From Freetown, Sierra Leone.
Volume 3a: Chapter 1: Historical Antecedents to the Conflict
CHAPTER ONE
Historical Antecedents to the Conflict
Introduction
1. In the
final decade of the twentieth century, Sierra Leone – a tiny country on
the coast of West Africa made up of just 4.5 million people –
became the scene of one of the greatest human tragedies of our
time. On 23 March 1991, armed conflict broke out in Sierra Leone
when forces crossed the border from Liberia into the town of Bomaru
near the eastern frontier. Over the next eleven years, the
country was devastated by a complex and bitter war that unleashed
appalling brutality against the civilian population.
2. How did a
peace-loving nation become engulfed, seemingly overnight, in
horror? What events occurred in the history of Sierra Leone to
make this conflict possible? Explanations put forward have varied
from ‘bad governance’ and ‘the history of the post-colonial period’ to
‘the urge to acquire the country’s diamond wealth’ and the roles of
Libya or the Liberian faction leader Charles Taylor. The
international community initially dismissed the war in Sierra Leone as
just another example of tribal conflict in Africa; another failed state
imploding in the context of environmental degradation and acute
economic crisis.
3. The Truth
and Reconciliation Commission (“TRC” or “the Commission”) was
established in 2000 with a primary objective “to create an impartial
historical record of … the armed conflict in Sierra Leone, from the
beginning of the conflict in 1991 to the signing of the Lomé Peace
Agreement.” The functions of the Commission, as set out in its founding
Act, included investigating and reporting on the causes, nature and
extent of the violations and abuses that occurred, including the
antecedents to those violations and abuses and the context in which
they took place. From its outset, the Commission interpreted
these provisions broadly, aiming to fulfil the intention of the
drafters of the Act that the TRC should ‘‘compile a clear picture of
the past.’’ Accordingly the Commission devoted considerable
resources towards examining the pre‑conflict history of Sierra Leone.
4. This
chapter reflects a brief summary of the Commission’s research into the
‘Historical Antecedents to the Conflict’. The chapter attempts to
locate causes of conflict in Sierra Leone’s past, place the conflict
within its proper historical context and offer explanations for what
went wrong. It identifies social trends that spawned division and
confrontation between the various groups that make up Sierra
Leone. It picks out fault lines and key events that created the
structural conditions for conflict. It highlights decisions on
the part of the political elite that were designed to strengthen their
grip on power at the expense of common benefit, progress and ultimately
peace.
5. Central to
the study contained in this chapter is the social and political
interaction among Sierra Leone’s constituent groups. Throughout
Sierra Leone’s history, the nature and extent of such interaction –
often negative and limited – has influenced people’s perceptions of the
state in which they live and their own places within it. These
perceptions have in turn presented the greatest challenges to the
concepts of nationhood and citizenship. They have served to
undermine the positive sense of national identity needed to build a
strong and unified independent nation.
6. In order to
adduce a balanced historical perspective on the conflict, the
Commission invited a host of national and international stakeholders to
make submissions about the key events of the past. It held public
and closed hearings at which individuals, institutions of state,
non‑governmental organisations and donor agencies were able to express
their views and opinions. It substantiated the material from all
these testimonies by referring to multiple secondary sources, including
books and periodicals on the country, as well as memoirs by Sierra
Leoneans. The resultant chapter compiles a concise narrative out
of these various resources and reflects contrasting versions of history
in an impartial manner to the greatest extent possible.
7. The
‘Historical Antecedents to the Conflict’ have been divided into three
sections for the purposes of this chapter. ‘Part I – The
Historical Evolution of the State’ examines Sierra Leone’s social,
political and economic development under colonial rule and in the first
few years of independence. ‘Part II – The Management of Power by
the APC’ is a short synopsis of the system of government adopted by
Sierra Leone’s longest-serving and most influential pre-war Government,
under the All People’s Congress (APC) party. ‘Part III – Local
Historical Antecedents’ traces pre‑conflict dynamics in a variety of
important Districts that help to explain the manner in which the war
unfolded across the nation. The main points of the chapter are
drawn together at the end in a brief ‘Conclusion’.
PART I – THE HISTORICAL EVOLUTION OF THE STATE
8.
The Commission has identified four distinct phases in the historical
evolution of Sierra Leone, which it regards as crucial to understanding the roots
of
the conflict and some of the challenges that the country still faces
today.
These four phases are analysed below in the following order:
- The
Colony and the Protectorate. Rather than constructing a unified Sierra
Leonean state, the colonial government effectively created two nations
in the same land. The divide between the entities known as the
‘Colony’ and the ‘Protectorate’ had far-reaching implications for
issues such as citizenship, land tenure rights and conflict of laws.
- The
Era of Party Politics (1951-1961). After the 1947 Constitution had
amalgamated Sierra Leone’s ‘two nations’ in preparation for
independence, party politics became the greatest obstacle to national
cohesion and identity. Party allegiance proved just as divisive
as ethnicity, class or regional prejudice in the battle over who should
succeed the British. On the cusp of independence in 1961, the
ten-year-old Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) was joined in the
political arena by the All People’s Congress (APC), which would become
its main rival in contesting elections.
- The
Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) in Power. The euphoria and perceived
unity of the immediate post‑colonial period appear with hindsight to
have been artificial. The first independent government, formed by
the majority SLPP party, served to polarise public opinion in the
country, introduced notions of cronyism in many state institutions and
laid the foundation for military involvement in politics. This
period had terrible, albeit foreseeable consequences on the unity of
the young state and served to deepen existing cleavages.
- The
1967 Elections and their Aftermath. The elections of 1967 were scarred
by bitter power struggles based on ethnicity, personality and party
affiliation. Although the APC won the most seats, the leadership of the
SLPP stoutly refused to concede defeat. The resultant standoff
signalled a watershed in the political fortunes of the country and
ultimately led to the destruction of the multi-party system.
The Colony and the Protectorate
9.
Before 1947, Sierra Leone was divided socially, geographically and
historically into two entities. The colonial capital Freetown,
known as the Colony, and the much larger area of provincial territory,
known as the Protectorate, were political creations of the British,
designed to facilitate their administration of the people as part of
their expanding Empire. The Crown Colony State, established in
1808, was originally limited to the area of Freetown and its immediate
environs on the Western peninsula, later taking in the Bonthe Urban
District of Bonthe Island. The Protectorate, encompassing the
remainder of the territory known in modern times as Sierra Leone, was
established in 1896.
10.
The imperial leadership pursued a social engineering strategy that was
deeply divisive in its nature and impact. Simply put, the Colony
and the Protectorate were developed separately and unequally. The
colonialists used commerce, Christianity and notions of ‘civilisation’
as their tools to manipulate the relationships among the indigenous
peoples, who had intermingled and dealt with one another for
centuries. In place of harmonious co-existence, the colonialists
sowed seeds of distrust, competition and intransigence.
11.
By way of example, the chiefs and peoples of the Sierra Leonean
interior had originally welcomed the arrival and gradual resettlement
of various categories of freed slaves on the Western peninsula.
Several traditional rulers even made their land available to the freed
slaves. Yet the British colonial administration promoted the
notion that western values and Christianity were superior to the
traditional customs and religions practised in the Protectorate.
The people in the Protectorate were thus effectively discriminated
against on the basis of their belief systems.
12.
In terms of land area, the Crown Colony was not more than 200 square
miles. The Protectorate, on the other hand, extended some 182
miles from West to East, and 210 miles from North to South. The
Colony had only about sixty thousand people by the end of the colonial
period, while the Protectorate had about two million people.
These massive disparities in land size and population, however,
appeared to be inverted by the sociological and political divide.
13.
The British had acquired the original land in the peninsula and its
environs (now known as the Western Area) for the Colony in 1787, from
the Temne ruler, King Nimbana, whose northern Koya Kingdom extended to
the western tip of the territory. With colonial expansion, Bonthe
Island, off the south-western shore, was later added. The Sierra
Leone Company, a corporate entity created by the British Abolitionists
who had led the campaign to end the slave trade in the United Kingdom,
administered the Colony at first. By 1800, former slaves and
their descendants had developed into a distinctive social group who
were known as the Creoles, or Krios. They developed a language
from among their various dialects, which became known as Krio. By
1808, with the collapse of the Sierra Leone Company administration, the
Creoles had become colonial subjects governed directly by the British
crown.
14.
The territories of the Protectorate, meanwhile, came under British rule
through the gradual and subtle advance of the colonialists into the
hinterland. The British took their lead from Krio traders and
Christian missionaries, whose entry into the outlying territories
provided the context and the conditions for their annexation. By
1896, the British had expanded their coverage and control to a
sufficient extent to be able to declare the hinterland a
Protectorate. Thus, almost nine decades after the resettled
former slaves had come under British colonial rule in 1808, the
remainder of the population also lost their sovereignty to the avarice
of imperialism.
15.
The British treated the peoples of the Colony and the Protectorate
quite differently. The inhabitants of the Protectorate were
classified as “protected subjects” and were commonly referred to as
“natives”. The people in the Colony were considered to be direct
British subjects and were thus referred to as “non-natives”.
These designations were not merely descriptive, but rather had huge
political, social, economic and administrative implications. Only
the Crown Colony State was governed by the monarch and recognised as
part of the British Empire. The Protectorate was administered
indirectly, as a British “protected territory”.
16.
The existing rulers of the hinterland, who were monarchs in their own
right, were nevertheless quickly subordinated to the
colonialists. They had previously governed their people directly,
but now became representatives of the Crown and were answerable to the
local British administrator. In the past, these rulers had
derived their legitimacy through a process of selection in accordance
with the customs and traditions of their people. They represented
the interests of their people and served as symbols of unity.
They were subject to a variety of in-built checks on their power that
purportedly prevented them from becoming abusive or autocratic.
17.
In the process of acquiring territory and expanding the frontiers of
the British Empire, the colonialists in Sierra Leone entered into
treaties and agreements with traditional rulers in approximately 400
land units, which they designated as chiefdoms. The leader of
each of these chiefdoms was given the title of ‘Paramount Chief’.
