Word: karefa
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Karefa-Smart's political awakening came shortly after that, during a tour of East Africa. He was stunned by the exploitation of Africans in the mining industry throughout the copper belt, and, looking around, saw far more rigid repression than relatively liberal Sierra Leone had known...
...surprised to find one young man who was already fighting this discrimination, and they became friends. That early organizer was Kenneth Kaunda, now the president of Zambia. Kaunda's courage forced Karefa-Smart to re-evaluate his own career and the fruits of all his education...
...Karefa-Smith returned to Sierra Leone and resigned all of his other posts to go into political life. With Sir Albert Margai, he organized the Sierra Leone People's Party, which eventually won Sierra Leone's independence from Britain in 1961. Over the next three years, he served in a variety of key positions: Foreign Minister, Minister of Defense, and Acting Prime Minister during Margai's frequent illnesses...
When Margai finally died in 1964, his brother, Sir Michael, took over the government by military force to avoid an election with Karefa-Smart. This placed Karefa-Smart in a delicate position. "When this brother pulled this fast one on us, I found I could not stay under those conditions," he says. "So I left the country. I remained a member of Parliment, but took a post at Columbia University because it would be safer...
...Karefa-Smart commuted from New York to sessions of Parliament four times a year until 1965, when new coups forced him to cut off all political contact with Sierra Leone. For the next five years, he served in Geneva as assistant director general of the World Health Organization, but continued to watch the political situation in Sierra Leone. In 1970, with power in the hands of an old political ally, Dr. Siaka Stevens, he reasoned that the time was right for him to return to Sierra Leone for good. Karefa-Smart smiles at his own innocence now when he says...