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Locating the politics of a Sierra Leonean chiefdom

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2011

Richard Fanthorpe
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Extract

The chiefdoms of Sierra Leone are institutions of colonial origin but nevertheless continue to serve as local government units in the post-colonial state. The prevailing view among scholars is that these institutions have little basis in indigenous political culture, and have furthermore become breeding grounds of political corruption. This view has tended to elide anthropological analysis of internal chiefdom politics. However, it is argued in this article that such conclusions are premature. With reference to the Biriwa Limba chiefdom of northern Sierra Leone, it is shown that historical precedent, in many cases relating to prominent political figures of the late nineteenth century, continues to serve as a primary means of ordering local rights in land, settlement and political representation. This phenomenon is not a product of innate conservatism but emerges rather as a pragmatic response to the persistent failure of successive Sierra Leone administrations to extend modern measures of citizenship to the bulk of the rural populace. Rights and properties have become progressively localised in villages originally registered for tax collection in the early colonial era. Here one finds one of the most telling legacies of the British policy of indirect rule in post-colonial Sierra Leone.

Résumé

Les chefferies de la Sierra Leone sont des institutions d'origine coloniale qui continuent néanmoins à servir d'unités gouvernementales au sein de l'état post-colonial. L'opinion la plus répandue parmi les universitaires est celle selon laquelle ces institutions ne se fondent guère sur la culture politique indigène et sont devenues par ailleurs des foyers de corruption politique. Cette opinion a eu tendance à élider l'analyse anthropologique de la politique de chefferie interne. Cependant, cet article suggère que de telles conclusions sont prématurées. A travers l'exemple de la chefferie Biriwa Limba du nord de la Sierra Leone, l'article montre qu'un précédent historique, lié dans de nombreux cas à des personnalités politiques éminentes de la fin du dix-neuvième siècle, continue de servir de mode d'organisation principal des droits locaux en matière de terres, d'implantation et de représentation politique. Ce phénomène n'est pas un produit d'un conservatisme naturel mais apparaît plutôt comme une réponse pragmatique à l'incapacité persistante des gouvernements successifs du pays à étendre des mesures modernes de citoyenneté à la masse de la population rurale. Les droits et propriétés se sont progressivement localisés dans des villages initialement recensés à des fins fiscales dès le début de la période coloniale. On trouve là un des héritages les plus révélateurs de la politique britannique de domination indirecte en Sierra Leone post-coloniale.

Type
At the colonial margin: the past in the present
Information
Africa , Volume 68 , Issue 4 , October 1998 , pp. 558 - 584
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1998

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