President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton at the US Department of State in Washington, DC, April 21, 2009. State Department photo.
But at home, things were beginning to become complicated. The terrible outbreak of Ebola in 2014 exposed the longevity of the incredible challenges that had faced Sirleaf when she first took office. So much of what challenged Liberia in 2006 remained in 2014: the weak infrastructure, corruption, and distrust of government. Ironically, the fact that so much money had been spent on rebuilding Liberia exacerbated citizens’ dissatisfaction. As of 2010, for example, Liberia was the third-largest recipient of US aid in the entire continent. But in 2014, 71 percent of the population lived on less than a dollar a day, and basic sanitation was available only to the wealthy, and mainly in Monrovia. And sexual violence against women remained an open national wound. In 2013, 65 percent of the 1,002 reported cases involved victims who were only three to fourteen years of age. Yet only 137 cases came to court, and only 49 rapists were convicted.6 An Amnesty International report in 2011 showed the challenges in prosecuting rape, with magistrates taking up cases not actually under their purview, too few social workers to take care of survivors, and the difficulty of even getting the accused to court because of the shortage of transportation.7
Sirleaf had certainly tried. As Blair Glencorse, chair of Accountability Lab, an anticorruption NGO in Liberia, wrote in 2013, Sirleaf had done much to create transparency in government by passing a Freedom of Information Act. And she had wrested more control over Liberia’s natural resources and tried to stem corruption. However, as Glencorse also noted, Sirleaf herself said in 2012 that corruption in Liberia remained “systemic and endemic.”8 In addition, the promise of securing profit from companies’ investment in Liberia’s natural resources has faded. A “legal loophole” allows the government to issue Private Use Permits to companies: sixty-six such permits have been issued. These permits often apply to collectively owned community lands, and provide less revenue to the government than other contracts.9 In addition, questions about Sirleaf’s relationship with Taylor remained. And citizens continued to complain about Sirleaf’s refusal to comply with the recommendations of the Liberian TRC. In May 2014, for example, Bernard Gbayee Goah, president of an organization called Operation We Care for Liberia, an activist blog dedicated to the “complete transformation of Liberia,” criticized Sirleaf for not heeding the recommendation of the TRC and stepping down. “Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf is not capable of navigating her own people through the rough waters of justice because doing so would mean holding herself accountable.”10
But how much could one ask of a single person? Among many accomplishments, we can note that she reduced Liberia’s crippling international debt, brought running water and electricity to Monrovia, and in partnership with other countries and companies constructed roads across the country, which will help unify Liberia as well as stimulate commerce. She had the international trade sanctions (imposed against Charles Taylor) lifted, and she provided free education up to the ninth grade. In 2006, Sirleaf launched the Girls’ National Education Policy, in cooperation with UNICEF, which dramatically increased opportunities for girls to be educated, and her government also partnered with USAID to increase girls’ education.
