Truth, Lies, Ritual: Preliminary Reflections On The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Sierra Leone

HUMAN RIGHTS QUARTERLY
Truth, Lies, Ritual:

Preliminary Reflections on the
Truth and Reconciliation Commission
in Sierra Leone
Tim Kelsall*
ABSTRACT
This article uses an ethnographic description of a provincial public hearing
in Sierra Leone to explore the paradoxical fact that in truth commissions,
the truth is seldom told. It argues that the truth was not told for a variety of
reasons, some of which are related to the special circumstances of the
District, some to the problematic relationship of the Truth and Reconcilia-
tion Commission with the Special Court, some to organizational infirmities
of the TRC itself, and some to the fact that public truth-telling lacks deep
roots in the local cultures of Sierra Leone. By contrast, a staged ceremony
of repentance and forgiveness on the final day struck resonant chords with
the participants and succeeded in forging a reconciliatory moment. The
implication, argues the article, is that in certain circumstances ritual may
be more important to reconciliation than truth.
* Tim Kelsall is Lecturer in African Politics at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne and Joint
Editor of the journal African Affairs.
He thanks Peter Andersen, Daniel Bendix, Stephen Ellis, Richard Fanthorpe, Mariane
Ferme, Lans Gberie, David Hecht, Elaina Loizou, Paul Richards, Simon Roughneen, Rosalind
Shaw, Gavin Simpson, and Sandon Shogilev for comments on this paper, the views of which
remain his own. He also thanks the staff of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for their
great assistance during the research, which was made possible by a grant from Newcastle
University’s Arts and Humanities Research Fund.
Human Rights Quarterly 27 (2005) 361–391 © 2005 by The Johns Hopkins University Press
362 HUMAN RIGHTS QUARTERLY Vol. 27
I. INTRODUCTION
More than two years have passed since Sierra Leone emerged from a ghastly
civil war in which the population was terrorized and brutalized by a variety
of armed factions.1 Today Sierra Leoneans face the formidable challenge of
trying to consolidate peace. In the field of transitional justice the country is
pursuing a two-pronged and potentially synergistic strategy, with a Special
Court to “try those who bear the greatest responsibility” for human rights
violations, and a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), created to
provide, “an impartial, historical record of violations and abuses suf-
fered . . . to address impunity, to respond to the needs of victims, to promote
healing and reconciliation and to prevent a repetition of the violations and
abuses suffered.”2
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Sierra Leone (TRC) should
be understood as part of a global trend toward truth-telling. Demands for the
truth, and for commissions to investigate it, are becoming the norm in
societies emerging from periods of violent conflict or authoritarian rule. The
1970s and 1980s saw the creation of six such institutions; in the 1990s there
were fourteen, and that number looks set to increase again in the current
decade.3 As Priscilla Hayner has written, the reasons for demanding the
truth are numerous, and not always consistent. Nor, in her view, is there a
necessary connection between truth and reconciliation: truth may reopen
1. For analyses of the war see, Ibrahim Abdullah, Bush Path to Destruction: The Origin and
Character of the Revolutionary United Front/Sierra Leone, 36 J. MOD. AFR. STUD. 203
(1998); Yusuf Bangura, Understanding the Political and Cultural Dynamics of the Sierra
Leone War: A Critique of Paul Richards’s Fighting for the Rain Forest, 22 AFR. DEV. 117
(1997); Morten Bøås, Liberia and Sierra Leone–-Dead Ringers? The Logic of Neopatrimonial
Rule, 22 THIRD WORLD Q. 697 (2001); Richard Fanthorpe, Neither Citizen nor Subject?
‘Lumpen’ Agency and the Legacy of Native Administration in Sierra Leone, 100 AFR. AFF.
363 (2001); JOHN L. HIRSCH, SIERRA LEONE: DIAMONDS AND THE STRUGGLE FOR DEMOCRACY (2001);
Jimmy D. Kandeh, Subaltern Terror in Sierra Leone, in AFRICA IN CRISIS: NEW CHALLENGES AND
POSSIBILITIES 179 (Tunde Zack-Williams et al. eds., 2002); Robert D. Kaplan, The Coming
Anarchy: How Scarcity, Crime, Overpopulation, Tribalism, and Disease are Rapidly
Destroying the Social Fabric of our Planet, ATLANTIC MONTHLY, Feb. 1994, at 44; PAUL
RICHARDS, FIGHTING FOR THE RAINFOREST: WAR, YOUTH AND RESOURCES IN SIERRA LEONE (1996).
2. Truth and Reconciliation Commission Act 2000, cited in William A. Schabas, The
Relationship Between Truth Commissions and International Courts: The Case of Sierra
Leone, 25 HUM. RTS. Q. 1035, 1036 (2003) (providing a detailed account of the thinking
behind, history of, and relationship between the TRC and Special Court). See also
INTERNATIONAL CRISIS GROUP, AFRICA BRIEFING: SIERRA LEONE’S TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSION:
A FRESH START? (2002) (hereinafter ICG BRIEFING); PAUL JAMES-ALLEN ET AL., SIERRA LEONE’S TRUTH
AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSION AND SPECIAL COURT: A CITIZEN’S HANDBOOK 15 (2003); Lansana
Gberie, Briefing: The Special Court of Sierra Leone, 102 AFR. AFF. 637 (2003); MOHAMED
JALLOH, COMMISSIONING THE PAST IN SIERRA LEONE: WHOSE COMMISSION AND WHAT PAST? (2002).
3. Figures are based on PRISCILLA B. HAYNER, UNSPEAKABLE TRUTHS: FACING THE CHALLENGE OF TRUTH
COMMISSIONS 303–11 (2002).
2005 Truth, Lies, Ritual 363
old wounds while failing properly to heal them. Further, and most curiously,
in truth commissions, the truth is rarely told.4
It is this paradoxical state of affairs that I want to explore in the present
article. Why is the truth seldom told in truth commissions, and why might
reconciliation take place even in truth’s absence? In the case material that I
present from the District hearings in Tonkolili, Northern Sierra Leone, the
point I want to draw is that the truth—a truth, that is, that was satisfactory to
the participants—was not forthcoming. This was so obvious that on the
penultimate day of the Commission’s hearings, members of the audience
were incensed and the hearings appeared to be on the brink of failure, with
the community possibly on the verge of renewed violence. But on the final
day of the hearings the atmosphere changed. This was not because the
perpetrators eventually told the truth; in fact the truth status of testimony
only marginally improved. Rather, the change was due to the addition of a
carefully staged reconciliation ceremony to the proceedings, a ritual that
created an emotionally charged atmosphere that succeeded in moving
many of the participants and spectators, not least the present author, and
which arguably opened an avenue for reconciliation and lasting peace.
Insofar as this was the case, it suggests that ritual may be more important to
reconciliation than truth.
I aim to illustrate these points with a brief description of the aims and
organizational structures of the TRC in Sierra Leone, before moving to an
account of the district hearings in Tonkolili.5 I will argue that the truth was
not told in Tonkolili for a variety of reasons, some of which related to the
special circumstances of Tonkolili District, some to the problematic relation-
ship of the TRC with the Special Court, some to organizational infirmities of
the TRC itself, and some to the fact that public truth-telling—in the absence
of strong ritual inducement—lacks deep roots in the local cultures of Sierra
Leone. By contrast, the staged ceremony of repentance and forgiveness, a
multicultural concoction that drew on Christian, Islamic, and traditional
religious forms, struck deeply resonant chords with the participants and
forged a reconciliatory moment, even in the absence of truth.
II. THE TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSION
The TRC began to hold public hearings in Freetown and twelve provincial
districts in April 2003; this followed a period in which 9,000 statements
were taken. In the provinces, scores of people typically testified at these
4. Id. at 137–41.
5. The conclusions of this paper do not necessarily apply to other district hearings in Sierra
Leone, nor can they be taken as an assessment of the TRC’s work as a whole.
hearings and hundreds attended. The proceedings were broadcast live on

