I CRY FOR TONKOLILI
william bangura
Tonkolili District with a majority Temne population generated the second largest votes for Ernest Koroma during the 2007 and 2012 presidential elections.
But what has the district benefitted from the policies of President Koroma and his All People’s Congress (APC)? Absolutely zilch. Harold D. Lasswell
defined politics as, “Who gets what, how and when”.
In his current administration there is neither a Tonkolili nor a Temne in a senior cabinet position. The Vice-President Victor Foh is a Mende; the Minister of Foreign Affairs Samura Kamara is a Limba, while the Minister of Finance Kelfala Marah is a Korankoh.
Last Thursday (February 04, 2016) Koroma had the gall to declare that former vice-president Solomon Berewa is his "senior vice-president". Solomon Berewa as President Tejan Kabbah’s Attorney General was one of the principal architects for the execution of the 24 officers for had deposed Kabbah and his Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) in May 1997. Sergeant Major Abu “Zagalo” Sankoh the architect of the coup was a Limba who later bequeath authority to another Limba, Major Johnny Paul Koroma. But of the 24 murdered officers 9 were Temnes.
The optics of Koroma’s announcement was that he can travel to the bastion of anti “APCism”, initiated against Siaka Stevens and his APC’s thievery, uselessness, maladministration, totalitarianism in the 1970’s through 2006 and ridicule not only the Themnes and Konkays of today, but those historical warriors such as Ibrahim Taqi, his brother Hamid Taqi, Dr. Mohamed Sorie Forna, Paramount Chief Bai Yorsor Kholifa, Foday Sankoh and Abu “Buza” Kanu of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF).
I pity Kanu who was Head of RUF’s Military Intelligence--when they invaded Sierra Leone on March 23, 1991--whose nomme de guerre was Commander BK, because his roots are in doe Msingbi (British colonial pronunciation Masingbi). These are some of the reasons Kanu became an RUF warrior, indignities from both the APC and the SLPP.
Tonkolili had been an equal opportunity radical district. Sir Albert Margai and his SLPP lost all the parliamentary seats in Tonkolili during the March 1967 General Elections.
Complicit in this humiliation is Paramount Chief Bai Kurr Kanagbaro III, because it was at the funeral of his mother that Koroma made this announcement. The late Paramount Chief Bai Yorsor Kholifa would have publicly objected to Koroma’s pronouncement given Berewa’s history of the aforementioned treason trial.
John Kueblers quote, “Show me your friends, and I will show you your future”, is very appropriate for those in Tonkolili who have betrayed the principles of our fallen and future heroes.
William Bangura (Konkay)
Cornelius Hamelberg
Dear William O’Bai Bangura,
Seke yo!
Unfortunately, unlike my mother Adekumbi who spoke Themne and some other African languages fluently, I had to phone my best friend from Salone to ask what does Oga Bangura mean by “Konkay” - does he mean “Kanikay” – that Eastern part of Freetown that was ( is?) dominated/ heavily populated by the Temnes?
Re- the heart of the matter: “In his current administration there is neither a Tonkolili nor a Temne in a senior cabinet position.”
Shiooor! We noh go gree!
And let me assure you that I am in full sympathy with your take on Solo B who our Ernest K is trying to redeem from the wilderness of total political irrelevance and oblivion after his defeat at the 2007 elections. Our Ernest of course is trying to be seen as being godly , non-tribalistic and even “magnanimous” in victory. Who know, maybe EKB is hoping that all of Berewa’s former devotees, the Mendes – will vote overwhelmingly for him if he decides to throw in his hat for a third term, but I wouldn’t count on the South-South people ever voting for the APC even if he makes Solo B the APC flag bearer - no Sir – South is South and North is North and forevermore, so shall they remain.
That Solo B was the A-G and chief prosecutor of the 24, including a pregnant woman charged with treason is one thing but in my view the villain of the piece is President Ahmed Kabbah who did not heed his own conscience or the voice of all the people of Sierra Leone , the world, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International not to carry out the execution sentence , his lame excuse being that the Nigerian army had presented him with the dire alternative : that Kabbah should see to it that the 24 Sierra Leoneans charged with treason were executed or else Kabbah should no longer count on Nigerian soldiers to fight for him or to continue to maintain him in power ( Kabbah having dissolved the Sierra Leone army and replaced it with the Nigerian army) thus empowering some of them to do some diamond mining as part of their non-military activities…
As I’ve told you before, I was last in Sierra Leone and only for ten days and that was in April, in 1970 and then back to Ghana. But I do have my reliable contacts. So, hopefully, for a greater impact and a wider range of responses - I assume it’s wished for – so that I don’t misquote you, I’m forwarding the whole of your lamentation to the only Sierra Leone forum that I occasionally participate in: Bintumani
Your lamentation is incredible – astonishing, not in the sense of the French “ incroyable” (unbelievable) since I take your word for it and I have no reason to believe that you my dear honourable friend would deliberately mislead me or is one who is capable of any transparent calumnies or prepared to plead guilty to any of what Sir Winston himself would have daubed a ”terminological inexactitude” . But I had better first get you right, fully understand what you are saying in black and white so that I do not inadvertently misquote you - for verily misquoting can take on many forms and is not limited to lifting a mere sentence out of context or out of a whole paragraph or to lifting a paragraph out of a whole book when it so suits the manipulator to serve a devious purpose such as when it “helps” to willy-nilly “win” an argument, philosophical or otherwise with or without even the smallest degree in virology, about HIV or when talking about Zik or Zika or – when it is not ethically convenient to question “Thou shalt not kill” e.g. with a deadly virus because of a looka here it says in the Quran “And kill them wherever you find them”
This one sentence continues to ring in my ear and I quote it from memory : “If the nations accuse Israel of banditry for seizing the lands of the seven nations of Canaan, Israel can respond” The entire universe belongs to God. He created it and He granted it to whomever He deemed fit. It was His desire to give it to them and then it as His desire to take it from them and to give it us” And that half solves the problem question of “Can the Almighty change His mind?”
