A Detailed Description of Liberia's Executive Mansion

The Executive Mansion was constructed over a three - year period, from 1960 to 1963. The entire project was designed and supervised by Stanley Engineering Company of Africa; and the Construction Contractor was Liberian Construction Corporation (LCC). The project was officially dedicated on January 3, 1964, the seat of the Executive branch of the Government of the Republic of Liberia. 

The building is an eight-storey horizontal arch-like (semicircular) structure, constructed primarily of reinforced concrete post and lintel system, covering a total area of approximately 26,500 sq. ft. Vertical circulation throughout the building is by means of four major staircases and six elevators. One of the elevators is solely used by the president and visiting dignitaries, another one is used for freight and the rest of the other four elevators are used by the public. 

The Executive Mansion was designed and is being used for four basic functions; the official residence of the President of Liberia, Offices of the President and Staff of the Ministry of State, reception and living accommodations for guest/dignitaries and maintenance/technical sections. The focal point of the building is an elaborate northern and centralized entrance/reception hall of the second floor, which connects the executive parlor, located in the eastern section of the building along with relevant supporting facilities; and to that of other administrative offices, located in the western section.  

The entrance is approached by a bridge-like driveway (semi-circular), which overlooks and engulfs a parade ground in the north and under which lies a reflected pool. A reinforced concrete canopy covers this entrance and bears the seal of the republic of Liberia centralized on its reinforced concrete V-shaped fascia.  Access to the beautifully landscaped, ocean view garden, yard, which is located at the southern side of the building, is also obtained from the above - mentioned hall. 

Very prominent on the exterior walls of the building, running across the northern and southern surfaces is gold colored composite rectangular shaped solar screen, which runs from the second to the seventh floor. These aluminum metal solar screens are divided into several sections by vertical fins from first through eighth floors of the building and are concealed behind the indicated solar screens and fins. The building’s western and eastern exterior end- walls, which also bear concave forms are finished with mosaic tiles. 

Since the completion of construction works on the Executive Mansion in 1963, there had been two major rehabilitation works executed on the composite building elements/systems. Additionally, it is worth noting that the first renovation/rehabilitation of works was executed during the 1988 /89 under the reign of the late President Samuel K. Doe.  The second renovation work was executed during the tenure of former President Charles G. Taylor in the year 1997-1998. Since the indicated period, there has been no other renovation & rehabilitation of the building element system. 

The Executive Mansion was gutted by fire during Liberia's 159th Independence Anniversary celebration on July 26, 2006. Following the outbreak, the government of Liberia announced its closure pending renovation work. President Sirleaf relocated to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where she has been performing official State functions. The eight-storey building was constructed in 1964 during the tenure of Liberia's 18th President, William V. S. Tubman, Sr.

This wonderful, detailed description of the Executive Mansion is from this less-than-uplifting article regarding the current state of affairs of the official residence of the President of Liberia (What's even less encouraging are the excoriating comments underneath the article on FrontPageAfrica.com).

It will sound terribly unfair to the journalist, but I am almost tempted to conclude that the above-description was lifted from another text, so different and lucidly accomplished it is from the rest of the article, and how abruptly the article transitions from a rough and excitable j'accuse to a technically proficient architectural description. I have never encountered such a detailed accounting of the building's history, and there are a dozen details and facts here that I didn't know before. Of course, being off-limits to the public, I've never toured the building. But a simple internet word search does not come up with a duplicate of this passage, so perhaps it is original to the FPA journalist.

“A Short Drive Through Town”

As she looked for her car key she asked if I must get back right away or would I like to come with her for a short drive through town. 

‘Bori at night is simply fascinating,’ she said… 

She certainly knew the city well, from the fresh-smelling, modern water-front to the stinking, maggoty interior.  

We drove through wide, well-lit streets bearing the names of our well-known politicians and into obscure lanes named after some unknown small fish. Even insignificant city councillors had their little streets… 

I began to wonder whether Jean actually enjoyed driving through these places as she claimed she did or whether she had some secret reason, like wanting me to feel ashamed about my country's capital city. I hardly knew her but I could see she was that kind of person, a most complicated woman.  

We were now back in the pleasant, high-class area. 

‘That row of ten houses belongs to the Minister of Construction,’ she said, ‘They are let to different embassies at three thousand a year each.’ 

So what, I said within myself. Your accusation may be true but you’ve no right to make it. Leave it to us and don't contaminate our cause by espousing it.  

 ‘But that’s another Chief Nanga Street ’ I said aloud, pointing to my left.  