In terms of functions and powers, Paramount Chiefs were restricted in
comparison to the pre-colonial rulers. Hierarchically, Paramount
Chiefs fell directly under the District Commissioners, who were mainly
white, British citizens. Only if a Paramount Chief fulfilled the
District Commissioner’s demands for labour and taxes, as well as
“maintaining law and order” within his territories, would he be given a
degree of autonomy to rule his subjects.
18.
Conscious of their steady marginalisation, the Chiefs objected
strongly, albeit in vain, to colonial domination. Their
protestations culminated in the so-called ‘Hut Tax War’ of 1898, led by
Bai Bureh of Kasseh and a number of Mende chiefs, such as Nyagua of
Kpanguma. The ‘Hut Tax War’ was a revolt against the proposed
imposition of a tax based on the size of one’s homestead. The
British suppressed the rebellion and the tax was retained. The
perceived ringleaders of the protest were arrested and 98 of them were
hanged in Bandajuma. Indeed most of the Chiefs who had rebelled
were punished – some of them imprisoned, others banished – while those
who supported the British were rewarded along with their
subjects. The period of unrest around the ‘Hut Tax War’ thus
marked the effective consolidation of colonial rule. All
the chiefs were compelled to adjust to their new status as the servants
and representatives of the colonial government.
19.
The overhaul of the structure of Chieftaincy was to have grave
implications on the ways in which traditional rulers related to their
subjects and on the socio-political organisation of the
communities. The overbearing attitudes and behaviour imbibed by
the Chiefs from their colonial masters led to their assuming new and
overwhelming powers over their subjects. Some of these measures,
such as the ability to impose fines or other punishments for errant
behaviour, were retained long into the post-colonial period and
permanently defined the negative perceptions of Chiefs among many of
their subjects. Indeed, these negative perceptions carried over
into the conflict in Sierra Leone in the 1990s as a partial explanation
for the brutality of the treatment meted out to Chiefs and other
figures of status or authority.
20.
No system of Paramount Chieftaincy existed in the Colony. Instead
the Office of Colonial Governor was charged with administration.
By 1863, the people of the Colony were allowed some form of
representation in the colonial Legislative Council and therefore had
the opportunity to learn and grow in the management of their own
affairs. The Municipality Act of 1893 inaugurated the City
Council, the equivalent of local government for the Colony. The
existence of a City Council in Freetown gave the inhabitants of the
Colony a distinct advantage over their counterparts in the
Protectorate. The institution was to become a significant factor
for the people of the Protectorate as they dealt with their fears of
domination by the Krios in the years before self‑government.
Education
21.
The disparities between the Colony and the Protectorate were
particularly acute in the realms of social and economic
development. British colonial policies afforded the residents of
the Colony vastly superior access to resources such as education.
These advantages for the Krios, the predominant residents of the
Colony, endured until the end of colonialism in 1961.
22.
Education in the Colony flourished to the extent that some residents
were able to attain what were considered high standards in the
West. In 1827, one of the first universities in sub-Saharan
Africa was established in Freetown in the shape of Fourah Bay
College. The Krios, who were the sole beneficiaries of such
facilities, became the first professional lawyers, doctors,
missionaries, educators and engineers.
23.
In respect of primary education, the Colony had 67 schools, which was a
disproportionately high number compared to only 104 schools in the
Protectorate. Moreover, the colonial government supported 50 out
of 67 schools in the Colony and only 24 out of 104 in the
Protectorate. This disparity in educational provision manifested
itself clearly in the contrasting percentages of children attending
primary school in the different regions of the country in 1947:
Southern Province (Protectorate) 4.8%
Northern Province (Protectorate) 1.8%
Western
Area
(Colony)
50%
Eastern Province
(Protectorate)
N/A
24.
A cursory examination of these statistics against population figures
reveals that the Western Area had far more children attending school
than the rest of the country combined. There were also notable
disparities within the Protectorate itself, given that the number of
children attending primary school in the South was twice that of the
North.
25.
There was an upsurge in the number of school-going children between
1946 and 1953, following the establishment of the Colonial Development
Welfare Fund and a massive investment in education in the
Protectorate. However, the expansion did little to address any of
the disparities because the new facilities were totally inadequate.
26.
Further problems could be ascertained by examining the social profile
of the children who were given the opportunity to go to school.
In Bo, the main town of the Southern Province, for example, a school
for boys was set up in 1906. Yet this school catered almost
exclusively for the children of the elite and included the nominees and
children of Chiefs. The establishment of such a school promoted
the notion in the minds of ordinary people that members of the
traditional ruling class were forming themselves into an elitist
group. Indeed, this ‘traditional elite’ would provide the
country’s leadership from the end of colonialism. Meanwhile, there was
only one school for girls anywhere in the Protectorate, namely the
Hartford School at Moyamba.
27.
With regard to teacher training colleges, the Northern Province had
none at all, while there was one each in the South and East, owned and
run by the missionaries in Bo and Bunumbu respectively. The
highest qualification obtainable at these colleges in the Protectorate
was the Teacher’s Elementary Certificate, which qualified the holder to
teach only at primary school level. No holder of such a
certificate could enter Fourah Bay College, as the teacher training
colleges did not offer Latin or science, both compulsory subjects for
entrance to the university.
28.
As only persons who were “suitably educated” could serve in the
colonial administration, the Krios had a massive advantage over people
from the rest of the country. Accordingly, the Krios dominated
all the important positions in the colonial government. Even the
emergent entrepreneurial class relied on a literate work force, which
was essentially Krio. The Krios were therefore extended
inordinate advantages over other Sierra Leoneans, considering their
population size.
29.
The enduring disparities in education were not the result of some
historical accident that favoured the Krios. On the contrary, the
colonial rulers were adept at promoting specific indigenous groups with
particular skills, which served their own interests. Communities
close to the coast were the first to encounter the Europeans and had
access to western education long before communities in the
hinterland. The population from the coastal areas provided the
bulk of interpreters, court officers, messengers and other support
staff for the colonial administration.
30.
The Krios were in a sense doubly advantaged because they were already
literate by the time the Colony was governed directly from London and
they had direct familial and other links to the United Kingdom arising
from their historical relationship. They were classed as British
subjects, which conferred certain privileges upon them and enabled them
to be influential players in the period leading to
self-government. Their only major drawback was their paucity of
numbers. In 1947, when a constitutional debate addressed the
question of voting rights, the Krios opposed an extension of the
franchise to illiterate people. This opposition was widely
considered to have been a self-preservation tactic on the part of the
Krio minority, aimed at excluding illiterates (most of whom were from
the Protectorate) from the political arena and thus allowing the Krios
to continue to dominate domestic affairs. The move created deep
resentment among the emerging educated elite in the Protectorate and
heightened the perception of discrimination against Protectorate people.
31.
Even educated Krios soon began to realise the impact of limited
opportunities, however, when they found that there was a certain level
in the colonial service beyond which non-British persons could not
advance. The Krios were then quick to mobilise public opinion
against the policies of the colonial government. With a vibrant
civil society including established media houses, they constantly
attacked the divisive politics of the colonialists. Experiences
elsewhere on the African continent had demonstrated that such threats
to colonialism were inevitably neutralised through the promotion of the
interests of the numerically superior natives by the
colonialists. Sierra Leone proved to be no exception. The
British increasingly began finding common cause with the Protectorate
peoples and the emergent immigrant groups such as the Lebanese and the
Syrians. New constitutional arrangements that granted increased
representation to the numerically superior Protectorate were ostensibly
designed to expand public participation in governance. It is
difficult to escape the impression, though, that in reality these
measures were the first steps by the colonialists towards reining in
the vocal and perceptibly “over-educated” Krio elite.
Legal duality
32. The
distinction between the Colony and the Protectorate was also reflected
in the laws that governed them. Whereas the Colony adopted the
English Common Law, the Protectorate operated a combination of legal
doctrines and a three-tier court system, as follows:
(a) The Court of Native Chiefs, which regulated
matters relating to land and factional fights. It had no jurisdiction
over criminal offences;
(b) The court of the District Commissioner, which had original jurisdiction over all offences; and
(c) The
Court of the District Commissioner and Native Chiefs, on which both
parties sat to try criminal cases. This court had the power to
impose the death penalty.
33.
The ambiguity over the hierarchy of these three courts in the
Protectorate created a great deal of confusion about the powers and the
limits of the Chiefs. In theory, the Chiefs were not permitted to
adjudicate on criminal cases alone. In practice, however, they
often did so and they became very powerful as a result. The
Chiefs frequently exploited their people’s uncertainty about the legal
system to impose fines and other kinds of punishment as a means of
consolidating their authority. Their abuse of the courts sowed
the seeds for conflict over which law would prevail in any given
situation. Quite apart from the differences between the Colony
and the Protectorate, the Chiefs created a harmful situation of legal
duality within the Protectorate itself.
34.
The multiple conflicts of laws were to reverberate long into the
post-colonial period. The Colony had a heritage of applying only
the Common Law, whereas the Protectorate had a mixed system of
inconsistent and irrational application. The Common Law was
supposed to supersede customary law in the event of a conflict between
the two, but in reality most disputes were decided at the whim of the
adjudicator. The Common Law was codified while Customary Law was
not, making the latter more susceptible to arbitrary interpretation,
varying from Chiefdom to Chiefdom as well as between different ethnic
groups. The impact of this legal duality was that people were
treated differently in response to the same forms of illegal
behaviour. The people of the Protectorate were given cause to
resent the law and feel aggrieved at their second-class treatment; they
looked spitefully upon the Krios, who seemed to have everything
tailor-made for them.
35.
