned

All rules broken

Employers fear employees

That was the end of the telesecution, sometimes called pressecution. It is the same with Dark Confession. These are all bizarre terms that exist only in the small but isolated nation of Kanan. Tyranny excels in one thing: introducing new style and thus new language.

Thus telesecution is a word Khalid introduced in the English language vocabulary of Kanan, meaning trial by the television as opposed to prosecution: trial by the courts. While pressecution is trial by the press.

The little over 2 hours of telesecution was quite long for the desperate people, and it brought one more night of sleeplessness. As if there was a piece of metal in the nation’s throat or a nuclear chemical in its spine, the silence that followed was monumental. In Tabat, the booos, booos of the heavy wind that the sea delivered was the only thing the sharpest of ears in the city could hear.

And Khalid has already woken up from bed and is talking to Malin, his only son, trying to help him make sense of the horror movie the nation had been forced to watch. That was necessary—offering some psychological help to kids who were unfortunate victims of the party’s display of terror. But as Telewa had put it: The hearts of revolutionary kids, our successors, should be hardened to withstand the threat that the success of this nation faces.

One wonders what that success is and whether the President is even ready to hand over power to anybody even when he dies, because he was once quoted by the media as saying that revolutionary figures like us lay a foundation of governance and development that does not just stand the test of time but also remains helpful till the end of time— we are even more relevant when we die.

Nobody believed it but they clapped for him. They hoped that his crazy belief would make him kill himself so that the nation would be free.

Malin has already fallen asleep. He buried his head in his father’s arms and began snoring. Khalid is not even sure if he was helpful enough in trying to explain the political insanity that gripped Kanan under President Manneh. Logic only exists in the world of the sane and Khalid knows that. What becomes of kids in a land where even the grown-ups can’t make sense of what they see or hear? Poor kid, murmured Khalid, as he put Malin to bed.

The nation woke up the following day. The sun began beating hard on the shoulders of the shocked and exhausted Kananians. People began smiling though they never wanted to, but it was necessary for survival. To smile was interpreted as an approval of the regime’s victory over traitors.

To frown was considered treasonous, an endorsement of the activities of the traitors. The national TV, the propaganda arm of the Truth Department at the Ministry of Communications, has gone out to sample the opinion of the people. This was never a vox populi (voice of the population) as known in mainstream journalism.

Khalid called it Controlled Communication, CC. People appeared on TV talking in favour of the regime as if that is what they wanted to do, but it was acting at best. These are trained people from the Truth Department who are given specific messages to say and pretend that they are willingly saying them. These are the same people who will show up at the state-sponsored demonstrations.

In CC nobody sane will say a word that contradicts the regime’s account, and they know that. In fact, people are eager to praise the President so that they will be considered as sympathisers of the regime to continue to breathe.

Everybody endorsed the regime. Some said President Manneh was a national hero and thanked him for saving them from the beasts who planned to kill their young babies, as the state would have it. Others equated his magnanimity to that of Allah.

But the truth remained that the more one feared the regime, the better the songs he or she sang. But who has a soul if you can’t decide what you want or need, or even say what you think is right? To Khalid, life is the freedom to do what you think is right. Thus, he would argue, freedom was mourned under Manneh, and with it, the people.

In the background of the people’s opinions was a cluster of songs recorded by the party musicians for the victory. These explain what rests in the political psyche of the regime—death is fun for them. They rejoice when there is one or two, or even ten more to kill amomg their own people.  

While everybody went about their businesses, Khalid rushed to the newspaper vendors. He had published a newspaper himself once, but the regime forced it to close when it published a story they did not like.

He named his paper The Watchdog. It was the most critical paper in the country during the days of Manneh's coup and when the soldiers hid behind the cover of civilian rule and legitimized their rule with fraudulent elections.

Closing newspapers was a routine thing in Kanan. News was what the President said was news and nothing more.

Khalid saw huddle of newspaper vendors, but they were selling pro-government papers that were directly or indirectly edited by the Department of Truth at the Ministry of Communication.

Their front pages were littered with headlines like National traitors doomed to fail: President Manneh and 5 counter-revolutionary elements confessed crimes. Khalid was looking for a paper he could buy, but his options were limited because there was only one independent newspaper in Kanan, whose staff were often a target of the feared men of the NRG. As he turned to walk away, he saw an isolated vendor in the distance.

He knew this must be the one selling the copies of The Independent, the last independent newspaper in the country. It is a norm. Anyone who carries a faint colour of opposition in Kanan is isolated.

The Independent has never been able to get regular vendors to handle its papers. Its own staff sell it. The ordinary vendors are scared and don't want to attract an unnecessary attention. They are survivors, not stubborn enough to risk the torture of the NRG.

Hello gentleman, Khalid said, Do you have copies of The Independent? The isolated young man, in his early 20s, replied yes and pointed