In an extended interview in July 2013, President Sirleaf answered questions about corruption in her government, her numerous trips abroad, and the slow pace of change in Liberia put to her by Darryl Ambrose Nmah, director general of the Liberian Broadcasting System. An apparently frustrated Sirleaf patiently answered questions, returning again and again to the challenges Liberia faced after the war. She said that a primary problem was the capacity of Liberians to enact the change and the governance that was required. She defended her trips abroad, saying that these helped give Liberia a voice in the world and brought investment to Liberia. She spoke to a record of dismissing people in her government for corruption, and she pointed out how in trying to be democratic, and being sensitive to communities’ perspectives, some investments that would have brought more employment had taken much longer to get off the ground. Sirleaf concluded the interview with her perspective on Firestone, the company to which the Liberian government had ceded so much power back in 1926. In some ways, one could see this as exemplary of what Sirleaf’s approach had sought to accomplish: through working with powerful companies, which brought employment opportunities and foreign capital to Liberia, she believed change could happen:
We have to work with the concessions. I’ll give you the example of Firestone. You remember where the people used to live? That’s part of the investment. They used to live in hovels. We said to Firestone, you’ve got to give us a five-year plan to transform that Plantation and get better living conditions for the workers. Go to Firestone today; see the transformation that’s taking place there. Today, Firestone students are the ones that are making the highest in the WAEC Exams. LAC will follow; Salala will follow the same pattern; COCOPA will follow. Any other rubber or agriculture concession will do the Firestone model. Those are part of the investment rewards that are taking place, that people say they don’t see there. The other day, Firestone workers just completed their Collective Bargaining Agreement in which their wages were raised. They used to carry the rubber on their shoulders; that has changed now; they have to have little trailers where they can now put the container on the trailer. Those are the good things that are happening, but you know, people don’t see that one. Please come with me in the countryside sometimes, so they can see what’s happening outside. People always say Monrovia is not Liberia, and they’re correct. Out of 4 million people, 1.5 million people are right here in Monrovia. They are making Monrovia Liberia. We are trying to make Liberia Liberia by doing things out there, so that we create the jobs out there, so people can live out there.11
Perhaps the challenges facing the president were just too many, coming too fast, and the legacy of some 160 years of gross inequality was just overwhelming. So by the time Ebola hit in 2014, many citizens had come to feel that Sirleaf had done little to change conditions for Liberians.
A hemorrhagic fever with a very high death rate, 40–90 percent, and with no known cure at the time, Ebola started in Guinea and moved quickly to Sierra Leone and Liberia. The first case in Liberia occurred in northern Lofa County, the county where LURD had launched its war on Charles Taylor. Lofa is a heavily forested county bordering on Guinea and Sierra Leone where people walk back and forth across the borders visiting family and trading. The first case of Ebola was found in March 2014 in a patient who had returned from Guinea. Previous Ebola outbreaks had happened in relatively isolated environments in central Africa and had been contained. Thus, for a while, authorities did not worry much about containment. However, by June 2014, Ebola had continued to spread. By August, Ebola was in Monrovia. The coming of Ebola to a heavily populated city changed the dynamics of Ebola completely, turning it from a deadly disease that could be contained to one that threatened to ruin the three countries in which it was now spreading.
On August 7, 2014, Sirleaf declared a state of emergency. This empowered the government to suspend civil liberties as it saw necessary. Sirleaf said that she had enacted “extraordinary measures for the very survival of our state and for the protection of the lives of our people.”12 Ebola now exposed the degree of animosity that poorer citizens still harbored against government. People were skeptical that Ebola really was contagious and blamed Sirleaf for just trying to bring more development dollars into government pockets. People said things like: “Sirleaf . . . and her minister of health want to pocket money so they have come up with a new tactic to collect money and share.”13 In West Point, a crowded informal settlement in Monrovia, citizens entered an Ebola containment center, freeing patients and taking mattresses and other materials. The government soon placed West Point under quarantine, with the police and the Liberian army patrolling. A military blockade prevented people from Bomi and Grand Cape Mount counties from enteri
ng Monrovia.
By late August, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States was declaring the Ebola outbreak in Liberia the worst the world has ever seen. The head of the CDC praised ordinary Liberians for trying: “I have been impressed by the response I have seen. We met dozens of volunteers answering dozens of calls every day, 24 hours daily, we met dozens of healthcare workers and dozens of community volunteers in rural areas willing to help with the response.”14 But the reality was that Liberia’s infrastructure, neglected for decades, damaged by war, and only just recovering, could not cope with Ebola. Soon doctors and other health workers treating patients died, as did many of the patients they treated. Without basic medical supplies such as latex gloves, good sanitation in hospitals, and a healthy government infrastructure, Liberia became ground zero for the disease.
