By Mahmoud Jalloh
What President Julius Maada Bio said about Sierra Leone being a divided country, making specific reference to the “Mende Line” and “Temne Line” name-calling, was nothing short of the truth, except that there’s little problem with him saying that in public.
Leaders are made or have their reputation destroyed by their public utterances, something Siaka Stevens was very self-conscious of. He was very selective when it came to making public statements as a Leader.
I don’t want to believe that the President was indirectly giving credence to Structural Tribalism when he said Sierra Leone has always been a divided country, meaning it is not in his place to put things right and so therefore blameless.
The Principle of Command Responsibility means the Leader is blamed for almost everything until proven otherwise. President Bio, like all his predecessors, shares full responsibility for his inability to change the backward-looking regional and tribal politics that make a real mockery of sound democracy where people express their electoral choice based on progress and Leader accountability rather than simply saying, for better or worse, he is from my same region or same tribe.
To set the records straight, Structural Tribalism is not limited to Mende, Temne, Loko, Limba, Fullah, Mandingo, and so on. Any of the 15 or 16 Tribes permanently settling in those two Temne Line and/or Mende Line areas fit the definition of Structural Tribalism if found to be conducting themselves as such. Of course there is always an influencing factor rather than the plain black and white as seen.
You have something called Majority Alignment for Safety Protection. Support by coercion, to put it simple. Unprovoked reprisals against the minority who chose to support or vote for a different Party other than the APC regional north or SLPP regional south are all too common. I have heard instances where subsistence farmers have their lands forcibly taken away and told to go back to their natural or parental birthplace to claim land rights or ownership, not those of a stayer in a different region. They are reduced to squatter status in their country of birth. It goes to show how little we have learned and how far we have to go as a Society.
(Culled from Cocorioko online)