D. Elwood Dunn

“Overcoming Alienation and Building National Community in Liberia”

Remarks at Thematic Hearings on Historical Review, Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Monrovia, Liberia, September 5, 2008

Mr. Chairman and members of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, my fellow Liberians and friends of Liberia.

Allow me to begin by expressing appreciation for the process that led to the creation of the TRC of Liberia. My thanks to each of you commissioners and my fellow citizens for your service to our country.

I would like to thank the Commission for the kind invitation to be a part of your Thematic Hearings on Liberian Historical Review. I have come to appreciate your work not only from the press, but also from some of your organizational associates in the United States, such as the Minnesota-based Advocates For Human Rights, and the Dorsey and Whitney Law Firm of Washington, DC, with both of which I have had extensive conversations.

Mr. Chairman and Commissioners, as a student of Liberian history, I believe that a strong sense of alienation pervades the body politic. This alienation, which is of historical vintage, has been exacerbated by the anguish of political violence and war that have consumed the nation since 1979. Thus to our historic alienation problem has been added the anguish of violent conflict.

I propose to focus my remarks on the alienation dimension of our national problem. The fact that there is a connection between political violence prior to, and following1990, should by now be clear as we proceed with the general historical review. For that part of our problem, which dates to 1990, and which is widely perceived in common with civil wars in other countries since the end of the Cold War, there is extensive literature to call upon in our quest at understanding the requirements for national reconstruction. I might mention in passing the World Bank’s Breaking The Conflict Trap (2003), and June and Verkoren (editors), Post Conflict Development. This literature acknowledges the issues that are common to all conflict countries and those that are peculiar to each conflict country. I fear that Liberia’s peculiar problems have widely been mischaracterized depending on the focus of the moment. Some have called it the problem of the “aborigines.” Others say the problem of the “Americo-Liberian.” Still others have reduced our national problem to Gio and Mano versus Krahn and Mandingo. Because we have ourselves yet objectively to identify our problem we can hardly find a sustainable way forward. If we miss the diagnosis, the prognosis could be disastrous. If we don’t know what is wrong we may administer the wrong medicine.

So, let us begin by attempting to frame our historical problem. It is a problem of political history or a history of power relationships among Liberians, a history of who has gotten what, when, and how of the tangible and intangible things of value in Liberian society over the years.

But Liberian political history needs to be understood in the broader context of Africa’s political history. What do we find? A distinguished professor at Oxford University, Hugh Trevor-Roper wrote in his 1964 book Rise of Christian Europe that “perhaps in the future there will be some African history to teach. But at the present there is none; there is only the history of Europeans in Africa. The rest is darkness, and darkness is not the subject of history.” Even as the learned professor wrote, post-World War II African nationalism was not only calling the lie, but inspiring a renaissance in African history as demands for political independence were inextricably linked to the legitimacy of an African history apart from the West. And so basic to that history was the fact that there was clearly an African society before the coming of Europe to Africa.

When applied to Liberia, what might the outcome look like? Were there African societies prior to the early 19th century establishment of the Liberian state? Have we acknowledged and incorporated values from those societies into what might be called the architecture of the Liberian state? Might the incomplete task in this regard be a source of the alienation problematic that I mentioned earlier?

Mr. Chairman and member of the Commission, I believe that we stand at a critical moment in history when the opportunity is ours to re-visit the Liberia state-creation project –the national architecture, the very foundation of our nationhood as we search diligently for a sustainable peace anchored in equity and justice, and in a shared sense of common national community. And speaking of national community, I find no better way to proceed than to invoke the memory of a distinguished Liberian whose life and scholarship reflect this concern.

We were at one of the many turning points in our long and checkered history, the 1980 coup d’etat, when Mary Antoinette Brown Sherman, first female president of the University of Liberia and a first rate educator, spoke to the nation. The occasion was the first anniversary of the coup and she spoke on the topic “Mobilizing The Masses in Revolutionary Liberia For a Better Society.” Addressing the issues of Liberia’s mission and purpose she suggested “any attempt to mobilize the masses in revolutionary Liberia for a better society must begin with a clear definition of the mission of the nation, its purpose, and its hopes for the future being clearly formulated. “Such clarification,” she continued, “can only be meaningful when the history of the nation is heard with objectivity. Each tomorrow implies a today and each today a yesterday.”

