$Unique_ID{COW03143} $Pretitle{380} $Title{Sierra Leone Chapter 4B. Interethnic Relations} $Subtitle{} $Author{Irving Kaplan} $Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army} $Subject{sierra language leone languages temne mende creoles groups ethnic spoken} $Date{1976} $Log{} Country: Sierra Leone Book: Sierra Leone, A Country Study Author: Irving Kaplan Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army Date: 1976 Chapter 4B. Interethnic Relations The major factor dominating interethnic relations has been the historic rift between the Creoles and the peoples of the interior. From the beginning of Sierra Leone's modern history, Creoles have proudly regarded themselves as having created an outpost of Western civilization. Members of other ethnic groups have deeply resented what they perceived as contemptuous and condescending Creole behavior. This resentment has provided a bond among these groups, which at times has overshadowed whatever latent rivalries and tensions may have survived from earlier warfare during the settling of the interior. As the power of the Creoles has declined and the number of educated people in other ethnic groups has grown, rivalries among the latter have surfaced but without the virulence that has occurred in some other African countries. A number of factors have made for fairly peaceful coexistence. Creoles failed to notice differences among the various peoples of the Protectorate who came to work in the Western Area. This prevented the development of fixed conceptions and fostered a feeling of oneness among the different ethnic groups. Cities and towns grew slowly, and newcomers were absorbed singly or in small groups. People usually settled in ethnically mixed neighborhoods, and there was a fair amount of intermarriage. Only the Kroo have continued to live exclusively among themselves in small villages. Ethnic groups, such as the Susu, Vai, and Kissi, whose major distribution is in neighboring countries are not very important numerically, whereas the three biggest groups, the Temne, Mende, and Limba, are concentrated mainly inside Sierra Leone. Thus another factor that frequently colors interethnic relations in African countries-that of ethnic loyalties reaching beyond national borders-is missing. Traditional institutions, such as the secret societies, cut across ethnic boundaries in many instances. For example, details and rituals of the Poro secret society vary from one ethnic group to another and even within subgroups, but migrations during the past two centuries have facilitated the diffusion of some features of Poro from one ethnic group to another (see ch. 5). A Poro member from one group may under certain conditions enter the Poro councils of another. Poro persisted to some degree in the 1970s as a channel of interethnic communication, but its importance was declining. Islam, too, has been an important unifying factor. Generally relations between members of different ethnic groups seem to be closer when both are adherents of Islam. The history of political party alignment has been mirrored in changes in interethnic relations. In the first election in 1951 Creoles formed two parties of their own while the peoples of the Protectorate united in the Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP). In 1957 in the last election before independence the Creoles, recognizing their numerical weakness, backed a new countrywide party, the United Progressive Party (UPP), while most of the people of the Protectorate continued to vote for the SLPP. But cracks were appearing in the formerly united front. The Mende and Temne had begun to see each other as rivals, and there was strife between the Susu and Fullah. By 1962 the Mende seem to have been perceived by others as the major threat, which led to a wholesale flight from the SLPP. It became primarily a Mende party, and the other groups, including the Creoles, formed the All People's Congress (APC). In 1967 the Temne and other northern groups were firmly lined up against the Mende and the minor southern groups. Half of Kono District, which has a mixed population, voted for the APC and half for the SLPP. Creoles continued to be seen as a privileged group in wealth, level of education, and prestigious jobs, but the historic division between Creole and non-Creole no longer dominated interethnic relations. It has been superseded to some extent by competition between northern and southern peoples, crystallized respectively around the Temne and the Mende (see ch. 10). As interethnic contacts have increased with the growth of the cash economy, urbanization, and the development of mining, members of the different ethnic groups have developed a number of stereotypes about others and about themselves. The Mende are proud of their generosity, friendliness, and diligence and are admired for these characteristics by others. They tend to look down on the Kissi as primitive and on the Lokko as poor and backward, but they admire the Madingo as aristocratic, and they somewhat grudgingly admire the Temne for the fighting prowess they demonstrated in the intertribal wars of the past century. The Limba have high regard for the Fullah and Madingo who live among them, partly because of their reputation as devout Muslims. The Limba give their daughters as wives to Madingo but seem not to be allowed to marry Madingo girls. The Limba are generally regarded as traditional, a reputation they share with the Koranko. The Limba are proud of their honesty, peaceful disposition, and ability to work hard. The Temne are regarded as self-confident, proud, obstinate, unwilling to bow to authority, and always spoiling for a fight, a view of themselves they share. The Gola and Vai are said to be unwilling to work for others, possibly because