Fragmentation and the Temne: from War Raids Into Ethnic Civil Wars

chapter 4 Fragmentation and the Temne: From War Raids into Ethnic Civil Wars

The Temne and Their Neighbours: A Long-Standing Scenario of Inter-ethnic Hostilities?

The former British colony of Sierra Leone is today regarded as one of the classic cases of a society that is politically polarised by ethnic antagonism. By the 1950s, the decade before independence, ethnic fault lines had an impact on local political life and the inhabitants of the colony appeared to practise ethnic voting. Both the Sierra Leone People’s Party (slpp) government formed after 1957, led by Milton Margai, and the All People’s Congress (apc) government of Siaka Stevens coming to power in 1967/68, relied on ethnic support and cre- ated ethnic networks: the slpp appeared to be ‘southern’ and ‘eastern’, and Mende-dominated, the apc ‘northern’ and Temne-led.1 Between 1961 and the 1990s, such voting behaviour can be found in sociological and political science survey data.2 However, the period of brutal civil war in the 1990s weakened some of these community links, as local communities were more interested in their survival than in ethnic solidarities.3 We have seen that the 2007 legislative elections contradicted this apparent trend. Before the second half of the nineteenth century, the territory of present-day Sierra Leone was politically fragmented into a number of different small structures, which were often much smaller than the pre-colonial states of Senegambia (Map 4). The only regional exception was the ‘federation’ of Morea, which, however, was an unstable entity. The slave trade and the ‘legitimate commerce’ in palm

1 Cartwright, John R., Politics in Sierra Leone 1947–67 (Toronto – Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1970), 101–2, 128; Fisher, ‘Elections’, 621–3; Riddell, J. Barry, ‘Beyond the Geography of Modernization: The State as a Redistributive Mechanism in Independent Sierra Leone’, Canadian Journal of African Studies 19(3), 1985, 529–45, 532; Kandeh, Jimmy D., ‘Politicization of Ethnic Identities in Sierra Leone’, African Studies Review 35(1), 1992, 81–99, 93–4. 2 Kandeh, ‘Politicization’, 97; Hayward, Fred M., and Ahmed R. Dumbuya, ‘Changing Electoral Patterns in Sierra Leone: The 1982 Single-Party Elections’, African Studies Review 28(4), 1985, 62–86, 66–7; Riddell, J. Barry, ‘Internal and External Forces Acting upon Disparities in Sierra Leone’, Journal of Modern African Studies 23(3), 1985, 389–406, 402–4. 3 Hirsch, John L., Sierra Leone: Diamonds and the Struggle for Democracy (Boulder – London: Lynne Rienner, 2001), 52–4.

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Wonkafong SANDA LOKO DEMBELIA Kabala Moribea BOMBALI SUMBUYA KOINADUGU UPPER LOKO

SANDA CHENRARON KARENE

GBANTI- KAMARANKA Bumban BIRIWA Makundu SAFROKO Bumbuna LIMBA Makeni MALAL KOLIFA MAYOSO KONO KAFU MARAMPA MINING BULLOM Magbele Magburaka REGION Sumbuya Rokon Madina TONKOLILI Bance Island MASIMERA Mabang Yonibana Freetown Mafengbe Mafokoya Mongeri KOYA Ronieta Rotifunk LUNIA Moyamba Taiama Sembehun KAIYAMBA KPAA MENDE Bo BAOMA Bumpe BAGRU Tikonko TIMDALE IMPERI SHERBRO Bonthe ISLAND Dodo Bendu PANGA

Pujehum Bandasuma

GALLINAS SORO Map 4 Sierra Leone products in the nineteenth century did not lead to political centralisation. The region also knew little linguistic coherence; in the early nineteenth century, European missionaries complained that it made little sense to learn Temne as it was not a lingua franca among the northern languages.4 The fragmentation may explain

4 Archives of the Church Missionary Society, University of Birmingham Library, Birmingham (cms), C A1/E5A – 95, Gustav Nylander, cms missionary, to Pratt, Secretary of the Church Missionary Society (without number), 19 Dec. 1816, 2; cms, C A1/E6 – 42, Nylander, Statement of Yongroo Somoh (without number), 25 March 1817, 2.