What is this history of Liberia that the late Dr. Mary Antoinette Brown Sherman warns us to hear with objectivity? How might our collective yesterdays inform our today? Is the suggested theme of alienation discernable at all? Let us probe briefly under the following rubrics or sub-titles:
1. The Original Idea of Liberia
2. The Evolution of the Original Idea
3. Implications for the Task at Hand

Original Idea of Liberia
I maintain that modern Liberia is the product of a complex African past woven into the circumstances attending the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade and the historical process of state formation. This statement speaks to historical process. The idea preceded the process. The state preceded the nation. What do I mean? What is a state? What is a nation? In order to have a state on the model created following the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, there must be people, territory and sovereignty. So, a state is a political construct consisting of people, land and sovereignty. A nation, as the root of the feeling of nationalism, is a social and cultural concept. It is a people’s sense of collective destiny through a common past and a vision of a common future. It incorporates a common heritage such as language, customs, historical tradition and common purpose. The nation need not have all of the foregoing characteristics for there are nations that are homogenous in a socio-cultural sense and there are others that are heterogeneous in the same sense. What matters is that we now call countries ‘nation-states” for the nation becomes the glue that holds together people, territory and sovereignty. If the glue is strong the country is able to weather adversity without disintegrating. If, on the other hand, the national glue is weak, the country risks falling apart when there is a severe social stress. I recall a headline in an early 1980 issue of West Africa magazine – Liberia breaks at the seams,” it said.

Application to Liberia: The original Liberian state was like a “potted plant” transported from the New World to early 19th century West African society. The idea of the enterprise was to affect a civilizing and Christianizing mission, or bringing Western enlightenment and modern education to what was called a “primitive people.” Let me shorten this part of my remarks by quoting a succinct statement about the original idea of Liberia. The late Vice President C.L. Simpson, Sr. wrote in his Memoirs published in 1961:
“Two courses were open to us [to the Liberian leadership in the beginning]: one was to merge at the outset the comparatively small advanced elements of the population into the mass of those who, for various reasons, were at a more primitive stage of development and to hope that in due course all would progress homogenously and simultaneously. The other was to preserve the ideal of western democracy on however small a scale… We adopted the latter course” – the ideal of western democracy rather then merger with those seen as being at a more primitive state of development.

We are thus left with the “potted plant” because in the complex scheme of things, the black immigrants who came to this land under the auspices of the American Colonization Society saw themselves less as an African people and more as pioneers building in Africa an “American” society. They eschewed a competing vision – that of Paul Cuffe (1759-1817) who held rather progressive views of African identity and people hood, but died before he could see his plans to term. Edward Wilmot Blyden will later resurrect Cuffe’s perspectives.

Evolution of the Original Idea
This takes us to our second sub-topic, evolution of the original idea of Liberia, the nation-building discourse. So the potted plant called the Liberian state was brought from America to Africa. What would be done with the plant? One possibility was to attempt to nourish the plant in its pot or within its original framework. The other possibility was that the plant could be removed from its pot and placed in Liberian soil, thus altering the original framework or effecting a paradigm shift.

What did Liberia’s founding fathers do with the potted plant? As they related to their times, they were part of an interesting discourse about the relationship between “American-ness” and “African-ness.” Our founding fathers did not simply set up shop in Liberia on the basis of the civilizing/Christianizing ethos that I mentioned earlier, and then declare an end to thinking, an end to debate. In fact a debate persisted in America and the rest of the Atlantic world, including Liberia, about what to do about African-ness in America and what to do with American-ness in Africa. I have just been reading James Sidbury’s Becoming African In America: Race and Nation in the Early Black Atlantic. (2007)

About a decade following Liberia’s independence, and in the decades that followed, this discourse exercised the minds of a few Liberian thinkers. For brevity, I will juxtapose John Brown Russwurn to Edward Wilmot Blyden.

Russwurn, the third African-American college graduate, lived between 1799 and 1851. He immigrated to Liberia in 1829 and subsequently served as governor of the independent settlement of Maryland in Africa before that settlement joined Liberia as Maryland County. Russwurn was an important articulator and practitioner of the civilizing/Christianizing ethos. JJ Roberts and many other Liberian leaders espoused the idea of Liberia as a potted plant that needed to remain in the pot because the African environment was deemed as unworthy.