radio and the highlights were edited into a forty-five minute television show
each evening. The Commission also conducted closed hearings in which
children and victims of sexual violence testified. Some of this testimony was
also broadcast, though the identities of the deponents were disguised. In all,
more than 450 people testified to the Commission in thousands of hours of
testimony.6 The TRC subsequently went into its “report writing” phase.
The hearings in July 2003 in Magburaka town, Tonkolili District,
Northern Province, which I was able to attend, form the basis for this article.
Tonkolili is a largely agricultural district in Northern Sierra Leone,
populated predominantly by members of the Temne ethnic group (though
Magburaka town is ethnically diverse). The majority of the population are
Muslims with a minority being Christian, world religions frequently being
combined with ancestor cults. Reports suggest that Tonkolili began to
experience Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebel activity in 1994. This
was resisted by members of the Sierra Leonean Army, at that time loyal to
the National Provisional Ruling Council (1992–1996) in Freetown. The
army’s relations with the civilian population were not always cordial.
Government soldiers reportedly forced local people to provision them,
raped local women, seized food from local farmers and then sold it back to
them, burned houses, imposed curfews, humiliated local people, and dealt
harshly with complainants. Some young people fled to the bush; others
stayed and, in 1995, organized a local militia that was later incorporated
into a nationwide Civil Defense Force (CDF). Subsequently, in 1997, rogue
elements of the army known as the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council
(AFRC) seized power and invited the RUF to form a government (the AFRC/
RUF junta 1997–1998). RUF forces advanced from the bush and occupied
Magburaka town, where they remained until the end of the conflict.
Kamajor fighters from the South, the backbone for the CDF, tried without
success to dislodge them, sometimes venting their frustration on civilians.
Atrocities committed by all of these armed factions, but in particular by the
RUF, formed the focus of the Truth Commission’s hearings, which opened in
Magburaka on 7 July 2003 and lasted for five days.7
Below, this article turns to a description of these hearings. The account
is narrated in the style of a participant observer. I have been unwilling and
unable in the analysis to disentangle completely my own subjective
impressions from those of the participants. This has assisted, I hope, in
capturing some of the collective atmosphere of the hearings, though it runs
6. Press Briefing, TRC, TRC Marks End of District Hearings (23 July 2003).
7. Because of the difficulty in obtaining background data about Tonkolili, most of this
paragraph is based on a witness testimony given on the fourth day of the hearings.
the obvious risk of misreading audience reactions by projecting onto them

feelings that were largely my own. To guard against this, I ran my
interpretation past that of other observers, both during the event and after it
and was gratified to find it largely confirmed. Nevertheless, other interpreta-
tions are clearly possible, and a full assessment of the TRC’s impact must
await a further period of research.
A. The Setting and Opening Ceremony
The setting for the Tonkolili hearings was the assembly hall of the Secondary
School for Boys, Magburaka, previously the District’s main boarding school.
Inside the hall, the impression was of an attempt to bring order and the
restorative authority of the center to a derelict province of the nation
through an arrangement of space that gave prominence to the symbols of
the state and the technological regalia of the public television. The
Commission announced its presence by means of a large banner, hung at
the back of the hall. In front of this stood a panel of three tables, draped in
white tablecloths, behind which sat comfortable swivel chairs. Small name
plates bore the identities of the commissioners. Arranged in front of the
panel were rows of differently colored plastic chairs; behind them, metal
folding chairs with a rusting turquoise finish; and behind them, stretching to
the back of the hall, wooden benches. An aisle divided the seating into two.
Halfway down the hall on the left hand side were two tables on which were
organized mixing desks and recording equipment, giving birth to a tangle of
wires, some leading to loud speakers, arranged on either side of the hall. On
a tripod in front of the mixing desks was a video camera. Attached to the
front of the panel was a plaque with the Commission’s seal. To each side
and slightly to the rear stood a drooping flag of Sierra Leone. The impression
of restoration was hard to sustain, however. The open windows of the hall
were broken in places, graffiti scrawled in the thick dust that coated them.
The floor was laid in grey and white patterned tile, now cracked and dirty.
squares of ceiling panel were missing in places, revealing the tin roof above
us, and in others pieces of decaying panel dangled from the ceiling. This
gave the setting an atmosphere of decrepitude only marginally relieved by a
recent lick of paint applied to the building’s facade.
The walls of the hall were decorated with posters bearing a variety of
exhortatory slogans: “Truth Today, A Peaceful Sierra Leone Tomorrow”; “Tru
At Fo Tok, But Im Nomo Go Bring Pis” (It hurts to speak the truth, but it’s
needed to bring peace); “Save Sierra Leone from another War. Reconcile
Now. TRC Can Help”; “Truth Hurts But War Hurts More”; “Bush no då fo tro
wå bad pikin” (A popular Krio proverb, implying that whatever a child
might do, it cannot be banished [thrown in the bush], but must be forgiven).
The hall filled with people, about two hundred in all, more than three
quarters of whom were men, many of the older ones bearded and wearing
Islamic gowns and embroidered fezzes, others, frequently younger, in more
casual attire. A handful of Western observers and journalists, myself
included, were dotted about the hall. The mood seemed fairly relaxed.
The opening ceremony consisted of singing (the national anthem),
prayers (Christian and Muslim), and speeches by a succession of local
dignitaries (the paramount chief, the district officer, the district chair of the
interreligious council, representatives from “the civil society movement,”
from the “NGO community,” from the two main political parties, and from
the “young people”). Space was also reserved for “the voice of the women,”
though the appointed representative failed to appear. A key refrain of these
speeches was that in the interests of peace and reconciliation, people
should come forward and testify to the Commission without fear of reprisals
or prosecution. The Regional Coordinator of the TRC then made short
panegyrics to the Commissioners, describing Professor John Kamara as “a
man who has contributed tremendously to agricultural development in
Sierra Leone,” and to Chairman Bishop Humper as the leading religious
authority in the country. The audience was assured that by mid-week we
would be joined by Yasmin Sooka, an experienced Commissioner from
South Africa (who in fact failed to appear), and apologies were made for
another Commissioner, Ajaaratou Satang Jow, unavailable because of urgent
family matters in The Gambia.
The floor was then handed to the Chairman, who explained the
purposes of the Commission in a theatrical tone, illustrative excerpts of
which I reproduce here. The first states the Commission’s intention to build
a historical record of the conflict and its causes.
Why Sierra Leone? What went wrong? What went wrong? We were the most
peaceful country in the world in Africa! In Africa we were among the most
enlightened states! We supplied the region with educated people. . . . We
respected authority in this country. . . . We had religion to the core! . . . The
Commission is trying to come to grips with the context of history . . . before we
know what happened from 1991 to date. . . . The TRC is therefore for you to tell
the truth, why it happened. What is your understanding of the ten years? Why
did the rebel war take that turn in this country?8
The next passage articulates the idea that the community knows the crimes
committed against it, but that in order to forgive, a public confession of
those crimes by their perpetrators is required. The Commission’s role was to
facilitate this.
8. Bishop Humper, Testimony at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Hearings in