‘No. What we saw near the fountain was Chief Nanga Avenue,’ she said and we both burst out laughing, friends again. ‘I’m not sure there isn’t a Road as well somewhere,’ she said. ‘I know there is a Circle.’ 

Then I promptly recoiled again. Who the hell did she think she was to laugh so self-righteously. Wasn’t there more than enough in her own country to keep her laughing all her days? Or crying if she preferred it?  

‘I have often wondered,’ she said, completely insensitive to my silent resentment, ‘why  don't they call some streets after the many important names in your country’s history or past events like your independence as they do in France and other countries?’ 

‘Because this is not France but Africa,’ I said with peevish defiance. 

She obviously thought I was being sarcastic and laughed again. But what I had said was another way of telling her to go to hell. Now I guessed I knew why she took so much delight in driving through our slums. She must have taken hundreds of photographs already to send home to her relations. And, come to think of it, would she— lover of Africa that she was—would she be found near a black man in her own country?  

…‘I was wondering whether I could see you again,’ 

‘Do you want to?’ 

‘Sure.’ 

‘Why not? Let me call you tomorrow?’

An excerpt from the end of chapter 5 of Chinua Achebe’s A Man of the People, written in 1966. Posted today on the first anniversary of his passing. It’s a shame that, if people read any Achebe at all, it is only his best-known work, Things Fall Apart, which is monumental, but not his only masterpiece. In looking for this passage, which I thought was a brilliant, multivalent telling of an African city, I came across so many other great little moments just in the 137 pages of this story, which I enjoyed just as much as his other books.

The Going Rate for Office Space in Monrovia Is...

…$385,000 per year?!

In what seems to occur with ever-increasing regularity, the Liberian government was exposed in a shocking headline, the boldface type squeezed together to fit in all the zeros. Such an eye-popping figure jumped out of the latest j'accuse on one of the most recent controversies: the Liberia Telecommunications Agency supposedly signed a multi-year lease for a newly-built office compound in Congo Town, priced at $1,155,000.

How could any property, no matter how grand, command such a price in the world's fourth-poorest country? But the seven-figure phalanx is only the most densely-formed particular of the tale, which perfectly reflects both the artifice and the reality of this city’s social and political transacting.

Monrovia, like many African cities, is a place where astronomical real estate prices, rivaling office and residential rental rates in American cities, spike above a dismal landscape of unlit, unplumbed $10-per-month rooms, home the vast majority of the city's residents. The elite amalgamation of government, philanthropy and diplomacy, which is meant to serve these desperately poor people, sprays enormous volumes of expenditure, not towards their desperate constituents below, but high aloft into this stratosphere, above the zinc roofs and over the walls into the freshly-finished, $3,000 per month sea view apartments and quarter-million-dollar per year office compounds.

Another gated compound. Photo courtesy FrontPageAfrica.

What makes the situation, if not worse, than at least politically expedient, is these huge windfalls are initially captured by the tiny foreign commercial class, whether Lebanese, Syrian, Spanish, Chinese, Egyptian, Turkish, or American. Only secondarily does this non-citizen strata remit the ultimate rent to the Liberian elite: most of whom are currently or recently in government. It is not just a fact but a common practice that many of the tenants and ultimate landlords are one and the same. It is no wonder, then, that for decades and decades the Liberian government is constrained of office space, and must perennially turn to the private market to find suitable accommodation, and must pay the prevailing price.

The LTA saga casts all the usual characters precisely in this reinforcing relationship: the quasi-regulatory agency, headed by a returnee with an only-famous-in-this-town last name; the landlord-builder, not Liberian but a semi-mysterious, Chinese firm with a participation rate in the post-conflict boom that dubiously prolific, who together strike a deal for one of the plethora of "Upstairs Buildings" which have risen up across Monrovia since 2006 by the dozens.

Then, there are the brass tacks: the sums, the numerals, the commas, the zeros. And why not? It is a difficult country, hard to secure land, hard to build, hard to wait for a return on investment. Hard to trust someone. So it's the logic of the market, the invisible hand(s). It is the fee that is commanded. Who’s to say if it is a waste? There is no alternative.

And so, in one of the few remaining countries in the world where the GDP works out to less than one dollar per person per day, a million dollars doesn't buy you very much: a few years at your appointed office, high aloft with a view to the ocean, the air-conditioning floating down from the wall-mounted unit, relentlessly holding back the tropical heat outside the walls. After a few seasons, time is up, the keys are turned over, and it is someone else's turn to pay fictitious lease rates, and feel the artificial air soothe their skin.