Blyden, on the other hand, held views that were opposite to those held by Russwurn. Blyden lived between 1832 and 1912 and came to know every Liberian president from E.J. Roye to Edwin Barclay. He immigrated to Liberia at age 19 and developed into a pioneer panAfricanist. An original thinker, his views about the acknowledgment, utilization and preservation of the indigenous African heritage were striking considering that he came to Liberia under the auspices of the colonization societies and the civilizing influence. His core idea was to advocate for placing the potted plant of the Liberian state in African soil so that it might draw nutrients from its natural habitat. A strong advocate of blending Western and African values, he, unlike Russwurn, was a failure as a politician, but his ideas have remained a part of Liberian political discourse ever since the latter half of the 19th century. President E.J. Roye was perhaps one of the first political figures to come under Blyden’s influence. And a slew of others followed Roye. Whatever Roye and Blyden were in the process of doing in the late 1860 and early 1870s, within the framework of the then newly established True Whig Party, was aborted by the coup d’etat against Roye in 1871 which resulted in Roye’s death and led to Blyden’s exile to the British Colony of Sierra Leone.

It is of some historical interest to compare President E.J. Roye and President William R. Tolbert, Jr., the first, and (at least till now) the last True Whig Party president. There is in the case of Roye a political reform legacy heavily influenced by Blyden that historical research might uncover. In the case of Tolbert, the engagement of his regime with the progressive and other opposition agendas in the 1970s remains a challenge to today’s Liberia. Much of the reform that Liberia stands in need of today can be viewed in outline form in the uneven and at times muted national debate of the 1970s.

We thus have before us two unfinished reform agendas – that effectively begun by Edward Wilmot Blyden, his contemporaries of the 19th century and their ideological successors, and that begun in the 1970s as consequence of a disparate opposition engagement with the administration of President Tolbert. Implicit in each of these agendas is the theme of alienation and the absence of national community earlier alluded to.

Lessons and Implications
I have suggested that Liberia started as an idea. Coming out of early 19th century America, the idea was to create in West Africa a Western style state and society for the free people of color of the United States. The U.S. in miniature form was to be transplanted to West Africa. We are today witnesses to echoes of that founding vision with the many cultural reminders of things American in our midst. There was little appreciation on part of the early pioneers of anything of value in the Liberian cultural milieu to which they had come. Implementation of the state-planting project required adjustment which was meager at times and significant at others. Before the civil war of 1990-2003, the decade of the 1970s stands out as the period of concentrated debate about how to translate Blyden’s ideas of African incorporation into systemic reformation of the Liberian body politic. The 1980 coup d’etat aborted the change process. We now face a double challenge – to pick up where we left off on April 12, 1980, and also to address the national distress of the civil war period.

What, then, might a way forward look like? We must begin with the context and the opportunity of the presence today in our country of the international community. We must complement physical reconstruction with a process of transforming the Liberian mind through re-socialization. Time is of the essence in this challenge of initiating an irreversible process of placing the national potted plant in Liberian soil. We would thereby be contributing to a national reconciliation that is consequence not only of the severe political violence that we have collectively suffered lately, but also of the political alienation that has for too long plagued the Liberian body politic.

The implications here are both clear and daunting. They call for a definitive Africanization of the Republic of Liberia. Of course, Liberia is physically situated in Africa, but the Liberian mind has historically been socialized to denigrate Africa. The continuing dualities of some of our institutions attest to this inheritance – customary versus statutory law, indigenous governance arrangements versus institutions enshrined in a constitution, Poro/Sande schools versus modern education, indigenous knowledge systems versus scientific/technological knowledge. Let me briefly touch upon two areas of the challenge we face: (1) how we use history to build or postpone the development of a national community, and (2) the representative-ness of our national symbols.

The Historical Problem: Let me pose here a number of questions for our consideration:
What are we trying to teach when we teach Liberian history?
–Are we promoting national identity?
–Are we teaching tolerance – cultural, religious?
–Are we offering accurate and balanced accounts of the past, or as Dr. Mary Antoinette Brown Sherman would say, is the nation’s past being heard with objectivity?

Does our history reflect a hegemonic culture? Does it propagate a national myth that dramatizes wrongs done by one group while sweeping misdeeds of other groups under the rug?

Might there be a gap between public history as learned in our classrooms and through civic institutions and the more private histories that circulate in families and other social groups?

Have we considered why post-conflict Rwanda has placed a moratorium on the teaching of history in that African country? Do we know what’s really happening today in our classrooms?

These are all huge national questions that we evade only to our peril. Some colleagues have advanced the idea of a National History Commission or a forum to address our history problematic. It could take several forms though appointment by national authorities would be the most desirable. It would bring together Liberian historians and historians of Liberia, including perhaps some of us who consider ourselves history buffs. Following proper organization and serious deliberations, a document might be produced which, following appropriate professional vetting might be used by history-writing authors of textbooks for our schools and universities.

