By Nathaniel King, Ph.D (Soc. Anth), Max Planck Research Associate
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Sierra Leone is mentioned in local and international discourses as post-war, an acknowledgement that the civil war officially ended in 2002. For the country to be truly post-war and development-focused, though, the right conditions have to be set and sustained.
In Sierra Leone’s aspiration to post-war development, a potential impediment seems to be tribalism. The research, therefore, sought Sierra Leoneans’ views on nationhood, ethnicity and politics in the country. It placed these alongside examinations of how other African countries manage(d) diversity, including ethnicity, as a national issue. Other facets of diversity, which also need addressing if development in Sierra Leone is to be rooted and long-lasting that those examinations brought out were diversity in terms of: socio-economic standing of the people; socio-economic advancement of regions, districts and communities; access to the country’s material resources and non-material resources, like job opportunities; access to political power; age/generation; physical ability/inability and gender.
Noting those diversities, the research sought to: look at the state of nationhood in relation to ethnicity in Sierra Leone; ascertain the reasons for the reinforcement of the political divide, as tended to be repeatedly brought out by voting patterns during elections; examine how other African countries manage(d) diversity; and, from the findings, the research made recommendations, which could inform the constitutional review process.
The report is divided into: field perceptions of the nationhood, citizenship, politics and elections and respondents’ recommendations; then follow a tabulation and a brief discussion of how other countries manage(d) diversity; next are the analyses of the findings; and last come recommendations (for institution-building and -strengthening, and for the current constitutional review process in Sierra Leone).
Key Findings
The main content of the findings presented here are summaries of the views of the majority of Sierra Leonean men, women, community leaders, the able-bodied and people living with disabilities, who formed the focus groups and other interviewees.
But for translations into English, these views are presented mainly unaltered. Some of them can be considered simplistic, lacking detail or impracticable; but, because the people’s views are salient in managing diversity nationwide, they are presented as communicated. Following these are: summaries of analyses of the responses; and deductions of the underpinning problems articulated in the discussions and recommendations, informed by how other countries manage(d) diversity.
Field research tools were mainly qualitative; therefore, the presentation of the findings and analyses of them make use of adjectives and adverbs of degrees like ‘many’, ‘most’, ‘few’, ‘a few’, ‘the majority”, “the majority” and “about half of”.
Sierra Leonean citizenship: In the views of the majority of respondents, full Sierra Leonean citizenship automatically comes from one being born in Sierra Leone. But citizenship means not only “being” but “doing”. They clarified that deeds that exemplified or reinforced Sierra Leonean citizenship were “doing good to fellow-Sierra Leoneans” and “doing good for the country”. In the views of the respondents, this performative dimension to Sierra Leonean citizenship, though not provided in the country’s constitution, qualifies non-negro persons born in Sierra Leone, no matter their parentage, to be full Sierra Leonean citizens.
A Sierra Leonean, notwithstanding his/her Sierra Leonean parentage or ancestry, who “does not do good to a fellow-Sierra Leonean” or who is not “doing good for the country”, thereby, calls his/her Sierra Leonean citizenship into question.
Those views show that, normally, Sierra Leoneans are accommodating of one another. They believe that ascribed citizenship is secondary to demonstrated citizenship. It is circumstances of their poverty, blocked opportunities and perceived State neglect, experienced alongside other Sierra Leoneans’ and non-Sierra Leoneans’ relative opulence and access to resources, that fuel their discrimination of “them” versus “us” and “strangers” versus “original occupants”.
Strong identities and identifications that compete with ethnicity and reinforce nationhood: The respondents said that religion and identification with their villages or the communities they normally lived in were strong identity markers, which cross-cut political and ethnic boundaries.
They explained that Sierra Leone’s principal religions, Islam and Christianity, also enfolded Sierra Leoneans across parties and were effective buffers to the misuse of ethnic and regional identities. Respondents held the view that when tribalism broke individual and collective bonds, shared religion re-bridged them.
The foregoing suggests that though circumstances could compel identifications and discriminations of “them” versus “us”, there are identities and identifications below or above ethnic group and nation which Sierra Leoneans fuse around when discrimination and tribalism cause fissions. One of such identities is religion and it proves more adhesive because of the atmosphere of characteristic religious tolerance in the country. But that people also have a close attachment to the communities and villages they live show that, in the final analyses, one’s country is as good as how it is experienced at the portion of the country one lives, works and, as is often the case for respondents, struggles to make ends meet. The villages/communities that people actually live in, given the right conditions, could be microcosmic representations of national harmony and could reinforce Sierra Leonean nationhood.
Tribalism: In the views of respondents, ethnicity is unavoidable and the diversity it provides Sierra Leone should be celebrated and encouraged. But they argued that tribalism, on the other hand, was dangerous to national cohesion. Respondents variously explained tribalism as “not basing the value of a Sierra Leonean or his/her Sierra Leoneanness”, “deciding who gets what not on one’s abilities, but on his/her belonging to one ethnic group or another, especially in the award of jobs and social resources”.