The rent is so like that man-made cold air. It doesn't last long, and has to be relentlessly replaced. As soon as the machine is shut off, the oppressive heat outside leaks through the cracks. Like that cold, the rent is gone; it’s floated away into the atmosphere.

Excellent Podcast: Peter Day's World of Business in Zambia

One of the best podcasts that I've heard in a long time was broadcast in two parts last month. The slightly unlikely platform for this insight into African development was Peter Day's World of Business on the BBC.

It seems precisely because Peter Day, an intelligent, experienced broadcast journalist who appears to possess no particular Africa experience and no apparent "aid/development" mindset, comes with his questions and observations without any preconceptions, that he was able to conduct such straightforward, revealing interviews.

What follows over two 20+ minute reports about the inadequate supply of power, drinking water, and transport both within Zambia and crossing its borders, as well as quick, perceptive dives into the country's rocky but stabilizing economic, political, and infrastructural scenes, and how these all interact. The interviews include the US Ambassador and the Zambian Vice President Guy Scott but many are by and large discussions with regular Zambians, from a truck driver, who can drive from South Africa in two days but has to sometimes wait five days sitting around because of transport bottlenecks, to poor people in peri-urban communities of Lusaka searching for clean drinking water.

There is also an insightful analysis of Zambia's copper mining industry, illustrating the challenges of transfer pricing, tax evasion, over-reliance on a single extractive sector with a fluctuating commodity price.

Well-worth listening to both parts of this podcast, first broadcast on 31 August and then 7 September, and available for listening online or download.

Nigeria's Stolen Oil

Sticking with Nigeria for another day, here's a few startling (or not so surprising) paragraphs:

Nigerian crude oil is being stolen on an industrial scale. Some of what is stolen is exported. Proceeds are laundered through world financial centres and used to buy assets in and outside Nigeria. In Nigeria, politicians, military officers, militants, oil industry personnel, oil traders and communities profit, as do organized criminal groups. The trade also supports other transnational organized crime in the Gulf of Guinea... 

Nigeria offers a strong enabling environment for the large-scale theft of crude oil. Corruption and fraud are rampant in the country’s oil sector. A dynamic, overcrowded political economy drives competition for looted resources. Poor governance has encouraged violent opportunism around oil and opened doors for organized crime. Because Nigeria is the world’s 13th largest oil producer – exports often topped two million barrels per day in 2012 – high rents are up for grabs. 

Those are from the opening passages of the Executive Summary of "Nigeria's Criminal Crude: International Option to Combat the Export of Stolen Oil" authored by Christina Katsouris and Aaron Sayne, and released this week by Chatham House. Free to download here. Eye-opening reading.

Francafrique on Al Jazeera

Following on the last post about the corruption scandal in Guinea, a recently-broadcast 3-part Al Jazeera documentary is especially well-timed (now that Al Jazeera America has launched and subsequently Al Jazeera's website has been blocked in the US, I may be just teasing Moved 2 Monrovia's American readers). This excellent three-part exposé, The France-Africa Connection, can be accessed online in three 45-minute episodes on the Al Jazeera website.

While reading up the topic will give interested viewers more depth into the long, sordid, shocking relationship between France and its colonies, documentary programming like this are electrifying for their vintage footage, however fleeting. Anyone interested in African history can only dream of having hours to look through all these archive news reels. 

In this respect, Episode Two is especially riveting, concentrating on the shocking "Elf Affair," which revealed how metropolitan French politics were infused with dirty money from oil exploitation from Francophone Africa, especially Gabon. Included here are brief glimpses of rare footage of Brazzaville, pockmarked by gunfire in the wake of the Nguesso-Lissouba conflict. 

Legendary prosecutor Eva Jolly also makes an appearance at the end, calmly recounting her life-risking exposure of the Elf scandal. 

All three episodes reference astonishing chapters in this complex, often ugly history, such as the mention in Episode 1 of the now openly-admitted poisoning of Cameroonian opposition candidate Félix Roland Moumié, and the counterfitting of the Guinean currency to destablise the regime of its democratically elected leader, as well as some disturbing retelling of the Biafran crisis, where France tried to undermine British power in the Gulf of Guinea.  

Across the entire broadcast, the grey-haired, liver-spocked old men, sitting in their gilded salons in Paris, could not be more frank in admitting to and confirming the malfeasance and shenangians that went on for decades in French West and Equatorial Africa, from Conakry to the Congo. 

