But I am jumping the gun. So let me make a short story long. Let's dip into history. The party that is now known as the SLPP was the result of the coming together of three different parties during British Colonial rule. There was the Protectorate Educational Progressive Union (PEPU) founded by protectorate (upcountry) men and women like Milton Margai (a Mende), Amadu Wurie (a Fula), and M S Mustapha (an Oku). There was also the Sierra Leone Organisation Society (SOS) founded by men like John Karefa-Smart (a Sherbro) and Kandeh Bureh (a Temne). And there was the People's Party (PP) founded by the Rev. Ethelred Jones (a Creole) who later changed his name to Lamina Sankoh. These three organisations cum parties found a common cause in the belief that Sierra Leone was one country with one people irrespective of their ethnic backgrounds, and they were able to forge an alliance into one party which they named the Sierra Leone People's Party.

True, the leadership of the new party was handed over to Milton Margai; but not because he was Mende, but because he was more nationalistic and less tribalistic in both outlook and deed. Of course his leadership was so genial that on several occasions men like Karefa-Smart and Kandeh Bureh regularly acted as Prime Minister. It was this nationalistic outlook that gave the party the attractiveness on the eve of independence to garner support from all other minor parties to form a united front.

 That is why the SLPP's motto is ‘One Country, One People'. But ever since there have been people who have tried to derail the original motive by trying to reduce party politics into farcical tribalism. However, they have never got their way through. Historians concluded that the SLPP lost the 1967 elections primarily because it was portrayed as a Mende man's party as against its nationalistic origins. And in 2007, the SLPP stands to lose another election primarily on the same basis.

The problem with some politicians is their inability to read the writing on the wall; or, if they do, their inability to read or interpret the writing correctly. Tribalising politics is as dangerous as unleashing a dragon on defenceless people. The hue and cry in the SLPP camp at the moment is that Charles Margai should not have vouched for the APC in the run-off for the mere reason that he is Mende. What an insult! But Margai has not only gone through education, education has also gone through him. He knows that Sierra Leone is for all Sierra Leoneans; and if one party fails to deliver on its ‘wutehteh' promises only to hang on a thin thread of tribalism for survival, that thread must be snapped and let that party drown in the sea of ignorance.

And that brings me to the whole issue of whether the Mendes are actually a tribe in the sense of the Temne or Bullom as an ethnic entity. Or are the Mendes actually not a confluence of people from different ethnic backgrounds descending from a combination of the disgruntled warlike Manes that invaded Sierra Leone in the sixteenth century? Is Mende not really an African lingua franca? Sierra Leone is not divided into Temne and Mende territory. In the middle of the two are a whole range of other ethnic groups, some of which are virtually disappearing. But it is still clear that there are the significant ones like the Kissi, Bullom, Sherbro, Vai, Krim, Kono, Limba, Kuranko, Yalunka, Susu, Madingo, Loko, Fula, and Krio.

Coming back to my earlier questions, historians believe that before 1700, there was no language or group of people in Sierra Leone called Mende. So you will ask me, where did the Mende come from or how did their language develop? Simple. A powerful woman called Masarico had fallen foul of the then falling Mali Empire and recruited a group of fighters to conquer territory wherever she could find it. She waded her way into Liberia, where further recruitments were done, and entered Sierra Leone by what has been described as the Mane Invasion. The language the invaders spoke was called Hondo, while the natives who were already in Sierra Leone spoke Dogo. At the same time, there were several ethnic groups like the Kissi, Vai, Kono, and Sherbro/Bullom.

And now, to truncate the story, historians have it that Mende as a language was a mix of the language of the invaders and the languages of the invaded. As time passed, it underwent several linguistic simplifications to make it acceptable to many about 100 years after the Mane Invasion. The good thing was that, as in the case of the Krio, it united a people once divided. Therefore it is so easy for a native Sherbro or a Vai to call himself a Mende man.

In all this, what is clear is that Mende evolved as a means to bringing people together, not to divide them. This trend continued when both Temne and Mende leaders were united in their stance against colonial government's Hut Tax. It was that same spirit that made the powerful female Mende Paramount Chief, Madam Ella Koblo Gullama, to marry a Temne Chief, Bai Koblo Pathbana, so that even though she was a founding member of the SLPP (first female MP and Minister ever), she eventually became a very influential APC Women's Leader. The crux of our nation's future is not about whether we are Mende or Temne. We need to push our leaders to respond to the people's desires.

 After all, at the end of the day, war or hunger or disease or accident does not know which tribe you belong to. It is an insult to our brothers and sisters in the south-east if we try to depict them as people who cannot distinguish between a good government and a bad one or that they never want to grow beyond their primitivism. The Mende-speaking people know this; and I believe they will speak loudly, come the run-off presidential election.

So, intellectuals and what-have-you, it is our duty to project, not proscribe, the national image. We should educate those who want to thrive on tribal idiosyncrasies. This time around, Charles Margai has led the way; and I doff my hat to him.

(Stay tuned for Part Two)

*Sheka Tarawallie(pictured) is Sub-Editor of www.expotimes.net and Board Member, Exiled Journalists' Network, UK. He is the former editor of the Torchlight newspaper in Sierra Leone.