Opinion

The Trouble with Cameroon


By Peter Wuteh Vakunta



Introduction
You may remember Animal Farm, the 1945 classic written by George Orwell. Many in my generation had to read this book in order to pass the London General Certificate of Education (GCE) ordinary level examination. Over the years I have come to see the relevance of the message contained in this novel even more as I ponder the Cameroon Anglophone Question. The plot of Orwell’s book is centered on the dissatisfaction of farm animals who felt they’re being mistreated by Farmer Jones. Led by the pigs, the animals revolted against their oppressive master, and after their victory, they decided to run the farm themselves on egalitarian principles. However, the pigs became corrupted by power and a new tyranny took root. The famous line: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others” (92) still rings true to date.   In this essay, I contend that the socio-political impasse in Cameroon at present is a parody of Animal Farm. The novel is a replica of what has come to be branded the Cameroon Anglophone Problem.

The Anglophone Question
 
After fighting together to decolonize Cameroon from French and British hegemony, French-speaking Cameroonians now tend to lord it over their English-speaking compatriots. The There exists a generation of English-speaking Cameroonians who now find themselves at a crossroads and would like to know where they really belong. Many Anglophone Cameroonians are now asking themselves why they are condemned to play second fiddle in the land of their birth. The unfair treatment meted out to English-speaking Cameroonians by arrogant, condescending Francophone compatriots in positions of power is a time bomb that needs to be defused before it explodes to do irreparable damage.  As Alfred Matumamboh puts it, “Anglophone Cameroonians still feel themselves a colonized people trapped in the clutches of horizontal colonization. Francophone Cameroonians keep on reminding them by their political word and deed that they are the masters while the deprived Anglophone is the trapped helpless servant to be maltreated and molested”(Online article).  Unfair discrimination sows seeds of discord regardless of where it is practiced. Prejudice, in all its shades and colors, is deleterious in all parts of the world. A celebrated American literary icon, Maya Angelou (1986:5) once said: “Prejudice is a burden which confuses the past, threatens the future, and renders the present inaccessible.” The cohabitation between Anglophone and Francophone Cameroonians has been likened to a marriage of convenience by scholars and students of post-colonial Africa. In fact, some critics have compared the uneasy co-existence between these two distinct linguistic communities in Cameroon to the attitude of two travelers who met by chance in a roadside shelter and are merely waiting for the rain to cease before they continue their separate journeys in different directions. No other metaphor could better depict the frictional coexistence between Anglophone and Francophone Cameroonians.
More often than not, the perpetrators of this macabre game of divide and rule are the French-speaking political leaders who take delight in fishing in troubled waters. They divide in order to conquer to the detriment of the proverbial man in the street. In doing so, Francophone leaders take delight in stoking the flames of animosity and whipping up sentiments of mutual suspicion on both sides of the Mungo at the expense of nation-building. Many of them have been heard to make statements intended either to cow Anglophones into submission or to incite them into open rebellion. Yet these self-styled leaders would mount the podium to chant to the entire world that there is no Anglophone Problem in Cameroon. This type of hogwash, it seems to me, will come back to haunt them. Nemesis has uncanny ways of getting at its culprits. The plain truth is that there is a palpable feeling of discontent and dissatisfaction amongst Anglophones in Cameroon. Questions that remain unanswered are numerous: Are Anglophone Cameroonians enjoying equal treatment with their Francophone counterparts in the workplace? Are Anglophone Cameroonians having their fair share of the national cake? Do they feel at home in Cameroon? These and many more unanswered questions constitute what has been labeled the Cameroon Anglophone Question.
 
The Cameroon Anglophone Problem manifests itself in the form of complaints from English-speaking Cameroonians about the absence of transparency and accountability in matters relating to appointments in the civil service, the military, the police force, the gendarmerie[i] and the judiciary. In short, the Anglophone Problem raises questions about participation in decision-making as well as power-sharing in the country. This is not a figment of anyone’s imagination! It is real, tangible and verifiable. The Anglophone Problem is the cry of an oppressed people, lamenting over the ultra-centralization of political power in the hands of a rapacious oligarchy based in Yaoundé, the nation’s capital, where the Anglophone with limited proficiency in the French language is made to go through all kinds of odds in the hands of supercilious Francophone bureaucrats who look down on anyone speaking English.  To borrow words from Matumamboh again, “There is always an atmosphere of rejection or alienation surrounding him, when he crosses the Mungo River into the French-speaking territory. He is always aware that he is a stranger” (op cit). The Anglophone Problem stems from the cocky attitude of French-speaking Cameroonians who believe that their Anglophones compatriots are unpatriotic, and therefore, should be asked to seek refuge in another country! This bigotry compounded by conceit has given rise to the rampant use of  derogatory slurs such as” les Anglophones sont gauches[ii], “c’est des ennemis dans la maison[iii], “ce sont les biafrais[iv] and so on.
 
The consequence of this anti-Anglophone sentiment is the birth of the misconception that Anglophone Cameroonians are unreliable and untrustworthy, and therefore, undeserving of positions of leadership. This explains why key ministerial positions in Cameroon are the exclusive preserve of French-speaking Cameroonians. Such ministries include: Defense, Finance & Economy and Territorial Administration. Anglophobia has also led to the appointment of Francophones with no working knowledge of the English language to ambassadorial positions in strategic countries like the United States of America, Great Britain, Germany, Nigeria and South Africa where they wind up making a complete fool of themselves linguistically and culturally speaking. Before Enoni Ephraim served as guinea pig at the Presidency of the Republic and later dumped as Prime Minister, the presidency of the Republic and its ancillary organs were “no-go” zones for Anglophone Cameroonians. Although political appointments in this country ought to be done in conformity with the constitutional “regional balance paradigm”, it is common knowledge that distrust of English-speaking Cameroonians has made the implementation of this constitutional stipulation a dead letter over the years. It should be noted that the relegation of Anglophone Cameroonians to the back burner in matters pertaining to political appointments has nothing to do with incompetence. In fact, the crème de la crème of Cameroon’s intelligentsia are Anglophones produced at top-notch Anglo-Saxon secondary schools such as Sacred Heart College-Mankon, St. Joseph’s College-Sasse, Our Lady of Lourdes-Bamenda, CPC-Bali and a host of others.

Sadly enough, the administrative system in Cameroon does not reward merit. In fact, the requiem for meritocracy was sung in this country on the very day Paul Biya Mbivodo took the baton from Ahmadou Ahidjo who had his own Francophonic flaws.  It seems to me that giving reward to those who deserve it has no signification in Francophonie. Corruption and nepotism are the yardsticks used in the selection of applicants to work in the civil service and other workplaces in this unfortunate geographical expression called Ngola[v]. Little wonder, the Berlin-based watchdog, Transparency International, has declared Cameroon one of the most corrupt nations in the world! In the same vein, Marilyn Greene (2005:1), Press Fellow from USA, in an interview with Jeff Ngwane Yufenyi in the November 23, 2005 edition of the Post, pointed out: “Corruption is a plague affecting everyone from top government officials to poor folks in the street.” She made the statement in reaction to the outcry on corruption in Cameroon in Bamenda, at the opening of a two-day seminar on Media Excellence in Cameroon.Corrupt practices affect the manner in which revenue from natural resources is used in Cameroon. Statistics indicate that about sixty percent of Cameroon’s wealth in natural resources is located in the English-speaking part of the country. Yet the Francophone region takes the lion’s share of the national budget intended for the building of roads, hospitals, schools and other social services. This state of affairs has been described by some pundits as “jungle justice” or survival of the fittest. We are where we are today, saddled with the elephantine problems because of mutual misunderstanding amongst Francophone and Anglophone Cameroonians. Worse still, the Francophone Cameroonian is estranged from the motherland. Matumamboh makes a strong point when he opines that “the Francophone Cameroonian has been so objectified by France to the point where he stares with awesome admiration at his master’s fatherland” (op cit). This does not bode well for national unity.
 
Open hostility toward Anglophones reached its acme many years ago when English-speaking Cameroonian students protesting against discrimination on the basis of the language of instruction at the University of Yaoundé went on strike and chanted the “We shall overcome” rallying song. Francophone members of government with limited proficiency in the English language accused them of singing the national anthem of a foreign country, supposedly Nigeria, and told Anglophones to go and live in Nigeria if they were not happy in Cameroon! In other climes, these officials would have been asked to resign without further ado.  In Cameroon nonsensical statements like these actually earn accolades. How else can leaders show the world that they are square pegs in round holes? The clamor for the democratization of the political system in Cameroon has been branded by some narrow-minded Francophones as an Anglophone-Bamileke[vi] conspiracy to overthrow the government of President-for-life, Mr. Paul Biya Mbivodo. Political myopia is one of Cameroon’s cancers, I believe. There have been unbridled attempts by French-speaking Cameroonians to whip up anti-Anglophone sentiments in order to score political points. The Cameroon GCE Board imbroglio that bred fire and brimstone in the early 1990s is a case in point.  I remember that the attempt to create a separate examination board for the General Certificate of Education Examination for Anglophones brought Cameroon to a virtual standstill because French-speaking Cameroonians could not fathom how Anglophone “underdogs” could muster the temerity to demand fair treatment.  There is no gainsaying the fact that the use of language is a divisive factor in the Republic of Cameroon.

The Language Question
The question of language policy in Cameroon is another bone of contention. There is no language policy, to the best of my knowledge, put in place to prevent the marginalization of linguistic minorities. The interpretation of the letter and spirit of the law is left to the whims and caprices of French-speaking judges who are ignorant of how the Anglo-Saxon judicial system works. This has resulted in several instances of miscarriage of justice in Cameroon. Miscarriage of justice was self-evident during the infamous Yondo Black trial way back in the 1990s when an Anglophone witness was deprived of his right to testify on the grounds that the presiding judge could not understand English. One wonders what has become of the pool of translators and interpreters at the Presidency of the Republic.
 
The Cameroon Radio & Television (CRTV) is another sore point. It has been so “french-fried”[vii] that 95 percent of the programs are broadcast in French only, to the detriment of English-speaking Cameroonians. Programs in English obtained from overseas are rapidly translated into French to serve the needs of the Francophone majority at the expense of the Anglophone minority. The language of training and daily routine in the military, police and gendarmerie is French. Anglophones may go to Hades if they do not understand French! That’s the state of affairs in Cameroon! This in plain terms is the Anglophone Problem. There is no turning a blind eye to it. It will come back to haunt not just the present generation of Cameroonians but also those yet to be born. It may even affect Africa as a whole because Cameroon is, indeed, Africa in miniature, a microcosm of the continent.  It has happened elsewhere, it can happen in Africa. We’ve got to face it squarely. We don’t need another Bosnia on the globe. Of all the burning issues that remain unresolved in Cameroon in the wake of independence, the language question is perhaps the thorniest. The imbroglio has degenerated into the well-known identity crisis amongst English-speaking Cameroonians.
 
More than forty years after accession to political independence, it is unimaginable that there is no reliable indigenous language policy in Cameroon.  Unlike most other African countries which give pride of place to their indigenous languages, French and English, languages of imperialists, remain official languages in Cameroon in stark contradiction of the national constitution which stipulates: “The State shall guarantee the promotion of bilingualism throughout the country. It shall endeavor to protect and promote national languages (Article 1.3: 5)”. The question that begs asking here is why Cameroon, which boasts two hundred and thirty-six native tongues, does not have an official indigenous language policy. Why is it that we are still dressed in borrowed robes five decades after gaining ‘independence’ from France and Great Britain? How can we talk of a Cameroonian national identity without an indigenous language policy? Are Cameroonian policy-makers oblivious of the fact that language conveys the cultural identity of a people? Language constitutes the memory-bank of a people; it is also an embodiment of both continuity and change in the historical consciousness of the community of speakers of the language. Each indigenous language in Cameroon reflects the worldview, sensibility and imagination of its speakers. In other words, our native languages carry with them the habits, mannerisms, and identity of native speakers. Don’t Cameroonians have the right to articulate their own cultural identities?  This is tantamount to fatal assimilation! How can we portray our cultural identities by speaking in foreign tongues? Bjornson (2001:19) has described assimilation in Africa as: “The adoption of European tastes, languages, customs, and colonial government policies by Africans.” Language is the soul of a people. Language transports culture. If you destroy a man’s language, you have destroyed the man!  Sadly enough, Cameroonians relish borrowed cultures to the detriment of their indigenous cultures. We continue to speak in foreign tongues many decades after the departure of the loathed Toubabs! Cultural imperialism in Cameroon is attributable, in the most part, to government lack of interest in promoting indigenous language education. Albert Gerard (1988:265) has a point when he maintains: “…Les gouvernements issus des l’empire français ne prennent guère de mesures efficaces pour encourager l’activité écrite dans les langues du peuple. Ils ont pour cela des motifs politiques valables.” [Governments that were formed in the wake of political independence from France do not take effective measures to foster the codification of indigenous languages. They have valid political reasons for not doing so.]

This leaves any conscientious Cameroonian with the uneasy feeling that we have not yet liberated ourselves from mental slavery. The acculturation that has taken deep root in Cameroon has had as a corollary the denigration of our traditional values. How many times have you heard mind-boggling comments like “this man na kontry, he no sabe tok gramma”[viii] in reference to someone who strives to promote his mother tongue by speaking it as often as he can? Confiant et al. (1990:80) perceive this self-abnegation as an anomaly and points out that the tragedy of the colonized is the servile manner in which he tries to “portray himself in the color of elsewhere.” Franz Fanon (1964:15) describes Africans who behave in this manner as people with “black skin” wearing “white masks”. To fight cultural imperialism, it is incumbent on Cameroonians to defuse what Ngugi wa Thiongo (1986:3) calls the “cultural bomb”. He maintains:
 But the biggest weapon wielded and actually daily unleashed by imperialism against that collective defiance is the cultural bomb. The effect of a cultural bomb is to annihilate a people’s belief in their names, in their languages, in their environment, in their heritage of struggle, in their unity, in their capacities and ultimately in themselves.
Language experts have pointed out that multilingualism is indispensable in today’s global village. In fact, monolingualism, they argue, is now an anachronism in today’s global village. Bilingualism is an added advantage to the bilingual individual and to the nation as a whole given that what is acquired in one language is transferable to the second language.  This is an enriching acquisition that broadens the mindset of individuals in the linguistic community, and lubricates social intercourse. Studies have shown that multilingual individuals exhibit a higher degree of cognitive ability than monolinguals. Surprisingly, Cameroon’s bilingual educational project has proven to be a nonstarter on account of ethnocentrism and bigotry. Revolting disdain for the English language has led French-speaking Cameroonians to downplay the use of English as an official language although the constitution of the Republic is explicit on this: “The official languages of the Republic of Cameroon shall be English and French, both languages having the same status (Article 1.3: 5).”

It needs to be pointed out that the second fiddle role that has been assigned to English-speaking Cameroonians by French-speaking members of government has made the implementation of the nation’s bilingual education program a stillborn. There seems to be a deliberate attempt on the part of Francophone Cameroonians to undermine and eventually destroy the Anglo-Saxon culture in Cameroon.  How does one explain the fact that in typical English-speaking towns and cities in Cameroon such as Buea, Tiko, Kumba, Bamenda, Bali, Nso and Nkambe to name but a few,  one finds billboards and toll-gates with inscriptions written in French?  Tiko, a town in the South-West province is a good example. As you approach this town, you are greeted by a billboard that reads: “Halte Péage!” For goodness sake, what does this mean to the Anglophone South-Westerner? How do the powers-that-be expect the average man who has never been taught French to understand what this inscription means? Tiko is not an isolated case. There are myriads of such monolingual billboards dotted here and there throughout the national territory. Similar linguistic hotchpotch litters airports throughout the country. The Nsimalen Airport in Yaoundé is a good example. At Nsimalen commuters are able to read stomach-churning gibberish such as: “To gather dirtiness is good.” This is a word-for-word translation of the French sentence: “ramasser la saleté c’est bien.”  Sure, the French in this sentence leaves much to be desired.  But it is even more annoying to realize that there is no English language translation of the notices posted on the billboards. The originators of this unintelligible stuff know very well that in bilingual countries the world over, all official communication: billboards, memos, letterheads, road-signs, application forms, court forms, police documents, health forms, driver’s licenses and hospital discharge forms to name but a few, are all written in the official languages of the country in question. Failure to do so is tantamount to a violation of the constitution, an illegal act punishable by law in any country where the rule of law matters.I do not believe that diplomats accredited to Yaoundé and other foreigners in transit through Cameroon find this emasculation of language amusing at all. One finds on billboards inanities such as: “Not to make dirty is better”. This linguistic trash is meant to be a translation for: “Ne pas salir c’est bien.” If the situation were not so grave one would be laughing but the language question in Cameroon brooks no laughter.

Public authorities: mayors, governors, divisional officers, police officers and gendarmes are expected to maintain zero tolerance in upholding Cameroon’s bilingual policy. Breaches of official language policies ought to be punished heavily. There are pools of translators and interpreters at the Presidency of the Republic and Ministries in Yaoundé spending time on trivialities such as translating ballot papers for elections that are rigged beforehand. Why not use them to perform this important task? These technocrats who were educated at the expense of the taxpayer should be made to serve the nation by translating official documents aimed at public consumption. Administrators should avail themselves of the services of these well trained professionals. Let myopia, bigotry and blind allegiance not deter them from valuing the priceless work that translators and interpreters are capable of doing for the good of the nation.

Personally, I couldn’t care less how much cosmetic surgery French-speaking Cameroonians want to perform on the language of Voltaire. As a matter of fact, psycho-sociological factors have made me totally callous to the mastery of Voltaire’s mother tongue beyond the ability to ask for water to drink when I am on a visit to the world of La Francophonie.[ix] If I have acquired a smattering of French it is because it enables me to put an additional loaf of bread on the dining table. What I do care very much about, though, is the place occupied by my mother tongue, Bamunka, in the linguistic landscape in the land of my birth. And, I believe it is the duty of each and every Cameroonian to use all means necessary to prevent the demise of his or her own indigenous language, the more so because language abuse has become the hallmark of formal education in Cameroon. The importance of indigenous languages has been stressed by scholars in the field. It is important to recall the views of Nkrumah on the importance of indigenous languages. In his speech “Ghana is Born,” he perceived the use of European languages in Africa as one of the problems compromising the freedom, equality and independence of African countries. He thus suggested the following blueprint:
It is essential that we do consider seriously the problem of language in Africa… Far more students in our universities are studying Latin and Greek than studying the languages of Africa. An essential of independence is that emphasis must be laid on studying the living languages of Africa for, out of such a study will come simpler methods by which those in one part of Africa may learn the languages in all other parts.(Quoted in Kwame Botwe-Asamoah,2001:747)
In his discourse, Nkrumah not only saw the danger in neglecting one’s mother tongue, but he also underscored the significance of the linguistic factor in African unity, the more so because as Ngugi (1986:13) points out, ”Every language has a dual makeup; it is both a mode of communication and a bearer of culture.” Asante (1988:4) is probably right when he claims that “If your God cannot speak your language, then he is not your God.”

Years ago, I read some material that made me question the place of English in Cameroon. The offensive document that I read was the C.A.P examination in Cameroon. The following is an excerpt culled for Francis Nyamnjoh’s book (1996:114): “Each candidat should pick by bilot a sujet. Each sujet is mark over 40 marks. For each port, candidat shall establish the working mothed card. Fill in the analysis car in annexe B.” Quite frankly, any one in his right mind reading this except should be wondering what on earth is going on in Cameroon. Is English not endangered in this country? One wonders how Anglophone students are expected to succeed in an examination in which the phraseology of the questions has been tinkered beyond intelligibility. The unintelligible stuff cited above was meant to serve as an examination that would determine the fate of thousands of Anglophone students who had spent four years studying at technical colleges nationwide. Little wonder they fail in drones. The good thing about this conundrum is that Anglophone parents and teachers are not willing to allow this sort of linguistic bastardization to go on forever. This rape of the English language speaks volumes about the disregard Francophone educators and decision-makers have for English-speaking Cameroonians. When the senile Minister of National Education, Robert Mbella Mbappe, was confronted by some irate Anglophone parents and teachers over the nature of this examination as well as the need for an independent Examination Board for Anglophones, here is the response he gave to the representatives of TAC and the SONDENGAM Commission: “You can do whatever you like with your so-called GCE board, none of my children studies in Cameroon” (op cit, 114).
Hard to believe that this is coming from the Minister of National Education, paid with the taxpayers’ money! In other climes, he would have been asked to resign without ceremony.

Conclusion
In this piece, I have pinpointed the root causes of the now well-known Cameroon Anglophone Question. It is a problem, I believe, that harbors far-reaching implications for the survival of a nation at risk. Francophone Cameroonians will be living in fool’s paradise if they continue to dismiss the legitimate complaints of English-Speaking Cameroonians as the raving of a few disgruntled individuals as some French-speaking ministers have claimed. When all is said and done, we must ask ourselves the inevitable question: Is there light at the end of the tunnel in Cameroon? The response, I believe, is in the affirmative. What needs to be done at this juncture is to convene a national conference of leaders from both sides of the linguistic divide to engage in frank dialogue.  Cameroonians must cease to act the ostrich by dismissing calls for a national confab with rants of “sans objet!” Cameroon’s political leadership must take both steps toward addressing this issue by all means necessary. If convening a national conference would be instrumental in defusing the tension that exists in the country, I see no reason why Cameroonians should not be given the opportunity come together and talk about the things that hurt them.  In order to salvage this hitherto enviable country from the canker of disintegration, Cameroonians at home and in the Diaspora must sink their differences, deflate their personal egos and take a number of realistic measures:

·         Cameroonians have to get rid of the colonial mentality and assume the posture of architects of their own destiny. The belief that external goodwill will solve our developmental problems is a fallacy. We must be prepared to look one another in the face and say: look, this is where we went wrong; it is time to correct the mistakes we committed in the past and move on.
·         They must combat corruption and ethnocentrism in all its forms;
·         They have to fight poverty, including intellectual poverty by all means necessary. This means redirecting economic resources toward the acquisition of much-needed skills;
·         They must make assure that their hard-won political independence is not a sham. To put this differently, political independence must be backed by economic freedom. This is the point Ngwane (2004:14) underscored when he wondered: “Of what use is political freedom without economic emancipation?” Ngwane’s question is not an idle one.  Fifty years after independence, it is a shame to realize that Cameroon is still tied to the bootstraps of France, in every sense imaginable. Cameroon should be in a position to assert itself and conceive a framework that would lead her toward peace and prosperity.

Most importantly, Cameroonians need an able leadership. The people that govern us today are not leaders but masters with a myopic vision of everything around them. Under an enlightened leadership endowed with goodwill, Cameroonians should be able to harness their natural and human capital to serve all Cameroonians regardless of ethnic origin, creed, language, sexual orientation or gender. In a nutshell, I maintain that Cameroon is not on the brink of cataclysm on account of these internal problems. Cameroon has the potential to serve as Africa’s success story provided Cameroonians are willing to sink their linguistic and cultural differences to work in tandem for the betterment of all and sundry. To attain this goal, Cameroonians must learn to rise above them petty differences and see themselves first and foremost as citizens of one country. In the words of Ngugi (1986:3): “They must discover their various tongues to sing the song: ‘A people united can never be defeated.’”

This article is an excerpt from my book titled Cry My Beloved Africa: Discourse on the Postcolonial Aura in Africa (2008)
Works cited

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___________. (2001).The African Quest for Freedom and Identity: Cameroonian Writing and the National Experience, Indianapolis: Indiana UniversityPress.


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NOTES


[i] Police force in the French-speaking region of Cameroon and other francophone countries.
[ii] Anglophones are clumsy
[iii] They are enemies in the house.
[iv] They are Biafrans
[v] Native name of Cameroon.
[vi] Though francophone, the Bamileke have more in common, culturally-speaking, with English-speaking compatriots than they do with French-speaking Cameroonians.
[vii]Tailored to meet the needs of French-speaking Cameroonians.
[viii] This man is uncivilized; he can’t speak English.
[ix] La Francophonie is an international organization of French-speaking countries and governments. Formally known as the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (OIF) or the International Organization of La Francophonie, the organization comprises fifty-five member states and governments and thirteen observers. The prerequisite for admission is not the degree of French usage in the member countries, but a prevalent presence of French culture and French language in the member country’s identity, usually stemming from France’s interaction with other nations in its history.

Manufacturing the Illusion of Freedom
By Peter Wuteh Vakunta
As winds of change continue to blow over Africa, the continent’s intelligentsia and friends of Africa spend sleepless nights brainstorming on efficacious remedies that may cure the myriad maladies afflicting the continent. Africa’s most contagious ailment at present, it seems to me, it that of misgovernment. Africa continues to be poorly governed by a bunch of greedy self-seekers “who have invented neither powder nor compass”, to borrow the expression of the celebrated Caribbean poet and playwright, Aimé Césaire (1983, p.95). This class of comprador bourgeoisie[i] is good for nothing but "apemanship” and “parrotology" to borrow words from another illustrious son of Africa, Ngugi wa Thiong’o.  Great thinkers such as Frantz Fanon (1968) have underscored the fact that Third World bourgeoisie are different from their Western counterparts in that they have not risen to power through the historical process of Cultural Revolution but have merely been placed in power by former colonial masters. As a result, this bourgeoisie lacks the historical energy and vitality of its western predecessors, of whom it is merely a caricature.


The struggle to decolonize Africa and extricate her from the grip of Western imperialism is a task too critical to be left in the hands of intellectual Lilliputians.[ii] Meaningful development in Africa, I believe, requires commitment by level-headed Africans from all walks of life. Africans must get rid of what z Fanon (1967, p.115) has termed the “mentality of the colonized” in his classic work Black Skin White Masks.