So, this is the world in which we live and of course President Dr. Ernest Bai Koroma, Sierra Leone’s temporary and very earthly “all-mighty” is also free - according to the powers derived from the SL Constitution, to change his mind and to fire or appoint as and when It pleases him whoever he sees fit, just as he likes. That’s how I see it. I take it for granted that you too see Ernest O’Bai Koroma as the democratically elected President of Sierra Leone and that he has won two terms and could not have done so without the massive support of the Temne people, the largest ethnic group in Sierra Leone – and another thing that I so love about the Temne people is that just like the Arabs , if you speak their language they embrace you.
Here’s what I understand – and this is also often true of other African countries – such as Nigeria and Sierra Leone is no exception. If you remember correctly, after Our Ernest appointed his first cabinet he was accused of “ Northernisation” - because of what was perceived to have been an over-representation of Northerners in his cabinet - which to me at that time (and now too) seems/ seemed reasonable – after all most of his support came from the North, the West and the East – so why should the sour grapes Southerners be crying foul? Did they hope to be rewarded with cabinet positions in the APC government after voting overwhelmingly for the palm trees of the SLPP? ( It has been the same with the sleeping giant Nigeria where the Igbos voted en masse for their idol/ their redeemer Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan and even after that expect to be rewarded, accommodated/ rehabilitated into the corridors of power and are still crying the bitter tears of defeat even though Brother Buhari has given them 20% of the available cabinet positions. If possible under Buhari the greedy buggers would like to have everything and with a divine sense of entitlement too!
I have not checked out the ethnic composition of Ernest’s current cabinet – but within the past two years many ministerial heads have rolled including that of Richard Konteh – a Northerner.
Conclusion : Although your claim may be 100% accurate that today there is not a single person of Temne ethnicity in any cabinet position we should not lose sight of the fact that the Temnes are being reward in full measure in other ways – first of all by The Almighty who deposited in the Tonkolili district of sierra Leone the biggest iron ore deposit in Africa and the third largest in the world . Those mines generate a lot of work – and even if mining has been temporarily interrupted or suspended by the killer Ebola’s onslaught - the workforce/ miners I’m sure consists mostly of resident Temnes and there would be more in the higher managerial and technical positions if they heed the advice given here by Dr. Benedict Oramah…
Tonkolili and indeed the neighbouring Bombali have been more than compensated as the beneficiaries of massive infrastructure development and investments and apart from road construction and luxury hotels etc. there’s a new university in Tonkolili The University of Makeni in Makeni, the capital of Tonkolili District. I hope that you are not also complaining or crying about that much needed development?
Consider that apart from ministerial appointments there are surely ambassadorial and other bureaucratic appointments that are being duly manned by Temnes. Intili?
But on the whole I agree with you, that EBK should not bite the Temne hand that feeds him and the cabinet must to some extent reflect the ethnic diversity in the country.
Sincerely,
Cornelius
Cornelius Hamelberg
Impiari…
Just in case you have not been following some of the responses to your very serious allegations, well here are some and please pay attention to what Yei Manga is saying.
As for me, like Socrates of old, “All I know is that I know nothing”
Best Regards,
William Bangura
If Tejan Kabbah (TK) was appointed as the Permanent Secretary of the Minister of Trade and Industry he believed in AM’s ideology.
On TK’s initial trip as President to the North in Makeni, he said--and I am paraphrasing here--that the Northerners, which were a code word for Temnes and especially Tonkolili, must apologize to the Southerners and South-Easterners for the carnage that their (Northerners) son, Foday Sankoh had brought to the region. Such impudence.
Some supporters of the SLPP informed me that the only reason they did not govern Sierra Leone as the APC did for 24 years--April 29, 1968 through April 29, 1992--was that they did not execute their opponents a lá Siaka Stevens (Lieutenant Kolugbondah, Major S.E. Momoh, Major Fara Jawara, Brigadier John Amadu Bangura; Bai Mkari N’Silk, Brigadier David Lansana, Lieutenant Habib Lansana Kamara, Ibrahim Taqi, Dr. Mohamed Sorie Forna; and the murder of Sam L. Bangura, Governor of the Bank of Sierra Leone) and Joseph Momoh (Francis M. Minah, G.M.T. Kaikai and others).
