MONROVIA – It has been a long journey for Africa’s first democratically elected president. There were rocky treks – even on the plains. Wide, treacherous oceans. High, snowy mountains. And, in the end, she triumphed, and she is today widely celebrated and adored. What was the magic wand? How did she make it? Madam Ellen Johnson Sirleaf tells over a hundred leadership-pursuing young women the vital virtues and traits that cushioned her way to greatness at an ongoing conference of the African Women Leadership Network. THE ANALYST reports.
Former Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has been speaking to scores of young Africa feminists who are meeting in the country for the 6th Inter-generational Retreat of the African Women Leaders Network (AWLN), coaching them not only on how they can get their aspirations turned into concrete reality but also using her experience as a prism to model after.
On the first day of the Retreat, the former Liberian leader who is also World Health Organization’s Goodwill Ambassador told her story powerfully, however cursorily.
“I started on the basis of the strength and the values of my endeavors, integrating that strength to stand up to be able to face difficulties, to be able to speak out and also to learn values of work, value of honesty. Those are the work that stimulated my quest. So, the rest of my journey, all I was saying was, ‘I wanted to be president’, and that cultivated into the presidency.”
She told the young people and other distinguished continental guests in attendance: “I started with the long journey of going from one step to the other, facing the obstacles, being able to overcome them, taking positions from way back in school, positions for the rights of what you think or to have. And moving from that challenging the status quo, being able to take a position, being prepared to suffer the consequences of the action you take.”
Madam Sirleaf continued, as her mentees keenly listened: “And so it’s all of those that mode you into a place where you take a step at a time; you challenge, you win. You move, you stand up, you protect your values and your principles, and you can take on any formidable force.
“So it is. It’s like I say, for some, it can take a much shorter journey because you may just move at a faster pace. The circumstances, the environment in which you operate, will be quite different, and you may be able to establish your strategy in accordance with that environment.”
She also told the young feminists that generally, “we all go through the same tests of faster than others, but the various steps about setting a goal, making sure you know what you want to be and staying on course toward it.”
She warned: “Prepare to face any obstacles. And so with that, I think I went from one step to another. I suffered in certain ways of being prepared. And it’s not an easy journey. You know you will find yourself contained in certain ways, subdued in certain way. But the good thing about it is that if you believe in yourself and you have the confidence that you can do it” when others think you can do it.
Liberia went through decades of war, decades of civil conflict, Madam Sirleaf reflected. “And I was selected right after that. My responsibility, my commitment, was to rebuild the country; it was to make sure we deal with our destroyed infrastructures; our institutions make them functional again. We grant freedom to people, the freedom of thought, the freedom of expression, and make sure that we also reduce the bigness of the presidency.”
Further speaking about her stewardship as a former Liberian president, she said: “We made sure that we began to put Liberia back, whether it was for debt, whether it’s for our credibility, whether of what we were able. Once again, my job was to bring Liberia back and get it started in a manner we should know it had been before the Civil War.
“And so, I thank God that I couldn’t do it alone, many of the people in this room were part of doing it. I was just there; I was just in front. I was just leading. But I could not be an ineffective leader if I didn’t have so many of them in this room to have been there with me. I couldn’t have done it if somebody mentioned Angie Brooks, the first woman president of the General Assembly. You know her emotions. Put her robes on and walk with all the activists. I was an activist too. You know, I challenge and walk and walk the down road. So, all of those we had to do where I relied on this, Ruth Perry, all those women.”
Absolutely, she said further, “I stood on their shoulders. But I didn’t stop there. After standing on the shoulders, I jumped up. Stand on the shoulder. You know your facts; make sure you stand your ground. Make sure you have the knowledge of what you’re trying to do. And that takes effort on your part. Took effort on my part, so that if I was in the situation where there were men, I stood my ground because I could do what they could do.”
Madam Sirleaf also disclosed she was able to establish first, her own credibility, so that if she went into a room she was to go there and take whatever there for the purpose of being there and it was to be there and do what one had to do, and do it well.
“Do it well so that they respect you,” the added. “And I think after that, you find that it’s a very man who is seeing a woman, you’re not a woman, and you’re a man. I’m sure some of you face that right?”
“So, I think with that, it doesn’t take long, you know, once you begin to move in that way, you become a part of your own momentum. Because as you achieve one step, another step, you know, and you go on, yes, you will run to face obstacles,” Madam Sirleaf noted.
“And I always say, don’t worry about failure; failure is the upside down of success, because if you fail in one step, you can build upon that failure, and you can redo it and strategize make all the mistakes you’ve made in the first failure, you know how you can cover them up in your next step forward,” she told her mentees at the Retreat.
Taking Questions
The African matriarch, as one of the major panelists at the Retreat, took questions from the audience, someone asking what was her defining moments in life and at the presidency of Liberia.
She responded: “Well, you know, the first one was dealing with our legislature. Most of those elected were, you know, warlords. So how do you get to work with them? How do you enable them to respect you. But I think on that, you just do the right thing, and you meet them on their course, and you respect them also, and you find a way where you can deal with them. So those are some of the first obstacles. Of course, one of my defining moments is, when I was charged with sedition and was facing the military court that had decided they were going to jail me for 10 years. I would be sent to the notorious prison for six years; it was the defining moment when I could speak up with my lawyer there and so many times and occasions like that.”
