Sierra Leone

The country was named Sierra Leone (Lion Mountains) by the Portuguese explorer Pedro da Cintra, who visited the coast in 1460. Colonial Rule The British established a colony at Freetown in 1787 for slaves repatriated from Great Britain and the United States and for slaves rescued from shipwrecks. The land of the original settlement, where the city later developed, was purchased from local chiefs. The Sierra Leone Company, formed in 1791, administered the settlement until 1808, when it became a crown colony. Great Britain set up a protectorate over the hinterland of Freetown in 1896. The first elections for the legislative council were held under the constitution of 1924. The ministerial system was introduced in 1953, and Sir Milton Margai, a former physician and leader of the Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP), was appointed chief minister in 1954 and prime minister in 1960. Independence Sierra Leone became an independent nation on April 27, 1961. The constitution of 1961 extended the right to vote to women. Following the elections of 1962, Margai remained prime minister. In 1967, as a result of disputed elections, in which Siaka Stevens, leader of the All-People's Congress (APC), was elected prime minister, the army staged a coup and organized a National Reformation Council. After a second army revolt in 1968, civilian government was restored, and Stevens was returned to power. Sierra Leone was declared a republic on April 19, 1971, and Stevens was sworn in as executive president on April 21. Opposition to the government was gradually eliminated; in elections held in May 1973, the APC was unopposed. In 1975 Sierra Leone signed a trade and aid agreement with the European Community (now the European Union) and helped form the Economic Community of West African States. The next year Stevens was reelected president. In 1978 a new constitution made the country a one-party state, and Stevens was sworn in for a new seven-year term in office. The APC was thereafter the only legal party. In the early 1980s Sierra Leone suffered an economic slowdown, as sagging export revenues left the government unable to pay for essential imports. In November 1985 Stevens retired, and Major General Joseph Saidu Momoh was sworn in as president the following January. A coup attempt was suppressed in March 1987, and in November the president declared a state of economic emergency. Early in 1991 guerrillas spilling over from the Liberian civil war captured several towns near the Liberian border; Guinea and Nigeria supplied military aid to the Sierra Leone government to contain the threat. As government forces fought back the Liberian guerrillas, a Sierra Leonean rebel group sprang up to take territory of its own, and a brutal civil war ensued. A new constitution providing for a multiparty system was adopted in September. In April 1992, however, Momoh was ousted in a military coup and replaced by Captain Valentine Strasser. Strasser's government reduced street crime, lowered inflation from 115 percent to 15 percent, allowing the country to receive more than $300 million in global aid packages. Strasser, who at age 27 became one of the world's youngest heads of state, was accused of restricting free press practices, having his political enemies executed, and for continuing the civil war. In 1994 he endorsed a two-year transition to multiparty democracy, with elections scheduled for 1996. Six weeks before the scheduled elections in late February, Strasser was removed from power in a bloodless coup by his defense minister, Brigadier Julius Maada Bio. Bio pledged to hold free elections as planned, but insisted that an end to Sierra Leone's devastating five-year-long civil war was necessary for a successful transfer to civilian rule. The elections were held on February 26 and 27, marred by sporadic violence in Freetown and Bo. In a runoff vote, Ahmed Tejan Kabbah of the SLPP was elected president. In March Bio announced a two-month cease-fire pact with rebel leaders and peacefully stepped down. The government survived a resurgence of fighting and an attempted coup in late 1996, but a May 1997 military coup ousted Kabbah.