As neutral party in the discourse of politics if not in actual occurrences, I felt it most necessary to keep posted for a while, modestly re-edited, this very first version of Ibrahim Abdullah’s essay as example of Intellectual Production as discussed in the Clivus Transactus series. It was originally posted on the Internet in 1996 and has further revised and extended editions formally published (Journal of Modern African Studies, vol.36, no.2 1998.) Categorically, it can be said to be inclusive of Hostilities Analysis written within the period of 1990 to 1998 and carries explicit detail pertinent to Sierra Leone Politics. 

 

BUSHPATH

TO DESTRUCTION:

THE ORIGIN AND

CHARACTER OF THE RUF

 

By Ibrahim Abdullah © 1996

 

Because you are in the Academy, does not mean, that you’re an Intellectual; Dehn Say Abbas Alie, You Say Davidson Nicole - Abdullah 1995

Author’s Preamble

In the discussion provoked by my review of Paul Richards’ chapter in the Furley collection Conflict in Africa, Yusuf Bangura, our chief pundit on policy formulation and consensus building in cyberspace (what a descent from the Zaria era) made a cryptic remark regarding the outcome of the 1985 expulsion of students at FBC and the consequent evolution of what has unsuccessfully tried to pass itself off as part of the struggle for Africa’s second independence. Yusuf’s question - why and how did the radicals/progressives allow themselves to be elbowed out of the post 1985 struggle for an alternative agenda - is central to an understanding of the origin and character of the Revolutionary United Front.

It constitutes my point of departure in understanding, in unraveling; the process which culminated in the emergence of a movement most Sierra Leoneans will readily agree has wrecked untold havoc on our society. My on going research on lumpen culture and youth resistance which has led me to make sociological connections between the RUF and the NPRC, suggests that both were products of the youth culture in search of a viable alternative - without a programmatic agenda - to the bankrupt APC regime. But to understand the historical and sociological processes which gave birth to RUF as it now exists, it is necessary to understand the political vacuum in Sierra Leone’s political culture, especially the glaring absence of a radical/viable. This absence is all the more glaring when we take into consideration the rich legacy of Wallace-Johnson and his West African Youth League.

A Radical Tradition?

The demise of the Youth League inaugurated by Sierra Leone’s legendary revolutionary cum Pan-Africanist in 1939 did not automatically witness the end of radical labor agitation. What it did was to close the avenues for radical political organizations through a series of concessions in the form of constitutional arrangements which eventually led to independence. Elias Mukunoweshuro, a Zimbabwean student of Salone politics has admirably mapped out the contours of this process in his brilliant study. This sanitization of politics did not, however, affect the labor movement. Labor activists connected with the Youth League tradition, Marcus Grant, Comrade Georgestone and others, were influential in shaping the process of remaking the working class from above which was inaugurated by the colonial office once Wallace-Johnson had been imprisoned and the organization proscribed. The tradition of an independent working class organization and movement was the most important factor which shaped post-war labor agitation in the mines and in the city of Freetown.

The incorporation and subsequent cooptation of prominent labor leaders like Akinola Wright and Siaka Stevens into positions of authority in the era of decolonization did not blunt the radical edge of labor politics. This became evident in 1950 when strikes and riots rocked DELCO and again in 1952 when miners in Yengema demanded a wage raise and shut down the mines for two weeks. The pinnacle of post-war labor agitation was the general strike in the city of Freetown in 1955, when the late Pa Marcus Grant, with the support of Wallace-Johnson, defied the colonial state and called a general strike which paralyzed the city and forced colonial officials and employers of labor to concede to workers demand for a raise and the right to enter into direct negotiations with their employers.

