A dream deferred, By Owei Lakemfa

Tragically, the lofty dreams of the founders of Liberia, due to self-inflicted injuries, became a dream deferred. The new returnees simply replicated the negative policies and actions of the American society, with the victims, this time, being the indigenous people they met. Some of them had lived in what became Liberia for over seven centuries before the new arrivals.
When the US Declaration of Independence proclaimed that all men were born free, the White establishment did not accept the Black Americans as humans who were born free and who therefore have a right to equality. So also did the new arrivals, who became known as Americo-Liberians, not recognise other Liberians as equal human beings. In fact, until 1904, the indigenous Liberians were excluded from citizenship of their country.
The minority Americo-Liberians ruled for 133 years until the April 1980 coup that brought Samuel Doe to power. That itself was the beginning of instability, leading to a Civil War that claimed 250,000 lives or eight per cent of the population. The follow-up elected Presidency of Taylor was truncated and President Charles Taylor was lured into exile in Nigeria by President Olusegun Obasanjo.
The bulk of the Americo-Liberians created a different identity, refusing to integrate the locals, just as the White American establishment had refused to integrate the Black people. They also denied them the ballot, discriminated against them, excluded them from economic opportunities and, worse still, began turning the indigenes into slaves and forcing them to work in plantations, especially those of rubber. The American industry needed rubber and the Americo-Liberians decided to help set up rubber plantations and use slave or forced labour on these.
So prevalent was the new slave system in Liberia that the League of Nations established the Christy Commission, which established that the Liberian government was neck deep in it. Consequently, President Charles D.B. King, the 17th President of Liberia, and Vice President Allen N. Yancy, were forced to resign.
The mention of President King reminds me of the corruption in the Americo-Liberian establishment and the perfidy of its ruling True Whig Party, whose rigging of the 1927 election is the worst in world history. In that election, there were about 15,000 registered voters; the opposition candidate, Thomas Faulkner secured 9,000 votes, while the incumbent President Charles King scored, wait for it, 243,000 votes! That is over sixteen times the number of voters.
The minority Americo-Liberians ruled for 133 years until the April 1980 coup that brought Samuel Doe to power. That itself was the beginning of instability, leading to a Civil War that claimed 250,000 lives or eight per cent of the population. The follow-up elected Presidency of Taylor was truncated and President Charles Taylor was lured into exile in Nigeria by President Olusegun Obasanjo. The latter turned round to betray Taylor, sending him into the hands of Western powers in the name of a request by President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf. She was Doe’s Finance Minister and main fund raiser for the Taylor insurgency. The Sirleaf Presidency was characterised by nepotism; she appointed relatives into juicy positions, where they looted the impoverished country. She appointed her sons, Charles Sirleaf as the governor of the Liberian Central Bank, Robert Sirleaf as the chief executive of the National Oil Company, and Fombah Sirleaf as the head of the National Security Agency.

It remains to be seen whether in the next 25 years, Liberia would mark its Bicentennial Independence, as a country fulfilling its initial dream.
Owei Lakemfa, a former secretary general of African workers, is a human rights activist, journalist and author.

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