mdogbasandy@aol.com /302-494-4688
New Castle, Delaware- It was 18:30GMT that fateful morning of Friday, June 8, 2012 when I awoke from bed. As part of my early morning routines, I immediately reached for my Black Berry cellular phone to check my e-mails.
As I browsed the web, the first subject line that caught my attention was “Veteran Journalist Tom Kamara Dies.” Mr. Edwin Kruah, a crony of mine, who lives in the State of Delaware, USA, forwarded the communication to me that morning at 18:00GMT from the popular List serve: EveryLiberian@yahoogroups.com . I swiftly opened the e-mail and read it.
The e-mail’s author, simply referred to as Steve, announced, “Early this morning, veteran Liberian Journalist and prolific writer Tom Kamara died a couple of hours ago in Brussels.” According to Steve, Tom was in Brussels, Belgium receiving treatment after suffering multiple sudden and severeailments. He expired at St. Luc Hospital at age 63 while en-route to Amsterdam, Holland for urgent medical care. He reportedly went into coma andsuffered stroke, which paralyzed one side of his body.
On June 3, 2012, hewas airlifted from Liberia for advanced medical care over sea. The news about Mr. Kamara’s abrupt death made me numb. I sat in the middle of my bed with my mouth agape for few seconds. I was shock, hurt, and amazedbecause the deceased was oneof my former professors from the Department of Mass Communications, University of Liberia, where he served as adjunct lecturer in the early 1990s.He taught there briefly horning the reportorial skills of journalism students in the art of magazine and feature writing.
I was one of his covert admirers. I cherished and venerated him for his professional work and creative writing. Because of Tom’s creative style of news writing, I became a voracious reader for the New Democrat Newspaper, a paper he helped established in 1993.He lived a humble and simple life style. He was neither arrogant nor ostentatious despite the outstanding talent and education he had.
Death News
By 1900 GMT or 7:00AM (Eastern Time), the news about Tom’s death had hit the Liberian communities in the Americas like wild fire. My phone was literarily “off the hook” with calls that emanated from several individuals including some members of the Liberian press corps in the Americas. The non-journalist callers were, Liberians, who are friends of the Liberian media and admirers of the late Kamara. They telephoned to alert me about the tragedy that had hit the Liberian media again. As they spoke and re-echoed the news, I was confounded.
I was deeply saddened because his hasty death comes at a time when his expertise and professional guidance are mostly needed for the elevation of Liberian journalism, a career which is gradually eroding due to poverty and the shortage of trained man power in the country. It later dawned on me that indeed, Liberia and Africa have lost an emblematic journalist, human rights campaigner,inexhaustible writer, and an advocate of social justice.Most callers, who spoke to me that morning, conceded that the late Tom or TK as he was affectionately called was a NATIONALIST, GAINT, LEGEND, and a MENTOR in Liberian journalism.
Tom was an erudite “pen pusher” and media executive; he had absolute control of the pen. He was an impeccable writer, who was graphic, vivid, descriptive, robust, and analytical in storytelling. The late Kamara was one of the finest creative essayists and analytical print journaliststhe African continent, specifically Liberia, has produced in recent history.
Legendary Role
The callers’ unanimity about TK’s gallantryin the Liberian media was the same for most Liberians and friends of Liberia the world over. Liberia’s President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in a tribute described the fallen media pundit as a “Great patriot, who dedicated his life to the pursuit of freedom of speech, the right of the media, and the democratic process in Liberia and Africa.” Liberia, Mrs. Johnson Sirleaf regretted, “has lost one of its greatest sons, who did not live long enough to benefit from the fruits of freedom and democracy for which he fought for so many decades.”
The Monrovia based News Newspaper, ex-Editor-in-Chief, Joe Bartuah, who now resides in the State of Massachusetts, in a tribute captioned: TOM KAMARA: AN EPITOME OF A TRUE NATIONALIST, proclaimed “The untimely death of Tom Kamara is indeed, an irreparable loss to the Liberian nation, because he was a consummate patriot and a gallant nationalist in the most unequivocal sense of the word.”
TK as noted by Mr. Bartuah was one of the finest gems of the Inky Fraternity in Liberia. He wrote, “In his passing, I have no doubt that foes and friends alike will concur that Tom was one of the most refulgent icons of Liberian journalism. The aura of eminence, trust and dignity he exuded among his peers was fueled by his intrepid and courageous stance on crucial public policy issues. When many others chose to cheer for pecuniary gains, Tom was critical, once he reasoned that the ultimate good for the country was being sacrificed on the altar of personal greed.”
For Mr. Bai M. Gbala, a former senior official of the late President Samuel K. Doe autocratic administration, TK as he penned in an e-mail posting, was a “Towering figure, a personality not only in Liberia, but also in worldwide journalism. He was independent, fair, fiercely patriotic, brave and roaring with the desire and rage for political and socio-economic justice.”
Tom was an outstanding member of the Publishers Association of Liberia (PAL). PAL in paying homage to one of its own, said TK was a true patriot and nationalist. “The Liberian political history, and the history of its locust years, can never be completed without the mentioning of the central role Tom played in informing the world about the murderous situation in Liberia while in the Diaspora. Where some professionals saw the need for comfort in Europe and the Americas, Tom saw a need to return home to help clear the debris of war and rebuild Liberia,” PAL maintained.