Tonkolili, Sierra Leone (7 July 2003).
[I]n the establishment of truth and justice in this country it is important that
those who did the wrong thing come and tell us that “I did it because I was
asked to”. . . We have most of the information in our hands . . . you will be
doing a disservice to this community if you don’t come forward and corroborate
what we already know. Don’t think that we don’t know . . . we know who you
are . . . it is good for you to come here so we can get the religious leaders
together in front of the community and forgive you . . . we plead with you to do
so.9
The Bishop moved on to express the hearings’ role in catharsis, healing, and
reconciliation.
Come and say, “I am ready to talk” . . . so that you have the psychological peace
of mind. . . . Why do you hide from yourself? . . . You have the greatest
opportunity this week: The opportunity to be healed; the opportunity to
reconcile with yourself; with your neighbour and with the community. The
opportunity to be reunited, the opportunity to be reintegrated, the opportunity
to help repair our shattered cities and communities. . . . Reveal truth today for
peace.10
Finally, and more vaguely, he articulated the Commission’s role in recom-
mending reparations.
All of us are survivors . . . . Unless you come forward and tell us what happened
to you, we will not be able at the end to make appropriate recommendations to
address your needs. . . . These recommendations will go to the government, to
NGOs, other agencies; the document itself will go to the United Nations!11
When the opening ceremony closed, the three tables comprising the
panel were separated, with a central one reserved for the witness, inter-
preter and counselor, and on the left and right respectively, a table for the
Commission’s “Leader of Evidence” and for the Commissioners themselves.
As witnesses were called, they were asked to confirm their name, their
religion, and to swear an oath on the appropriate holy book, be it the Bible
or the Koran, which stated their commitment to: “The truth, the whole truth,
and nothing but the truth.” They then delivered their testimony, some
reading from preprepared statements, others extemporizing. On the right of
the witness sat a counselor, a matronly woman who sometimes held the
hand of witnesses while they spoke, or gently rubbed and patted their backs,
especially if they appeared to have difficulty speaking. At other times,
especially with perpetrators, she sat a fraction removed from the witness,
arms folded across her chest, a look of apparent disdain in her eye. An
9. Id.
10. Id.
11. Id.
interpreter sat to the left of the witness. Should the witness speak in English
it was translated into Krio, if in Krio into English, and if in a tribal language,
such as Temne or Mende, into English.
B. The Victims
Out of the thousands of statements taken around the country, the TRC made
an effort to bring to hearings those witnesses who represented different
experiences of violence, but also those with particularly graphic stories to
tell.12 This was because the hearings were meant not merely to be
representative, but to be demonstrative: they were designed to have a
powerful public effect. It came as something of an anticlimax, then, when
the first witness told an elliptical story in which he called for a certain
Mohamed T to come to the Commission and apologize for spreading false
information about him. This information had led to the witness being
victimized by the rebels, who had burned down his house. Serious though
this story was, it was pale by comparison to some of the atrocities suffered
by Sierra Leoneans, and left the audience cold. The second witness, an
elderly man, told a more calamitous story of how he had lost his son, his
daughter, and his brother to the rebels. He appeared incredibly weary as he
related this story, though his bearing was upright. Next on the stand was a
youth who had been abducted, and forced to join the rebels, and later
stabbed in the eyes by them when he attempted to abscond. This was a
highly charged testimony, in which the witness was visibly nervous and
upset; disturbing more for what one guessed was being held back, than for
what was actually revealed. The final witness on the first day was a woman
who narrated how her son had been shot and burned by two rebels with the
monikers of “Rambo” and “Tactical.” I will return to this story at a later
stage.
Dismal though most victim testimonies were, what was perhaps most
striking about them was not how much, but how little they seemed to move
the Commissioners, the audience, or indeed myself. Most of the testimony
was delivered in a rather detached and clinical way. For instance, a witness
on the fourth day took less than ten minutes to describe the destruction of
his family, with most of the traumatic details being narrated in the first three
minutes:
12. Interview with Gavin Simpson, Head of Research, Truth and Reconciliation Commission,
in Freetown, Sierra Leone (22 July 2003).
I am going to talk because a lot of things are still in my head. The first thing that
I have to say is that they killed my elder brother; they killed my sister’s son; they
burned our houses; my younger sister was a suckling mother and they forced
her to leave her child; those who did that, they are the rebels. . . .
Every day we have to contribute rice for them . . . . They made checkpoints all
over the town. . . . Since when I was a full grown man, nobody has challenged
me to fight, but a small leader of the RUF laid me down and gave me a thorough
beating . . . . We have our father, our ancestor of our own land—they killed
him.13
Though pregnant with affect, as in the preceding testimony, the stories
they gave rarely delivered emotionally. There seemed to be a process of
dissociation at work, in which facts were willfully cordoned off from
feelings; the impression being given that emotions were dammed up or held
in check. This process appeared to be functioning both on a level internal to
the individual and on a level between the individual and the audience.
Victims stared implacably into the middle distance, or into their laps, as they
testified. Though the atmosphere was at times charged and morbidly
fascinating, it failed to overwhelm the participants. At times I felt my own
and the audience’s concentration lapsing, as we struggled with the long-
winded translation process and the stifling heat. Some people flagellated
themselves with handkerchiefs, while others fanned themselves with books
or purpose built plastic fans; the audience thinned out.
At the end of the first day’s testimony I felt physically and emotionally
tired, as doubtless did the witnesses, yet also faintly disappointed that I had
not seen people collapse on the witness stand in dramatic and cathartic
outpourings of grief. Whether my disappointment was due to the fact that I
felt emotional collapse and resurrection to be in the best interests of the
witnesses, or due to a desire to satisfy some voyeuristic urge of my own, I
cannot say. Over lunch on the second day I spoke to one of the statement
takers, and suggested to him that people’s stories, though sad, were not
terribly vivid, and that we were therefore not getting the whole of the truth.
“They find it hard to say everything about those things,” he said, “so they are
just circling around the truth.”14
13. Hassan Forna, Testimony at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Hearings in
14. The same was not the case at hearings in all districts. At Bonthe it was reported that
“almost the entire audience [was moved] to tears” (Informal conversation with Mohamed
Carew, at UNAMSIL (7 July 2003)) after hearing the story of an eighty-nine year old
woman whose son had been tortured and butchered before her. The soldiers had then
removed a piece of her son’s heart and given it her to eat, and severed his head for her
to breast-feed. Press Briefing, TRC, TRC in Bonthe and Magburaka (19 July 2003).
The major exception to this, in my view the most vivid and moving
testimony of the entire week, came on the second day. It was given by a
man in early middle age, with moist eyes, both of his hands severed at the
wrist. A section of it I reproduce here:
I am a farmer. My father is dead. I have no mother. I have two wives. I have six
children. I live at S. The rebels came from K; they met me at S; I ran away. When
I ran, my children left me; I was left behind. The rebels surrounded us. They
catch us; six of us. They catch me; they tied me; they killed my companions. . . .
They tied me on a post. When they are ready to go, they brought a bench. They
said “Put your hand” and I said, “Oh God.” So they asked me, “Do you have a
God?” . . . They cut off my hand. They cut off both of my hands. Then they left
me there. I could not run too far, and I fell down. I cried. I said, “Oh God, I am
finished for life. I am finished.”15
He compared his state to that of a child, and spoke of the amputees as
being “the most sorrowful people on earth.”16 I had to fight to retain my
composure during this melancholic testimony, which continued to have a
powerful effect on me for days after the hearings had closed. Nevertheless
composed I remained, as did the witness and everyone else in the hall.
Discussing with Commission staff the surprising absence of emotion on
display, and the dwindling number of spectators in the hall (the audience
was reduced to between fifty and 100 people at some points) they told me
that this was a fairly common feature of hearings. Often it was not until the
perpetrators came to testify during the final days that the proceedings took
on a particularly gripping quality. If a notorious villain came before the
Commission public interest usually intensified.
A notable feature of witness testimony was that when asked by the
Commissioners for their recommendations, most victims pointed to their
dire economic plight as individuals (though some made more collective
statements), and urged the government, or the Commission itself, to come to
their assistance: “We are handicapped, we have children. How can the
government help us assist our children?”;17 “I want the assistance of the
government for my problem. Not only with the eyes”;18 “I have recom-
mended that the government continue to help us for the welfare of our
children, for their education and medical facilities.”19 This has been a
15. Ballah Sesay, Testimony at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Hearings in
16. Id.
17. Kamba Kamara, Testimony at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Hearings in
18. Sulay Kanu, Testimony at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Hearings in
19. Ibrahim Forna, Testimony at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Hearings in
common feature of truth commissions in other countries. When combined

with the fact that witnesses seemed to erect deliberate emotional barriers
between themselves and the audience, it gives support to the idea that most
deponents came to the Commission with the intention of staking a claim for
reparations against the government. The Commission was viewed by them
principally in instrumental terms, a deal under which they would exchange
their stories for a share of the government’s economic resources. “You told
me to come and testify my pains; I am ready to talk. I am a child now; I am
a poor man; I still suffer; the government must continue to assist us.”20
Typically, they sought to drive a hard bargain, making the claim with the
minimal amount of emotional investment possible, offering a version of the
truth composed of cold facts and little more.
If this reading is correct, it suggests that witnesses did not generally
accept the idea that the Commission was a platform upon which to enact
grief, catharsis and healing, either for their own benefit or for that of the
nation. The drama of healing through public confession and grief, which
enlists a number of tropes in the Christian imaginary, such as suffering,
martyrdom, and resurrection, and explains in part the widespread fascina-
tion with truth commissions, was a story in which most participants seemed
reluctant to be enrolled.21
C. The Perpetrators
Wednesday was a day of closed hearings in which testimonies were heard

from children and victims of sexual violence. I was unable to attend these
hearings, nor did I discuss them with Commission staff.
On Thursday perpetrators came to testify. Topping the bill was a
diminutive young man, alias “Base Marine,” who had been an RUF
commander in Magburaka since 1998. A journalist friend told me that he
had interviewed Base Marine at that time: “He was a fearsome killer,” he
said, “You should have seen him. He was ten feet tall.”22 In 2003, with
assistance from an international organization and Bangladeshi UNAMSIL
(UN Mission in Sierra Leone) personnel, Base Marine was running an
agricultural project in the district for ex-combatants and others, having
some 600 people under his supervision. He gave a long testimony in which
20. Sesay, Testimony at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Hearings in Tonkolili,
Sierra Leone (8 July 2003).
21. See RICHARD A. WILSON, THE POLITICS OF TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION IN SOUTH AFRICA: LEGITIMIZING THE
POST-APARTHEID STATE 109–21 (2001)(discussing this aspect of truth commissions in the
context of South Africa).
22. Conversation with anonymous journalist (10 July 2003).
he claimed that he never witnessed or participated in atrocities, and in

