Gambiaj.com – (BANJUL, The Gambia) – Karl Popper was a proponent of the theory of the Paradox of Tolerance. Popper argued in his book The Open Society and Its Enemies that tolerance without limits in any society would eventually lead to the destruction of tolerance, as intolerant forces would eventually gain power and eliminate tolerance.
The same analogy can apply to our society’s tolerance of criminality and bad social behavior. Any society that increases its acceptance and tolerance of criminality and bad behavior would eventually normalize such behavior.
The vast majority of Gambians are law-abiding, civil, gentle, and considerate to others in their daily lives and behavior. But an increasing number of vocal and very visible minorities are hijacking that tolerance through wanton displays of law-breaking and bad social behavior.
In this discussion, I would consider criminality to connote any act or omission prohibited by the state and punishable under statute. While bad social behavior would cover deviations from social norms, including deeds that society considers indecent acts but are rarely punishable by any law.
The coherence of any society is contingent on the maintenance of peace and tranquility. All good things in life emanate through quiet and reflective thinking and contemplation. The coherence of society hinges, among other things, on two pillars.
Firstly, the enforcement of laws in a fair, equitable, and predictable manner. The other pillar is conformity to society’s norms and codes of behavior. The enforcement of laws is essential but alone may not be sufficient, nor desirable, as the sole means of maintaining order. The enforcement apparatus for such all-encompassing laws would be overwhelming and dictatorial.
A deeply cultural society like The Gambia depends to a large extent on each individual conforming to expected norms of behavior and attitudes. At the family level, children are groomed to obey and respect elders. Outside the home and parental oversight, children feel ashamed to bring their family into disrepute.
Their behavior would be restrained because they would not want any reports of bad behavior to be sent back to their families. Family cohesion, name, and reputation were critical factors in controlling how people behaved.
In the village, almost everyone is a watchdog. Any misbehavior is bound to be noticed, corrected, and reported to parents for further action. The few die-hard thieves are all well known. While bad behavior happens, as human nature dictates, it is usually something that can be nipped in the bud much earlier.
The urban jungle has arrived
The village neighborhood watch system has withered. In urban settlements, neighbors share only rented space. Child care is hired either through maids or, increasingly, through baby care centers. An increasing number of homes are working-parent homes and even single-working-parent homes.
Mum wakes at 4:00 AM to go trade at the market to put food on the table. Parental oversight in fathoming children’s behavior has weakened. The extended family and neighborhood system of rural Gambia has disappeared. Children growing up in this urban jungle are spending an increasing proportion of their time with friends in the streets. These cohorts of single-parent children are now becoming parents themselves.
The wanton criminality and bad behavior we are seeing in our streets is mirroring how we are grooming our next generation. Expecting law enforcement or even the school system to address such discrepancy is far-fetched. The police and the teachers are all part of the same society. They are not elves from another planet.
Protecting our families through self-harm
As a decent society, I think we all need to say enough is enough. This is not a government issue per se. This is beyond routine police work. Police are keepers of the peace, not enforcers of the peace. This is far more than schools can instill. The above institutions have vital and critical roles. But I sincerely believe this should be us, as a Gambian society, who should all stand up and call out bad social behavior and petty criminality when it happens. When we see someone behaving badly and committing criminal acts openly, we all need to say that is not right and you need to stop.
Why? Because we are all not innocent bystanders. Most of us are active participants. If you see wrong at the family level, at the village and community level, and at the office level, and you turn a blind eye, you are condoning wrong that is accumulating into a national disaster.
I attended a naming ceremony for my relative’s elder son. Amidst the flow of high chunks of meat and drinks and the display of fine clothes and merriment, I asked my sister where all the money was coming from, as the husband/father of the baby, as far as I know, works in a government project office.
The whole family went into an uproar about how my jealousy was leading me astray. The boy is doing well, and all I am doing is accusing him of stealing government money instead of supporting him. He is not doing anything that others would not do in his position.
The guy in question has two wives. He has rented a four-bedroom self-contained house for each wife. Each house costs well over D150,000 in yearly rent. He bought a car for each wife and provides fuel and maintenance for the cars. I hear he is building a house for each wife. He is doing all these high expenses on a project office salary of less than D50,000 a month.
The mother was complaining bitterly that anything her son wants to do is being hampered and hindered by one permanent secretary at his ministry. She has been to a number of Marabouts to help destroy that permanent secretary to allow her son free access to more resources from the government. Her son, by the way, is doing all this while still being a MARAKASS, outwardly believing in the values of Islam.
I almost regretted querying the sources of all the money being spent. The whole family literally came after me because I am okay and do not want their children to also be okay financially. It is not magic for even the most illiterate person to know that this guy is stealing government funds. But the whole family is supporting him and encouraging him to do more of the same thing.