Many respondents believed that tribalism was still prevalent in Sierra Leone and that there were no effective means to deal with it (yet) in the country.
That expressed widespread belief shows that, notwithstanding attempts made to integrate Sierra Leoneans in the pre-war years, through the post-war truth and reconciliation processes, through decentralisation and existing policies and practices aimed at uniting the country, Sierra Leoneans are still very much fractured along regional and ethnic lines. This reality calls for more rooted actions to: build or strengthen institutions; give policies and practices force by documenting them in the country’s constitution; and, most importantly, implementation.
Is Sierra Leone a united country?: The majority of respondents reasoned that Sierra Leone was nominally united, but contended that “tribalism”, “post-elections party-ism”, “widespread poverty”, “deprivation” and “underdevelopment” weakened that unity. In respondents’ views also, the current state of peace, in contrast to the instability of the war years, made Sierra Leoneans potentially united.
The foregoing shows that the taken-for-granted and proclaimed Sierra Leonean unity is soon exposed as artificial when encountered by social challenges. This points to the fact that unity is not a synonym for peace or the absence of war, as many respondents conceive it, but the result of a carefully built and utilised infrastructure. That infrastructure also needs provision of opportunities for all, rewarding merit and supporting vulnerable groups in society. Peace is not another word for unity, nor is development the synonym for both. Institutionalisation of all three makes a country, especially a post-war country, to work for its people and its people to work for it.
Who should unite the country and the people? In the views of the respondents, the charge of uniting Sierra Leone and Sierra Leoneans principally rested with the presidency, aided by the government. Many respondents said that they would follow the presidency’s lead to be nationally integrative. But the majority of the respondents opined that the presidency and other leaders have not united or are not uniting the country at present.
The president and his government should be the protagonists to unite the country. But that would reduce the problem to one that an individual alone can manage. The best of intentions of a president and the expectations of the people can be thwarted by sub-national pulls, like ethnicity, regionalism and attachment to ex-pupils of the secondary school one attended. For the president and his/her cabinet to deliver unity as a strategic national resource, institutions have to be built or reinvigorated and constitutional provisions have to be made to turn intention to actuality or compel leaders to unite and develop their people. This report will make recommendations along these lines later.
Pride in being Sierra Leone: Almost all of respondents said that they were proud of being Sierra Leonean and having Sierra Leone as their country because: “they had been born in it and had the right to claim it (the majority opinion)”; “of the abundance of the country’s natural resources”; “of the fact that the civil war had ended”. (That last view seems to hint at pride in the knowledge that Sierra Leoneans acted in unity to bring that war to an end).
But explanations that accompanied respondents’ expressed pride pointed to the majority’s resignation to the fact that though things were difficult for many of them, they inherited the country from their forebears, nonetheless. They felt that it was a duty to be proud of it. Importantly, and potentially productively, they are proud of the country not for what it offers them but because of what it means to them: a collective possession. The displeasure that respondents expressed about their standard of living, even though researchers did not ask that question, shows that the pride in Sierra Leone that they spoke about masks the perceived State’s neglect of the majority them.
Impediments to Sierra Leoneans seeing themselves as one people: The respondents tended to give these (in order of expressed importance) as the impediments: “widespread poverty”, “absence of development in their communities”, “a general absence of development in the country”; “tribalism”; “injustice”; “corruption”; and “politics”.
Significantly, tribalism seems of less significance. This is a profound point. It seems to illustrate that socio-economically unfavourable conditions for many Sierra Leoneans calcify the people as one – partners in suffering – even those that are members of other ethnic groups. Evidently, the strongest elements related to diversity mismanagement that Sierra Leone has to tackle are: mismanagement of differences between the rich and the poor; mismanagement of the gap between urbanity and rurality; and mismanagement of the void between the centre of power and resources, which, as the research found out, still remains Freetown, and many parts of the interior, which are still marginalised.
The national flag: Many respondents said that they knew what it was, as the flag of Sierra Leone, but they did not know what it actually symbolised. The apparent lack of knowledge about its symbolism was weakest in border communities of Northern, Southern and Eastern Sierra Leone, where people felt a stronger emotional attachment to Guinea and Liberia, respectively – countries which satisfied their everyday needs of food, medicine and commercial intercourse, for example.
A flag might be a piece of cloth. Yet it is not an ordinary object to be valued for its tangible quality but to be treasured because of the intrinsic worth it holds symbolically. That many Sierra Leoneans do not know what it is is an attestation of lack of appropriate civic education. But that is a lesser deduction. Of greater import is the fact that the country, as represented by the governance apparatus, did not make (in the past) and does not make (in the present) its relevance felt in the lives of many Sierra Leoneans. Sierra Leone, the signified, does not exert its productive importance in the lives of the people. How would the signifier (the flag) be understood, felt and emotionally attached to? One might ask.