One of the more compelling interviews is Jean Pierre Cot, who, as a young public servant was named Minister of Cooperation in the early days of the Mitterand cabinet. Having never been to Africa, much less positioned within the corruption networks, Cot's year in office was a rare, brief moment of reform, retold in his own words from 30-year old footage as a baby-faced Cot steps off an Air Afrique jet to visit a village, and speaks of a new era of fairness and partnership that never came.

The third episode is especially fascinating. In post-cold war era, as realpolitik pros age and die and new powers, especially China, arrive on the continent, and the traditions of feality to Paris slacken. The bonds with metropolitan France aren't exactly broken, but in some cases are reversed. 

Gabonese President Ali Bongo's endless suitcases of cash, stashed in corners of Crillion Hotel suites, not so much lubricated French party politics, but became one of the post important power nodes in the entire country, hand selecting freshman ministers across the political spectrum. Rather than simply being an industrial-commodity exploitation, now cash was the main extraction flowing out of Africa with the Presidents-for-life playing their former colonial masters.

Just as this bizarre arrangement reached its sprawling, viscous apex, its main underwriters, the founding father of Cote D'Ivoire and Françafrique itself, Hophouët-Biogny, passed away. The other pillar of Françafrique, Ali Bongo, died in 2009, succeeded by his son. 

This last episode includes several pristine panoramas of the Basilica in Yamoussoukro... 

...but more memorably features some shocking footage of the night-time bombing of Gbagbo loyalists on bridges Abidjan, and hundreds scattering and falling as French forces fire on protesters outside the Hotel Ivoire. 

Rather than being the final unravelling of Françafrique, the arrangement seems to live on in a post-classic form, as French intervened in the Gbagbgo-era Ivorian crisis, and its commercial tentacles still firmly grip the economic levers of West and Central Africa in the Sarkozy era, when ministers who spoke ill of Françafrique found themselves suddenly without portfolio.  While Hollande has declared a new era, French companies still operate ports and mines from Cote D'Ivoire to Congo. 

Simandou Scandal

It's not often that West Africa features in America's leading periodicals, but the surprise at glimpse words like Conakry and concession jumping off glossy pages only partially accounts for why Patrick Radden Keefe's article on Guinea, appearing in the July 8th edition of the New Yorker was so compelling.

Guinea is one of the poorest countries on the planet. There is little industry and scarce electricity, and there are few navigable roads. Public institutions hardly function. More than half the population can’t read. “The level of development is equivalent to Liberia or Sierra Leone,” a government adviser in Conakry, Guinea’s ramshackle seaside capital, told me recently. “But in Guinea we haven’t had a civil war.” This dire state of affairs was not inevitable, for the country has a bounty of natural resources. In addition to the iron ore in the Simandou range, Guinea has one of the world’s largest reserves of bauxite—the ore that, twice refined, makes aluminum—and significant quantities of diamonds, gold, uranium, and, off the coast, oil.

Keefe's report details the saga of Guinea's massive Simandou iron ore mine, in the interior highlands of east of the crescent-shaped country, north of Liberia. In particular, Keefe records the account of Israeli billionaire Benny Steinmetz's success in gaining control of the Simandou rights, in which the original concession was stripped multinational giant Rio Tinto, only to be handed over to one Steinmetz's companies, who then resold its interest in the potential mine to Brazilian behemoth Value, for billions of dollars in profit, as Guinea lurched from the death of its President-for-Life Lasana Conté, through chaotic military junta, to nascent democracy under General Alpha Condé.

Instead, B.S.G.R. could pursue a cheaper option: exporting the ore through Liberia, which already had the necessary infrastructure. For years, the government of Guinea had resisted such a scenario when Rio Tinto had proposed it. As a concession, B.S.G.R. agreed to spend a billion dollars developing a passenger railway for Guinea.

It's definitely worth reading in full (as well as the Photo Booth feature that accompanied the article), not only because it carefully explains a very complex situation and is otherwise thoughtfully written, but because of its dramatic unfolding, including President's wife's collusion with an aging Steinmetz proxy, which may have resulted in the purchase of a McMansion in Jacksonville, Florida; only the most memorable detail of what is a sprawling opera of kleptocratic corruption.

Cilins hired Touré’s brother to help promote the company’s interests in Guinea, then secured an introduction to her. Not long afterward, Cilins and several associates from the company obtained an audience with the President. 