This presupposes casting off the colonial mindset characterized by a culture of subservience. Most African presidents still comport themselves like elementary school pupils suffering from compulsive paranoia. The case of President Paul Biya of the Republic of Cameroon who once declared himself the “meilleur élève du Président François Mitterrand”[iii] of France is a case in point. In a publication released by the national secretariat of the Social Democratic Front, the writer underscores Paul Biya’s backwoods mentality in the following terms: “In the retrospective analysis of the end of Mr.Biya’s reign, there will be many vignettes, like his declaration to a French journalist that he was the best pupil of Mitterand…” (4). President Biya has made himself an absentee tenant of Etoudi[iv]. He frequently takes off to France and other European countries where he spends months leaving his compatriots to wonder whether he is dead or alive. Cameroonians are dumbfounded by the head of state’s unruly conduct! Rebel novelist Mongo Beti (1980,p.120) castigates Mr. Biya’s dereliction of duty in one of his novels Trop de soleil tue l’amour as follows:
Quand le grand chef disparaît de chez nous là pour passer deux mois à Baden-Baden là, tu vas même lui dire que quoi?  Je te demande, Norbert, qui va même lui dire que quoi?
[When the big boss disappears from the country to spend two months in Baden-Baden, what do you have to tell him? I am asking you, Norbert, who can say what to him?]

It is significant to point out that the assimilation policy employed by France as a colonization paradigm had an enormous impact on the way French-speaking Africans view themselves, especially in their relation with the Metropole. Mr. Biya is a representation of the insecurities of Francophone African leaders who take their cues from Paris and digest them with gusto. After his marriage to Chantal Vigoroux on 23rd April 1994 following the death of former first lady Jeanne Irene Atyam, the president has been behaving as if he is out of his mind. Chantal seems to have hypnotized him and made herself the de facto vice-president of Cameroon, calling the shots left, right and center! Smith (2006, p.1) makes a strong point when she describes Biya’s marriage to his métis[v] wife born in Yaoundé to a Lebanese father and Cameroonian mother as the “worst blunder of marriage of an African leader to a second wife.” She points out that Chantal has a well furnished bank account at the French Bank BNP, the Bank of African dictators, their wives and entourage. Chantal Biya is alleged to have a ‘healthy’ account with another French bank, Credit Lyonnais. This bank is believed to be where the petroleum monies of Cameroon have been deposited by Mr. Biya since he came to power in 1982. Like Chantal Biya, Grace Mugabe, the second wife of the dictatorial president of Zimbabwe, is calling the shots in Harare. She is virtually the vice-president of Zimbabwe.
Ahmadou Kourouma (1990:266) satirizes the deplorable conduct of African leaders in the following terms:
Ceux de Soba comme tous les Africains plus tard vivront l’ère des présidents fondateurs des partis uniques, dont certains décréteront que tous les habitants du pays sont membres du parti et préléveront comme la capitation des cotisations qu’ils feront encaisser sans attributer ni carte ni acquit. Avec les fonds jamais comptabilisés ou contrôlés, ou nom du combat sacré pour l’unité nationale, de la lutte contre l’impérialisme, le sous-développement et la famine, ils se construiront des villas de rapport, entretiendront de nombreuses maîtresses,planqueront de l’argent en Suisse et achèteront en Europe des châteaux où ils se réfugieront après les immanquables  putschs qui les chasseront du pouvoir.
[The people of Soba, like all Africans, would experience the era of one-party systems and founding presidents, some of whom will decree that everyone in the country was a party member, will collect membership dues as if they were a per capita tax and they’ll pocket the money without giving any card or receipt. With these funds that are never verified or accounted for in name of the sacred cause of national unity, the struggle against imperialism, underdevelopment and famine, they’ll build themselves income-producing houses, they will keep numerous mistresses, stash money in Swiss banks and buy villas in Europe where they’ll take refuge after the inevitable putsch that will chase them away from power.]

As you can see, Kourouma ridicules African political leaders and the manner in which they govern their nations as if they were passersby. The diatribe is quite incisive. There is a sense of urgency for the governed to come to terms with leaders who continue to betray them in word and deed. It is the conviction of this writer that it would take a popular uprising, in fact, a revolution to get rid of these political leeches in Africa. By their very nature revolutions are led by the downtrodden, the wretched of the earth, people who have nothing to lose. To paraphrase the central thesis in Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth (1963), only through a violent political revolution can Africans rid themselves of the servile mentality that prompts people to accept glaring social inequalities without questioning. The success of a revolution is determined by the degree of commitment of the people determined to bring about meaningful change in society. Arguing along the same lines, Rial (1972, p.12) contends that the total liberation of Africa will be achieved via two revolutions. As he sees it, Africans have successfully carried out one revolution--political independence. The second, socio-economic, is still to be hatched:
L’Afrique ne sera vraiment libre qu’après une double révolution. La première politique, a eu lieu. Elle a donné l’indépendance aux Africains. La seconde, sociale, reste à faire.

[Africa shall really be free only after a two-fold revolution. The first, political independence, has been achieved; the second, social, is yet to come.
In Decolonizing the Mind (1986:80) Ngugi Wa Thiong’o wonders aloud with regard to the slave mentality of African leaders:
How does a writer, a novelist, shock his readers by telling them that these [heads of state that collaborate with imperial powers] are neo-slaves when they themselves, the neo-slaves, are openly announcing the fact on the rooftops? How do you shock your readers by pointing out that these are mass murderers, looters, robbers, thieves, when they, the perpetrators of these anti-people crimes, are not even attempting to hide the fact? When in some cases they are actually and proudly celebrating their massacre of children, and the theft and robbery of the nation? How do you satirize their utterances and claims when their own words beat all fictional exaggerations?
What Ngugi is alluding to has become common currency in Africa. The struggle to liberate the continent from inept leadership calls for the involvement of Africa’s intelligentsia at home and in the Diaspora. We have to desist from paying lip service to the liberation struggle. We have to call a spade a spade and stop manufacturing the illusion of freedom. The plain truth is that most African countries have a flag and national anthem without genuine independence. African countries have achieved political independence providing them with a new sense of responsibility, and yet a foreign presence continues to haunt them.
In the struggle to free Africa from neo-colonialism, the genuine African intellectual must be distinguished from the pseudo-intellectual who thrives on greed and opportunism. As Madamombe (2007:17) points out:
The role of our intellectuals should be to enhance the capacity of the continent to mobilize the vast human capital and natural wealth in order to eradicate the endemic poverty and stagnation that have become our lot for so long.
Arguing along similar lines, Yoder (1991, p.177) maintains
that “[…] the destiny of Africa is closely related to the personal success and moral integrity of its elite.”

In this essay, I have argued that Africa is not free yet. The onus is on us all to take up the cudgels and do battle with external forces working in tandem to keep Africans in perpetual underdevelopment. The time for spectatorship is over! As Césaire (1968, p.22) cautions, life is not a spectacle:
[…] Gardez-vous de vous croiser les bras en l’attitude stérile du spectateur, car la vie n’est pas un spectacle, car une mer de douleurs n’est pas un proscenium, car un homme qui crie n’est pas un ours qui danse…”
[And most of all beware, even in the thought of assuming the sterile attitude of the spectator, for life is not a spectacle, a sea of grief is not a proscenium, and a man who wails is not a dancing bear…]
Put differently, Africans will act now or perish. We cannot afford to bury our heads in the proverbial sand and continue play romance with our own nemesis. We are not yet free! Let’s not lie to ourselves. We must make sure that our continent is free politically and economically. We have to do everything necessary to halt Western interference in our internal affairs.


Works cited

Beti,  Mongo. (1999). Trop de soleil tue l’amour, Paris:
   Julliard.


Césaire, Aime. (1968). Return to My Native Land, Paris :
Présence Africane.

___________. (1983). Cahier d’un retour au pays natal,
 Paris: Présence Africaine.


Fanon Frantz. (1963).The Wretched of the Earth, 1963.
New York: Grove Press.

___________. (1967). Black Skin, White Masks, New York:
         Grove Press.


Kourouma, Ahmadou. (1990). Monnè: outrages et défis, Paris:
        Editions du Seuil.



Madamombe Itai. (2007).‘Combating Zambia’s Hidden Hunger.’
      Africa Renewal 20.4, 14-15


Ngugi, wa Thiong’o. (1986). Decolonising the Mind: The
   Politics of Language in African Literature,   Portsmouth: Heinemann.


Rial, Jacques. (1972). Littérature camerounaise de langue
Française, Lausanne: Payot.


Smith, Elie. “The Second Wives of African Leaders.” May 25, 2006<http://eliesmith.blogspot.com/2006/05/second-wives-of-african-leaders-11.html


Social Democratic Front. “Mr. Biya’s New Year Speech 2003:
Empty!” January 4, 2003, <http:// www.sdfparty.org/english/speeches/381.php


Yoder, Carroll.(1991) White Shadows: A dialectical view of
the French African Novel, Washington, D.C.: Three Continents Press.

Notes



[i] The term is sometimes used to refer to lower classes of the bourgeoisie.

[ii] The Lilliputians symbolize humankind’s wildly excessive pride in its own puny existence. Swift fully intends the irony of representing the tiniest race.
[iii] The best pupil of President François Mitterrand
[iv] Presidential palace
[v] Any person of mixed ancestry

© Vakunta 2010




Economic Implications of the Manichaean Stigmatization of Africa (By Peter Wuteh Vakunta)
It is hard to disagree with a weighty viewpoint expressed by a concerned Africanist.
 In an article titled “Masks and Marx: The Marxist Ethos vis-à-vis African Revolutionary Theory and Praxis” (quoted in Olaniyan and Quayson, 496-503), renowned Ghanaian writer, Ayi Kwei Armah, contends  that Eurocentric racism is Manichaean in that it splits the world along racial lines, then  assigns a negative, lower value to the world’s non-Western peoples. The assumption is that the rest of the world is primitive, savage, barbarian, and underdeveloped, and that the West is civilized and developed.  Manichaean stigmatization is seldom based on knowledge of non-Westerners; it is often based on ignorance reinforced by disingenuous denial disguised in misleading intellectual jargon. Its source is racial prejudice. Teleologically, stigmatization cretinizes non-Westerners, especially Africans. The result is that Africans start to doubt themselves. Worse still, they begin to buy into the fallacy that African history does not exist; therefore, Africans have nothing to be proud of. This reasoning produces the stereotypical epithet of Africans as a “people without history,” to borrow from Eric Wolf (Quoted in Booker, 25), denies African peoples access to a usable past from which they can rely in order to construct a viable future.

For centuries, Western powers have systematically stigmatized Africa as the ‘dark continent’ in dire need of enlightenment as they sought ways to justify the wanton theft of her natural resources through covert activities ranging from their roles in genocides, civil wars, the looting of mineral, forest, and land resources, and the overthrow of governments through mercenary activities. Readers may remember the case of Sir Mark Thatcher, son of erstwhile British Prime Minister, Mrs. Margaret Thatcher, who escaped a long jail term in South Africa over a coup plot. As reported in the February 2005 edition of Africa Today, Thatcher’s arrest by South Africa’s elite police unit, the Scorpions, came months after the imprisonment of a group of mercenaries in Zimbabwe led by one Simon Mann, acting in collusion with some Westerners based in Equatorial Guinea. It later emerged that the two groups were part of a plot, allegedly backed by foreign governments, to topple Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, the controversial president of Equatorial Guinea. Reporting on this incident, John Dludlu, writing for Africa Today observed that Mark Thatcher spoke to the media outside the High Court in Cape Town, “…after pleading guilty to charges of bankrolling an alleged coup plot in oil-rich Equatorial Guinea” (op cit, 18).

In a different vein, the arrest of nine French nationals in the Republic of Chad charged with child kidnapping is another evidence of the meddling and evil deeds of Westerners and their accessories in Africa. According to Europe News (2007:1)
Six members of Rescue Children and three French journalists were jailed on Thursday on charges of kidnapping and trafficking in children after being taken into custody at the airport of Abeche, in eastern Chad, as they were preparing to leave the country with the children on a Boeing 757 aircraft.
These foreigners were suspected of wanting to take the children to France to have them adopted by French families. Chadian President, Idriss Deby, called the action of the French NGO Rescue Children “inhuman, unacceptable and unthinkable” (op cit, 5). He said those arrested would be “severely punished”, according to Europe News.  Rescue Children is a French NGO created by the association L’Arche de Zoe, which is run by firefighters in the Paris suburb of Argenteuil. A spokeswoman for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Véronique Taveau, speaking in Geneva, said what had happened in Chad and the way it had been carried out was illegal and irresponsible and it had breached all international rules.  Cases like the aforementioned lend credence to the contention that Africa remains a playground for Western individuals and groups guided by the profit motive.

The biggest Western myth about Africa is that which regards the continent as a free-for- all-zone, a continent for the taking on account of the presumed backwardness of its peoples. As Mudimbe (1988:40) has noted, such racist presumptions speak neither about Africa nor Africans, but rather justify the process of inventing and conquering a continent and naming its “primitiveness” or “disorder” as well as the subsequent means of its exploitation and methods for its “regeneration.” Similarly, Lyons (1975:86-87) notes the consistency with which nineteenth century European commentators regarded Africans as inferior to Whites on the basis of non-existent scientific evidence, quite often comparing the two peoples along the lines of children versus adults:
Though they did agree among themselves about which European “races” were inferior to others, Western racial commentators generally agreed that Blacks were inferior to whites in moral fiber, cultural attainment, and mental ability; the African was, to many eyes, the child in the family of man, modern man in embryo. (Quoted in Booker, 10)
This skewed thinking provided a justification for European imperial conquest of Africa at the Berlin Conference in 1884. History has it that on November 15, 1884 at the request of Portugal, German chancellor Otto von Bismarck called together the major Western powers of the world to negotiate the African Question. Bismarck used the opportunity to expand Germany’s sphere of influence over Africa and forced Germany’s rivals to struggle with one another for territory. What ultimately resulted was a hodgepodge of geometric boundaries that divided Africa into fifty irregular countries. This new map of the continent was superimposed over the one thousand indigenous cultures and regions of Africa. The new countries lacked rhyme or reason because European powers had divided coherent groups of people and merged together disparate groups who really did not get along. Little wonder that post-Berlin Africa has remained a battlefield to date. It is important to bear in mind that the misrepresentation of Africa constitutes a leitmotif in European colonial literature. Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1960) and Joyce Cary’s Mister Johnson (1951) are good examples of Western literary texts that dehumanized Africans, and served as justification for the so-called ‘civilizing mission. Conrad’s novel depicts the entire continent as backward and primitive. As Achebe has pointed out:
Heart of Darkness perhaps more than any other work, is informed by a conventional European tendency to set Africa up as a foil to Europe, as a place of negations at once remote and vaguely familiar in comparison with which Europe’s own state of spiritual grace will be manifest(Quoted in Booker, 13).
Like Heart of Darkness and Mr. Johnson, many other Western literary works about Africa are overtly contemptuous in their racist depiction of Africans. American readers are probably aware of the portrayal of Africans as savage cannibals in Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan novels. But as Booker points out, these writers simply ignored the reality of Africans altogether. The truth of the matter is that the characterization of Africans as cannibals and savages; Africa as an uninhabited wilderness where courageous Europeans could go on exciting adventures, served as justification for the European misappropriation of Africa’s wealth.

As can be seen, Africa has been the object of Western manipulation for a very long time. Innumerable incidents, including the transportation of millions of Africans across both the Indian and Atlantic Oceans as slaves, the colonial swoop on Africa, and more have produced disastrous effects on the cohesion and productive capacity of African economies. There’s an urgent need, I believe, for Africa’s historians to assess the situation and write about the horrors suffered by Africans as a result of the nefarious trio--- racism, slavery, colonialism. We need these records in order to institute legal proceedings for the payment of reparations to Africa! Memmi (1965) points out that “the most serious blow suffered by the colonized is being removed from history” (91). It is critically important for Africans to understand the impact of the continent’s past relations with the West in order to empower ourselves to deal effectively with the present. The onus is on African intellectuals and literati to educate the peoples of Africa about the consequences of Western imperialistic meddling in Africa. Europeans and other Western powers continue to mislead and misinform Africans about their own history. Trevor Roper, an eminent English historian at Oxford claims that “prior to European adventure in Africa, there was only darkness, and darkness was not a subject for history” (Quoted in Obiechina, op cit, 9). Our historians have the task of debunking these myths by educating Westerners about the glorious history of Africa prior to the advent of colonizers.

It is time to call into question the condescending Eurocentric interrogations such as: where would Africa be without Europe? Would African peoples not be half-starving warring tribes eternally at each other’s throat fighting for land without the benevolence of Westerners? We have to desist from feeling permanently injured by a sense of inadequacy about our won achievements. African scholars must be courageous enough to unravel the myth about Africa’s collective amnesia. In the words of Ngugi (1986): “The classes fighting against imperialism even in its neo-colonial stage and form have to confront this threat with the higher and more creative culture of resolute struggle” (3). In the capitalist world, imperialism has become a monopolistic parasite, a veritable bugbear of the African people. Western capitalists employ all foul means to superimpose their hegemony on the African continent. The debilitating effects of imperialism on the lives of Africans are real and deep. Africa’s economic paradigms have been rendered dysfunctional on account of the strangle-hold of Bretton Woods institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund who continue to sing spurious Hosannas of foreign aid for Africa to the detriment of our home industries. In the words of Ngugi (op cit, 2): “Imperialism is total: it has economic, political, military, cultural and psychological consequences for the people of the world today. It could even lead to a holocaust.”

In this essay, I have argued that the Manichaean stigmatization of Africa is not benign. It is a calculated Western contraption intended to provide a reason for the economic rape of Africa by Westerners. To inveigle Africans into believing that the West is overly concerned about economic growth on our continent, Westerners throw hollow around buzzwords such as “foreign aid,” “humanitarian aid,” “structural adjustment”, and other loud-sounding lexemes.  Foreign aid is one deceitful word that has been used to hoodwink all African countries, without exception, into chronic indebtedness. In her recent book titled Dead Aid Dambisa Moyo argues that The net result of aid-dependency is that instead of having a functioning Africa, managed by Africans, for Africans, what is left is one where outsiders attempt to map its destiny and call the shots”(66). Moyo’s book is an economic blueprint intended to serve as a paradigm for weaning Africa off the debilitating aid-dependency syndrome that has kept the continent in perpetual economic stagnancy for decades.    


Works cited

Booker, Keith, M. The African Novel in English, Oxford: James Curry, 1998.
Cary, Joyce. Mister Johnson. New York: Harper, 1951.

Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness, Englewood: Prentice-Hall, 1960.
Europe News. “Nine French Arrested in Chad for
     Kidnapping 103 Children” retrieved April 23, 2007 from
     <http://news.monstersandcritics.com/europe/news/articl
     E_1368998.php/Nine_French _arrest...

King, Martin Luther. (2005). ‘Togo: Land of Contrasts’,
     Africa Today, 11.8: 22-24.

Memmi, Albert. The Colonizer and the colonized, Translated by Howard Greenfield.
            New York: Orion Press, 1965.

Moyo, Dambisa. Dead Aid: Why Aid is not Working and How there is a Better
            Way for Africa. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009.

Mudimbe, V.Y. Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge.
            Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988.

Ngugi, wa Thiong’o. Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature,
 Portsmouth: Heinemann, 1986.

Obiechina, Emmanuel. Culture, Tradition and Society in the West African Novel, New
 York: Cambridge University press, 1975.

Olaniyan, T. and Quayson, A. African Literature: An Anthology of Criticism and Theory,
            Oxford: Blackwell, 2007.



 

Reign of Demo-dictators in Africa


By Peter Wuteh Vakunta

It is tempting to dismiss numerous complaints about abuse of power in Africa as the ranting of Afro-pessimists. But come to think of it, the continent is replete with demo-dictators, compulsive megalomaniacs who are compulsively obsessed with power. Africa’s so-called political leaders have made it abundantly clear, in word and deed, that they would stop at nothing in their attempt to monopolize political power in perpetuity. Sometimes it feels like these self-styled leaders are addicted to power. In a bid to stay at the helm until death do them part, it has now become common practice for African heads of state to tinker with national constitutions.

Former President Sam Nujoma of Namibia is a case in point. The man toyed with the supreme law of the land as if he were a child playing around with toys. Each time his term of office came close to expiration, Nujoma simply tweaked the constitution in order to give himself another term of office. According to Amupadhi (2004:1), the situation was so bad in the days of Nujoma that the Congress of Democrats (CoD) called the President a “political trickster” and Swapo a“circus of magicians”. He further notes that Swapo had destroyed the educational system and was taking Namibia backward into something worse than a banana republic.

President Paul Biya of Cameroon is another ‘democratic’ despot ruling a puppet republic. He is notorious for his political prevarications and offhandedness. This man gifted with a squeaky voice and knock-knees came to power in 1982, from the position of Prime minister, after purportedly colluding with the French government to oust President Ahmadou Ahidjo from power. Twenty-eight years after this political watershed, Mr. Biya is still hanging onto executive power in Cameroon in utter contempt of democratic tenets! He resorts to heavy-handed repression and torture in order to silence dissenting voices in the country. Cameroonians of some thinking capacity have identified corruption, nepotism, and tribalism as the scourges of the nation. The president simply turns a blind eye to the heinous crimes committed by his lieutenants on a regular basis. Rather than confront corruption head on, he continues to chase shadows as the once buoyant nation continues to disintegrate. Biya seems to be a firm believer in the Francophonie axiom according to which “La chèvre broute là où elle est attachée” [The goat eats where it is tethered.] He honestly believes that he can pull the wool over the eyes of Cameroonians and the international community with his simulacra, and half-truths forever. This is a leader so loathed by citizens that his demise is likely to result in a national week of jubilation, rather than mourning.

Nyamnjoh and Fokwang (2005) point that “In early June 2004, it was rumored among Cameroonians in the Diaspora that the 71-year-old Paul Biya, who is widely believed to be in poor health, had died in Switzerland, only for him to surface several days afterwards to joke about it: ‘those who wish me dead have the next twenty years to wait…’”(269) The nation had gone berserk in jubilation thinking that God had finally provided the long-awaited biological solution to their insuperable travails, only to find out that it was a yarn spun by an opponent of the President resident in the United States of America (ironically, a native of Mr. president’s own Beti tribe). According to these writers, the rumor seemed like the collective symbolic assassination of President Biya by all those whose aspiration for democracy and summon bonum have repeatedly been thwarted by the insensitivities of his regime. According to Nyamnjoh and Fokwang, Paul Biya is “a stooge of France, without genuine concern for his people…” (op cit, 270). Mismanagement, lack of accountability, loss of confidence in state political and economic institutions, seclusion and manipulation of the people based on political affiliations, and a repressive legal system are the collection of factors that account for the hatred that Cameroonians nurse against their leaders.

Mr. Biya is notorious for rigging elections to the chagrin of opposition parties nationwide. As Ngwane points out:
In effect there are a lot of exogenous factors that deprive the Opposition from starting the election race on the same block as the ruling party—disenfranchisement, nonchalant international community, low civic participation, mass rigging…(2008:6)
The situation in Zimbabwe is full of pathos. Robert Mugabe continues to behave like a demented person. He became Zimbabwe’s political leader in 1980 and was hailed as a democrat worthy of emulation. The former Marxist guerrilla has hung onto power despite deep political and economic crises that threaten to ruin the country he fought so hard to set liberate from the stranglehold of Western imperialists. His tyrannical buffoonery is affecting not only the economy of Zimbabwe as a nation-state but also that of the entire Southern African Development Community (SADC) sub-region. After making a fool of himself during the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) a couple of years ago, Mugabe has now turned to his own compatriots to vent his ire. His land redistribution program has proven to be a complete fiasco! The land he grabs from white farmers is not given to Zimbabweans in dire need of farmland; rather it is given to the president’s cronies! Disinherited Zimbabweans who really need farm-land remain landless. It would appear that Mugabe has outlived his usefulness as a political leader. Common sense dictates that leaders who are no longer serving the aspirations of the people should make way for others. I believe that Mugabe is at the helm of a political system that has fallen out of touch with the needs of the masses. The lack of vision exhibited by this African leader compounds the misery of ordinary Zimbabweans. Mugabe lacks foresight as far as the future of his country is concerned.

The list of Africa’s demo-dictators is interminable. Here and there one runs into a fawning political “acrobat” who says one thing and does the exact opposite. Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, once revered as Africa’s visionary, has joined the gang of political jugglers. Museveni became president in January 1986 after seizing Kampala following a five-year guerrilla struggle. He banned multi-party politics shortly afterwards. In July 2005, sensing that his second and last term was coming to an end, he quickly persuaded the rubberstamp parliament dominated by his henchmen to lift the presidential term limit from the constitution in order to give him the chance to run for the presidency for the third time! It should be recalled that when Museveni came to power in 1986; he promptly outlawed multiparty politics, saying it was divisive. Not long after the pronouncement the same man was out in the streets of Kampala calling upon Ugandans to vote for multiparty politics in a referendum. Ugandans must be very confused!

These governmental iniquities are not the preserve of sub-Saharan Africa. Northern Africa boasts its own brand of dictators dressed in the robes of democrats. Hosni Mubārak is the fourth and current president of the Arab Republic of Egypt. Following the assassination of President Sadat by militants, he became president on 14 October 1981. He is still in power as we read this article! He is the longest-serving ruler of Egypt since Muhammad Ali Pasha. According to the BBC, Mubarak has survived six assassination attempts. President Mubarak has succeeded in hijacking the electoral process in Egypt, a maneuvre that has enabled him to remain in power for life. Though the Egyptian people are against the rule of Mubarak, he continues to reign, nonetheless. Lately, he has introduced his son, Gamal, into the political arena in a bid to groom him to be his heir in the rule over Egypt. We can only wish Egyptians well.
Things are not better in Libya where the eccentric dictator, Colonel Muammar Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi has been the de facto leader of Libya since 1969. Gaddafi is accorded the honorific title, "Guide of the First of September Great Revolution of the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya" or "Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution" in government statements and the official press. Gaddafi's remaining a colonel, while assuming control over a country, is not a new concept among dictators. Gamal Abdel Nasser remained a colonel after seizing power in Egypt while Jerry Rawlings, dictator of Ghana, held no military rank higher than flight lieutenant.

