Human Rights in Sierra Leone, 1787–2016: The Long Struggle from the Transatlantic Slave Trade to the Present 9780429887598, 9780429887581, 9780429887574, 9781138604766, 9780429468407

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Significance of the book
A brief outline of the chapters
References
Chapter 1: The transatlantic slave trade and the illusions of “freedom,” 1787–1790
In England: the anti-slavery debate
In Sierra Leone: the illusions of freedom
Communicable diseases
The slave trade forts or factories
Crimes and punishment
Wars with the natives
Reconciliation and the challenging question of land indemnity
Notes
References
Chapter 2: The restitutive justice policy of the Sierra Leone Company, 1791–1808
The Sierra Leone Company and its critics
The Company’s restitutive justice policies in the colony of Freetown
The restitutive regulation of economic investment
The Company and the indigenous peoples: reconciliatory economic, political, and socio-culturalempowerment activities
In search of “equity” in restitutive justice: the Company’s mayoral court—composition and restorative human rights framework
Composition
The Court’s equity framework for restorative justice
Notes
References
Chapter 3: No taxation without representation, 1820–1920
The rise of an African political elite class
The house and land tax of 1851 in Freetown
The Hut Tax (War) of 1898 in the hinterlands
Notes
References
Chapter 4: Citizens and protected persons, 1920–1951
Racists, radicals, and moderates
Political representation for protected persons: the 1924 Constitution
Freedom for all enslaved British protected persons
Group (dis)satisfactions in an era of majoritarian democracy: the Constitutions of 1947 and 1951
Notes
References
Chapter 5: Racism and the rise of party politics, 1950–1960
The National Council of the Colony of Sierra Leone
The Sierra Leone People’s Party
Notes
References
Chapter 6: Class conflict: Chiefs, politicians, peasants, and the revolts of 1955 and 1956
Samu chiefdom: the House of Bai Sherbro Yumkella II
Maforki chiefdom: the House of Alikali Modu III
The peasant revolts in Maforki and Samu chiefdoms
Notes
References
Chapter 7: Women in the colonial spaces: From the founding of the colony to 1960
The “women’s section”: a feminist space in a male-dominated domain
Support for women candidates
The Constance Agatha Cummings-John factor
Ten Daily News: the platform for a Freirean consciousness-raising
Notes
References
Chapter 8: Political independence and the Africanization project, 1960–1967
The “Africanization” of post-independence development interventions
Urbanization
Agriculture and mining
Human resources, institutions, and infrastructure
The strengthening and constitutional recognition of the legal authority of the chiefs
The Local Courts Act (1963)
The Tribal Authorities (Amendment) Act (1964)
Notes
References
Chapter 9: The narratives on human rights in a neopatrimonial state, 1967–1984
Narrative one: the neoliberal conception of human rights was an instrument of a neocolonial control of the postcolonial state
Narrative two: the neopatrimonial regime of President Stevens offered the best possible developmental outcomes for Sierra Leone
Notes
References
Chapter 10: Ethnopolitics, tribal-nationalism, and the youth empowerment crisis, 1985–1991
Ekutay: ethnopolitical nationalism and the construction of a privileged discourse on empowerment
Youth and ethnopolitics: the representations (of disempowerment) of the marginals
The conditions and representations of the rarayman
The responses of the “savisman”: student unionism and pan-Africanism
Notes
References
Chapter 11: (Wo)men’s rights in theneopatrimonial/ethnopolitical spaces, 1967–1991
The decades of impossibility: gender-based inequality before the law
The constitutionality of the suppression of women’s rights
The laws regulating gender-based offenses
The crime of abortion: an “unnatural” gender-based offense?
Sexual and gender-based violence: the question of a burden of proof
The myth-making customary laws regulating land ownership, and their impact on minority rights and gender and racial relationships
The Citizenship Act (of 1973) and the making of “aliens” in the belly of women
Concluding remark
Notes
References
Chapter 12: The idea of liberation in the war communities, 1991–2002: Representation, adaptation, and outcomes
The rise of the RUF rebel faction
The space for the domestication of an alternative model of human rights
Making of “Sowo” (the sacred community of the RUF ) inside the rainforests
Hierarchies and privileges of rights inside Sowo
Notes
References
Chapter 13: Contested truth: The Truth Commission and restorative justice, 2002–2004
The Truth Commission and the making of an official truth
The established performative functions of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Sierra Leone
The challenges of trust and truth
The representations and typologies of truths
Orwellian truth
Transitory truth
Arrested truth
Practical truth: the role of history in the documentation of human rights violations by the Commission
Notes
References
Chapter 14: The War Victims’ Fund and the emergence of contributive justice after 2004
Contributive justice in Sierra Leone: a short history
The elements of contributive justice in Sierra Leone
The economic and financial elements of contributive justice
The legal elements of contributive justice
The political element/imperative for contributive justice
Notes
References
Chapter 15: The instututional quest for another province of freedom: The Human Rights Commission and Constitutional Review Committee, 1994–2016
Part one: the Human Rights Commission of Sierra Leone (HRC-SL)
The definition of a Human Rights Commission
History of the HRC-SL
Mandate and structure of the HRC-SL
Standards of operations and functions
Challenges
Part two: the Constitutional Review Committee (CRC)
Defining constitutional review: histories, theories, and experiential processes
Constitutional review in Sierra Leone
Composition
Mandate
Activities
Notes
References
Conclusion
Directions towards gender justice, and women’s empowerment
Democracy and the possibility of an expanding space for political participation
Freedom of information and the role of the media
Concluding remark
References
Index

Citation preview

John Idriss Lahai has written a challenging book in all the best senses of the term. Students of Sierra Leonean history will find in Human Rights in Sierra Leone a thoughtful, nuanced account that is unusual, even unique, in scope. Lahai isn’t afraid to read history, human rights discourse, and political theory against the grain, and he does so to powerful effect in these chapters. For anyone prepared to think critically about human rights and postcolonial politics, in Sierra Leone and beyond, Lahai is an extraordinary guide.   Professor Daniel J. Hoffman, University of Washington, author of  The War Machines: Young Men and Violence in Sierra Leone and Liberia (Duke University Press, 2011) In its modern form, Sierra Leone began as a by-product of an international human rights crusade, but in practical terms the idea that all human beings everywhere are entitled to liberty, the pursuit of happiness and government of their choice – the essence of human rights – was not widely shared, even by some of those who led that crusade. In Human Rights in Sierra Leone 1787–2016, John Idriss Lahai attempts to do something audacious: provide a comprehensive account of the struggle to actualise the imperatives of human rights in Sierra Leone from its beginning as a modern state to the present, a period of over 220 years, during which time human rights in practical terms had undergone several changes of meaning. Thus, he provides considerable space for a discussion of gender issues, ‘liberation’ in civil war affected communities, and transitional justice – perhaps the best chapters in this ambitious book. Dr. Lahai’s book is a valuable contribution to the literature on the history and politics of Sierra Leone, shedding important new lights on some of the country’s foundational and continuing anxieties. Dr Lansana Gberie, author of A Dirty War in West Africa: The RUF and the Destruction of Sierra Leone (Indiana University Press, 2005)

Human Rights in Sierra Leone, 1787–2016

This book offers an up-­to-date, comprehensive interdisciplinary analysis of the multifaceted and evolving experiences of human rights in Sierra Leone between the years 1787 and 2016. It provides a balanced coverage of the local and international conditions that frame the socio-­cultural, political, and economic context of human rights: its rise and fall, and concerns for the broader engendered issues of the transatlantic slave trade, colonialism, women’s struggle for recognition, constitutional development, political independence, war, and transitional justice (as well as “contributive justice,” which the author introduces to explain the consequences of the problems of the temporal nature of transitional justice, and the crisis of donor fatigue towards peacebuilding activities), local government, democracy, and constitutional reforms within Sierra Leone. While acknowledging the profound challenges associated with the promotion of human rights in an environment of uncertainty, political fragility, lawlessness, and deprivation, John Idriss Lahai sheds light on the often-­constructive engagement of the people of Sierra Leone with a variety of societal conditions, adverse or otherwise, to influence constitutional change, the emergent post-­conflict discourse on “contributive justice,” and acceptable human rights practice. This book will be of interest to scholars in West African history, legal history, African studies, peace and conflict studies, human rights and transitional justice. John Idriss Lahai is a Research Fellow at the University of New England, Australia.

Routledge Studies in the Modern History of Africa

This series includes in-­depth research on aspects of economic, political, cultural, and social history of individual countries as well as broad-­reaching analyses of regional issues. Themes include social and economic change, colonial experiences, independence movements, post-­independence governments, globalisation in Africa, nationalism, gender histories, conflict, the Atlantic Slave trade, the environment, health and medicine, ethnicity, urbanisation, and neo-­colonialism and aid. Colonialism on the Margins of Africa Edited by Jan Záhořík and Linda Piknerová Power, Culture and Modernity in Nigeria Beyond the Colony Oluwatoyin Oduntan African Testimony in the Movement for Congo Reform The Burden of Proof Robert Burroughs Human Rights in Sierra Leone, 1787–2016 The Long Struggle from the Transatlantic Slave Trade to the Present John Idriss Lahai

Human Rights in Sierra Leone, 1787–2016 The Long Struggle from the Transatlantic Slave Trade to the Present John Idriss Lahai

First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 John Idriss Lahai The right of John Idriss Lahai to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-­in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-Publication Data Names: Lahai, John Idriss, author. Title: Human rights in Sierra Leone, 1787–2016 : the long struggle from the Transatlantic slave trade to the present / John Idriss Lahai. Description: New York : Routledge, 2018. | Series: Routledge studies in the modern history of Africa Identifiers: LCCN 2018027451 (print) | LCCN 2018029350 (ebook) | ISBN 9780429887598 (web pdf) | ISBN 9780429887581 (epub) | ISBN 9780429887574 ( mobipocket) | ISBN 9781138604766 (hardback) | ISBN 9780429468407 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Human rights–Sierra Leone. | Sierra Leone–Social conditions–History. | Sierra Leone–Politics and government. Classification: LCC JC599.S5 (ebook) | LCC JC599.S5 L34 2018 (print) | DDC 323.09664–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018027451 ISBN: 978-1-138-60476-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-46840-7 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear

To Fatou Godslove Lynette Lahai You were schooling in your mother’s (my wife’s) womb when I was writing this book, which was published on your first birthday. So, I hope you’ve learnt all you need to know. I wish you well in writing the other editions!

Contents



Acknowledgements



Introduction

xiii 1

Significance of the book  6 A brief outline of the chapters  7   1 The transatlantic slave trade and the illusions of “freedom,” 1787–1790

12

In England: the anti-­slavery debate  12 In Sierra Leone: the illusions of freedom  15   2 The restitutive justice policy of the Sierra Leone Company, 1791–1808

32

The Sierra Leone Company and its critics  35 The Company’s restitutive justice policies in the colony of Freetown  38   3 No taxation without representation, 1820–1920

54

The rise of an African political elite class  54 The house and land tax of 1851 in Freetown  55 The Hut Tax (War) of 1898 in the hinterlands  60   4 Citizens and protected persons, 1920–1951 Racists, radicals, and moderates  70 Political representation for protected persons: the 1924 Constitution  71 Freedom for all enslaved British protected persons  72

66

x   Contents Group (dis)satisfactions in an era of majoritarian democracy: the Constitutions of 1947 and 1951  74   5 Racism and the rise of party politics, 1950–1960

83

The National Council of the Colony of Sierra Leone  84 The Sierra Leone People’s Party  89   6 Class conflict: chiefs, politicians, peasants, and the revolts of 1955 and 1956

95

Suma chiefdom: the House of Bai Sherbro Yumkella II  95 Maforki chiefdom: the House of Alikali Modu III  98 The peasant revolts in Maforki and Samu chiefdoms  100   7 Women in the colonial spaces: from the founding of the colony to 1960

110

The “women’s section”: a feminist space in a male-­dominated domain  114 Support for women candidates  118 The Constance Agatha Cummings-­John factor  120 Ten Daily News: the platform for a Freirean consciousness-­raising  126   8 Political independence and the Africanization project, 1960–1967

134

The “Africanization” of post-­independence development interventions  136 The Local Courts Act (1963)  147 The Tribal Authorities (Amendment) Act (1964)  149   9 The narratives on human rights in a neopatrimonial state, 1967–1984 Narrative one: the neoliberal conception of human rights was an instrument of a neocolonial control of the postcolonial state  158 Narrative two: the neopatrimonial regime of President Stevens offered the best possible developmental outcomes for Sierra Leone  165

157

Contents   xi 10 Ethnopolitics, tribal-­nationalism, and the youth empowerment crisis, 1985–1991

173

Ekutay: ethnopolitical nationalism and the construction of a privileged discourse on empowerment  178 Youth and ethnopolitics: the representations (of disempowerment) of the marginals  182 11 (Wo)men’s rights in the neopatrimonial/ethnopolitical spaces, 1967–1991

195

The decades of impossibility: gender-­based inequality before the law  195 The constitutionality of the suppression of women’s rights  199 The laws regulating gender-­based offenses  199 The myth-­making customary laws regulating land ownership, and their impact on minority rights and gender and racial relationships  204 The Citizenship Act (of 1973) and the making of “aliens” in the belly of women  209 Concluding remark  212 12 The idea of liberation in the war communities, 1991–2002: representation, adaptation, and outcomes

217

The rise of the RUF rebel faction  218 The space for the domestication of an alternative model of human rights  225 13 Contested truth: the Truth Commission and restorative justice, 2002–2004

239

The Truth Commission and the making of an official truth  240 The representations and typologies of truths  244 Practical truth: the role of history in the documentation of human rights violations by the Commission  248 14 The War Victims’ Fund and the emergence of contributive justice after 2004 Contributive justice in Sierra Leone: a short history  256 The elements of contributive justice in Sierra Leone  260

255

xii   Contents 15 The institutional quest for another province of freedom: the Human Rights Commission and the Constitutional Review Committee, 1994–2016

271

Part one: the Human Rights Commission of Sierra Leone (HRC-­SL)  272 Part two: the Constitutional Review Committee (CRC)  282

Conclusion

299

Directions towards gender justice, and women’s empowerment  299 Democracy and the possibility of an expanding space for political participation  303 Freedom of information and the role of the media  305 Concluding remark  307

Index

309

Acknowledgements

To the people of Sierra Leone, this book is yours; it is for you and about you. It is a story (our story) unknowingly/knowingly created by you in the quest to either discover or prevent the discovery of another Province of Freedom. The paths are there, but it may take a collective effort to get there; and make sure you do not forget to board the ship called “gender justice.” It is the easiest and boldest means of transportation to your final destination – a peaceful Sierra Leone where equity is (or should be) regarded as the benchmark for human rights claims and entitlements. If it were an easy task to recommend otherwise I would have done so. But this is no longer about past and present generations, and what they did not do to right the wrongs of politics, culture, and economics. It is about future generations. Whether our children and their children will live in a peaceful Sierra Leone depends on the actions of all Sierra Leoneans. Sierra Leone is now a democracy; let us work towards perfecting it. The struggle for human rights should be a violence-free process with a commitment to accountability, transparency, and unity (in diversity: of ethnicities, political ideologies and affiliations, and gender). If there are future editions of this book, I pray thee to give me constructive reasons to say the positives outweigh the negatives. I don’t want you to put me through another traumatic experience when documenting (in future editions) stories about the struggles for human rights. I hope we will all work towards making sure the progress towards reaching that utopian Province of Freedom will be a wonderful experience for all Sierra Leoneans. To my wife, Mrs. Nenneh Lahai, and our children, Abdul, Jennifer, Joel, and Fatou, I am grateful. Your sustained support (not to mention the cups of tea) kept me going through the night. To my sisters and brothers, Aminata, Kadijatu, Salim (Junior), and John (Boyz), I can only wish for more blessings to be added to the sisterly/brotherly bond we share. To my in-laws, Ms Sarah Mansaray (and my wife’s siblings Grace and Eunice) and Mr. Brima Kamara (and my sister’s children), I am also grateful for your support over the years. My indebtedness also goes to Pastors Mike and Bekk Baumgartner for your moral support to, and prayers for, my family and I. To my friend, Isaac Koomson, this book would have been completed few weeks earlier if it hadn’t been for your brotherly insistence that I go for fitness training (football) every evening. You owe me even though your effort to keep me fit worked like magic! To the Onapa family (Sam,

xiv   Acknowledgements Herbie, and Isabel) your words of encouragement and prayers paid off! Thank you. This book is supported (financially) by the Humanities, Arts, Social Sciences and Education (HASSE) Faculty and the Peace Studies Research Fund of the University of New England (UNE), Australia. I thank you for your generous support throughout this project by restating the obvious (so that my readers know): “UNE is the only Australian public university to be awarded the maximum 5 stars for ‘overall student experience’ thirteen years in a row” by the Good Universities Guide. Adding to this, I am also indebted to senior colleagues at the UNE for their support during my fellowship: Karin von Strokirch for her trademark critical insights and candid critique of previous drafts; and Professor Helen Ware, your support and supervision throughout this fellowship kept me on my toes – an athletic feat that started in 2009 (ending 2012) when I was a Ph.D. student under your supervision and again in 2017 as a research fellow under your desirable supervision. You met me at a time when I was shy to put pen to paper. After years under your tutelage, I am now able to write a 150,000-word book (this book) in four months – amid the task of teaching and writing other (edited and authored) books. Thanks for shaping my academic research and writing skills. To Claire Girvin (HASSE School Manager, Resources and Administrative Services), remind me to be you in the next life,” your financial management skills are admirable. I would also like to thank Matthew Sidebotham, managing editor of WorkWiseWords Editing in Canberra, for the eye-opener that language editing is to an expert editor what the Mona Lisa was to Leonardo da Vinci. It was bravery on your part to enter my world of L2 English Language writing skills. My thanks also go to Emma Critchley at Wearset for her commitment and support throughout the copyediting stages of this book (on behalf of Routledge/Taylor & Francis). Finally, my words of appreciation go to Leanne Hinves, the Commissioning Editor of the Routledge Studies in the Modern History of Africa series, and to the anonymous reviewers who reviewed and provided valuable suggestions. I am indebted to you, too. In your anonymous selves, you share in the success of the outcome of this book.

Introduction

This is not a mere historical text that explains the interdisciplinary history of the long struggle for human rights in Sierra Leone, from 1787—the year a “Province of Freedom” was founded for the former victims of the transatlantic slave trade)—to 2016, the year Sierra Leoneans, after a quest of more than two centuries to re-­discover another “Province of Freedom,” presented a recommendation for a ‘new bill of rights’ to the Government of Sierra Leone. This book draws from multiple perspectives within the sub-­fields of ethnography, constitutional theory, human rights law, security studies, critical postcolonial theory, sociology (including the study of slavery, race and identities), gender and youth studies, cultural studies, and African studies. In 1787, a “Province of Freedom” was founded in Sierra Leone as a safe haven for former enslaved Africans. At this time, human rights concerns centered on the right to life and freedom from slavery (Sibthorpe 1970; West 1970; Brooks 1974; Schwarz 2007). Between 1808 and 1960, the struggle for human rights played out across four key issues: taxation and political representation (Fyfe 1955; Abraham 1972), the status of British citizens and British protected persons (Spitzer 1974; Wyse 1989; 2003), the political recognition of women (Denzer 1987) and peasants (Rashid 2009), and freedom from British colonial control (Cartwright 1970). Political independence came in April 1961 and, until 1964, the focus was on the Africanization of the state institutions and human rights norms inherited from the British colonial government (see Chapter 8). Between 1965 and 1967, the government’s aspirations to political dictatorship saw the adoption of the 1967 libel and sedition laws (Gberie 2005). While this first attempt at a dictatorship was foiled by a series of military coups, the return of parliamentary democracy in 1968 was temporary; by 1978, Sierra Leone was a one-­party state. From 1978 to 1984, the discourse of human rights received an anti-­liberal, Afro-­ Marxist re-­conceptualization that reinforced the neopatrimonial state, in which the patron–clientele network controlled a parallel economy that prospered to the detriment of the wider society (Keen 2005; Cartwright 1970). By the time power changed hands in 1985, Sierra Leone was, by all indications, a failed state (Reno 1995; 1996; 2003). Between 1985 and 1991, ethnopolitics became a major defining factor in the un/making of human rights, and the attempts by the youth of

2   Introduction Sierra Leone to resist this sparked a civil war in 1991 (Gberie 2005; Keen 2005). During the civil war (1991–2002), this youth movement evolved into a number of “war communities,” but their revolutionary principles required a platform for actualization. To this end, the rebels created an alternate space, which they called “Sowo,” in which they began to experiment with a model of human rights informed largely by precolonial cultural belief systems, with semblances of historic customary legal practices, and a neo-­pan-Africanist reading of western political, economic and cultural morality. Unfortunately, their lack of discipline undermined the establishment of permanent communities, compromising their human rights agenda. In the end, hierarchies of rights and privileges were (re)created, and women in particular were subjected—as they had been throughout the history of Sierra Leone—to stereotypical patriarchal constructs. The war came to an end in 2002. Between 2003 and 2005, two transitional justice processes unfolded: the Truth Commission and the War Crimes Tribunal, the Special Court for Sierra Leone. These transitional justice processes, especially the Truth Commission, created the space for social healing. But not all kinds of truth were empowering to the truth-­teller (see Chapter 13). Attempts were made to resolve some of the challenges faced by truth-­seekers and tellers through the promotion of equality and equity. But the belief that equity is best served when every Sierra Leonean is called upon to contribute to the post-­ conflict nation-­building project resulted in another ongoing process, one that can best be described as “contributive justice” (see, Chapter 14). The aim of this emergent justice is to ensure that, as a conflict prevention mechanism, the fiscal policies of the government should act as a restitutive mechanism to meet the needs of war victims. With human rights challenges still unresolved, the Human Rights Commission of Sierra Leone (HRC-­SL) was created to prevent, protect, and react to incidents of human rights violations in the country. Without constitutional reform, however, it was all but impossible to effectively regulate human rights in the country. For this reason, the Constitutional Review Committee (CRC) was established. Guided by the desire to create a new “Province of Freedom,” the CRC looked for ways for the government to enact a constitutional review process that would promote “gender justice” as an alternative path to reach this utopic “Province of Freedom.” Underneath this elaborate, interwoven history is a narrative that says people’s claims to what they perceive as their fundamental, universal human rights have contributed, more than any other factor, to the creation and demise of communities, nations, and governments. These human rights include the rights to life, liberty, personal security, and equality before the law; freedom from slavery, torture, degrading treatment, arbitrary arrest and exile; rights to access information, own property, practice one’s religion, and associate with others in peaceful assemblies; and guarantees of a presumption of innocence, among others. These tenets of human rights, irrespective of how people imagined, understood and theorized them, have survived where many other phenomena have not. As fundamental as the normative rules and entitlements that make the struggle for human rights worthwhile may be, one can argue that human rights are not impervious to

Introduction   3 change. Thus, underlying this history are incontrovertible lessons that show that human rights, like human life itself, are non-­static. Naturally, human beings and their contested histories are evolving. They are born, they live and die, or persist. And in between these beginnings and ends—of men; of nation-­states; of institutions; of ideas—there are normative, substantive and procedural human rights issues that may not necessarily be about discourses that promote the ethics of peaceful coexistence. As such, people and organizations that have fought for human rights have done so within the confines of their subjective worldviews. Thus, the more one considers the interactions between people and institutions in trying to understand the rights and wrongs of the contested histories of their societies, the more one is tempted to project a subjective interpretation of the objective relevance of the term human rights. In terms of definition, the driving force behind the desire to fight for human rights—to the extent of putting one’s life in harm’s way—was the idea that the survival of humankind depends on those rights. This argument also suggests that all human beings, irrespective of their worldviews and identities, are entitled to their basic fundamental rights simply because they are humans (see, Donnelly 1989). This is the doctrine of ius natural, lex naturalis (or natural law). This thinking about the connections between man (in his natural state) and his needs and rights, as Thomas Hobbes observed in 1651, is about “self-­preservation” (Thornton 2005) of man, and what is believed to protect morality in a civil society—which, in the view of Immanuel Kant, is “sacred.” The sacredness of this moral ethos is what makes the struggle for human rights morally legitimate in a civil society in which politicians have turned into rogues; in societies that are founded on the sacrificial steps “the ruling powers” make to protect the natural, inalienable rights of the people, and the acceptance of these sacrifices as part of paying what Kant refers to as a “tribute to morality” (Kant 1991, 125). Of course, not all will agree with this standpoint. Arguing from Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarian account of human nature, some would contend that political discourses premised on “natural, inalienable and sacred rights of man” are, at best, humankind’s subjective tendencies to create an objective meaning on the rights and wrongs created by their “unnatural” law. What people understand as “natural” rights and justice are, if anything, mere reflections of unmet needs. In view of the horrendous methods—including armed violence, and politically motivated sexual and gender-­based abuses—employed to protest against human wrongs in Sierra Leone, one would be tempted to say that those who struggled for human rights between 1787 and 2016 were, to borrow the words of Bentham, self-­regarding persons, whose goals were not a new “Province of Freedom,” but furthering their self-­interest to the detriment of the greater good. If this was not the case, the question of why Sierra Leone remains a hot-­spot for human rights violations calls for answers. Regardless, the findings outlined in this book tell a story of resilience. With references to my interactions (between 1985 and 2016) with Sierra Leoneans— my people, as I am a Sierra Leonean—the quest for human rights in Sierra Leone is historically aimed at achieving the six elementary aspects of justice. These

4   Introduction elements are (1) Legality: that human rights, irrespective of the intent and purpose, should be universally accepted and obeyed; (2) Certainty: that human rights institutions and the laws they regulate must be predictable and not set aside to make way for prejudice or self-­interest; (3) Consistency: that the standards around the application of justice should not favor one individual or group over another; (4) Accountability: that, irrespective of one’s station within the Sierra Leone society, the Aristotelian political being should see governmental structures that protect and promote his/her human rights, with a concomitant emphasis on responsibilities to answer for one’s individual or collective actions; (5) Efficiency: that, in the codification, classification, application and interpretation of the tenets of human rights, the law (even if it is an unpopular law) must have a positive impact on those affected by it, and must not negatively affect the general society; and (6) Due process: that no person must be condemned without being given the opportunity to directly or indirectly, through a legal representative, defend him/herself. It was the absence of these elements that accounted for the violent turn taken by the long struggle for human rights in Sierra Leone—although, of course, it has also to do with the continuities and discontinuities, historical beginnings, intersectional variations, and ends associated with that struggle. One can point to the long, labyrinthine evolution of western morality in the cultural spaces of Sierra Leone to explain these beginnings, intersectional variations, and ends. As demonstrated throughout this book, the desire to attain human rights as they were understood through the prism of western morality opened up competing discourses of rights and wrongs that were enmeshed in the subjectivities of race, gender, locale, education, power-­politics, culture, religion, and economics. It was these subjectivities that made the very idea of a struggle for human rights worth researching. The subjective appeal, and the political uses, of narratives around human rights led to a constant process of creating new forms of wrongful acts and competing rights. As such, the purported advancement of human rights did not always serve the purpose of eliminating societal wrongs in Sierra Leone. In some cases, such as the historic case of women’s rights (see Chapter 7 and Chapter 11), the need for justice was trivialized whenever it threatened to compromise the legitimacy of the largely patriarchal and hierarchical politico-­ cultural belief systems of grassroots communities and the state. The outcome was a jigsaw game of power-­politics favoring the rights of the state and imposing unjust burdens on the common man and woman. These imbalances, I argue, created a space for the continued political and cultural (mis)uses of rights and wrongs, and the trivialization of politically motivated forms of identity-­based violence—which, in established democratic liberal societies, would have been a clear and present danger to the human rights of people. What I also observed in the course of researching this book is that, between 1787 and 2016, governments saw people’s “Freirean” consciousness of the inalienability of their rights only as building blocks for potential uprisings against the political order. The interpretation of legitimate protests as attempts to sabotage the state exposes the fact that Sierra Leone was (and still is) in the process

Introduction   5 of developing agreed sets of human rights standards and principles. With the political legitimacy of the powers-­that-be always high on the agenda, the periodic struggles for human rights swung between replacing, and later re-­introducing, systems of rights and privileges considered primitive (and for that reason first trivialized, then regarded as “authentic”) and systems considered foreign (but were a priori well thought-­out to be objective, then alien). Thus, the constant tension between what people consider outdated or futuristic, alien or authentic, in their conceptualization of human rights, we must note, is an outcome of the country’s two legal systems: the English common law and customary law. As such, people’s constant (re)adaptation of the idea of human rights sometimes took the form of defending belief systems opposed to the universality of western morality. In the course of researching this book I came across defenders of customary law and practice in Freetown for whom the existence of the English common system in Sierra Leone was a betrayal of the imprescriptible customs and traditions of the land. They talked of the role of western morality in the unmaking of the sacred cultural norms of the country. This, they told me, made the postcolonial state acting on matters considered culturally too sensitive to leave to the mercy of judges and lawyers trained for and by the English common law system. This incapacity to deal with culturally sensitive human rights issues through the mythopoetic of customary law, they contended, contributed to the nullification of Africanized identities, and the trivialization of the central role of cultural belief systems and traditional institutions in influencing people’s behaviors towards, and receptiveness to, human rights in Sierra Leone. To them, the moral authority of the English common law system was inauthentic, its concepts of human rights based not on what the people wanted or needed but on what the self-­interested and western-­framed political establishment preferred. Thus, through a complex web of stereotypical constructs these people came to imagine the struggle for human rights as one that lacked grassroots ownership, despite the unrelenting participation of the people. That notwithstanding, it can be argued that some rights—such as the right to life, liberty, and personal security, freedom from torture, and slavery—cannot be classified solely as “western” concepts, nor should they be excluded from the cultural narrative of rights and wrongs. But some have interpreted the political terrain of the struggles for human rights in Sierra Leone as a series of tempestuous attempts to transition from western legal positivism—with its emphasis on the privileged individualization of human rights—to a multiplicity of customary norms and legal practices that habitually privilege the interests of the “community” over individual interests. Thus, where the analyses in this book make reference to Sierra Leone’s tribe-­specific belief systems on individual/societal rights and wrongs, readers are reminded of the definition of belief systems as performative discursive acts. As performative acts, all competing belief systems were intended to serve the purpose of creating platform(s) or narratives calling on Sierra Leoneans to follow a politicized crowd psychology that legitimated the traditional political authorities. Such narratives call on the people to abide by their prescriptive set of customary rules (and thus to rebel against norms of the

6   Introduction West) as a condition for social solidarity (however constrained) in the struggle for human rights. Throughout history, people’s sense of entitlement to rights (be they cultural or statutory or those enjoyed solely in virtue of being human) has been subject to the core question of whether their enjoyment compromises the sovereignty of the state and its institutions. This is especially true for situations where the idea of the state (the legality of its existence and hegemonic functions) is considered part of the power equation. For example, in their attempts to preserve the authority of the state, during and after colonial rule, some politically powerful actors created a metanarrative calling for the political disregard of people’s rights. Others (mostly the politically insignificant) exploited this state of political deprivation to justify the declaration of civil wars. War, to them, was not just a means for the creation of alternate spaces for experimentation with other models of human rights, it was a political critique of the state—its rulers, laws and institutions (see Hoffman 2006). Hence, the struggle for human rights was about the creation of spaces for the reconfiguration of human rights practices to give meaning to the cultural, social, and political markers of the downtrodden. This observation provides an insight into the role played by “people’s agency” in the appeals for a pro-­people system of government that protects the interests of both the haves and the have-­nots, both powerful and non-­powerful, both men and women. Against this backdrop, it was the rights of the “common” man and woman (boy and girl) that impacted, in significant ways, upon the debates on the constitutional direction of human rights in Sierra Leone. Thus, in terms of rational design, the assumption is that once institutional arrangements change, so too do the incentives of the struggle for human rights, leading to the realization of desired human rights outcomes in the aftermath of every social response to every incidence of human wrongs. Against this backdrop, when thinking of, and writing about, the limits of human rights and people’s continued struggles for the attainment of their “unmet” needs, the state (where rights and wrongs are played out) and the people should be treated as a part of a collective struggle for human rights in Sierra Leone.

Significance of the book There is a growing body of literature on the intersection of the discourse of human rights with the political, economic, and socio-­cultural history of Sierra Leone. But on whose terms are these histories written? What kinds of historical contents do they reflect? And how gender-­sensitive are these histories? To what extent did the lived experiences of the people (men and women, young and old, free and enslaved), and the questions of racial and ethnic identities, inform the thematic choices of the authors? What period in history was covered? What theoretical frameworks—beyond the listing of dates and the chronological pin-­ pointing of noteworthy incidents—are employed in writing these histories? How do they balance theory, global, and local practice and historical texts on the history of the struggle of human rights in Sierra Leone?

Introduction   7 Reviews of the available literature revealed that informed perspectives on the implications of human rights discourses in Sierra Leone have been hampered by a shortage of detailed research on the issue. While scholarly research into the socio-­political and economic circumstances of the people of Sierra Leone has increased significantly in recent decades, inquiry focusing on human rights issues has been largely confined to the postcolonial era. Despite the existence of some noteworthy research on people’s lives in the country, the limited corpus of reliable research on Sierra Leone has tended to adopt a negative outlook. Some notable exceptions aside, Sierra Leoneans have been commonly characterized as vulnerable victims of the humanitarian and human rights crises that have plagued the country since its inception in 1787. While acknowledging the profound challenges associated with the promotion of human rights in an environment of unending political fragility and economic uncertainty, this book sheds light on the often-­constructive engagement of the people of Sierra Leone with a variety of societal conditions, adverse or otherwise, to influence constitutional change and acceptable human rights practice. Through a multidisciplinary approach, this book aims to counter one-­sided representations of human rights and constitutional change in Sierra Leone and to contribute a more balanced examination of good and bad experiences in the struggle for human rights. This book theorizes and historicizes the figure of the Sierra Leonean, situating the study of human rights and constitutional change in Sierra Leone within both historical and contemporary cultural and global contexts. By focusing on a contextual historical analysis of the multifaceted and evolving experiences of human rights in Sierra Leone between the 1787 and 2016, this book balances attention to the local (and international) conditions that frame the socio-­cultural, political, and economic context of human rights: its rise and fall, with concerns for the broader engendered issues of the transatlantic slave trade, colonialism, women’s struggle for recognition, constitutional development, political independence, war and transitional justice, democracy and constitutional reform within Sierra Leone. This book enables us to understand the place of human rights in the precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial histories of Sierra Leone, with attention drawn to the significance of political, economic, and socio-­cultural analyses, and the articulation of local, national, regional, and transnational gendered politics. It thus interrogates power relations in the study of constitutions, humanitarianism, and human rights and opens up analytical and practical spaces for alternative ways of knowing the complex representations of human rights in the history of Sierra Leone. Moreover, Human Rights in Sierra Leone contributes to a growing body of literature attentive to the postcolonial condition in the lawless-­scapes of Sierra Leone.

A brief outline of the chapters This book is organized according to theme: human rights from the transatlantic slave trade to the founding of the colony; constitutional change and human rights

8   Introduction under colonial rule; human rights from political independence to the end of the one-­party state; the representations of “human rights” during the civil war years; and the post-­war human rights regimes. That said, a common thread running throughout the chapters is the understanding that conceptualizations of the struggle of human rights, and the space (Sierra Leone) within which they occur, vary not only by the prevailing circumstances within each era, but also the actors involved, including identities such as race, gender, and age. Against this backdrop, Chapter 1 offers a concise examination of the founding of the colony, when Sierra Leone’s claims to the western (English) doctrine of natural justice first emerged. The chapter begins with an examination of the Abolition Society’s representations of lex naturalis in its struggle to create the “Province of Freedom,” then moves on to explore various human rights challenges encountered by the resettled Africans, drawing on in-­depth archival research in Britain and Sierra Leone. In Chapter 2, again based on extensive archival research, I explain the legal, economic, political, and socio-­religious ways in which the Sierra Leone Company promoted restitutive justice in Sierra Leone. It did so within the “new” settlement of the freed slaves and in relationships with the rulers of neighboring indigenous kingdoms. I conclude this chapter with the observation that, had the Company focused on profiteering (and less on their humanitarian philanthropy) Sierra Leone could have escaped British colonialism in 1808—or even if it were to come, it would have come at a later date, and through other means. Chapter 3 locates the core human rights issues that gave rise to the political and constitutional crisis surrounding taxation and representation between 1820 and 1898. I examine the human rights implications of the 1863 Blackhall Constitution and argue that the success of the 1851 taxation policy in Freetown gave rise to the Hut Tax, and resulting conflict, in the protectorate areas in 1898. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the findings of the Chalmers Commission of Inquiry instituted in the aftermath of this war. In Chapter 4, I explain the impact of the Foreign Jurisdiction Act of 1890 on the rise of racial tensions between the Creoles and the people of the protectorate. Reflected in unequal electoral representation, this tension gave rise to many dissatisfied groups: The Creole merchants, the chiefs of the protectorate, and the British provincial and district administrators, constraining the colonial administration’s capacity to address the largely ignored human rights issue of slavery in the protectorate. Chapter 5 explores the emergence of party politics in Sierra Leone in the 1950s and role of the first two political parties in Sierra Leone, the National Council of the Colony of Sierra Leone and the Sierra Leone People’s Party in promoting the idea of a “right to political participation,” and population-­based distribution of political power. The chapter also explains how these ideas produced a crisis that would lead eventually to the indigenization of politics. The rise of self-­interested partisan politics contributed to the eruption of peasant revolts in 1955 and 1956. These revolts, I argue in Chapter 6, marked a watershed moment in the history of human rights in Sierra Leone, exposing the

Introduction   9 lack of commitment among the chiefs and politicians to the people’s struggle for economic freedom. I suggest that these revolts also bore the markers of class differences and conflicts. The focus of this chapter is on “who”—not “what”— was behind these violent episodes. Chapter 7 focuses on women’s rights, arguing that the duality of oppression— imperialism and patriarchy—in the colonial spaces of Sierra Leone contributed to burgeoning women’s interest in the struggle for independence: for country and for self. Self-­rule, I contend, was viewed as a sine qua non for national unity, including gender equity, but there was also an understanding that without the inclusion of women and their gender-­specific needs, independence would be a mere transition from the oppressive system of British colonial rule to the patriarchal paternalism of Sierra Leonean men. In Chapter 8, I critically examine the human rights-­related policy priorities of Sir Milton Margai’s government: agriculture and mining, urbanization and housing; human resource, institutions and infrastructural development, education, and the chieftain institution. In relation to efforts to “Africanize” the country’s legal sector, I explore how the government promoted the constitutional recognition of the legal authority of the chiefs through the Local Courts Act of 1963 and the Tribal Authorities (Amendment) Act of 1964. Chapter 9 deals with the unintended implications of the Milton Margai government’s “Africanization” project: the rise of what can best be described as a militant Afro-­Marxist political discourse. It explores the attempts, ultimately successful, to create an autocratic system and the way in which the predatory regime of Siaka Stevens positioned itself as the sole alternative to a human rights agenda it portrayed as hegemonic, oppressive, and a neocolonial instrument to control the postcolonial state. Chapter 10 examines the rise of ethnopolitics in Sierra Leone. I contend that, while ethnopolitics did not do away with the rogue economy of Siaka Stevens’s neopatrimonial state, it did sociologically restructure inter/intra-­ethnic political relations in Sierra Leone during the presidency of Stevens’ successor, Joseph Saidu Momoh (1985–1992). Under Momoh, ethnopolitical and ethnonational considerations came to matter more than wealth and influence. However, the government’s refusal to recognize the concerns of the underprivileged class contributed to the outbreak of the civil war in 1991. Before examining the struggle for human rights during the civil war, Chapter 11 turns to the statutory place of women’s rights in the neopatrimonial political space of President Stevens, and in the ethnopolis of President Momoh. In this chapter, the years from 1967 to 1992 are presented as the “decades of impossibility” for the women and women’s groups; this was the period in which, for the first time in the history of Sierra Leone, gender-­based violence was endorsed by the presidency. It concludes with a discussion on how the patriarchal imbalances of rights during these years created the parameters for armed conflict and dictated the platform—the bodies of women—where this conflict was to be fought. Chapter 12 is about the history of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF ), its reading of political authority and power, and its attempts to create an alternative

10   Introduction space for its model of human rights. The chapter begins with an examination of the rise of the RUF and its ideological representations of “liberation” and human rights. In the second section, the description of the RUF ’s communities (the “Sowo”) is presented. I describe what life was like inside Sowo, and the strategies of the RUF to implement its highly hierarchical human rights model. This model, I argue, was aimed at societal continuity of some pre-­war relationships and the introduction of new (and largely ideological) forms. Chapter 13 is about the Truth Commission and the competing historical truths told during its sessions. Here, I situate the very idea of the “history” of these truths in the lived experiences of the country and its people. This history, the discussion demonstrates, lives on: in the past, the present, and in the future. To see it, one should turn, on the one hand, to people’s lived experiences and their modes of memorializing the meanings of “truth,” “forgiveness,” and “guilt.” On the other hand, it requires an evaluation of the impact of “official” truth (that is, the truth of the Commission, as contained in its official report) about the country: its violated people, human rights laws, and policies. In Chapter 14, I use the history of the War Victims Fund to explain the origins and the economic, legal, and political imperatives of contributive justice in Sierra Leone. The intention is to spark debate on the possibility of an empirically informed “stand-­alone” typology of transitional justice in post-­conflict African countries. I recognize the objection that the transformation of transitional justice processes into a long-­term goal would compromise the effectiveness of the permanent institutions of a country. However, I suggest, not phasing out “transitional justice,” but rather a shift of emphasis from transitional processes to an approach that emphasizes the element of “completeness,” a continuum that persists until the lives of the victims (and the broken countries they live in) have changed for the better. In the final chapter, Chapter 15, I examine the histories and contributions of two institutions, the Human Rights Commission of Sierra Leone and the Constitutional Review Committee. In so doing, it is impossible to avoid problematizing their theoretical foundations. Their intellectual premises, as presented here, have been subjected to various interpretations by institutions, research consortiums, scholars, politicians, and legal practitioners with an interest in Sierra Leone’s post-­ war nation-(re)building efforts. I conclude the chapter by noting that, while progress has been made, political and cultural resistance to constitutional change means that Sierra Leone is still a long way from a new “Province of Freedom.” ​

References Abraham, Arthur. 1972. “Nyagua, the British, and the Hut Tax War.” The International Journal of African Historical Studies 5 (1): 94–8. Bertram, Christopher. 2004. Rousseau and the Social Contract. London: Routledge. Bentham, Jeremy. 1987. “Anarchical fallacies; Being an examination of the declaration of rights issues during the French Revolution,” in Jeremy Waldron (ed.), Nonsense upon Stilts: Bentham, Burke and Marx on the Rights of Man. New York: Methuen.

Introduction   11 Brooks, George E. 1974. “The Providence African Society’s Sierra Leone emigration scheme, 1794–1795: Prologue to the African colonization movement.” The International Journal of African Historical Studies 7 (2): 183–202. Cartwright, John R. 1970. Politics in Sierra Leone 1947–67. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press. Denzer, LaRay. 1987. “Women in Freetown politics, 1914–61: A preliminary study.” Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 57 (4): 439–56. Donnelly, Jack. 1989. Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Fyfe, Christopher. 1955. “The life and times of John Ezzidio.” Sierra Leone Studies Journal 4 (n.s.): 213–33. Gberie, Lansana. 2005. A Dirty War in West Africa: The RUF and the Destruction of Sierra Leone. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Jackson, Paul. 2006. “Reshuffling an old deck of cards? The politics of local government reform in Sierra Leone.” African Affairs 106 (422): 95–111. Hoffman, Danny. 2006. “Disagreement: Dissent politics and the war in Sierra Leone.” Africa Today 52 (3): 3–22. Kant, Immanuel. 1991. “Perpetual peace,” in Hans Reiss (ed.), Kant: Political Writings. 2nd edn. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Keen, David. 2005. Conflict and Collusion in Sierra Leone. Oxford, UK: James Currey Publishers. Kilson, Martin. 1964. “Grass-­roots politics in Africa: Local government in Sierra Leone.” Political Studies 12 (1): 47–66. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9248.1964.tb00610.x. Rashid, Ismail O. D. 2009. “Decolonization and popular contestation in Sierra Leone: The Peasant War of 1955–1956.” Afrika Zamani 17: 115–44. Reno, William. 1995. Corruption and State Politics in Sierra Leone. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. http://library.wur.nl/WebQuery/clc/975052. Reno, William. 1996. “Ironies of post-­Cold War structural adjustment in Sierra Leone.” Review of African Political Economy 23 (67): 7–18. Reno, William. 2003. “Political networks in a failing stage: The roots and future of violent conflict in Sierra Leone.” Internationale Politik Und Gesellschaft 2: 44–66. Riddell, J. Barry. 1985. “Beyond the geography of modernization: The state as a redistributive mechanism in independent Sierra Leone.” Canadian Journal of African Studies/La Revue Canadienne Des Études Africaines 19 (3): 529–45. Schwarz, Suzanne. 2007. “Commerce, civilization and Christianity: The development of the Sierra Leone Company,” in Suzanne Schwarz and David Richardson (eds.), Liverpool and Transatlantic Slavery. Liverpool, UK: Liverpool University Press. Sibthorpe, Aaron Belisarius Cosimo. 1970. The History of Sierra Leone. 4th edn. London: Frank Cass & Co. Spitzer, Leo. 1974. The Creoles of Sierra Leone: Responses to Colonialism, 1870–1945. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. Thornton, Helen. 2005. State of Nature Or Eden?: Thomas Hobbes and His Contemporaries on the Natural Condition of Human Beings. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press. West, Richard. 1970. Back to Africa: A History of Sierra Leone and Liberia. London: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. Wyse, Akintola. 1989. The Krio of Sierra Leone: An Interpretative History. London: C. Hurst & Co. Wyse, Akintola. 2003. H. C. Bankole-­Bright and Politics in Colonial Sierra Leone, 1919–1958. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

1 The transatlantic slave trade and the illusions of “freedom,” 1787–1790

In England: the anti-­slavery debate The question of the transatlantic slave trade was the most topical issue in eighteenth-­century England. On the one hand were those who saw slavery as a divine plan of God in his hierarchical ordering of the human race: whites as masters and blacks as expendable slaves.1 For them, the physique and skin color of black Africans was not the only reason they were designed for slavery; they also believed the African had a natural instinct for horrendous practices such as cannibalism and violence—hence the need to make them expendable slaves. Moreover, to capture them from their “dark” African continent and sell them into slavery in Europe and the Americas was to save them from their “primitive” ways of life, and susceptibility to communicable and non-­communicable diseases (see, Kiernan 2015). By the 1770s, those who held such beliefs were a minority, yet they included powerful members of English society. They were the owners of the West Indian Planters Association, they were members of the English Commons and House of Lords, and they were controllers of the banking sectors in London, Bristol, Manchester, and Liverpool. Prominent among them was Bamber Gascoyne,2 alderman William Newman,3 John Sawbridge,4 George Dempster,5 William Miles,6 and William Gregson.7 On the other hand were those who had faith in the laws of England (as expressed in Lord Mansfield’s ruling in Somersett’s case of 17728) and in the decency of the British people. For example, there was Jonas Hanway, a banker (one of the directors of the Bank of England) and abolitionist. In his capacity as the founding chairman of the Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor (Schama 2006), Hanway provided on a daily basis a quarter-­loaf of bread to “every black in distress” on the streets of London between January 1786 and April 1787 (Pybus 2006b, 26). He also established the first fifty-­bed hospital, in Warren Street, London, to care for destitute Africans. Moreover, it was Hanway who approached the House of Commons on January 6, 1786 to formally present a case “to the King, requesting funding to send the black poor to a place where they would be able to become independent and self-­sufficient” (Pybus 2006b, 127). It was this pioneering work of Hanway that motivated other abolitionists: Granville Sharp, Thomas Clarkson, Henry Thornton, William Wilberforce,

The transatlantic slave trade   13 William Dillwyn, John Barton, George Harrison, Samuel Hoare Jr., Joseph Hooper, John Lloyd, Joseph Woods, James Phillips, Richard Phillips, and the Reverend James Ramsay. There were those within English society who came to understand the plight of the Africans through the writings of the “sons of Africa,” a small group of London-­based former slaves—including Olaudah Equiano,9 Ignatius Sancho, and Ottobah Cugoano. There were those who came to appreciate the efforts of the Abolition Society through the religious teachings of its leaders, Thomas Clarkson (general-­secretary), Granville Sharp (chairman), and Samuel Hoare Jr. (treasurer). Some were driven to support the campaigns to end the slave trade by the literary works: Hannah More’s The Black Slave Trade and William Cowper’s The Negro’s Complaint (Thomas 1997, 497). Others were spurred on by the widely distributed pamphlets and books of William Wilberforce, Admiral Sir George Young, Henry Thornton, Alexander Falconbridge,10 John Newton, Thomas Clarkson, and Anthony Benezet. Others were influenced by the arguments for reform by the leader of the Tories, Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger, as well as other members of parliament, particularly Henry Thornton, Edmund Burke, and Charles James Fox. In fact, it was Fox who precipitated the first parliamentary debate to end slavery—or what he referred to as a “disgraceful traffic”—after he had listened to Jonas Hanway (Thomas 1997, 521). Last, but not least, there were those who were inspired to join the cause of the abolitionists by their own lived experiences of being over-­burdened by the landed gentry—the “feudal lords” of imperial England (see, Brown 2012; Drescher 1994). Irrespective of the source of their motivation, their moral and financial contributions could not have the intended impact if there was no place to take the freed slaves to; a place where, in the words of Jonas Hanway, former slaves “would be able to become independent and self-­sufficient” (Pybus 2006b, 127). Against this backdrop, it is worth noting that the founding of a “Province of Freedom” in Sierra Leone for liberated African slaves became a reality only after all possible options to relocate them elsewhere had been exhausted. The West Indies had been the first option, but the West Indian Planters Association—still embittered by Lord Mansfield’s ruling in Somersett’s case, and fearing that the existence of a “free colony” for liberated Africans in the West Indies would result in mass revolts in the plantations by those wishing to join the colony (Coleman 1999, 8)—rejected the idea. The second option was to send them to the Canadian province of Nova Scotia. This option was also rejected; the Africans who had fought for the British during the American War of Independence (1775–1783) (in exchange for their freedoms and land compensation) had been resettled in Halifax immediately after Britain lost the war in 1787 but began to protest the harsh Canadian winter soon after their arrival. The penal colony in Botany Bay (Australia) was considered but was deemed unsuitable because it was a colony of felons; to relocate freed slaves to Australia to live alongside prisoners was, both morally and psychologically, unhelpful to the formerly enslaved Africans (Coleman 1999, 7–21; 2005, 8). Interestingly, Botany Bay and Granville Sharp’s

14   The transatlantic slave trade “Province of Freedom” in Sierra Leone are historically interconnected in the histories of asylum, imprisonment, banishment, slavery, and freedom. According to John Matthews, “in the popular imagination of late eighteenth-­century Britain, nothing seemed so terrible as the fate of transportation to Botany Bay”—unless “you were black, in which case, being kidnapped into slavery was an even worse fate.” Thus, there was little difference between enslavement in the West Indies and transportation to Australia; between the condemnation of an African to be sold to a white man for some offense against the laws of his country, and the English felon transported to a wild, uncultivated country, Australia. Botany Bay, like the West Indies, was a place of no return (John Matthews 1788, quoted in Coleman 2005, 8). Finally, in 1785, a Swedish botanist, Dr. Henry Smeathman, suggested Sierra Leone. In 1771, he had traveled to the coast of Sierra Leone aboard a slave trade ship, the Fly. His suggestion was the last resort, despite the controversies surrounding it. Smeathman was of the view that the rivers of Sierra Leone “with extraordinary temperature and salubrity of the climate, rendered the place ideal for a colony of freed slaves.” However, just a year earlier (in 1786), when the British government was undecided whether to send white convicts to Botany Bay or Sierra Leone (Pybus 2006a, 69), he warned against sending them to Sierra Leone because of the “unsuitability of the place as a penal colony.” In his assessment, “the [white] convicts would die … at the rate of a hundred a month,” whereas the liberated Africans could quickly adapt to anything nature threw at them (Thomas 1997, 497). Smeathman’s ties to the slave trade were known to the Abolition Society. He was a frequent visitor to Sierra Leone where his father-­in-law, James Cleveland, was stationed as the middleman between the European slave traders and the local king, Panabouré Forbana—known to the Europeans as King Tom (Braidwood 1994, 7). Smeathman’s friend and former trading partner, Richard Oswald, had massive slave-­trading forts on Banana and Bunce Islands, and in several locations along the estuaries of Sierra Leone (Thomas 1997, 497). One cannot tell whether Smeathman was sending these liberated Africans into Sierra Leone to be recaptured by slave traders. What is known, however, was that the Abolition Society agreed to his suggestion. In doing so, Granville Sharp and his colleagues ignored explorer Mungo Park’s warnings of the high incidence of cannibalism and the slavery that characterized the political economy of the region at the time. With £5,532 (£12 for each of the 461 people) provided by the Tory Government of William Pitt the Younger, the Abolition Society hired the frigate Nautilus in April 1787. Under the command of respected anti-­slavery sympathizer and Royal Navy Captain (later Baronet) Thomas Boulden Thompson, the Nautilus departed England on April 8, for the “Province of Freedom.” On board were 290 black men, 41 black women and 130 white women, the last of whom the English nobility regarded as “women of the lowest sort in ill health and bad character” (Thomas 1997, 498). Upon arrival, the Abolition Society bought a tract of land for about £60 from Panabouré Forbana (Thomas 1997, 498) for the “purposes of offering an asylum” to the black paupers and their women (Clark 1834, 492). This land, which would result in a series of legal issues and wars

The transatlantic slave trade   15 between 1789 and 1792, was about “ten miles by twenty miles” (Thomas 1997, 498). To the north it was bounded by the Sierra Leone River; to the south and west by the sea and Calmont Creek; and to the east by Waterloo Creek and Bunce Island, where it joined the Sierra Leone River (Clark 1834, 492).

In Sierra Leone: the illusions of freedom Communicable diseases The “Black Poors” arrived in Sierra Leone during the wet season and had to spend several months (from May 8 to September 6, 1787) onboard the Nautilus. Overcrowding and mosquito bites contributed to the occasional outbreaks of sicknesses such as cholera, malaria, and flu. Astonishingly, only one person (an old man) died on board (Hoare 1828, 325). The low mortality rate on the Nautilus was due, in part, to the preventive measures adopted by the Admiralty Lords in London and Captain Thompson. Being a man with a keen interest in tropical diseases, Captain Thompson send a request to the Admiralty Lords asking them to allow him to drop anchor at San Cruz de Tenerife, in the Canary Islands, on his way to Sierra Leone. The purpose of this short visit was to buy medicinal ingredients: wine, vinegar, tobacco, and cinchona or Peruvian bark (from which quinine was derived). Though hesitant at first, the Lords approved his request (Braidwood 1994, 194). Upon arrival in Sierra Leone, there was an outbreak of malaria. Thompson used the tobacco to fumigate the Nautilus every other day (Hoare 1828, 326). The wine he used for the infusion of the Peruvian bark, which was the best available treatment for malaria in the eighteenth century (Braidwood 1994, 193). However—having disembarked in October 1787—by January 1788 the death toll had increased to 122. The shock that these deaths caused in the “Province of Freedom” was captured in a letter written to Granville Sharp by one of his beneficiaries, Mr. Elliot, on July 20, 1788. I am sorry and very sorry indeed, to inform you, dear Sir, that this country does not agree with us at all; and, without a very sudden change, I do not think there will be one of us left at the end of a twelvemonth. It was a great pity ever we came to the country, after the death of Mr. Smeathman; for we are settled upon the very worst part. We are situated on a very high hill, where nothing will come forth at all. Mr. Irwin is dead, which puts everything out of its order entirely; and, what is more surprising, the Natives [the citizens of Rocamp, and the indigenous owners of the land] die very fast: it is quite a plague seems to reign here among us. I have been dangerously ill myself, but it pleased the Almighty to restore me to health again; and the first opportunity I have, I shall embark for the West Indies.11 That at the “first opportunity” he (Mr. Elliot) had, he was heading back for the West Indies—the “place of no return” for the slaves—explains how the Black

16   The transatlantic slave trade Poors felt upon arrival in Smeathman’s “ideal” place. That he was ready to return to the scene of the misery of slavery rather than live at the mercy of sicknesses explains the elusiveness of freedom. However, communicable diseases were but one of the many challenges experienced in this vague “Province of Freedom.” Others included the consequences of the presence of thriving slave-­ trading forts or factories, hunger and crime, wars (with the natives), and ultimately the destruction of their settlement. The slave trade forts or factories Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter? … can it be readily conceived that government would establish a free colony for them nearly on the spot, while it supports its forts and garrisons, to ensnare, merchandise, and to carry others into captivity and slavery? (Olaudah Equiano and Ottobah Cugoano, quoted in Coleman 2005, 9) The presence of hundreds of thriving slave-­trading factories in Sierra Leone at the time of the founding of the “Province of Freedom” in 1787 was a confrontational reality neither the “sons of Africa” (Olaudah and Ottabah) nor the Black Poors could understand. These factories represented a significant problem for the psychological rehabilitation of the “liberated” Africans, one that was to have a far-­reaching impact on their society’s adaptation strategies, as well as their relationships with the natives. Regarding the psychological aspects, let us imagine a fictional character, “Salone,” and situate him as the protagonist in my recounting of the true accounts of the realities of the slave trade—as explained in the works of Falconbridge (1967, 17–18), Ferreira and La Rosa (2015), Diop (2014), Steckel and Jensen (1986), West (1999; 1970), and LoGerfo (1973), among others. Salone was captured and taken inside the slave factory. There he was stripped naked to allow the European merchants to inspect him and check his health: bodily and dental defects, and physique (height, bone structure, and spine). Salone stood there helplessly as fellow slaves who failed these checks were chained to massive rocks and dumped into the river. Having passed the examinations, he was branded with the logo of the enterprise that bought him using a hot iron (see, Ferreira and La Rosa 2015). Then rusty neck and foot shackles were placed on him before he was thrown into an overcrowded holding cell— with the shackles on him clamped on whatever would prevent him from running away (see, Diop 2014). If the ship that was to take him to the West Indies was delayed, he might have remained in the cell for weeks, given the minimum quantity of rotten food and water required to keep him alive. However, the ship was anchored off the coast. He and the other slaves were carried in small boats to the ship with guns at their heads—let us not forget that Salone had already witnessed the killing of two of his fellow captives who had jumped into the shark-­infested waters in an attempt to escape. Upon arrival, they were borne into the hold of the ship and stowed in the ship’s lower decks. Salone, having

The transatlantic slave trade   17 protested the overcrowding and filth (Steckel and Jensen 1986), was beaten and threatened with starvation for the greater part of the journey. To the crew members, Salone was a dangerous human cargo. To protect themselves from physical attack or attempts by Salone and his fellow slaves to seize the ship (Richardson 2001), they had safeguards in place, using bulkheads to separate their human cargo into small groups so that they can talk to only few people throughout the journey. Unsurprisingly, Salone had no idea that the actions of the European merchants who had purchased him and were now taking him to a land far away from his homeland and family members, whom he might never see again (West 1999; West 1970), were in full accordance with the law—the Slave Trade Act of 1788.12 According to this Act, it was not a crime for the crew of the slave ship to beat Salone for protesting; indeed, the Act authorized the crew members to throw him overboard if he fell ill and his sickness threatened the safety and health of the other slaves and the crew members. In fact, mortality rates during these voyages were very high. My archival research revealed that, for the years 1780 and 1807, the crew mortality—among those who sailed from Liverpool on 1,651 slave voyages to the West Indies—was 10,109 deaths (Behrendt 1997). The figures for slave deaths almost double those for the crew (Klein et al. 2001; Klein and Engerman 1976). However, the only violation the ship’s captain and owners seem to have committed against Salone was that of overcrowding. There was a story that had circulated widely concerning a notorious slave ship called the Brookes from Plymouth. The Brookes became notorious after a depiction of the cramped arrangement of its human cargo was published by the Plymouth Chapter for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade (LoGerfo 1973). Soon after this exposure of the actual image of the inhumanity the slaves were experiencing on board the Brookes, the Slave Trade Act of 1788 was passed to address the problem of overcrowding (or so it would seem). Under the new law, the Brookes (and other slave ships) could carry up to 454 slaves (the Bookes had previously carried as many as 744). Male slaves were to be allocated a space of six feet (1.8m) by one foot four inches (0.41m). A female slave was entitled to five feet ten inches (1.78m) by one foot four inches (0.41m), and every child slave five feet (1.5m) by one foot two inches (0.36m). Back to Salone: in any case, on its journey, perchance, the ship carrying him was forced to dock on English soil. Here Salone heard about Lord Mansfield’s ruling, in Somersett’s case of 1772, that chattel slavery was unsupported by the common law of England and Wales. Perchance, also, Salone received help from the Abolition Society to petition the English courts to issue a writ of habeas corpus, ordering the captain of the slave ship holding him to produce him before the court. The captain did as ordered and during the brief court appearance the judge told him that since “no master ever was allowed” in England “to take a slave by force to be sold abroad,” he must set Salone free. To the enraged captain and his supporters (let us assume they were members of the West Indian Planters Association), the judge then read the famous words of Lord Mansfield:

18   The transatlantic slave trade The state of slavery is of such a nature, that is incapable of being introduced for any reason, moral or political, but only by positive law, it is so odious that nothing can be suffered to support it, but positive law. Whatever inconveniences, therefore, may follow from the decision, I cannot say this case is allowed or approved by the law of England; and thus, the black must be discharged.13 Soon after securing his “freedom,” the Abolition Society decided to send Salone to Sierra Leone to join his fellow “liberated” Africans. On arrival, the first thing Salone noticed was the existence of several active slave trade factories—like the one where he lost his humanity; where he was branded and shackled—within the vicinity of the “Province of Freedom.” The shock from the unexpected encounter, especially after he was made to believe he was going to the “Province of Freedom,” was enough to cause irreparable psychological harm. In his study on trauma and memory, Bessal A. Van der Kolk discovered that, in cases of traumatic (re)encounters, the victim’s memory becomes less constructive. He/she cannot articulate what they know in words and symbols; and as a result, his/her memory becomes less declarative. Unlike the sensory imprints that make room for semantic representations, which may disintegrate over time, sensory experiences or lived experiences involving deep generational pain will remain stable over long periods.14 Thus, when, for example, flashbacks begin to occur, the victim would enter into a state of not being able to feel or think accurately (Van der Kolk 1998, 1994). That said, in describing the encounters that these Black Poors had, one can only try imaginatively to situate their lived experiences within contemporary empirical observations on the actions (of the slave traders) and reactions (of the “liberated” Africans). Depending on their individual experiences and coping mechanisms, it is possible the Black Poors did enter into an acute stressor hyperarousal mode, in which they were trapped between freeze, fight, or flight responses. I suggest here that the women, particularly, could have naturally entered into a physiological response mode of “freeze.” They may have remained silent but, deep on the inside, fought one thought after another in a state of altruistic fear continuum—where the fears, not for themselves, but for their children and husbands, for other community/family members, remained constant. The fear of not knowing whether their loved one would be captured and re-­sold into slavery was reinforced by the troubles of uncertainty, poverty, war, and the slave traders around them. As for the men (whose mode of response is our focus here), it is possible that their responses to these encounters were determined by the cortisol stressors that push one to be aggressive. Depending on their health (physical and mental), they entered into fight or flight stress response modes. As we shall see later, there were some who may have decided to fight, and on several occasions, they may have tried to do everything in their power to make economic and social life unbearable for the slave traders. They imposed higher fees for “anchorage and water” on ships that came to collect fresh consignments of human cargoes to the Americas and other European cities. Ship’s captains who refused to pay these dues were taken hostage until they paid (Hoare 1828). It has been reported that, on some occasions, they

The transatlantic slave trade   19 would set ships on fire and kill crew members (Coleman 1999). It is this uncontrollable “fight mode” that spurred the slave traders and ship owners to enter into a secret agreement with some of the native kings to attack and destroy the “Province of Freedom.” For example, it was reported that “they gave weapons to King Pa Komba, who attacked and set fire to the settlement in 1789” (Sibthorpe 1970, 7). It was also alleged that such groups provided the weapons used by Panabouré Forbana in the destruction of the “Province of Freedom” a few months later (Rashid 2000). In exchange, Panabouré sold them many of the 461 Black Poors captured during this attack. By the end of this onslaught, only 64 Black Poor remained, and Alexander Falconbridge, with the help of another native king, Pa Kouka, was able to rescue them from King Tom’s army (Sibthorpe 1970, 8). There were some among these Black Poor whose stress response was “flight.” One example was Mr. Elliot, who, in his letter to Granville Sharp, stated that “the first opportunity I have, I shall embark for the West Indies.”15 Interestingly, with no “safe” place to run to, many ran into the slave trade factories and ships. Some surrendered themselves and begged for employment as laborers. In desperation, and with the hope that presenting themselves as experts in capturing their fellow Africans in the rainforest communities would save them from being captured themselves, some may have asked the managers of the slave factories to employ them as slave captors. These were the ones who rose to prominence, and before long they became influential members of the inner sanctum of the (in)formal political economy of the slave trade. Such ex-­slaves-turned-­slave-traders included Messrs Henry Demane, Tacitus, Estwick, and Collins. Henry Demane was a slave Granville Sharp “had rescued at the last minute from being transported to the West Indies” (Braidwood 1994, 192). When news reached Sharp that the Demane he had rescued had become “a great man on the Bulam shore, and a dealer in slaves”16 (ibid.), he expressed his disappointment. That notwithstanding, Sharp did not regret being the ringleader of the lengthy, traumatic fight to end the slave trade. In his letter to the “worthy inhabitants in the Province of Freedom” dated November 11, 1789 (Hoare 1828, 344), Sharp asked them to remind Demane of his own feelings under the horrors of slavery, when he turned his face to the mast of the ship (into which he was trepanned by his wicked master), and formed a resolution, as he afterwards confessed, to jump overboard that very night, rather than submit to slavery for life. But he was in danger of eternal slavery! Remind him, also, of the joy he felt when he saw two men, sent with a writ of habeas corpus, so exactly in time (most providentially) to rescue him, that a single minute late (as the anchor was up, and the ship under weigh from her last station), the Dawns must have rendered his recovery impossible! Tell him I have ample reason to be convinced that his escape was by a real interposition of God’s providence … (Hoare 1828, 345–6) Sharp also asked Demane to inform Tacitus, Estwick, and Collins, who were also involved in the abominable trade, that the practice of “slave-­dealing and

20   The transatlantic slave trade slave-­holding” was dangerous to the whole species of man. For the slave trade, by “subverting every social and virtuous principle, on which the peace and happiness of mankind depend,” they should see their actions as an instance of “the horrible unnatural depravity of man devouring man” (Hoare 1828, 346). It is possible that the desire to escape hunger and danger, as much as the comforts afforded by money, may have kept these men in the slave business. There is no prior archival or scientific research that employs Walter Cannon’s flight-­orfight theory to understand the push and pull factors behind the decision of men such as Demane, Tacitus, Estwick, and Collins to enter the trade. I suggest that some may have joined the trade in response to their emotions. Drivers such as the desire for recognition (and the anger that comes with the lack of it) acts as a signal to the mind. Those were the days when European slave traders were respected; those were the racist days when African slave traders were considered more human than the fellow negroes they were selling to the Europeans. As such, the desire to use the trade to build better identities for themselves transformed the likes of Demane, Tacitus, Estwick, and Collins into influential figures—matched only by the notorious warrior king and slave trader, Panabouré Forbana (King Tom). Thus, we cannot ignore the possibility that fear, anger, and the lust for recognition were psychologically responsible for the fright, flight, and fight responses of the Black Poors to the conditions in the “Province of Freedom.” Crimes and punishment The Black Poors depleted a significant portion of their food during the four months they spent onboard the Nautilus waiting for the rains to cease. Hunger became an issue, with delays in supplies from England due to the financial difficulties of the Abolition Society and the scarcity of charter ships to transport the food from their London storehouses. One consequence of this situation was an increase in the incidence of crime. Before the arrival of the second consignment of food, clothing, and farm implements on the frigate Myro in October 1789, the Black Poors had been reduced to depending largely on food stolen from the nearby farms of the natives and from the storehouses in the slave trade factories. Some Black Poors formed dangerous gangs of thieves. They were a menace to the natives and the slave traders on Bunce Island and the Calmont and Waterloo creeks. They were also notorious for swimming long distances in the shark-­ infested waters under cover of night to steal from ships that had anchored to replenish their drinking water, or to trade with the natives (supplying them with iron bars, musket guns, and tobacco in exchange for slaves) or to capture slaves themselves (Falconbridge 1967, 18). Their criminal activities became so rampant that even the kind-­hearted King Naimbana did not intervene when Panabouré Forbana—one of his chieftains— retaliated by attacking the settlement in 1788 (Braidwood 1994, 199). During this attack, Panabouré allegedly captured and sold two of the Black Poors to a French slave ship, with the threat that for any further reported robbery involving

The transatlantic slave trade   21 the Black Poors, he would capture and sell every one of them to European slave merchants (Braidwood 1994, 198). The natives were not the only people who used excessive extra-­judicial means to respond to the petty crimes of the Black Poors. Their nemesis, the slave traders, also targeted them—excepting, of course, the white women who lived among them. Apart from sponsoring the wars of the natives against the settlement as described earlier,17 the slave traders used their decrees and legal institutions to punish the Black Poors. There are many prominent instances whereby they imposed sentences disproportionate to the offenses. One such case occurred in June 1788. It concerned five men accused of the armed robbery (using loaded muskets) of a store owned by the Liverpool slave trade factory on Bunce Island. The resident agent18 of the Liverpool slave traders, one Captain Bowie, was authorized to hunt for and arrest the assailants. Apart from putting a gun to the head of the store attendant, Captain Bowie was of the view that the armed robbers had taken some of his correspondence, which would prove valuable to the likes of Granville Sharp. Acting on this conviction, Bowie convened a meeting of his peers on Bunce Island. There, he told them what had allegedly occurred and warned them of the grave consequences if the offenders were not apprehended. Convinced by his argument, they issued warrants for the arrest of the robbers. These warrants proved useless, as the fugitives’ fellow Black Poors aided their escape on several occasions. Even after a bounty of 100 iron bars (a valued commodity in Sierra Leone) was announced, the men remained at large. Angered by this, the Bunce Island slave traders then issued a threat that they would stop and catch everyone from the settlement “who passes by their factories or forts or Islands” (Braidwood 1994, 199). Braidwood informs us that, shortly after this threat, the people of the settlement handed the fugitives over to Charles Studdard, the “Chief Justice” of Bunce Island. Studdard wasted no time in calling an ad hoc jury to try them; they were found guilty and banished to spend the rest of their lives as slaves. Soon after the verdict was rendered, they were sold to a French ship bound for Saint-­Domingue, in the Caribbean (ibid.). Was the punishment of banishment and slavery proportionate to the crime of armed robbery? Two issues are at question here: first, what the law says about these convicted criminals, and, second, what they (the convicts) and their prosecutors (who also doubled as trial judges, attorneys and jury) had to say. Regarding the law’s position on the (non)proportionality of crime and punishment, we should avoid the theorization of eighteenth-­century legal positivism— which states that “legal rules or laws are valid not because they are rooted in moral or natural law, but because they are enacted by legitimate authority and are accepted by the society as such.”19 The issue at stake was about neither innocence or guilt nor the legality or illegality of the non-­proportionality of the judgment. Rather, the issue was whether the law considered them (black African slaves and freedmen/women) human, and thus able to lay claim to the Diceyian notion of human rights. However, this was Sierra Leone, where the eighteenth-­ century’s natural law theory of morality, right (though not necessarily just), and  wrong was applicable only in the settlement. As such, a legal positivist

22   The transatlantic slave trade perspective on the legality or illegality of their actions in these trials was alien to the slave traders. And if we are tempted to argue that the enslavement of the men was contrary to Lord Mansfield’s ruling in Somersett’s case, we must address the question: Was the “Province of Freedom,” notwithstanding the Crown’s legislative approval for its creation, under His Majesty’s jurisdiction—in which case the slavers’ actions would have constituted a breach of Mansfield’s ruling? The answer, it would appear, is no. The British Government permitted the settlers to make their own laws, as long as they were not inconsistent with the statutory laws of England. They were also authorized to hold courts, assemblies, and folk-­motes, and to select their chiefs and officers among themselves. Thus, the settlement was considered, as a matter of international relations, entirely free (Hoare 1828, 336). As such, to understand the transnational legal implications of this case, we should focus on what can best be referred to as the “supply side” of the political economy of slavery. This supply side was against the idea of human rights and morality. In fact, it played a major role in shaping the relations of imperial states and non-­state actors (pirates and slave traders) at the time. I am of the view that, if it were about morality and human rights, the focus would have been on the determination of truth or falsity of factual allegations—and against the errors in the verdicts of both the ad hoc jury and judge Charles Studdard. But since it was about the promotion of the argument that slavery was still an essential component of the eighteenth-­century political economy of England (despite the efforts of the Abolition Society), the trial was designed to achieve an outcome that was in favor of the gains that were to come from the wrongful act (of armed robbery) and the error in the verdict. Whichever way one looks at it, it is the desire to discredit the relevance of “morality” (the need for an unbiassed court to try them), and promote the supply side of an abominable political economy (of selling and transporting them) that explains the outcomes of this famous case. Concerning what was said, the words of the convicts in their defense meant nothing. However, their transient lived experiences—from slavery in the West Indies, to fleeting liberty in the “Province of Freedom,” and back to slavery in Saint-­Domingue—explains their side of the story. On its part, the ad hoc jury defended its verdict. The jurors contended that it was “the mildest punishment that could be inflicted upon crimes, which would in any other part of the world be punished with death” (Braidwood 1994, 199). Granville Sharp and other members of the Abolition Society disagreed. After a series of written exchanges with the authorities on Bunce Island, and fact-­finding discussions with the inhabitants of the settlement, the Abolition Society drew the attention of the Bunce Island authorities to one ignored, yet essential, factor that determined the outcome of the trial—the primary occupation of the members of the jury at the time of the court trial. All the jurors were either owners, managers, or agents of the slave trade factories in Sierra Leone. Jacob Grigg, before he became a slave trader, was among the first European Christian missionaries to evangelize to the natives (Thomas 1997, 499). John Ormond was the manager of a slave factory in Rio Pongas, north of the Sierra Leone River. Richard Oswald was also

The transatlantic slave trade   23 a successful slave trader in Bunce Islands—in fact, he had played host to Dr. Smeathman, the Swedish botanist who recommended Sierra Leone as the “ideal” place to build the “Province of Freedom.” Another member of the jury, John Tilley, was the manager of one of the slave factories on the Calmont Creek and the Sherbro River. The identities of three other men are not disclosed in Granville Sharp’s letters; however, Braidwood (1994, 199) argues that they were probably captains of the slave ships that were in port at the time of the trial. Although he agreed with Granville Sharp’s position on the role of identity politics in the outcome of the trial, John William Ramsay attributed the problem to the lack of a government in the settlement. Ramsay was a “Tithing man” (in Granville Sharp’s first political experimentation with the frankpledge system of government—see below) and a corporal of the (dysfunctional) community watch in the “Province of Freedom.” For Ramsay, if the Abolition Society did not appoint “some men to command” the affairs of the settlement, and to “punish them,” it would be close to impossible to control the Black Poors—as he put it in a letter to Sharp, “some of them are a very bad set of people” who had “committed depredations on people here” (quoted in Braidwood 1994, 197). Ramsay’s position exposes two issues: his dissatisfaction with Sharp’s frankpledge model, and the role of power and its privileges. The type of government he wanted was not what Sharp envisaged. For Sharp, if there was to be a government, it must emerge out of a belief in the natural goodness of the Black Poors, not the need to curtail the Hobbesian natural evil in the members of the community. Regarding the functions of power, Ramsay may have envisaged it as a privilege-­based “thing.” From his law enforcement perspective, it meant using force to get each member of the settlement to be responsible to all for the safety of self and others. To Ramsay, Sharp’s experimentation with the frankpledge system—placing men in a group of ten (or tithing) under a committee of Hundredos (the leaders of the ten tithing groups)—was not enough. Even if the Hundredos were able to come together to form a shire (ten hundredos, or 1,000 people), and appoint a shire-­reeve (the equivalent of the modern-­day sheriff of an American county), there was still a need for a strong government. By strong government, Ramsay meant a government that had a monopoly in the use of force (including the powers to stage preemptive wars of self-­defense against the natives) and the powers to regulate the settlement’s “international relationships” with the natives and the slave trade factories. Wars with the natives An unusual incident that occurred on November 17, 1789 lent credence to Ramsay’s argument. The British naval frigate HMS Pomona arrived in Sierra Leone with “copies of Sir William Dolben’s Act [the Slave Trade Act of 1788] that was passed the year before to regulate the political activities of the slave trade” (Braidwood 1994, 204). Upon hearing the arrival of the Pomona, the Black Poors, led by their governor, Abraham Ashmore, went down to the wharf to see the captain, Henry Savage. The purpose of their visit was to complain about the

24   The transatlantic slave trade treasonous interference of agent James Bowie in the internal affairs of the settlement, and his sponsoring of the attacks of some of the native kings against the settlement. In the deliberations that followed, it was reported that Captain Savage sided with Bowie, who was of the opinion that the settlers were the aggressors and, moreover, that “their conduct [which] was very irregular and without any form of Government” (ibid.) had created chaos within the settlement. However, in a surprise twist, the representatives of the Bunce Island slave factories—perhaps not wanting to be seen as henchmen of Bowie—told Captain Savage that the native kings were the problem. They spoke about the attempts of one of the native kings, “King Jimmy,” to destroy the settlement on several occasions. It was against this backdrop that they “urged Savage to intervene to help restrain his [King Jimmy’s] actions.” Not wanting to be left isolated, Bowie changed his narrative and sided with them. But he advised Captain Savage of the need for caution, despite the unrelenting hostilities of King Jimmy towards the settlers. Nevertheless, he argued, if there was to be war, Captain Savage should weight his decision against the threat King Jimmy posed to both maritime security20 in the Sierra Leone rivers and bays, and the profitability of the slave trade. After the meeting, Captain Savage approached King Jimmy to hear his side of the story and to offer himself as a mediator between him and the Black Poors. The king refused to talk. Before the break of dawn the following day, King Jimmy sent some of his soldiers on small dugout canoes to destroy Captain Savage’s ship as it anchored in the bay. The plot failed; the soldiers were captured, and they told Savage who was behind their attempted attack on the Pomona. In retaliation, Captain Savage bombarded the territories of King Jimmy, destroying his capital city and capturing some of his subjects. Angered by this retaliatory act of aggression, King Jimmy declared war on the Black Poors. However, with the Pomona still anchored in the bay, King Jimmy refrained from immediate action and waited for an opportunity to destroy the “Province of Freedom.” As soon as the Pomona left the waters of Sierra Leone, King Jimmy issued an ultimatum to the Black Poors. His demands were as follows: (1) that the Black Poor dismantle their so-­called “Province of Freedom,” (2) that they release his soldiers and civilian citizens captured during the conflict with Captain Savage, (3) that they hand over the fugitives John Cambridge and James Reid,21 (4) unconditional extradition of the leaders of the settlement22 to stand trial for an alleged war against King Jimmy’s “country,” and (5) financial compensation for the damage caused by Captain Savage’s bombardment. Governor Abraham Ashmore rejected King Jimmy’s demands. In response, King Jimmy’s forces attacked the settlement and burned it down in early 1791 (Thomas 1997, 498). He also killed many of the black settlers (Kaifala 2016). The survivors, numbering about 36 men and 20 women, fled and hid in the mangroves of the Calmont Creek and the Sierra Leone River. Once King Jimmy’s army was gone, the settlers traveled to a slave trade factory called Bob’s Island but, fearing they might be mistaken for slaves and sold into slavery, all 56 survivors soon left Bob’s Island and sought refuge in the territory belonging to King

The transatlantic slave trade   25 Pa Boson, one of the most feared warrior chiefs and an arch-­enemy of King Jimmy. They were granted asylum by Pa Boson and his people treated them well. In a letter to Granville Sharp, Corporal Ramsay said that, although they had been in poverty and distress, they were thankful to God that Pa Boson and his council of sub-­chiefs had shown kindness to them, and they looked forward to a safe and happier future (Braidwood 1994, 229). Reconciliation and the challenging question of land indemnity When news of the destruction of the “Province of Freedom” reached Granville Sharp and the Abolition Society, they sent Alexander Falconbridge to Sierra Leone on a fact-­finding mission and to find an interim solution to the homelessness of the surviving Black Poors. Falconbridge was accompanied on his mission by his wife, Anna Marie Falconbridge, and his younger brother and assistant, William Falconbridge. He arrived in Sierra Leone aboard a slave ship, the Duke of Buccleuch, owned by Messrs John Anderson and Alexander Anderson (Coleman 1999, 48). He was to have traveled on another, non-­slaving ship, the Lapwing, but it had sailed a few hours before his party’s arrival at the port, and his passage on the Duke of Buccleuch was a last resort. In fact, on arrival, he “refused to accept the hospitality of the local slave traders, much to his wife’s disgust.” His brother William was more receptive to their hospitality. Soon after their arrival, William abandoned Falconbridge and joined the slave traders at Bunce Island, where he died soon afterward (Braidwood 1994, 229). Undeterred by his wife’s constant criticism of his commitment to ending the slave trade, Falconbridge journeyed inland to meet Pa Boson. After he had explained the purpose of his visit, Pa Boson took Falconbridge to his overlord, Naimbana II, the king of the Temne people. To make amends for the wrongful actions of his subchief, King Jimmy, King Naimbana announced the establishment of a restorative justice session (or “Palaver Hut,” as it was called in those days). King Jimmy was ordered by King Naimbana to attend the session. It may have been that King Jimmy was of the view that the meeting was a trap—after all, his archenemies, Pa Boson and the remnants of the Black Poors, were also invited. He agreed on condition that he be permitted to come with half of his army. Falconbridge, for his part, decided not to attend the meeting. Instead, he sent a Captain Alexander Kennedy to represent him. Captain Kennedy was accompanied by Governor Ashmore, Magistrate Thomas Cooper, Chief Police Officer John Stuart, and corporals Daniel Christopher and John William Ramsay. According to Braidwood, Falconbridge was not intimidated by King Jimmy’s army but, rather, refused to attend the session as a preventive measure. He was hot-­tempered and felt his presence might have negative consequences, especially with regards to one fundamental issue: the return of the land King Jimmy had seized from the Black Poors (Braidwood 1994, 229). It was reported that, during the Palaver Hut session, Captain Kennedy politely demanded the  return of the land the Abolition Society had bought from King Jimmy’s predecessor,

26   The transatlantic slave trade Panabouré Forbana, for £60 in 1787. King Jimmy refused, citing for his decision the complex customary law on land ownership among the Temne tribal groups in Sierra Leone. A vital feature of the common practice in the unwritten laws was the exclusion of “strangers.” For the Temnes at that time, the land formed part of the religious soul of the people. Any man23 who claimed an entitlement to any piece of land, however large or small, was required by the law to prove his ancestral connections to it. One’s ancestors must have been natives of the community where the land was situated. Moreover, these ancestors must have no history of enslavement—it was permissible for them to have been slave owners, but not slaves in the household of another family within the community. Furthermore, the person making a claim should be a member of the Temne secret society called Poro. As neither the Black Poors not the leadership of the Abolition Society met all these conditions, they were considered strangers and, under the law, could only be granted a temporary stay on the land as “stranger-­tenants.” A stranger-­tenant was required by law to cover the cost of the preparation of the contract and to shoulder all liabilities for damage done to the land during his occupancy. Stranger-­tenants could also lose their legal hold on the land upon the death of the person from whom they had leased the land. According to King Jimmy, the death of Panabouré Forbana, with whom the Abolition Society had had its agreement, released King Jimmy from any legitimate claims. That notwithstanding, it was possible to get a new lease agreement from the new owner(s) of the land. For that to happen, the strangers (the surviving Black Poor and their European advocates) were required to perform Lembe—loosely interpreted, an expression of one’s desire to be a stranger-­tenant in the land of a native landlord (Johnson 1974, 549). The stranger was required to submit his Lembe to the chief or king of the community and his council. Once approved, the stranger could choose between the three types of land contracts: (1) a lump sum prepayment (the Abolition Society did pay a lump sum of £60 to Panabouré Forbana, so, it is possible that this was the contract they selected in April 1787), (2) part payment, with the remainder of the fee to be paid off within a set period, such as by the second quarter of the second year, and (3) post-­payment of all fees upon the expiration of the term of residency. These were issues the Abolition Society had not taken into consideration, or that Panabouré Forbana had not explained to them adequately, when they signed the agreement in 1787. Had English common law applied, liability for the destruction of the land would lie with King Jimmy, and it would have been easier for the Black Poors to get the land back. However, this was precolonial Sierra Leone, and the laws of England were not applicable, even when it concerned the monies of English people. With no legal alternative, Falconbridge submitted to King Naimbana an expression of interest for the lease of another tract of land outside King Jimmy’s jurisdiction. It was approved, and the struggle began to build a new settlement called Granville Town—hence, the end of the “Province of Freedom.”

The transatlantic slave trade   27

Notes   1 Ironically, while these people saw virtue in the economic importance of slaves, at a social level they abhorred them—the men particularly, for alledgedly corrupting the virtues of some of the white women of England (Reddie 2007). Regarding their Negroid color, they were an enigma—the reason Queen Elizabeth (1533–1603) called on the Lord Mayor of London to take steps to remove “the city’s unsightly black population” (Coleman 2005, 9).   2 MP Gascoyne was quoted as saying even he “was ‘persuaded that the slave trade might be made a much greater source of revenue and riches … than it was at present’ ” (Thomas 1997, 513).   3 Alderman Newman was a banker and a sugar plantation and slave owner who “grotesquely said that, if the trade were to be abolished, the City [of London] would be filled with men suffering as much as the poor Africans” (Thomas 1997, 513).   4 Alderman Sawbridge, a “stalwart of metropolitical radicalism in his youth,” opposed William Wilberforce on the ground that “abolition would not serve Africans: ‘If they could not be sold as slaves, they would be butchered and executed at home’ ” (Thomas 1997, 513).   5 George Dempster was a parliamentary member of the Scottish seat of Perth Burghs, and he was the one who insisted that “despite his friendship with Scottish liberals such as Hume and Adam Ferguson … neither Wilberforce nor Pitt not anyone else who did not own plantations had any right to interfere with the interests of those who did” (Thomas 1997, 513–14).   6 William Wiles was a former mayor “and self-­made chairman of a bank and of the second-­biggest sugar refinery in Bristol” (Thomas 1997, 574). He made his huge fortune in Jamaica, and although he did not deal directly in slaves, he was an insurer of the slave ships; he was supportive of five pro-­slavery aldermen in elections; and he was a fierce opponent of Edmund Burke and his crusade for a just world.   7 William Gregson was famous for his statement: “Whenever it [slavery] is abolished, the naval importance of this kingdom is abolish’d with it.” He was a formidable figure: a former mayor of Liverpool, a member of the six slavers who, in 1791, bought half of the Liverpool’s slave ports, and the owner of the slave ship, Captain Collingwood’s Zong (Thomas 1997, 515).   8 Somerset v. Stewart (1772) 98 ER 499, in which Lord Mansfield held that the institution of slavery required the support of positive law, whether statute or common law, and that no such law existed in England.   9 In his autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (published in nine editions between 1789 and 1807), Equiano spoke of the horrors he experienced from the time of his capture, to life inside the ship during the voyage across the Atlantic, and to life as a slave in the West Indies. These experiences, he said, made him suicidal and he was able to survive only by embracing Christianity, joining several debating societies (including the London Corresponding Society), and traveling as a researcher as far north as the Arctic and south to the Mosquito Coast of Central America with Dr. Charles Irving. 10 It has been suggested, however, that Alexander Falconbridge’s book, An Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa, was commissioned by a group of wealthy pro-­ slavery merchants. Their intention was to ascertain whether an investment in other, non-­slave trade, economic ventures would be more lucrative than the sale of people (Pratt 1992, 238). 11 This letter was included in the manuscript (published in 1828), which contains the authenticated documents and letters between Granville Sharp and the Black Poors in the Province of Freedom. They were supplied by Sharp’s family and the African Institution, and compiled by Prince Hoare (1828, 320–1).

28   The transatlantic slave trade 12 In full, An Act to regulate, for a limited Time, the shipping and carrying of Slaves in British Vessels from the Coast of Africa (28 Geo. III, c. 54). 13 According to William R. Cotter, “despite this pervasive influence, in the more than two centuries since Somerset was decided there has been substantial controversy over whether the court, in fact, freed the 10,000–15,000 slaves who were then believed to reside in England” (Cotter 1994, 32). 14 As such it was the sensory experiences that enabled the slaves to document their lived experiences and encounters with the slave traders in poetry drawings and artistic works (in museums in Africa, Europe, and America). These lived experiences have been used by the modern movie industry to help us understand something of the times. Museums in West Africa, Europe, and North America have also contributed to our understanding of the psychological impact of the slave–slave trader encounters. 15 This quote was taken from the manuscript (published in 1828), which contains the authenticated documents and letters between Granville Sharp and the Black Poor in the Province of Freedom (see, Prince Hoare 1828, 320–1). 16 When the Province of Freedom was destroyed by the native king, Jimmy, in 1790, Henry Demane was implicated in the capture of some of the survivors. It was reported that he was behind the disappearances of James Crane, George Stephenson, Michael Banks, and Alfred Chilcot. His accomplice, a Captain Campbell, was caught transporting Banks and Chilcot to Demane’s slave trade factory on the Bulam shores (Hoare 1828, 347). 17 The leader of the Black Poors, one Mr. James Reid, reported the slave traders to Granville Sharp, who in turn complained to Prime Minister, William Pitt the Younger. In a letter (dated July 1788) sent to the Prime Minister, this was what Sharp had to say (note: the italics represent either my summary of omitted sections or addenda for the purposes of clarity): Right Hon. Sir, A letter which I have just received from the chief person in command in the new settlement at Sierra Leone, gives me much concern. The contents are of such a nature, that I think it my duty briefly to represent to you the substance of them [Sharp then went on to quote the Letters from Richard Weaver and James Reid and to thanking Pitt for his generous donation of 200 pounds from His Majesty’s Treasury]. But yet a larger body of settlers is wanted, to oppose the treachery of the Natives, instigated by the English slave-­dealers in the neighbouring factories, whose influences, I have great reason to suspect, has prompted the avarice of King Tom, and occasioned his breach of faith; for I find by another letter that all the surviving White people, the three surgeons [whose names were Mr. Tacitus, Mr. Peale, and Mr. Irwin (Hoare 1828, 318)] and the land-­surveyor that was sent out last year at the expense of Government, have actually entered the service of the slave-­dealers, and that the greater part also of the Black poor are gone into the same detestable service at different factories in the neighbourhood, and some even on board the slave-­ships. I humbly submit, whether it may not be expedient that the commander of the man of war, or frigate, now under orders for that coast, should have directions to represent to King Tom the impropriety of his conduct, in interfering with the poor people contrary to his solemn engagement, and to compel him also to declare the names of the person to whom he sold the men, and of the ships in which they were sent away; that the plagiaries may receive exemplary punishment, and that the planters may be prosecuted for buy stolen men. (Granville Sharp to the Right Hon. William Pitt; this letter is included in the collection of Sharp’s letters, as compiled by, Hoare 1828) 18 Agents were the managers who oversaw the affairs of the slave-­trading forts, which were owned by consortia of four to six merchants, including the shipowner. The agent

The transatlantic slave trade   29 was known then as the “ship’s husband” or the main slave trader, responsible for managing the capture and shipment of slaves, and corresponded “with the ship’s captain to ensure the voyage was conducted according to the owners’ wise.” See, the Bristol City Council, www.discoveringbristol.org.uk/slavery/people-­involved/traders-­ merchants-planters/slave-­traders/bristol-­slave-traders-­trade/. 19 LawTeacher, Legal Positivism, (2013), www.lawteacher.net/free-­law-essays/juris prudence/legal-­positivism.php?cref=1 (accessed: November 10, 2017). 20 It was alleged that some of Jimmy’s people had seized an American boat bound for Bance [sic] Island with rum, and “barbarously murdered” three of the four men onboard. [King] Jimmy claimed that this was in retaliation for the earlier kidnapping of four of his people by some other Americans. (Braidwood 1994, 204) 21 According to King Jimmy, these men were the leaders of a gang of thieves responsible for pillaging the farms of the natives. His men had arrested and imprisoned them in a village just outside of the city of Robana. But unbeknownst to Jimmy, these men—fearing that they might be arrested and sent back to King Jimmy—had fled from the settlement, taking refuge in the city of the kind-­hearted King Naimbana II at Robana. Although King Jimmy and all the other chieftains had autonomy, they recognised King Naimbana as the supreme chief of the loose confederacy of the chieftains that formed the Kingdom of Koya. As such, even if the Black Poor had told Jimmy of the whereabouts of Cambridge and Reid, it was political suicide to ask for their extradition or attempt to use force to arrest them in Robana. 22 Those whose extradition was demanded included Governor Abraham Ashmore and his officials: Thomas Cooper (the magistrate), John Stuart (the police commander or shire-­reeve), and seven of the eight corporals appointed to police the settlement, namely Daniel Christopher, John William Ramsay, Bernard Elliot, James Forster, John Scot, James Frazer, and James Baley (Hoare 1828, 334). 23 According this Lembe law, women were not allowed to lay claim to land in “Temne country.”

References Behrendt, Stephen D. 1997. “Crew mortality in the transatlantic slave trade in the eighteenth century.” Slavery and Abolition: A Journal of Slave and Post-­Slave Studies 18 (1): 49–71. Braidwood, Stephen J. 1994. Sierra Leone Settlers—Black Poor and White Philanthropists: London’s Blacks and the Foundation of the Sierra Leone Settlement 1786–1791. Liverpool, UK: Liverpool University Press. Brown, Christopher Leslie. 2012. Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. Clark, Charles. 1834. A Summary of Colonial Law, The Practice of the Court of Appeals From The Plantations, and the Laws and Their Administration in All the Colonies [with Charters of Justice, Orders in Council]. London: Law Booksellers and Publishers. Coleman, Deirdre, ed. 1999. Maiden Voyages and Infant Colonies: Two Women’s Travel Narratives of The 1790s. London: Leicester University Press. Coleman, Deirdre, ed. 2005. Romantic Colonization and British Anti-­Slavery. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Cotter, William R. 1994. “The Somerset Case and the abolition of slavery in England.” History 79 (255): 31–56. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-229X.1994.tb01588.x.

30   The transatlantic slave trade Drescher, Seymour. 1994. “Whose abolition? Popular pressure and the ending of the British slave trade.” Past & Present 143 (2): 136–66. Diop, Samba. 2014. “Cutting off the shackles of bondage: Freedom, redemption and the movement back to Africa in Haile Gerima’s Sankofa.” Journal of Media and Communication Studies 6 (4): 59. Falconbridge, A. M. 1967. Narrative of Two Voyages to Sierra Leone During the Years 1791–1793. London: Frank Cass & Co. Ferreira, Lúcio Menezes and Gabino La Rosa. 2015. “The archeology of slave branding in Cuba,” in Pedro Paulo A. Funari and Charles E. Orser Jr., Current Perspectives on the Archaeology of African Slavery in Latin America. New York: Springer, 45–59. Hoare, Prince. 1828. Memoirs of Granville Sharp, Esq. [Composed Of His Manuscript and Other Authentic Documents in possession of His Family and the African Institution]. 2nd ed. Vol. II. London: Henry Colburn. Johnson, Omotunde E. G. 1974. “Contract costs and the liability structure for stranger-­ tenant damages in Sierra Leone’s customary land law: An economic analysis.” African Studies Review 17 (3): 549–59. Kaifala, Joseph. 2016. Free Slaves, Freetown, and the Sierra Leonean Civil War. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Kiernan, Heather. 2015. The Lord of Human Kind: European Attitude to Other Cultures in the Imperial Age. London: Zeb Books. Klein, Herbert S. and Stanley L. Engerman. 1976. “Slave mortality on British ships, 1791–1797,” in P. E. H. Hair and Roger Anstey (eds.), Liverpool, the African Slave Trade, and Abolition: Essays to Illustrate Current Knowledge and Research. Liverpool, UK: Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 113–25. Klein, Herbert S., Stanley L. Engerman, Robin Haines, and Ralph Shlomowitz. 2001. “Transoceanic mortality: The slave trade in comparative perspective.” The William and Mary Quarterly 58 (1): 93–118. LoGerfo, James W. 1973. “Sir William Dolben and ‘The Cause of Humanity’: The passage of the Slave Trade Regulation Act of 1788.” Eighteenth-­Century Studies 6 (4): 431–51. Pratt, Mary Louise. 1992. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. New York: Routledge. Pybus, Cassandra. 2006a. Black Founders: The Unknown Story of Australia’s First Black Settlers. Sydney, NSW: University of New South Wales Press. Pybus, Cassandra. 2006b. Epic Journeys of Freedom: Runaway Slaves of the American Revolution and Their Global Quest for Liberty. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Rashid, Ismail. 2000. “Escape, Revolt, and Marriage in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Sierra Leone Hinterland.” Canadian Journal of African Studies/La Revue Canadienne Des Études Africaines 34 (3): 656–83. Reddie, Richard S. 2007. Abolition! The Struggle to Abolish Slavery in the British Colonies. Oxford, UK: Lion Hudson. Richardson, David. 2001. “Shipboard revolts, African authority, and the Atlantic slave trade.” The William and Mary Quarterly 58 (1): 69–92. Schama, Simon. 2006. Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves, and the American Revolution. London: Random House/BBC Books. Sibthorpe, Aaron Belisarius Cosimo. 1970. The History of Sierra Leone. 4th edn. London: Frank Cass & Co. Steckel, Richard H. and Richard A. Jensen. 1986. “New evidence on the causes of slave and crew mortality in the Atlantic slave trade.” The Journal of Economic History 46 (1): 57–77.

The transatlantic slave trade   31 Thomas, Hugh. 1997. The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade: 1440–1870. New York: Simon & Schuster. Van der Kolk, Bessel A. 1994. “The body keeps the score: Memory and the evolving psychobiology of posttraumatic stress.” Harvard Review of Psychiatry 1 (5): 253–65. Van der Kolk, Bessel A. 1998. “Trauma and memory.” Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences 52 (S1). West, Emily. 1999. “Surviving separation: Cross-­plantation marriages and the slave trade in antebellum South Carolina.” Journal of Family History 24 (2): 212–31. West, Richard. 1970. Back to Africa: A History of Sierra Leone and Liberia. London: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.

