Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
UNDERSTAND SIERRA LEONE
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History
The North American slave trade was effectively launched from Freetown in 1560 and by
the 18th century Portuguese and British trading settlements lined the coast. In the late
1700s, freed slaves from places such as Jamaica and Nova Scotia were brought to the new
settlement of Freetown. Soon after, Britain abolished slavery and Sierra Leone became a
British colony. Many subsequent settlers were liberated from slaving ships intercepted by
the British navy and brought here. These people became known as Krios and assumed an
English lifestyle together with an air of superiority.
But things didn't run smoothly in this brave new world. Black and white settlers dab-
bling in the slave trade, disease, rebellion and attacks by the French were all characteristics
of 19th-century Sierra Leone. Most importantly , indigenous people were discriminated
against by the British and Krios, and in 1898 a ferocious uprising by the Mende began, os-
tensibly in opposition to a hut tax.
Diamonds Are Forever
Independence came in 1961, but the 1960s and 1970s were characterised by coups (once
there were three in one year, an all-African record), a shift of power to the indigenous
Mende and Temne peoples, and the establishment of a one-party state (which lasted into the
1980s). By the early 1990s the country was saddled with a shambolic economy and
rampant corruption. Then the civil war began.
It's entirely possible that buried in the depths of Foday Sankoh's Revolutionary United
Front (RUF) was a desire to end the corruption and abuses of power committed by the rul-
ing military-backed elites in Freetown, who had turned the country into a basket case. But
any high ideals were quickly forgotten, replaced by a ferocious desire for Sierra Leone's
diamond and goldfields, with looting, robbery, rape, mutilation and summary execution, all
tools of the RUF's trade. While their troops plundered to make ends meet, Charles Taylor,
the former president of Liberia, and the RUF's leaders enriched themselves from diamonds
smuggled south.
The Sierra Leone government was pretty ineffective and tried using South African mer-
cenaries against the RUF, who, bolstered by disaffected army elements and Liberian irregu-