which he defended his record as a commander in the district. Taking this
story at face value, one would imagine that Base Marine was a model
administrator, champion of good governance and human rights. However,
he seemed ill at ease as he spoke, constantly shifting in his chair, and
appearing irritated and exasperated by the cross-examination of the Com-
missioners, a point to which I shall return. Next on the stand was a youth
named Samuel, apparently the half brother of Base Marine. He had been
kidnaped by the rebels, he said, and had then traversed the country in a
series of convoys that spanned several years. He had never participated in
any fighting, nor witnessed any atrocities, he said, though he admitted that
he overheard his companions talking about them. Another witness was a
young man from the south of the country, alias “Gabon,” who gave his
testimony in Mende. He appeared cocksure and faintly amused by the
proceedings, narrating a story in which he had spent the last years of the
war being captured by rebels and escaping, being captured and escaping,
but never participating in combat, let alone atrocities. Two other witnesses
also appeared that day, providing similar stories of unrelenting blandness.
“That is all that I know,” was their common closing statement, following
testimony that implied they knew nothing.
An exception to this pattern was a young man named Peter, who gave
a comparatively full account (on Tuesday) of his actions in the war,
admitting to and apologizing for violations. This young man was unusual
among the witnesses in that he was already enrolled in a program of
rehabilitation and counseling with a local NGO in the area. But even he did
not provide graphic or even specific details of atrocities he had committed.
All of the perpetrators apologized to the community, sometimes under
pressure from the Commissioners, for their involvement in armed factions
that were known to have committed atrocities. However, except in the case
of Peter, none of them admitted to individual responsibility for their actions,
and none of them appeared genuinely contrite. Because their statements
had been empty, their apologies rang hollow. I provide the following
passage, directed to the brother of Base Marine, as an illustration. The
Bishop had previously failed to force him to admit that he fought:
WITNESS: I am asking the people of this community to forgive me for whatever
atrocities I have done. Because we are RUF and we in the RUF did a lot of
atrocities in this country.
KAMARA: Mr. Parker, before we proceed I want to tell you this. It is not enough
for anybody to come here and cover up what he or she has done, and think that
by just giving a pronouncement that “I was RUF and the RUF committed
atrocities, and I belonged to that institution so I apologize.” . . . It’s not enough.
We in this hall may not know what you have done . . . but the people to whom
you committed those atrocities know what you have done to them and they
know you. If you do not come out to publicly declare what you have done and
ask for forgiveness for what you have done, you are not likely to get
forgiveness.23
D. The Commissioners
The blandness of the testimony, by both victims and perpetrators, was not
significantly embellished by the cross-examination of the Commissioners,
Bishop Joseph Humper and Professor John Kamara, or the Leader of
Evidence, Lydia Apori-Nkansah. Cross examinations, which were presum-
ably intended to elucidate testimony or to elicit the truth where truth was
not forthcoming, followed a number of themes. To some extent each of
these themes was associated with the character of a particular Commis-
sioner, though there was a considerable interchanging of roles. Kamara, for
instance, tended to pursue a dry, legal-positivist agenda. He sought to clarify
facts, such as the identity of armed factions, and to establish dates, places,
and a proper chronology of events. Take for instance the following
inconclusive line of questioning, directed at a male amputee, the first
witness on the second day:
KAMARA: So you said at Magburaka you were attacked by the rebels when you
moved from Kono to Magburaka in 1998. Is that correct?
WITNESS: Yes.
KAMARA: Are you sure? That it was 1998 that you moved from Magburaka
because of the attack?
WITNESS: Yes.
KAMARA: Alright, well in 1998 are you sure it was the RUF or the Sierra Leone
soldiers who had joined with the RUF and were driven from Freetown?
WITNESS: [agitated] I cannot distinguish a rebel from a soldier . . . there’s no

difference; these are the people who destroyed us.
KAMARA: So you cannot make the difference. It’s alright, it’s alright . . . well the
two groups are telling us that cutting of hands was done by the others.
WITNESS: [angry exclamation, unclear]
23. Witness & Kamara, Testimony at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Hearings in
KAMARA: Alright Mr. [Kamba] Kamara, alright, it’s no problem. Now you said
in Kono in 1997, the rebels locked up some people in a house when they
separated you. How many people were locked up?
WITNESS: Ten people were locked up.
KAMARA: [S]o you saw this house burning to the end, so that these people were
all burned?
WITNESS: All of them were burned.
KAMARA: What did the rebels do after this? Did they go round capturing other
people and burning more houses?
WITNESS: They burned a lot of houses.
KAMARA: You have no idea how many houses were burned?
WITNESS: At that time my hand had been amputated.24

On one occasion he complemented a witness who had given a dry
factual account of the relationship between the CDF and the Sierra Leonean
Army (SLA) in Magburaka chiefdom. What made the testimony “beautiful,”
he said, was that it was “well-planned, well-structured, with a lot of detail,
which doesn’t go too much into narratives.”25 In spite of assurances that the
TRC was not a courtroom, his style of interrogation occasionally led one to
think that it was one; his tone was generally skeptical, like that of an
opposing attorney, and bordered sometimes on the unsympathetic. His
detail oriented approach often defused what limited emotional charge the
testimony had formerly possessed. Only rarely did his questions appear to
this observer to bring useful clarification or to elicit significant new
testimony. On a few occasions he asked ex-combatants how many people
they had killed, and was usually met with an evasive answer. Gabon, for
instance, replied that he “never saw somebody and really fired at him.”26
Many questions seemed to be asked merely for the sake of being asked.
The Bishop was also fond of this forensic manner of interrogation.
However, his style was supplemented by a more didactic dimension. In the
absence of supporting testimony, he would sometimes tell witnesses how
they had been feeling at the time an offence was committed, offering an
implicit explanation for their deeds. His imaginative identification with
witnesses had a dual purpose I surmise: to try and open the witness up and
24. Id.
25. Kamara, Testimony at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Hearings in Tonkolili,
26. Gabon, Testimony at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Hearings in Tonkolili,
elicit more testimony and to cast the witness in the role of victim, preparing
the ground for the possibility of absolution. Take the following example
directed to Peter, an RUF ex-combatant:
HUMPER: [N]ow you have a choice, you either live or you die, which did you
choose? . . . now Peter, don’t talk too much . . . from there you went to training,
and you were looting people’s food and you beat them . . . what did you
experience as an individual? . . . Peter, what did they do to you . . . outside of
the bush and inside the bush? That your mother and father never did to you? . . .
I can tell you precisely what you went through but I want to hear it from you . . .
what they did to him, as an individual: that was horrible. . . . I want you to open
that bad.
WITNESS: We were forced to kill, forced to capture, forced to burn houses,

[unclear phrase], we were forced to bring animals we need from people.
HUMPER: And they did all that to you . . . was it a good thing they did to you?
Was it a good thing they did for this country that they did to you, or was it a bad
thing?
WITNESS: Bad thing.27

Or this, directed at a former CDF commander, testifying on the second
day:
HUMPER: You and your people became victims. And you endured and endured
and it became non-endurable any longer! So you committed yourself to what
ultimately came to be called CDF. So you became a member of CDF. Is that
right? And CDF are perpetrators, so you are a perpetrator as well. You are a
victim-perpetrator!
WITNESS: [unclear] No.
HUMPER It is simple here; you’ve said it here. . . . At every point when you are
a victim and in fact it was just that that is what was a militating factor that
aggravated your anger and suddenly you said, “You have to change!”28
In this manner, the Bishop would seek to draw general lessons from the
witnesses’ individual traumas, often pointing to the ceiling, gesticulating to
the audience as though from a pulpit. Here the Commission echoed the
South African example, in which the sanctification of witness experience
played an important public role—sacralized narratives building to a sermon
about the renaissance of the nation.
The Leader of Evidence tended to ask questions reminiscent of a
27. Bishop Humper & Witness, Testimony at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
Hearings in Tonkolili, Sierra Leone (8 July 2003).
28. Id.
careworker. She would sometimes ask witnesses about how they felt
following a trauma, or more frequently and concretely, about their eco-
nomic condition or the health of their families. For instance, this was her
approach to the first witness of the second day:
APORI-NKANSA: Could you please describe for the Commission how you feel
about your situation, about the fact that you have been amputated? . . . How do
you feel about it?
WITNESS: I am not happy because my hand has been amputated. I used to

work for money but now I am depending on other people. . . . I’m a farmer. . . .
Now I can’t do anything except if the government is giving me money.29
In another instance, the leader of evidence stated to a male witness on
the first day: “You mentioned one of your brothers who was killed had six
children. Could you please tell us about their state?” This mode of inquiry
was at least sympathetic and usually formed a fitting prelude to the requests
by witnesses for economic assistance of one form or another, even if the
Commission only had powers of recommendation in this regard.
Different approaches notwithstanding, it is fair to say that the Commis-
sioners were almost entirely unsuccessful in leading victims through a
process of catharsis or in prizing the truth from the tight lips of perpetrators.
At times this led the Commissioners to become exasperated. To give an
example, Bishop Humper at one point ridiculed Gabon’s testimony: “One
boy came here and he was specialised in ‘super-convoys’; now you have
come here and you were specialised in ‘super-escaping,’” continuing,
“[t]hey killed, they maimed, they looted, they raped . . . you are trying to shy
away from that.”30 On one occasion, after haranguing a distraught female
witness into admitting she had been raped, he exclaimed, “Well, you more
or less had the opportunity to tell us this before. Why didn’t you do so?”31
He sometimes resorted to putting confessions into the mouths of ex-
combatants, saying to Base Marine:
You are one of the few people who has sat down and said . . . . “This is me, this
is who I am . . . . I am a perpetrator . . . . I killed, I looted, I did bad things, I had
people abducted, some of whom were raped.” Is my observation correct?32
29. Apori-Nkansa & Witness, Testimony at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
Hearings in Tonkolili, Sierra Leone (8 July 2003).
31. Id.
32. Id.
In fact his testimony fell short of admitting to individual culpability. Two