This state of being highlights a vital plank in arguments of nation, nationhood and the State: that the geopolitical nation is different from the lived nation[1]. When the geopolitical nation is felt in the lives of the majority of people therein, there is consonance between the geopolitical nation and the lived nation. When it is not, the people could look even out of the geopolitical entity for survival. Sierra Leoneans trekking to and from Liberia for basic necessaries speaks to pre-war conditions elongating into the post-war period. It also speaks to a country with a very weak embrace of its nominal citizens.
Party symbols: Many Sierra Leoneans gave detailed explanations about the symbolisms of the political party symbols of the All People Congress and Sierra Leonean People’s Party and how, based on those symbolisms, the political parties differed from each other. This clarity of explanations about what political party symbols signify contrasts sharply with respondents’ seeming lack of knowledge about what the national flag stands for.
That Sierra Leoneans could explain what the party symbols represented, without matching that knowledge, when asked what the flag meant to them, shows that a part has robbed the whole of its significance. It summarises the point that an individual’s adherence to the national flag does not satisfy his/her immediate needs but attachment to the symbol of his/her party could satisfy felt needs. That attachment is more intense because the supported political party tends to represent his/her ethnic group.
Can elections unite the country? Many respondents believed that elections, as currently carried out in the country, divided and would always divide the country. In their view, a more inclusive form of government, which would integrate all the regions, communities and peoples of country, should be effected. The majority of respondents called for elections to be more inclusive of the country’s many diversities, but more so ethnic.
The respondents do not devalue elections as a form of democratic expression and representation. They deprecate the realisations of elections in this country; how they accentuate ethnic and other differences; and how the elections ethos unremittingly continues into the post-elections period.
Citizens’ key recommendations on how Sierra Leoneans can become more durably united
The respondents said that Sierra Leoneans could be more durably united: when the country had a truly national president; when development was really decentralised; when justice was dispensed everywhere and equally; when there was a more inclusive political-party system; when current and past injustices had been addressed; and when the country had a high number of reasonably prosperous people.
Those suggestions, good as they might be, could best succeed when affirmed in the new constitution, when the relevant institutions are built or strengthened or when policies and practices are concretised to enforce the management of diversity in Sierra Leone and sustain it.
Inferences
It could be deduced that there are sub-structures that underlie the problems that came up during the focus group discussions and other interviews, and recommendations are made on that deduction. Some of the recommendations made are aimed at institution-building or institution-strengthening, and some of the recommendations could be indispensible to the current constitutional review process. The following were identified as sub-structural issues that underlay the problems and discussion points that came up during the focus group discussions and the reviews, and on which recommendations will be made later. They are presented here as needs:
- a. Centring the people, not the State, in political and economic governance
- b. Uniting the nation
- c. Diffusing socio-economic development
- d. Protecting people’s rights and the rule of law
- e. Accountable leadership
- f. Addressing the needs of specific (vulnerable) groups of the population
- g. Sustaining the spirit and the provision of the new constitution nationwide
- h. Land and the environment
- i. Restoring the belief in elections
- j. Diffusing political power/ encouraging inclusive leadership
- k. Inclusive elections
Key structured recommendations
These recommendations only cover issues that came out during the research, international reviews and emergent discussions, especially as they relate to diversity management and constructing or reinvigorating national integration in Sierra Leone.
The recommendations are divided into those for institution-building or institution-strengthening and those for the current constitutional review process. The recommendations are not mutually-exclusive, but actually meant to be mutually-reinforcing. Very important examples of recommendations, drawn from a few of the genres, follow. (Aspects of preceding recommendations are expanded in subsequent recommendations. This action is meant to exemplify them as vital features that should inhere, but which are not implied, in those preceding recommendations. Those seeming expansions should not be conceived as discrete)
For inclusion in the current national constitutional review process that:
(i) Sierra Leone’s new constitution give primacy to the people, not the State.
In Sierra Leone’s current constitution, “the people” is first expressly addressed in Section 5 (2) but the emphases of that 1991 constitution are on the State and government throughout, not the people;
(ii) The State be subordinate to the people in the new constitution;
(iii) This popular sovereignty be articulated in the First Article of the new constitution;
(iv) The national constitutional review process and the construction of the new constitution have a philosophy to govern the spirit of the constitution, its shape and principles;
(v) Based on the findings of the focus group discussions and interviews, a suggested philosophy for the new constitution could be: “sovereignty of the people; eradication of ethnic, regional and other divisions; the promotion of national unity[2]; consensus; the rule of law, institutional reforms to strengthen accountability and accountable leadership; demystification of political leadership and political power; diffusion of political power; and inclusive leadership – including women’s role, which should increasingly match men’s in representation and leadership”.