2 The restitutive justice policy of the Sierra Leone Company, 1791–1808

In December 1791, Alexander Falconbridge submitted the report of his investigations to Granville Sharp. The report contained a detailed description of life before the destruction of the settlement by King Jimmy, and the post-­war plight of the surviving Black Poors. It also included a set of recommendations for a new settlement: the first being the procurement of another tract of land from the friendly King Naimbana for the construction of a new settlement close to Robana. Falconbridge hoped that if the settlement were closer to Robana, King Naimbana’s forces would act as a deterrent against future attacks by the chieftains and their people. Second, there was a need to bring more freed slaves from Britain and the Canadian province of Nova Scotia to populate the new settlement—after disease and war having greatly reduced the original Black Poors. The third recommendation was the formation of a stable government, including a police force, to manage the economic, political, and religious (Christian) affairs of the settlement. The aim of these recommendations was to transform the settlement into the “most valuable inheritance of the free settlers” (Hoare 1828, II: 347). Without the help of the Abolition Society, however, the settlers could not achieve any of these goals. Their number was few, and there was the ever-­present threat of attacks from the natives, or of being captured by the slave traders and their native accomplices, or by pirates who sometimes come ashore for drinking water and to capture humans who strayed from their communities. Granville Sharp turned to the Tory Government of William Pitt the Younger for further assistance. Already exhausted by the Napoleonic wars, however, the Tories refused to invest more in the settlement, having already contributed £12 per person for the 1,100 settlers aboard the Nautilus in 1787 and subsequently provided maritime security for the frigate Myro when it sailed for Sierra Leone carrying medical supplies and food in 1789. A few months after being rebuffed, Sharp approached the Tories again. This time, it was to ask them to convince King George III to permit him to build a “free English Territory in Africa,” and to provide him with seaworthy ships to take the Nova Scotians and their belongings to Sierra Leone. He promised to ensure that the inhabitants would be required to abide by the “free customs and rights of the English Common Law” (Hoare 1828, II: 347–8). King George requested further clarification and, in a

The restitutive justice policy   33 letter dated February 13, 1790 asking the King for a Charter of Incorporation, Sharp explained that, by the last count, of about two hundred persons, men, women, and children, are so extremely poor that they cannot effectually avail themselves of the extraordinary natural advantages of that fruitful and healthy district without some further aid; and therefore they have earnestly requested in their last letters, that some merchants or factors might be induced to settle among them, in order to keep up a constant communication between England and the new English territory in Africa, where they hope to procure the necessary aid and assistance. In consequence of this request, your faithful citizens have solicited and obtained promises from several respected gentlemen and merchants of London, that they will form themselves into a Company, and advance their respective shares and proportions of money, to enable them to send proper factors or agents [not confused with the “agents” of the slave trade] to St. George’s Bay, the principal harbor of the new English territory, to promote and carry on the business of the settlement in British manufactures with the natives of the neighboring coast and rivers in Africa, provided [his] Majesty will be pleased to grant them a Charter of Incorporation. (Quoted in Hoare 1828, II: 350) The King accepted Sharp’s argument. By an Act of Parliament, the Sierra Leone Company (hereafter, the Company) was established in June 1791. The Act gave the Company a monopoly on trade in Sierra Leone. It also authorized the Company to manage the affairs of the new settlement, Granville Town (which replaced the “Province of Freedom”; named in honor of Granville Sharp). The Act placed legislative, executive, and judicial authority in the hands of the directors of the Company—all leading abolitionists, and some of them members of the Clapham Sect: Henry Thornton, William Wilberforce, Admiral Sir George Young, Thomas Clarkson, and Granville Sharp himself (Thomas 1997, 498). Immediately after, the Company announced its liberal ideas to the British nobility: respected gentlemen and women: philanthropists, naturalists, entrepreneurs, politicians, and adventurists. It also called on like-­minded people in the business community to subscribe to its trade venture, an investment that would promote an agenda “which may prove of great national importance to the manufactures and other trading interests” (Hoare 1828, II: 348). Encouraged by public support, financial and otherwise, the Company began the implementation of Falconbridge’s recommendations. One thousand black Africans who refused to stay in North America and 100 Caucasoids, mostly white men who had fought for Britain during the American War of Independence, emigrated from Nova Scotia to Sierra Leone in 1792 (Brooks 1974). At the same time, the Company instituted, in full measure, Sharp’s preferred model of government, the frankpledge system (Braidwood 1994; Kaifala 2016). This type of government reflected the utopian “revolutionary republican ideas” that not long before had taken root in France and the United States. It was a system that called for limiting the powers of government and emphasized liberty,

34   The restitutive justice policy brotherhood, and justice. In practice, government was reserved for the “European administrators appointed by a board of … Company directors in London” (Schwarz 2007, 255). That notwithstanding, the renaming of Granville Town as Freetown in 1792 was intended to give the Africans a socialized “self-­conscious” appreciation of the intentions of the Company: to build a society where the Africans could live as free men and women (Fyfe 1990). Regardless of the form of government, the directors and shareholders of the Company had invested in an economic venture to reverse the political economy of the slave trade. They were interested in change: change from the use of unpaid human labor; change in the consumer behavior of Europeans. The venture was about asking Europeans to do what was ethically right: invest in the lives of the people who had suffered hundreds of years in slavery for the material satisfaction of the Europeans. They wanted the Europeans to divest from economic activities that had exploited Africa and Africans, and to invest in the production of agricultural products produced by paid African labor. Though ignored by economists, this strategy was the first attempt to develop, and put to the test, the possibilities of developing an egalitarian free market economy, with an emphasis on corporate social responsibility, in Africa. Had this economic model remained the template for financial and economic investment after 1808, following the Company’s exit and the transformation of Freetown into a British colony, it might have resulted in the development of a culture of economic rights. However, in a world of competition—between good and evil, greed and philanthropy—what the Company thought was a sustainable means to end the transatlantic slave trade produced mixed outcomes. On the one hand, it succeeded in institutionalizing restitutive justice for the crime of slavery—a crime against humanity perpetrated by Europeans, aided by the complaisance of some Africans, between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries. On the other hand, it resulted in economic and political upheaval. History teaches that, where political and economic interests clash with morality, the latter will, in most cases, end up being the sacrificial lamb. The Company was competing against slave traders, who felt the Act of 1791 was detrimental to their profitable trade in Sierra Leone. The slave traders had begun their amoral economic activities in Africa as far back as the 1500s. It took them almost a century to get the British government to recognize their activities through the Royal African Company Act of 1672. This Act had granted them the “monopoly to trade [within] the five thousand miles of the western coast of Africa”: from Cape Salle in the north to the Cape of Good Hope in the south (Davies 1957, 213). If the Sierra Leone Company was interested in competing with these traders, it could have concentrated on increasing its profit margins. However; the aim was to invest in activities aimed at changing consumer behavior towards the products (the slaves) of the traders. However, the activities of the Company were not purely about restitution. It was also interested in making money to reduce its deficit. To this end, the directors of the Company were engaged in “ethical” economic activities, especially the extraction of products—ivory, wax, gum, copal, grains and alluvial minerals—that were plentiful on the west coast of Africa.

The restitutive justice policy   35 This chapter examines how the Company conducted itself in the furtherance of its commitment to replace sixteenth-­century mercantilism, and its endorsement of slavery, with ethical and restitutive economic policies. Drawing from archival reports, including the annual reports of the Company and the personal journals of some of its directors, this chapter describes the economic, political, and socio-­religious strategies employed by the Company to promote restitutive justice in Sierra Leone between 1791 and 1807.

The Sierra Leone Company and its critics What purport today, in the curriculum of schools and universities, to be the historiographies of the Company’s activities in Sierra Leone are in fact the vestiges of unhelpful postcolonial narratives. I am no stranger to these curricula; some of these history books were compulsory reading in the schools and universities I attended in Sierra Leone in the 1980s and 1990s. When I began the archival research for this chapter, I conducted a review of all the prescribed history books for primary schooling and university education in Sierra Leone and many others published in recent years. The Company’s attempts to use its economic activities to promote human rights were either omitted or misrepresented in all the works reviewed.1 There are those that presented the Company as a cabal of greedy Europeans who ventured into Sierra Leone with the sole intentions of exploiting the natural and agricultural resources, with little or no positive contributions to show for it. Others saw them as the first colonizers of the free precolonial spaces of Sierra Leone. Others (whose texts were published in recent years) referred to them as “white ‘hypocritical pretenders’ to [the Christian] religion who were trying, most undoubtedly, to operate against honesty, truth, and justice, and ruin the quiet and happiness of a thousand souls” (Kaifala 2016, 95). These misdirected conclusions, my research revealed, were based on the letters of complaints by three sources, all of them suspect: Isaac Anderson and Cato Perkins (the representatives of the Nova Scotian settlers), and Marie Falconbridge (the “unofficial” spokesperson for the slave-­trading forts). Anderson and Perkins were known for their attacks on the character of the abolitionists, referring to them as fraudsters in almost all their letters to the authorities in England. To take just one example, in one letter (dated November 20, 1793) written to the chairman of the “Court” of Directors, Henry Thornton, the Nova Scotians accused John Clarkson and the Company of failing to fulfill their promises to them. The letter in question states that John Clarkson was authorized by the Directors of that Company, to say, each head of a family should have a grant of not less than twenty acres of land, for him or herself; ten acres for a wife, and five acres for each child. That those grants should be given … free of any expense or charge whatsoever. There has been one fifth part of the lands distributed to most of the settlers, but they are in general, so mountainous, barren, and rocky, so to be of little or no use to them; nor was the surveying of that fifth part completed … at which time

36   The restitutive justice policy the rains had set in, therefore it was impossible to clear or make much progress this year, and you must be sensible, Sir, of the injury we sustain by loosing two years in the improvement of those lands. (Coleman 1999, 146–7) According to Coleman, it is possible that the slave traders bribed Anderson and Perkins to sow discord between some Company shareholders in England, the Company’s board of directors, and the Nova Scotians. That notwithstanding, Clarkson sought on several occasions to persuade the native kings to lease more of their cultivatable land to the Company, but was rebuffed. This was not the first encounter the abolitionists had with the Temne tribal kings; as noted in the preceding chapter, in 1789 and 1790 the latter had invoked customary land law or Lembe (which prevents the sale of land to “strangers”). Where the encounters of 1793 differed from those of earlier years was the increasing hysteria of the previously well-­disposed King Naimbana. After his meeting with Anderson and Perkins, he angrily told Clarkson that “every white man [was] a rogue” (Coleman 1999, 25). The refusal of Anderson and Perkins to desist from writing accusatory letters to the Company leadership and the British Prime Minister led to conspiratorial theories, including that the slave traders were funding their activities and paying for their voyages to and from England to present their petitions. One can easily dismiss the accusations of Anderson and Perkins. The Nova Scotians appointed these men as their representatives because they themselves were, for the most part, illiterate. There was, thus, a real possibility that they—the Nova Scotians—would put their thumbprints on almost any document these men presented to them. Suspicion is raised by discrepancies in the written words of Anderson and Perkins and the expressed words of the Nova Scotians, who described Clarkson as a man with a “sweet and gentle behavior”; a man with a “kind and tender” heart, and “a father” (Coleman 1999, 22). However, the theory that cannot be dismissed is that Anna Marie Falconbridge was behind some of the letters of Anderson and Perkins. According to Coleman, Mrs. Falconbridge was not like other women of her time. She was the self-­appointed nemesis of the Company and its male officials, whom she “once accused of being offended by the ‘delicacy’ of her near naked body in a white dress” (Coleman 1999, 24). In the eyes of the Company’s Court of Directors, she was untruthful and a “rogue, conspicuously lacking in the stricter codes of propriety familiar to English women travelers.” Mrs. Falconbridge published a series of letters in 1793, in which she presented what she believed was a counter­narrative to the earlier reports of her husband, Mr. Falconbridge, on behalf of the Abolition Society. In one of her reports, she described her husband as a “drunkard and an abusive man,” and not competent to write a balanced report on the activities of the slave traders and the plight of the Black Poors, whose settlement was destroyed in the war of 1789. In 1794, she published another set of accusatory letters to “counter the official Company account of the ‘infant colony.’ ” When the Company accused her of betraying what her husband stood for, she issued, within the same year, further sets of letters in which she

The restitutive justice policy   37 reminded the stakeholders of the Company who she was: a “female traveler in conflict” with the Company (Ferguson 1997, 1). She was a believer in the hierarchy of human races, of the supremacy of the Caucasoid race and the inferiority of the Negroid race. Against this backdrop, she saw “the abolitionists as extremists,” and “sour evangelists, ‘hypocritical puritans’ and ‘canting parasites who clustered around Freetown’s ruling clique.’ ” She concluded that letter by calling on the African rulers—whom she called the “flirtatious Scots” of the slave factory on Bunce Island—to embrace slavery because it was a “necessary condition” and the inevitable destiny of black Africans (Hall 2012, 26). Her stance angered the directors of the Company. They, too, began to send letters to the settlement in Sierra Leone and to the British Government, seeking to expose her untruthfulness. They reported that she was present during their meeting of October 19, 1791 in London, and had not objected to the unanimous vote of the Company’s General Court2 to bring the Nova Scotians to Freetown on humanitarian grounds. An excerpt from the minutes of the Company’s meeting reads: The important article of intelligence, which was above referred to, respects a large and valuable accession of inhabitants, the new Colony is about to receive from America. It consists of some Free Black Families, to the amount, it is believed, of at least 1000 souls, a part of many who, at the close of the American war, was carried from different Provinces of the United States into Nova Scotia, where they were promised allotments of land. The Directors hardly feel themselves at liberty to speak without reference in this part of their narratives [of unsubstantiated claims of promises]: let it suffice therefore to say, that the rigour of this climate and still more the degraded condition wherein these poor people found themselves, and the ill treatment they received, after having many of them bled in the service of Great Britain, inducing them to wish for a change of situation, they deputed an agent to make application for that purpose to the British Ministry; and in consequence of his express solicitations to that effect, it was settled that as many of them as might chuse it, should be conveyed, at the expense of Government, to our new settlement at Sierra Leone. The Directors are happy in being able to declare, from the accounts of a person, on whose information they can entirely rely, that under many disadvantages, they have proved themselves a sober, orderly, industrious set of people, from whole domestic habits, and ability, as well as disposition to labour for the support of their families, the most pleasing prospects, may be indulged. (The Sierra Leone Company 1792, 10–11) They went on to explain, in a letter dated November 10, 1973, the oddity of Anderson, Perkins and Mrs. Falconbridge’s constant accusations that the Company had refused to recognize “the legitimacy of the black settlers’ claims for land” (Hall 2012, 23).

38   The restitutive justice policy

The Company’s restitutive justice policies in the colony of Freetown The restitutive regulation of economic investment Why would people invest in an economic venture developed to weaken the lucrative slave market? The slave-­trading ports of England had enjoyed a constant supply of slaves from the Royal African Company since 1672. However, the slave markets in Bristol and Liverpool, England were disrupted by the intensifying War of the First Coalition against France (1792–1795) and, by 1794, not a single slave ship was anchored in either of these slave-­trading centers. Some of those ships were engaged in helping British forces evacuate the French cities of Toulon in the wake of Napoleon’s onslaught, others had flooded into Africa to revive the slave trade. They were present in Sierra Leone and, as Governor Zachary Macaulay recalled, in a letter (dated 1796) to one Reverend Samuel Hopkins, slave traders came from as far as the United States, and their presence in Sierra Leone had reached “an unprecedented degree.” He expressed his fears that their “pertinacious adherence to the abominable traffic” was detrimental to the struggle to abolish the slave trade (Thomas 1997, 536). With their profit margins on the decrease, these slave traders, led by James Rogers—a key shareholder in the Bristol slave trade ventures and a man who was “most vociferous in his denunciation of the abolition” (ibid., 535)—made several attempts between 1792 and 1804 to buy shares from the Company. This attempt was unacceptable to the directors of the Company; as the Company recalled in its 1804 report, these traders “constituted one of the reasons for the limited progress of the settlement” (Schwarz 2007, 264). In 1794 the Company re-­issued its policy, reminding all potential shareholders that their Company was unlike any other. Their shares were an ethical investment, and a practical mechanism through which “those who feel for the wrongs [against] Africa” could compensate her for the “injuries she has so long been sustaining at our [i.e. the Europeans, including the British people and government] hands.” (Schwarz 2007, 254) England-­based Swedish abolitionist, Carl Bernhard Wadström, in An Essay on Civilization (1795), argued that the directors “assumed a tone of moral assurance” because they were conscious “that the West India interest might try to subvert their moral objective, and the directors attempted to ‘prevent the intrusion of improper persons into the Company’ ” (Wadström 1795, quoted in, Schwarz 2007, 256). The screening of potential shareholders also contributed to the resilience of the Company. Those with links to the slave trade were not allowed to buy shares, on the basis that slave traders would contaminate the benevolence of the Company’s principles of Christian ethics and moral economic investment. The Company explained in its annual reports for the years

The restitutive justice policy   39 1791 and 1804 the benefits of engaging only in “just and honorable commerce” throughout the west coast of Africa. Of course, there were some shareholders, including Company officials, who could not resist the urge to engage in the abominable trade. For instance, a Captain Davies was caught smuggling two boys into Freetown from the Gold Coast (modern Ghana) and was arrested. At trial, he argued he had brought the boys to Freetown for schooling and intended to return them to their families thereafter. Unconvinced by his claims, the Company found him guilty of child trafficking. He was dismissed and banished from West Africa. Another instance involved one Alexander Grierson. His provocative comments to some of the Nova Scotians—that he was not sure how he was going to use them economically “if he had them in the West Indies”— resulted to two days of arson and riots in June 1794. He was also brought before the court, found guilty of plotting to sell the Africans, and banished from the colony (Schwarz 2007, 264). This willingness to investigate instances of slave trading among its shareholders, and cancel the shares of those found wanting, was the raison d’être of an urgent meeting convened in 1794. During this meeting, shareholders were reminded of the risks and sacrifices that came with their investment. They had invested in an enterprise “worthy of the noble aims of the Company”—to achieve “freedom” and to promote “civilization” (through evangelism and formal education). As such, they should embrace the sacrifices that attended the use of their monies to promote the Company’s work in Africa, “which [monies] the Sierra Leone Company … considered as their own,” as the directors informed them (ibid., 254). It was from these monies that the Company provided the training for its employees, especially the Africans. However, the Company was criticized for not putting in place “practical guidance on how the Company traders should conduct business on the West African Coast” (Schwarz 2007, 262). Notwithstanding such criticism, to further its commitment to use these monies to rebuild Freetown and to strengthen its defenses against possible infiltration by slave traders, the 13-man board of directors issued an amendment to the requirements for becoming a shareholder in the Company, adding the condition of strict adherence to the doctrinal teaching of either the evangelical or the Quaker Christian religious sects. The board members wanted the Company to be a band of brothers—as the unselfish followers of Jesus were to the Church. These founding members of the Company had full knowledge of who they were, and what they were, before they asked for the Act of Incorporation from the English government. All were members of the Clapham Sect, save for two officers in the Royal Navy, Rear Admirals Sir Charles Middleton, and Sir George Young. The others, in order of their position in the Company (and in the London Committee of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade), were Granville Sharp, Thomas Clarkson, Henry Thornton, William Dillwyn, Richard Phillips, Samuel Hoare Jr., William Wilberforce, and John Lloyd. As for the composition of the ordinary shareholders, Suzanne Schwarz (2007, 256) informs us that they included leading abolitionist thinkers and activists. The thinkers included Josiah

40   The restitutive justice policy Wedgwood, John Newton, Hannah Moore, and Dr. Peter Peckard, whose “essay title on the legality of slavery inspired Thomas Clarkson’s lifelong commitment to abolition.” The activists included John Yates and William Rathbone (members of the Roscoe Circle in Liverpool, and among the first to subscribe to the Company), and Thomas Walker, one of the organizers of the famous abolitionists’ protests in Manchester (between December 1787 and June 1789). Another clause added to the amended constitution was a by-­law on the salaries of Company officials. The October 19, 1791 Report of the Court of Directors of the Sierra Leone Company to the General Court spoke of the voluntary decision of the directors not to accept salaries. The 1792 report made it a rule that none of the members of the Court of Directors was to receive financial rewards. An excerpt of the report reads: The Company is authorized by the Act of Incorporation to make Bye-­Laws; and to it has been in consequence since ordained, that no Director shall be concerned in any contract whatsoever relating to the business of affairs of the Company; or directly or indirectly take any fee, present, or reward; as also that no officer or servant of the Company shall directly or indirectly receive any payment, gift, or compensation, other than such as shall have been allowed and duly established by the Court of Directors. (The Sierra Leone Company 1792, 9) This by-­law aimed to shield the Company from the influence of the British government, particularly the individual members in the Commons and Lords still supportive of the slave trade. However, the potency of this by-­law was short-­ lived. The Company was in financial distress following Napoleon Bonaparte’s attack on the colony of Freetown in 1794 and the Nova Scotian rebellion of 1800, and consequently amended the by-­law to allow it to receive funds from the British Parliament. The Company’s 1806 report disclosed that its expenditures for the years 1800 and 1805 doubled the financial assistance it received from Parliament (reported in the Journal of the House of Commons, 1806, 826–7). It noted that, apart from the £8,700 spent on rebuilding in the aftermath of these attacks, the Company spent in excess of £12,000. In 1805, its excess expenditure was £13,346. However, between 1800 and 1805 the British Parliament defrayed some part of this cost. The Company received £7,000 for the erection of fortifications in 1800. In 1801 and 1802, the Company received £4,000 per annum, with tax deductions of £346, for social services. It also received £10,000 for the construction of new fortifications in 1803 and 1804. In 1805, it received £14,000 (minus £653 in property and other tax deductions). Without this financial help, it would have been impossible to pay the salaries of the African workers running their businesses in West Africa. While salaries were low—as the only employer, the Company was at liberty to regulate wages—it did not employ workers as slaves (Hall 2012, 28) in its clothing, ivory, pepper, cattle, wax, hides, and gold industries.

The restitutive justice policy   41 The Company and the indigenous peoples: reconciliatory economic, political, and socio-­cultural empowerment activities The years between 1672 and 1808 were characterized by fierce European rivalry in the courts of the native warrior kings and chieftains. On the one hand was the Royal African Company (until 1791) and the slave traders; on the other, the Sierra Leone Company. Apart from the Bristol and Liverpool financial crisis of 1794, cholera outbreaks in the West Indies and Cuba in 1796 had resulted in the mass exodus of these traders from the Americas into the coastal regions of West Africa, including Sierra Leone. The Crown’s grant of a deed of incorporation to the Sierra Leone Company resulted in open competition between these two factions. The slave traders presented themselves to the native kings and chieftains as business people, interested solely in buying (or exchanging precious objects like mirrors, or consumables like tobacco for) slaves captured by the armies of the native rulers. In his study of the activities of the Royal African Company and the slave traders in the courts of the chieftains, K. G. Davies explains that their relationships with the native authorities was based on temporal interests. In the absence of strong ties with the natives, their business transactions “remained dispersed rather than concentrated to a few known markets” (Davies 1957, 278). Moreover, as new settlements emerged along the West African coast, the slave traders would move to these places and establish “some modus vivendi” with the local leaders. Davies does not specify the nature of the relationships, but it is known that some slavers married the daughters of local rulers. Because of these connections, some chiefs refused to deal with the representatives of the Sierra Leone Company. However, with the waning influence of the Royal African Company, some kings realized it was impossible for the slave traders to conquer and occupy their kingdoms3 and were more willing to grant an audience to the Sierra Leone Company representatives and Christian missionaries. For its part, the Sierra Leone Company presented itself to the natives as a company that valued their safety, livelihood, and socio-­economic empowerment. In pursuance of this aim, the Company used several strategies: diplomacy, trade and commerce, agriculture, and formal western education. Hence, much of what they did, in the area of diplomatic relations, was aimed at controlling local activities to the end of transforming their goal (to end the slave trade and sponsor other business ventures) into reality. To the communities within a 200-mile radius of Freetown, the Company offered to become their official mouthpiece—just as it had offered itself to the European abolitionists, educators, archaeologists, and missionaries. Some accepted the offer, others refused. To the citizens of these communities, the Company’s message was simple: turn to other economic activities, and we will be primary trading partners. A case in point was the visit by the Company key negotiator (and later governor of the colony), Zachary Macaulay to William Cleveland, a leading African slave trader on Banana Island, in July 1793. Macaulay succeeded in persuading Cleveland to destroy his slaveholding docks and, together with the Company, they began what would eventually become a profitable business: the cultivation and supply of rice and camwood to the colony of Freetown.

42   The restitutive justice policy The Company’s first recorded attempt to develop its trade relations occurred in June 1793. Zachary Macaulay and Lieutenant William Dawes (who was brought to Freetown from Australia, and later became governor) were dispatched to the hinterlands of Sierra Leone. To the general public in Freetown, the purpose of this visit was to pay “respect to some of the chiefs.” However, the ulterior—and primary—objective was to secure the consent of Pa Cumba, a ruler of the Koya Temne, to establish a factory for the purchase of camwood, gum, copal, and rice. Macaulay’s visit to William Ado, an elderly chief of Jenkins Town on the north-­eastern corner of Sherbro Island, was intended to “acquaint [himself] with him and the other chiefs, to form connections with them, to pay the customs, to fix factories on a sure footing, to adjust differences, and to give them a thorough knowledge of the views and intentions of the Sierra Leone company.” (Schwarz 2007, 260) Lieutenant Dawes succeeded in establishing trade relationships with the Bullom rulers of the micro-­kingdoms in the Rio Nunez and Rio Pongo areas, and with the kings of the Fullah and Susu tribal communities, in March 1793 and January 1794, respectively. Persuading these powerful rulers to establish commercial activities with the Company was significant, in light of both the strategic location of their kingdoms and their notoriety for contributing more than a quarter of the total numbers of slaves shipped from the ports of the Nunez and Pongo rivers to Europe and the Americas. To strengthen these commercial links, and to prevent the rulers from re-­establishing relationships with the slave traders, the Company appointed John Watt as its non-­resident ambassador to these kingdoms. Within a year, these kingdoms began to sell cattle, rice, and ivory to the European merchants (approved by the Company) and the government in the colony of Freetown. With demand for its agricultural produce on the rise, the Company employed people from among the Freetown citizens to teach the Company’s trading partners (the native kings and their people) how to plough the ground with cattle (Mouser 2009). After the establishment of commercial relations with the Company, the local rulers also formalized diplomatic ties: with the micro-­kingdoms of the Rio Nunez and Rio Pongo establishing embassies in Freetown in May 1794. They were joined a year later by the emissary of the Mandinka tribal king—whose kingdom was located along the Kamaranka River, north-­south-east of Freetown (in the area the Nova Scotians called Furry Canada; present-­day Port Loko District). On the strategic use of western education, the directors of the Company set for themselves the task of replicating the primary schools Jonas Hanway and his Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor had established in the 1770s in London. The Company aimed to establish and use schools to propagate Christian doctrine within and beyond the colony of Freetown (Mouser 2009, 2). To achieve this, the 25-year-­old governor, Zachary Macaulay—the chief administrator of Company business in Freetown—brought many European evangelists, teachers, and preachers to Sierra Leone between 1792 and 1807. They include

The restitutive justice policy   43 the Reverends Nathaniel Gilbert IV (of the Wesleyan church), Melvill Horne (a Wesleyan), James Langlands (of the Established Church), John Clarke (a Scottish Presbyterian), John Garvin, and Jacob Gibbs4 (of the Presbyterian church), and James Watt5 (a Quaker missionary). The coming of Peter Greig and Henry Brunton (both members of the Edinburgh section of the Long Mission Society) in 1797 resulted in the founding of the first school outside the Freetown Colony, in 1798. The school they operated was located “in a nearby village belonging to a local headman named Fantimani” (Mouser 2009, 4). Brunton was credited for developing the alphabet for the Susu language, which he published in 1802 in a book titled A Grammar and Vocabulary of the Susoo Language (Schwarz 2007, 266–7). With the approval of their parents, and following a lengthy vetting process by officials of the Company, Brunton took several boys from the Susu kingdom for schooling to London at the African Academy (which had been established in 1799 with funding from Brunton, Macaulay, and other abolitionists). One of these boys, whom Brunton named Jellorum Harrison, was a member of an important family of local entrepreneurs. His family had established trade links and marriage alliances with some of the prominent European families in Sierra Leone: the Ormonds (an English family who controlled the slave-­trading forts on the upper Rio Pongo); the Fernandezes (a Spanish family who owned businesses along the Dembia River area); and the Gomezes (a Portuguese family with shops and factories in the lower Rio Pongo region). Following the founding of the Society for Missions in Africa and the East (which later became the Church Mission Society (CMS)) in 1799, some of the Clapham Sect of the anti-­slavery movement became members. They include the sect’s rector, Reverend John Venn, and council members Brunton and Macaulay. Anti-­slavery activists with membership in the Eclectic Society and the Established Church, including Nathaniel Gilbert IV and Melvill Horne, were among the Society’s patrons. The Society declared the years 1799 and 1804 the era of “providential theology.” Why pursue providential theology in Freetown, of all places? It was their response to the complex theological questions churches were faced with in the 1790s. The theologians were interested in whether “providence” was about “divine intention” or “progressive evolution.” The founding members of the Society believed that, as agents of Providence, it was necessary for them to take the gospel outside Freetown. Moreover, it was also a duty to study the cultural beliefs and languages of the natives, as only through this could they teach them the good news of the Gospel. They considered this “company experience,” when they approached the Company Court of Directors to request permission to work in Sierra Leone. The directors did not just grant this request; they became patrons, advisers, and volunteer teachers for the Society (Mouser 2009, 6). The inclusion of directors in the Society, however, created some challenges. On the one hand, these directors were ambassadors for the universalization of British cultural beliefs. To this end, they insisted that, in the furtherance of its work among the natives, the Society should focus on the social transformation of the natives. After all, the social transformation of these people was the first step to persuading them to embrace the “westernized” lifestyles of their

44   The restitutive justice policy fellow Africans in the colony, and the Company’s way of doing politics and economics. On the other hand, they were businessmen. Where the evangelists, lay-­ preachers, and teachers of the Society were concerned with “education and civilization,” the Company directors were calling for a balance between propagation of the Christian doctrine and the promotion of commerce in the courts of the indigenous kings and chiefs. The educational aspects of the Society’s work were suspended during the Nova Scotian rebellion of 1800 and 1801. When it resumed its work, the Muslim clerics of the Susu ethnic group in the northern regions of Sierra Leone declared the officials of both the Company and the Society to be enemies of Islam and began non-­violent protests against the Society’s proselytizing work (Mouser 2009, 8). Despite these setbacks, by 1806 the Society was active in almost all the major capitals of the southern hinterlands, and some in the northern region. This Christian expansion was aided by the arrival of three German Lutheran missionaries and ethnographers, Leopold Butschet, Gustavus Nyländer, and Johann Prasse. Their work among the Susus helped calm the Muslim clerics and they remained with the Susus until 1817, when the colonial government recalled them to Freetown to focus on the recaptives6 in the colony (Kolapo 2018, 138). Thus, by the time the Company transferred sovereignty of Freetown to the Crown in 1808, about 200 sons of the ruling class of the indigenous people had received standardized British primary education; and 30 crown princes of the micro-­kingdoms within a 300-mile radius of the colony of Freetown had graduated with diplomas in London. Among them was the famous son of King Naimbana II of Robana, the crown prince John Henry Frederic Naimbana7—popularly known in England as the “Black Prince.” It was Alexander Falconbridge who took him to England in 1796, and the Company paid for his schooling as a show of its commitment to empowering the people of Sierra Leone. Unfortunately, the Black Prince died shortly after his return to Robana. It was these 230 Englandand Sierra Leone-­educated men the Company used to propagate its anti-­slavery ideology nationally (in Sierra Leone) and internationally (in England and the United States of America). In search of “equity” in restitutive justice: the Company’s mayoral court—composition and restorative human rights framework One positive outcome of the Nova Scotian rebellion (1800–1801) was that it convinced the British government to grant the Company the right to adjudicate cases using English common law instruments. Issued in 1802, this clause, otherwise known as the Charter of Justice, was the first legal instrument instituted to promote “equity” before the law in the colony of Freetown. It was the colony’s core human rights instrument until the promulgation of the 1893 Order in Council, which dissolved the “mayor’s court of the colony” and created the Freetown City Council (Wyse 1987). To some, the Charter of Justice had one negative effect. It destroyed all possibility of implementing Granville Sharp’s model for achieving justice. Sharp had drafted his model to reflect what he

The restitutive justice policy   45 hoped the colony would be—a utopian, free society for the former enslaved black Africans, who, despite being the occupants of Freetown, were yet to experience the true meaning of “freedom.” In its intended outcomes, the model that comes closest, perhaps, to Sharp’s is John Rawls’s theory of justice (which appeared two centuries after Granville Sharp’s death). In Granville’s ideal society, there would be equality for all (similar to Rawls’s liberty principle) and, if inequality before the law was the best possible outcome, it should be to everyone’s advantage (comparable to Rawls’s difference principle). Like Rawls, Sharp based his ideas of equity before the law on the principles of the socially just distribution of justice, with legal guarantees for life, liberty, and property. Sharp had hoped that his model would promote the constitutional rights of the former enslaved Africans, in the same way the ancient law of Magna Carta protected the English nobility in 1215, and further, that it would prevent political attempts to downplay the dangers of the slave trade. Granville Sharp did not get his way. However, all was not lost. To the perceptive reader, the 1802 Charter of Justice was a principal legal instrument that laid the foundations for the rise of the Westminster model of the rule of law in the six years before British colonial rule began in Sierra Leone in 1808. To these ends, the Charter granted the Company the powers to try “civil cases effectually” and to manage the “trial and punishment of crimes or misdemeanors committed” in the colony of Freetown, the surrounding slave trade forts, and on ships within the waters of Freetown (Clark 1834, 500). In essence, the Charter gave the directors of the Company the powers to make and implement by-­laws, statutes, and ordinances that were neither repugnant to the laws of England nor against His Majesty’s pleasures. Moreover, it gave them the authority to establish in Freetown “one body politic and corporate, by the name or style of ‘The Mayor and Aldermen of Freetown’ ” (Clark 1834, 502). Regarding its authority, this “body politic” was given the powers of perpetual succession. With “equitable justice” as the sole objective, the members—the mayor, the aldermen, the sheriff, the Court’s Accountant-­General, the esquires, and the junior officers/clerks—had a legal personality. In that, they were not above the law; they were entitled to the right to sue, but also to be held liable if found guilty of wrongdoing, including under claims of tort liability and negligence. Concerning their functions, this body politic (hereafter, mayor’s court) was charged by the Company’s Court of Directors with the delegated responsibility of promoting restitutive justice. Even in cases where retributive judgments were inescapable, the goal should be to promote restorative justice. On the whole, the Charter set in motion a process whereby the citizens (of the colony of Freetown) would have access to the courts (at the grassroots, mayoral level), with their cases (both civil and criminal) adjudicated by their peers acting as jurors. Against this backdrop, let us now turn our attention to the composition (and the duties of each member) of the mayor’s court, and its use of an equity framework to achieve justice for the people of the colony. The analysis below draws extensively from a document compiled by Charles Clark, and published in 1834,

46   The restitutive justice policy A Summary of Colonial Law, The Practice of the Court of Appeals From The Plantations, and the Laws and Their Administration in All the Colonies [with Charters of Justice, Orders in Council]. Composition The Charter authorized the resident governor (or in his absence, the resident lieutenant-­governor) to summon the aldermen on the first Monday of every September and ask them to elect from among themselves one who would act as the head of the head judge of the mayor’s court. After the elections, the mayor-­elect was required by law to repeat the rituals of oaths of allegiance to the realm and commitment to the performance of his duties before he assumed office, on or after September 29 (Clark 1834, 503). If he died before the completion of his one-­year term, the aldermen were called upon again to elect a regent-­judge from among themselves to complete the term of their deceased colleague. Upon completion of the term, if the regent-­judge was not elected to continue, he was required to go back to his regular duties as alderman. When the aldermen took the oath of allegiance, they were required to keep serving for the rest of their “natural lives,” unless they were found guilty of serious offenses and crimes. In cases where, after the Company’s resident governor had sworn into office the head judge of the court and his aldermen, they either refused to assume their duties or traveled out of Freetown for three calendar months without any reasonable excuse—or did not submit their explanations within the stipulated time of 14 days—they might forfeit their positions or, where applicable, be required to “pay [a] reasonable fine, as should for that purpose be fixed and agreed on by the court of the mayor and alderman thereinafter constituted, with the approbation and consent of the Governor and Council” (Clark 1834, 504).8 Without prejudice, and in recognition of the possibility of extenuating circumstances and human rights of these and other office holders (discussed below), those found wanting had a right to appeal any disciplinary action to the court of the Company directors. The court also had a sheriff. Before the adoption of the Charter in 1802, a chief constable and his eight deputies performed the duties of a sheriff in the “Province of Freedom” and Granville Town. In 1802 (to 1808), the Charter authorized the Company directors to create the position of sheriff of Freetown, and appoint a respected colony resident from among the Africans (the Black Poors, the Nova Scotians, the Maroons, and Recaptives) or Europeans. The rules that applied to the aldermen’s oath of allegiance, eligibility for (re)election, and penalties for abdication and absence from duty applied also to the sheriff.9 However, if, after taking office, he provided a reasonable reason for absence from office, the sheriff, in consultation with other court members, was authorized to appoint a deputy or “under-­sheriff.” This observation is a subjective interpretation of the wordings of the authorizing clause granting the sheriff the powers to appoint a temporary under-­sheriff to act “in the name of, and by the authority of such sheriff ” (Clark 1834, 506). That notwithstanding, the powers

The restitutive justice policy   47 of the sheriff (including his arresting powers as the chief bailiff of the court) were limited. The royal garrisons within the colony, and the neighboring slave-­ trading forts, were outside his jurisdiction. Another officer of the court was the Court’s Accountant-­General. Unlike the other officials, whose appointments required the approval of the resident governor, the Accountant-­General was appointed by, and responsible to, the 13-man court of Company directors in London. Why were the governor and his council excluded from choosing the occupant of such an important position? The Accountant-­General was responsible for the colony’s financial affairs. With the approval of the directors, the Accountant-­General of the High Court of Chancery in London could, where it was expedient to do so, call upon the Court’s Accountant-­General to audit and keep the accounts and registers of the colony officials for tax purposes. Regarding his role in the mayor’s court, he was charged with the responsibility of (1) executing court orders relating to the collection of court fines, (2) delivering taxable financial and asset compensations to plaintiffs, and (3) managing effects and securities (Clark 1834, 509). For efficiency and stability purposes, the Accountant-­General was appointed to serve a renewable term of two years. A restitutive justice court system without esquires or lawyers to provide pro-­ bono services was, at best, a recipe for injustice—at least for the black African majority—in the colony. In cognizance of the financial constraints of the inhabitants, the Charter of Justice gave the resident governor and his council the power to appoint lawyers to the court after consultation with the relevant authorities in the High Court of Chancery of Great Britain in London. Between 1802 and 1806, the governor’s council appointed Edward Fitzgerald (the colony’s Chief Justice), Daniel Molloy Hamilton (the colony’s Advocate-­General), and esquires Kenneth Macaulay, William Dawson, John Hope Smith, Thaddeus O’Meara, John O’Neill Walsh, Joseph Reffell, and Alexander Grant. These men were granted licenses to represent clients in the mayor’s court (as well as in the higher courts that adjudicated matters with a value above the £400 threshold of the mayor’s court). The Court’s equity framework for restorative justice The Charter authorized the court to do all such things as should be found necessary for the administration of justice, and the due execution of all or any of the powers given to them by the said charter, so as they from time to time should give an account thereof unto the company. (Clark 1834, 510) In pursuance of this mandate, the court adopted particular practices: trial by jury, pro-­bono legal representation, the right to bail (with flexible non-­monetary options), and restorative justice outcomes in judgment and sentencing, with the

48   The restitutive justice policy possibility for the parties to opt for alternative dispute resolution before sentencing. We may never know the exact number of people on the jury. Undoubtedly, however, the members were highly respected Christians and anti-­slavery advocates. Some, in fact, were shareholders of the Company. The emphasis on the Christian faith and anti-­slavery requirements was adopted at the insistence of Granville Sharp and of Henry Thornton, who was a major shareholder in the Company. They may have been of the view that all-­Christian juries were the surest means to achieve outcomes based on the prevailing Christian philosophy of the time. The Company’s opinion on the connections between “good” laws and “peaceful” society was influenced by Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae. Aquinas had proposed a metaphysical inquiry into the virtues of justice, the common good, the natural goodness of man (before society corrupted him), and the rule of law. As such, the Company viewed crime as man’s disobedience to the laws of God, a consequence of the weakness of the body and soul. Instead of calling for the annihilation of criminals, the jury members created an opportunity for those in conflict with the law to use reason to transcend human fallibility and to aspire to live in harmony in the “free space” (i.e., Freetown) God had provided for them. Thus, the duty of the jury was to evaluate the circumstances of a crime or dispute involving a value of no more than £400. Moreover, if a crime had indeed been committed, they were required to reach a verdict based on compassionate grounds, albeit without compromising justice. As stated earlier, pro-­bono services ensured that even those who were poor had access to the courts. Those caught violating the law were presumed innocent until found guilty by the jury. For example, the Company provided free legal representation for the leaders of the Nova Scotian rebellion. For the directors of  the Company, the law was about giving back to people who had lost everything—including their loved one—as a result of the transatlantic slave trade. Besides, Freetown, less than 30 years from its founding, was still an infant colony in which many might lack the capacity to pay for the services of the esquires. Moreover, it was highly likely many of those who did have money to pay for representation were connected to the slave trade, and to accept their “blood money” was seen as an abomination. However, this did not prevent the court officers from representing some of them. One example was the case of some of the crew of the slave ship Brothers (owned by a number of brothers in Liverpool). In 1803, these crew members leapt overboard into the shark-­infested sea and swam to Freetown. There they reported being habitually mistreated by the master sailor and captain. The court ordered the seizure of the ship until the end of the trial. Both the complainants and the defendants were provided with free legal representation. The verdict, however, went in favor of the crew. The captain was ordered to pay compensation to the crew and was then allowed to resume command of his ship and depart. Unconvinced that the captain would not throw the complainants overboard on the high seas, the court prevented them from boarding the ship before it sailed. While some crew members used their compensation to pay for their voyages home in neutral ships, others stayed in Freetown and were employed by the Company. This famous case was later cited

The restitutive justice policy   49 by the Abolition Society in its argument that the slave trade was harmful to all: slave and slave traders, sellers and the buyers, and bystanders alike. It is worth noting that, the pro-­bono services provided by this court were not justified solely on Christian religious grounds. The laws of England, especially the Means to Help and Speed Poor Persons in Their Suits Act of 1495, may also have influenced this practice. This Act stipulated that all poor people should have access to free legal services to enable them to seek redress in a court of law. These services included the preparation/issuing of writs and subpoenas and legal representation in court. An excerpt of the Act (cited here in its original Tudor-­era English), states: If it be afore the King in his bench, justices there shall assign to the same poor person or persons, counsel learned, by their discretions, which shall give their counsels, nothing taking the same; and likewise, the justices shall appoint attorney or attornies for the same poor person or persons, and all other officers requisite and necessary to be had for the speed of the said suits … which shall do their duties without any reward for their counsels, help, and business in the same; And the same law and other shall be observed and kept of all such suits to be made afore the King’s Justices of his familiar place, the Barons of his Exchequer, and all other justices in the Courts of Records where any such suits shall be. (Evans 1829, 357) In fact, some scholars have argued that there were several instances in which attorneys who violated this Act by demanding money from the poor were either suspended from the bar or had their licenses revoked (Major 1994, 722). Regarding the right to bail, the Charter stated that before the sheriff arrested a person there must be a warrant from the court. The warrant itself required the signature of the mayor and two assistant judges or aldermen. Once this requirement was fulfilled, and the person arrested, the law required the court to announce the time and place of the trial within 24 hours. The announcement of the “venue” for the trial was required because the mayor’s court was a mobile court; it heard cases in the lower chambers of the courthouse of the colony on Thornton Hill (the avenue where all government institutions were located) and in the open spaces of the slave-­trading forts at Rio Nunez and Rio Pongo, among other places. On the appointed day, the charges were read, the accused informed of his or her rights to free legal representation, and, after a brief consultation with the assigned attorney, was given the opportunity to plead innocence or guilt. After that, the court was required to notify the accused of their right to bail. Bail was granted upon producing sufficient security, as determined by the court. The bail-­bond remained in the custody of the Attorney-­General until after the court had reached its verdict and any appeals to the Court of Requests (the name of the appellate court) concluded. There were non-­monetary options for those unable to provide the securities or bail-­bonds. A relative was permitted to provide surety for the accused; if no relative or a friend was available or willing

50   The restitutive justice policy to do so, the accused could ask the court to allow him to turn to the general public for assistance. This assistance—otherwise known as the “solemn affirmation”—had to be taken in “the most solemn manner.” By solemn manner, the Charter of Justice was referring to the character of the male person (women were excluded) providing the bail-­bond. He must be a Christian, and his confession of faith should be witnessed by a “holy evangelist,” unless “such witness” was of the “persuasion of the people called Quakers, in which case a solemn affirmation” was “sufficient” (Clark 1834, 507). Where the accused had nobody but a native (a citizen of the micro-­kingdoms of the outside the jurisdiction of the Company) to vouch for him or her, that native was only required to vow that he was providing his solemn declaration of support for the granting of bail to the accused in good faith. However, if the native vowed with the hidden intention of aiding the escape of an accused, both could be arrested. If the authorities in the “country” of the native approved, the colony could request the trial of the offending native in Freetown. Conversely, if there was a matter involving a native (as the principal accused), the Company was not authorized to arrest or try them without the express consent of the ruler of the community of which the accused was a citizen. Moreover, there were documented instances in some of the reports of the Company reviewed for this book in which natives opted to have their matters adjudicated in the courts of Freetown—provided the native had residency status in Freetown or showed willingness to become a Freetownian. As observed earlier, the punishment of offenders was not the intended outcomes of the cases adjudicated by this court. Instead, the goal was the promotion of restorative justice. To this end, out-­of-court settlement was encouraged. With its strong Christian backing, and the recognition of the trauma court attendance could have on those vulnerable former enslaved Africans, the court recognized that incarceration might not always achieve the desired result. It was highly likely some of those convicted might experience flashbacks to being in the slaveholding cells in the forts, awaiting shipment to Europe and the Americas. It was against this backdrop that the clergy of the different denominations in the colony was actively involved in providing counseling and in mediating disputes between parties. Some ministers were on record as having paid the court’s litigation costs and compensation to the offended parties on behalf of the offenders, especially for those who were unable to pay or, in the opinion of the clergy, were victims of errors in the judgment of the court.

Notes 1 They include, among others, of the recent publications (which I reviewed for this book, but did not use during my school days): Kaifala, Joseph. (2016). Free Slaves, Freetown, and the Sierra Leonean Civil War, New York: Palgrave Macmillan; Harris, John. (2014). Sierra Leone: A Political History, London, UK: Hurst & Co.; of the older publications (which I used in school) they are: Alie, J. A. D. (1990). A New History of Sierra Leone, London, UK: Macmillan; Sibthorpe, A. B. C. (1970). The History of Sierra Leone, London, UK: Frank Cass; Fyfe, Christopher. (1962) A History of Sierra Leone, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press; Walker, James W. St G. (1992). The

The restitutive justice policy   51 Black Loyalists: The Search for a Promised Land in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone, 1783–1870, Toronto: Toronto University Press; Peterson, John. (1969). Province of Freedom: A History of Sierra Leone, 1787–1870, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press; Kup, Alexander Peter. (1961). A History of Sierra Leone, 1400–1787, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. 2 In fact, the distribution of votes on the basis of shares, which was in line with limited Capital Joint Stock of the Company (as stipulated by the Act of Incorporation), was fixed to £500,000. And it was divided into shares of £0.50 each. Depending on the unrestrictive number of shares held by the members, their vote was fixed as follows: one or two shares equals one vote; three or four shares equals two votes; five, six, or seven shares equals three votes; eight or nine shares equals four votes; and ten or more shares equals five votes (the Sierra Leone Company 1792, 8). 3 Sierra Leone was highly contested space from 1441, when the Portuguese claimed it from a pirate called Gonzales. He was removed by the French, who, like Britain, Spain and the Netherlands, were using “Sierra Leone as an entrepot for slaves” (Sibthorpe 1970, 7). It became of interest to the English in 1562, “when Sir John Hawkins forced some of the inhabitants into the export slavery.” The bay between Murphy Point and Aberdeen was infested by pirates. On April 2, 1719, the English pirate Thomas Cocklyn burnt all the coastal towns of Sierra Leone. In August 1720, the more famous Welsh pirate and slave trader Bartholomew “Black Bart” Roberts also ransacked these townships. The slave merchants of Havre and Nantz sent a large cache of weapons to destroy the slave traders and pirates occupying Pirate Bay in Sierra Leone in 1730. In fact, before the encounters of the British, the French, the Dutch, and the Portuguese, there were reports that a pirate named Martello had claimed Sierra Leone for himself in 1442; Portuguese explorer Pedro de Cintra claimed it in 1480; English slave trader and privateer (and later vice admiral) Sir John Hawkins in 1562 and 1568; English slave trader Captain William Snelgrave in 1719; and Welsh pirates Howel Davis in 1719 and “Black Bart” Roberts in 1720 and 1722. Roberts’s claim was short-­lived; he was killed shortly after off Cape Lopez— in the Gulf of Guinea, or present-­day Gabon—in an engagement with a Royal Navy frigate (Sibthorpe 1970, 7–8). 4 These Presbyterian missionaries were expelled from the colony in December 1798 after they were found guilty of forcing the “settlers to concert to Presbyterianism” (Mouser 2009, 3). 5 James Watt was credited with negotiating the establishment of a Christian mission in the hinterlands of Sierra Leone (in present-­day Kambia District) with the king of Futa Jallon (present-­day Guinea), Alimani Tombo. It was his groundwork that led to the spread of Christianity in the Muslim-­dominated northern hinterlands of Sierra Leone after 1795 (Mouser 2009, 3). In 1796, the Wesleyan Foreign Mission arrived in Futa Jallon. They were soon followed by reverends from the London, Glasgow, and Edinburgh missionary societies. Although none of these Futa Jallon missions proved successful—due, in part, to the established presence of Islam—they provided the opportunity to spread further into the interiors beyond the Rio Pongo. 6 The “recaptives” were freed slaves seized by the Royal Navy from the slave ships on the high seas and brought to Freetown. 7 King Naimbana II had other sons, including one known to the Portuguese as Prince Pedro. He sent Bartholomew to Portugal for his education (with the expenses paid by an unnamed slave trader). Another son, whose name remains unknown, was sent to Turkey for his studies (with the expenses paid by a Muslim cleric). However, what became of them remains a mystery to this day (Sypher 1941, 246). 8 The governor’s council included the lieutenant-­governor, the surveyor of lands, the chief justice, the colony chief medical doctor, the advocate-­general of the colony and the secretary of the colony.

52   The restitutive justice policy 9 However, unlike the pomp and pageantry that attached to the funeral of deceased council members (of the mayor’s court), the government of the resident governor was required to organize a small funeral and soon after that (within two working days) appoint another to take his place.

References Alie, Joe A. D. 1990. A New History of Sierra Leone. London: Macmillan. Braidwood, Stephen J. 1994. Sierra Leone Settlers—Black Poor and White Philanthropists: London’s Blacks and the Foundation of the Sierra Leone Settlement 1786–1791. Liverpool, UK: Liverpool University Press. Brooks, George E. 1974. “The Providence African Society’s Sierra Leone emigration scheme, 1794–1795: Prologue to the African colonization movement.” The International Journal of African Historical Studies 7 (2): 183–202. Clark, Charles. 1834. A Summary of Colonial Law, the Practice of the Court of Appeals from the Plantations, and the Laws and Their Administration in All the Colonies [with Charters of Justice, Orders in Council]. London: Law Booksellers and Publishers. Coleman, Deirdre, ed. 1999. Maiden Voyages and Infant Colonies: Two Women’s Travel Narratives of the 1790s. London: Leicester University Press. Davies, K. G. 1957. The Royal African Company. London: Longmans, Green and Co. Evans, W. D. 1829. A Collection of Statutes Connected with the General Administration of The Law; Arranged According to The Order of Subjects; With Notes. London: Saunders and Benning. Ferguson, Moira. 1997. “Anna Maria Falconbridge and the Sierra Leone Colony: ‘A Female Traveller in Conflict.’ ” Lumen: Canadian Society for Eighteenth-­Century Studies 16: 1–24. Fyfe, Christopher. 1962. A History of Sierra Leone. Vol. 1. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Hall, Catherine. 2012. Macaulay and Son: Architects of Imperial Britain. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Harris, David John. 2014. Sierra Leone: A Political History. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Hoare, Prince. 1828. Memoirs of Granville Sharp, Esq. [Composed Of His Manuscript and Other Authentic Documents in possession of His Family and the African Institution]. 2nd ed. Vol. 2. London: Henry Colburn. Kaifala, Joseph. 2016. Free Slaves, Freetown, and the Sierra Leonean Civil War. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Kolapo, Femi James. 2018. “Anglicanism in West Africa,” in William L. Sachs (ed.), The Oxford History of Anglicanism: Global Anglicanism, c 1910–2000. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 124–47. Kup, Alexander Peter. 1961. A History of Sierra Leone, 1400–1787. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Major, Justice JC. 1994. “Lawyers’ obligation to provide legal services.” Alberta Law Review 33 (4): 719–29. Mouser, Bruce L. 2009. “Origins of church mission society accommodation to imperial policy: The Sierra Leone quagmire and the closing of the Susu Mission, 1804–17.” Journal of Religion in Africa 39: 1–28. Peterson, John. 1969. Province of Freedom: A History of Sierra Leone, 1787–1870. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.

The restitutive justice policy   53 Schwarz, Suzanne. 2007. “Commerce, civilization and Christianity: The development of the Sierra Leone Company,” in Suzanne Schwarz and David Richardson (eds.), Liverpool and Transatlantic Slavery. Liverpool, UK: Liverpool University Press, 252–76. Sibthorpe, Aaron Belisarius Cosimo. 1970. The History of Sierra Leone. 3rd edn. London: Frank Cass & Co. Sypher, Wylie. 1941. “The African Prince in London.” Journal of the History of Ideas 2 (2): 237–47. The Sierra Leone Company. 1792. Postscript to the Report of The Court of Directors of the Sierra Leone Company To The General Court, Held in London On Wednesday the 19th of October, 1791. London: James Phillips, George Yard, Lombard Street: The Sierra Leone Company. Thomas, Hugh. 1997. The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade: 1440–1870. New York: Simon & Schuster. Walker, James W. St G. 1992. The Black Loyalists: The Search for a Promised Land in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone, 1783–1870. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press. Wyse, Akintola J. G. 1987. “The dissolution of Freetown City Council in 1926: A negative example of political apprenticeship in Colonial Sierra Leone.” Africa 57 (4): 422–38.

3 No taxation without representation, 1820–1920

The rise of an African political elite class The rebuilding of the Freetown Colony continued right through the 1820s, undeterred by the 1829 and 1830 cholera and malaria pandemics. By 1835 there were a substantial number of black African (the descendants of the freed slaves) businessmen, school teachers, clergymen, and clerical level administrators. However, it was the appetite for business that contributed to the rise of a dominant middle class of merchants, both European and black African. There were five Africans among this elite group of businessmen: W. T. Dove, credited with introducing trade links between the colony of Freetown and the Gold Coast (present-­day Ghana) in the 1820s; Emmanuel Cline, an estate tycoon between the 1830s and 1850s; Thomas Macfoy, harbor master (and shareholder) of the quay in Freetown; William Henry Pratt, the owner of many retail shops in Freetown; and John Ezzidio, landowner and supplier of stationery to the colonial administration and woolen uniforms to the boatsmen employed by the Mixed Commissions for the Suppression of the Slave Trade. Together with their European compatriots, these men dominated the political economy of the colony of Freetown and the non-­British territories in greater Sierra Leone, controlling the business centers in Bandajuma, Kerene, Falaba, Kwelu, and Panguma. Working in partnership ventures with either their European partners in Manchester, Liverpool, and London or the natives in greater Sierra Leone, Dove, Cline, Pratt, and Ezzidio won the favor of the colonial administration in Freetown and praise from Sierra Leoneans. The colonial administration accepted them because the high taxes they (and their European counterparts) were paying contributed to managing the affairs of the colony. They were loved by Sierra Leoneans because they were job providers—due, in part, to their strict policy of employing only Africans in their businesses. Moreover, as their wealth increased, they began to invest in the modernization of Freetown. They built schools and churches and sponsored the missionary activities of the Wesleyan, Baptist, Methodist missions from Europe, and the Huntingdon Christian mission for the ‘Nova Scotian’ Africans (the black Africans who came from the Canadian province of Nova Scotia in 1791). These men were not only known for  building and sponsoring churches but were also renowned lay-­preachers,

No taxation without representation   55 presidents of the welfare committees in the churches they established and funded, and patrons of the European missionaries (Lamin 1983). In return for their assistance to the European church mission societies, they received special favors that helped them expand their business ventures beyond the boundaries of Sierra Leone and into Europe. John Ezzidio became a member of the Wesleyan Methodist Mission Society in 1835, contributing to the construction of their churches and assisting their leaders, financially and otherwise. In return for his generosity, the General Superintendent of the Wesleyan mission, the Reverend Thomas Dove, accompanied Ezzidio to England in 1842. While they were there, Dove introduced him to the owners of the “wholesale firms in London and Manchester,” thus enabling “him to deal directly with the English market without a middleman.” Ezzidio inspired “enough confidence to persuade several firms to risk the novelty of dealing with an African.” By 1850, he was importing a variety of goods with an annual market value of £3,000 to £4,000 to sell from his shop in George Street. The goods he imported from England included haberdashery, groceries, ironmongery, black suits, and patent leather boots, muslin dresses, ladies’ hats and silk bonnets, hams, mixed biscuits and tea, port and sherry, and woolen shirts (Fyfe 1955, 217). Buoyed by their influence, wealth and good stewardship, these prominent businessmen began to agitate for inclusion in government. The colonial administration was not averse and Governor Fergusson appointed Thomas Macfoy (in 1851) and John Ezzidio (in 1844) council members of the Freetown Town Council. In 1845, Ezzidio became the first African mayor of the council. Using their political positions as leverage, Ezzidio and Macfoy founded the New Era newspaper in 1850 (it remained in print until 1869). They also established the African Steamship Company in 1852, opening up greater Sierra Leone to European and African merchants. The newspaper and the steamship became the most reliable means through which the African elites in the colony of Freetown spread their political agenda. After 1852, Macfoy and Ezzidio were able to build their political followings and improved their strategies for petitioning the government. To the Africans, the petition system was about holding their government accountable. The colonial government, however, viewed petitions in general as “unsatisfactory methods of voicing opinions” (Fyfe 1955, 229); to the colonial administration, especially the governor and his council, petitions were an instinctive form of political opposition to the smooth operations of the institutions of government. Thus, when Ezzidio’s mayoral term ended 1845, and Macfoy’s term as alderman in 1853, the governor did not renew their appointments, instead replacing them with Europeans. The council remained under the complete control of Europeans, with no African representation, between 1853 and 1925.

The house and land tax of 1851 in Freetown Political marginalization could not contain Ezzidio and his followers among the African and European entrepreneurs, shopkeepers, land holders, and steamship

56   No taxation without representation owners. The more they were marginalized, the stronger they became. In an attempt to curtail their powers, the colonial administration of Governor Hill (who had replaced Fergusson in 1850) imposed a house and land tax—the first of its kind in British colonial West Africa—in 1851. This move angered the landowners and businessmen; to fight for their rights they needed to work collectively. Created in 1852, the Mercantile Association, as the name implies, was, on the one hand, a chamber of commerce; the lifeline of the colony, after all, was business. To the entrepreneurs, however, the Association was also a platform to effectively challenge the politically motivated economic policies of the colonial administration. It was a proto-­nationalistic political movement; politicians dominated its leadership, and their followers cut across the racial divide. There are those who, after many years researching the impact of the Mercantile Association, have concluded that it was the first attempt towards representative democracy in colonial Freetown. For Hargreaves (1955), the composition of the Association and its strategy of resisting the house and land tax challenges the view that there was a chasm between the Association’s leaders (businessmen, clergymen, and politicians) and the masses. Rather, what those leaders were fighting to achieve aligned with the political aspirations of the ordinary people in Freetown (and in greater Sierra Leone) between 1863 and 1898. The colonial administration saw things differently. For Governor Hill, if there was any worthwhile request of his administration, it was the adoption of militarized policies that could help reduce the frequency of the tribal conflicts that disrupted commercial activities for members of the Association in greater Sierra Leone. The administration was neither moved by the petitions nor intimidated by protests (in the form of closing of shops) and the cries of “no taxation without political representation.” Unperturbed by these threats to the political and economic stability of the colony, Governor Hill publicly rejected the Association’s claims to be the representative of the people. The colonial government attempted to drive a wedge between the leaders and the supporters of the Mercantile Association and raise questions as to whether the goals of the elite were the same as those of the common man, the houseless/landless peasants. Reviews of the available literature show the colonial administration tried to use this issue to place the onus on the elites—who were known for their emphasis on “class difference”—to demonstrate that they represented all of the community and that they would not attempt to create a tyranny of the minority. The actions of the governor served only to embolden the African members of the Association. Some had heard tales of the American Colonization Society’s decision to grant self-­government to the 20,000 former enslaved Africans they had resettled between 1812 and 1838 in Liberia. Others saw this self-­government in action with their own eyes during their trade journeys from greater Sierra Leone to Liberia—an actual “Province of Freedom.” With every passing day came more petitions and, gradually, these petitions had an effect on the governor’s tone as he moved from indifference to sympathy, and from sympathy to recognition of the political and economic rights of members of the Association. His evolution was no doubt hastened by pressure

No taxation without representation   57 from the Secretary of State for the Colonies in London, who was also a recipient of almost all the petitions of the Mercantile Association. Even if the governor was not an admirer of the petitions, his superiors in London were receptive to them because the petition system provided some checks on the political authority of the colonial administration in Freetown. That some of these petitions sought action to resolve the tribal wars in greater Sierra Leone also aligned with the interests of the empire; if greater Sierra Leone, although outside the political jurisdiction of His Majesty’s government, was pacified, the prosperity of the colony of Freetown (and that of the empire with it) was assured. The only issue which did not bode well for the colonial secretary and the governor was the “no taxation without representation” argument of the Mercantile Association. Even so, they were ready to negotiate with the Association as long as the latter’s demands for political recognition and inclusion did not endanger the authority of the colonial government, and the empire to collect taxes. From a theoretical standpoint, I argue that the Association had the right to refuse to pay taxes if they were not represented in government. This position, which became popular in America in the years leading up to the War of Independence, was that the “value” of land and houses should be measured, in part, by its influence on political representation (Schmitt 2008). Through this, the propertied class receives, alongside the value of what is taxed, the political character of a proto-­partisan group. What the house and land tax issue in colonial Freetown revealed was not the self-­seeking interests of the individuals doing the petitioning but, rather, the value of what was represented—the land. This land had been given to them by the Abolition Society, and it served a purpose that went beyond economics. It reminded them of their recent past—as slaves who had gained their freedom as a result of the generosity of a group of philanthropists who rescued them from slavery. Against this backdrop, the land was a tie that bound the petitioner (especially the likes of John Ezzidio, Thomas Macfoy, Emmanuel Cline, and William Henry Pratt) and the land to the interests of the collective—namely, their fallen brethren, victims like them of an abominable trade. Thus, what the land meant to the African members of the Mercantile Association was primordial, and the affinity they felt for it was tied to their socio-­cultural and political identities. To this end, their Association, inasmuch as it was also multiracial, was appealing to the colonial administration’s sense of justice; to an ethical imperative that they (the taxpayers) should be included in the formulation of policies that affected their lives and their sense of belonging. Corresponding to this primordial idea of the role of the self in the authentication of the political decisions of the colonial government—with the desired effect of introducing some degree of democratic practice—is Edmund Burke’s theorization and interpretation of the concept of taxation. In his treatise, Observation on a Late State of the Nation, published in 1769, Burke contended that, as the British Parliament had the constitutional right to impose taxes on its American colonies, it was unwise to refuse them representation in government. He developed this idea after becoming a member of the British House of Commons in December 1766. Among his first objectives was to have the Rockingham-­led

58   No taxation without representation Whig government repeal the Declaratory Act of 1766 and the Stamp Act of 1765. These acts gave the imperial government the right to impose and regulate a highly contested and unfavorable tax regime on the American colonies (Dickinson 2010). Supported by David Hartley, and backed by supporters of the Earl of Shelburn and some members of the Rockingham Whig Party, Burke sought to appease the American colonies by making a case that reaffirmed the conciliatory proposal of the Prime Minister, William Pitt the Elder (the Earl of Chatham) before Parliament. For these men, the British Empire could still compete with its European imperial rivals without the imposition of taxes that might compromise Britain’s hold on the colonies. Following the passing of Lord North’s Coercive Acts1 in 1774, which was to be the last straw for the American colonies, Burke tried, again, on April 19, 1774, to advise Parliament that the colonies “will cast your sovereignty in your face.” As he put it, “nobody will be argued into slavery” (quoted in Elofson and Woods 1998, 458). In Burke’s constitutional legal theory, taxation could only be legitimately imposed if those bearing the brunt of it were responsible for its adoption through the legislature—hence the need for political representation of the colonized in the parliament of the colonizers. Without this guarantee, the authority of an empire could justifiably be resisted, or criticized as a system that rejected partnership (between the conquered and the conqueror) and promoted authoritarian paternalism. Like the American colonies, the colony of Freetown had its share of coercion in the form of the house and land tax. And just as it had in the 13 American colonies, so too did this coercion lead to demands for representation in Freetown. These were questions the Mercantile Association members were asking: is the representation we have proportionate to the burden of the house and land tax? Whose right is it to determine representation? Is it the people, whose contributions to the empire define the limits of the sovereign power of the colonial administration? Or can the colonial administration take the people’s taxes and refuse them representation, notwithstanding the ominous precedent of the Thirteen Colonies? As I see it, as long as the fundamental demands of the Mercantile Association focused on representation, and not challenging the sovereign authority of the empire, their right to use the economic leverage of taxes to gain political representation was legitimate. In the same vein, in view of the “extractive” nature of an empire to which the colony of Freetown was subject, the granting of political representation was a way of compensating the colonized for their contributions to strengthening the sovereign authority of the British Parliament over its colonies. After a process of back-­and-forth consultation between the office of the Secretary for Colonial Affairs, and the business community in Freetown, the colonial administration of Governor Blackhall put forward a proposal for constitutional reform to satisfy the desires of the Mercantile Association. This reform would see the creation of two houses: the executive and the legislative councils. Membership of the Executive Council was strictly limited, comprising the governor, the chief justice, the Queen’s advocate, the colonial secretary (who was based in London but represented in the colony by a delegate appointed by

No taxation without representation   59 him), and the commander of the imperial troops. In the Legislative Council, members were to bear the title of “honorable member.” Despite this, in practical terms—however dignified they thought their political status was—they were to remain unofficial members of the Legislative Council. Why the “unofficial member” status? The answer requires situating the whole constitutional arrangement within the context of the governor’s proposal for limiting the constitutional and sovereign authority of the Legislative Council. In the same way Burke’s proposed in April 1774 a “two-­tier parliamentary authority,”2 the governor (representing the political authority of the British Crown and Parliament) wanted the executive to retain absolute authority vis-­à-vis the Legislative Council. In this way, he had to use his executive powers to guide and control the activities of the Legislative Council without rendering its existence inconsistent with the wishes of the British monarch and, therefore, unconstitutional. To ensure the Legislative Council remained pro-­empire, Governor Blackhall recommended to the colonial secretary that the number of the unofficial members be limited to ten and, moreover, that nine of those positions be reserved for white Europeans. Thus, depending on who held the remaining membership (which was not reserved for a black African), the outcome would be either an all-­white European council or a white council plus one black African member. As historian, Christopher Fyfe notes, the governor’s hope was to see only Europeans in the Legislative Council: Governor Blackhall wanted the merchant community to elect a representative, rather than choose one himself. Hoping they would take one of the Europeans, he arranged for the Mercantile Association, which had faded away, to be revived to conduct the election. At the meeting, held on the 8th December 1863, there were present fourteen Europeans, one Afro-­WestIndian, and twenty-­four Africans (the majority recaptives). Two candidates, one European, John Levi, the other African, John Ezzidio, were proposed. The voting was by secret ballot, but the result, twenty-­three votes for Ezzidio, thirteen for Levi, suggested [therefore] that the voters were divided by race. (Fyfe 1955, 223) Although the outcome was not what the colonial administration had anticipated, the colonial secretary was compelled to accept the result. The next question for the administration was whose voice was the honorable member Ezzidio going to represent in the Legislative Council: imperial England, the Mercantile Association, the peasants, or all? The colonial administration feared that if Ezzidio decided to declare his allegiance to the Mercantile Association, he would be their puppet throughout his time in the council. On the other hand, should he refuse to represent the Association’s interests, it could work to remove him. To prevent this, the governor made sure that the powers of the Legislative Council were advisory only—thus feeding into the logic of constitutional and sovereign limits through a two-­tier parliamentary authority. This way, whatever decisions the council took, the executive could choose to accept or reject them.

60   No taxation without representation For his part, Ezzidio was aware of the political traps. To impress upon the colonial administration his intention not to create tensions between it and the Mercantile Association, he isolated himself in the council. His least interest, Fyfe argues, was to be caught in the center of power-­politics, where no prisoners are taken. He was, however, conscious of his political responsibilities and his commitment to his business ventures, politics, and friends. Thus, whenever given the opportunity to introduce a bill in the council, he was notorious for suggesting a change of date to enable him to consult with his “friendly” colleagues in the council, the Mercantile Association, and his select group of peasant friends in his church congregation. Beyond what we know about Ezzidio’s time and place in the Legislative Council, however, lies the question of whether the peasants in greater Sierra Leone—in the hinterland—would react in a similar way that the inhabitants of the colony of Freetown did to the house and land tax of 1851.

The Hut Tax (War) of 1898 in the hinterlands The 1863 Blackhall constitution was unequivocal in its reaffirmation of the sovereignty of the nations and peoples in greater Sierra Leone. Their independence, however, was to end in 1896, once the colonial administration felt its economic interests in greater Sierra Leone were under threat from possible encroachment by the French imperial government in Guinea (to the north and northeast of Sierra Leone) and the black African-­controlled Republic of Liberia (to the east and southeast). The Anglo-­Liberian Convention of November 11, 1885, which established the Mano River as the boundary between Sierra Leone and Liberia from the Atlantic Ocean to a “somewhat indefinite point in the interior” (Mugnier 2012, 104), resolved the Liberian question. However, the French were finding it hard to adhere to their agreement at the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885. They had moved from Ivory Coast to Guinea and the presence of their military garrisons, missionaries, and merchants in Timbekundu (on the Guinean side) and Kambia (on the Sierra Leone side) was a threat to British interests (Abraham 1974; Bangura 2009). To resolve the impasse, the two imperial European nations reached an agreement on delimitation of the disputed territory on January 21, 1895. By May 1896, the tenth parallel (the line from Timbekundu to the basin of the Niger, and from the Little Scarcies River to the Atlantic Ocean) was completed.3 Three months later, on August 31, 1896— perhaps suspicious of the continued activities of French merchants in the Guinea–Sierra Leone border communities—Governor Frederic Cardew4 unilaterally declared Sierra Leone a British protectorate. The Protectorate Proclamation established a three-­court system: A court of the native chiefs5 (to try civil and lesser criminal cases), a court composed of native chiefs and District Commissioner (with jurisdiction over graver criminal matters, including capital offenses relating to the natives), and a court exclusively presided over by the District Commissioner

No taxation without representation   61 (to preside over all civil and criminal cases between natives and non-­natives, except when it regards capital offence, when in that case it would be referred to the supreme court in Freetown). At least 100 Frontier Police personnel were based in each district. Revenue to run the Protectorate was to be “derivable from licenses and a house-­tax.” The tax was to come into effect on 1 January 1898. (Gberie 2013, 107–8) The former members of the defunct Mercantile Association welcomed this move to establish a “Frontier Police” force.6 For more than three decades, these Freetown merchants had complained about the impact of the endless inter-­tribal tensions and wars on their business activities in the region. They embraced the idea of a protectorate because it eased their frustrations over the stiff competition from French merchants in the trading centers of Bandajuma, Kerene, Falaba, Ronietta, and Panguma. However, the euphoria of the Freetown merchants and Cardew’s government was short-­lived. In January/February 1898, Governor Cardew imposed a “hut tax”—which was an extension of Governor Hill’s house and land tax of 1851 in the colony of Freetown—on the people of the protectorate. The outcome of this illegitimate tax regime was an armed conflict—the Hut Tax War—between February and June 1898. There were three parties during this conflict: the people of the protectorate, the British colonial administration (and their Frontier Police Force), and the Creole merchants. To the people of the affected communities in the protectorate, the tax symbolized British imperial adventurism; and the use of force to enforce it was clearly a violation of Treaty No. 5 of 1871 (Abraham 1974, 99). Emboldened by the leaders (who also doubled as their chieftains) of their Poro Societies—which was founded centuries before for the defense of their respective communities (see, Day 1980; Little 1966)—the people of the protectorate responded to the attrocities of the Frontier Police Force by declaring war on the colonial administration. For their part, the colonial administration of “Governor Cardew wanted to improve the economy through taxation, but he failed to properly explain his motives to locals who had little knowledge of an economic system in which citizens paid taxes” (Kaifala 2017, 174). It was this miscalculation that contributed to the Hut Tax War. Whilst the Creoles saw themselves as legitimate businessmen, to the rebels of the protectorate, they were the “middlemen who collaborated with the European colonial power” (Brown-­Davies 2014, 9) to impose an unfair tax system on them. It is possible that the Creole merchants were in support of this tax regime because they felt it was the best way to punish the chieftains of the protectorate who opposed the existence of their entrepreneur ventures and attempts to procure tribal lands (which would have violated the customary land law or Lembe) in the protectorate. Notwithstanding the short duration of this war (Febuary 1898 and June 1898), the way the forces of the colonial administration (the Frontier Police Force, the Royal Artillery, the 1st Battalion Regiment, and the Army Service Corps) conducted themselves during their offensive on

62   No taxation without representation the near-­defenseless communities (and even against the warriors of the protectorate) was brutal. On June 20, 1898, Sir David Chalmers, a Scottish lawyer and chief justice of the colony of Gold Coast, was commissioned to investigate the causes of the Hut Tax War. With unlimited powers—including the authority to subpoena the governor and his officials—the Chalmers Commission of Inquiry was to provide answers to the following questions: was the conflict caused by the methods of collection adopted by Governor Cardew? Was this direct tax regime “peculiarly obnoxious to the customs and feelings of the natives?” Was this tax regime expediently necessary? Chalmers arrived in Freetown on July 16, 1898 to begin his four-­month-long investigation. During this time, he interviewed 254 witnesses: 15 from among the Freetown African merchants (the descendants of the Africans resettled from the West Indies and Nova Scotia), 51 from the Temne ethnic group, 74 from the Mende ethnic group, and 18 European merchants who had experienced the war first-­hand (Hargreaves 1956). He also interviewed members of the colonial administration, the churches, the Frontier Police, the Royal Artillery and the 1st Battalion Regiment, and the Army Service Corps7 (Gberie 2013, 103–4). Commissioner Chalmers’s report, submitted to the colonial secretary in December 1898, contained the following findings. First, Governor Cardew had not sought the consent of the natives and their chiefs. By his unilateral imposition of a tax system that failed to take into consideration the possibilities of dissenting voices, the governor had erred in his judgment. Moreover, although he recognized Cardew’s initial consultation with minor—village level—chiefs, Chalmers was of the view that these chiefs lacked authority and it was, therefore, an error to exclude those who mattered (the chiefs at the district and provincial levels) during these consultations. Second, the Cardew administration had failed to take into consideration the fact that the natives would not tolerate any direct tax if that tax was not going to be used for the development of their communities. Against this backdrop, Chalmers called on the British government to “accept the fundamental fact that the Chiefs and people of the Hinterland of Sierra Leone have as yet only very slight knowledge of the English Government or its beneficial aims.” For this reason, the natives were right to interpret the Hut Tax as unjust. Chalmers took note of the colonial administration’s argument that the tax was an enterprise aimed at raising funds for the empire. However, he was of the view that the natives were right to intepret the levy as an imperial attempt to take away their right of ownership in their own houses—houses they built without British help, and at a time when British colonial rule was yet to come to the shores of Sierra Leone. Third, even if the argument of community development was presented to the natives, the administrations should have sought to understand the internal workings of the native polities. Chalmers reminded the administration that it was longstanding customary practice for the chiefs not to demand monies from their people. Instead, where people contributed to developing their communities

No taxation without representation   63 financially, they did so in the form of a “free-­will offering for particular purposes known and approved by the people.” Examples of these include the coronation of a paramount chief or similar occasion for festivities (Chalmers 1898, quoted in, Gberie 2013, 109). Fourth, the colonial government had erred in its decision to disregard the petitions the Temne and Mende tribal chiefs submitted to Governor Cardew months before the eruption of violence. These petitions contained: (1) complaints against the militant and extra-­judicial activities of one of the district commissioners, Captain Sharp (in the Northern Province, Temneland) and Commissioner Carr (in the Southern Province, Mendeland) and their Frontier Police officers; (2) a warning that if the hut tax was not suspended, they (the natives) would declare war against the colonial administration and attack all British officials and government installations in the protectorate; and (3) demands for a return to the terms of the “Treaty of Friendship” the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade had signed with their late kings in April 1787 and that had culminated in the founding of the “Province of Freedom” for the former enslaved Africans. Fifth, the indiscretions of both Commissioners Sharp and Carr8 in their armed attacks on the natives were an act of war, not of self-­defense as they had argued. Chalmers, quoting the confession of one of Commissioner Sharp’s officers, noted that the inability of the British to arrest the ringleaders of the insurrections (paramount chiefs Bai Bureh of Kasseh and Nyagua of Panguma) before the eruption of the war9 exposed the unprofessionalism of the Frontier Police (Abraham 1972). Responsibility for the colonial administration’s destruction of 97 towns and villages, and the killing of about 44,000 natives, rested squarely on Governor Cardew and his forces (Chalmers 1898, quoted in, Gberie 2013, 109). Finally, Chalmers found that the tensions and controversies surrounding Governor Cardew’s tenure (1894–1900) made him unfit to continue as governor of Sierra Leone. Acting on this recommendation, the Secretary for Colonial Affairs in London ordered Cardew to leave and, on November 26, 1900, Cardew departed the shores of Sierra Leone. Sir J. E. Caulfield took over as acting governor until December 11, 1900, when Sir Charles King-­Harman arrived from St. Lucia to assume the position, which he held until October 3, 1904.

Notes 1 The Coercive Acts refers to the statutes passed in 1774 in response to the destruction, in Boston, Massachusetts, of a shipment of tea in protest over taxation in the colonies (the “Boston Tea Party”). The Coercive Acts, which severely penalised the colony of Massachusetts, comprised the Boston Port Act (14 Geo. III c. 19), the Massachusetts Government Act (14 Geo. III c. 45), the Administration of Justice Act (14 Geo. III c. 39), and the Quartering Act (5 Geo. III c. 33). The acts were perceived as punitive by the American colonists, who termed them the “Intolerable Acts.” 2 In his April 1774 address to the House of Commons, Burke proposed a two-­tier parliamentary colonial authority that would give an absolute legislative authority to Great Britain, but in her “imperial character”—that is, as a superintending power over all the inferior provincial legislatures, whose powers she could guide and control, but not annihilate. The colonial legislatures should be left to exercise their full authority over

64   No taxation without representation the internal affairs of the colonies. Only if they clearly acted in an unjust fashion and abused their power could the British Parliament act as arbiter in the conflicts between these various assemblies or between them and the colonists they represented (Dickinson 2010, 95). 3 The notes of exchanges in Paris, France on June 14 and 16, 1896 sealed these international boundaries. 4 Cardew was governor between 1894 and 1895, succeeded by Governor Caulfield in June–August 1895; again from August 1895 to 1897, succeeded by Governor J. C. Gore in 1897; and yet again, between 1897 and 1899. 5 Under the Protectorate Ordinance, “the local paramount chief became the highest authority in the civil legal disputes, and such appeals would have carried less weight” (Reed and Robinson 2013, 7). That notwithstanding, the Protectorate Ordinance weakened many existing checks on the power of chiefs within their respective chiefdoms. For instance, Arthur Abraham (2003, 75) notes that prior to the declaration of the protectorate, in the case of a dispute between a king [a title the British removed, arguing that there was only one sovereign king, the British Monarch] and his subject, the subject had the right to appeal to a neighboring king, which was not considered an indignity. 6 The Annual Report on the Colony for 1896 “noted that the Frontier Force—recruited largely from the Temne and Mende [tribal groups]—were to act as ‘the means of quelling all inter-­tribal warfare and slave-­raiding and the bringing the country to a state of peace and security’ ” (Gberie 2013, 108). 7 The Royal Artillery and the 1st Battalion Regiment, the Army Service Corps had been sent from England aboard the warships HMS Phoebe, HMS Fox, HMS Blonde, HMS Tartar, and HMS Alecto to suppress the insurrection (Gberie 2013, 103–4). 8 The insurrection in the southern region, in Mende Land, was due, in part, to the indiscretion of District Commissioner Carr, whose impulsive actions (aimed at fulfilling the wishes of Governor Cardew) contributed to the rise of a sense of irredentist nationalism among the natives. Carr had called a meeting on January 3, 1898 to explain the colonial administration’s tax measures. The minor chiefs who attended defiantly told him they were not going to pay taxes for their homes to strangers from a faraway foreign land. Upon hearing this, Carr arrested these chiefs. This action, according to Commissioner Chalmers, showed that Commissioner Carr was trying to fulfill the desire of Governor Cardew and was, therefore, in contravention of the legal ethics (Chalmers did not, however, cite which ethical standards were violated by Car). Chalmers concluded “that the exercise of force, preemptory, rapid, and inflexible, was the element to be relied on in making the scheme of taxation a success” (Chalmers 1898, quoted in, Gberie 2013, 109). 9 Both men, Bai Bureh and Nyagua, were later arrested and sent into exile in the Gold Coast (Ghana) from whence Nyagua never returned to his homeland. He died and was buried in the Gold Coast (Abraham 1972).

References Abraham, Arthur. 1972. “Nyagua, the British, and the Hut Tax War.” The International Journal of African Historical Studies 5 (1): 94–8. Abraham, Arthur. 1974. “Bai Bureh, the British, and the Hut Tax War.” The International Journal of African Historical Studies 7 (1): 99–106. Abraham, Arthur. 2003. An Introduction to the Pre-­Colonial History of the Mende of Sierra Leone. Vol. 67. Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press.

No taxation without representation   65 Bangura, Joseph. 2009. “Understanding Sierra Leone in colonial West Africa: A synoptic socio-­political history.” History Compass 7 (3): 583–603. https://doi.org/10.1111/ j.1478-0542.2009.00596.x. Brown-­Davies, Nigel. 2014. “The role of the Sierra Leone creole people in the Hut Tax War of 1898: Aggressors or victims?” The Journal of Sierra Leone Studies 3 (1): 7–71. Day, Lynda Rose. 1980. Historical Patterns in a Stateless Society: Sherbro Land 1750–1898, Madison: University of Wisconsin-­Madison. Dickinson, H. T. 2010. “The failure of conciliation: Britain and the American colonies 1763–1783.” The Kyoto Economic Review 79 (2): 91–109. Elofson, Warren M. and John A. Woods. 1998. “The writings and speeches of Edmund Burke. Vol. III, Party, Parliament and the American War 1774–1780.” https://philpapers. org/rec/ELOTWA. Fyfe, Christopher. 1955. “The life and times of John Ezzidio.” Sierra Leone Studies Journal 4 (n.s.): 213–33. Gberie, Lansana. 2013. “The Chalmers Commission and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of Sierra Leone: Official inquiries as historical memory,” in Sylvia Ojukutu-­Macauley and Ismail Rashid (eds.), The Paradoxes of History and Memory in Post-­Colonial Sierra Leone. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 101–26. Hargreaves, J. D. 1955. “Colonial office opinion on the Constitution of 1863.” Sierra Leone Studies Journal 5: 2–10. Hargreaves, J. D. 1956. “The establishment of the Sierra Leone protectorate and the insurrection of 1898.” The Cambridge Historical Journal 12 (1): 56–80. Lamin, Sanneh. 1983. West African Christianity: The Religious Impact. New York: Orbis Books. Little, Kenneth. 1966. “The political function of the Poro (Part II).” Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 36 (1): 62–72. Mugnier, Clifford J. 2012. Grids & Datums: Republic of Sierra Leone. The Imaging and Geospatial Information Society. www.asprs.org/a/resources/grids/02-2012-Republic-­ of-Sierra-­Leone.pdf. Reed, Tristan and James A. Robinson. 2013. The Chiefdoms of Sierra Leone. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, Department of Economics. https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/ jrobinson/files/history.pdf. Schmitt, Carl. 2008. Constitutional Theory. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

4 Citizens and protected persons, 1920–1951

The end of the Hut Tax War signaled the start of a lengthy process of assimilation of the protectorate’s people into mainstream national politics. There was a need for a new constitution to replace the 1863 Blackhall Constitution, which was limited to the colony of Freetown. An expanded legislative council was also required to accommodate representatives from across the protectorate. The initial challenge facing the colonial administrations (between 1920 and 1924) was whether having both an upper and lower house (bicameral) legislative council was politically expedient. The educated leaders of the protectorate, who called themselves the Committee of Educated Aborigines (CEA), were in favor of a unicameral legislative council provided there was a special chamber to accommodate the paramount chiefs—who acquired their status mostly through hereditary systems—from the protectorate. The African politicians in the colony of Freetown, who had assumed a new, elitist ethnic identity called Creole,1 were opposed to the idea of having a single house, for several reasons. First, the Foreign Jurisdiction Act of 1890 made it unconstitutional to appoint or select the people of the wider protectorate (hereafter, British protected persons) into the Legislative Council. Instead, only British subjects (the Creoles of the colony of Freetown) were allowed membership of the council. Citing this law, the Creoles objected to the idea of granting any parliamentary representation to British protected persons. The CEA opposed this argument, arguing that the successful outcome of the Mercantile Association’s case—on the “no taxation without representation” crisis of 1851—had set a precedent establishing that it was illegal for the colonial administration to deny parliamentary representation to taxpayers. No doubt, the CEA was attempting to question the legality of the Foreign Jurisdiction Act. It was also drawing the attention of the government to the Chalmers Commission of Inquiry. Commissioner Chalmers (1899) had recommended that, should the government continue to raise “anything about the nature of regularly recurring revenue” or taxes, which was alien to the people of the protectorate, those people should be granted political representation in the government in Freetown. Interestingly, the manner in which this constitutional issue was presented by Creole historians (the leading figures in the study of creoledom) has only added to the misconceptions about the citizen/protected person question. For example, Edward Wilmot Blyden III’s explanation of the legal

Citizens and protected persons   67 ramifications of the protectorate’s stance offers a racialized argument that favors the position of the Creoles (Blyden 1959). Although he engaged with the contemporaneous legal transcripts to make his case for the unconstitutionality of the colonial administration’s rejection of the Creoles’ argument, his minimalist analysis, which ignored the “no taxation without representation” argument, was superficial, projecting a discourse that elevated the anxieties occasioned by the inclusion of protected persons in the Legislative Council. Even Akintola Wyse’s reasonable effort to use the lived experiences of the separatist leader of the Creoles, Herbert Bankole-­Bright, to explain the “differentials in legal status” of the Creoles in the empire was problematic (Wyse 2003). His projection of an argument supporting the superiority of the “Britishness” of the Creoles over the wider people of the protectorate was unhelpful; if “Britishness” was to be the yardstick for inclusion in government, then the decision of the British colonial administration to side with the protectorate undermines his argument as less efficacious, leaving only an attempt to divert attention from what mattered most: the “no taxation without representation” issue. Second, there was the question of western civilization and education. In their racialized interpretation of who should or should not be included in the Legislative Council, the Creoles insisted that the protected persons could be a danger to the limited democracy the colonial administration was offering Sierra Leone. As far as the Creoles were concerned, the protected persons were uncivilized and unschooled in the ways of the colonial master. As such, they were not capable of navigating complex parliamentary procedures, let alone interpreting the content of bills and legislations. In fact, Jimmy Kandeh contends that the Creoles were of the view that these illiterate protected persons could become “stooges of the European district commissioners” (Kandeh 1992, 88). In situations where the unelected district commissioners could dictate how the protectorate chiefs spoke and voted in the Legislative Council, democracy would become largely meaningless. One prominent Creole politician, Ernest Samuel Beoku-­Betts, writing in the Sierra Leone Weekly News of August 24, 1924, opined that, As this article is written from a constitutional point of view, I will content myself with making only a passing remark on the folly of nominating Paramount Chiefs to the Council on the ground that there is no guarantee that the Chiefs will be literate, not can anyone guarantee whatever be given that they will not be subjected to the influence of the commissioners from whose provinces they will come.  (Quoted in Bangura 2016, 23) The Creole political leaders were, therefore, of the view that “western education” should be a criterion for membership of the Legislative Council. That way, the district commissioners could be prevented from becoming the puppet-­ masters of national politics. This requirement might have been acceptable to the members of the Committee of Educated Aborigines; indeed, the Creoles had anticipated that they would be in favor of it. After all, the CEA also had its

68   Citizens and protected persons issues with the district commissioners. They did recognize that education in the protectorate should be given a priority “over the elective franchise, especially under the terms proposed by Creole leaders.” This education requirement was, however, unhelpful, as it would effectively disqualify the vast majority of protectorate Africans. Against this backdrop, Kandeh, citing Martin Kilson, has observed that the CEA told the colonial administration and the Creoles that the requirement would need the consent of the 200 chiefly dynasties in the protectorate. Moreover—anticipating that the chiefs would object to the requirement—the CEA advised the colonial administration not to grant “to a handful of colony Africans” (the Creoles) the privilege to legislate on behalf of the protectorate Aborigines without the consent of their chiefs (Kandeh 1992, 89). The CEA’s misgivings over the education requirement were well-­founded. The colony of Freetown had begun experimenting with western (British) primary and secondary education as far back as 1790, and with university education in the 1820s. In the wider protectorate, it was not until 1902 that tertiary education commenced with the founding of the Harford School for Girls in Moyamba, southern Sierra Leone. However, since protectorate women (except for the daughters of chiefs in the southern region) were not permitted to participate in politics, Harford School graduates were politically irrelevant. Where women were expected to contribute was in nurturing roles: as wives and mothers of the male politicians (after all, even in the 1920s Harford School was only offering courses in home economics and domestic management). The starting point of politically relevant public schooling in the protectorate was 1906, when Bo School was founded to train the sons of the protectorate chiefs. There were those who believed that the education requirement was designed to forestall “a social, rather than a political, threat” to the Creole hegemony (Kandeh 1992, 88). It was this “social threat” that explains, in part, the resistance of the Creoles to including the people of the protectorate in the Legislative Council. The sense of “class” crystallized into a “Creole political identity.” This insistence on identity differences reflected, and shaped, the kind of relationship the Creoles wanted with the protectorate’s people. It resulted in a significant watershed moment in the political and human rights histories of Sierra Leone— the birth of the persistent problem of racism and tribalism in the country. There is a saying that “pride cometh before a fall,” and the Creoles were known for using every available means to advertise their self-­perceived superiority. In the September 9, 1922 issue of the Sierra Leone Weekly News, the Creole elites warned of the consequences of opening the colony up to the “uncivilized” of the protectorate, in a somewhat demeaning terms. Political representation in the Legislative Council, according to the authors of the article, should also take into consideration the public appearances of the people. Failure to do that could result in the mass migration of the “unwashed” protectorate people into the colony— people “dressed, or rather undressed in a style which would have been considered scanty even in the days when Adam delved and Eve spun.” Such people were not to be suffered to appear in “our thoroughfares offering silent and nude reproaches to the existing local regulations, our civilization and ideas of

Citizens and protected persons   69 decency.” They decried the sight of the kossoh folk or, as they like to be called, Mendes [as they] file 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 wear, only rendering the absence of these which they ought to wear more conspicuous (Sierra Leone Weekly News 1922, quoted in Kandeh 1992, 88). A closer look at this editorial in the Sierra Leone Weekly News reveals more than just the ethnopolitical implications of the mudslinging against the British protected persons. That the Creole politicians resorted to the use of derogatory “speech acts” tells of their use of a familiar social narrative in Freetown. Their case to the colonial administration that their Creole identity equated to superiority was also circular, based on the superficialities of location. They were in Freetown, and the others were in the protectorate: therefore, they were civilized, and the protectorate peoples—being outsiders—were uncivilized. Racism was commonplace in their political statements targeting their presumed audiences, the general Creole populace in Freetown and the indifferent British overlords in Freetown and London. The authors of such columns wanted these audiences to know that the laws of England were under threat from the primitive, “unwashed” people of the protectorate. They did not conceal these views from the protected persons, either; they made them understand that they should see themselves as a threat. For the protected peoples, coming to Freetown, where they were called demeaning names—“skewered herring,” “unwashed African,” and “hideous primate”—created a negative mirror image of their identities. The Creole politicians’ aim was to position the protectorate peoples as a suboptimal condition of the human subject. They wanted the protectorate people to see them—the Creoles—as the “interpellated beings,” to use the words of Louis Althusser, beings who should be hailed by “ideological state apparatuses that operate on behalf of ruling ideas to become subjects of an ideology that always pre-­exists them” (Althusser, quoted in Hall 2012, 153). While this was seemingly empowering to the Creole elites, it had a negative impact on the protected persons. They were made to see themselves as a category of people who were not human enough. It created a temporal sense of powerlessness and transformed their identity from being the subject of progressive democratic political pluralism to an object that was trying to prevent the westernization and modernization of Sierra Leone. This psychological conditioning of the place of identities in modernization was a persistent feature of the colonial politics of the 1920s. By presenting the protectorate people as “primitive” or “barbaric,” the Creoles sought to remind the colonial administration of the danger the protectorate peoples had posed to the empire since the Hut Tax War of 1898. The Creoles were still angry about the slaughter of Creole businessmen and their families by the armies of Bai Bureh, Nyagua, and other chiefs during that conflict.

70   Citizens and protected persons

Racists, radicals, and moderates Given their belief that the people from the protectorate were barbarians, and the interests of the two communities—Freetown and the wider protectorate—were irreconcilable, the Creoles called on the colonial administration to create two sets of laws and rules: one for the Creoles and one for the protectorate people. Bankole-­Bright, the most vocal opponent of the protected persons, was quoted as saying that the Creoles and the protectorate peoples were like “two mountains that never can meet.” Bankole-­Bright, “a diehard Creole racist, wondered why the colonial administration had rejected their suggestions for the introduction of black minority rule (headed by the Creoles) in Sierra Leone” (Crowder 1958, quoted in Kandeh 1992, 89). If minorities in other parts of Africa—the Afrikaaners of South Africa, the Whenwes of Rhodesia—could control the majority black population, the thinking went, then it should be achievable in Sierra Leone. Better still, if the minority Americo-­Liberians (the descendants of the liberated Africans resettled by the American Civilization Society) had dominated politics in Liberia since 1822, and been masters over the indigenous ethnic groups—the Krahn, Gbandi, Kpelle, Loma, Grebo, Gio, Vai, Kissi, Gbandi, and Kru peoples—why should they, the Creoles, not be allowed to institute a black apartheid regime in Sierra Leone? Returning to the possibility of having “two rules,” and “two institutions”—one in the colony for the Creoles, the British subjects, and one in the protectorate for the natives, the British protected persons—the Creoles suggested that the rules to govern the colony of Freetown should be the laws of England, from Magna Carta to the laws of the 1920s. However, if the colonial administration insisted on Sierra Leone developing its own laws, then whatever law they made should have a positive impact on the Creoles of the colony. One way of measuring impact, as far as the Creoles were concerned, was to give them the right to make laws for the colony and the protectorate. By insisting on associative semantics, meanings, and illocutionary gestures that pointed to their longstanding adaptation to “British” legal ideas and ideals, their “Britishness” became a platform to promote Creole interests in the lead-­up to the adoption of Slater’s Constitution of 1924. The colonial administration was aware of the motives behind the Creoles’ disparaging tactics. For the administration, politics was about interests. If granting the protectorate chiefs some form of psephological representation encouraged them to keep paying taxes, as well as appeasing them for their losses during the Hut Tax War, so be it. When Alexander Ransford Slater became governor of Sierra Leone on May 4, 1922, his first official act was to tour the protectorate to listen to the district commissioners, the chiefs, the members of the CEA, and the people. In the colony of Freetown, he also listened to what the Creoles had to say. With the date (October 28, 1924) of the elections for the Legislative Council barely two months away, there were captious political squabbles and tensions between the two Creole political factions that had emerged out of the National Congress of British West Africa (NCBWA). On the one hand were the Creole radicals who, under Herbert Bankole-­Bright, “actively sought the secession of

Citizens and protected persons   71 Freetown from the rest of Sierra Leone” (Kandeh 1992, 89). The moderates, led by Ernest Samuel Beoku-­Betts and Albert Tuboku-­Metzger, disdained the radicals’ threats of violence and instead sought to challenge any expansion of the Legislative Council to accommodate the protectorate. According to Joseph Bangura, Beoku-­Betts and Metzger “resorted to legalistic arguments.” In fact, Metzger went on the rampage in the Legislative Council, describing the protectorate chiefs and their people “as aliens and not British Subjects” who it would be a breach of the British Constitution and the Foreign Jurisdiction Act of 1890 to accommodate in government. However, neither radicals nor moderates succeeded in overturning the governor’s proclamation that the chiefs were the “legitimate and natural representatives of their people” (Bangura 2009, 587). Disregarding the pressure from the Creole factions, Governor Slater made his recommendations to the Colonial Secretary, finding that the political exclusion of the protectorate was unhelpful to the empire. He therefore proposed a new constitution to replace the Blackhall Constitution of 1863.

Political representation for protected persons: the 1924 Constitution The 1924 Constitution created a Legislative Council of 22 seats (12 official and ten unofficial), and an Executive Council. Eligibility to vote varied: in the colony of Freetown the franchise was limited to literate (i.e., British educated) Creoles, 21 years of age and above, and owning at least £10 worth of property in central Freetown or £6 of property (house or farmland) in the Creole communities of rural Freetown. In the protectorate, it was the prerogative of the governor to appoint three chiefs from among the 200 ruling houses. In both the colony and the protectorate, women were disenfranchised. In the elections that followed in October 1924, of the 25,000 enfranchised population, the voter registration office only registered 1,866 people: 1,016 in central Freetown, 511 in peri-­urban Freetown and 339 in rural Freetown. The distribution of seats was as follows: the 12 official seats were allocated to the Legislative Council and reserved for white British nationals in Freetown. The colonial administration also determined the allocation of the ten unofficial seats. It allocated five seats to the Creoles of Freetown, two seats were given to the (European) business class, and three seats to the protectorate. Of these three protectorate seats, one was reserved for each of the three regions, southern, northern, and eastern region. Elections were held only for the colony of Freetown; in the protectorate, the governor hand-­picked the representatives. The Freetown seats were won by three members of the NCBWA and two independents. The NCBWA members included Ernest Beoku-­Betts (who won 607 votes in his Central Urban constituency to his opponent’s 373 votes), Herbert Bankole-­ Bright (562 votes in his peri-­urban Freetown constituency to his opponent’s 199) and Albert Tuboku Metzger (173 votes, running unopposed in his constituency, Rural Freetown) (Wyse 2003, 57–8). For the three protectorate seats, the governor appointed, from the southern and eastern regions, Chief Kumba (of the

72   Citizens and protected persons Mande chiefdom) and Chief Tucker of Nangoba (of the Bullom chiefdom) respectively and, for the northern region, Bai Kompa (of the Koya chiefdom) (Wyse 1989, 100 fn. 23).

