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Wednesday, May 7, 2025

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf: Power without spectacle

by

Ira Mathur
17 days ago
20250420

There are coun­tries where the past is not past. It lies in pot­holes, in ra­dio broad­casts, and in the price of rice. Liberia in 2005 was such a coun­try. The war had end­ed. The mem­o­ry had not.

And then, a woman stood to speak. She did not raise her voice. She did not call for re­venge. She spoke of re­new­al—not the kind promised on posters, but the hard­er kind that be­gins with clear­ing rub­ble and re­turn­ing ledgers.

“To­day, we whole­heart­ed­ly em­brace this change. We recog­nise that this change is not change for change’s sake but a fun­da­men­tal break with the past ...”

She was 67 years old. Her name was Ellen John­son Sir­leaf, and she had come by her pres­i­den­cy not through a dy­nasty nor through glam­our, but through at­tri­tion and work. In a coun­try ac­cus­tomed to strong­men, she ap­peared as a woman in a plain suit, an econ­o­mist by train­ing, shaped not by ide­ol­o­gy but by in­sti­tu­tion.

She was born in 1938 in Mon­rovia, in a house that be­longed to no sin­gle class. Her moth­er, Mar­ket­ta, had been adopt­ed in­to an Ameri­co-Liber­ian fam­i­ly, de­scen­dants of freed Black Amer­i­cans who had colonised the coun­try. Her fa­ther, Jah­male, was the first in­dige­nous Liber­ian to be elect­ed to the na­tion­al leg­is­la­ture.

It meant that from ear­ly on, Sir­leaf un­der­stood the qui­et hu­mil­i­a­tions of caste. She knew how lan­guage worked in rooms and how pow­er moved through fam­i­lies. And she knew ear­ly, too, the us­es of ed­u­ca­tion as an es­cape. At 17, she mar­ried James Sir­leaf and fol­lowed him to Amer­i­ca. It was there that the girl from Mon­rovia be­gan her sec­ond life—as a woman who would choose work over mar­riage, books over be­long­ing.

In Wis­con­sin, she stud­ied ac­count­ing. In Col­orado, eco­nom­ics at Har­vard, in pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion. She de­voured the lives of thinkers and tech­nocrats—John May­nard Keynes, Amartya Sen, and the econ­o­mist Gun­nar Myrdal. Her in­ter­ests were not the­o­ret­i­cal. She want­ed to know what built a state—and what de­stroyed one.

She worked for the Trea­sury in Liberia and lat­er be­came Min­is­ter of Fi­nance un­der pres­i­dent Tol­bert in the 1970s. She tried to re­form salaries and crack down on cor­rup­tion. It made her en­e­mies. In 1980, Tol­bert was ex­e­cut­ed in a coup. Sir­leaf fled. It would be the first of many ex­iles.

From Nairo­bi to New York, she worked for the World Bank, the UN, and Citibank. She learnt how cap­i­tal moved across bor­ders. She watched African lead­ers sell their coun­tries for donor mon­ey. She al­so saw what in­sti­tu­tions could do if they were not hol­lowed out.

“We pledge anew our com­mit­ment to trans­paren­cy, open gov­ern­ment, and par­tic­i­pa­to­ry democ­ra­cy for all of our cit­i­zens ...”

She came back in the 1990s to a Liberia in tat­ters. Charles Tay­lor, a for­mer war­lord, was pres­i­dent. Sir­leaf op­posed him. She ran for of­fice. She was jailed. Re­leased. Jailed again.

The Sec­ond Civ­il War end­ed in 2003. She was 65. Most would have re­tired. She cam­paigned in­stead. She won. On Jan­u­ary 16, 2006, she stood be­fore a coun­try that had seen 250,000 deaths. The pow­er grid was gone. Roads were mined. Bud­gets were fic­tion.

She be­gan with debt re­lief, rene­go­ti­at­ing bil­lions. She re­stored elec­tric­i­ty to parts of Mon­rovia. She ap­point­ed women to top posts.

In the wreck­age of Liberia’s long civ­il war, with 250,000 dead and in­sti­tu­tions in tat­ters, Ellen John­son Sir­leaf stood be­fore her peo­ple and asked for a mo­ment of si­lence—not for ap­plause, not for tri­umph, but for the dead.

Then she spoke—not like a politi­cian, but like a wit­ness. She evoked her il­lit­er­ate grand­moth­ers, the ter­ror of ex­ile, the hunger of chil­dren, and the debt of sur­vival. Her voice was steady, dry, and un­flinch­ing.

Her 2006 in­au­gur­al ad­dress re­mains one of the most qui­et­ly rad­i­cal doc­u­ments of post-con­flict lead­er­ship—a woman’s ac­count not just of re­turn­ing home but of choos­ing to re­pair it. There was no grandios­i­ty, on­ly the au­dac­i­ty to be­gin again. These 500 words cap­ture its eth­i­cal force.