As custodians of custom, the Chiefs were responsible for creating and
adjusting the laws of the Protectorate. Their interpretations
were often influenced by considerations other than a sense of
justice. An impression spread among the people that the Chiefs
had become predators on their own subjects. Such a negative
perception undermined the legitimacy of the Chiefs and further
alienated them from the ordinary folk. In addition, survival as a
Chief came to depend almost entirely on one’s subservience to the
colonial authority rather than on one’s allegiance to the population
one was elected to serve. Sadly this did tradition became
entrenched to the extent that it did not change when colonialism
ended. Chiefs were to be co-opted in an identical fashion by the
post-colonial political parties, who relied on them to corral support
from their people at election time. In exchange, the parties
offered their support to help the Chiefs retain their positions even
when there was good cause to remove them.
Systems of local government
36. The
Colony and the Protectorate were also governed differently at the local
level. In the Colony the Municipality of Freetown was established
as far back as 1895. The management of the Freetown council was
by election of a substantial percentage of the population who were
literate and had assets that qualified them to be on the voters’ list.
37.
By contrast, in the Protectorate native administrations were first
established in 1937, District Councils in 1946 and Town Councils in
1950. These institutions were perceived by the people in the
Protectorate not to be progressive as they were dominated by Paramount
Chiefs who were elected on a limited franchise by only the Tribal
Authorities, to represent their Chiefdoms on the Councils.
Feelings of disenfranchisement took root quite early in the
Protectorate and contributed to a diminished sense of self-esteem and
perception of enforced marginalisation, especially among the youths,
which became a recurring theme as a cause of conflict.
Resources
38.
The endowment of resources was another area in which the Colony and the
Protectorate experienced contrasting fortunes. On the face of it,
the Protectorate enjoyed a natural advantage in this regard, as it was
blessed with all the economic resources (including bauxite, iron ore,
rutile (titanium ore), diamonds, coffee and cocoa) the country needed
to develop, while the Colony had virtually nothing to offer.
39.
However, what the Colony lacked in economic resources it compensated
for with its highly literate and privileged population. The
people of the Colony were to form the professional classes that were
needed to run the post-colonial bureaucracy. Centralisation of
government enabled those in the Colony to enrich themselves using the
resources that the people of the Protectorate had produced. The
profits of Sierra Leone’s resource endowment were channelled almost
exclusively into the Colony, financing the construction of huge houses,
hospitals and other infrastructure, as well as a clean water supply for
the citizens of Freetown. The citizens of the protectorate were
deprived of any such benefits and remained in abject poverty.
Strangers in the same country
40.
The British colonialists suspected the Krios of inciting the people of
the Protectorate into rebellion during the Hut Tax War in 1898.
The colonial administration therefore enacted stringent laws to exclude
all Krios from the hinterland. Krios became “strangers” in the
Protectorate by virtue of the Protectorate Ordinance of 1896 and they
had to pay “stranger” fees to the local Chief, making them a lucrative
source of revenue. Given that Krios were regarded as ‘foreigners’
in the Protectorate territories, they were afforded only those rights
extended to them by the local Chiefs.
41.
In the Colony, the different ethnic groups from the Provinces were
segregated and compelled to reside in designated areas: for example,
the Mendes stayed in Ginger Hall, East Freetown, while the Fullahs were
put in the area that became known as Fullah Town. Apart from
living in individual ghettos, people from the Protectorate could not
acquire voting rights in the city since they were illiterate and had no
assets that qualified them to be on the roll of voters. The Krios
of the Colony did not mix with the Protectorate people in any way that
could have fostered greater understanding of each other. Being
ignorant of one other, it was easy and convenient for the Krio elite to
characterise the Protectorate people as uncivilised. This
stereotype was applied to the Mende people in particular, as
illustrated by the following newspaper excerpt from the 1920s, which
depicted them as:
“…dressed, or rather
undressed, in a style which would have been considered scanty even in
the days when Adam delved and Eve spun. [They] go about our
thoroughfares offering silent and nude reproaches to the existing local
regulations, our civilisation and ideas of decency. The Kossoh
folk or, as they liked to be called, Mendes… filled along the streets,
all in a row, like skewered herrings, clothed for the most part with
hideous grins and adorned with dirt. The lower apparel or
rather appendage, which they ought not to wear, only render[s] the
absence of those which they ought to wear more conspicuous…”
42.
The endurance of this prejudice was such that, by 1947, the
Protectorate people in the Colony outnumbered the Krios but were
totally excluded from Colony politics.
43.
The arrival of Lebanese and Syrian immigrants in 1905 created new
dynamics in inter-group relations. The Protectorate people
embraced the new arrivals and diverted the bulk of their trade to
them. The Lebanese and the Syrians were efficient, humble and
literate and they had capital. They were willing, unlike the
Krios, to grant credit to the Protectorate traders. In a short
time, the British also began to favour the Lebanese and the Syrians
over the Krios. This shift in economic alignment removed the
remaining opportunity for inter-dependency between the people of the
Protectorate and the Krios.
44.
In the period between 1896 and 1947, the separation between the Krios
and the people of the Protectorate grew ever wider. The two
groups became strangers to each other in the same land. The deepening
division had stark effects on the approaches of both groups to
post-colonial politics. The Krios, fearful that they would not be
treated fairly under a Protectorate government, formed a party of their
own, the National Congress of Sierra Leone, to protect their
interests. The Protectorate people, in defiance of the Krios,
seized the opportunity at independence to assert themselves and to
redistribute the national wealth in a manner reflective of their
numerical strength.
Land tenure and ownership
45.
The differences in the rules for land tenure and ownership between the
Colony and the Protectorate contributed in large measure to the neglect
of the Protectorate and a glaring lack of investment in its rich arable
lands. Whereas Sierra Leoneans from all parts of the country had
similar rights in the ownership of land in the Colony, the same was not
true in the Protectorate.
46.
Three types of land ownership obtained in the Protectorate: communal
land holding, family land holding and individual land tenure.
Irrespective of the type of land ownership an individual asserted in
the Protectorate, different land laws applied to Sierra Leoneans
depending on whether they were “natives” (those originating from the
Provinces) or so-called “non-natives” (those originating from the
Colony). “Natives” could hold an indefinite interest in land in
the Protectorate but “non-natives” could only acquire land and hold it
on limited tenancy. The Provincial Land Act of 1906 stated that
“no non-native shall acquire a greater interest in land in the
Provinces than a tenancy for fifty years.” The same statute
contained the further clause that “nothing in this Section shall
prevent the insertion in any lease of a clause providing for the
renewal of such lease for a second or further terms not over twenty one
years.”
47.
The Provincial Land Act of 1906 was manifestly discriminatory, as it
gave certain advantages and privileges to the Protectorate people by
reason of their place of birth or origin, which were not extended to
other Sierra Leoneans. The Chiefs could arbitrarily recover land
sold to “non-natives” if they so desired, especially if the land was
formerly communally owned. The Act was designed to protect lands
in the Provinces and have them available for use by the local
people. In practice, however, it constrained the conversion of
land into economic capital and prevented “non-natives” from making
long-term investments in the Provinces for fear that their capital was
not secure, being subject to recovery by the chiefs. Therefore,
despite the huge agricultural potential in the Provinces, economic
activities there focused mainly on trading and mining. Only the
government made any real investment in agriculture in the Protectorate
(through the Integrated Agricultural Projects scheme). The
overwhelming majority of private economic investments were concentrated
in Freetown and other parts of the Western Area.
48.
Discriminatory provisions against Krios and others regarded
“non-natives”, such as the Lebanese, existed in the statutes of Sierra
Leone for a period of 85 years, from 1906 to 1991. The effect of
these discriminatory laws was a deep-rooted reluctance to invest in the
Protectorate. Thus even where the possibility existed for
partnerships to make the land profitable, the majority of the people in
the Provinces, lacking the capital and restricted by law and communal
ownership, remained poor in the midst of an abundant land. In
particular, the banks and commercial enterprises interpreted the
restriction imposed by Communal Ownership as a basis to reject
Provincial land as collateral for loans. The people of the
Provinces saw no route out of poverty.
49.
Meanwhile the population of Freetown was able to secure commercial bank
loans and access state services with comparative ease. This
development steadily deepened the social gap between the two peoples
and explains the perception of people in the Protectorate that that
those in the Colony consumed all the country’s wealth.
50.
The cumulative outcome of socio-economic divisions, coupled over time
with a host of other disparities between the Colony and the
Protectorate, would induce people who had lived harmoniously for most
of history to become polarised along ethnic and regional lines at
moments of crisis. The polarity that is captured in the phrase
‘two nations in the same land’ was an ominous historical antecedent for
future civil conflict with ethnic and regional undertones.
The Era of Party Politic
51.
The system that governed the Colony and the Protectorate as two
separate entities lasted until 1947. Up to that point, the only
contact between the two entities in terms of governance was the
presence of three Paramount Chiefs on the colonial Legislative Council,
as provided for in the Constitution of 1927. The numerical
strength of the Protectorate was not reflected in the disbursement of
institutional influence or state resources. It was iniquitous for
such a small number of people as lived in the Colony to have such
access to and control over state resources.
52.
Contradictory views on the management of state resources had fostered
such mistrust between the Krios and the Protectorate people that it
would largely shape the subsequent political alignments of both
groups. The impact of this mistrust came to the fore in 1947 when
a new Constitution (known as the ‘Stevens Constitution’ after its chief
drafter Siaka Stevens) was proposed in order to prepare the country for
independence. This Constitution amalgamated the Colony and the
Protectorate into a single political entity, but divided their elite
representatives into opposing factions, each dedicated to protecting
the interests of its own people.
53. Among the key provisions of the 1947 Constitution were:
- The creation of an elected “unofficial” (non-executive) majority in the
Legislative Council, comprising 22 members;
- 14 “unofficial” positions in the Legislative Council for
representatives from the Protectorate. These representatives
would be elected by fellow Paramount Chiefs and members of Tribal
Authorities to the Protectorate Assembly (which had been set up in 1946
as a counterbalance to the Legislative Council in the Colony), and then
on to the Legislative Council;
- 7 “unofficial” positions in the Legislative Council for representatives
from the Colony, who were to be directly elected.
54.
