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| Bai Koroma and Rumpoy of the European Union |
By Amadu Bai Bureh (in
Freetown).
Five years has passed since the last elections in Sierra
Leone that ushered in the All People’s Congress of Ernest Bai Koroma into power
in September 2007 amidst global acclaim of democratic maturity and local hope
of progress and improvement. On the contrary, five years after this famous
victory, Sierra Leone has recorded the worst ever cholera epidemic in its
post-colonial history claiming the lives of nearly 300 people, mostly women and
children while over 16,000 people have been affected. The epidemic has spread
from Freetown to 12 other districts. This recurrent cholera epidemic that seems
to come every rainy season (between April and September), has beaten the record
of the previous epidemic in which 10,000 people were affected and about 100
people died.
This worst ever cholera epidemic has also come a year after
Sierra Leone’s 50 year’s independence celebrations as well as five years of
President Ernest Koroma’s “Agenda for Change” which the president claimed in
2007 will be the panacea for the people. But what really went wrong and how did
Sierra Leone come to this terrible situation?
Of course for the opposition parties, it is simply an
opportunity to score political gains whilst the Government cry that the
opposition “politicizing the cholera epidemic”.
A fierce debate has ensued in the varied overly partisan media outlets
(over 50 newspapers for a country of six million people) in the country.
The
Government saying only it’s a tragedy that has unavoidably befallen the country
whilst the opposition parties on the other hand say it shows the inefficiency
of the APC Government. In reality the
worst cholera epidemic in the history of the country is a chilling indictment
of the whole Sierra Leonean ruling class irrespective of their political
colours or guise! The fact is that the main political parties, the All
People’s Congress (APC) and Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) should have
collectively taken responsibilities given that they have both been in power for
the past 16 years after the war and in fact the only two political parties
(apart from brief military interregnums in the 60s and 90s) that have run the
country since independence from Britain in 1991. Both these parties, during
their various stewardships, have not prioritized the interests and concerns of
ordinary people of the country; rather have sought only to consolidate power
and institutionalizing corruption, neo-patrimonialism and elitism. .
But we will come to the justification of saying this, first
let’s look at the epidemic in more detail and how it engulfed the country.
The
epidemic and a feeble government response
UNICEF and the World Health Organisation (WHO) started to
raise alarm after the first report of a cholera outbreak back in April as the
first rains dropped heralding the start of the rainy new season. Three people
died in the poor slums along the coast.
The sub-human conditions in which
citizens live in the slums of Mabella and Kroo Bay in the heart of Freetown is
simply unacceptable. The sanitary conditions of the community are degrading to
say the least; there are only few latrines and no modern toilets facilities at
all. People defecate in the open sewage
or the filthy stream that runs through the community.
People live in shacks
built of corrugated iron sheets and roofs made up of mostly tarpaulins and
plastic with rocks placed on top of them to prevent it taken out by the heavy
breeze from the Atlantic Ocean. Naked children run around between the shacks
and play in the filth side by side with pigs, rats and all kinds of
unimaginable filth.
In such a situation, it is easy to see that in the advent
of a water-borne disease like cholera, these people will suffer. There is
absolutely no availability of pipe-borne water in majority of these slums (and
indeed many parts of Freetown). Children have to wake up at 3 am and fetch
water in yellow jerry cans till dawn and go to school during the day.
The government responded to the report of cholera in Freetown
by simply ignoring it. By May, the death toll rose to tens and by June it had
almost reached 100. Still the Government is silent. In July newspapers
continued to report the rising death toll but still no real urgency in the
government to do anything, It was until August when the death toll claimed
nearly 200 lives and the “international community” and civil society raised
more concern that the government responded. As of second week on September,
over 250 people have died even though rate of deaths is declining as the rainy
season comes to a close.
In August, almost five months after the first reported death
case, President Koroma finally declared a state of emergency to allow for
extra-resources to be put together to reverse the epidemic. An international
appeal for support was issued with various governments in the world responding
by donating medicines and money.
The British Government announced it will
donate two million dollars (channeled through NGOs) towards fighting the
epidemic, bringing Sierra Leone to the global media prominence, once again for
the wrong reasons.
Cholera centres were opened across the affected areas. NGOs were also scurrying and falling over
each other to cash in to write proposals and get funding to campaign for people
to clean their areas and wash their hands without interrogating the real causes
of the crisis.
The Presidential Task Force was shown on TV meeting market women,
Chiefs, elders and went to poor areas with simply messages: Wash your hands before touching food or after
using the toilets. In other words the government deflected the blame of not
providing clean water, sanitation and decent housing for the majority of the
people all these years. By doing that they were chastising the poor for causing
their own crisis. A position which fails to take into account the fact that,
you can have all the personal hygiene,
if there is no sanitation and clean water, there is very little one can
do to prevent cholera.
Real
Causes of the Epidemic
I guess there are very serious questions that need serious
answers. First the questions: What are the root causes of this epidemic and how
it can be averted in the future?
The answer is simple, successive governments since the end
of the war and the so-called international development partners (mainly serving
the interests of neoliberal globalization) have failed to prioritise the
provision of the most basic necessities of life for the majority of citizens
despite the introduction of the PRSP I (under Kabbah) and PRSP ii,
euphemistically christened “Agenda for Change” by the new Koroma government.
Tejan Kabbah engaged in subserviently advancing the agenda of the World Bank, IMF,
DFID and the UN. After the war, Kabbah and the SLPP government failed to
prioritise the provision of clean drinking water, affordable food for the poor,
quality education, housing, sanitation and the creation of decent jobs.