The Youth league tradition was therefore alive in the 50s; but it did not assume a national dimension nor did it emerge as a coherent force or as an alternative tradition in the post independence period. Arguably, it was partly because of the defeat of the Youth League and partly because of his departure to Ghana (Wallace Johnson) that radical politics or a leftist tradition was shunted out of Salone’s political culture. Elsewhere on the west coast, notably Ghana and Nigeria, a radical tradition was present in the labor movement and in the arena of national politics. What therefore marked Salone’s post-independence politics was not its tolerance of a leftist tradition in the labor movement or in national politics; but its conservative leadership and unabashed western orientation.

The APC’s pretense at reviving the tradition of the Youth League by dawning the radical mantle of a viable leftist opposition (Wallace-Johnson gave his blessing to the party) was betrayed by its ethnic composition and its empty socialist rhetoric which initially fell on deaf ears. It was when the party swept the polls at the city council election and made an impressive start in the 1962 elections, that it was able to establish its credentials as a viable alternative and as a credible leftist opposition. Stevens’ trade union career and the fact that the party’s leadership was mainly composed of individuals from the working population and the lower middle class, lend credence to its claim to radicalism. This was in contrast to the SLPP which was dominated by the upper class and middle class professionals and their feudal allies the Paramount Chiefs.

But the APC in power was markedly different from the party in opposition or when it controlled the city council. Perhaps, because it was under the watchful eye of an SLPP government in power, the APC tenure at the city council was relatively free of any blemish; it allowed for checks and balances and SLPP councilors did force the APC city council to hold the line. The APC after 1968 was something else. Once it had successfully reduced the number of SLPP members in the House of Representatives through fraudulent and not so fraudulent election petitions, in which the judiciary fully acquired, the party quickly began to dismantle the national coalition cabinet that had been formed in 1968. This move signaled the beginning of APC’s consolidation of power and opened the road to a one-party state. From 1970 when the first attempt was made to unseat the government by Brigadier Bangura et al; to the alleged coup attempt involving Mohamed Sorie Forna and fourteen others, for which Pa Morlai Sankoh (Foday Sankoh) was jailed; to the fraudulent elections of 1973 and 1977; the party did all it could to stifle the opposition and consolidate power.

Thus, by 1978 when the one-party state was declared the SLPP had become disabled due to the incessant arrest and detention of its members. The general atmosphere of violence against any form opposition and the simultaneous centralization of power in the hands of the party and the Pa, transformed the state and by implication, politics, into an affair for and by APC members/ supporters. This centralization of politics made access to resources impossible for non-members; it made membership of the party a sine qua non to get by; exclusion literally meant death by attrition. There was therefore nothing shadowy about this state. Its shadow character (to use Reno’s outlandish formulation) was neither literal nor metaphorical; the existence of the state was real to those who experienced it; and it meant death or total exclusion for those who challenged its power. It was in this context that the students and youths in the city and elsewhere, those who saw their dream of achieving their life ambition blocked by an unpatriotic bunch of politicians and their hangers on, assumed the mantle of informal opposition.

Uprising Discourses: The Making of a Viable Opposition/Alternative

The search for an alternative (not necessarily a radical one) to the SLPP did not emanate from the Youth. Nor did they make any organized or independent contribution - based on their own agenda - towards the defeat of the SLPP. The period from independence to 1968 was characterized by a tussle for power between the two organized political machines: the SLPP and the APC. If the youths were involved, their role was simply one of foot soldiers, as thugs, by the politicians of both parties. This marginalization of youth was concretely expressed in the form of party youth wings (there were also women’s wings); an arm of the party always peripheral to where real power was located. Their performance could therefore be read as ritual; it always begins with a crisis situation and their mobilization as thugs to do their dirty work. Once the project is complete, they fall back to the status quo ante, as wings, waiting for another assignment. These examples of youth "activities"--- Ginger Hall massacre, Akibo Betts lead and inspired; Mobai, Kailahun bye-elections, SI Koroma led and organized; attack on FBC, Kemoh Fadika, led and organized; Kurubola, Kabala, Kawusu-Conteh, led and organized; the Sanda massacre, Temu Bangura, led and organized - have formed part of the iconography of political violence in Sierra Leone. This reading of political roles did not mean that those who joined the so-called youth wings were all thugs or simply auxiliary troops. People like Caleb Aubee, Alfred Akibo-Betts, the John Brothers, Adewole and Olufemi, Mohamed Samura, Kemoh Fadika, Kojo Randle started their political carriers as members of the APC youth league. However, their role was strictly speaking limited to action oriented tasks and occasional trips to communist countries; it was only in the 70s that the party gave those who were still in the fold a rightful place in the sun.