The creation of a single legislature for the country signalled the
demise of Krio dominance since the Krios were numerically far
inferior. The Krios in the Colony argued vehemently against the
1947 Constitution on the basis that it was wrong and impracticable to
have uneducated Chiefs making laws for people who were colonial
subjects. The Krios therefore advocated that a separate
legislature should be created for the Colony. To champion their
respective positions, the factions from both Colony and Protectorate
formed themselves into narrow, regionally-based political parties with
little or no national agenda
55.
In the Colony, the original ideals of the West African Youth League,
namely to bring together the working class in both the Protectorate and
the Colony to fight the evils of colonialism, gave way to the movement
of Creole ethnic protectionism. This movement in turn gave birth
to the National Congress of Sierra Leone, headed by Dr. Bankole Bright.
56.
In the Protectorate, pressure groups such as the Protectorate
Educational and Progressive Union, which was dominated by Paramount
Chiefs, and the Sierra Leone Organisational Society, which was
dominated by the Protectorate elite, were galvanised into action.
They united into a single force, putting aside their differences at
least temporarily, to meet the Creole challenge.
57.
The political agenda became a battle over which regional elite would
succeed the British. Little consideration was given to the
majority of the inhabitants in either the Colony or the
Protectorate. The debate on the issue of a single national
legislature was indicative of this battle. Dr. Bankole Bright was
reported to have said, “the Colony and the Protectorate are two
hills standing opposite each other and can never meet.”
58. The
feelings of the Protectorate people were equally uncompromising, as
vented by Bai Koblo Path Bana, one of the Protectorate representatives
in the Legislative Council:
“We warn the inhabitants of
the Colony that they are embarking on dangerous grounds in making any
claims of independence from us. We would urge them to reflect on
what is happening between India and Pakistan and between the Arabs and
the Jews in Palestine, before they persist in claiming exclusive
rights. If our emancipation should come, as we earnestly hope it
will, we could well depend upon our treaties to reclaim our here lands
ceded to the British crown, now known as the Colony area, and I would
therefore ask our Colony brethren to locate themselves elsewhere.”
59.
A variety of political groups in the Protectorate came together in 1951
to create the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP). They included
the Protectorate Education Progressive Union (PEPU), the People’s Party
(PP) and the Sierra Leone Organising Society. Moderate members of
the Krio community joined the party as well. This effort to forge
a link between the Colony and the Protectorate was not welcomed among
the elite Krios. Despite claming to be a party for all the people
of the Protectorate, the SLPP was composed almost entirely of
Protectorate middle class interests, the only exception being Siaka
Stevens, who was a trade union leader. The party was not a
broad-based party of mass appeal and relied on Chiefs to “deliver”
popular support in the communities. Its origins would affect its
management of power in the post-colonial period.
60.
The 1951 Legislative Assembly elections pitted the NCSL against the
SLPP. The result was victory for the SLPP. Protesting
Krios, who constituted themselves into the Settlers’ Descendant Union,
challenged the constitutional legality of imposing “native” rule on
them, without success. Having failed to stop the SLPP, political
and economic survival for the Krios depended on creating an alliance
with any group opposed to the SLPP. This strategy was to prove
convenient in elections held at the end of the colonial period and it
places in context the historical link between the Krios and the
Northern-dominated All People’s Congress (APC).
61.
The defeat of the Krios in the political theatre did not eliminate
their impact on the newly self-governing state of 1951, as they
continued to dominate the positions in the state bureaucracy.
With its electoral victory, the SLPP was invited to choose members who
would sit on the Executive Council, a kind of nascent cabinet.
The Executive Council assumed a more indigenous character than the
colonial administration, with the SLPP members becoming its Ministers
and Sir Milton Margai becoming the Chief Minister.
62.
In 1956, the Protectorate Assembly was finally dismantled. A year
before its abolition, in 1955, the weak nature of support for the SLPP
among the working class and peasantry was revealed by strikes in the
North, South and East of the country, as well as in Freetown.
Sierra Leoneans were rising up against various oppressors. In the
North, the imposition of the precept – an extra tax levied by the
Native Administration – sparked an open rebellion by the people against
their Chiefs. Residences of Chiefs were burnt down, goods were
looted from Lebanese shops in Port Loko, Kambia, Bombali and Tonkolili
Districts and many people were killed.. Buildings belonging to
either Chiefs or Tribal authorities were burnt.
63. In
the Southern District of Moyamba, similar acts were repeated. In
the Eastern District of Kono, the Chiefs were targeted for their
appropriation of diamond licence fees and for failing to improve the
general welfare of the people. Finally in the Western Area,
Marcus Grant, the Secretary General of the Artisanal and Allied Workers
Union, led his group of urban unemployed and working class into rioting
against official corruption and poor labouring conditions. The
SLPP was not in tune with the mood of the provincial working classes,
the support base it would need to win elections.
64.
In 1957, the British colonial authorities conducted another
election. This time the NCSL found an ally in the Kono
Progressive Union, an ethnic-based party, to challenge the SLPP.
It appeared for a time as if the NCSL-SLPP party rivalry was subsiding
and being replaced by a division based on ethnicity, class and
regionalism. The KPU won all the parliamentary seats in the Kono
District. The overall victory of the SLPP was assured, however,
as the party had no effective rival in the rest of the Protectorate.
65.
The SLPP victory of 1957 was soon to be undermined by an internal split
in the party. Albert Margai had defeated his brother Sir Milton
Margai in the contest for party leader and should therefore have become
Chief Minister. Yet the leaders of the party prevailed upon
Albert Margai to allow his brother to remain as leader. When
forming his cabinet, Sir Milton Margai removed from the list those
members of the party who had opposed him, despite the list having been
approved by the party’s executive council. Among the members
excluded was Siaka Stevens, while Sir Milton Margai’s brother, Albert,
was retained.
66.
The internal split in the SLPP led to the formation of the People’s
National Party – the PNP. The breakaway group that formed the PNP
included Albert Margai, Siaka Stevens and many others who had been
marginalised by Sir Milton Margai. An ethnic dimension was added
to this opposition against the conservative wing of the party when Sir
Milton Margai effected a cabinet change in 1960, which jettisoned Temne
members from his cabinet.
67.
The strikes of 1955, the formation of a splinter group from the SLPP,
the defeat of the NCSL and the perceived Temne exclusion from cabinet
had all contributed to the fragmentation of the political system by
1960. The constitutional talks underway in London, in contrast,
called for some form of unity if the British were not to postpone the
granting of independence. Anxious to rid themselves of colonial
rule, the political class coalesced by necessity into the United
National Front and went to London to negotiate for independence.
Among the main players in the delegation was Siaka Stevens of the PNP,
who would become a key player in post-independence Sierra Leone.
68.
At the London talks, Siaka Stevens refused to sign the final document,
which established the basis for granting independence to Sierra Leone
in 1961. Stevens objected because, as he put it, the British “had
given us the goat and held onto the rope.” His turn of phrase was
a clear reference to the defence agreement between Sierra Leone and the
United Kingdom for the use of the Freetown port as a naval facility for
the British armed forces. Stevens returned home and immediately
acted to exploit popular disenchantment with the political elite by
forming The All People’s Congress party – the APC.
69.
The new APC party was quite different in composition from the
SLPP. The majority of APC leaders came from working class
backgrounds, while the SLPP leaders came from established traditional
Chieftaincy homes. While the SLPP boasted numerous university
graduates, the APC had none. The SLPP comprised mostly older men
while the APC had a higher proportion of younger men.
70.
The APC was also ideologically detached from the SLPP. The SLPP
motto of “One People, One Country” signified that national unity was
important to the party. The APC motto of “Now or Never”
centralised the notion of capturing state power. While the SLPP
claimed it wanted unity between the Colony and the Protectorate, the
APC professed socialist ideals: a welfare state with no tribalism, no
class distinctions, and no exploitation. In addition, the APC was
against the autocratic rule of Paramount Chiefs and wanted the whole
institution of Chieftaincy to be democratised. Chiefs still
provided the main bastion of support for the SLPP. Most important
of all, the founding fathers of the APC were almost exclusively of
Northern origin.
71. From
1960 onwards, the fight for political power would develop into a
protracted rivalry between these two opposing parties. On the one
hand, the APC sought to appeal to the proletarian masses and the
influential tribes of the North; on the other hand, the SLPP drew on
the backing of the middle class, traditional elite, dominated by the
ruling houses of the South and East. From the 1960s onwards,
party politics supplanted the Colony-Protectorate divide as the
greatest obstacle to national cohesion and identity, and as a premise
for prejudice, hostility and, ultimately, conflict.
The Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) in Power
72.
On 27 April 1961, independence was granted to Sierra Leone. The
new Constitution made provision for a legislature consisting of but one
chamber, in which twelve Paramount Chiefs would sit alongside other,
elected representatives. The Chiefs who were to be voted on to
the legislature by a limited franchise of the Tribal Authorities,
whereby one Chief would represent each of the twelve districts.
The SLPP majority party formed the first post-colonial government, with
Sir Milton Margai as Prime Minister. Key members of the APC were
arrested on the eve of independence on suspicion that they wanted to
stir up trouble. Consequently Sir Milton Margai declared the
first state of emergency in independent Sierra Leone.
73.
Barely a year after independence, the 1962 elections revealed the
depths of ethnic and regional polarisation in the country and the
superficiality of the ideological differences between the two main
parties. First, perhaps predictably, the victorious SLPP obtained
far more of its seats in the South and the East than in the North and
the Western Area. The party won 18 of the 32 seats on offer in
the South and the East and only ten of the 29 seats on offer in the
North and the Western Area. It lost seats in its “safe areas” of
Bo and Kenema due largely to the votes of northerners settled in these
areas, the majority of whom were traders and diamond miners. It
also failed to win any seats in Kono.
74.
