Lubanga’s conviction is a wake up call to African leaders to uphold rule of law

Barrack Muluka

Martin Meredith recounts the events of the night of April 12, 1980, in Monrovia, "A group of 17 dissident soldiers led by a 28-year-old master sergeant, named Samuel Doe, scaled the iron gate of the president’s seven-storey Executive Mansion, overpowered the guards and found (President) Tolbert in pajamas in an upstairs bedroom. They fired three bullets into his head, gouged out his right eye and disemboweled him (walimtoa matumbo)."

That was how the Tubman-Tolbert Dynasty that ruled Liberia for 37 years ended. It was an atrocious end. Meredith recounts further in The State of Africa: A History of Fifty Years of Independence, "Amid much jubilation, watched by a crowd of thousands of laughing and jeering people and filmed by camera crews, 13 high-ranking officials were tied to telephone poles on the beach in Monrovia and executed by a squad of drunken soldiers, firing volley after volley. The soldiers rushed forward to kick and pummel the corpses."

The Tubmans and Tolberts presided over one of the most unequal and oppressive rules by minority groups, anywhere in the world. Liberia was their family property. Frank was president of the senate, his other brother Stephen was minister for finance, his sister Lucia Mayor of Bentol City, his son AB ambassador at large, his daughter Wilhemina, presidential physician, Christine was deputy minister for education. His niece Tula was presidential dietician. His three nephews were assistant ministers." Four sons-in-law were minister for defence, deputy minister for public works, commissioner for immigration and board member of Air Liberia. One brother-in-law was ambassador in Guinea, another one a senator, and a third one the mayor of Liberia.

The 13 officials who were pulverised in the streets of Liberia were, therefore, all members of the Tubman-Tolbert Dynasty. These fellows had abused power of office with the impunity that has been the trademark of the post-colonial African State. If you crossed them, you were jailed or killed. You begin to understand why crowds celebrated their lynching.

However, Samuel Doe would be no different. In the end, he went the same way. Here is Meredith again (on Doe’s last day), "Wounded in both legs (in a gun fight) he was taken to a bungalow in a residential compound . . . On Johnson’s orders, a film was made of Doe’s interrogation . . . Stripped down to his underpants, Doe stares up at his tormentors, his face bruised and bloody. "I want to say something, if you will listen to me," he says. Johnson sits calmly behind his desk drinking beer, ‘Cut off one ear,’ he says in a soft voice. Doe is held down flat. A knife slices through an ear. Doe screams. The film shows Johnson holding the ear high above his mouth and then chewing it. The other ear is sliced off."

The following day Doe’s mutilated and naked body was paraded through the streets of Monrovia in a wheelbarrow, his dead genitals in his dead mouth. This is Africa. The headquarters of impunity. From Cape Town to Cairo, the continent has known some of the most atrocious history anywhere in the world, over the past 50 years. There have been the killing fields of Sudan under successive presidents, the murder fields of Angola, the massacre grounds of Equatorial Guinea and the minefields of Mozambique.

Ours has been narrative of looting and unmitigated mayhem by people who cannot be touched. That is unless someone upstages them Liberian style. Warlords have murdered Africans with impunity in Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Togo, Ivory Coast, Uganda, DRC, Congo Brazzaville, Central African Republic, Chad, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, Rwanda, Burundi, Kenya, everywhere!

It is behind this tragic history that Africa must unfortunately welcome the conviction of Warlord Thomas Lubanga Dylo of DRC by the International Criminal Court (ICC), on Wednesday this week.

Lubanga was found guilty of using child soldiers in the inter-tribal war between the Hema and the Lendu in Ituri, in 2002 to 2003, contrary to international conventions on child soldiers. The girls suffered double jeopardy. They were used as sex slaves. Lubanga will soon be sentenced, although I am told that he plans to appeal.

Whatever the case, it is scandalous that Africans should be tried and convicted in foreign countries for things that happened in their own countries. However, what options do we have? The conviction reminds us that the international criminal justice system was set up for people whose governments are unable or unwilling to address war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity, allegedly committed by "people who cannot be touched." What are the lessons from the Lubanga conviction? First is that it does not matter how long it takes, or whom you think you are. The wheels of justice will catch up with you. When the whip cracks, it lands on you alone, with your God. The world of retribution is a lonely one. It does not matter that is institutional retribution, or jungle justice. It is simply lonely. Others can cheat you along.

They may tell you things like, "We are together (Tuko pamoja)." However, when the moment of truth comes, you will discover how you were always alone. Your only true friends are your family. Lubanga will eat the bread of sorrow and drink the water of affliction in solitary confinement. It was the same thing with Tolbert in his pajamas and with Samuel Doe’s naked body in a wheelbarrow, genitalia and all, in the streets of Monrovia.

Lubanga’s conviction is especially an invitation to African leaders, to institutionalise the rule of law. Impunity belongs to the past. It operates on the wrong side of history, together with all who would embrace it. It does not matter how loudly you could scream, "Neocolonialism!" You can no longer do the things Tolbert, Doe, Johnson and Lubanga did and expect to go scott-free. The world will not listen. The death knell has sounded on impunity, who will not hear? The lion has roared, who will not fear?

The writer is a publishing editor and media consultant