While the story is compelling in that documentary evidence seems to exist that would prove the guilt of a billionaire taking advantage of one of the world's poorest countries. But the best passages of the Keefe's stellar 13-page story are those that zoom outward for a panoramic view of 21st-century robbery of African nations. The Simandou saga is allegorical of the kleptocratic corruption in many corners of Africa:

But how do you prove corruption? By its nature, corruption is covert; payoffs are designed to be difficult to detect. The international financial system has evolved to accommodate a wide array of illicit activities, and shell companies and banking havens make it easy to camouflage transfers, payment orders, and copies of checks. Paul Collier argues that there are often three parties to a corrupt deal: the briber, the bribed, and the lawyers and financial facilitators who enable the secret transaction. The result, he says, is “a web of corporate opacity” that is spun largely by wealthy professionals in financial capitals like London and New York. A recent study found that the easiest country in which to establish an untraceable shell company is not a tropical banking haven but the United States.

The story has developed since July, as this Guardian report from earlier this month details how Britain's Serious Fraud Office (love that name) has taken up the investigation into Beny Steinmetz's holdings in the UK and Guernsey. 

The Imprisonment of Rodney Sieh

Uplifting reports of the successful running of Liberia's second marathon are being overshadowed by two negative stories out of Monrovia: that the entire prospective entrant class to the University of Liberia, all 25,000 of them, failed their entry exams, and secondly that the editor of FrontPage Africa, one of Liberia's most respected online and offline newspapers, was jailed last week following a failure to pay a libel fine of US$1.5m. FrontPage Africa's presses were halted, although the US-based website still operates. For details, the below is reposted from the Committee to Protect Journalists, including links to the original government audit report:

The Committee to Protect Journalists today condemns moves by Liberian authorities to shut down FrontPageAfrica and jail its publisher for not paying US$1.5 million in damages related to a libel conviction.
Police shut down the offices citing a court order, pictured on FrontPageAfrica's website, that said the offices would remain closed and publication cease until the damages are paid in full. The website is registered in the United States, not in Liberia, and is still publishing news.
FrontPageAfrica's publisher, Rodney Sieh, was jailed on Wednesday after telling a judge that he was unable to pay the damages owed to Chris Toe, a former government minister who had sued Sieh, FrontPageAfrica, and Samwar Fallah, a reporter for the paper, for libel three years ago. Toe sued them for US$2 million in February 2010 after the paper reported the findings of an official government inquiry that accused Toe of corruption, according to news reports. Toe resigned from his government position and was never charged. In his complaint, he saidFrontPageAfrica's reports were libelous because he was never convicted in court. He has denied all of the allegations against him.
In February 2011, a court convicted Sieh, FrontPageAfrica, and Fallah and ordered them to pay a total of US$1.5 million in damages and US$90,000 in court costs, Sieh told CPJ before he was jailed. Sieh told CPJ that FrontPageAfrica could not afford to pay the damages. Local journalists told CPJ that the heavy fine imposed was a deliberate ploy to shut down the critical newspaper. FrontPageAfrica has repeatedly reported on corruption, official misconduct, and human rights abuses.
Information Minister Lewis Brown said that Sieh had chosen to go to jail rather than "abide by the court's ruling to pay," according to news reports. Sieh has refused to eat or drink water since he was jailed, his colleagues told CPJ. He will remain jailed until he pays the damages, according to news reports.
"The excessive damages levied against FrontPageAfrica have all along been a transparent ploy to shut down a newspaper that has gained international acclaim for exposing corruption and official misconduct at the highest levels of the Liberian government," said Peter Nkanga, CPJ's West Africa Consultant. "Rodney Sieh does not deserve to spend a moment in prison, but if authorities would concentrate on investigating and prosecuting corruption allegations, they might find someone who does."
In 2011, the court denied FrontPageAfrica's motion for retrial despite reports of the jury being bribed. Liberia's judiciary ranks as the third most corrupt Liberian government institution, according to Transparency International's 2013 Global Corruption Barometer. Liberia has a history of silencing press critics through libel lawsuits, according to CPJ research.
On July 16, 2013, the Supreme Court upheld the judgment against FrontPageAfrica, saying that the appeal process had not been completed, Kofi Woods, lawyer for FrontPageAfrica, told CPJ. Under Liberian law, an appeal can only be heard after the defendant pays a bond of 2 percent of the total amount, Woods said. The lawyer said Sieh did not have the money for the bond.
Authorities have not been able to find Fallah, who has resigned from FrontPageAfrica.
FrontPageAfrica said the newspaper is appealing the case before the ECOWAS Community Court of Justice. The ECOWAS Community Court, which has jurisdiction to hear individual complaints of alleged human rights violations, is the judicial arm of the Nigeria-based Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). The court's decisions are legally binding on ECOWAS member states, which include Liberia.

