Squatters, with no legal rights, but with permits

After yesterday's post about Kru Town, I was interested to read this article about sea erosion in West Point, which is said to be home to around 75,000 residents, most of whom, among other challenges, have highly insecure rights to their property: 

Mary B said she had bought the piece of land from the commissioner of the township for 11,500 Liberian dollars, about 130 dollars,and built her shop on it. 

According to the Township Commissioner's office, residents in the area are primarily squatters, with no legal rights to the land though it is possible to obtain a Squatters Permit from the administrative office, which grants a certain level of legitimacy to the dwellers.…West Point is home to many of Monrovia's disadvantaged people and many cannot afford the city's huge rents, which are fixed in U.S. dollars - 150 for a modest two bedroom apartment. To make matters worse the government does no have public housing available. 

People in the area have always talked about plans by the government to relocate them, but the Public Works Ministry says the government has no such plans to move over 75,000 people.

I've never heard of buying a squatters permit, but that hardly means such things don't exist or aren't actually codified legally in Monrovia or elsewhere, but the Commissioner's statement that the dwellers have no legal rights, just a vague "certain level of legitimacy" is hardly reassuring. 

A Far West, A Mushroom City

I think I bought these flashcards on eBay a couple years ago. Printed in Italy in 1978-79, they must be part of a larger set of fast-fact cards on places around the world. They would suggest something educational, although in reading the short summary on the back suggests that either these were for an adult audience in the pre-digital age or that pupils from thirty years ago were under a much higher expectation for reading comprehension than would be the case today—with terminology like “autochthonous peoples” and “insalubrious districts” casually included the explanatory text. 

The card presents a dynamically industrializing state, with the orderly and ultramodern Freeport on the front, and much of the back discussing trade and economics. The tabulation of figures is also remarkable: Liberia exported 250 million dollars worth of goods in that year, 90% of which was iron and rubber, or around 800 million dollars in 2013 inflation adjustment. 

As mentioned in a post from a few months back, 2010's figure was 823 million dollars, although a third of this was the offshore ship registry. The whole country had only 1.2 million people; Monrovia only 180,000. There are probably more than 1.2 million people in greater Monrovia today. My favorite sentence, unquestionably, is “…Monrovia, which until then had looked like a Western film city with twisted wooden posts, developed and acquired one of the finest ports of West Africa, which became a free port.” Great sentence, although I cannot imagine that the unfamiliar reader would be able to understand the connection between a wild west film set and pre-modern Monrovia. Although this was enough for the front of the card to declare Liberia “An African ‘Far West.’”

The card for Abidjan is perhaps even more fascinating. First, the image itself is so banal as to be mesmerizing; it seems to be calling attention to how remarkable such an ordinary scene of an office building parking lot was in sub-Saharan Africa before 1980. The back caption states that the block is “the Ivory Coast data-processing centre at Abidjan.”

The remainder of the back text is mostly devoted to an unusual description of Abidjan's socio-economic  “hierarchy” —the Europeans concentrated in the more attractive districts of Plateau, Cocody and Marcory, the industrial zone in Petit-Bassam. Then there are the majority-African districts: Adhamé, Koumassi— “high-rise towers of rented flats,” an intriguing image; and then “the ‘areas of spontaneous settlement,’ or shanty-towns.” 

Then: “as fast as these insalubrious districts are renovated to clear them of the slums, new ones spring up alongside to house the influx of immigrants from Upper Volta, Mali, Nigeria, etc.” The echo of an earlier, imperially-sactioned racism informs a modern sociological assessment. The final two paragraphs summarize the economic sectors in almanac form. “Abidjan really is a mushroom city,” it declares. 

These cards not only recall the pre-decline era of post-independence, when Africa hummed with progress and industrialization; for me they also remind me of early childhood memories, flipping open the family Atlas or taking down a volume from the Encyclopedia set, to look up a distant, exotic city or country, described in a handful of paragraphs. The brief, essential words conjured the cityscapes in my mind: “a tourist complex on the lagoon,” —what would a ten year old American kid see? Rare was the encyclopedia image of an African city in those days, and even if the entry had an illustration, it was but one small photograph in the decades before Google image search. It was left to interpretation, and the imagination.

China's Fishing Fleet, Africa's Seas

A Quartz post earlier in August, entitled, "China’s government is subsidizing your sushi—and driving other countries’ fishermen out of business,"while worth reading in full, included two graphics that I'm reposting here, which highlight the impact of China's worldwide fishing trawl on Africa's local fishing industry and the fish themselves:

While China might not be exactly subsidizing the sushi in Monrovia, which to my understanding most of the restaurant owners procure themselves from Liberia's waters, the issue of overfishing is a proxy for our global over-exploitation of resources, and the strain of the burgeoning emerging markets' billions of consumers have added in the past decade.