weeks after the hearings had ended, I spoke to Bishop Humper about the
problem of getting the truth.
Perpetrators will tell you truth from their own perspective . . . he will say what
he saw . . . but he is dissociating himself . . . it may be the truth, but what is
truth? What is partial truth?. . . In most of the cases there is some partial truth.
The person is saying something that affects another person . . . he reserves
within himself some of those elements that he needed to say the whole
truth. . . . It’s truth on the surface, it’s not a deep truth.33
Throughout the testimony of the perpetrators, the audience often
expressed its disapproval, even though this was formally forbidden by the
Commission. Spectators sucked their teeth, gasped in disbelief, muttered, or
uttered hoots of derision at various junctures to these implausible stories. As
the Commissioners left the hall on the close of Thursday’s proceedings, the
audience dissolved in discontent. “We are not happy!” the Sierra Leone
People’s Party representative for the District turned to me and said, “They
have not told the truth. They are lying!” Other people joined us, including
one of the interpreters, a local schoolteacher. “They are not telling the
truth,” he exclaimed; “If they do not tell the truth tomorrow, if they do not
get up and show they are sorry, we will not have them here. We will drive
them out of our community!”
“We will be able to tell, we will know if they are truly sorry!” said
another bystander.
On Friday morning two new perpetrators testified. One of these was
“Tactical” who, on the opening day, had been accused of murdering the son
of a witness. He provided a scarcely believable testimony in which he
claimed he had been kidnaped by the rebels and then pressed into service
as a driver. However, as with most of the other ex-combatants, he had never
taken part in fighting or in the abuse of civilians. This testimony recapitu-
lated a story that he had told to me, a Portugese journalist, and an intern at
the TRC, when we had visited Tactical and interviewed him at his home on
Wednesday evening. At the time I had been surprised that Tactical had been
so ready to grant an interview, yet utterly unwilling to tell the truth. I
suspected that he was using our audience as a mirror in which to reflect, for
his own observation, a self-deceiving lie he was telling himself and
everyone else about the war. The impudence of Tactical’s testimony
provoked much mirth and derision in the hall, as did his cross-examination,
in which the Commissioners failed to link him to the aforementioned
33. Interview with Bishop Joseph Humper, Chairman, Truth and Reconciliation Commission,
in Freetown, Sierra Leone (30 July 2003).
murder, but were more successful in insinuating that he had abducted his
current wife.
Another perpetrator, the nephew of the paramount chief, took the stand
and was relatively open in admitting to atrocities, albeit in an abstract sense.
However, his real agenda appeared to be to accuse Base Marine of
embezzling ex-combatants’ demobilization money, thus bringing into the
public sphere a private feud that was only tangentially linked to the purpose
of the TRC. In addition, one of the translators gave a testimony in which he
accused some of the perpetrators of specific crimes. After this testimony,
Base Marine and Gabon were hauled before the Commissioners to face
further cross-examination in the light of this new evidence. Under intense
pressure they conceded some (in the context of Sierra Leone’s civil war)
relatively minor crimes and misdemeanors, such as vandalizing the local
secondary school and taking the wife of a local man. However, this fell far
short of admitting to severe violations, of which there had been plenty in
Tonkolili. Moreover, Base Marine stuck to his line that he had done
everything within his power to prevent atrocities under his command. As
the meeting broke up and people began to prepare the hall for the
reconciliation ceremony, it seemed incredible that any meaningful recon-
ciliation could take place.
III. THE RECONCILIATION CEREMONY
If the Commissioners’ cross examination was largely ineffectual, the same

cannot be said for the reconciliation ceremony on the final day. The
ceremony had a remarkable impact on the hearings, transforming the
atmosphere from one of virtual crisis and farce, to one of emotional release
and reconciliation.
The reconciliation ceremony saw the witness’ table occupied by the
paramount chief, flanked by the assistant district officer representing the
government, and a representative of the interreligious council. The commis-
sioners remained in their places. In front of their table, slightly to one side,
a lectern was placed. The front rows filled with elders of the community,
wearing long robes and leather hats with elaborate earpieces and protuber-
ances. There was a very low murmur in the hall. The ceremony began with
Christian and Muslim prayers; the Christian leader asked that God bless
those about to come forward and “confess themselves.” The Regional
Coordinator of the TRC spoke:
We want to hear some of our ex-combatants come to this community and ask
for forgiveness. We have witnessed the tussle between them and the Commis-
sioners as they were cross-examined. They have come to realise that there is no
information that is hidden from the Commission. . . . We trust that the religious
leaders and the traditional rulers will work with the people and the ex-
combatants so they can be properly reintegrated and accepted in their
communities.34
The perpetrators sat in a row of chairs behind the lectern, flush to the
wall. They looked nervous. One by one, they were invited to apologize.
Base Marine, the local commander of the RUF, got up and said he was sorry.
The RUF had committed atrocities, and as they were part of the RUF, so they
had to apologize for what they had done. Base Marine’s face was hard, but
he spoke with gravitas. He knelt at the table before the paramount chief and
the three leaders touched his head. Then Gabon, who had been the most
self-confident and casual of the witnesses, went to the lectern. As he spoke,
his eyes glistened with tears:
[W]e have fought this war and we have committed many atrocities. We have
looted property and we have taken people’s women from them. I Mori N__ am
standing here, confessing these things, and asking the people of the community
through the paramount chief to forgive me.35
He practically ran to the chief’s table and prostrated himself on the floor
before it. They blessed him, and then he went through the audience,
shaking hands with the people on each of the first four rows. At this point
my throat felt constricted. Next was an ex-SLA soldier and after that Joseph,
the nephew of the paramount chief, who compared the ex-combatants’
plight to that of the prodigal son, linking this story to the Krio proverb, “Bush
no då fo tro wå bad pikin.”36
Then Tactical stood up, looking downcast, taking the microphone:
“Ladies and gentlemen, what happened during the war . . .”37 Suddenly he
started to tremble, the microphone shaking violently in his hands. As he
spoke, his voice seemed to catch in his throat, emerging only as a small
squeak. Once he had recovered himself, he made his apology in a steady,
solemn voice, and then hurried to receive a blessing from the elders. “I’m
sorry, I’m sorry,” he said to them.38 It appeared that moment that the
collective weight of the community had torn through the tissue of lies he
had wrapped around his life, compelling him to confront his past in a spirit
34. Rev. Usman J. Fornah, Testimony at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Hearings
in Tonkolili, Sierra Leone (11 July 2003).
35. Gabon, Testimony at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Hearings in Tonkolili,
36. See supra section II(A).
37. Tactical, Testimony at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Hearings in Tonkolili,
38. Id.
of remorse. At this juncture my eyes brimmed. Finally Peter offered a long

and eloquent apology. After the confessions, the Bishop brought together
Base Marine and the witness who had impugned him. They smiled and
embraced to applause. Humper made a short speech, then Professor
Kamara explained at some length the forthcoming role of the traditional
leaders.39 The paramount chief spoke, stressing that the traditional leaders
were humiliated during the war and that the RUF stole from them and
misused the regalia that we saw them wearing that day. At the chief’s
invitation, the ceremonial leaders formed a small circle at the front, intoned
a mantra, clapped, and poured libations of whisky on the floor. There were
wide smiles and laughter around the hall. The Bishop made a closing
address:
Today marks a new day in Tonkolili District . . . we can sense, we can smell, we
can experience a peace . . . the experiences of the ten year civil war can never
and must never be forgotten. But we can put the past behind us. . . . I believe
Sierra Leone will rise again. . . . We thank you all and God bless you.40
People stood and slowly made their way out of the hall. There were
smiles on faces and a palpable feeling of release. Making my way to the
doorway, still partly overcome by the powerful ritual of the ceremony, I
glanced back into the hall. Tactical was stacking and tidying away chairs
like a diligent schoolboy, relief written all over his face.41
IV. TRUTH, HALF-TRUTHS, AND LIES
As one of the Commission’s own posters proclaimed, it hurts to tell the truth,
and the TRC in Tonkolili, in spite of its injunction to victims to express the
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, was rarely able to get
beyond detached, factual statements on the part of victims and half-truths,
evasions, and outright lies on the part of perpetrators. The current section
turns to an exploration of why this might have been the case. I discuss first
the relationship of the TRC to the Special Court, then certain weaknesses of
39. See infra note 68 and accompanying text.