During a mosque opening ceremony, the center of the praise was reserved for the guy who provided the beautiful carpets plus six air-conditioning units for the village mosque. He topped that by providing a five-year-old bull for the mosque inauguration ceremony itself. The Imam and the village elders could not contain themselves in praising him.
The provider of these donations had spent two years in jail four years earlier for scamming and fraud. Two years after coming out of jail with no professional training and no known full-time job but rappa-rappa, he has built two houses and now spent close to a million dalasis on the village mosque. Nobody queries the source of the money. All praise him for his generosity and pray to God Almighty to protect him and bless him more.
These two fictitious scenarios and countless ones like them raise profound questions about our society. The family elders were and are still expected to be the moral compass of the family. Society depends on them to instill in young ones honest behavior and proper attitudes, coupled with hard work.
If you steal someone’s mangoes or crops, you can be sure to get a severe beating from senior members of the family to remind you that stealing is not acceptable. Parents will insist that children learn to earn the hard, honest way through honest sweat and labor. We may be losing that moral compass.
During the Local Government Commission Enquiry, we heard people employing their family members to collect government revenue and deposit such monies into their personal accounts. People retiring from GRA and GPA and other good portfolio jobs bring in their children to replace them. The wider implication of these acts is that we are establishing a sine qua non that stealing government money is normal and families should protect each other to the detriment of society as a whole.
Long before the Commission of Enquiry, co-workers, family, and neighbors of those behaving like that at the LGA all knew what was happening but chose to keep quiet. Those senior officers grooming their children to replace them at GRA and GPA are clearly aware of the lessons they are passing to their children and coworkers. But again, all chose to keep quiet and accept bad behavior.
Islam, like almost all religions, detests the use of dirty earnings in places of worship. From the time of the Rightly Guided Caliphs, public resources were considered sacred. The expectation is that the Imam and religious leaders would tell the truth and be on the side of God Almighty rather than praise-sing, cajole, and close their eyes to the theft of public funds. But something titanic seems to have shifted in our society.
Our collective action is needed.
I would posit that our society over the years has developed a high level of tolerance for bad social behavior and criminality. This could have started as small infringements that slowly escalated. It is reaching a point where, as a society, looting of public property, fraud, and scamming people are being considered normal and acceptable. It is all over our streets. We all choose to close our eyes, thinking it will go away. It will not go away.
The broken-window experiment proved that. If people get away with impunity with small infringements, they soon escalate into bigger crimes. It is the nature of the beast. As a society, if we collectively do not stand up to such behavior, it will get much worse.
Every day we see people—educated Gambians—driving their vehicles at night at full speed on our highways with no headlights or backlights. Nobody stops them. The people doing it know it is wrong but are happy doing it with impunity.
In the streets, someone will snatch your mobile phone and not even run. He will calmly walk away in the presence of all, and nothing will happen. You see small children standing right in the middle of the road and daring any driver to touch them. Or someone’s car engine has a problem, and they will leave the car right in the middle of the highway without a care for others. If you ask, they will simply say it is broken. But they could have moved the car out of the way as a courtesy to others but will refuse.
People dump garbage on the streets with impunity. People who have been accused of hideous crimes under Yaya AJJ Jammeh are walking on our streets with no care in the world, meeting with their past victims regularly. You catch a thief in your house and take him to the police—he will be released within a few hours, and nothing will happen. Impunity has become part of our social system.
Everywhere you go, Gambians don’t like waiting for their turn. From shops to supermarkets to petrol stations to open markets, people will shortcut you and jump the queue without any guilt. If you try to correct them, they will think there is something wrong with you.
The smallest infringements of the law to the biggest looting are all linked to the same behavior pattern. People believe they can get away with it. Our society has stopped taking action against bad social behavior.
Recent events indicate that murder, hit-and-run, and armed robbery are becoming rampant. Impunity for smaller crimes always escalates to bigger crimes. There is a growing feeling that you can do anything now in this country and nothing will come out of it. That has to stop. It is in all of our interest to put an end to impunity from criminal acts and bad social behavior.
As a society, we cannot outsource the solution to these issues. They were not imposed upon us. We built them and accepted such bad behavior for a long time. Only we can solve it. Anybody thinking government can resolve these issues, in my view, is badly mistaken. Those in government come from us—they are like us. The same bad behavior we accepted in our homes and in our streets is what modeled them.
The Inspector General of Police’s (IGP) younger brother may just be the taxi driver running with no headlights at full speed on the highway. The people manning our laws come from the same society. We all built a high degree of tolerance for criminality and bad social behavior.
Strict laws and their enforcement would help. It would set good examples and could be part of a strong deterrent system. But anything short of dictatorial powers to punish and impose severe consequences with limited judicial safeguards would be insufficient. Democratic checks and balances could work but would be slow to be effective quickly. Imposing a dictatorial police state for law-and-order control has built-in limitations. As Max Weber postulated, the greatest risk to the freedom of the individual could be the power of the state—the one with the monopoly on the use of legal force.
