Africa has been described as 'the hopeless continent' and Sierra Leone's recent history provides a vivid picture of this tragedy.
Sierra Leone has witnessed a slide into anarchy and in large areas the government is powerless, with control in the hands of rebel gangs, some belonging to the Revolutionary United Front, while neighbouring states jockey for position and intrigue for influence. After years of civil war, violent changes in government, death, mutilation and destruction of property – extreme suffering by so many ordinary people - such order as exists is maintained by 11,000 United Nations troops, a battalion of British soldiers and a substantial Royal Navy force with marines. Apart from its own military costs, Britain as the former colonial power has poured in £60 million to help shore up the government. Renewed attention has been drawn to the problems of Sierra Leone by the visit of the British Prime Minister Tony Blair to the country in early February 2002 during a West African visit intended to highlight the African crisis in general and the dilemmas of Sierra Leone in particular.
The diamond trade, especially its illicit variety, lies at the root of the problem, which began to emerge when Sierra Leone was still a British colony. Harry Mitchell shows how the colonial government tried to control the trade and harness the wealth it generated to the territory's advantage, and to limit its effect on other aspects of economic and social life. He gives a vivid account of the British Colonial administration in the twilight of Empire. He describes the daily round of a District Commissioner: sitting as a magistrate to preserve law and order; working with the District Councils and native administrations; maintaining relationships with all strata of society from Paramount Chiefs to peasants; and organising local elections at all levels to the House of Representatives – Sierra Leone's first elected parliament. Harry Mitchell and his colleagues were fearful of the fate of Sierra Leone as an independent nation despite the stability and calm at independence and, while offering no blueprint for the salvation of Africa, he suggests that a formula might be devised to bring in the United Nations as trustee for new African nations now in chaos.
