<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: Gripping introduction to Sierra Leone¿s convoluted politics
Review: As a gripping introduction to Sierra Leone's convoluted post-Independence politics, this book is unmatched. Through the story of her own life, as the daughter of an influential and key political figure in newly independent Sierra Leone, we are led through the details of how Sierra Leone made its gradual descent from one of the most promising countries in West Africa, the place that used to be called "the Athens of Africa", to what is today considered euphemistically a "collapsed state". While one has heard of Foday Sankoh and the RUF, and one has an idea that diamonds are involved, Aminatta Forna takes us back to the very beginning of the process of decay. From the imprisonment of the victors in the 1967 elections, to the eventual rise to power of the rightful victor of that election, Siaka Stephens, and his consolidation of Sierra Leone into a one-party state completely under his own control. The book is divided into two parts. In part one, we read about Aminatta's first ten years, as she moved between Scotland, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, according to the political situation in Sierra Leone, and the state of her parents' marriage. Consumed by politics, and not fully accepted by Forna's very traditional Sierra Leonean family, Mohamed Forna and his Scottish wife Maureen quickly grew apart. By the time Aminatta was eight, she had lived in six different homes, in three different countries. Part one ends when Mohamed Forna is taken away by state security, imprisoned, and his children never see him again. Part two begins some 25 years later, in the year 2000, when Aminatta has started to research the death of her father. As a child she was told he died of stomach ulcers, which she always knew was not the truth. She returns from England to war-torn Sierra Leone where she seeks out everyone involved in her father's arrest, trial, and execution. She interviews scores of people, reads the complete trial transcript, and uses her own memories of the day he was taken away to try to piece together what really happened. What she finds is a blatant perversion of justice. Bribed and tortured witnesses, manufactured evidence, a jury of government stooges, and a judge obviously in the pockets of the state, together find her father guilty of treason and condemn him to death. The narrator, Aminatta Forna herself, who writes in the first person, is not completely trustworthy, however. Particularly in the beginning of the book, she makes so many polemical statements about the nature of states' corruption, in the midst of which she states as fact a contested interpretation of history-who really killed Patrice Lumumba-that one is thenceforth wary of her claims. Coming to the book with very little knowledge of Sierra Leonean history, and again recognizing her bias towards her father's goodness, his achievements, after a while, become somewhat incredulous. We are repeatedly told how brilliant Mohamed Forna was. At medical school in Scotland he was top of his class. The clinic he opened in a rural Sierra Leonean town was the model of Sierra Leonean healthcare. He won his parliamentary seat by the largest margin ever, he had the most support of all the politicians, as finance minister his budget was the most sensible that Sierra Leone had ever seen, and Sierra Leone enjoyed a fiscal surplus for the first time while he was minister. Sometimes it seems a bit too good to be true. Then she lets us know that he does have a weakness. Mohamed Forna's only shortcoming, according to his daughter's account, was with women. He carried on an extra-marital affair openly in front of his children, as he betrayed their stepmother who had spent the previous four years of her own life looking after his own children in England, while he was in prison. Yet the incidental treatment that Aminatta Forna gives this aspect of her father's life leaves the reader not fully understanding why Forna has included this in her account, as she does not use it to help us to understand her father and his choices. However, I must confess that I couldn't put the book down once I had started reading it. Even amongst my quibbles about style and some of the content, I was compelled to keep turning the pages until I had finished, in a virtual non-stop two day reading marathon. Indeed these drawbacks that I cite, by the end of the book, are either forgotten or forgiven, as the account is so detailed and well researched, and too, moving. The point is that once democracy, and democratic institutions and processes get corrupted, it tends to be a slippery slope, with a very unpleasant end, that exacts its tolls not only on countries, but on the lives and relationships of individuals. Aminatta Forna's book is a pithy and personal account of exactly how this happens.
Rating: 
Summary: Making sense of the senseless
Review: From a certain point of view Africa seems like such an enigma - the forgotten continent. Through an amazing memoir--detective story this book brings light and understanding to a so much of what is going on there - as well as being an exceptional read. The story of the author's father (a political dissident) and his fate at the hands of a corrupt regime is meticulously researched and compelling told. No stone is left unturned, no detail ommitted. For all people everywhere it is a fascinating study of corruption and what it does.
Rating:
Summary: A conspiracy of silence
Review: I first heard about this book travelling in Uganda where it was recommended to me. It is the story of a woman, Aminatta Forna, who sets out to discover the truth behind her father's execution in Sierra Leone in 1975 for treason. As she traces and lays bare her country's past and the events which led Sierra Leone into civil war, so she gradually discovers that her father's death was nothing less than a judicial murder. Her family's fate and the country's fate are intertwined. And in both case the intervening years have produced only silence. Silence from those responsible for her father's death ( and compellingly she tracks down the survivors one by one). Silence, too, from a generation who were complicit in the death of a nation, who reaped the benefits of a kleptocracy, including the many who cast themselves in the role of 'good men who did nothing'. The same story is played out wherever tyranny has succeeded: from Amin's Uganda to Pinochet's Chile. Every succeeding generation must learn to hold past generations accountable, to ask of each and every one: 'what did you do to prevent this?'. It is the only way to break the cycle. It is an important book for all these reasons and also because it is disturbingly, beautifully, hauntingly written.
Rating:
Summary: Compelling, but....
Review: It is a difficult topic to write about, that relationship between father and daughter. In this case, the narrative is compelling and intensely personal, so much so that it is difficult to get a sense of who Mohammed Forna actually was. Sierra Leone, contrary to its image in the media, was a complex society, and the whole relationship of the Creoles and the 'upline' people is at the very centre of the post colonial struggle. Ms. Forna treats very very lightly with that.
On the whole, even though she documents her hurts and slights growing up as a child of colour in the United Kingdom, for me, a child of Ghana and to a lesser extent, Sierra Leone in the same time frame as Ms. Forna, there is a sense that she had little or no idea of what was going on, apart from the hero worship of her father, which is , of course , understandable.
Through her prose, though, I am able to relive those times in Sierra Leone - who can forget Mile 91, Kissy Road, Connaught Hospital, Lumley Beach! The diamond smuggling which is at the very heart of the tragedy. It is easy to forget that no one in Sierra Leone, especially not the rural poor, is capable of making a bullet, let alone a gun. So who profits? And for what? That is at the very centre of the tragedy. The Tiny Rolands, with their footprints all over Zimbabwe, Sierra Leone, Botswana - they are the ones who do.
<< 1 >>
|