Some of these demo-dictators in military gear are blood thirsty vampires. Such is the case with Blaise Compaore of Burkina Faso. In 1987,President Thomas Sankara, one of Africa’s visionaries, was overthrown and then executed in a coup masterminded by Blaise Compaore, who has since instituted a  semblance of multi-party political system. Burkina Faso has faced domestic and external castigation over the state of its economy and human rights, and allegations that it was involved in the smuggling of blood diamonds by rebels in Sierra Leone.  As if to compensate him for misgovernment, Blaise Compaore won a new five-year term in 2005 after 18 years at the helm in this poor country even by West African standards.
The question of misgovernment in Africa has reached such crisis proportions that African fiction writers have taken it upon themselves to fictionalize it. Ghanaian novelist and poet Kofi Awoonor has satirized the Question of Power in Africa in his novel titled This Earth, My Brother (1972). Awoonor’s novel depicts the disintegration of post-independence Africa under demo-dictators in the form of a kaleidoscopic view of African society as it passes from colonial bondage to freedom and self-determination, and finally to a new form of bondage in the hands of its new African leaders gallivanting as neo-colonists. The novelist’s deepest emotions are disgust, anger and despair at the betrayal of the ideals of democracy and the aspirations of the independent African states. The reader is made to feel that change in Africa is cosmetic; only an illusion. The history of African societies, Awoonor seems to say, is a vicious circle of exploitation of the rank and file, the ordinary people eking out a bare living. He is a vigorous critic of the inept political leadership in prevalent in contemporary Africa.

In a similar vein, Kenyan novelist and dramatist Ngugi wa Thiong’o has castigated Africa’s political leadership in his novel Petals of Blood (1977).In this text, Ngugi wonders aloud about the problems of Africa: the sharp divide between the ill-gotten wealth of the new African middleclass and the worsening plight of the proletariat and peasants. He expresses his disenchantment with post-independence Kenya, in particular, and the betrayal of the African people by the ruling elite in Africa as a whole.

Disillusionment with post-independence Nigeria forms the kernel of Chinua Achebe’s novel A man of the People (1966) in which he debunks the myth of independence in Africa by telling the story of Chief Nanga, one-time school teacher who becomes the Honorable Minister of Culture. Nanga is corrupt to the core as most of our leaders are. Nanga is portrayed as a prototype of the African politician who takes the people for a ride brazenly. In a similar vein, Ayi Kwei Armah’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born (1968) is a scathing satire of corruption, moral decadence and wanton abuse of power in Ghana. The novel portrays what Booker (1998: x) sees as “an entire society overwhelmed by corruption brought about primarily by fascination with the ‘gleam’ of Western commodity culture.”
This notwithstanding, it is heartening to know that there are a few good leaders in Africa. Ertswhile president Festus Gontebanye Mogae of Botswana, educated at oxford, is a role model. His country is an economic success story in Africa. He has achieved the best economic growth rate in the past couple of years. One wonders what magic potion he employs to achieve such sterling results. His peers could learn a lesson or two from him.

All in all, this writer contends that Africa is mired in stagnancy. Our leaders excel at double speak, ineptitude and tomfoolery. Kowtowing to their dictates would spell doom for Africa. Brutality and dishonesty are common traits inherent in all human beings. Thus, it is the responsibility of the governed to call their governors to order when they fall to respond to the call of duty. The onus is on the citizens of each African nation state to muster the courage to get rid of the apathetic leaders that continue to stifle the aspirations of the citizenry. Current leadership debacles will continue to thwart Africa’s progress if nothing is done to arrest the trend. Evidence abounds to prove that isolated efforts will not be effective in halting misgovernment in Africa.  As Ngugi wa Thiong’o observes in his novel Matigari (1989) subservience to demo-dictators is tantamount to robotic sycophancy which he refers to as “parrotology”. At its most obnoxious level, “parrotry” is associated with the comprador bourgeoisie and the news media personnel, both of whom make the reign of dictatorship possible in postcolonial Africa.
         
    
Works cited

Achebe, Chinua. (1966). A Man of the People. London:
Heinemann.

Amupadhi, Tangeni. (2004). ‘Swapo has led Country to Economic and Social Destruction.’ Retrieved June 14, 2004 from <http:// www.namibian.com.na/2004/June/national/0449BA231.html

Armah, Ayi Kwei. (1968). The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet
 Born. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Awoonor, Kofi. This Earth, My Brother. London: Heinemann, 1972.
Ngugi, wa Thiong’o. Petals of Blood, New York: Dutton, 1977.
_________________. (1986). Decolonising the Mind: The
      Politics of Language in African Literature,
      Portsmouth: Heinemann.
________________.  (1989). Matigari, Translated from Gikuyu
by Waugui wa Goro. Oxford: Heinemann.

Ngwane, G. (2004). ‘Cameroon’s Democratic Process: Vision
      2020’ CODESRIA BULLETIN, No.3.

Nyamnjoh F. and Fokwang J. Entertaining Repression: Music
and Politics in Postcolonial Cameroon.” African
Affairs 104/415 (2005): 251-274.



Nelson Mandela’s Blueprint for Successful Revolutions (By Peter Wuteh Vakunta)

With two historic revolutions (Tunisian and Egyptian) now behind them; one ongoing in Libya, and many more to come, many an African are brainstorming incessantly on the ingredients that make or mar a revolution. And who else to turn to for ample elucidation but Africa’s legendary revolutionary, the illustrious Nelson Rolihlahla Dalibhunga Mandela aka Madiba?  In his recently published book, Conversations with Myself (2010:99-108), ex-president Mandela provides a blueprint for the successful organization of revolutions in Africa and beyond.  What follows is Madiba’s recipe for highly effective revolutions—vital matters which have to be borne in mind in building up a revolution.  
  • Good organization is critical. There must be an absolute guarantee that all precautions have been taken to ensure success. There must be a network in the country, first and foremost. Many uprisings fail because the idea was not shared by all parties. An uprising that is local must be avoided. A revolution must be organized in such a way as to ensure its continuity. You must have a general plan that governs all daily operations. In addition to the general plan that deals with the total situation, you must have a plan for the next three weeks or even months. There must be no action for the sake of action. Every individual action must be done to implement the strategic plan. Your tactical plans must be governed by strategy, and should cover such things as the political consciousness of the masses of the people, as well as the mobilization of allies in the international field.
  • Timing is of essence. The date of an uprising must be chosen when it isabsolutely certain that the revolution will succeed and it must be related to other factors.  Choosing date(s) should be influenced by psychological opportunity. Conception of when you begin the struggle will determine failure or success of the revolution.  To start a revolution is easy but to continue and maintain it is most difficult. The duty of revolutionary leaders should be to make a thorough analysis of the situation before a start is given a blessing.
  • Take stock of human capital. Plan and provide for replacements.  Right from the beginning, you must show the enemy that your strength is inexhaustible. Take into account the fact that the longer the revolution lasts, the more the massacres continue the more the people will get tired. You must plan and provide for replacements simply because in combat you will lose combatants. You must have the courage to accept the fact that there will be reprisals against the population. But you must try and avoid this by a careful selection of targets. It is better to attack targets that are far away from the population than those that are near. Targets must be as near as possible to the enemy. You will break the revolution if you do not take the necessary precautions.
  • Galvanize the entire population. Seek the support of the entire population with a perfect balance of social classes. The base of your support will be among the common people, poor and illiterate but the intellectuals must be brought in as well. In all activities and operations, there must be a thorough diffusion of the intelligentsia and the masses of the people—peasants, laborers, workers in the cities and more.  There must be perfect harmony between the external delegation of the revolutionary movement and the high command. Both must consist of similar and equally developed personnel. Your plan should be to destroy the legality of the Government and to institute that of the people. The underlying objective should be that your forces will develop and grow while those of the enemy disintegrate.It is hoped that these cautionary words of wisdom from a man who has been through it all and knows where the shoe pinches would be heeded by freedom fighters of all shades and colors.  There is no gaining the fact that the recent abortive uprising in the Republic Cameroon is attributable to the ineptitude of its organizers compounded unfamiliarity with the mantra adumbrated by Comrade Mandela in his seminal book. 
About the Author
Dr. Vakunta is Professor of Modern Languages at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey-California, USA.


 False Start in Postcolonial Africa ( By Peter W. Vakunta)

The African continent has been described as a medley patchwork of disparate ethnic groups lumped together for the administrative convenience of imperial powers. This has meant doom for Africans. In his celebrated work titled False start in Africa (1969:5) French agronomist René Dumont tells that story of post-colonial Africa. As he puts it, it is a tale of failure; failure on the whole due to the historical framework in which liberation has taken place. As he observes:
The bewildering violence of the ‘winds of change’ in Africa has converted the most universally colonial continent into the greatest jumble of independent states. Their existence is in most cases due neither to the exigencies of geography nor ethnic unity. They are the ultimate results of the disastrous rivalry and the chase for colonial aggrandizement of the ‘great powers’ at the end of the nineteenth century. They are also the inheritors of the imperial institutions, especially in administrative structure and education, which suddenly lost such socio-economic relevance as they had never possessed.
Dumont’s reasoning is that African nation-states as they exist today are the handiwork of outsiders, the treasure-seeking ex-colonial masters. Post-colonial Africa, he argues, took the wrong step right from the outset and has either been unwilling or too slow to correct lingering mistakes. Arguing long the same lines, Kambudzi (1995:10) notes: “The ‘national question’ has not been realistically and broadly regarded after independence.” He further points out that at independence Africans glossed over crucial developmental questions and issues and stampeded into the bandwagon of post-colonial euphoria. He observes:
Even the meanings of the post-colonial state and society, of development plans, of nation-building and nationalization have only been sought on the periphery of the hearsay of politicians, charismatic individuals and less committed individuals.
The truth of the matter is that post-colonial nation-states in Africa continue to hang in the balance. They have not gained economic independence from erstwhile colonial masters. As Dharam (1973:9) points out:
[…] Despite the potency of the idea of economic freedom in shaping the goals and policies of numerous developing countries, very little intellectual effort has been expended in analyzing the concept and exploring its ramifications in the realms of politics, economics or sociology.
 The reasons for this state of affairs are legion. Primarily, African nation-states are incapacitated by the economic morass in which they find themselves on account of being literally tied to the apron strings of erstwhile colonial overlords: Anglophone countries to Britain; Francophone countries to France, Lusophone countries to Portugal, etc. Dharam maintains that economic freedom “is defined to consist in the freedom of choice of economic agents, be they producers, consumers, employees or employers” (10) The economic dependence of Africa on the West seems to spell doom. When politicians and economists talk of economic dependence, Dharam asserts, they may be referring to some or all of the following features of their economies:
  • Structural characteristics of production and trade;
  • Foreign aid and private capital flows form a high proportion of both public and total investment in the country;
  • The share of foreigners in both the stock of capital in the modern sector and of skilled manpower is high; as a consequence of this, the foreign share in gross domestic income is high.
It is perturbing to realize that several years after gaining political independence from France, the economic policies of francophone African countries remain carbon copies of policies conceived to serve the economic interests of France. This holds true for the so-called Commonwealth countries who have remained minions to Britain. The reality is that Francophonie, the European Union, the Commonwealth and other Western economic blocks interested in Africa are merely paying lip service in order to rip Africa of her natural resources. It is time to change this trend. African countries, to my mind, will make or mar. Africa must desist from being inveigled into believing that the West is interested in her economic wellbeing. It is a fallacy!  Africans must stop believing that financial aid is a panacea for Africa’s developmental problems. We don’t need aid; what we need is trade cooperation on equal terms. African governments need to do more than daydream and make empty promises. It is time for our leaders to get rid of what I see as the ‘dependency complex’ of post-colonial African nation-states.  Put differently, it is incumbent upon Africans to stop feeling that somehow the African continent is tied to the umbilical cord of the West. We have to fully shoulder the responsibility for our own self-determination.
 The way forward for Africa’s socio-economic survival has been spelled out by the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), brainchild of architects of the African Union (AU). NEPAD sessions should serve as forums for Africa’s think-tanks to converge and rethink sound economic policies for the continent. It would be sad if such encounters were transformed into the same ‘talk-shops’ to which the now defunct Organization for African Unity (OAU) had accustomed us. Africans should work in concert toward consolidating regional trade arrangements (RATs). It is consoling to know that Africa is home to some 30 regional trade arrangements at the moment; many of which are part of bigger regional integration schemes.
Over and above, regional and sub-regional trade blocs, namely, the African Economic Community (AEC), Economic Commission of West African States(ECOWAS), the Southern African Development Community (SADC), Southern African Customs Union( SACU), East African Community (EAC),Preferential Trade Area for Eastern and Southern African states(PTA, Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa(COMESA)and  the Union Douanière et Economique de l’Afrique Centrale (UDEA)(Customs and economic Union of Central Africa) should work in tandem in favor of free trade agreements (FTAs) which would involve not only the removal of trade barriers (e.g. tariffs) but also the elimination of other stumbling blocks to the free movement of capital, goods and services on the African continent. Once this is done, I believe that Africa will not only experience a new lease of life but will be able to lay claim to genuine economic freedom. It may be of some interest at this juncture to dwell on some of the parameters that would account for economic independence in Africa as discussed by Dharam:
·         The substitution of national for foreign enterprises;
·         A massive training program for the production of requisite workplace skills;
·         Replacing foreign with national capitalists;
·         The incorporation of a national element in foreign corporations;
·         Encouraging the growth of indigenous entrepreneurship.
As one would imagine, there are many socio-politico-economic implications involved in the implementation of the aforementioned initiatives into which we cannot go here; but, as Dharam has noted, “[…] they invest the political and bureaucratic elite with immense powers to control the disposition of valuable resources.” (26)
In this paper, I have attempted to diagnose the economic ailments of postcolonial Africa. I have pointed out some of the pressing issues that have to be addressed in a bid to put the African continent back on a sound economic recovery track. The factors that account for the economic quagmire in which Africa finds her at present are endogenous as well as exogenous, including neo-colonialism, collusion of our petite bourgeoisie with the bourgeoisie of the metropolis, lethargy toward finding lasting solutions to perennial problems, and the incessant meddling of Western powers in the internal affairs of Africa’s nation-states. I have further noted that the quest for self-determination and South-South cooperation constitute effective recipes for Africa’s economic freedom.

Works cited

Dharam, Ghai. (1973). Economic Independence in Africa. Dar es Salam : East African Literature Bureau.
Dumont, René. (1962). L’Afrique noire est mal partie.       Paris: Editions du Seuil.
___________. (1969). False Start in Africa. New York: Frederick A. Praeger Publishers.
Kambudzi, A.M. (1998). Africa’s Peace Fiasco: From 1960 to  1995. Harare: Jongwe Printing and Publishing Company.
*Peter W .Vakunta is of the Department of French & Italian, University of Wisconsin Madison


Time for Armed Opposition in the Republic of Cameroon

By Dr. Peter Vakunta
As the presidential election draws near it is time for home-based Cameroonians and Diasporans to begin to think outside the box. The following questions should be uppermost in our minds: Will Mr. Paul Biya learn from events in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, and Yemen and do the right thing by organizing free and fair elections? How would the opposition react if their victory was stolen again? What would the Cameroonian people do in the event of blatant electoral gerrymandering?  Most importantly, where would the Cameroonian military position itself in the event of an abrasive vendetta between those at the helm and the populace?  These are not idle questions at all given the sleazy manner in which Mr. Biya and his cohorts are going about this election business.
In a bid to divert national and international attention from the misgovernment going on in Cameroon, Mr. Biya has created a paper-tiger called Elections Cameroon aka ELECAM. Sub-paragraph 11 of article 13 of the December 29, 2006 law creating ELECAM, made it clear that “the post of chairperson, the vice chair and members of the electoral council are incompatible with functions or quality…of a member belonging to a political party or a group supporting a political party, a candidate or list of candidates.” The statute further states that the appointment of members into the electoral council of ELECAM will be chosen from amongst Cameroonian personalities known for their competence, moral integrity, intellectual honesty, and sense of patriotism.  
Interestingly, ELECAM has turned out to be a sham. Given its constitution, it is not impartial enough to conduct free and fair elections in Cameroon.  Truth be told, ELECAM is a masked organ of the CPDM, a tool in the hands of Paul Biya and his lieutenants. A major criticism of the ELECAM is that in violation of the law governing the body, Biya has appointed militants of his CPDM party; a party ridden with stories of corruption, influence peddling and misappropriation of public funds into the board.Eleven (11) of its twelve (12) board members are members of the Central Committee and Political Bureau of the ruling CPDM party. This thinly veiled attempt to control ELECAM is seen by many sound-minded Cameroonians as the death of democracy in Cameroon. It is an attempt to tone down ELECAM's credibility by making the body both player and referee at the same time. Reacting to the appointment of members of ELECAM, opposition Member of Parliament, Hon. Jean Jacques Ekindi, made the following comment to the press: “Today, it is clear that the consultation which the Prime Minister carried out was in fact useless. The appointments on December 30 were a clear indication that nobody cared about our proposals…”[i]
The implication of all this is that the upcoming presidential election in Cameroon is a non-starter. Biya will rig it by all means necessary! He is prepared to do it at all costs and is getting his military primed to wreak havoc in the event of an uprising.
Cognizant of the fact that his political survival depends on repression rather than electoral promise Biya has decided to swell the ranks of the army by appointing ten new generals! Cameroonians know who they are, and what roles they will play in this presidential election in a bid to prop up a regime that has consistently defied the will of its people. But the Cameroonian people are determined to confront these generals! As Ndifor appeals,”… rather than play footsie with them, we should take them on.”[ii]  Cameroonians should be ready to counter fire with fire.
As Cameroon’s opposition parties prepare for this year’s presidential election, they should not lose sight of the fact this is their last ditch battle for the ouster of a brutal dictator whose 29-year tenancy at Etoudi has yielded nothing but misery, frustration, joblessness and abject poverty for the generality of Cameroonians. There is an urgent need to consider the option of arming its militants. In the tradition of responding to violence with violence, it is absolutely necessary that the Cameroonian opposition ponder the option of arming itself. What I am proposing here is not a novelty.  It has happened elsewhere, it should happen in Cameroon. If opposition leaders find this stratagem enticing enough, there are a couple of success stories to draw inspiration from.
The case of the South African National Congress (ANC) readily comes to mind. Umkhonto We Sizwe translated as "Spear of the Nation" was the military wing of the ANC. MK as it was generally called, fought ruthlessly against the South African apartheid government. MK launched its first guerrilla attacks against government installations on December 16, 1961. The ANC leadership saw MK as the armed component of a strategy of "people's war" that was primarily geared toward mobilizing mass political support. Umkhonto We Sizwe carried out numerous bombings of civilian, military, industrial and infrastructural sites. Their tactics were initially geared solely toward sabotage, but were eventually expanded to include urban guerilla warfare. According to ex-president Nelson Mandela, all of the founding members of the MK, including himself, were also members of the ANC. In his famous "I am prepared to die" speech, Mandela summarized the motivations that led to the formation of Umkhonto We Sizwe as follows:
Firstly, we believed that as a result of Government policy, violence by the African people had become inevitable, and that unless responsible leadership was given to canalize and control the feelings of our people, there would be outbreaks of terrorism which would produce an intensity of bitterness and hostility between the various races of this country which is not produced even by war. Secondly, we felt that without violence there would be no way open to the African people to succeed in their struggle against the principle of white supremacy. All lawful modes of expressing opposition to this principle had been closed by legislation, and we were placed in a position in which we had either to accept a permanent state of inferiority, or to defy the Government. We chose to defy the law. We first broke the law in a way which avoided any recourse to violence; when this form was legislated against, and then the Government resorted to a show of force to crush opposition to its policies, only then did we decide to answer violence with violence.[iii]
Umkhonto We Sizwe made it known that they, the oppressed people of South Africa, would fight tooth and nail for their fundamental human rights. They made this known not only with words but with dynamite! So as you can see, even the world’s most revered peacemaker and conciliator like Mandela deems recourse to armed struggle inevitable in certain circumstances.
Another case that is likely to inspire the Cameroonian opposition is the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/M). The SPLA was formed in 1983 by Dr. John Garang, Captain Salva Kiir Mayardit, Colonel Samuel AbuJohn Khabas, Major William Nyuon Bany, Major Kerubino Kuanyin Bol and other Southern Sudanese officers of the Sudan armed forces.  It is composed of the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) and its political wing, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM). It was led by Dr. Garang until his death on July 30, 2005. John Garang held a doctorate and was militarily trained in the USA.  The SPLA is now headed by  Salva Kiir Mayardit  who is also the President of Southern Sudan and Vice President of Sudan. The declared aim of SPLA/M is the establishment of a secular, democratic Sudan.
Discourse on armed rebellion in Africa would be incomplete without reference to the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (Portuguese: União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola (UNITA).  Jonas Savimbi and Antonio da Costa Fernandes founded UNITA on March 13, 1966 in Muangai in Angola's Moxico province. UNITA launched its first attack on Portuguese colonial authorities on December 25 that same year. In the 1980s and early 1990s, Savimbi sought out vastly expanded relations with the United States of America and received considerable guidance from the Heritage Foundation, an influential conservative research institute in Washington, D.C. that maintained strong relations with both the Reagan administration and the U.S. Congress. Michael Johns, the Heritage Foundation's leading expert on Africa and Third World  issues, visited Savimbi in his clandestine southern Angolan base camps, offering the UNITA leader both tactical military and political advice. A noteworthy point concerning this Angolan armed opposition is that UNITA waged a guerrilla war against Portuguese colonial rule, from 1966 to 1974, then confronted the rival MPLA during the decolonization conflict, 1974/75, and after independence in 1975 fought the ruling MPLA(Movement for the Liberation of Angola) in the Angolan Civil War. In brief, a movement that started out on a decolonizing mission turned out to be a major role-player in the postcolonial struggle against abuse of power.
In Cameroon, the Union des Populations du Cameroun (Union of the Peoples of Cameroon) played a similar role during the era of decolonization struggle. UPC was founded on April 10, 1948, at a meeting in a bar Chez Sierra in Bassaland. The majority of the participants were trade unionists. In November of the same year Ruben Um Nyobé took charge of the organization as its general secretary following a vote at a meeting of the Provisional Bureau. The party adopted a radical nationalist program that envisaged immediate independence and reunification with the British Cameroons. Such a program aroused the wrath of the French because it ran contrary to their postwar integrationist colonial policy. According to Awasom, “The UPC further infuriated the French by establishing ties with the Rassemblement Démocratique Africain, an affiliate of the French Communist Party.”[iv] Thus, the stage for a tug-of-war between France and the UPC was set. The UPC was, therefore, subjected to systematic harassment and discrimination ranging from the arrest and intimidation of its leaders to the obstruction of its members from winning any election organized in the territory. The UPC responded by starting a series of violent demonstrations in May 1955 in a bid to oust the French from Cameroon. By the end of the month, when the colonial authorities had restored order, 26 people had lost their lives and 176 had been wounded. On July 13, 1955, the French government outlawed the UPC. This triggered a long-festering rebellion (1955–1971) that was initially concentrated in Bassaland but finally spread to Bamileke territory. Like the MK, SPLA/M and UNITA, the UPC had its own armed wing branded the Armée de libération nationale du Kamerun (ALNK). The ALNK recruited youths—men and women—from rural areas, particularly the Sanaga-Maritime, the Mungo, and Bamileke region, establishing maquis camps throughout the country on both sides of the Anglo-French territory.[v]
In a nutshell, the foregoing discourse lends credibility to the assertion that the doves of today could become the hawks of tomorrow.  If Mr. Biya’s advisers were endowed with a modicum of common sense they would ask him to read the signs of the times. New winds are blowing over Africa. Gone are the days when bloodthirsty dictators could massacre their own citizens and not be held accountable. Auspicious moments engender novelties.Opposition parties in Cameroon have continually been treated like scumbags by a cocky executive. They have been subjected to daunting setbacks since their dramatic appearance on the political landscape in the early 1990s.[vi] The task of contesting the regime’s excesses and unconventional style of governance has become harder with each passing day. The louder the voice of the opposition grows the more Mr. Biya perfects his techniques of authoritarianism. Yet, the challenge remains a vital one, for what do the people do when the opposition runs out of steam? Just take to the streets?
NOTES


[i] Yemti, Harry Ndienla. “ELECAM Appointment: A Death to Democracy in Cameroon.”  Retrieved March22, 2011 from http://www.zimbio.com/President+Paul+Biya/articles/4209437/ELECAM+appointment+death+democracy+Cameroon
[ii]  Ndifor, Joseph. “The Last Standing: Going after Cameroon’s Military Generals.” Retrieved April 3, 2001 from http://www.postnewsline.com/2011/04/the-last-stand-going-after-cameroons-military-generals.html#tp
[iii] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umkhonto_we_Sizwe
[iv] Awasom, Nicodemus. “Cameroon: Rebellion, Independence, Unification, 1960-1961. Retrieved, March 17, 2011 from  http://www.bookrags.com/tandf/cameroon-rebellion-independence-tf/
[v]Terretta, Meredith. “A Miscarriage of Revolution: Cameroonian Women and Nationalism.” Retrieved March 12,  2011 from http://www.univie.ac.at/ecco/stichproben/Nr12_Terretta.pdf
[vi] “Cameroon: Fragile State?” Africa Report No.160—25 May 2010. Retrieved April 22, 20111 from http://www.crisisgroup.org/~/media/Files/africa/west-africa/cameroon/160Cameroon%20Fragile%20State.ashx


The Cameroonian Conundrum: Autopsy of a Moribund Nation

By Dr. Peter Wuteh Vakunta

Introduction
The ailing polity code-named Cameroon seems to be afflicted with a medley of ailments that have earned it a myriad of sobriquets: Clando Republic, Mimboland, Animal Farm, Gaullist Africa, Ghost Nation, and more. The purport of this write-up is to diagnose the illnesses with which our nation is afflicted. The end game is to be able to prescribe some dependable medicaments efficacious enough to resuscitate a nation from its death throes.
Chronic inebriation
Alcohol is the opium of the Cameroonian people.  In other climes, people drink alcohol on very special occasions, if at all. In Cameroon, booze is our national drug of choice. A meeting without item eleven[i] is considered an abortive meeting. Little wonder, some of the talk shops [ii]that pass for meetings in Mimboland often result in drunken revelries.  I was brainstorming the fate of Cameroon with a friend lately and here is what he said: “Try to get two or three Cameroonians at a round table to brainstorm about some matter of substance and you will come away disappointed, but get them to put on their traditional regalia and come for alcohol or to dance ndombolo and you will be humbled by their vibrancy!” [iii] With this irresistible penchant for alcohol, does it surprise anyone that we have become numbskulls, bereft of cognitive ability? The brain that is filled with bubbles of alcohol cannot think. Bacchus[iv] must be rubbing his hands in mock glee wherever he is lurking in Cameroon. Come to think of it, what are we really celebrating? The uncertain fate of thousands of University graduates who have been driven by Chomencan[v] to become sauveteurs[vi], taxi drivers, bendskinneurs[vii] and wolowoss[viii]?  Or is it our once beautiful roads that have degenerated into death traps that we are celebrating? The question begs to be asked again: what are Cameroonians actually celebrating on a daily basis in circuits[ix] and off-licenses? The sale of our fatherland to foreigners? When Longue Longue oralizes the auctioning of our natural resources, including crude-oil and forest products to the French, we simply scoff at him and scurry back to our booze as promptly as possible. Some sagacious man once observed that Paul Biya is governing a nation of nineteen million drunkards!  Is there a dissenting voice? I urge my fellow countrymen and women to stay sober at all times. You snooze you lose, an expression which insinuates that we will miss out on a great many opportunities if we don't remain aware or open to the goings-on in our country. How can we afford to numb our brains with alcohol when this nation is on the brink of an abyss? There is a vendetta around the corner. We cannot afford to snooze or booze!