An interesting angle to ponder is the question: why youth? An obvious historical parallel is Wallace-Johnson’s Youth League. Was this performance of youth a throw back to the Youth League era of the thirties? Stevens’ admiration and respect for Wallace is well known. Was this an unconscious script been played back and enacted by revisiting the youth league days? These questions are tantalizing not least because Wallace-Johnson activities were centered on the youth; employed as well as unemployed. Wallace had in fact argued in the thirties that the youth of Sierra Leone would one day assume the mantle of radical leadership and redeem the Athens of West Africa in the eyes of the Black World and in the eyes of humanity. Is this therefore Wallace’s dream come true or is it a caricature? I would argue that the youth project which started unfolding in the 70s and which inevitably culminated in the emergence of the RUF/NPRC and the beginning of the "uncivil" war is not an enactment of the Wallacian project because it lacked the discipline and the maturity that Wallace-Johnson was known to constantly emphasize in his speeches and writings. Even so, it raises the question of a probable connection in a not too dissimilar socio-economic context. Paul Richard’s Fighting for the Rain Forest: War, Youth and Resources in Sierra Leone (1996) does come to grips with the role of youth in the drama surrounding the war and the continuation of the war. But his heavy emphasis on resources and the forest (he should have concentrated on the trees instead of the forest) seems to down play the political importance of youth culture, not youth, in shaping the process leading to the rebellion and the continuation of the war.

This youth culture which evolved in the late 60s had its genealogy in the so-called rarray boy/lumpen culture. It was the classical rarray boys, or if you will the first generation, who were the foot soldiers for the politicians. They played this role because of their contradictory lumpen consciousness and their defective education. They were mostly unlettered, predominantly second generation residents in the city, whose abode the Pote, and was also a cultural /leisure space constructed around the odelay (debul). These groups were known for their anti-social behavior: drug (jamba), petty theft, violence (chuk), which did not endear them to the populace at large. Their periodic carnivals on public holidays was always under the watchful eyes of the police; they needed permit for their carnivals, first from city officials and later from the police, in order to pull debul. Their revelry and riotous behavior alienated them from the city inhabitants: they were a good for nothing bunch to avoid in the interest of peace. The rarray boys are still waiting for their historian/sociologist. The work of Dr. Dennis Bright at the French pedagogic centre and Rev. Sam Kpakra of the Sierra Leone Christian Council on grassroots community development and drug rehabilitation are major leaps toward our understanding of this youth culture.

This representation of lumpen culture however started to change in the 70s particularly when middle class youths and other respectable bunch became interested players and participants in lumpen popular culture. This change was reflected in the changing character and composition of the pote as well as the acceptance of Odelays as part of the urban cultural landscape. Yet this change reflected all the contradictory tendencies inherent in lumpens as a social category and their culture. Thus whereas politicians were interested in co-opting and taming this culture so as to ensure a ready supply of thugs to do their dirty work, the entry of middle class youth and others in the pote as participants in the periodic carnivals, transformed the culture as well as the nature of the pote. These youth were still in high school; they participated in the drug culture but still stayed in school. Others dropped out and followed the footsteps of the original rarray boys. The entry of this new crop changed the social equation in the pote. This new change coincided with the coming of reggae music and a decided turn to the political.

