Liberia: An American dream or African nightmare?

Liberia's bloody civil conflict has lasted more than seven years and cost the lives of an estimated 200, 000 people, furthermore 1.5 million Liberians have been left homeless and displaced often starving of hunger.

So how did this once thriven country, to some a blue print for modern African democracy, descend into an all familiar African nightmare? Perhaps Ahmadou Kourouma's international best-seller 'Waiting for the wild beasts to vote', unlocks some of the answers.

The word Liberia is Latin for 'place of freedom'. This was the name given to a piece of West African land in 1821 which was bought by North American religious philanthropists, for born free and freed American slaves. Ironically, self-interested slave owners in the US financially aided the philanthropist in order to ensure freed slaves did not disturb their shackled workforce.

Over the next 30 years the colony grew with three very distinct cultural groups: Freed slaves from the US and the West Indies; settlers with European-African lineage the indigenous native peoples. In 1848 Joseph Jenkins Roberts the son of a freed African American slave became the country's first President.

In those early years of establishing a 'promised land' the architects of the Liberian constitution were already storing up trouble that would come back to plague the nation. Liberia's national motto read, ' The love of liberty brought us here', which immediately excluded Liberia's native inhabitants: the Kru, Gola and Grebo.

For the next 100 years the minority Americo-Liberians governed the country with a belief of utter superiority, sending their children to American schools and colleges and achieving the type of status and respect they never would have achieved as US citizens. They failed miserable to include native tribes into their power base, often using them for tax fodder, and controlling their businesses. Such resentment often spilled over to military conflict, which would increase as the years went by.

In 1923, Liberia became an international player when the Firestone Rubber Company set up a rubber plantation. 25,000 workers where eventually employed generating wealth and prosperity. This was further enhanced in 1948 by the country's development of an iron ore industry.

By the mid seventies under the presidency of William R. Tolbert Jr, Liberia was seen by many as one of the most prosperous and stable countries in Africa. But the façade of stability ignored the oppression and inequality of the ruling Americo-Liberians towards the native tribes' people. In 1980 President Tolbert and 13 of his top Government aides were brutally murdered in a military coup. The masses cheered in hearing the news 'we are finally free'. Five years later Samuel Doe became Liberia's first indigenous President.

Far from bringing peace and stability Doe raged civil war, not only on Americo-Liberian forces, but also on those tribes who where his historic opponents.

A cycle of violence, militia uprisings and the inevitable contempt for democratic rule had set in, has it had in so many other African countries. Not surprisingly, President Doe was himself executed in 1990 by one of his former allies and President in waiting Charles Taylor.

It's difficult in the extreme to fully understand Liberia's, socio-political and economic problems as it is with other troubled African countries. But Ahmadou Kouraouma's novel 'Waiting for the wild beast to vote', helps begin that process. Kourouma uses fiction to chronicle an African state, using tribal, national and international dynamics to help articulate how many of these countries find themselves in such a mess. The Cold War, for example, forced many African states to choose either an Eastern or Western ally. The opposing ally would finance the opposition ensuring that armed conflict was well financed and bloody. Kourouma explains, ' In the Cold War that governed the world, ones choice of camp was crucial, it was a perilous choice, as perilous as choosing a wife'.

Kourouma also exposes a tribal mindset that at times adds to the African chaos. 'The French didn't understand anything about Negroes, they didn't realise that when you condemn a Negro to death you have to kill off a whole clan if you are to have any peace in the country'.

Kourouma's book doesn't have all the answers but if we place it in a Liberian context we realise that Africans must ultimately solve Africa's problems. Furthermore, that a nation's stability does not necessarily come from prosperity if that prosperity only resides within the ruling elite. A nation's stability is dependent on its ability to equitably provide for all its citizens.

Now Charles Taylor is gone we all hope that the UN African peacekeepers will create a national dialogue that empowers the different Liberian factions to build a democracy for Liberians unshackled from the manipulation of international big business. Only then can we expect Liberians including the 'wild beasts' to vote.