First Female African Head of State Takes Office:

Sometimes You win

Sept. 13, 2006

In January of this year, with 500 U.N. peacekeeping troops deployed for the occasion, a descendant of former slaves in the United States was calmly sworn into office as President of Liberia.

“I am excited by the potential of what I represent,” Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf proclaimed in her inauguration speech, “the aspirations and expectations of women in Liberia, African women and women all over the world.”

The first female head of an African state, Ellen John-Sirleaf is a 67-year-old Harvard economist and former Director of the UN Development Program Regional Bureau for Africa. In the 1980’s she served as Citibank’s director in Nairobi, Kenya, and would later serve as a financial advisor to the International Monetary Fund, but in 1985 ran her first unsuccessful campaign for President of Liberia.
Had she won, the fortunes of Sub-Saharan Africa might have turned out much differently. Instead, the corrupt regime of dictator Samuel Doe won the vote, Johnson-Sirleaf was placed in prison, and civil war proceeded to decimate the region for the next 18 years.

In 2003, the United Nations finally sent in 15,000 troops and brokered a truce that brought down Doe’s equally abominable successor, Charles Taylor. A War Crimes tribunal was commissioned in Sierra Leone to prosecute the former president and others implicated in genocide, rape and the use of child soldiers. At the same time, Liberia has been saddled with a three billion dollar international debt. Many believe much of the debt is illegitimate, since foreign governments, including the United States, had supported both Doe and Taylor despite their dubious records.

Johnson-Sirleaf has been dubbed the “Iron Lady” since taking office. She would have to be, given the continent’s grim record regarding the longevity of heads of state in that part of the world. Rwanda’s Assistant Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana previously held the highest post of any female in Africa, yet didn’t serve long. She was murdered in her home at the beginning of the genocide of 1992, in which nearly a million Rwandans lost their lives.

At President’s Sirleaf’s swearing-in ceremony in Monrovia, both First Lady Laura Bush and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice sat among the dignitaries. However, back in Washington, not everything is tea and crumpets concerning the United States’ relationship with Liberia.

Emira Woods, Co-Director of Foreign Policy in Focus, a progressive think tank of the Institute for Policy Studies, of course expressed delight in a recent interview about Sirleaf’s electoral victory.

“I think it's extraordinary that a woman has finally emerged in the top post in Africa. If you look around at recent developments in women's political leadership it is not only in Liberia but in a number of countries where women are rising to prominence to cabinet level posts, in parliamentary and legislative posts.

From Liberia herself, Woods also points out that the country still needs an infrastructure that provides jobs housing and other basic building blocks that can mitigate against the problem of instability. She also agrees that the debts incurred by past regimes should be shouldered by the governments that knowingly made the bad loans,”explaining that during the Reagan Administration, more money poured into Liberia (after Doe deposed the sitting president in a coup) than the cumulative total of all other money given or loaned to the country since it became a republic in 1847 .

“Clearly the bulk of U.S. funding went to build the military machinery,” according to Woods, “and also went to fuel to type of loan that created the debt in the first place.”

Located on the upper west coast, below Nigeria, Liberia is a nation of rainforests, mangrove swamps, rubber and coffee. Liberia, situated in sub-Saharan Africa, It was founded in 1822 by former African American slaves. In 1816, shipping merchant and Quaker Paul Cuffee was the first to transport returnees back to Africa aboard his own ship, the Elizabeth. That particular group took up residence in nearby Freetown, Sierra Leone.

Cuffee, who was also of African descent, died before he could make a second trip. A few years later, however, the American Colonization Society and other organizations dispatched representatives, along with two U.S. Government officials, to negotiate a land purchase in the sub-Saharan western coast. At first, the area’s tribal chiefs were not interested in selling. Then in 1821, American Robert Stockton, paid a visit to one of the more influential players, a chief known as King Peter. Stock is said to have placed a gun to the man’s head and made an offer he couldn’t refuse.

With that inauspicious beginning, a new nation was born, and up until 1980, things went rather smoothly for the former American colony. But that year, President William Tolbert was murdered in his bed during a coup d’etat launched by junior military officers. Army master sergeant Samuel Doe seized control of the nation, and appointed his associate, a man named Charles Taylor, to head the General Services Agency. Educated in the United States, Taylor soon found himself rushing back into Yankee territory when Doe accused him of embezzling a million dollars from the country’s treasury.

In Massachusetts, Taylor was apprehended and detained in the Plymouth County House of Corrections on an extradition warrant, and a decade of atrocities and genocide might well have been averted had not for the suspicious events that followed. Taylor somehow executed a jailbreak, departed the United States without incident, hen set up a military operation in Sierra Leone a short time later.

Of this bizarre episode, a BBC biography of Taylor notes, “Some reports say he managed to escape the prison by sawing through the bars; others that there was some collusion in his departure from Americans who wanted him to play the role he then proceeded to carve out for himself – overthrowing the corrupt, violent and generally disastrous regime of Samuel Doe.”

Taylor capitalized on the historic friction between the native tribes of Liberia and those freed slaves who colonized the region in the 19th century, and therefore received ample support when he launched the first incursions into the country in 1989. By 1996, he controlled every township in Liberia, save Monrovia, the capitol.

