By Umaru Fofana
Today - 23 March 2016 - is 25 years to the day the first shots were fired at Bomaru in the eastern Kailahun District of Sierra Leone. It would be the onset of an orgy of boundless cruelty that would confound everyone. Old people hacked to death by boys young enough to be their children or grandchildren. Babies mutilated with blunt machetes by people who should be protecting them. Women gang-raped some by boys of their children’s age. Youths drugged and turned into killers. Sierra Leone was transformed into killing fields. But any lessons learned?
The war engulfed the country. As the poorly equipped army retreated, the highly-motivated and heavily-drugged rebels advanced. Town after town, they captured. One after the other they unleashed mayhem. House after house they systematically gutted. Their dominance, their orgy and their terror engulfed the entire nation.
The war would mark the onset of what would become an intractable bloody civil war that killed tens of thousands of people. Their sheer brutality was such that the world could no longer stand aloof. Led by the Nigerians, West Africa came. Helped by Britain and the UN the war ended. The world helped rebuild our infrastructure. It may have been expensive to rebuild the army, the police and the general civil services. But crippling those institutions from within would mean the war did not impact us enough. have we learned any lessons?
Politicians were the cause. Disgruntled citizens were the architects. Innocent civilians were mostly the victims. But 25 years have paled so much into insignificance that we seem to have forgotten what caused the war, what it unleashed on us, and how we managed to end it. If we need reminding, 25 years must be seen as too short a time to return to those things that caused us those sleepless nights, crying babies, bemoaning spouses, incessant burials in shallow graves, and sometimes vultures feeding on human corpses.
It reminds me of the US country musician, Darryl Worley singing about the 9/11 attacks on his country and asking: “Have you forgotten how it felt that day? To see your homeland under fire. And her people blown away…We had neighbours still inside going through a living hell…Have you forgotten?” But he was singing for action against the backers of the attackers. I am calling for my homeland leaders to avoid doing those things that caused the war. You need not be a rocket scientist to see how prevalent those causes are today. They are ubiquitous!
Revolutionary United Front rebels had entered the country from neighbouring Liberia on 23 March 1991. Backed by the National Patriotic Front of Liberia led by Charles Taylor who had invaded Liberia 15 months earlier, they met a Sierra Leone Army lacking in everything: resources arms, motivation and the will to fight. They had been trained and funded by people whom our future leaders would parley with and wine and dine with - without an apology. One of them was Burkina Faso’s Blaise Campaore, one of the first leaders President Ernest Koroma visited after his election in 2007. Libya’s Muammar Ghadaffi, the man our parliament would later make an honorary member of. The man opposition leaders Ernest Bai Koroma and Charles Margai said was not welcome to Sierra Leone when President Tejan Kabbah had rolled out the red carpet for him. The two would later wine and dine with Ghadaffi at State House when they shared power. So much for consistency!
That rebel invasion thrived on bad governance which made some see power as their entitlement against others. It thrived on poverty which saw the poor and hapless masses stare at the corrupt and rich leaders building mansions and riding fat cars from ill-gotten wealth. It thrived on youth unemployment that caused young and able-bodied men sit on the roadside looking for anything to eke out a living from. The manure for the spread of the brutality was injustice which saw people detained needlessly and their liberty seized by police and magistrates and judges without contrition. Cronyism and tribalism provided fuel for the flame of war. Have those changed today?
Let us think, deeply, as a nation and remember from whence we came. Let our leaders admit to their wrongdoings and make that change. Such is our disregard for the history of the war that there is no memorial (day) about it. Some because they feel a part of the cause or were players themselves. Such is our leaders’ attitude towards the findings and recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that they cherrypick what to implement and what not to.
The TRC summarised one of the causes of the war thus: "The judiciary was subordinated to the executive, parliament did little more than ‘rubber-stamp’, ... non-state bodies that ought to ensure accountability – like media houses or civil society groups – were thoroughly co-opted... Lack of courage on the part of lawyers and judges over the years paved the way for the desecration of the constitution, the perpetuation of injustice and the pillaging of the country’s wealth.”