National Symbols Representative-ness: We are fresh from celebrating on August 24, 2008 the 161st anniversary of our National Flag. We live unconsciously almost daily the other symbols of our nationhood oftentimes oblivious of their significance in strengthening or forging a sense of national community and unity. Do we sense any relationship between the potted plant idea, both in its origins and in its evolution, to the issue of national symbols? What, in fact, are symbols? Symbols are “socially shared values and meanings which acquire their significance through the collective experience of the users.” Our symbols include, but are not limited to the 1847 Declaration of Independence and the founding Constitution, The Flag, Anthem, Motto, Seal, and national monuments throughout the country. In the task of forging a nation, these presumed integrative symbols have not been made to relate to the history, norms, values, and expectations of all the constituent elements or cultural groups in Liberia. We have therefore wallowed in contested values, contested identity, contested purpose.

Let us consider a few of our national symbols:

–State Emblem/Seal/Court of Arm – the highest visual symbol of our state. Does it evoke in all of us a deep and abiding patriotism?
–Other National Symbols – the Flag, The National Anthem, National Monuments, National Orders and Decorations.

For example, the “Liberian Humane Order of African Redemption”, a national Order often conferred by President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf on deserving Liberians and foreign nationals has for its purpose “the glory of God in the civilization of the African tribes within and in the neighborhood of Liberia.” Another national order, “The Most Venerable Order Of Knighthood of The Pioneers of the Republic of Liberia” states as its purpose the commemoration of “the memory of the Sainted Pioneer Fathers and Mothers; keep the flame of their memory always burning bright; inspire, by continuing references to their great deeds, in the hearts of all living Liberians a deep and abiding love of their country…” Might modifications be necessary to these and other national orders? We may want to consider adding on to or modifying the symbolism of this very building in which we are gathered – The Centennial Memorial Pavilion that was “erected and dedicated to the solemn and sacred memory of the pioneers Fathers and Mothers of the Republic of Liberia.” All around us are historical relics and symbols that cry for modification as a means of helping us overcome alienation.

There are at least two reasons why I raise this issue of symbols. The first is that in my extensive conversations with fellow Liberians over the years, I sense that some of these symbols are in fact symbols of alienation, certainly not what they should be. The second reason for raising the issue is that I have been studying South Africa’s transition from Apartheid to a multiracial democracy. Blending the old and new orders there has been a hallmark of their successful transition. If the Afrikaner political culture can be blended with a new dispensation heavily influenced by the African National Congress of South Africa, I believe we in Liberia could borrow a page from that experience. The issue of the appropriate forum for discussing and disposing of these issues remains to be determined. I hope that as the TRC submits recommendations for consideration of the national government, it will consider the two suggestions I have endorsed or advanced here – a National History Commission and a national forum to address national symbols.

In The Guise of a Conclusion
As I end these remarks on the past we have come from, the lessons we must learn, and the future we must chart for the next generation to build upon, I would like to return to our national experience of the 1970s. I do so because I believe that something of vital significance was unfolding in that tumultuous decade. President Tolbert and his government were not the only players. The well-known progressive movements, notably MOJA and PAL were key players. A segment of the religious community and a host of ordinary citizens were all engaged openly or surreptitiously, including a Frederick Korvah of Voinjama. You need only re-read the news organs of that era – The University Spokesman, The Revelation, The Tribulation, The Voice of the Revolution, and scores of others. Add to these the self-publications of veteran political analyst Albert Porte. Some political players disdained what they considered the hoi polloi or the masses; some incited the masses with abandon. There was no “political class” consensus on what the boundaries of the debate were. Deep distrust was consequently engendered. I have some sense of the measure of that distrust because backstage, I heard some of the private conversations. That experience led me to the conviction that the governance of our country can never be the sole, even primary responsibility of the government of the day. Every society must figure out a moral center of gravity, a guiding conscience, and that conscience must become the Guardian of the Nation. All of us who were molders of public opinion in the past failed to recognize this fact. I hope we are not today repeating that failure.

As some may know, I served the government of Liberia between 1974 and 1980, three years each at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Executive Mansion. I was thus a public functionary at the Mansion when the incident of April 14, 1979 occurred. I have brought some personal documents related to the incident which I will share with the Commission. I played a small role in the creation of the Presidential Commission on National Reconstruction, otherwise known as the Brownell Commission.

