Chanting back, “Who wants the mansion key? Ellen wants the mansion key!” they clearly were ready, helping to turn this 67-year-old economist, known everywhere by her first name, into the first elected female president—not only in Liberia, but also on the entire African continent.
Just a few months after that trip, Johnson Sirleaf, a former Mason Fellow who continues to come back to the school for speeches and the annual Women Waging Peace conference, stood on the grounds of the capital building in Monrovia—just down the road from the “mansion”—and took the oath of office, ushering in what headlines and hopefuls all over the world are waiting for: a new beginning for Liberia.
Her election couldn’t have come at a better time. Although the 14-year civil war ended in August 2003, the country, founded in 1847 by freed American slaves, is still in shambles. Unemployment is a staggering 80 percent. The national debt hovers at about $3.5 billion—a crippling amount when compared to the country’s national budget of about $80 million. During the war, which left 200,000 dead and another 1 million displaced, nearly everything of value was looted or destroyed. Entire villages were razed. There is still no piped water and very little public electricity—the latter something Johnson Sirleaf has pledged to restore within six months.
Her critics say the challenges are too great; her supporters, who affectionately call her “Iron Lady,” say she’s tough enough for anything. And the proof, they add, is in her history.
In 1980, for instance, while serving as the finance minister, she escaped death when Samuel Doe staged a bloody coup that killed then-president William Tolbert and 13 members of his cabinet, each one stripped, tied to a pole, and executed by firing squad.
Five years later, following a speech she gave that was critical of the government, Doe put her under house arrest, then in prison. After two months, she was charged with sedition and sentenced to 10 years hard labor. Thousands of Liberian women signed a petition and the international community, including members of the Kennedy School, wrote letters. She was released, only to end up back in prison for seven months with other members of her political party, this time for treason.
More recently, during the election, she faced 22 opponents, all men, including a wildly popular soccer star, and won nearly 60 percent of the vote.
Johnson Sirleaf agrees she’s no pushover.
When asked by an American television anchor what she’d say to someone who believes she’ll be a soft leader just because she’s a woman, she says: “Try me. You’ll be shocked.”
But “Ma Ellen,” as she’s also known, doesn’t intend to become another Margaret Thatcher.
“The Iron Lady, of course that comes from the toughness of many years of being a professional in a male-dominated world,” she recently told The New York Times.