The poor showing of the SLPP in the North, the Western Area and in Kono
illustrated that a growing divide was pitting the South and the
Southeast (pro-SLPP strongholds) against the North and the West
(apparently anti-SLPP territories). This divide seemed to be
overlaid by a divergence of attitudes between traditionalists, on the
pro-SLPP side, and youths, or radicals, against. In addition, the
rout of the SLPP in Kono District suggested the emergence of two new
political forces. First, the impact of migrant workers in
diamond-mining areas had demonstrated their clear potential to
influence local politics. Second, the rejection of the SLPP by
Kono voters represented their firm desire to retain ownership of the
District’s diamond resources. The SLPP Government, in
collaboration with local Chiefs, had sold off many diamond licences to
the foreign‑owned Sierra Leone Selection Trust (SLST), which was an
unpopular move.
75.
Partly due to the fact that its main support base came from areas
populated by Mende people, and partly because of opposition across the
rest of the country, the impression grew that the SLPP was a “Mende
man’s party.” The SLPP Government was therefore labelled as a
Mende government.
Cronyism and the public perception of the SLPP
76.
The image of a single, strong ethnic group running the government
polarised public opinion in the country yet further and introduced
notions of cronyism and nepotism in many state institutions.
77.
In 1964, Sir Milton Margai died in office and was succeeded by his
brother, Sir Albert Margai. The manner of succession was to cause
another major fission in the Party. Section 58 (2) of the 1961
Constitution empowered the Governor General, Sir Lightfoot Boston, to
appoint as “Prime Minister any Member of Parliament who appeared to him
likely to command the support of the majority in the House”. This
was a controversial clause. In the first place, no person could
know, prior to any vote, which MP commanded the majority at any given
time. The clause therefore introduced the potential for a
damaging split in the ruling SLPP. Predictably, Sir Albert
Margai’s appointment caused just such a split.
78.
The controversy was underscored by the immediate measures Sir Albert
Margai took against those who opposed his appointment. He sacked
most of the prominent dissidents from his Cabinet, with little
appreciation of the rancour his move would cause. Most of those
he sacked were not only strong erstwhile party members, but also men
with formidable individual, ethnic and regional support bases.
Each of them left the SLPP to join the APC, carrying large sections of
their supporters with them.
79.
Sir Albert Margai’s reduction of the cabinet from nineteen to eleven
members, coupled with the promotion of younger men who were personally
loyal to him, seemed pre-destined to estrange the conservative members
who had benefited under Sir Milton Margai’s cabinet. The
downsizing of the cabinet was also perceived as an attempt to sideline
the North, especially the Temne ethnic group. The cabinet had
five Mendes, four Creoles, one Temne and one Susu. There was no
Limba and no Kono representation.
80.
Sir Albert Margai increasingly turned to his own Mende ethnic group to
consolidate his power. When he doubled the percentage of Mendes
in the officer corps of the Sierra Leone Army from 26 percent to 52
percent, his actions were perceived as an attempt to “Mende-ise” the
forces. In addition, he gave David Lansana, a Gola affiliated to
the Mende, accelerated promotion until he became the Force
Commander. Nepotism on the basis of ethnicity became rampant in
the Army from Sir Albert Margai’s rule onwards.
81.
After the Army, Sir Albert Margai turned his attention to the
judiciary. He appointed his long‑standing friend, Gershon
Collier, to the post of Chief Justice and then sent the Acting Chief
Justice C. E. O. Cole (whose loyalty he doubted) to become Sierra
Leone’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations. This
replacement was aimed at neutralising and bringing into line a
dissonant judiciary, which was filled with Creoles allied to and
increasingly supportive of the APC.
82.
In the Civil Service, the changes effected by Sir Albert Margai created
the impression that he was purging it of non-SLPP members. As
Mendes received appointment to a number of high-profile jobs in the
public sector, the perception of “cronyism” with ethnic undertones
continued to deepen.
83.
Many Sierra Leoneans point out that such pro-Mende discrimination was
not as pervasive as it appeared given that Krios retained 80 percent of
all civil service jobs. One reason often cited as justification
for these appointments was that Sir Albert Margai wanted to address the
inequality of Krio domination in a proactive fashion. The very
suggestion of such radical changes, however, increased concern among
the affected elite and encouraged them to find common cause with the
sidelined Temnes and Limbas who predominated in the APC.
Local elections and ethnic polarisation
84.
The town and district council elections of 1966 proved that ethnic
polarisation had become entrenched in politics. Moreover, it
showed that the incumbent Prime Minister would go to any lengths to
save himself and his party from defeat. Prior to these elections
Sir Albert Margai took several measures to suppress the
opposition. In 1965, for example, he used the Defamatory Libel
Act to silence APC supporting journalists. He was also alleged to
have used Paramount Chiefs actively to suppress his opponents. In
some constituencies he encouraged the Chiefs openly to take part in
elections, while in others the Chiefs refused permission for APC
candidates to campaign in their Chiefdoms. Increasingly the
Chiefs were sucked into partisan politics and commanded less and less
respect in the eyes of their subjects. Although the SLPP won the
election, it was a hollow victory secured largely by intimidating the
opposition and manipulating the Chiefs.
85.
An examination of the electoral returns of 1966 seems to lend credence
to the theory that Chieftaincy had become a political office. For
example, 172 of the 208 seats in the Mende Chiefdoms of the South and
East were obtained unopposed by the SLPP candidates. In the North
and in Kono, the SLPP obtained only 47 unopposed seats out of the 165
on offer.
86.
The SLPP could only really count on the Mende votes of the South and
East to secure its majority. In the North, the results would
suggest that the Temnes were assuming their own political identity in
the form of the APC. In Freetown, the Krios threw in their lot
with the APC, largely because of their view of the SLPP as a common
adversary.
87.
A widely held view among academics in Sierra Leone is that the SLPP was
the first political party to have manipulated the electoral process
through the intimidation of political opponents. The SLPP was
alleged to have used such tactics as preventing aspiring adversaries
from appearing at nomination centres in order for SLPP candidates to be
declared as ‘elected unopposed’. The cynical tactics of the SLPP
under Sir Albert Margai amounted to a very flagrant denial of the right
of the electorate to choose their leaders. Indeed, its practices
were to be perfected and put to yet more debilitating use by the APC
when it came to power later.
88.
The victory of the APC in Freetown local elections brought Siaka
Stevens to the seat of Mayor. The northern-led APC was now in
control of the municipal government in the capital. The electoral
tactics of both parties, along with the unashamedly “chameleonic”
nature of Sierra Leonean politicians, ensured that disillusionment was
the main reaction of ordinary people to politics. Nevertheless,
it must be noted that while District Council election results arose
from a limited franchise (only the Tribal Authorities could participate
in the poll), the local elections of 1966 were indicative of the real
political pendulum and therefore served notice that the 1967 general
elections would be hotly contested.
The 1967 Elections and their Aftermath
89.
With the experience of the District Council elections having emphasised
the fragility of his grip on power, Sir Albert Margai is alleged to
have taken measures to prevent a defeat in the general elections of
1967. First he attempted to introduce a one party state, but in
the face of intense opposition from civil society, his bill was
withdrawn before it was presented to Parliament. He then
announced a coup attempt on 9 February 1967, implicating some prominent
Krios like Dr. Sarif Easmon and Dr. Davidson Nicol as its
sponsors. He arrested eight military officers including the
Deputy Force Commander, John Bangura, who was the only Temne among the
six top‑ranking officers in the armed forces.
90.
The arrests of Krio and Temne military officers overtly fuelled the
accusations of an SLPP campaign to target people from these ethnic
groups. Predictably there was a backlash. Anti‑Mende
feelings were whipped up to unprecedented levels prior to the election
in Freetown. SLPP attempts to rig the elections and widespread personal
corruption were to be documented in the report of the Forster
Commission of Inquiry, which was set up after the assumption of
political power by the Army some time later.
91.
On the eve of the general election in 1967, Sir Albert Margai was
confronted with division and dissatisfaction that were largely of his
own making. He had denied the party symbol to his internal
opponents and prevented them from standing as official candidates of
the SLPP. He encountered huge hostility from the Western Area
and, in the shape of the APC, an aggressive opposition party that had
successfully mobilised popular sentiment against the SLPP, particularly
in the Northern Province. On the whole, the elections were
scarred by bitter power struggles based on ethnicity, personality and
party affiliation. The results, when they were eventually
discerned from amidst the confusion, would spell defeat for Sir Albert
Margai personally and for the SLPP party.
92.
The SLPP officially won 28 seats out of a total of 66. When the
Electoral Commissioner declared that the party had obtained 32 seats,
the same number as the APC, it stoked a pervasive confusion that
dominated the days after the elections. Just as at the local
level, there were again stark regional variations in the election
results. Most of the SLPP seats were obtained in the South and
the East. It won only one seat in the North and not a single seat
out of the eleven contested in the Western Area.
93.
By ethnic division, the SLPP won 19 Mende seats and nine non-Mende
seats, of which a total of six were “unopposed”. The APC, on the
other hand, won 32 seats, mostly in the North and West. The APC
returned 15 Temne seats, seven Krio seats, two Kono seats and eight
seats in areas of mixed-ethnicity electorate, including Limbas,
Korankos and Mendes. On the basis of these results, it appeared
that the country was divided in half along ethnic and regional lines.
94.
The Electoral Commissioner created a new source of tension by abruptly
changing the rules for the Paramount Chieftaincy election
results. Whereas in the past the Paramount Chiefs were expected
to join the majority party in Parliament, the Commissioner in 1967
allotted these seats unilaterally to the SLPP before a winner of the
elections had been declared. The Commissioner’s actions provoked
blind hysteria all over the country, with both parties celebrating that
they had won the election. There were reports of Temnes being
attacked and expelled from the South and the East, as well as Mendes
being assaulted in Ginger Hall (a Mende sector of the city of Freetown).
95.
In the course of its public hearings in 2003, the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission received a number of submissions and
testimonies regarding the conduct of the 1967 elections. It
became clear that Sir Albert Margai’s policy of excluding his internal
opponents within the SLPP from contesting the elections on an SLPP
ticket resulted in many of them contesting the elections as independent
candidates. Four independent candidates who stood in this fashion
defeated their former SLPP colleagues. Given what had transpired
in 1962, the SLPP expected these independents to return to the fold
after the election, which would have enabled the party to claim that it
had secured 32 seats in Parliament. This prophecy was to prove
impossible.
