John Karefa-Smart

John Albert Musselman Karefa-Smart (born June 17, 1915 in Rotifunk , † August 26, 2010 in Freetown ) was a doctor , university professor and politician from Sierra Leone . He was the country's first foreign minister from 1961 to 1964 .

biography

Studies, university professor and minister

Karefa-Smart, who came from the Bullom-Sherbro people , studied after school at Fourah Bay College and graduated in 1936 with a Bachelor of Arts (BA). He then completed a postgraduate course in medicine at Otterbein College in Westerville in 1940 with a Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.) and in 1944 with a Master of Surgery (CM) . He completed further postgraduate studies at McGill University in Montréal with a diploma in tropical medicine in 1945 and a master's in public health (MPH) in 1948 from Harvard University .

After his return to Africa he was first professor of medicine at the University of Ibadan in 1949 , before he accepted a position as professor of medicine at the Xavier University of Louisiana in 1953 .

In 1957 he began his political career with election as a member of the Parliament of Sierra Leone which eventually its internal self-government and in the following year on 27 April 1961 by the United Kingdom, the sovereignty within the Commonwealth of Nations received. In parliament he represented the interests of the Tonkolili district until 1964 .

After independence, he was considered a possible candidate for the office of Prime Minister because of his education . However, this office was taken over by Milton Margai , while he himself was Minister for Land, Mines and Labor and between April 1961 and April 1964 Secretary of State in his cabinet. However, he was acting Prime Minister several times during Margai's stays abroad and illnesses.

After Margai's death on April 28, 1964, he would be the legitimate successor as Prime Minister according to the constitution, but the constitution was manipulated by the then ruling Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP), so that the previous Minister of Finance , Minister of Education, Agriculture and Nature and Milton Margais' younger brother, Albert Margai , who succeeded him as Prime Minister.

Exile and presidential candidate in 1996 and 2002

Disappointed at this situation, Karefa-Smart left Sierra Leone and returned to the United States , where he was initially a professor at Columbia University from 1964 to 1965 . After a subsequent position as Assistant Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva , he returned to Sierra Leone in 1970.

With the help of other political leaders such as Mohamed Sorie Forna and Brigadier General Ibrahim Bash-Taqi , who had resigned from Prime Minister Siaka Stevens' All People's Congress (APC) , he founded the National Democratic Party (NDP), a broadly supported party that on the best way was to defeat Siaka Stevens. The UDP was the party with the largest membership growth ever formed in Sierra Leone. After Stevens realized the wave of support for the UDP and Karefa-Smart, he ordered the party's ban on charges of spreading chaos in the country. Several UDP leaders were subsequently arrested, while Karefa-Smart himself was forced to leave the country again and go into exile .

Between 1971 and 1981 he was Professor of Medicine at Harvard University and from 1972 to 1977 also at Boston University . He was also a professor of medicine at Wellesley College in 1974 and at Howard University from 1980 to 1983 .

Although he was in exile for around a quarter of a century, he did not give up his political commitment to Sierra Leone and returned there in 1996 and was a candidate for the United National People's Party (UNPP) in the first free elections after years of military dictatorship . In the first ballot he was ahead of the later election winner and candidate of the SLPP Ahmad Tejan Kabbah , but could not beat him clearly enough to avoid a second ballot. In this he was ultimately a loser against a coalition formed from the SLPP and the People's Democratic Party (PDP SORBEH) . He had previously been offered the presidential candidacy for the SLPP himself, but because of the manipulation of the constitution committed by this in 1964, he renounced it, so that the previously politically unknown Ahmad Tejan Kabbah presidential candidate of the SLPP and, after the election victory against Karefa-Smart, successor to General Julius Maada Bio became head of state.

In the presidential elections he was again a candidate for the UNPP, but this time he was clearly defeated with only 1.0 percent of the vote, while President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah was re-elected with 70.1 percent. APC candidate Ernest Koroma came in second with 22.4 percent of the vote , followed by Johnny Paul Koroma of the Peace and Liberation Party (PLP) with 3.0 percent and Alimamy Pallo Bangura , candidate of the Revolutionary United Front , with 1.7 percent of the vote.

At the time of his death, John Karefa-Smart was the last surviving politician of the fathers of Sierra Leon's independence such as Herbert Bankole-Bright , Isaac Wallace-Johnson , Ibrahim Bash-Taqi, Mohamed Sorie Forna, Luseni AM Brewah , Salia Jusu-Sheriff , Siaka Stevens , Sorie Ibrahim Koroma , RES Lagawo , Mannah Kpaka and others.

Publications

• 2009: Rainbow Happenings: A Memoir . XLibris Corp., USA, ISBN 978-1-441501677 .

as editor

• 1966: Africa: Progress through Cooperation . Dodd, Mead, New York City.

Web links

• COCORIOKO: Karefa-Smart's death is a big loss to the nation (August 27, 2010)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Report of the Sierra Leone Truth & Reconciliation Commission. Sierra Leone Truth & Reconciliation Commission, Volume 2, 2004, p. 92.