The influence of music was at first local: it was rock music, drug and political talk. It started with Purple Haze, a musical group in the city of Freetown, Super Combo from Bo, later followed by Afric Jessips, Superb Seven and Sabanoh ‘75. The proliferation of reggae music - Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Burney Wailer - and the political lyrics of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, Osibisa and Manu Dibango added another dimension to the repertoire of youth rebelliousness and non-conformity. The liberation struggles against settler colonialism also contributed to the development of this new culture of resistance. The pote, like the English pub, became an arena for discussions centered on what was popularly referred to as the system. System "dread" became a slogan and a rallying call for alienated youths in the potes who were mostly unemployed. The popularity of marijuana within this cohort brought diverse groups to the pote so much so that the language of the pote began filtering into mainstream society. Lumpen youth culture was at the cutting edge in the development of Krio language; they expanded the vocabulary which came to incorporate items from their cultural repertoire. The transformation from rarray boys to service man was complete with a new language and an iconography of resistance. This transformation was signified by the link between town and gown.

Ishmael Rashid has explored the connections between this new lumpen culture and FBC students in his forthcoming publication  Subaltern Reactions: Student Radicals and Lumpen Youth in Sierra Leone (1977-1992). What comes out clearly in his take on the issue is the emergence of organic intellectuals, those who were in the forefront articulating some form of change. In the 70s this group included mostly high school drop outs and some unfortunate O and A level holders who were mostly unemployed; spent a lot of time in the pote; some later went to FBC, while the majority joined the expanding army of Freetown’s unemployed who lingered mostly in the potes and the numerous working class and lower middle class pubs in the city. These groups were conversant with the political philosophy of some distinguished Africans, they knew in outline form the history of slavery and the slave trade and the dehumanization of the African; they could make connections between the colonial past and the post-colonial present; they generally espouse some form of Pan-Africanism. During this period, pote discussions were spiced with generous quotes from Marcus Garvey, Kwame Nkrumah, Wallace-Johnson, and at times Haile Selassie. Some of these pote-types had read some Nkrumah (Class struggle in Africa was quite popular), some Fanon, some Rodney, a bit of Che Guevara, Fidel Castro’s History Will Absolve Me (1953), and some undigested Marx and Lenin propaganda, thanks Soviet Progress publishers.

By the 1980s students at FBC were a respectable lot in the pote; they were a reference group for their unfortunate brothers, and their role in the 1977 demonstrations enhanced their status vis a vis other groups in the pote. In the pote’s code of honor, essentially an extension of the bra-borbor clientist’s relationship in the society, due regard was given to the service man who frequented the pote and was also a student at FBC. Their unfortunate brothers listened to them as they preached, smoked and politicized in the safe confines of the pote. It was within this social ferment that the change from service man to man dem took place. By then, the camaraderie had come full circle: one love and brotherhood had become the slogan of this new group of youths. This discursive practice was visible in the popular support the 1977 demonstrations received even though some of the thugs who were mobilized by Kemoh Fadika to storm FBC were recruited from the pote. It is also from this vantage point that the series of student protests in the 80s become intelligible. The students, who were immersed in the rebellious youth culture, became the most articulate group to oppose the APC by utilizing the platform of student politics to launch an attack on APC rule in general and to call for change.

The 1977 student demonstrations were organized and led by students who were participants in this resistance culture. The Gardener’s club, much maligned by outsiders, was central to some of the demonstrations in the late 70s and early 80s. By the 80s, however, other student groups had emerged that were politically organized. The Green Book study group, the Douche Idea of Kim Il Sung, the Socialist club and PANAFU, Pan-African Union. These student political groups debated strictly political matters and sought to use the student union as an effective medium to channel their grievances at the national level. They were different not only because of their decidedly political thrust but also because they eschewed the drug culture, a central pillar of this rebellious culture.

The 1977 students’ demonstrations were not the first time that students were involved in national politics. Before this incident, FBC students were involved in the APC inspired agitation against the introduction of a one-party system.