The Press Union of Liberia has also called for Sieh's release. Both these embarrassing developments are black eyes to Liberia during a week when a 7-member Congressional Delegation, accompanied by Bono and Condi Rice, held an audience with President Sirleaf and members of her cabinet, a session of profuse mutual admiration, reportedly. No mention if the issue of Sieh's imprisonment was raised during the event, but on Twitter and elsewhere, including the comments sections of the articles boasting of the CoDel, Liberians and non-Liberians are clearly upset.

Accountability

One more post related to last weekend's 10-year anniversary since the end of Liberia's civil war:

Two posts, both authored by Blair Glencorse, a friend who runs the very innovative Accountability Lab. Both reflect on the state of Liberia's society a decade since the end of the conflict. At African Arguments, Blair talks about the scourge of corruption and impunity, a topic close to my heart, and outlines how the Accountability Lab's philosophy and work set out to combat these civil ills and build a more robust social contract. Blair boldly, and to my mind, rightly identifies corruption as the leading impairment to Liberia's progress.

"Liberia is still far from a well-functioning society with secure peace and sustainable development."

Secondly, on Devex, Blair looks at Liberia's aid dependency, and the massive volumes of direct and indirect foreign assistance Liberia and its government have achieved in the last ten years, and whether all those millions have translated into much in terms of substantial change among Liberia's citizens.

How can we square the amount of attention, resources and effort put into rebuilding Liberia with these conditions on the ground? At its heart, this is an accountability problem through which the Liberian government has become oriented not toward its citizens, but toward a well-meaning, generous but ineffective international community. While there are many truly excellent development workers in Liberia, they are operating within an outdated aid system that breeds dependency, undermines capacity and ignores sustainability. Well-qualified Liberians are drawn away from government or civil society positions by higher wages in donor organizations. Each of these entities has their own agenda, procedures, obligations, reporting methods, funding streams and target beneficiaries. The result in many cases is overlapping authorities, duplication of efforts and significant space for corruption.

Both are worth reading in their entirety, and the Accountability Lab is a great organization to follow. 

Positive Peace

Finally, this weekend's anniversary of the Accra Peace Accord signing saw a good deal of press coverage marking the decade since the end of Liberia's Civil War. Liberian journalist and researcher Robtel Neajai Pailey wrote a very nice essay, published on the Guardian website, which included this poignant passage: 

However, a decade on, we are reminded of how far we have left to go. A raised voice, threats of riot and protest, and overall disillusionment remind us that peace is the mask we wear to hide our fears of violence. Although the guns have fallen silent, Liberia is experiencing what social theorist Johan Galtung called negative peace – that is, peace derived from the absence of physical violence. Over the next decade and beyond, Liberia must strive for positive peace: the absence of indirect, structural violence manifested in poverty, inequality, and impunity. 

When Liberians publicly rebuke corruption, they are calling for positive peace. When Liberians lament that a third of their land is being leased to concession companies without local consultation, they are calling for positive peace. When Liberians scorn the pay disparities between those who come from abroad and those who remained in the country during the war, they are calling for positive peace. When Liberians call for a war crimes tribunal and full implementation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) recommendations, they are calling for positive peace.

Moved 2 Moscow

The Economist's Baobab column from April this year chronicled and compared the comically centipedal convoys of many African heads of state. Its worth reading in full, and its point that such motorcades are both over-cautious and an unwise expenditure of aid-dependent governments. President Sirleaf's motorcade was picked out in particular: 

ON A recent Tuesday evening, President Ernest Bai Koroma's motorcade swung past St Mary's supermarket in the west of Sierra Leone's capital, Freetown. A motorcyclist came first. Mr Koroma followed in a Mercedes saloon. Most of the other six vehicles in the procession were gleaming black 70 Series Toyota Land Cruisers. The 70 Series wagon starts at $68,210. The World Bank puts Sierra Leone's GDP per capita at $325. 

Mr Koroma's extravagant motorcade is modest compared with other African leaders. When Ugandan leader Yoweri Museveni travels up-country he takes between eight or nine cars, a couple of mine-resistant South African armoured personnel carriers and a large silver Mercedes truck with a mobile lavatory. Occasionally mobile-phone signal dies when he arrives, suggesting that one of his vehicles also contains some kind of jammer. 