of the dominant role they once played in the slave trade. NON-AFRICANS A few thousand Europeans, Americans, and Middle Easterners (chiefly Lebanese) reside in the country. There are also a few hundred Indians, originally from Gujarat, who are usually active in commerce. Europeans and Americans are engaged in private or government-sponsored enterprise or aid requiring a fairly large and consistent number of persons over a period of years. Europeans are mostly from Great Britain, but there are also French, Swiss, Germans, and a sprinkling of other nationalities. Nearly 7,000 Lebanese were registered aliens in 1971. Lebanese and Syrians (all of whom were called Syrians at the time of the Ottoman Empire) began coming to Sierra Leone during the 1890s. Most arrived penniless, but within thirty years they became a formidable power in commerce and trade and had an almost total monopoly of these activities in the early 1920s. In the process they destroyed the hitherto predominant economic position of the Creoles, who from then on concentrated on the professions and government service. Resentment against the Lebanese erupted into riots after World War I. Lebanese usually started as trading partners of European firms and had the encouragement of the colonial government. They leased land from paramount chiefs in the Protectorate and built small stores. In time they became the country's foremost middlemen and the principal source of credit in rural areas. They bought goods in bulk from European firms and sold them in small amounts to cultivators. They bought the local crops and sold them to European firms and in later years to the Sierra Leone Produce Marketing Board for export (see ch. 13). By introducing new wares into the countryside they changed rural consumption patterns and stimulated the growing of cash crops. Their family-oriented business operations expanded until they controlled all motor transport in the Protectorate and owned hotels, motion picture houses, and manufacturing plants. After World War II they entered the expanding diamond trade. After independence in 1961 they were in the same situation as the Indians in East Africa. Africans who could not yet hope to compete with large-scale foreign firms aspired to the middle sector of the economy and found themselves blocked by firmly entrenched Lebanese. Beginning in the 1960s a number of laws were passed that aimed at barring foreigners from many branches of retail trade and business. Foreigners were, however, still needed for their skills in the mid-1970s. Lebanese in Sierra Leone are either Muslims or Christians. The Muslims in turn may be Sunnites or Shiites. Christians are chiefly Maronites or Eastern Orthodox. Lebanese society is characterized by close kin ties. LANGUAGES Language is an obvious feature distinguishing the ethnic groups in Sierra Leone from one another, and the names of most groups are the same as, or related to, the languages they speak. Notions of ethnic identity and actual variations of cultural patterns often accompany and reinforce differences in language. Conversely adoption of a major language by members of a small group may be the first step toward cultural assimilation. The languages of Sierra Leone have generally been classified as either Mande or West Atlantic, both parts of the larger Niger-Congo stock. The exceptions are Krio, which is the native English-based language of the Creoles, and Kroo, which has been classified as part of the Kwa linguistic family. Mande languages are prevalent in much of the savanna area, in the interior forests of West Africa from the Atlantic Ocean to the Black Volta River in Ghana, and in parts of western Nigeria. Their primary focus is in Guinea and Mali. West Atlantic languages are spoken mainly in the coastal areas from the Senegal-Mauritania border to Liberia and in scattered parts of the savanna as far east as Chad. It has been estimated that about 8 million people in West Africa speak a Mande language as either their first or their second language. In geographic spread Mande ranks with Hausa and Swahili. The Mande languages spoken in Sierra Leone include, in order of descending numerical importance, Mende, Kono, Koranko, Susu, Lokko, Madingo, Yalunka, and Vai. The British linguist David Dalby, who has made a detailed study of Mande languages (he uses the alternate term Manding), has ranked them in terms of relatedness. Of those spoken in Sierra Leone, he considers Madingo and Koranko closest. At the next level he places Kono and Vai. More distantly related, according to Dalby, are Susu and Yalunka, which are mutually intelligible dialects of a single language; still more remote from Madingo and Koranko are Lokko and Mende. (The name of the latter language should not be confused with Mande, the name of the linguistic family.) Mende, which ranks with Temne as one of the country's two most important languages, is spoken everywhere in the southern half of Sierra Leone. It is used as a lingua franca by the Gola, Kissi, and Kono and as a first language by a growing number of southern Sherbro, Krim, and Vai. West Atlantic languages spoken in Sierra Leone include Fula, Temne, Limba, Bullom, Kissi, and Gola. Because of the great diversity within this linguistic group, Dalby proposed in 1965 to abandon the term West Atlantic altogether. Instead he classified Temne, Bullom, Kissi, and Gola as Mel languages, from the words denoting "tongue" in these languages. Ties of Mel languages with Limba and Fula he considered too tenuous to allow grouping them all under one heading. In the mid-1970s other linguists had reserved final judgment on the question of classification. Fula, the language of the Fullah, is spoken by about 7 million people who live scattered across the savanna from southern