By Matthias Bendu
How shall we mourn in anguish in the hands of corporate mining companies who for almost a century have been brutally exploiting our wealth. Who will believe our stories that our leaders who claim to be custodians and defenders of our land have been collaborating with the vampires to suck our blood and fry us with our own fat? Where are the true sons of the defenders, whose sweat, blood and tears gave us a land called Kono? How long shall we remain on the sacrificial alter of investment, for the prosperity of others. While we continue to wallow in abject poverty, as the new breed traditional and political leaders are the same old ones motivated by greed. They do not allow us to even feed on the crumbs that are falling from the tables on which dine the corporate diamond mining wolves.
In 2007 two people were gunned down during a peaceful protest against the operations of the then Koidu Holdings mining company. The APC regime of President Ernest Bai Koroma, which was just a few weeks old in office, suspended the operations of the company and set up a commission of inquiry headed by lawyer Blyden Jenkins-Johnston. Truism, the commission did their job perfectly. The APC-led government produced a white paper and, lo and behold, all of a sudden the company owner flew into Sierra Leone, and the Koroma government, after a meeting with him and some sons and daughters of Kono district, made a U-turn. Effectively they reneged on many of the commission’s recommendations and even some of those contained in the white paper the government itself published.
The suspension of the activities of Koidu Holdings was lifted rather inexplicably. Almost exactly five years since those killings in 2007, another two people have been killed with an unspecified number of others injured during a peaceful protest by mine workers of the renamed OCTEA Mining Company (former Koidu Holdings). The minister of mineral resources went to Kono and apparently sided with the company against the aggrieved workers who felt slighted as he went to see the company management and not his own people.
Vice President Samuel Sam-Sumana also went to Kono, with joy of hope from the mineworkers and frightened residents of the Koidu who thought he had gone to listen to them and hear their cry and wipe their tears. Rather Samuel Sam-Sumana, himself a native of the district, went there with a knife which he twisted to their wounds. He commanded all present in the meeting, young or old, to sit on the dusty floor. This is the biggest humiliation and intimidation the people of Kono have suffered in the hand of any regime or president in the history of our land. We all totally condemn violence in all its forms as a means of settling grievances. But that did not warrant the vice president in any way whatsoever to dehumanize the citizens of Sierra Leone, worse still his own flesh and blood.
The words he uttered should not have come from anybody occupying the office he does occupy. If nobody on his delegation told him that he blundered in Kono, I wish to put it to him that this will come to haunt him for some time to come. It is not yet late to go back to Kono and tender his profound apologies for his actions and words on his own people. He does not have to wait for 2016/17/18 to go back and start composing Kono songs and begging his people to forgive him. Somebody should have informed him that all leaders who forced their people to ground are asking the same people to force such leaders to the gutter.
Leaders who force their people to sit on a dirty floor, will sooner rather later been trod upon by these same people. The common people are the most powerful weapon in politics. Intimidating and humiliating them at whatever moment in the life of a politician has got to have a negative repercussion even if such politician comes clawing on their belly like a snake, to ask for forgiveness.
Government must also take disciplinary action against those armed OSD policemen who opened fire and killed innocent citizens in cold blood leaving some serious injured. The APC must often remember each time they want to brag about their human rights records that when the police kill citizens with impunity and go scot free such a regime must not distance themselves from such brutality.
If they care to, government should check how many peaceful citizens have been killed by the OSD since Koroma came to power. I hope somebody is listening and will hear our cry for justice in Kono, the rich land of poor people.
Saa Matthias BENDU is National Coordinator, Development Initiative for Community Empowerment and Promotion of Human Rights
POEM:
DIAMONDS:
Hard sparkling, precious beauty
Wondrous beyond imagination
Then say you belong to the devils,
And that you brought wealth
But woe unto me and my land.
How many magnificent cities have you built?
Look how my land bleeds, for your sake
Unhealed wounds, with greedy knives
Twisting into it every day creating new cuts
Must I laugh, must I cry for you?
See how my people are cheated
And humiliated every day for your sake
Listen! A cry is heard a pit has caved-in killing many youths
See the mourners, haggard and in rags
Carrying everlasting poverty in their pitiful eyes
Glisten stones, must I laugh, must I cry for you?
Hear! A heavy blast
It is for the twinkling stones, the earth shock
Houses crack and crumble, there is a sudden cry
Yonder lies a woman with baby strap to her back
And an old woman in a pool of blood
Smashed and crushed by flying rocks
Yet, we did not bemoan them
Innocent victims of corporate colonization and reckless exploitation
Gem stones, must I laugh, must I cry for you?
By Saa Mathias BENDU