41. I mentioned in an earlier paragraph that alternative interpretations are possible. At least
one member of the audience, a representative from a South African NGO and expert in
psychocultural counseling who attended on Thursday and Friday, was not moved by the
proceedings. She felt that the confessions of the perpetrators were insincere and that it
had cost them nothing to attend the ceremony. “But perhaps I have my own issues with
perpetrators,” she admitted. Informal conversation with South African NGO representa-
tive, at a party in Freetown (Jul. 2003).
the TRC itself and the peculiar characteristics of Tonkolili District, before
turning to a discussion of cultures of confession in Sierra Leone.
An important factor deterring witnesses from speaking openly in the
hearings was the troubled relationship between the TRC and Special Court.
The Special Court, as noted above, has been established to try only those
who bear “the greatest responsibility” for human rights violations and war
crimes in the period after 1996. The Prosecutor, David Crane, has stated
publicly that the court has its own investigative procedures and that it will
not use evidence presented to the TRC.42 It has also been suggested that TRC
evidence would be inadmissible in court.43 Unfortunately this message
appears not to have reached everyone in Sierra Leone. Some Sierra
Leoneans had difficulty distinguishing between the TRC and the court and
feared that confessions to the TRC may lead to prosecution. Reportedly,
there were also rumors that an underground tunnel ran between the TRC
and the court, which stand practically adjacent to each other in Freetown.44
These suspicions were not as far fetched as they might seem. Arguably, only
the Prosecutor’s word stood between TRC testimony and court prosecu-
tions, and it was highly likely that defense lawyers would mine TRC
testimony, wherever possible, in support of their clients.45 Moreover, while
the suggestion of a tunnel was clearly fanciful, the idea that the two
institutions exchanged information was not: it was common to see represen-
tatives from the court and TRC lunching together in Freetown, and some
technical staff had worked in both organizations. Several of the people I
spoke to around the Tonkolili hearings mentioned the court as a deterrent to
giving statements to the TRC. Perpetrators, in particular, were determined
not to incriminate themselves while the court was sitting. This fact was a
source of considerable frustration to some TRC staff, who felt that the court
was impeding their work to an unacceptable degree.
These problems were compounded by the TRC’s own organizational
frailties. A slow start up, together with lack of resources, led to a variety of
weaknesses.46 Regional offices, for example, were often run on a shoestring,
with little preparatory work being done prior to the public hearings.
Sometimes statement taking hardly started until the Commission arrived. In
Tonkolili, only two statements had been taken from Magburaka town prior
42. See Charles Cobb, Jr., Sierra Leone’s Special Court: Will It Hinder or Help?, allAfrica.com,
available at allafrica.com/stories/200211210289.html (21 Nov. 2002).
43. ICG BRIEFING, supra note 2, at 4. For an extended discussion see Schabas, supra note 2, at
1035.
44. Interview with Paul James-Allen, Researcher, Truth and Reconciliation Commission, in
Freetown, Sierra Leone (18 July 2003).
45. Schabas, supra note 2.
46. Id.; ICG BRIEFING, supra note 2.
to the Commission’s arrival. Statement takers received training, but it was

not extensive. The research team was undoubtedly stretched, sometimes
presenting information to Commissioners only at the last minute. The
schedule of hearings was typically grueling, and Commissioners often had
inadequate opportunity to study witness statements prior to testimony,
demanding a degree of concentration during hearings that not all could
sustain. The commissioners themselves, most of whom had never served on
a truth commission before, received minimal training, and sometimes dealt
with witnesses insensitively.
These factors made it difficult for the hearings to get the most out of
witnesses. Human beings, in many societies, are predisposed to deny
unpleasant truths. As an official at the opening ceremony warned, “It is true
that some things are horrible to remember.”47 Another interpretation is from
Freud: “The ego rejects the unbearable idea together with its associated
affect and behaves as if the idea had never occurred to the person at all,”48
a phenomenon that Bollas explains by reference to, “our need to be
innocent of a troubling recognition.”49 To embrace the unbearable idea,
especially in public, requires a special sort of recklessness or courage. This
applies to both victims and perpetrators. Many people would require
intensive preparation and coaching in order to strip away their psychologi-
cal defenses for the purpose of a national spectacle, and would probably
require therapy afterwards to help them recover. It was not clear that the
Commission was able to offer either of these to an appropriate degree. Most
witnesses, therefore, kept their defenses resolutely in place.
Certain features peculiar to Tonkolili District also complicated the truth-
telling process. Tonkolili is unusual in Sierra Leone in that during the
conflict it had a reputation for being sympathetic to the rebels. I was told
that many of the young men who drifted in and out of the audience to the
hearings were ex-RUF combatants, and it is possible that their presence,
with the associated fear of reprisals, deterred both victims and perpetrators
from speaking openly about their experiences. That said, the TRC would
expect ex-combatants to form a part of the audience in all districts as they
are diffused throughout society, and this ought not to have been an
insurmountable obstacle. More significant perhaps, was the possibility that
ex-combatants continued to have the support of district authorities. Foday
Sankoh, the leader of the RUF (who died two weeks after the hearings), was
47. Charlris Brown, Testimony at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Hearings in
48. Sigmund Freud, The Neuro-Psychoses of Defence, in STANDARD EDITION III (1961), cited in
STANLEY COHEN, STATES OF DENIAL: KNOWING ABOUT ATROCITIES AND SUFFERING 25 (2001).
49. CHRISTOPHER BOLLAS, BEING A CHARACTER: PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SELF EXPERIENCE 167 (1993), cited in
STANLEY COHEN, STATES OF DENIAL: KNOWING ABOUT ATROCITIES AND SUFFERING 25 (2001).
a native to Tonkolili and his family retained a strong presence, most notably
through the person of the paramount chief, his cousin. Although the chief
played a role in the opening ceremony of the TRC, he did not testify during
the proceedings, distinguishing Tonkolili from other Districts and signaling
his ambivalent stance towards the Commission. Some local people were
rumored to be waiting for a clear signal from the Chief before giving
statements or coming to testify.50 In addition, the command structure of the
RUF was said still to be in place, with Base Marine remaining influential in
his semidetached agricultural community.
It is probable that these obstacles to truth-telling in Tonkolili, which
were plain for anyone to see, were compounded by more subtle features of
the cultural environment. The practice of confession, it should be remem-
bered, has been an outstanding cultural node in the historical experience of
the West. Individualized confession of personal actions and inner psychic
states has been central to the Catholic religion, to the secular practices of
psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, and has latterly gained mass appeal
through TV talk shows, in which ordinary people confess extraordinarily
intimate details of their private lives to public audiences.51 By contrast,
confessions of this sort have been marginal, or even inimical to cultural
imperatives in Sierra Leone. Writing about Mende areas, for instance,
Mariane Ferme has pointed to the ways in which “a cultural order of
dissimulation” is linked to “a violent historical and political legacy.”52
Indirectness, evasiveness, and secrecy have been valorized in a political-
economic context in which individuals shift between economic activities
and geographical locations and in which they seek to maintain an open
ended and adaptable stance to powerful patrons. An imperative to stay
mobile or protean militates against processes which might tie down or fix
the self, such as might arguably be provided by a full, explicit, and recorded
confession to the TRC. In this context, the “effective use of ambiguity,”
writes Ferme, has been and continues to be, “more productive than the
social ideals of transparency.”53
Writing for the Northern region of Sierra Leone, Rosalind Shaw notes
the surprising fact that the slave trade, a historical experience which
wrought profound changes on the people of this area, is rarely spoken
about. This does not mean, however, that it has been forgotten: “if we are
50. Personal Communication, Rosalind Shaw. The author is much indebted to Professor
Shaw for a number of illuminating conversations around the hearings.
51. A classic reference is MICHEL FOUCAULT, THE HISTORY OF SEXUALITY (Robert Hurley trans.,
1990).
52. MARIANE FERME, THE UNDERNEATH OF THINGS: VIOLENCE, HISTORY AND THE EVERYDAY IN SIERRA LEONE 1
(2001).
53. Id. at 2.
attentive to forms of remembering different from those of verbally discursive

