Fatou Jaw-Manneh is a Gambian journalist and activist who received political asylum from the United States in 1994 and has lived in the U.S. ever since. She is a well-known member of the Gambian community in the U.S. and runs the popular news and politics website Maafanta.com. She was the first female reporter at the Gambian Daily Observer and is widely known as “Gambia's Iron Lady” and the “Dame of the Flaming Pen.”
During a visit to her native country in 2007, Jaw-Manneh was arrested and tried for sedition. Her arrest and trial were widely covered by international human rights groups and were protested by the Committee to Protect Journalists and by PEN in the UK and the U.S.
Early life and education
Fatou Jaw-Manneh was born in Sukuta/Foni Bulock, Gambia. She has recalled that as a young woman she “sat contemplating, with [her] brother and his friends"...how they were "going to get a job” in a country “rife with nepotism, corruption, and serious government irresponsibility.” Her brother, she said, taught her “how to brew tea/attaya, play Scrabble, listen to all kinds of music; mostly Bob Marley, Burning Spear, Peter Tosh and all the heavyweight reggae kings….Plus he introduced me to reading political materials and holding arguments, taking and receiving blows.”
She has said that her first job after high school was “a receptionist/phone operator at the Novotel/Kombo beach Hotel.” When she was laid off during after tourist season, a friend of her father's “gave [her] a job at his tiny juice shop,” where she “sold soft drinks and rented out action movies.” At the time she was “a young married mother with two sons,” whose husband was “on a hustle in America,” seeking help to “get into law school.”
Introduction to journalism
During this time, she was always enticed by the current events of her native country and the globe. “I would always buy the Observer, this new paper...” she explained. She would read avidly about the Mandelas, and about “Lady Diana and Whitney Houston.” She liked the Observer because it ran “photos of our politicians,” thus providing “evidence of all our fears of and distaste for Gambian politicians,” and also “carried human-interest stories” and “represented the downtrodden.” Jaw-Manneh “began bombarding the Observer with letters to the editor about government waste, nepotism, cheating [the people] on government scholarships, and the dangers of skin bleaching. And about corruption and everything else that was bothering our communities.”
Career at The Observer
Eventually, she went to the newspaper's offices and met the letters editor, who was the sister of Kenneth Y. Best, the Liberian exile who was the newspaper's publisher. Brewer “laughed at the sheer bulk of letters to the editor [Jaw-Manneh] was sending by the day” and introduced her to Best, who asked if she wanted to be a reporter. She reportedly replied “Oh no Sir, I am not that educated... and I know nothing about reporting.” He then offered her first a position as a columnist, but after she considered the proposals decided on being a reporter. She became the newspaper's first female reporter. As she “became more of an opinionated commentator,” says Jaw-Manneh, Best would “pluck and peel my opinions out of news stories,” saying “I am not asking for your opinion. Give me the story, the Who, What and Why.”
Exile
Jaw-Manneh was granted political asylum in the U.S. in 1994 after the coup that brought President Yahya Jammeh to power. After her emigration from Gambia, she was a frequent contributor to the now-defunct U.S.-based opposition website AllGambian.net. In 2003 she wrote an article, entitled “Jammeh under the Microscope,” for the Gambian newspaper The Independent, which is also now-defunct. The article, which focused on that country's poverty level and corruption, resulted in the arrest and detention of the paper's editor, Abdoulie Sey. The Gambian government shut down The Independent in 2006.
Writing on her website Maafanta.com, Jaw-Manneh has argued that “no other sector in Gambian civil society has suffered as much as the private press under President Yahya Jammeh.” Although he had originally “presented himself as a different kind of...leader, one who respects and believes in a free and vibrant press,” he had eventually turned the press into his “punching bag,” as a result of which “most journalists have been forced to go into exile or to abandon the profession due to family pressure, while a number of newspapers and radio stations have been indefinitely closed by the government.”