Freedom for all enslaved British protected persons At the international level, Britain had provided leadership to end the transatlantic slave trade. According to Christopher Fyfe, “between 1807 and the middle of 1815 the Treasury paid naval captains [alone] £191,100 in slave bounties.” This view is also supported by Tara Helfman, who states that, following the adoption of the Anti-­Slavery Act of 1807, Westminster established powerful incentives for the enterprising British privateer to take up the cause of abolitionism, regardless of the depth of his convictions. On May 16, 1808, one year after the vice-­admiralty court was established at Freetown, the King issued an Order in Council offering a bounty for captured slaves of £40 per man, £30 per woman, and £10 per child, in lieu of prize money for the ship itself. (Helfman 2006, 1143) Apart from hiring slave-­bounty hunters, Parliament established two courts for that purpose. One was the Court of Vice Admiralty in Sierra Leone. It had responsibility for “enforc[ing] Britain’s 1807 Act [as amended by the Slave Trade Felony Act of 18112] for the Abolition of the Slave Trade” (Helfman 2006, 1122). The other was the Courts of Mixed Commission.3 This mixed court sat in Freetown, the Cape of Good Hope, Boa Vista (Cape Verde) Luanda (Angola), Havana (Cuba), New York (United States), Paramaribo (Surinam), Spanish Town (Caribbean), and Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) between 1819 and 1871. It was “responsible for the condemnation of over 600 slave vessels and the liberation of nearly 80,000 slaves” (Bethell 1966, 79). Moreover, through a series of bilateral agreements with the United States, Spain, Portugal, France, and the Netherlands, Britain was able to set the international agenda for the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade. After the First World War, Britain continued its leadership in abolishing the trade from within the newly created League of Nations, drafting and introducing the League of Nations Slavery Convention of 1926. Was British international commitment reflective of its domestic policy in Sierra Leone? The protected persons may have scored their first constitutional victory with the political recognition afforded by Slater’s Constitution. Nevertheless, forms of slavery persisted in the protectorate. During his visits to the protectorate, Governor Slater said his first impression on arrival “was one of a surprise that in Sierra Leone, of all colonies, having regard to the history of its first sellers, there is still in existence, even in the hinterland, an admitted form of slavery” (Hanlon 2007, 2). It is noteworthy that, before the appointment of Governor Slater, there had been a 1901 Ordinance to end the dealing in slaves by

Citizens and protected persons   73 allowing “slaves to buy their freedom, at a sum” fixed by the governor but “not more than four pounds for an adult and two pounds for a child” (Hanlon 2007, 1). This ordinance, as interpreted by the district commissioners, granted freedom to any runaway slave who was able to enter the colony of Freetown. Once in Freetown, that slave was free from all claims of ownership by his master(s) in the protectorate. Even if he or she decided to return to the protectorate, it was illegal for his or her former master to claim him or her (Lewis 1954, 67). Despite the existence of this ordinance, the colonial government was under pressure from England to keep the slave trade alive in the protectorate. Slaves who attempted to run away were captured and returned to their owners; district commissioners who attempted to intervene to protect the rights of these recaptured slaves were sometimes reprimanded by the governor in Freetown. The governors were also powerless to act, adjured by telegrams from the “Colonial Secretary to put the matters [of runaway slaves] on an eighteenth-­century basis” (ibid.). This policy of “catch and return” meant, in Lewis’s assessment, that “Nobody [heeded] Mr Justice Mansfield’s decision of 1772! It was not relevant! Wasn’t it, though with all Europe laughing at British hypocrisy?” (ibid.). Not all district commissioners desisted from efforts to deliver as many slaves as possible out of bondage. They relocated runaway slaves into faraway, though “less fertile farm-­bush to fend for themselves.” It had been expected that, with the adoption of the Ordinance No. 24 of 1927, the problem of slavery would be resolved. This did not happen. In fact, despite being a signatory, just a year before, to the 1926 League of Nations Slavery Convention, the British imperial government showed little interest in ending the trade in Sierra Leone. Motivated by the American civil rights activist W. E. B. Du Bois, members of the National Congress of British West Africa, under the leadership of Joseph Ephraim Casely Hayford, went directly to the League of Nations in London with a plea for help (Mcduffie 2017). According to Joseph Hanlon, the main issue for the National Congress of British West Africa was the intervention of the colonial administration (less than a year after Britain had signed the League of Nations Slavery Convention) to influence the ruling of the Sierra Leone Supreme Court. The court declared on July 1, 1927 that the status of slavery “is clearly recognised” and thus “the use of reasonable force [by the slave owner] in retaking of a runaway slave must also be recognised.” Court president, Mr. Justice Sawyer-­Cookson added: “It must be as absurd to deny an owner of a slave his rights to retake a runaway slave as to deny a husband certain rights which follow on a lawful contracted marriage.” (Hanlon 2007, 1) The National Congress of British West Africa was not the only group fighting against the hypocrisy of the colonial authority. As far back as 1921, the clergy of Sierra Leone had an encounter with the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Winston Churchill. The Church Mission Society of Sierra Leone submitted a

74   Citizens and protected persons petition to the governor of the colony of Sierra Leone to take steps to end slavery in the protectorate. Churchill rejected their petition and, in a letter to the colonial administration of Governor Sir Richard James Wilkinson (governor between 1916 and 1922), disputed the benefits of the abolition. As far as he was concerned, “the abolition of slavery could not … have an immediate beneficial effect on the finances of the colony” of Sierra Leone (Fyfe 1962, 136). As Christopher Fyfe observes, the Secretary would only approve the abolition of the trade if it did not have a negative impact on the finances and labor-­intensive industries of the protectorate. Thus, he was not interested in ending slave labor in the Protectorate of Sierra Leone (nor in Northern Nigeria, The Gambia, Aden, Burma and Hong Kong). Instead, it was to be tacitly tolerated to sustain its immoral contributions to the political economy of colonialism. After all, the slave trade in the peripheral areas of the British Empire was not only a source of personal wealth for some officials in the protectorate, in Freetown and London. It was also a source of public wealth—for the empire (Gott 2007). To the 219,275 slaves (15 percent of the total population) in the protectorate (Hanlon 2007), freedom was a misnomer—an entitlement of the Creoles of the colony of Freetown and a privilege to the British protected persons. The British colonial administration was not yet ready to make the protectorate a place to redeem itself from the guilt of plundering Sierra Leone for centuries. As Roy Lewis observes, the development of legal policy to end slavery in the protectorate required a policy that was in “harmony with the emergent ideas of a new British Empire” (Lewis 1954, 3). Such a policy eventually came with the Slavery Ordinance of January 1, 1928. However, some forms of slavery—especially for women—continued until the late 1930s.

Group (dis)satisfactions in an era of majoritarian democracy: the Constitutions of 1947 and 1951 The adoption of the 1924 Constitution and the abolition of the slave trade in 1928 were two major successes for Governor Ransford Slater. However, there were still groups who were dissatisfied with his constitutional arrangement. Some believed it was a betrayal; others, though appreciative of their gains, wanted more. The chiefs were among first group. The 1896 Protectorate Proclamation created vague political and judicial structures of checks and balances that diminished their powers.4 In the main, this proclamation constrained the powers of chiefs by creating new overlords for them, the district commissioners (DCs). The judicial powers of the chiefs to try civil and criminal cases were also curtailed, and placed under the supervision of the courts of the district, and provincial and chief commissioners (Abraham 1972, 1974, 1978). The chiefs had protested (to the governors before and after Governor Slater) the continued existence of the office of commissioners (at district, provincial and regional levels). They loathed these commissioners and their court messengers (CMs), who were notorious for disregarding the offices of the chiefs (Banton 1957). The DCs and CMs were known for considering themselves as having sole authority to uphold

Citizens and protected persons   75 “law and order, suppressing slave-­dealing, cannibalism;5 and in the collection of taxes, encouraging agriculture and holding the ring for the civilizing efforts of missions and traders” (Lewis 1954, 66). By overstepping the powers and terms of reference of their role (which was initially designed to be advisory to the chiefs), these DCs became overlords, and the chiefs their subordinates. The DCs came to wield both executive and judicial powers (Abraham 1978). Despite the 1905 Tribal Administration Act, the chiefs were unable to challenge the limitless powers of the DCs, who were the eyes and ears of the governor and in turn relied for “police work, detective work and general executive duties, upon a remarkable semi-­military body, the Court Messengers”6 (Lewis 1954, 66). The Creole merchants (and their legal representatives) in Freetown were the second dissatisfied group. These business people wanted the repeal of discriminatory land laws that prevented them from acquiring land in the protectorate (Spitzer 1974). They had expected that the British government would replace the unwritten customary laws of the protectorate with English common law. Their legal representatives had expected that they would be charged with drafting a new land law regime, a task that would have enabled them to recommend the removal of the clause in the Protectorate Proclamation that prevented both Creoles and foreign enterprises run by Creole agents (such as the United Africa Company and the Société Commerciale de l’Ouest Africain (Wyse 1989, 27)) from owning land in the protectorate (Spitzer 1974, 79). These hopes were dashed; the select committee of the British Parliament in London responsible for chieftain affairs did not feel it was expedient to impose further detriment upon the chiefs (Lewis 1954, 65). The Committee of Educated Aborigines was another dissatisfied group. They saw the Creole minority’s dominance in politics, the underrepresentation of the majority protected persons, and the unlimited powers of the DCs as the three main reasons for the lack of progress in the protectorate. The attempts by the Creoles to create tensions between the CEA and the chiefs had failed. CEA members were the educated sons of chiefs, and under no circumstances would they side with the Creoles against their fathers. In fact, it was considered a taboo for them even to aspire to defy patriarchal authority. As far as the CEA was concerned, politics, in the Aristotlean sense, was about authority; authority was characteristic of the state; and that state was a teleological outgrowth of the family; the seminarium res public (“the seedbed of the state”). Moreover, their families were an outgrowth of the natural society. In this natural society, there were hierarchies and paternalistic order, and rules to maintain that order. Children, however educated, should aspire to obey the elders, and only through obedience could one merit membership of the natural society, the household, the state, and politics. Backed by their fathers, the members of the CEA (whether acting individually or collectively) pitched camp against the Creoles. The tensions between them intensified in 1947 when Slater’s successor, Governor Sir Hubert Stevenson, announced his plans to replace the 1924 Constitution (Kandeh 1992). If adopted, Governor Stevenson’s Constitution would tip the political scale in favor of the protectorate.

76   Citizens and protected persons Reviews of newspaper publications between 1946 and 1947 suggest that the Creoles’ (who were the educated and moneyed class) fight against protectorate political domination was driven by a sense that their existence—their Creole identity—was at stake. According to the census of 1911, Creoles constituted 21 percent of the population, against the protectorate’s 71 percent (Banton 1957, 24). To the leaders of the Creoles (both radicals and moderates), this paucity of numbers meant any transfer of power to the protectorate would seal their political demise. To forestall that, they intensified their mudslinging against the chiefs, the members of the CEA, and the general populace. This also resulted in the intensifying criticism of the colonial administration for supporting the people of the protectorate. Using the Creole nationalist newspaper, the Sierra Leone Weekly News, they went on the offensive. They reminded Governor Stevenson of the unconstitutionality of his proposal. In one editorial, they argued that a Legislative Council in the colony with a majority of foreigners, as British protected persons are in the Commonwealth, is contrary to the whole conception of British citizens. British citizens have the right that they shall be governed only by such persons as are the same status as themselves. By the suggested set-­up of Protectorate majority, persons who are not British would be empowered to make legislation that may seriously affect the rights of British subjects. (Bangura 2009, 588; emphasis added) How was the governor to balance political justice (to satisfy the British subjects, the Creoles) and economic justice (to satisfy the tax-­paying people of the protectorate)? His predecessor, Slater, had set a precedent that all taxpayers were entitled to political representation. Regarding contributions to governance, the Creoles were outstanding in the civil and public sectors: schools, hospitals, courthouses, and government ministries. So too, however, were the people of the protectorate: they paid their taxes and composed the rank and file of the police, prisons, and military forces. In fact, during the Second World War, 95 percent of the soldiers from Sierra Leone came from the protectorate. They fought for the empire in Burma (present-­day Myanmar) and Western and Central Africa (Conway 1968; Sekgoma 1986). Finally, concluding that a shift of political power from the Creoles to the people in the protectorate was politically and economically the right course, Governor Stevenson presented his constitutional reform proposal. His plan called for the creation of a 23-member Legislative Council. Ten seats were allocated to the protectorate. Unlike Slater’s Constitution, which gave the governor the powers to select protectorate representatives, Governor Stevenson’s Constitution gave this power to the Protectorate Assembly. The Assembly, which was dominated by the chiefs, was the parliament in the protectorate. Seven official council seats were reserved for white Britons and four were allocated to the Creoles of Freetown. The proposal also allocated two seats to the European merchant community in Sierra Leone, with the governor empowered to appoint these representatives (Cartwright 1970, 43).

Citizens and protected persons   77 In sum, Stevenson’s constitutional arrangement not only replaced the unofficial members of the protectorate with official members, but also increased their numbers to ten. The Creoles, who had a majority of five in the 1924 Constitution, were reduced to four representatives (Wyse 2003). Governor Stevenson’s reform had a number of human rights implications. Granting the Protectorate Assembly the power to elect all ten members from the protectorate was a victory for the district commissioners and a defeat for the ordinary citizens of the protectorate, who aspired to the same constitutional, political, and economic rights the citizens of Freetown enjoyed by virtue of their status as British subjects/citizens. The people in the protectorate yearned for a time when they would control politics in their districts. The first attempt at political decentralization (after the adoption of the Protectorate Proclamation of 1896) was the Tribal Administration Act of 1905. Although this Act was passed to enable the governor to regulate local government in the new communities the people of the protectorate had created in rural Freetown, it was the first to recognize the “tribal authority” of the non-­Creole people in Freetown (Banton 1957, 14). This Act granted the chiefs, the headmen, and alimamys of these non-­Creole Freetownians the authority to [adjudicate ordinary] cases, saving time and giving men an easier hearing than they would otherwise obtain. They are useful as mouthpieces of the government in conveying orders to the people. They are of the greatest assistance in enquiring into matters for the police when the occasion demands, and in helping to bring fugitives to justice. The fact that they are representative men for each tribe … is a great factor in the reduction of crime as each headman is naturally anxious to stand well with the Government. The tribal ruler is also a local agent for members of the tribe who come down from the protectorate and medium for inter-­tribal palavers in Freetown. (Banton 1957, 16–17) The second attempt came with the adoption of the Protectorate Order in Council (POC; S. I. 1951, II, 658) in 1951. At face value, the POC was a solution to the problem of “over-­centralization of governmental powers in Freetown.” In practice, it empowered the district commissioners and the chiefs to the detriment of the ordinary citizens in the protectorate. This POC was, indeed, as the chiefs would like it: it was the first law that came close to restoring the chiefly powers lost under the Protectorate Proclamation—even if it meant they had to share power with the district commissioners. After its adoption, the chiefs and district commissioners lost no time in creating for themselves capitulatory privileges. To further compensate these chiefs and commissioners, the colonial administration conducted chiefdom delimitation exercises between 1948 and 1951. Smaller chiefdoms, with politically petty chieftains, were amalgamated and hand-­picked rulers from both old and new dynastic families were imposed on the people within these newly demarcated chiefdoms. Those who retained their thrones or

78   Citizens and protected persons were appointed from non-­dynastic families to positions as paramount chiefs, were expected to return this favor to the commissioners (or “good friends” as they were called), even if such favors were detrimental to the political, socio-­ cultural, and economic freedoms of their constituents. Out of these capitulatory privileges emerged a situation in which people began to fight for a place as clients within the neopatrimonial network of the chiefs and the commissioners. The outcome was the emergence of ethnopolitical sentiments. Tribalism, wealth, violence, and witchcraft came to dominate this neopatrimonial system for smaller communities, where the railway had not reached and there were no significant numbers of resident European merchants, doctors, lawyers, or teachers. Moreover, because the salaries of chiefs were less than those of the school teachers, corruption became a hallmark of these communities (Lewis 1954, 66). The chiefs and the commissioners were compelled to find means to supplement their salaries. One avenue was the local courts; in these courts-­cum-marketplaces, “justice” was always for sale to the highest bidder. This was also true for the court of the conniving commissioner doubled as the supreme court (for criminal cases) and the court of appeal for all other cases in the district (Banton 1957; Gberie 2013, 108). The courts of the chiefs were the first instance courts (Acemoglu, Reed and Robinson 2014). Thus, those who refused to pay the bribes demanded by the chiefs would need a miracle to find justice in the commissioner’s court. Even where the commissioners realized that the chiefs erred in their judgments—especially on matters concerning “women-­palaver”7 and “inheritance of bush-­farms”—the commissioners were notorious for upholding the chiefs’ verdicts (Lewis 1954, 68). Through the commodification of “justice,” the chiefs and commissioners were able to interfere in the private lives of their subjects, depriving some of their rights to privacy, property, or life, as well as the right to legal redress and freedom from torture (Lewis 1954, 68). In some communities where the chief was the only person who knew how to read, speak, and write in the language of the “English white man” and the Krio language (the language of the Creole people) (Lewis 1954, 70; Clarke 1863; Skinner 1976; Bangura 2006), life was unbearable. That educated chief would use language as an instrument of control. They were “despots; obeyed without questions, disposing of their treasuries much as privy purses, cool towards new-­fangled white man’s talk of education and development.” There was no expectation that people could try to remove these despots because it was “harder to oppose or depose the chief, especially when he stood well with the Government.” The chief “could, therefore, settle down to make his chiefdom a source of personal wealth; and many did” (Lewis 1954, 68). It was this search for personal wealth, and what the peasants referred to as the “oppressive practices and the excessive financial demands by the paramount chiefs” (Rashid 2009, 115) that contributed to the year-­long peasant war of 1955–1956.

Citizens and protected persons   79

Notes 1 It is true that, as a universal category, the Creole identity existed in every society where there has been a mixture of cultures. However, the spurious claim that Creoles existed in nineteenth-­century Sierra Leone is not true. No people identified themselves as Creoles in the nineteenth century and no language called Krio emerged. The decennial censuses are clear on the question of identity. They called themselves “Saro”; “colony Africans”; “liberated Africans from the transatlantic slave trade”; “Oku”; “Yoruba”; “Hausa”; “Nupe” etc. (Wyse 2003, 3). Until 1920s, when scholars began to write about creoledom, they were struggling with a name for the language. Most scholarly works ended up calling them Saro (see, for more on this issue, Spitzer 1974). Thus, if the people did not exist, the language would not be there. A people must have a language to be a distinct group. 2 On May 14, 1811, the Slave Trade Felony Act was adopted by the British Parliament through the insistence of Henry Brougham, Member of Parliament for Camelford. The Act contained felony definition (in Section 1): the “removal, or assisting in the removal, transportation and shipment of slaves by British subjects, or in British territory.” It also contained provisions on the “penalties of imprisonment and hard labour for between three and five years or transportation for 14 years.” However, to some, the Act degraded the crime of slavery to the category of “pickpockets and swindlers” (Haslam 2012, 10). 3 According to Jenny S. Martinez (2012, 67), of the courts created by the treaties [on the abolition of the slave trade], the courts at Sierra Leone [especially the Courts of Mixed Commissions] were by far the most active, hearing more than 500 cases in all. During their peak years of operation between 1830s and 1840s, one out of every five vessels known to engage in the transatlantic trade was brought for trial in the Courts of Mixed Commission. 4 The Hut Tax War had been, in part, a form of protest against the changes. Unfortunately, its outcome was the execution of 33 chiefs found guilty of treason (Chalmers 1899; Gberie 2013) and the ousting of many more—resulting in the elimination of several prominent ruling dynasties (Reed and Robinson 2013; Acemoglu et al. 2014). 5 Including the ritualistic and cannibalistic excesses of secret societies, especially the Alikali society (the group notorious for committing assassinations for their patrons, the chiefs), the Poro, and the Leopard Secret Societies (Banton 1957; Lewis 1954, 66). 6 Roy Lewis teaches us that the court messenger “force developed out of the Government-­paid messengers who maintained contact between the Governor in Freetown and his Good Friends, the chiefs in treaty [i.e., the Protectorate Proclamation Agreement] relationship to Her Majesty.” After the protectorate was declared, they (the CMs) were put on uniforms and given proper training; men who have served in the West African regiments often become court messengers, and ex-­CMs usually obtain high positions in the chiefdoms from which they come, even to being elected paramount chiefs. They served as interpreters and general go-­betweens. They are thus policemen; and their morale [which include the boldness to go into remote villages to arrest people despite the threats and actual use of “witchcraft” and ordinary resistance], it is hard to deny, is far higher than that of the ordinary African constabulary (Lewis 1954, 66). 7 This exploitative use of the patronage system served other purposes beyond the building of the personal wealth of the clientele-­chiefs and the patron-­commissioners. It served a gender-­based performative function in the subjugation of women to polygynous marriages. It also resulted in the psychological castration of the powerless men within the chiefdoms. On the issue of polygynous marriages, women were considered a commodity; a bounty for the chiefs, who “took their pick of the young women.” Even the missionaries believed that chiefs significantly “increased the numbers of their wives

80   Citizens and protected persons as their riches grew under the peaceful shade of [the] District Commissioner[s].” Some chiefs had more than 300 wives. It was common for a chief to express a desire for a woman he encountered in the bush, only to be told that he had been married to her for some time. One methodical chief made his wives embroider serial numbers on their lappas; another put his into a regular uniform. (Lewis 1954, 69) The colonial government was aware of this social ill; it was aware of the implications of these ills for the human rights of the protectorate’s Africans. However, it did nothing to address the problem. During field research for this book in northern (Port Loko) and southern (Bo Town) Sierra Leone, I heard real stories from people who suffered imprisonment and banishment imposed by their chiefs (between 1947 and 1955) for having sexual affairs with any of the chief ’s “wives.” Respondents in the cities of Bo Town and Kenema, in eastern Sierra Leone, also confirmed that the chiefs and their councils were forcing young men who pleaded not guilty to swear on a very potent curse called ngele gbaa (or “thunder-­medicine”). The nature of this curse is rather controversial, but the best narrative that seems to have come close to explaining its “true” anthropo-­ mystic history and impact on people was provided by the Sierra Leonean historians, W. T. Harris and Harry Sawyer. They reported that the effectiveness of the ngele gbaa originates from its source, which the Kpaa Mendes (a sub-­group of the Mende tribal group) believe was to have been cut off from a meteorite by lightning. The ngele gbaa, which is a small axe dug from the ground together with an assortment of other small metal objects, is wrapped in a hamper of leaves and its owner, the ngele gbaa-­moi, or keeper of the medicine, was held in respect by the community (Harris and Sawyer 1968). It is a curse believed to affect not just the offender; all those related to him/her would also be killed by the thunder. It is for this reason, writes another historian on Mende belief systems, Joe A. D. Alie, that those with information would confess before the curse was placed. The offender was then punished (either by public flogging, fine, and/or banishment) (Alie 2008, 137–8). It is possible, judging by accounts of chiefs forcing their subjects to give them money, that some of these young men who pleaded guilty and decided to pay the fine and/or be imprisoned with hard labor (in the farms of the chief ) did so because they knew their fate had already been sealed even before they appeared before the chief ’s court.

References Abraham, Arthur. 1972. “Nyagua, the British, and the Hut Tax War.” The International Journal of African Historical Studies 5 (1): 94–8. Abraham, Arthur. 1974. “Bai Bureh, the British, and the Hut Tax War.” The International Journal of African Historical Studies 7 (1): 99–106. Abraham, Arthur. 1978. Mende Government and Politics under Colonial Rule: A Historical Study of Political Change in Sierra Leone, 1890–1937. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Acemoglu, Daron, Tristan Reed, and James Robinson. 2014. “Chiefs: Economic development and elite control of civil society in Sierra Leone.” Journal of Political Economy 122 (2): 319–68. Alie, Joe A. D. 2008. “Reconciliation and traditional justice: Tradition-­based practices of the Kpaa Mende in Sierra Leone,” in Luc Huyse and Mark Salter (eds.), Traditional Justice and Reconciliation after Violent Conflict Learning from African Experiences. Stockholm, Sweden: International IDEA Publications, 123–48.

Citizens and protected persons   81 Bangura, Joseph. 2009. “Understanding Sierra Leone in colonial West Africa: A synoptic socio-­political history.” History Compass 7 (3): 583–603. https://doi.org/10.1111/j. 1478-0542.2009.00596.x. Bangura, Joseph Jusuf. 2006. “The Temne in Freetown history: Rethinking the history of the Sierra Leone Colony, 1890–1961.” Ph.D. Dissertation, Halifax, Nova Scotia: Dalhousie University. https://dalspace.library.dal.ca/bitstream/handle/10222/54820/NR 19583.PDF?sequence=1. Bangura, Joseph Jusuf. 2016. “Constitutional development and ethnic entrepreneurism in Sierra Leone: A metahistorical analysis,” in Joseph Bangura and Marda Mustapha (eds.), Democratization and Human Security in Postwar Sierra Leone. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 13–36. Banton, Michael. 1957. West Africa City. London: Oxford University Press. Bethell, Leslie. 1966. “The mixed commissions for the suppression of the transatlantic slave trade in the nineteenth century.” The Journal of African History 7 (01): 79–93. Blyden, Edward Wilmot, III. 1959. Sierra Leone; The Pattern of Constitutional Change, 1924–1951. Ph.D. Thesis. Harvard University. Cartwright, John R. 1970. Politics in Sierra Leone 1947–1967. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press. Chalmers, David. 1899. “Report by Her Majesty’s Commissioner and Correspondence on the Subject of the Insurrection in the Sierra Leone Protectorate, 1898. Part II–Evidence and Documents.” London: Her Majesty Printing Office. Clarke, Robert. 1863. “Sketches of the colony of Sierra Leone and its inhabitants.” Transactions of the Ethnological Society of London 2: 320–63. https://doi.org/10.2307/ 3014328. Conway, H. E. 1968. “Labour protest activity in Sierra Leone during the early part of the twentieth century.” Labour History 15: 49–63. Fyfe, Christopher. 1962. A History of Sierra Leone. Vol. 1. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Gberie, Lansana. 2013. “The Chalmers Commission and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of Sierra Leone: Official inquiries as historical memory,” in Sylvia Ojukutu-­Macauley and Ismail Rashid (eds.), The Paradoxes of History and Memory in Post-­Colonial Sierra Leone. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Gott, Richard. 2007. “Britain’s vote to end its slave trade was a precursor to today’s liberal imperialism.” Guardian Newspaper, 2007. Wednesday, January 17. www.the guardian.com/commentisfree/2007/jan/17/comment.politics2. Hall, Steve. 2012. “Consumer culture and the meaning of the urban riots in England,” in Steve Hall and Simon Winlow (eds.), New Directions in Criminological Theory. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 145–64. Hanlon, Joseph. 2007. “Response: The 1833 Abolition of Slavery Act didn’t end the ‘vile trade.’ ” Guardian Newspaper, 2007. www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2007/jan/ 25/comment.comment. Harris, W. T. and Harry Sawyer. 1968. The Springs of Mende Belief and Conduct: A Discussion of the Influence of the Belief in the Supernatural among the Mende. Freetown, SL: Sierra Leone University Press. Haslam, Emily. 2012. “Redemption, colonialism and international criminal law: The nineteenth century slave-­trading trials of Samo and Peters,” in D. Kirby (ed.), Past Law, Present Histories: From Settler Colonies to International Justice. ANU e-­press. https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/30066, 7–22.

82   Citizens and protected persons Helfman, Tara. 2006. “The court of vice admiralty at Sierra Leone and the ABOLITION of the West African slave trade.” The Yale Law Journal 115 (5): 1122–56. Kandeh, Jimmy D. 1992. “Politicization of ethnic identities in Sierra Leone.” African Studies Review 35 (1): 81–99. Lewis, Roy. 1954. Sierra Leone: A Modern Portrait. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. Martinez, Jenny S. 2012. The Slave Trade and the Origins of International Human Rights Law, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Mcduffie, Erik S. 2017. “ ‘A new day has dawned for the UNIA’: Garveyism, the diasporic Midwest, and West Africa, 1920–80.” Journal of West African History 2 (1): 73–113. Rashid, Ismail OD. 2009. “Decolonization and popular contestation in Sierra Leone: The Peasant War of 1955–1956.” Afrika Zamani 17: 115–44. Reed, Tristan, and James A. Robinson. 2013. “The chiefdoms of Sierra Leone.” Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, Department of Economics. https://scholar.harvard. edu/files/jrobinson/files/history.pdf. Sekgoma, Gilbert A. 1986. “The Second World War and the Sierra Leone economy: Labour employment and utilisation, 1939–45,” in David Killingray and Richard Rathbone (eds.), Africa and the Second World War. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 232–57. http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-349-18264-0_9. Skinner, David E. 1976. “Islam and education in the colony and hinterland of Sierra Leone (1750–1914).” Canadian Journal of African Studies/Revue Canadienne Des Études Africaines 10 (3): 499–520. https://doi.org/10.1080/00083968.1976.10803768. Spitzer, Leo. 1974. The Creoles of Sierra Leone: Responses to Colonialism, 1870–1945. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. Wyse, Akintola. 1989. The Krio of Sierra Leone: An Interpretative History. London: C. Hurst & Co. Wyse, Akintola. 2003. H. C. Bankole-­Bright and Politics in Colonial Sierra Leone, 1919–1958. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

5 Racism and the rise of party politics, 1950–1960

In 1950, the Acting Chief Commissioner for the protectorate, Logie Wilson, wrote a series of letters to the governor of the colony in Freetown and the Home Office in London suggesting ways to increase the political empowerment of the people of the protectorate. The idea of empire was becoming less appealing, and the United Nations was urging colonial powers to grant more political rights to the people in their colonies. New human rights-­led political theories were generating enthusiasm for change across the racial, gender, and political divides. Against this backdrop, the Home Office in London was left with the task of devising a feasible plan for the gradual political transition to self-­rule in Sierra Leone, and the granting of political freedoms to the more than two million Sierra Leoneans (Kilson 1964, 100), as recommended by the United Nations’ 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UNDHR). With no other political alternative following the adoption of the UNDHR, the Home Office authorized the colonial administration to expand the Protectorate Assembly in 1949 to accommodate people from outside the chiefly dynasties. The leader of the United Mines Workers Union, Siaka Probyn Stevens (who would become President of the Republic of Sierra Leone in 1971) was appointed by the governor to represent the interests of all mine workers in the country. The adoption of the Order in Council of 1951 for the reform and political modernization of the district councils enabled all “educated protectorate people to have a role in local government” (ibid., 99). Accordingly, Albert Margai (who became Prime Minister of Sierra Leone in 1964) and Siaka Stevens entered the Legislative Council following their selection as representatives of their respective district councils. At the national level, the rise of political parties can be attributed, in part, to the commissioners of the protectorate. For example, between 1945 and 1950, Chief Commissioner Hubert Childs “exerted some influence on the protectorate’s behalf,” suggesting to the colonial administration in Freetown that it hand over political power to the chiefs of the protectorate. In fact, to counter Creole agitation for control of the Legislative Council, Childs was reported to have “put up protectorate chiefs to make anti-­colony [that is, anti-­Creole] statements” (Wyse 2003, 159). The consequence of Childs’s constant nudging was a change in the administration’s attitude towards the Creoles. The leader of the Creoles,

84   Racism and the rise of party politics Herbert Bankole-­Bright, lost favor in the eyes of the governor. In response, Bankole-­Bright’s Creole faction accused the colonial administration of taking sides. They were opposed to the administration’s disregard for due process, and its deliberate pursuit of a path that would compromise the political rights of the Creoles. As their agitation increased, the need for a centralized political party grew more urgent. The outcome was the founding of the National Council of the Colony of Sierra Leone.

The National Council of the Colony of Sierra Leone As the name implies, the National Council of the Colony of Sierra Leone (hereafter, the National Council) was a Freetown party. It is important to note that the formation of the National Council was not solely the work of Bankole-­Bright, as Akintola Wyse (2003) argues. In fact, several small Creole organizations had coalesced under Bankole-­Bright’s leadership “to oppose the dominance of the numerically stronger Protectorate people in the new political dispensation”—that is to say, the new constitutional arrangement that called for the granting of political control to the people of the protectorate (Fyle 2006, 139). The National Council’s core objective was to advance the political interests of the Creole ethnic group. Two ideological factors contributed to its emergence. These were, first, ethnonationalism—a focus on the Creole racial identity and way of life, and, second, a push for self-­rule (under Creole political hegemony). Regarding ethnonationalism, the leadership of the National Council was of the view that, without a Creole political party, the schemes of the colonial administration and the protectorate’s complaints of disenfranchisement would destroy all chances of realizing unity among the Creoles. The divisions they feared had begun to emerge as far back as the 1930s. This was due, in part, to Isaac Wallace-­ Johnson’s desire to unify the Creoles of Freetown and the people of the protectorate as a means to defeat European imperialism in Sierra Leone and beyond. Through his West African Youth League (WAYL), discussed in detail in Chapter 7, Wallace-­Johnson began to promote the political empowerment of the people of the protectorate, seeking to bring them to the level of ideological enlightenment the Creoles had already attained. For example, instead of working together with other Creoles to support the support the candidacy of W. S. Lapedon and S. Deen Alharazim (both Creole conservatives and nationalists) in the Legislative Council elections of 1939, Wallace-­Johnson’s WAYL fielded several of its members for the elections. They included C. D. Hotobah-­During, Otto Oyekan During, and Dr. W. Ojumiri Taylor. When the polls closed, Hotobah-­During had secured 504 votes, Oyekan During 445 votes and Ojumiri Taylor 154 votes. The Creole conservative nationalists, Lapedon and Deen Alharazim, received 405 and 364 votes respectively. With Hotobah-­During and Oyekan During elected, the Creole nationalists felt threatened by their popularity and their sympathies for the people of the pro­ tectorate. The Creole nationalists and conservatives were not prepared for a

Racism and the rise of party politics   85 political polarization at the national level that would make it difficult for them gain control of, and sustain their dominance in, the Legislative Council. Their enduring aim was to maintain a proactive—or even a racist—political front for the protection and promotion of the political, socio-­cultural, and economic interests of Creoles. By the 1940s, amid the rising power of the non-­Creole people of the protectorate, the conniving of the regional commissioners and the complacency of the colonial administration in Freetown, the need for a “Creole nationalist” political party became stronger than ever (Kilson 1966). In pursuance of their Creole nationalist objective—self-­rule under Creole political hegemony—the National Council adopted a fusion of two political strategies. The first was drawing on the political capital of the traumatic experiences of their ancestors (the Black Poors, the Nova Scotians, the Recaptives, and the Maroons) during the transatlantic slave trade to engage political sympathy (see, Braidwood 1994; Pybus 2006). The second was the explicit harkening back to the wishes of Granville Sharp and the Abolition Society that Freetown—the land of the free—should remain the “Province of Freedom” for their race, to remind the colonial administration of its moral obligation to politically empower the Creoles (Porter 1963; Hair 1998). The Creole nationalists had attempted, even before their leaders came together to form the National Council, to set benchmarks for the gradual transition to self-­rule (or African-­led government) in the colony. However, despite their confidence in the superiority of the Creole race, the Creoles continue to insist on a “western” education as a criterion for office at a time when their monopoly of it was fading. Interestingly, as time passed and they realized that western education was no longer the exclusive hallmark of the Creole, and that sustaining their status as an “elite” class who knew how to wine and dine with the colonial master was no longer possible, they shifted the argument to the question of “who first embraced westernization.” They espoused the view that who was to get political control should be decided on the basis of who, among all the ethnic groups in the country, first became British citizens and subjects. Remarkably, there were some politicians from the protectorate who sided with the Creoles on making education a requirement to run for political office. They knew that not every politician from the protectorate was illiterate; in fact, the only members of the Protectorate Assembly who were illiterate were the chiefs, and the chiefs did not become members of the Assembly through popular elections but at the will of the governor. These were the issues that Siaka Stevens raised with the Secretary of the Bureau, Dr. Rita Hinden, in a letter dated January 17, 1949. According to an excerpt from the letter: To my mind the whole thing hinges on the one question that is troubling most parts of British West Africa today—the position of chiefs in the Legislative Council. This is the burning question. I, for my part, agree with the colony people [the Creoles] that an unofficial majority made up of chiefs from the Protectorate, who, likeable people in themselves, are but part of a government and hold their position at the will of the government, and above

86   Racism and the rise of party politics all illiterate (most of them); such an unofficial majority would be nothing but a farce … So there we are, the “New Constitution” was turned down in the Legislative Council by an overwhelming majority—only the unofficial side of the Council voting, officials refraining from voting. So we have to start it all over again. I sincerely trust that the root of the difficulty will be tackled and not just the top. Once this difficulty is cleared, once the Colony people can see at least 50% Protectorate representation consisting of literate Protectorate men, I think their talk about the Colony getting more representation than the Protectorate will blow away. (Wyse 2003, 156) Steven’s assessment of the situation was correct. The leaders of the major political parties with links to the protectorate were either professionals or entrepreneurs; examples include Milton Margai (a medical doctor), Albert Margai (a lawyer), and Siaka Stevens (a businessman) (Kilson 1964, 110). In total, the Sierra Leone’s Peoples Party (SLPP)—before Albert Margai and Siaka Stevens broke away to form the People’s National Party (PNP) in 1960—had six members with a university/college education, ten with secondary school education, and one with primary education (Kilson 1964, 102). Moreover, although tribal consideration would later play a role in the constituted Legislative Council of 1960, the occupation of an individual topped all considerations influencing leadership recruitment. According to Kilson (1964, 100), Twenty-­one, or 40 per cent, [were] professionals; twelve, or 23 per cent, [were] businessmen; and thirteen, or 25 per cent, [were] native administration officials. Some 54 percent of the SLPP legislators, all UPP [United People’s Party] and the PNP-­Alliance legislators, all but one of the Independent Progressive Party (IPP) legislators [were] professionals and business-­men. Despite this, strict adherence to a tertiary level western education requirement, as suggested by the National Council, would make it impossible for the majority in the protectorate to exercise their suffrage. To resolve this issue, the colonial administration reached an agreement with the National Council on a new provision lowering the education threshold to basic (primary education level) literacy skills in the English language—reading, writing, and speaking—for those interested in contesting the new Legislative Council elections of 1951 (Wyse 2003, 159). Through its suggestion of representation based on who first became British citizens, the National Council intended to create what it had always dreamed of; a hierarchical society, with the Creoles acting as overlords. If partisan politics, after 1951, was going to provoke a populist call for independence, then the protectorate and the colony people should be separated by class-­based social and political privileges: the Creoles on top, and the protectorate below (Porter 1963; Thayer 1991). If, on the other hand, they were to be united by a new—but Creole dominated—political goal of achieving political independence from Britain,

Racism and the rise of party politics   87 “freedom” should be limited to the Creoles, thus effectively establishing Creole colonialism in the protectorate. This would have also meant designating the Krio tongue the country’s official language (Neumann-­Holzschuh and Schneider 2000). This National Council idea, that segregation was a method through which politics was perfected and the imperfections of racism (a human right deficiency) corrected in the long term, was influenced by its understanding of Darwin’s theory of natural selection, and the colonial administration resisted this racist ideology. In the elections of 1951, the National Council won three seats and became the official opposition in the Legislative Council. An interesting, though not surprising, outcome of the elections was the worsening relationship between the Creole members in the National Council and the colonial administration, on the one hand, and between Bankole-­Bright and the people of the protectorate, on the other. The souring of the relationship with the administration stemmed from the fact that, since the National Council was the only “majority party in the limited field of declared party contest” (Wyse 2003, 160), it had hoped that the governor would invite Bankole-­Bright to form a government. What had happened instead was that Bankole-­Bright was “misled by the results of the pools and the kite-­flying suggestions of the governor” (ibid.). According to Akintola Wyse, the leading scholar on Bankole-­Bright’s private and public life, it is possible that, during their private meeting immediately after the elections, the governor assured Bankole-­Bright he would be asked to form a government. Such an assurance may have stemmed from the governor’s promise to do a headcount of Council members in support of Bankole-­Bright becoming Chief Minister. However, the belief that the majority of the new Legislative Council would support Bankole-­Bright came from the colony representative in the Protectorate Assembly, Columbus Thompson, who advised Bankole-­Bright to agree to a headcount of support between him and Milton Margai, the leader of the newly  formed SLPP. Thompson was confident all elected members from the protectorate were going to declare their support for a Bankole-­Bright-led government. In the final event, the governor appointed Margai to form a government. Bankole-­Bright petitioned the governor’s decision on the grounds that the National Council was the only party that contested the elections by adult suffrage. Although the adult suffrage model devised by the colonial administration for Freetown was limited to the 5,000 enfranchized males in urban Freetown (thus excluding the other 123,000 enfranchized males in rural Freetown and the protectorate), Bankole-­Bright’s National Council had won three seats, a majority in the Legislative Council; those elected were Bankole-­Bright himself, C. A. Thompson, and J. Rogers Williams. The SLPP won two seats, held by A. G. Randle and M. S. Mustapha. Under the tradition in representative parliamentary democracy, Bankole-­Bright, as the majority leader in the Legislative Council, should have been invited by the governor to form a government. Governor Beresford-­Stoke had other ideas. He advised Bankole-­Bright that the fact that  members from the protectorate were elected through indirect democratic

88   Racism and the rise of party politics means (i.e., by members of the Protectorate Assembly on behalf of the general protectorate citizenry) was not sufficient reason to exclude them from the headcount. Moreover, the members elected by the Protectorate Assembly, Albert Margai and Siaka Stevens, had already informed the governor of their intention to declare their support for Margai. Margai also had the unreserved support of the 12 paramount chiefs from the protectorate: R. B. S. Koker (from Bo District), Milton Margai (from Bonthe District), Bockari Sambi (from Daru), Reverend Paul Dunbar (from Kono District), Lansana Kamara (from Koinadugu), Kenewa Gamanga (from Kenema District), Alikali Modu III (from Port Loko District), Jaia Kaikai (from Pujehun), W. H. Fitzjohn (from Moyamba District), and Bai Kurr (from Tonkolili District). In the governor’s assessment, even if the two independents, I. T. A. Wallace-­Johnson and J. C. O. Crowther, declared their support for Bankole-­Bright, it was still not enough. The issue was not who won the directly contested seats in Freetown, but to whom Albert Margai, Siaka Stevens, and the paramount chiefs would give their support during the headcount (Wyse 2003, 159). This was to be the only time the National Council, which had fought hard for Creole minority rule, would be the main opposition party in Sierra Leone. Other political parties emerged after 1951. They include the Koya Political Party, United Peoples Party, Labour Party, Kono Progressive Movement, Sierra Leone Independence Movement, Sierra Leone Progressive Independent Movement, Radical Democratic Party, Independence Progressive Party, and the All People’s Congress. It is true that Bankole-­Bright and the National Council were antagonistic to the chiefs and people of the protectorate and opposed most of Milton Margai’s policies. What is also true is that they played a crucial role in the development of several human rights policies, and the adoption into law of bills on press freedom and economic, trade union, and labor law reforms between 1951 and 1956. Despite this, in the 1956 elections, which resulted in the renaming of the Legislative Council to the House of Representatives and the transformation of politics that would lead to the granting of independence five years later, the National Council performed poorly. In fact, its performance was so bad it was not able to get back the financial deposits of its candidates (Fyle 2006, 139). On December 12, 1958, a year after this dismal performance, Dr. Herbert Bankole-­ Bright died. What he had accomplished, and had hoped the National Council would accomplish, for Sierra Leone was documented in the annals of Sierra Leone and reflected in Sir Milton Margai’s tribute: The death of Honorable Dr. H. C. Bankole-­Bright can best be described as the end of an epoch. For the grand old gentleman of politics was a stalwart pioneer in a field which held very little rewards. But as God would have it, he achieved in his lifetime some of the things for which he worked very hard. His contributions to West African journalism, to the political consciousness and activity of Sierra Leone, to the general cause of freedom and justice are too numerous to mention. We will remember him for all these and for his part in helping Sierra Leone gain its present constitution.

Racism and the rise of party politics   89 I have many memories of the late Dr H. C. Bankole-­Bright but I remember him most of all for his wit, his lively debates and his ability to put his point across very effectively during his leadership of the official opposition of the last government … death will not easily silence the achievement of a man who did so much for his country and people. History and those who write history will make spacious room to record the life and achievements of the later Honorable Dr H. C. Bankole-­Bright. (Quoted in Wyse 2003, 1)

The Sierra Leone People’s Party In April 1951, several proto-­nationalist parties and pressure groups from the protectorate merged to establish the SLPP. These groups included the People’s Party (PP), the Sierra Leone Organizing Society (SOS), and the Protectorate Educational and Progressive Union (PEPU). This merger could not have gone through without the individual efforts of prominent paramount chiefs including Kai Tungi (of Kissi Tung chiefdom), Bai Koblo Pathbana (of Marampa chiefdom), Jaia Kaikai (of Pujehun), P. C. Bockari Samba (of Daru), Bai Farima Tass (of Kambia), Bai Kurr (of Tonkolili), Alikali Modu III (of Port Loko/Maforki chiefdom), and Julius Momoh Gulama (of Kaiyamba chiefdom, Moyamba District). West Africa, one of the most widely read newspapers in Sierra Leone at the time, reported that the SLPP’s August 1951 manifesto described the party’s policy as the “political unification of the two units in the dependency and self-­ government within the British Empire” (Wyse 2003, 159). In pursuance of its policy, the party adopted a strategy of sponsoring all candidates in the colony of Freetown and the protectorate who expressed, in writing, a commitment to the unification of Sierra Leone. Why unification? What did the leaders of the protectorate see that Bankole-­ Bright and the Creoles of Freetown could not? Two reasons drove the desire in the protectorate for a unified Sierra Leone. The first was a person, the Reverend Ethelred Nathaniel Jones (also known as Lamina Sankoh), the second was the desire of the chiefs to reclaim Freetown (or Rocamp, to the people of the protectorate). The Creole clergyman Ethelred Nathaniel Jones (1884–1964) was the foremost figure of the struggle for a unification of the Creoles and the natives of Sierra Leone in the 1940s and 1950s. His guiding principles of “Afro-­centric Christian theology,” “civilization” (through the adoption of an Africanized version of westernization), “Afro-­nationalism,” and “inclusive politics” influenced much of his work in the protectorate. The story of his life was not unique. He emerged at a time of racial segregation in Europe (including Britain) and the United States. Jones, the subject of works by various scholars (Fyle and Abraham 1979; Kilson 1966; Porter 1963; Little 2013), was born in the Freetown rural village of Gloucester to a wealthy family involved in exporting peanuts. He completed his university studies at Fourah Bay College (established in 1825). Acting against his father’s wishes, Jones abandoned the study of

90   Racism and the rise of party politics medicine and instead studied theology and philosophy at Wycliffe College at Oxford University. It was at Oxford that he first encountered racism. The story goes that an Anglican bishop called on all theology students to tender their candidatures for ordination as deacons and lay-­preachers of the Anglican Church. Reverend Jones submitted his application but the bishop rejected it and informed the congregation that he was “allergic” to black Africans. When Jones insisted, the bishop angrily told him that it was “an unpardonable sin” against God for a bishop to lay his hands on the head of a black man and ordain him a deacon (Fyle 2006, 169–70). He was later ordained in 1923 by the Bishop of Peterborough in England—after he agreed to the church’s stipulation that the bishop must wear gloves during his ordination. To say that Jones was disappointed and angered by these events would be an understatement. He subsequently wrote a series of weekly columns in the Spectator newspaper expressing his disdain for the racism that had taken root in the so-­called “house of God” in England. He returned home in 1924, only to be confronted by Creole racism against the natives. In his first public statement, he rebuked the Creoles, prophetically warning them to “Change or Perish!” “By your refusal to adapt yourselves to a changed environment,” he contended, you have forfeited the ship of the country. In the process of time, after you have rehabilitated yourselves; after you have realized that a man is a man, by his humanity, not by his antecedents or profession, you may succeed in producing a man who is capable of commanding the heights and commanding the allegiance of the whole country.1 When the Creole conservatives, radicals, and moderates refused to listen to him, and instead launched a disparaging racist offensive against him and the people of the protectorate, his response left a permanent mark on the history of Creole– Native relations in Sierra Leone. He changed his name in 1924 from Ethelred Nathaniel Jones (English names that were a factor in Creole elitism and racism) to Lamina Sankoh (a popular tribal name among the Temnes of northwestern Sierra Leone). In the same year, he was ordained a priest-­curate of the Holy Trinity Church. He abandoned this position in 1927 and returned to Oxford University, where he graduated, in 1928, with a postgraduate diploma in education. Leaving England, he migrated to the United States, where he worked as a lecturer in several African-­American colleges and universities: the Orangeburg State College in South Carolina, the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, and Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. In the United States, Lamina Sankoh was further confronted by racial segregation against the black people. He returned to England in 1930 and, between 1930 and 1940, worked with various pan-­ Africanists, including Wallace-­Johnson. In 1941, Lamina Sankoh returned to Sierra Leone and entered the not-­forprofit business sector. He founded the Sierra Leone Cooperative Society, the first  registered micro-­savings bank, which encouraged its members to save a penny in every pound sterling they earned. Soon after, he joined forces with the

Racism and the rise of party politics   91 Honorable C. D. Hotobah-­During, the Legislative Council member for the colony of Freetown, and second-­in-command in Wallace-­Johnson’s WAYL. In 1948 the two founded the African Vanguard newspaper to promote the unification of the colony of Freetown with the protectorate (Fyle 2006, 170). With encouragement from Hotobah-­During, Lamina Sankoh entered protectorate politics and, under Hotobah-­During’s tutelage, founded the People’s Party in 1948. In response to the founding of the National Council by Bankole-­Bright and other Creole nationalists in 1950, Lamina Sankoh went from one protectorate district to another, talking to the chiefs and politicians. His message was the benefits of a political merger between his People’s Party and other protectorate parties to create a united front. In 1951, these parties merged, with the outcome being the creation of the SLPP. Under the SLPP banner, Lamina Sankoh contested a seat in the colony of Freetown during the Legislative Council elections of 1951. Although he lost this election to Bankole-­Bright, and died in 1964 (Fyle and Abraham 1979), he won the hearts and minds of many. The seed he planted in 1948 would come to fruition in 1961, when a united Sierra Leone gained its political independence from Britain. The second force behind the SLPP’s commitment to the unification of Freetown and the protectorate was the desire of the chiefs in the protectorate to “re-­gain” Freetown. In 1787, they had leased a tract of land to the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade for £60. In 1791, following the destruction of the settlement the Society had built for the liberated Africans, the Sierra Leone Company (which took over from the Abolition Society) bought another tract of land. In 1808, the whole of Freetown was ceded by the Company to the British Empire. The circumstances and implications of this loss are discussed extensively in Chapters 1 and 2 (this volume). Importantly, these native chiefs had never lost hope of reclaiming Freetown. The founding of the SLPP provided the platform they required. Between 1951 and 1953, they worked to convince Governor George Beresford-­Stoke of their readiness to form a government. During the official opening of the Legislative Council following the 1951 elections, Beresford-­Stoke had noted that, Where there is a well-­developed “party system” it is the practice of His Majesty the King or representative to send for the leader of the party which commands a majority and invite him to form a government. Here in Sierra Leone today I am not sure that the party system is yet quite sufficiently developed for me to introduce a procedure modeled mutatis mutandis on that which I have described. I proposed therefore on this occasion to consult unofficial members [i.e., who were not elected into the Council as SLPP or National Council members] at a private and informal meeting on the choice of who are to be invited to join government. I want to make two points clear: (1) that this should not be regarded as establishing a precedent; (2) that in following this procedure this year, I am guided solely by the overriding necessity to ensure that the Executive Council has the support of a working majority in the [Legislative] Council. (Wyse 2003, 160–1)

92   Racism and the rise of party politics On April 28, 1953, these chiefs were among the “Africans [who] became ministers in Sierra Leone … for the first time since the West African combined colony and protectorate was ‘founded’ by British settlers in 1878 as a home for Africans rescued from slave ships” (Australian Associated Press 1953, 7). Bai Farima Tass II, Alikali Modu, and Madam Ella Koblo Gulama were some of the chieftains2 who formed part of the government of Sir Milton Margai (Chief Minister and Minister for medical services, agriculture, animal husbandry, and forestry). Although their positions came with full executive powers, they were not given any specific ministry to head. That notwithstanding, there were times when these chiefs assumed the self-­styled titled of ministers responsible for protectorate-­ colony affairs). The inclusion of chiefs—the custodians of customary law in Sierra Leone—in the Legislative Council had some far-­reaching implications. Apart from exacerbating tensions between the English common law tradition and customary norms and practices, it decimated the system that had supported the elitism of the Creoles (Wyse 2003, 156). In the 1950s, these chieftains began using their cultural belief systems to undermine belief in the universality of human rights. Despite some political tinkering by the British colonial administration after these 1953 elections, support by some within the Legislative Council for a cultural-­relativist interpretation of human rights persisted, as evidenced by a review of the policy documents of the district councils, the Native Administration, and the Protectorate Assembly, as well as the pioneering work of Martin Kilson (1964). The chiefs of the protectorate and the Freetown-rural districts wanted a universal acceptance (within Sierra Leone) of their views on human rights. Though ultra-­patriarchal and anti-­ westernization in character, they wanted their cultural belief systems and traditions to be protected through constitutional guarantees. After all, as the statistics for tribal affiliations of Sierra Leone Legislators in the House of Representatives in 1951 show, the Creoles, who favored the English common law system and western education, constituted only 22 percent of legislators; moreover, they represented the Creole community, which equated to only 1.1. percent of Sierra Leone’s population.3 The chiefs also desired the strengthening of their political authority and the removal of the western education requirement for political participation being promoted by the National Council. They were of the view that the education bar, stationed by the Creoles, served to sustain Creole elitism and prevented the protectorate from getting the funds it needed to promote the chiefs’ preferred educational institutions. While the Creole political elite supported the building of more schools in the protectorate, they maintained that it should be limited to primary education, and they discouraged the establishment of tertiary and vocational institutions. This, the chiefs argued, was because the Creoles wanted to retain the lion’s share share of the education budget; moreover, to the chiefs this was a plot to prevent the emergence of a tertiary-­educated native population. Accordingly, as Kilson notes, [w]hereas in 1939 the colony, with a population of 96,422, had 82 schools (70 primary, 9 secondary, 3 vocational), and 57.6 per cent of its children

Racism and the rise of party politics   93 (mainly Creole) attended school, the protectorate, with a population of 1,667,790, had 185 schools (183 primary, no secondary, 2 vocational), and only 3.25 per cent of its children attended school. (Kilson 1964, 101, quoting the 1938, 1940, and 1940 reports of the Education Department) Kilson went on to state that, [t]he same pattern prevailed a decade later, with the colony claiming 54 per cent of educational expenditures and having 55 per cent of its children in school, whereas the protectorate claimed only 29 per cent of such expenditures and had 4 per cent of its children in school.  (Ibid.) The chiefs of the protectorate also called on the Creoles to accept the legal relevance of customary law, which they believe should have equal—or even more— weight to the English common law in Sierra Leone; moreover, they wanted the removal of all legal restrictions placed on their local courts, and the granting of unrestricted authority to adjudicate on matters dealing with religion, customs and gender relationships.

Notes 1 Quoted from the Center for Global Christianity and Mission’s Dictionary of African Christian Biography: Jones, Ethelred Nathaniel (Laminah Sankoh) 1884 to 1954 Anglican/“People’s Church” Sierra Leone. Available: www.dacb.org/stories/sierra leone/jones_ethlred.html. 2 The non-­chieftains who formed part of Sir Milton’s cabinet included the following: Mr. Albert Margai (Minister for Local Government and Social Welfare); Alhaji M. S. Mustapha (Minister for Port and Marine Affairs, and Civil Aviation, Public Works, Railway and Road Transport); Mr. A. G. Randle (Minister for Commerce and Industry, Posts and Telegraphs, and Co-­operatives); Mr. Siaka Stevens (Minister for Lands and Surveys, Mines, Geological Survey and Labour). 3 Against this, the Mende tribal group (with 35 percent of legislators), formed 36.2 percent of the population; the Temne tribal group (23 percent of legislators), 27.5 percent of the population; the Kono (6 percent of legislators), 7.2 percent of the population; the Kuranko (4 percent of legislators), 3.5 percent of the population; the Loko (2 percent of legislators), 3.5 percent of the population; the Sherbro (4 percent of legislators), 4 percent of the population; Mandinga/o (2 percent of legislators), 0.4 percent of the population; and the Aku (with tribal connections to the Yoruba tribal group in Nigeria) had 2 percent of legislators, representing 0.2 percent of the population (Kilson 1964, 100). Note that these figures were based upon a survey of 2,250,000 people, excluding the possible floating population of 750,000 people who were not counted.

94   Racism and the rise of party politics

References Australian Associated Press. 1953. “Africans’ new role in Sierra Leone.” Australian Associated Press, 1953, April 28 edition. Braidwood, Stephen J. 1994. Sierra Leone Settlers—Black Poor and White Philanthropists: London’s Blacks and the Foundation of the Sierra Leone Settlement 1786–1791. Liverpool, UK: Liverpool University Press. Fyle, C. Magbaily and Arthur Abraham. 1979. “Dictionary of African biography: Sierra Leone,” in H. L. Ofosu-­Appiah (ed.), Dictionary of African Biography: Sierra Leone/ Zaire (Volume 2). New York: Reference Publications. Fyle, Magbaily. 2006. Historical Dictionary of Sierra Leone. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, Inc. Hair, P. E. H. 1998. “Aspects of the prehistory of Freetown and Creoledom.” History in Africa 25 (January): 111–18. https://doi.org/10.2307/3172183. Kilson, Martin. 1964. “Sierra Leone,” in James S. Coleman and Carl G. Rosberg (eds.), Political Parties and National Integration in Tropical Africa. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 90–131. Kilson, Martin. 1966. Political Change in a West African State: A Study of the Modernization Process in Sierra Leone. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Little, Kenneth Lindsay. 2013. Negroes in Britain: A Study of Racial Relations in English Society. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Neumann-­Holzschuh, Ingrid and Edgar Werner Schneider. 2000. Degrees of Restructuring in Creole Languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing. Porter, Arthur T. 1963. Creoledom: A Study of the Development of Freetown Society. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Pybus, Cassandra. 2006. Black Founders: The Unknown Story of Australia’s First Black Settlers. Sydney, NSW: University of New South Wales Press. Thayer, James Steel. 1991. “A dissenting view of Creole culture in Sierra Leone (Une Approche Non-­Conventionnelle de La Culture Des Créoles de Sierra Leone).” Cahiers d’Études Africaines 31 (121/122): 215–30. Wyse, Akintola. 2003. H. C. Bankole-­Bright and Politics in Colonial Sierra Leone, 1919–1958. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

6 Class conflict Chiefs, politicians, peasants, and the revolts of 1955 and 1956

Did the peasant revolts of 1955 and 1956 in the provinces (or the protectorate) marked a watershed moment in the history of human rights Sierra Leone? Did they expose the lack of commitment among the chiefs and politicians to the struggles of the people for economic freedom? Answers to these questions, I suggest, should factor in class differences and conflicts. These factors, according to Roger Tengri (1976), were a defining feature of these violent episodes. On one side were the elitist chiefs in the Northern Province (and their political backers in the National Council of the Colony of Sierra Leone and the SLPP); on the other, the ordinary peasants. Thus, Martin Kilson (1966, 60, 189) was correct in his classification of these revolts as “radical” responses to political paternalism in the rural areas. The thrust of this chapter is on the “who”—not the “what”— was behind these violent episodes. Although all chiefdoms in the provinces were affected by this rebellion, the main battles were in the Maforki and Samu chiefdoms. These were the most powerful chiefdoms under the second government of Milton Margai. To understand the political potency of these chiefdoms, and the reasons the colonial administration under Chief Minister Margai supported the chiefs whose economic activities sparked the revolt, it is necessary to begin with the anthropocentric political histories of these chiefdoms.

Samu chiefdom: the House of Bai Sherbro Yumkella II Samu chiefdom was (and still is) located on the north-­eastern borders with Guinea. According to traditional histories, this chiefdom traced its origins “to a Susu warrior named Sorie Thamro,” who was noted for his military victories (Reed and Robinson 2013, 60). Contrary to this historical account, however, interviews1 of the some of the “living encyclopedias” or oral historians in the chiefdom indicate that Thamro and his band of warriors, who migrated from Jallon Kadu sometime during the last quarter of the sixteenth century, were not the founders of the Samu and Kychom chiefdoms. Rather, they captured them from a group of refugee princely warriors known as the “defenders of Kychom.” It is possible that these defenders, as reported by John Hawkings in 1561, were a branch of the “Sapes” of Landuman extraction (Rodney 1967, 215; Thomas 1920). They (the “defenders of Kychom”) were defeated by the conquering

96   Class conflict Mane forces on Sherbro Island in the 1530s and fled on dugout canoes up the Sherbro River, passing through the northernmost tributaries of the Great and Little Scarcies Rivers, where they founded the city of Kychom. Hawking’s account has been substantiated by Sierra Leonean linguist Prince E. A. J. Kenny.2 Kenny contends that the word “Kychom” is alien to all the northern linguistic groups, including Thamro’s Susu ethnic group, and suggests the word is from the Sherbro language; loosely translated, it means “safe-­heaven” or “city of rest.” Another oral historian, Abdul Konko-­Kamara, argues that after Sorie Thamro had won his war against the exiled defenders of Kychom, he proceeded to institute dynastic rule. After his death, his children fought for control over Samu; several generations after them likewise continued to fight for control of the throne until the nineteenth century, when the British and the French entered the scene. At first, the European nations did not take sides; eventually, however, the temptation of territorial aggrandizement drew them into the fray. After years of fighting among the less powerful heirs-­apparent, the competition came down to a contest between two of Thamro’s sixth or seventh generation descendants. One was Ansumana Gbenti. Schooled on the French side of Samu territory, he was fluent in French and Arabic. When the French and the British reached an agreement in 1861 on the international boundary between Guinea and Sierra Leone—which ran down the middle of Samu—Gbenti became the king on the French side. His cousin Sherbora Neyemi, who was fluent in Susu and Temne ethnic dialects, was crowned king of the British side. After the Hut Tax War of 1898, which resulted in the deposition of many chiefs and the restructuring of the protectorate, the British colonial administration began to install new puppet rulers in the chiefdoms. By 1910, there were  four ruling houses with legitimate claims to the throne: the Kabbah–Sorie, Tonkoya, Yumkella, and Yek or Neyemi families. The House of Kabbah–Sorie, according to Tristan Reed and James A. Robinson, traced its claim to the throne to Bai Sherbora Kabba Sorie, the younger brother of Sherbora Yek who succeeded him on the throne. The chieftaincy was cinched apparently when a fortune teller named Boma Pa Lamina foretold the death of Yek and forecasted that his younger brother would take the throne. (Reed and Robinson 2013, 61) The House of Tonkoya traced its claim to Mayeni, the half-­sister of Sherbora Yek. Following the death of Kabbah Sorie (date unknown), Mayeni, who was the only surviving child, bestowed the throne on her husband, Bai Sherbora Tonko (ibid.). The House of Yumkella, it is believed, derived its legitimacy from the daughter of Kabbah Sorie, who was the mother of Shebora Yumkella (Reed and Robinson 2013, 61). The story goes that the House of Yek was founded by Sherbora Neyemi’s, son Sherbora Yek, whose mother was the sister of Sherbora Sheba of Kaffu Bullom chiefdom.3 Between 1898 and 1938, little was heard of Samu. However, when the Second World War erupted in 1939, Samu’s strategic border location and its

Class conflict   97 importance as the source of the Great and Little Scarcies rivers brought it into the limelight again. Following the end of the war, and the opening up of the district (Kambia) to cross-­border trade and commerce with Guinea, the chiefdom gradually became a crucial economic outpost for the cash-­strapped colonial administration in Freetown. On the political front, it was not until 1949 that Samu emerged as an influential power-­broker in the Native Administration Assembly in Bo. In 1951, the final meeting for the creation of the SLPP took place at the home of Bai Farima Tass II (a member of the House of Bai Sherbora Yumkella), which is how Samu chiefdom (and the Yumkella dynasty) assumed a vital political place in Sierra Leone’s politics during the era of Sir Milton Margai. It should be noted that the opening up of chiefdom politics was meant to be a distraction for the peasants, diverting them from national politics. Interestingly, the government of Chief Minister (and, after 1956, Prime Minister) Milton Margai, and governors of the colony, Sir George Beresford-­Stoke and Sir Robert de Zouche Hall, also promoted this policy (Tangri 1976). Unfortunately, the strict respect for age, traditional paternalism, and class-­based hierarchy made it difficult, if not impossible, for the peasant youth to break the political glass ceiling. The paramount chiefs were at the top of chiefdom politics, the section chiefs in the middle, and the village headmen at the bottom of the aristocratic class; and the peasants were the “nobodies.” These octogenarian chieftains were not only given the authority to control the electoral processes of their chiefdoms (Kilson 1966), they also had the powers of controller-­of-the-­chiefdom-purse (or chiefdom treasuries). Through these powers, they were able to manipulate the outcomes of electoral college voting within their communities. In fact, to make things easier for themselves, they populated their electoral colleges with men of their own ilk: sub-­ chiefs and the heads of the Poro secret society (Little 1966; 1949; Acemoglu, Reed, and Robinson 2014; Lahai 2016, 41). In such a situation, for the peasants to win an election, they needed to contest the general elections and survived the schemes of the members of the electoral college. Moreover, when the Order in Council of 1953 was introduced, the majority in the “rural periphery,” the peasants, felt excluded by its interpretation of “representative democracy.” Instead of allowing the people to elect their representatives, the colonial administration adopted a policy of gubernatorial appointment of chiefs from within the Native Administration (formerly, the Protectorate Assembly). The “representative democracy” was such in name only; in the end, only the “politicians in Freetown were familiar with the values and institutions bequeathed by the former colonial power” (Minikin 1973, 129). Minikin also argues that the electoral intricacies and complex processes of representative democracy created divisions. Whenever there was a need to “bridge the various gaps which existed between the centre and the rural areas” in the lead-­up to elections, contenders had to seek alliances with political parties. For example, while radical political parties such as Cyril Bunting Roger-­Wright’s United Progressive Party (UPP) were busy building alliances with like-­minded people (mostly notable peasant youth), the SLPP was building its own with like-­minded conservatives and candidates from dynastic houses.

98   Class conflict A case in point was the 1951 and 1953 elections in Samu. In the 1951 general election, the electorates were presented with a choice between Ahmed Foday Sama (the candidate of the Yumkella dynasty) and Yola Bangura (the candidate of the Yek dynasty). The UPP supported the Yek candidate, Yola Bangura, in the hope that a defeat for the SLPP-­backed candidate would tip the balance of power in the Native Administration, from whence the unofficial members were selected by the governor for inclusion in the Legislative Council. However, the final outcome was outside the control of the peasants, who could only vote in the first phase of the popular elections and were excluded from voting in the electoral college. In the 1953, as was with the 1951 election, what mattered to members of the electoral college was to satisfy the SLPP power-­brokers, who were in control of government business at the national level (Tangri 1978). When the results of the 1953 election were announced, Foday Sama emerged victorious. He took the chieftain title of Bai Sherbro Yumkella II. As for Yola Bangura, he resurfaced in 1955 and, in 1956, was gaoled for holding an illegal public meeting (Minikin 1973, 130–1); riots had broken out and Bangura was blamed for not controlling his peasant supporters, whom Bai Sherbro Yumkella II accused of having killed a British police officer on February 14, 1956 (Rashid 2009, 124). The antagonism between the peasants and Chief Yumkella II contributed to the outbreak of the 1955–1956 peasant revolt in Samu chiefdom.

Maforki chiefdom: the House of Alikali Modu III The available literature on the origins of Maforki chiefdom and the Alikali Modu dynasty points to groups of people: the “Sapes” and the “Mane.” It is possible that the Sapes were an offshoot of the Bantu people found today between central, eastern, and southern Africa. Studies suggest that, when they arrived in what would later become Sierra Leone, they took a different ethnic identity, initially calling themselves Nalus and by the seventeenth century, branching into the Limbas, the Lokos, the Temnes, and the Bullom. It is also claimed that, upon arriving in northern Sierra Leone on the estuaries of the Bankasoka River, they formed what would eventually become Maforki chiefdom. Marforki itself, however, came into being as a result of the expansionist policy of the Mane invaders. Before they were conquered by the Mane invaders between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Sapes of the Bankasoka lacked what would have passed, in contemporary times, as characteristics of statehood. Despite the existence of a Sape confederacy, the government did not derive its legitimacy from a social contract between the people and the “big men” of their communities. In fact, there was no sense of “national identity” among the people and their territory had no defined boundaries. Economically, the lack of a fixed currency meant that transactions relied on a barter system: the exchange of, say, rice for yam. Tellingly, also, because of the non-­attachment of the people to their “confederate government,” there was no centralized military security for the defense of their village communities. According to Walter Rodney, it was in this context of statelessness that,

Class conflict   99 the political weakness of the Sape confederacy was most oblivious. Before a disciplined military force, the Sapes could only present a spectacle of political disunity and indecision. The principle disunity seemed to be that one should fight only when it was absolutely necessary; namely when one’s turn came, and the Manes were exactly on the doorstep. So each tribe, each village, submitted or fought its own battle, as it thought fit. (Rodney 1967, 225) Who were the Manes, and what did they do after they conquered Maforki chiefdom? To date, no scholarly work has emerged to challenge the conventional narrative on the origins of the Manes. All agree that the Manes were from the ancient Malian Empire (Abraham 2003, 1974; Fyfe 1962; Kup 1961; Rodney 1967; Thomas 1920; Wylie 1977; Reed and Robinson 2013). The narrative contends that their Mandimansa (or queen), Macarico, was banished from the empire after she challenged the political authority of the Mansa, or king. She departed with thousands of her loyal followers: family members, dependents, slaves, and hundreds of others who felt she was wrongfully exiled and were willing to live and die for her. These were the people she transformed into a ferocious, cannibalistic conquering army. According to Rodney, because they were skilled in the art of war they overran vast territories and many nations. For every battle won and for every city or community that surrendered, they swelled their ranks with recruits to such an extent that, for the sustenance of the soldiers and their families, it was necessary to do the unimaginable: “eat some of the defeated people” (Rodney 1967, 224). Despite their military skills, their swords and spears were no match for the cannon and firearms of the Portuguese merchants in the slave trade forts of Cape Palmas and Mani. With the hope of capturing more recruits, food, and weapons, Macarico attacked the Portuguese slave traders in 1501. After months of fighting, the Portuguese bombarded her camp and many of her best warriors were killed. She retreated southwest and, after regrouping, divided what remained of her forces into four groups. She sent one group eastward; what became of them remains unknown. As for Mandimansa Macarico herself, she marched westward into the Guinean rainforest communities. She established her first suzerainty in Cape Mount (located in present-­day Liberia) and, from there, attacked the micro­kingdoms of the Sapes in northern, eastern and southern Sierra Leone. Her first battle was against the Bullom Sapes in the northeast, whom she attacked after they refused to accept her authority. Contrary to some scholarly opinion and oral historical accounts, Macarico was not destructive and military attacks were her last option. When she arrived with her forces on the outskirts of a community, she would send emissaries with white apparel and a sword. Those who accepted her dominion would return the apparel to her; those who rejected it would return the sword. To return the sword meant war. The Bullom returned the sword, and Macarico sent her forces under the command of her eldest son and heir-­apparent into battle in 1541. During this battle, the crown prince was killed. In retaliation, Macarico attacked and destroyed the Bulloms. Nevertheless, she never recovered

100   Class conflict from the loss of her son. She died in 1545––about 40 years after leaving Mali (Rodney 1967, 224)—leaving behind a vast empire to her other sons and generals. By 1623, the Mane warrior kings had completed the amalgamation of the communities of the Temne–Limba Sapes (of the Bankasoka River, Malaykuray, Marforki, and Mallal communities) and the communities of the Masama–Loko Sapes (of the Bekeloko and Loko Masama communities) under one supreme ruler. They called the princedom Bekeloko and the capital city Maforki.4 In Maforki, they instituted a hierarchical and aristocratic system of government such that the Sapes had never experienced. Atop of the hierarchy were the Alikalis (or kings), with the Kapres (sub-­chiefs with various portfolios in the Alikali’s court) in the middle. Although Bekeloko’s suzerainty officially ended in the 1690s, the people of Marforki maintained this hierarchical system. As instructed by their Mane overlords, the Temnes of Maforki based people’s societal status on land ownership, which was also a requirement for all those with claims to the throne of the Alikali or the stools of the Kapre (Wylie 1977). This land issue, as we shall see in the next subsection, played a pivotal role in the creation of class conflicts that would eventually result in the peasant revolts (against the Alikali, Modu III) of 1955 and 1956 in Marforki chiefdom.

The peasant revolts in Maforki and Samu chiefdoms The Alikali Modu III (of Maforki chiefdom) and Bai Sherbro Yumkella (of Samu chiefdom), and their political backers in the administration of Prime Minister Milton Margai were responsible for these revolts of 1955 and 1956. The peasants of their chiefdoms accused them of a variety of malfeasance: embezzlement of public funds, imposition of excessive taxes and fines, subversion of due process, sale of political offices, extortion, the public ill-­treatment and mortification of “big men,” including the members of the rival royal households,5 and the cruel practice of forced labor (Rashid 2009, 118, 120). The peasants did pursue non-­violent options in their attempts to reason with these chiefs and the colonial administration in Freetown and obtain recognition and protection of their economic rights. However, neither of these parties were particularly receptive to the issues the peasants raised. This is not to say the administration did nothing to address their concerns. It brought administrative officer Hugh Adair Nisbet—on secondment from the British East African colony of Kenya—to Sierra Leone in 1939 and appointed him as secretary for labor. He was charged with helping fix the economic policies of the government and creating the Trade Union Ordinance and the Workers’ Compensation and Arbitrational Tribunal to help resolve the endemic problem of strikes in Sierra Leone. However, with the colony and the protectorate under two systems of governance—direct British rule in the colony of Freetown and Lugardian indirect rule6 (i.e., rule through the chiefs and their existing institutions) in the protectorate—the impact of Nisbet’s reforms was limited to the colony. Moreover, after the protests of 1939 and 1941, the colonial administration deposed

Class conflict   101 some of the chiefs, including Paramount Chiefs Bai Sherbro of Mambolo and Alimamy Satton Lahai of Massumgbala chiefdom, who were found guilty of “excessive extortion and abuse of authority” (Rashid 2009, 118). However, the deposition of Bai Sherbro and Alimamy Lahai occurred before the emergence of party politics in 1951, after which, to sustain the colonial status quo, political interests were placed above the desires of the peasants. The government had hoped that the introduction of western education and westernized political institutions in the protectorate would lead to the “enlightenment” of the chiefs, and the promotion of social changes within the mostly traditional forms of political authority (Little 1955). The unintended impact of this move, however, was felt mostly at the social and economic levels. Socially, class differences based on educational attainment, adaptation to the ways of the white man, and the elitism of the Creoles, had a significant impact on inter- and intra-­ generational relations. Economically, it reinforced the oppression of the peasants at the hands of a lumpenbourgeoisie comprising the chiefs and politicians. With western education proven to be an ineffective force for behavioral change, the colonial administration instituted another policy to appease the chiefs, who felt humiliated by their powerlessness to control their people. It created and expanded the Native Administration. They (the colonial administrators) used the demographic distribution of peasant grievances to argue that the communities with the highest numbers of petitions were those without adequate representation. This expansion of the Native Administration further inflamed the situation; to the peasants, it confirmed suspicions that the colonial administration of Milton Margai was siding with the chiefs, and had gone against their promises of economically and politically empowering the peasants (Tangri 1978). What use was an expanded Native Administration if the peasants had no direct role in the processes of “appointing” their chiefs to it? How representative was this body if those who appointed them—the provincial commissioner and the chief minister— were out of touch with the local realities and lived experiences of the peasants? Before they eventually rebelled, the peasants sent a series of petitions to the government in Freetown. When no answers came, they protested peacefully, but this, too, fell on deaf ears. Then they sent more petitions, and representatives, who made references to natural justice, international human rights law and morality, and principles of good government (Rashid 2009). In response to the indifference to their case, and the disproportionate use of force by the authorities in dispersing peaceful protests, the peasants rose in rebellion against the Native Administration and the colonial administration. The first petition was sent in 1954 to Governor de Zouche Hall. It came from a man called Kali Morba Bembe, whose complaint against the Chief of Marforki, Alikali Modu III (an SLPP member in the Legislative Council) centered on the chief ’s handling of a land dispute between him and Bai Koblo, the Paramount Chief of Lunsar. It was common practice among the Temne people to call on their chiefs, as the court of the first instance, to adjudicate matters involving other chiefs. Alikali Modo not only dismissed the case, but also instructed Bai Koblo to take the remaining land and forced Bembe to make a public apology to

102   Class conflict the defendant. Bembe had a primary school education and was an affluent businessman. Because of his education and wealth, the uneducated, poor, and vulnerable peasants of Marforki, who had lost their lands in similar circumstances, looked to him for leadership. His petition to the governor, though written in the first person singular, was a collective expression of the powerlessness of the downtrodden. It told the story of their “struggle for liberty, justice, and individual rights,” and appealed to the moral principles of the rule of law and good governance (Rashid 2009, 119). An excerpt of the petition reads: I know what it has meant for me to acquire property, and for it to be divorced from me in this manner does not in my humble opinion, constitute an act which conforms to individual liberty nor British law, order, good government, and justice. I am well aware what my position is vis-­à-vis that of the Honourable P. C. [Paramount Chief], but my humble status does not, nor can [you] deprive me of the ordinary rights of a subject. (Ibid.) This petition tells the story of a people willing to embrace the liberal concepts of individual liberty and property rights to correct the culturally conditioned paternalistic ills of customary law7 in the protectorate. However, the colonial administration remained unconvinced. Bankole-­Bright was reported to have thrown Bembe’s petition on the floor when it was brought to his office for assessment. As far as the Creole conservatives, including Bankole-­Bright, were concerned, Bembe’s petition lacked legal merit because Bembe had presented himself as a British subject/citizen and not a British protected person (not forgetting that the central debate between 1863 and 1957 was on the question of the constitutional rights of the peoples of the protectorate). Another petition, with the title “Tribal Authority of Maforki Chiefdom,” was submitted on November 1, 1954. It contained over 1,700 thumbprints of the citizens of Maforki (including the peasants and some of their aggrieved section/ sub-­section/village chiefs). Their complaints against Alikali Modu III were three-­fold. First, the Alikali was accused of monopolizing commerce in the chiefdom. To drive competitors out of business, the petitioners contended, the Alikali employed several strategies: over-­taxation, intimidation, and the imposition of a state of emergency during “Luma” days (days when the whole chiefdom congregated to trade with people from within and beyond the chiefdom) to prevent competition. They cited the case of Bembe in their accusation that the Alikali was sending Maforki businessmen into exile. Second, the Alikali had refused to refund £8,000 that Kandeh Burreh, Minister for Works in the colonial administration, had lent the chiefdom for the construction of roads. This loan, the petitioners explained, came with conditions. One of these conditions was a surety requirement. To get the loan, the aggrieved tribal leaders (whose names were listed in the petition) had to put their houses and farmlands up as security; and they were now going to lose these securities as a result of the Alikali’s abuse of power. Third, the Alikali refused to explain why he took £4,000 from the

Class conflict   103 consolidated funds of the chiefdom to buy a used army truck for his personal use. With references to government complacency, the petitioners concluded in their 15-page petition with a request: that Governor de Zouche Hall should allow “administrative justice to prevail in all matters,” with the suggested option of setting up a “commission of inquiry … to look into the affairs of the whole chiefdom” (Rashid 2009, 120). The government of Milton Margai not only ignored these complaints and recommendations, it also approved another tax regime. Bai Sherbro Yumkella, Bai Farima Tass, and Alikali Modu III, who were members of the Financial Appropriation and Protectorate Affairs Committees in the Legislative Council, introduced a Local Tax Ordinance in the Legislative Council in 1954. With the endorsement of the Minister for Local Government, Albert Margai, this bill received overwhelming support and was passed into law. By creating a “single poll tax of twenty-­five shillings to forty shillings payable by all males who were twenty-­one years and above,” this Ordinance replaced the House Tax and Chiefdom Tax (Rashid 2009, 121). The chiefs in the Native Administration in Bo supported the motion; in fact, they were, as expected, instrumental in its implementation in their respective chiefdoms. They were happy to inform their people that this tax had replaced the Hut/House Tax, which had brought about the Hut Tax War of 1898; an imperialist tax regime whose infrastructural, socio-­ political, and economic consequences contributed to peasant resentments in the protectorate between 1898 and 1955. The peasants did not share the positive view of the Native Administration. For them, the shifting of the tax burden from the house/landowners (who, by 1950, were the middle and upper classes—that is to say, the politicians and chiefs) to the landless, the unemployed and the indigent was an unjust and economically unsound decision. In response, other petitions were sent from the southern, eastern, and northern provinces of the protectorate. From the Maforki chiefdom came a petition titled “Tax Payers, Traders, Farmers, Tribal Authorities and the Youths of Maforki Chiefdom.” It was tendered to Albert Margai on September 25, 1955. This petition contained the following accusations against Alikali Modu: the use of forced labor, and the imposition of an “unlawful” extra five shillings in tax—to an already hurtful tax regime imposed by the Local Tax Ordinance—for the purposes of building a private residence for himself and family. The decision to introduce the additional “crime” of forced labor to the list of allegations may have been politically motivated and ideologically driven by the apologists of neo-­Marxist socialism in Sierra Leone. A few weeks before this petition was sent to Freetown, Isaac Wallace-­Johnson had visited all Maforki, where he held a series of town hall meetings and public discussions on the general state of labor relations and unemployment in the country. Suggestively, the petition was framed in the language of the International Labour Organization, and submitted to the Legislative Council in the same week that the Workers’ Rights Bill was defeated in that same council. The peasants were of the view that adding the allegation of forced labor against the Alikali would sway both national and international sympathy in their favor. Post-­Second World War economic pressures

104   Class conflict had resulted in a recession. The price for goods (diamonds and agricultural products) from the British colonies in the international market had attracted attention, and criticism, from the neo-­Marxist ideologues. In Sierra Leone, the neo-­Marxist agitator Wallace-­Johnson had used the failure of imperial economic policies to stir up the malcontents among the peasants (Denzer 1982; Conway 1968; Sekgoma 1986). By 1954, these malcontents had begun to attract the sympathies of international communities including, among others, the International Association for Labour Legislation8 and the Socialist International.9 Again, neither the Executive Council (headed by the governor and his chief minister) nor the Legislative Council (which was dominated by the SLPP and the chiefs) responded favorably to the concerns and needs of the petitioners. In response, about 10,000 peasants took to the streets in all the headquarter towns of the chiefdoms in the protectorate. Between November 25 and 28,1955, they held a series of well-­coordinated “peaceful” protests in front of the offices of their district commissioners and paramount chiefs. Sensing the seriousness of the situation, on November 29, 1955, the Chief Commissioner for the protectorate, Fennel Smith, suspended the Local Tax Ordinance and all the taxes the chiefs had imposed on their peoples. Commissioner Smith’s decision satisfied no one; some of the peasants saw it simply as a damage-­control measure (Rashid 2009), and it angered the chiefs, especially Yumkella of Samu and Alikali Modu of Maforki. The latter was halfway through his house-­building project on Falaba/ Lunsar Road in Port Loko—at the expense of his people. To retaliate, Alikali Modu called a general meeting on December 2, 1955. He “especially asked that all the non-­disabled men with any grievance (important or trivial) against his government to attend. Hundreds came; “we went with nothing but the hope that ‘our Alikali had finally come to his senses,’ and was going to promise to be a good chief,” stated one elderly man10 who participated in the protests. He went on to say that their “imaginative hopes were dashed when many of us were arrested and taken to a police cell; some were beaten up and injured.” With moral and legal restraints weakened by this unprecedented action on the part of the chief and his native administration police forces, arson and riots break out. Three weeks of rioting in Maforki ensued, while other chiefdoms where similar peasant grievances had been reported likewise imploded. In the Northern Province, the peasants of Buya Romende rose in rebellion against their Chief, Bai Banta; in Marampa, the peasants attacked and burned down the houses and rice farms of their ruler, Alimamy Sheriffu (Rashid 2009); in Sebora, Makari Gbanti, Bombali Sebora, Loko Massama, Kasseire/Mambolo, Tonko Limba, Sanda Loko, Koya, and Marampa-­Masimera chiefdoms, the peasants terrorized the chiefs and the colonial administration. In Samu, the peasants marched to the palace of their “sun-­king,” Chief Yumkella, to demand economic reforms and the restoration of their freedoms of movement, expression, and association, which had been curtailed by an “unlawful” state of emergency. However, Yumkella, who referred to himself as the “Black Governor” of the protectorate (Rashid 2009, 130), was not ready to dismantle the authoritarian political atmosphere he had created. He ordered his N.A. Gbadahs (as the “Native Assembly police force” was

Class conflict   105 provocatively referred to) to use maximum force on the protesters. In the Southern and Eastern Provinces, the peasants of Sembehun, Rotifunk/Bradford and Kaiyamba chiefdoms staged similar protests, and again police brutality was reported. The disturbances escalated from protests to full-­blown revolts when Commissioner Smith reinstated the Local Tax Ordinance. He also dispatched a chief widely disliked by the people, Bai Farima Tass of Gbinle Dixing chiefdom (and SLPP minister without portfolio), on a national mission to explain the reasons behind the reinstatement of the tax. According to Ismail Rashid (2009), Farima Tass was chased out of all the chiefdoms he visited. Angered by this, Commissioner Smith publicly condemned the peasants, praised the chiefs’ handling of the riots, and approved additional troops for the chiefs in all affected chiefdoms. Emboldened by this, the chiefs unleashed their police on their people. Some of these police officers were soldiers who fought during the Second World War—in Burma, Central Africa, West Africa, and East Africa—and saw the protesters as enemy combatants. The level of violence they unleashed inevitably led to guerrilla warfare. It was reported that the rioters adopted the tactic of ambushing the police, killing and wounding as many of them as possible before disappearing into the nearby bushes to wait for the next opportunity to surprise their opponents. In Samu, the revolt took on the character of a civil war (though with less battle-related deaths). In Kychom, the capital of Samu chiefdom, intelligence reports from 1955 (cited by Ismail Rashid) stated that the peasants were well-­ trained and engaged in a tactical guerrilla war (which may have helped limit the numbers of “revolt-­related” deaths, to less than ten). Describing the “battle for Kychom,” Rashid writes that: By the time the protests spread to Kambia District on December 19, they had acquired the character of a war. Intelligence reports described the Crowd as “better armed and organized and more directly and systematically aggressive in burning and looting houses and stores of the Chiefs and Native Authority officials.” They claimed that the chiefs had enjoyed “these evidences of affluence for a long time and now did not need them any longer.” (Rashid 2009, 124) The Samu peasants targeted and destroyed the houses and farms of the chiefs, the offices of their district commissioners, and the courthouses and police stations in their chiefdoms. More than 20 people, mostly civilian men, women, and children, were killed between December 1955 and March 1956. By mid-­March 1956, stability had returned, and the colonial government set up the Cox Commission of Inquiry (as recommended in the “Tribal Authority of Maforki Chiefdom” petition of November 1, 1954). The findings of the Commission were that the government erred in not putting in place structures of oversight. On the question of who caused the revolt, the report blamed the chiefs of Maforki and Samu. It also noted that the chiefs of Mambola, Loko Massama, and Yoni Bana (including the townships of Mamilla and Manbanta) also acted irresponsibly in over-­taxing their people. The Commission’s report concluded that:

106   Class conflict Chieftainship intrigues played a large part in fostering disorder … and the particular venom of the rioters in Samu was the result of a dynastic dispute … Intrigue has played a significant part in the difficulties in Kaiyamba. The strain upon loyalties which arises in the amalgamation of chiefdoms was noticeable in Marampa-­Masimera Chiefdom, Maforki and Buya Romende … In other places—Bumpe and Kagboro in particular—there was a Temne element in the population which complicated what otherwise would merely have been a relatively simple domestic Sherbro problem. Membership of the Poro Society or lack of membership sometimes has affected the issue. (Cox 1956, 146–7; see also Tangri 1976, 314) It was expected that the Margai government would take action and, where possible, depose these chiefs, as had been done after the protests of 1939 and 1941. This expectation was not met; instead, the government elected to support— through electoral autocracy—the regimes of Alikali Modu III, and Bai Sherbro Yumkella. The result was further violence and the death, arrest, imprisonment, or exile of many people. One example of such tensions was the Kambia District electoral tensions of 1962 and 1963. Upon their release from prison in August 1961, the leaders of the radical leftist party, the All Peoples Congress, began to court the support of grassroots groups in the lead-­up to the general elections of 1962 (Cartwright 1968). In Kambia, they joined forces with A. B. S. Janneh, who was the candidate approved by the Yek dynastic family and Paramount Chief Alimamy Sourie, ruler of the newly reconstituted Gbinle Dixing chiefdom. Janneh was running against Pyne Bailey, who had the support of the SLPP and Paramount Chief Bai Sherbro Yumkella II. According to Minikin, Alimamy Sourie supported Janneh because he was aggrieved because his Chiefdom, with only 7400 people, was over-­ shadowed in Kambia West constituency by Samu with a much larger population. He felt that no Gbinle Dixing candidate had a chance of victory, so he supported Janneh as a protest against the SLPP. However, the governing party could still count on the support of Bai Sherbro Yumkella, whose influence was such that Janneh … claimed that no one suspected of being his supporter dared to walk the street.  (Minikin 1973, 131–2) Janneh won the election but was unseated after Prime Minister Margai, acting in his capacity as the Minister of Internal Affairs and Development, agreed to the petition of Pyne Bailey on the grounds of “an anomaly in the electoral law.” The tensions in Kambai became a national crisis when, in August 1962, Janneh was arrested for supposedly undermining the authority of Paramount Chief Yumkella. As Minikin rightly put it, it was a “wide-­reaching accusation, used especially by Northern chiefs to apprehend and convict many APC politicians during the SLPP period.”

Class conflict   107 To vent out their disapproval of his arrest a “700-strong band of Janneh’s supporters confronted the inhabitants of Kychom, who favored Pyne Bailey” (Minikin 1973, 132). A state of emergency was declared, and some of Janneh’s supporters, including the renowned members of the Yek family, were exiled to faraway chiefdoms ruled by pro-­SLPP chiefs (who were reportedly instructed never to allow these exiled men to leave their chiefdoms). Yola Bangura was banished to Sulima (where he died), Alimamy Sourie to Madina, and M’baimba Kamara to Pendembu. As for Janneh and his 70 supporters, they were sentenced to two years’ imprisonment. Janneh served a year in prison and, after his release, contested the parliamentary by-­elections of 1963, again running against Pyne Bailey. Despite intimidation of his supporters and the killing of his campaign manager, Alpha Yekir of Mariboya Village, Janneh won the elections by a convincing majority (Minikin 1973). However, his term in office was short-­lived. It was alleged that the Prime Minister and Minister of Internal Affairs plotted with the Speaker of Parliament, Sir Banja Tejan-­Sie, to amend the parliamentary rules of attendance while Janneh was away; following his return, the rules were applied retrospectively and Janneh, a pro-­APC (All People’s Congree) Member of Parliament, was forced out of Parliament because his reason for absence was “not convincing enough.” These political manouevers by the chiefs and Sir Milton Margai—who, as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) concluded, had deployed them to silence his opponents—were in direct contravention of the Electoral Provision Act of 1962. The outcomes were a series of personal enmities, ethnic antagonism, and other forms of social discord that were a recipe for political instability and human rights violations throughout the 1950s and 1960s (see Allen 1968; Cartwright 1968, 1972).

Notes   1 Abdul Konko-­Kamara, Alimamy Sorie, Abdul Yumkella, and Kolleh Yilla, interviewed by the author April 15, 2016, Kychom, Kambia District.   2 Prince E. A. J. Kenny. Interviewed by the author June 10, 2016, Freetown, Sierra Leone.   3 Chief Foday Yumkella, former chief of Samu, and Sierra Leone’s former High Commissioner to The Gambia. Interviewed by the author July 10, 2017.   4 After the Hut Tax War of 1898, the British colonial administration separated Maforki and Bekeloko and appointed two Alikalis. They remained separated until 1948 when they were re-­amalgamated under one Alikali.   5 The opposition leaders from rival ruling houses such as Forki Magbankitha, Forki Sonkoi, Forki Bath-­Polon, Forki Rofenka, Forki Kafakeh, Forki Penthagbo, Kandebeli, Alikali Fatmabrima, Alikali Moribaya, and Alikali Mayla; and as well as from sub/section/village chiefs who refused to show public support for the Alikali Modu’s syndicate of neopatrimonial paternalism.   6 Named after Sir Frederick Lugard, variously Governor, High Commissioner and Governor-­General in the colony and protectorate of Nigeria between 1912 and 1914.   7 According to Ismail Rashid, Protectorate law and administration reflected and reinforced the dominant position of the colonial state. The basic law, the Protectorate Ordinance (first passed in 1896 and amended almost yearly to reflect changing colonial conditions), outlined

108   Class conflict the powers of the defeated indigenous potentates. The prime responsibility of chiefs was to maintain local law and order. Although their elections were still to be based on precolonial processes, their coronation as substantive chiefs had to be endorsed by the colonial state. The precolonial political structures and paraphernalia of power within the different chiefdoms were maintained. Chiefs continued to preside over their courts but they adjudicated only “civil cases arising exclusively between natives.” Chiefs had no legal jurisdiction over Europeans and non-­ natives. (Rashid 2000, 59)   8 The International Association for Labour Legislation was founded in 1900 to act as a global regulatory monitoring body of social, economic and political policies of countries.   9 Socialist International was founded in 1951 as a political network of all socialist political parties and pressure/lobby groups, with the objective of exposing the western imperial agenda behind the so-­called neoliberal institutionalization of labor relations and laws in the Third World. 10 Pa Abdul Konko-­Kamara, interviewed by the author December 10, 2016, Maforki chiefdom, Port Loko District.

References Abraham, Arthur. 1974. “Women chiefs in Sierra Leone: A historical reappraisal.” Odù: Journal of Yoruba and Related Studies 10: 30–44. Abraham, Arthur. 2003. An Introduction to the Pre-­Colonial History of the Mende of Sierra Leone. Vol. 67. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press. Acemoglu, Daron, Tristan Reed, and James Robinson. 2014. “Chiefs: Economic development and elite control of civil society in Sierra Leone.” Journal of Political Economy 122 (2): 319–68. Allen, Christopher. 1968. “Sierra Leone politics since independence.” African Affairs 67 (269): 305–29. Cartwright, John. 1968. “Shifting forces in Sierra Leone.” Africa Report 13 (9): 26. Cartwright, John. 1972. “Party competition in a developing nation the basis of support for an opposition in Sierra Leone.*” Journal of Commonwealth & Comparative Politics 10 (1): 71–90. Conway, H. E. 1968. “Labour protest activity in Sierra Leone during the early part of the twentieth century.” Labour History 15: 49–63. Cox, Sir Herbert. 1956. The Report of the Cox Commission of Inquiry into Disturbances in the Provinces: November 1955 to March 1956. Freetown, SL: Government Printer. Denzer, LaRay. 1982. “Wallace-­Johnson and the Sierra Leone labor crisis of 1939.” African Studies Review 25 (2–3): 159–83. https://doi.org/10.2307/524215. Fyfe, Christopher. 1962. A History of Sierra Leone. Vol. 1. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Kilson, Martin. 1966. Political Change in a West African State: A Study of the Modernization Process in Sierra Leone. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kup, Alexander Peter. 1961. A History of Sierra Leone, 1400–1787. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Lahai, John Idriss. 2016. Gender in Practice: Culture, Politics, and Society in Sierra Leone. 14 vols. Oxford, UK: Peter Lang. http://dx.doi.org/10.3726/b11126. Little, Kenneth. 1955. “Structural change in the Sierra Leone protectorate.” Africa 25 (3): 217–34. https://doi.org/10.2307/1157103.

Class conflict   109 Little, Kenneth L. 1948. “The changing position of women in the Sierra Leone protectorate.” Africa 18 (1): 1–17. Little, Kenneth L. 1949. “The role of the secret society in cultural specialization.” American Anthropologist 51 (2): 199–212. Little, Kenneth L. 1966. “The political function of the Poro. (Part II.).” Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 36 (1): 62–72. Minikin, Victor. 1973. “Indirect political participation in two Sierra Leone Chiefdoms.” The Journal of Modern African Studies 11 (01): 129–35. Rashid, Ismail O. D. 2000. “Patterns of rural protest: Chiefs, slaves, and peasants in northwestern Sierra Leone, 1896–1956.” Ph.D. Dissertation, McGill University. http:// digitool.library.mcgill.ca/R/?func=dbin-­jump-full&object_id=35051&local_base= GEN01-MCG02. Rashid, Ismail O. D. 2009. “Decolonization and popular contestation in Sierra Leone: The Peasant War of 1955–1956.” Afrika Zamani 17: 115–44. Reed, Tristan, and James A. Robinson. 2013. The Chiefdoms of Sierra Leone. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, Department of Economics. https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/ jrobinson/files/history.pdf. Rodney, Walter. 1967. “A reconsideration of the Mane invasions of Sierra Leone.” The Journal of African History 8 (2): 219–46. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021853700007039. Sekgoma, Gilbert A. 1986. “The Second World War and the Sierra Leone economy: Labour employment and utilisation, 1939–45,” in David Killingray and Richard Rathbone (eds.), Africa and the Second World War. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 232–57. http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-349-18264-0_9. Tangri, Roger. 1976. “Conflict and violence in Contemporary Sierra Leone chiefdoms.” The Journal of Modern African Studies 14 (2): 311–21. Tangri, Roger. 1978. “Central–local politics in contemporary Sierra Leone.” African Affairs 77 (307): 165–73. Thomas, N. W. 1920. “Who were the Manes.” Journal of the African Society xix (xx): 176–88. Wylie, Kenneth. 1977. Political Kingdoms of the Temne. London: Holmes & Meier Publishers.

7 Women in the colonial spaces From the founding of the colony to 1960

It was the duality of oppression—imperialism and patriarchy—in the colonial spaces of Sierra Leone that contributed to the burgeoning women’s interest in the struggles for independence: for country and for self. There was a general understanding that the divisiveness of masculinized partisan politics (see Frankema 2012; Acemoglu, Reed, and Robinson 2014; Munslow 1983), and the racialized colony–protectorate divide (see, Fyfe 1987; Hoogvelt and Tinker 1978) was detrimental to societal relationships in the public and private spheres alike. Self-­rule was viewed as a conditio sine qua non for the nation’s unity. There was also an understanding that equal gender representation, politically speaking, was a core element of democracy. Without the inclusion of women and their gender-­specific needs, independence would be a mere transition from the oppressive system of British colonial rule to the patriarchal paternalism of Sierra Leonean men. Put another way; the women of Sierra Leone saw the oppressive nature of colonialism in its militarized imposition of Britain’s political, economic, and cultural will on the physical space of the country. In a similar vein, they saw the National Council’s and SLPP’s paternalistic modeling of self-­government as equally tyrannical. They saw, in those parties’ grand political agendas, the tendencies of an oppressive, ongoing quest to control women’s bodies and sexuality. Moreover, the political speech acts of the Sierra Leonean male politicians (with a few exceptions) were clear expressions a patriarchal tendency to control community emotions that might promote constructs about “self ” and “power.” For the women in the colonial spaces of Sierra Leone, political participation offered a platform from which to subvert the influences of colonialism and patriarchy and pursue freedom for country and self alike. To understand the impact of political participation on the women of Sierra Leone, it is necessary to examine the (gendered) tensions between those in favor and those against the mainstreaming of women in colonial politics. The gendering of political participation was a topical issue, and its political characterization in colonial Sierra Leone revolved around the typologies of women’s participation—the “aggressiveness” or nonaggressiveness of women’s participation, the target for participation, and the intended aim and outcomes. To better explain these, I adopt the positionalities identified by Patrick Conge (1988, 241–2) in his definition of

Women in the colonial spaces   111 political participation. Regarding the forms of participation and tensions, Conge says, the issues revolve primarily around the question of where participation should take an active form—that is, the use of action-­voting and campaign strategies for the colonial and anti-­colonial political establishments—or a passive form—a reliance on people’s sense or feelings of patriotism and the impact of such feelings on the political issues. On the issue of “aggressive” versus “nonaggressive behaviors” in politics, the question is mostly about whether to count civil dis­obedience and political violence as forms of political participation or to limit the discourse to more conventional activities. With regards to the aims— both governmental and non-­governmental—the question is whether we should focus only on participation that is directed toward the governmental authorities, policies, and institutions, or whether the focus should be expanded to include socialized phenomena outside the realm of government but with impacts on public policy. With the understanding that governmental actions are the determinants of external phenomena, comparative political theorists are interested in the role of “mobilized and voluntary actions.” Here the question is whether political participation includes political behavior supported and guided by the government to protect its interests, or whether the focus should be limited to the behavior of citizens in pursuing their interests. Regarding the (intended and unintended) outcomes, the issue is whether behaviors that have unintended consequences for the government should be classified as political participation. At face value, the gradualist approach to self-­rule, notwithstanding some paradoxical aspects, offers a picture of the role of “active” political behavior in the choices and policies of government across time and space, at least from a gender-­neutral standpoint. However, this gradualist approach was problematic from a feminist persepctive. In the colonial spaces of Sierra Leone, the gender-­based drivers of political behavior were considered “passive” phenomena, and their intended/unintended consequences were confined to the private realm, outside the sphere of government. Interestingly, traditional paternalism was used by the colonial administration to check, or at least restrain the pace of, the gender discourse’s transition from the private to the public sphere. Through the adoption of generalized narratives, the colonial administration attempted to understand women in the colony of Freetown and the protectorate. This generalization, however, reinforced the problem of political subjectivity. In the restrictive space it created it was difficult for women to women to tell their own stories, because their lives were conditioned by a set of culturally determined and politically motivated binaries. These binaries, to use J. Ann Tickner’s (1992) words, were about the differences between the public and the private. It was about the distinction, as viewed through a patriarchal political lens, between objectivity and subjectivity, reason and emotion, autonomy and interrelatedness, strength and weakness. With the first of each pair of characteristics typically associated with men, women were expected to deploy their political participation to promote what the men believe in—even if what they believed in was not necessarily about freedom. Emphatically, in colonial Sierra Leone these constructs were a powerful tool for the

112   Women in the colonial spaces aggrandizement of the masculine over the feminine. Active forms of political participation were considered masculine, and passive forms of behavior feminine—and therefore posing little threat to the holders of power. In the same vein, the structural object (the masculine) of participation, which sought directly to change or maintain the form of government, was given precedence over the non-­structural object (the feminine), which sought to influence policy. Finally, the governmental (with its masculine tendencies toward the accumulation of power, contested or otherwise) was prioritized over the non-­governmental (with its feminine attributes offering little or no power to challenge the governmental). In colonial Sierra Leone, it was this preferential categorization that shaped the nature, patterns, and outcomes of resistance experienced by women in their attempts to join the struggle for political, economic, and cultural freedom. It was in response to these categorization that feminist activism—both first and second wave—emerged. The first wave which occurred between 1920 and 1929, was noticeably limited to the colony of Freetown. Within this restrictive space, the understanding of freedom as safety from transatlantic slavery overshadowed all attempts by the women of the colony to object to the oppressive tendencies of the male-­dominated settlement for liberated Africans. If any, freedom for women from patriarchal domination was as illusory in the colony as it had been in the slave plantations of the West Indies (Phillips 2006; Goerg 1998; Morgan 2011; Eltis and Engerman 1993, 1992; Wilson 2011). In the 1920s, the essentialist understanding that women were peace-­loving was one of the reasons for their relegation to the domestic sphere: the arena for pleasure and the site for the repopulation of the colony. Notwithstanding this relegated position, women of this first era of feminism sought in little ways to empower themselves and their communities. A case in point was the founding of the Sierra Leone Chapter of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in 1920. Its leadership included Mrs. Casely Hayford (President), Kathleen Easmon (General-­Secretary), Mrs. T. K. Rollings (Vice President), and Mrs. Evelyn Carew (Public Relations Officer and General Manager of UNIA’s newspaper, The Sierra Leone Weekly News) (Denzer 1987)). The UNIA used consciousness-­raising in an attempt to achieve Garvey’s dream of unifying all people of color in Africa, America, the Caribbean, and Europe into one united race (Okonkwo 1980; Geiss 1969). The Sierra Leone chapter also hoped to achieve a Sierra Leone-­specific aim: futhering the political and economic rights of women. To the political gatekeepers of the colony, the leaders of UNIA-­Sierra Leone, especially Mrs. Hayford, were considered proxies of the NCBWA. Had UNIA-­Sierra Leone been “just” a women’s organization, these patriarchs and gatekeepers would likely have viewed the activism of these women as another unstructured and innocuous effort to influence government policy on women’s empowerment. However, the UNIA-­Sierra Leone was unlike other pressure groups before it. It had the backing of radical men who were both in favor of equal gender political representation and hostile to colonialism in Sierra Leone. As a result of this, the leader of the chapter became the target of a political witch-­hunt. First, Mrs. Hayford was accused of extorting money from her

Women in the colonial spaces   113 fellow women in the colony of Freetown. When this failed, she was accused of conflict of interests due to her membership of both the UNIA-­Sierra Leone and the NCBWA. Notwithstanding that she was merely a women’s representative of the NCBWA, her accusers saw in her a surrogate of her husband, Joseph Ephraim Casely Hayford, founder of the NCBWA. Casely Hayford was a leading figure in the struggle for political independence for all African countries under European colonial rule. In fact, in 1920, he delivered a statement on the right to self-­determination for African nations to the League of Nations in London (Mcduffie 2017). Mrs. Hayford knew her harassers were seeking to strike at her husband (Cromwell 1986, 79) and, to protect herself and her husband, she resigned from the UNIA-­Sierra Leone. The organization, deprived of it foremost voice, entered a decline from which it was never to recover (Denzer 1987). The fortunes of the womenfolk began to change for the better during the second wave of feminism in Sierra Leone, between 1930 and 1959. This was made possible by the emergence in the 1930s of a cohort of women with university degrees in various disciplines, including law and medicine, from Sierra Leone’s Fourah Bay College (an affiliate of Durham University in England) or from universities in England and the United States of America. Mrs. Ethel Cole (the daughter of prominent activist Dr. Jenner Wright) became the first female specialist physician in 1932. In 1938, Letilewa Hyde (later Hyde-­Foster) became the first female graduate of Fourah Bay College (Denzar 1987, 446). However, it was not until 1943 that Sierra Leone’s first female magistrate, Stella Thomas, was appointed. Ms Thomas had been a practicing lawyer in Nigeria but moved to Sierra Leone in 1941 or early 1942 after marrying a Sierra Leonean lawyer (Denzar 1987, 446). The second woman appointed to the Sierra Leone judiciary was Miss Frances Wright. She was appointed as a temporary magistrate following her return to Sierra Leone, after 13-and-­half years in England. This second wave was also made possible by the rise of Isaac T. A. Wallace-­ Johnson’s WAYL in 1930. The WAYL actively supported women candidates for municipal elections; such candidates included Gladys Casely-­Hayford, daughter of Mrs. Casely Hayford (Lucilda 2016), Peggy May Nylander and Letitia Stuart. The WAYL also elected five women to its central committee: Constance Cummings-­John (assistant chair), Edna S. Elliott-­Horton (assistant organizing secretary), Lorine E. Miller (Assistant Secretary, Freetown Branch), Lottie Black, and Gladys Tyre (assistant and organizing secretary, respectively, Bauya Branch) (Denzer 1987). The WAYL provided the space women needed to challenge the colonial administration’s refusal to enact women’s suffrage and, under relentless pressure from the WAYL, the administration granted women the right to vote in 1931, provided they met the age, education, and income and property requirements. To change what needed changing; resist where resistance was necessary; and, above all, create the space in which they would use their lived experiences to suggest a feminist path out of imperialism and patriarchy, women adopted several strategies. The first was to establish women’s sections (or offices) in all

114   Women in the colonial spaces the political parties following the introduction of party politics in 1950. These sections were the formal spaces in which women subverted the oppressive income and property requirement for women wanting to enter politics. These women’s sections also provided a path for women to infiltrate the inner circles of these political parties, to offer feminist alternatives and solutions to the problems of governance. Another strategy was to support women candidates contesting elections, after it became evident that supporting the male candidates did not yield the desired outcomes. A third strategy was the “Custance Cummings-­John factor.” The final noteworthy strategy was the use of the feminist newspaper, the Ten Daily News (also known as Madora) as a platform to speak against gender-­ based discrimination and to sway the people of Sierra Leone towards a feminist path to a Freirean freedom.