Again, Sirleaf’s relationships built up over so many years came to Liberia’s rescue. She appealed to the United States to help her crippled country fight the disease. The United States, always wary of getting too involved in Liberia, woke up to the seriousness of Ebola. In September, the US military inaugurated “Operation United Assistance” to coordinate the military’s response to Ebola in Liberia. President Obama authorized three thousand troops to be sent to Liberia to help with logistics and nonmedical help. By early November the military had set up a field hospital for infected health care workers and a hundred-bed hospital. The Cuban and Chinese governments also sent doctors and other personnel to help stem Ebola. By November, the CDC noted that cases of Ebola were beginning to decline in Liberia, but the epidemic raged on in neighboring Sierra Leone and Guinea.15 Time will tell if Ebola becomes a scary chapter in the history of Liberia or a major theme of its future. But by April 2015, Liberia became the first country in the Ebola-affected region to have no new case of Ebola. The last confirmed death from Ebola occurred November 24, 2015.
One of the reasons for the containment of Ebola in Liberia was the move by communities to work toward safer burial practices, which stopped the spread of the disease. Liberians also embraced the campaign to wash hands with bleach and to stop greeting one another with the traditional Liberian handshake, at least for a time. In addition, there was a concerted effort by government and civil society actors to reach out to communities through radio and advertisements, with the government helping to produce a hip-hop song titled “Ebola Is Real.” George Weah and the Ghanaian musician Sydney produced a song about Ebola in 2014 to raise awareness.16 In March 2015, President Sirleaf acknowledged that she had made some errors in her first reactions to the epidemic, particularly with regard to her declaration of a state of emergency. She said that in hindsight sealing off West Point had “created more tension in the society” and promoted distrust between citizens and their government.17
When running for president a second time, Sirleaf said she had underestimated the challenges facing her country. She lamented: “We found a totally collapsed economy, dysfunctional institutions, lack of proper laws and policies, low capacity, and a value system upside down.”18 A year later, having won the election, Sirleaf looked beyond her presidency to the legacies she would like to leave Liberia. “We have to take responsibility for our own development. We have to determine that our resources first and foremost will be used for our development. And if we can send that kind of message to our younger generation who will be assuming leadership, you know, over the next few years, then I think the sustainability of our effort will be secured.”19 Translating that vision into a Liberia where citizens truly feel they have the means and authority to shape their own paths remains the challenge.
Sirleaf did much to try to move Liberia forward. The challenge was whether this vision matched the realities of rural Liberia, where people lived within the legal framework of chiefs and societies, somewhat removed from the national legal system and far from any help the state could provide. Could Sirleaf’s conventional vision of government, rooted in Western assumptions and structures, offer Liberians the kinds of engagement with governance that would make them feel connected to their government? Only time will tell.
Notes
Introduction
1. “The Nobel Peace Prize for 2011,” accessed November 12, 2014, http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2011/press.html.
2. SCR 1325 focuses on the effects of war on women and urges the inclusion of women in peace negotiations and postconflict reconstruction.
Chapter 1: Growing Up in Two Worlds
1. “History of Liberia: A Time Line,” http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/gmdhtml/libhtml/liberia.html.
2. Merran Fraenkel, Tribe and Class in Monrovia (published for the International African Institute by Oxford University Press, 1964), 5, 156.
3. “Indirect Rule in the Hinterland,” accessed April 17, 2014, www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/1985/liberia_1_indirectrulep.htm.
4. Fraenkel, Tribe and Class in Monrovia, 119, 25.
5. Ibid., 33, 34, 36, 39.
6. Ibid., 156, 154.
7. Ibid., 152–59.
8. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, This Child Will Be Great: Memoir of a Remarkable Life by Africa’s First Woman President (New York: Harper Perennial, 2010), 22.
9. “Monrovia, Liberia: Heritage Landmark of the United Methodist Church,” College of West Africa, http://www.gcah.org/research/travelers-guide/college-of-west-africa.
10. Angie E. Brooks, “Political Participation of Women in Africa South of the Sahara,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 375, no. 1 (January 1968): 82–85.
