MONROVIA: Tomorrow, Friday, July 26, 2024 marks Liberia’s 177th Independence Anniversary—23 more years before this oldest African nation hits its bicentennial adversary—quite an extraordinary journey of a people with a long story to tell and behold, be it one they are proud to narrative or one they are shame to identify with. Clearly, even as the Government takes up the celebration momentum in the last couple of days with colorful ceremonies here and there ahead of the main date of July 26, citizens hold polarized views about any motivation to appreciate and celebrate the day along with the government. Though much of what is said in favor and against the rationale for celebration of their nation’s 177th Independence Day is informed by their political and social perspectives, there are facts of history that none can deny or baffle. In honor of this great national event, The Analyst pieces together empirical notes that showcase the high and low points of a nation many believe made spectacular feat at home and abroad but is indeed caged in the misery of its own creation.
In the Wednesday, July 24, 2024 edition of The Analyst, the lead story highlighted and conveyed dichotomous perspectives of Liberians regarding how they see tomorrow’s celebration of their country’s 177th Independence Day. While some contended that, due to prevailing harsh economic realities, there is no reason to celebrate; others argued it is worth celebration.
Almost every year, whenever the Independence Day celebration is spoken to, Liberians are traditionally divided, either across political lines or alone social cleavages. There are often those who feel elated, and most of such citizens are those who are well of, either because the economic and political conditions prevailing are favorable to them, and there are those who object because things are a more socially and politically awful.
Along time, citizens switch their perspectives about the Independence Day celebration, and it depends on how things fare socially, economically and politically at the time or year of the celebration. So, for instance, those who a year or two ago saw the celebration of July 26 fitting and festive because they were in government or because they were benefiting from private and public favor and largess are not, during this year’s celebration, feeling elated about it, and verse versa.
Thus, while citizens vacillate in their opinions and statuses between epochs, one thing is constant: July 26 comes every 12 months each year since July 26, 1847 and is regarded and celebrated as Liberia’s Independence Day. The critical question everyone is asking is this: When shall all Liberians, or most of them, see the celebration of July 26 as something worth doing, to participate in, in joy, happiness and gladness? The question has been, why has this not been possible?
Class Struggle, Lib’s Debilitating Virus
Since the political birth of Liberia in 1847, the state’s most noted woe is class struggle—a fight by one group or another to subdue the other for its own advantage and benefit. It has all been about personal and group supremacy, not necessarily about the national interest, about patriotism, about accommodation of all tribes and persuasions in the political mosaic.
Over the last century and three-score years and 17, there have been struggles between groups based on the color of their skin; it has been about which part of the Atlantic one hailed from; about settlers and indigenous; about regions and counties, about tribes and families. There have been struggles, unspoken and tacit fight, between the political elite and the impoverished masses of the people.
Struggle on skin colors
Those who are familiar with Liberia’s early political history would remember that the very political elite of early independence days, from the late 1840s to the 1880s, were at each other’s throat, having been divided along racist lines—a divide based on the color of their skin—the mulatto-colored and the ebony-skinned. That was when the Americo-Liberians who hailed from the United States, with fair color on the one hand who dominated economic and political powers over the ebony-skinned Congaus/Congos from the Caribbean and latter-day freed slaves that were seized from the Congo Basin on the other.
The dichotomy during those early years of independence largely defined the political and economic life and policies of the period, to the extent that two major political parties drew dominant membership from the public on the basis on pigmentation.
The political and economic rivalry of those days, the maneuverings and counter-maneuverings left scars on the body politic with far reaching implementation on national identity, peace and harmony, with multiplying effects on national development and transformation.
The most dramatic aftereffect of events at that time was the assassination of dark-skinned President Edward J. Roye in 1871—his killing and dragging of his naked body in the streets of Monrovia, something blamed on his fair-skinned political opposition.
That struggle was one within—within because of both the ebony-skinned and mulatto-skinned cleavages that belonged to the settler stock which exulted itself over native Liberians as far as economic and political governance was concerned.
The later rule of the True Wigh Party to which Roye belonged, spanning over 133 years, melted or dissolved the settler dichotomic rivalry into harmonious hold, as both cleavages began to alternatively be called Congo people or American Liberians, who together kept their knees on the neck of the native majority for nearly a century and half.
Settlers and Native Class Struggle
Liberia’s next emergent class struggle was no more about pigmentation, or diasporic origin; it was largely about settlers, those who arrived from abroad having got liberated from servitude or near-servitude on the one hand and the natives, Liberians who were met on the land later to be known as Liberia at the arrival of the settlers, on the other.
The struggle lasted for nearly 150 years with the former slaves-turned-masters perpetrating a form of subjugation, exclusion and coercion against the natives.
The world marveled as the former slaves sustained if not maximized and transposed the cruelty of servitude which they had suffered abroad upon their African brothers who in effect were their hosts. And the struggle also had a long list of casualties, political and economic, to which the native counterparts were the prime preys.
It was only after a century or more years that the natives visibly and substantially fought back to seek a foothold on the governance landscape. That was when children of the indigenous stock and their settler empathizers, having earned a level of education abroad, returned to the motherland in the 1970s to help advance the natives’ quest for recognition, inclusion and participation in the body politic.
The first steps by the emerging revolutionaries, some called them agitators, was to embark upon the political and civic baptism of the silent majority, spreading civil enlightenment and consciousness.