Later the APC, through Alfred Akibo-Betts, established a branch of the Youth League on campus in the early 70s. But like the lumpens before them, the students did not enter the political arena as independent actors; they were always brought in as foot soldiers in the service of a mythical common agenda. 1977 was therefore the first time that FBC students as a body intervened in the political arena as an informal opposition. The initiative was taken solely by students, the radical students, who did not anticipate the consequences of their actions. The demonstrations exposed the fragility of the APC regime; it was a popular uprising which was supported by a cross section of the population. The Pa was forced to grant some concessions: a general election was called three months later. Inspite of its limited gains, the demonstration was successful: it revealed the potential of organized protest particularly by College students. It was a lesson to both students and politicians about the political potential of organized student protests.

It was therefore not surprising that the APC government became involved in student politics by attempting to sponsor candidates. Attempts to draft noted radicals on campus did not succeed but it revealed the polarized nature of student politics as the nation entered the turbulent 80s. The economic downturn in the early 80s, partly fuelled by the lavish hosting of the OAU conference, and the dwindling revenues from mining exacerbated by rampant smuggling, affected the provision of scholarships for students as well as expenditure on health and other social services. The increase in the ranks of the unemployed continues to shape the discourse in the pote. And the muted talk about revolution in the 70s, gave way to open talk about revolution. But how this revolution was to be prosecuted was never systematically discussed nor were other options explored.

The talk about revolution, vague and distorted as it was, remained alive in the rhetoric and the language of rebellious youths. And the language shifted from man dem to comrade, and finally to brothers and sisters. This shift was symptomatic of an ideological change particularly amongst the Organic Intellectuals in the pote and the numerous study groups in the city and in Bo, Kenema, and Kono. This change was evident in the political groups which had emerged at FBC campus in the early 80s. Anti-imperialists slogans were appropriated as part of this youth iconography.

Meanwhile student-administration relations on campus deteriorated. A student demonstration in January 1984 resulted in a three month lock out. A Commission of inquiry set up to look into the frequent complaints of students and conditions in the campus turn out in their favor. The Kutubu Commssion report was never released. By 1985, the administration had taken it upon itself to discipline students so as to keep state interference to a minimum. It was in this context that a radical student union leadership emerged to channel the accumulated grievances of students over the years. The movement was a coalition of radical groups on campus with a populist platform that attracted radicals as well as democrats.

The Mass Awareness and Participation (MAP) student union President Alie Kabba was elected unopposed, while he was in Libya attending the annual green book celebration. The MAP was loose coalition of radicals: it involved members of Green book study group, the Gardeners’ club, PANAFU, and the Socialist club. But its fierce rhetoric, bordering on adventurism, alarmed the college administration. The new government did not follow in the footsteps of previous student leaderships who only tried to address national issues in crisis situations; they took the initiative, partly as a result of the popular youth culture of which it was a product, to link up with youths in the city. Their publicity campaign spawned numerous anti-government posters on campus and the city. A people’s tribunal was set up to adjudicate between students, and to combat anti-social behavior. It was a popular government based on allege Peoples Power.These activities, and the rumor that the student leadership was been sponsored by the Libyans, did not endear then to the administration.

What remains unclear in the muddle accounts of several participants is the source of the wild campaign of disinformation about Libyan sponsorship and involvement in student politics. Perhaps, Alie Kabba’s trip to Libya added some credence to the charge about Libyan sponsorship. If this was the case then it was indeed a flimsy ground on which to base such a serious allegation. And the trip to Libya was not clandestine nor was Alie the only student who travelled with the Sierra Leone delegation. There were two faculty members on the delegation, Cleo Hanciles and Moses Dumbuya. Whatever the case, the charge of Libyan involvement was serious enough to provoke another student lockout.

