Concord Times (Freetown)
Bhoyy Jalloh
23 May 2008
Freetown — In 2003 hip-hop artist Joseph Gerald Adolphus Cole aka Daddy Saj recorded an upbeat dance groove with some unlikely lyrics.
The English translation of the Krio expression is something like "mismanagement, bankruptcy, unaccountability" and "no electricity, bad sanitation." Called "Corruption e do so" ("Corruption: Enough Is Enough"), the song became a pan-African hit, and the album became the most popular in the history of Sierra Leone.
Since last fall, Saj has been living in Utah, in the little town of Providence, after marrying Cache County native Ann Norman. It was the battle against corruption, and a shared tendency to say what they think, that brought Saj and Norman together.
Norman is a farm girl from Paradise who went on a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to Paris, graduated from Utah State University, got a job in public relations in New York and ended up raising private money for United Nations microloan programmes for the world's poorest countries.
In the summer of 2005 she made a quick stop in Sierra Leone, West Africa.
A few months later, back in New York, Norman got a phone call from the UN office in Sierra Leone. The president of the country, she was told, was starting a new programme to combat media corruption following a devastating decade-long war, and he wanted her help.
"I said, 'I don't know the first thing about any of that, but I'll see if I can find someone else who does,"' Norman remembers telling the U.N. officer.
"No," he told her "they want you." Later, after Norman did, indeed, move to Sierra Leone to help former President Tejan Kabbah with his communications campaign, she discovered why she had made such a favorable first impression.
"They said, 'You weren't afraid of us and you're bossy. ... You were bold enough to say what you thought."' "A blabbermouth," is how Norman describes herself. "My M.O.," she says, "is 'when bad stuff happens, tell someone."' Meanwhile, Daddy Saj already had established himself as the boldest singer in Sierra Leone.
His song "Corruption" was "the talk of the town," remembers Chukwu Adeyemi Paul, a publisher of Sierra Express Media. "People thought he would be locked up.
It was risky for his life and his family, to come out and slam (the government)." The song encouraged other people to talk publicly about corruption, Paul says, and other singers followed with similar songs.
Especially right after the war, Saj says, "Corruption was the order of the day. It was a way to survive." The corruption extended to government workers, the police, teachers and shopkeepers. He offers this everyday example: You go to buy some rice from a street vendor, and she puts rocks in the bottom of the measuring cup.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2008 Concord Times. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