Journalistic Stance
TK was a stout journalist, who never mincedhis words in reporting the truth. In his vocabularies, there existed no euphemisms for calling “a spade a spade.” He spoke less, but his pen was “merciless” in criticizing or critiquing social ills in Liberia. He had no friend or foe in telling the news as it was.
His aspiration for objectivity in news reporting dates back as far as 1969 when he was the Editor of the William V. Tubman High School students’ newspaper, The Monitor.While at Tubman High, Tom was suspended bydeceased Principal A. Nanu Manly “Due to his fearless reporting on issues confronting students. He was suspended for a newspaper story that landed him into trouble with the school administration that had to do with the refusal of students to adhere to the directive to cut their Afro hairdo low,” recalled Mr. Joseph Farkollie, a longtime friend of the expired journalist in a recently published tribute.
Tom stood in defense of press freedom and free speech. He was courageous, independent, and fair in the performance of his reportorial duties. “He resisted temptations, including financial, material and high paying jobs in a country of abject poverty, to remain independent and practice a very high journalistic standard,” Journalist Jacqueline Maris of Public Radio in the Netherlands pontificated when she spoke at a recent memorial service held in honor of the expired journalist in Holland.
Before his demise, Tom was the first Liberian journalist to have tested the Sirleaf government’s commitment to compliance with the newly promulgated Liberia Freedom of Information Act, which gives the media and the public the right to inspect and obtain copies of all kinds of information held by the government and public authorities except those legitimately exempted.
In March 2012, he requested information on the financial records from three government agencies: Monrovia City Corporation(MCC), Liberia Telecommunication Authority (LTA), and the Maritime Bureau. He charged that some of the agencies had controversial financial dealings.
But Mary Broh, Monrovia‘soverzealous City Mayor, declined to cooperate with the request.In 1993, when he resigned as Director of Communications in the Dr. Amos Sawyer led Interim Government of National Unity (IGNU), the late Kamara and a team of local Liberian journalists established the now locally acclaimed New Democrat Newspaper as an alternative medium for free speech in Liberia.
As Managing Editor, Publisher, and writer, TK gave voice to the voiceless in Liberia. The paper from its inception to now remains a critical and aggressive news outlet for reporting the news as it is.In 1994, “when anarchists were virtually worshiping their guru, Charles Ghankay Taylor, it was Tom Kamara who envisioned that the kleptocratic despot would one day be tried and convicted, and of course, on May 31, 2012, Tom’s “prophesy” was fulfilled,” wrote Journalist Bartuah in a recent tribute to the late TK.
The Charles Ghankay Taylor Trial in the Great Beyond column launchedby the late TK in the New Democrat Newspaper won him local and international approbations.On a routine basis, TK through his creative and analytical write-ups graphically exposed the ills of Mr. Taylor and his ex-NPFL thugs.
Social Justice Advocacy
A holder of a Master’s degree in journalism from Texas University in the US, Tom began his crusade for free expression in Liberia years before the nation’s ended civil wars. A graduate of the prestigious University of Liberia, TK was a courageous, “controversial”, and eloquent writer.
In the 1980s, Tom fell off with the regime of the slain President Doe, when he exposed bad governance and economic malfeasances in Liberia. The government arrested and subsequently canned him at the National Security Agency (NSA), but he clandestinely eloped and fled into exile.
According to Journalist Bartuah, the deceased trouble with the late Doe and the People’s Redemption Council (PRC) started in 1981 when he as Editor-in-Chief of the New Liberian, a government owned newspaper, published the composite photos of the hut in which the late Doe was born and the gigantic mansion he had built in Tuzon just one year after the over throw of the late Williams R. Tolbert administration. The publication enraged the late Doe and he summarily fired the late TK.
In his quest for social justice and an equitable Liberia, the late Kamara did not pick and choose his targets in speaking against dishonesty, greed, and corruption. Journalist Bartuah in a testimony about Tom’shonestyin calling a spade a spade wrote “In 1994, when Interim President Amos Sawyer, at the phasing out of his administration, proposed that outgoing government officials purchase government vehicles assigned to them in the purported equivalents of Liberian dollars in order to own them, Tom Kamara, who had been Sawyer’s Director of Information, bitterly criticized the policy because he felt that it was robbing the struggling, war-ravaged country of needed resources. In short, whether it was his best friends or those who might tag themselves as his worst enemies, the late Thomas Kamara never minced his candid opinion.”
Legacy
Tom was an outstanding pillar in the Liberian media and human rights communities. He lived an exemplary life as a journalist and social justice advocate.Although he fell seven years short in reaching age seventy or “three scores and ten,” the biblical prediction for the life span of every human being, the late TK’s earthily journey was not in vain.He succeeded in leaving indelible and enviable foot prints on the Liberian media and human rights landscapes.
Tom suddenly died at 63, but his dazzling contributions to good journalism in Liberia will forever be remembered. Tom raised the bar for professionalism and ethical practices in the media. In the words of his longtime friend Mr. Farkollie, the late TK “Set a standard for the Liberian press.”
About the Author: Moses D. Sandy is a US based Liberian Journalist with residence in the State of Delaware. He is a middle level social work manager in the City of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He holds a Master’s degree in Social Work (MSW) from the Pennsylvania based Temple University. He is former Editor-in-Chief, Liberia Broadcasting System (LBS). He is also the Team Manager of the First State Old Timers Sports Association based in Delaware.