For a trip to church some weeks ago, the Liberian president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, travelled with three four-wheel-drives from the Special Security Service, two pickup trucks from the Liberian national police, and an off-roader carrying Nigerian troops from the United Nations peacekeeping mission. Long-time Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe travels with two motorcyclists up front who clear the road, arriving at high speed then stopping by their road, their lights flashing and sirens blaring. Three blacked-out Mercedes saloons follow, one with the number plate "Zim1". Finally two pick-up trucks appear, with ten or more armed guards in them. Which of these many cars Mr Mugabe himself travels in is unclear.

This wasn't the only time that Presidential Motorcades were mentioned in African-focused press during the same time frame. From the Brookings Institution Africa blog:

Likewise, President Banda has come to power with a lot of goodwill from home and abroad . But she must be careful not to follow the path of her predecessor. It is easy to squander such goodwill. President Banda must be very careful not to fall victim to the trappings of power. Last Friday (April 13, 2012), I was traveling around Lilogwe and I was stopped by police as the president’s motorcade passed through. The president’s limousine was surrounded by over 20 outriders, a large number armed cruisers and other vehicles as part of the president’s security detail. A very large convoy by any standards. While the president’s security is critical, there is no need to be extravagant. For a country that is heavily dependent on donors and one that is experiencing severe fuel shortages, such an image does not reflect a leadership that seeks to move away from the trapping of power that marked Mutharika’s regime. So, Your Excellency President Banda, as you rationalize the activities your government, start by getting rid of some of those vehicles in your motorcade.

These long motorcades may or may not be overblown or overbudget. That point is not, to me, the most detrimental effect of these long motorcades. This is not just a contingent of cars moving down the road, after all. This is a heavily armed caravan, with sirens whining and guns drawn, rushing at high speed down the highway at all hours, requiring (and sometimes forcing) other vehicles and citizens out off the road and out of the way, a repugnantly aggressive tactic that has lead to at least one death in the past year, when a Presidential Escort struck and killed a pedestrian in Paynesville in July. Traffic laws, as little as they are celebrated in Liberia, are not applied here. 

This is a daily, or multi-daily occurrence, often during rush hour, or other periods of heavy traffic, which have become increasingly constant in the last several years as roads have improved and more people have bought cars. The only relief is during the President's frequent visits to other countries. 

President Sirleaf is not alone in skipping the gridlock. The Vice President has an only slightly smaller, slightly less-armed motorcade to and from his residence in distant Paynesville. But any time the President gets in a car, space is made for her movement. As you may notice from some of these videos, the grand finale of this show, along with various Special Security guards, UNMIL troops, as the Economist mentioned, are a random assortment of SUVs with the bright red government plates, or just regular business and private plates, or NGO plates, which may or may not have been part of the convoy at the beginning, but just may be tagging along to skip the traffic. All it seems to take is a big helping of the old "look like you belong" behavior and pressing the hazard button of the dashboard for some flashing lights. In the montage below, notice the yellow (business)-plated grey SUV tailing the last police escort as it rushes through ELWA. The last video is from when Sirleaf and the aforementioned Malawian President Banda attended church together on the Sunday during her official state visit to Liberia, also in April: 



This seems to be the precipice of a slippery slope which Liberia's motorists are now happily sliding down. In the past year, a proliferation of impromptu motorcades seems to appear almost daily. National Police vehicles now routinely travel with their sirens sounding, rushing at high speed into on-coming traffic. Perhaps they have pressing business, but perhaps they are just making (ab)use of their privilege. Any government plate (such as the black Representative plate in the first video below) is a license to instantly enter motorcade mode: hit the flashers and cross the yellow line into the opposite lanes of traffic, or at least, as in the examples below, have other motorists show you undue deference even if you stay on the right side of the road: 



This practice has become an everyday occurrence, and there is no way of knowing whether there has been any official sanction for these Make-Your-Own-Motorcades, or whether this method is authorized, but its frequency seems inversely proportioned to the increase in gridlock traffic on Tubman Boulevard, and are a rather dispiriting display of public servants and regular citizens finding was to flaunt the law, the rules, and dilute social norms. 

Its starting to feel a bit like the ridiculous circus that is the gridlocked Moscow, which has become infamous for the proliferation of special flashing blue lights (which come with immunity from traffic laws) can be purchased by business men and other private citizens to whip past stalled lanes of mere mortals.  Maybe Monrovia needs its own Society of Blue Buckets. But it'd be nice if this society would move away from the chaos of Moscow rather than speeding head-on toward it, and it would be better if the elites in and out of government weren't imitating oligarchs.

