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A comment on “Remove or reform?”
- Paul Richards (11 August 2008)
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Paul Richards, Professor Wageningen University
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Paul.Richards{at}wur.nl Paul Richards
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It is distressing to learn that Edward Sawyer's life was cut short after submitting his article “Remove or reform?”, published in African Affairs 107/428 (June 2008). The paper reveals a researcher of considerable promise, and respect for his memory obliges me to reply to the arguments he makes against me. Sawyer finds my claim that the war in Sierra Leone was influenced by injustices associated with (colonially-devised) paramount chieftaincies biased. He thinks I relied “primarily on interview data with ex- combatants” (p. 389). This is incorrect. As pointed out in Archibald & Richards (2002), where the background to our fieldwork is detailed, these criticisms were voiced widely (by civilians as well as combatants, and by fighters from opposed factions). In some cases - informants had been known to me for 25 years, and had never been emboldened to make such remarks before - I assumed the war-time absence of chiefs was a factor in loosening tongues. Data gathered by Sawyer in three localities (greater Freetown, Tonkolili District in the north and Kenema District in the east) in 2005 suggest a different finding – that village-level chiefs were rated quite highly for their contribution to conflict resolution. So what is the explanation for the apparent differences between our two accounts? One possibility is (as Sawyer claims) sampling bias. I find this cuts both ways. Sawyer refers to his own survey as based on random sampling, but does not reveal how the sample frame was established. One person per sampled household was selected for questioning in three localities, none in the Liberian border districts within which the war took root. Randomization notwithstanding, the make-up of his 300 interviewees is far from representative. Men (61%), persons aged 26-50 (59%) and those with some secondary or higher education (49%) are over- represented; farmers (28%) are under-represented. Sawyer says nothing about the social group with weakest rights under customary administration - the third or so of the population of rural Sierra Leone graded as “strangers”, i.e. persons not born within the chiefdom of their residence. In short, it is not clear that his sample is a fair selection of those most likely to object to customary rule. On the other hand, I share Edward Sawyer's sense that the differences between us may be real. Sawyer notes that many chiefs died in (or during) the war and considers their younger replacements may have behaved differently. This is certainly possible. The data in Richards (2005) refer to the period 1999-2002, before peace was secure. Sawyer's sample refers to a situation following the restoration of chiefly administration, achieved with substantial help from British aid. Some (at least) of these chiefs tried to live up to their benefactor's expectations. A second explanation of our differences, as Sawyer recognised, is that our two studies address different levels of the customary system. His main question asks respondents to grade the conflict resolution abilities of sub-chiefs and village headmen. I have never denied the utility of the informal village moot as a low-cost method of dispute settlement (cf. Gibbs 1963, Richards et al. 2005). The complaints documented in Archibald & Richards (2002) and Richards (2005) refer to problems at a different level - mainly to injustices of the chiefdom court system. Customary justice (I claim) is structurally biased against women, “strangers” and impoverished male agrarian workers. The last group (a product of incomplete emancipation in the 1930s and '40s) belongs, in the terminology of Gibbs (1965), to the “wife borrowing” class. Marriage (regulated by customary courts) is a problem for this class, and bride service (farm labour for the male elder deemed to hold reproductive rights over a potential partner) continues to contribute to the dependent status of many young men in villages. More work is needed to test this claim quantitatively, but there is evidence that marriage was difficult for many of those recruited into the war. A random-sampled survey of ex-combatants (Humphreys & Weinstein 2004) found (to the apparent surprise of the researchers) that whereas few fighters cited diamonds, more than one fifth of rebel RUF combatants claimed acquisition of a marriage partner among the benefits of joining the movement. Equally significantly, cases for damages against young men for unauthorised sexual alliances comprised about a fifth to a quarter of all cases heard before three reconstituted chiefdom courts in the period 2000-2006 (Chauveau & Richards 2008), suggesting that this archaic offence - Sir John Hawkins reported such a case at Sierra Leone in the 1560s! - remains important to the fortunes of the local landed class. As a constraint over the reproductive agency of young people “woman damage” cases - almost by definition - pit male youths against older men. Fines averaging about half a year's wages are the norm (generally commuted to farm labour); our data suggest that the chance of successfully defending against the charge is close to nil (Chauveau & Richards 2008). Debt-bondage or vagrancy are the result. RUF activists not infrequently reported such an history (Peters 2006). Edward Sawyer did well to remind us of the value of village-based “alternative dispute settlement” in Sierra Leone, but he offers no evidence to undermine my conclusion that customary justice requires deep reform if a militant underclass is to have its energies redirected towards peace. References Archibald, Steven and Paul Richards, 2002. 'Conversion to human rights? Popular debate about war and justice in central Sierra Leone'. Africa 72(3): 339-367. Chauveau, Jean-Pierre and Paul Richards, 2008. West African insurgencies in agrarian perspective: Cote d’Ivoire and Sierra Leone compared. Journal of Agrarian Change (in press). Gibbs, James, 1963. 'The Kpelle moot: a therapeutic model for informal settlement of disputes' Africa 33: 1-11. Gibbs, James, 1965. 'The Kpelle of Liberia'. In Peoples of Africa, ed. James Gibbs Jr. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Humphreys, Macartan & Jeremy Weinstein, 2004. What the fighters say: a survey of ex-combatants in Sierra Leone, June-August 2003. CGSD Working Paper No. 20. New York: Columbia University. Peters, Krijn, 2006. Footpaths to reintegration: war, youth and rural crisis in Sierra Leone. PhD Thesis, Technology & Agrarian Development Group, Wageningen University NL. Richards, Paul, 2005. 'To fight or to farm? Agrarian dimensions of the Mano River conflicts (Liberia and Sierra Leone)'. African Affairs 106 (no. 417), 571-90. Richards, Paul, Steven Archibald, Beverlee Bruce, Watta Modad, Edward Mulbah, Tornorlah Varpilah & James Vincent, 2005. Community cohesion in Liberia: a post-war rapid rural assessment. Social Development Papers: Conflict Prevention and Reconstruction, Paper No. 21, January 2005. Washington DC: The World Bank. PAUL RICHARDS Technology & Agrarian Development Group, Wageningen University Conflict of Interest:None declared |
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