Arnold Hughes

‘Democratisation’ under the military in The Gambia: 1994–2000

A ‘democratic audit’ of The Gambia since the return to civilian rule reveals the ambiguous nature of redemocratisation under military direction. The military radicals, under Yahya Jammeh, ostensibly seized power to restore democracy and good governance, yet their continued rule in elected guise not only perpetuates the neo‐patrimonial leadership which they so despised under the deposed head‐of‐state, Sir Dawda Jawara, but also displays a level of intolerance and coercion towards political opposition and public criticism, never found previously in The Gambia. The evidence presented here prompts doubts about the capacity and intention of military putschists to achieve a fully participatory democracy and, in the latters absence, raises the spectre of future military intervention.

Historical dictionary of the Gambia

The fourth edition of the Historical Dictionary of The Gambia-through its chronology, introductory essay, appendixes, map, bibliography, and hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries on important persons, places, events, institutions, and significant political, economic, social, and cultural aspects-provides an important reference on this burgeoning African country.

The appeal of marxism to Africans

The recent retreat from Marxism on the part of individuals and governments in Africa should not blind us to the fact that communism in the past did prove attractive to a considerable number of Africans.1 While it is true that, with few exceptions, no large‐scale Marxist political movement emerged on the continent, yet radical elements among the colonial and post‐independence intelligentsia and labour movement, supplemented in the latter case by dissident groups within the armed forces of the new states, did find in Marxist values and theories blueprints for a new moral and political order and the supposed means to the rapid economic transformation of their societies. The appeal of Marxism has always lain in a mixture of idealism and instrumentalism. While a small number of political visionaries and idealists genuinely saw in Marxism‐Leninism a morally superior social order and more efficient economic system, free of the taints of economic exploitation and racialism associated with Western capitalist socie...