"Liberia's Capital from Slum to Forest"

This editorial from the In Profile Daily, which emerged in the week following President Sirleaf's late January 2011 state of the union address, includes much of the same questions about the priorities and practicalities of building a new capital, but also contains the same negative rhetoric about Monrovia's present condition and appearance, and also echoes the President's allusions to climate change and sea erosion [with my emphasis added]:

As President Sirleaf mounted the podium at the Capitol Building on January 24, 2011 to give her annual message to the nation as mandated by the constitution, she gave a laundry list of achievements her administration has accomplished thus far and listed several more she needed to accomplish, one of which was laying the groundwork for the construction of a new capitol city as the political seat of the nation. 

While Monrovia rapidly degenerates from city to a slum amidst failures, visionless leaderships from successive governments steeped in corruption, nepotism, cronyism, special interests, compounded with years of senseless warfare; and with the prospect of oil wealth, the effects of global climate change and ever creeping sea erosion, and after five years at the helm of the nation, the President has come to recognize that Monrovia was no longer suitable to be Liberia's nation's capitol. 

The President has just admitted that Monrovia is a slum and that we must move to the forest and build ourselves a new capitol city there. The new capitol, according to the President, would be at the meeting point of Nimba, Bong and Grand Bassa counties, the area where Zekepa is the key town. 

Although at the southernmost part of Nimba County, Zekepa is embraced by Bassa and Bong counties, geographically in the heartland of Liberia and central enough to make it an ideal location for the capitol of a country that is so politically charged at all times.

While Liberians do not disagree with the central location of Zekepa, they wonder why the pronouncement now.
These are some of the questions that linger on the lips of critical thinkers: “Why couldn't the President choose the name of a town or village in Bassa or Bong counties adjacent to Zekepa? Was this meant as an indirect campaign strategy in vote-rich Nimba County, where the President has Prince Johnson to contend with? Could it be that the President was sizing up voters in the three counties and pampering them with pipe dreams?” 

Others argue that the thought of a new capitol to be financed in part or whole with income from potential oil wealth will be a waste of resources that will bankroll politicians, their cronies and good-for-nothing international firms at the detriment of Liberians. 

They argue that Monrovia, as is, is far from a true city and therefore should be developed into a metropolitan city from B.F. Goodridge to Cotton Tree and to Kakata, with modern facilities such as electricity, water, trains, water, transportation system, air, land and public transport system that meets international standards, as well as adequate and affordable housing and schools. 

According to Thomas Coleman, a resident of Water Street, 'taking resources to build a new capitol in the middle of nowhere requires a lot of money; much more expensive than government officials breaking Monrovia down and rebuilding it.' 

Emmanuel Kerkula, a University student reading accounting asserted: “many of the properties in Monrovia that need to be demolished belong to people who are politically and socially connected, and demolishing them will not be politically expedient for any leader. Rather, taking it to a place dominated by farmland and people blind to political realities will be much safer for any politician.” 

Ma Finda, a market woman at Ma Juah Market agrees that there is a need for a new capitol where there might be newer markets and modern buildings. 

As the argument continues on the need or not for a new capitol, pundits assert that the fruition of such plan - be it Zekepa or any other town or village for that matter, is many years away. 

More interestingly over the decades, city planning of Monrovia by government through the Ministry of Public Works (MPW) and the Monrovia City Corporation (MCC) have failed to produce the anticipated results, having employed the Monrovia Urban Development Project (MUDP) to have largely engaged itself into the construction of sanitary facilities in various communities, while the MPW was preoccupied with re-designing the capital that would have brought to bear the demolition of several homes in the creation of alleys and as well encouraged the construction of modern homes that most of its residents could not and cannot afford.

Of significant feature leading to attempts by governors, including the President of Liberia to relocate Monrovia has been the pervasive number of zinc shacks that continue to dull its outlook, evolving principally from urban migration that has been necessitated by the lack of gainful employment and other cores that are meant to encourage self-generating incomes to avert the continuing dependency on national government for survival.
Quizzically it certainly appears for the current leadership of President Sirleaf to propose a new capital, confusing the site still appears to many Liberians with Zekepa taken for Sekepa as publicly clarified in recent week, harnessing relevant resources proves the fundamental question in the wake of minute financial resources following the waiver of the nation's huge debts by the international community, giving way to external credits that may not necessarily have to be directed at construction of a new capital but improving the livelihood of the vast majority through job creation and ensuring food security.