Truth First, Reconciliation Later
BANJUL, GambiaEveryone in the room was patient. Many had waited two decades for a meeting like this. So they sat, quiet, even as monologues meandered and temperatures rose. The seven panelists stood, one after the other and spoke about the end of the old Gambia and the beginning of the new. For 22 years, this country had been in the clutches of a dictator as capricious as he was cruel. No longer, the justice minister said. Tall, dressed in an off-white robe, and with a bump on his forehead in the spot where it touches a prayer mat five times a day, he told the hundred-odd people gathered...