admissions . . . we find that . . . there are other ways of remembering the
past than by speaking of it.”54 Remembrance does not take the form of a
spoken or written record of the truth; rather, memories of the slave trade are
elliptically inscribed in a range of everyday actions and cultural forms:
“human leopards, witch-guns, contractual relationships with river spirits,
and divinatory images of roads.”55
Taking these two anthropological works together, they imply that the
practice of public confession and inquisitorial investigation may not be the
most familiar vehicle by which to arrive at the truth in Sierra Leone. This is
not to say that confession and inquisition are entirely alien to contemporary
local culture—far from it—it is merely that they might be expected to strike
fewer responsive chords there than they would elsewhere.
Supporters of the TRC were alive to this possibility when they designed
the institution, and in 2002 a report was commissioned to examine cultures
of confession in the country.56 The report found that confession did in fact
play a role in most tribal practices of conflict resolution and reconciliation,
but that confessions, significantly, were typically made with powerful ritual
assistance. The report observes that, “the various ethnic groups have
mechanisms such as cult and swearing/curse casting to help ensure that
perpetrators and witnesses tell the truth.”57 It explains that the purpose of
54. ROSALIND SHAW, MEMORIES OF THE SLAVE TRADE: RITUAL AND THE HISTORICAL IMAGINATION IN SIERRA LEONE
2 (2002).
55. Id. at 265. In Temne chiefdoms leopards are “royal” animals to which the chief is
sometimes compared. The characteristics of the leopard helped the chief protect his
people. However, in twentieth century Sierra Leone, chiefs, among others, were
frequently accused of turning themselves into leopards and devouring their subjects.
These accusations, believes Shaw, express a feeling that in the context of the slave trade
and its aftermath, chiefly power has turned rogue, chiefs abusing rather than protecting
their citizens. Temne people have rich images of witchcraft, which provide a commen-
tary on the moral ambivalence of accumulation descending from the traffic in human
beings. Prosperous and powerful people in Sierra Leone are sometimes accused of
possessing “witch guns”—lethal weapons constructed from natural materials such as
papaya leaf and a grain of sand. Women are thought to bear a special relationship to
river spirits, which form a focus for their ritual associations. Women, like rivers, link
communities to one another and build linkages in society; but they can also be a route
through which other communities learn one’s secrets and can mount attacks, just as
rivers were the arteries along which the slave trade moved. Temne diviners talk in terms
of “roads to life” and “roads to death”; during the slave trade and after, roads could be
spaces of commerce and wealth but also slavers’ channels of attack. See id. at 237–43,
208–09, 168–69, 89.
56. This report was commissioned by Manifesto ’99, a local human rights NGO launched in
November, 1999, aiming to monitor the implementation of a 1999 Human Rights
Manifesto for Sierra Leone. The group was later contracted by the UN’s OHCHR to
conduct a piece of research into traditional truth-telling and reconciliation.
57. Manifesto ’99, Traditional methods of conflict management/resolution of possible
complementary value to the proposed Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commis-
sion 5, Freetown, Manifesto ’99 (2002).
curses is to strike terror into the hearts of witnesses in the interests of gaining
a confession. The town crier or cult leader, in all his paraphernalia, typically
announces the impending invocation of occult powers. It observes that,
In oath taking, the strong belief that God and the ancestors would not tolerate
perjury influences the culprit to own up or the witness to give true testimony.
The fear of death, disease, death of children or any other misfortune when the
cult system is employed to cast a spell (or curse) on the culprit persuades the
guilty party to confess their crime even at the eleventh hour.58
Taking the two groups best represented in the Tonkolili District
hearings, the report found that the Mende have a number of curses, such as
Sasa, Ngegba, and Tilei, dealing with offenses such as stealing, adultery,
sexual offences, and defiling the bush. The breaking of these oaths leads to
reprisals in forms such as bronchitis, death by thunderbolt, diphtheria, or
insanity. For the Temne, the report noted that curses such as Poron or
Sakabana, Ehsasa, Oren, or Ch, were applied to cases of defiling the bush,
miscellaneous crimes, burglary, murder, or other heinous crimes. The curses
could evoke retribution in the form of oral cancer, death by thunderbolt, or
“death to the entire family by sequence.”59
It advises that these specific channels for inducing confession should be
deployed by the TRC alongside statement takers.
The strong traditional belief in swearing, cleansing, and purification should be
considered seriously by the TRC. In essence where the truth cannot easily come
out voluntarily, these practices should be appealed to as a way of enhancing the
truth and reconciliation process.60
The truth-telling component of the public hearings might have been
more successful had they been more heavily invested with ritual practice.
Swearing on neither the Koran nor the Bible seemed sufficient to induce the
telling of the whole truth. With the addition of local idioms, more rounded
versions of the truth could have emerged. However, some of these
procedures would doubtless have encountered resistance from certain TRC
staff, who would have regarded them as irrational and obscurantist, if not
abhorrent and contrary to the spirit of human rights.61
58. Id. at 23.

59. Id. at 22.
60. Id. at 25.
61. The author infers this from a conversation about local purification ceremonies with the
head of reconciliation at the TRC. One of the ceremonies involves flogging a perpetrator
and a dog simultaneously. When the dog defecates, the perpetrator is assumed purged.
“There are some things I would rather not see in the TRC,” she told me. Interview with
Martien Schotsman, Freetown (July 2003).
V. RITUAL AND RECONCILIATION
Up to this point I have been writing about the Tonkolili hearings as though
they fell into two distinct parts: the first part constituted by a quasi-judicial
component designed to elicit truth, which was largely unsuccessful, and the
second part comprised of a ritual-ceremonial component, designed to foster
reconciliation, which appeared highly successful. Part of the aim of the
article has been to try and explain the surprising fact that the failure of the
quasi-judicial component to achieve its aims did not appear to affect the
success of the ritual component.
This puzzle is solved if one abandons the view that the hearings were
designed to bring reconciliation through truth, the idea, in a sense, that truth
would entail reconciliation. One must look beyond the notion that after four
days of telling the truth, reconciliation would logically follow, the ceremony
merely underlining a state of affairs that truth had brought into being. It is
more plausible to view the entire five days of the hearings as a ritual
building to the climax of the final ceremony, upon which the purpose of the
Commission hinged. The principal function of the first four days was not to
elicit the truth, but to psychologically pressure and prepare perpetrators to
show remorse and to be symbolically reintegrated into the community.
The first point to note in this respect is that the process of cross-
examination, though largely unsuccessful in generating full confessions
from perpetrators, seemed uniformly successful in making them feel
uncomfortable. Base Marine’s face, for instance, was like a mask as he
delivered his testimony and responded to the Commissioners, but his leg
jigged and his body shifted continually from side to side. Gabon, who had
seemed relaxed during his testimony, was at times made anxious, exasper-
ated, and downcast by questions. The schoolboy smirks of Tactical can be
partly explained by his embarrassment and nervousness. Other witnesses,
such as Samuel, were plain lugubrious. By taking the stand, the perpetrators
submitted their bodies and their attention to the authority of the Commis-
sioners and the community, facing an audience that included not only their
friends and subordinates, but also people they had harmed and traditional
leaders now eager to consolidate their own domination. The perpetrators’
very attendance at the hearings registered their partial subordination to the
community, their compliance with its norms, and their willingness to submit
to its judgement. Where the stories they told were beyond belief, the
audience made clear its disapproval.
A key refrain of the cross-examinations was a reminder to perpetrators
that there would be a reconciliation ceremony on Friday and that they
would be expected to attend and to show genuine remorse: “If it does not
come from your heart, people will know,” Bishop Humper said to Tactical;
“The apology must come from the heart” he told Gabon.62 He insinuated to
Base Marine that the community would destroy his agricultural project if he
was not sufficiently contrite. These public reminders were supplemented by
behind the scenes pressure, as statement takers met with perpetrators, taking
time to persuade them that public apologies were essential to acceptance by
the community.
By Friday the perpetrators had heard victims recount their stories and
describe their pitiable states, they had been harangued by the Commission-
ers, they had witnessed the audience’s discontent, and they had been
badgered by the statement takers, all of which built to an impression that
they should show sorrow on the final day or else face perpetual
marginalization from the community, if not retribution. While the perpetra-
tors had been arrogant, swaggering, and terrifyingly capricious during the
war, the Commission was now working to break their pride and reduce
them to the status of obedient children.
In the first four days of the hearings, invariant procedural elements—in
other words ritual elements—were ostensibly subservient to the substantive
aim of getting the truth.63 The days opened with prayers, there was oath
taking on the Bible, the witnesses faced the audience; but the focus of their
interactions was with the Commissioners, in the various forms outlined
above. Perpetrators had obviously prepared themselves not to tell the truth
during their testimonies and to keep their guards up during the cut and
thrust of cross-examination. Only intermittently would the presence of the
audience have penetrated their consciousness during these interactions.
More likely the weight of the community would have impressed itself upon
them as they thought about their experience in the hours after they stepped
down.
In the closing ceremony, the religious elements of the hearings were
amplified. Christian and Muslim prayers were repeated by local church
leaders; in addition, the traditional leaders attended en masse, for the first
time wearing full ceremonial garb. Through this route the work of the
Commission was conjoined to the world of God and the ancestors, a set of
symbolic cues whose significance the participants could hardly have failed
to recognize.64 Symbols and statements conduced to an overwhelming
63. For a discussion of the components of ritual, and a spectrum of ritual forms, see ROY A.
RAPPAPORT, RITUAL AND RELIGION IN THE MAKING OF HUMANITY 34 (1999).
64. To be open about my own influences, I am the agnostic son of nonpracticing Quakers.
It is probable that the drama of turning the other cheek and granting forgiveness struck a
few responsive chords somewhere inside me.
impression that this was the last opportunity for perpetrators to be redeemed
in the here and now as well as in the world beyond. Witnesses then faced
the audience, with only a lectern to support them, and with no counselor,
interpreter, or Commissioners to distract them. Interaction with the audience
here was at its most intense, the atmosphere building to a kind of crescendo.
As Durkheim noted, “The very fact of assembling is an exceptionally
powerful stimulant”;65 “within a crowd moved by a common passion, we
become susceptible to feelings and actions of which we are incapable of on
our own.”66 The social fact of the community67 crystallized in the form of a
tangible weight impressing itself upon the perpetrators, in some cases
squeezing an apology from them and in others crushing their spirit of
resistance and opening them to genuine remorse. This feeling reverberated
around the audience, unleashing emotions of solidarity and forgiveness in
its members. People were not completely overcome, but the sense of relief
was palpable; the ceremony had had an effect.
The quality of the proceedings was illocutionary or performative. The
ceremony did not signify or commemorate a reconciliation that had come
about by means of telling the truth. It enacted, or brought about a
reconciliation, with the help of an emotional effect unleashed by its ritual
form. By participating in a ritual designed by the Truth Commission with the
support of the community, the perpetrators publicly acknowledged the
authority of the Commission and the community’s demand that they show
remorse. The community, by participating in the ceremony, publicly
obligated itself to reconcile with perpetrators.
There remain, needless to say, questions about the authenticity and
durability of remorse, forgiveness, and reconciliation. On the part of
perpetrators, a question arises as to the extent to which acceptance and
remorse were genuine. Tactical and Gabon, for instance, appeared more
affected than Base Marine. For them, the act of saying sorry and its
emotional import were conjoined. As they said sorry, they were sorry. For
Base Marine, his stated apology notwithstanding, this was less clear. It is
possible, however, that for him the ritual would have had a perlocutionary
effect; participation in the proceedings would help to persuade him, in time,
that he did indeed have regrets. The community on its part forgave the
perpetrators through the blessing bestowed by its leaders (the paramount
65. ÉMILE DURKHEIM, THE ELEMENTARY FORMS OF RELIGIOUS LIFE 162 (Carol Cosman trans., 2001).
66. Id. at 157.
67. Note that when I refer to “community” this is an idealized term: the audience was not the
community nor genuinely representative of it, as was shown, among other things, by the
disproportionate number of older men.
chief, assistant district officer, and representative from the interreligious

