I’ve watched several programs on some of the troubles in Africa recently. The Empire in Africa was available on the “watch now” feature on Netflix. I could barely watch parts of it and I’m not overly squeamish. I’ve never seen anything more brutal in my entire life and am not exactly sure I needed to see it. To portray that sort of violence seems somehow wrong to me - like you are doing further degradation to the person who had to suffer it by watching it. If I had been raped, I’d be horrified to know that strangers were watching it on a documentary. They didn’t show any actual rapes, but somehow the “in your face” violence seemed a tad on the voyeuristic side although perhaps we need to know how brutal man can be to man? I didn’t feel right watching it - not just because it was difficult to watch, but because it somehow felt like I was performing an indignity by doing so.

The documentary is about the troubles in Sierra Leone, a tiny country bordered by Guinea on the north and Liberia on the south. It’s a very small country but could easily be self-sustained because it used to be a major importer of rice and there are diamond minds. It was ranked the poorest country in the world in 1998. The civil war was about control of the diamond mines. The Rebels had intended to take it back for the people, but even when they had control, the people were still extremely poor. Today, foreign interests have control of the diamond mines and the country is still very impoverished.

Freetown was founded in 1787 for former Africans who had been American slaves and who had fought in the American Revolutionary war for Britain. It became a British colony and the interior of Sierra Leone become a British Protectorate. Both the Colony and the Protectorate gained their independence in 1961 and there was much instability from 1991-2002 which was blamed on the rebels. The film pointed out that the agencies hired by the government may have been to blame for much of the horrors that were committed in the country and that the rebel forces were used as scapegoats. This seems to be a theme in many of the conflicts in Africa.

The film’s main point is that even though the colony has won it’s independence, it continues to be controlled by foreign interests with the colonial power maintaining rights to the country’s most valuable resources. Some people have said the documentary is rebel propoganda, and perhaps it is. But then it isn’t unusual for rebels to be scapegoated for the interest of the powers that be.

The politics behind these conflicts is so complicated. Perhaps it is extremely easy to be misled when you don’t have all the facts, which I don’t. All I know is that there should never be any reason for innocent people, especially children, to suffer what these people have had to suffer. It is beyond my understanding of how people can feel so self-righteous about their stance that they could not only allow this sort of suffering to occur, but to commit it. The rebels (Revolutionary United Front) systematically physically mutilated civilians they believed sided with the government - chopping off hands, legs, etc. It is estimated that 20,000 civilians suffered these sorts of amputations. They didn’t discriminate - they amputated the hands of children, too. They likewise recruited children for the rebel cause. The intellectual members of the RUF disagreed with these tactics, but within the first year of rebellion, they were killed.

There was also quite a bit of footage of government soldiers brutalizing civilians. The most disturbing was the atrocities they were committing on a young boy (maybe 8 or 9 years old, possibly younger) who had likely been recruited by the rebels. He was crying in fear and there was no mercy whatsoever. Very, very difficult to watch. That scene has haunted me more than any other. Clearly it wasn’t just the rebels who inflicted horrors on civilians. (Can you legitimately call an 8 year old boy a rebel?) Soldiers hired by the government were extremely brutal.

The British took control of the government in May 2000 as a result of “mission creep”. Within a year, the UN was in full control of the country and gradually handed control over to a retrained Sierra Leone army. In January, 2002, President Kabbah declared the civil war to be officially over.

The revenues from the diamond industry have increased, but more than 50% of diamond mining still remains unlicensed and considerable diamond smuggling continues. (I’ve added two more films to my Netflix queue - Blood Diamond (a movie) and Blood Diamonds (a documentary) to hopefully learn more about this.)

Tourism is becoming a major industry in Sierra Leone. After having watched Life and Debt about the tourism industry in Jamaica, you have to wonder if that is a good thing? Tourism is very often just another way for the powers that be to enjoy the resources of a country at the expense of the native residents.