Here is how the Commission came to be: On April 19, 1979, five days after the bloody confrontation, Professor Patrick L.N. Seyon of the University of Liberia handed me a letter. The letter which I gave to the President and which I then used to prepare a memorandum of suggestion to the President read as follows:

Dear President Tolbert:
I am writing you this letter because you have said that your want to know what the Liberian people think, and this will enable you to be a good President. I believe you, and if ever you needed to know what the Liberian people are thinking, it is now.

The events of 14th April 1979, which occurred in Monrovia, caught us by total surprise, and have left us shocked and greatly disturbed both as a people and nation. We are thus confronted with one major question: Why did a section of a peace-loving and peaceful people suddenly erupt into violence and destruction on a scale unimaginable in the life of the Liberian State?
As we seek to repair the damage to our national image as a peaceful and peace-loving nation, and to reconstruct and reactivate the national economy, which has been nearly wrecked, we must find an adequate and satisfactory answer to the question raised above. In this connection, I have a small suggestion.

I wish to suggest the creation by you of an independent National Commission of Inquiry into the Violence and Destruction of 14th April 1979. The Commission should not be less than five nor exceed ten, and its composition should be such that it will have the full credibility it deserves from the Liberian people as well as the outside world, which is now peering over our shoulders to see how wee are handling the situation.

There are several advantages to be gained in setting up such a Commission. Firstly, setting up an independent commission of inquiry will demonstrate to the outside world Liberia’s political maturity in dealing with political crisis. Secondly, setting up an independent commission of inquiry will free the Government of possible charges of acting on impulse, covering up the wrong doings of its officials, and denying and/or abusing the constitutional rights of its citizens. And thirdly, the Commission will provide the Government hard data and information on the basis of which measures can be taken so as never to have a repeat of 14th April 1979 in Liberia.
Specifically, the Commission should be charged with the following responsibilities:
1. To investigate thoroughly the causes of the violence and destruction of 14th April 1979 in Monrovia in particular and Liberia in general; and
2. To make appropriate recommendations to the Liberian people and government, within 60 days of its establishment, on actions to take to eliminate such causes.

To enable the Commission to perform its responsibilities, it should be granted the following powers:
1. To issue summons on individuals to appear before it as well as to produce documents it may need to carry out its investigation; and
2. To grant immunity from prosecution to certain individuals who shall testify before it in the course of its investigation.

Also, in order for the Commission to carry out its tasks, it should be provided an adequate budget and staff, including legal counsel and field researchers.

I close with the fervent hope that such a Commission will be set up, and that in the meantime, the Government will proceed with speed in removing further sources of tension in the country, particularly the presence of the Guinean soldiers. Their presence on Liberian soil at this time not only constitutes a source of further tension, which complicates an internal crisis and tends to minimize our attempt and effort to deal with it ourselves, but also fundamentally undermines our sovereignty and suggests to the outside world an appearance of our inability to deal with our internal matters.

Thank you, Mr. President, and please accept my warmest best wishes for your personal well being. Sincerely, Patrick L.N. Seyon, A Concerned Citizen.”

On April 23, 1979, as Deputy Minister of State I addressed a memorandum to the President in which I said, inter alia the following: “After a crisis such as we have just experienced, the temptation is great to undertake a ‘witch-hunt.’ I feel this is un-Tolbert, would be counterproductive and should consequently be discouraged.” I continued:
“Dr Patrick Seyon’s idea of a ‘National Commission of Inquiry into the Violence and Destruction of 14th April 1979’ should be seriously considered. Such a Commission should include individuals from the public and private sectors who are patriotic and with a discerning mind about he dynamics of the Liberian society.” I proceeded to suggest 17 names.

In a hand-written response, President Tolbert wrote: “Commission on Receiving and Analyzing Suggestions made by Concerned Citizens for Reconstruction of Liberia and Making Recommendations to Government for Attention (action).” He drew from my list of 17 the name of Nete Sie Brownell whom he named Chairman of the Commission. Patrick Seyon was included, and the President wrote my name as Secretary to the Commission. The full list of members of the Brownell Commission is of course publicly available.

