Here is one of those women whom all the women and men can be proud of! What she has done for her country in a little more than eleven years seems too good to be true. I am talking of the woman who has been the President of Liberia from 2005 – Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. Liberia is the oldest republic in Africa. It was founded in the 19th century by African slaves who were freed from the U.S.
If you read world history carefully, you’d see that behind much of the destruction and damage caused by human beings – behind wars, conflicts, killings and rapes – is the enmity between two groups. What separates the two groups may be race or ethnicity, religion, language or caste. In Liberia it is the enmity between the descendents of the freed slaves and the indigenous people.
Ellen is of native Liberian descent. Her mother was a teacher, and her father, an attorney. Her parents understood the value of education, and got her well-educated. When everyone thought she would pursue higher studies, the seventeen-year old Ellen fell in love with James Sirleaf, a young agronomist with an American degree, and married him. Four sons were born in rapid succession, which made her a full time home maker. When the government offered her husband the opportunity to pursue graduate studies in the U.S., they decided to leave their children in the care of grandparents and travelled to America together. While he studied agriculture, Ellen studied accounting. When they returned to Liberia, he resumed work in the Agriculture Department, while she joined the Ministry of Finance.
Sadly, Sirleaf, her husband, soon became violent and abusive and Ellen had to appeal for a legal divorce. When she got it, she continued her education in the U.S., earning degrees in economics and public administration. She went back to Liberia to become the Assistant Finance Minister. But soon, unable to support the policies of President William Tolbert, she had the courage to publicly criticize him. When she was forced to resign, she went to Washington to work for the World Bank. She returned in 1977 and served as Deputy Finance Minister and then the Finance Minister – the first woman to hold this position in Liberia. As Finance Minister, she attempted a much-needed reform of the country’s finances. But a coup staged by Sergeant Samuel Doe and the violence that followed made her flee and work in the World Bank for a while and then Citicorp in Nairobi. When she returned to Liberia to run for the Vice President, she was arrested for criticizing Doe’s corrupt regime and put in jail. Liberia descended into a horrendous civil war. International pressure led to her release and in 1992 Ellen became the first woman to become the Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations. Later President Charles Taylor’s corrupt and brutal regime brought unprecedented horrors. Even children were forced to fight and commit atrocities, like killing their own mothers.
Thank God, in 2005 the country’s first truly free elections took place and on 16 January 2006 Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was sworn in as Liberia’s 24th President – the first elected female head of state in African history. In 2011 she was re-elected. In these eleven years she has done all she could to undo the damage caused by twenty-five years of violence and misrule. She has made universal elementary education free and compulsory. She has enforced equal rights for women. Her administration has built over 800 miles of roads, attracting substantial foreign investment. In 2010, Newsweek magazine listed her as one of the “Ten Best Leaders in the World.” Now a grandmother of eight, she has become a popular symbol of democracy and women’s rights. In 2011, she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace, along with two other women’s rights campaigners.
Ellen Johnson’s achievements should make us face the bitter fact: Our country and our Church have a long, long way to go to be able to benefit from the gifts and abilities of women.
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