Atlanta - Since Rev. Jesse Jackson reminded Liberians of the evils haunting them because of their overthrow of arguably Africa's longest serving oligarchic political dynasty - the True Whig Party - a party of freed slaves who ruled Liberia from 1822 to 1980 now back in a disguise designed by Charles Taylor, my ears have been deafened by the cries of my ancestors.
I have had troubled dreams since then, although my brother, Tarty Teh,
consoled me by explaining the terrible nightmares I have had in his
masterful work Liberia Is Being P.U.S.H.ed by Rev. Jackson.
There is very little one can add to such work.
But the voices of my ancestors, wailing in the rain forest of Foya,
now Taylor's base for destabilizing West Africa, keep reminding me of
their ordeals, horrors meted on them by the Liberian state, a state
that Rev. Jackson, a man who makes his living by preaching civil
rights, so admires, so glorifies, so defends. For justice, let us
listen to Rev. Jackson who, at the American embassy in Monrovia
recently, declared that because The democratic government [the
settler regime] was violently overthrown the country has not recovered
from its nightmare.
He decried the fact that (according to the
Liberian News Agency) so many good and so much talents have been
lost in a flash of maimers [sic].
With this verdict, confusion reigned through my head; anger filled my
heart, intensifying each night I slept and heard the voices of my
ancestors, many of them forced laborers for the
Americo-Liberians. Their bones are scattered in the forests, among the
250,000 shot in cold blood in a ruthless campaign of elimination
organized and implemented by Rev. Jackson's heroes - his good
people,
as they regained the power they lost in 1980. But not
relying on my ancestors' protests and cries, their unending stories
told to me as a child about the cruelties and inhumanities of the
Liberian state, I enlisted some witnesses to present my case to the
humane world, hoping that such would make Rev. Jackson, and his likes,
to stop spreading falsehood, deceit and outright lies. My witnesses
are individuals with experience and solid knowledge of my people's
ordeals and humiliation under the Liberian State. Let me begin with
the British historian, the irreplaceable Basil Davidson:
Convinced of this (the lowliness of natives in what became Liberia)
generations of Americo-Liberians proceeded to rule their 'degraded
subjects' by a contemptuous tyranny presented to the outside world,
whenever that might seem useful, as a right and proper anteroom of
manhood suffrage and representative democracy. But the anteroom was
found to lead to no such results. Democracy was not encountered. What
finally emerged in 1980, at the culmination of many miseries, was the
master sergeant who made himself President Samuel Doe.
Not
convinced, I went back into history, to listen to another British
writer and journalist of earlier time, the venerable Graham Greene:
A case was also reported to me from several sources of a man who
had been wounded close to Sasstown (during the Sasstown War) and
wished to surrender. Although unarmed and pleading for mercy he was
shot down in cold blood by soldiers in the presence of Captain
Cole.
Greene continued: The soldiers crept into the banana plantations,
which surround all native villages, and poured volleys into huts. One
woman who had that day been delivered of twins was shot in bed, and
the infants perished in the flames when the village was fired by the
troops. In one village the charred remains of six children were found
after the departure of the troops. In this connection, it may be
mentioned that a man who had been a political prisoner at New Sasstown
stated that he heard soldiers boasting of having cut children down
with cutlasses and thrown them into the burning huts.
The
commander of these troops, Graham tells us, was a Col. Davis, an
Americo.
Still searching for evidence, I asked Dr. Stephen Ellis, in his recent
book The Mask of Anarchy
for which Taylor has launched a libel
law suit because Dr. Ellis - using eyewitness testimonies and
documents - informed the world that the warlord actually ate his
victims and drank their blood to augment his powers.
In the many parts of the country, throughout its history the
Liberian system of indirect rule bore the stamp of military means used
to establish it in the early twentieth century. It was first
established in the Liberian Army, which had a reputation of brutality
and for looting, since troops largely lived off the land. In 1910 some
chiefs in the south-east of the country complained of the activities
of the Liberian Frontier Force, which they termed 'this execrable
force', and was 'entirely mobilized,' and wherever they had been sent
throughout the country - whether to Rivercess or in the hinterland -
their custom has been to plunder the towns through which they pass and
rape the women,
Ellis quotes a letter from King Gyude and chiefs
of the Grebo to the American Colonization Society.