Endemic paranoia
Fear has crippled Cameroonians. Behind the semblance of bravado that punctuates our daily discourse, Cameroonians are inwardly compulsive cowards.  Despite all the brouhaha: catcham! beat’am! catcham! killam! If Mr. Paul Biya were to walk down the streets of any Cameroonian city today without a bodyguard, you would be surprised to see how many people would simply take to their heels after identifying the nation’s ennemi numéro 1[x] This explains why the man is unfazed by the raving and ranting of his many detractors. Internally, he knows Cameroonians are a bunch of paranoid big babies. Who would have believed that Mr. Biya would go to Bamenda in 2011 and be hailed as Fon of Fons after all the trauma to which he has subjected the people of Abakwa? Our Ntarikon landlord even granted him audience! The legendary Bamenda man known for his tenacity and alacrity to chop fire has suddenly became melo.  What is the genesis of this paralysis? Or dare I say hypnotizing fear? What become of the likes of Fon Mbinglo of Nso who, we are told, once declined to shake the hand of the Queen of England because in Nsoland, women do not shake hands with men.  As we brace ourselves for the pending battle ahead, it is critical that we kill fear, like the Egyptians who buried their fear at Tahrir Square.[xi] We must bury own fear here and now.  The 32nd president of the United States of America, Franklin D. Roosevelt, is reputed to have said: “There is nothing to fear but fear itself.”[xii] We cannot subject ourselves to slow death each day on account of fear. That is what William Shakespeare meant when he observed that “Cowards die many times before their deaths.”(Julius Caesar, Act 1, Sc1). This quote suggests rationally that man should not fear death but instead confront it boldly. To fear death is to die already.
Lethal ethnocentrism
One of the cankers eating deep into the Cameroonian social fabric is ethnocentrism, alternatively labeled tribalism. Tribalism engenders corruption, influence peddling, self-interest, abuse of power and dereliction of duty. This hydra has killed meritocracy in our country! Our nation has been reduced to ethnocentric concaves locked in lethal battles. The Beti want to fend for the Beti; the Bamileke attend to the needs of the Bamileke; the Bassa would do everything necessary to look after the Bassa, even if this means flouting the laws of the land and hurting other tribes.  Politics has been given an ethnic bent across the board. And that is why nothing seems to work in Cameroon.  Until we begin to see ourselves as Cameroonians first this quagmire will persist for a very long time.  Ethnocentrism permeates all the nooks and crannies of Cameroon, including academic circles. William Ndi fictionalizes this predicament in his play Gods in the Ivory Tower (2009). Gods in the Ivory Tower depicts the University of Ngoa as a glorified secondary school where the credo of ethnicity determines who succeeds and who drops out as evident in the caustic remarks of Professor Guignol: “This is a place for smart civilized people! Not primitive non-natives like you!”(44) Clearly, ethnophobia and xenophobia are cankerworms that eat deep into the very fabric of what the protagonist christens “the village college” (2) where meritocracy has been put on the back burner.  Professor Guignol does not veil his preference for students from his own ethnic group as his question illustrates:   “Did I not ask you from the very first day whether he was from your neighborhood, Mvog-Akum? Again, whether his parents were friends of some kind?”(40) Professor Guignol is openly spiteful of Anglophone students: “These English speakers…! Do you think it is for nothing that we label them in our tongue, I mean French as ‘les gauchers?’”(40) As it were, Ndi barely scratches the surface of the now well-known Anglophone question in Cameroon. The cohabitation between Anglos and Frogs[xiii] is depicted in Gods in the Ivory Tower as a marriage of convenience. This play is a lampoon on the notorious Francophone-Anglophone animosity in Cameroon.

The Anglophone Question
You may remember Animal Farm, the 1945 classic written by George Orwell. Many in my generation had to read this book in order to pass the London General Certificate of Education (GCE) ordinary level examination. Over the years I have come to see the relevance of the message contained in this novel even more as I ponder the Cameroon Anglophone Question. The plot of Orwell’s book is centered on the dissatisfaction of farm animals who felt they’re being mistreated by Farmer Jones. Led by the pigs, the animals revolted against their oppressive master, and after their victory, they decided to run the farm themselves on egalitarian principles. However, the pigs became corrupted by power and a new tyranny took root. The famous line: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others” (92) still rings true to date. The novel is a replica of what has come to be branded the Cameroon Anglophone Problem.

After fighting together to decolonize Cameroon, French-speaking Cameroonians now tend to lord it over their English-speaking compatriots. There exists a generation of English-speaking Cameroonians who now find themselves at a crossroads and would like to know where they really belong. Many Anglophone Cameroonians are now asking themselves why they are condemned to play second fiddle in the land of their birth. The unfair treatment meted out to English-speaking Cameroonians by cocky, condescending Francophone compatriots in positions of power is a time bomb that needs to be defused before it explodes to do irreparable damage.  As Alfred Matumamboh puts it, “Anglophone Cameroonians still feel themselves a colonized people trapped in the clutches of horizontal colonization. Francophone Cameroonians keep on reminding them by their political word and deed that they are the masters while the deprived Anglophone is the trapped helpless servant to be maltreated and molested”(Online article).  Unfair discrimination against Anglophones sows seeds of discord. The cohabitation between Anglophone and Francophone Cameroonians has been likened to a marriage of convenience by scholars and students of post-colonial Africa. In fact, some critics have compared the uneasy co-existence between these two distinct linguistic communities in Cameroon to the attitude of two travelers who met by chance in a roadside shelter and are merely waiting for the rain to cease before they continue their separate journeys in different directions. No other metaphor better depicts the frictional coexistence between Anglophone and Francophone Cameroonians.

More often than not, the perpetrators of this macabre game of divide and rule are French-speaking political leaders who take delight in fishing in troubled waters. In doing so, Francophone leaders indulge in stoking the flames of animosity and whipping up sentiments of mutual suspicion on both sides of the Mungo River at the expense of nation-building. Many of them have been heard making abrasive statements intended not only to cow Anglophones into submission but also to make them feel unwanted at home. Yet these self-styled leaders would mount the podium to chant to the entire world that there is no Anglophone Problem in Cameroon. This is utter hogwash, it seems to me. The plain truth is that there is a palpable feeling of discontent and unease among Anglophone Cameroonians. Questions that remain unanswered are numerous: Are Anglophone Cameroonians enjoying equal treatment with their Francophone counterparts in the workplace? Are Anglophone Cameroonians having their fair share of the national cake? Do they feel at home in Cameroon? These and many other unanswered questions constitute what has been dubbed the Cameroon Anglophone Question.

The Cameroon Anglophone Problem manifests itself in the form of complaints from English-speaking Cameroonians about the absence of transparency and accountability in matters relating to appointments in the civil service, the military, the police force, the gendarmerie[xiv][i] and the judiciary. In short, the Anglophone Question raises interrogations about participation in decision-making and power-sharing in the country. This is not a figment of anyone’s imagination! It is real and tangible. The Anglophone Problem is the cry of an oppressed people, lamenting over the ultra-centralization of political power in the hands of a rapacious oligarchy based in Yaoundé, the nation’s capital, where Anglophones with limited proficiency in the French language are made to go through all kinds of odds in the hands of gloating Francophone bureaucrats who see English-speakers as anathema.  The Anglophone Problem stems from the obnoxious attitude of French-speaking Cameroonians who believe that their Anglophone compatriots are unpatriotic, and therefore, should be asked to seek refuge in another country. This bigotry compounded by conceit has given rise to the rampant use of derogatory slurs such as “les Anglophones sont gauches[xv][ii], “c’est des ennemis dans la maison[xvi][iii], “ce sont les biafrais [xvii][iv] and so on.

The consequence of this anti-Anglophone sentiment is the birth of the misconception that Anglophone Cameroonians are unreliable, untrustworthy, and therefore, undeserving of positions of leadership in the country. This explains why key ministerial positions in Cameroon are the exclusive preserve of French-speaking Cameroonians. Anglophobia has also led to the appointment of Francophones with no working knowledge of the English language to ambassadorial positions in strategic countries like the United States of America, Great Britain, Germany, Nigeria and South Africa where they wind up making a complete fool of themselves linguistically and culturally speaking.

The corollary of this frictional co-existence is mutual distrust, a phenomenon that has been exploited maximally by Cameroonian politicians, including the Head of State himself. One only needs to ponder the manner in which the president has used the position of Prime Minister as an effective tool to play North-westerners against South-westerners beginning from Simon Achidi Achu to date. Who says nurturing ethnocentrism is not politically expedient? Undoubtedly, avaricious self-interest is at the root of all this rigmarole. We are not asking anyone to repudiate his ethnic origin.  We can choose our friends; we cannot choose our parents. At the same time, Cameroonians must guard against balkanizing the nation along tribal lines.

Conclusion
In this essay, I have attempted to lay bare the anatomy of a malignant Nation-State. Cameroon is sick, very sick indeed. In 29 years we have gone from the posture of a buoyant Africa in miniature to that of a skeletal nation in decrepitude. Yet, our leaders continue to wine, dine and tango at the expense of the proverbial man in the street. The call is ours to halt this dementia by all means necessary. This task is ours. No outsider can do it on our behalf.
© Vakunta 2011

AFRICANS ARE NOT DISPOSAL PEOPLE!
By Peter Vakunta

 I could hardly hold back my anger as I read the article titled “Ivory Coast: No Deal Yet” in the April 2007 edition of Africa Today. This article recounts the ordeal of 4000 Ivorians who are battling to be paid  full compensation by  the Dutch Company, Trafigura for illegally discharging toxic waste in Abidjan in August last year. According to information from global toxic trade watchdog, Basel Action Network (BAN), about 400 tons of gasoline residues were dumped at 10 and 14 sites in Abidjan on August 19 and 20, leading to the death of ten people and the hospitalization of 1500 more.

The Ivorian incident is not an isolated occurrence.  The use of Africa as a dumping site for hazardous waste from industrialized nations is an old story.  The infamous Koko beach dumping in Nigeria in 1987 is still fresh in our memories. Nigerian officials reported that hundreds of drums of toxic waste were illegally shipped from Italy to Koko. The Italian company that shipped the waste said the delivery was authorized.  One wonders by whom. During the Somali civil war hazardous waste was dumped in this poor African nation by industrialized countries. The alleged perpetrators were Italian and Swiss firms, Progresso and Achair Partners respectively. Apart from the impact of the war in Somalia, the people are now afflicted with toxic waste-related diseases which the local medical professionals don’t know how to handle. Guernica Chemicals, a British company in South Africa received thousands of tons of chemical waste in the 1980s and early 1990s from the United States and European countries, including American Cyanamid and Boren chemicals, to be reprocessed. Little wonder the United States is one of the few countries that have refused to ratify the Basel Convention, an international treaty devoted to setting up a framework for controlling the movement of hazardous wastes across international frontiers. While the USA is not the sole source of global toxic waste, its failure to ratify the treaty speaks volume to its orientation toward toxic waste trafficking.

It is clear that someone out there is busy deluding themselves that Africans are disposable people.  The dumping of toxic waste materials poses a grave environmental threat to the African people many of whom are not aware of the dangers and are not equipped to handle the ensuing consequences. It is incumbent upon the governments of Africa to take bold action now by making it clear to perpetrators of illegal trade in toxic wastes that Africa is not a global dumpster.  They should seek international justice by working in tandem with the United Nations Environmental Program whose adoption of the Cairo Guidelines and Principles for Environmental Sound Management of hazardous Waste is a sign of good things to come. But this anticipated change will not happen while African Environmental Ministers are busy drinking Chivas and smoking marijuana as is the case in most African nations.  It will not happen when African Heads of State are busy having a good time taking siesta at UN plenary sessions as was the case with Robert Mugabe and cohorts lately. Africa will continue to be a lucrative dumping ground for toxic wastes from industrialized countries as long as African presidents continue to see themselves as minions of Western powers. One of them (the president of Cameroon) once described himself as the “best pupil” of late President François Mitterrand of France. How sad!

Equally important is the role of the African Union (AU) on a regional level. I believe it would be helpful for this body to initiate a vote on a resolution banning the acceptance of waste materials by all member countries. There is no gainsaying the fact that the greed of a few African business owners with the desire to make huge amounts of money in foreign currency , in a relatively short amount of time, has also played a significant role in the growth of waste dumping in Africa. The intervention of the AU will go a long way to holding such profiteers accountable.
 Peter Vakunta Wuteh
 University of Wisconsin Madison-USA


Curious Study on Anglophone and Francophone Cameroonians
By Simo Bobda, University of Yaoundé I, and Innocent Fassé Mbouya, University of Douala (Translated from French by Dr. Peter Wuteh Vakunta)
Source: http://www.quotidienlejour.com/double-page-/opinion-/6683-anglophones-et-francophones

How do Anglophones and Francophones identify themselves and perceive each other in Cameroon? One of the salient aspects of Cameroon’s colonial heritage is its official languages—French and English. These two languages harbor two occidental cultures (English and French). Cameroonians who speak these languages in addition to 286 indigenous languages have two sub-identities, two personalities, and two supra-cultures (Anglo-Saxon and French) that do not always cohabitate harmoniously. Today, as Cameroonians celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the country’s independence from colonial masters, and the reunification of Anglophone and Francophone Cameroons, there is need to take a keen look at the perceptions and attitudes that Anglophone and Francophone Cameroonians have toward each other.  To do this, two researchers, both professors, have carried out a socio-linguistic survey involving more than two hundred adult speakers of English and French, all students at the Universities of Yaoundé 1 and Douala. The fairly interesting results obtained from the study are striking in several respects, not least of which is the way members of one linguistic subgroup perceive members of the other subgroup.
Objectives and methodology of the study
The aim of this study was to scientifically elicit responses to several questions, notably the manner in which members of one linguistic community perceive members of the other linguistic community; how each community defines its members; and finally, the degree to which each of these communities is tolerant or intolerant toward members of the other linguistic community. To this end, questionnaires containing 22 questions were distributed to 240 Cameroonian students at the Higher Teachers’ Colleges of the University of Douala and Yaoundé 1. In total, 209 Anglophone and Francophone students of both sexes actually completed and returned their questionnaires. The results show that more Francophones than Anglophones completed the questionnaires. However, more female than male Anglophones responded to the questions.  On the Francophone side, more men than women responded. These disparities could be explicated by the fact that on the national level, there are more Francophones than Anglophones in Cameroon. Moreover, this survey was conducted in two French-speaking cities (Douala and Yaoundé). The male/female dynamics in both groups are a matter of pure coincidence. Given that the focus of this study was not gender, the disparities that were noted in each group were not given undue consideration.
Findings
An analysis of the findings engendered some noteworthy facts presented here. For the purpose of clarity, findings for both groups are presented concomitantly. Thus, for each question, the opinions and attitudes of Anglophones and Francophones will be juxtaposed followed by analyses and/or remarks made by the researchers.
 Question/s
  • How do Anglophones and Francophones identify themselves?
1. Who is Anglophone in Cameroon in the opinion of Anglophones?
Response/s
  •  A person whose parents originate from the North-West or South-West  regions (82.3% agreed; 13.8% disagreed, and 3.4% abstained);
  • A person who has studied in the Anglophone system but whose parents are neither from the South-West nor from the North-West (47.1% agreed, 50.6 disagreed, and 2.3% abstained);
  •  A person who hails from the North-West or South-West even if s/he is not proficient in English(66.7% agreed; 31.0%disagreed, and 2.3% abstained);
  • A person who is from the North-West or South-West even if s/he studied in the Francophone system(52.9% agreed; 43.7% disagreed, and 3.4% abstained);
  • A person who masters and utilizes English as his/her main functional tool  even if s/he is not from the North-West or South-West(32.2% agreed; 62.1% disagreed, and 5.7% abstained);
2. Who is Francophone in Cameroon in the opinion of Francophones?
  • A person whose parents originate from  a region other than the North-West  or South-West (71.3% agreed; 26.21% disagreed, and 2.5% abstained);
  • A person who has studied in the Francophone education system even if his parents are from  the North-West or South-West(66.4% agreed 32.8% disagreed; and 0.8% abstained);
  • A person who hails from the North-West or South-West but is proficient in French and uses it as his main functional tool (37.9% agreed; 52.9% disagreed, and 9.2% abstained);
  • A person who originates from a Francophone region but is not proficient in French (51.7% agreed; 36.8% disagreed, and 11.5% abstained).
From the foregoing, it could be inferred that the notion of Anglophone and Francophone is subject to different definitions depending on the linguistic group under the spotlight. However, it is clear that the definition that has gained the greatest sway is that which is based on ethnicity followed by the one that puts a premium on the fact that a person who originates from an opposite group has been schooled in the education system of the other group. Proficiency in English or French is considered third as a criterion for defining who Anglophone or Francophone Cameroonians are.  As regards Cameroonians whose ethnicity links them to one linguistic community, even though they have lived or studied in the education system of the other group, Cameroonian linguist, Eric Anchimbe, has made some interesting findings on how these people identify themselves. They are an atypical group of Cameroonians often branded “Eleventh Province Cameroonians”, or linguabrides, a term coined by Anchimbe to describe them. They are often perceived as a rather opportunistic group: Anglophone now and Francophone the next day depending on circumstances. In this light, one could draw the conclusion that the notion of Anglophone and Francophone means different things to different people. Indeed, it would be safe to talk of degree of Anglophony and Francophony, concepts that shouldn’t be based on dictionary definitions, unless recourse is made to a dictionary that acknowledges Cameroonian socio-linguistic realities. Having said this, it is important to shed light on the ways in which members of each linguistic community in Cameroon view members of the other group.
How do Anglophone and Francophone Cameroonians judge each other?
To properly gauge reality, the researchers provided a scale of traits in the questionnaire in a bid to facilitate the task for respondents. For example, to respond to the question relating to “good education/civility”, respondents had to choose from the following options: “highly educated”, “well educated”, “poorly educated”, “and very poorly educated”.
On elegance
Certain stereotypes common among Francophone Cameroonians led the researchers to include this criterion. The stereotypes include: “Anglophones are always on the odd side of things or are always awkward”. This expression often refers to the general comportment, worldview and style of dress of Anglophones. Reponses to questions in the questionnaire show clearly that Anglophones have the same impression about their Francophone compatriots given that 60% of respondents from both linguistic communities believe that the others are not elegant.
On work ethics
A striking disparity was observed here: while the great majority of Francophones (69.7%) believe that Anglophones are hard-working, and up to 12.3% of Francophones consider Anglophones very hardworking, only 23.0% of Anglophones viewed Francophones as hard-working. A mere 1.1% of Anglophones considered Francophones hard-working. Given that questions in this section of the study are based essentially on stereotypes, the researchers were not particularly keen on obtaining justifications for respondents’ value judgments. 
On corruption
The trend of responses in this rubric is similar to the aforementioned. In other words, Francophones have a strong tendency to perceive Anglophones in a positive light whereas Anglophones perceive Francophones negatively.  Furthermore, the researchers noted one other point of divergence in favor of Anglophones. While a significantly large majority of Anglophones(87.4%) regard Francophones as  corrupt, in fact, 58.9% consider them very corrupt, and 27.6% corrupt, more than half the number of Francophone respondents (54 out of 91)view Anglophones as honest people.
On competence
Members of the two linguistic communities also passed value judgments on each other based on the criterion of competence at work. The results obtained confirmed the negative perception that Anglophones have of Francophones in Cameroon. The contrary remains true regarding the perception of Anglophones by Francophone Cameroonians.
In fact, as the figures indicate, while half the number of Francophones considers Anglophones competent (53.3%), up to 70.1% of Anglophones consider Francophones incompetent.
Dr.Vakunta is professor of Modern Languages at the Defense Language Institute, California-USA http://www.vakunta.blogspot.com/


Fons without Fondoms: Autopsy of Royal Bushfallers
By Dr. Peter Wuteh Vakunta
 cameroon traditional rulers leaders
In the early 90's following the groundswell of political agitations that came in the wake of the launching of Ni John Fru Ndi’s Social Democratic Front, I wrote an article titled "Fons Without Fondoms" that was published in Paddy Mbawa’s erstwhile Cameroon Post weekly. In that article, I took umbrage at traditional rulers (fons and chiefs) that had unashamedly engaged in partisan politics, logorrhea and harlotry to the point of debasing not only themselves but the thrones over which they held hereditary custody. As Kebila Fokum would have it, “…fons of the Northwest have lost their compass… Most of the fons have desecrated the throne, betrayed their people and ridiculed the region” (2).[i] The aforementioned article was my reaction to the untoward events that had transpired in Bamenda in the 90s with Fon Angwafor III taking center stage. Fokum notes that “Fon Angwafor was seen in public holding an umbrella over the head of governor Bell Luc Rene (op. cit, 3). I referred to the fon of Mankon in my newspaper article  as ‘Mr. Angwafor’ because of this unbecoming attitude. It was therefore, no surprise when the population of Bamenda who had taken offence at the fon’s servile comportment and foul-mouthed utterances against the SDF and its Chairman rose up in anger and pelted him with rotten tomatoes and burned down his palace.

Whether or not fons and chiefs should engage in party politics is a question that falls beyond the scope of this write-up. The intent of this discourse is not to denigrate or belittle our traditional leaders. Let the weighty words used in this paper to qualify the unabashed comportment of these rulers not be misconstrued to connote a disdain for traditional leadership on the part of this writer.  I hail from a village where traditional rulers are held in high esteem. In point of fact, my people perceive their fon as being more than an ordinary human being; an intermediary between the living and the dead. That explains why they refer to him by having recourse to hyperbolic epithets: the fon’s eyes are analogous to the stars (beulo’oh); his head is akin to a granary (beuhkeuh), and so on.

Little wonder, therefore, that my people find it unfathomable that the once revered traditional rulers are today at the bottom of abysmal moral depravity. The integrity, nobility and dignity that were once the hallmarks of royalty have been thrown to the dogs. Low self-esteem and greed have given birth to a crop of fons and chiefs who speak and understand only one language: money. To borrow words from Fokum, “Traditional rulers can be seen palling around with armed robbers; they confer titles of notability on celebrated embezzlers and professional crooks. Most fons in the northwest have sold their souls to the devil” (op.cit, 1).  Some fons, like Doh Gah Gwanyin of Balikumbat in Ngoketunjia Division have earned the notoriety of murdering their own subjects with impunity: ”At the height of this buffoonery, Fon Doh Gah Gwanyin of Balikumbat pulled out a gun and shot at innocent villagers who refused to assist him in stealing the vote”(Fokum, 9). This bestial dereliction of royal duty brooks no commentary.    