The “women’s section”: a feminist space in a male-­dominated domain Without losing sight of what they wanted and what they were up against, women entered the dangerous male domain of national politics. Of the political parties discussed in Chapter 5 (this volume), the women’s section of the SLPP was the most proactive. Although the grassroots women’s groups of the independent candidates were also active, it was the national reach of the SLPP that contributed to the rise of an active women’s section. According to Martin Kilson, within a decade of its founding in 1951, the SLPP had 80,000 registered members. The SLPP was able to achieve this because its leadership relied on such traditional institutions as paramount chiefs, tribal authorities, and Poro societies [the largest male-­only mystic secret society in the country (see Lahai 2016)] to ensure its adequate political support. When political need [arose], these groups [were] called upon to gather audiences of chiefdoms subjects, to instruct peasants to vote for SLPP candidates, to distribute party membership card to peasants, and to perform other similar functions. (Kilson 1964, 104) Women’s entry into this arena was fluid, their level of activity fluctuating with the level and nature of mistrust and the patterns of male resistance. When tensions between their male counterparts were high, it was not uncommon for women to revert to the role of conflict managers, taking a behind-­the-scenes role; when stability was restored, they would return to active politics. The SLPP women did not want to be seen as meddlers in the violence-­prone politics of their male counterparts. Their focus was on getting the men of the SLPP to listen to women, and on holding them to their campaign promises to create an enabling environment for the emancipation of women. This was a difficult objective; the drive for women’s empowerment took place in the middle of political infighting over party leadership and flagbearer positions, especially in the lead-­up to the 1957 elections. These intra-­party conflicts splintered almost all the political

Women in the colonial spaces   115 parties contesting the 1957 elections. The National Council of the colony of Sierra Leone broke into two factions, the conservative rump remaining with their leader, Bankole-­Bright, while the radicals UPP under the leadership of Cyril Bunting Rogers-­Wright (Kilson 1964; Fyfe 1962, 1987). The SLPP was also split, with the radical faction, led by Albert Margai—the rightful winner of the intra-­party leadership contest of 1956—leaving to form the Progressive National Party (PNP). Writing about the “unintended” consequences of this split in the SLPP, La Ray Denzer, the biographer of Constance Cummings-­John, explains in extenso the crisis within the SLPP: Conflict [bedevilled] politics. Conservative and radical factions competed for power within the SLPP; the older conservatives are supporting Sir Milton Margai, the Prime Minister, and the younger radicals, Albert Margai. Although the women’s section favored the progressive faction, they decided to stay in the party when Albert Margai, in alliance with Siaka Stevens,1 broke away in 1958 to form the People’s National Party (PNP). Cummings-­ John stated that the women’s decision was based on their desire for a “united” stand to gain self-­government as soon as possible. Later they [the women] realized their folly [in staying as “neutralists”], for when the conflict was resolved, and the PNP re-­joined the SLPP neither side trusted the women politicians. Few were appointed to senior positions in government or public commissions; few received government contracts, few were nominated as candidates in local or national elections. (Denzer 1987, 450) Some of the “trusted” few were Hannah Benka-­Coker, Mrs. Zainabu Kamara, Haja Kai Dumbuya, and Madam Ella Koblo Gulama. They were trusted because they had personal, intimate connections with some of the conservative politicians. This crisis revealed the exclusionary nature of partisan politics and exposed the hypocrisies of the male politicians. The men who openly challenged political authority were not classified as traitors. Interestingly, the impact of this division among the men was more profound. Kilson reported that the PNP having won 17 percent of the seats (against the SLPP’s 83 percent) made political negotiations in the House of Representative precarious. In fact, even after the 1957 elections, the SLPP was still divided, with some of its legislators, including Maigore Kallon (Ministerial Secretary), S. T. Navo (Chief Whip), and A. J. Massaly (the Deputy Speaker) leaving to join Albert Margai on the opposition bench. Moreover, in February 1959 (a few months before the crisis was settled and the PNP returned to the SLPP), Wallace-­Johnson’s Radical Democratic Party and Tamba S. Mbriwa’s and A. A. Mani’s Sierra Leone Progressive Independent Movement allied with Albert Margai’s PNP. Despite these constant betrayals and schisms among the male members of the SLPP, it was the women—who decided not to take a side and to stay true to the struggle for independence—who were labeled traitors. During the field research for this book, I held a series of discussions with people, now elders of the party,

116   Women in the colonial spaces who were members of the SLPP youth wing at the time. I wanted to know why the male politicians never trusted the women, and why Prime Minister Milton Margai did not fulfill most of his promises to the womenfolk. Responses where that the Prime Minister was “a victim of his wrongdoing,”2 that “he wanted power,”3 and that “in the process of acquiring it, he made many promises to the power-­brokers: the chiefs, who were least interested in women’s empowerment.”4 Further research revealed that he was pressured into fulfilling his promises to these chiefs by the fear of political isolation; as discussed in Chapter 5, the SLPP was the outcome of a merger between some of the most prominent paramount chiefs, including the founding members of the PP, the SOS, and the PEPU. In effect, Milton Margai had no alternative but to compensate or reward the power-­brokers within each faction within the party. From the PP, he appointed M. S. Mustapha his Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Finance, and treasurer of the SLPP. He made R. G. O. King his Minister of Development, and Abdul Fattah-­Rahman was appointed alderman (and later mayor) of Freetown City Council, much to the displeasure of the National Council, which unsuccessfully opposed his appointment because of his non-­Creole—and Muslim—identity. From the PEPU faction, he appointed H.E.B John General-­Secretary of the SLPP. He made Albert J. Momoh the First Vice President of the SLPP (1951–1957) and, concurrently, chairman of several government parastatals and commissions, including the Public Service Commission where he remained until his death in 1968. He appointed Salako Benka-­Coker Puisne or Junior Judge (1954–1956), and Chief Justice (1957–1960). He promoted Amadu Wurie to Speaker of House of Representatives in 1957, where he served until 1962, when he was appointed Minister of Education (1962–1965). From the SOS faction, he appointed John Karefa-­Smart to the position of Minister of Lands, Mines and Labour. He compensated Doyle Sumner, F. S. Anthony and T. M. Williams with many government contracts, including the project to “nationalize” the Protectorate Teachers Union (PTU; the forerunner of the Sierra Leone Teachers Union (SLTU)). An example of some of the benefits they received was the bi-­annual government subvention to run the PTU-­owned newspaper, The Vacco (Kilson 1966, 229). William Henry Fitzjohn was appointed Chargé d’Affaires to the United States (1959–1961) and High Commissioner to Britain (1961–1967). He also appointed Kandeh Bureh Minister of Education (1957–1961) and Minister of Transport and Communication (1961–1967). Among the paramount chiefs (PC) who received political rewards were chiefs Kai Tungi (of Kissi Tung chiefdom), Bai Koblo Pathbana (of Marampa chiefdom), Jaia Kaikai (of Pujehun), P. C. Bockari Samba (of Daru), Bai Farima Tass (of Kambia), Bai Kurr (of Tonkolili), Alikali Modu III (of Port Loko/Maforki chiefdom), and Julius Momoh Gulama (honored posthumously5). These chiefs were only relevant in the national political discourse on independence because they were the representatives of the patriarchal customs and traditions (Abraham 1974; Day 2012; Spear 2003). Unfortunately, their importance to the Milton Margai administration resulted in the relegation of

Women in the colonial spaces   117 women, in keeping with their gender-­assigned roles, to positions behind the political scenes, where they were expected to “befriend” some of the alpha males in the SLPP. For the women, this was a clear warning of things to come. The SLPP women leaders created their own pressure group, the Sierra Leone Women’s Movement (SLWM) in 1951, to coincide with the inauguration of the SLPP and celebration of the one-­year anniversary of the National Council. As the intra-­party tensions of 1956 and 1957 played themselves out, and the levels of mistrust became intolerable, women retreated to the SLWM. In fact, whenever there were protests or riots against the government, “the SLWM would experience an increase in its membership. Mostly these women could come with stories that they wanted betterment for themselves and their households.”6 Under the leadership of Constance Cummings-­John, Mabel Dove-­Danquah, Lottie Hamilton-­Hazeley, Patience Richards, Paramount Chief Ella Koblo Gulama, and Etta Harris, the SLWM was active in advocating for the political, economic, and social empowerment of women (Denzer 1987). However, the kind of egalitarian society the SLWM wanted was diametrically opposed to the prevailing political atmosphere in Sierra Leone. The 1950s was the era of Cold War politics, and men were not aspiring to a successor state that was receptive to the global, feminist, anti-­war activism (Lahai 2016, 70). Unwilling to go down without a fight, the SLWM began to organize protests, meetings, and workshops across the country (Steady 2005). In the international arena, they began to build a series of transnational relationships through which they were able to tell the world about the plight of women in Sierra Leone. In their international coalition-­building effort, for example, they joined forces with the Berlin-­based Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF ). In April 1960, one year before the scheduled date for independence (April 27, 1961), the SLWM was invited to attend the WIDF summit in Copenhagen, which coincided with the fiftieth anniversary of International Women’s Day. Dr. June Roness and Mrs. Fanny Thomas were selected to represent the SLWM. They left Sierra Leone on April 18, 1960 and made a very somber submission on April 21, reminding delegates of their collective troubles and requesting their assistance, both technical and financial (Madora 1960, 7). Building on this, they also established ties with groups in Ghana. Thanks to the extraordinary efforts of Mabel Dove-­Danquah, they also caught the attention of Ghana’s President, Kwame Nkrumah. On January 28, 1961, Paramount Chief Madam Ella Koblo Gulama, Elizabeth Hatib, Dulcie Bundu-­Williams, and J. B. Facondo (who was Madam Gulama’s chiefdom Speaker) visited Accra. During the three-­day visit, Madam Gulama held talks with Nana Kobina Nketsia (Chief Adviser for Cultural Affairs to the Ghanaian Government), Sir Kobina Arku Korsah (Ghana’s first black African Chief Justice), Mrs. A. Goedama (wife of Ghana’s Minister of State for Presidential Affairs) and Mrs. Akinwumi (wife of Ghana’s Minister of Finance). She also held workshops with the women’s caucus of the Ghanaian Parliament, the National Council of Ghana Women, and the Ghana Market Women Association (Madora 1961, 6).

118   Women in the colonial spaces With this international recognition, it was difficult for the male politicians to ignore the SLWM. Before long, the SLWM became a proto-­political think-­tank for all political parties with an interest in gender and women’s empowerment issues. For some of the leaders of the SLWM, an opportunity to reenter active politics presented itself in 1958 and 1959. This was the period when Sierra Leone began to experience the rise of minor political parties challenging the dominant SLPP and National Council.7 For example, the Sierra Leone Progressive Independence Movement (SLPIM) “emerged out of a merger between Edward Blyden III’s Sierra Leone Independence Movement (SLIM) and the Kono Progressive Movement (KPM) led by a druggist-turned-paramount chief, Tamba Mbriwa”8 (Fyle 2006, 184). The SLWM also saw a potential ally in the radical politician and journalist, Cyril Bunting Rogers-­Wright, and his UPP. Rogers-­Wright left the National Council over its anti-­gender equality and anti-­ protectorate stance. Using his newspaper Shekpendeh, Rogers-­Wright was able to build a large following in the provinces. The re-emergence of his UPP in 1959 contributed to the political reawakening of women in the provinces, especially in the southern region. The UPP and Shekpendeh offered provincial women the opportunity to increase their chances of securing coalitions with like-­minded politicians. With the UPP and the SLPIM making inroads in areas that were once SLPP strongholds, women were able to trade their grassroots mobilization and fund-­raising efforts in exchange for a commitment to support bills aimed at promoting women’s empowerment (Cummings-­John 1995, 65). However, this horse-­trading strategy was not always effective; some politicians changed their tune after winning the elections, confining women’s issues to their platforms with political rhetoric on women’s rights that had no policy implications whatsoever.

Support for women candidates Atikul Wan: Ɛvribɔdi bɔn fri ɛn gɛt in yon rayt, nɔn wan nɔ pas in kɔmpin. (Article 1 of the1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights”) Amid their suspicions that their support for supposedly liberal politicians was no guarantee they would get their way, the SLWM was “inspired by this article [above] of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights when they took the bold step to support women, political candidates.”9 The SLWM did not discriminate against women on the basis of their political party affiliation, location (urban, peri-­urban or rural), or religious background. There was only one woman, Ella Koblo Gulama, in the 50-member House of Representatives, who is also a cabinet minister with no specific portfolio. Thus, there was an urgent need to increase the number of women in the House of Representatives and the cabinet of Prime Minister Milton Margai. The SLWM organized a series of public lectures to promote to Sierra Leone the advantages of having women in government. The benefits they invoked

Women in the colonial spaces   119 included the creation of a balance between social welfare and militarized welfare (Cummings-­John 1995, 43) and bringing to light the problems of gender-­based discrimination and sexual violence. Constance Cummings-­John, Nancy Koroma, Ella Koblo Gulama, Nana Turay, Lerina Bright-­Taylor, Ellen G. A. Caulker-­ Caulker, C. T. William, Haja Kai Dumbuya, and Zainabu Kamara, crisscrossed the country extolling these benefits and others. Selling their message in the northern region was very difficult. In this region, especially among the dominant ethnic group, the Temnes, it was a taboo for women to hold political office (Lahai 2016), so it was not a surprise that they encountered resistance. Despite their efforts, the women of the communities in the north, perhaps not wanting to be seen as violators of their cultural dictates, showed little interest in joining the wave of feminist activism. In fact, before the adoption of the 1930 Ordinance granting women the right to vote (in the colony of Freetown), tribe-­specific belief systems were the primary legal and social foundations of women’s voting rights. There were two exceptions, however. In creoledom or the communities of the descendants of the liberated Africans,10 there was a strict adherence to the English common law system. However, adherence to the Westminster system did not necessarily mean the people of creoledom were receptive to the idea of having women in politics.11 In Mendeland (the communities of the Mendes in southern and eastern Sierra Leone), on the other hand, the people were receptive to the women holding political office (Abraham 1978; Cartwright 1970; Kandeh 1992; Dorjahn and Fyfe 1962). In fact, according to Lynda Day, in Mendeland, the institution of female chiefs was not a colonial creation but emerged “from [the] indigenous principles embedded in lineage dynamics, cultural associations, and gendered roles” (Day 2012; review excerpt from cover). This Mende tradition aside, however, the discourse on gender equality in colonial Sierra Leone was not consistent with the country’s position on the normative understanding of positive law (the right to education and progress). This notwithstanding, the SLWM did its best to win hearts, change minds, and raise funds to meet the income and property requirement for women wanting to run for public office (as dictated by the Ordinance of 1930). Their extraordinary efforts were not in vain. Constance Cummings-­John, Lena Weber, and Stella Ralph James were elected into the municipal council of Freetown in 1958; and in 1960, Stella was elected deputy mayor. Prominent women in the provinces also took part in Freetown politics. Nancy Koromah was elected the first Mende Chief (or Headman) in Freetown on September 14, 1960 (Denzer 1987, 451). In the southern and eastern regions of the country, and under the banner of Roger-­Wright’s UPP, C. T. William (who was a noted businesswoman in the southern provincial city of Bo) and Ellen G. A. Caulker-­Caulker (daughter of Paramount Chief William I. Caulker of Bompey-­Mongereh chiefdom), alongside Messrs Tarasid Tarawalie and Valesius Neale Caulker, contested the elections of 1956 and 1960.

120   Women in the colonial spaces

The Constance Agatha Cummings-­John factor Cummings-­John, Constance Agatha: member, LCP (London) executive, 1937; co-­founder, LCP (Freetown), 1937; member, WAYL executive, 1938–39; city councillor, 1938–42, 1952–65; co-­founder and organizing secretary, SLWM, 1951–67; co-­editor, Ten Daily News (later Madora), 1954–63; member, SLPP executive, 1952–67; co-­founder, SLPP women’s section, 1955; mayor of Freetown 1966–67. (Denzer 1987, 453) The entrenched gender-­based discrimination experienced by women in the political space of Sierra Leone was a constitutional crisis that patriarchal attitudes had shifted from the platform of objective reasoning of positive law and natural justice to the intersubjective space of cultural relativism. It was the ugliness of this situation that contributed to the rise of Constance Cummings-­John in the 1930s. She was born Custance Horton in the colony of Freetown in 1918. Like all descendants of the liberated Africans, Constance’s family connections were in Jamaica and Barbados, where several generations of her paternal and maternal great-­grandparents had been enslaved during the transatlantic slave trade. Following the repatriation of the liberated Africans to the Province of Freedom by the Abolition Society, Constance’s people embraced “westernization.” By the 1900s they were Negroids by race alone, their ways of life having more in common with the ways of their Caucasoid European overlords. It was into this Europeanized Afro-­aristocratic class that Constance was born. Due to her passion for British education, which happened to be one of the surest means to break the glass ceiling, her father, who was the treasurer of the colony, sent her to London. She graduated with a degree in teaching from Whitelands College in Putney (Fyle 2006, 39). It was while in Putney that she joined the pan-­Africanist movement. She was actively involved in the grassroots mobilizations and recruitment drive of the West African Students Union (WASU) and the League of Coloured Peoples (LCP) (Adi and Sherwood 2003). Immediately after completing her studies, and through the influences of her father, she secured a loan from the colonial government in Freetown that enabled her to pursue a six-­month course at Cornell University in 1939. Traveling to the racially divided United States of America transformed her in many ways. Her traumatic encounters with racism and sexism gave her another perspective on freedom (Denzer 1987, 444). She realized that political freedom for colonial Africa, without the emancipation of women from patriarchal subjectivities, gender-­based violence, and discrimination, was no freedom at all. She returned to London in 1937 and married a Creole solicitor named Ethan Cummings-­John. After their wedding they returned to Freetown. Soon after their arrival, the colonial government offered her the position of schools inspector. She rejected the offer, despite the fact that the government had defrayed part of the cost of her training. The Constance who left Sierra Leone had been indif­ ferent to the ills of colonialism; the Constance who returned was different.

Women in the colonial spaces   121 She  wanted freedom, not to work for a system that was trying to prevent her from achieving it. Instead, she accepted the offer of a teaching positon from the Methodist Girls’ High School. Seven months into the job, however, she resigned, citing her British colleagues’ displays of racism and their “openly derogatory [comments] about her American education” (Denzer 1987, 444). Soon after, she accepted the position of principal at the Methodist Episcopal Girls’ Industrial School (or the Episcopal School), founded in 1924 by the Right Reverend Henry Metcalfe Steady and the Methodist Episcopal Church (Steady 2006, 84). With help from a young West Indian Marxist intellectual, George Padmore, and his International African Service Bureau, the Methodist Church, and her brother’s (Austin Horton) Dafora Horton foundation (Bush 1999, 119), and from the Creole community in Freetown, Constance was able to modernize the Episcopal School. The Episcopal School was her training grounds. After about a decade working for the Methodist Episcopal Church, she resigned to start her own school, The Roosevelt Preparatory School for Girls, in 1952. It was in this school that she was going to begin to mold the next generation of Sierra Leonean feminists. According to Filomena Chioma Steady, to inculcate a sense of propriety and self-­reliance, Constance framed her school curriculum to impress upon her pupils that education was the only means by which they could break free from the imperialism–poverty–patriarchy trap. Constance made it compulsory for her pupils to recite the school song every morning during school days. The song, titled “There is Dignity in Labour,” reads: Why do we come to school today? To make our lives worth living. Why all these books, why all these rules? They’re just to keep us going. To make our nation strong and great, To draw out what is best in us, To work for God and country We see dignity in labour, We hold our heads above board, We struggle on for unity And for happiness in this world. With hearts and hands and heads at work, We pledge ourselves to help our race, An endless moving teamwork. And when our school days are over, We pass the baton over to who will take our place, With dignity and pleasure To those who will continue the race It’s ours today, it’s there to be A never-­ending teamwork. (Quoted in Steady 2005, 85)

122   Women in the colonial spaces The line “Why all these books?” in the first stanza was no empty question. The school was among the best-­equipped in the country and, according to Steady, Constance “expanded on [her] patterns of providing vocational education, combined with academic subjects, on a larger scale. It also emphasized technical work, commercial subjects, and adult education” (ibid., 84). Nor did she confine herself to the classroom. She was active on two platforms: school and politics. In March 1938, she established the Freetown branch of the LCP, modeling it on Wallace-­Johnson’s WAYL. To curb her political influence, the colonial administration kept offering jobs that would have made it impossible to join Wallace-­Johnson and others. She rejected them as they were made. In a public statement following the arrest of Wallace-­Johnson in 1939, she argued that these piecemeal advances from the colonial administration were attempts to derail her from focusing on what mattered. For her, the prospect of emancipation for Sierra Leone and its womenfolk depended on who was in control of the affairs of the nation; Sierra Leone could only be free when the reins of the country’s economy, politics, and security apparatuses were in the hands of non-­European blacks: indigenes and Creoles. She exploited every avenue to expose the social and political ills of colonialism. As far as she was concerned, colonial Sierra Leone was a direct contradiction to the “Province of Freedom” the Abolition Society had in mind. She stayed true to the struggle for a freedom that was configured along feminist lines. She saw that the colonial policy of direct rule (for the colony of Freetown) and indirect rule (for the protectorate/provinces) was not about administrative efficiency (Cummings-­John 1995) but, instead, was a strategy to divide and rule. She also saw the colonial education policy as oppressive. The Feminist Forum ran a commentary on the occasion of her death in 2000 in which Constance’s view on the divisiveness of colonial rule were outlined: [O]n the one hand, the colonial government limited colonial [i.e., western-­ styled] education to the existing elites of the Krio people in the area around Freetown [see also Whyte 2008]. British colonizers also sub-­contracted the bulk of administration to traditional chiefs and natives rulers [without providing the atmosphere, institutional and infrastructural support to enable them to adapt to the western Weberian bureaucratic processes (Corby 1990)], thus also ensuring that they could maintain their colonies “on a shoestring.” The British also admitted Africans into the central colonial government, but with a strict ban on advancement. (African Feminist Forum 2016) To reverse this, she traversed the country, mobilizing grassroots women’s groups for the “fight” for freedom (Adi and Sherwood 2003, 29–32). It was in recognition of her efforts that the people elected her to the Freetown municipal council in 1938. She would remain in this position until 1942, when she was ousted as a result of underestimating the colonial government. There were rumors that the colonial government infiltrated the National Council and influenced it to present

Women in the colonial spaces   123 several rival candidates (secretly funded by the administration) for the Freetown municipal elections. Despite this, Constance won the election, but lost an appeal against the outcome in court. After she lost her seat, she joined forces with Wallace-­Johnson in his neo-­Marxist, anti-­colonialism campaigns between 1948 and 1959. Her decision to join the anti-­colonialism campaigns did not go down well with the colonial administration, which had just started raising funds and recruiting soldiers to support the British mobilization for the Second World War (which had broken out on September 1, 1939). In a bid to stop Constance and Wallace-­Johnson, the colonial government invoked the Emergency Powers (Defence) Act of 1939. This Act, which outlawed subversion in England and the British colonies, was one of the security measures adopted following the outbreak of the Second World War. The administration arrested Wallace-­Johnson for treasonable offenses. The scope of these offenses was vague; they included disloyalty to the Crown, obstruction of the administration’s recruitment of locals into the imperial armed forces (Cole 2014), and acting contrary to what the colonial administration may, whenever and so often as they think fit, have in mind for the colony of Sierra Leone. There was no need for an arrest warrant; the Act (in Section 2(m)) authorized the governor in Sierra Leone to order the arrest without warrant of any person charged with committing an offense, specified or not, under any section of the Act. Interestingly, the Act also gave powers to the government to arrest those whom it had reasons to believe might be thinking of committing the crime of subversion (Spitzer and Denzer 1973, 573; Cole 2014, 279; Moores 2017, 212). This Act also suspended the freedoms of expression and association guaranteed in the 1924 Slater Constitution and reaffirmed in the Ordinance of 1930 (which also granted women voting rights). The Press Censorship Act of 1924, which contained measures to promote “responsible journalism,” was also suspended. In effect, the oratory and public speaking tours of Constance Cummings-­John and Wallace-­Johnson were not interpreted as their fundamental human rights. Instead, the colonial administration saw them as a crime of sedition against the Crown. Wallace-­Johnson’s oratory during these tours “was brilliant” and “his targets well chosen, his audience receptive and enthusiastic” (Spitzer and Denzer 1973, 567). In one of the townhall meetings, held on April 30, 1938 at the Wilberforce Memorial Hall, he argued that: In no other Colony in West Africa do I find the masses in such a miserable state of economic and social disabilities … Instead of progress, after a lapse of twelve years, I find conditions within the colony rapidly declining … As a people, we have been too lethargic, drowsy and happy-­go-lucky … A very wide margin has been provided for the foreign exploiters—capitalists and imperialists alike—to drive the wedge of divide-­and-rule within our social circle: and while we keep grasping at shadows, they are busy rapidly draining out the natural resources of the land for their personal benefits, leaving us in poverty and want. (Ibid.)

124   Women in the colonial spaces However, criticizing the government for curtailing press freedom, and for exploiting Sierra Leone and leaving their people without “economic and social progress after one hundred and fifty years of British connections” (ibid.), was a treasonable offense. Governor Jardine had little doubt that what he called Wallace-­Johnson’s anti-­colonial agitation was linked to similar unrest in the West Indies and “inspired and probably partially financed by London communists” (Spitzer and Denzer 1973, 586). Against this backdrop, he called on A. J. Dawe of the Colonial Office and Colonel Vernon Kell of the War Office to provide police intelligence services in Freetown. They agreed to Jardine’s request and sent an agent to Sierra Leone. Despite the colonial administration’s suspicion of Wallace-­Johnson’s Marxist connections, the Marxist International African Service Bureau, of which he was a member until 1938 was not interested in Africa. Its interests were confined to Europe and Asia (Spitzer and Denzer 1973, 586). Regardless, Wallace-­Johnson was arrested and tried (in a kangaroo court without his peers to act as jurors), found guilty, and sentenced to a year in prison. In the same week that Wallace-­Johnson was arrested, the colonial administration asked Constance to disavow his activities and his WAYL. She refused and was threatened with imprisonment under the Emergency Act of 1942; in the year, she was cheated out of her seat on the municipal council. This was a traumatic time for her. Her defender, Wallace-­Johnson, was in prison and her mentor, F. A. Miller, a former senior civil servant and a founding member of the proto-­ nationalist National Congress of British West Africa (founded in 1920), had also died (in 1939) (Denzer 1987, 444). With no one to turn to, and not wanting to betray or renounce Wallace-­Johnson, Constance fled the country in 1943. Britain was not willing to accommodate her—not when she was supportive of the man whose political activism was considered treason against the empire—so Constance went to the United States to be with her brother, Dafora Horton. With his help, she obtained a series of menial jobs in the health sector between 1943 and 1951. Following the recall of Sir George Beresford-­Stoke to England in January 1951 for briefing, and with rumors that he was going to be replaced, Constance returned home in December 1951 (Cummings-­John 1995). A year later, Governor Robert de Zouche Hall12 became governor of Sierra Leone. Governor de Zouche Hall promulgated the 1951 Constitution (dubbed the Hall Constitution). It resolved the constitutional crisis over women’s voting rights created by the 1930 Ordinance, which neither the Slater Constitution of 1924 nor the 1947 Blackhall Constitution had managed to do, and had a positive impact on women’s voting rights. Robert de Zouche Hall reduced the income requirement for women from the 1930 threshold of £100 to £60 per year. The rent requirement was likewise reduced, from £5 to £3. Moreover, for the first time, women from the provinces were also granted the right to vote and be voted for—if they could meet the income/property and residency requirements (i.e., they must have resided in Freetown for five years). This enlarged Constance’s support base, as many women became enfranchised. Thus, amid the emergence of a more liberal Creole class (many of them alumni of either the Episcopal

Women in the colonial spaces   125 School or the Girls’ School), Constance re-­emerged on the political scene. Governor de Zouche Hall endorsed her victory in the Freetown municipal council elections. Constance’s support base had increased considerably among women in, and from, the provinces. These women were all members of “royal families,” with powerful connections in and outside of Sierra Leone. They included, among others, Nana Turay (the leader of the Susu ethnic group in Freetown, whom Constance was fond of calling the “kind gentlewoman at large” (Denzer 1987, 447)), Ella Koblo Gulama, and Mabel Dove-­Danquah. Given her standing, the SLPP embraced Constance soon after its formation in 1951. She was allowed to create and lead the SLPP women’s section, the first in the history of political parties in the country. Constance’s membership of the SLPP and creation of the SLPP women’s section brought its own challenges. Most of her Creole countrymen and women, and some members of her family, saw it as a betrayal of her Creole identity, while the older conservatives in the SLPP hated her pro-­feminist stance on political issues. In fact, they tried to prevent her from contesting in the Freetown seat under their banner in the 1957 elections. In the face of this resistance, she ran as an independent, alongside Patience Richards. She won by a considerable margin and obtained a seat in the House of Representatives (which had replaced the Legislative Council). This was a political victory for women. However, the events that followed exposed the gender-­based discrimination in the politics of Sierra Leone at that time. The male politicians, across the colony–province divide, realized that Constance was not going to support any bill that was not sensitive to women’s concerns. This had the potential to create chaos in the House—the kind of chaos the older conservatives wanted to avoid in the lead-­up to independence. Thus, when the National Council decided to challenge the constitutionality of the electoral outcome in court, the conservatives in the SLPP supported their appeal. According to Denzer, The male leaders defaulted on their commitments to their female colleagues. Cummings-­John’s career illustrated this. In the 1957 election, she expected victory and appointment as Minister of Social Welfare. When an election petition was entered against her [because of her gender], Sir Milton Margai let it be known that he favored one of the petitioners [R. G. O. King, who would eventually become Minister of Development in the Margai government] against her.  (Denzer 1987, 452) According to Denzer, Cummings-­John was prepared to fight the matter through the courts. However, before the case was heard, pressure was placed on her family to persuade her to either stay out of politics or not to challenge the outcome of the elections in court. In effect, two institutions conspired to prevent a woman obtaining a place in the legislature and the executive: the family (representing the cultural foundations of the state) and the political parties. Instead, Cummings-­John was presented with a role those institutions (her family, and the

126   Women in the colonial spaces SLPP) thought was compatible with the duty of women (Lahai 2016); her husband, Ethan Cummings-­John, was appointed ambassador to the Republic of Liberia, with the hope that “she would have to stay by his side, abiding by the conventions of being an ambassador’s wife” (Denzer 1987, 452). As the champion for the self-­reliance of women, Constance did not accept these “unwritten, albeit patriarchal, conventions of diplomacy” (ibid., 454). Hence, she spent most of her time working in Freetown as organizing secretary of the SLWM (between 1951 and 1967) and editor of the women’s flagship newspaper, the Ten Daily News (between 1954 and 1963).

Ten Daily News: the platform for a Freirean consciousness-­raising CR [consciousness-­raising] sessions were fact-­gathering sessions, research sessions on our feelings. We wanted to get at the truth about how women felt, how we viewed our lives, what was done to us, and how we functioned in the world. Not how we were supposed to feel but how we did feel. This knowledge, gained through honest examination of our own experiences, we would pool to help us figure out how to change the situation of women. (Shulman 1980, 598) The definition above of consciousness-­raising is Alix Kates Shulman’s. Like William Hinton (1966) and several other scholars before her,13 Shulman argued that consciousness-­raising originated in China during the decade when Mao Zedong declared the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Writing after Shulman, the acclaimed feminist scholar Hester Eisenstein, in her 1983 work Contemporary Feminist Thought and in many of her post-­1983 works, gave credence to this claim. However, claims that this model started in China are debatable; there is plentiful literature by ethnographers and anthropologists who have spoken about consciousness-­raising sessions in Africa that date as far back as the precolonial times. In Sierra Leone, for example, the following scholarly works are focused on practices similar to what Shulman presents above as the definition of consciousness-­raising. They include, among others, H. U. Hall (1938), Kenneth Little (1948; 1949, 1948; 1955), Ruth B. Phillips (1978), W. P. Murphy (1980), and Caroline H. Bledsoe (1980); later works include those of Mariane C. Ferme (2001). I grew up listening to stories about how the matriarchs of Mendeland (southern Sierra Leone) created the Bondo Secret Society to tell (among themselves) the truth about their personal experiences and to find ways to change the situation for the womenfolk. There were stories about Mandimansa Masarico and her reign from the western borders of present-­day Ivory Coast to the estuaries of the Atlantic Ocean in northern Sierra Leone (see Chapter 6). There are stories, also, of the reign of Queen Nyarroh of Bandasuma (present-­day southern Sierra Leone) where similar sessions also took place (see Day 2007). Looking at more contemporary history, the modern forms of these fact-­finding sessions are seen in the early 1900s among the Creole women in the emancipated

Women in the colonial spaces   127 communities in Sierra Leone (Osagie 1997). Despite the political constraints of colonialism, these women were still able to create pressure groups with membership reserved for (Creole) women. These groups became the forums in which they talked about their plight, including the impact of the slave trade on their Creole identity (Shaw 2002) and devised strategies to challenge their marginal status in society. Soon after their formation, these pressure groups became proto-­feminist nationalist organizations, which were able to produce a counter-­narrative to the male-­dominated discourse in the National Congress of British West Africa. In 1920, they joined forces with UNIA and, between 1920 and 1921, held a series of consciousness-­raising activities, before fading away in the 1930s. In 1940, they founded the country’s first neo-­Marxist group, the Women’s Auxiliary Corp of the WAYL. When it was banned, they founded the SLWM in 1951. They formed other groups, such as the Sierra Leone Washer-­Women’s Union (headed by Violet Johnson) and the Sierra Leone Market Women’s Union (headed by Christiana England and Mary Martyn). All these groups employed consciousness-­raising strategies in their fight against patriarchal domination. Despite these radical neo-­Marxist efforts, they still hoped that the whole country would hear their “bitterness.” They needed a platform to share reliable information about their experiences, in their own words and terms. The men had their news outlets14 but they were not (except Cyril Rogers-­Wright’s Shekpendeh) interested in promoting women’s issues or reporting on the bitter experiences of women. Rather, these male-­owned and operated newspapers expressed unfavorable views of women in politics and their impact on the psyche of the people. With this exclusion from public discourse came political indifference to domestic and gender-­based violence. In response, Constance Cummings-­John founded the Ten Daily News in 1954; it remained in print until 1960 and, under the banner Madora, from 1960 to 1976. Its headquarters became a space where women would come and hold fact-­finding sessions.15 One of the main gender issues— apart from equal gender representation in politics—was sexual and gender-­based violence against women. With the public discourse insensitive to the plight of women victims, the Committee of Correspondence of the SLWM published an inflammatory piece in the Ten Daily News of February 13, 1959. The headline read “Women must not be mere ‘dolls’ for men.” In this op-­ed, the Committee accused men of turning the hotels in the city into brothels. It reminded readers of the gender-­based consequences of this lascivious behavior for women and for the country as a whole. The article provoked a bitter response from male politicians and civil servants, including the firing of all the women working at the Paramount Hotel, located opposite State House, the Offices of the Prime Minister, and about 100 meters away from the parliament building. The only women who retained their jobs were those whose husbands were also working in the hotel. The emotive decision stemmed from the view among the male politicians that the Committee had based its argument on the increasing trend of female employment in the hospitality sector. This shocked the SLWM leadership. On July 9, 1960, the Committee of Correspondence issued another op-­ed in the Madora, calling on the management of Paramount Hotel to reinstate these women (see Figure 7.1).

Figure 7.1  SLWM stance against Paramount Hotel and an Appeal to Lady Dorman.

Women in the colonial spaces   129 The statement also suggested that the SLWM was ready to provide additional training to all women—courtesy of June Roness and Rena Karefa-­Smart (wife of Dr. John Karefa-­Smart, the Minister of External Affairs). As can be seen, Constance Cummings-­John added her voice to the article, appealing to the First Lady, Her Excellency Mrs. Dorman, wife of the governor of Sierra Leone, to help the fired workers get their jobs back.

Notes   1 In January 1960, Siaka Stevens founded the Elections Before Independence Movement (EBIM); in August–September 1960, the EBIM merged with I. T. A. Wallace-­ Johnson’s Radical Democratic Party (which he had founded in July 1958 as something of a successor to the defunct West African Youth League) to create the All People’s Congress (Kilson 1964).   2 Pa Patrick Teddy-­Musa (SLPP Bo Kakua Branch). Interviewed by the author June 10, 2016.   3 Pa Alfred Kamanda (SLPP Kenema Chapter). Interviewed by the author June 12, 2016.   4 Madam Nancy Lahai (nee, Lengor) (SLPP Matru Jong Branch). Interviewed by the author June 23, 2016.   5 Paramount Chief He Julius Momoh Gulama died before Margai assumed office. To compensate him, his daughter Ella Koblo Gulama, having received the backing of the paramount chiefs and conservatives in the SLPP, was crowned the legitimate heir to the throne in Kaiyamba chiefdom.   6 Madam Rachel Parkinson (nee Thomas), a central committee member of the SLWM “reading group.” Interviewed by the author August 16, 2016.   7 By 1964 the National Council had collapsed following the death of Bankole-­Bright and the defection of its other founding members to Siaka Stevens’s All People’s Congress Party.   8 Magbaily C. Fyle also noted that, at the time of their merger, the “SLIM was a dwindling party while the KPM was seeking to avoid being branded an ethnic party.” Tamba Mbriwa was appointed the leader of the SLPIM. The fortunes of this party dwindled when Mbriwa was removed from his paramount chieftain position and banished to Kamakwe, Bomabali District in 1964. Following the death of Sir Milton Margai, and the rise of his brother, Albert Margai, to the Prime Ministership, Mbriwa was reinstated in 1965. Between 1958 and 1959, SLPIM shifted its allegiance between the PNP and the SLPP on several occasions. It eventually ceased to exist when Mbriwa died in 1968 (Fyle 2006, 184).   9 Mrs. Theresa Caulker. Interviewed by the author April 12, 2016. 10 Freetown, and its surrounding villages: Bathurst, Regent, Hastings, Kossoh Town, Murray Town, Wilberforce, York, Sussex, Kent, and MacDonald (Cline-­Cole 1987; Hair 1998; Spitzer 1974; Thayer 1991). 11 In fact, it was one of the factors responsible for Constance Cummings-­John’s failure to enter the House of Representatives. They also applied a constitutional technicality to prevent Lerina Bright-­Taylor from contesting the 1957 elections, arguing she had been five hours late in filing her candidature (see, Denzer 1987). 12 Governor Hall was considered by many the only governor to promote the cultural rights of Sierra Leonean people. His enthusiasm for Sierra Leone’s cultural heritage led to the founding of the Sierra Leone Monument and Relics Commission. M. C. F. Easmon, a retired Creole medical doctor and president of the Sierra Leone Society, was appointed chairman (Basu 2016), and Constance was selected women’s representative to its board of directors (Cummings-­John 1995).

130   Women in the colonial spaces 13 These scholarly works include, among others, Kathie Sarachild’s (2000) “A program for feminist consciousness-­raising”; Pamela Allen’s (1970) Free Space; and Vivian Gornick’s (1978) Essays in Feminism. 14 H. C. Bankole-­Bright had the Evening Despatch, and Sir Milton Margai had the Sierra Leone Observer and the African Vanguard (Kilson 1964). 15 The author undertook data mining to discover how many of these sessions were reported. Between March 1955 and March 1976, 14 sessions were recorded and reported—some in the rare publications of the Ten Daily News and Madora (stored on a forgotten shelf in the basement of the four-­storey building housing the University Library at Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone).

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132   Women in the colonial spaces Kilson, Martin. 1966. Political Change in a West African State: A Study of the Modernization Process in Sierra Leone. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Lahai, John Idriss. 2016. Gender in Practice: Culture, Politics, and Society in Sierra Leone. 14 vols. http://dx.doi.org/10.3726/b11126. Oxford, UK: Peter Lang. Little, Kenneth. 1955. “Structural change in the Sierra Leone Protectorate.” Africa 25 (3): 217–34. https://doi.org/10.2307/1157103. Little, Kenneth L. 1948. “The Poro Society as an arbiter of culture: (A note on cultural inter-­penetration).” African Studies 7 (1): 1–15. Little, Kenneth L. 1949. “The role of the secret society in cultural specialization.” American Anthropologist 51 (2): 199–212. Little, Kenneth Lindsay. 1948. “The Changing Position of Women in the Sierra Leone Protectorate.” Africa 18 (1): 1–17. Lucilda, Hunter, Yema. 2016. An African Treasure: In Search of Gladys Casely-­Hayford 1904–1950. Sierra Leone: Sierra Leonean Writers Series. Madora [The Official Voice of the Sierra Leone Women’s Movement]. 1960. “Sierra Leone Women’s Movement and the W.I.D.F. Conference Copenhagen,” April 20, 1960, Vol. 7, No. 137 edition. Madora [The Official Voice of the Sierra Leone Women’s Movement]. 1961. “Madam Gulama given rousing welcome in Accra,” January 28, 1961, Vol. 7, No. 137 edition. Mcduffie, Erik S. 2017. “ ‘A new day has dawned for the UNIA’: Garveyism, the diasporic Midwest, and West Africa, 1920–80.” Journal of West African History 2 (1): 73–113. Moores, Chris. 2017. Civil Liberties and Human Rights in Twentieth-­Century Britain. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Morgan, Jennifer L. 2011. Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Munslow, Barry. 1983. “Why has the Westminster model failed in Africa?” Parliamentary Affairs 36 (1): 218–28. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.pa.a051879. Murphy, William P. 1980. “Secret knowledge as property and power in Kpelle society: Elders versus youth.” Africa 50 (2): 193–207. Okonkwo, R. L. 1980. “The Garvey Movement in British West Africa.” The Journal of African History 21 (1): 105–17. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021853700017898. Osagie, Iyunolu. 1997. “Historical memory and a new national consciousness: The Amistad Revolt revisited in Sierra Leone.” The Massachusetts Review 38 (1): 63–83. Phillips, Richard. 2006. “Heterogeneous imperialism and the regulation of sexuality in British West Africa.” Journal of the History of Sexuality 14 (3): 291–315. https://doi. org/10.1353/sex.2006.0029. Phillips, Ruth B. 1978. “Masking in Mende Sande Society initiation rituals.” Africa 48 (3): 265–77. Sarachild, Kathie. 2000. “A program for feminist consciousness-­raising,” in Barbara A. Crow (ed.), Radical Feminism: A Documentary Reader. New York: New York University Press, 273–6. Shaw, Rosalind. 2002. Memories of the Slave Trade: Ritual and the Historical Imagination in Sierra Leone. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Shulman, Alix Kates. 1980. “Sex and power: Sexual bases of radical feminism.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 5 (4): 590–604. Spear, Thomas. 2003. “Neo-­Traditionalism and the limits of invention in British Colonial Africa.” The Journal of African History 44 (1): 3–27. Spitzer, Leo. 1974. The Creoles of Sierra Leone: Responses to Colonialism, 1870–1945. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.

Women in the colonial spaces   133 Spitzer, Leo and LaRay Denzer. 1973. “ITA Wallace-­Johnson and the West African Youth League. Part II: The Sierra Leone period, 1938–1945.” The International Journal of African Historical Studies 6 (4): 565–601. Steady, F. 2005. Women and Collective Action in Africa: Development, Democratization, and Empowerment, with Special Focus on Sierra Leone. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Steady, Filomina Chioma. 2006. “Collective action for educational and occupational empowerment,” in F. Steady (ed.), Women and Collective Action in Africa. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 75–93. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403979490_5. Thayer, James Steel. 1991. “A dissenting view of Creole culture in Sierra Leone (Une Approche Non-­Conventionnelle de La Culture Des Créoles de Sierra Leone).” Cahiers d’Études Africaines 31 (121/122): 215–30. Whyte, Christine H. 2008. “School’s out: Strategies of resistance in colonial Sierra Leone.” The Resistance Studies Magazine, May 2008. Wilson, Kathleen. 2011. “Rethinking the colonial state: Family, gender, and governmentality in eighteenth-­century British frontiers,” The American Historical Review 116 (5): 1294–322. https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr.116.5.1294.

8 Political independence and the Africanization project, 1960–1967

The “political pragmatism” and “cosy legislative counsel” of a fading empire had inevitably to give way to the wishes of the people. That people, however, were by no means united in the quest for political independence. The advocates of independence were members and supporters of four political parties: the SLPP of Sir Milton Margai, the United Progressive Party of Cyril Bunting Rogers-­Wright, the Labour Party of Tamba S. Mbriwa, and the National Council of Sierra Leone led by Bankole-­Bright. Those against called themselves the “Elections Before Independence Movement” (EBIM), and their leader was Siaka Stevens. Nine days before Independence Day, 31 members of the EBIM, including Stevens, were arrested and detained; Chief Justice Salako A. Benka-­Coker was swift in his decision to deny them bail. The official explanation given by Prime Minister and Minister for Defence, Sir Milton Margai, was that those detained were trying “to bring the whole country into contempt and ridicule.”1 Notwithstanding Stevens’s opposition, the “London Constitutional Talks” had been successfully concluded at Lancaster House in London on April 20, 1960. At this conference, Prime Minister Milton Margai and the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Iain Macleod, agreed that April 27, 1961 (which marked the tenth anniversary of the founding of the SLPP) would be the date for Sierra Leone’s independence. Dignitaries came from far and wide to witness the birth of this “new” nation. Representing the Crown were Queen Elizabeth II’s cousins, Prince Edward and Princess Alexandra (West Africa 1961, 473). Others included Albert Carnahan, the United States’ first ambassador to Sierra Leone; the Prime Minister of Nigeria, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa; and Lord Casey, leader of the Australian delegation to the independence celebration (Australian Deptartment of Foreign Affairs 1961, 58). They and many other dignitaries were greeted at Lungi Airport by the outgoing colonial governor, Sir Maurice Dorman, and the incoming government of Sir Milton Margai, the chiefs from all the chiefdoms of the country, and about 1,250 cultural troupes and 500 masquerades.2 All were there in time—at precisely 11.59 p.m. on April 26, the eve of independence—to witness the lowering of the British Union Jack and the raising of the green, white, and blue flag of Sierra Leone by Officer-­Cadet S. B. Jumu (Carpenter and Eckert 1974, 43; West Africa 1961, 473).3

Political independence   135 The next day, shortly after 10.30 a.m., the Sierra Leone House of Representatives was called into session. Sir Maurice Dorman took the oath of office as governor-­general—and the constitutional Head of State—of an independent Sierra Leone (Pham 2005, 28). In effect, it meant that he was no longer a representative of the British imperial government in London. His allegiance was transferred to the people of Sierra Leone, through their elected representatives (and selected chiefs) in the House of Representatives. According to the Second Schedule of the Legislative Powers of the governor, as stipulated in the Sierra Leone Independence Act 1961 (Government of Sierra Leone 1961, col. 3), the governor-­general had the powers to pass into law the acts made on or after this day by the House of Representatives. The constitutionality of such law was no longer subject to the provisions of the British Colonial Laws Validity Act of 1865 and the legal provisions of any Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. After the governor-­general was sworn in, the Duke of Kent delivered a somewhat somber message from Her Majesty the Queen and the British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan (British Broadcasting Services 1961). The nostalgic speech was replete with references to the gains (he did not comment on the regrets and failures) the British monarchy’s 153-year rule had bestowed upon the people Sierra Leone. He concluded his message by handing over the “Instrument of Sovereignty” to Sir Milton Margai, thus bringing to an end the British imperial era in Sierra Leone. The Instrument of Sovereignty made references to Subsection 2 of the Sierra Leone Independence Act (1961), which states that independent Sierra Leone included the area in West Africa lying between the sixth and tenth degrees of north latitude and the tenth and fourteenth degrees of west longitude and bounded on the north by the boundary line delimited under the provisions of the Anglo-­ French Convention dated the twenty-­eighth day of June 1882, the Anglo-­ French Arrangement dated the tenth day of August 1889, the Anglo-­French Agreement dated the twenty-­first day of January 1895, and the notes exchanged between His Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and the Ambassador of the French Republic, and dated the sixth day of July 1911, and on the south by the Anglo-­Liberian boundary line delimited under the provisions of the Anglo-­Liberian Conventions dated the eleventh day of November 1885, and the twenty-­first day of January, 1911. (Sierra Leone Independence Act 1961; Chapter 16, 9 and 10 Eliz 2)4 Next, Sir Milton Margai took the oath of office as Prime Minister and Minister of Internal Affairs and Development. His cabinet members also took their oaths of office. After that, they were presented to the people. The ministries were allocated to M. S. Mustapha (Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance), H. E. B. John (Education), Dr. John Karefa-­Smart (Lands and Survey, with responsibility for external affairs and defense), Doyle L. Sumner (Communications), I. B. Taylor Kamara (Trade and Industry), Kandeh Bureh (Minister of Works), Taplima Ngobeh (Health), A. J. Demb (Mines and Labour), Y. D. Sisay

136   Political independence (Information and Broadcasting), Albert M. Margai (Natural Resources), G.  Dickson Thomas (Social Welfare), and C. B. Rogers-­Wright (Housing and Country Planning). Moreover, The Hon. R. G. O. King was appointed Minister of State (The Department of Information, Sierra Leone 1961, 42). The paramount chiefs R. B. S. Koker and Madam Ella Koblo Gulama (the only female representative in the House) also took their oath as ministers without portfolios. Paragraph 6 of the Second and Third Schedules of the 1961 Constitution of Sierra Leone gave these members of the House of Representatives the constitutional responsibility “to repeal or amend any such Act, order, rule or regulation in so far as it is part of the law of Sierra Leone or any part thereof.” This, in effect, repealed the Colonial Laws Validity Act 1865 (Second Schedule of the Government of Sierra Leone 1961, sec. 2). These powers also came with obligations under the international legal regimes of the United Nations, to which Sierra Leone was admitted five months after independence, on September 27, 1961, becoming that organization’s one-­hundredth member state (Pham 2005, 29), and some of the bilateral and multilateral obligations it inherited from Britain. The granting of independence meant different things to different groups and individuals. To the government of Sir Milton Margai, it meant the adoption of a gradualist approach to Africanization. The Africanization policy priorities of the Margai administration focused on agriculture and mining, institutions and infrastructure, education, and the chieftain institution (attending especially to the roles of the local courts in the promotion of human rights). To achieve the objectives of his administration, Prime Minister Margai adopted a practical strategy of “Africanizing” his government’s social administration of institutional and infrastructural development and the country’s human rights framework.

The “Africanization” of post-­independence development interventions As we witness the birth of our new nation, we should not forget, as we build the new on the old, that our continued stability depends on the cooperation of all. (Sir Milton Margai) Africanization, as a sociological term, is concerned with the socialized reforms of governmental interventions. It is a pragmatic model of governance concerned with the development of more than just a social safety net to meet some—if not all—of the needs of the people on the peripheries of the postcolonial state. It is also about the social administration of the political objectives of government through the effective management of information. With information, as a source of power, in the hands of “decolonized minds” in a postcolonial space, the hope is that stronger linkages between the grassroots communities and government agencies will deliver bottom-­top strategies to attain human development objectives. Against this backdrop, there was a need to expand the government’s information services. In May 1961, the Minister of Information and Broadcasting, the Hon.

Political independence   137 Y.  D. Sisay, and the Minister of Communication, the Hon. Doyle L. Summer, proposed the formation of a parliamentary standing committee to draft a bill promoting government accountability and ethics in journalism. The aim was to build on the achievements of 1934, when the first broadcasting relay service in West Africa was launched in Freetown (Department of Information, Sierra Leone 1961, 5). It was essential that Sierra Leoneans were kept informed about government activities; and possibly, it was … the political signficance of information that spurred Prime Minister Margai to state, in his first message to the newly independent country, that: The Government Information Service is working hard to help you … My Ministers and I will continue to come round and talk with you. But you must want to know, and you must bring others with you to listen to the authoritative words of Government, and you must pass the correct word to those who cannot attend. Precisely the same applies to Town Councilors and more particularly to District Councilors. It is not enough to attend your Council meetings and then go home to sit in your hammocks. Many of our people are thirsting for knowledge of what your Council and the Government are doing. All your elected people must tell your constituents the correct word and bring their questions and desires back to your Councils so that they may be answered. (Sir Milton Margai 1961, cited in Concord Times 2008, ll. 12–14) The social administration of the country requires developing a competent cohort of public administrators to devise and implement policy for the provision of social good. This level of competence requires, on the one hand, the recruitment and professionalization of a civil service; on the other hand, in the view of the Prime Minister, everybody had a role to play. Whether you are a farmer, a clerk, a trader, an artisan, a daily wage worker, a fisherman, a lawyer or a judge … Mining companies, missions, trade unions, hospitals, schools, and government departments, life will go on as before … The significant change is that we are now in complete control of our destiny and for the formulation of our external as well as our internal policies … This is the time when all you men and women should strive to know what is being done, what your responsibilities are and what the responsibilities of your country are … As I have said before, Paramount Chiefs, Section Chiefs, Tribal Headmen, and Tribal Authority Members all have a great responsibility to do this, and I expect them all to do what is required of them. (Sir Milton Margai, excerpt of Independence Address to the nation on April 27, 1961, cited in Concord Times 2008, ll. 8–9, 10–11) Consistent with his political mandate, and the progress his government had already made, the Prime Minister wanted as many Sierra Leoneans as possible in

138   Political independence all government institutions, especially in the public/civil service, the armed forces, and the police forces (Pham 2005, 35–6). That notwithstanding, it was necessary to adopt a strategy of gradual transition if the government was to “retain an effective Civil Service to implement its policy at a time of stress, change, and rapid development” (Department of Information, Sierra Leone 1961, 35). The Prime Minister also recognized that his Africanization policy was not just about getting Sierra Leoneans in top-­ranking posts in government and the public service; it was also about identifying and addressing some of the problems associated with the segregation of the Africans by the British during colonial rule. The Prime Minister’s call re-­echoed the wishes of many in Sierra Leone. Under colonial rule, attempts by “Sierra Leoneans”—both the African-­British citizens of the colony of Freetown and the African-­British protected persons of the protectorate—to subtly promote the Africanization of education, healthcare, and the courts, had all been resisted. Through a deliberate policy of “selective employment”—or what Akintola Wyse referred to as “professional discrimination” or “augmented residential segregation” (Wyse 1989, 63)—Africans were excluded from occupying positions where they could influence, if not fast-­track, the Africanization process. This is not to say that Sierra Leoneans passively endured the contempt the British displayed towards them. They did their best to put an end to the institutionalization of augmented segregation, which was sustained by a “white only” recruitment policy in the professional sector. Wyse explains that J. C. Shorunkeh-­Sawyer was among the first to object to this segregation in 1908, when the Christian Mission Society threatened to close Fourah Bay College due to the undue political interference of the colonial administration, which wanted to disrupt the education of the Africans. Shorunkeh-­Sawyer criticized the longstanding relationships the Africans in the colony of Freetown had shared with the British, expressing dismay at the latter’s decision to “distance themselves from people with whom they had shared so much in common” (ibid., 61). The colonial administration made further threats to downgrade the status of the college “from a degree-­granting university college to a preparatory school” in the 1940s (Paracka Jr. 2003, 154). In a series of articles—under the title: “The future of Fourah Bay College”—that appeared in the Sierra Leone Daily Mail between 1935 and 1946, Professor Otto-­During protested the decision of the colonial administration to convert the college into a military barracks. Although the British military paid over 35,000 lease fees, the Creoles saw it as a violation of their right to education. The liberated Africans of Freetown were not blind to the role of the British in the founding of their “Creole” identity. This was the crux of Shorunkeh-­ Sawyer’s point. That notwithstanding, they also had played their part—including allowing the British access into their lives. All that they wanted in the 1900s was that “after having been ‘civilized’ through ‘patronage and favor,’ they were [to be treated as] equals of white colonials” (ibid., 61). This did not happen, and instead the segregation of the Africans intensified. Infuriated by this, E. S. Beoku-­Betts, who had just returned to Sierra Leone after completing his legal

Political independence   139 training in England, wrote a damning letter in 1918 to the British government, demanding an official statement from them on “whether ‘the colour of a man’s skin is to make any difference within the Empire.’ ” He also demanded the adoption of a “decree proclaiming the ‘equality of all races’ ” and noted that, even if the British preferred to refuse these demands, they were a moral obligation; Sierra Leoneans (specifically the descendants of the liberated Africans) had served in the British forces in the First World War and thus, in the aftermath, should be granted “fuller rights of citizenship” (ibid., 61). The British government, however, responded by imposing further job restrictions. Between 1917 and 1919, barrister W. Awunor Renner’s applications for the position of assistant district commissioner were rejected because there “was no place for an African in that category”—instead the position went to a white Briton, Colonel Hart, whose only qualification was his military experience. Dr. E. H. Taylor Cummings, Sierra Leone’s first public health professional, was not appointed a medical officer of health. Instead, a white European was employed in 1920 and, after the appointment, sent to obtain the academic qualifications Cummings already possessed (Wyse 1989, 62). Drs Uel John and G. C. E. Reffell, the first two Sierra Leonean dentists, had similar experiences. In the protectorate, the future Prime Minister, Dr. Milton Margai, who was the first native to become a doctor, was also refused placement until 1928; even then, his appointment was on condition that he was to practise among the “Africans” in the communities outside Freetown and his license to be revoked if he was caught treating non-­ Africans. The only African allowed to practice medicine in the pre-­1937 colony of Freetown was a mulatto named E. J. Wright. He was accepted because he was born and raised in England, and because of the white(ish) color of his mulatto skin (Cromwell 2014, 35). To end this “British” domination—because independence meant nothing if Europeans remained in control of key government sectors—Prime Minister Margai adopted an Africanization policy. To some, this was a move in the right direction. It was not aimed at depriving the British and their Creole protégé of their economic and political rights. Instead, and as the Creoles were a century ahead in wealth and education, his focus was on the empowerment of the peoples in the provinces. At a time when the Creoles were in control of the real estate and other business sectors of the colony of Freetown, “Protectorate Sierra Leoneans” were being exploited. At the time when the Creoles were being educated at Fourah Bah College (between 1825 and 1925), non-­Creole Sierra Leoneans were still fighting for recognition of their fundamental human rights. It was not until the 1950s that the people of the protectorate were granted the right to be admitted into Fourah Bay College en masse. Against this backdrop, the Prime Minister’s policy was aimed at promoting equity and justice in employment through the distribution of jobs based on tribe and region. In view of this, during his tenures (first, as chief minister in charge of government business (1954–1957); then as Prime Minister responsible to the British imperial government (1957–1960); and finally as Prime Minister of an independent country (1961–1964)), Sir Milton Margai put in place an “Africanization project” to empower the least empowered

140   Political independence (excluding, of course, the womenfolk). He was of the view that empowerment should not be reserved for those with higher qualifications; rather, a system of education that catered for all—Creole and non-­Creole alike—was needed (Kandeh 1992). This is not to say that there was no higher level education in the protectorate. In 1906, the British had established Bo School, which was the first step towards promoting the “right to education,” and, in tandem, in raising the standards of living and the levels of political, social, and economic participation of protectorate Africans in local government and national politics. As a result Bo was transformed to “sweet Bo,” the “black man’s London”; and Bo School to, “the black man’s Eton” (Lewis 1954, 62). In sweet Bo, these educated Africans (mostly from the Mende tribal group), under the leadership of Sir Milton Margai (who had also opened his provincial offices in Bo), founded the Sierra Leone Observer newspaper, the “voice of the tribal natives” (Lewis 1954, 62) in 1950. To the people of the provinces, the Sierra Leone Observer was the bringer of the “right to freedom of expression.”5 In Bo, these educated Africans also founded the Bunumbu Press, famed for printing books—of all relevant types and on all subjects—in all the main local/tribal languages; the Bo School graduates were also instrumental in the modernization drive of the Chief Commissioner, Mr. Norman MacRobert (the most senior official of the colonial government outside of the capital, Freetown). They worked on the road networks—transforming Bo into “Coal Tar Bo”—and the electrification of the city (they were employed in the Bo and Kenema Power Station, BKPS). It was these Bo School-­educated Africans who would go on to become instrumental to the Africanization process. They were the readied workforce that would help in the promotion of the fundamental human rights of people: the right to life, free movement, education, association, and religion in the postcolonial era of Sir Milton. Without them, the necessary infrastructures and institutions for the achievement of the government’s proposed development plans—not forgetting that, in theory and practice, and no matter the context, development is a human right (see McGoldrick 1996; Sano 2000; Uvin 2004)—was impossible. Urbanization There were, inarguably, disparities between Freetown and the provinces of Sierra Leone. At independence in April 1961, Freetown inherited from Britain countless western bars, libraries, modern cars—including double-­decker buses identical to those one might find on the streets of Bristol, Manchester, and London in the 1960s. There was a disciplined police force in Freetown, and thus less need for armed security guards in the department stores (Government of Sierra Leone 1962, 40), which were loaded with fashionable goods from all the major industrial countries in the West. Freetown was a vibrant, cosmopolitan city. It was connected to the rest of the world through its international airport at Lungi, the expressways to and from the neighboring Liberia and Guinea, and the Queen Elizabeth II Quay. This quay was primed for business. It was the third largest natural harbor in the world, behind only Sydney Harbor in Australia and

Political independence   141 the port of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. It had anchorage for 240 ships and its quay could accommodate three ships at the same time. In fact, records reveal that in 1960, approximately 1,200 ships berthed at this quay. The banking sector of Freetown was also very active. Although all the major banks were owned by British and other European firms, some of their top management officials were from the class of local (mostly Creole) entrepreneurs, accountants, and economists, who were among the most competitive in the British Commonwealth. In the former protectorate (after independence, the provinces) of Sierra Leone, political independence exposed the extractive nature of colonial rule, and the contradictions of the capitalist economy it introduced in the 1830s. Compared to Freetown, the provinces, on the forgotten periphery of the political economy of empire, demonstrated major contradictions regarding urbanism. As Walton observed, on the one hand, there is a great difference between indicating the existence of urban–rural contrasts and identifying the forces causing such differentiation. On the other, there [was] an inability to separate the spatial and the class nature of such bias. (Walton 1975, cited in Riddell 1985b, 374) The unspoken economic consequences of the protectorate Proclamation of 1896 for labor relations, the agriculture-­based industries, rural and urban class differences, and the subsequent attempts to create a unified country through the amalgamation of Freetown and the protectorate, led to what J. Barry Riddle referred to as the “urban bias in underdevelopment,” and the “appropriation from the countryside in postcolonial Sierra Leone” (Riddell 1985b, 374). In the provinces, the idea of an independent Sierra Leone was a misnomer. After 153-plus years of colonial control, human settlement and development exposed a paradox: in Freetown, one could see western buildings nestled together like shields held together by a phalanx of battle-­readied Spartans. In the provinces (with the exception of Bo Town, in southern Sierra Leone), human settlements were characterized by isolated huts in the middle of vast, untouched savannahs and rainforest, the clear evidence of which was a missed agricultural and economic opportunities. To resolve the housing crisis, the solution of the government was two-­fold: construction of low-­cost housing and investment in social welfare. The former was to be of little benefit to the poor people of the provinces, targeting instead the low-­income groups—the workers and public servants—of Freetown. Although the government promised to construct similar housing projects in the provinces in due course, Freetown was their priority. Perhaps in the hope that providing low-­cost housing for these workers would enhance the Africanization process, the government launched a low-­cost housing scheme in the Kissy and Cline Town communities of Freetown. This scheme aimed to set an example for the private sector to follow. To this end, the government enacted several laws and regulations to encourage private financial interests to invest in the development schemes. The development plan, the government argued, was “made for a

142   Political independence broad zoning pattern and the improvement of existing road lines and other means of communication.” Slum communities within these target areas were also redeveloped, with the government making provision for “alternative accommodation … for the inhabitants of such slum areas while the development scheme aimed at transforming these slums [was] being implemented” (Department of Information, Sierra Leone 1961, 28). Concerning social welfare, the Ministry of Social Welfare was charged with of putting in place “a measure of security for every man, woman and child in real need up to the level of living which the country can afford.” My archival research did not identify whether monetary assistance was provided; what it did reveal was that the government only provided a social safety net as a measure of social security. This safety net included probation service for juvenile men and women found wanting as a result of domestic violence (along with mass public education on the dangers of such violence). It also included the establishment of social and community centers; the hiring of family support caseworkers for abused children and youth; and alternative dispute resolution community workers (attached to local government bodies) to help resolve domestic disputes. Housing and schools were also provided for the disabled and a desk was established in the Ministry of Labor with the purpose of finding jobs for women and men. Agriculture and mining In the mining sector, the extractive industry had little positive impact on the economy of the provinces of Sierra Leone. The iron ore sector was owned by the Sierra Leone Development Company (SLDC), which started its mining operations in Sierra Leone in 1933; by the end of November 1960, it had shipped a total of 25,000,000 tons of iron ore. In fact, the reported shipment for the year 1960 was 1,500,000 tons. In 1950, the Marampa and Pepel mines expansion project was launched to expand the mines’ loading port (built in 1934) from its handling capacity of about 300 ships and loading conveyor capacity of about 2,000 tons per hour to 500 ships and 5,000 tons per hour. It was estimated that with this expansion the country could export three million tons of iron ore annually. This was good news for the locals. The SLDC did promise to bring jobs and build hospitals and schools for its workers and families. Unfortunately, the new mechanized methods of ore extraction the SLDC adopted meant that fewer human hands were added to the workforce, and the social services it promised never materialized. There was also the Sierra Leone Selection Trust (SLST), which had sole rights to mine diamonds in the country. The SLST began its private operations in 1934, following the introduction of the Alluvial Diamond Mining Scheme that same year. The total legal export of diamonds for the year 1960 was valued at over £15,000,000. Of this, 746,534 carats (with a provisional value of £4,357,781) and 1,215,611 carats (with an estimated value of £10,913,883) were exported. However, of the estimated profit of £10,913,883, only 30 percent was paid to the consolidated funds of Sierra Leone by the

Political independence   143 colonial administration, the reason being that the government was still paying off £1.5 million in compensation to the SLST for breaching the exclusive lease agreement. Governor Sir Maurice Dorman and the Prime Minister Milton Margai had breached the agreement because the SLST (and its subsidiary, the Diamond Corporation Sierra Leone Limited, which began operations in January 1956 and was tasked with buying diamonds from individual miners) was unable combat rampant diamond smuggling. The colonial administration’s solution was to establish the Government Diamond Office in Kenema on August 4, 1959, with mining rights and regulatory powers over the SLST and the Diamond Corporation Sierra Leone Limited. There was also the Consolidated Zinc Corporation and Columbia Southern Chemicals, which started their operations in 1959. Their focus was on titanium, rutile, ilmenite, and cassiterite around Gbangbama village in the Imperi chiefdom. They were granted reconnaissance licenses that granted them full drilling rights to find and determine the alluvial concentrations of those minerals. On the agro-­economic front, the Ministry of Agriculture was satisfied with the peasant agricultural sector. The colonial administration had not seen the need to use Sierra Leone’s plentiful rain and cultivable land to develop a vibrant agricultural sector; instead, if the forest was to be of any use, it was in feeding into the political economy of European-­owned timber companies. Opposition grew against uncontrolled tree felling and timber exports to Europe, but the colonial administration did not heed the pressure from environmentalists until February 1961—that is, just two months before independence. The Department of Agriculture and the Colonial Ministry of Natural Resources launched the Economic Tree Scheme at Njala (Southern Province) and Rokupr (Northern Province) to train farm demonstrators from every district on specialized lines, including nursery siting and the management and selection of land to be cultivated (Department of Information, Sierra Leone 1961, 10). The outcome of this policy was the expansion of the S. B. Thomas Agricultural College (which had been founded in 1934) at Mabang, northern Sierra Leone. In 1963, this college was relocated to Njala town and renamed the Njala University College (Lahai 2015, 316). The prioritization of the extractive mining sector over agricultural sector had a significant impact on Sierra Leone’s export of agricultural produce. There was a low level of exports of raw produce, such as palm kernel oil, coffee, kola nuts and rice (rice being the country’s staple). A research programme in rice breeding was launched, and a study of rice-­suitable soil was carried out at the West African Rice Research Station in Rokupr in 1960. It was the expectation of many that this venture would result in a higher yield in rice production, due, in part, to the introduction of mechanical cultivation techniques. This did not happen, and the imbalance of trade, between the country’s exports of raw agricultural produce and its importation of processed goods, such as fuel oil, clothes, cement, vehicles, and machinery for the construction of roads, persisted. In the first-­ever budget to be presented in 1959 by Sierra Leone’s first indigenous Minister of Finance, M. S. Mustapha, the government reported that its  revenue exceeded expenditure. Returns from the country’s exports, the

144   Political independence Minister’s report noted, came to £8.4 million. This was much lower than the £25 million the government had spent on imported products. In fact, government expenditures doubled in 1960. The December 1959 logbook of the Customs department, as well as the receipts of all the post offices across the country, recorded £426,759, compared to the 1960 level of £531,342 (Department of Information, Sierra Leone 1961, 13, 18). The total receipts for government spending, including its budget for the 1961 independence celebrations, increased by £4,886,962. With this imbalance, it was difficult for a country transitioning from British imperial control to self-­rule to cater efficiently to the needs of her people. As one political commentator put it, the challenges Sierra Leone faced, included, among others, “the imbalances between budgets and deficits, which was not likened with freedom and independence.” To resolve this issue, the successor state and its government “had to deploy its pragmatic model of governance to operate side-­by-side with either cozy legislative counsels or paternalistic colonialism of Britain in the 1950s and 1960s … the era of Cold War politics.”6 Indeed, pragmatism was required for the promotion of the two mainstays of the economy: agriculture and mining. The challenges for the government were, first, how to create the conditions for these sectors to thrive; second, how to undertake the projects in agriculture and mining that were necessary; and, third, how to “encourage, by all reasonable means, private activity and investment” in both sectors (Department of Information, Sierra Leone 1961, 19). To achieve these bold aims would require expanding the agriculture sector through the introduction of new farming methods. The Prime Minister had hoped that, through this, a technically competent secondary industry would develop, which could form, as time went by, a third sector based on information, technology, and innovation. Against this backdrop, the government set for itself a benchmark: the attraction and retention of private investment. To meet this target, the government relied on the Development Ordinance of November 6, 1960, which provided, in Part I, “for the granting of income tax and customs concessions to companies undertaking industrial or agricultural enterprises which are needed for the development of the country” (ibid., 20). Start-­up companies owned by Sierra Leoneans (or registered as a partnership involving Sierra Leoneans) were granted a five-­year tax holiday, starting from the day the business began to sell marketable quality produce. This tax break, however, did not include “dividends in the hands of individual shareholders, except in the case where profits” were placed by the company “into a special reserve,” and were “not distributed until five years after the end of the tax break” (ibid., 21). Part II of the Ordinance noted that, during this five-­year period, companies in the agricultural and mining sectors that imported goods and machinery for their businesses were also granted 100 percent concessions at the Customs offices in the three main entry points to the country: airport, quay, and roads. The Mines and Minerals Statutory Ordinance of May 18, 1960 reiterated this (Sierra Leone House of Representatives 1960a, vol. 48A–10, sec. 23). Part III of the Development Ordinance noted that to qualify for this concession, companies (excluding private individuals) were required to “satisfy the Minister of Trade and Industry that [they were] entitled

Political independence   145 to a development certificate.” They could so satisfy the minister by providing documentary evidence that they were “going to manufacture a product which is not being manufactured already in sufficient quantity in Sierra Leone or carrying on some other industrial activity which is not being carried on sufficiently in Sierra Leone” (Sierra Leone House of Representatives 1960b, 52A–12:5). Human resources, institutions, and infrastructure The Prime Minister was well aware of the need for a gradualist approach towards Africanization and that, if there was to be any progress, his government needed first to tackle the problems relating to education, public service, infrastructure, and the institution of chiefdom. Funding for these ventures came from the Colonial Development and Welfare Scheme (a parting gift to Sierra Leoneans from the British government). The government also received funding from its consolidated funds and from the private sector.7 Between 1961 and 1964, the government commissioned the construction of 33 secondary schools (to add to the 35 secondary schools constructed by the colonial administration in its 153 years governing the country) and 600 more primary schools, to cater for approximately 75,000 students.8 The Prime Minister also ordered the admission of more students and the granting of more scholarships, and the construction of a new campus building for Fourah Bay College on Mount Aureal. This was not only an expensive undertaking for a university college with no more than 421 students, it also led to tensions between the pan-­ Africanist scholars and the government. The scholars accused the government of double standards, despite the fact that the government was providing full scholarships to 160 out of the 420 students as part of its Africanization of the education sector. There were academics, especially Professor Peter Kaim-­ Caudle, a visiting professor from Durham University, who felt the government’s decision in 1958 to send 47 Sierra Leoneans to the United States, and 1,010 Sierra Leonean students to the United Kingdom, for further studies was a “generosity” that “will handicap the development of the College” (Kaim-­Caudle, quoted in, Paracka Jr. 2003, 169). Moreover, as Daniel J. Paracka observes, the British Government in London encouraged Margai’s decision to send more students to study in Britain than in Sierra Leone because it was “an indirect but effective way to continue to ensure a return of funds from the peripheral colony [Sierra Leone] to the metropole [England]” (ibid.). Besides the criticism of the government’s scholarship policy, there were also those who felt an Africanization policy on education was best served by funding the expansion of the campus on Mount Aureal. Others felt it was necessary to construct a new campus. Even those who wanted it to remain on Aureal were divided into two schools of thoughts. There were those, especially the Creole descendants of the “Liberated Africans,” who presented a moral argument based on the historical connection of Mount Aureal to the transatlantic slave trade. Mount Aureal was once a fortified slave trade fort with hundreds of holding cells for slaves waiting to be shipped to the Americas. A new campus

146   Political independence would not send an implicit message that “it was from the pains of slavery that Sierra Leone’s resilience was built,” through the training of Sierra Leone’s next generation of administrators and workers on Mount Aureal (Nicol 1961, 44). The other school of thought focused on the economic factor. When the Second World War break out in 1939, the British military had constructed a series of buildings (alongside the ones they leased) on Mount Aureal. After the war, there was a need for a new campus of Fourah Bah College. They suggested that, instead of constructing new buildings, the British Army lease its military huts on Mount Aureal for the purposes of holding classes. This was agreed, and between 1945 and 1949, the college paid rent to the British. After independence in 1961, the same economic argument was advanced—although this time, the British Army no longer owned the huts. Sir Milton Margai was convinced that this solution was cost-­effective, so the campus stayed on Mount Aureal (Paracka Jr. 2003, 154). With the question on (re)location settled, a Royal Charter was adopted in 1961 transforming Fourah Bay College into a university college. The Charter also terminated the college’s direct affiliation with Durham University, which had been established in 1876. There was, therefore, a need for the construction and/or expansion of the faculties of arts, economic studies, theology, and pure and applied science, as well as the Department of Extra-­Mural Studies and a postgraduate Education Department (Lahai 2015, 316). To these ends, the university received, from the Colonial Development and Welfare Scheme, a grant totaling £2,000,000. The construction project that transformed the university into a “modern campus with building befitting the dignity of such an institution” was completed in July 1962. Once completed, people’s right to higher education was reaffirmed by the introduction of degree-­granting courses that catered for the needs of both men and women from Freetown and the provinces, as well as other countries in British West Africa. On infrastructure, some of the projects the Margai government ventured into included the construction of a 3,000-mile road network linking all major district headquarter towns and the capital, Freetown. Buildings were erected to house the government ministries of works, agriculture, social welfare, and education, as well as the government printing press, in the precinct of New England Ville, Western Freetown. Two hundred government houses were built for civil servants and 77 new hospitals and clinics were added to those constructed by the colonial administration. Of course, what would freedom be without a new parliament? Knowing that to continue to meet in the colonial meeting place was morally not reflective of a new, independent, postcolonial country, the government ordered a new parliament building be constructed on Thornton Hill (now Tower Hill), close to State House. This programme of expansion had a range of other consequences as result of the lack of an educated workforce to manage these new sectors and to formulate and implement the government’s human rights policies.

Political independence   147 The strengthening and constitutional recognition of the legal authority of the chiefs The constitutional parliamentary system of government created in 1961 had two  spheres of government: the central government in Freetown, and the chieftains in every district, town, and village in the country. Before independence, there were two major constitutional provisions for local government: the Tribal Authorities Ordinance of 1938, and the Native Administration Act of 1938. Unfortunately, as Paul Jackson observes, when Sierra Leone gained its  independence from Britain in 1961, the central feature of the country’s “political system was an increasing centralization of power and resources in Freetown coupled with a dualism between Freetown and the rest of the country.” This dualism, he argued, was “reinforced by a continuation of the colonial bifurcation of western legal systems in Freetown and of a form of indirect rule in the countryside based on a system of District Officers and Chiefs” (Jackson 2011, 207).

The Local Courts Act (1963) To solve the problem of over-­concentration of the country’s legal system, the Local Courts Act of 1963 was adopted. After the SLPP-­majority parliament passed the Local Courts Act, it was given Royal Assent by the Governor-­ General, Sir Henry Josiah Lightfoot Boston, on June 1963 and came into force on March 12, 1964.9 This Act was applicable in both Freetown and the provinces, irrespective of tribe-­specific cultural belief systems. It made several changes to the structure of local government administration, as well as how people saw the institutional safeguards of their human rights. Except where the context was otherwise interpreted by the Minister of Local Government (who assumed the supervisory functions in relation to the local courts, thus replacing the Minister of Justice), the Act provided a new definition of customary law that remains the working definition to date. It defines customary law as, any rule, other than a rule of general law, having the force of law in any chiefdom of the Provinces whereby rights and correlative duties have been acquired or imposed which is applicable in any particular case and conforms with natural justice and equity and not incompatible, either directly or indirectly, with any enactment applying to the Provinces, and includes any amendments of customary law made in accordance with the provisions of any enactment.10 In effect, this definition provided a framework for the incorporation of customs and traditions as legitimate sources of law in Sierra Leone. There exists a rich literature on the interplay of cultural belief systems in the making of laws, and the place of discourse narratives in the authentication of rights and privileges. There is a disagreement, however, on the influence of the English common law system on the local courts within their areas of jurisdictional authority. During

148   Political independence my research, some interlocutors believed that customary law, however defined and wherever applied, has its origins in belief systems that were unique to Sierra Leone’s tribal groups. This cultural-­relativist argument, if I understood it correctly, was not about preventing the modernization of the customary norms of an independent nation along the lines of western morality and legal ethics. What may have spurred the Margai administration to adopt such a definition of customary law? I am only speculating, based on what appears to be the only logical reasoning in view of the 1905 Native Administration Order in Council’s contrary understanding of “customary law” and its corresponding due process (see Chapter 3) that the reason may have been connected to the need to reinforce the constitutional relevance of the cultural identities, discourses of rights, and the performative structures of communal relationships of all the Sierra Leonean tribes. That said, this definition created a dualistic legal framework for Sierra Leone, through the incorporation of elements of both English common law as applied by statutory courts (and their common law case laws and judicial precedents) and the courts of the chiefs (with their unwritten customary norms) (Lahai and Lahai 2017). As Justice Bankole Thompson (1997) noted, these courts operated at different levels: one at the national level and the other at the chiefdom level; and while the former was (and still is) superior to the latter, the latter’s jurisdictional powers also gave it political legitimacy and relevance. To justify the separation between the English common law courts and the local courts, the Local Courts Act also transferred the Minister of Justice’s role as supervisor of the local court to the Minister of Local Government. In the same vein, the Act explicitly stated, in Part XIV and Section 15, that no barrister or solicitor schooled in the English common law system,  may appear for any party before a Local Court or Group Local Appeal Court: Provided that the court may in cases of hardship where a party cannot be present in person permit that absent party to be represented by a spouse, guardian or relative duly authorized by him in that behalf. The government also renamed the Native Courts as Local Courts and the Group Native Appeals Court as the Chiefdom Appeals Court. The jurisdiction of the court was somewhat limited (see Section 10(a) of the Local Courts Act (1963)). On civil matters, the court only had jurisdiction to try cases with a value of not more than £200 (Section 13(ii))—in effect, limiting the jurisdiction to civil cases relating to claims, debt, duty, or matter in a dispute over property. The Act also required that  the case did not extend to include any of the following: the civil status of people, the devolution of estate of deceased persons, cases relating to the national government’s (or its representatives’) dealings with companies or private individuals, and any other action that was interpreted as a libel and slender, false incarceration, malicious prosecution, seduction and breach of promise of marriage. (Section 13(ii)(aa; bb; cc; dd))

Political independence   149 In criminal cases, jurisidction was limited to matters “where the maximum punishment which may be imposed does not exceed a fine of fifty pounds or imprisonment for a period of six months or both such fine and such imprisonment” (Section 13(ii)(c)). Moreover, Section 16, which addresses the “criminal jurisdiction of the Local Courts,” gave regulatory authority to the governor-­ general to confer on these courts, in line with Section 13, any additional jurisdiction. Part VI (the section on control by Judicial Adviser; A.156) noted that the governor-­general “may from time to time constitute such posts of Assistant Judicial Adviser as shall seem to him to be necessary” (Section 34(1)); and in Cap 2 (of the same section), it stipulated that the functions of the Judicial Adviser include the advising of the Local Court in matters of law and organization, the training of personnel and the exercise of the powers of review prescribed in the following sections and such other functions as may from time to time be conferred upon him by order of the Minister and all or any of the functions of the Judicial dviser may, subject to his directions, be performed by the Assistant Judicial Adviser. Appellate courts were provided for in Part V of the Act (see also Section 31(2)(32)). Every district was entitled to an appeals court, which consisted of the district magistrate and two other assessors selected by a district magistrate from the community’s list of customary law experts, as presented by the district officer. Collectively, these appeals court officers were charged with the responsibility of re-­assessing matters brought by aggrieved persons who were dissatisfied with the local courts’ judgment (this was in line with the provisions of Part III of the Courts Appeals Act (No. 18) 1960). Moreover, the Act also put to an end the positions of district and provincial commissioners and the court messenger. The district and provincial commissioners were replaced by “Court Presidents” and the Chiefdom Police Corps replaced the court messengers. In effect, this Act repealed Cap 8 of the Native Court Act of 1938, and amended Cap 7 of the Tribal Authority Ordinance of 1938, which granted the offices of the provincial commissioners the authority to act as the final courts of appeal in the provinces.

The Tribal Authorities (Amendment) Act (1964) One significant issue the government was required to address was the question of who had more powers in the chiefdoms. Paul Jackson observes that the “picture in local areas was further complicated by the power of the district officer over the chief as the representative of the center. This is a system of indirect rule instigated by British colonial authorities” (Jackson 2006, 98). To complicate issues further, the Local Courts Act of 1963 created the offices of President and Vice President in the local courts. In Section 4(1, 2 & 3) of the same Act, the Minister of Local Government was granted the authority to reappoint these officials for a renewable term of three years (Section 5 also

150   Political independence explains the reasons, such as abuse of power, that could justify the suspension or dismissal of these officials by the Minister. The question then was, within a system containing local court presidents, chiefs, magistrates (of the appeals court) and district officers, who was superior in the adjudication of customary law? Irrespective of the postcolonial changes to their names, their functions remained the same. Writing about this, Paul Jackson noted that the role of the district officers dates from colonial times where he was the representative of the Central government at the local level, with the relevant powers and responsibilities. Effectively, this role is one of representation and oversight and is the central government’s main political controlling mechanism over rural areas.  (2006, 100) In effect, there were bound to be political tensions, and these tensions arose in all the chiefdoms of the country (see e.g., Fanthorpe 2001, 1998; Tangri 1978; Kilson 1964). In a bid to resolve this problem, the Margai administration passed the Tribal Authorities (Amendment) Act 1964. This Act was an amendment to several existing laws,11 including, among others, the Chiefdom Councils Act 1938 (chap. 61); The Provinces Act 1933 (chap. 60); and the Tribal Authorities Act 1938. Characteristically, the Tribal Authorities (Amendment) Act 1964 had two major implications. First, it called for the “enshrinement” of the office of the paramount chiefs in the national constitution, and created a new hierarchy in the court of the chieftain or other tribal authority: Each chieftaincy has a council consisting of the paramount chief, sub-­chiefs, and “men of note elected by the people …” Each paramount chief is elected for life from hereditary families known as “ruling houses” by an electoral college of councilors. Each councilor is elected by 20 taxpayers. The term “taxpayer” of course has been effective control over the electoral college, successfully excluding women and the poor. Each chief has a speaker, who is effectively the chief ’s deputy and leading enforcer, and each council has a chiefdom committee that acts as an executive arm. (Jackson 2006, 98) Second, the Act also called for the Africanization of offices responsible for the interpretation of all customary laws (that had the features of para-­constitutional law) in the provinces. It was expected that this change would involve a transition based on people’s identity—for example, from Europeans to African commissioners overseeing the affairs of the African chiefdom. This anticipated change took over a century to materialize. When it finally began in colonial Sierra Leone (i.e., in the 1950s), it did not go further than replacing one Caucasian chief/provincial/ district commissioner with another. The British could not allow the chiefs to govern themselves without the undue military and political presence of the colonial

Political independence   151 officials, partly because they were suspicious of the presence and trading activities of the French colonial government in neighboring Guinea. In part, there was also the false argument that the locals were not able to govern themselves without the presence of the British (ignoring the fact that they had governed themselves for centuries before they were forcefully included into the periphery of the empire). The Protectorate Proclamation of 1896 contained aspects of this model of governance. But it was not fully implemented because the colonial administration did not trust the African chiefs. In 1898, the chiefs had led a rebellion (the Hut Tax War) to oppose payment of taxes to the empire; and they were also averse to the idea of exploiting the natural resources of their communities without compensation. It was the expectation of many that, following Governor Lord Lugard’s successes with indirect rule in Northern Nigeria between 1914 and 1925, the colonial administration in Sierra Leone would follow the same pattern of granting the chiefs political, economic, and socio-­cultural authority with minimal supervision. After all, there was already a semblance of democratic electoral politics in the elections of chiefs, sub-­chiefs, head men, and section chiefs in the protectorate. But the way the locals designed their model of “democracy” was alien to the British. It was a system of numbers (i.e., who had the highest number of ballots) and customary norms (i.e., who among the candidates understood the cultural belief systems and wielded more ritualistic mythical powers). Deciding who wins in such situations called for the members of the electoral college to “hang heads.” The British only tolerated this electoral arrangement of hanging heads because the electoral colleges were forced to agree to consult with “Pa DC,”12 as the district commissioners were fondly called (Lewis 1954, 71). Although fusion of voting by numbers and hanging heads gave the people a sense of “ownership” of the local government, in practice power was in the hands of the “hammock-­carried” Pa DC. He was head of chiefdom affairs. He presided over the transformation of micro-­kingdoms into chiefdoms with “electoral bodies for a representative district council.” In the same way villages were under the control of the chief ’s court, the chiefdoms were under the control of the commissioners’ courts. Between 1924 and 1949, it was the responsibility of commissioners to appoint chiefs to the district council. Once appointed, the “district council in turn elect[ed] members to the Protectorate Assembly” (Lewis 1954, 70), which sat in the southern city of Bo as a “body representing the chiefs and their tribal authorities” (Lewis 1954, 63). The “unelected” representative position of Pa DC in the Protectorate Assembly also explains the powerlessness of the people’s true representatives, the chiefs. Roy Lewis, whose eyewitness account remains an original reference point on the Pa DCs’ authority, told of how the powers of the Pa DCs grew when the Protectorate Assembly was not allowed to perform its functions based on what the members felt was necessary for their chiefdoms, but only based on what the British presiding commissioners demanded. This unchallenged position of Pa DC in the chiefdom exposed the “characterless approach of the British officials in the past to the political future of Freetown’s hinterland” (Lewis 1954, 63). Lewis’s account demonstrates that, irrespective of the processes of constitutional change, the powers of Pa DC did

152   Political independence not change much between 1896 (when the protectorate was declared) and 1953 (when an Order in Council creating a unicameral legislature was adopted) (Bangura 2009, 589). The Pa DC was still in control of assessing and collecting taxes. He kept all financial matters of the chiefdom “tied to his desk by the development plans and estimates.” To maintain his control, he developed sophisticated forms of statistical paperwork that the chiefs found very strange. As presidents of the district councils, the commissioners made it part of their duties to teach about the chiefs in their councils about administrative practices and committee rules that further entrenched the position of the commissioners as the chief executive in their districts (Lewis 1954, 218). This oppressive system began to change in 1954, when Milton Margai granted the chiefs the authority to counter the decisions of the commissioners by a two-­thirds majority in the Protectorate Assembly. The commissioners resisted these changes. They wanted a return to the 1896–1898 era, a period of classic British imperial rule in the hinterlands, when district commissioners enjoyed extra-­judicial freedoms to go “everywhere, stopped everywhere, interfered with everybody’s palaver and humbugs and enjoyed the shouting” (Lewis 1954, 219). Pa DC was going to lose the privileges he had attained to the detriment of the people he was lording over. His privileged rights and powers were a contradiction to his surrounding and the deprived lives of his subjects. Roy Lewis recalled that, there was no finer sight [to] be seen than a certain D.C. Kabala moving with a majestic train from the railhead at Kamabai [Northern Sierra Leone], his hundreds of porters loaded with every delicacy that Fortnum and Mason [an expensive department store in Piccadilly, London] could supply. Upon him descended within … months anyone who had, or anticipated, any business with him; for it was known that after six months of feasting he ran out of stock and calmly reverted for the next year or so to a completely native diet—rice, foo-­foo, and palaver source on Sunday. (Lewis 1954, 219) Other instances of his privileges include his right to criticize (and punish) his subjects freely. He was not required to account to the chiefs for his actions, except on matters concerning their daughters. If Pa DC wanted to marry from among his subjects, he was obligated to make “proper payment of bridewealth into local families” (Lewis 1954, 218). In most cases, Pa DC was only interested in the daughters of the households of the chiefs. By marrying into these households, he reinforced his paternalistic control over the chiefdom and made it easier for him to get information about those opposed to colonial rule (Hoffer 1974, 1972). It was, therefore, to be expected that a Pa DC would object to any attempt to reform chiefdom laws and politics in ways that would increase the powers of the chiefs (Abdullah et al., 2009, 12). The final blow to Pa DC came with independence in 1961, and the subsequent passing of the Local Courts Act 1963 and the Tribal Authorities (Amendment)

Political independence   153 Act 1964. The first stripped them of their extra-­juridical powers as presidents of the local appeals courts (see Part III, Sect. 4(1; 2; 3) and 31(1), (2) and (3) of the Courts Appeals Act 1963); the second abolished the superior office of Pa DC in the chiefdoms. Although his brother and successor, Sir Albert Margai, attempted to undo both the Local Courts Act and the Tribal Authorities (Amendment) Act, because of his anger at the chiefs for conniving with his older brother to rob him of his chance to lead the SLPP in 1957 (Pham 2005, 33), Sir Milton Margai was seen by many as a person who sought to transform Sierra Leone into a “symbol of freedom; and an embodiment of the aspirations of Africa” (Melady 1964, 39).

Notes   1 The fear of Stevens and his followers continued even after independence. Madam Ella Koblo Gulama, the only women in the government of Sir Milton Margai, was among those who called for the outright rejection of Stevens and his connections to the USSR. She noted, during her first visit to the United States (on the invitation of the US State Department) in 1961, that: Now that our country has gained independence, I am sure that outside people, who are interested in communism will make it their business to interfere into [the] internal workings of our country. We [the women] will stand against any move to introduce communism into our country. We have far too many things to bother about; to think about than communism. We hate interference and we’ve been practicing democracy and hope to continue to practice democracy even after our independence. Full interview available in the documentary Sierra Leone with Milton Margai (see, www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztUXY_IYT0U at: 21 minutes; accessed: October 10, 2015).   2 These figures were taken from the Independence Day budget estimates of the SLPP. This very rare file is available at the SLPP party offices in Freetown (accessed: June 10, 2015).   3 The green representing agriculture, the country’s natural resources and the mountains; the white symbolizing unity, freedom and justice; and the blue, signifying the seas of the country and the natural harbor in Freetown.   4 Sierra Leone Independence Act 1961, Chapter 16–9 and 10 Eliz 2. Available at: www.sierra-­leone.org/Laws/Sierra%20Leone%20Independence%20Act%201961.pdf (acces­sed: June 10, 2016).   5 John Doe, interview with the author, March 14, 2016.   6 Narrator of the documentary Sierra Leone with Sir Milton Margai. www.youtube. com/watch?v=ztUXY_IYT0U (accessed: May 10, 2015).   7 Apart from providing funding to the government, the private sector was also involved in the construction of schools circa 1961. For example, as a gift to the people of Sierra Leone on Independence Day, the Sierra Leone Development Company provided £25,000 towards the construction of the Engineering Department at Fourah Bay College in April 1961. In the same month, the Sierra Leone Selection Trust constructed a school building for the children in the diamond-­rich area of Tongo Fields, Koidu Town (Department of Information, Sierra Leone 1961, 7).   8 There was, however, a regional bias in the distribution of schools in the country. The north was more inclined towards Islam and, as a result, the western-­styled schools that were founded outside of Freetown were mostly in the south (Kilson 1966, 77).

154   Political independence It was in the 1970s that western-­styled schools gained a foothold in the district headquarter townships in the north.   9 Moreover, in pursuant of the residual powers of the chiefs in the exercise of their powers, the Milton Margai government released, on March 12, 1964 (the date the Act came into effect), an Order (approved by the governor-­general) stating that, in its operations, and at all times, the local courts are free from governmental interference in the pursuance of their functions. This was a reaffirmation of Section 10 (“indemnity of judges and officers of the local courts”), which noted that, (a) no member of a Local Court or Group Local Appeal Court shall be liable to be sued in any civil Court for any act done by him within the territorial limits of his jurisdiction in the exercise of his judicial duty, or for any order made by him in the discharge of such duty, nor shall any order for costs be made against him; provided that he at the time of reasonably and in good faith believed himself to have the jurisdiction to do or order the act complained of; and (b) no officer of any Local Court or Group Local Appeal Court or other person bound to execute lawful warrants [by way of a rejoinder, this definition of “unlawful warrant” was vaguely started and thus, difficult, if ever possible, to determine] or orders of any such Court shall be liable to be sued in a civil court for the execution of any warrant or order which he would be bound to execute if within the jurisdiction of the Court issuing the same. This constitutional reassurance was put in place to guarantee the residual powers of the local courts in the performance of their political and legal functions. Politically speaking, it provided a “political recognition of the judicial powers of the chiefs and the traditional institutions they lead as compatible with” the postcolonial constitutional and human rights developments. With this legitimacy, the chiefs (and their councils of customary law experts) were able to re-­create socio-­ legal narratives in their rulings to discredit attempts at the westernization of customary legal practices at the tribal level. Second, it gave the chiefs the powers they needed to sustain the status quo (which was politically beneficial to the incumbent Prime Minister, Sir Milton Margai). 10 Local Court Act No. 20 (1963), Part I (A144), Section 2), which addressed the preliminary interpretations of the Act. Available at: www.sierra-­leone.org/Laws/1963–20. pdf (accessed: June 20, 2016). 11 These include the Chiefdom Councils Act 1938 (chap. 61), the Provinces Act 1933 (chap. 60) and the Tribal Authorities Act 1938. 12 Loosely interpreted, ‘Pa’ means ‘Papa’ or patriarch.

References Abdullah, Hussaina J., Aisha Fofana-­Ibrahim, and Turad Senesie. 2009. “Women in local governance in post-­conflict Sierra Leone,” in Pathways of Women’s Empowerment: Building Constituencies for Equality and Justice. Cairo, Egypt: Pathways of Women’s Empowerment. http://s3-eu-­west-1.amazonaws.com/pathwaysofempowerment­org-staging/downloads/women_in_local_governance_in_post-­conflict_sierra_leone_ original594f5bd838bfd47c45c5eb794e883d3e.pdf. Abdullah, Ibrahim. 1994. “Rethinking the Freetown crowd: The moral economy of the 1919 strikes and riot in Sierra Leone.” Canadian Journal of African Studies/La Revue Canadienne Des Études Africaines 28 (2): 197–218. Australia. Dept. of Foreign Affairs. 1961. “Sierra Leone: Australia’s Good wishes [Australian Foreign Affairs Record, Volume 32].” Vol. 32. Canberra: Australian Government Publications Service.

