Although it is early yet to preempt who might bear the SLPP flag in 2028, it could be reasonably surmised that the current Vice President, Mohammed Juldeh Jalloh, a Sierra Leonean Fula, would be one of the frontline contenders.
If that happens, the geopolitical landscape could assume a less tribal and regional outlook and, hopefully, bridge the nascent tribal rift that has bedeviled politics in Sierra Leone since 1964, when Sir Albert Margai succeeded his brother, the first Prime Minister, Sir Milton Margai, that year.
When that happened, according to John Cartwright, a historian who lectured at Fourah Bay College in the early sixties, he wrote in his book ‘Politics in Sierra Leone’: “The resentment of the Temnes rose, and Sir Albert was unable to contain it.”
Since 1964, politics assumed desperate proportions, which played into the hands of Siaka Stevens, who won a narrow majority for the APC in the following general elections in 1968, picking Sorie Ibrahim Koroma, a Temne hardliner, as his vice president.
Between 1968 and 1992, coups and alleged coup attempts ushered in an era of political desperation that culminated in a war in 1991, the same year Sierra Leone returned to multiparty democracy after almost two decades of APC one-party rule under Siaka Stevens.
Before he died in 1988, in 1985 Stevens chose the head of the military, Joseph Saidu Momoh, a Limba, to replace him. With a war raging in the hinterland and the economy battered, Saidu Momoh caved in to international and national calls for restoration of multiparty democracy in 1991.
In 1992, Saidu Momoh and the APC were ousted from power by the military, marking another milestone in the polity of the state. The National Provisional Ruling Council (NPRC), the military junta that took power, was caught in a quandary, prosecuting a war on the one hand and dealing with heightened calls both from within and without for restoration of constitutional rule at the same time.
Democracy and constitutional rule were restored in 1996 when Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, a Mandingo, became president under the SLPP.
Late Tejan Kabbah was deliberately chosen over other just as competent Mende, Charles Margai, for example, aspirants in order to not raise any tribal sentiments as was witnessed in 1964.
Tejan Kabbah’s first term was fraught with complications, including yet another junta interregnum in 1997 by the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC).
While the international peace brokers struggled to keep in balance a precarious peace, the forces of democracy weathered all the storms, and Tejan Kabbah’s government was reinstated through a Nigeria-led ECOMOG military intervention.
Again, in January 1999, recalcitrant rebels stormed Freetown for the first time since the war started in March 1991. This time round, their actions were unbearable to the international community.
While ECOMOG struggled against all odds to keep the rebels at bay, Britain, Sierra Leone’s closest international ally, had become thoroughly exasperated.
In a frontal battle with rebels holding eleven British soldiers hostage at Okra Hills just outside Freetown, British Special Forces obliterated any threat to the capital. It was then that the war truly ended, and disarmament, demobilization, and reconstruction began.
Throughout the war, Special Court for Sierra Leone records show that tribalism had begun to shape the leadership and objectives of the various factions that had no clear-cut agenda to govern.
Those who carried the greatest responsibility for war crimes committed during the war were arrested, prosecuted, and punished accordingly.
Looking at their leadership tells the story: Foday Sankoh, leader of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), was a Temne who harboured great resentment for the political system.
He predicated his ‘revolution’ on the existence of unbridled corruption among politicians, although it was clear that Charles Taylor in Liberia was the real instigator, using Foday Sankoh as a surrogate. For Taylor, it was all about revenge and diamonds.
Not long after the RUF launched its rebellion in 1991, the political dynamics revved up to defense mode, giving rise to congeries of Civil Defense Forces (CDF), fighting alongside regular troops to, as it were, defend the nation.
The Temnes formed the ‘Gbethis;’ the Mendes ‘Kamajoh;’ the Kurankos were first to establish the ‘Tamaboro,’ all vowing to defend their homeland.
Again, going by records of the Special Court for Sierra Leone, allegations of ethnic consideration in selecting targets and the enemy were levied against the Kamajoh, hence the arrest of Hinga Norman, its leader, and prosecution by the Special Court.
So, even in open armed conflict, as in politics, the nascent tribal divide between Northwest and Southeast is ever present. To be continued.
By Abayomi Tejan: Culled from Sierra Leone Telegraph: 01 December 2024
