Reincarnating Africa’s old man
By Kofi Akosah-Sarpong

Ghanadot, August 2, 2009

In July, Liberia, Africa’s oldest republic, celebrated its 163 years old existence. And in July, too, Liberia’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), set-up in 2005 as a tranqualizer for a deeply troubled country, released its report. True to the nature of the civil war that was as a result of the complicated nature of Liberia’s existence, the TRC final report is attempts to reincarnate Liberia and give it a new functional soul.

Either in the physical or metaphysical realm, reincarnation is a complicated matter, more so, of the Liberian soul, if one’s earlier existence have been deeply messed-up to the extent of self-destruction. The attempts, through the TRC, to reincarnate Liberia is through its history, its culture and the illusion that it is American on African.

As my good friend Lansana Gberie (fondly called Lans), the academic-journalist, writing in www.pambazuka.org entitled Memory and politics: Liberia's TRC report, says of the birth of Liberia, “In its modern form, Liberia was established by the American Colonization Society (ACS) in 1827 as a colony for American freed slaves… in Liberia they replicated the system of servitude they had known in the antebellum South, only this time with them as masters and the majority indigenous Africans as virtual slaves…This is Liberia's foundational deformity, if you will, and it is why post-war Liberia today is burden by a very special anxiety: the fear that it is relapsing into that condition against which the struggles of the late 1970s, the nihilistic coup of 1980, and the subsequent collapse into bloody anarchy was triggered.”

Either in Lans’ superb analysis or the TRC attempts to rationalize the Liberian self-destruction or the on-going Liberian democratic dispensation to make sense of this small but convoluted country, it is all to purge Liberia, an attempt to reincarnate Liberia with a new soul for progress. And making Liberia live a comfortable life entails refining certain parts its culture that contributed to the darkness that engulfed. And also, as its history show, appropriate the enabling parts of its culture for policy-making.

Despite controversies surrounding the TRC report, in the sense of its lack of higher clarity as a mirror of a country that has gone through one of the most terrible experiences in human history, it is healthy that Liberian “Big Men,” who, like other African “Big Men,” out of their stupidity and lack of sense of greater grasp of their country, blew Liberia into pieces, taking note of their culture as one of the antidotes of their malady.

The TRC report, as quoted by Lans, says, "a historical review commission [to] be established to review Liberia's history and produce a version of it that reflects the lives of the people met here by the settlers in 1822 and that "the motto in the seal of Liberia should be changed from its current form, 'The love of liberty brought us here,' to instead read: 'The love of liberty unites us here" and that "a national culture center [to] be established to promote Liberia's diverse culture[s]," and that "a national consultation process [to] be set-up to determine a single indigenous dialect to be spoken throughout the country and taught in Liberian schools.”

In attempting to do so, Liberia will be re-discovering its lost soul, for long disturbed in relation to its foundational cultural values that was heavily ignored by the ruling Americo-Liberians either out of ignorance or demeaning of the majority of the indigenous Liberians. For some time, through its long-running ruling Americo-Liberians, Liberia wrongly saw itself as American but Liberia isn’t. Liberia is African, and it is the megalomaniac Americo-Liberian ruling elites who failed to grasp this and appropriate the indigenous Liberian culture fully as part of its for progress that saw the country asphyxiated and imploded. The TRC report reveals a Liberia trying to think its way of the misunderstanding itself, an act that Africa hasn’t seen from its oldest brother for over 160 years.

And short of the TRC report suggesting appropriation of the positive parts of the Liberian culture for its development process a la Botswana, the almost 15-year civil also revealed that part of the reason for Liberia’s self-destruction was its Big Men’s appropriation of the negative parts of its culture in the state affairs. Aside from the mind-boggling horrors revealed at the TRC and the trial of former President Charles Taylor for crimes against humanity at The Hague, Holland, on June 29, 2005, prior to Liberia’s current democratic dispensation, its interim leader, Gyude Bryant, warned politicians attempting to boost their chances of winning by carrying out human sacrifices and other dark cultural practices that they would be executed. “If you think you can take somebody's life in order to be president, or the speaker (of parliament) or a senator, without anything being done to you, then you are fooling yourself,” Bryant warned.

While Africa welcomes its oldest brother in attempting to re-discover itself through its cultural base (both as psychological and logical processes) and the global prosperity ideals, Liberia should also demonstrate its grasp of itself by attempting to refine the inhibiting aspects of its culture – witchcraft, human sacrifice, dominance of juju-marabou mediums, Pull Him/Her Down syndrome, among others – that were openly revealed during the almost 15 years civil war.
 

Kofi Akosah Sarpong, Canada, August 2, 2009