Mauritania to northern Cameroon and Chad. The language has many distinctive though mutually intelligible dialects. Temne is spoken as a first language by more than 30 percent of Sierra Leoneans, including an increasing number of Sherbro in the formerly Bullom-speaking area north of Freetown. Temne, a second language for neighboring Lokko, Limba, and some Susu, is a lingua franca in central and parts of northern Sierra Leone and is related to certain minority languages of Guinea, such as Landouma and Baga. Limba, numerically the third most important language, is spoken north of the Temne. Kissi is the language of at least 250,000 people who live in an area traversed by the borders of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. Bullom, the language of the Sherbro and related Krim and formerly current all along the Sierra Leone coast, has been replaced in the north by Temne and in some places by Susu and in the south is giving way increasingly to Mende. In fact linguists are predicting that it may die out entirely. Gola, spoken east of the Moa River, is the southeasternmost representative of West Atlantic languages. Far more Gola speakers live across the border in Liberia in an area reaching to the St. Paul River. African languages of Sierra Leone do not have a written form except for Mende, Vai, and Temne. A Vai syllabary was devised in 1833 by Mamalu Duwaly Bukele and is still in use among the Vai of Liberia. This inspired Kisimi Kamara in 1921 to invent a written form for Mende, which became popular for a while, especially in the city of Bo. The importance of both scripts has declined as mass literacy campaigns based on the Roman alphabet have been conducted during and since World War II. Temne and Mende are written in the Roman alphabet modified by the addition of a few special letters. Ability to write these languages usually coexists with literacy in English. At the time of the 1963 census there were nearly four times as many literate Mende as Temne, who in the past had resisted missionary efforts and other outside influences. Krio is the mother tongue of the Creoles and those Sierra Leone people of mixed descent who had been brought up by long-settled citizens of Freetown. The number of native speakers was estimated at more than 200,000 in 1969. Krio is used in public meetings in the Western Area, where people of different ethnic affiliation and of different educational background meet, and increasingly as a lingua franca throughout Sierra Leone. Krio, a language that has a largely English lexicon, African, Portuguese, and other loanwords, and an essentially African syntax, had developed into its present form by the mid-nineteenth century as a means of communication among the people of diverse background who eventually came to be called Creoles. There is a minimum mutual intelligibility between Krio and other languages based on a Pidgin English core and used in The Gambia, Fernando Poo, Cameroon, Nigeria, Guyana, and Jamaica and even with Gullah, a language spoken by Blacks living on islands off South Carolina and Georgia or on the nearby coast. They may possibly all derive from a pidgin used between English-speaking seamen and the indigenous people along the West African coast as early as the sixteenth century. Krio has a much wider range of expression than the various forms of Pidgin English because, unlike most of these, it is the first language of many. A large number of liberated Africans who were landed at Freetown between 1829 and 1870 were originally from Nigeria and the Cameroons and strongly influenced Krio as it is spoken in the 1970s. But Pidgin English as it is spoken in Nigeria and Cameroon has in turn been influenced by Creoles from Sierra Leone who worked in various parts of the British West African administration during colonial times. Highly educated Creoles tend to look down on Krio as a inferior version of English to be used only with close friends or immediate family members. But because of the reevaluation of the African heritage that began in the last two decades of the nineteenth century, most prominently by the West Indian writer Edward Wilmot Blyden, the use of Krio came to be considered by some as more appropriate for Sierra Leone than English. Complaints continued to be made during the early twentieth century that school curricula were entirely in English although it was not the language used by most people in everyday life. Thomas Decker, distinguished Creole editor of the Daily Guardian in Freetown, argued in 1974 that Sierra Leone could lay claim to being a nation because it already had a common language that was the mother tongue of the Creoles and the lingua franca of many people of the Protectorate. He even proposed to publish the Daily Guardian in Krio instead of English. There existed, however, no standardized orthography for Krio, which was, moreover, regarded by the majority of Sierra Leoneans as synonymous with Creole domination. Thus at independence English came to be chosen as the country's official language. English fills a need for administrative, technical, and business communications inside the country and for inter-African and international relations. It is used among educated Sierra Leoneans of different ethnic affiliation and is the language of instruction in school. Arabic is spoken by Lebanese and Syrians and also to some extent by African Muslims who have gone to Koranic school. Its major distribution is among the Susu near the Guinean border; in areas of diamond mining, especially Kono District; in Freetown and Bo; and wherever Madingo, Fullah, and other Islamic groups have immigrated. Radio and television programs are broadcast in English, Krio, Mende, Temne, and Limba. They contribute to the spread of these languages (see ch. 8).