The proposed philosophy should be in the new Constitution’s ‘Preamble’. Expected to be drawn from that multi-sided philosophy, the Fundamental Principles of the new constitution can be more specific to include, for example, ‘ensuring that women are granted at least 30% of posts in decision-making organs’[3]. These principles should also be a part of the ‘Preamble’;
(vi) For a pro-people structure of the new constitution to be sustained in every one of its provisions, Sierra Leone adopt the Ghanaian Constitution model;
(vii) A national character clause – to behove governments to award positions to compatriots following an effective ethnic spread principle – be entrenched in the new constitution;
This would guide appointment in the political, public, civil, including judicial, political and military positions.
And, this clause would reinforce the powers of the National Character Commission;
(viii) A hybrid of first-past-the-post and proportional representation be adopted for general and presidential elections;
(ix) Membership of Parliament be based jointly on the first-past-the-post and the proportional representation systems.
Proportional Representation should be implemented in a way that gives significant representation to women, youth and people living with disabilities.;
(x) That 55% be retained as the threshold for a presidential candidate to win elections;
(xi) If no candidate gets to that threshold, then he/she or his/her party shall go into an alliance with another party or parties to collectively reach that stipulated 55%;
(xii) There be no second round run-off elections, as they further divide the country along ethnic and regional lines.
The coalescing of parties could contribute towards uniting the country and it can result in a government more nationally representative;
(xiii) Local Council Elections not be run on political party lines;
In researches, done in the provinces and the Western Rural district in 2012 and 2013, many of respondents held the view that development at local council level since the reintroduction of decentralisation in 2004 and currently has been/is largely dependent on whether the councillors are/were from the ruling party or not. This, they argued, pervaded local government development efforts during the outgone SLPP and the current APC dispensations. In their view, central government support seemed to go to councillors representing the ruling party, while support seemed to be held back from councillors from the opposition.
(xiv) Central government, the judiciary, the legislature, local government and political parties and their officials not interfere in the chieftaincy elections and the day-to-day administration of traditional authorities like paramount chiefs, chiefs, section chiefs and headmen and headwomen;
(xv) The said entities and their officials breaching that preclusion shall justify the Ethics Commission taking punitive action.
The intention of that preclusion and the inscribed potential for punishment in cases of breaches is to prevent central government, other arms of government, local government, political parties and their interests from being brought to bear on traditional authorities, who are, of essence, supposed to promote culture, one of the elements of national cohesion, at community level. We argue that the sum of quality of integration demonstrated at the level of communities constitutive of the nation, especially when devoid of the politics of central and local governments, is a corollary to the quality of integration nationwide.
(xvi) The Chairman of the National Electoral Commission be a judge of the High Court;
(xvii) He/she be appointed by the Judicial Service Commission;
(xviii) There shall be five (or another number considered as a workable unit) other persons who are fit, proper and impartial, appointed by the Judicial Service Commission from a list of persons recommended by the registered political parties to be commissioners.
This exercise would give a character of fairness to the Commission than when being appointed by the President (alone);
(xix) The Chairman and the members of the Commission hold office for not more than two successive lives of Parliament;
(xx) The Chairman and members of the national Electoral Commission are not supposed to hold offices in the government in whose elections any of them was involved;
(xxi) The age qualification for President be 30 years, to demystify the presidency as an old(er) man’s preserve;
(xxii) In the new constitution, the article “Suffrage”, state that qualified men and women have the right to vote and be voted for;
(xxiii) The provisions/chapters/articles/clauses of the new constitution use the subject pronouns he/she and the objective pronouns him/her instead of the seeming universal ‘he’/’him’, as currently in use in the constitutions of many countries of the world.
The symbolism of these pronouns would carry the spirit of effecting gender-sensitive changes to the constitution and bring about gender-sensitive governance, for example;
(xxiv) There be a Women's Representative MP in every district;
(xxv) Women have 30% representation in all public positions of authority[4];
(xxvi) It be made explicit that discrimination on the basis of, among others, ethnic group, colour, sex, region, religion or faith, opinion, economic status, social status, pregnancy, physical and mental disability or any other form of discrimination is punishable by law;
(xxvii) The ‘of negro descent’ clause be removed from Sierra Leone’s citizenship prescriptions;
(xxviii) The government prescribe minimum and maximum land holding acreages in respect of private land;
(xxix) The Speaker of the House of Parliament be from a party different from the majority party or parties which form the ruling coalition; and
(xxx) Parliament have no power to enact a law establishing a one-party state.
This is an abridged version of a report titled: "Citizens’ Perceptions of Sierra Leone’s Ethno-Political Divide and Diversity Management"
(C) Politico 27/02/14
