By Isaac Massaquoi
When I read the press release issued by the Council of Churches of Sierra Leone in one of our tabloids this week, I was left with the impression that the leaders of our churches who are normally very patient people had been compelled to speak out at a time when many of the noble people of our country are either too compromised to say anything critical of the status quo or prefer to live happily ever after in their prosperity havens around Freetown.
Church leaders are normally the last people to speak out. Their voice would normally be very strong and they always bring their followers along. It's no secret that our Vice President is clearly marginalised in the running of the state despite the obvious fact he was elected on the same ticket as Ernest Bai Koroma. There are a few shouts here and there but in the main, we are all pretending as if it's not an issue and people like us who keep raising the issue are doing some hatchet man's job and we should be ignored.
So the point is if strong and consistent shouts came from the church, the business community, labour unions and so on, not just on the question of a marginalised Vice President, but on "rising violence and indiscipline" that the church leaders spoke about in the press release, the authorities were bound to listen.
The violence and deaths that prompted the church leaders to issue this statement have brought home yet again the stark realities about how this country was changed forever by the war, the decline of family life, and the exposure of our young people to different lifestyles in this age of technology. Our Ministry of Social Welfare, our criminal justice system and institutions in general have simply failed to keep pace with what is happening and have found themselves completely outflanked by dark forces operating in our communities today.
I am not sure there are any accurate figures anywhere in this country but knife and gun crimes are drastically up, every day we hear about rape and general domestic violence. I make no claim to having a silver bullet to deal with the petty thieving, rape and murder in Freetown in particular but I am writing as a Sierra Leonean who believes the system is failing the young people of this country badly.
The church leaders urged their membership to "address these issues seriously and in-depth from a biblical perspective when speaking to their congregation...", and my reaction to that is that even the church appears to have lost contact with its congregation to the extent that the Council of Churches has taken the extraordinary step of pointing the leaders of God's church to their real responsibility in Society.
This article is certainly not a critique of the church but already, the problems the church leaders are calling attention to have eaten very deep into the fabric of our society and I think it wouldn't be wrong to ask to what extent the church and other sectors of society, like the judiciary, media and the medical profession, the business community have been complicit in all this, either by refusing to confront the difficult questions of the day or openly colluding with politicians to line their pockets directly or be appointed to positions of benefit in the bureaucracy.
The last time I dealt with an issue like this in this column, I suggested that the state of Sierra Leone was retreating in the face of lawlessness instead of standing up to the forces of violence, corruption and death to deny them the opportunity they crave to restrict our civil liberties.
I also suggested that if we aren't careful, by the end of this year criminals would have expanded their spheres of influence across the city to the extent that the rest of us will find it difficult to operate without crossing their paths and the consequences are well known. I told the police that if they thought I was being alarmist, as they always say when they are criticised in this way, they should commission a survey around Freetown and people will tell them which areas of the city they have avoided out of fear of criminals even in broad daylight.
The survey will also call attention to the growing threat to the peace and security of this country posed by armed gangs and so-called cliques who have carved up Freetown into zones of influence and are prepared to kill people belonging to other criminal zones.
All this is happening under the noses of the Sierra Leone police. The number of young people killed in such conditions, reported and unreported, is alarming and that should help the authorities understand why many Sierra Leoneans are worried.
All over the country it's easy to notice that hundreds of thousands of young people between the ages of 18 and 35 years basically have nothing to do. And I am also talking about those who have concluded tertiary education.
No matter how much NGOs and part-time sociologists romanticise those informal meeting points the young people call Ataya Base, the reality is that the group of young people I just spoke about are those you find sitting there, consuming drugs the whole day and engaging in unproductive discussions while they wait for a politician or a land grabber to deploy them to their next destination to unleash violence in the name of the big man.
I am not coming at this with any scientific analysis but just looking around a few areas in Freetown at different times of the day convinces me that this country has a long way to go dealing with the problem of this young and potentially restive population.
The president may have pledged his final term of office to the young people of Sierra Leone. And I believe he had his fingers on the pulse of the nation and he was genuine when he made those comments about "dying" for young people. He can even point to the appointment of a few of them to positions in government as a practical demonstration of that commitment. But the reality is that commitment on paper and words alone mean nothing when our active population can't find jobs – even the highly skilled ones. And ours is not the welfare state that provides safety nets for those out of job.
The nation is at a dangerous point because the young people who I believe are themselves victims of a badly-run and corrupt governance system since independence are resorting to crime just to get something to eat – the system has dehumanised them.
I may sympathise with them but I refuse to understand why they have to be involved in petty crimes and gangland style violence and killing themselves just to make a point.
Inevitably, I have to call on the police again to take their job seriously. It's no secret that there are scores of mushroom football leagues taking place across the city. And I have no problem with that. Some of our greatest footballers came through from such leagues at Kingtom's Kaytee Field and Fire Force playing field, so there is nothing wrong with people organising football leagues.
The police should however not tell me they are not aware of the high level of unnecessary violence that goes on in these places all the time, including what happened at Fourah Bay. I stopped watching those leagues more than five years ago when even within the enclosure of the national stadium, officials and supporters invade the pitch over every referee decision, behaving in a threatening and insulting way to match officials without consequence.
What is really difficult about the police using their so-called partnership boards to liaise with the organisers of these community leagues and to provide them with the appropriate level of security for every match. The SLFA or the Western Area Football Association should register all such leagues in such a way that the organisers and teams are made to agree to certain conditions, including an unambiguous commitment to non-violence and the acceptance of stiff penalties for any breach of those conditions.
I don't even believe that all these many leagues can take place simultaneously. The police will be vastly overstretched considering their other responsibilities. The local football governing bodies must produce a calendar clearly stating when such community leagues are played.
Another point to make is that the police must do a background check on the organsiers, some of whom I dare say have convictions for violent crimes and other public order offences. These measures may not be exhaustive but these free-for-all avenues for violence called football leagues cannot be allowed to continue. Lives are being lost and the manner in which innocent people are being compelled to curtail their civil liberties is alarming and could backfire in the face of the authorities.
The incident in Fourah Bay is isolated only in the sense that two people were needlessly killed in gangland violence but no community league is free of appalling violence. Whether our church leaders like it or not, they have to demonstrate by their conduct and in their sermons that they are part of this society.
© Politico 26/09/13
