View of the World (11 page)

After a century of stagnation, in which Liberia lagged far behind the adjacent areas under white colonial domination, the country has begun to move rapidly ahead under President Tubman's firm, paternal guidance.
Liberia assumed strategic importance during the last war. It could at any time provide a base in traditionally friendly territory for American armed forces defending the South Atlantic, and, along with Brazil, it is the only source of vital natural rubber bordering the Atlantic Ocean. The president's intelligent exploitation of these factors has conjured up such evidence of prosperity as the new Free Port of Monrovia, five hundred miles of new roads, a three-million-dollar bridge over the St Paul River, a sprinkling of new hospitals in the hinterland, an air-conditioned hotel with a magnificently eccentric Spanish lift, taxis, telephones, piped water and modern sewage disposal for Monrovia, and a fairly elaborate yacht for the president himself. The president's ‘open door' policy has attracted foreign capital to Liberia and an assortment of American, Swiss, German and Spanish firms who now share with the Firestone Rubber Company – that great monolithic pioneer – in the considerable natural wealth of the country.

The main problem confronting these concessionaries is Liberia's acute shortage of unskilled labour. The Liberian tribesman has always been accustomed to gain the mere necessities of life with a minimum of effort. At the most he will consent to clear and burn a little virgin bush, and then leave it to the womenfolk to plant the ‘dry' rice and cassava forming the basic diet. Even the women's agricultural work is very light. No hoeing, weeding or watering is done. The family simply waits for the crop to come up, and supplements its diet by harvesting a few tropical fruits. The Liberian countryman will eat anything. There are no sizeable wild animals left in the country to hunt, but the chance windfall of a serpent or a giant snail, the seasonal manna of flying ants, and palm grubs – all are joyfully accepted for the cooking-pot. The result of this catholicity of appetite is a well-balanced diet and a good physique. The amount of leisure enjoyed by a Liberian villager – especially a man of substance with a full quota of three wives to wait on him hand and foot – is quite beyond the comprehension of modern civilised man. It is natural enough that such a villager is extremely reluctant to exchange this
lotus-eating
existence for that of a plantation labourer working up to twelve hours a day for a wage of thirty cents, and what are called ‘fringe benefits',
i.e. free housing, medical supervision, and so on. When, indeed, he is driven by force of circumstances into the plantations, he will sometimes pathetically attempt to emphasise the transitory and separate nature of his life as a labourer by adopting a temporary name which often recalls the brighter side of plantation life, such as Dinner Pail, T-shirt, Pay Day, or Christmas. In these circumstances, labour is simply obtained by a system of bonuses paid to local chiefs – whose word is more than law. There is nothing furtive or shamefaced about this procedure, and the amounts paid duly figure in company balance sheets submitted for stockholders' approval.

Firestone, which controls a labour force of 25,000 men to operate its million-acre concession, and which sets the pace in these matters, pays $1.50 per man, per annum, and its 1955 balance sheet discloses a total of $90,000 expended in this way. ‘In addition [I quote from
Case Study of Firestone Operation in Liberia
, published in the Nation Planning Association series] a regular scale of non-monetary gifts from Firestone to the paramount, clan, and occasionally town chiefs, has also evolved.' This regular scale of non-monetary gifts for the supply of labour goes under the dignified title of the ‘Paramount Chiefs Assistance Plan', and it was developed, we are assured, with the full knowledge and consent of the Liberian Government, and has also been adopted by other foreign companies.

I learned, by the way, that it was considered highly unethical to outbid one's competitors in this extremely restricted labour market. Just as a successful tradesman may consider it a good thing to contribute occasionally to the local police benevolent fund, foreign companies operating in Liberia are also notably generous in their support of charitable, educational, cultural and religious institutions in Liberia.

The minimum wage of thirty cents a day, which is between one-third and one-fifth of wages paid for equivalent labour in the adjacent colonies of the British Sierra Leone and the French Ivory Coast, is explained in the publication already quoted, as a device for keeping inflation in check. More cogently it is argued that Liberian employers of labour could not afford substantial pay increases. Liberians have been quick, in fact, to
convert themselves into plantation owners, and as soon as a new road is completed it is lined on both sides with the plantations of prominent Liberians who act as small subsidiaries of Firestone. These native plantation operators obtain free seedlings from Firestone, and as long as their labour costs remain cheap, and their land can be obtained under ‘advantageous' terms from tribal communities who have never heard of title deeds, they seem to be on a very good thing. Occasionally in the current scramble for land, someone oversteps the mark, and there is a rumpus in the Liberian Press. While I was in Liberia, a tribe actually dared to take a foreign company to court for the illegal enclosure of its tribal land, and no one was more astounded than the tribesmen themselves when they won their case.

