{"id":65027,"date":"2014-02-04T04:04:22","date_gmt":"2014-02-04T04:04:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sierraexpressmedia.com\/?p=65027"},"modified":"2014-02-04T04:04:22","modified_gmt":"2014-02-04T04:04:22","slug":"the-tribal-card-not-wise-option-for-any-governing-party-in-sierra-leone-part-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/?p=65027","title":{"rendered":"The \u2018Tribal Card\u2019: Not \u2018wise\u2019 option for Any Governing Party in Sierra Leone (Part Two)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u201cThose who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it…\u201d<\/i>Philosopher, Santiyana<\/span><\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

The Editorial\u00a0 in PREMIER NEWS of January 22, 2014, <\/span><\/b>ISSUE 6323, titled, \u2018Reflecting on the Historical Antecedents to the War in Sierra Leone\u2019<\/span><\/b>, quotes from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission<\/span><\/b> (TRC) Report thus: \u2018The vital test is preventing the recurrence of such a tragedy<\/i><\/b> (what we dubbed the \u2018rebel war\u2019 \u2013 between 1991 and 2002: one of the most nauseous and brutish wars in human history!!) lies in whether Sierra Leone can learn the lessons of its past….<\/b><\/i>\u2019\u00a0 The past! Sierra Leoneans!! Learn!!!<\/p>\n

Foday Sankoh was sired by\u00a0 30 years<\/span><\/b>\u2018<\/span><\/b>Tribal War<\/span><\/b>\u2019<\/span><\/b> of SLPP\/APC<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

The 1991-2002 Foday Sankoh-led Revolutionary United Front (RUF) \u2018rebel war\u2019 that was waged mainly against unarmed civilians had its genesis in the preceding\u00a0 30 years of\u00a0 \u2018Low Intensity Tribal War\u2019 that masqueraded as\u00a0 normal political competition\u00a0 between\u00a0 the SLPP and the APC.\u00a0 That Premier News<\/i> would be publishing such an editorial today could mean that its editors have deduced, from\u00a0 journalistic\u00a0 pulse-touching\u00a0 of the public,\u00a0 that that which caused our civil war is being stoked today.\u00a0 Some politicians swooning\u00a0 into complacency by the cacophony of \u2018dreg men\u2019, intoxicated with new found power and wealth, afflicted by chronic amnesia and incapacitated by lack of foresight…..could dismiss my \u2018tribalism serial\u2019 as sensationalism.\u00a0\u00a0 If President Ernest Bai Koroma\u2019s government have recently hosted a conference on \u2018National Dialogue\u2019; have invited all political parties to a heart-to-heart meeting\u00a0 at State House, and perked their hope that there would be regular consultative meetings with them…. it could mean that the President has heard the tsunami rumblings that threatens to be a harbinger for something worse than our <\/i><\/b>\u2018<\/i><\/b>rebel war<\/i><\/b>\u2019<\/i><\/b>.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

The TRC Report\u00a0 states…: \u201c<\/i>It was during the protracted reign of the APC….that politicians and the processes they directed were to forfeit all credibility….A system of power through patronage developed, with blatant corruption and the plundering of state resources……Neither the SLPP nor the APC has made\u00a0 <\/i>(we hope, for this APC, that tense would be \u2018had made\u2019) any real effort to attend to the debasement of the post independence politics and economy of the country..<\/i>\u201d<\/i> (Apparently, super star musician \u201cEmerson<\/b>\u201d<\/b> studied the TRC report; for his \u201c<\/b>\u2018Kokobeh\u2019<\/b>\u201d song in his recent CD just puts into music (or, sermon) the \u2018truth\u2019 in the \u201cTruth\u201d and Reconciliation Report (TRC\u201d)\u00a0 Report.<\/p>\n

APC<\/span><\/b>\u2019<\/span><\/b>s Shaki Stevens More Potently Used the\u00a0 <\/span><\/b>\u2018<\/span><\/b>Tribal Weapon<\/span><\/b>\u2019<\/span><\/b> of the SLPP<\/span><\/b>\u2019<\/span><\/b>s Albert Margai<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