The events which led to the expulsion and suspension of some 41 students were connected to the alleged Libyan linkage of the student leadership. The students were accused of holding on to their keys during the lent semester break because they intend to camp Libyan mercenaries in their hostels. Neither the administration nor the government investigated the allegation. What the College administration did was to invite the notorious SSD gendarme on campus to literally flush out students from their hostels. When the college reopened, for the Easter semester, the administration was faced with a militant student demonstration against the expulsion and suspension of students which subsequently engulfed the city. It led to widespread looting, vandalism and in the ensuing melee,’ the principal’s car got burnt. Three faculty members - Olu Gordon, Jimmy Kandeh and Cleo Hanciles, judged friendly to the students lost their jobs. Olu Gordon and Cleo Hanciles were founding members and patrons of PANAFU. The student union president, Alie Kabba, and four other students - Haroun Boima, Derek Bangura, Israel Jigba and Mohamed Barrie - were arrested and detained for two months. They were later arraigned for allegedly torching the principal’s car. The action of the student radicals could be described as infantile. They were neither politically mature nor sufficiently disciplined to realize the short comings of whatever leverage they had on the administration or the state. They naively thought that their rhetoric could deliver their puerile call for people’s power without a solid organizational base.

Compared to the 1977 leadership, the 1985 student leadership was more organized. Unlike 1977, they were politically blind: they failed to understand the inherent limitation of student politics and the dead end of student confrontational politics. Elsewhere on the west coast, notably Nigeria and Ghana, this confrontational stance had taught students a bitter political lesson. Perhaps, the unpopularity of the regime was a factor shaping student militance: the students enjoyed tremendous support on campus and in the city. The activities of Alie Kabba, the union president, were according to some his closest advisers, too naive and politically immature. The interview he granted to the BBC about the new change (where he allegedly expressed his determination to have State House come talk to him) was in the words of one of his closest comrades a stupid mistake.

Their expulsion from FBC ended a phase in the making/constructing of an informal opposition. Henceforth, the baton, it seemed, was passed on to the lumpen youths and their organic intellectuals some of whom had graduated from FBC and Njala in the city and the numerous study groups/revolutionary cells in Bo, Kenema and Koidu. Why did student radicals in Sierra Leone, obviously far backward ideologically speaking in comparison to their counterparts in Nigeria and Ghana, embrace the word of Pan-Africanism and Libya’s Green book ideology? Why did Ghadaffi’s Green book ideology take root in Sierra Leone and not in other West African countries? The student movements in Nigeria and Ghana applauded the anti-imperialist stance of Colonel Khadafy and supported Libya’s uncompromising position on the question of Africa’s liberation and Third World independence. They did not embrace the message partly because they were wedded to Marxian political economy analysis a la Ake and partly because they were critical of Khadafy’s Third Universal Theory. Radical students in Nigeria did not theorize the role of students as vanguard of the revolution. Their position on the Nigerian revolution was always articulated from the vantage point of an alliance of progressive forces. The disastrous attempt by Isaac Boro, a student leader in the 60s had foreclosed this option for the student radicals in Nigeria.

Perhaps, the backwardness of the student movement in Sierra Leone with regard to ideology and the lack of a post-colonial radical tradition was a factor in explaining the attractiveness of the Green Book. Some student radicals who were involved in this performance are now offering an auto-critique of what, with the help of hindsight, they now dub youthful adventure. Others suggested that it was not really the message but the opportunity to travel and get some cash which explains their involvement. This could have been the case for some of the students. Yet the failure to critique Khadafy’s ideas and the inherent contradictions in the text reveals a lot about the consciousness of this radical bunch. They did not only fail to offer a critical analysis of Khadafy’s populism but failed to make the obvious connection between the Green Book and Libya’s foreign policy. No attempt was even made to understand the Colonel’s support for Idi Amin or his claim to Chadian territory. It is this lack of ideas, this failure to search for one based on a thorough analysis of the situation, which explains why Pan-Africanism (the pan-Africanism of Wallace-Johnson?) was uncritically appropriated, or why revolutionary Pan-Africanism, became an option. Pan-Africanism was therefore the context within which the movement unfolded; Libya, the midwife of the Revolution to be. 

Posted Leonenet: Tuesday, 12-Nov-96 05:50 PM ([email protected])