In a covering letter dated June 12, 1979, the now 31-member Commission submitted its Report to the President. The Preface read in part: “Embodied in Part I are the recommendations which the Commission requests the President of Liberia to take action on with some urgency. Part II identifies issues, which by their very nature require detailed and systematic study. The President of Liberia is being asked to enlarge, equip and extend the duration of the Commission to enable it to accomplish this phase of the undertaking.” The long-range issues identified included:
1. Reform of the True Whig Party
2. Freedom of Association
3. A national youth service corps
4. Required ‘intern’ service for all college and university graduates
5. A Liberian Research Association for Socio-Economic Development
6. Review of statute for Demonstrations.
7. Review of Machinery and Operation of National Government
8. Land Tenure
9. Exercising the Right of Eminent Domain
10. Review of Present Laws on Suits and Claims against the State
11. Implementation of the Due Process of Law Provision
12. Raising the minimum wage
13. Making such banks as the Development Bank and the Housing Bank more responsible to the needs of the economy
14. Transportation needs
15. Housing needs
16. Review of Taxes

Mr. Chairman, and members of the TRC, I have provided this measure of detail about the event of April 14, 1979 to suggest not only the frame of mind of the nation on that fateful date, but more importantly, to suggest what I consider the profound meaning of that national tragedy. It was perhaps the first occasion of confrontation in Liberia between a mass of alienated citizens and their government, the felt object of the alienation. A few public officials grasped what had happened; many, unfortunately, failed, and in their failure deepened the alienation.

Before his public statement officially reacting to the Report, President Tolbert called a meeting of the Cabinet to which he invited the Committees on Executive of both the Liberian Senate and the House of Representatives. Tolbert was seeking their views on the Report. As Secretary to the Commission and Director of the Cabinet, I read in full the Report to the assembled Cabinet and lawmakers.

The President then proceeded to inform the body of developments since the Report’s submission, particularly a denial statement from the Commission of any responsibility for leaking the Report to the BBC. He went on to add that government was already attending many of the recommendations included in the Report. He desired to know the body’s reaction.

The old Liberia and a new Liberia struggling to be born were on display as officials of that era reacted to the Brownell Commission Report. One Minister felt that the Report deserved serious consideration on part of the President. Another Minister declared that the ‘entire Report is set up against Government.” ‘It is an attempt to attack the reputation of the Government of the Republic of Liberia, as he asked rhetorically: What was the whole objective behind the Report? Was it to ridicule or reconstruct? Yet another Minister asserted “The Commission indicts all Administrations from J/.J. Roberts to W.R. Tolbert, Jr.”

Senator Charles D. Sherman of Cape Mount County indicated that it worried him to listen to suggestions that the Report be rejected or ignored. Referring to the significance of the undertaking, he cautioned that the world awaited Government’s reaction. He added, “The Report does not please most of us – there are the imbalances and the flaws, etc. But it would do more harm to your image if you sit tight on it, ‘ the Senator said to the President. “Release the Report to the public, indicating necessary explanation. Accept what you want to accept; reject what you want to reject, calling a spade a spade.” Alluding to those who branded members of the Commission opponents to government, Senator Sherman wondered aloud whether Mrs. Corina Van Eee (a Commission Member) could be considered a government opponent? “Don’t reply general criticism with general rejection, the Senator continued. Simply address the main matters. There is no power usurpation as some suggest. It is all recommendations. As the President addresses the nation on the matter, it is important to refer to the BBC release, and then proceed to accept, explain and indicate issues for further study by the Commission. the Senator concluded.

President Tolbert thanked the officials for views expressed. He indicated that he never entertained idea of not taking action on the Report. Despite the BBC release, he said, he would act upon the Report. He subsequently addressed the nation on the Report, and during that address he announced a release from detention of citizens detained in connection with the civil disobedience. This Presidential action reduced considerably the tension in society. The government benefited from this respite and was able to host successfully the Sixteenth OAU Summit in Monrovia. The relaxation of tension was deceptive. It was imperative to address a Liberia then breaking up “at the seams” as West Africa Magazine put it then. The historic alienation to which I earlier referred seemed everywhere in evidence. Reform was slow and halting. National leadership was faltering. Many political forces intervened. The 1980 coup occurred.

A Final Word
Mr. Chairman and members of the Commission, here is what I hope I have conveyed to you: As a people, I believe that we face two sets of interrelated problems. The first is our unfinished task of nation building. The body politic is afflicted by endemic alienation which is deeply rooted in our national society. We postpone addressing this only at our peril. The other problem we face is more evident and a direct consequence of almost three decades of instability and war. A credibly elected government is hard at work trying to as it were “restore the years the locusts have eaten.” These are not two problems but one. Providing the tangibles, the deliverables without serious attention to the intangibles of overcoming alienation and building community, could undermine the sustainable peace we seek.

I Thank You!