Liberia - Resistance 7: It is not Congaus Vs Natives, but Patriots Vs Criminals

Minority ruling classes the world over alienated from the oppressed and exploited masses, treat the people with contempt, and annex the national wealth to feather their nest have this worldwide notoriety for stoking the flames of bigotry, and all of its excesses among the people in order to divide and rule them. This was the modus operandi of British imperialism during the heyday of colonial plunder and conquest. Of late, this is the strategy employed by the French ruling class to sap the revolutionary militancy of the Yellow Vest protest movement by accusing the leadership of anti-Semitism as a way of scaring away French Jewish from it.

Faced with the tremendous radicalization and the explosive revolutionary energies of the Liberian masses, the tunnel vision-ridden CDC regime has whipped up such divide. By dividing the people on this toxic line the CDC believes it can maintain the political dynasty (perpetual rule) as being bandied about by their agents. It is our analysis that the regime has resorted to this backward reactionary method because the republic is in the throes of a revolutionary situation. Revolutionary situation is the midwife of a revolution, a situation in which jurisprudence and political formations are stuck up in the uproar. The old CDC order is cracking and falling like a house of cards; the people are getting actively involved in political life, making popular demands with a liberating gusto, and there is a seismic movements from below. There is a developing trend of mass consciousness. The forces representing law and order are shilly-shally and swinging. Old political alliances are tearing apart and new ones are being formed.

The country is gradually turning into the vortex of the African Revolution, where the next stage of the social struggle is gradually being ushered. Inspired by the unlimited heroism and unparalleled resistance of the Algerian and Sudanese masses in toppling their decadent regimes and are totally involved in the process leading to the construction of a dynamic era, the Liberian masses have become ultra-stirred up and restlessly courageous to make their own history. Thus revolution is on the agenda, and the stampede of the people into history against the ruling farce is a historical inevitability which could be delayed but cannot be permanently postponed. While there are signs of the end for the regime, the signs of the people entry onto the scene of history are on the horizon.

Revolutionary struggles have phases and stages. There is a principal aspect of contradiction, and there is a principal contradiction. The imbalances of the 1970s were promoted and sustained by the ruling clique which belonged to a particular social formation so that formation was fought against by progressive social forces because it constituted the ruling circle. Today, we are faced with different and new imbalances, contradictions and dislocations, the alliances and methods that were used to fight against those vices in the 1970s cannot be the same alliances and methods that will be used to struggle against the current nightmare in the homeland. Those who think otherwise are historical fantasists and will be defeated by the logic of this era. Just as we are struggling against different social forces and contradictions under these difficult circumstances, new alliances will be forged with progressive forces from broad sections of the population to confront this menacing order.

President Weah and his henchmen have betrayed the people’s democratic aspirations and economic demands. They have turned the national treasury into a personal purse where colossal looting, debauchery, and ubiquitous corruption in less than two years have taken the economic crisis and material desperation of the masses of the people to the highest proportions. The economic crisis is worsening by the day, the people are the hardest hit, but the economy only works for Weah and his flunkeys, as unbridled property grab has become normalized. Inflation is butchering the income of the people and a virtually import based economy is reeling from its death pang due to minimum foreign currency supply and the callous irresponsibility of the fiscal and monetary authorities. In fact, some of the people have been thrown out of the workface and have become members of the street force.

Grimace, grimace and grimace pervade the faces of the Liberian people with nauseating regularity. In the government, scandal, scandal and scandal have become the characteristic features of the regime. These contradictions have placed the once politically inert people in revolutionary combat, to the extent that those who said the consciousness of the people is immutable have eaten their words and bowed in utter shame. Some of the sufferers from the urban slums who sacrificed their last, trekked upcountry, and exuded passionate illusions in Weah to the extent singing his praises became a regular rendition are showing implacable resistance of consciousness. Now, the noisy rendition ‘’move from on the road the country giant coming’’ has taken a back foot; in fact, it is going into extinction like an endangered species. The chorus of the people now is: lead, govern, or get out of the way, President Weah!