As president, of course, perhaps one of the most defining moments, the most testing moment of her administration, she said, was not so much doing the debt issue or the infrastructure or the institutions. Those were things that we do normally within the course of our responsibility.
“But when we got Ebola, that was one that really, really, really one thing defining, and when we saw people dying so much, it was horrifying,” the former President recalled. “The next thing was, we had to make one major decision, a decision that our society was totally unaccepting, and that was cremation. We had to do cremation to save lives, and that took a major decision of saying to hundreds and numbers of people that you will not see your loved ones again, because we’ll have to make sure that we protect the other ones so they all made a sacrifice for those others that we saved.”
She continued: “My cremation decision was a tough one, but it had to be done, and I’m glad that there was a woman in charge. It was just a strong decision as of let me put it this way, I think women, you know, we always say, you know that women don’t like power. We say we believe in influence; we can get what we want to do and that’s correct. That’s influence! But every now and there, you get to show some power, to show that you are in charge.”
Responding to the question on strategies she used to navigate systematic barriers and to take on leadership roles with confidence, Madam Sirleaf stated: “Your confidence is self-confidence. It is an important part for strengthening your ability to achieve what you want, and that confidence is built upon yourself, your experience, your followers, your associates, your mentors, so that you can find your way in such a way that you believe in what you want to do.
“But you do it by making sure that you have a full understanding of the environment in which you’re in. You need to know how to deal with others. You need to study what we do. You need to know the knowledge of what you try to advance in your own journey to achieve your role.”
She explained that each one finds their own way, based upon that, preserving values and principles and making sure one applies their time to get the goals that they have set, realizing that you may not get it all and get it all at the same time you want.
The former president narrated further: “But remember that you keep pushing steady course, moving forward all the time, stopping if there are obstacles, trying to readjust, try to reimagine, trying to reset your goals. But again, always know what you want to be and have confidence like I said that you are going to do it, and you stay focused on getting it done.”
Former President Sirleaf was also asked to share her thoughts regarding how she sees leadership at the top as truly driving meaningful change across all levels.
To this, she replied: “Number one, in my view, leadership by example, I mean you can ask people to do certain things and set certain things. If you’re not willing to do it yourself, you know you have to set the example. If you are the head of an institution, the head of ministry, the head of something, and you’re requiring people to work. You need to work yourself and let them see you working.
“You need to stress honestly and let them know that you are going to be honest. You know you have to have the principles. I think that’s the first step of being able to show that you’re a leader, but a leader must also show empathy, and that’s where women come in. I mean, women do not believe in power for power’s sake. If there’s power, is power to achieve a goal. But that doesn’t mean you hurt others to do it.”
She further explained: “You can understand the feeling of others, and you can also reach out to them so you understand what their issues are, so that when you do take a decision and when you apply power, you’re applying it in the right way, not to be offensive to anybody, but because it needs to be done, and they understand why you have to do it that way. And so I think those are the elements that every leader, but a leader must also like I say, there’s nothing this way you can do alone. Make sure you have a circle of friends. Make sure that you can get counsel from somebody. Nobody knows it all.”
Nobody knows everything, she reminded her young audience, adding: “You can always look to somebody to help. You can always look for training, make sure that you can reach out to somebody and to get to get what you want, but don’t let it take you away, though, from your goal or from your position or from your value, that’s when you have to stand study on it.
“So being a leader, you have to show for humility sometimes that’s why I always said that three “H” that I live by, which comes from my mother. They are hard work, honesty, humility.
If you can combine those three things in whatever you do, you know you can find yourself strengthened in your whole commitment. You can strengthen yourself. You can become more self-confident because you feel that those three things you require of others so you set the example to require any of them.”
Another member of the audience asked: “What will be your thought about how do we go beyond the low numbers of women in political leadership, especially in elected positions?”
The former Liberian head of state replied: “I was able to win the president because of women. You know, women in Liberia, women who help to be there with me, some of you in this room, women who just decided they wanted to see a different country that men had not delivered what they wanted to see. And so I was because of that, but also I’m also sorry that I didn’t have enough women are willing to go and run for the legislature, for parliament, that enough of them to be able to go and to be the ones that will be there to carry out the laws, to help to carry out what we needed to get done, so we wouldn’t have to keep fighting, you know, fighting With the legislature to be to get the proper things done.”
“And we still have that situation in Liberia. I still feel so terrible that we don’t have enough women in the lower house and the upper house for us to be able to work with them and strengthen them, to be able to do something.
“Christine from Rwanda said, ‘We came from Beijing, we passed in Beijing that would have 30% in the parliament. And what they did, they went and they put it before the President, they put it before the Parliament, and they passed it. What happened to our legislation, most of our legislators in West Africa have been battling and battling and backsliding.”
According to ex-president Sirleaf, Rwanda has over 60% in Parliament today and for Liberia, all of West Africa, “we have what 10% were saying in some cases, houses were less than 20% you know, 10% in Liberia, disgraceful.”
He declared: “Let us be ashamed. I say straight forward, because enough of you are not standing enough of you don’t want to challenge. You don’t want to go up there, go and do it. It’s not going to happen because it’s not going to be a giveaway. We don’t want it to be given away. We want to compete. We want to win, because we earn it.”