Political independence   155 Bangura, Joseph. 2009. “Understanding Sierra Leone in colonial West Africa: A synoptic socio-­political history.” History Compass 7 (3): 583–603. https://doi.org/10.1111/ j.1478-0542.2009.00596.x. British Broadcasting Services. 1961. “1961: Sierra Leone wins independence.” British Broadcasting Corporation, April 27, 1961. http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/ stories/april/27/newsid_2502000/2502411.stm. Carpenter, Allan and Susan L. Eckert. 1974. Sierra Leone: Enchantment of Africa. Chicago, IL: Children’s Press. Concord Times. 2008. “Sir Milton Margai’s independence message.” Concord Times, Editorial Note, April 28, 2008, IV edition. http://slconcordtimes.com/sir-­miltonmargas-­independence-message/. Cromwell, Adelaide M. 2014. An African Victorian Feminist: The Life and Times of Adelaide Smith Casely Hayford 1848–1960. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. https://books. google.com.au/books?hl=en&lr=&id=WTLKAgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq= Constance+Cummings-­John+AFRICAN+FEMINIST+ANCESTORS&ots=aowRqVF Pud&sig=lKAj-­I3hdTg4f4xerP0RZW9Fiyw. D’Angelo, Lorenzo. 2016. “The art of governing contingency: Rethinking the colonial history of diamond mining in Sierra Leone.” Historical Research 89 (243): 136–57. Department of Information, Sierra Leone. 1961. “Achievements in Sierra Leone: produced for ‘Independence Day,’ 27th April 1961.” The Department of Information, Sierra Leone. Papers of John F. Kennedy. Presidential Papers. President’s Office Files. Countries. Sierra Leone: General, 1961–1962. www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-­Viewer/Archives/ JFKPOF-­124-003.aspx. Fanthorpe, Richard. 1998. “Locating the politics of a Sierra Leonean chiefdom.” Africa 68 (4): 558–84. https://doi.org/10.2307/1161166. Fanthorpe, Richard. 2001. “Neither citizen nor subject? ‘Lumpen’ agency and the legacy of native administration in Sierra Leone.” African Affairs 100 (400): 363–86. Government of Sierra Leone. 1961. Sierra Leone Independence Act 1961. C. 16. www. sierra-­leone.org/Laws/Sierra%20Leone%20Independence%20Act%201961.pdf. Government of Sierra Leone. 1962. Royal Visit to Sierra Leone, 25th November-­1st December, 1961: A Record in Words and Pictures. Freetown, SL: Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Hoffer, Carol P. 1972. “Mende and Sherbro women in high office.” Canadian Journal of African Studies/Revue Canadienne Des Études Africaines 6 (2): 151–64. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/00083968.1972.10803663. Hoffer, Carol P. 1974. “Madam Yoko: Ruler of the Kpa Mende confederacy.” Women, Culture and Society, 173–88. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Jackson, Paul. 2006. “Reshuffling an old deck of cards? The politics of local government reform in Sierra Leone.” African Affairs 106 (422): 95–111. Jackson, Paul. 2011. “Decentralised power and traditional authorities: How power determines access to justice in Sierra Leone.” The Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law 43 (63): 207–30. Kandeh, Jimmy D. 1992. “Politicization of ethnic identities in Sierra Leone.” African Studies Review 35 (1): 81–99. Killingray, David. 1986. “The maintenance of law and order in British colonial Africa.” African Affairs 85 (340): 411–37. Kilson, Martin. 1964. “Grass-­roots politics in Africa: Local government in Sierra Leone.” Political Studies 12 (1): 47–66. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9248.1964.tb00610.x.

156   Political independence Kilson, Martin. 1966. Political Change in a West African State: A Study of the Modernization Process in Sierra Leone. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Lahai, John Idriss. 2015. “From discontinuity to continuity: Tertiary education institutions, conflict and peacebuilding in Sierra Leone.” Peace & Change 40 (3): 313–38. Lahai, John Idriss and Nenneh Lahai. 2017. “Human rights frameworks and women’s Rights in post-­transitional justice in Sierra Leone,” in Gender in Human Rights and Transitional Justice. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 143–74. Lewis, Roy. 1954. Sierra Leone: A Modern Portrait. London: Her Majesty Stationery Office. McGoldrick, Dominic. 1996. “Sustainable development and human rights: An integrated conception.” International and Comparative Law Quarterly 45: 796–818. Melady, Thomas Patrick. 1964. Faces of Africa. New York: Macmillan. Nicol, Davidson. 1961. Fourah Bay College: The University College of Sierra Leone. Vol. 3. Fourah Bay Annual Report, 1959–1960. Freetown, SL: Fourah Bay College. Paracka Jr., Daniel J. 2003. The Athens of West Africa: A History of International Education at Fourah Bay College, Freetown, Sierra Leone. New York: Routledge. Pham, John-­Peter. 2005. Child Soldiers, Adult Interests: The Global Dimensions of the Sierra Leonean Tragedy. New York: Nova Publishers. Riddell, J. Barry. 1985a. “Beyond the geography of modernization: The state as a redistributive mechanism in independent Sierra Leone.” Canadian Journal of African Studies/La Revue Canadienne Des Études Africaines 19 (3): 529–45. Riddell, J. Barry. 1985b. “Urban bias in underdevelopment: Appropriation from the countryside in post-­colonial Sierra Leone.” Tijdschrift Voor Economische En Sociale Geografie 76 (5): 374–83. Sano, Hans-­Otto. 2000. “Development and human rights: The necessary, but partial integration of human rights and development.” Human Rights Quarterly 22: 734. Sierra Leone House of Representatives. 1960a. Mines and Minerals Ister’s Statutory Powers & Duties (Modification of Minerals Ordinance) Order, 1960. Vol. 48A–10. Sierra Leone House of Representatives. 1960b. Development Ordinance, 1960. Vol. 52A–12. Tangri, Roger. 1978. “Central–local politics in contemporary Sierra Leone.” African Affairs 77 (307): 165–73. Thompson, Bankole. 1997. The Constitutional History and Law of Sierra Leone (1961–1995). Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Uvin, Peter. 2004. Human Rights and Development. Vol. 37. Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press. West Africa. 1961. “West Africa: World welcome for Sierra Leone.” Ilupeju, Lagos: West Africa Publishing Company. Wyse, Akintola. 1989. The Krio of Sierra Leone: An Interpretative History. London: C. Hurst & Co.

9 The narratives on human rights in a neopatrimonial state, 1967–1984

In 1964, Sir Milton Margai died and was replaced as Prime Minister by his half-­ brother, Sir Albert Margai. Sir Albert’s disapproval of the powers of the chiefs played a part in his downfall in 1967. In 1968, Siaka Stevens assumed the position of Prime Minister and, in 1971, declared Sierra Leone a republic within the British Commonwealth of independent nations. Seven years later, Stevens declared a one-­party state (under the All People’s Congress (APC)) and made himself executive president. Under Stevens’s rule, human rights were determined by his personal beliefs in what he felt was right, and his unequivocal rejection of a neoliberal Sierra Leone. Thus, the political interpretation of “freedom” was determined by the rent-­seeking behavior of Stevens. His failure to build strong bureaucratic institutions, and his pursuit of power and wealth through informal channels and patron–client networks, resulted in the crisis of predatory accumulation, patrimonial distribution, weak state structures, state failure, and warlord politics (Wai 2012, 4). That “President Stevens created a personalized rule over the Sierra Leonean state” is a narrative one must recognize when writing about the struggles for human rights during his presidency. To understand what we know about the place of human rights within the skewed and personalized politics of Stevens’s strongman rule in Sierra Leone, between 1967 and 1984, I conducted recurrent data mining on Google using the keywords: Siaka Stevens, Human Rights, freedom, violence. There was an average of 29,800 results in 0.52 seconds. Thereafter, I painstakingly searched for similarities in 75 publications (both non-­ reviewed and peer-­reviewed). The words that dominate in these publications are murder, treason trials,1 press censorship, rape, state of emergency, Internal Security Units, riots, arrest, detention, prison, disappearance, fear, injustice (including references to the injustices of a politicized justice system), youth violence (noted as having the approval of the regime), food shortage, and high (infant and maternal) mortality. These keywords suggest the nature of the predatory politics and state failure Sierra Leone experienced during the long presidency of Siaka Stevens. However, it would defeat the purpose of both this chapter and the entire book to exclude a priori the impact, on the one hand, of the ideological underpinnings of Stevens’s personalized rule and, on the other, the external factor(s) that made

158   The narratives on human rights it possible. To understand these issues, I suggest here that there were two contentious narratives that may have encouraged the “gatekeepers” of Stevens’s government to object to the idea of “the Sierra Leonean state,” to resist the neoliberal agenda behind the universalization of human rights and to offer an alternative approach that only reinforced political marginality in postcolonial Sierra Leone. The first narrative purported that “the neoliberal agenda behind the universalization of the western conception of human rights was hegemonic, oppressive and a neocolonial instrument to control the postcolonial state.” The second narrative posited that “the neopatrimonial Stevens regime, however violent, offered the best possible developmental outcomes for Sierra Leone.”

Narrative one: the neoliberal conception of human rights was an instrument of a neocolonial control of the postcolonial state From a Foucauldian standpoint, the disciplinary outlook of US foreign policy in the decade-­plus following Sierra Leone’s independence (that is, from 1961 to 1977) created political anxieties in many African countries. In part, this uneasiness was created by the response of the United States (and its neoliberal western allies) to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Interference in the internal affairs of countries on the periphery of the global south, especially in the newly independent African countries, had significant consequences for these countries’ politics and their receptiveness to western morality and its universalized norms: the 1948 UNDHR, the 1979 Convention on Civil and Political Rights, and the 1976 Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. During the turbulent years between 1961 and 1977, the foreign policy adventurism of the neoliberal states was uncompromisingly militant. This militancy had an imperial outlook, in that it portrayed these newly independent countries, with connections to the Soviet Union and sympathies with Cuba, as countries incapable of governing themselves. In essence, the “lack of capacity to govern” was the justification for a neocolonial attempt to control the internal and external workings of governments in sub-­Saharan Africa and beyond. For scholars like Stephen Gill (2003), the declaration of “lack of capacity” emanated from the aggressive nature of neoliberal internationalism and the liberal peace agenda as applied to the Third World. Associated with this aggression was what came to be known as “disciplinary neoliberalism,” in which liberalism transformed postcolonial sub-­Saharan Africa into a political platform for experimentation with western ideals that sought to commodify African civilizations. Thus, as new constituencies were created, the powers of the governments in postcolonial Africa were case-­managed, and the everyday lived experiences (built on uncertainties) of their people were seen as suitable subjects for the experimentation with alien forms of political behavior. Where these strange behaviors collided with the cultural values of the people, and where the leaders of these culturally sensitive countries refused to accept the neoliberal solution, they were labeled “enemies” of the free world.

The narratives on human rights   159 Like colonialism, western interventionism in the newly independent states was criticized for attempting to discredit indigenous governance models that promoted, on the one hand, the idea of political independence and, on the other, the localized pathways of political, economic, and socio-­cultural adaptation of the changing global and local ideological climate of the Cold War. The recognition of “cultural differences” in the UN Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of 1976 was betrayed by the very nations that sponsored its adoption. Instead of accepting the non-­universalization of western rights, efforts were made to discipline regimes that did not kowtow to the prescriptive model of western morality. Let us not forget that it was a sense of a commitment to reject the continued influence of the neoliberal west in Sierra Leone, and to re-­ write the histories of the decolonized space, that spurred President Stevens to reject the model of an “independent” Sierra Leone under the nominal leadership of the British Crown during the negotiation of political independence in 1960. As far as Stevens and his supporters (the membership of the Elections Before Independence Movement, EBIM) were concerned, the suggestion of a British head of state for an independent African nation was an attempt by the former colonial masters to subtly impose their law-­making instruments, including their hegemonic, westernized cultural belief systems. Stevens saw this as one way of sustaining a political continuum that had dictated political transitions in Sierra Leone: from direct rule (when it was necessary to re-­educate the Africans) to indirect rule (the politics of invisible control over the perceived sense of semi-­ autonomy); and, eventually, from colonialism to independence, whereby the metropolis (London) was to continue to impose itself on the people of the periphery (Sierra Leone). My reviews of the political manifestos of the All People’s Congress Party (the successor of the EBIM) reveal that the Stevens was not only against British political tutelage of Sierra Leone. He was also resistant to the western conception of human rights, which he felt existed to serve a singular purpose—maintaining the hegemony of the west. It is against this backdrop that the Stevens regime concluded that, if the postcolonial statehood of Sierra Leone was to survive, it was necessary to reject the neoliberal ideas of human rights and replace them with their own “unadulterated” model. Unfortunately, according to some scholars (such as Paul Richards (1996), William Reno (1995), David Keen (2005) and Christopher Clapham (1985)), the regime’s model was primitive. It resulted in an unprogressive, neopatrimonial political nativism that laid the foundations for the economic and political exclusion of youth and women, and the justification for the political use of sexual and gender-­based violence. Guided by what can best be described as the compass of personalized ideology, the Stevens regime not only skewed the internal dynamics of politics but also perverted the institutions of human rights (including the courts), which became instruments for the suppression of all those who were opposed to the regime. Attempts by the oppressed to hold the state accountable—and responsive to their needs—by invoking their claims under the positive laws of the English common law were either sent to prison (with all records of them deleted from the official files of the sentencing courts) or

160   The narratives on human rights murdered. This is not to say that such blatant disregard for human rights was unique to Stevens’s regime. No doubt, he was anti-­colonial (though he was receptive to aid from western countries). But the western countries that took the universalization of human rights beyond the political to the personal were equally guilty of heinous human rights violations between 1961 and 1977. Apart from the use of disciplinary actions such as the imposition of economic and political sanctions, coups2 and armed interventions through their proxies were common. Also very common—and contributing significantly to the skepticism of anti-­western politicians in Sierra Leone and elsewhere regarding the “morality” of the former European colonial powers (under the leadership of the United States after 1945)—was the rampant use of political assassination. Neo-­ Marxists and pan-­Africanist revolutionaries, politicians, and theoreticians were murdered by secret service operatives of these western countries. The aim, as Victoria Brittain contends, was to kill the “hope for political change [these leaders] embodied.” Her survey of assassinations in the 1960s onward “reveals a bloody legacy of killings of leaders from Algeria, Cameroon, Congo, Ghana, Guinean-­Bissau, Morocco, Mozambique, Palestine, South African, Togo and Zimbabwe” (Brittain 2006, 60), as well as Angola (Weissman 1979). Examples of assassinated leaders include Felix Moumie, the neo-­Marxist leader of Cameroon, poisoned by operatives of the French government in 1960 (Tande 2009, 60–4); Patrice Lumumba, Prime Minister of Zaire, assassinated by operatives of the United States on January 17, 1961 in a cleverly executed covert operation, “Project Wizard” (Weissman 1979). Mehdi Ben Barka, neo-­Marxist anti-­ colonialism advocate and leader of the main opposition party in Morocco, “was kidnapped in Paris on October 29, 1965 by two French police agents and an agent of the French counter-­intelligence service,” and his body was never found (Beigbeder 2006, 15). This militarized adventurism in the name of promoting the neoliberal political agenda was in itself a betrayal of the “politics of difference” that its founding theorist, Immanuel Kant, had sought. The Kantian liberal peace thesis reiterates that countries, democratic or nondemocratic, have the right to self-­ determine their political future (Doyle 1983; Cassese 1995; Chandler 2006). It is also true that, for countries like Sierra Leone, at the time when Siaka Stevens assumed the premiership in 1968, the use of military options against the regime was rarely considered. The reason was not hard to see; Sierra Leone was still under the nominal rule of Queen Elizabeth II, and Britain was a western, neoliberal ally. In light of this, the preferred option for interfering in the affairs of Sierra Leone was through continued ideological indoctrination. This indoctrination took the form of educating Sierra Leoneans, people and politicians alike, about the benefits that flowed from a commitment to the neoliberal pathways to progress. This included the domestication of neoliberal political structures and human rights, economics, and socio-­cultural belief systems. Such attempts at indoctrination came with their own controversies. They were an attempt to induce Sierra Leoneans to appreciate democracy as a natural phenomenon. Thus, the question was not solely about political pluralism but, also, about

The narratives on human rights   161 whether, in response to this indoctrination, it was reasonable for the Stevens regime to be suspicious of western morality as a template for the conceptualization of politics and law. I argue that it was an attempt to map out the limits of the political influence of the west that motivated Siaka Stevens to declare a republic in 1971. By doing so, the Sierra Leonean state was projecting itself as a terrain in which intersubjective arguments against “Empire” would thrive; where people’s lived experiences would legitimate the regime’s postcolonial critique of neoliberalism. It was in this terrain that an alternative model—Sierra Leone’s solution to Sierra Leone’s problems—was given grassroots legitimacy. In essence, republicanism was presented to the people as something that was articulated with a desire for freedom; not freedom as it was understood in the western canonical texts of liberalism, or as projected by the political leaders of the post-­1945 United States and post-­1960 Britain but, rather, as articulated in the dreams of, say, the founding fathers of the 13 American colonies who rebelled against, and secured their independence from Britain in 1776, or as envisaged by the leaders of the three estates (the French nobles, the clergy and the commons) during the révolution in France that overthrew the Bourbon monarchy of Louis XVI in 1793. If anything, the regime of Siaka Stevens did propose what I am tempted to describe (as would proponents of postcolonial scholarship) as a re-­reading of the canonical texts that underpinned the UNDHR of 1948. The regime was interested in exposing the provenance and trajectory of these ideas, contextualizing the circumstances in which they arose. The question then is this: Was it compulsory for the Stevens regime to accept the “given” English common law system Sierra Leone inherited as part of its so-­called independence package in 1961? There are two schools of thought that have attempted to answer this question. There are those who have argue the affirmative narrative. For them, Sierra Leone became, in 1961, a member state of the United Nations. All UN member states were required to affirm their commitment to the preamble and Article 103 (or the “supremacy clause” (Collins and White 2011)) of the UN Charter. The Charter’s preamble contained the following fundamental human rights principles: • • •

To reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, [and] in the dignity and worth of the human person To establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained To promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom.3

Further, Article 103 of the Charter stated: In the event of a conflict between the obligations of the Members of the United Nations under the present Charter and their obligations under any other international agreement, their obligations under the present Charter shall prevail.4

162   The narratives on human rights What this means, for starters, is that “all context, and regardless of specific extenuating circumstances” (Grover 2010, 202), the UN Charter (Article 25) calls on all member states to “agree to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council in accordance with the present Charter.”5 It was its commitment to prevent the carnage of the Second World War from reoccurring that encouraged Britain to attend the 1945 “world” conference in Los Angeles, USA, where the empire exhibited “their full powers,” which were “found to be in good and due form,” and agreed “to the Charter of the United Nations,” thus creating a world organization with overriding authority in the global regulation of peace, security, and human rights. Three years later, Britain, again acting on behalf of Sierra Leone, led the deliberations to formulate the first “global” norm of human rights, the 1948 UNDHR. In fact (with consideration of the rights of the colonized people within the empire to lay claims to their right to govern themselves), Britain was the first signatory to ratify this declaration and Sierra Leone, therefore, was a state party, by default, to the UN Charter—and, indeed, all pre-­1961 international human rights instruments that Britain acceded to or ratified. Thus, the Stevens regime was under an obligation to adhere to international laws against torture, slavery, arbitrary arrest, and detention; and to ensure that it promoted the civil, economic, social, and political rights of all Sierra Leonean men, women, and children. There are, however, those who disagree. They present the narratives of the oppressed; of helpless peoples and countries in Latin America, Asia, and Africa, who, to use the words of Michael Freeman, “formed the majority of those that produced the Declaration [of Human Rights],” yet “lived at that time [the 1940s] under colonial rule and were thus excluded from this process” (Freeman 2014, 275). This pan-­African objection, fused with neo-­Marxist defiance, came to characterize the subaltern representations of the western forms and formulations of human rights. Despite their rejection of westernization, it was seen as bad for their agenda to reinvent the precolonial institutions while at the same time embracing Marxism, giving rise to an adulterated model of human rights. Drawing from neo-­Marxist thinking and pan-­Africanism, this re-­invented model became known as neopatrimonialism. Neopatrimonialism, it has been said, is guilty of “Africa’s state weakness, democratic deficiencies and economic crisis” (Soest 2006, 7). Western ideologues are of the view that this concept, in principle, calls for the fusion and operationalization of two types of Max Weber’s theories of domination: rational-­legal and patrimonial domination (Clapham 1985, 48). According to Weber, by fusing these together, a leader (whom he called “a patron”) is produced upon whom political, social, and economic powers are bestowed, thus empowering him to promote order. Those around this patron become his clientele. They assist in the preservation of social and political order and, in return, receive favors, positions, and extra-­judicial protection for as long as they remain supportive and loyal (Alence 2004). To satisfy the voracious appetite of the patron and his clientele base, politics in Sierra Leone became, in behavioral terms, what Clapham refers to as a “personalized affair” (Clapham 1979). As a result of this personalization of the political,

The narratives on human rights   163 socio-­cultural, and economic life of the state, political authority in Sierra Leone found legitimacy from a complex “distributive network of patron–clientelist relations and the constitutional, institutional, and ideological consent” (Luke and Riley 1989, 134). While the constitutional perspective tells us about the role of the statutory and customary laws (including the Sierra Leone judiciary and its statutory courts, and the local authorities and their local courts), the institutional perspective explains the regulatory functions of the public (government-­ controlled institutions) and private (including the informal political economic sphere or black market) sectors. It was the third perspective, the ideological, that came to animate the subaltern justification for the Siaka Stevens regime finding its own a path out of the perceived neocolonial plot to use the “universal application of western morality” argument—as represented in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—to condition Sierra Leone’s sovereignty. What matters here also, for those who disagree, was the intended outcomes of adherence to the western conception of human rights and political freedoms. If the goal was to create a neoliberal world order (with an imposed international human rights regime to regulate the internal conduct of postcolonial states being part of the strategy), it is to be expected that all cultural-­relativist approaches, critical of and incompatible with the West’s framework for political settlement, would be relegated to the backburner (Karp and Mills 2015). This relegation of what Sierra Leoneans (or, better still, the regime of Stevens) believed at the international level played into the hands of the regime. It wasted no time in selling its message at the grassroots levels in Sierra Leone. By turning to the grassroots communities, the regime aimed to win popular support for its pan-­ Africanist cultural-­relativist criticism of the West’s involvement in the internal affairs of the country in the name of promoting human rights and political freedoms. In this way, people’s conceptions about what was lawful and unlawful were subjected to the political scrutiny of the regime. Although President Stevens may have been oblivious to the theoretical and legal underpinnings of the 1948 Human Rights Declaration, he believed democracy was about liberty, but that liberty had not worked for Sierra Leone. On the political front, the decision to declare a one-­party dictatorship in 1978 coincided with the adoption, a year later, of the UN conventions on civil and political rights. However, my reviews of the literature reveal that, if anything, democracy, as far as Stevens and his supporters were concerned, had led only to perceived equality, without any equivalent opportunities or outcomes for him. To get equality of outcomes in the electoral process required the establishment of a one-­party state under his tutelage; a state wherein every election had only one winner—the people who, irrespective of the candidates they supported, were all members of a single political party. A window of opportunity for Sierra Leone to successfully rebel against the neoliberal agenda without being punished came in 1977. In a familiar narrative, the emergence of a neopatrimonial one-­ party state in 1978 was triggered by a student uprising in 1977. In the absence of strong opposition in Parliament (between 1971 and 1977), Stevens and his regime had become what he had in the past lambasted the elitist SLPP for:

164   The narratives on human rights “he  was authoritarian, corrupt and manipulative” (Lahai 2015, 323; see also Gberie 2005; Kandeh 1999). I have already noted that, in 1971, the regime had “succeeded in getting the Parliament to declare a Republic.” Stevens was appointed (not elected) the first executive president of the new Republic of Sierra Leone, after Parliament adopted the Constitution of Sierra Leone Act No. 6 of 1971 and the Constitution (Amendment) Act No. 7 of 1971, with its provisions for an Executive President6 (Dumbuya 2008, 38). While his ascendancy to the presidency marked the start of the country’s “labyrinthine path to underdevelopment and state failure” (Lahai 2015, 323–4), the students of the University of Sierra Leone felt compelled to fill the vacuum left by the opposition. They began to agitate for political reforms (Lahai 2015, 322). On January 27, 1977, a student demonstration erupted when President Stevens, who was Chancellor of the University, visited to witness a graduation ceremony. Stevens used force to quell this demonstration; his notorious Internal Security Unit was said to have arrested, beaten, and even raped demonstrators. However, the students did not relent. They kept up their demonstrations until the President agreed to dissolve Parliament and announce a date for presidential and parliamentary elections. In the elections that followed, President Stevens forced his newly APC-­dominated Parliament to declare a one-­party state … with the APC as the only legitimate political party. From that time until 1992 when they were removed in a violent coup by a largely youth-­led National Provisional Ruling Council (NPRC), a year after the civil war started, the APC ruled the country with an iron fist.  (Lahai 2015, 325–6) I suggest here that all that was to follow after the events of 1977 was made possible by one major change in the United States in the same year: the election of President Jimmy Carter to the presidency. The Carter administration presided over a shift in US policy on Africa, from one that sought to impose (through coups, kidnappings, and assassinations) a new imperial order in line with the diktats of neoliberalism, to one that called for the “non-­interference” in the internal affairs of states, with the exception of three African countries: Namibia, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), and Apartheid South Africa. To this end, President Carter instructed his Secretaries of State Cyrus Vance (1977–1980) and Edmund Muskie (1980–1981), and the American ambassadors to the United Nations, Andy Young and Donald McHenry, to develop an Africa policy “which we … consider to be of great interest to the people of Africa and indeed of the entire developing world” (Carter 1980, 1929). Carter later revealed, during his September 25, 1980, remarks at a reception for the Members of the Congressional Black Caucus that his aims were as follows. First, to promote the “needs” and respect the “rights of people of all nations.” This respect should, President Carter argued, “celebrate in an emotional way the birth of additional freedom and human rights and equality and end racial discrimination” (in Zimbabwe and South Africa—based on the wishes of the peoples and governments of these

The narratives on human rights   165 countries). Second, this policy reflected Carter’s non-­interventionist approach to Africa. In his remarks to the Black Caucus, Carter explained: “America’s influence is never stronger than when we are meticulously true to our own highest principles. There is no way that a country even as strong as ours can force peace on the rest of the world” (Carter 1980, 1929). To show to the US Congress that his government was interested in stabilizing relationships with countries such as Sierra Leone, President Carter invited President Siaka Stevens to witness this Black Caucus reception at the White House. President Stevens, as Chairman of the Organization of African Unity was (together with Rwanda’s Dictator-­ President, Juvénal Habyarimana) on a special mission to the United Nations headquarters in New York. As chairman of a continental organization, President Carter thought it was politically expedient to have Stevens witness the Black Caucus meeting. It was during this reception that President Carter endorsed the autocratic rule of President Stevens, introducing him as one of Africa’s greatest, and most human rights-­loving presidents: We are privileged to have two outstanding leaders of the new Africa with us: President Siaka Stevens of Sierra Leone and President Habyarimana of Rwanda.7 And as you all know, President Stevens is also the Chairman of the Organization of African Unity, representing 50 nations in that “great continent,” having an important voice in mending regional and bilateral disputes, trying to carve out the ideals and hopes of the people of Africa, and playing a very significant role in the affairs not only of his continent but indeed of the entire world.  (Carter 1980, 1928) This endorsement was not just a victory for the autocratic rule of President Stevens; it was a stamp of approval for his regime’s cultural-­relativist understanding and representations of the theories and practice of civil, political, social, economic, and cultural rights. It was after the national and international events of 1977 that President Stevens began to put in place a human rights framework that was “sympathetic” to his regime’s ideology. With no one to police his human rights conduct, or to “punish” him for gross violations of human rights, Stevens did everything in his power to sabotage the civil and political rights of Sierra Leoneans.

Narrative two: the neopatrimonial regime of President Stevens offered the best possible developmental outcomes for Sierra Leone Prior to the elections of 1967, the All People’s Congress under Stevens presented itself as a pro-­development, socialist government that was prepared to govern the country along the lines of Marxist philosophy. What Sierra Leoneans got after the elections was a patrimonial and paternalistic politico-­economic system. The APC shared the Marxist belief that neoliberalism was detrimental to Third

166   The narratives on human rights World development. Despite this commonality, Stevens’s neopatrimonial system and Marxism did not share the same inspirations for economic rights. The Marxist analysis of how the proletariat would win economic rights is backed by a “high” scientific theory (Kolakowski 1983; McBride 1981; Lukes 1986). This theory presents an archeo-­teleological conceptualization of a systematic path to attain a classless superstructure (the state). In this classless society, the path to the transcendentality of the superstructure is set against overcoming the realities of tyrannical economic events and “the absolute ideality of the liberal telos” or intentions of the bourgeoisie class (Derrida 1994, 69). This exact path predicts that capitalist exploitation will set in motion transitional changes to a utopic end. This change, which is the only constant phenomenon in Marxist dialectics, should be about people’s (the majority, i.e., the proletariat) memorialization of capitalist wrongs, and the realization of their unassailable economic, political, and cultural rights. The neopatrimonial economic model of Stevens’s regime, in contrast, had sparse theoretical underpinnings. This contention may attract criticism from those who believe no political philosophy, however controversial and unprogressive, should be seen as normatively inferior. Without debating the merits of this claim, it is important to note another difference between the two economic theories. Marxism calls for the rule by the proletariat. In contrast, in Siaka Stevens’s neopatrimonial system, state governance was in the hands of the lumpenproletariat (Gberie 2005). By definition, the lumpenproletariat is within the category of the marginal subaltern working class. Members of this class are neither designed to achieve class consciousness nor economically productive. Where their progress is measured, the measurement indicators function only as a social determinant of their disorganized worldviews. On the political front, their “political” ordering of society is mainly about the maximization of their individual interests to the detriment of the revolutionary advancement of the impoverished masses (Robin and David 1973; Bussard 1987). As such, the regime’s lumpenproletariat understanding of human rights was based on the assumptions that “rights” are legitimate only if they promote the best possible outcomes for the patron (President Stevens) and his clientele (his ministers, and rogue businessmen from the Middle East, particularly Lebanon) (Gberie 2005, 31–5; Kandeh 1999, 350–1). How did this economic ideology offer the best possible outcomes for the regime? While it cannot be said that these outcomes were necessarily beneficial for the people, Jimmy Kandeh contends that the government of Siaka Stevens was able to “define, embody, and project the interests of ruling classes as universal and legitimate” (Kandeh 1999, 351). In this way, through the predatory logic of political domination, the dysfunctional ruling class in Stevens’s regime acquired the power to convert “state offices and public resources into sources of private wealth.” The privatization of the national coffers was one of the primary modes of accumulation. For example, Siaka Stevens (Prime Minister/President of Sierra Leone from 1968–85), turned over the entire diamond and fishing industry to Jamil Sahid

The narratives on human rights   167 Mohammed, his Afro-­Lebanese crony and business partner, who also at the time operated his own bank in addition to marketing, insurance, and light manufacturing ventures. Under Stevens, Mohammed attended cabinet meetings (although he was not a minister or official member of the government), occasionally vetoed ministerial appointments, reversed ministerial decision and routinely violated government foreign exchange regulations. At the height of his awesome power as chief economic patron of top APC politicians, Jamil Mohammed was allowed to maintain a heavily-­armed 500-strong personal security force consisting mainly of Lebanese and Palestinians. (Kandeh 1999, 351) Emphatically, therefore, one can argue that the adoption of the 1978 Constitution (through a stage-­managed national referendum) that transformed the country into a one-­party state, and established the APC as the only legal political party in Sierra Leone, was the ruling class’s call for Sierra Leoneans—who had been transformed into lumpen subalterns of a predatory regime—to forget about the foolishness of western philosophical understandings of human rights. Indeed, it was a call on the oppressed masses to accept what Kandeh referred to as the “malfeasance in the Stevens dictatorship” that “afflicted all levels of state administration” (Kandeh 1999, 351), and to get on with the job of building a human rights framework that should be authenticated by a set of predatory political, economic, and cultural belief systems that were the direct opposite of western philosophies of ethics and human rights. The people of Sierra Leone were made to understand that their human right framework was best served, not by the individuation of freedoms, but by the politically controlled economic markers of the regime. What were these markers? According to Barry Riddell (2005, 119), they constituted “the economic framework within which the Sierra Leone state operated.” The sub-­programmes and associated policies of this framework were designed to sustain a one-­way wealth transfer from the peasants to the lumpen-­elites, despite the fact that it understandably disquieted the peasants throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Riddell also contends that, since the economic fate of the country was conditioned by the informal economy, the formal agro-­economic policies the government pursued resulted in: • • • • •

A monopoly-­produce marketing board (the SLPMB) that paid farmers approximately 45 percent of world prices, while retaining the residual funds for operational expenses and a government budgetary surplus. Currency overvaluation, which led to relatively cheaper imports and more expensive exports (mainly rural cash crops). Urban employment growth in bureaucracy and government parastatals. Reduced urban rice prices which, in effect, “subsidized” urban dwellers and lowered the incomes of rural producers. The taxing of international trade so as to favor urban goods over rural cash crops.

168   The narratives on human rights • • • • • • • • • • •

Investment in commercial agricultural development schemes that provided subsidies and positions to favored people/areas. Urban industrial protection through tariffs, duties, and regulation. Locating most social services and utilities (healthcare, education, clean water, electricity and paved roads) in urban places. The selling of import licenses and foreign exchange allocations. Privatizing (community-owned) land and thus removing peasant access to land. National spending with an urban bias. Capital flight—that is, the movement of money to safe-havens by many, especially the elite. Hosting of the meetings of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in 1980, with benefits (especially housing and cars) extended to the elite. National Development Plan (in the 1970s), with an urban and elite bias. Foreign aid projects, with the major benefits accruing to government clients through state manipulation. Minimum wage legislation, favoring urban workers.

Did these economic markers offer the best possible outcomes for the regime? In the long term, no. In fact, people in the rural areas—the people who would one day support the eruption of the civil war, though it is as deleterious as it would also prove to them—came to view the state as their enemy, although an enemy worth avoiding, as it was suicidal to confront the government. If anything positive occurred, it was the benefit to observers and scholars who thereby obtained reference points in the theorization of predatory neopatrimonial regimes. Some of us who experienced the negative impact of this regime’s economic policies first-­hand were quick to realize that, in practical economic terms, there was a direct correlation between this regime’s economic policies and preferential understanding of economic rights, and the misery that characterized the lives of the people it governed. In Sierra Leone, there were initially expectations that, with its broad-­based national support, the APC would promote equity and justice through economic reforms; promote, for the first time in the country’s history, equitable distribution of income, welfare assistance for the unemployed, protection of workers’ rights, and better allocation of resources, especially to marginalized sectors and townships, among other things. After all, these were the promises that brought Siaka Stevens to the positions of Prime Minister in 1968 and President in 1971. These promises were suggestive of the ideology of Marxism. Rights were not meant to be a privilege, but entitlements that could be achieved by building the capacities and capabilities of the public sector. Unfortunately, this was not how the regime saw it. The public sector that should have provided employment for the masses was starved. The net effect was the inability of the youth, who would otherwise be the driving force behind the regime, to find employment. In fact, fearing that youth empowerment would lead them to challenge the authority of the octogenarian clientele of the patron President, the regime discouraged all external efforts, including those of the World

The narratives on human rights   169 Bank, to create jobs and other empowerment projects. Moreover, the thriving private sector was also targeted, and before long, replaced by a rogue private sector. No doubt, the regime allowed a private sector operating outside the mainstream political economy a greater amount of unregulated freedom; moreover, to protect them from all forms of healthy competition, companies who wanted to observe the rules of ethical corporate social responsibility were suppressed. Multinational companies that had been prominent colonial-­era business firms— including Compagnie Françoise de l’Afrique Occidentale (CFAO) and Paterson Zochonis, among others—were forced to leave the country between 1979 and 1984 (Harris 2014, 75). This is not to say local companies did not thrive during these “dark” days. Examples of local entrepreneurial ventures, “which had had humble beginnings but grew to be thriving businesses” include the Bata Shoe Company (Wyse 2003, 113). But to operate, they were forced to accept membership into the network of clientele who were only allowed to operate in exchange for favors, including granting jobs to faithful supporters of the regime. The emphasis on the impoverishment of the working class, I argue, had an impact on the cost of living and living standards. Connected to these was the political belief that Sierra Leoneans should not focus on the contributions of the state in their lives; instead, they were to focus on their contribution to the survival of the regime. The regime coerced them to look away from the politically motivated inequalities in the country and focus instead on the inequalities between countries within the international political economy. Why? Because by focusing on the global dimensions of inequality, perpetrated to some extent by the hegemonic economic policies of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, the predators of the regime found someone else to blame for the economic woes of the country, and the poor model of President Stevens (Reno 1995, 1996, 2003; Riddell 2005).

Notes 1 Instances of these include the failed attempts of Brigadier John Bangura, Majors S. E. Momoh and Jawara, and Lieutenant J. B. Kolugbonda. They were found guilty of treason and executed on June 29, 1971. Lieutenant Habib Lansana Kamara, Paramount Chief Bai Makarie N’silk, Dr. Mohammed Sorie Forna (ex-­Minister of Finance in the Stevens regime), Ibrahim Taqi (ex-­Minister of Information), and Brigadier David Lansana (the first Sierra Leonean to head the Sierra Leone military forces, taking over from British colonial adviser Brigadier R. D. Blackie in 1964) were executed on July 19, 1975. For more on their trials and execution, see Arthur Abraham’s (2013) History, Memory, and Postcolonial Sierra Leone; For more on the social and economic impact of their treason trials and execution (especially that of Dr. Forna) and the search for the truth, see Aminatta Forna’s (2002) The Devil That Danced on the Water: A Daughter’s Quest and the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (2004) Historical Antecedents to the Conflict (Volume Three A, Chapter One). 2 For example, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana was the neo-­Marxist who led Ghana to independence and champion of a confederacy of African states. He was ousted in a western­backed coup in 1966 and died in exile in Romania in 1972, aged 62. 3 Preamble to the Charter of the United Nations. Available at: www.un.org/en/sections/ un-­charter/preamble/index.html.

170   The narratives on human rights 4 Chapter XVI: Miscellaneous Provisions, See UN Charter, www.un.org/en/sections/un-­ charter/chapter-­xvi/index.html. 5 See the obligations to carry out the Decisions of the Security Council (Articles 25, 48, 49). This, however, attracted competing perspectives between the 1950s and 1970s. The reason for this was the lack of clarity on whether the phrase refers only to states’ obligation to carry out the directives of the Security Council or its decisions also (see Kelsen 1950, 95). 6 Act No. 6, with its provisions for a ceremonial president was first introduced in January 1967 by Prime Minister Albert Margai. But after his forcible removal from office (by Brigadier David Lansana, in a coup he himself orchestrated) after he had lost the elections of 1967, it was the incoming Prime Minister, Stevens, who amended it by replacing the position of a ceremonial president with an executive president (see, Dumbuya 2008, 38). 7 President Carter told the world, during his speech that Habyarimana was a “strong promoter of the cause of human rights in Central Africa,” despite the fact that he was a dictator, whose actions contributed to the outbreak the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

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The narratives on human rights   171 Doyle, Michael W. 1983. “Kant, liberal legacies, and foreign affairs, Part 2.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 12 (4): 323–53. Dumbuya, Peter A. 2008. Reinventing the Colonial State: Constitutionalism, One-­Party Rule, and Civil War in Sierra Leone. Lincoln, NE: iUniverse. Forna, Aminatta. 2002. The Devil That Danced on the Water: A Daughter’s Quest. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press. Freeman, Michael. 2014. “Human Rights,” in Peter Burnell, Lise Rakner, and Vicky Randall (eds.), Politics in the Developing World. 4th edn. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 274–87. Gberie, Lansana. 2005. A Dirty War in West Africa the RUF and the Destruction of Sierra Leone. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Gill, Stephen. 2003. “Globalisation, market civilisation and disciplinary neoliberalism,” in Roland Robertson and Kathleen White (eds.), Globalization: Critical Concepts in Sociology. London: Routledge, 256–81. Grover, Sonja C. 2010. The European Court of Human Rights as a Pathway to Impunity for International Crimes. Heidelberg, Germany: Springer. Harris, David John. 2014. Sierra Leone: A Political History. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Kandeh, Jimmy D. 1999. “Ransoming the state: Elite origins of subaltern terror in Sierra Leone.” Review of African Political Economy 26 (81): 349–66. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 03056249908704398. Keen, David. 2005. Conflict and Collusion in Sierra Leone. Oxford, UK: James Currey Publishers. Kelsen, Hans. 1950. The Law of the United Nations: A Critical Analysis of Its Fundamental Problems. New York: Frederick A. Praeger Publisher. Kolakowski, Leszek. 1983. “Marxism and human rights.” Daedalus 112 (4): 81–92. Lahai, John Idriss. 2015. “From discontinuity to continuity: Tertiary education institutions, conflict and peacebuilding in Sierra Leone.” Peace & Change 40 (3): 313–38. Luke, David Fashole and Stephen P. Riley. 1989. “The politics of economic decline in Sierra Leone.” The Journal of Modern African Studies 27 (1): 133–41. Lukes, Steven. 1986. “Marxism and morality.” Capital & Class 10 (2): 220–2. McBride, William Leon. 1981. “Marxism and human rights,” in Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, 55: 260–7. www.pdcnet.org/acpaproc/ content/acpaproc_1981_0055_0000_0260_0267. Rawls, John. 2003. A Theory of Justice. Revised edition. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press/Harvard University Press. Reno, William. 1995. Corruption and State Politics in Sierra Leone. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. http://library.wur.nl/WebQuery/clc/975052. Reno, William. 1996. “Ironies of post-­Cold War structural adjustment in Sierra Leone.” Review of African Political Economy 23 (67): 7–18. Reno, William. 2003. “Political networks in a failing stage: The roots and future of violent conflict in Sierra Leone.” Internationale Politik Und Gesellschaft 2: 44–66. Richards, Paul. 1996. Fighting for the Rainforest: War, Youth, and Resources in Sierra Leone. Oxford, UK: James Currey. Riddell, Barry. 2005. “Sierra Leone: Urban-­elite bias, atrocity & debt.” Review of African Political Economy 32 (103): 115–33. Robin, Cohen and Michael David. 1973. “The revolutionary potential of the African lumpenproletariat: A sceptical view.” IDS Bulletin 5 (2–3): 31–42. Russell, Paul. 2016. The Oxford Handbook of Hume. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

172   The narratives on human rights Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission. 2004. “Chapter one, historical antecedents to the conflict (volume three a).” Freetown, SL: Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission. www.sierraleonetrc.org/index.php/view-­report-text-­vol-3a/item/ volume-­three-a-­chapter-one. Soest, Christian von. 2006. “How does neopatrimonialism affect the African state?” No. 32. Hamburg, Germany: GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies. GIGA­WP-32/2006. www.files.ethz.ch/isn/47051/wp32.pdf. Tande, Dibussi. 2009. Scribbles from the Den: Essays on Politics and Collective Memory in Cameroon. Cameroon/ Michigan: Langaa RPCIG & Michigan State University Press. Turner, Thomas. 2013. “Crimes of the West in Democratic Congo: Reflections on Belgian acceptance of ‘moral responsibility’ for the Death of Lumumba,” in Adam Jones (ed.), Genocide, War Crimes, and the West. History and Complicity. London: Zed Press, 230–40. Wai, Zubairu. 2012. Epistemologies of African Conflicts: Violence, Evolutionism, and the War in Sierra Leone. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Weissman, Stephen R. 1979. “CIA covert action in Zaire and Angola: Patterns and consequences.” Political Science Quarterly 94 (2): 263–86. Wyse, Akintola. 2003. H. C. Bankole-­Bright and Politics in Colonial Sierra Leone, 1919–1958. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

10 Ethnopolitics, tribal-­nationalism, and the youth empowerment crisis, 1985–1991

The rise of ethnopolitics, while it did not do away with the rogue economy of Siaka Stevens’s neopatrimonial state, did sociologically restructure inter/intra-­ ethnic political relations in Sierra Leone. President Stevens was not oblivious to the issue of political succession in a one-­party state that revolved around him. The leaders of two ethnic groups—the Temnes and Limbas—were fighting over who should succeed him. Between 1965 and 1967, some prominent SLPP politicians of the Temne ethnic group has crossed over to the Stevens’s APC. Among them was Dr. John Karefa-­Smart. He began his political career in 1957, when he was elected to Parliament as the representative for Tonkolili District. Between 1957 and 1961 he was Minister for Lands, Mines and Labor Relations, and between 1961 and 1964 Minister of Foreign Affairs. Karefa-­Smart was second in the SLPP hierarchy and as the most senior minister in the cabinet of Prime Minister Sir Milton Margai, he was acting Prime Minister whenever Sir Milton was out of the country. It was widely expected following the death of Sir Milton Margai in 1964 that Karifa would assume the position of leader of the SLPP and Prime Minister of Sierra Leone. This did not happen; he was sidelined and the younger brother of the late Prime Minister, Albert Margai, a backbencher in Parliament, was appointed Prime Minister. Soon after he was appointed, Albert Margai began to systematically marginalize northerners (especially the Temnes and their non-­Temne sympathizers) in his party. This move breached the SLPP Constitution, which was founded on the ideology of “One Country One People”; it also contravened the constitutional arrangement (reaffirmed in the 1951 Order in Council) on political succession. In response, the Temnes left the SLPP and joined the APC. After the 1967 general elections, which the SLPP lost to the APC, Albert Margai refused to hand the government over to the victorious Siaka Stevens, even after Stevens had been sworn in by the Governor-­General, Sir Henry Lightfoot Boston. Instead, Margai called on an ally, of his ethnic Mende and head of the national army, Brigadier David Lansana, to overthrow his—Margai’s—government and declare the election invalid. On March 21, 1967, Brigadier Lansana’s junta, the National Interim Council (NIC) took power (Cartwright 1970; Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission 2004). The NIC placed Albert Margai under pre-­arranged house arrest and—as planned—attempted to detain Stevens

174   Ethnopolitics also. Unfortunately for Margai and Lansana, Stevens had been tipped off and fled to Liberia before Lansana’s men arrived at his home. Within 24 hours of taking power, the NIC was overthrown by a group of senior military and police officers calling themselves the National Reformation Council (NRC). The NRC, under Lt. Col. A. T. Juxon-­Smith, overthrew Lansana on the grounds that it was necessary to “shake off the shackles of monarchical imperialism” and to transform Sierra Leone into a republic similar to the one Kwame Nkrumah had instituted in Ghana: a government very different from Sierra Leone’s multi-­party parliamentary system still tied to the British Crown (Fisher 1969, 617–18). Sierra Leone remained divided over the constitutional argument presented by the NRC until April 1968, when Siaka Stevens was returned to office. His return was made possible by a group of low-­ranking soldiers calling themselves the Anti-­Corruption Revolutionary Movement. Sympathetic to Stevens, a fellow northerner, and opposed to the Creole and Mende leadership of the NRC, they toppled Juxon-­Smith’s junta. With Stevens back in office, as John Cartwright and Thomas Cox observe, the members of the Mende Tribe, which had enjoyed a prominent position in the SLPP government of Albert Margai, could not easily reconcile themselves to this shift in power to the northern Temne, Limba and other minority groups. In November 1968, clashes [occurred] between Mende and Temne “strangers” in certain southern areas, which were the traditional strongholds of the SLPP and home to the Mende people. President Stevens declared a “state of emergency,” and postponed all by-­ elections around the country. Soon after, the police and army went on the rampage, arresting hundreds of people, including 16 prominent SLPP leaders (Cartwright and Cox 1972, 16). This, in effect, ended the APC–SLPP coalition government created following the return of Siaka Steven in 1968. According to Fred Hayward (1984, 25–6), the crisis was caused by Siaka Stevens and his henchmen. Weeks before the first by-­election was scheduled in the Southern Province, Stevens authorized his supporters to intimidate the SLPP politicians and their supporters. Stevens placed restrictions on the movement of the SLPP parliamentarians in May 1968. He had Salia Jusu-­Sheriff (SLPP member in the coalition government) arrested and detained in a police station in his constituency. In June, Stevens sent a whole platoon of heavily armed army officers to transport Jusu-­Sheriff to Freetown, where he was imprisoned—without trial—in the country’s maximum-­security prison. Between August and September of the same year, incidents of arrests and/or beating of SLPP supporters occurred. On September 13 “the office of the SLPP newspaper, The People, was attacked in broad daylight in Freetown, the editor and staff beaten, and much of the equipment destroyed” (Hayward 1984, 19). The reason for this attack was that Stevens blamed the newspaper’s editors for playing an active role in a campaign that saw the SLPP winning nine seats (against the 16 seats won by the APC) in the 1968 by-­elections (Cartwright and

Ethnopolitics   175 Cox 1972). The intimidation and human rights violations of members of the opposition, writes Hayward, not only destroyed the APC–SLPP coalition but also “called into question the [APC’s] promise of open elections, a free press, and a competitive party system” (Hayward 1984, 25). Accusations that the SLPP parliamentarians were planning genocide against the Temnes during the November 1968 tensions in the Southern Province incensed the Temne politicians in the APC. They pressured Stevens to charge the Mende leaders (who were already in prison for the uprising) with treason. Stevens succumbed to the pressure. In April 1970, after spending two years in prison, and charges of treason against ten of the 16 Mende leaders were heard in a trial that ran from June 1969 to April 1970. The ten (who included Brigadier Lansana) were found guilty and executed. However, not wanting to inflame the Mendes any further, President Stevens ordered the release of the remaining six detainees (including Salia Jusu-­ Sheriff, who had been in prison since May 1968) in November 1971. Interestingly, the emergence of new Temne leaders in the APC in 1967— dubbed the “Newcomers,” including Karefa-­Smart (who joined the APC in 1965), Dr. Mohammed Forna, Ibrahim Taqi, Alusine Beddor Kamara, Ibrahim O’Toole, Borbor Kamara, Ahmed Bundu-­Kamara, Abu Lakkoh, and Paramount Chief Makaray N’Silk—resulted in another power struggle within the party. These “Newcomers” were resented by another group of APC members, known as the “Stalwarts.” The Stalwarts were also Temnes but, unlike the Newcomers, had they been founding members of the APC. Whereas the Newcomers were pro-­multi-party democracy, the Stalwarts were in favor of a totalitarian one-­party state. During the APC Convention of May 1970 (which was attended by representatives from many totalitarian and anti-­democracy socialist countries, including Iran), the Stalwarts, who by this time had entered into an alliance with the leaders of the Limba and Loko ethnic groups, called for a “Cultural Revolution” (Cartwright and Cox 1972). By their account, such a revolution involved the total abandonment of the western principles of human rights listed in all the statutory laws of Sierra Leone and the creation of a system of government similar to the one instituted by the Shah (Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi) in Iran. Like the Shah of Iran, the Stalwarts wanted to make Stevens supreme ruler of Sierra Leone, with absolute legislative, executive, and judicial powers. President Stevens, reassured by the absence of an external threat from either the western bloc or the Soviets, agreed to the Stalwarts’ plan. On Monday, May 18, 1970, President Stevens informed the nation, during the APC Convention, that he was going to appoint a Deputy Prime Minister to help in the drafting of a republican constitution—one that would end the nominal powers of the British monarch over Sierra Leone. The leaders of the Newcomers, Mohamed Forna and Karefa-­Smart, had hoped that one of them would be appointed Deputy Prime Minister; this had been one of the promises Stevens had made to induce them to leave the SLPP and join the APC. However, determined to allow the APC Stalwarts to go ahead with their cultural revolution, Stevens informed the Newcomers that he had no intention of appointing any of them as his deputy. This move not only took the Newcomers by surprise, it also exposed the insincerity of

176   Ethnopolitics President Stevens. In response to this betrayal, the Newcomers left the APC. Ibrahim Taqi (who was Minister of Information), together with his half-­brother, Hamid Taqi, formed the National Democratic Party (NDP) (Pham 2005, 42). Mohammed Forna (who was the Finance Minister) and Mohamed Bash-­Taqi (former Minister of Development) joined forces with Karefa-­Smart to form the United Democratic Party (UDP) (Hayward 1984, 26). Within weeks of their formation, the UDP and the NDP began to negotiate a possible alliance with the embattled leaders of the SLPP. Elections have always been about numbers, and an alliance between the leaders of the UDP, the NDP, and the SLPP would have granted them about 70 percent of the votes in any election. They thus posed a significant threat to the APC, one that Stevens (together with the Temne Stalwarts, who were very unpopular in their constituencies) was not going to allow. On the day of their conventions to elect their leaders (the day on which they also planned to announce the formation of their alliance with the SLPP), Stevens imposed a state of emergency and declared both the UDP and the NDP “criminal” organizations. He had their leaders arrested—save for Karefa-­Smart, who escaped to the United States. In 1975, those who were arrested were charged with treason, found guilty, and executed. This move to isolate, and thereafter support the execution of some of the “Newcomers” was a miscalculation by the Stalwarts (who included Sheku Kanu, Abass Bundu, Thaimu Bangura, Edward Turay, Idrissa Fofanah, Abdul Karim Koroma, and James Funna). Although the Newcomers were against the radicalism of the Stalwarts, their presence had given the Temnes an edge over other ethnic groups within the APC. The majority of the Temnes did not trust the Stalwarts. As such, they (the Temnes) were “leaderless” in the years between 1975 and 1977. During this period, they kept searching for a leader and, in 1977, they found one. His name was Sorie Ibrahim Tarawali. He was not a Temne, but of Mandingo extraction; however, to show his readiness to become one of them (the Temnes), Sorie Ibrahim, who was the member for a constituency in Freetown, went to Maforki chiefdom, Port Loko District, and submitted himself to the Paramount Chief Alikali Modu II. According to Temne custom, a male outsider could submit himself to the Alikali and request adoption; if his request is accepted, he becomes a “son of the soil”—that is, a Temne. And if he then becomes a landowner in the district, he also acquired the right to represent the district in Parliament (Wylie 1977; Howard and Skinner 1984). The people and their Alikali, who were also looking for a “political Moses,” accepted Sorie Ibrahim Tarawali’s request eagerly. They changed his name to Sorie Ibrahim Koroma (SIK, as he was fondly called). To fulfill the landownership requirement to stand for Parliament, SIK bought a 13-mile-­long tract of land in Magbaingbainra Village, Port Loko District, where he began one of the largest palm kernel farms in the country. Thus, he became the undisputed leader of the Temnes. Perhaps attracted by his wealth and large political following, President Stevens appointed SIK the First Vice President of Sierra Leone in 1978. That same year, he also appointed two of SIK’s followers, A. B. Kamara and C. A. Kamara-­ Taylor, Second and Third Vice Presidents, respectively.

Ethnopolitics   177 According to the APC’s internal party rules, the Vice President, Sorie Ibrahim Koroma, should have succeeded Siaka Stevens when he announced in 1984 his plan to retire the following year. But President Stevens, a very crafty and observant politician, may have realized that if Vice President Koroma assumed the presidency, the Temne Stalwarts might seek revenge for Stevens’s political crimes against them. To forestall this, Stevens side-­stepped his Vice President and imposed his own choice, Major-­General Joseph Saidu Momoh, a Limba tribesman, to the delegates at the 1984 APC Convention as the sole candidate. Thaimu Bangura (Minister of Information) and Abass Chernor Bundu (Minister of Agriculture), who could have challenged Stevens’s decision, were tricked by him. He merged their constituencies (Gbinti/Dibia chiefdom (Bundu’s home) and Sanda Magborlontor/Mange Bureh (Bangura’s home)) into a single constituency and told them there was to be a single delegate from that amalgamated constituency at the conventions. While they were away fighting for the delegate position, Stevens pressured the remaining convention delegates (including Vice President Koroma) to approve the candidacy of Momoh. Soon after Momoh was endorsed by the convention delegates, Stevens had a change of heart. He was no longer interested in the merger of Gbinti and Mange Burreh into one chiefdoms. Thaimu Bangura and Abass Bundu returned to Freetown but, as Stevens intended, by the time they arrived, it was too late: Momoh was already President­Elect and Stevens’s successor. To some, this political outcome signaled the continuation of the neopatrimonial status quo President Stevens had worked hard to create. While there are many examples to show that there was a continuum of a rogue economy, however, from a sociological standpoint, I suggest, the events and direction of J. S. Momoh’s presidency were not what Stevens had intended. Under Momoh, ethnopolitical and ethnonational considerations came to matter more than wealth and influence. In fact, in this ethnonational space, political, economic, and socio-­ cultural rights were determined by one’s ethnic belonging. The only people who enjoyed full human rights were those who identified themselves with President Momoh’s Limba ethnic group; and more specifically were members of the Limba cultural group, Ekutay (“Ekutay,” translated to English, loosely means “You See”; as in, now “you see” the light by embracing the Limba identity). Many scholars have documented the role of Ekutay in political governance in Sierra Leone. Sahr J. Kpundeh noted that President Momoh, whose administration was notorious for promoting tribalism and nepotism, appointed his “Ekutay” comrades to all the top government posts. The Ekutay group consisted of Limbas (a tribe from northern Sierra Leone) mostly from Momoh’s hometown of Binkolo. They formed an impregnable fence around the president and advised him on virtually all matters. These appointees were concerned only with pleasing Momoh, and in some cases, they conducted business dealings and transactions with both foreign and local businesspeople on his behalf. (Kpundeh 1999, 213)

178   Ethnopolitics For their part, Alfred B. Zack-­William (2001), Jimmy Kandeh (1992a, 1992b) and Lansana Gberie (2005) also present reductionist narratives that situate Ekutay as a political cabal interested only in holding the state to ransom through the unethical practice of tribalism, favoritism, and other ills that resulted in the severest form of state failure, and the eruption of an internecine civil war in 1991. A critical appraisal of these scholarly conclusions reveals one major shortcoming. They uniformly fail to take into consideration the profoundness of the shift from what Siaka Stevens had hoped for (a tightly controlled neopatrimonial system, with extra-­judicial protection for him and his Lebanese clientele) to what Joseph Momoh preferred, a mono-­ethnic state. By focusing on minimalist arguments on the place of Ekutay in the historical discourses of political governance and corruption in Sierra Leone, these works lack the theoretical grounding that would help explain the ethnopolitical representations of freedom, human rights, and political empowerment during the era of Ekutay. I argue in this chapter that, by shifting the requirement from APC (the only legitimate political party) membership to Ekutay (the only legitimate ethnicity) membership for all aspiring politicians and those in search of jobs, President Momoh succeeded, first, in giving legitimacy to tribalism and, second, in elevating the “familial” attributes of identity politics to the main determinant of people’s entitlements to human rights, economic empowerment, and political freedoms. On identity politics, the outcome was the creation of two groups: the privileged class (the 50+-year-­old male politicians, judges and magistrates, senior civil servants, military and police officers) and the underprivileged class (the politically, socially, and economically deprived youth). Several attempts were made by these deprived youths to effect change. But the refusal of the Ekutay to recognize these concerns contributed to the outbreak of the civil war in 1991.

Ekutay: ethnopolitical nationalism and the construction of a privileged discourse on empowerment What this chapter also brings to light is that which was particularly striking about Ekutay: its origins and the place where it emerged (Binkolo and Kamakwe chiefdoms). It is hard to pinpoint the date when Ekutay was formed. It may have owed its origins to the Gbangbani secret society, whose origin dates as far back as the 1500s, when the Manes invaded and conquered the Sapes (whom, as noted in Chapter 6, metamorphosed into several tribal groups, including the Limbas). In any case, Ekutay emerged as a dominant cultural association—more powerful than the Sierra Leonean state’s formal institutions (Kargbo 2006, 30–1)—in November 1985, the year J. S. Momoh became President. Because of Ekutay, the townships of Binkolo (where Ekutay re-­emerged in November 1985) and Kamakwe (where Ekutay held its first two-­day meeting on December 2 and 4, 1985) were transformed into the two most important towns of Sierra Leone— more important than the capital city of Freetown. Before 1985, Binkolo and Kamakwe were isolated towns in Bombali District, with no history of political

Ethnopolitics   179 or economic influence. Both towns had some connections to President Stevens, who claimed his father was a Limba from Bombali District, but during his presidency, they were far removed from the political scene. During Stevens’s rule, the most important towns (excluding Freetown) were Kono and Koidu (the epicentre of artisanal diamond mining in eastern Sierra Leone), Mattru/Mogbewa (in southern Sierra Leone, home to Sierra Leone’s rutile mines), Lunsar/ Marampa (the bauxite mines in northern Sierra Leone), and Kailahun (the Sierra Leone–Liberia border town in eastern Sierra Leone), where “President Siaka Stevens installed a loyalist of the ruling All People’s Congress Party … as chief in 1983 in order to gain political control over the area” (Acemoglu, Reed, and Robinson 2014, 331). However, during Momoh’s era, the political fate of Binkolo and Kamakwe changed. They became the places to be for an aspiring youth with a desire to serve in the regime’s security forces: the army, the police, and the notorious paramilitary forces, the Internal Security Units and the Special Security Division (Zack-­Williams 2001; Kandeh 1992a). As Momoh’s power continued to expand, these towns became the platforms for preaching the “virtues of ethnic nationalism” (Fanthorpe 2001, 369); they were synonymous with the “space for empowerment.” For someone to “feel” the virtues of Limba ethnonationalism would require traveling to Binkolo and Kamakwe; to “be” empowered meant developing affinities with these towns, and being recognized by the leaders of Ekutay. Given these observations, one might ask: why Ekutay? What does its formation tell us about the privileging of the human rights of the youth population in the country? Who were the winners and losers? I suggest here that to answer these questions requires the recognition of a feature largely ignored in the literature: the proto-­ethnonational character of Ekutay and what it dedicated itself to achieve; the creation (through physical and psychological coercion) of a singular national identity—even if it was to be a Limbanized identity—for all Sierra Leoneans. While it is true that, long before 1985, the Creoles had sought to create a Creole political hegemony (see Chapters 4and 5, this volume), tribal identities had never been the only factors that determined one’s station in politics. Even where it became an essential tool for President Stevens, he balanced it with other considerations such as wealth and social influence. That said, I do not deny the reality of inter-­tribal antagonism (see, for example, Kandeh 1992a; Zack-­ Williams 2001; Bangura 2016; McCauley 2017; Pugh 2011). Instead, I recognize that it was one of the features of colonial politics (especially the antagonism between Creoles and non-­Creoles between 1898 and 1959). Moreover, after independence, Prime Minister Albert Margai (1964–1967) attempted to exploit it between 1964 and 1967, just as President Stevens did after him, between 1971 and 1984. Against this backdrop, what is also true that it was during the reign of President Momoh that tribal identity (apart, of course, from gender identity on the question of women’s empowerment) became the sole determining factor of political inclusion and exclusion. As crucial as this observation is, what was also true was that Limba nationalism became the nominal national identity of privileged Sierra Leoneans because of its connections to the tribal identity of the

180   Ethnopolitics President. In fact, it was the President who encouraged the people to make such inferences. It was mostly through the personalization of a nostalgic, primordial connection the people felt towards him that he was enabled to narrow the scope of freedoms in the country. Over time, the nature of ethnopolitical formations and interactive/non-­interactive mobilizations across ethnicities were built on marked differences. These differences, I argue, were deeply rooted in the discursive representations of empowerment, and in the framing of societal responses to the oft-­asked questions of “who was empowered, and why”; and “which communities/regions were more empowered and how.” Arguably, therefore, empowerment became an emotionally activated means to ascertain the connections between gender, age, and the regional distribution of goods and services. It also meant that the constructions of empowerment as a human right—including the right to equal access and treatment—which would have given assurances to the people of their human rights entitlements and access to opportunities, was no longer an issue of human dignity but, rather, of the dignification (that is, the act of dignifying) the totemic tribal markers of the presidency. Part of this politics of solemnized dignification included ensuring that tribalism did not result in open inter-­ethnic group confrontations, as was the case during the presidency of Siaka Stevens. It was Momoh’s ability to control this process of mono-­ethnicization of politics that prevented Sierra Leone entering into an ethnic war. Instead, the war, when it came, was influenced largely by gender-­based (in terms of patterns of violence) and youth empowerment/freedom (in terms of the narratives of the combatants) issues. How did President Momoh and the leadership of Ekutay prevent Sierra Leone from experiencing what the people of Rwanda experienced during the reign of President Juvénal Habyarimana and his Hutu tribesmen and women? President Momoh made sure that the “ethnopolis” was mono-­tribal in outlook. However, his empowerment of one distinct group, the Limbas, was non-­exclusionary, instead strategically aimed at enticing non-­Limbas to join Ekutay and gain Limba citizenships. Thus, unlike pre-­1994 Rwanda, where the empowerment of one tribe (the Hutus) was not accompanied by a space for Tutsis to aspire to, or gain, membership of the empowered group (Hintjens 1999; Newbury 1998), in Momoh’s Sierra Leone, the patterns of inter-­tribal relations were about assimilation. If anything, it was this “open-­door” identity-politics policy that shaped the privileged characterization of empowerment. These schemas, in their nuanced forms, went beyond a simple “us” versus “them” narrative, as they had during colonial rule (when the “empowered” Creole elites saw the “unempowered” protectorate natives as “unwashed primates,” impossible for the Creoles to meet or mingle with (Wyse 2003; Kandeh 1992a)). That said, it was this idea of politically and culturally assimilating the non-­Limbas, willing or not, into the Limba fraternity, Ekutay, that explains the uniqueness of ethnopolitics in President Momoh’s Sierra Leone. Against this backdrop, I argue that Momoh’s ethnopolitical system was a shift not only in the political future Stevens had hoped for, but in people’s understanding of self and others, place, rights, and empowerment.

Ethnopolitics   181 Ethnographically speaking, to the ideologues in Momoh’s regime, the aim was getting all politically significant non-­Limbas to displace their understanding of who they were and where they came from. It was also about getting them to embrace an identity-­based historical narrative that they were an offshoot of the Limba Sapes. Through incentives, the non-­Limba middle class was impelled to  embrace the agentive possibility that being a Limba—by assimilation and adoption—was the goal of all Sierra Leonean people. Hence, by noting, for example, that “education [was] a privilege” to all, and an entitlement only for the family members of those with memberships in Ekutay (Lahai 2015a, 315), Momoh was appealing to potential initiates based on what they stood to gain from embracing a Limbanized tribal identity. This way, those aspiring to be part of the collective (Ekutay) must be seen to be demonstrating a sense of “nothingness” without the identity of the collective (Ekutay citizenship). Primordial questions about “who they were” and “where they were heading” were answered with a commitment to what appeared to be their version of the musketeer’s creed: “all for one and one for all.” Ekutay members came to adopt the view that what affects one, affects all. It was the responsibility of all to internalize whatever happens to one, with the hope that the “one”—President Momoh—would reward them for their sense of duty and loyalty. It was this in-­group interconnectedness that led politicians, public servants, teachers, lecturers, businessmen, chiefs, police/military officers, and ordinary citizens (with a desire to “get rich,” be influential, and be protected politically), and even non-­Sierra Leoneans (of Middle Eastern origins, mostly Lebanese and Syrians with interests in the diamond/natural resource sector) to seek membership of Ekutay and to aspire to honorary citizenship of Binkolo and Kamakwe (Fanthorpe 1998; Keen 2005). It was hoped that, with these middle-­class folk embracing the Ekutay identity, their constituents, families, friends and dependants, employees, and neighbors would also appreciate the need to belong. With good jobs, political protection, and the recognized privilege of wining, dining, and engaging in hedonistic affairs with women (and teenage girls) available to Ekutay members and their families, it was tempting indeed. But seeking either actual membership into Ekutay or the “symbolic assumption” of a Limbanized identity was conditional on the reconditioning of one’s political and cultural belief system(s). What seemed empowering also came with its own obligations. It was the expectation that one should remain attached to Ekutay. Those who preferred to remain among kin who did not share in the Ekutay ideology were expected to demonstrate their loyalty to the organization and its Limba identity. Political detachment from one’s roots offered the possibility of being elevated to “middle-­class” status. The appeal of such upward mobility, however, was compromised for many by the dilemma of not knowing whether those among their friends and family who abhorred the Ekutay and the Momoh regime were under the constant radar of the regime’s oppressive spy network. Suspecting the unintended consequences of this reconditioning requirement on political hierarchy, the gatekeepers in the government (that is, those around the President) factored in age and gender. These became, though unofficially,

182   Ethnopolitics essential instruments of inter/intra-­generational control. In the end, one section of the society—that is, males aged 40 years or older—dominated the inner circles of Ekutay and, consequently, the leadership of the various government institutions that made, interpreted, and implemented policy. They were given the right—which went beyond the mere sense of entitlement—to determine the political, social, and economic destinies of the other sections of society: the young adults and, more specifically, the politically, economically, and socially deprived youth. It should also be stated here that, despite the differences in terms of their access to power, both male categories within this patriarchal divide, the youth and those with greater authority, were allowed by the longstanding cultural beliefs of the country to determine the place and fate of women and girls. Faced with the tension described above—between social mobility and the desire to ascertain one’s friends and family were not under government scrutiny—some men gave their daughters (with some betrothed at birth) to the power-­brokers within Ekutay and the heads of the regime’s security and governance institutions (Lahai 2010b, 2016, 74–5). It was this control of the privileged few over the underprivileged majority, and the resistance of the latter (excluding the women, who had already been relegated to the domestic sphere), that gave the ethnopolitical privileging of human rights/empowerment a masculinized, militant outlook. This militancy was seen, by the defenders of the regime, as necessary.

Youth and ethnopolitics: the representations (of disempowerment) of the marginals The conditions and representations of the rarayman Of course, in all political systems there are claims to empowerment of the youth included in the political and economic justifications for the development of specific institutional policies and norms. Sierra Leone, under the aegis of President Joseph Saidu Momoh, was no exception. So there was also a category of “empowered” youth, and this category was crucial, serving to deflect criticism from community and human rights organizations for marginalizing the youth. But these “empowered” youths were the minority; they did not understand the plight of the deprived youth in the drug-­infested ghettos and to focus on them would betray the purpose of this chapter. In the ghettos, what proponents of liberalism understand as “empowerment” was absent. Instead, they were influenced by the narrative the regime and Ekutay members presented to the underprivileged youth. This narrative did not point to Ekutay as the source of the ills in the ghettos; but, rather, to the hegemonic economic policies of western liberal countries championed by the international financial and development agencies, such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The conditionalities of these institutions were presented to the youth as the leading causes of their predicament. The 1980s was the decade when the political awakening the youth of the 1970s had fought for began to emerge. That notwithstanding, Ibrahim Abdullah (1998) observes that before the

Ethnopolitics   183 rise of a crop of university-­educated youth (whom he referred to as the savisman: as in “savvy-­man”), the uneducated and largely unemployable ghettoyouths of this era were rarely seen conceptualizing their involuntary classification into the nuanced classes of the “empowered” (if they were politically connected to Ekutay), the “less empowered” (the tertiary-­educated unemployed, the politically unconnected, and the economically marginalized) and the “unempowered” (the uneducated, unemployable in the formal economy). Through this classification, the uneducated and unemployable youth became fatalists. They knew that the lack of political empowerment, due, in part, to Ekutay grip on the overall public sector, was a problem. Unfortunately, there seemed little they could do about it. Since they had already been brain-­washed into believing their predicament resulted from the schemes of neoliberalism as implemented by World Bank and IMF, any inward-­looking re-­assessment of the crucial question—why empowerment was unevenly distributed—was supplanted by political servitude and cultural negritude. Over time, this mindset of blaming external forces while turning a blind eye to the corruption of Ekutay’s ethnonationalism made it possible for the cleavages of ethnicity to reinforce political hierarchies. With one sub-­system (that of Siaka Stevens) down and another, the once less-­known tribal group (the Limbas) and their association (Ekutay) moving up, Sierra Leone was transformed into the political marketplace where the economic means of empowerment were commodities. And the only legitimate currency was political allegiance to Ekutay and symbolic assimilation into the Limbanized nation-­state within the state. Did the regime allow the rarayman access to Ekutay? Not exactly. Were these marginalized youths of any importance to Ekutay and individual members of the government? Yes. These youths were notorious for stirring up social and political tensions; they banked on the belief that they would be protected by the regime as long as they continue to intimate, maim, or kill those opposed to the President, Saidu Momoh, and his Ekutay cabal. By the mid-­1980s, they were so unpopular that people (whether or not they had stake in the regime or Ekutay) saw them as pugnacious beings ready to explode into violence whether provoked or not. In fact, they were calculatedly provocative towards others, including the political opponents of their benefactors in the APC. Making them more intimidating to the patrons’ rivals, there were several incidents in which such rivals were killed by them, while others disappeared and were never found (Lahai 2014, 205–7). Because of their mercenary activities, the majority of the rarayman were ostracized by their families (Betancourt et al. 2013). It was the culture of violence among these youths (or, better still, the foot-­soldiers of the regime) that transformed Sierra Leone, especially the capital city of Freetown, into a violent zone (Peters 2011). Their behaviors helped feed into the psyche of the general youth population that fueled the Revolutionary United Front (RUF ), the rebel group that emerged in 1991 to fight against the APC regime (Abdullah 1998). However, the focus of this section is not so much on the violence these youths committed. There are hundreds of scholarly works that have explained the

184   Ethnopolitics various ways “youth violence” and “youth culture” helped sustain the APC regime (see, for example, McIntyre, Aning, and Addo 2002; Peters 2011; Peters and Richards 1998; Richards 1996; Abdullah 1998a). What this chapter does is illustrate the processes of control (of youth activism against ethnopolitics) and the patterns of resistance (of the youth against the political establishment of the APC and Ekutay). It also explains the regime’s understanding of empowerment and who was entitled to enjoy it. It should be added that the regime’s understanding of empowerment provides a useful frame of reference for explaining the political behaviors of the youth. It also serves as the starting point for understanding that youth’s counter-­mobilization strategies in their advocacy for the granting of more freedoms and rights. That said, in this section a non-­directional approach to study youth ideologies (radical and otherwise) and political participation is employed. To that end, the nature, trends, and characteristics of youth mobilization for, and socialized narratives on, empowerment and their consequences should be understood as the reaction of the marginalized. I suggest that, initially, this reaction depended on three factors. The first was the distinctive characteristics of these marginalized youth: the differences between them and other youth categories, and whether they lived in the rural, peri-­urban, or urban areas. The second was the irreconcilable prejudices they felt against one another and the third the kind of behavior the political establishment expected of them. These political expectations—to kowtow to ethnic politics—would have served the purposes of making the work of the institutions in charge of youth (dis)empowerment and (suppression of ) human rights easier. Whatever the excesses of these rarayman youth, they can be excused as the actions of victims of a restrictive and exploitative political system that created a class of “deplorables,” necessary only as thugs and assassins-­for-hire for the power-­thirsty politicians. Interestingly, this rarayman youth syndrome took an ideological turn (or at least a semblance of it) when a crop of youthful university graduates, fondly called the savisman, who could not find jobs in the formal or informal economic sectors, entered the ghettos. Their entry, writes Ibrahim Abdullah (1998), transformed the rarayman culture to the savvy-­man culture. Who was the savisman and why did he come to dominate the ghetto? The answers to this question, I argue, require inferences from theoretically informed directional analysis of the conditions and lived experiences in the ghettos. By subjecting the lived experiences of the rarayman to neo-­Marxist and Hegelian ideological reasoning—not far removed from what the regime and Ekutay wanted, i.e., that the youth should blame the hegemonic neoliberal policies of the IMF and World Bank—the savisman became the living encyclopedia of the oral histories of youth culture. They came to embody a Hegelian knowledge, however traumatic it was, about the people within the drug-­infested peri-­urban spaces or ghettos. This embodiment also contributed to violent responses. The savisman, we should remember, were either university students or graduates. As such, the campuses of the tertiary institutions became the breeding grounds for mass neo-­Marxist orientation. The next section addresses this issue in line with student unionism and pan-­Africanism.

Ethnopolitics   185 The responses of the “savisman”: student unionism and pan-­Africanism The responses of student unionists, with ideological connections to neo-­Marxism and pan-­Africanism, began to emerge in the 1970s when a group of students, led by people such as Hindolo Trye, formed the Gardeners’ Club. The aim of the Gardeners was to “re-­orientate” newly admitted students at Fourah Bay College regarding the predatory policies of President Siaka Stevens and the APC. Members of this group believed that these newly matriculated students, upon entry into the university, shared a single mindset: that President Stevens was their supreme leader and that any action he took was right. The Gardeners were of the view that it was their moral duty to “sow new ideas” to liberate these imprisoned minds. Just as a gardener sows seed and waters it until it grows and blossoms, so they framed their intervention strategies. They considered these newly admitted students as seeds in need of watering with ideologically conditioned narratives. As expected, the transformation of the university campuses into ideological gardens did not go down well with the APC regime of Siaka Stevens. It took the fight to the students; student unions were banned, and their leaders were arrested, with some were expelled from the university. However, the actions of the APC did not kill the Gardeners’ Club. Instead, student union activities went underground, where they matured before exploding nationwide in 1977. The leaders of the Gardeners Club also hatched another strategy that appeared pro-­APC to uncritical minds, and to the regime and the security forces of President Stevens. This was the founding of the Auradicals Club (as the name implies, meaning the radicals of Mount Aureal). The Auradicals—or “Aura” as they were (and still are) fondly called—took red, the party color of the APC, as their official color, a move to convey an affiliation with the APC. Moreover, the leader of the Auradicals Club took the title of “Dictator” to impersonate the dictatorship of President Stevens.1 Soon after its founding, ethnopolitics began to contaminate the Auradicals Club.2 While membership remained open to any male student from across the ethnic divide, as long as they met the requirement of having above-­average grade points in their coursework, it became apparent to some that the club was under the control of radicals, from the Southern and Eastern Provinces of the country, including secondary school graduates from the prominent schools in these provinces: Christ the King College, Bo School, and Kenema High School. The students who identified themselves with the western (mostly from Freetown) and northern regions, and those who did not want to be identified with any region or ethnic group, protested. As this marginalization continued, amid the heightening levels of inter-­faction violent clashes, the majority of the protesters left the Auradicals and formed the Liberals Club. As a show of opposition to the “Dictator” of the Auradicals, the leader of the Liberals Clubs took the title of “Liberator.” This was to send a message that the “Liberator” had come to liberate the marginalized student unionists, as well as the undecided student population, from the oppressive tendencies of the Auradicals Club and

186   Ethnopolitics its “Dictator.” The initiation rites of both clubs remains a closely guided secret. What is not a secret, however, is the racialized manner in which these clubs identified the other. The Liberals were (and still are) known as “Whiteman,” and the Auradicals, “Blackman.” It is unclear how they acquired these names, but there are several theories. Some believed that these names were self-­ selected. The Liberals felt that they were open-­minded—the kind of open-­ mindedness that contributed to the rise of the European enlightenment, the era of intellectual and scientific progress characterized by the “Whiteman’s” rational and scientific approach to religious, social, political, and economic issues. Others say the Liberals adopted the “Whiteman” nomenclature because they saw themselves as the Europeans, whose mission civilisatrice purportedly brought civilization into the “dark, primitive African continent” (see Lahai 2010a). It is also believed that it was the members of the Liberals Club who gave the Auradicals and the Gardener Club the name “Blackman”—to describe their allegedly crude nature and resistance to change, just as the black Africans/ natives in the Protectorate of Sierra Leone were resistant to the progress the “White Europeans” brought from Europe into the colonized spaces of the black man in 1865. Notwithstanding the influences of ethnopolitics on student unionism, it was at the university colleges that the savisman youth were schooled in the revolutionary thinking that equipped them for the unanticipated roles as leaders and mentors of their counterparts, the rarayman in the ghetto. In the main, real revolutionary education began with the founding of Mass Awareness and Participation (MAP) in 1985. The MAP was a loose coalition of all Fourah Bay College radicals; its main leaders were Alie Kabba (the Student Union president), Olutumi Mark, Haroun Boima, Samuel Foyoh, and Kai Banja. The MAP also had affiliations with members of the Green Book Study Group, which was interested in the revolutionary ideas of Libya’s maverick leader, Muammar Ghadaffi; the Socialist Group, which promoted Hegelian/Marxist thought; and some revolutionary university lecturers, including Olu Gordon and Cleo Hanciles (who, in their student days, were members of either of these groups but were later rusticated for their revolutionary ideas) (Wai 2012, 206). According to Ibrahim Abdullah (1998), MAP members (especially their leaders) were fighting for the marginalized. They were there to lead people who could not be protected by the government and the international community. It was groups such as MAP, the Green Book Study Group, and the Socialist Group that offered the savisman youth the tool they needed: an ideological standpoint for the rationalization of self, others, and the state. After all, the savisman already had the necessary academic foundations to understand the global and local dynamics of governance. They had, at least, some grasp of the scientific study of Sierra Leone’s history; they were experts in sociology, in political theory, development economics, anthropology, and public administration, to name a few of the many interdisciplinary courses they studied at the university colleges. Thus, it was easier for them to rationalize the lives of their counterparts in the ghettos; they were able to deploy plausible arguments, tinctured with fluent prose, when

Ethnopolitics   187 deciphering the fate of the rarayman youth—a fate which the savisman believed was to be remedied through intellectual reawakening. The savisman youth, who saw themselves as the future of the country, had lost confidence in the government. They blamed the regime for almost everything, from creating the conditions for state failure to being complaisant with the IMF and World Bank and, above all, for marginalizing against the youth throughout the 1970s and 1980s (Abdullah 1998; Gberie 2005; Peters 2011). While they were imperfect, the savisman led the rarayman youth to the realization of its assertiveness in ridding the country of festering injustice. With reorientation from the university graduates, the jobless youth built a political platform to resist attempts by the apologists of tribalism and nepotism to muzzle, bully, intimidate, and coerce the majority (as the youth were in the majority in Sierra Leone) to believe in a spurious ethnonationalist project and bogus youth development programmes. On their platforms in the ghettos, their lived experiences self-­evidently explained that there are fundamentals of human history throughout time: that governments that fail to adhere to natural justice, lack commitment to governing in ways that protect the positive rights of their citizens, and refuse to include equity in measures of development and empowerment, inevitably weaken themselves. And, sooner or later, even the most docile beings within the ethnopolitical spaces of the country would have a change of heart and dedicate themselves to bringing about change—or to die trying to enforce change. There was, therefore, a need for the alignment of revolutionary militancy in the narratives of the savisman and rarayman youths. MAP, which had begun the revolutionary drive, was not willing to go down the path of aggression. As a result, by 1987, it began to lose its popularity to the more militant pan-­African populist group calling itself the Pan-­African Union (PANAFU). The gradual shift from the radical, but anti-­civil war, student unionism championed by MAP to the political populism of PANAFU was spurred, in part, by a parallel desire to build a unified “Youthman identity.” If they were to succeed in keeping their internal mechanics vibrant, they should see their deprived circumstances as unifying the uneducated (rarayman) and educated (savisman) youth to work towards achieving relative justice and equity. Amid all this, they (or at least the majority of the PANAFU members) were also in favor of war, if that was the only means by which they would get the political establishment to listen to them. To promote their beliefs, PANAFU created many study groups or revolutionary cells nationwide. Zubairu Wai noted that PANAFU molded the revolutionary ideas of youth empowerment and rejection of the ethnopolitical narratives of President Momoh’s Ekutay regime. The ideas of PANAFU were quick to take root in the diamond mining areas, especially in Kono and Tongo, where its revolutionary cells were established in 1987 by a man called Victor Ebiyemi Reider. In 1986, Reider recruited a man called Foday Sankoh into PANAFU. Five years later, in 1991, Sankoh and his RUF rebel forces declared the start of a very “uncivil” civil war against the APC regime and members of Ekutay. It should be noted

188   Ethnopolitics that not all PANAFU members were in favor of the calls for war, with PANAFU3 divided between the “moderates” and the “hawks.” The moderates were led by former Fourah Bay College lecturers Olu Gordon and Cleo Hanciles; the hawks by Victor Reider, Abu Kanu, Rashid Mansaray, and Alie Kabba. Writing about the split, Zubairu Wai noted that, at a special PANAFU session in June 1987, the issue was tabled for consideration. After the majority voted against an adventurist military enterprise in the name of a revolution, and a split occurred within the union by which the minority favoring armed struggle and training in Libya were eventually expelled from the union, the enterprise ceased to be a collective project. (Wai 2012, 207) With the moderates in control of PANAFU, they began a (short-­lived) project of social assertiveness against the ethnopolitical representations of the marginal youth. They used music and unsanctioned public lectures in the ghettos to advocate for political inclusiveness and the economic empowerment of youths, alongside their broader human rights demands. Regarding the use of music, they promoted both African and non-­African genres to spread their message. From Africa, they used the Gumbay, Mutti, Maringa, and Fela Anikulapo-­Kuti genres. These included songs from Afro-­pop artists such as Seydu, Abdul Tee-­Jay, Bosco Banks, Abu White, Daddy Rahmanu, and Patricia Bakarr; Calypso musicians such as Sabanoh 75, Super Combo, and Afro-­National; Afro-­Jazz artists such as the pan-­Africanist Afro-­beat maestro Fela Kuti of Nigeria; and Congolese rumba/ soukous/ndombolo performers such as Papa Wemba and Kanda Bongo Man. From outside Africa, they used the emancipatory songs of Bob Marley and Peter Tosh. They also employed the dress codes of Michael Jackson (whose jheri curls were the trend among the ghetto savisman) and Stanley Kirk Burrel (aka MC Hammer) and his “Hammer pants.” Citing the works of the existential philosopher Jean-­Paul Sartre, Lahai (2014) observes that, to these PANAFU moderates, music was an instrument for the authentication of their place in society. It was, for the moderates, the social means through which they hoped to get the wider Sierra Leonean society to see their individual differences as parts of the same puzzle.4 On the question of economic empowerment (which they believed was a fundamental human right), the moderates in PANAFU focused their criticism on two fronts: the Ekutay group and the international financial institutions in the country (that is, the IMF and the World Bank). Ekutay’s perspectives on the youth have already been discussed; however, I should add here that the youth reaction to this perspective consisted of a cycle of protests, arrests, imprisonment, and release throughout the era of President Momoh. Apart from tribalism, there were the problems of corruption and its impact on youth empowerment. For example, the government spent excessively on the procurement of Pajero SUVs, which were a status symbol for the politicians, but thus also symbol of an oppressive ethnopolitical class division, further fueling the anti-­government activities of the marginalized youth. In any case, bribery, embezzlement and the

Ethnopolitics   189 abuse of fiscal power (all of which contributed to the rise of the informal political economy) aside, there was also a continuing downward trend in local businesses amid a debt crisis. Chief among the economic rights-­related challenges was the problem of joblessness and its impact on poverty and mortality in slum communities and ghettos. As for the IMF ’s and World Bank’s dealings with the government, the reaction of the moderate youth was, like that of their hawkish peers, highly ideological and theoretically informed by neo-­Marxist philosophy and Franz Fanon’s postcolonial theorization of underdevelopment in Africa. The Sierra Leone that was known for its relatively stable economy before the coming of the APC into power in 1968 was no more. The IMF/World Bank had entered the scene as far back as 1966 (Fisher 1969, 619) but, by 1986, despite the regime’s outrageous human rights performance and blatant disregard for the methodical neoliberal path to economic growth, these international fiscal institutions were virtually dictating (through their structural adjustment policies) government policy in crucial sectors such as education and youth employment (Reno 1996; Riddell 1992; Herbst 1990; Mosley, Subasat, and Weeks 1995; Adepoju 1993). Before these structural adjustment policies became a reality, the youth had the power to force their government to reject the tempting financial loans and grants from these Bretton Woods institutions. For instance, in 1967, when the IMF approved a “stand-­by” loan of $7.5 million for the government (to be repaid by 1971), it was reported that the youth protested against the Juxon-­Smith junta, the National Reformation Council. Despite Lt. Juxon-­Smith’s insistence that the IMF “had saved our lives” (Fisher 1969, 619), to the youth, the consequences of this salvation outweighed the benefits. Of course, the IMF was not going to interfere in the internal political affairs of the country, but the youth of the 1960s, who were more interested in upholding the sovereignty of their independent country, were not the youths of the 1980s. This 1980s-generation youth was well-informed. For the PANAFU moderates, both the economic policies and interventions by the IMF/World Bank and the Government of Sierra Leone should be subjected to the scrutiny of their members in the ghettos. Such institutional policies, to these moderate youths, were “seen as illegitimate until they were scrutinized and the reasons behind their formulation and the possible outcomes understood.”5 Interestingly, while statements like this reveal the objectional tendencies of the youths, it also exposed how the youths (whether PANAFU moderates or not) came to believe the potes (their drug-infested gathering places) and ghettos were an alternative parliament. In this unofficial and unsanctioned parliament, they believed they had the moral power to scrutinize what the IMF/World Bank dictated to the government, and what the government suggested to Ekutay, and what Ekutay instructed the legislative and executive arms of government to do in serving the interests of their political patron, President Momoh. Emphatically, therefore, the youths knew they were up against internal and external forces that were trying to cover up the ills of a a failing economy (Longhurst, Kamara and Mensurah 1988). The government was  unable to repay its loans and was reliant on the “generosity” of the regulators of the Washington Consensus for a series of

190   Ethnopolitics flexible repayment plans for subsidizing petroleum and rice importation (Luke and Riley 1989). They knew that debt-­forgiveness (for the IMF ’s stand-­by $7.5 million loan in 1967), which attracted a series of unhelpful structural adjustment policies from the Washington Consensus, was not enough to resolve the problem of unemployment and youth marginalization (Fabricant et al. 1999; Reno 1996; McIntyre et al. 2002). Whether this was the intention behind the calling for the economic liberalization of an already failed economy is open for debate. What was certain was that it was no longer about investing in the government’s efforts to reshape the economy. Both moderates and hawks knew that with the natural resources of the country under the control of a rogue network of businessmen from the Middle East (Smillie et al. 2000), it would take a miracle to remove all restrictions and expand fiscal accountability, transparency, and discipline to resuscitate the diamond industry. Even at that, there was no guarantee that the diamond industry would create more jobs for the youths in the mining towns of Kono and Tongo. In fact, it was as a result of the inability of the diamond sector to provide jobs, amid a recession that hit the sector in the 1980s, that contributed to the radicalization of the young townsfolk, who had already been indoctrinated by Victor Reider, Foday Sankoh, and others (Wai 2012, 207).

Notes 1 There are, however, some who believed the title of dictator was adopted from the group’s reading of Plato’s Republic and the way it was re-­created in the story of Julius Caesar who, following his return from defeating the Gaul, Egypt, Pharnaces, and Juba, was made “dictator” by the Roman Senate in 49 bc. 2 When I first published an article on the role of ethnopolitics in student union politics (and violence) on the Freedom of Information Listserve, on May 29, 2010, the article was widely discussed in Sierra Leone (and by the Sierra Leone diaspora). Some accepted, and others—all die-­hards of either the Auradicals or the Liberals—wrote responses to my piece. Examples of these responses include the following: Solomon Moriba (of the Auradicals Club) noted (on May 30, 2010) that: In terms of relations between the entities, you may be right on some of your assertions, but you also overlooked a whole lot of facts which I don’t have time to state here now. But it has never really been about tribe or region. I must express that I’m a proud “Blackman” and member of the esteemed Auradicals Club. I’m equally proud to say that during my days at Fourah Bay College, I made many good and lasting friends with members of the “White camp” and I have no regrets for that. It’s all about tolerance and exploring the richness in diversity which I believe has mostly been lacking amongst many students. Oswald Hanciles (who was a student of the university in the 1970s) noted on May 31, 2010) that: From what I have learned of the Blackman/Whiteman phenomenon in FBC especially, the two major political blocks on FBC have membership that cut across tribe and region. I know (knew) of Temne-­speaking Northerners who were fervent members of the Auradicals/Blackman grouping—and blue-­blooded Mende-­ speaking South-­Easterners who were ardent supporters of Liberals/Whiteman group. But, the truth is that most of those in the Auradical/Blackman group were  Mende-­speaking South-­Easterners. Its core ideology is to ensure that

Ethnopolitics   191 Mende-­speaking South-­Easterners sustain themselves in power, or, grab power, from the “kaffris”—those who are the “ethnic enemies,” the Temne-­speaking of the North and Creole minority of the west. You see, the rabid ethnicism among the leadership in our political realm which we have discussed so passionately on this forum appears to be nurtured in our tertiary institutions. Our ethnic politics “nor born good pikin.” My hope is that the youth in my country would be stimulated to think more rationally than my generation and will be spurred to become the best among the best among humanity anywhere on our planet. Confronting the dark forces in groups such as Aura’/Liberals could be a necessary “removal of a plaque from a tooth.” For other responses see: https://uk.groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/foisl//conversations/ messages/16080 (accessed: August 19, 2017). 3 Another noteworthy observation is that Foday Sankoh—who started the civil war—did not gain entry into PANAFU because of his educational background. He was not a university-­educated man and had only a primary school education when he joined the army—where he rose to the rank of a corporal before he was dismissed and became a photographer-­for-hire in the mining communities of Kono and Koidu. 4 Of course, not every Sierra Leonean accepted the authenticity of the narratives of youth empowerment embedded in these competing music genres. Some non-­moderates, like Foday Sankoh, were not receptive to the pro-­western narratives contained in the Americanized music that they tried to adaptively re-­contextualize to fit into the anti-­ neoliberal human rights, authoritarian space. Others felt none of the musical genres they were using to convey their messages were authentically Sierra Leonean. Due, in part, to technological constraints, attempts to blend traditional instruments (like the Djembe drums, which are traditionally a musical symbol of people’s collective voice) and western instruments (such as the guitar) in the production of a convoluted music genre were neither authentically Caribbean, Rastafarian reggae, Maringa (of the Trinidadian calypso genre), Fela Kuti’s Nigerian Afro-­jazz (ibid., 206), nor can it be called Daddy Loco’s Gumbey genre. Hence, the hawks’ lack of interests (ibid., 207). Nevertheless, there was definitely a positive outcome to their effort. I argue elsewhere that, by “changing their lyrical narratives and rhythm,” they were able to create “an expressive space for the amalgamation of competing expressions of indigenous Sierra Leonean language,” thus exposing the complexities surrounding the attempts of the ghetto PANAFU savisman youth to create “a distinct cultural identity for themselves” (Lahai 2014, 209). Moreover, they should also be credited for using music as a subjective means of communicating their lived experiences, which they “reinforced by a nuanced self-­regulated creative imagination about self and belongingness to the country’s cultural past” (ibid.). Their music, irrespective of the genre, was the rhythm of their un/disclosed lived experiences; their platforms, the clubs and the ghettos, however constrained, became the arena where they disclosed their displeasures, explained their desires and proffered possible solutions; and the musicians they identified with represented their stories. 5 Respondent John Doe; focus group discussions with five men who are former members of PANAFU and were very active in the ghettos: two of them in the Fourah Bay community, one from Bo, and two from the diamond fields of Tongo and Kono.

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194   Ethnopolitics Reno, William. 1996. “Ironies of post-­Cold War structural adjustment in Sierra Leone.” Review of African Political Economy 23 (67): 7–18. Richards, Paul. 1996. Fighting for the Rainforest: War, Youth, and Resources in Sierra Leone. Oxford, UK: James Currey. Riddell, J. Barry. 1992. “Things fall apart again: Structural adjustment programmes in Sub-­Saharan Africa.” The Journal of Modern African Studies 30 (1): 53–68. Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission. 2004. “Chapter one, historical antecedents to the conflict (volume three a).” Freetown, SL: Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission. www.sierraleonetrc.org/index.php/view-­report-text-­vol-3a/item/ volume-­three-a-­chapter-one. Smillie, Ian, Lansana Gberie and Ralph Hazleton. 2000. The Heart of the Matter: Sierra Leone Diamonds and Human Security. Partnership Africa Canada Ottawa. www. pacweb.org/Documents/diamonds_KP/heart_of_the_matter-­full-2000-01-eng.doc. Wai, Zubairu. 2012. Epistemologies of African Conflicts: Violence, Evolutionism, and the War in Sierra Leone. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Wylie, Kenneth. 1977. Political Kingdoms of the Temne. London: Holmes & Meier Publishers. Wyse, Akintola. 2003. H. C. Bankole-­Bright and Politics in Colonial Sierra Leone, 1919–1958. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Zack-­Williams, Alfred B. 2001. “The Ekutay: Ethnical cabal and politics in Sierra Leone,” in E. I. Udogu (ed.), Issue of Political Ethnicity in Africa. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 125–48.

11 (Wo)men’s rights in the neopatrimonial/ethnopolitical spaces, 1967–1991

The decades between the years 1967 and 1992—the period when the autocratic APC governed Sierra Leone—can best be described as the decades of impossibility in terms of the attainment of a gender-­equal society in the postcolonial state. This was the period when, for the first time in the history of Sierra Leone, gender-­based violence was endorsed by the presidency (see, for example, Lahai 2010; Gberie 2005; Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission 2004). In Chapter 9, I talked about “state capture”: the way in which the neopatrimonial regime of President Stevens used an informal patron–clientele system as a strategy to compensate for the questionable legitimacy of the regime; a system that calls on the “select few”—the representatives of the people—to pretend to be responsible to their electors. In Chapter 10, I also explained the nature and consequences of ethnopolitics in producing the conditions that necessitated the use of age-­based inter-­generational differences, and ethnonationalism to discriminate against the youths. The patriarchal imbalances of rights during this era not only explain the nature of political autocracy. They also created the parameters for armed conflict (between 1991 and 2002) and dictated the platform—the bodies of women—where this conflict was to be fought.