The TRC recommends that going forward, Sierra Leone must protect human rights and guarantee the rule of law. It also recommends the promotion of good governance, fighting corruption, giving women a significant say and adequately looking after the young. It calls for reparation for war victims. I need not tell you what the reality is.
The report talks boldly about Sierra Leoneans wanting “a system that upholds the rule of law over the rule of strong patrons and protects the people from the abuse of rulers through a system of checks and balances.” Just look around and see what obtains.
Our MPs often do not see themselves as being there for those who voted them. Political party consideration seems primary - effectively their own interest and survival. They have passed mining and other agreements that left a lot to be desired. And here is what the TRC says about the House of many years ago:
"Parliament failed to study or challenge effectively the Bills that could have made Sierra Leone a one-party State in 1966 [under the SLPP]…Similarly, there was no democratic dissent to the objectionable Public Order Act of 1965…The legacies of this regime would be used extensively in later years [by the APC] to bypass the judiciary and eliminate opponents of the government through arbitrary arrest and detention…”
In a classic case of what the MORE TIME campaign of a few months ago was all about, the TRC says “the term of the head of government (now the President) was to be extended without reference to the electorate, despite his original tenure as Prime Minister having been limited to a period of five years. Parliament became nothing more than a rubber stamp institution.”
In recent years we have seen opposition MPs lose their seats despite having overwhelmingly won the votes in their constituencies - thanks to questionable court rulings. And hear what the TRC report says about the situation of decades ago: “Court cases involving elections under the APC were decided in favour of the APC by a compliant judiciary.”
In what's a total contempt for separation of powers that could leave Baron De Montesquieu quaking in his boots, in 1978 the offices of the Attorney General and the Minister of Justice were merged. The TRC recommended that that be undone. The Government White Paper that accompanied the report under President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah refused to buy that. And despite saying he would do so if he was elected, President Ernest Bai Koroma failed to do so.
How far the country has moved away from those causes of the war is there for all to see. But I think we seem to have forgotten to address the fundamentals with the politicians apparently turning a blind eye to the mono-ethnic politics being practised today, the joblessness of the youths, at al.
The death penalty has still not been abolished despite the TRC report calling for such. Criminal and seditious Libel Law remains in the law books despite the TRC calling for its repeal. As for an autonomous judiciary with budgetary independence, well I am sure you know what the reality is.
Where is the code of ethics for senior members of executives as recommended? may be if we had that some of the despicable behaviours of some of them would not happen without a tough consequence. Political parties have become more and more corrupt. They behave as and when they like. Some of their members have become political CROSSTITUTTES - crossing the carpet at will, depending on the highest bidder. There is no disclosure of their money and resources as recommended by the TRC. Nor are there any limits to the political campaign contributions - so you understand what causes contracts and murky concessions being doled out to certain individuals. And the return of chiefs to traditional roles and out of politics - all recommended by the TRC - is a pipe dream. They are mor political today than at any time I have witnessed.
The report states that payment of reparations was the primary responsibility of the Government. Today amputees, other war-wounded, victims of sexual violence, and war widows have been left to fend for themselves despite the Commission having recommended that the victims should be provided with free health care, pensions, education, among others.
One lesson we should all have learned but sadly don't seem to have learned is this: A war like that which started 25 years ago today can destroy police stations and law courts buildings and other public offices. It can, sadly, cost and shatter lives. But with good institutions the response can be quick. But a governance system that undermines or weakens those institutions from within - effectively ignoring the lessons of the war - that would be harder to rebuild. A structural destruction can be rebuilt in months or a couple of years. But destroying those institutions from within, through corrupt contracts, compromised justice service, skewed employment pattern and ethic politics will take generations to rebuild. failing to learn from that war of 25 years ago, means taking no steps toward moving Sierra Leone forward. It is all cosmetic!
(C) Politico 23/03/16