Kabbah’s PRSP only intensified poverty whilst his privatization agenda sold out
the country’s vast mineral resources that benefited only foreign owned
multi-nationals.
For example, Kabbah went into various obnoxious agreements
with Koidu Holding Ltd, a diamond mining company and Sierra Rutile Ltd, which
basically exempted them from tax for the 10 years and more whilst the
government only receiving 3% as
royalties from the profits. In essence
resources that should have been used for the provision of clean water (which is
available for only 35% of citizens), were given away for pennies. And when
ordinary citizens of the diamond rich district of Kono rise up and demand
justice and dignity, the police were sent in on a shooting spree. In his
memoirs, Kabbah bragged that he rescued the country from the brink of collapse,
stabilizing the economy, bringing peace, achieving economic growth without
progress for the poor, reformed the army and the police and privatised state
businesses. Health and education, let alone water and sanitation were very low
on his agenda.
When Koroma took power in 2007 after Kabbah’s failed
policies were rejected by the people in the polls, he basically set about doing
the same thing. In reality, Koroma offered no real alternative from the outset.
He is generally lacking in ideas and short of policy directions. He simply
benefited from the discontent against Kabbah and his SLPP.
Koroma, like Kabbah before him sought to consolidate the
neocolonial and neoliberal agenda. Koroma infamously declared during the 2007
elections campaigns that he would “run the country like a business concern”
and launched the “Agenda for Change”,
with the support of the IMF, World Bank, UK’s Department for International
Development (DFID) and the UN. The Agenda prioritized three things: infrastructure
and electricity, economic development and Agriculture. This agenda quickly
degenerated into a mere slogan to be parroted every day and on every occasion.
Even brushing one’s own teeth, became “part of the President’s agenda for
change” for the pro-government media.
Koroma claims now, without much evidence, that he has
achieved the Agenda for Change and that Sierra Leoneans are better off that
they have ever been. In fact so confident is the President of re-election, that
a full year before the elections, announced the next programme for his second
term in office called the “Agenda for Prosperity”. Question is, prosperity for
who? Certainly it does not need much thinking given the track record of the
first five years, it will most certainly be prosperity for Koroma, his cronies,
their foreign backers and senior members of his APC party.
He claims, though that the Agenda for Change achieved a lot
in five years: refurbishing and expanding some roads in the main cities and the
rich areas of the capital Freetown. He also provided more electricity in
Freetown although half of the city still don’t have electricity. Agriculture is
being commercialized with foreign companies snapping up huge swathes of land
from poor peasants and denying them of their livelihoods. The mining companies
still enjoy tax exemptions etc. Poverty still continues unabated.
But the question is not only that Koroma and Kabbah
(belonging to two different parties) were responsible for the cholera but that
their misplaced priorities, their blind following of IMF, World Bank neoliberal
agenda, poor leadership, ethnicisation
of politics to name but a few has led to the current health crisis typified by
the cholera epidemic that is still raging in 13 out of the 14 districts in the
country.
Way
forward
Elections in Sierra Leone are due November 17th
contested by 10 political parties but one of the two dominant parties since
independence (APC and SLPP) is certain to win. Ernest Bai Koroma is going for a
second term challenged by erstwhile military ruler Brigadier (rtd) Julius Maada
Bio. Ironically Bio was part of the directionless young soldiers in their 20s
and 30s led by Capt Valentine Strasser who took power in 1992 from the APC then
led by Joseph Saidu Momoh, who later died in poverty in neighbouring Guinea –
Conkary. Their policies don’t differ much and there seems no end in the ethnic
politics that have bedeviled the country since independence.
The reality of the
ethnic based politics in Sierra Leone means that there will be no ending sight
in the neoliberal and neocolonial agenda of the World Bank, IMF and UN in
Sierra Leone to which both Koroma and Maada Bio (of the opposition) are
committed to. The debate starts and stops at whether we can have peaceful
elections. All manner of community and youth groups are organizing peace
rallies calling for peace in the November polls without any attempt at
advocating for equal rights and social justice.
I dare say that neither Ernest Bai Koroma of the current APC
government nor Julius Maada Bio of the opposition SLPP has the solution to the
country and it’s suffering masses! They are both pursuing the same agenda under
different guise and political colour. The solution to the current malaise of poverty
for the majority, it seems to me does not lie in voting for one or the other of
the two equally corrupt parties.
The
solutions will only come when ordinary communities in Mabella and Kroo Bay and
other slums across the country, ordinary workers, peasants, the poor and
exploited stop dancing for one or the other of the political parties or indeed
attending foreign funded NGO campaigns for peaceful elections.
The solution
will be found when these suffering masses come together, organize into solid movements
from below challenging the ruling elites to provide clean water, affordable
food, decent jobs, health care and sanitation, quality education or put simply
demand to live in dignity as human beings. The conditions of the majority of
the people of Freetown’s slums is hardly better than the animals that roam side
by side with the children in filth. So ordinary people have nothing to lose but
their misery and chains.
Even better still, the masses of ordinary workers,
unemployed youths, students and women organize themselves into solid movements
that will overthrow all together the capitalist-neocolonial order and replace
it a new social and economic order that is sustainable, based on equality and
social justice for all as well as one that is sustainable and benefits the
majority and not just the elites that is the case right now.
The writer
is a Pan-Africanist and community activist for social justice with the
Pan-African Community Movement in Sierra Leone that advocates among other
things for an end to foreign land grabbing and police brutality in Sierra
Leone. For more information visit: panafricancommunitymovt.wordpress.com
or email: pacm1898@gmail.com
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