The Remedy for Peace and Development in Liberia
By: J. Momolu Kaindii, Jr
The Perspective
Atlanta, Georgia
Posted May 20, 2008
The settlers/Congos are the historic Liberians. Their ancestors were the freed or non-freed African slaves repatriated from the United States of America in 1822 and resettled in the area now named Liberia by the ACS in 1824. Members of this group are well educated and exposed. Their education was paid for by their parents many of whom were the political and commercial elites of Liberia. Lots of them got educated in high cost schools locally and abroad, mainly United States and Britain, thus behave much like westerners.
The assimilated are native Liberians reared by settler/congo or missionary families in urban environments. Most members of this group are fairly educated because they were fortunate to attend Church or privately managed schools with the elites’ children. The partially-assimilated are also native Liberians who migrated from rural towns/villages and lived with non-educated urban relatives or friends and struggled on their own to acquire some level of education from public schools. Most members of this group do not have international exposure, but rather familiar with life in urban environments. In the 1970s and 1980s, most members of this group admired the assimilated Liberians and founded political and social alliances with them and became their followers.
The non-assimilated are native Liberians who are permanent rural dwellers and acquire no formal western education, but live with the conditions of the changing time. Members of this group admire and believe in their children, relatives and friends residing in the cities, particularly, the political capitol Monrovia. This categorization is particularly important in understanding how Liberians in each category think about and react when it comes to the political future of Liberia. To date and no doubt about this, these four groups of Liberian citizens live with troubling views that are potentially dangerous to the peace, stability and development of Liberia.
For example, the settler/congo group continues to see themselves as first class citizens and Liberia as their personal legacy. Most of them strongly believe in their ownership of Liberia and they alone should lead Liberia’s political future with the natives as mere subjects. They harbor the conservative view that the native Liberians are second class citizens. In their exclusive family gatherings, they frequently castigate the natives over the event of the 1980s and often make sarcastic and irreconcilable remarks.
For the assimilated, most of whom have lost their native identity mainly by change of names, prefer to be identified mostly with their guardians than their natural families. The assimilated Liberians have been the major conduits through which internal and external forces penetrate the natives attempt to advocate for greater political participation and equitable distribution of economic opportunities in the land. Their main desires are lucrative jobs in public or private sectors that can enable them pay for the living expenses of their wives and children abroad and live lavishly with countless underage concubines of native origin in Monrovia. What happens to Liberia and its impoverished rural majority are not of any critical concern to them. Any situation in Liberia that will create those jobs that afford them the opportunity to divert public resources into personal assets is just what they go for. Most elements of this group lack the real academic, economic and moral capacities to govern a multiethnic and illiterate society like Liberia. The so-called progressive intelligentsias who have become critical factors in Liberia’s political spectrum are mixture of this group.
The partially-assimilated Liberians carried in-dept sense of disappointments and insecurity. Some of them also tend to wear the garments of the assimilated Liberians. Most elements of this group were frontline commanders of the indelible events of the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s. They were both actors and victims of the deadly wing of change in Liberia. Some feel betrayed and dejected, with lost confidence in the ability of the state to fairly administer justice in view of its social and political outlooks. In practical reality, the partially-assimilated Liberians associated with the various defunct warring factions who are currently scattered in and outside Liberia feel neglected and hunted. While they may claim honor or seek pardon for what they did positive or negative during the awful decades of war and conflicts, they are non-ignorable variables in Liberia’s political equation. The fears of this group should be allayed.
The non-assimilated Liberians are the majority native rural inhabitants. Most members of this group are illiterate or semi-literate vulnerable rural population who are hanging in the wind and often time deceived and manipulated to actions by the assimilated and their partially-assimilated agents. This vulnerable population easily gets glue to fake and self-proclaimed pseudo-liberators who are self-defeated by over-ambition and disobedience to the laws of nature. These confused figures come in with calculated designs to exploit the ignorance of the rural natives for their personal inner desires. No one should underestimate the mind frame and reactions of this significant portion of the Liberian population. Most of them feel deprived and their reactions are today manifested by their responses to concessionaries occupying their land.
It worth to mention here that the original positions of this segment of the population have shifted upward in that their children who by providence and change in time have acquired some level of western education along with national and international exposures. Most members of this group now have direct representation amongst the partially assimilated. This suggests that the configuration and mentalities of the citizen groups currently constituting the Liberian population and their individual roles in the recent history of Liberia pose greater and critical challenges to the future peace and stability of Liberia, particularly following the departure of the UN Mission in Liberia. This population must be made to have confidence and be comfortable in the new Liberia.
All of these citizen groups must come together to renegotiate the future of Liberia. This is why some of us are strongly advocating that Liberia needs and must undertake a post-conflict reconciliatory national conference that will bring together these contentious groups of Liberians into a face-to-face dialogue on the future of Liberia. This conference should not be the Vision 2024 type. It must be a conference of substance that will bluntly speak to the critical truth in Liberia’s existence and clearly outlines the historical and socio-economic circumstance that occasioned the citizenship of all Liberians. This conference must not be an eating and rhetoric assembly, but rather a real national agenda setting gathering for a new irreversible Liberia with all citizens taking full and unconditional legal responsibilities.
In my mind, the best of time for this conference is now with the presence of the International Community in Liberia. Liberia needs genuine national healing and reconciliation which would not come through any commission or court, but rather through frank and open dialogue base on re-examination of historical data, constitution review and compromise. The four groups of Liberians as mentioned must come together to close the book on the past and renegotiate and endorse a brand new social contract and carve out an agreeable national agenda for the future of Liberia.
E-mail: kaindii@yahoo.ca, 231-06-541-560
© 2008 by The Perspective
E-mail: editor@theperspective.org
To Submit article for publication, go to the following URL: http://www.theperspective.org/submittingarticles.html