council) and via the libations poured to secure the blessing of the ancestors.
However, whether performing an act of forgiveness will bring lasting
reconciliation with the members of the audience or the community at large
will depend in part upon the efficacy of the ceremony in persuading people
that forgiveness and reconciliation are desirable. Clearly, the ceremony
marked a first step, generating an emotional receptiveness to reconciliation
among its participants.
The hearings as a whole were focused on perpetrators rather than
victims, the primary purpose being to consolidate the reintegration of ex-
combatants into communities. This was shown by the fact that the witness
who had been bereaved by Tactical was not present on the final day,
apparently having been forgotten by the Commission, notwithstanding the
fact that she had grudgingly agreed to be reconciled. Tactical was not
required to tell the truth about this murder in order to be forgiven; an
imprecise expression of remorse was enough. During the reconciliation
ceremony, the concept of truth was even drained from the mundane world
of victims and perpetrators and delivered into the unseen world of the
sacred. In an astonishing address, Professor Kamara stated that:
In every culture, there is a belief, people recognize that there is a super power,
a God. But that mysterious human being is so powerful and mysterious that
ordinary beings cannot usually approach him directly . . . so we go through our
elders and through the elders to the ancestors to get close to God. . . . People
refer to the world beyond as the world of Truth. And here at the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission we have to have that link between us and those
who exist in that world where no lies exist, but the truth. . . . Anything we reveal
here today amounts to nothing without the blessing of the ancestors and the
elders.68
Echoing Mariane Ferme, who writes that in Sierra Leone the visible
world is thought to be “activated by forces concealed beneath the surface of
discourse, objects and social relations,”69 we can even suggest that
spectators scanned the perpetrators’ expressions of remorse for signs of the
atrocities they had committed, but did not require the truth about atrocious
events to be brought to the surface and made transparent. That, it might be
imagined, was a matter not for the living, but for the dead.
68. Kamara, Testimony at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Hearings in Tonkolili,
69. FERME, supra note 52, at 2.
VI. CONCLUSIONS
A number of conclusions can be drawn from the Tonkolili case. The first is
that truth, of the forensic, legal-positivist, or cathartic, emotional-confessional
variety, is not easy to elicit, especially in contexts where such practices are
not part of the cultural mainstream. Where forensic or confessional truth is
desired, it is possible that Truth Commission techniques can be strengthened
by the integration of local practices, for instance species of ritualized ordeal.
The larger question is whether truth-telling of this type always desir-
able? The reluctance of participants to “blow their minds and clear their
chests,” as the Commission encouraged them to do, suggests a deep
reluctance to make verbal admissions of the truth. As Hayner observes of
Mozambique, sometimes truth is too close to home and too much to bear.70
In these circumstances, indigenous purification and reintegration rituals, as
have been ongoing in Sierra Leone, may be more appropriate to reconcili-
ation.71 One might even seek a more wholesale integration of such practices
into Truth Commissions on the grounds that “ritual is its own form of
truth.”72
Certainly, the way in which the quasi-judicial aspects of the Commis-
sion in Tonkolili were put, whether desired or not, at the service of the
ceremonial dimensions, and the way in which spectators seemed more
concerned with seeing signs of genuine remorse than hearing detailed
confessions, suggests that the truths that come out of Commissions may
revert, in one way or another, to local, default settings. A slightly different
way of looking at it would be to say that rituals mask or obscure certain
truths in favor of others: in this case, the unbearable truth of atrocities was
partially eclipsed by the more palatable truth of remorse and desires for
peace.
What is most clear is that ritual, at its most effective, has the power to
transform perceptions and emotions and therefore situations, and it is for
this reason that it ought to be taken seriously by truth commissions. The
ritual elements of the Tonkolili hearings were recently improvised and
hardly elaborate, yet, with the addition of a week’s quasi-judicial bullying,
they had a tangible effect. Through them, the TRC acted as a lightning rod
for a set of anxieties surrounding several perpetrators, many not native to the
district, who stood outside of traditional reintegration procedures. The “will
to truth” of the Commission’s institutional machinery played a subordinate
role, in this situation, to the audience’s “will to peace.”
70. HAYNER, supra note 3.

71. SHAW, supra note 54. See also Rosalind Shaw, Rethinking Truth Commissions: Lessons
from Sierra Leone, Special Report 129, U.S. Institute of Peace (in press).
72. I thank an anonymous reference for this insight.
Whether Tactical, Base Marine, and Gabon can live in comparative

harmony in Magburaka remains to be seen. What the victims of these men
must feel is not clear. In time, even very shortly, the reconciliatory spell
woven by the hearings may unravel. But the TRC undeniably achieved
something in Magburaka, even if, on the question of its value as a
transitional justice mechanism, the jury has not yet returned a decision.

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HUMAN RIGHTS QUARTERLY

Truth, Lies, Ritual:

II. THE TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSION

hearings and hundreds attended. The proceedings were broadcast live on

the obvious risk of misreading audience reactions by projecting onto them

A. The Setting and Opening Ceremony

8. Bishop Humper, Testimony at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Hearings in

common feature of truth commissions in other countries. When combined

Wednesday was a day of closed hearings in which testimonies were heard

he claimed that he never witnessed or participated in atrocities, and in

WITNESS: [agitated] I cannot distinguish a rebel from a soldier . . . there’s no

WITNESS: [angry exclamation, unclear]

WITNESS: Ten people were locked up.

WITNESS: All of them were burned.

WITNESS: They burned a lot of houses.

KAMARA: You have no idea how many houses were burned?

WITNESS: At that time my hand had been amputated.24

WITNESS: We were forced to kill, forced to capture, forced to burn houses,

WITNESS: Bad thing.27

WITNESS: [unclear] No.

WITNESS: I am not happy because my hand has been amputated. I used to

In fact his testimony fell short of admitting to individual culpability. Two

III. THE RECONCILIATION CEREMONY

If the Commissioners’ cross examination was largely ineffectual, the same

of remorse. At this juncture my eyes brimmed. Finally Peter offered a long

IV. TRUTH, HALF-TRUTHS, AND LIES

39. See infra note 68 and accompanying text.

to the Commission’s arrival. Statement takers received training, but it was

attentive to forms of remembering different from those of verbally discursive

58. Id. at 23.

V. RITUAL AND RECONCILIATION

chief, assistant district officer, and representative from the interreligious

70. HAYNER, supra note 3.

Whether Tactical, Base Marine, and Gabon can live in comparative

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