A week ago I came back from a visit to Sierra Leone, just a few months after my last one. I have to say that it was most encouraging to see how the country is getting on as it tries to shed some baggage of recent history. There were many signs that things are beginning to stir for the better, with wide-ranging efforts directed at resurrecting infra-structure on which we can build a future.
All over the country, roads are being built, ensuring the re-connection between the centre and the margins, so that the alienation that led to the civil war can no longer be invoked as a reason for destabilization. And of course, such projects carry their own destabilizing influences, too, because of the need for additional land to create new roads or widen existing ones. Here, the problem is that there is wholesale uncertainty about titles to land and differences in land tenure laws between different parts of the country. This is not helped by the poor quality of records and archives kept in various places.
In my recent visit, I tried to get some information held at a number of sites, and was appalled by the state in which the records are kept. Moreover, the lack of a freedom of information law provides a cover for civil servants who have a vested interest in withholding information largely for the purpose of personal gain.
I should say, however, that when I visited the archives held at the University of Sierra Leone, I was highly impressed by the enthusiasm and knowledge of the young archivist who helped me to search for what I wanted. That was in contrast to the condition in which the records were being stored and I could not but wonder what their long-term fate would be if their condition of storage was not improved. For those of us out there, this should be a call to arms to rescue and preserve the repositories of our history in this the golden jubilee year of our independence from British colonial rule. If we don’t, we may well give credence to the Hegelian view, echoed by a once-reputable professor of history at a famous British university, that Africa has no history.
We wouldn’t want that now, would we?
Tell Fren Tru