On the other hand, the veteran African America actor, Ossie Davis
wrote of the experience he had with the Americo-Liberians while he was
stationed in Liberia (Robertsfield) as an American GI from 1942-1945,
in the book he co-authored with his wife Ruby Dee: With Ossie and
Ruby - In This Life Together
(pp. 126-132). According to him:
The Americo-Liberians were descendants of the repatriated slaves, and though they spoke with a lilt that sounded like West Indian calypso, they looked so much like us, it was amazing. They were now the ruling class, and that was disconcerting. They had nice homes and were wealthy but their servants, drawn mostly from the other indigenous tribes, were by and large poor and could not vote. The Americo-Liberians behaved toward them as any other ruling class, obviously forgetting what it had meant to be slave. That bothered me a great deal. I felt proud to be there among my people, in a double sense of the word, but I also felt ashamed.
The Americo-Liberians, black though they were, tended to live like Europeans or Americans, and that surprised me. They had new cars; they regularly sent their children off to Europe or America to college, and they fraternized with their peers at Firestone. They seldom mixed with the natives, with whom I had already bonded, who were authentic Africans and much more fun. I was not only uneasy with the class conflict I felt was brewing in Liberia, I was disturbed by it. But most of the soldiers on the post were not. They, too, quite easily, took to treating all the natives, not as brothers and comrades, but like servants, in much the same way white folks treated black folks down in Georgia.
This arrogance disturbed me, too, and I began to entertain a horrible suspicion. For most of my life, I had believed that black folks were in many ways morally superior to white folks, especially in our dealings with each other. I was profoundly disappointed that the Americo-Liberians, the children of slaves themselves, would come to Africa and behave as if they themselves were the slaveholders now.
- From
In This Life Togetherby Actor Ossie Davis and wife Ruby Dee (pp. 126-132)
Here we are with just a few examples of the deeds of Rev. Jackson's
good people
and democrats
whose loss must continue to
haunt Liberia, one of the least developed, least organized, pathetic
countries in Africa despite its place as the continent's oldest
republic
.
As a child in Western Province (now Lofa County) bordering Sierra Leone, I heard stories of how my people unsuccessfully tried to join British Sierra Leone and leave the Liberian State. Taxation without representation, the looting of their properties, and forced labor were practiced as late as the 1960s. One case in point was the effrontery of some Kissi men to challenge this fascist state by suing their chief, Tamba Tailor, on claims of forced labor.
Tamba Tailor was a good ally of then Vice President William Tolbert,
an alliance solidified by Tamba Tailor's giving his son, Elijah
Tailor, to be assimilated into civilized
Americo culture. For
this and other reasons, Kissi men were forcibly sent on Tolbert's farm
where they worked under difficult and humiliating conditions without
pay yet required to feed themselves. Many never returned, and their
fate remained unknown. This chief also ensured a periodic, compulsory
collection of food and supplies from the Kissis sent to Tolbert to
buttress the ties and presumably to buy his political protection since
all loyal natives needed Americo godfathers to survive.
The Kissis in Monrovia sought redress under the law and hired a lawyer
to plead their case. The answer: they were all arrested and jailed
after being charged with treason. But although the Kissi people failed
to get a judicial victory, their daring act was sufficient
embarrassment to the central government and led ultimately to the
abolition of the forced labor camps for fear of drawing international
attention to slavery in Liberia as had happened earlier. This happened
just a few miles outside Monrovia. Such are the talents
for
democracy and development to which Rev. Jackson hopes to re-introduce
in Liberia.
These are some of the factors that led my people to opt for British rule and to dream of severing the ties with the more oppressive Liberia. This is not to say that the Sierra Leoneans were completely happy with the British rule. The level of development of the two neighboring countries gives clear indications of why their citizens wished for something different, and why others left home.
So this is not a good testimony for either the British colonialists or
our black founders in Liberia who call themselves Americos. But
Liberia and Sierra Leone also have freed slaves in common, because
freed slaves also settled in Sierra Leone. At independence, despite
their protestation of not wanting to be ruled by natives,
democracy prevailed in some form.
The British acted pretty much then as they are acting now. They wanted
to save Sierra Leone from the tentacles of the Americos in colonial
Liberia as they are now fighting to keep another Americo - Charles
Taylor - from plundering Sierra Leone's diamond fields. Unlike
Liberia, however, the first Prime Minister of Sierra Leone, Sr. Milton
Margai, was a native African (Mende) not a Creole, Sierra Leone's
equivalent of Liberia's Americo.
The natives
have thus
dominated the politics of Sierra Leone, since independence, precisely
because democracy reflects numbers. But there was another, perhaps
better, reason: the British, assisted by the Church, encouraged
education in Sierra Leone.
