Sierra Leone : a political history

241 Pages·2014·2.11 MB·English

by  Harris

SIERRA LEONE
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DAVID HARRIS
Sierra Leone
A Political History
A
A
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available for this title
Harris, David
Sierra Leone
A Political History
ISBN 978-0-19-936-176-2 (hardback)
Printed in India on Acid-Free Paper
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements vii
Map of Sierra Leone viii
1. Introduction 1
2. The Rise and Wane of Krio Dominance, 1787–1951 9
3. Key Players in a Deceptively Quiet Decolonisation,
1951–1961 33
4. Immediate and Severe Challenges: Democracy and Coups,
1961–1968 47
5. The Choices of Siaka Stevens: Violence, Patronage and
the One-Party State, 1968–1991 63
6. Civil War and the Incendiary Debates Over its Provenance,
1991–1996 81
7. The Escalation and Ending of the Civil War, 1996–2002 101
8. The Post-Conflict Dispensation: Plus ça change? 2002–2007 119
9. Political Shifts in Sierra Leone: Elections, Liberal Reform,
Society and the New Mutlipolar World, 2007–2012 141
10. Conclusion 165
Postscript 177
Notes 181
Bibliography 203
Index 217
v
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
For various reasons, both in the past and in more recent times, I would
like to thank the following people for their direct and indirect help in
writing this book: my wife, Lynda Waterhouse, my brother, Andy Harris,
Tom Young, Simona Vittorini, Julia Gallagher, Shaun Milton, Felix
Conteh, John Birchall, Ibrahim Madina Bah, Michael Wundah, Charly
Cox, PC Thomas Koroma, the late Olu Gordon, Malcolm Jones, Daniel
Eyre and Carole Greene. Thank you also to my reviewers, Will Reno,
Stephen Ellis, Patrick Chabal and Almami Cyllah. There are many who
agreed to be interviewed, often anonymously, who cannot be named here
but to whom I am also grateful. Thank you to all.
vii
Map of Sierra Leone
1
INTRODUCTION
Sierra Leone is a small state, around the size of Ireland or Panama, on
the Atlantic coast of West Africa. With its two neighbours, Liberia and
Guinea, it is situated in the Mano River sub-region named after the
watercourse which divides Liberia and Sierra Leone. The country of
between five and six million people has now reached fifty years of inde-
pendence from British colonial rule. It is also one of the poorest coun-
tries in the world rich with diamonds, iron ore and agriculture but little
in the way of development or international influence to show for its pri-
mary commodity wealth. It would indeed have been a poor and forgot-
ten corner of the world if it wasn’t for the cataclysmic conflict in the
1990s and early 2000s which was beamed onto televisions around the
globe and later depicted in a blockbuster Hollywood film. However, this
rather fleeting interest hides more than it reveals and is only a part of the
story. There are instead three key reasons why the history of Sierra Leo-
nean politics is of crucial importance.
The first concerns Sierra Leoneans themselves, of whom I am not one,
but who provide a key imperative for this book. Sierra Leoneans are a
remarkable people who have given me friendship, humour, debate and
the desire to write what is indeed an outsider’s perspective on the national
story including the conflict that affected so many. It is, however, a per-
spective which I believe is well-informed and well-researched in a the-
oretical, empirical and comparative manner, and one which endeavours
to ground theory and history in the tangible by providing sketches of
political figures, contextual anecdotes and landmarks on the map that
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