Decentralization in Sierra Leone - Research for Development

Decentralization in Sierra LeoneInstitutional Choice in Local GovernmentThere has been talk in GoSL circles for several years about the need to revise and expand theLGA, but the main constraints on the development of an effective local government system inSierra Leone are political rather than technical. Chieftaincy has long been noted in theliterature as the national elite’s instrument of choice for maintaining political control over thecountryside and for mobilizing the rural vote at election time (e.g. Kilson, 1966; Barrows,1976; Reno 1995; Robinson, 2010). This strategy reflects the state topography Sierra Leoneinherited at Independence. Freetown was already a thriving port city with 30,000 inhabitants,its own municipal council and an extensive trading hinterland when the Protectorate wascreated in 1896 (Banton, 1957). Economic investment in the Protectorate never approachedthe levels the colonial authorities had originally been hoping for. At Independence, Freetownwas firmly established as a primate city while the main economic activity in the formerProtectorate (i.e. the provinces) remained smallholder farming. Little has changed since then.According to the 2004 census, 15½ per cent of Sierra Leone’s population and more than 80per cent of its public sector workers are located in Freetown.This topography has always encouraged political identification with provincial localities,especially chiefdoms, and a popular view of the state as a resource to be harnessed in theinterest of these localities. Competition between local groups to access state resources,including scarce educational and work opportunities, created a demand for patrons: an elitewith sufficient education and professional training to operate successfully in government, yetremaining loyal to its communities of origin. Chiefs were early investors in the colonialeducation system and the founder members of the SLPP, Sierra Leone’s first party ofgovernment, were all members of chiefly families. The extension of universal suffrage intothe provinces in the 1950s gave them a decisive electoral advantage over the Krio elite of theold Colony. For them, descent from “natural” African rulers was emblematic of their right torule an independent Sierra Leone (Kilson, 1966; Cartwright 1970). Having won power as asocial elite, early SLPP leaders had little interest in building bureaucratic capacity in thecountryside. By their calculation, such developments would merely create platforms forchallengers to their local pre-eminence (Cartwright, 1970). Even the socialist-leaning APC,which drew its early support from petty traders, commercial employees and lower paidgovernment workers, found it politically expedient to cultivate alliances with chiefdom rulinghouses.The trading of promises of government patronage for (actual or prospective) subjects’ votesensured the thorough imbrication of chieftaincy politics and party politics. This process ledmany commentators to argue that Sierra Leone underwent a remarkably seamless transitionfrom colonial “indirect rule” to the indirect participation of the rural masses in moderndemocracy (Kilson, 1966; Cartwright, 1970; Minikin, 1973; Barrows, 1976; Clapham, 1976;Tangri 1978b). However, the rural masses were not always passive pawns in these politicalgames. For example, it was not unknown for MPs of the early 1960s to lose their seats if theyfailed, during election campaigns, to visit off-road villages in their constituencies and engagein traditional “shake hands” (i.e. gift giving) with local headmen (Cartwright, 1970). In thefollowing decade, the Siaka Stevens regime’s tendency to confer paramount chieftaincies onparty loyalists regardless of their “ruling house” credentials often generated prolonged localprotest and campaigns of civil disobedience (Reno, 1995; Fanthorpe, 2006).The political impact of these protests was nevertheless limited by their localization.Furthermore, both of the leading parties, when in power, took full advantage of theauthoritarian possibilities in the colonially-inherited apparatus for regulating chieftaincy andFanthorpe Consultancy Ltd Page 60