Thus, at independence, there were enough educated native Sierra
Leoneans confident and prepared to lead, something which disappointed
and angered the Creoles who threatened a separate state just as the
Afrikaners are now threatening in South Africa. It is such
enlightenment that has prepared Sierra Leoneans to reject the
so-called mediation schemes of Jesse Jackson by denying him entry into
their country after he praised of Foday Sankoh as a Mandela, while
some confused Liberians see a savior
in him. The enlightenment
deficit was created intentionally in Liberia. In Rev. Jackson's
Liberia, it was a crime to teach natives
how to read and write,
a policy the settlers borrowed from their southern slave masters who
saw a danger in an enlightened black person.
The Americos went several steps farther than their white masters ever imagined. They would perfect other forms of subjugation in this part of Africa they named Liberia.
Independence from the American Colonization Society came in 1847, and the result was a club of Americos, which held what they called elections amongst themselves to share their loot and cement their dictatorship over the natives. Since political participation was denied to the majority in this bastardized form of Apartheid, the only option left for us was to seize power by force. But as Tarty Teh correctly said, we did not conspire, collectively, to seize power.
Had we done so, the difference would have been the difference between day and night in terms of development and education - factors, which would have precluded native boys and girls from serving as foot soldiers for the Taylors, Goodridges, Ureys, etc. in cementing our backwardness.
But some individuals who were least prepared for political power - members of an intentionally ill-educated, ill-trained military - seized power without our consent. In the end, these semi-illiterate soldiers (themselves victims and pawns of the orchestrated ignorance that we see today in those natives who lined up behind their Americo masters) surrendered power back to the Americos.
This time, however, there was no pretense of good intentions. Charles Taylor became one of the biggest thieves among the coup makers of 1980, a fact that landed him in jail in the United States from where, we are told, he escaped to launch his campaign of native elimination.
The level of state-encouraged and institutionalized illiteracy, which continues to plague Liberia, was a big factor in the witch-hunt launched by the junta (not against the Americos, as Rev. Jackson tells us, but) against fellow native Liberians who were convinced that the soldiers and their Americo allies in theft and plunder were bound to push the country into chaos. Throughout the campaign of elimination erroneously called war, not a single known Americo was arrested at most of the notorious checkpoints and slaughtered. But the names of native politicians and opinion leaders, technocrats, university professors, who were ordered executed by Taylor, many of them also victims of the junta's repression, are infinite. Yet, Rev. Jackson distorts our history and spreads half-truths in his crusade against Africans. It makes you wonder where he stands in Liberia's ongoing catastrophe.
Coups as means of political change plagued Africa after the wave of independence, because political institutions borrowed from the colonial masters proved useless in African statecraft. There, of course, are exceptions. Besides Senegal, not a single West African country escaped the wrath of the soldiers, who are themselves largely inept and incompetent. In East Africa, Kenya and Tanzania are among the few exceptions, though not without other problems. It is still too early to pass judgment on southern Africa because it was only yesterday that full independence was proclaimed.
When all peaceful means for change are suffocated (as it was in
Liberia from 1847 to 1980) violence remains an option. This has been
the case in Africa, but Rev. Jackson has embarked on a crusade to
distort history and spread lies. Throughout his tours around Africa
as President Clinton's unfortunate democracy envoy,
this man
has never rebuked any other African country with a coup
history. Liberia was among the last in the cycle of coups since its
army - a dumping ground for misfits who were cooks and janitors for
members of the Americo-Liberian establishment - sometimes forgot the
difference between left and right.
Earlier coups were rougher. Nigeria was among the first in beheading a leader. Sir. Tafawa Bellewa was the first victim in a now familiar string of bloody coups. Rawlings executed many, including judges, to become a well-respected president in America's eyes. Musevini led a violent overthrow of a government to become one of the West's examples of good government in Africa.
The list is endless, and yet Rev. Jackson sees no wrongs here, except in Liberia where his cousins instituted a ruthless political machine of death and plunder to keep themselves in power for well over 130 years.
America has offered many of us the opportunity to see the world in its true colors. While studying there, the values many of us admired were those of the Democratic Party, and there were reasons. Wasn't John F. Kennedy a Democrat?
Didn't Robert Kennedy belong to the Democratic Party? For people in bondage, the Democratic Party became the natural institution to admire. But thanks to Democrats like Jesse Jackson, Donald Payne, Cynthia McKinney and many others who see democracy in a butchering and thieving warlord. One can now begin to see humanity in the Republican Party of men like Sen. Judd Gregg. This man, more than any Democrat in recent memory when dealing with Africa, indicates his deep sense of justice, fair play and morality in a world inundated with bigotry and opportunism. Were I an American, I would give my soul to the Republican Party of Sen. Gregg. After all, it was President George Bush, a Republican, who risked his political future by sending in white boys to die in the heat and squalor of Somalia. With the likes of Rev. Jackson as icons in the Democratic Party, only God knows.
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