Bright-eyed, full of optimism, but also widely viewed as unflinching, and hailed Liberia’s 'Iron Lady,'
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf shouldered the responsibility of a nation racked by years of brutal civil war.
[Sirleaf]: Liberia today is at one of those key moments.
Our joint effort together over the next few months, the next year and beyond will determine the future course of the nation.
[Host]: Sirleaf did manage to get almost $5 billion in debt relief, increase foreign investment,
build relationships with international health and human rights NGOs,
and, ultimately, help the country rebuild after years of war.
[Sieh]: Overall, she was what Liberia needed after the war. Someone who could unite the
country and someone who could bring some sense of international stability to the country.
[Host]: We sat down with Liberian journalist, Rodney Sieh, who covered this president
closely throughout her tenure, to talk about Sirleaf’s legacy.
Because there’s more to her story than the traditionally rosy Western media narrative.
Sirleaf was born in the country's capital of fMonrovia in 1938. And politics ran her blood.
She was the daughter of the first indigenous Liberian to serve in the country’s legislature.
It’s important to mention that during this time there was divide between the indigenous
population of Liberia and former American slaves, called 'Americo-Liberians' who had settled in Monrovia.
The Americo-Liberians created a hierarchical society that suppressed the indigenous population,
denying them basic rights. Sirleaf was thrust into the middle of this divide.
[Sirleaf]: My feet are in two worlds. The world of poor rural women with no respite
from hardship, and the world of accomplished Liberian professionals.
[Host]: She studied in the United States before returning to Liberia to begin her government career at the Treasury Department.
In the early ‘70s, she worked as Assistant Finance Minister for then-president William Tolbert.
Throughout the ‘70s, and despite her critiques of Tolbert’s policies, she rose through
the ranks to become the first woman Finance Minister in Liberia.
But shortly after, violence would decimate the government.
In 1980, President Tolbert and over a dozen other high-ranking government officials were murdered in a coup,
staged by military leader Samuel Doe, who would go on to become the first indigenous leader of Liberia.
Sirleaf was one of four ministers who were spared.
She fled the country soon thereafter.
But in 1985, when Doe held elections in an attempt to legitimize his regime, Sirleaf returned to run for the vice presidency.
She was subsequently arrested and jailed more than once for criticizing him, and though she won a seat in the Senate,
she refused the position on grounds that Doe’s election had been fraudulent.
Eventually, she left again to work in the U.S.
All the while, Liberia was plunged into years of violent civil warfare.
Then, there was another coup.
The warlord Charles Taylor, who led the rebel uprising called the National Patriotic
Front of Liberia, or NPFL, toppled Doe’s government in 1990 leading to years of violence.
Sirleaf initially supported Taylor, but his brutal tactics eventually alienated her.
This initial support is an issue that still follows her to this day.
She was even accused of war crimes in a lawsuit and by Liberia’s Truth
and Reconciliation Commission over her support for rebel movements, including Taylor’s.
In 1997, after a peace treaty was brokered between the warring factions, Liberia held elections and
Sirleaf ran against Taylor. He won in a landslide, but Sirleaf was seen as a serious contender.
In 2003, Taylor went into exile amid pressure from resistance movements like the Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace.
After his exile, Sirleaf helped lead the transitional government, before accepting her party’s presidential nomination.
And on November 11, 2005, Sirleaf won the presidential election with 59% of the vote and officially became the first woman elected president of an African country.
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf represented hope for a better future, to a country left decimated by war, where the UN estimated 80% of citizens lived below the poverty line after Charles Taylor resigned.
She knew economics. She vowed to fight corruption. And she made many other promises, among them, to address issues plaguing women.
Throughout her tenure, Sirleaf was touted by western media as the woman who had shattered Africa’s political glass ceiling.
Her acclaim eventually peaked in 2011, when she was awarded the Nobel Peace prize, alongside two women activists. She was re-elected in a landslide victory just days later.
But then, things started to go downhill.
[Sieh]: It wasn't until maybe midway to her government, or toward the end of her administration of her second term, that some people began to say, look, maybe there’s something happening here.
So, the issues of corruption, issues of nepotism, she hired some of her relatives to work in the government, which created backlash from people.
So, those things kind of tainted her image and her legacy.
[Host]: Indeed, as many as 20 members of Sirleaf’s family reportedly held government positions under her presidency, including her sons in top advisory, financial, and security positions.
Sirleaf rejected accusations of nepotism and corruption, arguing she simply hired the best people for the job.
[Sirleaf]: I stand by my record, and I stand by the record of my family very firmly.
[Host]: Her administration was also tied up in a bribery scandal with a British mining company,
accused of turning over a third of Liberia’s land to private investors for things like palm oil production and logging,
and failing to consult or adequately compensate the communities that lived on and around the land.
She also fired several ministers for allegedly stealing government funds.
And though Sirleaf highlighted the importance of press freedom, she failed to ever pass a law that protected journalists from reporting on issues like this.
Sieh was among those jailed during her tenure, after his newspaper published an investigative report in 2013 exposing a missing $6 million dollars in government funds.
The minister involved was removed from his position, but Sieh ultimately paid the price when he was sued for libel.
[Sieh]: I was found guilty and sentenced to 5,000 years in prison. And that imprisonment kind of led to a lot of international uproar and tainted the legacy of Madame Sirleaf.
[Host]: 5,000 years?
[Sieh]: Yeah.
[Host]: Is that standard for a journalist?
[Sieh]: Well, they find, the punishment was $1.5 million, and in Liberia, if you can’t pay, they suggest that you pay $25 a day.
It would take me 5,000 years to pay that money. Thus, the 5,000 year prison sentence.
[Host]: After several months in prison, a hunger strike, and significant international uproar, he was released.
But Sirleaf’s problems continued.
In 2014, Liberia was hit with an Ebola epidemic that would take the lives of more than 4,800 people in Liberia in less than two years.
Sirleaf called this time the lowest point of her presidency.
[Sirleaf]: If we haven't done enough so far, I come here to apologize to you for that.
[Host]: And the criticisms didn’t stop there.
[Host]: Do you think she came out with a strong legacy on women?
[Sieh]: It was a kind of disappointing era for women under Sirleaf. Especially the issue of rape.
[Host]: Sirleaf did come out strongly in favor of supporting a comprehensive anti-rape law at the very beginning of her presidency, but it was eventually amended to make rape a bailable offense.
The underlying issue, says Sieh, was enforcement, with the government often failing to prosecute even high-profile rape cases.
Overall, critics say Sirleaf may have contributed to the patriarchal norms that already existed in Liberia, by doing things like waiting until her last day in office to ban female genital mutilation,
a ban that’s only good for a year and only applies to children, as well as surrounding herself with a largely-male cabinet, and even equating feminism to 'extremism.'
There was only one woman candidate in the last presidential election, and parliament is still just 12% female.
By 2012, only about two thirds of citizens approved of Sirleaf’s performance, and by 2015, that number was halved to just a third.
In spite of it all, Sirleaf did manage to get almost $5 billion in debt relief, increase foreign investment,
build relationships with international health and human rights NGOs, and, ultimately, help the country rebuild after years of war.
These accomplishments culminated – controversially – in her being awarded the prestigious $5 million Ibrahim Prize in 2018,
an award presented to democratically elected African heads of state who turned over power, including Nelson Mandela.
Still, Sirleaf acknowledged the country wasn’t quite where she wanted it to be leaving office.
[Sirleaf]: It hasn’t all been easy, I’ve had my share of failures, but I’m so glad the successes exceeded the failures, that’s why I’m where I am today.
I was able to rise above the failures and rise above the difficulties.