Suffice it to say that in this day and time, we are witnessing the emergence of a rather bizarre form of dereliction of duty among our traditional rulers—royal bushfallers.[ii] Caught in the web of pecuniary lure, some Cameroonian fons and chiefs have jumped the fence and are “loitering in DC and disturbing”…  “peace in this great nation.”[iii] To add salt to injury, these royal runaways are entangled in bitter squabbles as this email communication shows:
Good People,
Please help save the NW Culture before too much harm is done to ROYALTY. How can someone who calls himself a king abandoned his WIFE & KIDS in Cameroon for more than five years but yet have the mind to pay the Gazete News Paper to make up stories for him. Is it a toll for begging or to use it to obtain favors from the U.S. government? Regardless, "king" Raymond Mbumbi Kangsen need to answer questions. Is "MBANTUNG" translated as KING?
1) why have he abandone his family that long?
2) why didn't he as a king go home for royal rituals and to comfort his wife after the death of his first child years ago as royalty demands?
3) Is it royal for a "king" to desert his "Queen" for years?
4) Was the Right Moderator J.C. Kangsen that he succeeds a king? Was he ruling Wum or Nkesu?
5) Does he have a kingdom in Wum? What did he know or do about the LAKE NYOS DESASTER?
We also need answers from "king" CHUFONG GODLOVE LONGLA AYENG on what went wrong with the FULL GOSPLE CHURCH in Bamukubit and why is he always in physical fights if he is realy a "king"
Finally, we want to know why these "kings" sponsored the destabilization of FON ANYANGWE'S DYNASTY. Are they out to destroy dynasties for I even have a video of them organising, encouging and promoting a near deadly conflict in BABUNGO where I'm SECOND IN COMMAND to His Royal Majesty Fon Ndofoa Zofoa III.Why are they so DIVISIVE & DESTRUCTIVE if they're the kings that they claim to be. Be a crusader. Stop the assassination of our NW cultural norms & tradition.[iv]

The language in this citation certainly leaves much to be desired but grammatical correctness is not the crux of the matter here. What preoccupies this writer is the character assassination that is being perpetrated by these royal bushfallers who are at daggers drawn. Just ponder the ramifications of what you have read above and you will have an idea how low our chiefs and fons have sunk. The writer of the email above, who paradoxically, is himself a mbah (assistant fon resident in DC area for years now asks a pointed question:”How can someone who calls himself a king abandoned (sic) his WIFE & KIDS in Cameroon for more than five years…?” In fact, the interrogator should be asking himself the same question? Why is he here in the US and not in the village of Vengo co-ruling the village with fon Ndofoa Zofoa III ?

It is crystal clear from this email communication that these royal bushfallers have metamorphosed from respectable dignitaries to dishonorable pan-carriers, scoundrels, and mendicants in the white man’s land:”Is it a toll (sic) for begging or to use it to obtain favors from the U.S. government?”  In his lament on the sad predicament of royal bushfallers, Fokum opines: “The insatiable quest for money by traditional rulers has given birth to royal killers, royal dealers, royal drug barons, and royal beggars” (op.cit, 14). I maintain that a traditional ruler who shirks his responsibility to the point of not conforming to the rites and traditions that were bestowed upon him on the occasion of his enthronement ceases ipso facto to be the custodian of such rites and customs. By the same token, such a leader stands in breach of the social contract that binds him to the people (subjects) who perceive these rituals as their existential modus vivendi.

Royal misconduct harbors a myriad of socio-economic consequences: erosion of honor due to royalty, sexual promiscuity among the queens left unattended back at home, dysfunctional parenting for princes and princesses, philandering between jaded queens and sex starved nchindas or royal pages, and a host of other misdemeanors. Some observers have called for the immediate dethronement of irresponsible traditional rulers as a solution to dereliction of duty. Others have called upon subjects to commit regicide if duress cannot be brought to bear on absconding fons and chiefs to return home. The people of Kejem Keku (Big Babanki) seem to have heeded this clarion call when many years ago they burned their fon to death.
The circumstances surrounding this gruesome murder might have been unrelated to bushfalling but this only goes to show the extent to which people are prepared to go when faced with insurmountable frustration and angst. I do not condone assassination as a solution to misconduct. At the same time, our fons and chiefs at home and in the diaspora should be mindful of the burden of incumbency and desist from indulging in despicable comportment that puts them in harm’s way.

In a nutshell, the purport of this paper has been to spark a fruitful debate among Cameroonians at home and abroad on the role of traditional leadership, and the ramifications of neglect of royal responsibility. Our traditional leaders need to be reminded that character is the foundation stone on which to build in order to earn respect. As Ntemfac Ofege cautions:”Until Northwesterners are bold enough to call their fons to order as they do with President Paul Biya, the rot will continue” (“Royal Beggars: Northwest Fons and the Decadence of Tradition”, 8). I add my voice to that of Ofege in calling upon our royal bushfallers to give a second thought to the rationale behind their self-imposed exile. They must rethink and act now before it is too late.
Dr. Peter Wuteh Vakunta is a professor of modern languages at the Defense Language Institute, California, USA.
http://www.vakunta.blogspot.com/

Notes


[i] “Royal Beggars: The Northwest Fons and Decadence of Tradition.” Retrieved on July 8, 2011 from http://scylinfo.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/kebila-fokum1.pdf
[ii]  Peter Vakunta. 2010. “The De-identification of African Bushfallers in the Diaspora.” Retrieved on July 8, 2011 from http://www.postnewsline.com/2010/12/the-de-identification-of-african-bush-fallers-in-the-diaspora.html
[iii] Email communication via Cameroon politics, May 29, 2011
[iv] Email communication via Cameroon politics, May 29, 2011


Criminalize or Decriminalize ? That’s the question!
Culled from  http://www.hrw.org/fr/news/2010/10/28/cameroun-les-rapports-homosexuels-suscitent-agressions-et-arrestations
By Dr. Peter Wuteh Vakunta

Douala - Cameroonians are attacked by police, politicians, the media, and even their own communities if they are suspected of having sexual relations with a person of the same sex, four human rights organizations said in a joint report released today.The government should take urgent action to decriminalize such consensual conduct and to ensure the full human rights of all Cameroonians, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity, said Alternatives-Cameroun, l'Association pour la défense des droits des homosexuels, Human Rights Watch, and the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission.
The 62-page report, "Criminalizing Identities: Rights Abuses in Cameroon Based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity," details how the government uses article 347 bis of the Penal Code to deny basic rights to people perceived to be gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT). The report describes arrests, beatings by the police, abuses in prison, and a homophobic atmosphere that encourages shunning and abuse in the community. The consequence is that people are not punished for a specific outlawed practice, but for a homosexual identity, the groups said.
"The poor and the young, who often have no way to get legal assistance, suffer the most from Cameroon's abusive atmosphere," said Steave Nemande, president of Alternatives-Cameroun. "Even after they get out of jail, families and friends often reject them. They are denied education, jobs, even a place to live. Their lives are ruined."
The report, based on 45 interviews with victims, documents abuse by police, including beatings on the victims' bodies and even the soles of their feet. Prison guards ignore abuses by other prisoners, including beatings, rapes, and urinating and defecating on the victims' possessions.
Those arrested under article 347 bis are routinely held without charge in excess of the minimum time allowed by Cameroonian law, the groups found. Judges may sentence them to prison time without credible evidence that they engaged in a homosexual act. Even when judges have dismissed charges, prosecutors have sometimes charged the accused again before they could be freed. Prejudice and discrimination against the gay and lesbian population of Cameroon is pervasive. Women who do not dress or act in "typically feminine" ways are often singled out for persecution. Like men, they can be ostracized by their families or suffer physical abuse at the hands of family members, which is especially difficult in a society where women are expected to remain dependent and in the family fold.
Women suspected of having sex with women can be specifically targeted for rape and sexual attacks in their communities and risk losing custody of their children. They have little recourse to the law because of their fear of arrest and jail.The media in Cameroon compound the repressive climate, the groups said. Newspapers have published the names of those purported to be gay and invented the term "homocraty" to promote fear and hatred of people who engage in same-sex relations, depicting them as power-hungry, corrupt, rich, and intent on controlling the country.
"Lesbian, gays, and bisexuals in Cameroon are considered lower than dogs," said Sébastien Mandeng of l'Association pour la défense des droits des homosexuels. "They face great injustice because of homophobia." The criminalization of same-sex activities has serious health consequences, the groups said. Cameroon does not have HIV/AIDS programs designed to meet the special needs of LGBT people, despite evidence that this population is vulnerable to the virus. The government does not track HIV prevalence and conducts no surveys of behavior in these communities related to transmission of the virus. Furthermore, the government prohibits the distribution of condoms in prisons, although HIV prevalence in prisons is high, male prisoners engage in homosexual sex, and rape is common. "People living in secrecy are vulnerable to blackmail and abuse," said Boris Dittrich, advocacy director of the LBGT Rights Program at Human Rights Watch. "Arrests may be relatively rare, but the physical violence and mental cruelty against this population are devastating."
Condemnation by international bodies has not been enough to end the persecution of people under article 347 bis. In December 2008, during the Universal Periodic Review of Cameroon's human rights practices, the UN Human Rights Council recommended decriminalizing homosexual conduct. In July 2010, the UN Human Rights Committee called on the government to stem social prejudice and stigmatization against LGBT people, including in public health programs, to "ensure universal access to HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment, care and support." The government of Cameroon refused both recommendations.
Alternatives-Cameroun submitted a petition with more than 1,500 signatures to the National Assembly in November 2009 seeking decriminalization of same-sex relations. However, the National Assembly has not even considered introducing the topic into official discussion. "The criminalization of same-sex conduct has consequences beyond the obvious unacceptable arrests," said Monica Mbaru, African coordinator of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission. "It drives inequality within the justice system itself and promotes violence within people's homes, families, and communities. The government of Cameroon needs to accept responsibility to ensure all Cameroonians live free of discrimination, whatever their orientation or identity."


The Gargantuan  Fraud Machine of Mr. Paul Biya’s Embargoed Regime
By Dr. Peter Wuteh Vakunta
“I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring the real facts.”--- Abraham Lincoln

Never before in our history have Cameroonians been as frustrated about their nation and its political system as they are today. The people are stricken with doubt, subjected to existential sclerosis, and bewildered by what has been christened by some pundits as the GOVERNMENTAL MESS[i] . Pessimism is becoming ingrained in the Cameroonian psyche, and with good cause. Traditionally, Cameroonians look for the genesis of problems. If a house is poorly constructed we blame the builder. When a simple medical operation fails, we hold the surgeon accountable. Sadly, today Cameroonians are at the crossroads, knowing not where to turn for help.
Under Mr. Paul Biya’s 29-year tenure at the presidency of the Republic, the Cameroonian people have become unwilling victims of governmental dysfunction, characterized by impunity, ineptitude, dereliction of duty, corruption, human rights abuses, brutal ethnic wrangling, hardcore occultism, extravagance, and hollow promises. Not only have Mr. Biya and his inane lackeys defaulted in the fulfillment of their promises, but they have violated the most important ethic of any social contract: PRIMUM NON NOCERE—First Do No Harm. That is why I have resorted to the epithet ‘embargoed’ in this essay to label a government that from inception has worked against the  SUMMUM BONUM— The Common Good.  On account of its myriad iniquities, the Biya regime has become the people’s albatross, worse still this nation’s anathema.
In this essay, I contend that Mr. Biya and his CPDM ruling party have failed miserably in meeting the needs of the working class who pay taxes, farmers who toil day and night to feed the nation, university graduates who cannot find work, patients who cannot find medical care in our skeletal hospitals, and the rank and file who labor under rain and shine to make ends meet. I do so by adumbrating what I have branded the “deadly sins” of the Biya regime. The Cameroonian people deserve to know how their country is being governed. It is a right not a privilege. Our leaders should be accountable to us; not to themselves.Cameroonians thirst for transparency.

Requiem for Transparency
From 1982, the year of Paul Biya’s ascendancy to the supreme magistracy in Cameroon to date, he has used his ruling party, Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (CPDM) to erode the basic structure of political life in the country. Fair game and transparency mean nothing to Biya and his morally bankrupt cronies. CPDM politicians work obsessively at serving themselves, becoming experts at fanciful rhetoric, and conquering the ballot box by having recourse to electoral gerrymandering and fraud. Post Watch observes: “Election fraud in Cameroon is enhanced, advanced, state of the art and even refined with every election.”[ii]
It is tempting to take at face value the spurious postulations of some sycophantic Cameroonian pseudo- intellectuals in the Diaspora who claim that the CPDM is poised to win the upcoming presidential election in Cameroon because it has strategists who generate ideas, articulate policies, mobilize citizens to vote during elections, and ipso facto, presents Cameroon at this juncture with the best possibilities for developing a truly democratic political culture. This is balderdash!   The fact of the matter is that the CPDM modus operandi is antithetical to democratic tenets. It is an open secret that the ruling in Cameroon ‘wins’ elections because it has minted a monstrous rigging machine designed to divest the electorate of votes. Here are a few examples of CPDM’s election rigging contraptions discussed by Postwatch (op.cit).

1. Hidden Population Figures:  falsified voter registry and disenfranchisement are powerful tools employed with impunity by Mr. Paul Biya and his lieutenants for the purpose of rigging elections.  And they have done so repeatedly over the years. Postwatch  notes that “almost  2/3 of potential voters in Cameroon have been disenfranchised for one reason or another”(op.cit).Voter apathy created by many years of electoral fraud and disenfranchisement explain why this year’s presidential poll is going to be yet another election without an electorate,  yet another stolen victory!  Presidential election in Cameroon is a gigantic fraud that commences long before polls are even opened, and continues unabated during the electoral process, and ends on a false note.  
My word of caution to international election observers who will converge in Cameroon this October to monitor the Presidential Election process is that electoral rigging takes place before, during and after ballots are cast.  To borrow words from Postwatch, “In Cameroon the administration… manufactures election results two years before the vote. The figures are then preserved in the drawers ready to come out like magic declaring the incumbent winner…!”(op.cit.)

 2. Spin and Lies in the State Media
Every Cameroonian knows that the State media routinely feeds the populace with salacious news about the ruling party even if the news items are all spins.  Incidentally, news about opposition parties does not get much attention. Whenever it does it is vilifying news.  Government-owned media is annoyingly deceptive. As Norman Solomon observes,” the deceptions of the media… are not simply those that have to do with selectivity of sources or an obvious imbalance in the information offered, but also those more clever forms of media distortion that derive from subtle shadings , and the calculated instruments of denigration”(1).[iii]   Prior and during elections, the CPDM constantly hijacks the State media to diffuse pro-regime messages in flagrant disregard of the law stipulating equal access to media time for political parties in Cameroon. Postwatch points out that the CPDM party has gotten into the habit of bribing the private media as well: “Under the ‘subvention scheme’ some private newspapers and radio stations are coerced to campaign for the ruling party. Bribe money given to private radio stations can go up to 5.000.000. FCFA …”[iv] Let me say in passing that it is not only the media that is misappropriated by the ruling CPDM party during elections. Government property such as vehicles, personnel and money are used by the party for campaign purposes.  
The foregoing leads us to draw the conclusion that the CPDM party preys on journalistic fraud to foster its diabolical ends. In doing so, they  violate the basic principle of journalism  which was unambiguously embodied in the code of journalistic ethics adopted in 1923 by the American Society of Newspaper Editors stating that “ Sound practice makes clear distinction between news reports and expressions of opinion. News reports should be free from opinion or bias of any kind” (27).[v] The news media is supposed to foster healthy debate, raise conflicting points of view and present all sides of a story.

3. Electoral Gerrymandering
Mr. Biya’s regime creates Fake voter registers. After every election, the president orders his henchmen and partners in crime to tinker with voter registries by deleting obvious opposition names. Furthermore, the regime gives its blessing to the creation of clandestine voter registration.  What this means is that CPDM cronies (fons, chiefs, lamidos, divisional officers, district officers, etc) compile their own registers in clandestine locations which are later validated as official voter registers. Blood thirsty tyrants like Chief Doh Gah Gwanyin of Balikumbat in Ngoketunjia Division is notorious for running  at least four polling stations in his palace during every presidential election in Cameroon. He is not alone in committing this felony. Many other traditional leaders aid and abet the CPDM in electoral fraud in various ways.  The CPDM is notorious for flouting the law that stipulates respect for voter registration deadlines.
Mr. Biya has no respect for legality at all, much less for voter registration cut-off dates. Consequently, regime supporters are registered on the day of election, regardless of the fact that the law clearly states that voter registration should run from January to June.  Ghost voter registration is the stock-in-trade of the Biya regime. More often than not, the names of non-existent or even dead people are inserted into voter registers and corresponding ballot papers inserted into the ballot boxes. Often, in flagrant violation of the law, only one half of the electoral list per polling station is published when such lists are published at all. Sometimes, voters who registered to vote in one polling station may have their names deliberately transferred to a distant polling station. For example, voters in Bonaberi in Douala could have their names transferred to Logpom, some 15 kilometers away.  Given that commercial transportation is generally grounded on Election Day, these displaced voters end up not being able to vote.  Many times, crowds of anti-regime voters are sent to the wrong polling stations in an attempt to prevent them from voting. Then, the administration tallies the ballots and phony results, and life goes on as usual in Cameroon!

4. Draconian Voter Registration Process
The CPDM-led regime has made the voter registration process herculean. In bona fide democratic countries, the driver’s license, social security card, certificate of birth, etc are valid documents accepted for voter registration purposes. In Cameroon, the National Identification Card is the only valid document accepted for this purpose. Biya’s cronies in positions of authority have made it almost impossible for known opposition voters to obtain ID cards. To obtain an ID card in Cameroon, the citizen has to provide a certificate of nationality, a 500 FCFA fiscal stamp (this figure might have changed), passport-sized photos, and an unspecified amount in bribery to the police superintendent whose job is to sign the card. This makes it impossible for average Cameroonians who live below the poverty line to obtain a National Identification Card. On the contrary, reports abound testifying to the fact that CPDM cronies do hand out money stolen from state coffers to CPDM sympathizers to facilitate the process of obtaining National Identification Cards for them.

5. Stuffing Ballot Boxes
Things may change this year with talk about the availability of so-called transparent ballot boxes, but in the past it has been common practice for the Biya regime to stuff ballot boxes prior to Election Day. The CPDM is capable of manufacturing its own ballot boxes this year just to make sure that its candidate Mr. Biya is re-elected.  With Mr. Biya and his Ali Baba gang of scoundrels nothing is impossible. Don’t we say “L’impossible n’est pas camerounais?”[vi] Post watch observes that “in 1997 after registering some 8000 ghost voters, Doh Gwanyin of Balikumbat spent all night with the then DO of  Balikumbat  stuffing 8000 ballot papers into fake ballot boxes for ghost polling stations”(op.cit.)

6. Coercive Tactics
The CPDM regime is noted for resorting to scare tactics to swipe votes. In the palaces of fons, chiefs, and lamidos, voters are coerced into voting for the ruling party. Fons and chiefs intimidate their subjects (villagers), nchindas[vii] and harem of queens to vote for the CPDM willy-nilly. Often, pro-CPDM officials register foreigners to vote for the regime in power. There are documents out there that testify to the fact that CPDM officials have registered Chadians, Gabonese, and Equatorial Guineans in the Far North and South regions to vote for the ruling party.
Quite often, voters are ferried from polling station to polling station to vote for the CPDM.  To mask this act of fraudulence, the regime either refuses to provide indelible ink or produces chemicals that help to take off the indelible ink after voters have cast their votes. This way, pro-CPDM voters can vote as many times as they possibly can. It is important to point out at this juncture that in Cameroon, traditional rulers are auxiliaries of the government and, therefore, earn a salary from the administration. Thus, voting in favor of the ruling CPDM party boils down to a question of bread and butter as far as these misinformed, partially-educated traditional leaders are concerned.

7. Post-Electoral Rigging.
More often than not, even before the officially instituted counting committee sits down to validate the tallies, Divisional Officers and Senior Divisional Officers, all Biya’s appointees, produce bogus score sheets doctored to favor the CPDM party which are tabled to the central counting units. Such results are hastily proclaimed. Notable gimmicks played by these officials include fiddling with numbers: 39% for CPDM becomes 93%; 75% for an opposition party becomes 57% and so on. Sometimes, these corrupt administrators annul valid votes without justification. The objective is always to ensure that the CPDM emerges as the winner.

8. Creation of a Bogus Election Watchdog 
In a bid to divert national and international attention from the electoral fraud taking place in Cameroon, Mr. Biya has created a paper-tiger called Elections Cameroon aka ELECAM. Sub-paragraph 11 of article 13 of the December 29, 2006 law creating ELECAM, makes it clear that “the post of chairperson, the vice chair and members of the electoral council are incompatible with functions or quality…of a member belonging to a political party or a group supporting a political party, a candidate or list of candidates.” The statute further states that the appointment of members into the electoral council of ELECAM will be chosen from amongst Cameroonian personalities known for their competence, moral integrity, intellectual honesty, and sense of patriotism.  
Interestingly, ELECAM has turned out to be a gigantic sham. Given its constitution, it is not impartial enough to conduct free and fair elections in Cameroon.  Truth be told, ELECAM is a masked organ of the CPDM, a tool in the hands of Mr. Paul Biya and his party lieutenants. A major criticism of the ELECAM is that in violation of the law governing the body, Biya has appointed militants of his CPDM party; a party ridden with stories of corruption, influence peddling and misappropriation of public funds into the board. Eleven (11) of its twelve (12) board members are members of the Central Committee and Political Bureau of the ruling CPDM party. This thinly veiled attempt to control ELECAM is seen by many sound-minded Cameroonians and international election monitors as the death knell of free and fair elections in Cameroon. ELECAM is both player and referee at the same time. Reacting to the appointment of members of ELECAM, opposition Member of Parliament, Hon. Jean Jacques Ekindi, makes the following comment to the press: “Today, it is clear that the consultation which the Prime Minister carried out was in fact useless. The appointments on December 30 were a clear indication that nobody cared about our proposals…”[viii]
The implication of all this is that the upcoming presidential election in Cameroon is a non-starter. Biya will rig it by all means necessary! He is prepared to do it at all costs and is getting his military primed to wreak havoc in the event of a post-electoral uprising.

Conclusion
I will end this discourse with a quote culled from the US State Department’s report[ix] on elections and human rights abuses in Cameroon. The report sheds ample light on how the international community, especially the United States of America views the electoral process in Cameroon:
Opinions vary on how free and fair elections are in Cameroon and are reflected in the US State Department report on human rights:
In October 2004 President Biya, who has controlled the government since 1982, was re-elected with approximately 70 percent of the vote in an election widely viewed as freer and fairer than previous elections and in which opposition parties fielded candidates. However, the election was poorly managed and marred by irregularities, in particular in the voting registration process, but most international observers deemed that the irregularities did not prevent the elections from expressing the will of the voters. Some observers said progress had been made and called the election transparent; others, such as the Commonwealth Observer Group, stated that the election lacked credibility. Some opposition parties alleged that there was multiple voting by individuals close to President Biya’s party and massive vote rigging. One domestic group described the election as a masquerade. The 2002 legislative elections, which were dominated by the CPDM, largely reflected the will of the people; however, there were widespread irregularities (US Department of State 2006, ‘Elections and Political Participation’ in Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2005 – Cameroon, 8 March – Attachment 3).
In a nutshell, if and when the CPDM ‘wins’ the October Presidential poll, it would be both naïve and intellectually disingenuous to claim that Biya’s ruling party ‘won’ because  it has a sound system of organization and a truly democratic culture. Far from it! The facts discussed above speak for themselves: the ruling party in Cameroon is a gargantuan fraud contraption designed to rob the electorate of their right to freely choose their leaders. It is a nihilistic structure intended to nib all attempts at socio-political advancement in the bud.

About the author
Dr. Vakunta is professor of modern languages at the Department of Defense Language Institute in California, USA. He is the author of numerous books including Cry My Beloved Africa: Essays on the Postcolonial Aura in Africa (2007), No Love Lost (2008), Ntarikon (2009) and Indigenization of Language in the Francophone Novel of Africa: A New Literary Canon (2011).  He runs a blog at http://www.vakunta.blogspot.com/

Notes

[i]Gross, L. Martin. The Political Racket.  New York: Ballantine Books, 1996.
[ii] Postwatch.  "Election Rigging in Cameroon: A State of the Devil’s Art.” Retrieved on July 19, 2011 from http://www.postwatchmagazine.com/2004/10/election_riggin.html
[iii]  Solomon, Norman. The Habits of Highly Deceptive Media: Decoding Spin and Lies in Mainstream Media. Monroe, Common Courage Press, 1999.
[iv] Op.cit
[v] Bob Kohn. Journalistic Fraud. How the New York Times Distorts the News and How it can no Longer be Trusted. Nashville, WND Books, 2003.
[vi] Nothing is impossible in Cameroon
[vii] Royal pages
[viii] Yemti, Harry Ndienla. “ELECAM Appointment: A Death to Democracy in Cameroon.”  Retrieved March 22, 2011 from http://www.zimbio.com/President+Paul+Biya/articles/4209437/ELECAM+appointment+death+democracy+Cameroon


Habits of Highly Deceptive Despotic Regimes: Socio-economic Implications

By Dr. Peter Wuteh Vakunta

The canker of the developing world is despotism. The Reader’s Digest Complete Word Finder (1996:384) defines the term ‘despotism’ as a form of government in which a single entity, called the despot, rules with absolute power. That entity may be an individual, as in an autocracy, or it may be a group, as in an oligarchy. Colloquially, the  word ‘despot’ has been applied pejoratively to a person, particularly a head of state or government who abuses power and authority to oppress his people, subjects or subordinates. In the same vein, the Grand Ayatollah Ali Montazeri adumbrates this concept as follows: “A political system based on force, oppression, changing people’s votes, killing, closure, arresting and using Stalinist and medieval torture, creating repression, censorship of newspapers, interruption of the means of mass communication, jailing the enlightened and the elite of society for false reasons, and forcing them to make false confessions in jail…” (Ayittey, 2011, p.7).

