Tag Archives: Liberia

Liberian politics gone awry

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Scholars of historical institutional economics place a lot of emphasis on cognitive states and beliefs about how the world works as central to understanding the evolution and persistence of good institutions. Countries that have emerged out of abject poverty also happen to be those that managed to harness technology and rational-scientific knowledge for the public good.

It is therefore disheartening to read that in Liberia politicians engage in acts that belong in the pre-modern era. Whether they do it merely to instill fear in their opponents or actually believe in what they do is secondary. These acts are simply intolerable.

The Economist reports:

In a case dating from March last year, due to come to court soon, a pregnant woman and her unborn baby were killed and body parts taken. Vials of blood were reportedly found in the house of a senior official in Maryland, a south-eastern county where superstitious beliefs are strong. But reports of such killings come from all over. And traditional “heart men” now include criminals who trade body parts for cash.

Liberia’s long civil war made such things seem less gruesome. In 2008 Milton Blahyi, a former warlord, admitted to eating children’s hearts before going into battle. Along with wearing female wigs and going naked, the practice was believed to bring victory.

More on this here.

A related story from last year can be found here.

ushering in the new year

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Happy new year to all readers.

2011 will be a crucial year for a few countries on the Continent. On January 9th Southern Sudan will vote for secession, creating the newest state in the world. The aftermath of that might be all out war with North Sudan (over borders and oil) and/or civil war in the south (ethnically motivated warfare over control of the new state). That is what most analysts predict. I think there is a glimmer of hope for peace due to heavy Kenyan investment in the south and the desire to build, link and orient the new nation towards the East African Community. Watch this space as it all unfolds.

Uganda will hold elections on February 18th. Yoweri Museveni will win big and dig in even more now that Uganda has oil in the west of the country. Also bolstering Mr. Museveni’s hold on power will be the LRA’s delusional insurgency in the north of the country and the continuing war on terror in the horn of Africa – Uganda’s troops form the core of the African Union (AU) forces in Somalia. Mr. Museveni has been in power since 1986.

The other major election will be in Nigeria, the continental behemoth in the west. President Goodluck Jonathan is favored to win, but his victory will most certainly be tainted with chaos and irregularities.

Other countries holding elections in the new year are Central African Republic, Benin, Madagascar, Cape Verde, Chad, Djibouti, Niger and Liberia.

Electoralism remains largely dysfunctional and inconsequential in Africa because of a myriad of structural impediments (poverty, weak institutions, monarchical presidentialism, etc). In the recent past events in Kenya, Zimbabwe and Cote d’Ivoire have shown how far the Continent is from being a liberal democratic paradise (may be democracy is not for everyone at all times?). 2011’s elections will no doubt fail to buck the trend.

everyone is under the law

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It is kind of nice to be reminded that in a democracy nobody should be above the law. The pictures of sitting members of parliament, one of them an assistant minister, arraigned in court on charges of incitement are definitely refreshing.

In other news, a reminder that parts of the Continent still have the sort of CRAZINESS that ought to drive even the most mild tempered of us mad. And of course it is hard to talk about civil conflict without mentioning the land of Mobutu.

stop the blame game and move on

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I am no apologist for colonialism. I am also not a fan of blaming everything on colonialism. Arbitrary borders, neocolonialism, assassination of presidents, unfair farm subsidies etc etc are the usual things we hear as explanations to why most of Africa remains economically backward. I say it has been more than 50 years and its about time we moved on. Colonialism had its evils, no doubt about that. However, it’s enduring legacy on the Continent has been the fault of Africans and their leaders. There are numerous other countries that have managed to take off even though they were also colonized and for some time were heavily dependent on the industrialised West.

Mobutu, Amin, Bokassa, Moi, Mugabe, Nimeiry, Gaddafi, Doe etc etc were all Africans who deliberately chose to mess up their countries. Nobody held guns to their heads to force them to do what they did. Guinea – at independence – is a clear case that it was quite possible to break free from the former colonizers. All the above mentioned men presided over wasted dictatorships. They killed and maimed and jailed thousands of their citizens but never attempted to do what Pinochet did for Chile or the dictators of the Asian tigers did for their countries. Instead they stole everything they could from their treasuries.

