Politicized security forces or tribalized national politics; which is which?

Two seri­ous his­tor­i­cal blames have often been dished out by sev­eral of Sierra Leone’s polit­i­cal dis­cus­sants against, Siaka Probyn Stevens and Sir Albert Mar­gai; two promi­nent polit­i­cal lead­ers of Sierra Leone. While some have accused Siaka Stevens of hav­ing mil­i­ta­rized the pol­i­tics of Sierra Leone, oth­ers have accused Sir Albert Mar­gai of ever invest­ing in the trib­al­iza­tion of the country’s politics.

After Sir Albert’s stint with national pol­i­tics in the early 60s, the All People’s Con­gress party cohorts described his Sierra Leone People’s Party rule as intol­er­ant and heav­ily laden with tribal juice; espe­cially from the south­east­ern parts of the country.

This, depend­ing, who is talk­ing, has made many to accuse and ascribe tribal hints to the SLPP.

Recent exam­ple, was when Dr. Shekuba Sac­coh, a hith­erto very impor­tant SLPP stal­wart said in Mak­eni that he was leav­ing the polit­i­cal fam­ily, the SLPP because it was “a Mende man party”. It was sad to have heard this and those who believed him gave the excuse that this was no new alle­ga­tion against the party and for such peo­ple; it was an alle­ga­tion of fait-a-compli.

Wasn’t this what the APC said of the great Sir Albert in the 60s?

But watch­ing the party dur­ing Sir Albert’s time, those who were aware of the regional back­ground and hege­mony of the key par­tic­i­pants might be in bet­ter posi­tion to tell whether this was actu­ally the case. Many a SLPP his­to­rian would not agree with this alle­ga­tion against the man they came to can­on­ize as “Sir Albert of Africa”; but con­sci­en­tious gen­er­al­ist his­to­ri­ans may give it a sec­ond thought, though not in its entirety.

What is how­ever known is that, pro­po­nents of Sir Albert have con­tin­ued to excuse his eth­no­cen­tric mis­takes as mere exag­ger­a­tions by his detrac­tors. They explain that the SLPP, in its infant days had founders from the north­ern and west­ern parts of the coun­try. This is one unde­ni­able ethno-political fact when you con­sider ear­lier SLPP north­ern mem­bers such as Yumkela, Bai Sama and Tas of Kambia.

“After all, if appoint­ing too many polit­i­cal par­tic­i­pants from the same region can be con­strued as trib­al­ism, then what would you say about Ernest Koroma’s cab­i­net” an SLPP big von queried. But if his­tory be adjudged rightly, Sir Albert would be defended, though he might have already been found guilty of trib­al­ism as main­tained by his detrac­tors, bas­ing such defense on the exi­gen­cies of the times. Or rather, while charges of trib­al­ism could hold against Sir Albert, what about the other heinous charge of the politi­ciza­tion of the secu­rity forces by Siaka Probyn Stevens?

The alle­ga­tion that Siaka Stevens politi­cized the country’s secu­rity forces (while mar­gin­al­iz­ing the mil­i­tary specif­i­cally), has an uncom­fort­able back­ground, while at the same time, one can posit that this alle­ga­tion is actu­ally and fac­tu­ally the basis of he sub­se­quent alle­ga­tion, namely; that the APC is a party that ever invested in anar­chy and van­dal­ism. Those who have accused the APC of being a party of van­dals have stren­u­ously tried to base this alle­ga­tion on the rule and game plan of Siaka Stevens’ politics.

When Siaka Stevens won the 1967 elec­tions and was over thrown by men in mil­i­tary uni­form, Juxon Smith did not only over turn the coup, but set up the Dove Edwin com­mis­sion to inves­ti­gate as to whether the APC actu­ally won the elec­tions. The com­mis­sion found out that the elec­tions were demo­c­ra­t­i­cally won by the APC of Siaka Stevens.

The sad real­ity that many socio-political his­to­ri­ans of Sierra Leone have glossed over, is that Juxon Smith, con­trary to his ear­lier good inten­tions, refused to hand over power to the then exiled Siaka Stevens. This led to another coup by junior offi­cers who, upon suc­ceed­ing, brought in Brigadier Ban­gura, who in turn invited Siaka Stevens from Guinea to come take back power. All this hap­pened thir­teen months after the 1967 elec­tions. The role and sub­se­quent activ­i­ties of the infa­mous State Secu­rity Depart­ment, SSD, as well as sour rela­tion­ship between Siaka Stevens, Brig. Ban­gura and the entire army ech­e­lon were later to cre­ate the polit­i­cal impres­sion that Siaka Stevens had no trust any­more in the country’s con­ven­tional army; hence the supreme noto­ri­ety of the SSD. Any his­tor­i­cal accounts of the 1973 gen­eral elec­tions will be incom­plete with­out the dis­grace­ful role of the SSD, which was by now fully under the com­mand of Stevens.

Con­sid­er­ing the role played by the SSD in bring­ing Stevens back to power, the intim­i­da­tion of polit­i­cal oppo­nents and col­lege stu­dents, as well as sub­se­quent estab­lish­ment of the one-party democ­racy by Stevens, many have come to agree with the alle­ga­tion that he, indeed, mil­i­ta­rized pol­i­tics dur­ing his era while at the same time, den­i­grat­ing the army and putting less pro­fes­sion­als at the high­est hem of our secu­rity under an exclu­sively north­ern domin­ion. Some accounts of Stevens’ era show that under him, there may have been more north­ern­ers in the army as com­pared to south east­ern­ers and west­ern­ers put together.

At the moment, it is no secret that, for exam­ple, there are more south east­ern­ers in the ser­vice of the country’s Office of National secu­rity, as com­pared to north-westerners. Per­haps this is the main rea­son, and mind­ful of sto­ries of ethno-political infu­sions among ser­vice men, that author­i­ties have begun preach­ing and advo­cat­ing apo­lit­i­cal stance of per­son­nel. And even though there may be more south east­ern­ers within the cab­i­net sec­re­tariat of the Ernest Bai koroma gov­ern­ment, this might not be com­pared with the north­ern over bur­dened cab­i­net of the present system.

In the light of his­tor­i­cal com­par­ism, his­tory is begin­ning to reckon that for many Sierra Leoneans, in assess­ing their lead­ers since Inde­pen­dence, Stevens was prob­a­bly one of the great­est in many ways.

From above, you would have by now real­ized that the two alle­ga­tions against the two main polit­i­cal par­ties; that of trib­al­ism and con­fu­sion­ism, have had his­tor­i­cal prece­dence and have erro­neously been car­ried for­ward to present day gen­er­a­tions, for obvi­ous polit­i­cal gains. How do we dis­en­tan­gle these two polit­i­cal par­ties from these two histo-political real­i­ties? Can the present good-meaning lead­ers of the two par­ties do any­thing to cor­rect the bad his­to­ries of their two par­ties? See next issue.

© 2009, David Tam-Baryoh. All rights reserved. Discuss this article on the Salone Forum Salone Forum

By David Tam-Baryoh