At this time, the United Nations negotiated a truce which called for election in which Taylor could run as a candidate. His campaign motto: “He killed my ma; he killed my pa. I’ll vote for him” went over like gangbusters, and easily beat his nearest opponent - who happened to be Ellen John-Sirleaf – in what international observers described as a fair and free election.

The BBC bio of Charles Taylor continues: “His friends over the years have included the once-radical Colonel Gaddafi of Libya, the conservative former ruler of Ivory Coast, Felix Houphouet-Boigny, the current Preesident of Burkina Faso, Blaise Compaore, and a rogues’ gallery of businessmen, local and foreign, prepared to flout U.N. disapproval to make money in Liberia.”

Taylor proceeded to negotiate away much of the country’s timber and diamond mine concessions, and supported an unsavory rebel group known as the R.U.F., which was attempting to overthrow the governments of both Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast. Rebel groups from those countries, in turn, attacked Liberia, plunging the region back into violence for another half decade.

At the time of Sirleaf’s visit to Washington, the fugitive remained at large in Nigeria. Even though Liberia is not a party to the war crimes charges in Sierra Leone, the Nigerian government refused to surrender Taylor unless Sirleaf officially requested his extradition.

In March, this obstacle was surmounted. At first, the Nigerian government announced that Taylor had disappeared from his villa and could not be apprehended. Unfortunately for Taylor, an impending state visit to Washington by the Nigerian President fell in doubt unless that country produced the war criminal. Taylor was subsequently arrested near the border of Cameroon, and today remains tucked away in the Hague, awaiting trial.

Shortly before the White House hosted Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, Ellen John-Sirleaf arrived in Washington for her own state visit. She addressed both House and Senate during a joint session, but left Capitol Hill with a paltry $4 million dollars appropriated from the Low-Income Countries Under Stress Trust Fund. She has also received a pledge of $25 million from the World Bank, barely enough for a single payment on a foreign debt she describes as being “beyond the realm of comprehension”.

In addition to reviving industry, Sirleaf has called for a major transformation of Liberia from international charity case to developing nation. Over 3 million people still remain displaced in Liberia after a decade, and in recent years to an unprecedented wave of fraud, mismanagement and outright thievery by many NGO’s (nongovernmental organizations), as well as U.N. employees responsible for distributing relief.

Camp administrators have been accused of presiding over a huge prostitution for food scandal. Earlier this year he international charity Save the Children published the results of an investigation documenting the systematic sexual exploitation of girls and women.

Officials from U.N. agencies involved in the scandal say they’re taking steps to curb the abuses, and in some cases, prosecuting the offenders. And according to the Institute for Policy Studies’ Emira Woods, “One of the first acts of the new government was pushing forward a law against a rape and gang rape in particular speaks to the fact that there is tremendous concern the condition and lives of young girls and it is those types of measures that protect the vulnerable that are needed even more.

Nunu Kidane, a Liberian woman who formerly served as program director for the San Francisco based International Development Exchange, says there has been a lot of soul searching among humanitarian agencies of late concerning the entire approach to charity.

“Africa is probably the only continent where over the last thirty years we've seen a regression of economic development,” she says. We know a lot of things do not work.

Her organization was instrumental in developing what a partnership model with grassroots African organizations, in which those groups are empowered to manage programs on their own. After all, she explains, “They know the language, they know the culture, they know what works.”

Woods notes that in Africa especially, indigenous women have risen in the ranks of political leadership, and that despite the endemic problems with sexual abuse, in many African countries more than 40% of members of parliaments and legislatures are women, compared to only 13% in the U.S. Congress. “And new leadership is emerging, but it will take time for that new leadership to find that sort of firm footing that will bring about economic development, peace and stability.”

In the meantime, Woods is concerned about corporations like Firestone, whose power and policies continue to undercut efforts by African countries to develop their economies. In Firestone’s case, the company makes tires from rubber imported from Liberia, the world’s largest producer of that commodity. Since 1926, Firestone has been implicated in underhanded bargaining, and in 2005 Woods says the company cut a deal (prior to Sirleaf’s election) whereby it could buy rubber for just sixty cents an acre.

“Rubber is kind of like oil,” Woods says. “It's the highest price that it's been in history, over a thousand dollars per ton, and yet they are essentially stealing the resources, exploiting the workers and destroying the environment in Liberia.”

How you can help:

The Liberian Education Trust has been establish to generate money to reopen schools in Liberia. To make a donation, send checks payable to the Phelps Stokes Fund, the U.S. fiscal sponsor of the fund, indicating LET on the “for/memo” line. Address: Phelps Stokes Fund, 1400 Eye Street NW Suite 750, Washington , DC 20005. To donate online visit their site at www.psfdc.org/let.htm.

To join the effort to end child labor and corporate policies that are hindering Liberia’s progress, please visit www.stopfirestone.org.

You can find out more about Foreign Policy in Focus at www.fpif.org. Nunu Kidane presently coordinates the Priority Africa Network, a coalition of local organizations based in Berkeley. Their website is www.priorityafricanetwork.org

Copyright 2006 The City Edition