In his most recent book titled Defeating Dictators: Fighting Tyranny in Africa and around the World (2011), Ayittey observes that “modern dictators come in different shades; races, skin colors and religions, and they profess various ideologies” (7). This notwithstanding, despots have a lot in common: they are leaders who are not chosen by their people and, therefore, do not represent the people’s aspirations. As opposition mounts against them, they refine their tactics and learn new tricks in an attempt to stem the tide of pro-democracy forces.  Despotic governments are highly deceptive regimes that are distinctive by the following traits:
  • Unyielding grip on power: elections are farcical and are always won by the despot.
  • Political repression is an effective weapon in the hands of the despot: opposition parties are either outlawed or accorded very little political space. Key opposition leaders are arrested, intimidated, hounded and even killed.
  • Intellectual freedom is curtailed.  Censorship is imposed; journalists, newspaper editors, and columnists are harassed and arrested for telling the truth. Newspapers, radio and television stations that are critical of the despot are shut down.
  •  At the behest of the despot, brute force is utilized by pro-government forces of law and order to quell street protests; batons, water cannons, tear gas and even live bullets are used to thrash unarmed protesters. Freedom of expression, assembly and movement are flouted with impunity.
  • Despotic regimes are notorious for human rights violations: opponents of the regime are incarcerated arbitrarily and without trial; disappearances and summary executions are common currency.
  • In a dictatorship, things are topsy-turvy. There is no rule of law and state institutions are replete with sycophants who sheepishly sing the praises of the despot. Professionalism is thrown to the dogs by security forces and civil servants. Loyalty to the dictator outweighs competence, intelligence, and efficiency. Promotion and job security are measured in terms of who is capable of singing the loudest praise of the despot.
The grim reality about all this is that despotism and tyranny have socio-economic ramifications. Autocracy depletes human conscience and dignity. It exacts a heavy toll on human and economic capital. Infrastructure such as telecommunications, roads, airports, bridges, schools, hospitals, and seaports begin to crumble because contracts are awarded by the despot to his cronies, close friends, and family members. Ayittey notes that “commercial properties of businessmen alleged to be ‘anti-government’ may be confiscated or seized for distribution to the poor masses in the name of social justice” (19). He points out that such was the case in Zimbabwe, where the despotic regime of Robert Mugabe (in power for 29 years) organized ruthless thugs to grab white commercial farmlands. It should be noted that the crisis in Zimbabwe has cost Africa a fortune. Foreign investors have fled the region and the national currency of  Zimbabwe’s  neighbor, South Africa, has suffered immensely, losing 25 percent of its value since 2000 (Ayittey, 2011, p.19). Zimbabwe’s economic downturn has affected not only South Africa but also Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia.

In a similar vein, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela (in power for 10 years) seized rural estates, and factories, including some assets of Lorenzo Mendoza, Venezuela’s second wealthiest man, and of H.J. Heinz Co., the world’s largest ketchup maker.  Such contempt of property rights undoubtedly scares off potential investors who nurse the fear that they may be the next victims in the hands of a predatory regime. Foreign investors have fled from Venezuela on account of Chavez’s dictatorial policies. Inane diktats and reckless mismanagement of state funds inevitably engender economic crises. 


Africa is replete with tin god dictators whose deleterious governmental modus operandi has brought untold hardship upon their people. A handful of despots on the continent have inflicted misery, despair, hopelessness, and death on millions of citizens who have protested against tyrannical rule. Hundred of thousands have been jailed. Others have fled their homelands to become refugees in foreign lands. The most obnoxious of Africa’s despots is Mr. Paul Biya of the Republic of Cameroon of whom Ayittey paints the following portrait:
"A suave bandit who has reportedly amassed a personal fortune of more than US$200million and the mansions to go with it, Biya has beaten the opposition into complete submission. Not that he’s worried about elections—he has rigged the term-limit laws twice to make sure the party doesn’t end any time soon. Years in power 29" (Ayittey, 2011, p.15).

Mr. Biya is not alone in this game of political banditry. Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, a swashbuckler who became president in 1986 and declared “No African Head of State should be in power for more than 10 years” is still in power in 2011!  He has indulged in larceny, brutality and impunity as well.  Omar al-Bashir of Sudan, a megalonmaniac who has quashed all opposition and caused the death of four million Sudanese has been in power for 21 years. Muammar al-Quaddafi of Libya, an eccentric buffoon who runs a police state has been in power for 42 years. At present, his despotic regime is tottering on the brink of collapse.  Idriss Deby of Chad, who led a rebel insurgency against former dictator Hissene Habre, is still in power 20 years later. Deby has drained social spending accounts to equip the military who protect him. Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea, a vicious, mindless despot whose family literally owns the economy of one of the world’s richest oil-producing nations, has been in power for 31 years. How much money Mbasogo’s government earns from oil has remained a closely guarded ‘state secret’ to date. Yahya Jammeh of Gambia, a nonentity who insists on being called “His Excellency President Professor Dr. Al-Haji Yahya Abdul Azziz Jemus Junkung Jammeh, has been in power for 16 years. Blaise Compaore of Burkina Faso, a tin-pot despot with no vision at all, has been in power for 23 years after murdering his predecessor and close friend, Thomas Sankara. Compaore has brought opprobrium upon himself and upon the name of his country which means “men of integrity” in Dioula language. Compaore is bereft of integrity. Paul Kagame of Rwanda, a true liberator who saved the Tutsis from total extermination in 1994 now practices the same ethnic apartheid he sought to end. He has been in power for 16 years.

It should have dawned on readers that the litany of woes betide Africa’s ruthless dictators is endless.  The most palpable aspect of despotic regimes is the rapid deterioration of the institution of government.  The end-product is always a failed state that is completely divorced from the people and perceived by the people as a contraption designed not to serve them but to fleece them. Impunity, nepotism, thievery and misappropriation of state funds pervade the public service. Ayittey posits that what emerges then “is a vampire state—a government hijacked by a phalanx of bandits, gangsters, crooks, and scoundrels who use the machinery of state to enrich themselves, their cronies, supporters, and members of their own ethnic, racial and religious group and to exclude everyone else. It is an apartheid-like system based on the politics of exclusion” (23).

Is it any wonder that the richest people in Africa are the ruling elites, the lumpen bourgeoisie, whom Ousmane Sembene depicts in his novel Xala (1989) as unproductive, and government ministers turned bandits? Does it surprise anyone that more often than not the chief bandit is the Head of State himself? Does it astonish anyone that despite her immense wealth in mineral resources, Africa remains the poorest continent on planet Earth, mired in abject misery, deprivation, and deepening chaos?  Tens of thousands of lives have been lost on the continent, economies have collapsed, and entire nation-states have failed under brutal dictators. Ayittey sums it up beautifully when he notes that “Africa is poor because she is not free” (23). Think about it!

Works cited
Ayittey, George. Defeating Dictators: Fighting Tyranny in Africa and around the World. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
Reader’s Digest. Complete Wordfinder. New York: The Reader’s Digest Association, Inc., 1996.
Sembene, Ousmane. Xala. Trans. By Clive Wake. Chicago. Lawrence Hill Books, 1989.


About the author
Dr. Vakunta is professor of modern languages at the Department of Defense Language Institute in California, USA. He is the author of numerous books including Cry My Beloved Africa: Essays on the Postcolonial Aura in Africa (2007), No Love Lost (2008), Ntarikon (2009) and Indigenization of Language in the Francophone Novel of Africa: A New Literary Canon (2011).  He runs a blog at http://www.vakunta.blogspot.com/



Cameroon's Henriette Ekwe Ebongo receives International Women of Courage Award
Charles W. Corey, Mshale News


Henriette Ekwe, lauréate du prix du Courage féminin, à Washington, le 8 mars 2011.

« Moi-même j’ai été convoquée une fois par la hiérarchie militaire et policière pour des propos tenus lors d’un débat à la télévision. Et il y a 4 de nos confrères qui sont toujours en procès pour avoir organisé un débat télévisé sur un homme d’affaires qui est aujourd’hui sous les verrous. »
(Par Christophe Boisbouvier )



Although many women in Cameroon are economically empowered and active in civil society, they often lack the opportunity to enter politics and participate in their country’s male-dominated political sector. Henriette Ekwe Ebongo, a journalist and publisher of Bebela — a weekly independent newspaper — and a founding member of Transparency International in Cameroon, made that point March 7 at a roundtable discussion at the U.S. Department of State. Ekwe was in Washington to be honored at the 2011 International Women of Courage Awards.

Ekwe was selected for this award in recognition of her lifelong devotion to advancing press freedom, freedom of expression, the recognition of human rights, good governance and gender equality.The Women of Courage Awards were established in 2007 by then–Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to recognize and honor women around the globe who have shown exceptional courage and leadership in promoting women’s rights and advancement.

Ekwe said that in Cameroon, men dominate the political sphere. As a result, many Cameroonian women have concentrated their efforts in civil society and in creating their own nongovernmental organizations, or in working with organizations like the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund:

“Many of them [those women] have created organizations to defend women and to defend children,” she said. “They feel that they are respected much more in civil society organizations than they are in political parties.”


Ekwe lamented that the Cameroonian delegation that attended the Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995 in Beijing (along with more than 300 other women’s organizations), told no one in Cameroon upon their return of the platform that had been adopted in Beijing, which called for at least 30 percent of any country’s decision-makers to be women.

“We have many problems with getting women into politics,” she said. In Cameroon, there are only 21 women members of parliament (MPs) out of a total of 180, and 29 women mayors out of a nationwide total of 360, she said.

Ekwe said many women in Cameroon are educated, and many are business savvy as well, working in the markets and in many other businesses.

She explained that if a family has to choose between sending a son or a daughter to school, they don’t educate the daughter. The son is educated while the daughter is kept at home. She said many men don’t want their wives to become MPs because they don’t want to feel inferior to their wives.

Asked about the country’s electoral process and presidential elections scheduled for October 2011, she said, “If we have free, fair and credible elections, then I think we will be free to talk, we will be free to criticize. The current president has ruled Cameroon since 1982."

Asked what she foresees for the future of her country, Ekwe said any progressive change in Cameroon will be brought about by young people who have been inspired by the role of young people in Tunisia and Egypt.

Here are the other 2011 International Women of Courage awardees:

• Kyrgyzstan President Roza Otunbayeva

• Maria Bashir, the prosecutor general in Herat province, Afghanistan

• Guo Jianmei, a director and lawyer at the Women’s Studies and Legal Aid Center in China

• Agnes Osztolykan, a member of parliament and the Politics Can Be Different Party in Hungary

• Eva Abu Halaweh, executive director of the Mizan Law Group for Human Rights in Jordan

• Ghulam Sughra, founder and chief executive officer of the Marvi Rural Development Organization in Pakistan

• Marisela Morales Ibañez, deputy attorney general for special investigations against organized crime in Mexico

• Yoani Sanchez, innovator, blogger and founder of “Generación Y” blog in Cuba

• Nasta Palazhanka, the deputy chairwoman of the Malady Front (Young Front) nongovernmental organization of Belarus

Click the link below to listen to Henriette's interview


The Big Banana: A Mind-boggling Documentary on the Fleecing of the People of Njombé and Penja in the Mungo by a Franco-American Multinational

 By Dr. Peter Vakunta

Globalization, a homogenization of global economic, social and political systems is a double-edged weapon. There are two contradistinctive schools of thought on the concept of globalization. There are some who believe that globalization is at the root of rapid prosperity in the developing world. On the other hand, there are those who contend that globalization serves the needs of the metropolitan countries at the expense of the peripheral nations.


T.B. Joshua in an article titled "Globalization and the Development of underdevelopment of the Third World" (2008)[i] posits that to fully comprehend the phenomenon of globalization and its deleterious effects on the economies of developing countries, it is imperative to revisit the dependency theory. He further observes that "the dependency theory evolved in Latin America during the 1960's and later found favor in some writings about Africa and Asia."

Regardless of the prism through which we perceive it, it is my opinion that globalization is a gigantic fraudulent post-colonialist contraption designed to fleece developing countries of their natural resources(oil, gold, diamonds, bauxite, forest products, agricultural produce, land, etc) to enrich the already rich countries of the Western world. To get an idea of what I am talking about here, one only needs to be a keen observer of the business being transacted by governmental and non-governmental organizations in terms of their impact on the global economy.

Comparative studies on globalization, dependency and dominance reveal the contrasting forms of dominance and dependency between the capitalist nations of the West and the developing world. By dependency, I mean a scenario where the economies of some countries are conditioned by the development and expansion of other countries to which they are subjected economically, politically or militarily. To put this differently, on account of the unequal political, military and economic relationships between dependent economies and dominant external economies, the structure of the former is shaped by the economic needs of the external dominant economy.

What we are witnessing today in the Mungo where a Franco-American conglomerate (Plantations du Haut Penja, PHP) has unashamedly misappropriated vast acres of land from impoverished indigenes is a replay of this same old diabolical mantra called Globalization. When Late Ken Saro Wiwa rose up with members of his Movement for the Liberation of the Ogoni People (MOSOP),[ii] the world hardly understood what he was raving against until he and eight others were hanged by Sani Abacha, stooge of British oil conglomerate, Shell BP.


In sum, multinationals are grave-diggers in Africa and the world at large. Playing romance with them is tantamount to courting disaster. Let’s hear what Cameroonian film director; Franck Hameni Bieleu, has to say about his documentary The Big Banana, a scathing diatribe on Plantations du Haut Penja, PHP.

My name is Franck Hameni Bieleu, and I am a young Cameroonian filmmaker of 30 years old. I was born in Paris, when my parents were studying there. In 1982 they decided to return to Cameroon, where I grew up until I was 16 years old and returned to France for my schooling. One thing leading to the other, I ended up studying filmmaking in Great Britain at the London Metropolitan University.
The very first documentary I made after finishing my studies is “What Hope for the African Youth?” (2008), which talks about the despair of young Cameroonians and young Africans in general in the face of poverty, bad governance and corruption that are eroding their country. While I was shooting that film, I happened to come upon the story about some Mayor from a town called Njombé in the Littoral Province of Cameroon, who had been imprisoned, tried and condemned for standing up against a multinational. That seemed a very interesting topic to me, and I decided to make my next movie project about it.
It is ironical that «The Big Banana » was originally supposed to present the story of a Mayor fighting for this community, but has ended up becoming a documentary about the exploitation of bananas and its social- economic and environmental impact on the local community. Because, after a little research, it dawned on me that the Mayor's story was only the tip of the iceberg.
As I was gathering information about the topic, I discovered that Njombé-Penja is a town rich in natural resources due to its volcanic soil that is very fertile and favorable for fruit and vegetable production, i.e bananas, but its community is extremely poor.
The multinational, called Plantation du Haut Penja (PHP), of which the French Company called Fruitière in Marseilles holds 60%, while the American Dole Food Company owns in its turn 40% of Fruitière, allegedly did not pay local taxes to the municipality, which slowed down the town’s development and hardly allowed for any growth. On the other hand, the plantation workers were receiving a pathetic average monthly wage of 23000 CFA, which is less than the minimum set by the State, for a close to 14-hour working day.
To my great surprise, I also learned that the working conditions and salaries were not the only listed injustices in the region, there was something even more disturbing: the large scale expropriation of small farmers. In fact, due to increased demand on the European market, PHP is aided by local and national elected representatives who have their personal interest in the banana sector. For example, the Minister of Commerce is the President of the company’s Board of Directors, and the region’s Congressman is the company's Director for Foreign Affairs. They ease the process of expropriation of Cameroonian small holders, and whoever resists their decisions find themselves jailed, just like the Mayor.
My investigations into the expropriation of farmers, allowed me to come upon RELUFA in Njombé. I was pleasantly surprised to run into a collaborator of RELUFA, who shared with me about their initiative called “Fair Fruit”. Fair Fruit brings together two distinctly different groups of producers, the one being fruit farmers and the other fruit processors, and it facilitates the export of the dried fruit to the US, where it is sold through their distributor, Partners for Just Trade. I was particularly drawn to the initiative because the two groups of producers are made up of families who have been expropriated by PHP and the initiative gives them the utmost opportunity to earn some income and create a micro-economy that is independent from the mass productions by PHP.
My encounter with RELUFA could easily be seen as a symbiosis. Many of the people featured in the documentary have been introduced to me by them, and RELUFA meticulously arranged for me to have the opportunity to meet in the US with their trade partners. This allowed me to show the routing of the production from the grassroots in Njombé to the consumers in the US and I am deeply grateful to them for that. By including this initiative in my documentary, I wanted to show one of the many alternatives to circumvent the omnipresent transnational company. I sincerely believe that if this kind of initiative could be multiplied, the communities of Njombé and Penja could only benefit.
My interest in making this kind of documentary is solely to inform the public, and to trigger debate so that this sector will be reformed to improve the living conditions of the local residents in these regions. Their voices do not carry far enough to be heard. I hope with all my heart that the film will play its role and will not have been made in vain for the sake of the people in Njombé and Penja.
Consumers in the West have the power to influence the multinational thugs by calling out to them and if necessary by boycotting bananas that are the product of human exploitation.

 Needless to say that Franck Hameni Bieleu is the voice of the wretched of the earth, to borrow words from another crusader of social justice, Frantz Fanon.[iii] Bieleu has arrogated to himself the critical role of griot of the voiceless in the Mungo.  By the way, readers need to know that this movie has been banned in Cameroon but Frank is touring the USA at the moment to inform people about the plight of Cameroonians in the Mungo. Visit the following link to watch Franck’s interview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=374uG1Zekc4

 NOTES
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[i]  T.B. Joshua.”Globalization and the Development of Underdevelopment of the Third World.” Retrieved on June 13, 2008 from  http://www.modernghana.com/news/169804/1/globalization-and-the-development-of-underdevelopm.html

[ii] Read my article on this theme in THE ENTREPRENEUR at http://www.entrepreneurnewsonline.com/2010/05/economic-implications-of-the-manichaean-stigmatization-of-africa.html
[iii] Frantz Fanon(July 20, 1925 –December 6, 1961) was a French psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary and writer whose work is influential in the fields of post-colonial studies, critical theory and Marxism. Fanon is known as a radical existential humanist thinker on the issue of decolonization and the psychopathology of colonization. Fanon's writings include: Black Skin, White Masks  (1952), A Dying Colonialism (1959),  L'An V de la révolution algérienne (1959), The Wretched of the Earth, (1961), and Toward the African Revolution (1964).


Voting Rights for Cameroonians in the Diaspora: An Exercise in Futility
By Dr. Peter Vakunta
The recent law granting Cameroonians living in the Diaspora the right to vote during the upcoming Presidential elections scheduled for October 9, 2011 is as worthless as the piece of paper on which it is written. Driven by partisan politics, Mr. Paul Biya ordered his rubberstamp parliament on July 9, 2011 to adopt a bill granting Cameroonians abroad the right to vote in presidential elections and referendums organized in Cameroon. On June 13, the President signed the bill into law. Apart from the fact this law falls short of the expectations of diasporic Cameroonians, it is also fraught with legal glitches.   However, not being schooled in matters relating to the interpretation of the letter and spirit of the law, I leave it up to those trained in this walk of life to do so. The focus of this article is to substantiate the fact that regardless of whatever cloak of legality and transparency Biya may want to envelope his new law, the CPDM gigantic fraud machine renders the entire process an exercise in futility on the basis of technicalities. As Nganang observes in his article titled “Les jours du régime Biya sont comptés: Voici pourquoi:”[i] [The Days of Biya’s Regime are Numbered: Here is Why], “Comment Biya fera-t-il donc voter ces 2,5 millions de Camerounais (chiffres de Charles Ndongo à la CRTV) à qui selon une loi redondante il vient de ‘donner le droit de vote’, quand rien de vraiment sérieux n’est fait pour que leur vote ait lieu, et ce à quelques semaines de l’élection à laquelle la constitution et le Code électoral imposent ensemble la date du 9 octobre?” [How is Biya going to make it feasible for 2.5 million Cameroonians living abroad (figure given by Charles Ndongo on CRTV) to whom he has just ‘granted voting rights’  in accordance with the terms of a redundant law, when in reality nothing concrete is being done  to ensure that they actually vote? And this is happening only a few weeks away from the presidential election scheduled for October 9, 2011 in conformity with the Constitution and the Electoral Code.”
As you can see for yourselves, it does not take too much cognitive power to realize that Mr. Biya's electoral law is a simulacrum shrouded in falsehood, window-dressing and deceit.What follows is a succinct adumbration of some of the electoral fraud techniques that Mr. Biya’s despotic regime has designed and used repeatedly since he became president of Cameroon in 1982 in a bid to perpetuate his tenure in power. He is certainly going to have recourse to this gigantic fraud machine this time around because, truth be known, the odds are truly against him. The only difference this time is that rather than confine his obnoxious acts to the Cameroonian territory, Mr. Biya has brazenly chosen to wash his dirty linen in international public waters by colluding with his paid pipers in Cameroonian embassies and consular services (all his appointees) to do the dirty job for him. The fact of the matter is that whether Cameroonians living overseas vote or not, Mr. Biya’s victory in the October  presidential election is a foregone conclusion on account of the gigantic fraud contraption that he has put in place to rig the elections. The CPDM modus operandi is antithetical to democratic tenets. Postwatch (2004) discusses a few examples of the numerous electoral fraud mechanisms used by the ruling party, the CPDM, to rob Cameroonian voters of their legitimate votes.
 1. Hidden Population Figures:  falsified voter registry and disenfranchisement are powerful tools employed with impunity by Mr. Paul Biya and his lieutenants for the purpose of rigging elections.  And they have done so repeatedly over the years. Postwatch  notes that “almost  2/3 of potential voters in Cameroon have been disenfranchised for one reason or another”(op.cit).Voter apathy created by many years of electoral fraud and disenfranchisement explain why this year’s presidential poll is going to be yet another election without an electorate,  yet another stolen victory! Presidential election in Cameroon is a gigantic fraud that commences long before polls are even opened, and continues unabated during the electoral process, and ends on a false note.  
My word of caution to international election observers who will converge in Cameroon this October to monitor the Presidential Election process is that electoral rigging takes place before, during and after ballots are cast.  To borrow words from Postwatch, “In Cameroon the administration… manufactures election results two years before the vote. The figures are then preserved in the drawers ready to come out like magic declaring the incumbent winner…!”(op.cit.)
 2. Spin and Lies in the State Media
Every Cameroonian knows that the State media routinely feeds the populace with salacious news about the ruling party even if the news items are all spins.  Incidentally, news about opposition parties does not get much attention. Whenever it does it is vilifying news.  Government-owned media is annoyingly deceptive. As Norman Solomon observes,” the deceptions of the media… are not simply those that have to do with selectivity of sources or an obvious imbalance in the information offered, but also those more clever forms of media distortion that derive from subtle shadings , and the calculated instruments of denigration”(1).[iii]   Prior and during elections, the CPDM constantly hijacks the State media to diffuse pro-regime messages in flagrant disregard of the law stipulating equal access to media time for political parties in Cameroon. Postwatch points out that the CPDM party has gotten into the habit of bribing the private media as well: “Under the ‘subvention scheme’ some private newspapers and radio stations are coerced to campaign for the ruling party. Bribe money given to private radio stations can go up to 5.000.000. FCFA …” [iv] Let me say in passing that it is not only the media that is misappropriated by the ruling CPDM party during elections. Government property such as vehicles, personnel and money are used by the party for campaign purposes.  
The foregoing leads us to draw the conclusion that the CPDM party preys on journalistic fraud to foster its diabolical ends. In doing so, they  violate the basic principle of journalism  which was unambiguously embodied in the code of journalistic ethics adopted in 1923 by the American Society of Newspaper Editors stating that “ Sound practice makes clear distinction between news reports and expressions of opinion. News reports should be free from opinion or bias of any kind” (27).[v] The news media is supposed to foster healthy debate, raise conflicting points of view and present all sides of a story.
3. Electoral Gerrymandering and Fraud
Mr. Biya’s regime creates Fake voter registers. After every election, the president orders his henchmen and partners in crime to tinker with voter registries by deleting obvious opposition names. Furthermore, the regime gives its blessing to the creation of clandestine voter registration.  What this means is that CPDM cronies (fons, chiefs, lamidos, divisional officers, district officers, etc) compile their own registers in clandestine locations which are later validated as official voter registers. Blood thirsty tyrants like Chief Doh Gah Gwanyin of Balikumbat in Ngoketunjia Division is notorious for running  at least four polling stations in his palace during every presidential election in Cameroon. He is not alone in committing this felony. Many other traditional leaders aid and abet the CPDM in electoral fraud in various ways.  The CPDM is notorious for flouting the law that stipulates respect for voter registration deadlines. Mr. Biya has no respect for constitutionality or legality at all, much less for voter registration cut-off dates. Consequently, regime supporters are registered on the day of election, regardless of the fact that the law clearly states that voter registration should run from January to June.  Ghost voter registration is the stock-in-trade of the Biya regime. More often than not, the names of non-existent or even dead people are inserted into voter registers and corresponding ballot papers inserted into the ballot boxes. Often, in flagrant violation of the law, only one half of the electoral list per polling station is published when such lists are published at all. Sometimes, voters who registered to vote in one polling station may have their names deliberately transferred to a distant polling station. For example, voters in Bonaberi in Douala could have their names transferred to Logpom, some 15 kilometers away.  Given that commercial transportation is generally grounded on Election Day, these displaced voters end up not being able to vote.  Many times, crowds of anti-regime voters are sent to the wrong polling stations in an attempt to prevent them from voting. Then, the administration tallies the ballots and phony results, and life goes on as usual in Cameroon!
4. Draconian Voter Registration Process
The CPDM-led regime has made the voter registration process herculean. In bona fide democratic countries, the driver’s license, social security card, certificate of birth, etc are valid documents accepted for voter registration purposes. In Cameroon, the National Identification Card is the only valid document accepted for this purpose. Biya’s cronies in positions of authority have made it almost impossible for known opposition voters to obtain ID cards. To obtain an ID card in Cameroon, the citizen has to provide a certificate of nationality, a 500 FCFA fiscal stamp (this figure might have changed), passport-sized photos, and an unspecified amount in bribery to the police superintendent whose job is to sign the card. This makes it impossible for average Cameroonians who live below the poverty line to obtain a National Identification Card. On the contrary, reports abound testifying to the fact that CPDM cronies do hand out money stolen from state coffers to CPDM sympathizers to facilitate the process of obtaining National Identification Cards for them.
5. Stuffing Ballot Boxes
Things may change this year with talk about the availability of so-called transparent ballot boxes, but in the past it has been common practice for the Biya regime to stuff ballot boxes prior to Election Day. The CPDM is capable of manufacturing its own ballot boxes this year just to make sure that its candidate Mr. Biya is re-elected.  With Mr. Biya and his Ali Baba gang of scoundrels nothing is impossible. Don’t we say “L’impossible n’est pas camerounais?”[vi] Post watch observes that “in 1997 after registering some 8000 ghost voters, Doh Gwanyin of Balikumbat spent all night with the then DO of  Balikumbat  stuffing 8000 ballot papers into fake ballot boxes for ghost polling stations”(op.cit.)
6. Coercive Tactics
The CPDM regime is noted for resorting to scare tactics to swipe votes. In the palaces of fons, chiefs, and lamidos, voters are coerced into voting for the ruling party. Fons and chiefs intimidate their subjects (villagers), nchindas[vii] and harem of queens to vote for the CPDM willy-nilly. Often, pro-CPDM officials register foreigners to vote for the regime in power. There are documents out there that testify to the fact that CPDM officials have registered Chadians, Gabonese, and Equatorial Guineans in the Far North and South regions to vote for the ruling party.
Quite often, voters are ferried from polling station to polling station to vote for the CPDM.  To mask this act of fraudulence, the regime either refuses to provide indelible ink or produces chemicals that help to take off the indelible ink after voters have cast their votes. This way, pro-CPDM voters can vote as many times as they possibly can. It is important to point out at this juncture that in Cameroon, traditional rulers are auxiliaries of the government and, therefore, earn a salary from the administration. Thus, voting in favor of the ruling CPDM party boils down to a question of bread and butter as far as these misinformed, partially-educated traditional leaders are concerned.
7. Post-Electoral Rigging.
More often than not, even before the officially instituted counting committee sits down to validate the tallies, Divisional Officers and Senior Divisional Officers, all Biya’s appointees, produce bogus score sheets doctored to favor the CPDM party which are tabled to the central counting units. Such results are hastily proclaimed. Notable gimmicks played by these officials include fiddling with numbers: 39% for CPDM becomes 93%; 75% for an opposition party becomes 57% and so on. Sometimes, these corrupt administrators annul valid votes without justification. The objective is always to ensure that the CPDM emerges as the winner.