Ex­cerpt from pres­i­dent Ellen John­son Sir­leaf’s In­au­gur­al Ad­dress, Jan­u­ary 16, 2006—Mon­rovia, Liberia

“Let us first praise Almighty God, the Ar­biter of all af­fairs of hu­mankind, whose om­nipo­tent hand guides and steers our na­tion.

Be­fore I be­gin this ad­dress, which sig­ni­fies the high noon of this his­toric oc­ca­sion, I ask that we bow our heads for a mo­ment of silent prayer in mem­o­ry of the thou­sands of our com­pa­tri­ots who have died as a re­sult of years of con­flict.

I al­so ask your in­dul­gence as I re­flect on the mem­o­ry of my two rur­al il­lit­er­ate grand­moth­ers and my moth­er and fa­ther, who taught me to be what I am to­day, and the fam­i­lies who took them in and gave them the op­por­tu­ni­ty of a bet­ter life.

Vice Pres­i­dent Joseph Boakai and I have just par­tic­i­pat­ed in the time-ho­n­oured con­sti­tu­tion­al rit­u­al of oath-tak­ing … It af­firms the cul­mi­na­tion of a com­mit­ment to our na­tion’s col­lec­tive search for a pur­pose­ful and re­spon­sive na­tion­al lead­er­ship.

We ap­plaud the re­silience of our peo­ple who, weighed down and de­hu­man­ised by pover­ty and ren­dered im­mo­bile by the shack­les of four­teen years of civ­il war, coura­geous­ly went to the polls … We pledge to live up to your ex­pec­ta­tions of cre­at­ing a gov­ern­ment that is at­ten­tive and re­spon­sive to your needs, con­cerns, and the de­vel­op­ment and progress of our coun­try.

We know that your vote was a vote for change; a vote for peace, se­cu­ri­ty and sta­bil­i­ty; a vote for in­di­vid­ual and na­tion­al pros­per­i­ty; a vote for heal­ing and lead­er­ship. We have heard you loud and clear, and we humbly ac­cept your man­date.

We recog­nise that this change is not just for the sake of change but a fun­da­men­tal break with the past … re­quir­ing bold and de­ci­sive steps to ad­dress the prob­lems that for decades have stunt­ed our progress.

No one who has lived in or vis­it­ed this coun­try in the past fif­teen years will de­ny the phys­i­cal de­struc­tion and moral deca­dence the civ­il war has left in its wake. We are a strong and re­silient peo­ple, ca­pa­ble of ris­ing from the ash­es of civ­il strife and start­ing anew.

I know of this strug­gle be­cause I have been a part of it. With­out bit­ter­ness, anger, or vin­dic­tive­ness, I re­call the in­hu­man­i­ty of con­fine­ment, the ter­ror of at­tempt­ed rape, and the os­tracism of ex­ile.”

—End of ex­cerpt—

She left of­fice in 2018. Her crit­ics, and she had many, ac­cused her of favour­ing the elite. Her sup­port­ers point­ed to what she did with a ru­ined coun­try: re­stored sol­ven­cy, es­tab­lished civ­il ser­vice ex­ams, and pro­tect­ed a press that of­ten mocked her. She did not chase pop­u­lar­i­ty. She chased sta­bil­i­ty.

She left no dy­nasty. No cult. Not even a par­ty to in­her­it her name. She left doc­u­ments. Mem­os. Bud­gets. In­sti­tu­tions that worked slight­ly bet­ter than when she found them.

“This oc­ca­sion, held un­der the cloudy skies, marks a cel­e­bra­tion of change ... a na­tion­al re­new­al.”

In re­tire­ment, she pub­lished her mem­oir. It was spare. Al­most pro­ce­dur­al. There were no flour­ish­es. She want­ed to be read as a pres­i­dent, not a per­son­al­i­ty.

She read nov­els. She quot­ed Achebe, some­times Bald­win. But most­ly, she read re­ports—on pover­ty, women’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in agri­cul­ture, and on cor­rup­tion in­dex­es. When asked how she sur­vived prison, she said, “I fo­cused on what I would do when I got out.”

In a world of spec­ta­cle, she kept her pow­er qui­et, dry, and ef­fi­cient. Liberia still strug­gles. But un­der Sir­leaf, it did not re­turn to war.

That is not glam­our. That is gov­er­nance.

Ira Math­ur is a jour­nal­ist at Guardian Me­dia and the win­ner of the 2023 OCM Bo­cas Prize for Non-Fic­tion for her mem­oir Love The Dark Days.

Web­site: www.iras­room.org.

Au­thor in­quiries: iras­room@gmail.com


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