96.
The independent candidates in question were Prince Williams of Bo, L.
A. M. Brewa of Moyamba, Kai Samaba of Kenema and Manna Kpaka of
Pujehun. This group of four insisted, apparently after
consultations with members of the APC leadership, that the condition
for their return to the SLPP party was that Sir Albert Margai stand
down as leader. When Margai refused to step aside, the four
independents declared their opposition to his continuing as Prime
Minister. In effect therefore, the SLPP came out with 28 seats,
four less than the tally of the APC.
97.
The leadership of the SLPP stoutly refused to concede defeat, which
heightened the political temperature in the country. The Governor
General tried to calm the situation by inviting the leaders of the two
parties, Sir Albert Margai and Siaka Stevens, to form a coalition
government. The APC rejected the proposal, maintaining that it
had won the election by simple majority and should be allowed to form
the new government. Several accounts of what transpired after
this point have since surfaced. A submission to the TRC by Peter
Tucker, who was Secretary to Sir Albert Margai during his reign as
Prime Minister, claims that pressure was placed on the Governor General
by elderly APC stalwarts, many of whom had been his former schoolmates
and judges of the Superior Court. The APC delegation is said to
have visited the Governor General at State House and pressed him to
recognise Siaka Stevens as the winner of the election. Tucker
therefore insinuates that cronyism was the key to Stevens’ succession
to the post of Prime Minister.
98.
However, the four independent candidates had by this time written to
the Governor General and informed him that they would not rejoin the
SLPP as long as Sir Albert Margai remained leader. The
undertaking of the independent candidates was proof enough to conclude
that the SLPP could not command a majority in the incoming
parliament. It was therefore formally correct for the Governor
General, the representative of the Queen, who was still Head of State,
to have invited the leader of the APC, as majority party, to form a new
government in March 1967.
99.
In the middle of the swearing-in ceremony of the new Prime Minister,
Siaka Stevens, the Sierra Leone Army made a dramatic entrance into the
mainstream political arena. The Governor General, Sir Henry
Lightfoot Boston, was placed under arrest whilst conducting the
ceremony by a Mende Army officer called Lieutenant Samuel Hinga
Norman. Siaka Stevens and three other prospective APC Ministers
were also taken captive. Lieutenant Hinga Norman, who was the
Governor General’s aide de camp, was apparently acting on the
instructions of the Force Commander, David Lansana. Within
twenty-four hours Brigadier Lansana had announced that the swearing-in
of Stevens was unconstitutional and declared martial law.
100. The
turmoil did not end at Brigadier Lansana’s announcement, though.
A further twenty-four hours later, when it became apparent that
Lansana’s move was engineered to reinstate Sir Albert Margai as Prime
Minister, junior-ranking soldiers staged a coup to overthrow him.
After minor internal wrangling in the military, a new administration
led by Colonel Andrew T. Juxon Smith installed itself in power.
It was known as the National Reformation Council (NRC).
101.
The Commission can only speculate on whether the trajectory of Sierra
Leonean national politics would have been any different if the SLPP had
accepted defeat in the 1967 elections and gone magnanimously into
opposition. What is certain is that the standoff the SLPP
precipitated with the APC signalled a watershed in the political
fortunes of the country and ultimately led to the destruction of the
multi-party system. The consequent period of military rule under
the NRC served to narrow the political space and would encourage others
to seek alternative routes to power that did not depend on free and
fair elections. It was a historical antecedent for conflict and
instability, because it set the scene for multiple further coup
attempts in the following decades.
PART II – THE MANAGEMENT OF POWER BY THE APC
102.
In its official submission to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
in April 2003, the All People’s Congress (APC) recalled its basis for a
major policy shift upon finally assuming power in 1968. The APC
stated that the SLPP-engineered military intervention of March 1967 had
set an ominous precedent for the country. In the wake of that
intervention, the APC perceived that the threat to remove it from
office by unlawful means was ever present. Accordingly, in the
interests of its own survival, the APC felt compelled to place emphasis
on internal security rather than on governance. Indeed, with the
hindsight that history permits, it can be seen that the APC used its
concerns about internal security as a pretext to stifle the nascent
democratic culture.
103.
On assumption of the office of Prime Minister, Siaka Stevens attended
most urgently to the consolidation of his power. Despite
espousing socialist principles, he adopted authoritarian methods of
governance. All the institutions of the state were subjected to
strict party control. Institutions that should have been checks on an
overbearing executive were emasculated. The prolonged period of
Siaka Stevens’ rule is captured in more expansive detail in the chapter
of this report entitled ‘Governance’, so a brief summary should suffice
for present purposes.
104.
First and foremost, the APC set out to ensure that it had effective
control of the Army. The transformation of the Army Chief of
Staff into a Member of Parliament in 1974 completed the subordination
of the army as a tool for political manipulation. So fearful was
Stevens of the threat posed to him by a well-equipped Army, he denied
the soldiers any proper training and systematically suppressed their
fighting capacity.
105.
During Siaka Stevens’ rule, all the gains made by Southerners and
Easterners during the Albert Margai era were reversed. Government
had become balkanised in the 1960s and the predominant ethnic group of
the ruling party would seek to enrich and aggrandise itself, along with
any co‑opted members from other ethnic groups. So endemic was
corruption that the government was simply expected by all sides to use
state resources to advance the interests of its supporters.
106.
Stevens created the Internal Security Unit (ISU), a paramilitary police
force, which was more heavily equipped than the national Army and whose
members were absolutely loyal to the APC. ISU recruits were
chosen from the ranks of minority ethnic groups like Koranko and
Limba. The current Inspector-General of the Police Service in his
testimony before the Commission described the ISU, which later became
the Special Security Division, or SSD, in the following terms:
“The [ISU] group was feared
even by Police Commissioners, [which] eroded the basic rules of
discipline within the force. A de facto ‘force within a force’
was created, which bore little or no allegiance to the Sierra Leone
Police. This divided loyalty greatly affected the cohesiveness of
the police, resulting in maladministration. Inefficiency, as a
direct consequence of such maladministration, became prevalent.
Promotions and postings were based on political patronage and were done
on political recommendation.”
107.
Stevens also targeted the judiciary. With power vested in the
Head of State to appoint and remove judges, all judicial officers cowed
in fear. Lawyers and court officials alike were afraid to take on
cases involving leading party members. With the only formal
institution for mediating grievance compromised, the ‘rule of might’
prevailed over the ‘rule of law’. Political disputes were settled
by invariably brutal means on the streets, at election venues and in
community spaces. Even intra‑party disagreements within the APC
generated terrible violence. Political disputes were played out
in places such as Pujehun (Ndorgboryosoi), Koinadugu and Bombali
Districts, as well as in Freetown during the 1977 and 1982 elections.
108.
The creation of a one party state in Sierra Leone through the enactment
of the One Party Act of 1978 led to the demise of independent political
alternatives, with many individuals holding widely divergent political
views forced to cluster under the same banner.
109.
In examining the dynamics of this method of managing power – practised
to differing degrees and at different times by both of Sierra Leone’s
main political parties – the Commission has heard many testimonies
about the adverse effects it has had on the population.
Ironically, oppressive and authoritarian governance seems to have led
to both inward and outward forms of defection.
110.
On the one hand, the fear of political exclusion forced members of the
SLPP to join the APC party during the one-party system. These
‘inward defections’ were largely opportunistic, reflecting an
unprincipled lust for power and denying them any hint of credibility
when they later proclaimed a lifelong association with the SLPP upon
the promulgation of a new Constitution for a multi-party system in 1991.
111.
On the other hand, albeit related, the widespread loss of confidence in
the political elite and the patently fickle nature of Sierra Leonean
politics have driven inordinately high numbers of talented Sierra
Leoneans to abandon their country and seek opportunities abroad.
These ‘outward defections’ testify to the hopelessness experienced by
the majority under a government that sustains itself through
corruption, nepotism and the plundering of state assets whilst paying
no attention to the human rights of its citizens.
112.
By the late 1980s, Sierra Leone had become a fragmented country in
which central government was almost totally irrelevant to people’s
everyday lives. The population in the Provincial communities
conferred their loyalty and trust in their ethnic groups and
traditional associations, rather than in the leadership of the
nation. Yet the corrosive practices of the APC were replicated at
regional and local levels, where Chieftaincy remained synonymous with
power, patronage and control of resources. All semblance of
accountability or effective opposition was eliminated, leaving
disgruntled Sierra Leoneans with no outlet through which to vent their
grievances. The one-party system simply exacerbated the worst of
the nation’s existing trends towards conflict and national
disintegration. Sierra Leone was left poised on the precipice of
a bottomless pit.
PART III – LOCAL HISTORICAL ANTECEDENTS
113.
Prior to the outbreak of war in 1991, there were undercurrents of
conflict in many Districts of Sierra Leone. The local dynamics of
these areas would substantially influence the character and conduct of
the war, from the border Districts that served as ‘gateways’ for the
fighting forces, to the strategically located ‘heartland’ Districts
that initially supported the insurgency to overthrow the APC. At
local level as at national level, many of the answers as to why and how
this conflict happened are to be found in its historical antecedents.
Pujehun District (Southern Province)
114.
Pujehun District is in the extreme south of Sierra Leone, bounded in to
the East by Liberia, to the West by Bonthe District and the Atlantic
Ocean, to the North East by Kenema District, and to the North by Bo
District. The Southern boundary between Sierra Leone and Liberia
is at the Mano River Bridge in Soro Gbema Chiefdom, Pujehun District.
115.
