THE LAND OF FURY: Justice for Sierra Leone

Dear Pan-Africanists,

We write to you, our brothers, our sisters,
From the land we once called ‘Sweet Salone’.
We write because the house is burning,
And we cannot carry water alone.
‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere’,
King told us, and we feel the truth in our bones.
We are in injury time, and the whistle has not blown.

For years we sang with pride at sunrise.
Today our tongues taste something bitter.
We are not here to point or to blame.
We are here to ask: will you sit with us?
Fanon named it ‘the pitfalls of national consciousness’,
When freedom meets power and stumbles.
Where is our nation going, and what does it mean for all of us?
FREDO. P

Hannah Arendt said power lives ‘in concert’,
In the space where people gather to speak.
We watch that square grow small each month.
Citizens whisper where they once debated.
Journalists count words like coins before spending.
If speech is the ‘oxygen of democracy’, are we choking?
Help us guard the air we all must breathe.

Nkrumah warned us long ago, clearly:
‘The independence of Ghana is meaningless
Unless it is linked to the total liberation of Africa’.
We say the same of our right to speak.
If we normalize silence in Freetown,
We invite it in Accra, Nairobi, Dakar.
Your freedom and ours are tied with one thread.
BISHOP PETERSON

Montesquieu warned: no liberty lives
Where judging, making, and ruling share one bed.
We still believe in our courts as walls.
But walls crack when faith runs out.
Mbembe calls it ‘necropolitics’ — the long wait,
The public shame before the verdict falls.
Teach us how your nations kept justice trusted when noise was loud.

We have seen cases become public theatre.
Bail, remand, delay, and sentence
Fill our radio more than farms or clinics.
We are not lawyers. We are people.
We know that slow justice is civil death,
That fear of the gavel can mute a town.
Help us build law that is firm but not a whip.
FREDO. P

Sankara said ‘he who feeds you, controls you’.
Our pots are empty, and we feel the grip.
Fuel climbs. Rice becomes a prayer.
A child goes home because lunch did not come.
Sen taught that famine is not lack of food,
But lack of entitlement, of care, of share.
Help us measure wealth by ‘the dignity of the last woman in the village’.

We know the world is hard for all of us.
COVID-19, war, and dry rains shook every shore.
Yet when graduates sell phone cards at roundabouts,
When nurses strike and teachers beg,
We are not just poor. We are misplaced.
Priorities, not only prices, are broken.
How did Rwanda rise? How does Botswana hold?
BISHOP PETERSON

Mandela gave us a weapon: ‘education’.
But what if the blade is blunt and bent?
Books change, labs stay empty, teachers work two jobs.
‘Malpractice’ shouts louder than merit now.
Freire named it ‘banking’ — heads filled, not freed.
Our youth drift to bikes, to bets, to ‘Kush’.
Help us make WAEC a ladder, not a game of chance.

Durkheim called it ‘anomie’ — when norms collapse,
When the young see no road from here to better.
A boy chooses a cheap high over a hard day
Because we showed him no day worth the work.
Agenda 2063 says development must be ‘people-driven’.
People cannot drive if they cannot read the signs.
Send us ways to teach coding, civics, and craft.
FREDO. P

We are a post-war people. We know gun smoke.
We know the quiet after graves are filled.
Weber said the state holds ‘the monopoly on violence’,
But it must feel just to those it guards.
When uniforms bring fear, the contract tears.
We do not want a weak state. We want one that listens.
Show us justice that restores, not only jails.

After fire, some chose ‘truth before trial’.
South Africa sat and spoke. Rwanda heard and judged.
Others chose courts first. We are not experts.
But we know this: each election leaves new scars,
Each protest leaves fresh silence in a home.
If we stack pain, we will never stand tall.
Help us find an African road to heal and hold.

Today we chair ECOWAS. The seat is heavy.
Gramsci spoke of ‘the crisis of authority’,
When the old is dying and the new will not rise.
Coups circle the Sahel. People doubt the ballot.
If we cannot model dialogue at home,
How do we preach it in Bamako or Niamey?
‘Pan-Africanism’ must live beyond the summit hall.

So we ask three things, and we make one vow.
Speak of us on your airwaves, in your books.
Share your teachers, lawyers, healers — let us learn.
Stand when any African is dragged from the square.
‘Injury to one is injury to all’ must be law, not poster.
Nyerere’s ‘Ujamaa’ was not built in one night.
Neither will our castles. But we will lay bricks.

We are the children of Bai Bureh and Madam Yoko.
We are grandchildren of traders who crossed rivers without maps.
We still believe in ‘Sweet Salone’, but sweet is work.
Real castles are trust, law, schools that teach,
Food on the table, and speech without fear.
We stretch our hands. Tell us we are not alone.
Help us turn to the sun, so history says: ‘And then Africa came’.

DUET
BEAUTY OF AFRICAN POETRY (BoAP)
Bishop Sahr Isaac Peterson
FREDO P