My modest suggestions
Doing nothing is not an option. As we can all see, criminality and bad social behavior are escalating. Our streets and neighborhoods are now being threatened. Petty crime, bad social behavior, and robbing public funds are now transforming into daylight armed robbery, open disrespect for law enforcement, and vigilante violent youth groups threatening whole neighborhoods. It can get worse without our collective action.
The majority of law-abiding Gambians need to collectively act to protect ourselves and society. What I would suggest is a multi-pronged strategy—starting with the most challenging.
Reforming our family ethics and upbringing: Our society has become more of an urban jungle. The village network, where almost everybody is related to everyone else, allowed children to be under the watchful eyes of many elders. Wrongful behavior could be detected and corrected. It was not perfect but worked reasonably well.
Now, in the urban jungle, people from diverse parts of the country are neighbors. The umbrella network under which children were groomed has shifted. Neighbors are less at liberty to correct wrong behavior by other people’s children.
The family structure has also seen significant changes. Back in the village, most families were headed by an elder male figure who controlled behavior and discipline. What is wrong and what is right, and how to behave—both in speaking and action—was taught and ingrained at a very early age. That was the foundation of our society.
Increasingly, many families within urban areas are now headed by unmarried, single working women. Kids coming from such homes would learn most of their habits from the streets and friends. These kids from single-mother homes are now becoming single parents themselves.
It would be easy to shift this responsibility to the school system. But our education system is not built to replace the family but to complement it.
We first need to accept that our family structure has changed, exposing our youngsters to influences beyond our control. We need to develop and implement rigorous public education for parents on behaviors that reinforce and instill honesty, decency, and lawful habits in our children as a fundamental part of being human. This would be a starting point. Such an education program has to use all media outlets. Courtesy and respect for each other are fundamental human qualities. Public assets and funds belong to us all and should be protected.
To complement this education program, each of us must make it our responsibility to correct bad behavior and criminality, not in a harsh way but in a firm, corrective manner. If society refuses to condone bad social behavior, then the minority will find it challenging to sustain that attitude. It is a long haul. But we all need to do better to ingrain into our younger generation a sense of discipline and honesty at a very young age as gold standards of expectation.
We cannot condemn stealing public funds by others and condone it when our family members participate. We all need to call out wrong when it is wrong. People will realize that their own families are not accepting bad behavior. This may be the most challenging but perhaps the most powerful attitudinal change—when families refuse to accept plundering of public funds by their own members. That would be a more powerful message than police action.
Our school system: Our education system can help. We need to include Gambian culture, history, and tradition as a compulsory part of each stage of the school system up to university. Respect and courtesy to elders are part of the culture of every Gambian social group. Most of us grew up being so proud of our fathers and mothers because they never tolerated lies and cheating. We remember our uncles as honest, hard-working people.
Teaching Gambian history, culture, and tradition will reinforce these principles. Social and cultural courses should be compulsory for all students from primary school through to university. The idea would be to inculcate in all our youths good cultural practices and norms of behavior. We should aim to build good citizens.
Our police and legal system: A number of countries have reduced criminality and bad social behavior in society through draconian measures. China and Singapore come to mind. Small infringements, like chewing gum in public places, attracted detention. Corruption by public officers is a death sentence. These high-cost actions may have achieved the desired goals. But implementing such drastic measures under the democratic dispensation we now have in The Gambia would be difficult, if not impossible.
Notwithstanding, we could clean our public offices through enforcement of current anti-corruption laws. For this to work best, it has to start with our political class. They have to be willing to publicly undergo close scrutiny. Infringements must be severely punished.
Politics goes with influence-peddling everywhere in the world. Using political connections to get political appointments or even to open doors legally but easily is part of politics. But bending the law with impunity and deliberate craft by the political leadership does far worse than simply break the law. It is the best sign to subordinate officers that they can also do as they like.
If the minister can get someone appointed over and above merit, then the door is open. If the Permanent Secretary or Director at GRA can openly live far beyond his means, then it is hard to stop the junior officers from pilfering. If the IGP can get criminals off the hook, then junior police officers will not see anything wrong with using the power of their uniform to line their pockets.
Leadership following the law and staying clean is setting the example. That is the beacon of our society. We have to get that right for all else to follow.
Normally, it should not be necessary to prosecute every criminal infringement. Deterrence should be a stronger incentive. But the legal system should be robust enough for all to realize that breaking the law will not be free anymore. Once caught or brought before the law, you cannot negotiate your way out easily. But where people can get away with murder and criminal damage through negotiation and forgiveness, then the seeds of impunity are being sown.
Conclusion
As a conclusion, we all could do better to reduce criminality and bad social behavior in our country. It has to be a societal change. It cannot be imposed or forcefully enforced.
The Author, Yahya Duwa Sanyang, was a former Senior Gambian Civil Servant for many years. He later joined the UN system, notably the WHO and UNICEF, serving in that capacity in many countries for over 25 years, before returning home.
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