Considering the subservience of the Liberian Press, it is extraordinary how much self-criticism can be found in its pages, combined with extreme sensibility to adverse comment from anyone outside the True Whig Party family – especially foreigners. All the private scandals of Liberian government: the corruption in the judiciary, the oppression of tribal people by district commissioners, the bribe-taking by persons in high places (with the exact amount of the bribe), are ruthlessly exposed to the foreign eye. Some of these revelations, in fact, such as the account published in the
Listener
of May 14th 1957, of organised highway robbery on one of Liberia's two main roads – which had then been in progress for over two months, and had the backing, the paper thought, of ‘top interior officials' – make almost incredible reading. Yet the same papers explode with indignation on the slightest foreign comment that might be taken as injurious to national pride. Such outbursts are sometimes lacking in a sense of proportion. Recently the
Listener
came out with banner
headlines
: ‘Stamp Dealer Says Liberia Owns Savage Cannibal Tribes'. About one quarter of the space normally allotted to news was devoted to mulling over this slander, and there was a further orgy of wound-licking in a long editorial headed ‘Please Treat Us Kindly Next Time'. It turned out that an obscure stamp dealer in Boston had had the enterprising notion of printing a little geographical information on the packets he sent
out. Naturally this was highly coloured stuff intended to excite the interest of the children whom one presumes would be his principal customers; but to the Liberian inflamed sensitivity it was a monstrous calumny that overshadowed any international crises, such as that of the Suez Canal, that happened to be about at the time.

There are of course no ‘cannibalistic tribes' anywhere in Africa but the fact that cannibalistic practices do exist in Liberia is abundantly clear to anyone who reads the very uninhibited Liberian Press. Cases of ‘medicine' murders by ‘Human Elephant Men', ‘Snake People', ‘Water People', an organisation with the macabre official title of the Negee Aquatic Cannibalistic Society, and various other criminal secret groups, are regularly reported in the newspapers. These often contain gruesome anatomical details, and are sometimes accompanied by a
journalistic-reactionary
demand for the reinstitution of trial by Sassywood – which in its pure form means that the suspect drinks deadly poison, brewed from the bark of the sassy tree,
Erythrophloeum guineense
, from which he is supposed to recover if innocent. Here is an example extracted from the editorial published in the
Liberian Age
of April 30th, 1956, which incidentally explains the motive behind ritual murders.

The ‘medicine' referred to in this article is sometimes called ‘borfina'. It is manufactured from the organs of a murdered person, and as well as being employed in the ancient magical ceremonies common to primeval humanity to promote rainfall and to influence the growth of crops, it is in brisk demand by those who dabble in witchcraft for their own ends. Borfina is in common use, not only in Liberia, but in most of West Africa, and it is reported that rich men will offer as much as one hundred dollars for a scent bottle full of the grisly stuff. In Liberia it is obtained by professional ‘heart-men' who usually work at night and prefer women and children for their victims. It is a sinister fact that the ‘heart-men' are more active at the period of the Christian festivals of Christmas and Easter, when they are believed to invade even the capital itself in search of their prey. At these times Liberian countrymen go armed and in pairs along the jungle paths, and the women working in the fields keep in touch by calling to each other at frequent intervals. It is practically unknown for a white man to be the victim of a medicine murder, as it is believed that medicine obtained from a white man is of little or no value.

Trial by ordeal, I soon discovered, although not practised by colonial regions of Africa, is an everyday occurrence in Liberia, and I had only been in the country about a week before I had the opportunity of seeing how it worked. Wanting to learn as much as I could of the interior – a
little of which had become accessible in the last few years by the
completion
of new roads – I hired a taxi in Monrovia and drove across country to the frontier of French Guinea and back, a journey taking three days. I carried with me a letter of introduction to Mr Charles Williams, District Commissioner of Bgarnba, where I hoped to stay the first night, and it was at Bgarnba that I encountered this survival of medieval justice.

Mr Williams was in court when I arrived. I sent in my letter, and in a few minutes the commissioner came out to welcome me. He was a tall handsome man, with a reserved, almost melancholic expression. He mentioned that he still had a large number of cases to try, and asked whether I would be interested in seeing the district court in operation. I was naturally more than interested. As we strolled back to the courthouse Mr Williams softly whistled a bar or two of ‘Through the Night of Doubt and Sorrow'. I later discovered that he was a devout Episcopalian, with a great affection for
Hymns Ancient and Modern
.

The court was held in a large circular hut. About fifty members of the public were present, seated on rows of benches. The atmosphere was relaxed and informal. Most of the women had their babies with them, which they fed intermittently at the breast. The soldiers who brought in petty offenders from time to time hung about in wilting attitudes until they were dismissed. A pair of counsels, nattily dressed in sports clothes, kept up a crossfire of legal repartee. Seated behind his desk Mr Williams looked mildly judicial and perhaps a trifle sardonic. Once in a while he picked up his mallet and brought it down with a crash, sometimes to restore order, sometimes to deal with a tsetse fly that had alighted on his desk. Most of the complainants and defendants did not speak English, and as Mr Williams was a member of the Liberian ruling class and therefore spoke nothing but English, the services of an interpreter were often necessary. The interpreter translated from the tribal languages into a kind of Liberian pidgin, which I found completely impossible to understand. Even Mr Williams was often in difficulties, and called on the interpreter to repeat a sentence.