By: Mohamed Dauda Kamara
Imagine waking up one morning and realizing that our politics has changed, and a sound redemption has fallen flatly on its back. There is success, there is no nuance, there is joy and there is hope.
Imagine waking up from a nightmare and realizing that Sierra Leone is no longer the one you ran away from, the one that is wreathed in greed and covetous politics. Imagine you were born in a country that is not Sierra Leone, where your leaders would be selfless and less greedy. Imagine the ease that comes with the assurance that everyone will eventually prosper, that every university graduate is assured of a well-paid job, that every youth has today to build their future, that every pregnant mother has less fear of maternal mortality and infant mortality, that every girl has the right to grow without being destroyed, and that every potential is fully harnessed. Imagine elections were held, free and fair, detached from irregularities, discrepancies and fraud.
Imagine everyone has enough to eat, enough to earn, enough to save, and enough to invest. Imagine our judiciary was independent, free from the intervention of the greedy few. Imagine the press was wealthy, wealthy enough to give journalists the freedom to earn more without being forced to dance to the music. Imagine our teachers were the highest paid professionals.
But these are just mere imaginations, cut off from the reality that is before us, a sad reality that has become our fate because we have made it our fate.
Since Independence in 1961, Sierra Leone has egregiously wallowed in a back-and-forth politics that is in the hands of two malfeasant political parties, the All People’s Congress (APC) and the Sierra Leone Peoples’ Party (SLPP). Nobody has dared to fight them and win, nobody has dared to challenge them and go court free. It’s either they get rid of you or they hold you hostage, reprogramming your mind like a puppet. Dreadfully, with all your renunciating boldness to seek for a different path, you’ll be newly taught how to play their own “dirty” politics. And the people will be shocked at how well you have changed.
Going through the slightly stoop metamorphosis of a dependent independence to a one-party system under Siaka Stevens, few things have changed, but not the same politics. No matter how democratic our elections have been since Late Pa Kabba led this country to victory with his “Sababu Education” slogan, we will not quickly forget that his slogan was not fully manifested as it ought to have been.
His departure from office in 2007 left a wound that could be healed by Pa Koroma’s “Agenda for Prosperity.” But instead, his loudly acclaimed “prosperity” was only experienced by the few of them within his party and his cabinet. Still, we did not ask questions even when dancing to Emmerson Bockarie’s “Munku Boss Pa Matches.” We did not step back and truly read and understand the truth found in-between the lyrics of his song. That song was an eye-opener, a scoop to push us into verifying President Bio before lavishing him with votes in 2018.
Then, as if we did not truly grasp any lesson from Pa Kabba and his successor, we still rallied behind President Bio’s globally intriguing “Free Quality Education,” hoping for a redemption, as if our relief had been directly sent from God to man. Even so, we had partied when he launched his agenda, without asking about its sustainability.
Before his first term collapsed in rage and frustration, his statistical back-up to every promise he had made in 2018, became another reason for Sierra Leoneans to vote for him. And on the 27th June, 2023, when he was declared the winner in a disputed, flawed election, we did not seek to protect our democracy; instead we went out on the streets in the rains, fully dressed in green and white, selling our destinies for the next five years. Who cursed us? Who cursed this country and its people? Are we even cursed? Or are we being politically myopic that we cannot see any flaw in the decisions that we make?
Each one of our leaders had given us ambitious slogans clad in a full-legged deceit yet, they remain inevitably criticized. Over and over again, Sierra Leoneans had voted for a new sense of trust, a kind of trust that stems from a political residual, or a kind of trust found between the nationally ingrained “na we party” wordings. And yes, this has precisely made change utterly elusive, unattractive even when unavoidable. Change, a word almost used by both SLPP and APC, has its own connotative meaning in Sierra Leone, only perfectly found between written lines of campaign messages, and unseen in reality.
Are we cursed? Who cursed us? And why?
Our two parties, the Alhassan and the Alusine, have left us stranded in the exodus, overwhelmingly unprepared to challenge them, to ask them questions that demand abrupt answers, to say “enough is enough,” and to say “we want a change that is real, that is felt and that is experienced.” Not a statically programmed change that can disguise the scourge, and make us look happy and smiley. Not a kind of sarcastic change that can make us cry in pain and carry a smiling face.
But who dares to challenge them? Who dares to face them upfront, demanding for a real change that is not only lousy and bogus, and demanding for an authentic change beyond statistical fraudulence? Who dares to selflessly demand for an enthusiastic change with a vision to transform this country for the good of all, not for the good of the few, or the greedy few?
And the subterranean two-party idea is awash by wrongs than rights. But who dares to say “let’s turn a new page” when in fact all other political parties are either selling their birthright for “kokoh yebeh”? Did we not see how quickly Charles Margai sold his votes to APC? Did we not see how Kandeh Yumkelleh left his vision to nourish President Bio’s vision? What is left unseen? Only national prosperity.
Can we forget to talk about President Bio’s “Feed Salone” slogan or his “New Direction Manifesto”? No wonder my former Communication Skills lecturer, Dr. Turay, had jokingly said in class that our country was going “directionlessly.” We laughed it off, buried our pleasures in the humor of his words, and we didn’t pick out the truth hidden beneath them.
Who does not know that President Bio’s “Feed Salone” is brewing rage, frustration and a standstill hopelessness even with the statistical justifications that accompany a progress that is only felt by the few?
Who does not know that the “Feed Salone” propaganda is another well-nortured political bait aimed at winning votes? Who does not know that there is a stagnating hunger, refusing to go even with the many dollars President Bio’s government has spent?
We are tired of the inept graphs, data, and logarithms found in well-written documents, while we live in dire economic woe. We are tired with our imperiled politics, an oddly traumatized politics that leaves us hanging in the air, weightless and soulless.
We are tired, as much as God is tired with us. Who can we go to for refuge if not God? But even God, Himself, is tired with the stubbornness and the heartlessness of our politicians. Now, He is up there looking at us, as we perish in the hands of our politicians. God is tired with the rigorous forgetfulness in our politics, the brainless “party pikin” ideas, the stupid boldness to vote for APC and SLPP over and over, the cordial cowardiceness of our youths, the staunch hypocrisy of our Civil Society Organizations, the condescending betrayal of the press, the inevitable selfishness of the opposition, and the shocking silence of our religious leaders. Who cursed us and why?
At this point, instead of proudly facing the consequences of our mistakes in electoral decisions, and seeking forgiveness, we are hoping to make the same mistakes in 2028.
