YANKUBA KAI-SAMBA
A paopa had asked me, in their controlled whatapp forum to take a DNA test to prove that I am a mende.
This was after I warned that President Bio”s leadership and policies are endangering my mende people who are the largest supporters of the SLPP in the Southeast.
Below was my reply.
“We have national statistics and regions which categorised and classified our different tribes as mendes, Limbas, Temenes,Sherbros,mandingos, creoles,Lokos ,Kisis, Susus, fullas ,konos,yalonkas etc etc. For instance, although we have all the tribes assembled in Kono ,Kono remains a name of a city as well as a tribe.
This is what we have in UK. The English man is in the Southeast, the Scottish in the North.
In Sierra Leone, even though it is my mende people who are in the Southeast and are majority according to the national statistics, a mende man has never govern Sierra Leone but they carry the blame when a non centrist leaders perceived to be a tribalist becomes leader of our country.
We have had two of these leader, wrongly or not tagged as tribalists and all didn’t end well. This is the perception that characterized Sir Albert’s leadership and now president Bio.
Sir Milton and Tejan Kabba had the national character and their leadership skills widely reflected the country’s diverse tribes and regions. Both leaders were successful in holding the country together, even under upheavals such as the RUF war and AFRC coup in 1997.
It is widely known that the Margais are konos. The current president is a Shebro— one of the minority tribes that has been subsumed by the larger mende tribe in the Southeast.
President Tejan Kabba RIP was a Susu – although the Madingoes had claimed him as their kinsman when he became president. It could have been politically damaging for Kabba to say he was not a mandingo at that point in time.
Just as S I Koroma was known as Temene and presented himself as a leader of the Temene, until when he disowned the Temenes and declared himself a mendingo in Bo town hall when he tried to succeed president Stevens.I heard him clearly over the loud speaker because I was there. Some Temenes had expressed their observations to S I’s declaration as a Mandingo ,I was told. It is now that you (S I Koroma) have become a Mandingo when all the bad actions you took was done in the name of us– the Temenes.
Sierra Leone, like 99.9 percent of the world is a patriarchal society, which means you inherit the fathers paternity,name and tribes. That is why my wife of arab north African descent and our three children are carrying my fathers paternal names.
Sir Albert was known to have started tribalism in Sierra Leone politics. Even the former SLPP VP Berewa accentuated this in his book.
Bio is also widely known to be a tribalists , having created the same atmosphere of tribalism as when Sir Albert was in power.
But my question is this: why is it that a mendeman or Temene man,who are statistically in the majority ,have never govern Sierra Leone but they are pitched against each other by leaders who rides on their backs?