Faced with the quantum shift in the consciousness of the people, compounded by their revolutionary militancy of electric energies, like a dying order which will fight ferociously but futilely, this growing ferment, highest form of self-expression, and the quantum transformation of the masses from agonizing to organizing have sent a seething inferno in the spines of the CDC politicos. They have ebbed from peddling vulgarities to circulating anti-protest video propaganda, and have receded into hiring media mercenaries to distort history and inject fear into the people by spitting out the inaccuracy that the April 14, 1979 Rice Demonstration led to the 25years of civil carnage in Liberia—the people listen to them not! The people have long seen through the deception and drawn the appropriate conclusion that April 14, 1979 the masses ‘’stormed heaven’’ in confronting their century-old dispossession, deprivation, and exploitation by the True Whig Party. In short, the TWP faced the patriotic wrath of the people after decades of misrule and distribution of social injustices. It was the state that introduced armed violence into the politics of the country by shooting hundreds of unarmed and defenceless protesters.

It is clear that the process of rotten enrichment of the few to the exclusion of the majority can only strive on pandering to reactionary politics and breeding divide among the people so that the people can be dissuaded from the awful accumulation of wealth by the national parasites. No doubt a government formation which starves schools, hospitals, and outlets of public goods but whose leaders build condominiums, opulent villas, and take money from the public treasury and stash their loots in their many foreign bank accounts would always play dirty tricks to keep the people lull. However, the regime is caught in its own vice, in its own folly, and in its own contradictions. Stepped in this dilemma, it is looking for a safety valve to expel the pressure. Nothing different can it say as it has burned its hands on all fronts.

Crude materialism with corresponding infractions of the rule of law have eroded the people’s confidence in the discarded deck of cards parading as national leaders. The people are not suborned by the dangerous babble emanating from the regime circles to save its neck. In their dignified defiance, the Liberian toilers are redefining the concepts of governance and asserting themselves as the fountain from which political power flows, and whose endorsement or rejection of a political order determines its life span. This quantum leap and popular realization is a vindication of the dialectics. From passivity to activity, confirms the change from quantity to quality. This new awakening of the people’s consciousness finds its origin in the withering of the illusions in Weah by certain quarters of the public and in varying crises (economic, social, and political) from multiple frontiers, but it is being responded to by the degenerate ruling clique with the reactionary politics of national chauvinism and tribal bigotry.

In their attempt to extinguish the revolutionary flames blazing in the length and breadth of the homeland, the lackeys of the regime have taken to social media throwing out Congau vs. Native divisive rhetoric among the people. But the people have given no receptive ear to such childish nonsense. The more the regime spews the cliché, the more the people fuse together to confront the rotten order. In our politics we do not know Congaus and natives. We only know honest and dishonest people; criminals and patriots; fanatics and nationalists. We follow Blyden, Barclay, Horace, Porte, etc. Those who stand at the barricades with the people in the fight for justice, equality and dignity are our comrades, brothers and sisters. Those who are corrupt, greedy and ideologically bankrupt are enemies.

The country-native divide is only promoted by scoundrels and political rascals. These must be exposed and fought with the last drop of our revolutionary blood. Thus we follow the heroic stance of our fallen Comrade, Adolph Lawrence; the majestic position of all patriots and nationalists who are Liberians; and all the revolutionary defiance of our mothers and sisters who have never accepted and will never accept the mortgaging of our country! WE say forward with the popular democratic struggle where the people are masters!! WE say down with the Country-Congaus divisive scoundrels who are nothing but spineless opportunists and black fascists! WE say down with the CDC regime!

About the authors:
Moses Uneh Yahmia and Alfred P. B. Kiadii are students of the University of Liberia. Kiadii studies Political Science and Public Administration while Yahmia studies Political Science and Economics. They can be reached via [email protected] and [email protected]