  For more about Liberia's fishing situation, there's no better place to check out than the government's Bureau of Fisheries website, which was relaunched last year, and is a great resource and shares a lot about what it being done to protect Liberia's oceans.

"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.

Zekepa: Liberia's Abuja?

Although the passage of an Act to establish a new capital city for Liberia came and went in late 2009 with plenty of blustering announcements and chatter there followed absolutely no details and even less action for more than a year. Then, during President Sirleaf's annual state of the union address in January 2011, once again the outline of the fabled city appeared on the horizon. From a press report of later that January [emphasis mine]:

Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has unveiled plans for the relocation of Liberia’s capital Monrovia to Zekepa where Grand Bassa, Bong and Nimba Counties converge.Delivering her sixth state of the nation address Monday, President Sirleaf said there was need to relocate the capital city due to the effects of climate change and expectation that rising sea levels could threaten coastal cities.She said plans were being concluded for a new capital city at Zekepa, but warned that it would take time to realize this dream.“The vision I have outlined is a collective vision but we should be under no illusions about how difficult this will be to achieve. There is a long road ahead of us, and that road will not be smooth. We will need great courage and determination to get to our destination,” the liberia leader said.Liberia’s 20th President, William R. Tolbert, Jr. who was assassinated during the  1980 military coup d’etat, planned to relocate the Liberian capital to Gbarnga, Bong County in central Liberia.Meanwhile, President Johnson Sirleaf has disclosed that Liberia is on the verge of becoming a petroleum exporting country in the coming decade.She however said that before the country exports a drop of oil, her government will put in place policies that will dictate how oil wealth will be used for development, stability and poverty reduction.She said if properly managed,  resources from oil could be invested to transform Liberia. Currently, oil exploration is taking place off the coast of Liberia.Monday’s state of the nation address to the national legislature was the president’s  last in her first term as president of Liberia.

Firstly, Zekepa, a place that hardly exists any more than Brasilia did in 1950s Brazil, Abuja did in 1970s Nigeria, or Yamoussoukro did before President Houphouët-Boingy's reign. The Google Earth images above pinpoint Zekepa (not to be confused with the mining site Yekepa) which does indeed rest in a small nook of south-central Nimba County near the border with Bong and Grand Bassa Counties, and as can be seen not particularly far, as the pepperbird flies, from northeasternmost Margibi County nor for that matter Monrovia itself. Yet despite its verdant locale, it is by the few accounts that exist a tiny hamlet, and no matter how geographically proximate it may be, there are no roads to the place, nor really any suitable modern transportation options of any sort nearby.

In placing this proposal in a global context of the the movement of capital cities, this bears resemblance to several, including Brasilia but also Dodoma in Tanzania but most especially Abuja, Nigeria's capital which was explicitly moved away colonial coastal city dominated by one group to more neutral territory near the geographic center of the country and at a intercultural crossroads.

Secondly, its rather remarkable that President Sirleaf's pronouncement listed climate change and sea erosion as the primary drivers behind moving away from the coast. Its on the one hand interesting to see any head of state refer to climate change openly, much less one from a less developed country with a less educated electorate. More curious than that is the idea that the country's current capital, and by far its largest city, with a metropolitan area home to about one in three Liberians, is in danger of being swallowed into the ocean, and therefore the government will vacate the sinking city, leaving the populace behind.

The final aspect of the report to note is the mention of the oil. This is hardly a nonsequitur. From the beginning of the Sirleaf-era talk on capital relocation, the undertaking has been consistently linked to the new revenue stream of oil, often explicitly proposing that a very worthwhile use of the additional funds would be to build a new capital city. This begins to bring to mind Abuja again, which despite the legitimate arguments for its construction in the name of national unity and a break with the past, was without question an orgy of corruption during its establishment, and since that time has served as a comparatively luxurious retreat, hidden away from the teeming cities and the majority of the country's population, where the country's rulers control its revenues and wield power to their own benefit, out of easy reach or sight of much of the population. Its easy to imagine that this has appeal among Liberia's public servants also.

Africæ Tabula Nova, 1570

Two details from a plate of the 16th century Theatrum orbis terrarum, depicting the African continent. This masterpiece is part of the collection of the Boston Public Library's Norman B. Leventhal Map Center, which tweeted out a link to this item last week. 

The details above show West Africa and the Guinea coast. Cape Verde and Sierra Leone are already known as such, although the Niger River is incorrectly shown to flow into the Atlantic between the two, a fallacy that would exist for centuries to come.


