Again: Have their been critiques of the TRC? Thesis on the TRC? Have we continued to debate issues recorded in the TRC? Can we READ the TRC reports here and make constructive comments,, please. Kambia District (Northern Province) 133. Located in the far Northwest of the country, Kambia shares a lengthy boundary with Guinea, through which the RUF attempted several raids on Sierra Leones neighbour in 2000. In a familiar tale of neglect of outlying areas, the Kambia Districts remoteness from Freetown robbed the District of infrastructural development prior to the war and has denied it serious investment for reconstruction ever since. 134. The Temnes are the dominant ethnic group in Kambia, controlling three of the seven Chiefdoms in the District. Minority ethnic groups include Susu and Limba. An examination of the antecedents to the conflict in this District reveals the following factors: (i) Intense competition between ruling houses such as the Yumkellas and their rivals in the Samu Chiefdom; (ii) Gross injustices occasioned by arbitrary rulings and heavy fines imposed in Local Chiefdom Courts; (iii) Persistent smuggling through the unprotected border with Guinea, which has remained a major source of illicit personal gain for traders at the expense of national benefit; and (iv) The extreme poverty and illiteracy that are characteristic of geographical isolation, creating a sense of hopelessness among the people. 135. Kambias historical connection to the central government in Freetown has been tenuous at best. Far removed from the bargains and benchmarks of national politics, the Chiefs wielded absolute power over their subjects. Traditionally, many young people found the stranglehold of the Chiefs so unbearable that they crossed the border into Guinea and never returned. Rather than allowing Freetown and the Western Area to benefit exclusively from their extraction of natural resources, Kambians often traded independently with Guinea. Over time, intended symbols of Sierra Leonean State authority, such as public buildings and institutions, became little more than hated monuments to the disdain displayed in Freetown towards the outlying Provinces. Moyamba District (Southern Province) 136. Moyamba District was left scarred more than most by thuggery and election violence in the first thirty years of Sierra Leonean independence. The ruling parties had routinely overlooked candidates of the peoples choice during election time, instead deploying thugs and using intimidation tactics to impose party strongmen and devoted stalwarts upon them. This scenario was most acutely illustrated in the 1982 elections, when the henchmen of the APC strongman Harry T. T. Williams forced the Paramount Chief of Kagboro Chiefdom, Honoria Ballor-Caulker, into enforced exile for nearly ten years.57 137. The indigenous population was also aggrieved with the employment policies of SIEROMCO, the Sierra Leone wing of an international mining conglomerate, which had the lease for the mining of bauxite in Mokanji, Moyamba District. They saw the companys policy of hiring workers from outside the District as especially unjust because of the first-class social facilities offered within the company. Employees who had moved from elsewhere to Mokanji enjoyed professional and domestic luxury, while people in the host community wallowed in abject poverty and deprivation. The SIEROMCO site in Moyamba was one of numerous industrial installations that would be attacked during the conflict; local people were frequently alleged to have vented their pre-existing grudges with major firms by acquiescing or contributing to such attacks. Bo District (Southern Province) 138. The central District of Bo was the heartland of the SLPP from the inception of the era of party politics. Although several SLPP stalwarts switched their allegiance to the APC in order to take up positions in the one-party government,58 there was a general feeling among the residents of Bo that their fortunes would be vastly improved if the SLPP could be revived and restored to power. 139. For this reason, the idea of revolution in Sierra Leone was popular in Bo. Many inhabitants of the District were even in favour of an armed action to overthrow the APC and scores of youths travelled to Kailahun to volunteer for the RUF in the first few months of the conflict. As in neighbouring Moyamba, a prevailing history of election violence and thuggery had also reinforced the propensity for conflict in Bo. The centrality and high population of the District made it a natural wartime headquarter s for the Southern-based Mende militia known as the Kamajors. Tonkolili District (Northern Province) 140. Tonkolili is most central of all the Districts in Sierra Leone and is therefore, in conflict terms, one of the most strategically located. It shares boundaries with eight of the twelve other Districts. It has ten Chiefdoms, five of which resulted from amalgamation. Economic opportunities were few in the District, with non-mechanised gold mining in the North-eastern areas providing the single most important source of employment. The Magbass Sugar Factory boasted a large industrial complex, but offered only seasonal employment in the form of casual labour. The majority of the people were either petty traders or subsistence rice growers in the boli lands. 141. The major ethnic groups in the area are Temnes, Korankos and Limbas but Temne is the dominant language spoken in the Tonkolili District. Significant local peculiarities that were to have an impact on the course of the war include the following: (i) Sibling and Chieftaincy rivalry. In Yoni Chiefdom, two brothers contested the Paramount Chieftaincy. The loser exploited the disappointment of his supporters to undermine his brothers leadership and destabilise the Chiefdom. (ii) Youth deprivation. There was a desperate scarcity of job opportunities for the youths in the area, forcing many into petty trading and many more into petty crime. There developed an enormous army of unemployed youths who subsequently used the conflict to act out their frustrations at the lack of economic opportunities. (iii) The death of emergent political personalities from the District at the hands of the APC. When Siaka Stevens came to power in 1968, he faced increasing pressure on various issues from prominent natives of Tonkolili District who were in the Army or were members of his APC party. Dr. Mohammed Sorie Forna and Ibrahim Bash-Taqi, who were among the visionaries of the APC, broke away in acrimonious circumstances and formed the United Democratic Party (UDP) in 1970. The two men were then implicated by the Stevens Government in an alleged coup plot in 1971 and were arrested, charged and convicted, along with 13 others, in a celebrated treason trial in 1974. In July 1975 Forna, Bash-Taqi and six other men were executed.59 Their deaths alienated most of the influential and educated members of Gbonkolenken Chiefdom from the APC, which resulted in many inhabitants of that Chiefdom taking up of arms when the conflict began. (iv) The attachment to prominent sons of the District and identification with their fates. Another successful and well-loved son of Tonkolili District was Sam Bangura, the former Governor of the Bank of Sierra Leone. When Bangura died in suspicious circumstances in 1980,60 the people of Tonkolili perceived his death as a murder, stemming from internal feuding within the APC, to the detriment of their District. Moreover Foday Sankoh, the leader of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) hailed from the Tonkolili District. Sankohs uncle has remained a Chief in his home community and no member of the Sankoh family has ever been punished or ostracised for the harm and suffering their relative brought to the district. A widely held view in Sierra Leone is that the launching of the conflict was very popular in Tonkolili, despite the subsequent atrocities that were carried out by the RUF and others against the civilian population. The logic of armed struggle against the APC was accepted in Tonkolili and many residents allied themselves with the fate of their native son. Upon returning to the District after signing the Lomé Peace Agreement in 1999, Foday Sankoh was even accorded what his widow described to the Commission as a heros welcome.61 142. The local historical antecedents profiled in this part of the chapter are not intended to put the conflict into context in an exhaustive fashion. However, they are illustrative of some of the local undercurrents that ran parallel to daily life in Sierra Leone prior to the conflict, including popular grievances with socio-economic conditions and widespread opposition to the APC State. The country in which war broke out was in fact already a cluster of unresolved disputes and barely suppressed hostilities.
Posted on: Wed, 14 May 2014 15:46:52 +0000
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