Background
John was born on June 17, 1915, at Rotifunk in the Moyamba district, in a Temne family. His father was a minister and his mother the daughter of Paramount Chief Caulker.
John was born on June 17, 1915, at Rotifunk in the Moyamba district, in a Temne family. His father was a minister and his mother the daughter of Paramount Chief Caulker.
An ethnic Sherbro, Karefa-Smart was educated at the EUB. Primary School, in Moyamba District and the Albert Academy in Freetown. He received his BA from Fourah Bay College in Freetown in 1936. Four years later in 1940, he received his BS from Otterbein College in Westerville, Ohio, United States in 1940. From Otterbein, he went to McGill University in Montreal, where he received his MD and CM in 1944 and Diploma in Tropical Medicine in 1945. Finally, in 1948, he received his MPH from Harvard University in Boston.
During the war, from 1943 to 1945, he served as an officer with the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps. He then worked in various Mission hospitals back home before being appointed a lecturer at Ibadan University in Nigeria between 1949 and 1952.
From 1952 to 1955 he worked with the World Health Organisation at its Geneva headquarters and was later the leader of delegations and consultant to WHO on behalf of his country and West Africa as a whole.
He returned home in 1956, set up a private practice and took an active part in the Sierra Leone People’s Party. In the general election of 1957 he was returned unopposed to the Tonkolili West seat and was appointed Minister of Lands and Surveys (1957-9) before being shuffled to Minister for External Affairs (1960-4), where he pursued the moderate pre-western policies of his premier Sir Milton Margai. But when Sir Milton died, he opposed Sir Albert Margai’s leadership of the party and was not invited to become a minister. He then immediately left the country and spent 1964-5 as an assistant professor at Columbia University before becoming assistant director-general of the World Health Organisation from 1965 to 1970.
After the military coup of March 1967 he was strongly sympathetic to Siaka Stevens and visited him in his Guinea exile during the 13 months of military rule. But when Siaka Stevens returned to power in 1968 he did not reward Karefa Smart with the office of Governor-General as expected, so he remained abroad with the WHO.
In August 1970 he decided to make a big political come-back. He flew home to lead a group of dissident ministers who had resigned from government after quarrelling with Siaka Stevens and disputing his leadership. They accused him of “dictatorial tendencies”, a drift to the left and a desire to impose a presidential style government.
The dissidents formed a group which was to become the ITnited Democratic Party and called a mammoth open-air meeting on the Queen Elizabeth Playing Fields in F'reetown on September 13, 1969. The meeting resulted in violence which spread to other parts of the country. Stevens declared an emergency, banned the UDP and detained Karefa Smart and four other leaders. He was kept in detention until February 1971, when he was released. He stayed in Freetown until the abortive coup led by Brigadier John Bangura on March 23, 1969. The next day Karefa Smart left for London saying: “I am sure that if I stayed I would be under detention.” He promised to carry on his opposition from outside the country. Since then he has become a reader in public health at Harvard University.
House of Representatives 1957-1964.
A brilliant doctor, lecturer, international administrator (assistant director-general of the World Health Organisation). Also a charismatic politician and minister in the postindependence governments, reaching his peak as Minister of External Affairs, under Sir Milton Margai. His mercurial brilliance was partly responsible for his curiously unstable political record.
Married Rena Joyce Weller in 1948.