8. Creation of a Bogus Election Watchdog 
In a bid to divert national and international attention from the electoral fraud taking place in Cameroon, Mr. Biya has created a paper-tiger called Elections Cameroon aka ELECAM. Sub-paragraph 11 of article 13 of the December 29, 2006 law creating ELECAM, makes it clear that “the post of chairperson, the vice chair and members of the electoral council are incompatible with functions or quality…of a member belonging to a political party or a group supporting a political party, a candidate or list of candidates.” The statute further states that the appointment of members into the electoral council of ELECAM will be chosen from amongst Cameroonian personalities known for their competence, moral integrity, intellectual honesty, and sense of patriotism.  
Interestingly, ELECAM has turned out to be a gigantic sham. Given its constitution, it is not impartial enough to conduct free and fair elections in Cameroon.  Truth be told, ELECAM is a masked organ of the CPDM, a tool in the hands of Mr. Paul Biya and his party lieutenants. A major criticism of the ELECAM is that in violation of the law governing the body, Biya has appointed militants of his CPDM party; a party ridden with stories of corruption, influence peddling and misappropriation of public funds into the board. Eleven (11) of its sixteen (16) board members are members of the Central Committee and Political Bureau of the ruling CPDM party. This thinly veiled attempt to control ELECAM is seen by many sound-minded Cameroonians and international election monitors as the death knell of free and fair elections in Cameroon. ELECAM is both player and referee at the same time. Reacting to the appointment of members of ELECAM, opposition Member of Parliament, Hon. Jean Jacques Ekindi, makes the following comment to the press: “Today, it is clear that the consultation which the Prime Minister carried out was in fact useless. The appointments on December 30 were a clear indication that nobody cared about our proposals…”[viii]
The implication of all this is that the upcoming presidential election in Cameroon is a non-starter. Biya will rig it by all means necessary! He is prepared to do it at all costs and is getting his military primed to wreak havoc in the event of a post-electoral upheaval. The latest news from Cameroon state that Mr. Biya has recruited  circa 1300 new elements into armed forces in preparedness for the eventuality of a post-election popular uprising.
Conclusion
I will end this discourse with a quote culled from the US State Department’s report[ix] on elections and human rights abuses in Cameroon. The report sheds ample light on how the international community, especially the United States of America, views the electoral process in Cameroon. Opinions vary on how free and fair elections are in Cameroon and are reflected in the US State Department's report on human rights:
In October 2004 President Biya, who has controlled the government since 1982, was re-elected with approximately 70 percent of the vote in an election widely viewed as freer and fairer than previous elections and in which opposition parties fielded candidates. However, the election was poorly managed and marred by irregularities, in particular in the voting registration process, but most international observers deemed that the irregularities did not prevent the elections from expressing the will of the voters. Some observers said progress had been made and called the election transparent; others, such as the Commonwealth Observer Group, stated that the election lacked credibility. Some opposition parties alleged that there was multiple voting by individuals close to President Biya’s party and massive vote rigging. One domestic group described the election as a masquerade. The 2002 legislative elections, which were dominated by the CPDM, largely reflected the will of the people; however, there were widespread irregularities (US Department of State 2006, ‘Elections and Political Participation’ in Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2005 – Cameroon, 8 March – Attachment 3).

In sum, when Mr. Biya does ‘win’ the October Presidential election, this ‘victory’ should not be attributed to political savvy but  rather to the fact that this man is a political skunk bereft of any sense of morality,  integrity,  and self-respect. The facts discussed above speak volumes about Mr. Biya and the cavalier manner in which he is governing Cameroon. His ruling party can best be described as a gargantuan fraud contraption designed to rob the electorate, at home and in the diaspora,  of their right to freely choose their leaders. It is a nihilistic structure intended to nib all attempts at democratic advancement in the bud.
About the author
Dr. Vakunta is professor of modern languages at the US Defense Language Institute in California. He is the author of numerous books including Cry My Beloved Africa: Essays on the Postcolonial Aura in Africa (2007), No Love Lost (2008), Ntarikon (2009) and Indigenization of Language in the Francophone Novel of Africa: A New Literary Canon (2011).  He runs a blog at http://www.vakunta.blogspot.com 

NOTES


[ii]Gross, L. Martin. The Political Racket.  New York: Ballantine Books, 1996.
[iii] Postwatch.  "Election Rigging in Cameroon: A State of the Devil’s Art.” Retrieved on July 19, 2011 from http://www.postwatchmagazine.com/2004/10/election_riggin.html
[iv]  Solomon, Norman. The Habits of Highly Deceptive Media: Decoding Spin and Lies in Mainstream Media. Monroe, Common Courage Press, 1999.
[v] Op.cit
[vi] Bob Kohn. Journalistic Fraud. How the New York Times Distorts the News and How it can no Longer be Trusted. Nashville, WND Books, 2003.
[vii] Nothing is impossible in Cameroon
[viii] Royal pages
[ix] Yemti, Harry Ndienla. “ELECAM Appointment: A Death to Democracy in Cameroon.”  Retrieved March 22, 2011 from http://www.zimbio.com/President+Paul+Biya/articles/4209437/ELECAM+appointment+death+democracy+Cameroon 
[x] RRT Research Response. Retrieved on July 19, 2011 from http://www.mrt.rrt.gov.au





The Problem is the Cameroonian People


Everyone I have met from Cameroon seems to agree that the current Government is the problem. Also, they all seem to complain about corruption and the need for overhauling and reforming the system. We are all virtually in agreement that something has to be done. We all seem to want to do something about it. So, why can’t we ? Why is it that we as a people can’t do what we need and want ? Why do we –as a people—continue to do the things that we don’t want and not do the things that we want ? What is it with the African man that he can’t seem to reconcile his actions with his desires and aspiration ?  When it comes the time to agree on any given course of action to decisively act on a problem, they are all too undecided or unwilling or too afraid. In some cases, they are even against the honest attempts of others to work for solutions.
 
Whenever African people come together to discuss a topic, you will notice that more often than not, things easily get out of control. It quickly becomes a display of emotion, of personal ego and or self-aggrandizement. One can quickly notice how things get switched from the topic at hand to a topic of personalities, envy, jealousy, personal destruction and sometimes hate. This inherent immaturity –of mind and spirit--is one of the main cause of our inability as a people to come together and solve a problem of any kind. This inherent cognitive weakness is what has made some to wonder if the continent was ready for any kind of democratic process, where every topic requires vigorous debates. Some have argued that it may be a luxury that the people of Africa simply can’t afford. And that we as a people are not --yet--attuned to the higher principles required for any relatively grandiose collective endeavor. That we have not to arrive at the mental and spiritual state of mind, where you learn and assimilate the idea that the “Collective” must transcend the individual. That we are still to comprehend the spirit of collaboration that seamlessly made creation and cosmogony possible. The idea that we must be part of something bigger than ourselves. Why our individual existence on earth truly only matters as a “Collectivity”. Why our lives are without purpose without the awareness and knowledge of Oneness and “Wholeness”. We have not quite reconciled ourselves to the indispensable need to devote ourselves to something greater than ourselves, less we remain “SMALL MEN” forever. The work for the “Collective” is truly how we impact change in any significant way. The “Collective” or the collaborative is always much bigger than any one man, and no one man should be allowed to subject his will to the “Collective”.  The “Collective” truly becomes the “US” as a people.

It becomes the center of our aspirations. The symbol that sums up our ambitions, our hard work, our sacrifices as a people. It’s the sum total of “all of us” that truly matters and never each of us as individuals. Just like the hive of bees is able to produce a delicious honey as a group, without individual bees being able to achieve the same result. The colony of bees must be bigger than any single bee. It’s the “whole” hive that matters, and not the individual bee. That’s how the cells of the human body are able to keep the whole body alive without each of them being able to achieve the same results individually. The live of the cell only has a purpose if there is life to the whole body. The body becomes the essence of the cell’s existence. The people from Africa must begin to attune themselves to these basic principles of selflessness, oneness and wholeness. They must come to the knowledge that any meaningful change can only be achieved when we are all attuned to these principles of the “Collective” or oneness and wholeness. Once attuned to this higher level of consciousness, we become less aware of our individuality and even to some extent of our own mortality, and more aware of our “collectivity”. We then begin to understand the mystic of collective sacrifice and the cosmic laws that govern this fundamental and secret principle. The individual becomes more cognizant of the collectiveness of the problems of society. When we do, we begin the internal transformation that predisposes us to dedicate ourselves and knowledge to the collective good and not just to the SELF. We begin to see corruption, abuse of power, personal responsibility and accountability under a more holistic prism. We become more creative and more constructive. We want to uplift the lives of others as much we do of our own. We begin to comprehend the oneness of mankind and the connectedness of our beings at a much deeper and subtle level.
 
“The people get the Government they deserve” --Thomas Jefferson. We are all somehow –in the depth of our being—complicit of the state of our country. We are all -- as a people-- to some degree, responsible for what’s wrong with our government. And as every day goes by without us coming together to address the problems, we are doom to perpetuate the misery of MAN and in that sense we are guilty as a people, by our --unconscious--complicit silence and inaction. This is the “collective” sin, that strays us in the wilderness of existence. The sin that delays our arrival to the proverbial promise land. And until we become aware, conscious of the basic laws that govern our own existence, until we understand the purpose of creation, until we become attuned and aligned to the requirements of the creature, we will remain lost in the wilderness of existence. That’s in part why I call for the "Spiritual Awakening", the very act of the proverbial "Being Born Again" that opens man’s consciousness to the universal truth and awareness to the oneness of mankind.
"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters." –Benjamin Franklyn. Perhaps this quote sums up current the state of our collective karma –or the sins-- that we as a people carry. And in that sense, we the people, are the problem. It’s up to us..

Retrieved on August 15, 2011 from  
By Dr. Peter Wuteh Vakunta


Rewrite the African Dictator Handbook

 By Dr. Peter Wuteh Vakunta
I have advocated for the need to change the constitution of Cameroon. It is my belief that the current constitution gives too much power to the executive branch or the president. I have indicated that the African culture, to my view is already too surrendering and too “weak”  because of its practices of de-facto inequality among people. This is what the continent suffered from when the colonial masters arrived. The African man was generally voluntarily submissive and overly respectful to the proposals of the Whiteman --also to the Chiefs and the elders-- granting him excessive hospitality to the point of surrendering his own dignity and even that of his own people.

This behavior of elevating another human being above yourself, will necessarily inhibits your ability to make any objective and bold judgment or state any unbiased criticism. The subconscious impulse to quickly admit your inferiority or your incapacity to compete is what leads people to settle for the status quo even when they know and accept the need for a change. The boldness and strength of mind to break out the conventional thinking or reason differently, the audacity to ask the questions that have never been asked before, the ingenuity to imagine things as they have never been and ask why not, the curiosity to challenge the status quo and the de facto answers, the affirmative rebelliousness to express new thoughts even at the risk of being rejected, the desire to be free from within will all be greatly inhibited when the people lack the self confidence because they think they are inferior or that they have to be overly respectful to someone who is in position of power of some sort, in order not to offend them.

Don't get me wrong, we have to be respectful to others, we have to respectful to the stranger, we have to be respectful to the elders, we have to be respectful to the people who have achieve some stature in society. I am an advocate for all of that. But the right balance and measure to which you do all these things matters, granting that human beings are influenced by their psychology and their state of mind. I will take it one step further and argue that a little bit of measured rebellion, controlled defiance, and reasoned disobedience are always good to the human mind and soul. When you become overly respectful and to the point of surrender, you risk diminishing your own identity or personality. And as a result, you elevate the beneficiary of your behavior to a higher moral and psychological ground at the detriment of yourself. You then create the fertile ground for the narcissistic and self centered mind to take hold and exert dominion upon you. This can ultimately result in what I have termed "self enslavement". The voluntary submission of your dignity --and perhaps your humanity--to another human being.

This can be seen when someone becomes president in an African country, how all the chiefs, Fons, traditional leaders will bow down and surrender their humanity to new leader so easily, without any intellectual and spiritual examination of the unintended consequence of the human psychological impact of such a submissive behavior. This is how we have unintentionally created and elevated the dictators in power today. This state of mind is what made colonization and slavery so easily possible in Africa. The natural tendency to unconditionally submit oneself to the Whiteman, to the elderly or the leaders of society. The fear to offend the powerful or the elder will inhibit people's ability to stage any constructive critic or debate upon which lies the capacity of a society to change and evolve. The fear to hold the leader accountable hinders the people's ability to fight against any abuse of power, corruption and injustice.

Given this inherent weakness in our culture, traditions and ethos, the last thing we need is a constitution that gives vague and unlimited power to any one man. The constitution or the law of the land must be designed in such a way that power is distributed and shared among different branches of government. It must be designed so that the will of any one man must not prevail at the expense of the majority. It must be crafted so that inherent weaknesses of the African culture such as allegiance to the tribe and the ethnic group –before that of the nation-- has minimal or no impact to the psyche of the people. This is in my view how we build and protect a modern system of government with enough resistance and resilience to dictatorship and totalitarianism in Africa. We have seen time and time again how one man, surrounded by small group of people, --mainly people of his tribe-- will highjack the system with the aid of the military and stay in power indefinitely. Once the new leader comes to power, he understands three things: put people of his tribe in key positions –Military Generals, Ministers--, beef up his personal protection –that way, he can’t be overthrown by any coup--, bribe the military --as it is the instrument of repression to any popular uprising or revolt--. This is the handbook of the African dictator. This is what all African dictators have come to master.

This is the crafty art of staying in power indefinitely without the consent of the people. Once a dictator have settled in and mastered these principles, he is no longer accountable to the people that he governs. Elections can rigged and thanks to the leader’s tribesmen –in key position-- who will work tirelessly to ensure that election only leads to one outcome, thanks to the military that will crush any popular uprising or revolt when the people cry out for justice. This is the field manual of the African dictator. This is how you stay in power for 42 years in Libya, for 28 years in Cameroon and over 30 years in Gabon, just to name a few. Any new constitution must take these lessons learned into account. The newly drafted constitution must have built-in mechanism to prevent any one man from digging in so deep. The principles of counter power, power sharing and power distribution, term limits can be leveraged to achieve this goal. We must come to the realization that good governance is really the essence of any change that we seek. The principles of good governance are not an abstract, they speak to the core values of a society. Society must institute mechanisms to reward good behavior while discouraging and punishing bad behavior. The change we seek must institute constraints that compels all of us to do right by society. These are the –accountability—deterrents that ultimately make us become better human beings of society. The young people of today are the leaders of tomorrow. We must instill and promote good behavior and good judgment in our young people. This is in part the down payment for the good governance that we seek in the leaders of tomorrow.



The De-identification of African Bush-fallers in the Diaspora


By Peter W.Vakunta

Introduction
Concepts such as "de-identification," and "anonymization” are highly nuanced and context-specific terms. Oftentimes, the term ‘de-identification’ involves the removal of personally identifying information in order to protect personal privacy. Other instances of de-identification involve the willful obliteration of unique identifiers for individuals in the data set. In the health arena, de-identified information describes data that does not identify an individual and with respect to which there is no reasonable basis to believe that the information can be used to identify an individual (Hubbard, 2007). Anonymization, on the other hand, is a term that describes the act or process of making anonymous, of hiding or disguising identity as a security precaution. In this paper, we shall attempt to explore the psycho-sociological ramifications of de-identification among African immigrants (also called bush-fallers by Cameroonians) in the United States of America and Europe.  The terms "de-identification," and “anonymization” will be employed interchangeably throughout this discourse.


Physical estrangement from one’s cradle is a painful experience. More often than not, Africans leave their places of birth to resettle in other climes for a myriad of reasons. We will never fully comprehend the motivations underlying physical exile until we ask immigrants why each and every one of them emigrated to where they now reside. This notwithstanding, one could surmise that Africans who emigrate from Africa to Europe and North America tend to do so for two fundamental reasons: to obtain higher education and to avail themselves of economic opportunities that are non-existent at home. Unfortunately, this home is portrayed derogatorily in the Western press.

In the Western media, Africa is synonymous with grinding poverty, internecine wars, corruption, misgovernment, rape of democracy, and human rights abuses.  As  American blogger, P. Kayla observes, “When you ask a child, "What does Africa look like?" I bet you every single child will respond with something like "skinny kids" or "jungles" because that is what they see of Africa on television. They don't see the big cities and cars and regular families like theirs” (Blog, 2010).Therefore,  it stands to reason that bush-fallers easily succumb to the temptation to turn their backs to their ‘dark’ continent in the pursuit of greener pastures in the West,  however illusory these pursuits may be.

Research indicates that a sizeable proportion of African immigrants living in the Diaspora find themselves in the throes of self-denial in their attempt to fit into the mainstream (Ngwa and Ngwa, 2006)—a phenomenon labeled the “diaspora dilemma” by Ozodi Thomas Osuji (2006).  African Immigrants initially experience physiological and psychological shock as the following statements made by an Ethiopian bushfaller in Germany suggests: “There are a lot of cultural differences that I have already observed: the way they dress; the way the people behave: smokers, small girls and boys kiss on the street, and so on; the way they treat people” (Ngwa and Ngwa, 2006: 94).

Regardless of the nature of jobs they are performing, African immigrants soon learn that as far as white folks are concerned they are just immigrants, disposable people. Not many Africans are considered viable candidates for top-ranking jobs in the United States of America. The white man is very reluctant to allow an African with his heavy accent and other socio-cultural idiosyncrasies to rise to the top. Of course, there are exceptions to every general rule; there are, indeed, some well placed Africans in North America. This notwithstanding, the irrefutable truth is that African immigrants are often targeted for acts of racism and discrimination.

Whether they are citizens, refugees, asylum seekers or permanent residents, people of African origin often stand out among the principal subjects of racism and xenophobia in many parts of Europe and North America. In Western Europe, citizens of African origin face ongoing discrimination and violence. In parts of Eastern Europe, immigrants of African origin are highly visible and often vulnerable targets of brutal racism and unfair discrimination.

Racist and xenophobic prejudices indiscriminately victimize people regardless of their official citizenship or residency status. Human rights watchdog, Human Rights First notes that discrimination and racist violence against immigrant foreign nationals is generally both under-reported and under-recorded (2008).  It further states that in the United States, although the largest number of reported hate crimes continues to be committed against African-Americans, a dramatic rise in anti-immigrant violence accompanied a new mainstreaming of anti-immigrant rhetoric and fears [51].

The rising violence was reflected both in media reporting and in the statistical data available from annual national hate crime statistics.
Xenophobia accentuated by racist sentiments is so problematic that some creative writers have attempted to fictionalize it as seen in the following excerpt from Benjamin Kwakye’s latest novel, The Other Crucifix(2010): “The official stared at me and asked matter-of factly, ‘Where are you going, nigger?’” (7)  The protagonist’s head-on collision with savage racism and the contradictions inherent in black and white polarity in America is portrayed as psycho-pathology. This novel is an illustration of the American Dream paradox—an openness belied by obscurantist make-believe.

The question that begs to be asked at this juncture is how bush-fallers react to provocative acts of marginalization and denigration in the Diaspora. All too often, African immigrants in the West suffer from mild psychological disorders as a result of the countless frustrations they face as they go about their business.  Pent-up emotions resulting from inability to obtain what is desired (cars, homes, jobs, money, you name it) have driven some immigrants into throwing tantrums at the slightest provocation; they rave and rant.  Quite a few resort to homicide as this excerpt culled from a blog indicates:Another middle class Nigerian American professional has, once again, killed his wife in cold blood. I say once again because it is apparently becoming the pastime of some faceless Nigerian men in the United States to latch unto every imaginable unreason to do their own wives unto death. A Nigerian American man in Texas woke up one day and decided to tie his wife with a long cattle rope to the back of their family car and engaged an entire city’s police department in a street-by-street drag race.

By the time he was through all the roads and their stupefied spectatorship were left to bear witness to the battered body of a lifeless woman who was once a daughter, mother, sister, friend, and neighbor. Another man elsewhere tracked and trailed his wife on a rather bright day, ran her car off the expressway into a roadside valley and slugged her at the wheel point blank with a pistol that was specially marked for the hunt. Yet another man in a different state stalked his wife all the way into their family bedroom where he trapped her, following an alleged long distance telephone conversation with her lover in Europe, and proceeded to rain machete blows of unforgettable bodywork – in the very lame tradition of failed artists – all over her face and arms.

Till today the survivor woman of that implosion carries her stump and sutures like throwback testimonials from the blood oil and diamond genocides of Biafra, Liberia, and Sierra Leone (Obiwu, 2010).Others sink into profound taciturnity symptomatic of brewing storms. Occasionally, angst could be misplaced. This happens when the individual expresses angry at a person that is not responsible for his or her predicament. Some bush-fallers are known to vent their anger on spouses and children as seen in the passage above, thus making themselves liable to legal sanctions.
At this point, I would like to shift gears and discuss some less perceptible ways in which African immigrants react to discrimination and denigration in the Diaspora.

I will proceed by way of a medical analogy: getting rid of an abcess. An abscess refers to a tender mass of debris and pus that looks pink or deep red, and is easily pressed. Abscesses commonly grow around your armpits, anus, vagina, bass of spinal column, tooth or groin. An abscess is caused by a blockage in the sebaceous glands or sweat glands, minor punctures of the skin, little breaks and inflammation of hair follicles. An inflammation arises once your body tries to fight the germs that penetrate into the said glands. If you open an abscess, you will find bacteria, dead cells and other debris in it. Your abscess will start bothering you as it grows bigger every day. It will completely catch your attention as the presence of tension under your skin can no longer be ignored. To get rid of an abcess, you have to go through inspection to determine if the cause of your abscess is a foreign object that needs to be removed. If the cause is not a foreign object, then your doctor will have to drain the abscess through incision.
I view the symbolism of a malignant body through an abcess as an appropriate description of the malaise in which most African immigrants live in the United States of America and Europe. In an attempt to drain off their Afritude (quality of being African), bush-fallers have recourse to various paradigms. The bush-faller’s abcess is his Africanness—this blackness that constitutes the cause of his very undoing in the White man’s land. Caught in this crossfire of psycho-pathological warfare bush-fallers repudiate the following aspects of their psychological make-up:

LANGUAGE
A great majority of Africans living in the Diaspora feel ashamed to speak their mother tongues. Consequently, they willfully trade off their indigenous languages for foreign tongues. To them, the language of the white man is the language of power; it is the language of science; the language of prestige and accomplishment.  As far as these bush-fallers are concerned, African vernacular languages belong in the remote villages they have left behind. Children begotten in the Diaspora are admonished against speaking the vernacular languages of their parents—Swazili, Igbo, Mungaka, Zulu, Medumba, Beti, Meukoh, Vengo, Nsei, and so on.  If these kids desire to learn any of these African languages in order to meet college requirements, they will have to learn it at school, preferably from an American professor who learnt the language during one of his safari tours to Africa. I know of a Kenyan couple living in America, both professors who speak Swazili fluently but would not condescend to teach their college-bound daughter their native language. The kid has to learn it in college from a White Swahili professor, because American Swahili is just a little superior to African Swahili, you know. I am acquainted with an Egyptian professor who teaches Arabic at my institution who will not teach her daughter Arabic at home. The poor kid is now taking Arabic classes taught by an American instructor at a community college.  See? African Arabic is no match with American Arabic. I see you shaking your head and asking yourself what is wrong with Africans?

