By Anthony K. Kamara (Snr) of Winnipeg, Canada.
I want to thank Imodale for expressing her opinion on the above. True it is only by the clash of opinions that the truth can prevail. I also want to make it abundantly clear that I personally have no opinion on the rumoured misinformation on the relocation or non-relocation of the Annie Walsh Memorial School. But relocation or no relocation of the school, readers understand your message and a response is therefore in place.
The writer is right on the need for “serious re-planning” of Freetown. But she failed to realise that to re-plan an over-congested city like Freetown of today would entail huge expenditure. It will cost a government billions of Leones first to compensate property owners whose homes have been brought down for development reasons. Does this writer realise how many billions of Leones have been paid to property owners for bringing down their homes for the expansion of the Regent to Jui short-cut road starting from Spur road currently undertaken by a Chinese construction company? Yes people have to sacrifice for the good of the nation and Freetown in particular, and the government has been reasonable enough to mete out reasonable compensation in cash and offer alternative land site should they choose to rebuild. Look at the newly constructed short-cut road near the new Law court at Pademba Road right up to Bai Bureh road. Is this not an amazing development?
Yes the writer is suggesting a dialogue “with each other and the powers that be in government” to seriously discuss the future of Sierra Leone. Any dialogue would stall from the word go until the settlers’ descendants of today admit that their forefathers (the Black Poor and the Nova Scotians and others) were illegally settled on land ruled by a Temne ruler of the Koya kingdom Bai Kompa. There is no reasons to blame the settlers or their descendants for squatting on land whose acquisition they themselves did not understand to this day; and Sierra Leonean writers on Sierra Leone history all without exception did no research of their own to narrate the true history; instead, they relied on the false accounts of the colonial office in London which were used by British historian Christopher Fyfe to write his Short history of Sierra Leone which was first published in 1962 by Longmans. Fyfe’s account on the founding of the colony of Sierra Leone is flawed by all accounts. It was and is still intellectual dishonesty by any local historian to keep re-cycle Christopher Fyfe’s account which was a mere justification of his home government’s activities in Sierra Leone. I must mention that in 1950, this British author was appointed by the British colonial government to come over to Sierra Leone to organise the archives on Sierra Leone. Fyfe did just what he was paid to do, namely to embellish and justify the British activities in Sierra Leone and their claim to have purchased land from King Tom for whatever amount and goods they claimed to have paid.
Did any Sierra Leone writer ever ask the following questions?
Was there an interpreter when the said negotiations were conducted? This question is important because the naval captain who transported the settlers to Freetown Bouldie Thompson had never been to Freetown or West Africa.
Did King Tom understand English and conversely, did Captain Bouldie Thompson understand Temne? If the answer to this is No, then how did they negotiate and arrive at whatever settlement the British claimed to have reached?
Who witnessed the said discussions between King Tom and Bouldie Thompson?
From my research on this topic was that when the ship bringing the Black Poor reached the watering place, the settlers were not allowed to disembark and stayed on board for about 48 hours while the captain went ashore to see the king Tom. Who led him to King Tom?
Unless these questions are answered no debate on anything Imolade is proposing would take off. I am not challenging the accounts on Sierra Leone history in its entirety but on the founding on the colony of Freetown. True all African history was about European activities in our continent. To them Africans have no history. Similarly all that is written about the history of Sierra Leone is about British exploits in this country. This was the history we were taught at school and given excellent grades for writing answers acceptable to them. Sierra Leonean history writers have a duty to re-visit this aspect of our history otherwise it will be seen as intellectual dishonesty to keep telling our school kids the same lies of land purchase with no proof. There was no land purchased from any chief as the two sides did not have a common language to conduct negotiations. This aspect of our history is totally false.
Does anyone think the Temne people were just inconsiderate in burning Granville town? They felt cheated by the British in settling people from nowhere on their land, people whose real origins were unknown apart from the accepted fact that as Blacks their forefathers must have come from Africa, but not Sierra Leone in particular. It was racism and not philanthropic reasons that made the British find those Black Poor a home in Sierra Leone as a dumping ground. They did not want their presence in London and other cities. Why did they not consider Nigeria or the Gold Coast at the time? Probably they preferred to bully the small West African country. But thanks to the Church Missionaries Society (CMS) who made efforts to educate them with the starting of schools beginning at Leicester and more later followed including the Annie Walsh School. Let’s not forget that the Black Poor were destitute illiterate discharged slaves by their masters. It was in Sierra Leone they first had a taste of western education. For over two centuries, they were busy labouring in plantations in all the scattered islands of the Caribbean sea.
So once again, what debate does Imolade want the government to engage in with a people whose total population today in the country is around 80,000? I want Imodale to accept the fact that there has been no documentary evidence of any land purchase by the British from any ruler in Sierra Leone. The British simply wrote in their archives to justify their action in this country which no Sierra Leonean has ever seen. No Sierra Leonean historian can claim to have seen any such document. It’s all bogus. But we keep teaching our children the wrong aspect of our history because a white historian Christopher Fyfe said so.
Imodale must also realise that the British divided the country into colony and Protectorate for administrative convenience. The culture of land grabbing in Sierra Leone was started by the British and has continued to the present. Let me also enlighten Imodale on this issue. The Temne people did not come to Freetown to stay. They have always been there until other groups came to live with them including the settlers; that’s why the Temne are found in all villages in the peninsular like Leicester, Regent, Goderich, Waterloo, Wellington Kissy and others. They have been generous enough to accommodate and integrate with strangers on their land. There is nothing to debate with a people under 100,000 in population for land they did not own. The British lied to the settlers prior to leaving England that they would grant them land in Sierra Leone. We want to see the document that gave them other people`s land.
Imodale is right that most people did not go to school in the early days and even today people in the interior. Here again you need some history lessons. Did you know that the British colonial government did not start any school in Sierra Leone until 96 years after their arrival? And their first school was the Bo school. Their first secondary school was the Prince of Wales (1925). The Creoles educational benefit was due to the CMS. These distorted facts of history. The natives of Sierra Leone are today in the millions in population. The Black Poor started with 411 in 1787, and by 1961, their population was 55,000 and today still under 100,000. What futile debate does Imodale really want from government? Let me also enlighten Imodale that the Christian Missionaries did not at first open schools in Temne area because they did not want to come to a clash with Islam which was already well established in all Temne areas. Besides, no African country can provide western education for populations in the millions. The settler descendants` population, I repeat is under 100,000. This is simple logic. The people you`re trying to provoke are in millions.
True in 1961, we had our Independence with majority rule, by which power passed to the leadership of the indigenous people of the country and Sir Milton Margai who the Creoles ridiculed as "Mende Doctor" became our first Prime Minister. Thanks to his efforts, we are what we are today.
But on the eve of Independence, the British asked the settler descendants to decide whether to stay in Sierra Leone as Sierra Leoneans or become British citizens and be free to migrate and live in England. Many opted to be British citizens and left the country rather than be ruled by natives. No one quarrelled with their choice. But the poor who could not go to England had to stay and live under native rule at independence.
Yes, we are one country and one people and we’ll remain so forever. We must accept this fact.
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