In 1967, the SLPP-led government of Prime Minister\u00a0 Sir Albert Margai tried to use the \u2018tribal weapon\u2019\u00a0 to prevent the APC leader, Siaka Stevens, from taking the reins of government that had been handed to him by the then Governor General \u2013 it led to Sierra Leone\u2019s \u2018compromise coup\u2019. There were rumours that when Shaki Stevens was released from jail in 1967, he went into exile in\u00a0 Guinea, and\u00a0 mobilized a \u2018rebel force\u2019 to invade Sierra Leone to rout the National Reformation Council (NRC) junta in power.\u00a0 The \u2018rebel force\u2019 were being trained when\u00a0 there was a coup against the NRC in 1968.\u00a0 The quirks of Sierra Leonean \u2018tribal history\u2019 needs to be analyzed as to why the man who announced the coup against Juxon-Smith<\/i>\u2019<\/i>s NRC, Warrant Officer Amadu Rogers, a Mende from Pujehun District, <\/b>within forty eight hours handed over power to Colonel John Bangura, the Temne military officer<\/b> who was widely believed to had been one of the military leaders of Siaka Stevens\u2019s rebel force in Guinea, and who had been a victim of Albert Margai\u2019s tribalism, forced out of the military in 1966; and why did Colonel Bangura, from the majority and powerful Temne tribe,<\/b> hand over POWER to Siaka Stevens, from the minority Limba tribe, that were\u00a0 at that time intellectually and economically insignificant?\u00a0 <\/b><\/i>It should be noted that in 1968, the tribal dynamics in the military had changed little from what it was in 1967 \u2013 with the Mendes still the dominant force in the military.<\/p>\n

Once in power in 1968, the APC leader, Siaka Stevens, escalated on that \u2018tribal war\u2019 or \u2018regional war\u2019 that had been set into motion by the SLPP\u2019s Albert Margai.\u00a0 Between 1968 and 1972, the Mendes were purged in the military en masse \u2013 reduced from the average 70% to 5%!! Using legal and paramilitary coercive tactics, Siaka Stevens reduced the SLPP seats in parliament from 32 to 12 \u2013 the Bye Elections during that period were farcical: the SLPP would \u2018lose\u2019 seats in South\/Eastern constituencies that were only\u00a0 in 1967 fanatically SLPP. This trend continued until the Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone-ignited student uprising of 1977.\u00a0 The student protest spiralled, engulfing the entire country.\u00a0 To calm nerves down, to placate the students (and, apparently, to forestall ambitious military officers using the pretext of an anarchic country to grab power), Siaka Stevens met one of the demands of the students \u2013 General Elections.<\/p>\n

The General Elections that resulted from that student 1977\u00a0 unrest was one in which\u00a0 Siaka Stevens used thugs to launch a full scale \u2018war\u2019 on the SLPP.\u00a0 There was stiff resistance in the southern province capital of Bo Town by SLPP fanatical youth \u2013 the military had to be called out in full force to quell the\u00a0 youth resistance.\u00a0 If there were a Charles Taylor in Liberia and not a Rev. William Tolbert as President in Liberia, if\u00a0 guns were easy\u00a0 to acquire in the 1970s as it became in the 1990s, a civil war could have flared up in 1977.<\/b>\u00a0 Siaka Stevens succeeded in doing what all \u2018empire builders\u2019 throughout history would do \u2013 use military might against all political opposition, against a foreign enemy, then\u00a0\u00a0 assimilate\u00a0 the \u2018enemy\u2019s\u2019 elite into a cowed system.\u00a0 SLPP leaders like Salia Jusu Sheriff, M.S. Mustapha, Sama Banya, F.M. Minah, etc. caved in to the fait accompli that their political survival meant joining the APC, or, they would be made \u2018politically extinct\u2019 \u2013 the APC\u00a0 in 1978 made de jure\u00a0 a One Party State that had been\u00a0 de facto.<\/p>\n

The TRC on the APC and SLPPs \u201cincestuous relationship<\/span><\/b>\u201d<\/p>\n

A Limba, Siaka Stevens\u2019 establishment of a One Party State in Sierra Leone, and the relative peace that followed ten years after until he peacefully handed over power to his chosen successor, another Limba, General Joseph Saidu Momoh, marked him out as a highly successful politician. (It could be that part of Steven\u2019s success was that\u00a0 though he was paternally a\u00a0 Limba, he was sociologically more Mende than Limba, and could speak fluent Mende; and he\u00a0 absorbed the elite of the political opposition of the Mende-speaking South\/East).\u00a0 Was it a potent \u2018inclusive<\/b>\u2019 strategy of Steven\u2019s APC? This is what the TRC Report says really happened: \u201cExclusionary politics<\/b> led to an incestuous relationship between the APC and the SLPP: they merged into one, unprincipled \u2018political elite\u2019\u201d.\u00a0 (\u201cIncest\u201d: sexual incest, or \u2018political incest\u2019…. is\u00a0 a universally reprehensible concept).<\/p>\n