Benin and Biafra are labeled, as is Guinea, somewhat ironically exactly where modern-day Guinea is. I presume Dauma is kindred to Dahomey, as Melli surely is to Mali. Melegueta, the early Portuguese name for the Liberian coast, is probably the same as Melegete, which this map puts at somewhere near modern-day Ghana. Its fascinating not only that Cape Palmas is clearly labeled, but also the St. Paul River-- showing just how ancient that river's Christian name really is.

I don't recognize a single town name, (although I wonder if Gago is now Gao) and its notable that they are depicted with as tiny clusters peaked by a church spire, in the European style of the era. I love the swordfish, too.

April is the Cruelest Month

The above photo is from mid-April 1979. The corner of Broad and Randall Streets, the "1st and Main" of Monrovia, which is still today the site of the Palm Hotel and is down the street from the KLM desk, but no longer boasts a swish Swissair ticket office or Panasonic showroom. The city of that morning looks modern, cosmopolitan, and affluent, but on closer inspection, a disorder is evident.

It is one of the first days after the Rice Riots, perhaps even the very next morning. The Swissair agent's glass windows are smashed away, and the debris of chaos is visible on the otherwise immaculate pavement. At least forty Liberians are dead, the first casualties in a violence which would crescendo into a great massacre of hundreds of thousands.

While travel agents would sweep up the lobbies of their plush storefronts and enjoy a few more years representing European airlines, and the Lebanese Hi-Fi salons would still find customers for the latest American, European, and Japanese electronics, the golden days of Monrovia's prosperity were coming to an end. Later that year, in June, President Tolbert would open the Hotel Africa and Unity Conference Center, and for a brief while it would seem that Monrovia was still the capital of Africa, and Liberia was still a leader among its nations.

But by the next April, Tolbert would be dead in his bedroom, burial place unknown. His cabinet, including his family members, would be tied up and shot on the beach, or never be seen again.

That would be a full decade and half before the hell of April 6th, 1996, which drowned Monrovia in an acid bath of looting, destruction, mayhem and murder, and announced the arrival of the new leader, Charles Taylor.

It would be another seven years before the chaos of April 2003, when World War III rained down on destitute, desolate Monrovia in the form of un-aimed rockets, blind grenade landings, and the deadly whistle of AK bullets whipping through the streets.

April has come to Monrovia again, full of dates which are remembered by mourning if they are thought of at all. The clouds are changing. The waves, so crisp and evenly paced in previous months, crash haphazardly on shore. The bright sand repels the tidal forces, sometimes sending them back to crash against the next onslaught, a spectacular sight that forebodes of dangerous currents for swimmers. The seasons are changing; the skies begin to dim with cloud cover, soon to darken with rain.

Photo via Liberia77

What does New Zealand have to do with Liberia?

Generally not a lot, however over the past six months, stories about New Zealand have been showing up in news alerts about Liberia, and vice versa.

The reason is the Rena, a freighter vessel which struck the Astrolabe reef off the eastern coast of New Zealand's north island on October 5th, and has been lodged their since, slowly breaking up. Details of the toxic threat of oil and other chemicals leaking into the reef, and the US$100million clean-up that followed can be found in articles from around the world.

The Greek-owned, Swiss-chartered, Filipino-crewed cargo liner is, like a large number of ships on the high-seas, Liberian-registered. Liberia has long been one of the world's leading "flags-of-convenience" which has often been a source of bad press in general as an opaque source of foreign currency for Liberia's government and an unhealthy arrangement in which the world's oceangoing operators seek the lightest regulations to register their fleets (article from 2003 when Taylor departed). I mentioned the Liberian Ship Registry back in February when talking about their shiny new building in Sinkor.

Its only worse when there is a headline-grabbing accident with a Liberian-registered vessel, such as happened when Carnival Cruise Line's megaliner the Ecstasy caught fire after leaving Miami in 1998. The footage, caught on camera by Miami news stations, broadcast images of a blackening stern with the word MONROVIA emblazoned in huge letters (see below). The only connection to Liberia at all is legal and tax paperwork, yet its yet another way that evening news watchers associate negative news events with Liberia.

In the case of the Rena, it seems there may be some actual involvement of Liberian government authorities in allowing the ship to continue on its fateful voyage across the Tasman Sea. From an Associated Press Story from the end of February:

A December investigation by the AP found that Australian authorities impounded the ship 10 weeks before the crash after finding 17 safety and maintenance violations, but that Liberian maritime authorities intervened, essentially saying the ship was safe to sail and the problems could be fixed later. It's not clear whether any of the previously identified problems played a role in the grounding.

So far, the crew and the owners have been charged, but there is no further word if Liberia could be in further trouble or exposed to cost recovery by antipodean authorities. The repetitional damage that Liberia's foreign image continues to suffer at the convenience of its international maritime registry has been inflicted once again.