The reason I bring this up is because I just attended a talk on the legacy of colonialism in Africa where the general consensus seems to have been that European colonizers were to blame for most ills on the continent. I find this track of thought wanting. African failure should squarely be blamed on inept African leadership.

the war muddied everyone

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News that Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa’s first elected female president, had funded at least two rebel groups – including Charles Taylor – left me surprised and less optimist about the Continent. It was a stark reminder that politics is a dirty game, especially in the context of a civil war as crazy as Liberia’s (which had among its cast the self-styled General Butt Naked). It is hard to imagine how any prominent Liberian politician from the 80s and 90s could have avoided siding with any of the many warring factions.

Perhaps this comment from the FP website sums it best:

“Of course, it’s not clear that there is a Liberian over the age of six who hasn’t supported one rebel group or another the past twenty years. If they were all banned from politics, there wouldn’t be a local left to run the place.”

It is hard to sympathize with Ms Sirleaf without appearing to be applying double standards given Taylor’s treatment by the wider international community. That said, one thing is clear: Ms Sirleaf is no Foday Sankoh or Charles Taylor.

And speaking of Liberia, Charles Taylor’s defense at his trial in the Hague is turning out to be a  major hilarity. And of course nobody does better reporting on these issues than Wronging Rights.

grave looting in liberia, madness on steroids

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The BBC has a story that got me wondering what kind of hole Liberians have dug themselves into. You’d think that this West African country had reached its lowest point when mindless lunatics like Master Sergeant Samuel Doe and Gen. Butt Naked called the shots. But it turns out things could get lower, much much lower. The BBC reports that residents of Monrovia are complaining about a ring of grave robbers that are believed to have desecrated over 2000 graves. Yes 2000!

I am no expert on grave robbery but in my humble estimate I think it takes quite some time to dig up a grave, take out the casket and then leave the cemetary. It beats me how people can do this more than 2000 times without being caught. How hard can it be to catch people who repeatedly dig up graves in a known cemetary? Come on Liberians.

This story is yet another sad reminder of what war does to the human psyche. I have been to a few African countries and in all of them I noticed a deep respect for the dead – demonstrated in elaborate funeral rituals. It is unimaginable that Africans could routinely do what a section of Liberians are doing to their dead. It is apparent that, over the years, the war has demystified human life to these thugs and so for them anything goes, including emptying graves for their contents. This is a new nadir.

bush visit to africa

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President George Bush will pay his final official visit to the continent this coming week. According to the White House website the president and his wife will visit Africa between Feb 15 and 21 to see firsthand the impact of America’s aid towards prevention and containment of HIV/AIDS and other tropical diseases.

President Bush’s itinerary will include stops in Tanzania, Benin, Ghana, Liberia and Rwanda. Although Bush is wildly unpopular at home and in many other parts of the world, many Africans still view the president in a good light because of the visible impact that his aid policies have had on the continent’s struggle with AIDS. Mr. Bush launched the $500m aids fund for Africa in 2002 in an attempt to help many of the African countries struggling with high infection rates and lack of ARVs. Since then many of the countries that received the aid have managed to reduce the spread of AIDS and deaths due to the virus through the provision of affordable ARVs.

AIDS remains one of Africa’s biggest challenges. The continent has the world’s highest average infection rates and is faced with a crisis as millions of children continue to be orphaned by the scourge. A few countries like Uganda have managed to stem the spread of the virus while others have chosen to treat it as less of a threat. Yet others have even gone comical – South Africa and the Gambia come to mind. In South Africa, Mbeki insists that HIV does not cause AIDs and his health minister thinks that herbs would cure the illness. The President of Gambia on the other hand insists that he can cure the disease, but only on Thursdays.The church in Africa in its reluctance to endorse the use of condoms among the faithful is also playing a role in the spread of the disease.

I hope that Bush’s visit will be a wake up call to African health officials. The continent’s health services are in dire need of modernization since most of them lack equipment and drugs and cannot deal with even the simplest of illnesses.