11. Sirleaf, This Child Will Be Great, 29–30.
Chapter 2: Scholar and Government Employee
1. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, This Child Will Be Great: Memoir of a Remarkable Life by Africa’s First Woman President (New York: Harper Perennial, 2010), 7.
2. Cecil Franweah Frank, “A Critical Look at the Role of the Diaspora in Liberia’s Development,” Liberian Dialogue, last updated January 3, 2013, http://theliberiandialogue.org/2013/01/03/a-critical-look-at-the-role-of-the-diaspora-in-liberias-development.
3. “Liberia: America’s Impoverished Orphan in Africa,” Washington Post, accessed April 17, 2014, http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-adv/specialsales/international/spotlight/liberia/article2.html.
4. Merran Fraenkel, Tribe and Class in Monrovia (published for the International African Institute by Oxford University Press, 1964), 61.
5. Lawrence A. Marinelli, “Liberia’s Open-Door Policy,” Journal of Modern African Studies 2, no. 1 (1964): 91–98.
6. Cited in Harold D. Nelson, Liberia: Country Study (Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress, 1985), http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/1985/liberia_1_opendoor.htm.
7. Frank, “Critical Look at the Role of the Diaspora.”
8. Sirleaf, This Child Will Be Great, 81.
9. Fred P. M. van der Kraaij, “Iron Ore: The Start of Operations of Liberia’s First Iron Ore Mine,” Liberia: Past and Present of Africa’s Oldest Republic, last updated May 2015, http://www.liberiapastandpresent.org/ODP/IronOre/IronOreC.htm.
10. Sirleaf, This Child Will Be Great, 71.
11. Siahyonkron Nyanseor, “Putting the Matilda Newport Myth to Rest, Part I,” Perspective, December 1, 2003, http://www.theperspective.org/december2003/newportmyth.html.
12. Helene Cooper, The House at Sugar Beach: In Search of a Lost African Childhood (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2008), 11.
Chapter 3: Liberian Opportunities and International Perils
1. County Development Committee, Grand Gedeh County Development Agenda, Republic of Liberia, 2008–2012 (Republic of Liberia, n.d.), 1.
2. “President Samuel K. Doe, 1980–1990: The Master-Sergeant President,” http://www.liberiapastandpresent.org/SamuelKDoe.htm.
3. Helene Cooper, The House at Sugar Beach: In Search of a Lost African Childhood (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2008), 182.
4. Leymah Gbowee, Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer, and Sex
Changed a Nation at War (New York: Beast Books, 2011), 9.
5. “Remarks of the President and Head of State Samuel K. Doe of Liberia Following Their Meetings: August 17, 1982,” University of Texas, http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1982/81782d.htm.
6. “Liberia and the United States: A Complex Relationship,” Global Connections: Liberia, WGBH Educational Foundation, last updated 2002, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/globalconnections/liberia/essays/uspolicy.
7. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, This Child Will Be Great: Memoir of a Remarkable Life by Africa’s First Woman President (New York: Harper Perennial, 2010), 128.
8. Terry Atlas, “Shultz Visit to Liberia a Bit Sour,” Chicago Tribune, January 15, 1987,
9. David K. Shipler, “Shultz Is under Fire for Asserting Liberia Has Made Gains on Rights,” New York Times, last updated January 16, 1987, http://www.nytimes.com/1987/01/16/world/shultz-is-under-fire-for-asserting-libria-has-made-gains-on-rights.html.
10. “Charles Taylor ‘Worked’ for CIA in Liberia,” BBC News, January 19, 2012, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-16627628.
11. “My Verbal Sparring with Charles Taylor,” BBC News, last updated April 26, 2012, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-17845592.
12. Shelly Dick, “FMO Country Guide: Liberia,” accessed June 1, 2015, http://www.forcedmigration.org/research-resources/expert-guides/liberia/fmo013.pdf.
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