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Anticipatory tribalism: accusatory politics in the ‘New Gambia’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 August 2020

Niklas Hultin  and
Tone Sommerfelt
Niklas Hultin*
Affiliation:
Global Affairs Program, George Mason University, 4400 University Drive, MSN 6B4, Fairfax, VA22030, USA
Tone Sommerfelt*
Affiliation:
Department of Social Anthropology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, NO-7491Trondheim, Norway
*
Email: ihultin@gmu.edu
Email: tone.sommerfelt@ntnu.no
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Abstract

This article examines the upsurge in denunciations of ‘tribalism’ in public debate during The Gambia's transition from the autocracy of Yahya Jammeh to the ‘New Gambia’ under President Adama Barrow. In these public debates, derogatory statements about particular ethnicities articulate fears of present or future alliances to monopolise political power. These fears are disproportionate to attempts of organised political mobilisation on ethnic grounds, which remain marginal. It is argued that accusatory politics are a salient, and neglected, feature of ethnic dynamics in contemporary Gambian – and African – politics. This politics of accusation involves the contestation and negotiation of moral legitimacy in the political sphere, in a manner challenging the separation of the moral and the political undergirding scholarly distinctions between ethnicity and tribalism.

Keywords

Ethnicityaccusationpublic spheremoral politicspolitical discourseThe Gambia
Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 58 , Issue 2 , June 2020 , pp. 257 - 279
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2020

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Footnotes

This paper is based on research funded by the College of Humanities & Social Sciences at George Mason University (Hultin), the Falkenberg Foundation, and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (Sommerfelt). We are grateful to Byunghwan Son for commenting on an earlier version of this paper. We thank the many individuals who informed this paper or who helped us think through ethnicity in The Gambia. In particular, we thank Hassoum Ceesay of the National Museum, Sait Matty Jaw of the University of The Gambia, and Jarra Dabo and Omar Drammeh of the African Centre for Information & Development in Oslo. Thanks are also due to the anonymous reviewers for their detailed comments. Any errors of fact or analysis remain ours. The article has been written with equal contributions of each author.

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