Such organizations as the SUSUKU Incorporated and the Movement for Justice in Africa (MOJA) along with their diaspora partners, such as Union of Liberian Associations in the Americas (ULAA) and Association for Constitutional Democracy in Liberia, were formed to aid in pushing for a politically and socially pluralistic society.
By the end of the decade of 1970s, the class struggle matured into political movements such as the Progressive Alliance of Liberia and other formations which began prosecute bold and audacious confrontations with the Americo-Liberian or Congo hegemony for a space in the political arena.
Amid the fray of the emergent confrontations, occasioned by protests and demonstrations, the Armed Forces of Liberia perpetrated a violent revolution that killed the sitting president and in days several members of the True Wigh Party ruling class.
Mixed Class Struggles
With the takeover of the national governance architecture by predominantly members of the indigenous stock after the 1980 coup, several cleavages emerged in what became to be a scramble for relevance and survival.
There was a struggle between the military which was obsessed with power and advocates for constitutional rule; there was a struggle between internal powers in the military junta, each preoccupied with ethnic sensibilities; there was a struggle within the progressive elite, those who were followers of the Liberia People’s Party’s Dr. Togba-Nah, Dwe Twan-Wleh Mayson, Amos Sawyer, H. Baima Fahnbulleh, Jr., and others on the one hand and devotees of the Progressive Alliance of Liberia or the Unity People’s Party of Gabriel Baccus Matthews, Oscar Quiah, Wesley Johnson, on the other.
All of these struggles, particularly within the progressive stock, weakened the native agenda or the national liberation agenda which was at the heart of the agitation against the hegemony in the 1970s. Thus, outmaneuvering the military junta was difficult and positioning the population towards a single national purpose was impossible.
In the end, as both the political and educated class lost their vision toward building a patriotic culture, national unity and holistic development agenda, the silent majority went alone with evolving cleavages—splinter political parties, ethnic and regional groups, and other narrow solidarity confines.
War’s Carnage and Materialistic Mentality
As Liberians got stuck into the haze of post-coup parochial struggles along splinter interests then came the 14-year-civil conflict with its specter of mentality and psyche soiled in violence, lawlessness, mediocracy, thirst of personal or group morale and insatiable zest for wealth. Studiousness, intellectualism, patriotism evaporated from the national discourse giving way to violence and materialistic life.
At this point, the nation fell flat on its belly, something intellectuals call state collapse and state re-collapse, leaving the fate of the nation in the hands of foreign forces, without a particular doctrine of how it wanted to see itself rise from the vicissitudes of paralysis; no prophet, not priest, no roadmaps, except for some cunning strategy that one ruling elite wanted for itself before relinquishing to another selfish elite.
After the 14 year-civil conflict, and the passing of the transitional government, the chapter that began which some call the period of peace and democracy, the country and its people were already bereft of the steam and focus for genuine nation building efforts.
From 2006 to the present, it has been days of hyenas finding whom to devour. One president after the other, despite all their common expressed vision and interest to improve the well being of the people and the nation, the tragedy has been that hyenas obsessed with the sense of self wealth would not let them do so.
Whether it Sirleaf, or Weah or Boakai, each of the democratically elected president has got their share of the hyenas’ claws and jaws.
So, even though Liberia’s war woes came at about the time of the landlocked nation of Rwanda was in similar situation of state collapse, the two are only similar in the carnage of the same time. But emerging from the ashes of tragedies, Rwanda is now 100 miles ahead, becoming a powerful economy by African standard, an attraction to the world for its quickened recovery and brilliance in development, while Liberia is still crawling in the ashes.
So as the country hits 177 years after independence, and 21 long years after the end of war, the class struggle now exists between the impoverished majority of Liberians who vent their angers against roguish political leaders at the electoral polls by removing them time after time on the one hand, and the political class which have to their credit 24 Degrees each in proficiency in how to dribble and outmaneuver the electorate on the other.
All Not Doom and Gloom
The 177 years of Liberia’s nationhood is not just dastardly and gloomy. There have been sunshine days, when Liberia or a Liberian awe the world with its contribution on the world stage.
Africa’s oldest Republic, Liberia is a signatory to most of the worlds’ iconic organizations, institutions and instruments. A founder of the League of Nation, United Nations, the OUA now EU, ECOWAS.
It was a fortress of Africa’s liberation struggles, providing sanctuaries for freedom fighters and providing needful assistances that contributed to the independence of most of the continent’s pre-day countries.
Liberia is a signatory to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Beijing Convention, countless human rights protocols and conventions.
In the bleak of times, a Liberian, who became president of Liberia, George Weah, was decorated as the best footballer of the world, of Europe and of Africa, and immortalized in the Hall of Fame.
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who also was Liberia’s president, made Liberia shine when we was crowned a Nobel Laurent along with another Liberian, Leymah Gbowee.
And for nearly 20 years, the country has remained peaceful, politically pluralistic and freedom-conscious.
Thus, while at 177 years of independence, others are weeping for the long years of socioeconomic stagnation and backwardness; others celebrate and cheer up due to the country’s contribution on the world stage.
It is not however lost on critical observers that the line of reaction to this year’s celebration, as it has mostly been, is contingent upon social status, financial standing and political affiliation.
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