It can be said that President Momoh swung the ethnic pendulum away from the forced unity that had been created by President Stevens. This is what Prof. Jimmy Kandeh writes of the era:<\/p>\n

The ethno-politicization of the army, palpably evident under the present Momoh regime (all top officers continue to be northerners), has occurred largely within the context of continued attempts at power consolidation…. (The Limba) <\/i>\u2018<\/i>Ekutay<\/i>\u2019<\/i>: ….. President Momoh…. is a staunch member. So is the chief of police (Bambay Kamara), the minister of trade and industry (Ben Kanu) and the party affairs minister (E. T. Kamara), all of whom are Limbas….<\/i>\u2019(Source: \u2018Politicization of Ethnic Identities in Sierra Leone\u2019; Author – Jimmy D. Kandeh; Source: African Studies Review, Vol. 35, No. 1 (Apr., 1992), pp. 81-99Published by: African Studies Association\u00a0\u00a0 Stable URL: http:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The Tribal Card is a Flawed Game Plan<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

Let us pore on, but, shift away from, the pedantry of Prof. Kandeh\u2019s Paper;\u00a0 and put this piece into perspective with the journalese of my premise \u2013 the Tribal Card should be eschewed by any governing party.\u00a0 SLPP leader,\u00a0 Albert Margai… had about 68% of the military being Mendes; and, the voting pattern of 1967 puts about 50% of the population as Mendes \u2013 that did not save his regime.\u00a0 The disproportionate number of Limbas (and Northerners) in President Momoh\u2019s government and military\u00a0 was of little use when the Temne, Foday Sankoh, mobilized largely Mendes to invade Sierra Leone through the Mende-speaking East in 1991; and when military officers staged a coup in against the APC in 1992. \u00a0The ecstatic response of especially the Freetown populace to the Valentine Strasser-led 1992 NPRC coup absolutely included the majority Temne-speaking (or Northern Province) people who predominate in Freetown.<\/i><\/b> As with the \u2018rebel war\u2019 of Foday Sankoh, the NPRC coup manifest that\u00a0\u00a0 the people of Sierra Leone, ultimately, would\u00a0 almost always coalesce against politicians who play the \u2018Tribal Card\u2019.\u00a0 The APC lost power for fifteen years after 1992; and, the APC\u2019s coming to power in 2007 was more a quirk of political missteps by an overconfident SLPP; to spite the charismatic and strong-willed Charles Margai, the\u00a0 wrong-headed choice of a very-uncharismatic lawyer who was a political novice as presidential candidate (Solomon Berewa) –\u00a0 even then, the presidential election went to a runoff, and the APC only narrowly won.\u00a0 These\u00a0 are telling lessons for the current APC governing elite, and the main opposition, SLPP, who appear inclined to use the \u2018Tribal Card\u2019.\u00a0 After the \u2018death\u2019 of the \u2018First APC\u2019 in 1992, a long-serving\u00a0 First APC education\/foreign minister, a Northern Province Temne, Dr. A.K. Koroma, wrote a book excoriating the APC\u00a0 government (s) he was part of, doing a \u2018post mortem\u2019 \u2013 a loyal party man could have better done \u2018political surgery\u2019 to prevent the \u2018death\u2019 of\u00a0 the\u00a0 First APC!!\u00a0 The now \u2018resurrected APC\u2019 should not forget how it got into a \u2018political grave\u2019 in the first place….\u00a0 <\/b>(TO BE CONTINUED). <\/b><\/p>\n

By Oswald Hanciles <\/i><\/p>\n

Stay with Sierra Express Media, for your trusted place in news!<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

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\u00a0\u201cThose who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it…\u201dPhilosopher, Santiyana The Editorial\u00a0 in PREMIER NEWS of January 22, 2014, ISSUE 6323, titled, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":9661,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[671,692],"tags":[17980],"class_list":["post-65027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-politics","tag-tribal-card"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65027\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}