Before the conflict, Pujehun District was beset with a host of
problems, including the following five issues:
(i)
Amalgamation and Chieftaincy conflicts. Disputes over the
amalgamation of two Chiefdoms into Soro Gbema in 1953 and again in
Barri in 1975 left lingering resentment between residents. In
Pujehun’s five amalgamated chiefdoms there were no formal agreements on
rotation for the solitary seat of Paramount Chief, where previously
there had been two positions. Chieftaincy elections became
fiercely contested and candidates went all out to ensure victory.
An especially bitter battle marred the election of the Paramount Chief
in Gallinass Perri in 1976. With every new controversy the
society became more severely divided, opening up numerous grudges,
grievances and vendettas for exploitation by an armed insurgent group.
(ii)
The presence of non-native Paramount Chiefs in three strategic
Chiefdoms. The Kaikai and Sillah ruling houses in Pujehun Town,
comprised of Fullahs and Susus respectively, along with the Magonas, a
Mende clan, in Barri Chiefdom, were anomalous figureheads in
predominantly Mende territories. These three ruling houses were
installed in Pujehun as their reward for supporting the British during
the Hut Tax War, despite their lack of local legitimacy with the
indigenous population. The opportunity to throw off the yoke of
these imposed Chieftaincies presented a strong allure to disaffected
residents to take up arms against them. It became common for
people who objected to their Chiefs to collaborate with the armed
groups in attacking the ruling houses when the war broke out.
(iii)
The high percentage of illiteracy in the District, resulting from the
late arrival of western education methods and the dominance of Koranic
teachings. The illiterate masses proved easier for the militias
to mobilise and manipulate based on ethnic and religious
affiliations. Promises to end their marginalisation were for many
of them irresistible. When the Revolutionary United Front (RUF)
arrived in Pujehun pledging free education, clean water and other
social services people flocked forward volunteering to serve the
‘revolution’.
(iv) The
nation-wide student demonstrations of 1977 and the heavy-handed
response of the Special Security Division (SSD). This period of
civil unrest had the effect of driving most students in the Pujehun
District over the border into Liberia. Many of these exiled
students later returned as infiltrators and rebel leaders.
(v)
The lucrative diamond fields at Zimmi. The lure of illicit
diamond mining attracted a huge pool of so-called “san san” boys
(labourers who dig for diamonds in the sand) and hustlers from all over
the country. These strong, unskilled young men would become
willing tools in the hands of a manipulative invading force.
116.
The most important local antecedent in Pujehun, however, was the
Ndorgboryosoi rebellion, which started in Soro Gbema Chiefdom shortly
after the first one-party state election in 1982. The Mende word
‘Ndorgboryosoi’ carried powerful connotations of the involvement of
forest spirits in protecting the local people from an enemy. In
1982, according to a Pujehun resident interviewed by the Commission,
the enemy was the APC state security apparatus and the rebellion was
directed against dictatorship, a gross disregard for human rights and
the brutalisation of the rural people by the SSD.
117.
There were essentially two factions in the dispute that gave rise to
the Ndorgboryosoi rebellion: the Demby – Minah faction with the support
of the Chiefs on one side; and the Manna Kpaka faction on the
other. The election had been conducted and apparently rigged in
favour of the incumbent Member of Parliament, Honourable Solomon
Demby. Demby was supported by the APC strongman in the District
Francis Minah, the Attorney General and Minister of Justice. Yet
Demby became infuriated when a legal challenge to his election victory
was filed against him in the courts.
118.
Demby, with the support of President Siaka Stevens, called in the
paramilitary force, the SSD, under the command of M. S. Dumbuya.
The SSD was deployed to intimidate and arrest Demby’s opponents in a
move to have the election petition dropped. In Soro Gbema
Chiefdom, where the support for Demby’s opponent Manna Kpaka was
strongest, a local militia was formed in order to resist the campaign
of intimidation. The Ndorgboryosoi Group, as this militia became
known, engaged in armed combat with the SSD for the rest of 1982 and
part of 1983.
119.
As part of a sustained campaign in the Pujehun District, the SSD burnt
down several whole villages across various Chiefdoms and killed many
innocent civilians, including women and children. Hundreds of
Demby opponents were arrested, while more than half of those detained
died in jail.
120.
The Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Francis Minah, was tasked
with the prosecution of all those SSD members involved in the killing
of civilians. Minah, however, procrastinated inexplicably over
these cases, which many observers interpreted as an expression of his
support for his friend Mr. Demby.
121.
The Ndorgboryosoi rebellion ended only after the Army had been called
in to assist the SSD in suppressing the militia. The hostile
sentiments against the APC regime endured for much longer,
though. Some of the Ndorgboryosoi ringleaders and their family
members were among the first militiamen to join the RUF when it entered
Pujehun District from Liberia in 1991. They formed a civil
defence unit of the RUF called the ‘Joso Group’, deliberately invoking
part of the word ‘Ndorgboryosoi’ in its name to represent continuity.
122.
Pujehun District was thus replete with historical antecedents to the
conflict, including several periods of mass unrest, which provoked
repression and deprivation from the State in response. The District had
a well-known history of rebellion, a large pool of exiled and aggrieved
youths in Liberia and, ultimately, a volatile security climate.
As Foday Sankoh and his RUF ‘vanguards’ plotted their entry into Sierra
Leone in March 1991, Pujehun District had the vital characteristics of
a ‘gateway’ through which the launch of an insurgency against the
incumbent APC would meet with ideological support and find willing
recruits.
Kailahun District (Eastern Province)
123.
Kailahun District in the Eastern Province of Sierra Leone shares its
boundary with both Liberia and Guinea at the point called the “Parrot’s
Beak”. Like Pujehun, the District became a ‘gateway’ for the
initial incursion by the RUF in March 1991. It has the same dense
vegetation as Pujehun District, including thick forests that are
impenetrable by armoured cars or conventional army columns and highly
conducive for guerrilla warfare.
124.
Before the war the Kailahun District was plagued by rivalry between its
two ruling families, the Ngobehs and the Banyas (from the Kailondo
ruling house). From 1943 to 1966 the Banyas and the Ngobehs
produced Paramount Chiefs who were dethroned during their tenure on
allegations of abusing the office and engaging in cannibalism.
Indeed, accusations of cannibalism against traditional rulers arose in
many of the Chiefdoms in the District.
125.
Kailahun District was gradually ravaged of its common identity and
forcibly split into factions. Tyrannical Chiefs acted ruthlessly
against suppressed subjects whenever there was a hint of
rebellion. The antecedents to conflict in the District are best
summarised in three points: desperately poor infrastructure, causing
people to cry out for a social ‘revolution’; antagonism towards APC
rule and disillusionment with the ruling houses; and remoteness from
the control of central authority.
126. This
final point was critical because it emphasised the ordinary man’s sense
of detachment from the central government in Freetown. The
resultant feeling of alienation in Kailahun was captured by the popular
phrase (shared with other rural communities) when travelling to the
capital city: “I dae go na Salone”, meaning “I am going to Sierra
Leone”. Effectively Sierra Leone was associated with distance
rather than belonging. The central government was irrelevant to
most people’s daily lives and loyalty to it was non-existent. Any
promise of change in the economic and political order would prove very
appealing in the Kailahun District.
Kono District (Eastern Province)
127.
Kono District shares boundaries with the Republic of Guinea to the
East, as well as four other Sierra Leonean Districts: Kailahun to the
Southeast; Kenema to the South; Koinadugu to the North and Northwest;
and Tonkolili to the West. Large areas of Kono are densely
forested and would lend themselves to the creation of hidden ‘bush
paths’ by the fighting factions during the conflict.
128.
Indigenous Kono speakers were the predominant group in the District
before the discovery of diamonds. Subsequent mining of the
lucrative gemstone attracted vast numbers of other ethnic groups and
foreign nationals to the District, especially Lebanese, Guineans and
Malians. While the main offices of political power remained in
the hands of the Konos, outsiders prised away control of the economic
life.
129.
Despite the overwhelming riches attached to diamonds, they were mined
amidst mass illiteracy, poverty and general underdevelopment. The
APC government did not build a single paved road in the entire
District. Chiefdoms like Toli, Mafindo, Gbane, Sando and Lei
remain inaccessible by vehicle to the present day. This paradox
of Sierra Leone’s most richly endowed territory was even more
pronounced in Chiefdoms that actually produced diamonds, such as
Tankoro, Kamara, Nimikoro, Sando and Nimiyama: mining proceeded in the
middle of destitute wastelands.
130.
Ultimately three classes of people emerged in Kono. First, rich
foreign nationals lived comfortably in cohort with local traditional
leaders. Many foreigners enjoyed their own private water wells,
lived in huge mansions with satellite dishes on their rooftops and
drove Mercedes Benz sedans. The second class encompassed the vast
majority of the indigenous population. They were poor and forced
to seek their own means of survival, with minimal access to the fruits
of their land. The third class comprised the youths of all the
ethnic groups who flooded the District and had no allegiance to
traditional norms. They came from all over the country, desperate
to become players in the diamond trade, as hustlers, diggers, middlemen
or traders. This outcast group was referred to disparagingly as
“san san” boys.
131.
Only with the rarest of good fortune did a “san san” boy find a diamond
in the sand. Most of these youths lived on the edge, barely able
to eke out a living. They frequently resorted to banditry and
petty crime to ensure their survival and were naturally willing
conscripts, as both miners and combatants, when the RUF came calling.
132.
Perhaps the most telling feature of Kono District was the total vacuum
of state security in which its whole miniature economy operated.
The nearest Army brigade was stationed at Tekoh Barracks in the central
Bombali District, over 60 kilometres from the Kono headquarter town of
Koidu. The APC regime’s neglect of its defences and inept
policing of its Eastern border made a mockery of the Kono District’s
genuine strategic worth to the country.
Kambia District (Northern Province)
133.
Located in the far Northwest of the country, Kambia shares a lengthy
boundary with Guinea, through which the RUF attempted several raids on
Sierra Leone’s neighbour in 2000. In a familiar tale of neglect
of outlying areas, the Kambia District’s remoteness from Freetown
robbed the District of infrastructural development prior to the war and
has denied it serious investment for reconstruction ever since.
134.