The decades of impossibility: gender-­based inequality before the law From whichever angle one looks at it, women were on the political frontline of the neopatrimonial rule of President Stevens and the ethnopolis created by President Momoh. The masculine militancy and patriarchal social hierarchies of both regimes created an impenetrable glass ceiling that prevented women from challenging what can best be described (using the words of Aili Tripp) as the male-­controlled “societal forces” of the “state clientelistic practices” (Tripp 2001, 33). As it was during colonial rule, so was the situation of women in the postcolonial state—between 1971 (when Sierra Leone became a republic under Siaka Stevens) and 1992 (the year President Momoh’s regime fell). In the postcolonial state, there were two types of women’s groups: those without connections to the governing APC regime of Stevens and, later, Momoh, and those

196   (Wo)men’s rights with direct ties to the APC. Those without affiliation to the government included the Sierra Leone Women’s Movement I (SLWM I), which was active between 1951 and 1984 (Denzer 1987; Lahai 2010; Steady 2005), the SLWM II, active between 1985 and 1990 (Steady 2006), and the Women’s Association for National Development (WAND); although founded in 1991, WAND was largely a continuation of SLWM (Lahai 2016, 69). Those with connections to the government included the National Congress of Sierra Leone Women (NCSLW) and the pro-­Iran (anti-­west) Association of Muslim Women (AMW). One noteworthy observation is that, irrespective of political affiliation, these groups were a mere socio-­political façade concealing the crises of gender-­based political inequalities, and a strategy to deny the prevalence of sexual and gender-­based violence. Ironically, when it came to finding social legitimacy for their claim of being a grassroots political movement, the anti-­gender equality ideologues of the APC relied on the women’s wing of the party, the NCSLW and the AMW (Sierra Leone Truth & Reconciliation Commission 2004). These groups were an active force behind the regime’s grassroots mobilization. However, any attempts by these pro-­APC women’s groups to get the government to translate party propaganda on women’s empowerment into action, patriarchal narratives that had historically prevented women from breaking the politico-­economic glass ceiling were invoked. The regime was aware of the problems affecting women but, as women were an afterthought in politics, their collective attempts through these groups to further their political interests were suppressed. The patron and clientele in the neopatrimonial state of Stevens and the ethnopolis of Momoh preferred to promote women who projected themselves as individuals and contain those who presented themselves as “representatives” of the feminist collective, be it pro- or anti-­APC. To the patriarchs of the APC, empowerment of women who represented a wider feminist movement was suicidal. They remembered how the empowered women’s wing of the SLPP in the 1950s had been one of the vital social forces challenging the clientelist practices, the politicization of communal differences, and the personalized rule of the colonial administration and the government of Prime Minister Milton Margai. They did not intend to make the same mistake of allowing these groups to become a formidable political force. To prevent such an outcome, they were careful to prevent the leaders of these groups from becoming too powerful. A case in point is Nancy Steele’s story. Steele, as the leader of the National Congress of Sierra Leone Women, was a focal point of the national grassroots mobilization for the APC. Like all politicians, Filomena Steady reported that, Mrs. Steele has ambitions of attaining high political office. She works hard for the party and is responsible for much of the mobilization of women to the party. Her efforts do not cease after elections but continue to ensure that the party is enlarged. [The National] Congress [of Sierra Leone Women] provides her with a means of mobilizing women, but in addition, it also

(Wo)men’s rights   197 provides her with a platform to assert her political stature. This she achieves through speeches, rallies, conventions, and inauguration of branches throughout the country. the backing of Congress provides her with enough support to attain her political goal, which is a seat in Parliament, and, if possible, a ministry. Mrs Steele, once regarded as a dead certainty on the ticket, was not given a party symbol. She stood as an independent and lost.  (Steady 1975, 78) It cannot be said that the regime did not promote the political empowerment of all women. However, the women promoted by the patriarchs of the APC were those who came forward in their individual capacities to run for political office. For example, Paramount Chief Madam Honoria Bailor-­Caulker was given the go-­ahead to contest a parliamentary seat as the APC candidate in her home district of Moyamba, southern Sierra Leone, in the by-­elections of 1977. She won and became the first female parliamentarian of the APC. Five other women were also elected to the Freetown Council in 1975. In 1977, Dr. June Matilda Bernice Holst-­Roness became mayor of Freetown (Sierra Leone Truth & Reconciliation Commission 2004, 95). This selective empowerment of individual women was apparently a deliberate move to use patriarchal discourses on gender identity to instrumentalize sexuality in producing a hierarchy of rights. Within this gender-­ based hierarchy, political rights were above the economic; the economic over the social; and the social over the cultural. In terms of political rights, what mattered were the unquestioned rights of the regime, and the pre-­conditioned obligations of women to be subservient to the regime’s authority (Day 2008). This was a Machiavellian attempt to use the “strong men/weak women” narrative to create and sustain the political relevance of the public–private distinction and militant political spaces. Society was expected to promote the idea that politics (the public space) was a domain for men and the home (the private space), which was regulated by complex, layered belief systems that precluded gender equality before the law, the abode of the women. However, there were women who resisted this Machiavellian political order. They included Stella Thomas Marke, Edna S. Elliot-­Horton, Lorine E. Miller, Lottie Black, Mabel Dove, Lena Weber, Constance Cummings-­John, Stella Ralph James, Madam Ella Koblo Gulama, Nancy Koroma, Etta Harris, and Hannah Benka-­Coker (Lahai 2010; Abdullah 2014; Denzer 1987). These women were of the view that a country that could not promote equal gender political representation was not ready to commit itself to upholding the human rights of its citizenry (Cummings-­John 1995; Day 2008). Besides, if political rights were to be granted, these women refused to accept being confined to the intimate space in which their only relevance was providing sexual comfort to the male political elites. Emphatically, therefore, these women were in favor of the granting of rights and recognitions that went beyond the superficial authority attributed to the “Office of the First Lady,” the President’s wife, whose presence in the corridors of powers exemplified, at best, the “mothering roles” of womanhood (Lahai

198   (Wo)men’s rights 2016). At this juncture, the idea of liberalized feminism—and everything it stood for—was fiercely contested by the male politicians1 of the neopatrimonial postcolonial state. These politicians, conditioned into seeing their political survival as requiring the relegation of women to the background, saw the typical agenda of women’s rights advocates as part of the grand strategy of the liberal west to reconfigure the postcolonial space. As with the experiences of the women in the first and second waves of feminism between the 1920s and 1950s at the hands of the colonial administrators and the chieftains of the protectorate (see Chapter 7), so too in the postcolonial space did the strategy to prevent women attaining equal status before the law call for the conquest and control of the gendered spaces, including women’s sexuality (Cummings-­John 1995). The net effect of both subtle and blatant attempts to control such gendered spaces was seen in the creation of a marginal, albeit informal, political space that steered women into the political pheriphery. Within this limited space, women were expected—and sometimes forced—to only speak truth to power as long as that truth was not aimed at challenging the gender insensitivities of the state: its political, socio-­ cultural, economic, and legal apparatuses of control. With regards to economic rights, the regime was only concerned about its pseudo-­Marxist rights to control, on the one hand, the economic modes of production—land, labor, and capital—and, on the other hand, the economic functions of the family. Here, women were expected to remain invisible, even though they were the ones who undertook many of the everyday agro-­economic activities (Kamara 2008), amid the performance of their unpaid domestic duties (Abdullah 2014); while the men (the employed, the unemployed, the idlers, and the unemployable alike) were expected to be seen—by the public—to be aspiring to be the visible economic task-­masters of their homes (Lahai 2015). With regards to social rights, while the system allowed women to socialize and to engage in either hypogamous or hypergamous conjugal relationships; the young women were given the space to use their sexuality (through the acceptance of clitoridectomy (Coulter 2005)) as an agentive platform in their socialized process of becoming “marriageable”; to uphold the cultural expectations of their families, and not bring shame and dishonor to their (patrilineal) family names— by living, for example, promiscuous lifestyles (Lahai 2016). Interestingly, since “cultural belief systems” determined the legitimacy of power and authority, their familial interpretative connotations of what women’s rights meant was most apparent in the laws of the country. The constitutional laws of the country, I argue, were an instrument of domination. Through it, women’s gender-­specific rights were decided, and outcomes reached, within the cultural boundaries of patriarchy (Lahai and Lahai 2017). It is arguable that, in both theory and practice, whenever women’s rights issues are subjected to the discriminatory and oppressive predispositions of men, the outcome is likely be asymmetrically disadvantageous to women (Becker 1999; Lahai 2016). In the context of “doing politics,” for the sake of sustaining a patriarchal political system, it is possible for a clash of beliefs between cultural-­relativist and neoliberal understandings of human rights to occur. This was especially true for the period between 1968 and

(Wo)men’s rights   199 1992. During this period, women were expected to conform to the gender-­based exclusionary cultural norms regulating the human rights institutions of the state, both at the national and sub-­national/village levels (Lahai and Lahai 2017).

The constitutionality of the suppression of women’s rights There was a corollary between the cultural value system of gender-­based oppression (of women) and the political conditioning of women’s legal entitlements. Against this backdrop, in writing about the “constitutionality” of the suppression of women’s rights, my focus is not on what would seem vexing to a rational mind but, rather, on what the regime saw as lawfully allowed—either explicitly or implicitly—in its necropolitical constitutional laws. As we shall see in the following sections, the law was a system of control that was, to use Mary Becker’s words, “male-­centered, male-­identified,” and “male-­dominated.” The performative function of these male-­identified laws went beyond situating the male as a subject (the benefactor) and the female as object (the loser). Instead, it purposively sought—successfully at that—to justify the patriarchal tendencies of the male-­controlled government’s injustice to women (for the greater good) and, at the same time, deny, whenever the need arose, its disastrous oppression of the womenfolk. In January 1974, the government of President Stevens announced its plan to amend, by the end of 1975, the Constitution of Sierra Leone. This announcement came immediately after the United Nations’ declaration, on January 9, 1974, of the “Decade of Women” (1975–1985). Thus, the government’s announcement was seen by many as a message to the feminist movement. While the world— 133 governments and 6,000 non-­governmental organizations (NGOs)—was in Mexico City deliberating on a global plan of action for achieving the objective of the UN’s International Women’s Year, the Parliament of Sierra Leone, with the support of the Ministry of Justice, was also busy either amending or putting modalities in place for the effective implementation of the Offenses Against the Persons Act of 1861, the Provincial Land Act (Cap. 122, as amended by Act No. 29) of 1972, and the Citizenship Act of 1973. It is against this backdrop that I argue that the laws that discriminated against women, irrespective of their political affiliations, included (1) the laws on gender-­based offenses, (2) land and inheritance rights, (3) marriage and divorce, and (4) citizenship.

The laws regulating gender-­based offenses The crime of abortion: an “unnatural” gender-­based offense? With the unrelenting pressures from the several Christian organizations, including the Christian Mission Society, the colonial government of Governor Stephen John Hill, during his third term as governor2 (1860–1861), decided to domesticate the law of the realm through the English Offences Against the Person Act of 1861. This Act, as interpreted in a progression of case law and judicial

200   (Wo)men’s rights precedents, outlawed the following offenses: sodomy and bestiality, bigamy, homosexuality, prostitution (thus legitimating the suppression of brothels by any means possible), abortion, and bodily harm. It interpreted these offenses as felonies against self and others, and against the empire. In 1973, the government of Siaka Stevens linked this Act to the Pharmacy and Drugs Act of 1968 (which made it a criminal offense to sell contraceptives and abortion pills) and the Public Order Act of 1965. The amended Act (of 1973) gave the state’s security apparatuses (the police and the courts) the powers to crack down on women who attempted to exercise their self-­proclaimed (but statutorily illegal) reproductive rights. It is worth quoting in extenso the relevant clauses on abortion in this amended Act (Sections 58 and 59), which increased jail time from three to five years: Section 58. Every woman being with child who, with intent to procure her own miscarriage, shall unlawfully administer to herself any poison or other noxious thing, or shall unlawfully use any instrument or other means whatsoever with the like intent, and whosoever, with the intent to procure the miscarriage of any woman, whether she be or be not with child, shall unlawfully administer to her or cause to be taken by her any poison or other noxious thing, or shall unlawfully use any instrument or other means whatsoever with the like intent, shall be guilty of a felony and being convicted thereof shall be liable to imprisonment for life. Section 59. Whosoever shall unlawfully supply any poison or other noxious thing, or any instrument or thing whatsoever, knowing that the same is intended to be unlawfully used or employed with the intent to procure the miscarriage of any woman, whether she be or not be with child, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and being convicted thereof shall be liable to imprisonment for any term not exceeding five years. In 1982, soon after the adoption of this amended Act, the government of President Stevens created the National Population Commission (NPC). The NPC was created with the purpose of giving the regime the constitutional power to do what it knew how to do best, violate women (in the name of putting an end to the crime of abortion, and without any consequences). The NPC was charged, in line with its substantive constitutional duties, with the responsibility, first, to conduct (and keep all records of ) national population censuses and, second, to draw up a framework for reversing the trends in maternal mortality in the country. At the time of the NPC’s establishment, mortality rates were between 1,700 and 2,000 deaths per 5,000 live births, with an estimated rate of 4.5 dead children per every woman with ten children. In its report of 1983, the NPC recommended the elevation of the crime of abortion from a misdemeanor to second-­degree murder. This recommendation led to legal tensions between the NPC and the pro-­ choice feminist groups: the SLWM, the WAND, the Planned Parenthood Association, the Marie Stopes Clinics (which began operations in Sierra Leone in

(Wo)men’s rights   201 1976), and the local grassroots association of midwives. The pro-­choice groups protested. They asked their legal representative, Betts and Berewa Solicitors, to petition the Supreme Court of Sierra Leone to determine the constitutionality of the NPC’s recommendation to government.3 In making their case, these pro-­ choice groups relied on the High Court of England’s ruling in the case R v. Bourne in 1938. In R v. Bourne (which was a case on the necessity of action), a physician was acquitted of the offence of performing an abortion in the case of a woman who had been raped. The court ruled that the abortion was lawful because it had been performed to prevent the woman from becoming “a physical and mental wreck,” thus setting a precedent for future abortion cases performed on the grounds of preserving the pregnant woman’s physical and mental health.4 What was confusing to the women was that this Offences Against the Person Act had not included the crime of abortion under the crimes listed in sections 18 and 20. These sections listed crimes of grievous bodily harm, including rape (with a penalty of life imprisonment) and wounding (with a penalty of five years in prison). But in the case of abortion, the NPC wanted it to be included either as a punishable crime of bodily harm (under Section 18 of the Offences Against the Person Act) or a second-­degree murder (under Section 58 of the Offences Against the Person Act). Speaking on the grounds of anonymity, one of the leading counsel for the pro-­choice groups opined that the whole [NPC] report was a charade aimed at women. The parliamentarians who were in support of the death penalty for the offense of abortion were trying to shift attention from what mattered: the crimes of sexual and gender-­based violence being committed against women.5 Another contended, on condition of anonymity, that “they [the government] would not go after the male perpetrators of sexual violence because some were the footsoldiers of the regime.”6 For these respondents, nothing should be expected to procure justice for the womenfolk: not when “some of these rapists and women abusers were the guns-­for-hire for top government politicians,”7 and not when “[in] many cases … these male perpetrators were known to have killed the political opponents of their pay-­masters; and rape the daughters, sisters, mothers, and wives of their dead victims.”8 Sexual and gender-­based violence: the question of a burden of proof A characteristic feature of the responses of these interviewees was their frustrations over the near-­impossibility of women victims obtaining justice. This point, which attends to the second example of discriminatory laws on gender-­based crimes, tells us that most of the complaints of the women victims in these politically motivated sexualized crimes were thrown out of the courts. The courts

202   (Wo)men’s rights were known for asking women to prove the crime, merely because they (the judges and magistrates) wanted to justify their notorious gender-­insensitive action against victims of rape. This did baffle women, because Sections 18 and 20 of the Act did not state that grievous bodily harm should be permanent or present at the time the matter was reported, especially on matters dealing with forced penetration. As a matter of fact, the Act said the court should be satisfied with any one of three conditions. First, where the victim had suffered an injury, such as a broken skin on both the dermis and epidermis. In the case of penetration, the “broken skin threshold” should be proven by a medical report, especially where the defendant(s) had pleaded not guilty on the grounds of an alibi. Second, in the case of forced penetration, the court should be satisfied if the allegation was not based on the injurious withdrawal of consent. Third, if the allegation was supported by witnesses who satisfied the locus in quo requirement—that is, were present at the scene where the cause of action or event took place—and were able to recognize the accused. These benchmarks, taken at face value, would imply a duty of care on the part of the courts to promote judicial fairness. However, this was not the case. Of the 142 cases9 between 1978 and 1988 that I reviewed in the course of researching this book, 114 were dismissed or the accused acquitted because the women were unable to prove beyond reasonable doubt that they were victims of rape. In Sierra Leone, as a common law country, the courts had historically been influenced by precedent set in contentious cases within the Commonwealth of Nations, mainly England and Wales. Under an autocratic regime that had little interest in the furtherance of human rights, however, the courts were only interested in such precedent where it afforded loopholes to legitimize their legal errors or allowed them to invoke what some of my interlocutors argue were depraved legal opinions (whether majority or dissenting) in rulings from other Commonwealth countries.10 Thus, when matters of rape were brought before the courts the burden was on the victim to prove beyond reasonable doubt that a rape had occurred. Even with witnesses there were cases in which the victim was required, for example, to “recognize” the size of a penis (under the threshold of identifiable evidence). One legal loophole the courts relied on between 1977 and 1992 derived from the ruling of the Criminal Division of the English Courts of Appeal in R v. Turnbull and Another; R v. Whitby; R v. Roberts (of July 1977; QB 224). In this case, Lord Widgery CJ set out two contentious (or controversial from a liberal feminist standpoint) criteria that imposed limitations on the use of “recognition evidence.” In Lord Widgery words, in the first instance, whenever the case against an accused depends wholly or substantially on the correctness of one or more identifications of the accused which the defence alleges to be a mistaken, the Judge should warn the jury of the special need for caution before convicting the accused in reliance on the correctness of the identification or identifications. In addition, he should instruct them as to the reason for the need for such a warning and should

(Wo)men’s rights   203 make some reference to the possibility that a mistaken witness can be a convincing one and that a number of such witnesses can all be mistaken. Provided this is done in clear terms the Judge need not use any particular form of words. (Lord Widgery CJ (at p. 228), quoted in Beckerlegge, Hungerford-­Welch, and McPeake 2010, 220) Speaking from a procedural perspective, Geert-­Jan Alexander Knoops (2013) contends that these fundamental requirements have historically shaped many rulings—thus, exposing the dangers of miscarriage of justice, and the acquittal and discharge of criminals—in countries that follow the common law tradition. Beyond such jurisprudential loopholes lay the cultural dimensions of the problem with which women (victims and those in conflict with the law, alike) had to cope. Without dismissing the relevance of the tribal worldviews about sexual identity, there was a lack of a concise definition of marital rape, on the one hand and, on the other, the definitional distinction between relational discipline and abuse in the Offences Against the Person Act of 1861 (as amended in 1973). Unlike the Creoles, whose cultural belief regarding women’s rights were comparatively more receptive to liberal feminism, the other 15 ethnic groups’ understanding of what was culturally acceptable had a range of nuances. There was a commonly held belief among these groups that it was acceptable for the man to discipline the women in his household. This discipline could take the form of beating, isolation, or short-­term food deprivation. Women were expected to conform to this belief, which contributed to their objectification in the public and private arenas. It was considered a taboo, on the other hand, for a wife to subject her husband to these forms of discipline. Culture taught her not to beat the husband or to starve him by refusing to cook, and she must make herself available for sexual intercourse. Women who flouted these norms were not only considered cursed (a disgraceful attribute that reflected badly on her paternal and maternal families), but their actions were considered an open invitation to the husband to marry another wife—in a cultural setting where polygyny (the practice whereby the man was allowed to have many wives) was celebrated and polyandry (whereby a woman takes multiple husbands) was a criminal offense. With the cultural regulations of gender-­based affinities considered an instrument of political control, the patriarchs and unapologetic ideologues of the one-­ party state knew that when women were made to feel helpless, they were inadvertently creating spaces (at the domestic levels) where politically insignificant men would violate women to compensate for their powerlessness to defy their politically powerful overlords, the politicians. Put another way, culture presented the bodies of women as the platform where any male, frustrated by the governance of the regime, could use sexual and gender-­based violence as a coping mechanism. To these ends, to remove the motif of culture (which was in favor of the use of the household to contain the marginal man and hide the vulnerable woman and girl-­child) and reject the loopholes of the law, was detrimental to the political survival of the regime.

204   (Wo)men’s rights That said, to my interviewees, the Offences Against the Person Act was about the insulation of the cultural drivers of patriarchy. Patriarchy was used to condition the lives of women, as well as to decide the fate of the women’s empowerment movements operating outside approved channels and spaces; that is, groups other than the regime’s affiliated groups, the AMW and the NCSLW. Thus, the successes and failures of the pro-­choice grassroots groups depended on, among other things, the regime’s readings of the functionality of sex (attending to its erotic meaning), and the intersections of political militancy in “holding down” a subjugated people. If anything, the erotic functionality of sex exposed the hypocrisies of the “big women” or the “Mamie queens” (or godmothers) of the Central Committee of the APC, Haja Fatmata Saso, Kaindeh Bangura, Rebecca Stevens (wife of President Siaka Stevens), Hannah Momoh (wife of President Momoh), and Nancy Steele. They were the frontline champions of the common narrative that “behind every strong state and strong man, there was a woman.” Yet they refused to side with those who opposed the subjugation of their peers to politically motivated gender-­based violence (Dworzak 1993; Africa Now 1982).

The myth-­making customary laws regulating land ownership, and their impact on minority rights and gender and racial relationships The two groups of people most impacted by (and in fact the target of ) the Provincial Land Act of 1972 were the women in the provinces and the Creole ethnic group. Like the women, the Creoles were also considered non-­natives because they were the descendants of the black settlers (Little 1950), the freed African-­ American, West Indian, and African slaves who settled in the western area of Sierra Leone between 1787 and 1885 (Dixon-­Fyle and Cole 2006; Wyse 1989). The Provincial Land Act of 1972 defines a non-­native as a person who is not an indigene and, therefore, not entitled to own land in the provinces (Fanthorpe 1998). Several factors accounted for the development of racialized and gender-­based discrimination in land ownership laws in Sierra Leone. First, was the ancestry factor. Writing about the Mende native law on land rights, Kenneth Lindsay Little writes that “access to farming land and right to its occupation and use for purposes of farming, derive from membership of certain families or descent groups, who claim to have made the first settlement in the country” (Little 1948, quoted in, Dorjahn and Fyfe 1962, 391). Building on Little’s work, Paul Richards and Jean Pierre Chauveau contend that land was given to natives of the provinces with membership in what was deemed to be autochthonous or “firstcomer” lineages, i.e., one of the leading lineages in place at the end of the 19th century. Some of these lineages could be described as battle groups comprising a warlord, his warriors, and their dependents and slaves. (Richards and Chauveau 2007, 28)

(Wo)men’s rights   205 Who were these warlords and warriors? To answer to this question, it is necessary to go back in time. In their respective journeys into precolonial Sierra Leone, the tribal groups of Sierra Leone (excluding the Creoles) fought wars for control of the land. To avoid being evicted from the land, “both the indigenous and the resettled tribal groups began the practice of burying their dead in the forest.” Within a short time, “the belief that the forest was the home of their ancestors began to evolve.” As a result of this primordial cosmological narrative, “it became difficult for all subsequent ethnic groups to displace the indigenous people from these communities and the surrounding forests.” To gain access to these revered forests, “outsiders were required to marry into the families of tribal groups that ‘owned’ the forest.” Through this complexity of land ownership and power, “a polygamous system, based on hypogamous or hypergamous marriage affinities, which characterizes customary marriage systems of present-­day Sierra Leone, emerged” (Bledsoe 1984, quoted in Lahai 2016, 36). As such, the “forest” is historically connected to the cultural embodiments of the indigenous tribal groups in Sierra Leone (see, for example, Combey 2010; Richards 2005; Coulter 2006; Lahai 2016). From my many decades living among the tribal groups of the northern, Eastern and Southern Provinces, I have come to appreciate that, when people talk about the “land” or the “forest,” it is not just an attempt to dominate contested spaces. The forest is the place where “affective communities” employ emotions to ideologize what people have come to accept as the foundations of their identity, of who they are as people. It is possible that the continued usage of the word “forest” may lead us to think of a “primitive” attachment to the jungle way of living. In reality, for the Sierra Leoneans of the 1970s and 1980s, the symbolism and connotation of the forest were an embodiment of the essence of their survival. It is a space that has, from time immemorial, been used to regulate gender relations. This brings me to the second factor that explains the gender-­based discrimination against women on land ownership, the “myth-­making factor” that characterized the tensions between the secret societies of the women and the men. I suggest that what women lost as a result of the Provincial Land Act of 1972 was merely a restatement of the regime’s commitment to upholding the patriarchal reasoning behind the myth-­making narratives of why women lost their birthright to men. I argue that women did not lose their birthright on land ownership through the constitutional arrangements of the colonial and postcolonial governments. In what would sound, to some outsiders, as an out-­of-this-­world story, I explain elsewhere (Lahai 2016, 38–40) that women “lost” their landowning entitlements in the provincial areas of Sierra Leone as a result of the tensions between the women-­only Bondo or Sande secret society and the men-­only Poro society. The Poro society had laid claim to the forest and was vehemently opposed to the attempts by Sande (which was the representative of the women of the provinces) to challenge their esoteric myth-­making authority. The story goes like this: when people began to form communities in Sierra Leone, the women of the Sande society were the first group of people to discover the mysteries of

206   (Wo)men’s rights the forest (d’Azevedo 1994; Ahmadu 2000, 287; Murphy 1980). They, however, forfeited this knowledge to the men of the Poro society after the god of the women, Zeleya, lost the battle she was fighting against her brother, Namû, the god of the Poro society. By taking this knowledge as war booty, Welmer tells us, the men became controllers of the land/forest, even though they granted to the women the right to use the land for their rituals on the condition that they continue to recognize the supreme authority of the men (Welmers 1949, 237). Conversely, there is another account that disputed the claim that women were the bona fide owners of the land. According to this counter-­narrative, it was an old man who first discovered the mysteries of the land.11 The Mende people of southern Sierra Leone believe that it was because of this discovery that the men named their secret society “Poro,” which is the anglicized form of the (Koh) Mende word poie’y, meaning “the soil,” the “ground,” the “earth” (Combey 2010, 133). As a result of this discovery, people came to believe that the gods of their land (inclusive of their timeless ancestors whose spirits live in the forests and in the bodies of the animals in the forest) gave men the responsibility to protect their communities and household, especially the women and children. The third factor that contributed to the development of racialized and gender-­ based discrimination on land ownership laws in Sierra Leone was a “colonial politics” factor. Between 1927 and 1960, the colonial administration passed a series of policies to augment and protect the authority of the Native Administration. In 1927, it adopted the Protectorate Land Ordinance, which prevented the Creoles from owning land in the protectorate. The “land and house” (hut) tax question was the reason for the Hut Tax War in 1898. The British did set up the Sir David Chalmers Commission of Inquiry to investigate the causes of the rebellion and document the approximate “truth” about the “institutional and societal conditions that allowed the violence to happen in the first place” (Gberie 2013, 101). It also made a series of recommendations on the re-­regularization of the ordinances dealing with land ownership in the protectorate. The Creoles were citizens of the colony of Freetown and not citizens of the protectorate. Had the colonial administration allowed the Creoles to own land in the protectorate, it would have been harder—if not impossible—to tax them. Besides, it would have also resulted in militarized tensions between the natives and the Creole business class—who were embittered over the killing of some of their compatriots during the Hut Tax War (Dorjahn and Fyfe 1962). In 1960 (the year Prime Minister Milton Margai and the Secretary of State for the colonies began to negotiate Sierra Leone’s independence), Margai’s government adopted the Provinces Land Act, which reaffirmed the “ancestral clause.” According to Paul Richards and Jean Pierre Chauveau, the law was formulated to continue to “bolster the power of the rural landed classes whether through agrarian or mining interests” (ibid.). The chiefs, who were the powers behind the prime ministerships of Milton Margai, introduced this bill because they suspected the Creoles were still hoping to become a planter class in the interior (Fanthorpe 1998). With anti-­Creole sentiment unabated, the Creoles began advocating land reforms. But these legitimate attempts failed and their situation became more

(Wo)men’s rights   207 precarious when the Provincial Land Act was passed in 1972 by President Stevens, who had declared a republic the year before. The Provincial Land Act of 1972 gave the chiefs the right to regulate the distribution of land, collect the land tax, and arbitrate land disputes within their jurisdiction12 (Acemoglu, Reed, and Robinson 2014; Fanthorpe 1998). This Act did much to further exclude the Creoles from leasing and/or retaining native lands in the provinces. Though frustrated by this, the Creoles did not give up. They were still hopeful that perhaps, by marrying the daughters of the landed gentry in the provinces, they or their descendants (who were deprecatorily referred to in the provinces as “Kaimbeay Creoles,” loosely translating to “Creoles with mixed yet inauthentic heritage”) would transcend the racialized, institutional, and cultural barriers and resistance. To prevent them from using their daughters as conduits to achieve their hidden agenda of becoming the landowning, planter class in the provinces (a region the Creoles had once referred to as the land the of “unwashed Africans”), the natives expanded the definition of non-­natives to include the women in the provinces. The indigenous women, who were once held in high esteem for being the “people who represented the continuity of their communities,” were relegated to the category of “non-­natives” in all customary tribal laws of the land, including the Provincial Land Act of 1972. The Act also called on all chiefdoms to regulate the rules on hospitality. While this regulation did not prevent the Creoles from migrating to and settling in the provinces, it led to the creation of two classes of strangers within the definition of non-­natives, and complex rules to monitor their activities within the provinces. There were the merchant-­ strangers and the farmer-­stranger. According to Paul Richards and Jean Pierre Chauveau, rules of hospitality apply to both categories of “strangers.” The children of these strangers may become accepted as indigenes and form their own land-­owning group. “Strangers” interested in farming will normally serve a probationary period. A typical strategy for a young man is first to attach himself to an established farmer, helping the household with heavy farming tasks in return for food, and then to apply (through this man) for land for subsistence purposes of his own. Few land-­holding lineages are so short of land that they cannot find space to incorporate active young men, who strengthen the entire subsistence system by joining rotational labor groups and taking part in community labor. A definite problem is that the farming stranger lacks political and legal rights. He cannot, for example, plead on his own behalf in a customary court. Disputes can only be settled by mediation or by abandoning local assets and moving on. (Richards and Chauveau 2007, 29) There was also no constitutional protection for the native wives of these merchant and farming strangers, should their husbands opt to “abandon local assets (including children) and move on” to other chiefdoms in the provinces, or even to Freetown. There was the Local Courts Act (No. 20) of 1963, whose

208   (Wo)men’s rights standardized recommendations to the local courts on interpreting customary law were based on patriarchal cultural belief systems. As a general rule, these local courts were to base their judgments on natural justice and equity. But, in practice, the processes of norm identification and interpretation did not recognize women’s rights to inherit the estate and property of their husbands, fathers, and brothers. Thus, the constitutional protections available to women in the 1970s and 1980s were those that society believed would further the privilege of men, especially the chiefs and the political elites (Lahai and Lahai 2017). The assumed belief in the constitutionality of these patriarchal privileges served the cultural function of protecting the unhelpful and gender-­insensitive value systems of Sierra Leone. These were cultural value systems that were against gender equality in politics, culture and society, and against the habitual tendencies of the Freetown-­based women’s rights organizations to “speak modernity to anti-­ feminist cultural relativism” (Lahai 2016, 23–4). The chiefs forced the government to include a clause in the 1963 Local Courts Act that prevented legal uniformity in the justice system, and created two justice systems: the statutory courts and the local courts. The latter were placed under the Minister of Internal Affairs, while the former remained under the supervision of the Minister of Justice and Attorney-­General. The Act also made it a taboo for parties in a dispute before a customary law court to be represented by lawyers (barristers and solicitors) trained in the laws of the “Whiteman” and forbade parties seeking redress or appealing the judgment of the local courts. Accordingly, the strict adherence to the procedural rules of separation not only prevented the judicial arm of government from performing its constitutional duties of regulating human rights. It also prevented the Freetown-­based women’s groups from challenging the decisions of the local courts in the statutory courts. This is not to say that the government was unaware of the impact of this racialized and gender-­based discrimination. It was aware that the means of production—land, labor, and capital—were central to the functioning of the economy. But its political attempts to infuse patriarchal determinations of distribution in a postcolonial and neo-­feudalistic space underscored the nature of gender-­based agro-­economic exploitation of women. Within this system, women were influential insofar as they could contribute to a primitive agricultural system whose output was not enough to feed a quarter of the people. Those who benefited from this neo-­feudal system were those at the top of the hierarchy and their inner circles. Those outside the system were expected to beg for what was a fundamental right: the right to ownership of land. By 1977, land redistribution was so politicized that it was only men who had access to the necessary capital to engage in cooperative farming activities. Even so, the men too eventually had to give up their farming activities. The government failed to put in place safeguards such as tariffs or a quota system to protect locally produced rice and, as a result, men were forced to abandon large-­scale farming, relocating instead to the diamond fields in the eastern region of the country to work in the mines. With the agro-­economic base of the country in decline, attempts to revitalize the dying sector were unsuccessful. Amid a lack of employment for men, gender-­based

(Wo)men’s rights   209 violence increased disproportionately. In some households, since the men had left to work in the diamond mines (with some never to return), the women became the breadwinners. However, with their back-­yard farming activities not sustainable, these breadwinners soon joined the majority of the population on the streets of the country in search of imported rice. Chapters 9 and 10 (this volume) have noted that, upon realizing people were struggling to find food, the Stevens and Momoh governments made the “unavailability” of rice a political instrument of control. A monopoly for the importation and distribution of rice was granted to the select few. To be able to buy a cup of rice required sweat, luck, and the acceptance of the unquestioned authority, and generosity, of the President (Lahai 2016, 74).

The Citizenship Act (of 1973) and the making of “aliens” in the belly of women Aligned with the Provincial Land Act was the racialized and anti-­gender equality Citizenship Act of 1973. President Stevens referred to himself as a man with many tactics to control those around him (Stevens 1984). He allowed foreigners, especially the Lebanese, to control the economy. However, to prevent them from challenging his political authority, he prevented them from becoming citizens of Sierra Leone. Most of these “foreigners” were born in Sierra Leone, their fathers having been brought to Sierra Leone by the British imperial government from places such as Kenya, Palestine, India, and Lebanon, where they were working for the empire. They were brought to Sierra Leone for two purposes. The first was to help the colonial administration in its efforts to expand the railway into the hinterlands of the protectorate. They were the experts in the “art” of western industrial innovations while the locals they came to work with (or lord over, as foremen in the dockyards and quays) were novices, who were still learning how innovations like the trains and the steamers navigating the colony’s waterways worked. With the indigenes still trying to make sense of western innovations, the imperial government felt it necessary to bring in a workforce already au fait with the “ways of the Whiteman.” Their second purpose was to counter and contain the influence of the Creoles and the threat it posed to the imperial government. As discussed in earlier chapters, as British rule entered the 1900s, the Creoles had already successfully made the transition from the trauma of the transatlantic slave trade to mastery of the colonial political space. They had embraced western formal education with exuberance and had used it for upward economic, social, and political mobility. They were the clergy, the senior civil servants, the businessmen, the importers, exporters, and entrepreneurs; they controlled the trade routes between the colony of Freetown and the major trading centers in the protectorate district towns of Rotifunk, Shenge, Panguma, Bandajuma, Karena, Taiama, and Marampa (Hargreaves 1956). With this social and economic capital, the Creoles began to challenge the authority of the imperial government in the colony. To clip their wings, the government calculatedly imported into Sierra Leone, “Lebanese, and Syrians with more experience of the outside world, and

210   (Wo)men’s rights more capital to overcome the Creole businessmen, backers of the Creole political elites, in the competitive business field” (Lahai 2014, 204). The action of the Colonial Office in London to safeguard the interest of the Lebanese won the latter a political victory in Sierra Leone (Sillah 2016, 10). As Hendrik Laurens Van Der Laan puts it: The Government assurance of 1919 meant in effect that the right of long-­ term residence was granted to the Lebanese. The intervention from London was a bitter disappointment for many Africans, and in particular, for the Creoles … [who] were further disheartened by the knowledge that many British officials suspect them of having instigated the riots. They were worried that the Lebanese would make further inroads into their long-­ established economic positions. Thus, bitterness and frustration marked Creole attitudes towards the Lebanese in the years that followed. By 1960, these Middle Easterners had succeeded in displacing the Creoles from the economic center of the country. Like the Creoles, the Lebanese were also interested in becoming a landowning class in the northern townships of Port Loko, Lunsar, and Makeni, in Bo Town and Moyamba in the south and in Pujehun Town in the east (West Africa 1975). Upon arrival, they submitted themselves to the rulers of the towns, even “providing bride service [i.e., bride payment through farm work] for their landlord [the chiefs and landed gentry] and receiving a wife in turn, with the children becoming members of the lineage of the landlord” (Richards and Chauveau 2007, 29). However, the idea of marrying into these local families was one-­sided; while receptive to the idea of marrying into the indigenous families, the newcomers resisted attempts by the locals to marry their daughters (born to them by their Lebanese/Syrian wives). In a patriarchal society such as Sierra Leone, this racialized resistance of the Lebanese did them a disservice. Had they allowed reciprocal intermarriage, the problems of hypermobility (that is, the “rural–urban continuum” or the inability to settle down (Richards and Chauveau 2007, 29)) that affected the “merchant-­strangers” and influenced their “non-­recognized” status, would have been avoided. They were faced with two major problems. First, they had to explain why they supported the economic policies of the British imperialists, but this explanation had its own problems, as they did not know how their loyalty to the imperial government in Sierra Leone would be interpreted by the embittered ruling classes in their local communities, who saw these “merchant-­strangers” as an instrument of the colonial government against the local entrepreneurs. Second, because of such fears, they were unable to establish a permanent connection to the rural areas. There was a latent dislike of the merchant-­strangers, the Lebanese and Syrians, immediately before and after the declaration of a republic in Sierra Leone in 1971. However, with President Stevens’s interest being the money these Middle Easterners were ready to spend, he created a rentier economy for them, to operate parallel to the formal economy. At the same time, he did all he could to prevent them from becoming citizens. He repealed and replaced the

(Wo)men’s rights   211 1961 Constitution—which granted citizenship to people of mixed descent, including the children born to foreign fathers and Sierra Leonean mothers—with the Citizenship Act of 1973. Section II and the new Act contained a “negro descent” clause that prevented the Lebanese and others of mixed descent from becoming citizens by naturalization (Hanciles 2011, 2). Moreover, to prevent them from using Sierra Leonean women as a conduit to citizenship, Section II of the Citizenship Act further stated: Every person who, having been born in Sierra Leone before the nineteenth day of April, 1971, or who was resident in Sierra Leone on the eighteenth day of April, 1971, and not the subject of any other State shall, on the nineteenth day of April, 1971, be deemed to be a citizen of Sierra Leone by birth: Provided that— a b

His father or his grandfather was born in Sierra Leone; and He is a person of negro African descent.13

This meant that citizenship could only be transmitted through the “negro” father of the child; even if the mother of the child was a foreigner, the child was considered a citizen by virtue of his or her patrilineal heritage. This discrimination against children who were matrilineally connected to Sierra Leone served three gender-­based functions. First, in view of the neopatrimonial character of the state, the regime did not want a situation whereby these foreign husbands would determine the outcomes of elections. Women were in the majority in Sierra Leone, but it was common practice for men to dictate who their wives’ vote for during elections. Some of these foreign husbands were citizens of western European countries; they were exposed to the idealism of democracy and the power a person’s vote had in the determination of the political fate of politicians. For a neopatrimonial polity it was clear that allowing these foreign husbands—who had no primordial investment in the cultural belief systems and political status quo in the country—to dictate the political preferences of their wives would have disastrous political consequences. Second, in view of the patriarchal regulation of gender relationships in the country, the raison d’être for this exclusionary legal framework on citizenship was to prevent a situation whereby the divisions along gender lines would lead to the social empowerment of the transnational feminist movement. There “was a common, though largely controversial, belief among APC party supporters that only the ‘full-­blooded’ children [i.e., children of paternal negroid descent] would work towards the betterment of the country.”14 To these ends, notions of loyalty (to party and state), nationalism, and gender identity had patriarchal connotations. Third, in view of the ethnopolitical character of the state, the regime created a link between patrilineality and the sexuality of women to achieve their goal of

212   (Wo)men’s rights systematic racism. This linkage, I suggest, was mediated by the politicized performative function of sex that positioned women as factories for the manufacturing of “authentic” Sierra Leoneans. At the same time, patriarchal dictates called on women to conform to the pre-­determined sexual preferences of the lawmakers in the state. It was, therefore, the expectation that women would choose to marry Sierra Leonean men; but if, as a result of love or lust for wealth (as hypergamy was a determinant of the choices that some families made on behalf of their daughters, or the daughters for themselves) they married “outsiders,” they should be ready to face the consequences. This coercive reasoning reminded women that, for their children to merit full membership of the country, as citizens, they should be of “negro descent.” If, however, that did not happen, it would be necessary for the child to carry the name of his or her mother’s (Sierra Leonean) father. In essence, this deprived foreign husbands of a legitimate claim to their children. That notwithstanding, this was a subtle way of coercing women to continue with their reproductive functions of giving birth to children who would become the embodiment of the Sierra Leonean identity.

Concluding remark When theorizing the rights of women during this era (1967–1991), we must not lose sight of the role of patriarchy. To ignore this, and pretend that it was not integral, is to ignore the evidence: the evidence that the bodies of women were the platform for the contestation of the state and the collision between the forces of state failure: war, poverty, bad governance, and ignorance. I have argued elsewhere that the horrendous war crimes and crimes against humanity that occurred during the civil conflict were merely an explosion of violence long practised and perfected on the bodies of women (Lahai 2010). The crimes of sexual and gender-­based violence, torture, deprivation of rights, and human trafficking that characterized the civil war era (1991 and 2002) were not new. The only novelty—one that took many people by surprise—was the change in international attention: from “observe and do nothing” to “observe, report and intervene.”

Notes   1 It was even alleged (and some instances proven) that these politically significant men wanted to overthrow the APC: Lieutenant Habib Lansana Kamara, Ibrahim Bash-­ Taqi, Brigadier David Lansana, Paramount Chief Bai Makarie N’silk, Brigadier John Bangura, Dr. Sorie Fornah, Ibrahim Bash-­Taqi, Francis Misheck Minah, Gabriel T. Kaikai, Conrad Innes, and Captain V.E.M. Strasser (who would lead a successful coup d’état against the regime on April 29, 1992) (Gberie 2005; Alie 2006).   2 His first tenure was 1854 and 1855; and his second was 1855 and 1859. In between these two tenures, Robert Dougan was governor.   3 Madam Kadi Sankoh, former Marie Stopes Nurse. Interviewed by the author, October 10, 2017.   4 The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. (n.d.). Sierra Leone: Abortion Policy, Population Policy Data Bank, Population Division, Department of

(Wo)men’s rights   213 Economic and Social Affairs/United Nations. Retrieved from: www.un.org/esa/population/publications/abortion/doc/sierraleone.doc.   5 Jane Doe (pseudonym). Interviewed by the author, October 11, 2017.   6 John Doe (pseudonym). Interviewed by the author, October 12, 2017.   7 Jane Doe (see note 6 above).   8 John Doe (see note 7 above).   9 These cases concerning rape between 1978 and 1988 are too numerous to state their case-­reference-numbers here. All can be found are in the repository of the Offices of the Registrar of the High Court of Sierra Leone. Some were also held in the Law Courts of Bo Town, southern Sierra Leone. 10 John and Jane Does (pseudonyms); see notes 6 and 7 above. 11 The story of his discovery goes like this: [One fateful night the] old man had a dream … in which an ancestral spirit instructed him to go to a particular spot in the deepest part of the forest, where he was to find particular objects. These objects were sacred and were to be kept in secret, and only those who were initiated into the Poro [he was instructed to establish upon his return] and venerate the Poro ancestors were allowed to see it. One may not disclose the identity of the objects. In order for the old man to receive the objects, he must be courageous. He must pass by four dangerous animals. Only after he was able to pass these animals without fear was he qualified to see and possess the objects. The objects must be preserved at the most sacred spot in the deepest forest, which became known as Kamie [also interpreted to mean, the “Dark Place”] and village community must remain attached to the Poro ancestors. (Combey 2010, 133–4) 12 The Provincial Land Act of 1972 included a provision that gave nominal control of land matters to the chiefdom councils (CCs) and the paramount chiefs (PCs). But their powers were under the supervisory and regulatory function of the representatives of the central government, the District Officers (DOs). While the CCs and PCs had the residual powers to settle land disputes among “natives,” it was the responsibility of the DOs to regulate leases to non-­natives whose intention was to use the land for large- or medium-­scale farming or mining activities. It was common for lease applications from the Creoles to be rejected; and those from citizens from Middle Eastern countries to be accepted, because, these businessmen from the Middle East, led by the Lebanese Jamil Sahid Mohammed, were the clientele class in President Stevens’s neopatrimonial state. 13 Sierra Leone Citizenship Act, 1973 (adopted May 24, 1973). Available at: www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6b50610.html [accessed February 25, 2018]. 14 Madam Marie Yanseneh. Interviewed by the author, October 15, 2017.

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(Wo)men’s rights   215 Hargreaves, J. D. 1956. “The establishment of the Sierra Leone Protectorate and the insurrection of 1898.” The Cambridge Historical Journal 12 (1): 56–80. Kamara, Fouday S. 2008. Economic and Social Crises in Sierra Leone: The Role of Small-­Scale Entrepreneurs in Petty Trading as a Strategy for Survival 1960–1996. Bloomington, IN: Author House. Knoops, Go to Online Edition and Geert-­Jan Alexander. 2013. Redressing Miscarriages of Justice: Practice and Procedure in (International) Criminal Cases. 2nd edn. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Brill/Nijhoff. Lahai, John Idriss. 2010. “Sexing the state: The gendered origins of the Civil War in Sierra Leone.” Minerva Journal of Women and War 4 (2): 26–45. https://doi.org/10. 3172/MIN.4.2.26. Lahai, John Idriss. 2014. “The musicscapes of a country in transition: Cultural identity, youth agency, the emergent hip hop culture and the quest for socio-­political change in Sierra Leone,” in Msia Kibona Clark and Mickie Mwanzia Koster (eds.), Hip Hop and Social Change in Africa: Ni Wakati. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 198–225. Lahai, John Idriss. 2015. “Gendering conflict and peace-­building in Sierra Leone,” in Seema Shekhawat (ed.), Female Combatants in Conflict and Peace. UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 132–48. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137516565_9. Lahai, John Idriss. 2016. Gender in Practice: Culture, Politics, and Society in Sierra Leone. 14 vols. Oxford, UK: Peter Lang. http://dx.doi.org/10.3726/b11126. Lahai, John Idriss and Nenneh Lahai. 2017. “Human rights frameworks and women’s rights in post-­transitional justice Sierra Leone,” in John Lahai and  Khanyisela Moyo (eds) Gender in Human Rights and Transitional Justice. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 143–74. Little, Kenneth L. 1948. “The Mende Farming Household.” The Sociological Review 40 (1): 37–56. Little, Kenneth L. 1950. “The significance of the West African Creole for Africanist and Afro-­American studies.” African Affairs 49 (197): 308–19. Murphy, William P. 1980. “Secret knowledge as property and power in Kpelle society: Elders versus youth.” Africa 50 (2): 193–207. Richards, Paul. 2005. “To fight or to farm? Agrarian dimensions of the Mano River conflicts (Liberia and Sierra Leone).” African Affairs 104 (417): 571–90. Richards, Paul and Jean Pierre Chauveau. 2007. “Land, agricultural change and conflict in West Africa: Regional issues from Sierra Leone, Liberia and Côte d’Ivoire: Historical overview.” SAH/D(2007)568. www.oecd.org/countries/sierraleone/39495967.pdf. Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission. 2004. “Women and the armed conflict in Sierra Leone.” Accra: TRC, Government of Sierra Leone. www.sierraleonetrc. org/downloads/Volume3bChapter3.pdf. Sillah, Mohammed, B. 2016. “The Lebanese immigrants in Sierra Leone: A market dominant-­minority and revisiting the constitutional statute for naturalization and citizenship.” American International Journal of Social Science 5 (4): 8–16. Steady, F. 2005. Women and Collective Action in Africa: Development, Democratization, and Empowerment, with Special Focus on Sierra Leone. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Steady, Filomina Chioma. 1975. “Female power in African politics: The National Congress of Sierra Leone.” Pasadena, CA: California Institute of Technology. http:// resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechMALN:1975:004. Steady, Filomina Chioma. 2006. “Collective action for educational and occupational empowerment,” in F. Steady (ed.), Women and Collective Action in Africa. Palgrave Macmillan US, 75–93. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403979490_5.

216   (Wo)men’s rights Stevens, Siaka. 1984. What Life Has Taught Me : The Autobiography of President Siaka Stevens of Sierra Leone. London: Kensal Press. The Sierra Leone Truth & Reconciliation Commission. 2004. “Chapter Three: Women and the Armed Conflict in Sierra Leone.” 3. Witness to Truth: Report of the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Freetown: The Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission. www.sierraleonetrc.org/downloads/Volume3bChapter3.pdf. Tripp, Aili. 2001. “Women’s movements and challenges to neopatrimonial rule: Preliminary observations from Africa.” Development and Change 32 (1): 33–54. Welmers, William E. 1949. “Secret medicines, magic, and rites of the Kpelle tribe in Liberia.” Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 5 (3): 208–43. West Africa. 1975. “What future for the Lebanese.” West Africa No. 3057 edition. Wyse, Akintola. 1989. The Krio of Sierra Leone: An Interpretative History. London: C. Hurst & Co.

12 The idea of liberation in the war communities, 1991–2002 Representation, adaptation, and outcomes

There are those who have concluded that the war in Sierra Leone was senseless. Their reasoning is that the rebels—by abandoning their goal of ridding the country of the kleptocratic and autocratic APC regime and indulging themselves in crimes against humanity and war crimes—stood for nothing, and nothing was what they achieved. Such a conclusion unites Lansana Gberie (2005), David Keen (2005), Jimmy Kandeh (1996), and Christopher Clapham (2003). Based on my first-­hand experience during this conflict, the outcomes were not what many had expected. But life in these war communities was not solely about the destruction of everything. It was also about the creation of alternative spaces for experimentation with new institutional models for the regulation of rights and wrongs. Throughout these institutionalized experimentations, however hierarchical and violent-­prone, there was some form of continuity of people’s social, political and economic relationships. I propose in this chapter that power, identity, and life were the core sociological attributes of people’s representations of human rights in the war communities of Sierra Leone between 1991 and 2002. Power, fused with the rules governing in-­group (warring factions) relations, was a determinant of the kind of capability (or the lack of it) these factions had to achieve their objectives. Identity, reinforced by the historic cultural elements of societal gender-­based divisions of labor, was a determinant of in-­group hierarchies and responsibilities. The understanding of “life,” within the war and peace communities, went beyond the conventional meanings to be found in universal declarations of human rights. It also had ritualized connotations, reinforced by the relevance of sorcery and magic (Wlodarczyk 2009), which tells the story of the role played by ancestral spirits in shaping the history and military operations of the civil defense militia forces (Muana 1997; Lahai 2012). What I also suggest in this chapter is that the competing narratives of what constituted human rights and wrongs also impacted the relationships between the actors operating the warscapes of Sierra Leone. These include international communities of arms dealers, mercenaries, the United Nations and the Economic Community of West African States peacekeepers, and non-­governmental organizations. The differences in the narratives and perceptions of human rights, as presented here, denote not only the abstract memorialization of rights and

218   The idea of liberation wrongs within the warring factions, most notably the RUF and the National Provisional Ruling Council (NPRC) military junta; they were also about those factions’ invocation of a formalist view of who was fighting a just and unjust war, and how factions attempted to create alternative spaces for the legitimation of their self-­interested political authority. Attempts at creating formalistic views about the just and unjust actions of the warring factions were compounded by the legitimate question of whether any of these factions had the moral authority to discredit the philosophical foundations of each others’ human rights universe. If so, on what grounds did they assume such authority? Considering the circumstances from which these factions emerged, the idea that they should have followed the preferences of, say, the people or, better still, the complacent international community, is challenged by some thoughtful ontological questions on the behavioral aspects of authority and norm diffusion: How universal are human rights? Who was responsible for, but failed to invoke their substantive universal and formalistic principles before and during the conflict? There is one inescapable attribute of political behavior and political authority that explains the interrelatedness between order and disorder; politics and religocity; law and lawlessness; war and peace. This attribute is found in the relationship between the state and the people. The authority of the state to act on behalf of the people should be given (an example of political behavior). Once given, the people assume full responsibility for the actions (political authority) of the state. Inevitably, this argument raises follow-­up questions. What if the representative becomes a law unto himself and rejects the terms or formalities of relationships that bind him to the represented? The represented would have the right to end the mandate of the representative. What happens when war is used, as a deliberative form of power transmission (from the representative to the represented), and a means to remind the representative of her/his limits or to express the disapproval of her/his conduct? In such a scenario, war becomes a legitimate means of change. That said, this chapter is about the history of the RUF, its reading of political authority and power, and its attempts to create an alternative space for its model of human rights. To this end, the chapter begins with an examination of the rise of the RUF rebels and their ideological representations of “liberation” (as a complicated concept of human rights). In the second section, the description of the RUF ’s communities (the “Sowo”) is presented. I describe what life was like inside Sowo, and the strategies of the RUF to implement its highly hierarchical human rights model. This model, I argue, was aimed at societal continuity of some pre-­war relationships and the introduction of new (and largely ideological) forms.

The rise of the RUF rebel faction Some say the RUF is a representation of Robert D. Kaplan’s anarchy. In Paul Richard’s (2001, 1996) readings of rainforest economic relations, and in Ian Smillie et al.’s (2000) exploration of human security in the formative years of

The idea of liberation   219 the war, the RUF is portrayed as a dissident group whose sole agenda was resource exploitation, backed by narratives of an unending circle of resources for guns, and guns for resources. Danny Hoffman (2006) used of the concept of politics as dissensus, or the politics (and speech acts) of dissent to explain the origins and actions of the RUF. But these scholarly works fell short in their explanation of the group’s struggles for political recognition of its efforts to create a socio-­political and economic space within the rainforest. Notwithstanding these superficial representations, the RUF can best be described as the outcome of an unscientific attempt to interpret the methodically inclined, and normatively and epistemologically informed neo-­Marxist understanding of the concept of liberation. It was this unscientific reading of Karl Marx’s historical materialist thought on the accumulation of material possessions for self and not for the common good in human societies, and its long-­term impact on society’s dysfunctional development over time, that gave rise to a lumpen militariat class—a class, to use Jimmy Kandeh’s words, that occupied a “class position” (Kandeh 1996, 387) similar to, if more violent than, the working class in the general society prior to the conflict. Ultimately, when the war erupted, it was this class that would transform into the senior cadre of the RUF. It was these lumpen militariats’ problematic re-­readings of Hegel’s Natural Law and the Science of the State and Elements of the Philosophy of Right that led the rebels to opt for a transitive liberation from the old to something new. But this transitive liberation was one the rebels had no scientific understanding of; they only believed in its possibilities. The RUF leader, Foday Sankoh, noted in the prologue to Footpaths to Democracy that “when a society demands change there is no need attempting to change it on old principles” (Revolutionary United Front 1995, para. 3). The founding members of the RUF did see the world in its objective state, with its competing social rules and institutions; with its “affective” communities, moral, legal, religious, economic, political, and social; with its human organizations, including the family. Unfortunately, rather than follow Hegel’s philosophy of rights, predicated on the philosophical science of logic (of thought and its manifestations in result-­oriented reasoning), they opted for a superficial reading of the positive law on political oppression, social isolation, and economic marginalization of the youth through a militaristic lens. The outcome of these militaristic readings was the publication of a pamphlet titled Footpaths to Democracy: Towards a New Sierra Leone, first published in 1994 under the caption “About RUF,” but later revised and re-­published in its final form in London in 1995 (Revolutionary United Front 1995). The RUF ’s reading of Hegelian Marxism was made possible by the influence of the maverick Libyan leader Muammar Ghadaffi’s Green Book and Franz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth. Combining these two ideological books, the RUF fashioned “an eclectic assemblage of ideas and slogans encompassing pan-­ Africanism” (Rashid 2016, 198–9). Footpaths to Democracy called on all the peoples in postcolonial Sierra Leone to use their deprived lives as motivators to join the RUF in rediscovering a path to a future, or to remain subject to the evils of an autocratic regime.

220   The idea of liberation The pamphlet also noted that the people of Sierra Leone suffered as a result of the policies of a neoliberal west that sought to prevent the rise of neo-­ Marxism and its alternative readings of the impact of the IMF and the World Bank on the country’s youth. Thus, my suggestion here that the RUF should be seen as one of the first groups that tried to counter Francis Fukuyama’s readings of the democratic re-­ordering of the post-­Cold War era, in which man was supposed to be working towards the building of a society receptive to economic liberalism and representative democracy. For the authors of the RUF ’s manifesto, the conditionality imposed by these neoliberal institutions not only exposed the hypocrisy of the west but also demonstrated how these institutions did all in their power to eradicate anything or anybody that stood in the way of their self-­ seeking interests. Rather than help the ordinary people of Sierra Leone free themselves from the pathological and autocratic APC—which, to the RUF, would have been a legitimate neoliberal action—their conditioning of the performance of the regime on what was satisfactory to the west contributed to the rise of political autocracy in Sierra Leone. For the RUF leadership, the pampering of a totalitarian system with loans and grants was a betrayal of the IMF ’s and World Bank’s idea of freedom, one of neoliberalism’s legitimating tropes. By promoting policies based on unhelpful economic conditionalities, the west was endorsing the logic behind the regime’s exclusion of rural Sierra Leone. For all its resource wealth, the authors of Footpath to Democracy argued that the countryside of Sierra Leone had been reduced to a periphery, similar to the peripheral status Africa held in the international political economy. Through this remaking of global inequalities—on a much smaller scale, and within an already marginalized postcolonial state—the west’s purpose, the manifesto stated, was to sustain the marginality of Sierra Leone and its people: especially the youth, who were working “for nothing” in the diamond fields of the south-­east. Suspicious that its reasoning on liberation would be subjected to the liberal peace project’s apparatus of rules (that have historically sought to co-­opt non-­ western cultures, domesticate western cultures in the non-­western world, or neutralize or discipline resistant cultures), the RUF made known its disapproval of all western interventions to resolve the war they were waging in Sierra Leone. At the center of their criticism were two interrelated issues, the identity of the mediators and their historically hegemonic guiding agenda. Against this backdrop, the preamble of Footpaths to Democracy stated: We deem as more dangerous the quick-­fix and prescriptive hidden-­agendas of self-­seeking mediators. We have every right to be suspicious of those who have made careers out of Africa’s plight. They invariably end up as meddlers in internal conflicts prolonging the suffering of our people. (Revolutionary United Front 1995, para. 5) The war had begun on March 23, 1991, but a year later, on April 29, 1992, the RUF ’s ideological war of words against, and representations of the identity of,

The idea of liberation   221 their opponent (the government) took another turn when a group of young soldiers from the Cobra Battalion removed the APC in a bloody coup d’état.1 The coupists, led by 25-year-­old Captain Valentine Esegragbo Melvin Strasser, suspended the 1978 One-­Party State Constitution, instituted a rule by military decrees, declared a state of emergency, and formed a government, the NPRC. At first, the RUF tried to claim credit for the actions of the NPRC. This was what it argued in Footpaths to Democracy: It will be dishonest to attribute this education process to the RUF/SL alone. By this process of education and armed struggle, the RUF/SL strategically weakened the apparatus of government on which the APC rested. Panic struck the political apparatus, and the loyalty of the armed forces was broken by hard economic realities. The unpaid, ill-­armed and disgruntled front-­line government troops, who had benefited from RUF/SL political education and ideology, one day decided to leave the hard life of the bush to Freetown to demand their earned income and also to complain about their neglect by their commanders. Emboldened by a new consciousness and “the power of the gun” these young soldiers took to the streets of Freetown and to their surprise the military General turned President, Joseph Saidu Momoh and his APC stalwarts, took to flight at the mere sight of the barrel of the gun. The Commander-­in-Chief really knew “where power lies.” The young soldiers seized state power by virtue of its concentration in Freetown. In effect, Freetown was Sierra Leone and has always been Sierra Leone like Monrovia was Liberia, and Port Au Prince was Haiti. (Revolutionary United Front 1995, para. 45) This statement exposed the insincerity of the RUF. Its initial justification for the war was to remove the APC. Thus, if the NRPC had been the creation of the RUF, it should have ended the civil war. However, this did not happen. What emerged could best be described as a tactical competition between the two over the marginalized youth of the country. At the start of this competition, the national army, now under the effective control of the NPRC junta, was about 5,000 strong, but the junta was able to increase this to 15,000, swelling the ranks from among those who saw the “RUF and its war simply as an opportunity to loot or settle personal scores,” and from among the “unemployed, poorly educated urban youth” (Rashid 2016, 194). The RUF tried everything it could to stop the NRPC recruiting these marginalized youths. In Footpaths to Democracy, the RUF noted that it had made it a priority to enlighten these youths; to open “their eyes to the widening cycle of poverty and degradation and the increasing opulence of the very few.” It went on to state that it encouraged them to desert the army and join the RUF. Some listened; they left and joined the RUF/SL (Revolutionary United Front 1995, para. 35). Moreover, with its central message revolving around the “liberation” of the rarayman (the miscreant youth) and the savisman (the street-­smart, university-­ educated but jobless youth; see Chapter 10), the RUF had hoped that it would

222   The idea of liberation have the upper hand. Indeed, it was able to attract “individuals and groups who had deep-­seated grievances or felt alienated from the ruling APC regime; and people who accepted the group’s pronouncement about creating ‘a just, democratic, and egalitarian society’ ” (Wai 2012, 95). It was these people, who accepted the RUF ’s narrative of liberation, who formed a new class of customers in RUF ’s marketplace of ideologies on politics and human rights. However, to join the RUF required rejecting western modernity—and its capitalistic motives—and embracing what the “forest” (or what the RUF called “Sowo”) had to offer. This requirement proved to be a stumbling block. For most of the young, despite the depravity that surrounded them, life under the NRPC seemed a better option. By offering incentives to remain with the army, the NPRC was also able to attract hundreds of undecided youth to join its rank and file. From my recollections, being a soldier during the NPRC’s first two years (1992 and 1994) in government brought meaning to the lives of many of these young men (or “soja boys,” as they were fondly called). To be a soja boy provided an uplifting status in society: from the wretchedness of pre-­military life in the drug-­ infested peri-­urban and urban slums, to a revered class of brave patriots; patriots in modern military outfits with either the red, black, or green beret (depending on their battalions in the army corps). Their transformation, and acclimatization into the camaraderie of men at arms, also brought with it gender-­based rewards; a soja boy had the upper hand over his civilian peers when it came to the socialized practice of “girl-­friending” both married and unmarried women (and girls) in the communities outside the control of the RUF rebels. In an attempt to put an end to the popularity of the soja boys of the NPRC, and to turn the communities against them, the RUF devised two strategies. The first was to brand the NPRC as a puppet regime of the neoliberal west; the second, the use of “so-­bel” tactics—that is, the use of army uniforms when attacking civilian installations. In relation to the first, the RUF contended that Britain, the United States, and France were providing logistical and technical support to the ECOMOG peacekeeping forces and the mercenary groups (the New Jersey-­based Gurkha Security Services, and the South Africa-­based Executive Outcomes), as well as military and fiscal support to the NPRC for the day-­ to-day running of the affairs of the country. To the RUF, the presence of these foreign forces was not only about winning the war against the RUF; it was an insult to Sierra Leone. The RUF made no disguise of its views on this issue. It has become quite clear now, even in Freetown, that the NPRC was “introduced” to hi-­jack the revolution and betray the cause of the uprising against a rotten plantation system which impoverished Sierra Leone while at the same time enriched its slave masters. It is, therefore, strange to the backers of the besieged NPRC that the historically neglected, used and abused countryside would rise up to the simple call that “No more slave, no more master” and “Arms to the people; power to the people and wealth to the people.”  (Revolutionary United Front 1995, para. 45)

The idea of liberation   223 In comparing the impoverishment of the countryside of postcolonial Sierra Leone to life in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-­century plantations of the Americas, where, to borrow the words of Richard S. Dunn (2014, 3), “normal social relations where impossible because families were routinely ripped apart,” the aim was to reignite the tensions that characterized the pre-­1951 colony-­ protectorate relationship between Freetown and the provinces. The RUF used Frantz Fanon’s suggestive call to reject the schemes of imperialism (from which neoliberalism emerged) and remind the marginalized youth of the peri-­urban and rural areas that the intent behind the use of foreign forces (peacekeepers and mercenaries alike) was to sustain an exploitative order of domination beneficial to the west, whose ideological diktats aimed to ensure Sierra Leone remained impoverished. This strategy also exposed the double standards of the RUF. On paper, as well as in its pro-­war narratives, it was known to have rejected all foreign groups working with and/or for the NPRC. In practice, as Lansana Gberie (2005) and Smillie et al. (2000) have argued, the RUF was in direct contact with an unspecified number of the rogue elements (from the neoliberal West and the Middle East) running the informal international political economy of the diamond and arms trade. In relation to the second strategy, the use of so-­bel tactics, there is a plethora of literature attempting to explain its origins, but much of this scholarly work reaches erroneous conclusions. A case in point is Danny Hoffman’s claim that [by] the end of 1994, the RUF had launched attacks in the north, northwest, and east of the country. Much of the violence during this period was the work of so-­called “sobels” (soldier-­rebels), soldiers of the state army who had either disguised themselves as RUF rebels to attack civilian targets, or used the pretext of an RUF presence to loot or extract contributions for the war effort. (Hoffman 2006, 5; my emphasis) This incorrect conclusion was also echoed by Ismail Rashid, who argued that, “The RUF guerrilla campaign produced a number of responses … [the] ‘Sobel’—a soldier by day, rebel by night—phenomenon emerged as RSLMF [Republic of Sierra Leone Military Forces] officers began collaborating with the RUF ” (Rashid 2016, 194; see also, Kandeh 1996). These scholarly narratives serve the purpose only of trivializing the positive contributions of the Sierra Leone army during the civil war. Drawing from my first-­hand experience (as a child soldier between 1992 and 1995), I suggest a different narrative as a corrective to this flawed discourse. It is true that there were many opportunists within the armed forces of Sierra Leone who took advantage of the security situation in the country to wage their own private wars for gain and, in the process, colluded with the RUF—which in itself tarnished the RUF ’s criticism of the NPRC. I suggest here that the so-­bel phenomenon was a creation of RUF and not of renegade soldiers as Hoffman, Rashid, and many other scholars have argued. It began when the NPRC junta failed to honor a prisoner exchange deal

224   The idea of liberation brokered by the religious leaders (Muslim and Christian) and traditional rulers and chiefs around Upper Bambara Chiefdom, Kalahun District, in 1993. The NPRC reneged on this deal because it felt that with the arrival of military assistance from Ghana and Nigeria there was no need to talk to the RUF and its leader, Foday Sankoh. The RUF lamented that the young coup leaders opted for a military solution and made the defeat and extermination of the RUF/SL as their priority … with various enthusiastic [militarized] code names like Operation Clean Sweep for Kono district; Operation Destroy All for Kailahun district and Operation Locate and Destroy, to name a few. (Revolutionary United Front 1995, para. 42) The RUF responded by launching a series of retaliatory attacks on civilian installations. They were unable to score any significant gains against the joint military operations of the NPRC, the mercenaries, and ECOMOG (notably, the Guinean, Ghanaian, and Nigerian forces). These military successes against the RUF brought increased prestige for the soja boys. It was at this time, towards the end of 1994, that the RUF leadership re-­negotiated with Charles Taylor and the idea of so-­bel (or rather “reb-­sol”: rebels-­turned-soldiers) was born. In a memo to the RUF leadership, Charles Taylor, leader of the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), promised to assist the RUF in its effort to recapture all lost territories on condition that (1) Foday Sankoh promote a number of Taylor’s loyalists—including Mohamed Tarawallie (alias Zino, or C.O. Mohamed), Sam Bockarie (alias Mosquito), and Dennis Mingo (alias “Superman”)—as commanders of the self-­styled RUF special forces, the Joso Group.2 Initially reluctant to accede to Taylor’s conditions, Sankoh acquiesced a few weeks later. Zino and Superman returned from Liberia and took command of the Joso Group. Moreover, on the recommendations of the leaders of the RUF War Council (including Fayia Musa, S. Y. B. Rogers, Philip Palmer, and Ibrahim Deen-­Jalloh) Zino, Mosquito, and Superman also took command (though for less than three months) of the strategic RUF camps (or war communities) in the Northern Province (the communities of Masiaka, Mile 91, and Camp Charlie) and the Eastern Province (Upper Bambara Chiefdom and its surrounding communities, especially the routes the RUF was using to import arms from, and export diamonds to, Liberia). With these conditions met, Taylor imported from Russia military fatigues similar to the standardized uniforms the NPRC government supplied to its army and to the irregular soldiers, called Vigilantes (young men from the urban and peri-­urban areas of the capital, who wanted work but were not interested in full-­time military service). When these uniforms arrived, around mid-­1994, the Joso Group was the first to use it in a secretly planned military operation they dubbed, “Operation False-­Flag.” This operation called for the use of these army fatigues in attacks on civilian and government installations. The RUF would enter a town posing as government soldiers and at night, when the people were sleeping, would surround the village, killing everything they were unable to take with them to their camps deep in the forests.

The idea of liberation   225 Despite the thousands of deaths in the course of “so-­bel” operations, public opinion remained largely anti-­RUF. It was at this point the RUF began to abduct children, young men, and women to populate the Sowo, the alternative state it had built deep inside the dense forest in the northern, southern and eastern regions of the country. As we shall see in the next section, it was in these war communities that it sought to put in practice (domesticate) its alternative model of human rights.

The space for the domestication of an alternative model of human rights I introduce here a heuristic description of the “rebel communities,” explaining the intra-­structures and hierarchies, with a focus on the kinds of people within, and the typology of human rights enjoyed by, each category. Although I make mention of some of the human rights violations that were perpetrated (identified thorough scholarly research), my focus here is on the place of human rights, however loosely defined by the RUF, in the making of hierarchies, roles, and responsibilities. While “life” in these war communities was seen as an entitlement, it was the fight to preserve this entitlement that explains the fluidity of the concept of freedom within these communities. To this end, I interrogate the day-­ to-day struggles for the recognition and management of human rights inside the RUF camps, as dictated by the RUF War Council (which was the group’s supreme political and para-­juridical appellant body). Making of “Sowo” (the sacred community of the RUF ) inside the rainforests In Footpaths to Democracy, the RUF War Council reported that, following its failed 1994 missions to recapture the territories it lost to the NRPC junta—and in response to the latter’s increasing assaults on other rebel positions—the RUF decided to move deeper into the comforting bosom of our mother earth—the forest. The forest welcomed us and gave us succor and sustenance. The forest continues to be our main sources of survival and defense to date. We regained our composure and engaged ourselves in a sustained period of intensive self-­ examination and self-­criticism. We moved forward with a clearly defined programme and liberation ideology. We learned from our mistakes and labored hard to correct them. We continue to make mistakes, but we are not overwhelmed by them. Our collective sense of discipline continues to mature, and the result is an effective command and control procedures and structures in our administrative territory. We have created settlements; we call sowo bushes (i.e., a sacred grove for the initiated). We endeavor to provide limited, but free health care, schooling, housing, and seedlings. (Revolutionary United Front 1995, para. 45)

226   The idea of liberation Words like “succor,” “sustenance,” “discipline,” “self-­examinations,” and “self-­ criticism,” and statements such as “we continue to make mistakes, but we are not overwhelmed by them,” speak of the character of an affective community that was not free from the crises of emotions and trauma. While the focus has been on the far-­reaching consequences of these traumatic encounters within and outside the rebel camps, little has been said about the strategies the RUF employed to promote an “emotional turn” through which collective actions, perceptions, and memories were generated and diffused. The processes of memory diffusion within Sowo were chaotic. There were times when traumatic experiences would lead to either the temporary or permanent exclusion of people. An example of temporary exclusion was the sending out of people on reconnaissance missions or to fight; an example of permanent exclusion was the killing of group members by their peers or superiors. Moreover, there were times when “trauma” (understood here as an agency) implicitly and explicitly helped forge in-­group relationships. With the military viability of the RUF dependent largely on its numbers, the RUF War Council was proactive in using the otherness of the RUF members, and the trauma that came with it, to forge in-­group relationships. To help them forge in-­group relationships, and to defuse the tensions that came with being separated from “civilization” and the modern lifestyles of the cities, the RUF War Council employed religion—hence the references to Sowo being “a sacred grove for the initiated,” or the members of the RUF communities (Revolutionary United Front 1995, para. 45). It formed the Jungle United Christian Council (JUCC) and the Jungle United Muslim Council (JUMC). The use of the Christian and Muslim belief systems had the potential to ignite religious tensions that would have compromised the relative “peace” in these war communities. To mitigate this risk, and promote religious tolerance, the War Council made it a policy that JUCC and JUMC meetings were held under one roof, and under the collaborative guidance of a chief imam (for the Muslims) and a priest assisted by a church mother (for the Christians). From this social practice, one can deduce several aspects of life inside Sowo. First, the members of the RUF communities, whether they gained membership voluntarily or through abduction, had to adapt to an undesirable environment. Second, “adaptation” was not limited to the animate but included adjustments to certain types of weapons and changes to the methods of warfare. The RUF had to destroy its heavy artillery and weapons, burn its trucks, and dismantle its other conventional military infrastructure, which was of no value in helping their fighters move from point A to point B in a jungle guerilla warfare environment. In fact, the statement “the forest continued to be [our] main source of survival and defense,” reiterated in the preamble of the RUF manifesto, illustrates the rebels’ realization that, to succeed, they needed to accept the undesirable environment of the forest. The rebels believed it was not possible for the peacekeeping forces, with no idea of the topography of the forests of Sierra Leone, to defeat them inside Sowo; likewise, the NPRC soja boys, with little or no experience of jungle warfare, were unlikely to disturb the war communities deep inside the forests. Even if the peacekeepers and junta forces chose to pursue them, the rebels were of the view

The idea of liberation   227 that the forest would come to their defense. As I observed elsewhere, the international peacekeepers, mercenaries, and newly recruited soja boys were awestruck by the lurking dangers of the forest; frightening, carnivorous mammals and venomous reptiles and amphibians, and multitudinous disease-­causing micro-­organisms were a threat whenever they ventured into Sierra Leone’s vast rainforest in search of Sowo. With Sowo established, the War Council wasted no time in doing two things: determining the kinds of people it wanted within its communities and domesticating its liberation ideology. Concerning the first, in building Sowo, the RUF took a strategic approach in the people it abducted. For instance, elderly men and women—who traditionally controlled community relationships in Sierra Leone—were hardly abducted, except where they had a wealth of experience in teaching (at primary, secondary, and tertiary levels), nursing and medicine, engineering, journalism, or other disciplines necessary for the survival of a civil society within RUF ’s war communities. By abducting these professionals, the RUF was able to provide “free health care, schooling, housing, and seedlings” (Revolutionary United Front 1995, para. 45). From the surpluses of their looted goods, the inhabitants of Sowo became micro-­businessmen and women. They opened shops in the forests, and it was not uncommon for the people in non-­ RUF communities to enter into a barter system with these businesses. Thus, the non-­RUF villages in these dense rainforest communities also benefited from these services. In essence, “the right to life” in the non-­RUF communities was a commodity purchased by providing a portion of their agricultural produce. Of course, this practice was not unique to the social contract between these communities and the RUF communities; similar arrangements are to be found in almost all civil and uncivil human societies. The commodification and securitization of life in these communities were similar to what exists today in a typical American or European community, where people’s lives depend, partly, on their payment of taxes and the provision of other services that make life, and the right to it, possible. With regard to the domestication of what the RUF believed was a “clearly defined programme and liberation ideology,” the goal was to help community members learn from their everyday “mistakes” as they worked hard to create structures for the regulation of human rights, as determined by the commander of each rebel camp. Contrary to the popular opinion that the RUF was a group with no sense of purpose, with no regard for—and were only focused on destroying— everything progressive, within Sowo there was a collective sense of discipline. This was acknowledged by the prosecutors of the hybrid war crimes tribunal (the Special Court for Sierra Leone) in their argument that the RUF had centralized command structures and control procedures—thus, the ability to prosecute the indicted RUF leaders on the elements of “effective command responsibility” (see, for example, Van der Wilt 2013; Jalloh 2010). Against this backdrop, life inside Sowo went on as usual. As far as the prevailing security challenges permitted, the laws guiding engendered relationships were not greatly different from those guiding the pre-­war rural communities.

228   The idea of liberation The only significant change was the lack of permanent structures one would find in the pre-­war communities. However, from my recollections, there was little difference between the house of the chief (in the pre-­war communities) and the house of the rebel commander. Both, though they existed during different periods of the unfolding history of the human rights struggle in Sierra Leone, performed similar functions; they were the courthouses where cases of human rights and wrongs were heard, and verdicts passed. There are those who would point to the level of violence in these rebel communities as a major difference between the pre-­war and the wartime communities. While no one can deny the barbarous manner in which the rebels, like all the other factions, conducted themselves, there was little difference between the violence they perpetrated and those committed within the boundaries of Sierra Leone as far back as the fourteenth century. Throughout the history of Sierra Leone, violence has been (and still is) a key feature of political transitions. The transition from the micro-­kingdoms into a single British colony was occasioned through the Hut Tax War of 1898. In the twentieth century, the transformations that led to the rise of partisan politics resulted in two major armed conflicts: the war of 1931 (the jihad of the charismatic Islamic religious reformer and anti-­colonialist, Haidara Kontorfili, against the British and Christians of Sierra Leone), and the 1955 and 1956 peasant revolts (the uprising of the peasants against the colonial administration and the chiefs). In the 1980s, the gradualist transition from a neopatrimonial to an ethnopolitical one-­party state system under the APC resulted in the deaths of many, most notably during the Ndorgborwusui insurrection of 1982, which provoked the killing of thousands in Sorogbema town, Pujehun District3 (Gberie 2005, 66). When the civil war erupted in March 1991, the RUF was merely re-­living the inhumanity that had played a central role in the founding of a state; a state that became democratically independent in 1961; a state that lost that ideal of a representative democracy when a one-­party rule was declared in 1978. Sierra Leoneans since then had been forced to accept a system of governance under the control of politicians whose appetite for violence and relationships with the marginal youths in the drug-­infested potes of the peri-­urban and urban communities provided the RUF rebels (themselves denizens of the potes) all the training in violence they required before they entered Sowo. As such, the RUF was acting just as the European slave traders had in abducting people; just as the European imperial powers had in conquering and controlling physical, emotional, and sexual spaces. And in killing those they were meant to protect, the RUF was merely doing (if not outdoing) what the APC regimes of President Stevens and Momoh did between 1968 and 1985, and between 1985 and 1991, respectively. It is against this backdrop that I argue, first, that inside Sowo, life and death were determined by power—the kind of power, to adopt the words of Lisa Brush (2003, 25), that cannot be destroyed but can only change in its forms; and, second, that inside Sowo, people’s ability to negotiate exclusion and/or inclusion was dependent upon the narcissistic desires of the commanders and the need to do what must be done in the furtherance of the agenda of the RUF.

The idea of liberation   229 Hierarchies and privileges of rights inside Sowo It was in the war communities that the majority of the combatants who voluntarily entered the RUF camps began to understand that they were entitled to certain incontrovertible political, socio-­cultural, and economic rights they had not enjoyed before the civil war. Away from their pre-­war communities, most of these young men (and some female combatants) were engaged in the processes of memorializing their lived experiences. The memorialization process, I argue, was shaped by their gender-­based identities and what they made of their human rights entitlements. Moreover, part of this memorialization also called for thinking about a future in which their views and experiences mattered. For the young men, it began with their willingness to use violence to defend their rebel community. This willingness was seen as a demonstration that they merited membership in the community of men, as it was only in this way could they show their readiness to assume the roles of the patriarchs of their communities. However, the character of these patriarchs was different from those in the communities outside the control of the RUF. Old age, which was a defining factor in the selection of patriarchs in the non-­RUF communities, was replaced by youthful exuberance—not excluding the willingness to kill, maim, and rape. Age was not seen as a factor in the apportionment of responsibilities. The women within these violent-­prone patriarchal societies, on the other hand, were expected to conform to the rules set by the “young patriarchs.” This is not to say that all women within the camps were subservient to the patriarchal allocation of rights and privileges. Some did challenge the status quo. After all, as Coulter (2009; 2008) explains, it was in defense of their human rights, and in the projection of the strength of their femininity, that many women voluntarily joined the Women’s Auxiliary Corps (WACs) of the RUF. As was to be expected, the presence of these women combatants created the conditions for the emergence of their own hierarchies of rights, privileges, and responsibilities. At the top of the RUF hierarchy and chain of command was Foday Sankoh (although he was seen by many as a lieutenant to the Liberian warlord-­cumpresident Charles Taylor). Assisting Sankoh and Taylor in the furtherance of their war agendas in Sierra Leone was the RUF War Council. Collectively, these higher-­ups had special rights and privileges those below them did not enjoy. Interestingly, at a time when these men were among the most wanted men in Sierra Leone, it became apparent to the governments of Sierra Leone4 and the international community that eliminating them would derail the peace processes, measures were taken to ensure that the rights of these men (including the right to life) were protected. Their economic and political rights were guaranteed in all the peace accords signed between 1996 and 1999. For example, six months before the Lomé peace talks began in Togo (culminating in the Lomé Peace Accord of July 1999), President Kabbah assured the people of Sierra Leone that he had no intention of granting of the RUF leadership the rights they had deprived others of. He made this statement during the National Conference for Peace at the Bank Complex in Freetown in a response to the strident criticism of

230   The idea of liberation the President and his ministers by the All Political Parties Youth Association (APPYA) and the National Union of Sierra Leone Students (NUSS). The APPYA and NUSS had accused President Kabbah’s government of the high moral crime of granting Foday Sankoh and his men an unconditional amnesty and, further, alleged that Kabbah was going to push for a “government of national unity” that would include Sankoh and some of the surviving members of the War Council. At the National Conference for Peace, President Kabbah categorically denied these rumors, asking a series of rhetorical questions: “Will you share government with a movement that raped your children; chopped [off] the hands of your mothers and fathers … burned down your homes?!” Of course, the answer was a resounding “No!,” as nobody—at least not among those present who were drawn from the communities the RUF had victimized— wanted the government to reward the RUF leadership for its crimes. Notwithstanding this rhetoric, the fears of the people were proven correct. The Lome Accord (Article VII) called on President Kabbah’s government to appoint Sankoh to the position of chairman of the Commission for the Management of Strategic Resources—a position constitutionally equivalent to that of Vice President of Sierra Leone. Next below Sankoh and his War Council were the camp and platoon commanders. To be considered for these positions required acting in ways that sustained in-­group cohesion, as well as promoting the socio-­legal policies of the RUF War Council within the camps. Thus, apart from their military duties— such as selecting those who should join a raiding party—the camp and platoon commanders also served as magistrates or judges in their courts (under the supervision of the War Council). One RUF commander (let us call him John Doe5) I interviewed while researching this book confirmed this: My position was equal to what any modern-­day high court judge considers to be their functions. We depended on natural justice whenever we were faced with matters requiring the interpretation of the law. We held closed (for top commanding officers) and opened (for our subordinates: combatants and their families, as well as for the captors) hearings. Order was always very paramount. Members knew how dangerous it was for them to misbehave during hearings.6 Yes! Sometimes we execute those found guilty. But in most cases, we send them to the war front where the fighting was most intensified. If they survived, they were free to return, and it was part of our responsibilities to make sure that they were not harassed or mistreated afterward. During our conversation, he noted that loyalty, respect, duty, and personal courage were required from all RUF commanders. It was because he demonstrated these attributes that the RUF leadership called on him to serve on the RUF War Council. He was not the only person to rise to the top in virtue of such qualities: he told me that “it was because of their loyalty to the cause that Sam Bockarie, Issa Sesay, and others were recognized, and elevated to positions of prominence within the movement.” Asked if he considered membership of the

The idea of liberation   231 War Council a step towards the attainment of their political rights, he replied “Yes!” Moreover, when asked about his responsibility for the gross human rights violations that occurred under his watch within the camp, he argued that he was committed to defending the ideology of the movement. Asked whether that included attacking defenseless people, thereby preventing them from enjoying the rights and freedoms to which the movement said it was committed, he refuted this, and from a more personal point of view, said that in his view any incidents that may have compromised the rights of others occurred in the cause of defending his own rights and those of the combatants under his command. On the whole, he saw himself as a human being whose rights should be guaranteed not only because he was human, but because he was also a victim: Yes! We did many wrongs, and I did apologize for them before the Truth Commission. So, let us don’t revisit the past. I was a perpetrator and a victim. Above all, I am thankful that peace came and now I have a job, with a duty to defend and protect the rights of others in a civil society. There were other male-­only categories, including the middle and bottom cadres of the RUF ’s Special Forces (the Joso Group), the regulars (the fighting corps of young adult males), and members of the Small Boy Unit (made up solely of boys between the ages of 9 and 15). What their rights and associated privileges were, and how they laid claim to them, is best understood in relation to the hierarchies of rights and responsibilities of the women within the war community. To that end, it is necessary to turn our attention to the engendered tensions over people’s claims to rights, and how the presence of women within this violence-­prone space fed into the patriarchal narratives of power (specifically, over the sexuality of women). Like their husbands, the commanders’ wives were high in the hierarchy within Sowo. They also commanded much respect. They had specific responsibilities to protect the rights and dignity of women and girls within their respective war communities and to contribute to the war effort. Dyan Mazurana and Kristopher Carlson (2004, 14) state, of the militarized functions of these women: Captive “wives” of commanders exerted substantial power within the RUF compound. These “wives” were predominantly [pubescent] girls. When the commander was away, they were in charge of the compound. They kept in communication with the commander and would select and send troops, spies, and support when needed. These girls and young women decided on a daily basis who in the compound would fight, provide reconnaissance, and raid villages for food and loot. Some counseled their captor husband on war strategies, troop movement, and upcoming attacks. This extract illustrates how women were able to use the status of their “all-­ powerful” husbands to push for gender equality (an issue of concern to the discourse of human rights) within the camps. Despite their efforts, there was

232   The idea of liberation always a sense of “powerlessness” among these wives, associated with their status as “captured wives.” To be a victim of abduction, and to have to relive— on a daily basis—the trauma of being forced into a conjugal relationship, was a fundamental human rights violation with profound psychological and legal consequences. It is in view of the nature and consequences of forced marriage that some feminist legal scholars have sought to understand the impact that non-­ consensual sexual relationships have on gender-­based inequalities (Askin 2003; Bergoffen 2013; Brison 2002; Campbell 2003; MacKinnon 2007a, 2007b), and on the “forms of force that animate the hierarchy between the parties [men and women]” (MacKinnon 2007b, 247–8). In any case, what was also true about being a captured wife was the lack of the right to self-­determine their reproductive rights. While my male interlocutor—the former RUF commander—­ reiterated that they were attracted to these young women and girls because of their beauty, my discussions with Alima (not her real name),7 a former captured wife, indicated otherwise. Alima explained that, beyond the mere physical desire of these commanders, the women’s lack of sexual autonomy served several purposes. There were those whose “bush husbands” would always insist on abortion (through the use of an unspecified concoction of herbs), ultimately damaging their wombs. There were those, on the other hand, whose bush husbands would insist they have a child. Once pregnant, these men would remove these women from the camp and abandon the children they would give birth to outside the camps. Irrespective of the preferences of their bush husbands, one thread runs through these stories: there was, as one former bush wife put it, total surrender … to our commando husbands. They controlled our bodies. Sex, for those men, was for pleasure, and not about raising children. Some would even accuse their wives of promiscuity. When they try to argue, they were either tortured and locked up in a pit or room or sent to the war front, where they were expected to die.8 Below these commanders’ wives, there was a class of “Mammy Queens” (or godmothers). Their roles predated the establishment of Sowo; this category of women was also an influential group in the courts of the traditional rulers in the pre-­war communities of rural Sierra Leone. These Mammy Queens were the Ya Bompuseh and Ya Bomporo (minister of food and minister of women’s ceremonies, respectively) in the courts of Temne traditional rulers, and among the other tribal groups which shared marriage relations and cultural practices with the Temne in the Northern Province. This was the highest position a woman was expected to reach in politics at the traditional village level among the Temne. Age and experience were a prerequisite for a woman to become a Mammy Queen because young girls looked up to them for guidance on issues dealing with husband’s and children’s care, relations with co-­wives and on other matters relating to their gender assigned roles and responsibilities. (Lahai 2016, 213–14)

The idea of liberation   233 After independence, especially during the presidencies of Siaka Stevens and Saidu Momoh, women with the title of Mammy Queen—which indicated these regimes’ tendency to stereotypically condition women through their maternal roles—were central in the perpetration of politically motivated violence against political opponents (Lahai 2010, 25). They were in charge of selling rice at retail prices, mostly to those with APC party membership cards (Sierra Leone Truth & Reconciliation Commission 2004, chap. 3b, para. 58). When the war erupted, their duties in the rebel camps were merely an extension of their pre-­war quasi-­ parental roles and responsibilities. The Mammy Queens were charged with taking care of young girls until they were old enough to marry to rebel husbands. They also acted as godmothers and even conducted marriages in the rebel camps (Lahai 2016, 213; see also Coulter 2009). While the marriages they conducted were interpreted as crimes against humanity by the Special Court for Sierra Leone (Jain 2008; Oosterveld 2007; Park 2006), the Court, surprisingly, excluded these Mammy Queens from the indictments of those responsible for forced marriages inside Sowo. Instead, the Court pursued only the male leaders of the RUF (that is, after the UN refused to accept the blanket amnesty the Kabbah government had granted them).9 The third category of women was the WACs and the Small Girls Unit (SGU). The WACs was made up of adult women who voluntarily left their communities in government-­controlled areas to join the RUF communities; the SGU of young girls (below the age of 14) who had been abducted. The WACs members not only took part in routine military missions and in providing military support, but were also responsible for training the SGU recruits to become fierce warriors (Carlson and Mazurana 2004; Coulter 2009; Lahai 2012). However, the presence of these WACs and SGU female combatants in the RUF resulted in a major cultural crisis in Sierra Leone. This was the first time women and girls served openly as combatants in the wars of men; this was the first time women and girls were proud to be rebellious beings: with conflicting relational identities of being “killers” and “caring wives.” Sierra Leonean society struggled to interpret the identities of these gun-­wielding women; women with an appetite for human blood and flesh; women in male fatigues; women with masculine names that were meant for the male rebels—names like Kumba Blood, Adama Cut-­hand, Rambo, Colonel Mammy (also known as Gaddafi’s Wife), and Small Rebel.10 The societal exploitation of nomenclature to create stereotypical constructs that situated the men and boys as violent and women and girls as peacemakers overlaid the biological and cultural factors that continued to compromise the fight for women’s empowerment and gender equality. And for the women, society expected them to carry on with their domestic duties, giving birth to healthy boys (who would eventually become warrior men), and presenting themselves as “comfort women” with a natural sexual attraction to their protector men. Below these WACs and SGUs was the final category of women and girls, the camp slaves. They had all been abducted and, for obvious reasons, they were also skilled in the art of war. According to Aminata (whose story featured

234   The idea of liberation prominently in Chris Coulter’s book Bush Wives and Girl Soldiers: Women’s Lives through War and Peace in Sierra Leone), no woman who had spent a year with them [the RUF war communities] was not trained how to fix [a] gun and fire [it]. This was for protection; maybe even among us, if your companion want[s] to kill you and you also know how to fire, you can retaliate. (Coulter 2009, 135) What was also true was their lack of any claim or entitlements to human rights. The only thing that kept most of them alive was the hope that someday they would be either liberated by the pro-­government forces, or dead, which would put an end to their traumatic lived experiences once and for all. Various forms of human rights violations were perpetrated against them. They were raped (with as many as 257,000 rape crimes during the conflict (Physicians for Human Rights 2002)). They were also subjected to sexual slavery, forced conscription, and forced marriage.11 It was, therefore, not surprising that the prosecutors of the Special Court for Sierra Leone were able to secure an indictment charging three members of the RUF and Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) with rape as a crime against humanity,12 outrages against personal dignity as a violation of Article 3 of the Geneva Convention, sexual slavery as a crime against humanity13 and crimes against humanity under the heading of other inhumane acts—which included the act of forced marriage (Oosterveld 2011, 50).

Notes   1 These soldiers, frustrated by the lack of support from the APC, and the RUF ’s “strange” tactic of guerrilla warfare, for which they were unprepared, commandeered a 40mm anti-­aircraft gun and traveled from the front (in the area of Upper Bambara Chiefdom, Kailahun District) to Freetown. On arrival, at about 5 a.m. on April 29, the young soldiers stationed the anti-­aircraft gun at Ferry Junction, Eastern Freetown, in anticipation of pro-­APC military activities from Benguma Barracks and Lungi Garrison. From there, they proceeded to the military camp of the West African military forces (the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group, ECOMOG) on Tower Hill (where State House, the President’s office was) and seized it. As their mandate did not authorize intervention in the internal political affairs of the country, the ECOMOG forces stood by as these soldiers attacked State House. President Momoh fled to the neighboring Republic of Guinea—thus bringing to an end almost three decades of an autocratic regime.   2 At the time of this memo, these men wanted command of the self-­styled RUF special forces, the Joso Group. This group was a collection of battle-­ready men, mostly from the Mende ethnic group in Pujehun district, with prior combat experience, including having taken part in (or led) the 1982 Ndorgborwusui rebellion in Pujehun against the APC government.   3 This local armed uprising, writes Lansana Gberie, “erupted after a senior APC politicians rigged elections in the district and threatened to punish the people of Sorogbema, who cried foul at the electoral fraud.” In fact, according to Gberie, most of the people who suffered at the hands of the APC during this uprising

The idea of liberation   235 joined the RUF enthusiastically, beguiled by the rebels’ anti-­APC rhetoric. One such figure, and one who was to become notorious in the RUF, was Momoh Konneh. He was said to have enthusiastically joined the RUF when the rebels entered Sorogbema, and then gone about attacking “all those he believed were against his Ndorgborwusui group. the notoriety of Konneh in the Pujehun area led many people to conclude, wrongly, that the rebel activities were a continuation of the earlier Ndorgborwusui campaigns.” (Gberie 2005, 66)   4 The NPRC junta (between 1992 and 1996), the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council junta (1996 and 1997) and the President Tejan Kabbah-­led government (1996 and 1997; 1998 and 2002).   5 Former rebel commander John Doe. Interviewed by the author May 12, 2016.   6 He candidly observed that there were times (especially after winning major victories) when drugs and alcohol would provoke disturbances within his camp. That notwithstanding, he had officers—who he referred to as “police officers” (of the same standing as the military police of the army)—who were responsible for keeping law and order. They were also his court guards and the officers responsible for carrying out orders to “waste [execute] those who murdered their fellows out of malice and for no just cause”; asked what he meant by “just cause,” he cited self-­defense as an example.   7 Alima, interviewed by the author June 18 and 22, 2015.   8 Ibid.   9 On July 5, 2004, the Trial Chamber of the Special Court commenced proceedings against Issa Hassan Sesay, Morris Kallon, and Augustine Gbao. For more on these cases, and the problems of defining forced marriage in international human rights law and criminal law, see Valerie Oosterveld, “The Special Court for Sierra Leone, Child Soldiers, and Forced Marriage: Providing Clarity or Confusion?” The Canadian Yearbook of International Law 45: 131–72 (2007); “The Gender Jurisdiction of the Special Court for Sierra Leone: Progress in the Revolutionary United Front Judgements.” Cornell International Law Journal 44: 49–74 (2011); and Neha Jain, “Forced Marriage as a Crime against Humanity: Problems of Definition and Prosecution.” Journal of International Criminal Justice 6 (5): 1013–32 (2008). 10 For more on the story of Mammy Colonel (aka Colonel Gaddafi’s Wife) and Small Rebel, see the May 21, 2000 report by John Sweeney of the Guardian. This report is titled: “Boys taught to torture and maim.” Available at: www.theguardian.com/ world/2000/may/21/sierraleone1 (accessed January 10, 2018). 11 See, for example, Press Release, Human Rights Watch, Sierra Leone: Ruling in Revolutionary United Front Trial (February 25, 2009), http://reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/ db900SID/ LSGZ-­7PLE84?OpenDocument; see also Human Rights Watch, “We’ll Kill You if You Cry”: Sexual Violence in the Sierra Leone Conflict 26–27 (2003), available at www.hrw.org/reports/2003/sierraleone/. 12 Valerie Oosterveld also pointed out, in reference to the intersectionality of gender-­ based crimes the Court had to deal with, that “the crime against humanity and war crime of rape often intersected with other crimes during the Sierra Leonean conflict.” Quoting the evidence presented to the Trial Judges in the Prosecutor v. Sesay, Kallon & Gbao case, she corroborated the findings that the RUF regularly raped women who were forced to carry loads in the Guinea Highway area of Koidu in 1998. In Sawao, rape was accompanied by abduction, forced portering, beating with sticks and gun butts, and sexual mutilation. In Penduma, public gang rape was used alongside forced separation from family and murder. In Bumpeh, rape happened alongside forced nudity and public humiliation: a rebel ordered a captured civilian couple to have sexual intercourse in front of other captured civilians and then forced the man’s daughter to wash her father’s penis. In Bomboafuidu, the RUF rebels forced captured civilians to undress and

236   The idea of liberation have sex with one another and then sexually mutilated the captives. In another example of intersectionality, the Trial Chamber considered instances of sexual slavery and forced marriage to be intertwined within RUF-­controlled territory, and therefore, the Trial Chamber analyzed the supporting evidence together. In this author’s view, by considering sexual slavery and forced marriage together, the Trial Chamber better recognized the actual context of the Sierra Leonean conflict, in which victims were often subjected to both prohibited acts, or the sexual slavery and forced marriage occurred in the same time and place but against different women and girls. (Oosterveld 2011, 72–3) 13 Sexual slavery is, in the conclusions of the Special Court, a charge that intersected with other crimes. It noted (in Prosecutor v. Sesay, Kallon & Gbao) that “it was common practice for [RUF] rebels to keep captured women subject to their control as sex slaves and to force conjugal relationships on women who unwillingly became their ‘wives’ ” (SCSL Trial Chamber I 2009, quoted in Oosterveld 2011, 73).

References Askin, Kelly D. 2003. “Prosecuting wartime rape and other gender-­related crimes under international law: Extraordinary advances, enduring obstacles.” Berkeley Journal of International Law 21: 288. Bergoffen, Debra B. 2013. Contesting the Politics of Genocidal Rape: Affirming the Dignity of the Vulnerable Body. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Brison, Susan J. 2002. Aftermath: Violence and the Remaking of a Self. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Brush, Lisa D. 2003. Gender and Governance. Lanham, MD: Altamira Press. Campbell, Kirsten. 2003. “Rape as a ‘crime against humanity’: Trauma, law, and justice in the ICTY.” Journal of Human Rights 2 (4): 507–15. Carlson, Kristopher and Dyan Mazurana. 2004. “From combat to community: Women and girls in Sierra Leone.” Washington, DC: Women Waging Peace. Clapham, Christopher. 2003. “Sierra Leone: The political economy of internal conflict.” Netherlands Institute of International Relations, Clingendael Conflict Research Unit. www.clingendael.nl/sites/default/files/20030700_cru_working_paper_20.pdf. Coulter, Chris. 2008. “Female fighters in the Sierra Leone War: Challenging the assumptions?” Feminist Review: 54–73. Coulter, Chris. 2009. Bush Wives and Girl Soldiers: Women’s Lives through War and Peace in Sierra Leone. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Dunn, Richard S. 2014. A Tale of Two Plantations: Slave Life and Labor in Jamaica and Virginia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Gberie, Lansana. 2005. A Dirty War in West Africa The RUF and the Destruction of Sierra Leone. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Hoffman, Danny. 2006. “Disagreement: Dissent politics and the war in Sierra Leone.” Africa Today 52 (3): 3–22. Jain, Neha. 2008. “Forced marriage as a crime against humanity: Problems of Definition and prosecution.” Journal of International Criminal Justice 6 (5): 1013–32. Jalloh, Charles Chernor. 2010. “Special court for Sierra Leone: Achieving justice.” Michigan Journal of International Law 32: 395. Kandeh, Jimmy D. 1996. “What does the ‘militariat’ do when it rules? Military regimes: The Gambia, Sierra Leone, and Liberia.” Review of African Political Economy 23 (69): 387–404.

The idea of liberation   237 Keen, David. 2005. Conflict and Collusion in Sierra Leone. Oxford, UK: James Currey Publishers. Lahai, John Idriss. 2010. “Sexing the state: The gendered origins of the Civil War in Sierra Leone.” Minerva Journal of Women and War 4 (2): 26–45. https://doi.org/10. 3172/MIN.4.2.26. Lahai, John Idriss. 2012. “ ‘Fused in combat’: Unsettling gendered hierarchies and women’s roles in the fighting forces in Sierra Leone’s Civil War.” Australasian Review of African Studies 33 (1): 34. Lahai, John Idriss. 2016. Gender in Practice: Culture, Politics, and Society in Sierra Leone. 14 vols. Oxford, UK: Peter Lang. http://dx.doi.org/10.3726/b11126. MacKinnon, Catharine A. 2007a. Are Women Human? Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. MacKinnon, Catharine A. 2007b. Women’s Lives, Men’s Laws. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Muana, Patrick K. 1997. “The Kamajoi Militia: Civil War, internal displacement and the politics of counter-­insurgency.” Africa Development/Afrique et Développement 22 (3/4): 77–100. Oosterveld, Valerie. 2007. “The special court for Sierra Leone, child soldiers, and forced marriage: Providing clarity or confusion?” The Canadian Yearbook of International Law 45: 131–72. Oosterveld, Valerie. 2011. “The gender jurisdiction of the special court for Sierra Leone: Progress in the Revolutionary United Front judgements.” Cornell International Law Journal 44: 49–74. Park, Augustine S. J. 2006. “ ‘Other inhumane acts’: Forced marriage, girl soldiers and the Special Court for Sierra Leone.” Social & Legal Studies 15 (3): 315–37. Physicians for Human Rights. 2002. “War-­related sexual violence in Sierra Leone: A population-­based assessment.” Washington, DC: Physicians for Human Rights. https:// s3.amazonaws.com/PHR_Reports/sierra-­leone-sexual-­violence-2002.pdf. Rashid, Ishmail. 2016. “Sierra Leone: The Revolutionary United Front,” in Michelle Hughes and Michael Miklaucic (eds.), Impunity: Countering Illicit Power in War and Transition. Washington, DC: National Defense University, the Department of the Army, the Department of Defense of the US Government. http://cco.ndu.edu/Portals/ 96/Documents/Impunity/Impunity%20FINAL%20for%20Web.pdf, 190–216. Revolutionary United Front (RUF ). 1995. “Footpaths to democracy: Toward a new Sierra Leone.” www.sierra-­leone.org/AFRC-­RUF/footpaths.html. Richards, Paul. 1996. Fighting for the Rainforest: War, Youth, and Resources in Sierra Leone. Oxford, UK: James Currey. Richards, Paul. 2001. “Are forest wars in Africa resource conflicts? The case of Sierra Leone.” in Nancy Lee Peluso and Michael Watts (eds) Violent Environments, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Smillie, Ian, Lansana Gberie and Ralph Hazleton. 2000. The Heart of the Matter: Sierra Leone Diamonds and Human Security. Partnership Africa Canada Ottawa. www. pacweb.org/Documents/diamonds_KP/heart_of_the_matter-­full-2000-01-eng.doc. The Sierra Leone Truth & Reconciliation Commission. 2004. “Chapter Three: Women and the Armed Conflict in Sierra Leone.” Witness to Truth: Report of the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission, vol. 3. Freetown, Sierra Leone: The Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission. www.sierraleonetrc.org/downloads/­ Volume3bChapter3.pdf.

