This is a journey through the reality of Sierra Leone, a country in which the Augustinian Recollects have left their mark. The author, with his soul in pain but in love with Sierra Leone after a year in the country, tells us the story sometimes in the first person, other times from the point of view of the objective observer, with traces of humor and dreams for the future of this country.
The shadow of doubt hangs over its public function. In the Western world the politicians seem to be the guilty ones of a crisis without precedent. In the Middle East, the public plazas are political scenes of more importance than the Parliaments.
In Africa nothing is like the rest of the world. In the zone below the Sahara there are no revolutions. It is not that that no-one knows what those in control do: rather, it is begrudged. There is no teacher that does not know how many false schools exist. In this way the politicians fill their private accounts with the salaries of the non-existent teachers and the statistics increase the number of students and decrease the percentage of illiteracy.
Corruption is so much a part of the core that no-one complains about it. If they protested in the plaza their placard would read: “I also want a piece of the pie” or “I want another fantasy school for my current account”.
In Kamabai there is a strange by-product. When you ask a young boy or girl what they want to be when they are older some still say “doctor” or “teacher”. But I have found many who want to be “president” or “housing minister”: with free access and direct access to the accounts. For they know that this is what they do.
The power of Sierra Leone is a small chaos of parallel forces and spheres of activity mixed together without any clear definition of responsibility. There are political parties and elections in the state area; there are local chiefs with absolute monarchy in the local sphere; and there are tribes with their own traditions and mores of social organization. Everything is a strange amalgam with little practical force. But, above all, it is unjust.
The contemporary history of Sierra Leone has been weighed down by the specific load of this injustice. When the British left, the Capital region has a Western mode of government, free elections and democracy. Nonetheless, in the rest of the country there was not even a Protectorate. In this way the Empire saved itself more headaches, and the governors of His Majesty didn´t undo the local monarchic power structures rather they used them in their favour.
This was one of the first problems to resolve for the new nation, that in 2011 celebrated fifty years of independence. They opted for a mixed system way for the good of internal peace: the government of the nation and the four most important cities (Freetown, Bo, Kenema and Makeni) have a political system of universal democracy. The President and the Mayors of these four cities are chosen by the people.
But regional and local power continues to be in the hands of the absolute chiefs. In the regions there is a “Paramount Chief” who commands everything; his territory is divided into diverse sections, ruled over by a “Section Chief”. In every village there is also a “Chief” who, in practice, functions in the same way as medieval Monarch with all powers in his hand. Almost up to the point of having droit de seigneur.
To add more complications there is the powerful influence of the tribes. For example, all the presidents of the nation are examined with a magnifying glass and are afraid when they form a government, for immediately they will count, weigh and measure the power and number of members of every tribe in the cabinet.
All the political parties, in their statutes and by law, affirm to be national and not tribal. Nonetheless, the reality is that the traditional division of “lefts” and “rights” of the western democracies here is not ideological but rather regional: the parties with the greatest support are from the North or the South.
The final result is nearly a chaos. The local power, the most important in the day by day of citizens, does not have as its objective social wellbeing, but rather the survival of the family and the privileges of the chief. There are no town councils, pavements, water services, cleaning services, archives, registrations, or indeed any structures at all. There are no investments. The chief has executive, judicial, and legislative power and he uses it for his own wellbeing. But no-one complains.
The national politicians, for their part, live in a kind of schizophrenia. To the outside, in a country still dependent on international organizations, they are legislated according to the whims of the UN, the World Bank or the great benefactors (at the moment, the European Union, the United States and China). But inwardly the keep the local absolute monarchs happy and buy votes which fortify obscure local traditions which keep the people quiet.
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