Be a legend, save a legend

UPDATE: In accordance with GoFundMe's instructions, this is me acknowledging that, with Yankuba's permission, the funds raised will initially be paid into my bank account (Phil), one of the GoFundMe's organisers, to then pass on to Yankuba for his legal fees. This simply seems the easiest way.

I met Yankuba through a friend of mine at the start of summer. Living off £35 a week from the Home Office, he has managed to sustain himself  through the relationships he’s made since arriving in Sheffield in August 2019.

A self-described “child of the soil”, Yankuba made his living in Gambia working his land into lush fruit plantations, the profits of which afforded him a guest house for tourists and a comfortable life in his village.

In February 2018, however, Yankuba suffered an extremely violent attack. When working his banana plantation, three men arrived on his property, told him he must surrender his land, and attacked him savagely with machetes. He still bears the scars on his forehead, arm, and ankle, where’d they’d aimed for (and luckily, missed) his Achilles’ tendon to cripple his ability to farm. 

Yankuba is part of the Jahanka tribe, a small tribe that represents approximately 1.5% of the ethnic population of Gambia. Self-sustaining communities are common practice in Gambia, and for over a century the Jahankas have survived and flourished from their annual rice yield. The land upon which the rice fields grew was formally granted to them under tribal law in 1973 by Chief Muhammed Krubally, when first contested by members of the Mandinka tribe from a neighbouring village.

Gambia has had a difficult time in recent history. Since the overthrowing of dictator Yahya Jammeh in 2016, whose murderous regime oversaw political assassinations, ethnic cleansing, press suppression and various other human rights abuses, the newly-elected democratic government has been struggling to repair the wounds from the previous administration and mitigate the rise in tribal tensions left in its wake. 

As a result, the land on which Yankuba and his people have lived for generations is back under dispute by the Mandinka tribe, the largest ethnic group in Gambia representing roughly 42% of the population. This time, however, the lack of a comprehensive court system, organised police force, or experienced government to provide arbitration or resolution to the dispute has allowed the situation to descend into serious violence.

In March 2018, tensions finally boiled over when Yankuba and his village went to reap the annual rice harvest. Arriving at the fields, they were ambushed by a large group armed with machetes, sticks and rocks, demanding they abandon the harvest and that the land was no longer, and had never been, theirs. When the Jahankas continued their work, the Mandinkas set upon them with their weapons, severely injuring three including Yankuba’s brother, breaking his arm in three places and rendering his right hand useless.


Since then, Yankuba has been both witness and victim to a number of further attacks, with calls for justice, protection or even intervention falling on seemingly deaf ears. 2021 is Gambia’s next general election, and the Mandinka tribe make up the majority of the electorate. This has seen Yankuba’s tribe and others become increasingly marginalised, and Yankuba’s position as a landowner placing him at particular risk of harm. Indeed, in June 2019, whilst Yankuba resided in Sheffield, five men in balaclavas arrived at his property early in the morning, again armed with machetes, and tore up his house looking for him. When they couldn’t find him, they destroyed his banana plantation and warned his wife that should he return, they will kill him.

Yankuba has just had his second asylum claim rejected, and cannot make a third without returning to his home country and doing so from there. According to the Home Office, “[Yankuba has] been reasonably educated, have supported family members in Gambia, speak the national language and have already shown considerable fortitude in relocating to the UK. In addition to this, it is also considered that you could rely on sufficient domestic protection on return to Gambia...“

Both the political and tribal events building up to the attacks on Yankuba and his people, and the intrinsic links between them, stand in clear contradiction to the Home Office’s ruling, and demonstrate a fundamental misunderstanding of the current risk posed to minority ethnic groups in today’s Gambia.

It would appear this misunderstanding is somewhat wilful, as Yankuba’s experience with Home Office interviewers and their subsequent actions would suggest. When Yankuba attempted to correct his interviewer when he noticed she’d written “prosecution and debt” instead of “persecution and death” as his reason for seeking asylum, he was asked to move away from the interview table. Despite arriving at 9.30 and leaving at 4.45, his interview is logged as lasting four hours. 

Facing the experience without a representative of his own, Yankuba describes the ordeal as being made to feel like a criminal, scrutinised on his every action and ordered only to answer with “yes” or “no” whilst being forced to recount, to a stranger, the most traumatic moments of his life. Told he would receive a transcript of his interview, he was supplied an empty USB stick until an official request for another copy was made by Yankuba’s lawyer.

Yankuba’s only option now is to challenge the legality of the Home Office’s approach before September 22nd. His lawyers state in an email explaining the Home Office’s ruling that to do so would cost £500 to their office to engage a barrister, who in turn would cost, based on their experience, somewhere between £1500 and £2000 just to prepare the case for court.

There is no way Yankuba can do this off £35 a week from the Home Office. That is why we intend to raise the £2500 to get Yankuba an experienced barrister and attempt to ensure Yankuba can stay in the country. With a population little more than that of Sheffield, returning to Gambia and trying to survive the targeted hostility he faces could mean death.

As seems polite in these situations, we intend to cycle 140 miles to Snowdon in two days in order to raise the money by September 15th. Please consider donating - an awesome man’s life hangs in the balance, and reaching the goal could directly change the outcome.