238   The idea of liberation Van der Wilt, Harmen. 2013. “Command responsibility in the jungle: Some reflections on the elements of effective command and control,” in C. C. Jalloh (ed.), The Sierra Leone Special Court and Its Legacy: The Impact for Africa and International Criminal Law. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 144–58. Wai, Zubairu. 2012. Epistemologies of African Conflicts: Violence, Evolutionism, and the War in Sierra Leone. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Wlodarczyk, Nathalie. 2009. Magic and Warfare: Appearance and Reality in Contemporary African Conflict and Beyond. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

13 Contested truth The Truth Commission and restorative justice, 2002–2004

Thanks to advances in socio-­legal studies, justice, in its temporal or continuous form, is now seen through a scientific lens that has broadened our understanding of its meanings and impact on human existence. A scientific study conducted in 2008 at the University of California, Los Angeles, found that reactions to justice are “wired” into the human brain, and that justice activates the same part of the human brain that responds to money or chocolate (Wolpert 2008). This is consistent with the notion that being treated “fairly” satisfies a basic biological and psychological need. Like all forms of justice, transitional justice has become more sophisticated as the notion of fairness has became one of its core elements (Arthur 2009; Aukerman 2002; Call 2004; Bell and O’Rourke 2007; Teitel 2005). Fairness can assume the character of retributive justice (Goldstein-­ Bolocan 2004; Sikkink 2011), one of the most widely understood forms of justice. To give an example: when somebody rapes, or kills or maims someone, the suspect is taken to a tribunal. The tribunal has the powers to find that he or she is guilty beyond reasonable doubt, or not guilty (sometimes on the grounds of extenuating circumstances). The guilty are sentenced. Depending on the gravity of the offense and the laws of the country, some are sentenced to death; others to a specified time of community service; some to life in prison (with or without the possibility of parole). In societies where fairness is guaranteed, the punishment is typically proportional to the crime(s) committed. Thus, where retributive fairness prevails, it is unlikely for those found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity to be sentenced to, say, one month in prison or a fine of $200, and then freed. Fairness can also take the character of restorative justice—which is the focus of this chapter, with reference to the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission (hereafter, the Commission). Restorative justice is not so much concerned with vengeance and punishment—although restorative institutions may recommend criminal prosecution (Stahn 2001; Villa-­Vicencio 2000; Gibson 2002). Rather, it emphasizes making a victim (or victims) whole again, but also compels reintegration of the offender into “civil” society. The primary intention behind the adoption of restorative justice, in the form of truth-­seeking, is to bring together the victims and the perpetrators of grave wrongs on a platform where the victim receives the truth from the perpetrator (on condition that the victim

240   Contested truth promises not to revenge the harm done); and the perpetrator receives forgiveness in exchange for telling the truth and promising not to repeat the offense or crime. This is what is referred to as catharsis, for self and others. In Sierra Leone, with 99 percent of the perpetrators of heinous atrocities against innocent civilians never tried and punished—instead being disarmed, rehabilitated, and reintegrated into society (Zack-­Williams 2006)—it was necessary for some, if not all of them, to appear before the Commission, to receive forgiveness in exchange for their truth: the truth about what they did, when they did it, how it was done and to whom (Archibald and Richards 2002). This chapter is about the Commission and the competing historical truths that were told during its sessions. Here, I situate the very idea of the “history” of these truths in the lived experiences of the country and its people. This history, the discussion demonstrates, lives on: in the past, the present, and in the future. To see it, one should turn, on the one hand, to people’s lived experiences and their modes of memorializing the meanings of “truth,” “forgiveness,” and “guilt.” On the other hand, it requires an evaluation of the impact of “official” truth (that is, the truth of the Commission, as contained in its official report) about the country: its violated people, human rights laws, and policies.

The Truth Commission and the making of an official truth The established performative functions of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Sierra Leone Theoretically speaking, truth commissions have four main characteristics: First, they focus on the past. The events may have occurred in the recent past, but a truth commission is not an ongoing body akin to a human rights commission. Second, truth commissions investigate a pattern of abuse over a set period of time rather than a specific event. In its mandate, the truth commission is given the parameters of its investigation both in terms of the time period covered as well as the type of human rights violations to be explored. Third, a truth commission is a temporary body, usually operating over a period of six months to two years and completing its work by submitting a report. These parameters are established at the time of the commission’s formation, but often an extension can be obtained to wrap things up. Fourth, truth commissions are officially sanctioned, authorized, or empowered by the state. This, in principle, allows the commission to have greater access to information, greater security, and increased assurance that its findings will be taken into serious consideration. Official sanction from the government is crucial because it represents an acknowledgment of past wrongs and a commitment to address the issues and move on. Furthermore, governments may be more likely to enact recommended reforms if they have established the commission. (Hayner 2002, 14)

Contested truth   241 In the previous chapter (in the section dealing with the hierarchies and privileges of rights in Sowo, the sacred communities of the RUF rebels), I talked about the betrayal the people of Sierra Leone felt when a blanket amnesty was granted to all warring factions by the Lomé Peace Accord of July 1999. Notwithstanding its shortcomings, the Lomé Accord was a document of the people, who played no less a role in bringing an end to the civil war in 2002 (Lord 2000; O’Flaherty 2004; Archibald and Richards 2002). To give them a central place in the historical records of the war, the parties at Lomé, Togo, also included Article XXVI in the Lomé Peace Accord (hereafter, the Accord). This article called for the creation of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Pursuant to this clause, as reiterated in Article XXXIV of the Accord, the Government of Sierra Leone, through an Act of Parliament (the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Act (2000); hereafter, the Act) established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Schabas and Wald 2004). The Act spelled out the structure, mandate, procedure, and the intended outcome of the work of the Commission. In terms of its structure, the Act (Part II, ss 3(1)) created a commission consisting of seven ex-­officio commissioners, four of whom were to be citizens of Sierra Leone, and three non-­citizens.1 These commissioners were the “moral guarantors” of the people (Part II subpara (a) (iii)). To enable them to work efficiently in their capacity of moral guarantors, the Act guaranteed them independence2 (Part IV, ss 14(1)) and access to all information, including the power to subpoena people to appear before the Commission (ss 8 (d) and (g)).3 To enable these moral guarantors to gain the trust of the people, in the face of suspicion and competing truths about what happened during the conflict, all relevant actors4 (including civil societies and representatives of the war survivors) were also given a say in the appointment process of these commissioners. To assist the Commission in its duties, the Act (Part IV, ss 10(1)) called on the seven ex-­officio members to create any necessary committees. Through these committees, the Commission should also produce a quarterly report for the government (which was also to be made public) (Mahony and Sooka 2015). Regarding the Commission’s mandate (here I quote, at length, the relevant sections of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s report, Volume One, Chapter 1, titled The Mandate of the TRC5), Section 6 of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Act 2000 sets out the “object” of the Commission: 1

The object for which the Commission is established is to create an impartial historical record of violations and abuses of human rights and international humanitarian law related to the armed conflict in Sierra Leone, from the beginning of the Conflict in 1991 to the signing of the Lomé Peace Agreement; to address impunity, to respond to the needs of the victims, to promote healing and reconciliation and to prevent a repetition of the violations and abuses suffered.

242   Contested truth 2

Without prejudice to the generality of subsection (1), it shall be the function of the Commission— a

b

c

to investigate and report on the causes, nature, and extent of the violations and abuses referred to in subsection (1) to the fullest degree possible, including their antecedents, the context in which the violations and abuses occurred, the question of whether those violations and abuses were the results of deliberate planning, policy or authorisation by any government, group or individual, and the role of both internal and external factors in the conflict; to work to help restore the human dignity of victims and promote reconciliation by providing an opportunity for victims to give an account of the violations and abuses suffered and for perpetrators to relate their experiences, and by creating a climate which fosters constructive interchange between victims and perpetrators, giving special attention to the subject of sexual abuses and to the experiences of children within the armed conflict; and to do all such things as may contribute to the fulfillment of the object of the Commission.

Furthermore, Section 7(1) of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Act 2000 discusses the “functions” of the Commission, which, it says “shall include the following three components”: a b c

undertaking investigation and research into key events, causes, patterns of abuse or violation and the parties responsible; holding sessions, some of which may be public, to hear from the victims and perpetrators of any abuses or violations or from other interested parties; and taking individual statements and gathering additional information with regard to the matters referred to in paragraphs (a) or (b).

The Commission’s operational aspects presented a particular legal challenge for the Parliament of Sierra Leone (Mahony and Sooka 2015). Had the Act spelled out what the Commission was to do (in the field), it would have been seen by some as an attempt to dictate the kind of “truth” that should be told. This would create a risk that some, especially the victims, would refuse to participate in the process; there were already those who, during drafting and debate on the statute, had begun alleging “similarities between the Lomé Peace negotiations (whose outcome document, the Lomé Accord, compensated the perpetrators for their crimes) and the deliberations in Parliament on the mandate of the Commission.”6 To mitigate this risk, the Act noted, in Part III sub-section 7(a), that, the Commission alone should determine its procedures and mode of work with regard to its functions. Having said that, for all its worth—for all it was to do nationwide—the Commission’s work represented a constitutional endorsement of third-­party

Contested truth   243 mediation in Sierra Leone (Millar 2011); a country with a long history of alternative dispute resolution (Kelsall 2005; Shaw 2007b); with customary institutions and belief systems that were (and still are) founded on, and receptive to, truth-­ seeking and reconciliation (Maru 2006; Park 2010). This was recognized in the Act, with Part III sub-section 7(2), addressing the functions of the Commission, stating “[t]he Commission may seek assistance from traditional and religious leaders to facilitate its public sessions and in resolving local conflicts arising from past violations or abuses or in support of healing and reconciliation” (Government of Sierra Leone 2002, 7). With its broad-­base support and national platform, and with the powers that placed it above all (but subject to national and international law (Schabas 2004)), the expectation was that the Commission would produce an independent and an accurate account of the causes, course, and consequences of the civil war in Sierra Leone. The challenges of trust and truth The pressures brought about by people’s lack of trust in the process, and the challenges in determining the “truth,” were two of the main issues the Commission confronted. In relation to the problem of trust, the first challenge to address was the relationship between the Commission and the Special Court for Sierra Leone (hereafter, the Court). The Commission was working on restorative issues while, at the same time, the Court was busy putting mechanisms in place for the prosecution of those it considered most responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity. It was hard for the Commission’s argument to be accepted by the people when the Court refused to define its relationships with the Commission in its mandate. For his part, William Schabas (2004) argues that, even if the Court had made references to their separateness, it had a synergistic relationship with the Commission in that they were created to complement each other in their work on accountability, and to create platforms for the victims and perpetrators to tell their stories. Against this backdrop, there were fears that those who appeared before the Commission would be handed over to the Court for prosecution. Trust was vital to resolve this problem. During my time with the Commission I traversed the country collecting stories and identifying those who refused to talk to us because they were afraid. Their refusal to cooperate slowed the work of the Commission but, as members of the statement-­taking teams, we were required to work towards regaining the confidence of the people. Accomplishing this required no sophisticated strategy. On arrival in the community, we were given the choice of staying either in the homes of the chiefs and their elders-­incouncil, or in the overcrowded homes of the people in the community, or in our tents (supplied by the UN peacekeepers). Hospitality was rarely lacking and we blended with the community, even to the extent of taking part in their household activities and daily chores when we could. Though it was uncomfortable, amid  the general atmosphere of mistrust and insecurity, we found comfort in their smiles and willingness to forgive and move on. After all, the ability to

244   Contested truth forgive—which is not proportional to the kind of human rights violations they had experienced—is what defined people’s resilience in post-­war Sierra Leone. In relation to the challenges associated with the determination of “truth,” the kinds of truth that were told, and which informed the 2004 report of the Commission, included aspects that went beyond the powers of the Commission. These truths were determined by many factors: gender (Nagy 2008; Franke 2006; Rubio-­Marin 2006), education (Paulson 2006), people’s understanding of the Commission’s mandate and its relationship to the Court (Tejan-­Cole 2003; Schabas 2004, 2004), people’s cultural and ritualized belief systems (Kelsall 2005; Shaw 2007b), socio-­political and economic status, and the wartime roles of some of the principal actors (Gberie 2005), location (urban, peri-­urban, and rural), and people’s sense of gender-­based wartime violence (Denov 2006; Askin 2002). Unfortunately, these factors were never resolved and, when the report was submitted to the government in 2004, they contributed to the government’s inability to implement some of the recommendations.

The representations and typologies of truths Truth, in all its forms, was a commodity used by all communities with traumatic experiences and in need of a space to memorialize wartime past. And some, in their formal (recorded) and informal (unrecorded) use of the power of truth (or its absence), told stories about themselves and/or of others: family and community members. There were also three types of truth that were told: Orwellian truth, transitory truth, and arrested truth. Orwellian truth The Orwellian truth was told by the warlords (the leaders of the warring factions) and the politicians. As a result of the wartime competition between them, this category of “truth-­tellers” competed among themselves for the inclusion of their respective “truths” at every stage of the Commission’s life, from its inception to the conclusion of its report. At its inception, President Kabbah appointed Major Johnny Paul Koroma, leader of one of the warring factions, the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) and Chairman of the Commission for the Consolidation of Peace (CCP). President Kabbah’s action was aimed at fulfilling the terms of the Lomé Accord, which called on his government to appoint Major Koroma as chairman of the CCP with responsibility for setting up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. In their reflection paper on the politics of the establishment of the Commission, Chris Mahony (who was author of some of the chapters of the Commission’s report) and Yasmin Sooka (who was one of the international commissioners of the Commission), note that Koroma’s alienation of the RUF high command was due, in part, to the disintegrating relations between the former allies, Koroma’s AFRC and Foday Sankoh’s RUF. The CCP, under Koroma’s leadership, was not inclined towards ensuring the inclusion of the RUF and its reasons for starting a civil war in 1991 (Mahony and

Contested truth   245 Sooka 2015). Although President Kabbah and the CCP chairman had their own axe to grind, they saw the RUF leadership as a cabal of people experienced at “distorting reality by a combination of half-­truths and manipulation of facts including concealment, wild allegations, outrights lies, exaggerations, and deception” (Abraham 2001, 222). Because of the tensions between the leaders of the factions, the truth became a political commodity that was empowering only to the perpetrators. They used the Foucauldian power of language to impress upon their helpless victims that, contrary to what had been theorized about the role of apology in shifting power from the perpetrators to the victims, they were still in control of the space where the victims had come to listen to their Orwellian truth-­telling rhetoric. Sensing that this truth would have a negative impact on the victim/survivor communities, the representative of the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Francis Okelo, who was also a signatory of the Lomé Accord, met with President Kabbah to express disapproval of a warlord-­led process. In July 2000, the United States Ambassador for War Crimes, David Scheffer, also led a high-­powered delegation to Freetown to meet with the President. Although much of what was discussed remains unknown to this day, it was rumored that the US government was not interested in the work of the Commission and was reluctant to commit itself financially to the process. However, Chris Mahony and Yasmin Sooka (2015) suggest that Ambassador Scheffer reassured President Kabbah of the US government’s commitment to contribute to $250 million to the Commission’s budget on the condition that the government approved the creation of a criminal tribunal to try the select few commanding the factions during the conflict. Transitory truth The transitory truth was told by those with the dual identity of victim and perpetrator during the conflict. Examples of this category of truth-­tellers include, among others, child soldiers and abducted women/girls who later became active rebels. The people in this category were victims, as their victimhood and the responsibilities of states and non-­state actors to remedy their plights are enshrined in numerous international conventions. The laws that criminalized the use of children in armed conflicts include, among others, the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child,7 the 1990 African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child and its Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict (OPAC) of the Organization of African Unity (OAU),8 the 1997 Cape Town Principles9 and the 2007 Paris Principles.10 These norms oscillate between protection, “paternalism” and autonomy (Breen 2006). But this oscillation is not free from legal and social scrutiny. Socially, and following the psychological discourses on childhood, the question was how society was to deal with children immune from individual and collective responsibility for their actions against other community members (including children)? From a legal standpoint, the issue of equality before the law for children who commit war crimes and crimes

246   Contested truth against humanity is still in its infancy. The topical question, then, is whether child soldiers should be treated as victims11 or perpetrators. This was a major question that emerged during the national consultations of the Truth Commission. Those who believed they should be treated as perpetrators, and should, therefore, be placed in the category of wrongdoers, pointed to the heinous crimes they perpetrated against the innocent—hence the proposal (though rejected) for a Juvenile Chamber in the Special Court for Sierra Leone (Amann 2001). Nevertheless, since the Commission was established to do justice, the children, irrespective of what they had done, were considered to have the right to be heard (Mann, Theuermann and UNICEF 2001). Representing them at the Commission was the founding President of the Children’s Forum Network (CFN)— which became the first national children’s organization in Sierra Leone—Chernor Bah, now a member of the UN Secretary General’s Panel on Global Education. During his testimony, which was broadcast nationwide, Chernor called on all to see children as victims. Reflecting on his testimony to the Commission, he told me in an interview that: In my presentation to the Commission, I said that the children of the country believed that the war was fought primarily against us. Also, they [the children] felt, part of the reason for the war was the neglect and marginalization of children and young people, manifested by the visible lack of a platform for us in the governance of the country over the years. I recounted several stories we had collected and presented. I ended with a long list of recommendations for the future, including the need to include children in all decisions affecting them in every sector in the country. I received thunderous applause from the children and remarkably, from the adults [including the rebel leaders, government ministers, parliamentarians, parents] in the hall as well. I had just told them some hard truths; a phenomenon that went against the fundamentals of our culture. Weary of war, it seemed that these adults and the nation overall were suddenly willing to listen to their children. What they had witnessed in these eleven years [of war] had been enough to make them willing to listen to us and treat us as partners in development. As I argued in my presentation, it is true that children, some of whom were in the hall to cheer me on, had been forced to commit heinous crimes. If we could be this destructive, I said, we could as well be constructive, and the country could not afford to ignore us anymore. The evidence was compelling.12 From what has been said thus far, it is evident that the empowering outlook of truth-­telling for this category was temporal. Its temporality was characterized by a constant shift between the emotional-­confessional narratives of guilt (for the crimes they had committed) and shame (for their victimhood status).

Contested truth   247 Arrested truth The arrested truth was the unofficial truth. It represents the inauthentic truth that women (victims and perpetrators) recounted before the Commission; it contained stories that explored the general attributes of wartime violence, without touching on their individualized memorialization of lived experiences during and after the war. In a country where to be a woman was to always be on guard against sexual and gender-based violence, and against socially constructed stigma (attached to the identity of, say, a rape survivor) and patriarchal cultural belief systems that perpetrated gender-­based discrimination and violence, it was difficult for women to speak the kind of truth they wanted. Of course, national and international women’s advocacy groups were there to provide support for the women to speak in their own terms. However, they were constrained by the problem of the non-­ transcendence of the patriarchal customs and beliefs on the sexuality of women. Perhaps unaware of its gendered dimensions, the Commission’s gender-­neutral attempt to articulate the transcendence-­in-immanence of its powers contributed to the reinforcement of what can best be described as an embodiment of patriarchal truth. The centrality of the metanarratives of patriarchy resulted in a situation whereby the truth of women was positioned in ways that made their narratives an “alternative” truth, with an unofficial character. In the end, the truth-­telling process brought forth what Martha Minow referred to as the “dilemma of difference”: that is, the predicament of not knowing when a differential treatment accentuates differences (Minow 1990, 198). This dilemma began when the vulnerabilities of people were centralized, consciously or otherwise, to create a space where they (the women) were expected to keep on memorializing their susceptibility to irreparable harm. But this labeling—as I understand it from my readings of Minow and other scholars—when fused with people’s stereotypical understanding of the vulnerable space and the performative functions of power and sexualities, may have an adverse impact on how women come to terms with their traumatic lived experiences. Central to this, at least from a liberal feminist standpoint, is the intersectional role that the battered identities of women play in the creation of unhelpful class difference (Minow 1988, 1992; Millar 2015b). In this gender-­induced class difference, those who matter, the powerful—the male combatants, rapists, the armed forces of the country—are given egalitarian treatment (Millar 2015b; Shaw 2007b; Gberie 2005; Dougherty 2004); those who do not matter (women) receive a non-­egalitarian treatment (Muddell 2007; Shaw 2007a). The outcome of this egalitarian and non-­egalitarian treatment led many to believe that “those who mattered” may have (un)consciously dictated the methodology of the Commission. This is not to say that the Commission did not meet the standard of equality. It did, by way of its incorporation of three women13 into a bench of seven commissioners: Yasmin Louise Sooka, Madam Ajaratu Satang Jow, and Justice Laura Marcus-­Jones (who was Deputy Chairperson). Despite the presence of these women, the impact of the gendered politics of difference

248   Contested truth (which led the Commission to focus on specific perspectives), resulted in the production of an official truth that unconsciously denied the existence of forms of gender-­based exclusion. Put another way, the Commission’s institutional activities to ensure legally sanctioned social equality resulted in an “invisible” form of imprisonment within an already constrained space, where those who mattered, and what mattered, were determined by gender and sexual identity.

Practical truth: the role of history in the documentation of human rights violations by the Commission Notwithstanding the influence of people’s identities in the making of these contentious truths, all participants in the sessions of the Commission spoke about the history of human rights in Sierra Leone. Through them, this history became “practical truth”—as a subject-­matter. As Elazar Barkan noted, the combination of “historical advocacy” (Barkan 2009, 903) and “the subject of history” has the effect of contributing to national reconciliation through the construction of “negotiated histories”: Historical claims vetted by experts become “practical truth” and noncontroversial in the public arena. On the contrary, controversial conclusions might be innovative, interesting and challenging, yet they are unlikely to achieve the status of truth until they are embraced by the profession. (Barkan 2005, 234) The negotiated history of truth, however contentious, knows all. This history knows why, how, and what went wrong in Sierra Leone (Millar 2010). This history knows what all governments in colonial and postcolonial Sierra Leone did, whether right or wrong, and whose ideologies on human rights and politics were at fault. This history knows how it all ended; it knows why, after many centuries of experimenting with various human rights frameworks (both liberal and non-­liberal), Sierra Leone imploded into a decade-­long civil war that robbed the people their inalienable rights. This history knows what happened within the war/peace communities (Coulter 2009, 2005). This history knows the intent and motive of all combatants, including the UN and ECOWAS peacekeepers, the mercenaries, and those involved in the arms/natural resource industrial complex. This history can tell us why some of those who came to help also colluded in the perpetration of crimes, including rape. This history will tell us the meaning behind the pouring of a “water libation” before every truth/reconciliation session of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission—to invoke either the monotheist God, or the ancestral spirits of the community (Kaindaneh and Rigby 2010) or simply on the grounds that “ritual is its own form of truth” (Kelsall 2005, 367). Perhaps, this history wants it to be known that this water libation was symbolic, intended either to appease mother earth or to remind the guilty of the unnecessary pouring of the blood of the innocent whenever they fired their guns and exploded their bombs. Whatever the reason, this history is there to remind all of

Contested truth   249 the consequences of hunger (which could have been avoided had the pre-­war governments focused on food security) (Richards 2005; Shepler 2011); it tells of the uncounted deaths that occurred when poisonous reptiles, whose jungle and forest homes were invaded by internally displaced persons and marauding combatants, stung the interlopers (King 2007; Magnusson et al. 2014). This history knows why many decided to reject the whole idea of partaking in the Truth Commission and instead call on God to fight for them (Millar 2012). This history can tell us also the hidden messages encoded in the screams of women and girls when they were being (gang)raped in the war communities (Cohen 2013; Amowitz et al. 2002), or initiated into the Sande/Bundo Secret Society,14 or subjected to the horrific act of clitoridectomy or female genital mutilation.15 Of course, this history knows why their screams were a reverberation of the heartbeat of a country that had failed women; this history knows why these screams could not be drowned by the drums of the Sande/Bundo Society; this history knows why, despite opportunities to intervene, neither the country’s judiciary nor the politicized media denounced gender-­based discrimination in politics (Lahai 2010). This history knows why all postcolonial governments before and during the civil war were silent about the cultural practices of clitoridectomy and forced marriage (Coulter 2009); why it had to be a war crimes tribunal, the Special Court for Sierra Leone, that broke this silence when it categorized forced marriage as a crime against humanity (Oosterveld 2009a, 2007, 2009b) and sentenced the guilty to prison terms of 20 to 50 years (Lahai 2016; Park 2006)—the first of such convictions by a semi-­international criminal court using international human rights law.

Notes   1 In line with Subsection (1) of Section 3 of Schedule 1 (which spelled out the procedure for the selection of nominees for appointment to the Commission), the then Attorney-­General, Solomon Berewa, advised Parliament (in February 2000) that suggestions of names of non-­citizen members should be submitted directly to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (hereafter, the High Commissioner), Mary Robinson; or to the Selection Coordinator—who was recommended by the President and approved by Parliament—for submission to the High Commissioner. After due consideration of all the submissions, the High Commissioner was to recommend the three people, who would be vetted by a selection panel. Once approved, the names would be submitted to the President for his approval—and where the reason for rejection by the President was unjustified, Parliament, by a majority vote, was to approve the rejected person(s). www.sierra-­leone.org/ Laws/2000–4.pdf (February 10, 2015).   2 To promote its independence, the Act, in Clause 12, stated that, in terms of its funding, the Commission was to raise its own funds. But did not restrict its sources. In fact, the clause listed the Government of Sierra Leone, non-­governmental organizations, and the international community, among other legitimate means and sources. And in Clause 19, the President only had the powers to dissolve the Commission through a statutory instrument and could only invoke this power three months after the Commission had submitted its final report.   3 There are three types of subpoena the Commission could request: (1) a subpoena for production, (2) a subpoena to give evidence, and (3) a subpoena for production and to

250   Contested truth give evidence. In fact, the section in question contains the following statement that explains its powers of subpoena: 8.(2) Failure to respond to a summons or subpoena issued by the Commission, failure to truly or faithfully answer questions of the Commission after responding to a summons or subpoena, or intentionally providing misleading or false information to the Commission shall be deemed equivalent to contempt of court and may, at the discretion of the Commission, be referred to the High Court for trial and punishment. 9. (1) All persons, including members and officers of the government and political parties, shall cooperate with and provide unrestricted access for the Commission and its staff for any purposes necessary in the fulfilment of the Commission’s mandate under this Act, as determined by the Commission. (2) Any person who wilfully obstructs or otherwise interferes with the Commission or any of its members or officers in the discharge of the Commission’s functions under this Act, commits an offence and shall be liable on conviction to a fine not exceeding one million leones or to a term of imprisonment not exceeding one year or both such fine and imprisonment. Available at: www.sierra-­leone.org/Laws/ 2000–4.pdf.   4 Some of the key figures included Ahmed Tejan Kabbah, the President of Sierra Leone (representing the government and people of Sierra Leone), Foday Sankoh (representing his RUF rebel forces), Johnny Paul Koroma, leader and representative of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (and by default, the West Side Boys), Alimamy P. Koroma, who was also the Secretary General of the Council of Churches, representing the Inter-­Religious Council, the leadership of the National Forum for Human Rights, and the National Commission for Democracy and Human Rights, as well as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the people, whose right to know was equally guaranteed in the Act (Mahony and Sooka 2015).   5 Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission. 2014. Witness to Truth—­Volume One (Chapter 1: The Mandate of the TRC); available at: www.sierraleonetrc.org/ index.php/view-­the-final-­report/download-­table-of-­contents/volume-one/item/witness-­ to-the-­truth-volume-­one-chapter-­1?category_id=11 (accessed: June 10, 2017).   6 John Doe, interviewed by the author June 18, 2017.   7 United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. General Assembly resolution 44/25. www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CRC. aspx; for more on its commentary on this convention, see Sharon Detrick. 1999. A Commentary of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, Dordrecht/ Boston/London: Martinus Nijhoff.   8 The African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (and its additional protocol) is the only human rights treaty that emphasized the “18-year-­old threshold,” in line with international labor law and regardless of whether enlistment (forced or voluntary) was in the army or rebel forces (combined reading of arts. 2 and 22). OAU Doc. CAB/LEG/24.9/49(1990). Available at: www.au.int/en/sites/default/files/Charter _En_African_Charter_on_the_Rights_and_Welfare_of_the_Child_AddisAbaba_July 1990.p (June 10, 2015).   9 UNICEF. 1997. Cape Town Principles and Best Practices. Adopted at the Symposium on the Prevention of Recruitment of Children into the Armed Forces and on Demobilization and Social Reintegration of Child Soldiers in Africa, April 27–30, 1997, Cape Town, South Africa. Available at: www.unicef.org/ emergencies/files/Cape_Town_ Principles(1).pdf (accessed June 2, 2015). 10 The Paris Principles and Guidelines on Children Associated with Armed Forces or Armed Groups, February 2007. The Paris Principles define a child soldier as any person below 18 years of age who is or who has been recruited or used by an armed force or armed group in any capacity, including but not limited to children,

Contested truth   251 boys, and girls used as fighters, cooks, porters, messengers, spies or for sexual purposes. It does not only refer to a child who is taking or has taken a direct part in hostilities. Available at: https://childrenandarmedconflict.un.org/publications/ParisPrinciples_EN. pdf (June 2, 2015). 11 To resolve the social and legal tensions over the question of whether child soldiers are victims, the Convention on the Rights of the Child (hereafter, the Convention) and the Committee on the Rights of the Child (hereafter, the Committee) have this to say: The Convention (in Article 27) states: The CRC sees the child as an initially highly vulnerable person in need of protection, nurturing and care who under parental guidance gradually prepares for an independent life in a social setting of rights and duties when reaching eighteen. The Committee (in Article 5) reaffirms, thus: The evolving capacities of the child (art. 5) must be taken into consideration when the child’s best interests and right to be heard are at stake. The Committee has already established that the more the child knows, has experienced and understands, the more the parent, legal guardian or other persons legally responsible for him or her have to transform direction and guidance into reminders and advice, and later to an exchange on an equal footing … Similarly, as the child matures, his or her views shall have increasing weight in the assessment of his or her best interests. CRC Committee. General comment No. 14 (2013) on the right of the child to have his or her best interests taken as a primary consideration (art. 3, para. 1). 2013. UN Doc. CRC/C/GC/14 of May 29, 2013. 12 Interview, July 10, 2015. 13 Four male commissioners were also appointed: Bishop Christian Humper (chairman), Professor William Schabas, Mr. Sylvanus Torto, and Professor John Kamara. 14 This is not to say some politicians (specifically the Creole politicians, such as Herbert Bankole-­Bright) did not denounce the militarized political influences of these secret societies in colonial politics. In his survey of the newspapers from the period after 1957 (when the Sir Herbert Cox Commission of Inquiry report on the Disturbances in the Provinces during uprising of 1955–1956 was released) Abner Cohen (Cohen 1981, 100) reported that, Bankole-­right, the leader of the die-­hard Creoles, raised the issue in a speech which he gave in the Legislative Council, in which he dwelt at length on the need to stamp out “cannibalism,” and singled out the Bundu (sic) society for attack. Notably, Bankole-­Bright’s attack on the secret societies of the non-­Creoles also exposed his penchant for racism. In his writing on cultism in colonial Sierra Leone, and quoting Peterson (1969, 20) and Banton (1957, 20), Cohen also noted that the Creoles themselves had their own secret Societies, which were activities in the villages of the Freetown peninsula during the nineteenth century. Foremost among them was the Agugu, which had been brought by the Aku recaptives from Yoruba country … It thrived on the mysteries of death and on curative medicine. (Ibid.) And among the other secret societies of the Creoles was the Hunters’ Secret Society, a distinctly Creole organization, which for many served as a replacement for the Agugu. Quoting Peterson (1969, 268), Cohen writes: “As the Creole became increasingly a Freetown-­based person, and as the wildlife in the Colony grew scare, the Hunters Society transformed itself into a secret organization of Creole civil servants” (Cohen 1981, 101).

252   Contested truth 15 From the inception of party politics in Sierra Leone, all non-­Creole politicians to lead government (as Prime Ministers and/or Presidents) have been the most vocal defenders of the female-­only Bondo Secret Society. In 1954, the leader of government business (and later Prime Minister between 1957 and 1964) rejected Bankole-­Bright’s criticism of the secret societies in the country. “Sir Milton Margai,” Cohen writes, “maintained that the Bundu (sic) society was an integral part of the social life of the people.”

References Abraham, Arthur. 2001. “Dancing with the chameleon: Sierra Leone and the elusive quest for peace.” Journal of Contemporary African Studies 19 (2): 205–28. https://doi. org/10.1080/02589000125498. Amann, Diane Marie. 2001. “Calling children to account: The proposal for a juvenile chamber in the Special Court for Sierra Leone.” Pepperdine Law Review 29: 167. Amowitz, Lynn L., Chen Reis, Kristina Hare Lyons, Beth Vann, Binta Mansaray, Adyinka M. Akinsulure-­Smith, Louise Taylor and Vincent Iacopino. 2002. “Prevalence of war-­related sexual violence and other human rights abuses among internally displaced persons in Sierra Leone.” JAMA 287 (4): 513–21. Archibald, Steven and Paul Richards. 2002. “Converts to human rights? Popular debate about war and justice in rural central Sierra Leone.” Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 72 (3): 339–67. Arthur, Paige. 2009. “How ‘transitions’ reshaped human rights: A conceptual history of transitional justice.” Human Rights Quarterly 31 (2): 321–67. Askin, Kelly D. 2002. “The quest for post-­conflict gender justice.” Columbia Journal of Transnational Law 41: 509. Aukerman, Miriam J. 2002. “Extraordinary evil, ordinary crime: A framework for understanding transitional justice.” Harvard Human Rights Journal 15: 39. Bell, Christine and Catherine O’Rourke. 2007. “Does feminism need a theory of transitional justice? An introductory essay.” International Journal of Transitional Justice 1 (1): 23–44. Call, Charles T. 2004. “Is transitional justice really just?” The Brown Journal of World Affairs 11 (1): 101–13. Claire, Breen. 2006. Age Discrimination and Children’s Rights. Ensuring Equality and Acknowledging Difference. Leiden/Boston: Martinus Nijhoff. Cohen, Dara Kay. 2013. “Explaining rape during civil war: Cross-­national evidence (1980-2009).” American Political Science Review 107 (3): 461–77. Denov, Myriam S. 2006. “Wartime sexual violence: Assessing a human security response to war-­affected girls in Sierra Leone.” Security Dialogue 37 (3): 319–42. Franke, Katherine M. 2006. “Gendered subject of transitional justice.” Columbia Journal of Gender & Law 15: 813. Gberie, Lansana. 2005. A Dirty War in West Africa the RUF and the Destruction of Sierra Leone. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Gibson, James L. 2002. “Truth, justice, and reconciliation: Judging the fairness of amnesty in South Africa.” American Journal of Political Science 46 (3): 540–56. Goldstein-­Bolocan, Maya. 2004. “Rwandan Gacaca: An experiment in transitional justice.” Journal of Dispute Resolution 2: 355. Government of Sierra Leone. 2002. “Sierra Leone: Truth and Reconciliation Commission Act (2000).” www.refworld.org/docid/3fbcee4d4.html.

Contested truth   253 Hayner, Priscilla B. 2002. Unspeakable Truths: Confronting State Terror and Atrocity. New York: Routledge. Kaindaneh, Steven and Rigby, Andrew. 2010. “Promoting co-­existence through sacred places in Sierra Leone.” Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice 22 (3): 244–9. Kelsall, Tim. 2005. “Truth, lies, ritual: Preliminary reflections on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Sierra Leone.” Human Rights Quarterly 27 (2): 361–91. Lord, David, ed. 2000. Paying the Price: The Sierra Leone Peace Process. 9. Conciliation Resources. www.c-­r.org/downloads/09_Sierra%20Leone_2000_ENG_F.pdf. Mahony, Chris and Yasmin L. Sooka. 2015. “The truth about the truth: Insider reflections on the Sierra Leonean Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC),” In Ainley Kristen, Rebekka Friedman, and Chris Mahony (eds.), Evaluating Transitional Justice: Accountability and Peacebuilding in Post-­Conflict Sierra Leone. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 241–64. Mann, Theuermann and UNICEF. 2001. Children and the Trust and Reconciliation Commission for Sierra Leone. Technical report, UNICEF, National Forum for Human Rights and UNAMSIL/Human Rights. www.unicef.org/emerg/files/SierraLeone-­TRCReport.pdf. Maru, Vivek. 2006. “Between law and society: Paralegals and the provision of justice services in Sierra Leone and worldwide.” Yale Journal of International Law 31: 427. Millar, Gearoid. 2011. “Between western theory and local practice: Cultural impediments to truth-­telling in Sierra Leone.” Conflict Resolution Quarterly 29 (2): 177. Muddell, K.  2007. “Capturing women’s experiences of conflict: transitional justice in Sierra Leone.” Michigan State Journal of International Law 15 (1): 85–100. Nagy, Rosemary. 2008. “Transitional justice as global project: Critical reflections.” Third World Quarterly 29 (2): 275–89. O’Flaherty, Michael. 2004. “Sierra Leone’s peace process: The role of the human rights community.” Human Rights Quarterly 26 (1): 29–62. Park, Augustine S. J. 2010. “Community-­based restorative transitional justice in Sierra Leone.” Contemporary Justice Review 13 (1): 95–119. Paulson, Julia. 2006. “The educational recommendations of Truth and Reconciliation Commissions: Potential and practice in Sierra Leone.” Research in Comparative and International Education 1 (4): 335–50. Rubio-­Marin, Ruth (ed.). 2006. What Happened to the Women?: Gender and Reparations for Human Rights Violations. New York: Social Security Research Council. Schabas, William. 2004. “A synergistic relationship: The Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Special Court for Sierra Leone,” In Truth Commissions and Courts, 3–54. Springer. http://link.springer.com/10.1007%2F978-1-4020-3237-0_1. Schabas, William A. 2004. “Conjoined twins of transitional justice: The Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Special Court.” Journal of International Criminal Justice 2: 1082. Schabas, William A. and Patricia M. Wald. 2004. “Truth Commissions and courts working in parallel: The Sierra Leone experience.” Proceedings of the Annual Meeting (American Society of International Law) 98: 189–95. Shaw, Rosalind. 2007. “Memory frictions: Localizing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Sierra Leone.” International Journal of Transitional Justice 1 (2): 183–207. Shepler, Susan. 2011. “The real and symbolic importance of food in war: Hunger pains and big men’s bellies in Sierra Leone.” Africa Today 58 (2): 42–56. Sikkink, Kathryn. 2011. The Justice Cascade: How Human Rights Prosecutions Are Changing World Politics (The Norton Series in World Politics). New York and London: WW Norton & Company.

254   Contested truth Stahn, Carsten. 2001. Accommodating Individual Criminal Responsibility and National Reconciliation: The UN Truth Commission for East Timor. HeinOnline. http://hein online.org/hol-­cgi-bin/get_pdf.cgi?handle=hein.journals/ajil95§ion=65. Teitel, Ruti. 2005. “The law and politics of contemporary transitional justice.” Cornell International Law Journal 38: 837. Tejan-­Cole, Abdul. 2003. “The complementary and conflicting relationship between the Special Court for Sierra Leone and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.” Yale Human Rights & Development Law Journal 6: 139. Villa-­Vicencio, Charles. 2000. “Why perpetrators should not always be prosecuted: Where the International Criminal Court and Truth Commissions meet.” Emory Law Journal 49: 205. Wolpert, S. 2008. “Brain reacts to fairness as it does to money and chocolate, study shows.” UCLA Newsroom. http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/brain-­reacts-to-­fairness-as-­it-49042. Zack-­Williams, Tunde B. 2006. “Child soldiers in Sierra Leone and the problems of demobilisation, rehabilitation and reintegration into society: Some lessons for social workers in war-­torn societies.” Social Work Education 25 (2): 119–28.

14 The War Victims’ Fund and the emergence of contributive justice after 2004

As a researcher, I was faced with the task of investigating the impact of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on the “forgotten group,” the war victims or survivors. To this end, I employed a deductive grounded theory methodology when I entered the field to conduct a series of face-­to-face, personal interviews with government officials and the leaders of the War Victims Associations in Freetown. It was during one of these interview sessions that I was able to identify and integrate categories of meaning in what my respondents were saying. In the identification, refining, and integration, including the painstaking process of comparative analysis (involving theoretical sampling, saturation and coding) of respondents’ speech acts, I succeeded in generating an analytical construct for something new in the study of transitional justice in post-­conflict Sierra Leone. That “new construct” is what can best be described as “contributive justice.” On July 10, 2017, I conducted a pre-­scheduled interview with (or rather, received a “tutorial” from) a top government official (who prefers to remain anonymous) in Freetown. During this interview, my respondent tutored me on transitional justice, and his lessons had a significant impact in shaping my views on this emergent theory of contributive justice. He started off by saying that, for some of you people [researchers], when you hear the words “restorative justice,” you think of the words like “truth commissions,” “third party mediators,” “courthouses,” and their solicitors, as well as the plaintiffs and defendants who appear before the mediators.  But restorative justice, he continued, “is much more than that. It is an all-­ encompassing phenomenon (not just a concept) that goes beyond the socio-­legal and political emphasis its connotes.” Quoting the controversial nineteenth-­century American political figure Daniel Webster, my respondent-­cum-tutor said: “Justice is the great interest of man on earth. It is the ligament which holds civilized beings and civilized nations together”; and as a show of our commitment to justice, we are asking all Sierra Leoneans to contribute towards post-­conflict peacebuilding and rehabilitation [of war victims] programmes.

256   Contributive justice This surprisingly dramatic answer was unexpected. My question had been “why has the government of President Ernest Bai Koroma refused to implement the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s report of 2004?” His unanticipated response brought to the fore the possibilities of economic empowerment for the war victims through the government’s idea of contributive justice. The deliberate move on the part of the government to create a policy whereby all Sierra Leoneans (war victims, perpetrators, and the public and private sectors) are presented with a new task to contribute financially and morally to the post-­war nation-­building programmes did not come out of the blue. There was donor fatigue towards transitional justice issues and, faced with a dramatic reduction in external funding, Sierra Leone had to find ways to continue with its peacebuilding projects. What this reveals is the existence of two spheres of restorative justice. The first sphere was informed by the need to restore “the human dignity of victims” and promote reconciliation between the victims and perpetrators (Dougherty 2004). Central to this sphere of justice was the everyday lived experience of pre-­war and wartime Sierra Leone. The second sphere (into which the phenomenon of contributive justice falls) is about the efforts made since 2004 (the year the Truth and Reconciliation Commission submitted its report to the government) to ensure that the welfare of the war’s victims moved from intentions to action—which is a demonstration of a commitment to restore (and make good) the dignity of the victims/survivors. In this chapter I provide a definition of contributive justice. Then, shifting the focus to Sierra Leone, I use the history of the War Victims’ Fund to explain the origins, and the economic/financial, legal, and political imperatives of contributive justice in Sierra Leone. The intention is to ignite a debate on the possibilities of developing—in transitional justice—an empirically informed “stand-­alone” typology of contributive justice in post-­conflict African countries. I am aware that what I propose here has the potential to act as a critique of the scholarly consensus on the “temporality” of transitional justice measures. What I also recognize is the objection that the transformation of transitional justice processes into a long-­term goal would compromise the effectiveness of the permanent institutions of the country. But as a response, if not a control measure, I do not suggest phasing out the term “transitional justice,” as it implies an end in itself, but rather a shift of emphasis from transitive processes and complex challenges that make the idea of “temporality” less attractive, to an approach that emphasizes the element of “completeness.” This element of completeness, I suggest, is not about permanence, but a continuum that persists until the lives of the victims (and the broken countries they live in) has changed for the better.

Contributive justice in Sierra Leone: a short history Payments to individuals, apart from development-­minded spending to enhance a national economy, impart to reparations programs a genuine recognition of past wrongs done to individuals. [There is a] necessity (along with the insufficiency) of paying money in some form to individuals

Contributive justice   257 whenever governments seek to declare, convincingly, that they repudiate the human rights violations of the part. (Anita Bernstein and Hans Deiter Seibel 2011, 96) The history of contributive justice has its origins in the demands for a War Victims Fund for Sierra Leone. For various reasons, the successive governments of the post-­war era did not prioritize the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) recommendations regarding wartime victims in their respective peacebuilding projects. The SLPP government of President Tejan Kabbah (between 2000 and 2007) relied on the general level of political instability in the country to focus its attention on de-­securitization efforts through disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration. Through a narrative that situated the former combatants as a problem to be excised, the Kabbah-­led government excused itself from any commitment to the victims of these former combatants. Where statements were made about the plight of these victims, the intent was to score political points against the protest movements (created for the victims’ communities, but led by numerous civil society and community-­based groups). Whenever these groups criticized the government authorities, especially the Commissioner and members of the board of directors of the National Commission for Social Action (NaCSA),1 for not implementing the TRC recommendations, those authorities were quick to point to their efforts at making Sierra Leone gun-­free. In 2007, the protest movement made a political statement by voting overwhelmingly for Ernest Bai Koroma’s APC party. Many expected President Koroma, whose party had won the elections on the platform of governance and reforms for the poor, to do what he promised—that is, the implementation of the TRC recommendations—without further protest; he had promised the people that his APC government was different from the “old” APC, which had laid the foundations for the civil war in the 1970s and 1980s (Gberie 2007; Sahr Musa Yamba 2005; Kallay 2008). But initially he reneged on his promises to the war victims. His response to the protest movement led many to conclude he was no different from the presidents before him. His replacement at NaCSA, Commissioner Saidu Conton Sesay, sided with the President against the claims—under tort liability—of the war victims. In an interview with Jemini Pandya of the International Organization for Migration, Commissioner Sesay stated: I think concerns have been raised both by the public and the victims themselves. The TRC report was published in 2004, and the expectation was that immediate action would follow in providing reparations. But we are only starting now. And that time lag can actually insinuate a lot of things— neglect, lack of attention. But that is really not the case. I think it has basically been a question of mobilizing the necessary support; mobilizing the necessary wherewithal, including the logistics, systems, and support, to be able actually to start this process. Yes, there is anxiety out there. There is a  lot of anxiety. It is one of the challenges we have in implementing the

258   Contributive justice programme. How are we going to manage the expectations already out there given the limited resources we are able to lay our hands on? But as I said, there was nothing deliberate to delay the process.2 The protest movement did not relent. The powers of the President were not superior to the will of the people and, gradually, Koroma began to soften his stance. According to one commentator, the President, not wanting to be seen in the same light as the former dictator­leaders of his party, Stevens (1978–1985) and Momoh (1985–1992), began to entertain the narratives of the victims’ movement; narratives that were trying to put tort liability on his “new” APC government for the crimes of the old APC.3 There are those4 who believe the President became receptive to these war victims’ protect movements following a change of tactic by the latter. Between 2007 and 2009, against the wishes of the government, the protesters began writing letters to foreign diplomats (including the United States Ambassador and the British High Commissioner), international multilateral organizations (the United Nations and European Union), and international human rights advocacy groups (notably Human Rights Watch) requesting their intervention. On December 10, 2009, President Koroma launched the Victims Fund (hereafter the Fund) in Freetown (Horner 2009). To many,5 this Fund was the first step taken to fulfill Article XXIX of the Lomé Peace Accord, which called on the government to set up a “special fund for the war victims.” During the peace talks in Lomé, Togo, the representatives of the war victims insisted on the inclusion of a clause for the provision of funds to those who suffered irreparable physical injury (such as amputation) and trauma (such as rape). This Fund, according to the Accord, was to provide financial relief to the victims and to create “a feeling that the government recognizes the plight of the victims”6 and, by doing so, “transform[s] their identities from that of ‘victims’ to survivors.”7 NaCSA was given the authority (through parliamentary approval) to administer the funds. The Government of Sierra Leone provided US$250,000 from its consolidated funds and the United Nations US$3 million from its Peace Building Funds. The US$250,000 provided initially by the government was seed capital, in that the government expected the fund managers (NaCSA) to invest some of it in other capital ventures in partnership with the National Social Security and Insurance Trust (NASSIT), which managed the pension funds for public service workers. The aim behind the seeding of this Fund was to create other income flows (through dividends) into the War Victims Funds. Excluding what was seeded, the monies the war victims were to receive was not a one-­off payment but were meant to continue for ten years. The first payments of US$100 (for the purposes of acting as long-­term microcredit funds) were made to 20,000 people out of the 28,000 registered victims (Massaquoi 2012). Of the 20,000 who received these microcredit funds, 200 were survivors

Contributive justice   259 of sexual violence. They were also entitled to extra financial assistance to cover medical treatment, including fistula surgery. From these funds, NaCSA was also instructed to pay reparations. This instruction, which came several months after the first payments were made, created tensions in the country. People who were not among the 28,000 registered victims began asking for war reparations on the grounds that everybody, in one way or another, was a victim of the civil war. NaCSA refused to accept this suggestion, which would have depleted its funds. Without additional non-­seeded funds from the government, it was impossible for NaCSA to meet the demands of “tens of thousands of people likely to require reparations assistance … in a fair, effective and transparent manner.”8 Even the US$3 million provided by the United Nations Peace Building Fund would not have been enough for the 28,000 registered victims, not only because this Fund was meant to last for a year (according to the memorandum of understanding signed between the government and the United Nations Development Programme), but because of the level of corruption that had crippled the public sector of Sierra Leone. As a consequence of donor fatigue and corruption, the War Victims Funds was at risk of becoming another whitewashed failure. One way of saving the Fund was by looking inward, within Sierra Leone, to find ways of raising extra funds to realize a contributive justice. To raise the necessary funds, the government needed to compel society—the intelligentsia, the poor, the political class, former warlords and combatants, and the business communities, both local and international and in both the formal and informal economy—to contribute, and to give meaning to the emergent idea of “contributive justice.” In practice, this form of contributive justice is as logical as it is practical. Logically speaking, the people, through a democratic social contract, created an institution called government; this government, in turn, is required to work for the people, because it is, in Lincolnian terms, of the people, and by the people. Thus when the government asks those from whom it derives its legitimacy to contribute money to help fund peacebuilding projects (such as the War Victims Fund), it is not only a demonstration of the legitimacy those people have given to the government, it is also about demonstrating a commitment to right the wrongs (of the civil war), and accepting (under tort law) the full cost of rehabilitating the lives of wartime victims. Through this commitment, the government was also required to distribute the contributions of the people equitably. In effect, contributive justice is about the transformation of sovereign entitlements of Sierra Leone (as a country) to a constitutionally affirmed responsibility to rebuild the lives of vulnerable people. In theory, contributive justice, as presented here, fits within John Rawls’s (1993) concept of distributive justice. What the government envisaged was the possibilities (and not the shortcomings) of economic and egalitarian justice, which is founded on two Rawlsian principles of justice: first, that everybody has an equal claim to the schemes of fundamental rights and liberties (liberties that are to be guaranteed by the value the government places on its people, including the victims of war); and, second, that social and economic inequalities are only

260   Contributive justice justified if they benefit, in absolute terms, the relatively disadvantaged. Moreover, contributive justice fits neatly into Amartya Sen’s and Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarian focus on the welfare difference among the “worse off persons” and the “ranking of welfare levels” of the people within the category of the vulnerable. It is also in line with John Rutherford Bellerby’s (1931) understanding of “contributive society,” and Paul Gomberg’s (2007, 2016) theorization of contributive justice. Since the works of Bellerby and Gomberg are relied upon heavily for this study, their theories and recommendations are discussed in the following sections. The next section, however, looks first at the three main elements of contributive justice in Sierra Leone: the economic, legal, and political imperatives.

The elements of contributive justice in Sierra Leone The economic and financial elements of contributive justice In simple terms, the economic and financial element of contributive justice in Sierra Leone is the requirement it places on peoples from all walks of life to pay their taxes to the government (national and local). Sierra Leone’s first attempt to introduce a tax system with the intent of creating an economic and financial imperative for contributive justice (fused with punitive legal measures to prevent injustice) was framed in the Goods and Services Act of 2009.9 It is mostly a “consumption tax,” which ultimately, directly or indirectly, will touch every citizen. It can also be said to be a “reactive tax.” Simply put, it was the hope of its framers that it will help businesses to expand, thereby making higher profits, and thereby generating more tax revenue which the government can use to rebuild the country and the lives of the war’s victims and their communities. The tax was applied at a rate of 15 percent of the value of an item at the point of sale or exchange—the same rate as the present sales tax. However, only large businesses were required to register for and be charged a goods and services tax (GST). Most smaller businesses, including the retail businesses of the wartime victims who had benefited from the US$100 microcredit provided by NaCSA from the War Victims Fund, were not subject to the tax—on the condition that they did not charge GST to their customers. The introduction of the goods and services tax on January 1, 2010 was to replace seven existing, but outdated taxes: the import sales tax, domestic sales tax, entertainment tax, restaurant and food tax, messages tax, hotel accommodation tax, and professional services tax. Reactive taxes, the government argued,10 would be collected by registered businesses when they made domestic sales to their customers of goods and services not explicitly excluded in the GST Act 2009. These are called “taxable supplies.” At regular intervals, the registered businesses—mainly established small and medium enterprises with turnovers of over Le200 million (about US$55,000) annually—must pay their contributions (or taxes) from the money they have collected to the National Revenue Authority (NRA). But they will be able to reclaim the GST they have paid on legitimate

Contributive justice   261 business expenses incurred in the course of providing taxable goods and services to their customers. In practice, “tax returns” under this scheme have yet—as of 2018—to begin, because of the persistence of some of the problems created by the civil war. There is, however, a provision for voluntary registration in the GST system. So, for example, businesses that may not have a turnover of Le200 million, but are willing to be a part of this system of contributive justice, can apply to the NRA’s Commissioner-­General to register for the GST system, provided they have fixed premises, use proper accounting methods, and can submit records on their businesses to the NRA in a timely manner. These taxes are then used to service the peacebuilding projects, which include the welfare of war victims/survivors. To the business community, the question has always been why they— who have no direct contractual agreement with the people—should contribute to the rebuilding of their lives? And how, as Pablo de Greiff (2006) asks, in his study on the sources of funding for reparations, should the contributions of business establishments known to have collaborated with the warring factions in the perpetration of violence be used? In view of the nature of neopatrimonial politics in Sierra Leone, answers to these questions should be framed to recognize the possibility (or actual examples) of businesses using their direct contributions (taxes) to the people, through the government, to become more powerful than the people in the paternalistic game of economic clientelism and political patronage. That notwithstanding, and in recognition of de Greiff ’s (2006) study on the sources of funding for reparations, I argue that businesses, whatever their roles during and after the conflict, have a corporate social and economic responsibility to the war victims/survivors. For those businesses that took part in the rogue economy of the war (supplying arms to the factions in exchange for natural resources, especially diamonds) they should be compelled to accept a “collective” tort liability for the consequences of their actions. Thus, in response to de Greiff ’s argument that amoral contributions (that is, contributions from business entities that have not acknowledged their morally wrong wartime activities) lacked moral value (Greiff 2006), I would suggest otherwise. Acknowledgment comes in different forms; it can take the form of corporate social responsibility, payment of taxes (that help build the education sector), and the provision of jobs in communities affected by their operations (especially in the diamond mining regions of Sierra Leone). All these methods of “giving back to the poor” serve the performative function of ending inequalities in post-­conflict Sierra Leone. Furthermore, by accepting collective responsibility, the benefits of nation-­ building and of economic empowerment of the government, business, and victims’ communities come to have more and more continuous impact. In his book A Contributive Society, John Rutherford Bellerby contends that if the ethical standard of the economic system is pro-­poor, the probability that people’s quality of life will improve increases, and because there is an increase in the quality of life, the quality of the political system will also improve (Bellerby 1931). For a country still in transition from war to peace. and from peace to development, some might say that this economic narrative is more suited to the

262   Contributive justice type of utopic state envisaged by Sir Thomas More in 1516. In More’s imagined ideal society, the state that enjoys perfection in its social relations and is able to provide all necessities of life, is the state with pro-­poor economic and political systems. This utopia is achievable where each member of the society aspires to “make a maximum ‘contribution’ to communal consumption” (Bruce 1999). Although it will take some time to get the whole society to understand why it should contribute towards creating this utopia, “it would not be too much to hope that a select group might be induced to put [the idea of contribution towards getting to utopia] into practice”—the kind of practice that John Rutherford Bellerby referred to as a “reconnaissance post” (MacIver 1932, 338). Through this “Morean” experiment (and the willingness to learn from errors) the possibility of arriving at a reconciliatory policy that promotes pro-­poor economic practice is created. Putting these issues to the test, Sierra Leoneans believe the financial contributions of the business community (irrespective of their activities during the war) will create an ideal society, one where the structures of war, inequality, marginality, corruption, and injustice, as well as the sense of shattered identities (for the war victims), are eliminated.11 In practice, the elimination of the shattered identities of victims is a burden. But where the public and private sectors, including the working class, agree to promote equity and fairness, the necessary conditions for pro-­peace/pro-­victim/pro-­poor contributive justice will take effect on the lives of the people for whom, and by whom, these contributions are made. Once this equity (and its impact on the structures of unfairness in employment) reaches a certain level, the structures of war and inequality will naturally reduce. Writing about the contributions of equal employment opportunities, Paul Gomberg reiterates that Contributive justice proposes that each flourishes by advancing the flourishing of others. To achieve this goal all labor, both simple and complex, must be shared among all capable of doing it. The good of contributing our abilities to benefit others is then available to all non-­competitively. (Gomberg 2016, 31) People, whether in their individual (not forgetting that contributive justice is about self-­reliance) or collective space (the affirmation of social justice), will  value their needs over competing for wants, which breeds greed, relative deprivation and grievances, and, ultimately, the unending cycle of war (Richmond 2015). The above examines the role of business communities and the government in the promotion of contributive justice. Private individuals also have questions about contributive justice in their communities. These questions include how much should an individual be expected to contribute before they themselves are, or believe they are, being mistreated? Is contributing too much, while others contribute little or nothing, fair? From its inception in 2003, the NRA has been  forced to manage the public’s negative perception of supposedly unfair

Contributive justice   263 contributions, or tax injustice. Some examples of such negative perspectives collated during my fieldwork are provided below. According to Unisa (who was 15 when he testified before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2003), The only Sierra Leoneans who are going to argue (with a straight face) that by taxing us, without first providing what the government owe us as part of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s recommendations, are those who have either lived all their childhood and adult lives out of Sierra Leone; or, those who are cocooned in air-­conditioned offices and homes, and see the real Sierra Leone [by “real” Unisa is referring to the struggling and vulnerable populations, including women and children] only through the tinted glasses of their jeeps as they cruise by. For his part, Asumana, told me that for politicians to bank on the idea that contributive justice will eliminate inequality and promote development without undertaking any self-­examination or benchmarking themselves is symptomatic of the psychological imbalances that transitional justice in Sierra Leone failed to address. He cited the best practices of Rwanda and linked it with Sierra Leone’s resource wealth: What is wrong with Sierra Leone, and Sierra Leoneans? Over fifty-­five years ago we won our freedom from Britain, yet it was the international community that came to our rescue when we rejected the ideals of freedom, which led Milton Margai and others to request and succeed in achieving independence; because of the rejection of freedom, and the refusal to govern on the basis of fairness, it was outsiders who came to our rescue. In natural resources—gold, diamonds, bauxite, rutile, iron ore; one of the most beautiful beaches on planet earth; one of the best shrimps in our territorial waters—we are one of the wealthiest nations on earth. About a hundred years ago, we were the trailblazers in Western education in Africa. Look at us today. I am an amputee [Ansumana lost limbs in 1999 during the rebel onslaught in Freetown dubbed “Operation No Living Thing”]; I am a representation of the country; my amputated limbs are a disgrace and this disgrace I share with the country. When you look at me what you see is what the country has become; a country that is dependent on others to feed, clothe and shelter her people. For his part, a senior manager in a government department informed me that his salary was being impacted by over-­taxation. He argued that taxes to fund some of the isolated projects of the government have resulted in demotivation in most government ministries. He complained that Sierra Leone has one of the highest taxes in the world; and this is “discouraging investors from coming to Sierra Leone,”12 thus making it nearly impossible for him to quit the public sector and

264   Contributive justice join the private sector. He bemoaned what he termed as the “NRA’s tax system which is skewed against those who are in the public sector; those who tend to be law-­abiding in society.”13 Such perceptions of Sierra Leone’s tax system are seen by the government as an attempt to avoid their contributive justice drive. This, for the government, is dangerous. Demonstrably, what these complaints reveal is the possibility that contributive justice may result in the dilemma of not knowing whether a monetized economy would lead to that which it aims to prevent, namely injustice. In any case, continued technical support from the British government’s Department of Foreign and International Development and its contracted agency, Crown Agents (who began work with the NRA in 2010), has helped in changing public views about the activities of NRA. It is essential to note that the impact of contributive justice in Sierra Leone is also being influenced by the dictates of the international financial institutions, as well as by the patterns of foreign direct investment and the general trends in the value of the United States dollar.14 As a result, the elasticity of demand and supply has a direct impact on the price of consumable goods and services. Some might increase slightly under the GST; others are likely to decrease. In terms of the impact on war victims and other vulnerable populations, the government has decided that essential items such as rice (the country’s staple), piped water, fuel,15 textbooks, educational and medical services, and selected pharmaceutical supplies will not be taxed under the GST. This is to ensure that the poorer members of the community will not be adversely affected by the introduction of GST, and that the GST does not lead to social and political instability. Contributive justice is implicit in the execution of the GST. As a result, “honest taxpayers will not have to contribute more than is necessary as a result of poor laws, administrative inefficiencies,16 or because others have cheated by avoiding payment of their fair share of taxes.”17 “Justice,” argues one of my interlocutors (from the NRA), “is poised to be done more efficiently and thoroughly with the implementation of the GST Act 2009.” The withering of contributive justice, or lapses in its distribution “could lead to nearly all the other forms of injustices,” which can yield monstrosities in post-­war Sierra Leone. GST is, therefore, “not a peripheral matter in our social and political discourse”; indeed, it is the “very center of what we are to do to keep our society cohesive, and thriving.”18 The legal elements of contributive justice As an approach already in use, and one that fulfills the political mandates of the (post)transitional governments of Sierra Leone, contributive justice, as a pecuniary form of economic and legal (tort law) justice, has its legal basis in the laws of Sierra Leone. Among the laws of Sierra Leone that mandate the application of contributive justice are the Constitution of Sierra Leone (No. 6 of 1991);19 the Child Rights Act (No. 7 of 2007);20 the Summary Ejectment (Amendment) Act (No. 1 of 2006);21 the Goods and Services Tax Act (No. 6 of 2009);22 the Sexual Offences Act (No. 12 of 2012);23 the Anti-­Corruption Act (No. 12 of 2008);24 and

Contributive justice   265 the law that protects war amputees, the Person with Disability Act (No. 3 of 2011).25 These national laws are also in line with international instruments,26 specifically the 2006 UN General Assembly Resolution 61/147. This resolution, though it lacked the authority of the UN Charter’s Chapter VII resolutions (which are adopted by the UN Security Council), calls on states transitioning from wars to adopt transitional justice measures that should include “restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, satisfaction and guarantees of non-­repetition.”27 In view of this instrument, the question then shifts to whether there can be a liability—through the invocation of tort law28—should governmental and non-­ governmental programmatic support for contributive justice have adverse effects on victims’ communities. Transitional justice scholars share the view that reparations, and the contributive justice measures to implement them, are located within the framework of legal theory that informs tort law and its associated causes of action. For his part, Ken Cooper-­Stephenson suggests that the question to ask first is whether the “constitutional or reparative claims exhibit the form of Aristotelian ‘corrective justice’ ” (that is, the justice of the state correcting discrete individual and institutional “wrongs”); or whether it is in the form of “distributive justice” (i.e., the equity-­based “allocation by the state of entitlement generally in society on the grounds of merit and need”) (Cooper-­Stephenson 2003, 5). On the one hand, the classic tort claim—which answers the famous precedential question, in the Donoghue v. Stevenson case, of who is thy neighbor (with the answer being: “anybody who could foreseeably be affected by your action or inaction”)—is justified. According to Cooper-­Stephenson, because “through the integration of corrective and distributive justice, and, particularly in claims against the government, elements of distributive justice provide not only the background for claims but may serve to determine the extent and nature of redress” (ibid., 3). On the other hand, where contributive justice becomes part of any reparations programme, it transcends “a living victim and perpetrator,” and instead can be used against the state authorities for actions which were unlawful at the time of their commission. Through this, the tort liability notion of negligence becomes a determinant to force the government to invoke contributive justice to right the imbalances created by past wrongs. The political element/imperative for contributive justice Sierra Leone’s model of contributive justice should be seen as one that binds the whole country in a collective effort to achieve a common goal: a duty of care to the victims of the war and a commitment to rebuild the nation at war’s end. The contributions to the welfare of victim groups create an inseparable bond between the contributors, the government, and the beneficiaries (the victims). Through this, the decision-­making processes and activities of the government, which are aimed at eliminating the structures of violence and inequality, become Sierra Leone-­owned and led. And the government becomes accountable to the local communities rather than to foreign donors and aid organizations, creating a sense of a broad-­based legitimacy for its programmes. Put another way, contributive

266   Contributive justice justice is about shifting responsibility from the “responsibility observers,” the international community, to the “responsibility bearers,” the government, whose political legitimacy rests on the people. Against this backdrop, one can argue that contributive justice is both a procedural political process, subject to government bureaucracy, and a practical political process, as it is codified and can be challenged through the invocation of positive law and natural justice. It is my argument that contributive justice in Sierra Leone is also a form of political will explicitly expressed by the people to ensure peace and security (police and military) and quality education and healthcare (affordable for all, not just the wealthy). In a modern system, where contributive justice mediates between social justice, economic equality, and political legitimacy, governmental action must ensure such basic wants—and rights—of the people are met. If the Government of Sierra Leone cannot find money to pay its police and military, crime will rise and security diminish, and the gains of peacekeeping, peacemaking, and peacebuilding will be lost. If a government cannot provide utilities and infrastructure, the economy is affected, tax revenue falls, and the welfare of war victims/survivors is compromised. If the government cannot provide the necessary conditions for the rule of law and employment, criminal activity will flourish, and gangs of thieves may evolve into groups of rebels who, before long, may begin to challenge the authority of the state, leading inexorably to social and political instability out of which civil war may erupt once again— which creates another humanitarian crisis. Thus, a system of contributive justice is in the government’s own best interest—without it, the government is diminishing its own capability and, sooner or later, its legitimacy.

Notes   1 The National Commission for Social Action (NaCSA) is a semi-­autonomous government agency. Between 1996 and 1998 it was known the Ministry of National Reconstruction, Resettlement and Rehabilitation (MNRRR) and between 1998 and 2004 the National Commission for Reconstruction, Resettlement and Rehabilitation (NCRRR). It was created as a response to the wartime humanitarian crisis and was later charged with responsibility for the disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration of the former combatants. NaCSA’s mandate is to provide and otherwise engage in social relief programmes and to promote community-­based demand-­driven and sustainable development activities leading to the alleviation of poverty and improvement in the speed, quality and impact of development initiatives in cooperation with non-­governmental organizations, relevant ministries, private sector partners and other interested partners. For more on NaCSA, see: www.nacsa.gov.sl/about.html.   2 The full interview transcript is available at: www.iom.int/migrant-­stories/what-­hopereparations-­sierra-leones-­war-victims.   3 Interview with the author, July 10, 2015.   4 Respondents in one of my focus group discussions (held on July 19, 2017) in Freetown. During our discussions, these members of the War Amputee Association made several rejoinders to the government’s approach to contributive justice. These comments are summarized in the final section of this chapter.

Contributive justice   267   5 Ibid.   6 Yeabu Kamara, who was 16 years old when the rebels amputated both her hands during their onslaught against the people of Rogbere village, northern Sierra Leone. Interviewed by the author July 16, 2017.   7 Alfred Kamara, social worker at the Sierra Leone Union on Disability Issues (SLUDI). Interviewed by the author July 16, 2017.   8 Quoted in Jemini Pandya, 2009, www.iom.int/migrant-­stories/what-­hope-reparations-­ sierra-leones-­war-victims (accessed July 12, 2016).   9 Goods and Services Act (2009). Supplement to the Sierra Leone Gazette Vol. CXL, No. 37. Available at: www.sierra-­leone.org/Laws/2009-06.pdf (accessed January 2016). 10 Spokesperson for the NRA in Freetown; interview with the author, March 10, 2016. 11 Participants of a focus group interview conducted by the author at Mile 91, northern Sierra Leone, on September 12, 2017. 12 It is also important to note that his views are echoed in an unpublished document titled Administrative Barrier Study—Phase I (written in March 2005, by the Government of Sierra Leone, the Foreign Intervention Advisory Service of the International Finance Corporation, and the World Bank Office in Sierra Leone). This study noted that “many of Sierra Leone’s tax policies and practices, such as the imputed taxes imposed on unregistered enterprises, are intended to increase the tax base and bring informal businesses close to the formal sector” (p. 6). But the arbitrary way in which these “taxes are assessed may have the opposite effect, and may prevent small enterprises from moving from the informal to the formal sector.” This, the report continued, “may result in long-­term losses for Sierra Leone, not only of tax receipts, but also of the greater employment and wealth creation effects that the small businesses might generate if they did not join the formal sector” (p. 3). 13 Interview with the author, July 10, 2015. 14 The imports and exports of Sierra Leone depend on the exchange rate of the US dollar, which therefore has a direct impact on Sierra Leone’s balance of trade. As a general rule, a stronger Leone (the currency of Sierra Leone) makes imported goods cheaper, compromising the ability of the local businesses to thrive. In terms of import and other excise duties, however, the government gains—but the long-­term impact can be negative if the level of imports is not balanced by the level of exports. 15 However, in 2015, based on the advice from the World Bank, the government removed the fuel subsidy, a move that has angered the business communities and the people in the urban and peri-­urban areas of Freetown and the provinces. As of October 2016, according to one of the Information Attachés, John Baimba Sesay (writing in the Sierra Leone Telegraph), the government’s Ministry of Information and Communication has embarked on a “multi-­faceted media campaign through nationwide consultations” to tell the people that the “government [was] losing billions of Leones on subsidies, monies that could be channelled to other social needs” (Sesay 2016, 1). 16 Another official in the Ministry of Finance (interviewed March 11, 2016), in response to my questions on the impact of administrative inefficiencies, poor regulation, and corruption, told me that with time, the GST will be a boon for businesses in Sierra Leone; GST will encourage businesses to keep modern accounting systems, and be more efficient. This will significantly reduce the time they take to prepare their tax returns. The efficiency of the tax system and business environment that we’re putting together will stimulate better contributive justice (people will accurately pay what taxes they ought to pay according to law), and government will have more money to perform its responsibility of greater distributive justice (better roads, more pay for teachers, doctors, soldiers, police, etc.). GST will help government to create the enabling environment wherein the confidence of investors would be heightened,

268   Contributive justice and they are more likely to come and invest in Sierra Leone. Of course, one must not be naïve to posit GST as a panacea. There is still going to be a need for greater monitoring of the tax administration system by not only integrity institutions like the Anti-­Corruption Commission, but also diverse Civil Society groups. Still, all must give maximum support to GST, for indeed, more than any system of government, the NRA in the implementation of tax laws passed by Parliament absolutely would allow “No Sacred Cows.” All who should legally pay GST tax will pay it. Or face legal sanctions. 17 Spokesperson for the NRA in Freetown, interviewed by the author March 10, 2016. 18 Ibid. 19 This Constitution repeals the Constitution of Sierra Leone (1978), and was itself altered in Amendment No. 9 of 2008. Available at: www.sierra-­leone.org/Laws/constitution 1991.pdf (accessed June 10, 2015). 20 To continue the long title, Being an Act to provide for the promotion of the rights of the child compatible with the Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on November 20, 1989, and its Optional Protocols of 8th September, 2000; and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, and for other related matters. It repeals the Corporal Punishment Act and the Prevention of Cruelty to Children Act (1926) and amends the Protection of Women and Girls Act (Cap 30), Prevention of Cruelty to Children Act (Cap. 31), Children and Young Persons Act (Cap. 44), Muslim Marriage Act (Cap. 96), Armed Forces of Sierra Leone Act, 1961 (No. 34 of 1961), and Interpretation Act, 1971 (No. 8 of 1971). Available at: www.sierra-­leone. org/Laws/2007-7p.pdf (accessed June 10, 2015). 21 Being an Act to amend the Summary Ejectment Act (Cap. 49), it increases the jurisdiction of Magistrates’ Courts in respect of summary ejectment to prevent arbitrary ejectment of people who have had their houses torched by the warring factions and were facing a housing crisis. Available at: www.sierra-­leone.org/Laws/2006-1p.pdf (accessed November 10, 2017). 22 Being an Act to provide for the imposition of a broad-­based tax on the consumption of goods and services in Sierra Leone and to provide for other related matters. It repeals the Entertainment Tax Act, 1971, the Restaurant Food Act, 1989, External Telecommunications Act, 1995, and Sales Tax Act, 1995 and amends the Development of Tourism Act, 1990. Available at: www.sierra-­leone.org/Laws/2009-06.pdf (accessed June 10, 2015). 23 Being an Act to consolidate with amendments the law relating to sexual offenses. Available at: www.sierra-­leone.org/Laws/2012–12.pdf (accessed June 10, 2015). 24 This Act repeals the Anti-­Corruption Act, 2000. 25 Being an Act to establish the National Commission for Persons with Disability, to prohibit discrimination against persons with disability, achieve equalization of opportunities for persons with disability and to provide for other related matters. Available at: www.sierra-­leone.org/Laws/2011–03.pdf (accessed June 10, 2015). There are two main clauses worth quoting here. One is to encourage employers to employ amputees, and the other, to punish these who discriminate against them: Subsection 23(1 and 2) states, Subject to subsection (2), a private employer who engages a person with disability with the requisite skills or qualification, whether as a regular employee, apprentice or learner may apply to the National Revenue Authority for a deduction from his taxable income of an amount equivalent to twenty-­five percent of the total amount paid as salary or wages to the employee

Contributive justice   269 No deduction shall be made from taxable income pursuant to subsection (1) unless the employer presents proof: (a) certified by the Ministry responsible for labour that the person with disability in respect of whom he claims the deduction is under his employment; and (b) that the person with disability so employed is accredited by the Commission as to his disability, skills and qualifications Subsection 22 affirms that, [a]ny contract for employment or for the provision of goods, facilities or services or any other agreement shall be void in-­so-far as it purports to deny any person with disability, any right or privilege conferred under this Act or in any other way, limits the operation of this Act. 26 These include, among others, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, Mar. 7, 1966, 660 U.N.T.S. 195 (entered into force Jan. 4, 1969); American Convention on Human Rights, Nov. 12, 1969, O.A.S.T.S. No. 36; American Convention on Human Rights “Pact of San José, Costa Rica,” 1144 U.N.T.S. 123. 107. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, art. 2(3)(a)–(c), Mar. 23, 1976, 999 U.N.T.S. 171. 27 G.A. Res. 60/147, ¶18, U.N. Doc. A/RES/60/147 (Mar. 21, 2006). 28 Tort law has four elements: responsibility (or the duty of care), breach of responsibility (including foreseeable risk of harm), causation (proof of negligence), and harm (including physical harm and emotional harm). In the determination of a breach, the question who is thy neighbor is put into perspective.

References Bellerby, John Rutherford. 1931. A Contributive Society. London: Education Services. Bernstein, Anita and Hans Dieter Seibel. 2011. “Reparations, microfinance, and gender: A plan, with strategies for implementation.” Cornell International Law Journal 44: 75. Bruce, Susan, ed. 1999. Three Early Modern Utopias: Thomas More’s Utopia/Francis Bacon: New Atlantis/Henry Neville: The Isle of Pines. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Cooper-­Stephenson, Ken. 2013. Constitutional Damages Worldwide. Toronto, Canada: Carswell Publishing & Thomson Reuters. Dougherty, Beth K. 2004. “Searching for answers: Sierra Leone’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.” African Studies Quarterly 8 (1): 39–56. Gberie, Lansana. 2007. “Sierra Leone: Hail to the new president; in football, the pundits would call it ‘scoring against the run of play.’ Nobody gave Ernest Koroma and his APC party a dog’s chance to win Sierra Leone’s elections. But they won! And their new government is already at work. Lansana Gberie Reports.” Feature, New African 467: 48. Gomberg, Paul. 2007. How to Make Opportunity Equal: Race and Contributive Justice. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing. Gomberg, Paul. 2016. “Why distributive justice is impossible but contributive justice would work.” Science & Society 80 (1): 31–55. Greiff, Pablo De. 2006. “Justice and reparations,” In Pablo de Greiff (ed.), The Handbook of Reparations. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 451–77. Kallay, Alie. 2008. “One year of Koroma.” New African 479: 42. MacIver, R. M. 1932. “Book review: A contributive society. J. R. Bellerby.” The International Journal of Ethics 42 (3): 338–9. Mohamed Massaquoi. 2012. “NaCSA pays reparation to 12,398 victims across the country.” Africa News Service, 2012.

270   Contributive justice Rachel Horner. 2009. “Country to observe human rights day in grand style.” Africa News Service, 2009. Rawls, John. 1993. Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press. Sahr Musa Yamba. 2005. “ ‘APC known for curses, insults, and violence’ says presidential spokesman.” Africa News Service, 2005.

15 The instututional quest for another province of freedom The Human Rights Commission and Constitutional Review Committee, 1994–2016 The rapid expansion of human rights claims—due, in part, to a political awakening that followed the “official” end of transitional justice in Sierra Leone—and calls to adhere to new domestic and ever-­evolving international norms, led to the establishment of the Human Rights Commission of Sierra Leone (HRC-­SL). Subsequent calls for a review of the 1991 Constitution to strengthen the constitutional powers of the state and assert the inalienable rights of the people led to the setting up of a Constitutional Review Committee (CRC). The decision of the Government of Sierra Leone to establish the HRC-­SL and the CRC raised two questions: whether the creation of these bodies would lead to greater demand for governmental accountability; and, if so, whether such accountability would lead to a shift of emphasis from the securitization of rights—which had historically focused on the political survival of governments—or a correction of the government’s militarized conception of, and responses to, people’s claims to their human rights entitlements. This concluding chapter examines the histories and contributions of these two institutions, the HRC-­SL and the CRC. In doing so, it is impossible to avoid problematizing their theoretical foundations. Their intellectual premises, as presented here, have been subjected to various interpretations by institutions, research consortiums, scholars, politicians, and legal practitioners with an interest in Sierra Leone’s post-­war nation-(re)building efforts. The chapter begins with the HRC-­SL. It examines its mode of operation, structure, standardized mechanisms for policy implementation, monitoring and evaluation, and the challenges it faces, as well as its recommendations for reform. On the whole, I argue that to understand the mandate of the HRC-­SL one must see it as a permanent continuation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. In relation to the CRC, the focus is on its mandate and its relationship with key stakeholders: political parties (representing the view of the politicians), women’s groups (representing the views of the marginalized), and the grassroots human rights groups (representing the normative law: what it should be, and not what it is). I conclude the chapter by noting that, while progress has been made, political and cultural resistance to constitutional change mean that Sierra Leone is still a long way from a new “Province of Freedom.”

272   Quest for another province of freedom

Part one: the Human Rights Commission of Sierra Leone (HRC-­SL) The definition of a Human Rights Commission The HRC-­SL is a government institution. But what kind of an institution is it? From the standpoint of the social theory of institutionalism, there are two ways we can define its institutional character: the traditional Weberian understanding of an institution, and the post-­structuralist perspective. In the Weberian sense, the HRC-­SL is an organized, formal structure with a fixed set of functions, which enables us to ascertain its hierarchal structure and policy processes. The Commission’s website stated that its functions are to “protect and promote human rights in Sierra Leone.”1 These functions, while they are codified in the Act of Parliament (Act No. 9 of December 2006) that created it, are subject to certain international requirements set by the UN Paris Principles of 1991. It is under the Paris Principles that it enjoys an “A” accreditation status.2 To merit this status, the regulators of the Paris Principles must be satisfied that a body is a “key element” of a strong and effective national human rights protection system, helping to ensure the compliance of national laws and practices with all international human rights norms; supporting [the] Government … to ensure implementation; monitoring and addressing at the national level core human rights concerns such as torture, arbitrary detention, human trafficking and the human rights of migrants; supporting the work of human rights defenders3 [including community-­based human rights groups and non-­ governmental organisations, media houses and those operating at individual levels]; and contributing to eradicating all forms of discrimination. (UN High Commissioner for Human Rights 2010, 3) As new international norms are adopted, which the Government of Sierra Leone is required to domesticate (regardless of any cultural-­relativist objection), the HRC-­SL is frequently called upon to act, on the one hand, as the defender of rights and, on the other hand, as the facilitator of the activities of “an ever-­ growing group of NGOs, citizens, networks and regional bodies, and to take on new issues: transitional justice, climate change and development” (UN High Commissioner for Human Rights 2010, 3). Because of its changing role in meeting new challenges that are shaped by people’s purposive interactions in the economic, cultural, and political spheres, the character of the HRC-­SL can also be viewed through another institutionalist lens, that of post-­structuralism. In modern times, post-­structuralist discourses have asserted that, in navigating the currents of competing centers of economic, cultural, and political power, institutions behave much like human beings. Human rights institutions do have similar patterns of behavior to the people whose activities they seek to regulate; behaviors that can be seen as stable or unstable, long- term or short term. Like people, their behaviors can be ordered,

Quest for another province of freedom   273 and controlled by sets of rules, norms, and practices. For instance, the international recognition of national human rights institutions was not the only objective of the development of the Paris Principles in 1991. The end of the Cold War witnessed a proliferation of human rights institutions that impinged upon the sovereign authority of states (see Goodman and Pegram 2012a). In the pursuit of their self-­given mandates, these institutions engaged with issues at the international level, and matters pertaining to the international human rights systems developed by states (Sidoti 2012, 93) for the regulation of states’ behavior (Goodman and Pegram 2012b). Most of these human rights bodies sought, by injecting themselves into the traditional terrain of governments, to better promote and protect human rights at the national level (Dickson 2003; Rosenblum 2012; Haász 2013). Attempts to regulate these human rights institutions gave rise to an epistemological inquiry into the functions of national-­level human rights bodies. It was this inquiry that shaped, in the case of anglophone Africa, people’s ways of memorializing their lived experiences, and their receptiveness to the political and social impacts these institutions continue to have on what Obiora Chinedu Okafor refers to as the “voices of suffering” in the region (Okafor 2012, 124). History of the HRC-­SL The connection between human rights and constitutional reform in Sierra Leone is derived from a multiplicity of experiences. The first is the country’s relationship with Britain. Between 1808 and 1960, Sierra Leone was a peripheral colony of imperial Britain. During this time, various forms of human rights were experimented with, leading ultimately to the common law system of Sierra Leone, which the nation continues to adhere to after independence in 1961. The second is the international experience. Between 1946 (when the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) recognized the role of national human rights institutions) and 1948 (when the UN’s UNDHR was adopted), human rights institutions in colonial Sierra Leone were focused on political and economic rights. In 1946, the UN Commission on Human Rights was founded. From its inception to its replacement by the Human Rights Council in 2006, the Commission on Human Rights applied a series of guiding principles for the formation of permanent human rights institutions in the postcolonial states of Africa and beyond. But it was not until the end of the Cold War (in 1989–1990) that the Commission on Human Rights was able to achieve its objective. It was at the International Workshop on National Institutions for the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights in Paris in 1991 that the international community of sovereign nations (and semi-­autonomous nation-­states) finally endorsed the institutional legitimacy of national human rights institutions. Through what is known today as the Paris Principles, national human rights institutions became an embedded element in the theories and practice of human rights (UN High Commissioner for Human Rights 2010, 7). Ironically, 1991—when the world was gathered in Paris to develop a “common human rights standard”—was the same year the civil war began in

274   Quest for another province of freedom Sierra Leone. Thus, while those in Paris were talking peace, Sierra Leoneans were busy gunning each other down or fleeing (or suffering) indiscriminate human rights violations inflicted by all the factions—rebels, pro-­government forces, mercenaries, and peacekeepers—alike. Notwithstanding the atrocities of the civil war, Sierra Leoneans opted for a democratic political system in 1996. With democracy restored, the impetus for an independent human rights institution began to fade. Meanwhile, the civil war was also in its second catastrophic phase. This period is discussed in detail in Chapters 13 and 14. Of importance to the current discussion, however, was the modification of the National Commission for Democracy (NCD) which was created by the NPRC junta of Captain Valentine Strasser. Created by a military decree (Decree 15 of 1995), the NCD was “mandated to educate the public about the constitution and cultivate, ‘a sense of nationalism, patriotism, and loyalty to the State in every citizen’ ” (Human Rights Watch 2001, 1). On December 23, 1996, less than a year after the NPRC junta (now led by Brigadier Julius Maada Bio, who had overthrown Strasser for his dilatory approach to restoring democracy) handed power to the nation’s first democratically elected President, Ahmed Tejan Kabbah of the SLPP, the new government passed the NPRC Decrees (Repeal and Modification) Act (Human Rights Watch 2001, 6). With the decrees of the NPRC regime repealed, the government was constitutionally authorized to make its own changes to the human rights regime of the country. The NCD was renamed the National Commission for Democracy and Human Rights (NCDHR). By adding “human rights” to its remit, the government of President Kabbah created, for the first time in the constitutional history in Sierra Leone, a link between democracy and human rights. As well as enacting a series of laws to enhance the work of the NCDHR, the Kabbah government also created the platform for the involvement of civil society groups and community-­based organizations in the monitoring and evaluation of human rights interventions. For instance, in January 1997 the NCDHR instituted a weekly human rights education radio programme. This was followed by the publication every second Wednesday of a pamphlet that dealt with issues relating to “political tolerance, legal and political rights, women’s and children’s rights, and the rights of detainees” (ibid., 8). This pamphlet was targeted at the educational (primary, secondary, and tertiary) institutions. Moreover, in partnership with the Ministry of Education, a new curriculum that included compulsory subjects on civic education and human rights was developed. Both institutions then embarked on the nationwide distribution of relevant textbooks to all primary and secondary schools. At the tertiary/university levels, the NCDHR provided free legal aid clinic training to students, thus transforming both law students and non-­law students into paralegals. With US$4.7 million from the UN Development Programme to support a three-­year “National Awareness Raising Programme,” the NCDHR posted these select groups of university students to all the free legal aid centers it had established in Freetown. Apart from these temporal legal aid programme, the NCDHR also created

Quest for another province of freedom   275 four specialist human rights monitoring committees to document and advocate on behalf of victims of human rights abuses: (1) police, (2) prisons, (3) women and children, and (4) general public. Volunteer members of these committees were widely represented by human rights activists, professionals, civil servants, and religious leaders, and the NCDHR facilitated training for them through the human rights section of the UN [Peacekeeping] Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL). (Human Rights Watch 2001, 8) The NCDHR continued with its quasi-­legal activities until March 2000. A year earlier, during the peace talks in Togo’s capital, Lomé, the debate for and against the creation of a human rights institution that would meet the definition and standards of the Paris Principles re-­emerged. Civil society groups, perhaps still angered over by President Kabbah’s decision to grant a blanket amnesty to the rebels, called on the government to include a clause in the peace agreement that guaranteed the creation of such an institution. The government agreed and Article XXV, which made it mandatory for the government to establish an “autonomous quasi-­judicial national Human Rights Commission” within 90 days, was added to the Lomé Peace Accord. This, however, created tensions between the leadership of the NCDHR and civil society groups between 1999 and 2002. Civil society groups misread the clause as providing a green light for them to work as the “official” bodies responsible for monitoring human rights issues (and reporting non-­compliance by both state and non-­state actors). Not wanting to compromise the government’s good working relationship with these groups (who were financially dependent, not on the government, but on various external sources), President Kabbah sided with them. Realizing that this move would compromise the effectiveness of the NCDHR, Dr. Kadi Sesay resigned from her position as chair of the NCDHR in October 1999. She was replaced by Professor Joe Pemagbi, but he also found it very difficult to work with these refractory civil groups, and resigned in June 2000 (and was appointed ambassador-­ plenipotentiary to Sierra Leone’s permanent mission to the UN in New York). He was replaced by Bob Carter, who led the NCDHR until 2007. During Carter’s tenure, a compromise was reached with the civil society groups. The latter agreed to accept the constitutional authority of the NCDHR in exchange for government funding. Civil society groups also agreed to stop lobbying Parliament to repeal the “human rights advancement” mandate of the NCDHR—which would have the effect of changing the NCDHR to its former self, the NCD. Despite losing the battle for supremacy to the NCDHR, civil society groups did not remain dormant. It is true that they were not a dominant player during the peace talks in Togo; they were merely observers, and their powers to influence the political outcomes of the talks were limited. However, between 2002 and 2004, civil society groups contributed enormously to the work of the TRC and the Special Court for Sierra Leone. Once the TRC submitted its report, the government was faced with the task of  implementing its human rights (and other) recommendations. True to its

276   Quest for another province of freedom commitment, the government created, by an Act of Parliament (The Human Rights Commission of Sierra Leone Act (No. 9), 2004), the Human Rights Commission of Sierra Leone (HRC-­SL). A “selection panel” with representatives from all works of life was sent up by President Kabbah to develop a model that would “fulfill the standards set by the UN Paris Principles governing the operations of Human Rights institutions,” and to engage in a public search for five commissioners. In January 2005, the panel began its search. It was reported that The five commissioners were appointed through a transparent and participatory process that commenced in 2005 with a call for applications for the post of Commissioner. Shortlisted applicants were interviewed by a selection panel comprising six representatives of civil society interest groups and one representative of the government. The Selection Panel submitted a list of seven candidates to the President who selected five nominees whose names were gazetted for public scrutiny and review. (Human Rights Watch 2001) On October 30, 2006, the Attorney-­General and Minister of Justice presented to Parliament the names of the five commissioners selected by the President. They were the Reverend Moses B. Khanu (chair), Jemesina E. L King (vice-­chair), Bryma V. S. Kebbie, Daphne A. O. Olu-­Williams, and Brima A. Sherrif. Soon after taking their oath of office on December 11, 2006, they embarked on a series of study tours to Ghana, Uganda, Northern Ireland, and South Africa (with funding from the Irish Human Rights Commission). Mandate and structure of the HRC-­SL Regarding its mandate, the HRC-­SL describes it as one that requires them to take the lead role in building a culture of human rights (including respect for individual responsibility) which maintains human dignity for all in Sierra Leone in full compliance with the constitution, laws, international and regional instruments, through effective partnership and collaboration. (Roberts 2015, 418) As illustrated in Figure 15.1, the Commission is made up of five commissioners, from whom two were appointed chair and vice-­chair. These commissioners are appointed by the President and approved by a select committee in the House of Parliament for a renewable term of five years. Assisting them are the Executive and Deputy Executive Secretaries (ESs) and their support staff. Below the ESs are four directors (and their deputies). These directors are each assigned a directorate: the Directorate of Education, Communication, and Training; the Directorate of Monitoring and Research; the Directorate of Finance and Administration; and the Directorate of Criminal Investigations and Legal Services. There is another senior officer (equivalent in rank to a director) called the

Lib. and Doc Unit

IT Unit

HRC Commissioner

Treaty Body Unit

Regional Offices • Bo – South • Kenema – East • Makeni – North • Waterloo – West

• Deputy Director • Account Officer • Sub-Accountant • Snr. Admin Asst. • Drivers

Source: HRC-SL Directorate: www.hrcsl.org/Directorate (accessed October 7, 2017). For the interpretation of the acronyms of these institutions and their respective functions, see note *.

• Senior Regional HRO • Regional HRO • Assistant Reg. HRO • Office Assistant

Business and HR Unit

Director DFA

Executive Secretary Support Office • Programme Officer • Procurement Officer • Human Resource Manager • Snr. Admin. Assistant • Office Assistant

Commission’s Support Office • Internal Auditor • PIO • Snr. Admin. Assistant • Office Assistant

Coordinator Regional Services

HRC Commissioner

• Deputy Director • Snr. Human Rights Officer • Human Rights Officer • Asst. Human Rights Officer

Gender and Children Unit and DAND Unit

Director DMR

Deputy Executive Secretary

Executive Secretary

HRC Commissioner

• Deputy Director • Snr. Human Rights Officer • Human Rights Officer • Asst. Human Rights Officer

PI Unit

Director DECT

HRC Vice Chairperson

Figure 15.1  HRC-SL Organogram.

• Deputy Director • Snr. Human Rights Officer • Complaints Registrar • Human Rights Officer • Asst. Human Rights Officer • Bailiff

Complaints Registry

Director DCILS

HRC Chairperson

HR-CSL ORGANOGRAM

278   Quest for another province of freedom Coordinator for Regional Services. His/her duties include overseeing the four provincial and regional offices in the country. Below the offices of directors and the coordinator are 15 human rights officers, divided into three cadres: senior human rights officers, human rights officers, and assistant human rights officers. Standards of operations and functions The HRC-­SL is an institution with a comprehensive set of norms and structures to guide its standards of operation and prevent the politicization of its day-­to-day activities. While its duties have a political undertone, its operations are designed to give a socialized narrative of human rights and wrongs, without fear or favor. Towards this end, what it does, and how it goes about doing it, has a profound impact on what happens within the economic, political and social (including the private/domestic) spheres of human relations. Thus, should the HRC-­SL be politically influenced, its impact will affect all levels and sectors of the Sierra Leonean society. Commenting on its operations, the authors of the 2010 report explain that: In July [2008] the Commission initiated the drafting of the country’s national action plan for human rights in preparation for its Universal Periodic Review at the UN Human Rights Council scheduled for 2011. In March [2009], HRC-­SL published its annual report on the state of human rights in Sierra Leone … which it presented to the president and the Speaker of Parliament. Both the president and the parliament accepted and praised the report without reservations. In addition, the Commission initiated a working group with the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the international community to coordinate human rights activities in the country. HRC-­SL continued its efforts at enforcement of the Child Rights Bill, and three gender bills. There was increased use of its system for reporting human rights violations. (Sierra Leone Human Rights Commission 2010, 20) By stating that “the president and the parliament accepted and praised the report without reservation,” the authors of this report were basically saying that the Commission operates “without government interference” (ibid.). Regarding its functions, the HRC-­SL has created a comprehensive list of ten leading goals. They are included in its annual Strategic Plan4 to help guide its operations and fulfill the benchmarks set by the Paris Principles. These goals include: • •

Institutional capacity development of HRC-­SL: To enhance the operational and technical capacity of the HRC-­SL to effectively and efficiently protect and promote human rights in Sierra Leone. Protection against discrimination: To sensitize on all discriminatory practices and advocate for a practical legislative and policy framework to address discrimination in Sierra Leone.

Quest for another province of freedom   279 •

• • •

• •

• •

Effective complaints handling in the HRC-­SL: To speedily and efficiently address human rights violations and seek remedies for victims within the mandates of the HRC-­SL, the Constitution of Sierra Leone, Regional and International Human Rights Instruments. Human rights monitoring and research: To monitor, research, document, and report on the level of respect for or violation of human rights in Sierra Leone. Human rights education and training: To enhance understanding of human rights and promote a human rights culture in Sierra Leone. Respect for and observance of civil and political rights: To monitor and engage public officials to respect, protect, promote, and fulfill civil and political rights as well as educate the general public on their individual responsibilities for the enjoyment of these rights in Sierra Leone. Respect for and observance of Economic, Social, and Cultural (ESC) Rights: To monitor and advocate for the provision of essential social services for the fulfillment and enjoyment of ESC Rights in Sierra Leone. Enhance Compliance with local, regional and international human rights obligations of Sierra Leone: To promote state compliance with Regional & International Human Rights Instruments to which Sierra Leone is a signatory. These obligations include supporting the government to fulfill its treaty body reporting obligations to the reports to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Convention Against Torture and to redouble its efforts in submitting its annual reports to the African Union on the domestication of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights to the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights.5 Obligations of public officials to protect human rights & access to justice: To monitor, document, and engage public officials on their obligations to protect human rights in Sierra Leone. Business and human rights: To engage public officials on their obligations to ensure that multinational corporations and other business entities respect and observe international human rights instruments and the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.

From these goals, two sets of functions can be identified. They are (1) the regulative and (2) the constitutive functions. The regulative functions involve the protection of human rights, achieved through a legalistic approach. This approach, according to Sonia Cardenas (2012, 40), can take various forms, including “processing complaints, investigating instances of abuse, holding violators accountable”—especially in situations where the state has failed in its mandate to protect human rights and to confront and remedy wrongdoing. State failure, in Cardenas’s view, is not always an outcome of weak government. Strong states/governments (with authoritarian tendencies) are more often guilty of neglecting the human rights of their people. This accounts for a significant legal deficit for human rights institutions. In Sierra Leone, political fragility has resulted in state institutional weakness, and the need for political survival has

280   Quest for another province of freedom fed into the authoritarian tendencies of the government. With survivalist and authoritarian tendencies combined, institutional weakness and political authoritarianism (even in what seems to be a democracy) have created a situation in which the HRC-­SL was deprived of prosecution powers; it can only recommend that some human rights violations be adjudicated by a competent court. In practice, matters that involve the government—such as arbitrary arrest and detention of political opponents and disproportionate force against worker and student protesters by government security officials—are mostly ignored even when the HRC-­SL has recommended prosecution to the Directorate of Public Prosecution. In terms of its constitutive functions, the HRC-­SL has, since its creation, continued with the “public education strategy” of its predecessor, the NCDHR. Public human rights education is about building a culture of human rights (in pursuit of the “education objectives”6 of the 1991 Constitution), as outlined in Section (7) 2(b) 1–3 of the Human Rights Commission of Sierra Leone Act, 2004. This constitutional provision authorizes the Directorate of Education, Communication, and Training of the HRC-­SL to engage in the following activities in fulfillment of its constitutive functions. First, activities that will result in public awareness and education programmes. Some of these education programmes may include the coordination of training for government officials, civil society organizations, and the general public, with the aim of developing a culture of human rights in Sierra Leone. Second, putting together a national human rights resource center to act as the public repository of all national (and international) human rights instruments, including the management of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s archives. And, finally, publication of guidelines, manuals, and other materials explaining the obligations of public officials in the protection of human rights, as well as the translation of this information into all the relevant national languages. Through these constitutive functions, all stakeholders (the HRC-­SL, the government and the citizenry, and the international community) are able to assess the effectiveness of the HRC-­SL. That notwithstanding, as Sonia Cardenas (2012, 40–1) rightly observes in her study of national human rights institutions and state compliance, it is challenging to gauge effectiveness through a set of functions that can easily be isolated as the situational circumstances of the people and governments change. Challenges The first significant challenge to the activities of the HRC-­SL is lack of funds. In fact, most of the Commission’s funding comes from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and IrishAid, the government of Ireland’s official agency for international development. To promote, protect, and monitor human rights, and intervene to resolve resolvable incidents (or report criminal offenses) in a country with a population of 7.396 million (Statistics Sierra Leone 2015), the HRC-­SL received, for the year 2016, US$200,0007 (of which US$150,000 was provided by the UNDP for the implementation of the UNDP Access to Justice Project).8

Quest for another province of freedom   281 Second, the experiential contentions between politics and culture (the primary drivers for constitutional reform) have had a major impact not only on the kind of oversight of the activities of the HRC-­SL provided by human rights defenders, the District Human Rights Committees, but also by feeding into tensions— of a universalist versus cultural-­relativist character—between the Government of Sierra Leone and the international community, especially the UN Human Rights Council. The effect of this clash between politics and culture, and between local and global forces, is to produce conditions that make the memorialization of experiential human rights in the communities of the poor and vulnerable (especially women) burdensome. In the absence of clear information on the impact of these tensions, people do not place their faith in what the laws say on paper. Instead, they look at the speech acts and body language of the leaders of the HRC-­SL, the government, and the international community to reach subjective conclusions about who they (the people) are to the law, and what the law makes of them. The effect is the introduction of human subjectivity as people try to make sense of the objective tendencies of law (reason) and culture (belief ). As a result, attempts to claim one’s rights may lead to unexpected (but predictable patterns) of resistance, especially in situations where people use their subjective beliefs (the cultural) to interpret reason (the law). This point re-­echoes the words of John Griffiths: At the heart of the controversy about “rights” lie many confusions. The most serious is to assume that the word means the same in countries with [different] histories … Another source of the confusion in the discussion of “rights” is creedal. There are those who believe that certain rights are inherent and inalienable, attached to the individual as part of the individual’s being and inseparable therefrom. There are others … who find no meaning in this belief. [They are the people who] say that rights exist only in things separate from us. [They] also say that rights in their proper sense mean claims established by the laws of the society in which we live and enforceable in the courts or our country. It follows that such legal claims may be challenged by others and that their legitimacy falls to be decided by persons appointed for this purpose. (Griffiths 1999, 89) The third challenge facing the HRC-­SL, as my reviews of their reports reveal, is confusion over the identity of the reports themselves. It is very difficult to ascertain whether these reports are in favor of a universalist approach to human rights or supportive of the cultural-­relativist argument. At best, one can say these reports contain elements of both extremes. Between these extremes are the influences of patriarchy. Patriarchal paternalism, being a model for the militant regulation of gender-­based relations, have made possible the persistence of the unwanted polemics of cultural relativism, whose “extremist” view of human rights have situated sexual and gender identities as the yardstick of progress in the evolution and application of human rights norms in Sierra Leone. By subtly

282   Quest for another province of freedom subjecting people’s human rights entitlements and claims to cultural scrutiny (which is not outlawed by the 1991 Constitution), claims can easily be de-­ legitimated. This is especially true in situations where a person’s gender-­based political, socio-­cultural, and economic identity is considered either unworthy of protection or a danger to cultural belief systems. Beyond the aesthetics of the  cultural uses of human rights institutions in Sierra Leone, patriarchal temperament insists on the self-­seeking interests of the “politically relevant man” above all else. Where the question of who gets what, where, how, and when is given a patriarchal interpretation, the human rights of the oppressed and suppressed (for example, women without the right to determine their reproductive rights, or who are survivors of sexual violence) is relegated to the domestic space. In this space, the likelihood that women’s rights will be recognized and protected is reduced. It was with a desire to resolve these challenges that the HRC-­SL recommended the establishment of a CRC. In pursuance of this recommendation, the government instituted a Constitutional Review Commission in 2006, with Dr. Peter Tucker, the principal author of the 1991 Constitution, as chair. After conducting national consultations and holding a series of public sessions in which various sections of Sierra Leonean society presented their recommendations, Dr. Tucker presented (in 2008) his report (the Peter Tucker Constitutional Review Commission Report (PTCR)) to President Ernest Bai Koroma (who had succeeded President Kabbah in 2007). Had Parliament considered and approved this report, and the President assented, the PTCR would have gone to a national referendum. If accepted by the people, it would have resulted in a new constitution, amending or replacing the 1991 Constitution. However, the President discarded the report without explanation in 2012. Instead, in July 2013, he announced the formation of another commission, the Constitutional Review Committee, to carry out another review of the 1991 Constitution.

