African Democracy and Development by Veney Cassandra Rachel; Simpson Dick; Zeleza Paul

Author:Veney, Cassandra Rachel; Simpson, Dick; Zeleza, Paul
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: 2012-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

Arthur Abraham

Chieftaincy and Reconstruction in Sierra Leone

8 Arthur Abraham Arthur Abraham

Introduction

The institutional history of Sierra Leone since the introduction of internal self-rule after World War II is remarkable for its sterility. Successive governments have been reluctant to tinker with old institutions or to create new ones to respond to changing circumstances. With lack of imaginative approaches to changing socioeconomic conditions, successive governments have been content to manage colonial institutions less and less efficiently in ever more irrelevant circumstances. Institutional reforms have never been the strong point of public policy, and while several institutions have gone disappointingly untouched, others supposed to have been reformed witnessed nothing more than the barely cosmetic.[1]

Unfortunately, the institution of paramount chieftaincy is one of those bodies badly in need of reform, if only to liberate it as a force for local development. But this has never been comprehensively imagined.[2] The institution of chieftaincy underwent drastic changes during colonial rule, the general effect being to weaken the institution while at the same time strengthening the position of individual chiefs who could manipulate the system. In the independence period, distrust of chiefs by politicians, especially in the Stevens era, led to further weakening of the institution, as chiefs were coerced into becoming political tools of the government. Most of these traditional roles and duties were shorn. They depended almost entirely on government orders in an overcentralized political system; chiefs lost all initiative as leaders of their communities.

Consequently, it was no surprise that the Revolutionary United Front’s (RUF) invasion of the country from across the Liberian border in 1991 utterly confounded the chiefs. In the absence of appropriate government action, the chiefs— seriously weakened as they were—proved completely incapable of organizing any resistance to the initial RUF invasion, other than the response of flight. Those who were captured were publicly beheaded by the RUF. Thus, the post-conflict period provides yet another auspicious opportunity to reform the institution of chieftaincy and determine its proper role in national politics and in local reconstruction and development action. Since the postcolonial state was more or less content to keep the status quo inherited from the British, it is impossible to map out a future direction for this institution without tracing its historical fortunes or misfortunes. Remarkably, the single most important fact about chieftaincy is that it has survived.

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