Please expand on my ”terminological inexactitude” meaning lies.
How does referencing Israel affect my opinion?
Let me employ some analogy between EK and President Barack Obama (BO) of the United States of America. In his first term BO nominated Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court to placate the Latinos. He appointed Robert Gibbs as his initial Press Secretary to appease the South (Virginia). He replaced Gibbs with Jay Carney to mollify his Irish relatives.
This “…and another thing that I so love about the Temne people is that just like the Arabs , if you speak their language they embrace you” is the nonsense that had been sold to those Sierra Leoneans who speak Temne and “pass” (whose paternal great grandfathers were not Temnes) as members of the tribe. The grandfathers and great grandfathers of most “Temnes” were either Susus or Mandingos who had migrated to Temne country, spoke the language but never accepted the culture.
Sierra Leoneans should STOP using the adjective “Northerner”,
because it was a Creole concept when they (Creoles) ‘controlled’ theories in
the country. S.I. Koroma was not a Northerner. He was a Madingo whose mother
was a Temne. Momoh and C.A. Kamara-Taylor were Limbas. William Bangura, Dr.
M.S. Forna, and the Taqi’s (M.O. though he was a traitor, Ibrahim and Hamid) are
Konkays.
Yes there is the University of Makeni and a university in Tonkolili, but what are their purpose when the poor and most of the inhabitants of Bomabli (Makeni) and Tonkolili can ill afford to send their children and relatives to these institutions? Your EK should have maintained the hospital in Tonkolili instead of constructing a white elephant. PLEASE Corneilius.
Nar im dat.
William Bangura (Konkay)
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Cornelius Hamelberg
Kusheh yu sef.
Your addressing me as “Creole Chief Corneilius” is a provocation. I take offence and demand that you cease from addressing me in that manner forthwith!
I notice that you take delight in trying to get us bogged down in some of the painful past perhaps because you are a firm believer in Runoko Rashidi’s “History is a light that illuminates the past, and a key that unlocks the door to the future” ? The only good thing about this is that each time you return to the past you emerge with a few new details, for the record.
Tears are falling like rain: In the Bintumani Forum your thread I CRY FOR TONKOLILI is getting longer and longer.
I suggest that you transport your thoughts to the scene where I have transferred this thread – and there you are free to continue to operate/ participate as you and get some direct feedback from some of the Salone people who are more knowledgeable than I am ever likely to be and are certainly very engaged in these affairs of heart and state. As my in-law ( Australian and Jewish ) tells me time without number, when I am talking about Salone or Africa : “ Corn, you are Swedish!” Of course there might me a special section in heaven for the Swedes and maybe a slightly more tropicalized climate for the Saro people? And of course the hottest possible climate for the unrepentant miscreants! As the oppressed people of Freetown and Port Harcourt usually say , “ God dae!”
What you have said in paragraph 6 does not negate or nullify the fact that if a person speaks Themne, they (the Temnes) embrace you: I did not say that everybody who speaks Themne becomes a Temne - or that everybody who speaks the kind of Arabic that the speak in Ramallah ( I know a few) becomes a full blooded Militant Arab Palestinian
Do you seriously believe that but Susus and Mandingoes can live in Temne land , speak Themne as their mother tongue for several generations without “ accepting” Temne culture? Think again.
I guess that in the same way that you would like Sierra Leoneans to abandon the term “Northern” as referring exclusively to Temnes ( is this true? ) so too the people in the North could stop lumping together everybody in the South as Mendes and Mendes only? True or false?
Nigeria has the same local problem - when some of the Southerners say “ Northerners” they usually mean “ Hausa-man” or Muslims, and by Hausa-man they mean Hausa, Fulani, etc. in short, Muslims = Hausa man and Hausa-man means Muslims! Some of the people of the North believe that the whole of East, including Calabar, Port Harcourt , Buguma, Nembe, Warri, is one tribe: Igbo= Christian…
I understand your plea for understanding in your last paragraph: that the North, South, East and West need more clinics and hospitals and this should be prioritized over building more white elephant hotels….
Must now see how Trump is doing.
Impodi? I ask because the galley slave is now going into the kitchen.
Wishing you a good day tomorrow.
Cornelius
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William Bangura
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Cornelius Hamelberg
To William Bangura, Or Bai Kang Konkay (King of the Konkays):
Seke yo!
As you know, for those who have no home base, "Charity begins in outer space"
Me, so sensitive? About what? About the Creoles not having chiefs or Kings? Is it my business? Should I be sensitive about the non-existent? And how would you feel if I referred to you as “Big Creole Chief William the Conqueror” or “Mende Chief William Jefferson Konkay Bangura”? Handsomely!
I will do as you say, give your e-mail to Eddie Grant and look forward to your call
My Life in the Bush of Ghosts ( by Brian Eno and “Talking Head” David Byrne)
Your Kotoh,
Cornelius
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