The Temnes are the dominant ethnic group in Kambia, controlling three
of the seven Chiefdoms in the District. Minority ethnic groups
include Susu and Limba. An examination of the antecedents to the
conflict in this District reveals the following factors:
(i)
Intense competition between ruling houses such as the Yumkellas and
their rivals in the Samu Chiefdom;
(ii) Gross injustices occasioned by arbitrary rulings and heavy fines imposed in Local Chiefdom Courts;
(iii)
Persistent smuggling through the unprotected border with Guinea, which
has remained a major source of illicit personal gain for traders at the
expense of national benefit; and
(iv) The
extreme poverty and illiteracy that are characteristic of geographical
isolation, creating a sense of hopelessness among the people.
135.
Kambia’s historical connection to the central government in Freetown
has been tenuous at best. Far removed from the bargains and
benchmarks of national politics, the Chiefs wielded absolute power over
their subjects. Traditionally, many young people found the
stranglehold of the Chiefs so unbearable that they crossed the border
into Guinea and never returned. Rather than allowing Freetown and
the Western Area to benefit exclusively from their extraction of
natural resources, Kambians often traded independently with
Guinea. Over time, intended symbols of Sierra Leonean State
authority, such as public buildings and institutions, became little
more than hated monuments to the disdain displayed in Freetown towards
the outlying Provinces.
Moyamba District (Southern Province)
136.
Moyamba District was left scarred more than most by thuggery and
election violence in the first thirty years of Sierra Leonean
independence. The ruling parties had routinely overlooked
candidates of the people’s choice during election time, instead
deploying thugs and using intimidation tactics to impose party
strongmen and devoted stalwarts upon them. This scenario was most
acutely illustrated in the 1982 elections, when the henchmen of the APC
strongman Harry T. T. Williams forced the Paramount Chief of Kagboro
Chiefdom, Honoria Ballor-Caulker, into enforced exile for nearly ten
years.
137. The
indigenous population was also aggrieved with the employment policies
of SIEROMCO, the Sierra Leone wing of an international mining
conglomerate, which had the lease for the mining of bauxite in Mokanji,
Moyamba District. They saw the company’s policy of hiring workers
from outside the District as especially unjust because of the
first-class social facilities offered within the company.
Employees who had moved from elsewhere to Mokanji enjoyed professional
and domestic luxury, while people in the host community wallowed in
abject poverty and deprivation. The SIEROMCO site in Moyamba was
one of numerous industrial installations that would be attacked during
the conflict; local people were frequently alleged to have vented their
pre‑existing grudges with major firms by acquiescing or contributing to
such attacks.
Bo District (Southern Province)
138.
The central District of Bo was the heartland of the SLPP from the
inception of the era of party politics. Although several SLPP
stalwarts switched their allegiance to the APC in order to take up
positions in the one-party government, there was a general feeling
among the residents of Bo that their fortunes would be vastly improved
if the SLPP could be revived and restored to power.
139.
For this reason, the idea of “revolution” in Sierra Leone was popular
in Bo. Many inhabitants of the District were even in favour of an
armed action to overthrow the APC and scores of youths travelled to
Kailahun to volunteer for the RUF in the first few months of the
conflict. As in neighbouring Moyamba, a prevailing history of
election violence and thuggery had also reinforced the propensity for
conflict in Bo. The centrality and high population of the
District made it a natural wartime headquarter s for the Southern-based
Mende militia known as the Kamajors.
Tonkolili District (Northern Province)
140.
Tonkolili is most central of all the Districts in Sierra Leone and is
therefore, in conflict terms, one of the most “strategically
located”. It shares boundaries with eight of the twelve other
Districts. It has ten Chiefdoms, five of which resulted from
amalgamation. Economic opportunities were few in the District,
with non-mechanised gold mining in the North-eastern areas providing
the single most important source of employment. The Magbass Sugar
Factory boasted a large industrial complex, but offered only seasonal
employment in the form of casual labour. The majority of the
people were either petty traders or subsistence rice growers in the
boli lands.
141.
The major ethnic groups in the area are Temnes, Korankos and Limbas but
Temne is the dominant language spoken in the Tonkolili District.
Significant local peculiarities that were to have an impact on the
course of the war include the following:
(i)
Sibling and Chieftaincy rivalry. In Yoni Chiefdom, two brothers
contested the Paramount Chieftaincy. The loser exploited the
disappointment of his supporters to undermine his brother’s leadership
and destabilise the Chiefdom.
(ii)
Youth deprivation. There was a desperate scarcity of job
opportunities for the youths in the area, forcing many into petty
trading and many more into petty crime. There developed an
enormous army of unemployed youths who subsequently used the conflict
to ‘act out’ their frustrations at the lack of economic opportunities.
(iii)
The death of emergent political personalities from the District at the
hands of the APC. When Siaka Stevens came to power in 1968, he
faced increasing pressure on various issues from prominent natives of
Tonkolili District who were in the Army or were members of his APC
party. Dr. Mohammed Sorie Forna and Ibrahim Bash-Taqi, who were
among the visionaries of the APC, broke away in acrimonious
circumstances and formed the United Democratic Party (UDP) in
1970. The two men were then implicated by the Stevens Government
in an alleged coup plot in 1971 and were arrested, charged and
convicted, along with 13 others, in a celebrated treason trial in
1974. In July 1975 Forna, Bash-Taqi and six other men were
executed. Their deaths alienated most of the influential and
educated members of Gbonkolenken Chiefdom from the APC, which resulted
in many inhabitants of that Chiefdom taking up of arms when the
conflict began.
(iv)
The attachment to prominent sons of the District and identification
with their fates. Another successful and well-loved son of
Tonkolili District was Sam Bangura, the former Governor of the Bank of
Sierra Leone. When Bangura died in suspicious circumstances in
1980, the people of Tonkolili perceived his death as a murder, stemming
from internal feuding within the APC, to the detriment of their
District. Moreover Foday Sankoh, the leader of the Revolutionary
United Front (RUF) hailed from the Tonkolili District. Sankoh’s
uncle has remained a Chief in his home community and no member of the
Sankoh family has ever been punished or ostracised for the harm and
suffering their relative brought to the district. A widely held
view in Sierra Leone is that the launching of the conflict was very
popular in Tonkolili, despite the subsequent atrocities that were
carried out by the RUF and others against the civilian
population. The logic of armed struggle against the APC was
accepted in Tonkolili and many residents allied themselves with the
fate of their native son. Upon returning to the District after
signing the Lomé Peace Agreement in 1999, Foday Sankoh was even
accorded what his widow described to the Commission as a “hero’s
welcome”.
142.
The local historical antecedents profiled in this part of the chapter
are not intended to put the conflict into context in an exhaustive
fashion. However, they are illustrative of some of the local
undercurrents that ran parallel to daily life in Sierra Leone prior to
the conflict, including popular grievances with socio-economic
conditions and widespread opposition to the APC State. The
country in which war broke out was in fact already a cluster of
unresolved disputes and barely suppressed hostilities.
CONCLUSION
143. In
examining the history of Sierra Leone through the lens of the mandate
of the Commission, a picture emerges of a fragmented, exploited and
deeply insecure country. The colonial government was responsible
for dividing the land into two nations, one in the Protectorate and one
in the Colony, and developing them separately and unequally. The
impact of the colonial strategy affected access to education for
generations and defined social, political and economic progress, or
regression, for the whole population. It bred deep ethnic and
regional resentment, the manifestations of which can still be observed,
albeit in more subtle prejudices, to the present day.
144.
The colonial government was also responsible for destabilising the
system of Chieftaincy and creating a crisis of legitimacy around the
traditional rulers. The colonial government formalised the Common
Law but neglected the development of customary law, resulting in mass
confusion and effective legal duality. Customary law became the
preserve of the Chiefs who interpreted traditions and customs in an
arbitrary fashion and utilised their authority to whatever ends they so
desired. The rights of women, in particular, were denied during
this period.
145.
During the post-colonial period, ethnic tensions were exacerbated by
the emergence of domestic political parties. The elections of
1962 and 1967 had dangerous and divisive legacies for all the branches
of government. Sir Albert Margai’s overt manipulation of the
Paramount Chiefs, the military sphere and the supposedly ‘independent’
judiciary devastated public confidence in the self-run State.
When the Sierra Leone Army intervened in 1967 in an attempt to pervert
the course of democracy, a precedent was set for military men to play
influential roles in politics for decades to come.
146. It
was during the protracted reign of the APC, however, that politicians
and the processes they directed were to forfeit all credibility.
A system of power through patronage developed, with blatant corruption
and the plundering of state assets at its heart. Exclusionary
politics led to an incestuous relationship between the APC and the
SLPP: they merged into one, unprincipled “political elite”.
Ordinary people in Sierra Leone lost all faith in government. Up
to the present day, Sierra Leoneans expect arbitrary administration of
“justice”, nepotism and cronyism in all public institutions, and little
genuine prospect of a fairer and brighter future.
147.
Neither the SLPP nor the APC has made any real effort to attend to the
debasement of the post‑independence politics and economy of the
country. On the contrary, history speaks of a systemic failure,
whereby all the members of the political elite belonged to the same
failing system.
148.
With time, it became difficult for Sierra Leoneans to distinguish
between the SLPP and the APC. While the government changed hands
from one to the other, many of the faces remained the same. The
popular adage about government was that Sierra Leoneans would board “a
different bus, but with the same driver”. Deep-seated pessimism
now prevails as to whether things can ever really get better.
149.
While they may claim to be ideologically different, in reality the two
parties have always shared a brand of politics that is all about power
and the benefits it confers. Even a high-ranking member of the
political elite conceded to the Commission that “indeed, there is no
difference” between the SLPP and the APC. Tragically many of the
characteristics identified in this chapter as antecedents to the
conflict persist today in Sierra Leone. The vital test in
preventing the recurrence of such a tragedy lies in whether Sierra
Leone can learn the lessons of its past.
© 2002 - 2007, Sierra Leone Truth & Reconciliation Commission
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