Part two: the Constitutional Review Committee (CRC) Defining constitutional review: histories, theories, and experiential processes A constitutional review is not about the repeal and replacement of a constitution. There are those who have used the “formal powers” of national courts in their exploration of the ways and means by which constitutional review processes are born. One of the most influential cases, and one that continues to attract scholarly attention, is the landmark ruling on Marbury v. Madison [5, U.S. 137 (1803)] of the United States Supreme Court. Relying on Article III of the US Constitution, the court held that “constitutional review” is a process whereby courts or court-­like bodies are empowered “to set aside or strike legislation for incompatibility with the national constitution” (Ginsburg and Versteeg 2013, 591). This power to set aside the legislation of government is also called “balancing.” Balancing basically refers to the act of weighing a constitutional question

Quest for another province of freedom   283 against the “principles of suitability, of necessity, and of proportionality” with a view to eliminating human subjectivity and enhancing the legal possibilities for constitutional interpretation to protect human rights (Alexy 2005, 572). When understood from the standpoint of power-­politics, this weighing formula is about getting a government to create multi-­objective approximated norms. Where the legitimating institutions and structures exist, and the required resources are allocated, it becomes very difficult for the creators of these multi-­objective norms to be above the objective reasoning and application of the law. The aim of norm-­ making (or change) is to get the best out of every member of the society. But attempts to achieve this betterment through principles based on moral consideration have resulted in tensions, because the natural outcome of morality is the undoing of the realpolitik (or the systems of politics based on practical considerations) of the wielders of power—that is, the people with the authority to exercise “politics” through constitutional (and sometimes unconstitutional, but politically expedient) means. The tensions between moral acceptability and realpolitik pragmatism continue to attract the attention of constitutional lawyers, historians of constitutional development, and political theorists. One of their primary concerns surrounds the question (as Tom Ginsburg and Mila Versteeg of the Comparative Constitutions Project9 put it) of why “self-­interested government[s] [would] willingly constrain [themselves] by constitutional means”? Put another way, why would a government that was elected through a majoritarian democratic system compromise its political future, and restrict its governance choices, by putting its faith in the hands of unelected judges, or constitutional review commissioners or chairpersons? What, Ginsburg and Versteeg ask, underlies this radical move towards what they referred to as “juristocracy” or the “judicialization” of political power (Ginsburg and Versteeg 2013, 588). There are those, especially from what I gathered during fieldwork in Sierra Leone, who believe the 80 committee members and officials of the CRC were employed only to impute the views of the people—the electorate (who voted for the government). I would suggest Ginsburg and Versteeg may have forgotten the continuous (that is, the post-­ electoral) “powers of the people” in democracy when theorizing the rise and persistence of “juristocracies.” There are various theories that have been presented to answer these aforementioned questions. These theories include federalism, ideationalism, and discursive constitutionalism. Those arguing from a federalist standpoint contend that constitutional review (as an instrument for the strengthening of America’s federalism) has its origins in the US Supreme Court decision on the case New York v. United States (505 U.S. 144[1992]). This ruling called on states to establish alternative legal norms and structures—or even comprehensively codified states of rules—to balance all unfavorable interpretations of federal statutory laws (Jackson 1998; Shane 2000). The reasoning behind this “juris-­tocratization” of the political powers of states, Martin Shapiro (1999) argues, is to maximize the legal uses of checks and balances between the three branches of government: the legislature, executive, and judiciary. It is also about the mitigation of possible

284   Quest for another province of freedom double standards in judicial reviews (Baker and Young 2001). By qualified addendum, it is also about the interactions between the federal and state governments in the pursuance of their exclusive, concurrent, and residual functions. With regard to the ideational account, Ginsburg and Versteeg, in answering the questions regarding the origins and consequences of constitutional choices, tell us that the ideational explanation is less interested in the governance problems federalists are concerned with. Instead, it focuses on “the importance of rights protection and the rule of law, or the need to be protected from the vagaries of government action” (Ginsburg and Versteeg 2013, 587). These highly resourceful scholars went further to make the thought-­provoking claim that [w]hen constitution-­makers foresee losing power after constitutional adoption or revision, they are more likely to institute a constitutional review, as the judiciary may protect the substantive values that the drafters will be unable to vindicate through the political process. Constitutional review, in this account, is a form of “political insurance,” through which constitution-­ makers safeguard their future political interest. (Ginsburg and Versteeg 2013; see also, Ginsburg 2003) Scholars writing about discourse constitutionalism have, to use Robert Alexy (2005) as an example, used the discourse framing of “rationality balancing” or the processes of weighing the proportionality of constitutional review, to draw on the compatibility claims of objectivity. For them, objectivity (or the correctness of legal positivism) should be the justification for the intensification of freedoms that are threatened. It is against this backdrop that Alexy contends that constitutional reviews should be seen as an expression of the priority or superiority of constitutional rights over and against parliamentary legislation. Its logical basis is the concept of contradiction. The declaration of a statute as unconstitutional implies that it contradicts at least one norm of the constitution. This contradiction at the level of norms [making] is accompanied by a contradiction at the level of judgments about norms. (Alexy 2005, 577) In John Rawls’s theory of political legitimacy (and its connections to the theories of justice and fairness), the determination of the contradictions observed by Alexy should be about the legitimation of constitutional processes and the activation of people’s claims to natural justice. For this to occur, the illiberal consequences of political actions should negatively affect the “rational persons”—who are “able and willing to accept sound or correct arguments for the reason that they are sound or correct”—or those Rawls calls the “constitutional persons” (Rawls 1993). By focusing on the “constitutionality” of people, the idea (as far as my understanding of Rawls’s philosophy goes), is not limited to the conception of, and the case in favor of, the legal argument for the adoption

Quest for another province of freedom   285 of constitutional democracy and its liberal understanding of human rights (see Rawls 1958). Instead, it has everything to do with identity politics: whereby the identity of the “free and equal moral persons” becomes the center of the making and unmaking of laws. The question then to ask is: do the narratives of people matter in the adoption of the constitutional review process? For his part, Alexy (in his theorization of discursive constitutionalism) argues that what people say is only legitimate in a democracy, because power and authority within a democratic state “proceeds from the people”; and constitutional review “can be legitimate only if it is compatible with democracy” (Alexy 2005, 578). Hence, for starters, where a constitutional review process is ordered by the executive branch of government (the presidency) and made lawful by an Act of Parliament (deliberated upon and adopted by the elected representatives of the people), it means the people have activated and authenticated their constitutional rights. Alexy’s argument (like that of Rawls and other scholars referenced here) can be applied to explain Sierra Leone’s constitutional review processes, and associated contentions and contradictions. The only difference is that Sierra Leone is not like the notable western democracies, such as the United States, which, after centuries of experimenting with democracy and the rule of law, have developed sophisticated constitutional review processes, laws, and institutions. The contentious history of the tensions between laws and politics and the eventual triumph of the latter shows that the transitions that brought about constitutional reviews in Sierra Leone are experientially different from those experienced by other common law and non-­common law countries. It was the chaotic transitions from war to peace (and back to political instability), and from relative peace to underdevelopment and “inhuman” security that explain the repetitive nature of the lower (or zero) impact constitutional law reform/review processes attempted in Sierra Leone between 1863 and 2016. What this tells us is that experiences of human rights (and human rights violations) have their beginnings. These beginnings, I argue, cannot be understood in isolation from questions relating to a country’s localized models of governance, however so defined, and its international status (within and beyond the United Nations General Assembly). These experiential beginnings—or even their end—are also rooted within various competing historical processes. In this vein, the way society has come to embrace the idea of constitutional reform has a direct connection to what people experienced in the past. In between the past and the future (which may be created from the review of constitutions) is the question of authenticity. Can Sierra Leone make a legitimate claim to the right to a constitution designed along the English common law model? If so, what becomes of their endogenous models, which bear the cultural markers of Sierra Leone? There are those who believe Sierra Leone’s claim to the British model is “unrepresentative” of the struggles for human rights. Considered from a historical point of view, their argument has merit. The reformist tendencies of the English common law system began as far back as 1215 with the promulgation of the Magna Carta. It took centuries for it to be perfected. It was in the latter part

286   Quest for another province of freedom of the eighteenth century that black Africans (some of whom would eventually be relocated to Sierra Leone at the end of the transatlantic slave trade) began to lay claims to it, not because they were entitled to its privileges, but because they believe its characterization of natural law—that individual rights are intrinsic by virtue of human nature, and are endowed by God or a transcendent being. Even at that, the core elements of the English common law system were imagined, formulated, and applied through the theoretical lenses of the European Enlightenment thinkers, who were oblivious of the conditions (and cultural ways of life) of the African (Sierra Leonean). It is against this backdrop that some have criticized the whole idea of constitutional review in Sierra Leone as alien to the values embedded in the oral histories of the origins, and practice, of customary law. For them, inasmuch as the customary law may not be able to eliminate inequalities between genders (the male and the female), it speaks to, and about, the cultural markers of Sierra Leoneans. Besides this, and contextually speaking, some of the core human rights issues affecting the people and the state are culturally induced. To resolve them would require the hybrid application of English common law and Sierra Leone’s customary law frameworks. However, the operational aspects of the common law framework Sierra Leone has adopted (since 1863) have made it difficult for constitutional review committees to recommend a hybrid model without undermining the legal and political foundations of the country. Constitutional review in Sierra Leone In the lead-­up to July 2013, there were a series of issues that the then Attorney-­ Gender and Minister of Justice, Franklyn Bai Kargbo, had to deal with in cabinet and Parliament, and in different other civil society quarters. In cabinet, he was faced with the question: “Why would the government want to create a constitutional review process that will restrict the powers of the presidency?” In Parliament, as was to be expected, there were many questions that needed answering. Among them were: “Why another process when the report of the 2008 Peter Tucker Constitutional Review Commission has not been acted upon?”; “Was this process value-­for-money and how will it be funded?”; “Which law needs reforming?”; “Who are the winners and losers?” While political survival was central to his response to politicians across the political divide, persuading civil organizations was based on two factors: first, that the proposed review was predicated on the assumption that the 2008 report of Peter Tucker was incomplete and, at the same time, the government saw the Tucker report’s relevance as a foundation document from which the CRC was to start its work; and, second, relying on the imperfections of state governance—issues of press censorship, restrictive civil society access to government activities, increasing levels of sexual and gender-­ based violence, among others—to make a case that there was a need for reform. In considering “what should be reviewed,” civil society, too, wanted a role to play. In 1996, it had had no role in the creation of the National Commission for Democracy and Human Rights; in 2008, its involvement in the work of the Peter

Quest for another province of freedom   287 Tucker Commission was constrained by inter-­party differences between the outgoing SLPP government (which had instituted it) and the incoming APC party. In the end, inasmuch as the SLPP’s formation of this Commission was purely in pursuance of the recommendations of the 1999 Lomé Peace Accord,10 the 2004 Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report, and the 2012 Human Rights Commission Report, the APC was less interested in the politics of accommodation and/or continuity. It wanted to change the trajectory of governance and, with it, to undo most (if not all) incomplete policies and institutional processes of the opposition party. This was the thinking of some civil society organizations (as well as the SLPP11). The Attorney-­General’s Office was transformed into a public relations ministry as it undertook a national sensitization tour to convince the recalcitrant civil society (although some were holding out because they expected to be bribed). This outreach programme was so successful that when the bill to create the CRC reached Parliament, there was unprecedented public support for it. The parliamentarians, it is worth bearing in mind, knew that their mandate, in the slippery slopes of Sierra Leone, hinged on two pillars: the political favor of the presidency, and public opinion influenced by the civil society groups’ communications to the largely misinformed/uninformed general populace. It can be argued, within the constitutive boundaries of “mandate theory,” that while the right of Parliament to make and unmake laws is derived from the people, their capacity to carry on with their task is bequeathed to the government, which controls the “life-­giving nerve” of the constituents of parliamentarians; and, from the regulative effects of the fourth estate and civil society groups. To resist the presidency and the co-­opted civil society groups would have meant the “political death” of the leaders in Parliament. The President did not need to remind them of the extent of his powers—after all, he had used those powers to remove the clause that dictated that only a Supreme Court Justice should act as Speaker in the House;12 thus replacing Justice Edmond Cowan (whom he would eventually appoint to head the CRC process) with presidential loyalists S. B. Dumbuya and Chernor Bah in the positions of Speaker and Deputy Speaker, respectively—with Deputy Speaker Bah doubling as head of the Law Reform Working Group in Parliament. Arm-­twisted by the presidency and motivated by their desire for political survival, the parliamentarians deliberating on the CRC Bill all agreed on the need for another review process—and that the Peter Tucker Report did not reflect the post-­2007 political situation in the country. Against this backdrop, the CRC Bill was adopted by Parliament and received presidential assent as The Constitutional Review Committee of Sierra Leone Act (Act No. 13 of 2013). Composition The CRC Steering Committee was made up of five administrators: the chair (in the person of Justice Edmond Cowan), the Chief Technical Adviser (Sannualah Baloch from Pakistan), the Executive Secretary (Saa Kpulun), the Deputy Executive Secretary (David C. Conteh), and Finance, Administration, and Human

288   Quest for another province of freedom Resource (Julius Cole). Below the Steering Committee was a committee of 80 members, divided into nine sub-­committees: a b c d e f g h i

the Committee for the Reform of the Executive (headed by a consortium of civil society groups); the Information, Education and Communication Committee (headed by Halimatu Lucy Deen); the Committee for the Reform of the Judiciary (headed by Glenna Thompson); the Committee for the Reform of the Legislature (headed by Tholla Thompson and later by Gibril Thullali); the Committee on Local Government and Other Ancillary Divisions of Government (headed by Aruna Mans-­Davies); the Committee for the Reform and Management of Natural Resources and the Environment (headed by Yoni Emmanuel Sesay); the Report Writing–Drafting of the Working Document Committee (under a plenary committee leadership); the Committee Responsible for Research Activities (under the leadership of Alhaji Ben Kamara); and, the Fundamental Principles of State Policy and Human Rights Committee (headed by Ansumana M. P. Fowai).

These sub-­committees were required to report from time to time to the Chair of the CRC, Justice Edmond Cowan. Below these sub-­committees, there were the six UN-­Volunteers Corps (cross-­posted from UNDP) and the 788 Civil Society Organizations’ Volunteers (working at different places nationwide). Mandate The Act stipulated that the terms of reference for the CRC should be to review the Constitution of Sierra Leone, Act No. 6 of 1991. As part of its mandate, the CRC should, review the 1991 Constitution of Sierra Leone using Constitutional Review Commission Report submitted to Government in January 2008 as a working document. In carrying out its mandate, the committee is required to (a) Collect views by all practicable means for the general public in and outside Sierra Leone; (b) Undertake extensive consultations with the public and the relevant social, political and economic groups on its terms of reference; (c) Recommend provisions which will promote an open, transparent and democratic society; (d) Examine constitutions of other countries; (e) Examine and recommend any subject-­matter of a constitutional nature which is relevant in strengthening multi-­party democracy; (f ) Examine and recommend on any matter which is connected with or incidental to its terms of reference.13

Quest for another province of freedom   289 In the discharge of this mandate, the CRC was called upon to do the following:14 a b c d e f g h i

review the recommendations contained in the Report of the Constitutional Review Commission submitted to government in 2008 and to advise government on the acceptability (or otherwise) of the recommendations; collect views by all practicable means from the general public in and outside Sierra Leone; undertake extensive consultations with the public and the relevant social, political and economic groups on its terms of reference; recommend provisions that would promote an open transparent and democratic society; examine constitutions of other countries, especially the best practices contained therein; examine and recommend any subject-­matter of a constitutional nature which is relevant in strengthening multi-­party democracy; consider any other matters that might arise during the review process pertaining to the constitution making; examine and recommend on any matter which is connected with or incidental to its terms of reference; and submit its report to the government within 24 months after being constituted.

Activities During the two-­year review process, the CRC carried out extensive consultations with Sierra Leoneans both inside the country and in the diaspora. This included undertaking consultative meetings, collecting and collating 130 position papers submitted by civil society organizations (CSOs); 198 ministries, departments, and agencies; the ten-­plus political parties; 91 women groups; the National Council of Paramount Chiefs and Tribal Heads, 199 of whom took part in the CRC/Campaign for Good Governance Consultative Forum. In terms of its national outreach, in all 300,000 documents were printed and distributed nationwide, with the above-mentioned groups utilized as part of the process. The CRC conducted 7,000 direct consultations (excluding the 13,000 households reached during 14 days of door-­to-door information sharing sessions). It also aired 21,600 hours of content in 18 radio programmes, and presented 12 dramas and 25 short clips on relevant issues in seven languages on television, radio, and on stage (during town hall meetings) in the district headquarter towns of the four provinces, where Constitution Information Kiosks were established in 394 wards (manned by 788 volunteers from the consortium of civil society organizations). At the international level, the CRC worked with international organizations (with about 5,000 representatives participating in UNDP–CRC stakeholder consultations) and—with the UNDP—held 80 expert engagements on constitutional issues. The constitutions of 75 countries were reviewed. During the process, expert recommendations and public opinion were also taken into consideration. These activities—though not an exhaustive list15— were funded by the following donor agencies16 (see Table 15.1).

290   Quest for another province of freedom Table 15.1  The experiential plenary submissions (from one select group) to the CRC Year

Funding agencies

Amount (US$)

2013

The Government of Sierra Leone UNDP—Sierra Leone

1,000,00017 34,224

2014

UNDP—Sierra Leone UKaid/Department for International Development

496,656 1,659,290

2015

UNDP/Bureau of Crisis Prevention and Recovery (BCPR) UNDP/BCPR European Commission DFID

140,500 200,000 1,099,439 548,631

2016

UNDP

440,631

A review of the activities of the CRC reveals that it divided its work into five thematic areas: (a) local government and citizenship,18 (b) lands, natural resources, and the environment,19 (c) information, communication, and the media,20 (d) fundamental principles of state policy21 and the recognition and protection of human rights, and (e) the democratic representation of the people22 and the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary. In this section, my emphasis is on the theme of the recognition and protection of people’s fundamental23 human rights, and I concentrate solely on the submissions by one “category” of people: women. While progress in other categories and institutional sectors is easily achievable, women’s rights issues are not so easily understood and translated into policy in the patriarchal life-­scapes of post-­war Sierra Leone. In the beginning, Sierra Leone was dubbed the “Province of Freedom.” This province, like the mythical land of Atlantis, was either an illusion or the road to it had been lost. If it was the latter, then finding it meant finding another path. Sierra Leoneans have tried the “bush path” to democracy, human rights, and development. The outcome was the neopatrimonial conditioning of greed, nepotism and abuse of power (including gender-­based abuses), and the political use of violence that culminated in the widespread destruction of lives and property. However, the “gender justice” path is a path yet to be tried. I suggest here that the best hope in the common search for a new “Province of Freedom” in Sierra Leone lies in the socio-­cultural, political, legal, and economic transitions from human rights (and its associated gender-­based insensitivities) to gender justice. I should reiterate here that, by gender, one is not necessarily referring to women. But as they are the category that is most disadvantaged, their views matter. And, as such, they, whether individually or collectively, were the most proactive participants in the CRC. The reason for this was the gender-­inclusive guiding principles of implementation developed by the Steering Committee. These principles ensured that all sessions were sensitive to and supportive of the  ongoing peacebuilding and reconciliation processes, and in favor of the

Quest for another province of freedom   291 promotion of social cohesion with women’s participation. These principles were also cognizant of the need for gender equality as an overarching focus, emphasizing inter-­governmental, non-­governmental, and individual partnerships and a commitment to “grassroots ownership” of the process. Women made submissions in all thematic clusters: citizenship, justice, human rights, land and natural resources, the legislature, executive, and judiciary during plenary and non-­plenary sessions. Why did women opt to make their presence felt so strongly in this forum when they were traditionally known for their silence—albeit a silence due, in part, to their involuntary decision to allow men to dictate policy development and implementation? The answer, I suggest, is not difficult to guess. During the TRC-­SL process (see Chapter 11), for example, women did not own the truth that was told about them, and what they had to say about their lived experiences; as a result, their (and the “other”) truth to the powers-­that-be was “captured” by the latter; and the much-­trumpeted positive impact of truth-­seeking and forgiveness ended the moment the TRC-SL process ended. Times have changed. Women have come to the realization that the  appropriation of their “stories” at the TRC-­SL was partly responsible for the gender insensitivities of the transitional justice processes between 2000 and 2006. As a result, they were not ready to allow the “men” to hijack their narrative in all similar public hearing and consultations. The CRC offered them an opportunity to undo the physical and psychological wrongs of earlier institutional reform processes. What they did thereafter was to use their lived experiences (in their terms and words) in their validation (or invalidation) of some of the submissions of the state and its agencies, and the menfolk, during CRC workshops. Women’s groups, as agents of the collective interests of women (from all walks of life, and from every corner of the country), organized their members to engender the process. Women’s associations, such as the 50/50 Group and the Association of Market Women, made substantive submissions and recommendations that contributed to the transformation of workshop sessions into feminized spaces. To achieve this, they employed, depending on the issue under discussion and the actors present, tactics that enhanced both their individual and collective interests. They also organized separate women-­only conferences to discuss the prospects and challenges of the CRC’s desire to accommodate gender equality and justice. From these conferences, they emerged with formidable position papers and resolutions that were submitted to the CRC. Though not binding, these persuasive resolutions did add value to the review process and informed the Committee’s final report to Parliament. The following are some of the recommendations they made. First, any revision of the constitution should be written in a non-­specialist language, and the simplified version should take into consideration gender-­ sensitive words like she/he, and her/him. Women should be involved in the process of writing the revised constitution as drafters and validators. Second, the constitution should guarantee women’s rights to equal employment opportunities and paid parental leave entitlements. Both private and public

292   Quest for another province of freedom sectors should develop best practices that make the workplace safe for women workers. Third, the creation of a gender-­responsive social intervention and protection mechanism to protect vulnerable people and survivors of gender-­based violence. Fourth, the constitution should guarantee women’s rights to life, liberty, and security from all forms of sexual and gender-­based violence. Fifth, the right to education should not be subjected to cultural dictates that are unhelpful to women’s empowerment. Sixth, women should be allowed the right to own property and estates (including the right to land ownership, through the elimination of patrilineality in customary law). Seventh, women and men should be equal before the law; and equality should be determined based on equity. Finally, there should be a constitutional guarantee on the equal representations of women and men in all elective positions. This final recommendation, in part, called for (a) the repeal of Section 27 of the 1991 Constitution, whose interpretative definition of the phrase: “protection from discrimination” was contradictory. While expressing (in Section 27, sub-­ sections 1, 2, and 3) the unconstitutionality of discrimination on the basis of tribe, sect, place of origin, political opinion, color or creed, Sub-­section 4 (caps A through to H) countered this. It noted that the constitutional guarantees of Section 27 do not apply to vulnerable groups, such as the disabled, foreigners, and women, among others. It also stipulated that, in the application of the law, recognition should be given to the place of customary law—which is traditionally known for its gender-­based insensitivities.24 The women’s groups did not just recommend repeal, they also called for implementation of the recommendation of the Peter Tucker Constitutional Commission Review report. Tucker had recommended that any constitutional review and legal reform should be done in ways that would transform the reformed laws into tools for addressing structural inequalities and all longstanding and emerging governance challenges that had negatively affected women and youth and compromised the democratization process. From these contributions, we see that the promotion of gender justice is about replacing inequality with equity, injustice with justice and fairness. It is about replacing what is historically perceived as human rights with gender justice. Human rights and their patriarchal reading of identity have not been successful instruments for the elimination of practices that normalize the gender-­insensitive application of the law in Sierra Leone. The oft-­presented narratives of “equality before the law” (without consideration of the gender-­based differences) have not been helpful when it comes to dealing with gender-­sensitive issues. Hence, the kind of gender justice that women (and women’s groups) wanted the CRC to propose goes beyond the adoption of affirmative action policies. It entails removing the structures of inequality and discrimination; it involves a constitutional responsibility to reconfigure laws, politics and culture in ways that would enable women to attain their potential without fear of being subjected to

Quest for another province of freedom   293 unhelpful and harmful stereotypes, which most often would rely on their sexual identity (and their sexualized relationship with men) to draw conclusions on what rights women are entitled to.

Notes   * HRC: Human Rights Commission. DECT: Directorate of Education, Communication and Training. It is responsible for carrying out the functions of the Commission outlined in Section (7) 2(b) 1–3 of the Human Rights Commission of Sierra Leone Act, 2004 as follows: public awareness and education programmes aimed at creating a culture of human rights in Sierra Leone; providing human rights information, including locating within the Commission a national human rights resource and documentation center; publishing guidelines, manuals, and other materials explaining the obligations of public officials in the protection of human rights. www.hrcsl.org/PDF/Directorate/Profile%20of%20the%20 Directorate.pdf. DMR: Directorate of Monitoring and Research. It is responsible for: carrying out the monitoring and research functions of the Commission as required in Section 7(2)(f ) of the HRC-SL Act 2004; Coordinating the Commission’s role in reviewing legislation, draft bills, and policies to ensure compliance with domestic, regional and international human rights standards and principles (Sections 7(2)(c), (d), and (e) of the HRC-SL Act 2004). www.hrcsl.org/PDF/Directorate/DMR%20Profile.pdf. DFA: Directorate of Finance and Administration. It manages and supervises the finances of the Commission and provides the logistical support required for the work of the Commission. It ensures that financial reports to government and donors are submitted in a timely manner. It further provides support for the development and implementation of projects and fund-­raising activities of the Commission. www. hrcsl.org/PDF/Directorate/The%20Directorate%20of%20Finance%20and%20%20 Administration.pdf. PIO: Public Information Office; IT Unit: Information Technology Unit; PI Unit: Public Investigation Unit; HRO: Human Resource Officer; Reg: Region(al).   1 History of Human Rights Commission of Sierra Leone. www.hrcsl.org/History (accessed October 7, 2017).   2 Apart from the Paris accreditation, the HRC-­SL was reviewed by the International Criminal Court’s Sub-­Committee on Accreditation and was accredited with an “A” Status in May 2011. The Commission was also re-­accredited with an “A” Status when it was reviewed in 2016. See www.hrcsl.org/History.   3 As of 2008, the independent National Forum for Human Rights (NFHR) served as an umbrella organization for human rights NGOs in the country. There were 41 human rights NGOs registered with the NFHR, and all were reportedly active. Most domestic human rights NGOs focused on human rights education. A few NGOs, including the Campaign for Good Governance, Tinap for Justice, and Access to Justice, monitored and reported on human rights abuses.   4 History of Human Rights Commission Sierra Leone. www.hrcsl.org/History (accessed October 7, 2017).   5 See The State of Human Rights in Sierra Leone 2012, 6th Annual Report of the Human Rights Commission of Sierra Leone, presented to the President and Parliament of the Republic of Sierra Leone pursuant to Section 24 (1) of The Human Rights Commission of Sierra Leone Act, 2004. www.hrcsl.org/PDF/Annual_Reports/ SoHRR%202012.pdf.

294   Quest for another province of freedom   6 Under the educational objectives, the constitution noted (in Chapter 2 (subsection 9)) that, and I quote the relevant section in extenso: 1. The Government shall direct its policy towards ensuring that there are equal rights and adequate educational opportunities for all citizens at all levels by: (a) ensuring that every citizen is given the opportunity to be educated to the best of his ability, aptitude and inclination by providing educational facilities at all levels and aspects of education such as primary, secondary, vocational, technical, college and university; (b) safeguarding the rights of vulnerable groups, such as children, women and the disabled in securing educational facilities; and (c) providing the necessary structures, finance and supportive facilities for education as and when practicable. 2. The Government shall strive to eradicate illiteracy, and to this end shall direct its educational policy towards achieving (a) free adult literacy programmes; (b) free compulsory basic education at primary and junior secondary school levels; and (c) free senior secondary education as and when practicable. 3. The Government shall promote the learning of indigenous languages and the study and application of modern science, foreign languages, technology, commerce and business. www.constituteproject.org/constitution/Sierra_Leone_2008?lang=en   7 This could be a conservative estimate of the total funding received. What I have listed here is the amount that was released to me by the HRC-­SL’s Office of the Executive Secretary.   8 See the receipts of the budget setup of the HRC-­SL, as approved by UNDP’s Annual Work Plan (AWP), which is based on the Results Management Guidelines (RMG) of UNDP and its implementing partners. This AWP plans and authorizes the HRC-­SL to manage available resources and report achievable results. www.sl.undp.org/content/ dam/sierraleone/docs/projectdocuments/demgov/Support%20to%20the%20Human %20Rights%20Commission%20of%20Sierra%20Leone.pdf.   9 See http://comparativeconstitutionsproject.org/about-­ccp/. 10 On the question of constitutional reform, the Lomé Peace Accord in Article X (Review of the Present Constitution) noted, and I quote the relevant section in extenso: In order to ensure that the Constitution of Sierra Leone represents the needs and aspirations of the people of Sierra Leone and that no constitutional or any other legal provision prevents the implementation of the present Agreement, the Government of Sierra Leone shall take the necessary steps to establish a Constitutional Review Committee to review the provisions of the present Constitution, and where deemed appropriate, recommend revisions and amendments, in accordance with Part V, Section 108 of the Constitution of 1991. (Retrieved from the Peace Accords Matrix database [Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame]. https://peaceaccords.nd.edu/provision/constitutional-­reformlom-­peace-agreement (accessed October 10, 2017)). 11 In response to the attempt of the APC government to compromise the 2008 report, the SLPP National Executive Council instructed party members in Parliament to suspend participation in certain strategic parliamentary activities, commencing with the next State Opening of Parliament in June/July 2013; and it also authorized all SLPP national officers to review the boycott of Parliament by their MPs from time to time as well as communicating their constituency-­level positions on the matter to the party for remittance to the international community and the public in writing. 12 In fact, this was the reason why the SLPP suspended its participation in the constitutional review process on November 30, 2013, four months into the CRC’s work. The SLPP Secretary General, Sulaiman Banja Tejan-­Sie, noted that the Act “seeks to alter a fundamental qualification for those aspiring to be Speaker of Parliament”; that the

Quest for another province of freedom   295 amendments to the existing criteria for holding the position of Speaker (“which requires the individual to have a legal background coupled with the experience of a judge of the Supreme Court of judicature”) were unconstitutional; and, therefore, that the President had undermined “the authority and purpose of that forum in its infancy and fails to depict a commitment to the ongoing national consultative process.” http:// slconcordtimes.com/slpp-­suspends-participation-­in-constitutional-­review-process/. In a Press Release (issued on November 29, 2013) that was sighted by me, Mr. Tejan-­Sie reiterated that, in their determination to protect democracy and until the President expressly refuse[d] to give the presidential assent to the [CRC] Act and until the Appeal Court speedily hears our appeal that [was] filed … taking into consideration the threat to the tenets of democracy, the [SLPP National Executive Council had] resolve[d] that the SLPP suspends its participation in the National Constitutional Review process until further notice. 13 Quoted from, the Constitutional Review Blog, https://constitutionalreviewblog.word press.com/about/crc-­mandate/ (accessed October 10, 2017). 14 Constitutional Review Blog, Committee and Mandate; https://constitutionalreview blog.wordpress.com/about/crc-­members-sub-­committees/ (accessed October 10, 2017). 15 For all their activities, see Support to Sierra Leone Constitutional Review Project. Available at: www.sl.undp.org/content/sierraleone/en/home/ourwork/democratic governance/constitutional-­review.html (accessed October 10, 2017). 16 Ibid. 17 During the launching of the CRC at State House on July 30, 2013, Attorney-­General and Minister of Justice, Mr. Franklyn Kargbo, had stated (in the presence of the representatives from the international community, including donors, and the representative of the United Nations Secretary General, Mr. Toyberg-­Frandzen) that the “projected operational budget to cover the whole process amounts to approximately, 4,600,000 US dollars.” www.statehouse.gov.sl/index.php/useful-­links/705-constitutional-­reviewcommittee-­launched (accessed October 10, 2017). 18 During the sessions on citizenship, the CRC received submissions calling on the government to include a new chapter in the constitution on citizenship that did not make reference to race and gender. Against this backdrop, and in line with the recommendation contained in the TRC-­SL report, the CRC recommended that references to “ ‘race and gender’ in the acquisition of citizenship” should be removed and “recommend[ed] equal rights to both Spouses” (The Constitutional Review Committee (CRC) and Cowan 2016, 12). During my reviews of the literature, and the conversations I had with some of the plenary members, I discovered that the CRC was also constrained by the tendencies to uphold (in line with the 1991 Constitution) the Sierra Leone-­specific anti-­LGBTQ cultural belief systems, by restricting the definition of a spouse to exclude LGBTQ relationships and its refusal to entertain LGBTQ human rights advocacy groups. 19 There was no agreement on the question of lands, natural resources, and the environment as the issue of land ownership in the provinces was not validated by the paramount chiefs during the two years the CRC met. The abridged report the CRC submitted to Parliament contained recommendations only on the classification of land: “(a) Government Land (inclusive of State and Public Land) and; (b) Private Land (inclusive of land under customary tenure)” (The Constitutional Review Committee (CRC) and Cowan 2016, 16). 20 The CRC recommended that all those engaged in media-­related issues should acquire licenses to ensure responsible journalism, and strict adherence to the country’s constitutional laws against the use of the media (and media freedoms) for the propagation of (a) propaganda for war; (b) incitement to violence; (c) hate speech; or (d) advocacy

296   Quest for another province of freedom of hatred. But also called for “a healthy atmosphere to practice decent journalism devoid of censorship” (The Constitutional Review Committee (CRC) and Cowan 2016, 25). 21 The abridged CRC report stated that “State Policy defines the overarching relationship between the State of the Republic of Sierra Leone and its citizens and Institutions.” It also reiterated “the State’s goal and aspirations towards securing basic rights and development for its people” (p. 28). In pursuance to this, the CRC made the following recommendations: that “the supremacy of the Constitution be stated”; “the sovereign rights of the people be stated”; “following the TRC recommendation and adding ‘Human Dignity’ to the first section relating to The Government and the people”; and that, in line with modern constitutions, a more inclusive provision be made “for those responsible for securing the security, peace and welfare of the people of Sierra Leone” (The Constitutional Review Committee (CRC) and Cowan 2016, 29). 22 After due consideration of position papers calling for uniformity of age for registration of voters, the CRC recommended retaining the present position in the 1991 Constitution of Sierra Leone; that, “the regional commissioners of the Electoral Commission shall reside in the four regions in order to make them more accessible and to decentralize the Commission’s work”; that a “new section 32 (7) be added to require electoral commissioners to declare their assets to mitigate corruption”; and that the Political Parties Registration Commission “decide about candidate fees for Presidential, Parliamentary and Local Council elections in consultation with the National Electoral Commission” (The Constitutional Review Committee (CRC) and Cowan 2016, 52). 23 The CRC endorsed the recommendation of the Peter Tucker Commission Report that the word “fundamental” should be deleted from the marginal note and Title of Chapter III of the 1991 Constitution on the grounds that all human rights are fundamental (The Constitutional Review Committee (CRC) and Cowan 2016, 37). 24 For more on the constitutional challenges posed by Section 27 of the 1991 ­Constitution, refer to the instrument itself; www.constituteproject.org/constitution/ Sierra_Leone_2008?lang=en.

References Alexy, Robert. 2005. “Balancing, constitutional review, and representation.” International Journal of Constitutional Law 3 (4): 572–81. Baker, Lynn A. and Ernest A. Young. 2001. “Federalism and the double standard of judicial review.” Duke Law Journal 51: 75. Braverman, Daan. 1999. “Enforcement of federal rights against states: Alden and federalism non-­sense.” American University Law Review 49: 611. Cardenas, Sonia. 2012. “National human rights institutions and state compliance,” in Ryan Goodman and Thomas Pegram (eds.), Human Rights, State Compliance, and Social Change: Assessing National Human Rights Institutions. New York: Cambridge University Press, 29–51. Carroll, Susan J. 1994. Women as Candidates in American Politics. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Constitutional Review Committee (CRC), Sierra Leone, and Justice Edmond Cowan. 2016. The Constitutional Review Committee’s (CRC) Abridged Draft Report. Freetown, SL: The Constitutional Review Committee (CRC). www.parliament.gov.sl/dnn5/ LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=SFK0hJjumNI%3D&tabid=92&mid=652. Dickson, Brice. 2003. “The contribution of human rights commissions to the protection of human rights.” Public Law 47: 272–85.

Quest for another province of freedom   297 Ginsburg, Tom. 2003. Judicial Review in New Democracies: Constitutional Courts in Asian Cases. New York: Cambridge University Press. Ginsburg, Tom and Mila Versteeg. 2013. “Why do countries adopt constitutional review?” The Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization 30 (3): 587–622. Goodman, Ryan and Thomas Pegram, eds. 2012a. Human Rights, State Compliance, and Social Change: Assessing National Human Rights Institutions. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Goodman, Ryan and Thomas Pegram, eds. 2012b. “Introduction: National human rights institutions, state conformity, and social change,” in Ryan Goodman and Thomas Pegram (eds.), Human Rights, State Compliance, and Social Change Assessing National Human Rights Institutions. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1–26. Griffiths, John. 1999. “Making rights work,” in Penny Smith (ed.), Making Human Rights Work. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 88–101. Haász, Veronika. 2013. “The role of national human rights institutions in the implementation of the UN Guiding Principles.” Human Rights Review 14: 165–87. https://doi. org/10.1007/s12142-013-0270-6. Human Rights Watch. 2001. “Protectors or pretenders? Government human rights commissions in Africa: Sierra Leone.” New York: Human Rights Watch. www.hrw.org/ reports/2001/africa/sierraleone/sierraleone.html. Jackson, Vicki C. 1998. “Federalism and the uses and limits of law: Printz and principle?” Harvard Law Review 111 (8): 2180–259. Okafor, Ibiora Chinedu. 2012. “National human rights institutions in anglophone Africa: Legalism, popular agency, and the ‘voices of suffering,’ ” in Ryan Goodman and Thomas Pegram (eds.), Human Rights, State Compliance, and Social Change: Assessing National Human Rights Institutions. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 124–49. Rawls, John. 1958. “Justice as fairness.” The Philosophical Review 67 (2): 164–94. Rawls, John. 1993. Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press. Roberts, Kirsten. 2015. “Promoting and protecting the long-­term needs of victims of armed conflict: The potential role of national human rights institutions,” in Phillipp Ambach, Frédéric Bostedt, Grant Dawson, and Steve Kostas (eds.), The Protection of Non-­Combatants During Armed Conflict and Safeguarding the Rights of Victims in Post-­Conflict Society. Leiden, The Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff, 385–427. Rosenblum, Peter. 2012. “Tainted origins and uncertain outcomes: Evaluating NHRIs,” in Ryan Goodman and Thomas Pegram (eds.), Human Rights, State Compliance, and Social Change: Assessing National Human Rights Institutions. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 297–323. Shane, Peter M. 2000. “Federalism’s Old Deal: What’s right and wrong with conservative judicial activism.” Villanova Law Review 45: 201. Shapiro, Martin. 1999. “The success of judicial review,” in Sally Kenny, William Reisinger, and John Reitz (eds.), Constitutional Dialogues in Comparative Perspective. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Sidoti, Chris. 2012. “National human rights institutions and the international human rights system,” in Ryan Goodman and Thomas Pegram (eds.), Human Rights, State Compliance, and Social Change: Assessing National Human Rights Institutions. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 93–123. Sierra Leone Human Rights Commission. 2010. Sierra Leone: 2010 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. Freetown, SL: Sierra Leone Human Rights Commission. www.state.gov/documents/organization/160143.pdf.

298   Quest for another province of freedom Statistics Sierra Leone. 2015. 2015 Population and Housing Census Final Results. Freetown, SL: Statistics Sierra Leone. www.statistics.sl/. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. 2010. National Human Rights Institutions: History, Principles, Roles, and Responsibilities. No. 4 (Rev. 1). New York and Geneva: United Nations Publications. www.ohchr.org/Documents/Publications/PTS-­4Rev1NHRI_en.pdf.

Conclusion

Having examined the long struggle for human rights in Sierra Leone from a variety of theoretical perspectives and episodic practical case studies, it is crucial for us to consider—in this conclusion—what the lived experiences of the people of Sierra Leone can tell us about the current (post-­2016) state of human rights activism, and the factors that will determine its future directions in post-­conflict Sierra Leone: (1) Directions towards gender justice, and women’s empowerment; (2) Democracy and the possibility of an expanding space for political participation; and (3) Freedom of information and the role of the media.

Directions towards gender justice, and women’s empowerment No one reading the materials set out in this book can fail to be struck by the marginal, yet crucial place women occupy in the struggle for human rights in Sierra Leone over the last 220 years. As we have seen, with consideration to either the politics of mainstreaming or societal resistance to women’s gender-­specific needs in constitutional development, the metanarratives of human rights, and the activism they propelled, has mostly been insensitive to women. This is partly because women’s rights entail many “sensitive issues” that those who are opposed to women’s empowerment in Sierra Leone have yet to understand or, as the worldviews of interviewees suggest, are afraid of. Hence it is not just about the promotion of instances of affirmative action policies one can point to, it is also about the commitment to remove the structures of inequalities and discrimination, as well as the reconfiguration of law and politics in ways that would enable women to be equal partners of development. This understanding of what it takes to achieve gender justice is consistent with Carroll’s (1985, 15) argument that women’s rights is about making sure that “those issues where policy consequences are likely to have more immediate and direct impact on significantly larger numbers of women than of men” becomes the focus for legal, economic, and political investment. It is in recognition of this that the international community—such as UN Women—has been calling on the government (after each periodic reviews of its steps to implement the Beijing platform for action, and other associated

300   Conclusion protocols) to partner its ministries, departments, and agencies (MDAs) with non-­ government bodies, including grassroots women’s groups, to invest in women’s empowerment projects. Whereas all interventions by MDAs are political, the activities of the non-­governmental sector are mostly non-­political (despite their engagement on politically sensitive issues). Thus, there are observed variations in the interventions between the MDAs and the NGOs, but the goal—i.e., the promotion of gender justice—remains the same at present. The materials contained in the preceding chapters (Chapters 1, 7, 11, 13, and the second part of 15) reveal that, where the non-­governmental engage in gender justice advocacy, the aim is to promote women’s political, socio-­cultural, and economic empowerment so as to enable this marginal group to gain control of governance. This kind of intervention, as I discovered during the course of researching this book, is about creating a space for the (re)generation of a societal commitment to women’s empowerment. Conversely, where MDAs are involved, the aim is not just to demonstrate a commitment to the empowerment of women, it is also about the engendering of their political legitimacy. This, in essence, tells us that the political recognition of women’s struggle for the betterment of self and others is purposively aimed at the reconfiguration of a gendered space for the actualization of a gender-­responsive cosmopolitanism which, in terms of governmental responsibility, transcends neopatrimonial political paternalism, and situates the non-­monolithic “category,” women, within the state’s purview of “duty-­of-care” (in fulfillment to its commitment to the implementation of the UN Security Council Resolution 1325). Observably, the collaboration between the political and the non-­political agencies in the creation of a gender-­responsive cosmopolitanism begs for answers to these broader questions: in what ways have women (acting in societally recognized, though not necessarily politically accepted, groups) responded to the multiple frameworks on women’s rights in Sierra Leone? How does law reform shape the institutional approaches to, and transitions from human rights (which, in theories and practice, is historically patriarchal) to the prescriptive path towards women’s empowerment and gender justice as suggested in the pro-­ feminism literature on the theories and practice of economic and political development (see, Mayoux 2010; Jaquette 1990; Kabeer 2011, 2012). This second question is particularly important, in that, as Jane S. Jaquette (1990) observes in her work “Gender and justice in economic development” (which appeared in Irene Tinker’s edited volume, Persistent Inequalities: Women and World Development), the success of women in using gender justice to promote economic development creates new sets of debates every time the question arises of whether it would be easier to reconcile women’s competing claims for gender justice with governmental (the political) and non-­governmental (the apolitical) commitment to the mitigation of societal inequalities. Through a critical review of the works (on gender justice) of the late French economist and feminist, Ester Boserup, Jane Jaquette explains how, throughout history (and irrespective of place and actors’ preferences), the existence of severe inequalities in law, politics, and economics does not

Conclusion   301 in itself ensure that those who are discriminated against will be able to claim that the inequality they are suffering is unjust. Even if … inequality is perceived as unjust, that perception must be translated into political and social action that will change the patterns by which resources are allocated.  (Jaquette 1990, 54) Consequently, women’s gender justice claims depend on whether women’s activism and roles would change the dominant perspective that injustice is not necessarily about the inequitable distribution of resources between women and men, but what it takes to uphold the paternalistic socio-­cultural, economic, and political systems in patriarchal societies. Thus, inasmuch as the peri-­urban and rural women of Sierra Leone are marginalized, they should respond—to the constraints imposed by the patriarchal regulation of their navigational spaces at the national and household levels—in ways that would, on the one hand, promote a “power-­to-the-­people” narrative; and, on the other hand, inject a pro-­womanist (since the men are afraid of the “feminist” word) thinking in societal discourses on gender equality and women’s empowerment. This, I argue, must begin at the grassroots levels. The end of the war in 2002 did not only usher the “unwanted” group of women victims/survivors of sexual and gender-­based violence, it also created the agentive possibilities for women to use their “victim/survivor-­hood” identities to create grassroots feminist movements. These movements, if appropriately aligned to the hegemonic interventions of the international community, would get the Government of Sierra Leone to embrace gender justice. Some would want to point to the complementary powers of, say, UN women, to question the possible impact the international community would have at the political levels in Sierra Leone. In the same vein, the argument has been that since 1975 when the UN declared 1976–1985 as the decade for women, women still occupy a marginal status, and the discourse of gender justice has also not gone beyond the political speech acts of politicians into sustained policy-­based interventions—in fact, it is yet to be seen if gender equality (on a 50/50 basis) would be achieved in Sierra Leone. These arguments are valid. After all, there are several gender justice regimes that Sierra Leone has acceded to, but has used a cultural-­relativist argument to delay, if not resist, their unreserved domestication. These include, among others: the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) of 1979; the United Nations Declaration on Violence Against Women of 1993; the United Nations Declaration on Violence Against Women of 1993; the Beijing Platform for Action of 1995; and the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa (better known as the Maputo Protocol) of 2003. These conventions concentrated on the political questions of equality, development (as a human right), and peace (within states and homes). However, one of the main criticisms that has been levied against the framers of the outcome documents from these conventions is on the textual wording of the recommendations they made to states. With minor nuanced variations, when issues of concern

302   Conclusion to the individual rights of women is mentioned, framing of these rights gives individual states the right to use cultural-­relativist arguments against the domestication of these policies, and to get serious about mainstreaming the rights of women within their constitutions that will give them what they have been deprived of, equality. As it is, with the political objections to gender equality (amid the elevation of political violence to discourage the few female politicians), so too was the objection to their biological roles and responsibilities. And worse, women were objectified and considered less capable of speaking for themselves when it came to their reproductive rights. At best, where they were  subjectified, through subtle political approval, the society’s cultural constructions to interpret the reproductive functions of women created persistent structural barriers in Sierra Leone. It was in an attempt to resolve this performative crisis of patriarchy that the 1994 Cairo Conference on Population and Development was convened. At the conference, issues concerning the sexual and reproductive rights of women, among other sustainable development-­related issues, were discussed. And a global consensus was reached, though not on an ad hoc basis, that recognized that the rights to family planning, among others, as an indicator of human security and peace. In September 2014, a review of these Nairobi recommendations was conducted, and it was recommended, yet again, that the international community should invest in issues of concern to women’s reproductive self-determination, among other, rights across all sectors and at all levels of society. The question to ask therefore is, in what ways can women’s rights promote the theories and practice of human rights? In their fight to remove these structural barriers, women must first deal with the problems of the patriarchal cultural norms and institutions that sustain them. The struggle for the promotion of the Diceyian concept of human rights—and its attachment to the Aristotelian principles of natural justice—has not worked for women in Sierra Leone. Beyond the goodness one would see in A. V. Dicey’s theorization of human rights, when understood from the standpoint of feminist legal theory, human rights that many have advocated for in Sierra Leone (between 1787 and 2016) was, at best, about the promotion of substantive and procedural fairness that was not necessarily sensitive to the gender-­specific concerns of women. Unlike gender justice, human rights—or to use the words of Douzinas (2000, 201): “the end of human rights”— will always be subjected to the social constraints, historical determinations, and conscious and unconscious structures which have succeeded in projecting an ideal space for shaping modern subjectivity. Thus, where human intersubjective thought processes (cloaked in case laws and judicial precedence that are induced by gender ideologies) are given pre-­eminence over the gender-­awareness tendencies of the objectivity of the law, women’s gender-­specific issues risk being subjected to unhelpful human rights discourses. Having said that, without an investment in gender justice, even if, constitutionally speaking, the law says women have rights to their fundamental inalienable rights, societal understanding of “socially shared roles” may continue to compromise women’s rights. Without the political will to promote women’s empowerment, attempts to modernize the

Conclusion   303 legal systems of Sierra Leone will only reinforce the metanarratives calling for the cultural uses of the stereotypical gender roles and responsibilities to authenticate the laws that are receptive to the patriarchal order of the society, and the constitutional arrangements that are opposed to gender equality.

Democracy and the possibility of an expanding space for political participation The end of the conflict in 2002 and the triumph of multi-­party democracy have created an expanded space for political participation at the grassroots levels in Sierra Leone. In part, this expanded space was made possible by people’s adaptation to westernized social value systems, and their corresponding post-­ modern lifestyles and socialization processes. As such, it was these processes of westernization that are freeing the people, who were a priori culturally connected to practices that are resistant to political liberalism in the country. In their daily quest for social and political change, as well as to (re)frame their cultural constructs on state governance, more than half of the country’s youthful population have embraced political ideas that seek to promote the collective interest(s) of the Sierra Leonean state. Time-­honored neopatrimonial political beliefs that resulted in the systematic exclusion of the youth and women from direct political participation from the 1800s to the year 2000 are giving way to institutionalized safeguards against the militarization of politics and political autocracy. These safeguards, to use the words of the eminent twentieth-­century social and political theorist, Friedrich Hayek, presuppose beliefs that democracy strengthens the legal, political, and economic safeguards to ensure the extension of the principles of liberty, equality, and human freedoms to all citizens of a given society. Thus, he writes, in The Constitution of Liberty: This extension of the principle of equality to the rules of moral and social conduct is the chief expression of what is commonly called the democratic spirit—and probably that aspect of it that does most to make inoffensive the inequalities that liberty necessarily produces. (Hayek in The Constitution of Liberty; quoted in Kukathas 1998, 31) As such, based on my estimations, any system of government that “uphold liberty, equality and the rule of law” (ibid.) is what would help create the space for increased political participation in Sierra Leone. Between 2002 and 2018, Sierra Leone has held four multi-­party democratic elections. Although these elections were not free from accusations of rigging, political intimidation, and violence, they nonetheless enhanced the space for inclusive political participation. The reason for political volatility is demonstrably not the “strangeness” of liberalism and liberal democracy that two of Sierra Leone’s emerging ‘Africanist’ scholars blame for political instability at the national level (Wai 2012, 2014) and for the persistence of fractured local government institutions at the sub-­national/village levels (Kormoh 2016). Instead, I would argue that the

304   Conclusion focus should be on the roles played by the pre-­war and wartime social issues such as urbanization (i.e., rural-(peri)urban movements of people), illiteracy, and culturalism (and its relativist resistance of “westernization,” and gender equality). These isolated factors have shaped past and present challenges to the effective implementation of the aforementioned constitutional safeguards. Interestingly, the ability of the youths, who have adopted westernized social outlooks that have made it possible for the socialization of the ideas of liberalism and liberal democracy, continue to attract negative societal stereotypes. The older members of the Sierra Leonean society who believe nothing good has or will ever come out of the youth—i.e., the “raray-­boys” and “savisman,” who were the combatants during the decade-­long civil war of the 1990s—also pose a significant problem to the expanding political spaces of the country. The youths I spoke to during fieldwork were of the view that their social and political mobility also rests on what they make for themselves. This thinking, inasmuch as it speaks about “self ” has also attracted varying forms of metanarratives and actions—for and against the expansion of the political space. In the end, it is the best practices of liberalism and liberal democracy that would determine the outcome of these inter-­generational and civilizational tensions. These best practices chart three plateaus in the trajectory, or evolving character, of “democracy” and the political spaces in Sierra Leone. The first plateau underscores the role of the post-­war liberal peace project. As a popular idea, rooted in the self-­imagery of the antecedents of political modernity, democracy is not just, in the Lincolnian sense, “a government of the people, by the people and for the people.” As a phenomenon, democracy, in the deliberative sense, is about “peace, progress, and sustainable development.” Thus, the decision of Brigadier Julius Maada Bio, the then chairman of the junta, the Reformed National Provisional Ruling Council (RNPRC, which replaced the NPRC junta of Chairman Strasser), to usher in a multi-­party liberal democratic system in 1996 as a solution for the civil war was not misplaced. Looking at the primordial provenance of democracy suggests that its political and historical antecedents involve a crucial component for peace and human rights monitoring, and public consultations. Borne out of the Athenian political practice of “deliberative democracy,” public consultation, James S. Fishkin (2011, 1) writes, is about giving “voice to ‘we the people.’ ” “We,” he tells us, includes “all the people”; and this “we,” as the political subject, for whom and by whom the government finds its legitimacy, “should provide the basis for ‘the people’ thinking about the issues they decide.” These issues that are decided will undoubtedly include the strengthening of human rights. This brings us to the second plateau, the “mobilization” of the people into defenders of the constitution (and the factor for constitutional reform). The character of this mobilization may be constrained by resolvable issues such as gender and age differences. But, on the whole, it is about the creation of a platform where the impersonate will of the people—thanks to the growth of social media  usage—determines the political directions of their democratically elected leaders. The third and final plateau—“human resource axiomatic,” which is defined here as the commitment to create specialized “institutions” manned by

Conclusion   305 an educated citizenry—resulted from the second plateau, and the emergence of an accountable political class to the people. This is the state at which deliberative democracy calls for the creation of new, and the transformation of the old, government institutions into human rights responsive institutions. At this stage, it is my belief that with the requisite education, Sierra Leoneans will take their understanding of democratic governance and the rule of law to the local communities. This phase is still pregnant: following the 2018 elections, the winner, Retired Brigadier and former junta leader, Julius Maada Bio, has announced the start of a government-­funded free and quality education for both primary and secondary education, and the extension of full scholarships to women at the tertiary institutions and universities. Moreover, the civics—the study of the rights and duties of the citizens, and the responsibilities and the limits of governmental powers—has also being re-­introduced and made compulsory for primary, secondary, and teacher training colleges. With these skills, the young generation will learn from these education sector reforms, they will be able to rearrange their lives and promote human rights in their homes and communities. Thus, without a continued investment in human resource axiomatics, there would be a bleak future for human rights in Sierra Leone.

Freedom of information and the role of the media How would the phenomenon of human rights that started purely from people’s desires for a safer and progressive society come to be caught up in the political drama of “freedom of information” in the age of information, telecommunication, and technology? While we can be sympathetic to the post-­war governments for their resilience to meet the challenges of human rights and democracy, we cannot romanticise its resistance to the repeal of Section Five of the Public Order Act of 1965. This section deals with two offenses: sedition and defamatory libel. Section 28(1) of this section states that “the truth of the statement published is not a defense” for its authenticity; and therefore, the author of the published statement and the editors/proprietors of the publishing outlet could be imprisoned and/or fined. Consequently, Maurice Garder, of the Concord Times newspaper in Sierra Leone, is of the view that, an accurate but critical comment from a newspaper may trigger prosecution under the statute if the Government believes that the statement is likely to disturb the peace, seriously affect the defamed person’s reputation or bring into hatred or contempt or excite disaffection with the Government … The statute also criminalizes the actions of a person “who makes use of any threat, abusive, insulting, obscene or profane language or says or sings any insulting or offensive song or ballad, or makes a noise to the annoyance of any person in any place.” This is why newspaper editors, journalists, reporters, publishers, printers, musicians, dramatists, comedians may be charged with violating the POA [Public Order Act] and face possible incarceration. (Garber 2005, 1)

306   Conclusion In September 2010, Emmanuel Saffa Abdulai, the Chairperson of the Freedom of Information Coalition Sierra Leone (FOICSL), presented a citizens’ sponsored Freedom of Information Bill (for the repeal of Section Five of the POA) to the House of Parliament; and by the November 2011, this bill completed the first-, second-, third, and committee-­stage readings. However, in its report on the issue, Human Rights Watch (2012) noted that the government deliberately decided not to entertain a final reading, which would have made it mandatory for the government to vote yes or no on its passing. The reason for this lack of political will, according to Mr. Abdulai, was that the politicians felt “this legislation [was] key to addressing longstanding patterns of corruption and serious human rights violations, which were at the core of [Sierra Leone’s] brutal [decade-­long] armed conflict” (ibid.). He went on to note that: “Freedom of information is essential for transparency and accountability in government and to ensure that services are delivered capably to the people.” Against this backdrop, “when public officials operate in secret, the tendency to abuse and misuse powers is greater than when the public can access information about the daily happenings of public institutions.” For its part, Human Rights Watch noted (in the same report) that the executive arm of government and Parliament should show the necessary political will to pass the FOI bill into law. The executive and legislature in Sierra Leone have traded accusations that the other is to blame for the hold-­up in enacting the legislation. Regardless of the reason for the delay, the government should present a united front and show the necessary political will to ensure that the bill is passed into law. (Ibid.) Besides it being part of the political manifestos of all political parties since the re-­introduction of multi-­party democracy, the final report (TRC 2004) that established what has been characterized as a “historical record” of the country’s conflict that ended in 2002, observed that without freedoms of expression and association, and access to public information, it would be impossible for Sierra Leone to build an accountable and a transparent government. The TRC knew that the right to freedom of information is a “tool for bringing about the full realisation of all other human rights” (Human Rights Watch 2012); and did recognize it as a core element of “freedom of expression” by primary international human rights instruments, including the UNDHR, the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights, and the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights. With mounting pressure from the FOICSL and donor agencies, after a decade of civil society advocacy, the government of Ernest Bai Koroma passed the Right to Access Information Law (RAIL) on October 31, 2013. This law represents the constitutionality of people’s request for, and access to, public information; and presupposes the belief that there are now in place constitutional guarantees that impose a penalty on failure to make information available. This

Conclusion   307 law has not had the intended impact. Proscovia Svärd identified the following factors for this minimal impact. First, the adoption of this law was not borne out of the political will of the politicians. Those who adopted it were merely trying to escape the pressure of civil society groups and the international donor community, including the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF ), and the British Government’s Department of Foreign and International Development (DFID). Second, Sierra Leone lacked the required “information management infrastructure to facilitate the creation, capture, management, dissemination, preservation, and re-­use of government information and investments in civil education” (Svärd 2017, 190). Third, there is a shallow culture of seeking public information through appropriate channels. These factors, compounded by the refusal of the government to repeal Section Five of the 1965 Public Order Act has made it nearly impossible for the media and civil society groups to effectively carry out its function as the human rights monitoring watchdogs.

Concluding remark It cannot be gainsaid that the successes and failures in people’s struggle for human rights are influenced by democracy, gender equality, and freedom of expression. Throughout this book, my aim has been to theorize and historicize, through a variety of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, the figure of the Sierra Leonean in the study of the individual and collective struggles for human rights in Sierra Leone between 1787 and 2016. Whilst there is an acknowledgment of the deplorable state of human rights in this fragile space, the recognition that more and more people are aware of their fundamental rights, and what these rights would mean for their social, cultural, political, and economic empowerment, provides the ample evidence that human rights are given to people by virtue of their humanity. But, it would require an unequivocal political will to transition the thinking of Sierra Leoneans from the conventional understanding of human rights to gender justice for the stabilization of the state; and with it, the smothering of the path to the utopic “Province of Freedom” envisaged by the formerly enslaved Africans, the Black Poors, when they set sail on board the frigate, Nautilus, for the “Province of Freedom” or “Freetown” on April 8, 1787.

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308   Conclusion Rights Watch. www.hrw.org/news/2012/04/02/sierra-­leone-pass-­freedom-information-­ bill. Jaquette, Jane S. 1990. “Gender and justice in economic development,” in Irene Tinker (ed.), Persistent Inequalities: Women and World Development. New York: Oxford University Press, 54–69. Kabeer, Naila. 2011. “Between affiliation and autonomy: Navigating pathways of women’s empowerment and gender justice in rural Bangladesh.” Development and Change 42 (2): 499–528. Kabeer, Naila. 2012. “Empowerment, citizenship and gender justice: A contribution to locally grounded theories of change in women’s lives.” Ethics and Social Welfare 6 (3): 216–32. Kormoh, Joseph Lansana. 2016. “Chieftaincy reform and liberal peace-­building in Sierra Leone,” in Marda Mustapha and Joseph Jusuf Bangura (eds.), Democratization and Human Security in Postwar Sierra Leone. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 37–58. Kukathas, Chandran. 1998. “Fredrich Hayek: Elitism and democracy,” in April Carter and Geoffrey Stokes (eds.), Liberal Democracy and Its Critics: Perspectives in Contemporary Political Thought. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 21–38. Mayoux, Linda. 2010. “Reaching and empowering women: Towards a gender justice protocol for a diversified, inclusive, and sustainable financial sector.” Perspectives on Global Development and Technology 9 (3–4): 581–600. Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission. 2004. “Chapter one, historical antecedents to the conflict (volume three a).” Freetown, SL: Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission. www.sierraleonetrc.org/index.php/view-­report-text-­vol-3a/item/ volume-­three-a-­chapter-one. Svärd, Proscovia. 2017. “Freedom of information laws and information access: The case of Sierra Leone.” Information Development 33 (2): 190–8. Wai, Zubairu. 2012. Epistemologies of African Conflicts: Violence, Evolutionism, and the War in Sierra Leone. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Wai, Zubairu. 2014. “The empire’s new clothes: Africa, liberal interventionism and contemporary world order.” Review of African Political Economy 41 (142): 483–99.

Index

Page numbers in italics denote figures. 1924 Constitution see Slater’s Constitution 1930 Ordinance (female suffrage) 119, 124 1863 Constitution see Blackhall Constitution 1st Battalion Regiment 61, 62, 64 Abass Bundu 176, 177 Abolition Society abolitionists 12, 13, 33, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 43, 72 abortion 199–201, 232 Abu Kanu 188 Abu Lakkoh 175 accountability 4, 137, 190, 243, 271, 306 Accountant-General 45, 47 Aden 74 Ado, William 42 Advocate-General 47, 51 African Charter on Human and People’s Rights, The 279, 301, 306 African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, The 245, 250, 268 African Steamship Company 55 Africanization 1, 5, 9, 89, 134, 136–45, 150 Afro-Lebanese 167, 178 Afro-nationalism 89 aldermen 12, 27, 45, 46, 49, 55, 116 Alharazim, S. Deen 84 All People’s Congress (APC) 88, 106, 107, 129, 134, 157, 159, 164, 165–8, 173, 174–9, 183–4, 185, 187, 189, 195–7, 204, 211, 217, 220–2, 228, 233, 234, 235, 257, 258, 287, 294 All Political Parties Youth Association (APPYA) 230 Alluvial Diamond Mining Scheme 142

American Civilization Society 70 American colonies 57, 58, 63–4, 161 American Convention on Human Rights 269 Americo-Liberians 70 Anglo-Liberian Convention 60, 135 Anti-Corruption Act (2008) 264 Anti-Corruption Act (2000) 268 Anti-Slavery Act (1807) 72 arms dealers 217 arrested truth 244, 248–9 Ashmore, Abraham 23, 24, 25, 29 Association of Muslim Women 196, 204 asylum 14, 25 Atlantic Ocean 60, 126 Auradicals Club 185–6, 190 Australia 13, 14, 134, 140 bail 47, 49, 50 Bailey, Pyne 106–7 Bailor-Caulker, Honoria 197 Banana Island 14, 41 Bandajuma 54, 61, 209 Bangura, Brig. John 169, 212 Bangura, Yola 98, 107 Bangura, Thaimu 176, 177 banishment 14, 21, 39, 80, 99, 107, 129 Bankole-Bright, H. 67, 70, 71, 84, 87–9, 91, 102, 115, 130, 134, 251, 252 Banta, Bai 104 Barton, John 13 Bash-Taqi, Mohamed 176 Bath-Polon, Forki 107 Beijing Platform for Action of 1995 299, 301 Bembe 101–2

310   Index Benka-Coker, Hannah 115, 197 Benka-Coker, Salako 116, 134 Beoku-Betts, E. S. 67, 71, 138 Beresford-Stoke, Sir George 87, 91, 97, 124 Bio, Brig. Julius Maada 274 Black Caucus 164, 165, 24 Black Poors 12, 16, 18–21, 23–6, 27, 28, 29, 32, 36, 46, 85, 307 “Black Prince” 44 Black, Lottie 113, 197 Blackhall Constitution 8, 60, 66, 71 Blackie, Brig. R. D. 169 Bo School 68, 140, 185 Bockari Samba, P. C. 88, 89, 116 Bockarie, Sam 224, 234 Bombali District 104, 178, 179 Bondo secret society 126, 205, 252 Botany Bay 13, 14 Bowie, James 24 Bretton Woods institutions 189; see also International Monetary Fund; World Bank Bristol 12, 27, 29, 39, 41, 140 British Crown 22, 41, 44, 59, 123, 134, 159, 174 British Government 14, 22, 34, 37, 40, 44, 62, 75, 139, 145, 264, 307 British settlers 92 British subject/citizen 66, 70, 71, 76, 77, 102 “Britishness” 71 Bunce Island 14, 15, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 37 Bureh, Bai 62, 63, 64, 69 Bureh, Kandeh 102, 116, 135 Burke, Edmund 13, 27, 57–8, 59, 63 Burma 74, 76, 105 “bush husbands” 232 Butschet, Leopold 44 Cairo Conference on Population and Development 302 Calmont Creek 15, 20, 23, 24 Cambridge, John 24, 29 Canary Islands 15 cannibalism 10, 14, 75, 79, 99, 251 Cape of Good Hope 34, 72 Cape Town Principles and Best Practices 245, 250 captive “wives” 231 Cardew, Frederic 60–3, 64 Carr, Commissioner 63, 64 Carter, President Jimmy 164–5, 170

Casely, Joseph Ephraim 73, 113 Caulfield, Sir J. E. 63, 64 Chalmers, Sir David 62, 63, 64, 66 Chalmers Commission 8, 62, 66, 206 Charter of Justice 44, 45, 47, 50 Chief Commissioner 74, 83, 104, 140 Chief Justice 21, 47, 51, 58, 62, 116, 117, 134 Chiefdom Appeals Court 148 Chiefdom Councils Act (1938) 150, 154 Child Rights Act (2007) 264 Childs, Hubert 83 Christ the King College 185 Christianity 22, 27, 32, 35, 38, 39, 41, 42, 44, 48, 49, 50, 51, 89, 199, 224, 226, 228 Christian Mission Society 138, 199 Church Mission Society 43, 73 Churchill, Winston 73–4 Citizenship Act (1973) 199, 209–12 City Council, Freetown 44, 116 civil service 137–8 civil society organizations 257, 268, 274–6, 280, 287, 289, 307 civil war 2, 6, 8, 105, 164, 168, 178, 187, 191, 212, 221, 223, 228, 229, 241, 243, 244, 248, 249, 257, 259, 261, 266, 273, 274, 304 Clapham Sect 33, 39, 43 Clarkson, John 35–6 Clarkson, Thomas 12, 13, 33, 39, 44 Cleveland, William 41 Cline, Emmanuel 54, 57 clitoridectomy 198, 249 Cold War 117, 144, 159, 220, 273 colonial administration 8, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 74, 76, 77, 83–4, 85, 87, 92, 95, 96, 97, 100, 101, 102, 104, 107, 111, 113, 122, 123, 124, 138, 143, 145, 146, 151, 196, 206, 209, 228 colonial law 46–50 Colonial Laws Validity Act (1865) 135, 136 Colonial Ministry of Natural Resources 143 colonialism 3, 7, 8, 74, 110, 120, 122, 127, 144, 159 Columbia Southern Chemicals 143 Committee of Educated Aborigines (CEA) 66, 67, 75 Compagnie Françoise de l’Afrique Occidentale (CFAO) 169 consciousness-raising 112, 126–7 Consolidated Zinc Corporation 143

Index   311 Constitution of Sierra Leone (1991) 264, 288 Constitution of Sierra Leone Act (1971) 164 Constitutional Review Committee (CRC) 2, 10, 251, 271, 282, 286, 287–93, 294, 295, 296 contributive justice 2, 10, 255–66 Convention on Civil and Political Rights (1979) 158, 306 Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1976) 158, 306 Corporal Punishment Act 268 court messengers (CMs) 74, 75, 79, 149 Court of Appeals 46 Court of Directors 35, 36, 40, 43, 45 Court of Requests 49 Courts Appeals Act (1963) 149, 153 Courts of Mixed Commission 72, 79 Cowan, Justice Edmond 287, 288 Cox Commission of Inquiry 105, 251 Creoles 8, 61, 66–71, 74, 75–8, 79, 83–7, 88, 89, 90–­3, 101, 102, 119, 122, 124, 125, 127, 138, 139, 145, 179, 180, 203, 204, 206–7, 210, 251 crime 17, 20–3, 45, 46, 48, 77, 123, 199–201 crowd psychology 5 Crowther, J. C. O. 88 Cuba 41, 72, 158 Cuban Missile Crisis 158 Cugoano, Ottobah 13, 16 Cultural Revolution 126, 175 cultural belief systems 2, 4, 5, 43, 92, 147, 151, 159, 167, 181, 182, 198, 203, 208, 211, 243, 247, 282, 295 Cummings-John, Constance 113, 114, 115, 117, 119, 120–6, 127, 129, 197 customary law 2, 5, 26, 36, 61, 62, 75, 92, 93, 102, 147–8, 150, 154, 163, 204, 205, 207–8, 243, 286, 292, 295 Daddy Loco 191 Davis, Howel 51 Dawes, Lt William 42 de Cintra, Pedro 51 de Zouche Hall, Sir Robert 97, 101, 103, 124, 125 Decade of Women 199 Declaratory Act of 1766 58 Deen-Jalloh, Ibrahim 224 Demane, Henry 19, 20, 28 Demb, A. J. 135 democracy 1, 4, 7, 56, 57, 67, 69, 74, 87,

97, 110, 151, 160, 163, 211, 220, 228, 259, 274, 280, 283, 285, 288, 289, 290, 299, 303–5, 306 Development and Welfare Scheme 145, 146 Development Ordinance (1960) 144 Dicey, A. V. 21, 302 Dickson, Thomas G. 136 dignification 180 Dillwyn, William 13, 39 Directorate of Monitoring and Research 276, 293 distributive justice 259, 265, 267 Donoghue v. Stevenson 265 Dorman, Sir Maurice 134, 135, 143 Dove, W. T. 54 Dove-Danquah, Mabel 117, 125, 197 Du Bois, W. E. B. 73 Duke of Buccleuch 25 Duke of Kent 135 Dumbuya, Haja Kai 115, 119 Dunbar, Paul 88 Durham University 113, 145, 146 During, Otto Oyekan 138 economics 2, 8–9, 10, 18, 27, 32, 34, 35, 38, 41, 44, 56, 57, 58, 60, 76, 95, 98, 101, 103, 124, 141, 146, 160, 166–9, 182, 186, 197, 198, 205, 210, 218, 219, 220, 260–4, 300, 303 economic sanctions 160 economy 1, 9, 14, 19, 22, 34, 54, 61, 74, 85, 101, 103–4, 122, 141, 143–4, 162–3, 166, 169, 173, 177, 183, 189–90, 208–10, 223, 256, 259, 266 Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) United Nations 273 education 4, 9, 35, 39, 41, 42, 44, 67–8, 85, 86, 93, 101, 119, 120, 121, 122, 136, 138, 140, 142, 145, 146, 168, 181, 189, 209, 261, 263, 264, 266, 274, 280, 294, 305, 307 egalitarian society 117, 222, 259 Ekutay 177, 178–83, 184, 187, 188, 189 elections 27, 46, 59, 70, 71, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 91, 92, 97, 98, 106, 107, 113, 114–15, 118, 119, 123, 125, 129, 151, 163, 164, 165, 170, 173, 174, 176, 197, 211, 257, 303, 305 Elections Before Independence Movement (EBIM) 129, 134, 159 Electoral Provision Act (1962) 107 Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, International Convention on 269

312   Index Elizabeth II, Queen 134, 160 Emergency Powers (Defence) Act (1939) 123 English common law system 5, 17, 26, 32, 44, 75, 92, 93, 119, 147, 148, 159, 161, 285, 286 English parliament 12, 13, 40, 57, 58, 64, 72, 75, 79 Entertainment Tax Act 268 Equiano, Olaudah 13, 16, 27 Established Church 43 ethnopolitics 1, 9, 69, 78, 84, 173–80, 182–4, 185, 186–8, 190, 195, 211, 228 European merchant community 16, 17, 42, 62, 76, 78 Executive Council 58, 71, 91, 104 External Telecommunications Act 268 Ezzidio, John 54, 55, 57, 59–60 Falaba 54, 61 Falconbridge, Alexander 13, 16, 19, 25, 26, 32, 33, 44 Fantimani 27 Fatmabrima, Alikali 107 feminism 111–17, 118, 119, 121, 122, 125, 126, 127, 196, 198–200, 202, 203, 211, 232, 247, 300, 301, 302 fight or flight response 18 First World War 72, 139 Fitzjohn, W. H. 88, 116 folk-motes 22 Footpaths to Democracy 219, 220, 221, 225 Forbana, Panabouré 14, 19, 20, 26 Foreign Jurisdiction Act of 1890 8, 66, 71 Forna, Dr Mohammed 169, 175, 176 Fourah Bay College 89, 113, 130, 138, 139, 145, 146, 153, 185, 186, 188, 190, 191 frankpledge system 23, 33 Freedom of Information Coalition Sierra Leone 306 Freetown 5, 8, 34, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44–5, 46, 48, 50, 54, 55–60, 62, 66, 68, 69, 70–1, 72, 77, 83, 84, 85, 87, 88, 89, 91, 97, 100, 103, 111, 112, 113, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 129, 137, 138, 139, 140–2, 146, 147, 153, 174, 177, 178, 183, 185, 197, 206, 207, 209, 221, 222, 223, 229, 245, 251, 257, 258, 263, 267, 274, 307 Frontier Police 61, 62, 63 Gamanga, Kenewa 88

Gardeners’ Club 185 Garvey, Marcus 112 Garvin, John 43 Gascoyne, Bamber 12, 27 Gbadahs, N. A. (Native Assembly Police Force) 104–5 Gbangbani secret society 178 Gbinle Dixing chiefdom 105, 106 gender justice 290, 292, 299–303 gender-equal society 195 George III, King 32 Ghadaffi, Muammar 186, 219 Gilbert IV, Nathaniel 43 global inequalities 220 “good friends” 78, 79 Goods and Services Tax Act (2009) 260, 264, 267 Gordon, Olu 186, 188 Government Diamond Office 143 Granville Town 26, 33, 34, 46 Green Book Study Group 186 Gregson, William 12, 27 Greig, Peter 43 Grigg, Jacob 22 Group Local Appeal Court 148, 154 Group Native Appeals Court 148 Hamilton-Hazeley, Lottie 117 Hanway, Jonas 12, 13, 42 Harford School 68 Harris, Etta 117, 197 Hawkins, Sir John 51 Hayek, Friedrich 303 Hayford, J. E. Casely 73, 113 High Court of Chancery 47 Hinden, Dr Rita 85 HMS Pomona 23–4 Hoare Jr., Samuel 13 Hobbes, Thomas 3, 23 Horne, Melvill 43 Hotobah-During, C. D. 84, 91 House and Land Tax of 1851 55–60, 61 House of Representatives 88, 92, 116, 118, 125, 129, 135, 136, 144 Human Rights Commission of Sierra Leone (HRC-SL) 2, 10, 271–82, 293 human rights law 1, 10, 101, 235, 240, 249 hundredos 23 Hut Tax War 60–3, 66, 69, 70, 79, 96, 103, 107, 151, 206, 228 hypogamous/hypergamous conjugal relationships 198, 205 imperialism 9, 84, 110, 113, 121, 174, 223

Index   313 inalienable rights 3, 248, 271, 281, 302 Independence Progressive Party 88 intelligentsia 259 Internal Security Units 164, 179 International Criminal Court 293 International Association for Labour Legislation 104, 108 International Labour Organization 103 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 169, 182, 183, 184, 187, 188, 189, 190, 220, 307 International Organization for Migration 257 International Workshop on National Institutions for the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights 273 Islam 44, 51, 116, 153, 224, 226, 228

King, R. G. O. 116, 125, 136 King-Harman, Sir Charles 63 Koblo Gulama, Madam Ella 92, 115, 117, 118, 119, 125, 129, 136, 153, 197 Koker, R. B. S. 88, 136 Kolugbonda, Lt J. B. 169 Kompa, Bai 72 Kono 88, 179, 187, 190, 191, 224 Koroma, Maj. Johnny Paul 244, 250 Koroma, President Ernest Bai 256, 257, 258, 282, 306 Koroma, Sorie Ibrahim 177 Koromah, Nancy 119, 197 Koya Political Party 88 Kuranko 93 Kurr, Bai 88, 89, 116 Kychom 95, 96, 105, 107

James, Stella Ralph 119, 197 Janneh, A. B. S. 106­–7 Jardine, Sir Douglas 124 John, H. E. B. 135 Jones, Ethelred Nathaniel see Sankoh, Lamina Joso Group 224, 231, 234 journalism 88, 123, 137, 227, 296 Jow, Ajaratu Satang 247 Jungle United Christian Council (JUCC) 226 Jungle United Muslim Council (JUMC) 226 juristocracy 283 Jusu-Sheriff, Salia 174, 175 Juxon-Smith, Lt Col. A. T. 174, 189

Labour Party 88, 134 Lahai, Alimamy Satton 101 land indemnity 25–6 land inheritance 78, 199, 208 Langlands, James 43 Lansana, Brig. David 169, 170, 173–4 Lapedon, W. S. 84 League of Coloured Peoples 120, 122 League of Nations Slavery Convention 72, 73 Lebanese 167, 178, 181, 209, 210, 211 legal positivism 5, 284 Legislative Council 58, 59, 60, 66, 67, 68, 70, 71, 76, 83, 84–5, 86, 87, 88, 91, 92, 98, 101, 103, 104, 125, 251 Lembe (land tenure) 26, 29, 36, 61 Levi, John 59 lex naturalis see natural law Liberals Club 185, 186 Libya 186, 188, 219 Limba 98, 100, 104, 173, 174, 175, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 183 Limbanized identity 179, 181 Liverpool 12, 17, 21, 38, 40, 41, 48, 54 Lloyd, John 13, 39 Local Courts 136, 147–9 Local Courts Act (1963) 147 Local Tax Ordinance 103, 104, 105 Lomé Peace Accord 229, 230, 241, 242, 244, 245, 258, 275, 287, 294 Lomé peace talks 229, 242, 275 London 12, 13, 15, 20, 27, 33, 34, 37, 42, 43, 44, 47, 51, 54, 55, 69, 73, 74, 83, 113, 120, 124, 140, 152, 159, 210, 219 Long Mission Society 43

Kabba, Alie 186, 188 Kabba Sorie, Bai Sherbora 96 Kabbah, Tejan 235, 250, 257, 274 Kafakeh, Forki 107 Kaikai, Jaia 88, 89, 116, 212 Kaiyamba chiefdom 89, 105, 106, 129 Kallon, Maigore 115 Kamara, A. B. 175, 176, 288 Kamara, Lansana 88 Kamara, M’baimba 107 Kamara, Zainabu 115, 119 Kambia District 51, 60, 89, 97, 105, 106, 116 Karefa-Smart, John 116, 129, 135, 173, 175, 176 Kenema High School 185 Kerene 54, 61 “King Tom” see Forbana, Panabouré “King Jimmy” 24, 25–6, 28, 29, 32

314   Index Luanda 72 Lugard, Sir Frederick 107, 151 lumpenproletariat 166 Macarico, Mandimansa 99–100 Macaulay, Zachary 38, 41–2, 43 Macfoy, Thomas 54, 55, 57 Macleod, Iain 134 Madora (newspaper) 114, 120, 127, 128, 130 Maforki chiefdom 95, 98–100, 102–4, 105, 106, 107, 116, 176 Magbankitha, Forki 107 Magna Carta 45, 70, 285 Mammy Queen 232­–3 Manchester 12, 40, 54, 55, 140 Mandinga/o 93 Manes 99–100, 178 Mansaray, Rashid 188 Mansfield, Lord 12, 13, 17, 22, 27, 73 Maputo Protocol see African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, The Marbury v. Madison 282 Marcus-Jones, Justice L. 247 Margai, Albert 83, 86, 88, 93, 103, 115, 129, 136, 153, 157, 170, 173–4, 179 Margai, Sir Milton 9, 86, 87, 88, 92, 95, 97, 100, 101, 103, 106, 107, 115, 116, 118, 125, 129­–30, 130–7, 139, 140, 143, 145, 146, 152, 153, 154, 157, 173, 196, 206, 263 Marke, Stella Thomas 197 Maroons 46, 85 Martello 51 Marxism 121, 124, 162, 165–6, 186, 219; see also neo-Marxism Mass Awareness and Participation (MAP) 186 Massaly, A. J. 115 mayor’s court 44, 45, 46, 47, 49, 51 Mbriwa, Tamba S. 115, 118, 129, 134 Means to Help and Speed Poor Persons in Their Suits Act of 1495 49 memorialization process 217, 229, 247, 281 Mercantile Association 56–8, 59, 60, 61 mercenaries 217, 222, 223, 224, 227, 248, 274 Methodist Episcopal Church 54, 55, 121 Methodist Episcopal Girls’ Industrial School 121 Methodist Girls’ High School 121 micro-kingdoms 42, 99, 151, 228 Middle East 166, 181, 210, 213, 223

Miller, Lorine E. 113, 197 Mingo, Dennis 224 mining 34, 83, 136, 137, 142–3, 179, 208–9, 261 Minister for Lands, Mines and Labor Relations 173 Minister of Information and Broadcasting 136 Minister of Internal Affairs 107, 135, 208 Ministry of Agriculture 143 Ministry of Education 274 mission civilisatrice 186 missionaries 22, 41, 43, 44, 51, 54–5, 60, 80 Mixed Commissions 54, 72, 79 Modu III, Alikali 88, 89, 98, 100, 101, 102, 103, 106, 116 Mohamed, C. O. 224 Mohammed, Jamil 166–7, 213 Momoh, Albert J. 116 Momoh, Joseph Saidu 9, 177, 178–9, 180–3, 187–9, 195, 196, 204, 209, 221, 228, 233, 234–5, 258 Moribaya, Alikali 107 Mount Aureal 145–6, 185 Musa, Fayia 224 Muslims see Islam Mustapha, M. S. 87, 93, 116, 135, 143 N’silk, Bai Makarie 169, 175, 212 Naimbana, King 20, 25, 26, 29, 32, 36, 44, 51 Napoleonic wars 32, 40 National Awareness Raising Programme 274 National Commission for Democracy 250, 274, 286 National Commission for Social Action 257, 258, 259, 260, 266 National Conference for Peace 229, 230 National Congress of British West Africa 70, 71, 112–13 National Congress of Sierra Leone Women 196 National Democratic Party 176 National Interim Council 173, 174 National Population Commission 200 National Provisional Ruling Council (NPRC) 164, 218, 221, 222, 223–4, 226, 235, 274, 304 National Reformation Council 174, 189 Native Administration Assembly 97 natural law 3, 8 Nautilus 14, 15, 20, 32, 307

Index   315 Navo, S. T. 115 Ndorgborwusio insurrection 228, 234–5 neoliberal internationalism 158 neoliberalism 108, 157, 158–60, 161, 163, 164, 165, 183, 184 neo-Marxism 103, 104, 123, 127, 160, 162, 169, 184–5, 189, 219, 220 neo-pan-Africanism 2 neopatrimonialism 1, 9, 78, 107, 158, 159, 162–3, 165–6, 168, 173, 177, 178, 195, 196, 198, 211, 213, 228, 261, 290, 300, 303 Newcomers 175–6 Newman, William 12, 27 newspapers 55, 76, 89, 90, 91, 112, 114, 116, 118, 126, 127, 140, 174, 251, 305 ngele gbaa 80 Ngobeh, Taplima 135 Nigeria 93, 107, 113, 151, 224 Nkrumah, Kwame 117, 169, 174 Nova Scotia 13, 32, 33, 37, 54, 62; rebellion 40, 44, 48; settlers in Sierra Leone 35, 36, 37, 39, 42, 46, 54, 85 NPRC Decrees (Repeal and Modification) Act (1996) 274 Nyagua 63, 64 Nyarroh, Queen of Bandasuma 126 Nyländer, Gustavus 44 Nylander, Peggy May 113 Offenses Against the Persons Act (1861) 199 Okelo, Francis 245 Operation Clean Sweep 224 Operation Destroy All 224 Operation False-Flag 224 Operation Locate and Destroy 224 Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict 245 Order in Council 44, 72, 77, 83, 97, 148, 152, 173 Ordinance No. 24 of 1927 Organization of African Unity (OAU) 168, 245 Ormond, John 22 Orwellian truth 244–5 Oswald, Richard 14, 22 Oxford University 90 Pa Boson, King 24–5 Pa Komba, King 19 Padmore, George 121 “Palaver Hut” 25 Palmer, Philip 224

pan-Africanism 90, 120, 145, 160, 162, 163, 184, 187–8, 219 Pan-African Union (PANAFU) 187–8, 189, 191 Panguma 54, 61, 63, 209 paramount chief 63, 64, 66, 67, 78, 79, 88, 89, 97, 101, 102, 104, 106, 114, 128, 116, 117, 118, 119, 129, 136, 137, 150, 169, 175, 176, 197, 212, 213, 289, 295 Paramount Hotel 127 Paris Principles 245, 250–1, 272–3, 275, 276, 278 paternalism 9, 58, 95, 97, 107, 110–11, 245, 281, 300 Pathbana, Bai Koblo 89, 116 patriarchy 2, 4, 9, 75, 92, 110, 111, 112, 113, 116, 120, 121, 126, 127, 182, 195–9, 204, 205, 208, 210, 212, 229, 231, 247, 281, 282, 290, 292, 300, 301, 302–3 patron–clientele network 1, 163, 166, 168, 196, 261 peacebuilding 255–6, 257, 259, 261, 266 peacekeeping forces 217, 222, 223, 226–7, 243, 248, 274 Penthagbo, Forki 107 People’s National Party 86, 115 Pharmacy and Drugs Act (1968) 200 Phillips, James 13 Pitt (the Elder), William 58 Pitt (the Younger), William 13, 27, 28, 32 Plymouth Chapter 17 political critique of the state 6 political legitimacy 5, 148, 266, 284, 300 political pragmatism 134 polygynous marriages 79, 203 Poro (secret society) 26, 61, 79, 97, 106, 114, 205–6, 213 Port Loko District 42, 80, 88, 89, 93, 104, 108, 116, 176, 210 Portugal 51, 72 poverty 18, 25, 121, 123, 189, 212, 221, 266 powerlessness 69, 102, 151, 203, 232 practical truth 248–9 Prasse, Johann 44 Pratt, William Henry 54, 57 precolonial 2, 7, 26, 35, 108, 126, 162, 205 Presbyterian church 43, 51 press censorship 123, 157, 286 Press Censorship Act (1924) 123 Prevention of Cruelty to Children Act (1926) 268

316   Index protected persons 1, 66–8, 70, 71–2, 74–6, 102, 138 Protectorate 8, 60–3, 64, 66–74, 75, 76–80, 83, 84–8, 89–93, 95, 96, 100–7, 111, 118, 122, 138, 139, 140, 141, 151, 152, 180, 186, 198, 206, 209, 223 Protectorate Affairs Committees 103 Protectorate Educational and Progressive Union 89 Protectorate Ordinance 64, 107 Province of Freedom 8, 10, 13–16, 18–20, 22–6, 27, 28, 33, 46, 56, 63, 85, 120, 122, 271, 290, 307 Provincial Land Act (1972) 199, 204, 205, 207, 209, 213 Public Order Act (1965) 200, 305, 307 Public Service Commission 116 Quakers 39, 43, 50 R v. Bourne 201 R v. Roberts 202 R v. Turnbull 202 R v. Whitby 202 racism 20, 68, 69, 70, 90, 120, 121, 212, 251 Radical Democratic Party 88, 115, 129 Ramsay, John William 23, 25, 29 Randle, A. G. 87, 93 rarayman 182–4, 186–7, 221, 304 Rawls, John 45, 259, 284 reactive taxes 260 Recaptives 44, 46, 51, 59, 85, 251 reconciliation 25, 256, 291 rehabilitation 16, 255, 265, 266 Reid, James 24, 28, 29 Reider, Victor 187, 188, 190 Renner, W. Awunor 139 Republic of Sierra Leone Military Forces 169, 179, 223 restitutive justice 2, 8, 34, 35, 38–40, 43, 45, 47 restorative justice 25, 44–5, 47, 239, 243, 255, 256 Revolutionary United Front (RUF) 9–10, 183, 187, 218–29, 230–4, 235, 236, 241, 244–5, 250 Rhodesia 70, 164 Richards, Patience 117, 125 Right to Access Information Law (2013) 306–7 Roberts, “Black Bart” 51 Robinson, Mary 249 Rocamp 15, 20, 89

Rofenka, Forki 107 Rogers, S. Y. B. 224 Rogers-Wright, C. B. 115, 118, 127, 134, 136 Roness, June 117, 129 Ronietta 61 Roosevelt Preparatory School for Girls 121 Royal African Company 34, 38, 41 Royal Artillery 61, 62, 64 S. B. Thomas Agricultural College 143 Saint-Domingue 21 Samu chiefdom 95–8, 100, 105 Sancho, Ignatius 13 sanctions 160, 268 Sande (secret society) 205, 249 Sankoh, Foday 187, 190, 191, 219, 224, 229, 230, 244, 250 Sankoh, Lamina 89–91 Sape confederacy 95–6 Savage, Capt. Henry 23–4 savisman 183, 184–91, 221, 304 Sawyer-Cookson, Justice 73 Scheffer, David 245 Second World War 76, 96, 103, 105, 123, 146, 162 Secretary of State for the Colonies 134 seminarium res public 75 Sexual Offences Act (2012) 264 Sharp, District Commissioner 63 Sharp, Granville 12, 13, 14, 15, 19, 21, 22, 23, 25, 27, 28, 32, 33, 39, 44, 45, 48, 85 Shekpendeh (newspaper) 118, 127 Sherbro, Bai of Mambolo 101 sheriff 23, 45, 46–7, 49 Sheriffu, Alimamy 104 Sierra Leone Company 8, 33–50, 51, 91 Sierra Leone Development Company 142, 153 Sierra Leone Independence Act (1961) 135, 153 Sierra Leone Market Women’s Union 127 Sierra Leone Organizing Society 89 Sierra Leone Progressive Independent Movement 88, 115, 118 Sierra Leone Selection Trust 142, 153 Sierra Leone Teachers Union 116 Sierra Leone Washer-Women’s Union 127 Sierra Leone Weekly News (newspaper) 67, 68, 112 Sierra Leone Women’s Movement (SLWM) 117–19, 120, 126, 127, 128, 129, 196, 200

Index   317 Sierra Leone’s Peoples Party (SLPP) 86, 87, 89, 91, 95, 97–8, 101, 104, 105, 106–7, 110, 114–17, 118, 120, 125, 129, 134, 147, 153, 163, 173–5, 176, 196, 257, 274, 287, 294, 295 Sir William Dolben’s Act see Slave Trade Act (1788) Sisay, Y. D. 123–6, 137 Slater, Ransford 70, 71, 72, 74, 76 Slater’s Constitution 70, 72, 76, 123, 124 Slave Trade Act (1788) 17, 23 Slave Trade Felony Act (1811) 72, 79 slave traders 16–17, 18–20, 21, 22–3, 24, 25, 27, 28, 29, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36–7, 38, 39, 41, 42, 45, 47, 48, 49, 51, 99, 228 slavery 2, 5, 8, 12–14, 16–24, 26, 27–9, 34, 35, 37, 38, 40, 41, 42, 49, 50, 51, 57, 58, 72–4, 79, 112, 120, 146, 162, 222, 233–4, 236; see also slave traders; transatlantic slave trade Small Girls Unit 233 Smeathman, Dr Henry 14, 15, 16, 23 Smith, Fennel 104 social welfare 119, 141, 142, 146 socialism 103, 108, 165–6, 175 Socialist Group 186 Socialist International 104, 108 Société Commerciale de l’Ouest Africain 75 Society of Friends see Quakers soja boy 222, 224, 226–7 Somersett’s case 12, 13, 17, 22 Sonkoi, Forki 107 Sooka, Yasmin Louise 244, 245, 247 Sourie, Alimamy 106, 107 sovereignty 6, 44, 58–9, 60, 135, 163, 189, 259, 273 Sowo 2, 10, 218, 222, 225–32, 233, 241 Spain 51, 72 Special Court for Sierra Leone 227, 233, 234, 235, 236, 243, 244, 246, 249, 275 Special Security Division 179 Spectator (newspaper) 90 Stalwarts, the 175, 176–7 Stamp Act of 1765 58 state of emergency 102, 104, 107, 157, 174, 176, 221 state failure 157, 164, 178, 187, 212, 279 Steele, Nancy 196–7, 204 Stevens, Siaka 9, 83, 85, 86, 88, 93, 115, 129, 134, 157–8, 159, 161, 162, 163–4, 165–9, 173–4, 175–6, 177, 178, 179, 180, 183, 185, 195, 200, 233 Stevenson, Sir Hubert 75–6, 77

Stevenson’s Constitution 75, 76–7 Stopes, Marie 200 stranger-tenants 26 Strasser, Capt. V. E. M. 212, 221, 274, 304 Studdard, Charles 21, 22 sub-Saharan Africa 158 Summary Ejectment (Amendment) Act (2006) 264, 268 Sumner, Doyle L. 116, 135 “Superman” see Mingo, Dennis Supreme Court 61, 73, 78, 201, 282, 287, 295 Surinam 72 Susu ethnic group 42, 43, 44, 95, 96, 125 Tafawa Balewa, Sir Abubakar 134 Taqi, Ibrahim 169, 175, 176 Tarawalie, Tarasid 119 Tarawallie, Mohamed 224 Tass, Bai Farima 89, 92, 103, 105, 116 taxation 1, 8, 47, 54–8, 60–3, 64, 66, 67, 70, 75, 76, 100, 102, 103–5, 144, 152, 167, 206, 207, 260–4, 267–8, 279 Taylor, Charles 224, 229 Taylor, Kamara I. B. 135 Taylor, Dr W. Ojumiri 84 Temne ethnic group 25, 26, 29, 36, 42, 62, 63, 64, 90, 93, 96, 98, 100, 101, 106, 119, 173–5, 176, 177, 190–1, 232 Ten Daily News 114, 120, 126–9; see also Madora (newspaper) Thamro, Sorie 95–­6 The Gambia 74, 107 The Negro’s Complaint 13 Thomas, Fanny 117 Thompson, C. A. 87 Thompson, Thomas Boulden 14 Thornton Hill 49, 146 Thornton, Henry 12, 13, 33, 35, 39, 48 tithing 23 Tonkoya, House of 96 torture 2, 5, 78, 162, 212, 232, 235, 272 Trade Union Ordinance 100 transatlantic slave trade 1, 7, 12, 16–17, 34, 48, 72, 79, 85, 112, 120, 145, 209, 286 transitional justice 3, 7, 10, 239, 255–6, 263, 265, 271, 272, 291 transitory truth 244, 245–6 treason 24, 79, 123, 124, 157, 169, 175, 176 Treaty of Friendship 63 Trial Chamber 235–6 Tribal Administration Act (1905) 75, 77

318   Index Tribal Authorities (Amendment) Act (1964) 149–53 Tribal Authority Ordinance of 1938 147, 149 tribal society 26, 36, 42, 56, 61, 63, 80, 90, 93, 102, 136–7, 140, 148, 203, 205, 207, 232 tribalism 68, 77, 78, 86, 92, 177–81, 187, 188 Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Sierra Leone 107, 169, 195, 239, 240–4, 248, 250, 255, 256, 257, 258, 263, 271, 280, 287 Trye, Hindolo 185 Tucker Constitutional Review Commission 282, 286, 287, 292, 296 Tucker, Dr Peter 282, 286 Tungi, Kai 89, 116 Turay, Edward 176 Turay, Nana 119, 125 Tuskegee Institute 90 Tyre, Gladys 113 United Africa Company 75 United Democratic Party (UDP) 176 United Mines Workers Union 83 United Nations 83, 136, 161, 164, 165, 212, 258, 259, 273, 301; Charter 162, 169; Development Programme (UNDP) 259, 274, 280, 288, 289, 290; General Assembly 250, 265, 268, 285; High Commissioner for Human Rights 245, 249, 250, 272, 278; International Women’s Year 199; peacekeepers 217, 243, 248, 275; Security Council 162, 170, 265, 300 United Peoples Party 88 United Progressive Party (UPP) 97, 98, 115, 134 United States Ambassador for War Crimes 245 Universal Declaration of Human Rights 83, 118, 163 Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) 112 Upper Bambara Chiefdom 224, 234 urbanization 9, 140–2, 304 vice-admiralty court 72 Vigilantes 224

Wallace-Johnson, I. T. A. 84, 88, 90, 91, 103–4, 113, 115, 122, 123, 124, 129 War Council (RUF) 224, 225, 226, 227, 229–31 War Office 124 War Victims Fund 256–60 Washington Consensus 189–90 Waterloo Creek 15, 20 Watt, James 43, 51 Watt, John 42 Wesleyan church 43, 51, 54, 55 West African Youth League (WAYL) 84, 91, 113, 120, 122, 124, 127, 129 West Indian Planters Association 12, 13, 17 West African Rice Research Station 143 West African Students Union (WASU) 120 Westminster system 45, 119 Wilberforce, William 12, 13, 27, 33, 39 Wilkinson, Sir Richard James 74 William, C. T. 119 Williams, J. Rogers 87 Wilson, Logie 83 witchcraft 78, 79 Women’s Auxiliary Corps (WACs) 127, 229, 233 Women’s International Democratic Federation 117 Workers’ Compensation and Arbitrational Tribunal 100 workers’ rights 103, 168 World Bank 168, 168, 182, 183, 184, 187, 188, 189, 220, 267, 307 Wretched of the Earth 219 Wright, E. J. 139 Wurie, Amadu 116 WWII see Second World War Yek dynasty 96, 98, 106, 107 Yek, Sherbora 96 Yekir, Alpha 107 youth 1–2, 97, 116, 142, 159, 168, 178, 179, 182–90, 219, 220–2, 223, 228, 292, 303–4 Yumkella II, Bai Sherbro 95–8, 100, 103, 104, 106 “Zino” see Tarawallie, Mohamed Zochonis, Paterson 169