By Isaac Massaquoi
I think the time has finally come for this country to confront the question of whether mask devil parades are truly cultural events or political jamborees that have been hijacked by hardcore criminal elements whose activities have forced people like me to stop and think about the foreboding with which people greet mask devil parades these days in Freetown in particular.
Is there no other way to observe holidays than to pack central Freetown with mask devils and all kinds of criminals? I note the complete lack of open spaces for recreation in Freetown and disposable income for many ordinary people to give themselves a treat from time to time. Tie that up with a city population faced with the daily stress of simply getting by in Freetown then one probably begins to understand why people throw themselves out onto the streets in such frenzy during mask devil parades at every opportunity.
I have nothing against mask devil parades. With my background growing up in Brookfields for twenty years starting in the mid 70s, it's totally impossible to pretend not to have had some dealings with such groups. In fact I maintain some of those links even today. But like I said at the start of this piece, let's ask ourselves whether the argument that mask devil parades - the types we now see on the streets during holidays are part of our culture - is still valid.
I make bold to say that unbridled criminality has turned away many decent ordinary Sierra Leoneans who always found time to join the dancing or cheer from the sidelines. And the fact that so many mask devils are unleashed on society during holidays, paralysing other activities and causing serious disruption, has encouraged many to start speaking out against mask devils.
Inevitably, politics has completely taken over the so-called cultural mask devils. Anyway, there has always been underlying political considerations in Freetown's mask devil groups since Siaka Stevens. But now it's all about politics - the songs, the uniforms and everything. The result is that communities have been divided over whether to continue supporting certain "cultural groups".
Last Monday I ran into a mask devil parade along Pademba Road on my way home from work. In fact I had planned to escape from the central areas of Freetown before the mask devils arrived. As I found out to my peril, they arrived half an hour earlier. As I drove past Christ Church, a crowd of three hundred men, well they were mostly men, I reckon between 19 and 25 years, poured into Pademba Road from Circular Road looking fierce and hungry.
The other vehicles behind me made good their escape down West Street. It was scary.
During the next ten minutes, I clearly saw the boys peeping through the car window and attempting to open the doors. They are locked. I don't think I will fall prey to such marauding thieves anymore after my experience with them along Kissy Road when they almost slit my throat just to steal a cheap chain I was wearing five years ago. I have also witnessed firsthand, when school children in clearly identifiable school uniform snatched a lady's bag at the junction of Macauley Street in broad daylight during one of their many thieving sprees after inter secondary school athletics meetings. It was a very disgraceful thing.
The woman wept as if she had lost her husband in a road accident just before her honeymoon. That spoke volumes to me about the value of her bag, in terms of its contents. Two police officers, who stood close by, pretended to be doing something but none of the people who witnessed that event gave them any chance of finding the stolen property and putting those criminals in school uniforms away for a very long time.
A friend reported the other day that thieves had broken into his car about six times since he moved into a new place in what we would ideally refer to as affluent Freetown. Others have consistently reported thieves breaking into their vehicles along the beaches and other entertainment joints. Thieves smashed the windows of at least one car along the beach recently just to steal a man's lap top computer. The man's world was destroyed - all his information taken away. But was that thief looking to sell the computer or was he after the materials stored there?
There are thieves in every country, I should know that, but the point I am making is that I honestly don't get the feeling that the authorities here are really prepared and able to significantly reduce these constant attacks on people's homes and cars or even their persons on the streets.
The rainy season is upon us. This is usually the time when evil is most free particularly in small, dark communities that are completely inaccessible to vehicles because the roads are non-existent. The police discouraged the setting up of neighbourhood watch groups when they shot dead two volunteers in Wellington. To this day, none of the officers involved in that incident have been prosecuted. I will appreciate it very much if the police proved me wrong on this and a handful of other killings around Sierra Leone about which I make the same comment.
So back to the central issue of this piece. I don't think the argument about mask devils being part of our cultural expression is totally correct given the realities I have just described. Is it part of our culture that during mask devil parades, hundreds of thieves must mingle with the crowds to steal from us and attack our cars if we proved too clever for them? If this is our culture then some of us have gone off it and we will not shed tears if the government banned it right now.
I believe I have made the point before that hardly anybody understands the reasons why the police issue so many licenses to mask devils whenever they requested one. Here is a police force that cites security concerns for denying a group like the Sierra Leone Association of Journalists their right to assemble and protest peacefully, unquestioningly issuing licenses to mask devil groups, a good percentage of whose members engage in naked criminality of our streets time and again.
Last Monday I felt abandoned by my own police force in the hands of criminals who convinced them that they were honest Sierra Leoneans observing our culture. There are many Sierra Leoneans in Freetown who share my views but do not have access to a newspaper like me to put it in writing. This is getting serious and we must never get to the point where because mask devils are on the streets, I wouldn't be able to visit family and friends on Easter day of all days.
If the police are overwhelmed by the sheer number of people that pour into the streets on such occasions, then they must limit the number of groups they grant permission to on every occasion. It's as simple as that. I don't even think flooding the streets with police personnel just to watch over mask devil parades is necessarily a judicious use of police time, considered against the other pressing tasks facing them.
Let's agree that the argument about culture is becoming untenable and then act against known criminals who infiltrate these parades to cause havoc. The police have enormous powers under the Public Order Act to deal with such criminals but alas, this law appears to become relevant only when the authorities decide to move against journalists.
(C) Politico 24/04/14