FOOD
Our delicious African dishes—ero, ogwono, egusi, koki, ekwang, moin-moin, crayfish, dodo, puff-puff,  njama-njama, water–fufu, garri, and more have become anathema in the homes of bush-fallers in America and Europe. Hitherto, eaten with relish, these foodstuffs no longer have space on our dining tables because, as you have rightly guessed, they remind us of where we originate. Our white friends and spouses will shame us for eating stuff reserved for monkeys.  I remember bringing some ero and water-fufu from home two years ago for my friend who lives in Chicago. His parents had insisted that I take the precious parcel to their son who had not been home for twelve years. In the words of his mother, “let him eat this food and hear my smell in it.” This is a powerful statement in African cultures, especially if the food is coming from one’s biological parents. To my dismay, when I arrived at my friend’s home with the food items properly packaged, he shouted at the top of his voice: “Eh, eh! Massa, you wan kill me?  Ma white nyango go divorce me if dis ting enter dis house. Massa, I don’t eat this stuff anymore. If ma titi put eye dei, ye go broke marred now now.”[Oh,  oh! My friend, are you trying to kill me? My Caucasian wife will divorce me right away if this food gets into our house. I don’t eat this stuff anymore. If my wife sees it she will divorce me right away]. So much for cross-racial marriages!

AFRICAN OUTFIT
Like our indigenous foods and languages, our traditional garments—boubou, gandura, agwada, ndikong, dansiki, kabba, and more have undergone asphyxiation.  The beautifully embroidered outfits we brought from Africa are gathering dust in our closets and boxes. If we wear them, we will be identified as primitive Africans. Heck!  That does not bode well for our upward mobility in the white man’s world. The cool thing to do is dress up in American blue jeans and collarless T-shirts 24/7. While in Rome do as the Romans, you know.

ONOMASTICS
What’s in a name? Did I hear that? There is everything in a name! This explains why the naming ceremony is not a mindless affaire in Africa.  We do not simply give names to our children. The names we give our kids are pregnant with meaning. In my village Bamunka, for example, names are communicative labels. For example, ‘Keyeyeng’ means ‘Wait and see’; ‘Wuteh’ translates the concept of being a ‘loner’.   ‘Nyibanda’ signifies ‘God’s love for all and sundry’.  Sadly enough, for reasons that may not be divulged here, some of us substitute Western names for our African names. For instance, Mohammed Fofana becomes Jim Moore;   Ngoran Fondufe metamorphoses intoJem Sparks; Leonie Kandem is transformed into Kassandra Robertson; Mbionyi Tata now goes by the name David Jackson and so forth. These acts of disfiguring and self-denial are not fortuitous. They are calculated tricks to rid ourselves of our African identity. To our minds, these names constitute our most cumbersome source of embarrassment. The compulsive desire to deny oneself is part of the whitewashing scheme that Frantz Fanon denounces in his seminal work Black Skin, White Masks (1967).

CULTURE
In bygone times, cultural literacy was regarded by Africans as a life skill.  For instance, the beating of the traditional drum and other musical instruments was a skill passed down from generation to generation. As Burkinabe fiction writer, Nazi Boni, points out in his novel Crépuscule des temps anciens:
http://gan.doubleclick.net/gan_impression?lid=41000000033398705&pubid=21000000000258567 Tout jeune homme devait savoir manier avec aisance plusieurs instruments de musique, particulièrement le tian-houn, le kondio, le kokoni, le win’za et toutes les variétés de konkoans ou trompettes. Le tiohoun communément appelé balafon, le donkoho, minuscule tambourin de guerre à la taille de guêpe, le kere’nko, gigantesque donkolo, le kankan, tambour ventru, le ziri’nko, énorme kankan funéraire, constituaient—et constituent encore…des instruments  réservés aux chanteurs et compositeurs traditionnels: les kakawa.(30-31)
[Every young man was expected to know how to play several musical instruments with expertise, especially the tian-houn, kondio, kokoni, win’za  and all the varieties of the  konkoans or trompets. The tiohoun commonly called  balafon, donkoho, small war tambourin the size of a wasp, the kere’nko, gigantic donkolo, the kankan, hollow drum,  ziri’nko, big funeral kankan constituted—and still constitute…instruments reserved for use by traditional composers and singers: the kakawa. ]
Nowadays, this cultural activity is regarded as decadent culture.Other aspects of our indigenous cultures have had the same fate. Kids no longer stand up to cede their seats to elders.  They prefer to sit down while the older folks stand.  We no longer eat fufu, ero and njama- njama with our fingers.  No!  We insist on using forks!  Being able to handle silverware correctly at table is a marker of civilization, you know. Never mind these primitive Chinese and Japanese who serve chop-sticks in their restaurants!

CONCLUSION
In a nutshell, suffice it to re-iterate the thesis according to which the de-identification of Africans in the Diaspora is not simply a face-saving fad; but rather a survival stratagem. Quite often, de-identification results in anonymization, the highest stage of self-denial. African bush-fallers are not unique in this experience.  Other minority groups in North America and Europe—Asians, Latinos, etc, have, to a lesser extent, been subjected to similar psycho- sociological traumas.  When dominant and minority cultures co-exist, conflict ensues. I have the conviction that the onus rests upon immigrants to look for less demeaning ways and means to fight back all acts discrimination aimed at cowing them into subservience. They cannot afford to let their cultures sink into oblivion in order to please Caucasians.


Works cited
Boni, Nazi.  Crépuscule des temps anciens. Paris: Présence Africaine, 1962.
Fanon, Frantz. Peau noire, masques blancs. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1952.
___________ . Black Skin, White Masks.Trans. Charles Lam Markmann, New York:Grove press, 1967
Hubbard, Michael. “De-identification Data: What Every Privacy Professional Needs to Know.” NCHICA. 13th Annual Conference and Exhibition, September 23-26, 2007.
Human Rights First. “Victims of Violence Based on Racism and Xenophobia.”Retrieved December 12, 2010 from http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/our-work/fighting-discrimination/2008-hate-crime-survey/racism-and-xenophobia/iii-
Kwakye, Benjamin. The Other Crucifix. Oxfordshire.  Ayebia Clarke Publishing limited, 2010.
Kayla P. “How is Africa Portrayed in the Western Media?” Retrieved December 11, 2010 from http://www.peacejam.org/projects/How-Africa-is-Portrayed-in-Western-Media-300.aspx
Ngwa, Wilfred and Lydia Ngwa.  From Dust to Snow: Bushfaller. Princeton: Horeb Publications, 2006.
Obiwu. “Nigerian American Body Snatchers.” Retrieved July 19, 2010 from http://www.saharareporters.com/article/nigerian-american-body-snatchers
Osuji, Ozodi T. “African Immigrants in America.” Retrieved June 5, 2010 fromhttp://www.nigeriavillagesquare.com/articles/ozodi-thomas-osuji/african-immigrants-in-america.html


Cameroon High Commissioner in South Africa Backing Electoral Fraud

Dr. Peter Wuteh Vakunta

Some of you who are genuinely concerned about the outcome of the  upcoming presidential election in Cameroon have problably read my article captioned "Voting Rights for Cameroonians in the Diaspora: An Exercise in Futility" published in this forum on August 11, 2011. The crux of the matter in my article was to lay bare the gigantic fraud machine which our albatross, Mr. Paul Biya and his lieutenants , have put in place to rig this election. Not that this is new though. Mr. Biya has  rigged every election he has stood for since he came to power in 1982.  However,this year's election is particularly determiningg given that the eyes of the international community, notably France and other weighty role-players like the United States of America,  are on Cameroon. This notwithstanding, Mr. Biya and his henchmen seem unfazed as events on the ground seem to suggest.  The electoral fraud beast has been unleashed as the following report  about pre-election voter registration gerrymandering and fraud sent to us from Johannesbourg-South Africa seems to testify.
Please, note that this report  is written by a Francophone Cameroonian, Translator-interpreter and student at the renowned University of Witswaterand. I have decided to publish it unedited.

DONGUE TOKOTO PHILIPPE MOKOLO, SAQA , WITS UNIVERSITY, UNIVERSITY OF JOHANNESBURG,CONSULTANT FOR THOSE COMING TO STUDY IN SOUTH AFRICA, TRANSLATION OF YOUR DOCUMENTS FOR PRIVATE AND LEGAL DOCUMENTS
JOHANNESBURG SOUTH AFRICA
SWORN TRANSLATOR/INTERPRETER IN THE COURTS OF SOUTH AFRICA
CELL: +27736665307
E-mail: dongue_tokoto@yahoo.fr 

Cameroon is a sovereign state. In so doing, there will  be no interference of any given country of the world in her internal affairs. This was a different case whereby, South African citizens were registering for the elections in Cameroon.
WE ARE ON THE EVE OF THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS IN CAMEROON, BUT WHAT WE NOTICED ON THE 19TH OF AUGUST 2011 AT 127 HULSTEYN STREET KENILWORTH (TURFFONTEIN) Johannesburg South Africa, was as usual the same story as it was in the previous years.

The monolingual French decree  number “ décret no 2011/237 du 8 aoùt 2011 portant sur les modalités d’application de la loi no2011/013 du 13 juillet 2011 relative au vote des citoyens camerounais établis ou residant à l’étranger”(the decree number 2011/237 of the 8th August 2011 on the modalities of application of the law number: 2011/013 of the 13th July 2011 relating to the vote of Cameroonian citizens establishing  or residing abroad (confer www.prc.cm))published by a presidency of the republic which is supposed to be the presidency of all Cameroonians without discrimination stated”( Article 6(1)read: “ Pour s’inscrire sur une liste électorale, le citoyen camerounais établi ou resident à l’étranger doit présenter une carte consulaire en cours de validité…”. ( In order to  take registration on the electoral list, a Cameroonian establish or residing abroad must have  a valid consular card.) Confer  the pamphlet on elecam here attached.
The second document , still from the High commission of Cameroon in South Africa, states the followings:
See document 2 attached.

The 3rd document, still from the embassy provided us with another contradictory condition as seen in the 3rd attached document (which was being sold for three Rands, which is  the South African currency, equivalent to 300 fcfa per copy (R 3.00)
 Dear Cameroonians, the registration was supposed to start at 9 o’clock (I was on the spot at that time, and the High commission came at 2 pm), instead started at 2 pm. twenty minutes later, a Toyota of  more than 24 seats came from Yeoville with a delegation to take their registration.
There were two tables for the occasion. After a couple of thick,  the registration actually started amongst which I was the first.

The acting High commissioner in charge of the consular affairs, Mr., Boukane Bertin  “clarified the new conditions of registration as stated in the document number 3 below. He was in charge of delivering consular cards to those who didn’t have, to go and registered to the second table where was the elecam representative, Mr. Fotabong, accompanied by his registrar. One of the conditions was that asylum seekers were not qualified to register.
After my registration, I asked for the elecam receipt, and was told to take it later,and  I got rumours that Boukane Bertin, walter and Kemadjou  were registering people with asylum. I went there to see what was really taking place  I saw Walter(+27781009198) and Kemadjou taking incomplete file for asylum seekers to register. I decried it and then all of a sudden, Kemadjou ( cell +27837510441) pointed a finger to my mouth, threatening to beat me and to call the police to deport me. I said that you had no right to point a finger to my mouth. Walter on his own side sprang up and gave a powerful slap on my face, which I replied immediately.
NB: This was the 3rd time Walter is beating, meaning I reacted in self-defense. After this serious incident I was pushed out without collecting my voting card.
All this took place in front of elecam, Cameroonians, and the Cameroon High commission.
I left this compound above mentioned without taking my registration card.

For the attached documents referenced above, please visit:https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&ik=b1f994b00c&view=att&th=131e6614087e7dc8&attid=0.1&disp=inline&zw



ELECAM Masterminding Electoral Gerrymandering and Fraud in the United Kingdom
By Dr. Peter Wuteh Vakunta

On August 21, 2011, I posted an article on this blog titled “Cameroon High Commissioner in South Africa Backing Electoral Fraud”[i]. My article shed ample light on the cry of an aggrieved Cameroonian who had been subjected to physical abuse by Mr. Paul Biya’s uncouth henchmen because he had attempted to blow the whistle on electoral fraud perpetrated by Cameroon’s high Commissioner and his accomplices in Johannesburg. Today, I received news from another jaded Cameroonian national, Mr. Gabriel Nkwelle, resident in the United Kingdom about similar malpractices aided and abetted by Mr. Biya’s ELECAM appointees, namely Mrs. Dorothy Njeuma and Mr. Pierre Titi. For those youngsters who don’t know who Dorothy Njeuma is , suffice it to say that this is a political sly who has mastered the art of political artifice so well that she has remained in the good books of the powers-that-be from the time of Ahmadou Ahidjo to date.  Her longevity in power speaks volumes about how far she has hardened her ears and conscience to the cry of the Cameroonian wretched of the Earth, to borrow words from Frantz Fanon. As for the small fry named Pierre Titi, I have no clue who the heck that man is. I will let you read Mr. Nkwelle’s message but permit me say this to Cameoon’s Head of State: Evil is too big to be sat upon.  He that sows the wind harvests the whirlwind. Tyrants are predestined to have a tragic end. Rethink Hitler, Mobutu, Idi Amin, Samuel Doe, Ahmadou Ahidjo, Mubarak, Ben Ali and now Ghaddafi. Let Mr. Biya have a good laugh at the misery into which he has shamelessly plunged the country he claims to govern. But when that day comes, the Cameroonian people will laugh last and laugh best. What follows is Mr. Nkwelle’s message:
I, the undersigned Gabriel Nkwelle Cameroonian national residing in the UK, attended the Cameroon election procedure conducted by members of ELECAM Mrs. Dorothy Njeuma and Mr. Pierre Titi. It was decided that, due to lack of representatives from political parties in Cameroon, those attending should democratically set up commissions for Registration and voting by means of volunteers.Thirteen (13) members decided to take up the voluntary role. Out of the number decided, ten (10) where unfairly chosen by the ELECAM team. I followed the selection with keen interest.
Cameroon being a Democratic country, I deem the ELECAM team procedure of choosing the ten members not democrat and believe that the election in UK will not be free and fair because, those chosen are all members of the CPDM. Cameroonians and Cameroonian friends are excited to see the due process of democracy and transparency in this forthcoming Cameroon presidential election. Please, Mrs. Njeuma and Mr. Titi of ELECAM - Cameroon, clarify Cameroonians in writing on the criteria used to determine those to conduct the Election.
a) Was it democratic? If yes, please indicate the numbers voted for and those voted against. If not democratic, explain.
b) Was there any consultation with attendants before arriving at the final vote? If not, why?
c) Please indicate which party each of the ELECAM choice, UK commissions, belong to.
d) Please indicate by copy of their Consular cards or registration a list of these members’ legitimate right to vote before your today's selection.
e) Do you know them or related to any of them? Please attach your selection list of members.
f) What is your main aim of choosing only members of the ruling party without an opposition to challenge?
Mrs. Njeuma and Mr. Titi, you guys have today, clearly indicted the controversy in this election here in UK therefore, I call on all opposition parties to ask ELECAM to cancel the UK Registration and voting Commissions and give the power to re-select new members to the High Commissioner by means of democray.
Cameroonians should not forget that, it was the same Mrs. Njeuma on the 10/09/2005, that Presidential Degree dismissed her from the helm of the University of Buea, UB, which she headed from 1988. She was redeployed to serve as Rector of Yaoundé 1. Today, she has again decided to use her political ambition in favor of the ruling part which undermines the political Rights of Cameroonians, for a fair and free election. Please I expect your response before your departure to Cameroon.We can easily forget, but history will never.
God help us.
Gabriel Nkwelle

Note from Dr. Vakunta
Please, read my piece on the Gargantuan Electoral Fraud Machine devised by Paul Biya’s regime to rig this year’s presidential election at: http://www.postnewsline.com/2011/07/thegargantuan-fraud-machine-ofmr-paul-biyas-embargoed-regime-by-dr-peter-wuteh-vakunta-i-am-a-firm-believer-in-the.html

Toward a Western Annexationist Corporate Empire in Cameroon
By Dr. Peter Wuteh Vakunta

When Lenin argued many decades ago that imperialism was an advanced stage of capitalism, he meant it.  In his seminal work titled Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism(1917), this economic genius describes the function of financial capital in generating profits from  imperial colonialism.  His book is a synthesis of economic theories formulated by Karl Marx in Das Kapital  (1867). Lenin informs the reader that in order for capitalism to generate greater profits than the home market can yield, the merging of banks and industrial cartels produces  finance capitalism —the investment of capital in countries with under-developed economies.

In turn, such financial behavior leads to the partition of the world among monopolistic business companies and the great powers. Remember that this mentality was the genesis of the 1884 Berlin Conference that tore Africa apart. In the course of  colonizing undeveloped countries, Business and Government eventually engage in geopolitical conflict over the economic exploitation of large portions of the underdeveloped world and its populations.

Thus, imperialism requires monopolies of labor and natural-resource exploitation, and the exportation of finance capital (rather than goods) to sustain colonialism, which is an integral function of the imperialistic economic model. Furthermore, in the capitalist homeland, the super-profits yielded by the colonial exploitation of a people and their economy, permit businessmen to bribe native politicians—leaders and the upper stratum of the working class—to politically thwart workers' revolt (labor strike).

The scenario described above paints a vivid picture of the current expansionist enterprise embarked upon by Western powers in Cameroon. Not long ago, I published an article in this forum in which I decried the brazen exploitation of landowners in the towns of Penja and Njombé in the Mungo by a Franco-American Conglomerate, code-named Plantations du Haut Penja (PHP).[i]  Well, we haven’t heard the last of the machinations of these capitalist vultures that are hell bent on bleeding our people white with the collusion of some mindless fellows in power as the following article seems to suggest. Read on.   
Herakles lands $350 mln Cameroon palm oil deal[ii]
Sun Jul 17, 2011 9:24am GMT

YAOUNDE, July 17 (Reuters) - New York-based agricultural company Herakles Farms will develop some 60,000 hectares of oil-palm plantations in Cameroon's South-west region, project manager Delilah Rothenberg told Reuters in an interview.
"We are developing approximately 60,000 hectares of oil-palm plantation, and expect the total capital costs to be about $350 million, to be invested over several years," she said of the result of a land lease deal signed with the government.
Rothenberg did not give a start date for the project, adding the company was in initial nursery development involving 115,000 seedlings.
Land lease deals are becoming prevalent in Africa as developed markets rush to secure food supplies, but have been criticized as depriving often poor countries of the means to produce food for their own populations.
However, Rothenberg said Herakles would first aim to supply regional markets in west and central Africa before exporting the remainder.
She added Herakles was adhering to industry standards on sustainability and that the project would create some 9,000 local jobs (Reporting by Tansa Musa).
The statements made by the manager of Herakles Farms do not sit well with any informed Cameroonian who knows full well the fate of the people of the Mungo in hands of PHP.
Another article titled “Cameroon: peoples territories being targeted for oil- palm plantations,” sheds ample light on the hidden agenda behind these seemingly benevolent ventures in Cameroon in particular and Africa at large. Read on.


Cameroon: peoples territories being targeted for oil palm plantations[iii]
Powerful countries and corporations have targeted the African continent to become a commodity supplier for their industrial needs. This has led to intense land grabbing with industrial oil-palm plantations becoming in recent years a new source of land grabbing in many African countries. However, industrial oil-palm plantations are not new in some African countries. WRM electronic book "Oil Palm in Africa: past, present and future scenarios"[iv] gives an overview of how industrial plantations have been promoted in several African countries since colonial times: "Wherever it grows naturally, oi- palm has for centuries provided local communities with a large number of benefits such as palm oil, sauces, soap, wine, fertilizer (ashes); roofing (leaves), building material (trunk), medicines (roots). All of these traditional uses are until today very much part of the African culture in oil-palm countries.


When the European powers invaded the continent, they quickly realized that they could profit from trading palm kernels and palm oil, initially from natural palm stands and soon followed by the establishment of large-scale plantations, in most cases based on either forced or slave labor and in the appropriation of communities' lands. Independence resulted in the further entrenchment of the plantation system –encroaching on local peoples' lands—now based on state-owned enterprises with attached large industrial processing units.


World Bank and IMF-led structural adjustment policies imposed on African governments in the 90s resulted in the privatization of most of those industrial complexes and in the return of control over industrial palm oil production to foreign corporations. During the entire process summarized above, the traditional system based on the harvesting of fruits from natural or semi-natural palm stands and their conversion into palm oil through manual techniques managed to successfully coexist separately from the different centralized systems put in place by governments and corporations.


Over the last few years, the expansion of industrial plantations has changed its focus from edible palm oil to the production of agro-fuels, mostly led by a broad array of foreign corporations eager to invest in the region.
Cameroon is no exception to the agro-fuels boom. With already more than 76,500 hectares of industrial oil-palm plantations, the government is planning to lease huge areas of land to set up more oil-palm plantations. The Malaysian big player in the oil-palm sector, Sime Darby, has also set its eyes on the African continent to expand its business. The company has already been granted 220,000 hectares of land lease in Liberia for a 63 years period and it is now negotiating a 300,000 ha lease of land in Cameroon.


At an interview in the magazine The Ecologist, Samuel Nguiffo, from the Center for Environment and Development (CED), said in reference to the Sime Darby deal that "even if they only develop on degraded forest, the deal is likely to involve farmland being taken away from local communities." He also said that "degraded natural forests are located next to villages, and are considered as traditional land and `reserve' for the future expansion of communities' farmland. But according to the State law (which prevails), the State owns part of the land, and is custodian of the rest of the land. The Malaysian company will, therefore, enter a deal with the State, and not with the communities, but will be taking what is still considered by the communities as their traditional land, according to their customs," he says.


Furthermore, the US-based SG Sustainable Oils (SGSO) is planning a 30,000 hectares oil-palm plantation in the South-West Region in an area directly adjacent to the Korup National Park and Rumpi Hills Forest Reserve, and another 40,000 ha just to the east of that plantation and adjacent to Bakossi National Park and Banyang Mbo Wildlife Sanctuary. SGSO is affiliated with Herakles Farms (a US-based company that is a subsidiary of Herakles Capital Corp) and Sithe Global (a US-based energy company, involved in the Bujagali dam construction in Uganda and the Amaila Hydropower project in Guyana).


Sithe Global is 80% owned by the Blackstone Group, one of the largest investment firms in the world. In 2004, Bruce Wrobel founded Sithe Global Power. He is also the founder of Herakles Capital Corp. These companies share the same New York City mailing address as the NGO All for Africa, also founded by Bruce Wrobel. Mr. Wrobel and others founded All for Africa, in part, to help support and fund the oil-palm development of Herakles and Sithe Global. In collaboration with these two companies, All for Africa is promoting its "palm out poverty" campaign arguing that planting oil-palms will reduce poverty in Africa. They claim that this oil-palm development will not only be socially responsible but also environmentally sustainable. WRM was recently contacted by a group of US researchers working in Cameroon jointly with some local organizations that are strongly concerned about this project.


The researchers have sent a letter to All for Africa and Sithe Global urging them to provide full information on the project on the grounds that it may have terrible social and environmental negative impacts. The letter among other questions raised the following concerns: "The oil-palm plantation will displace and disrupt the social and economic situation for over 30 villages (over 3,000 people). Their culture and way of life is closely tied to these forests, which provide these villages with clean water, food, and important income-earning capabilities. Most of these villagers rely heavily on farming to feed their families and earn an income. It is unclear how local villagers will be compensated for loss of their forest and farms. Some documents suggest that villagers will be resettled and/or will be allowed to remain, but will be surrounded by oil-palms.


To date, SGSO has operated in an unscrupulous manner. Villagers from various villages have discovered SGSO teams demarcating land, opening transects, and planting pillars in their farmland without consent. Complaint letters concerning SGSO have been sent to government representatives. These letters described informal meetings SGSO has had with village and tribal elites who have given their support for the development without consultation from people in their villages. The original demarcation of the plantation, in fact, overlapped with existing forest titles and rights, including 2,500 ha of community forest, 5,415 ha of Council Forest, 132 ha with the Bakossi National Park, and 6,000 ha with the 3 km buffer zone to Korup National Park.


It was only after complaints from various individuals and organizations that the planned borders were changed. US-based researchers working in Cameroon informed us that, just a few weeks ago, the youths in one of the villages that will be directly affected by the oil-palm plantation threatened a SGSO bulldozer as it entered their village to establish an oil-palm nursery. Most of the villagers are against this development because it would mean losing their forests, and either being surrounded by oil-palms or being forced to relocate. The chief of the village was approached by representatives from SGSO and agreed to give up village land to allow the plantation to proceed. He did this without consent from people in his village. There is now a tremendous amount of in-fighting in the village and this is likely also occurring in each of the villages that will be affected by this plantation.


In addition to the social implications of this oil-palm plantation, the US researchers note that the majority of the land covered by the proposed plantation near Korup National Park is dense, mature, high canopy forest and the remaining being a mosaic of forest, agro-forest, farmland, and settlements. Forest and hunter surveys have shown that this area is home to the endangered chimpanzee and drill monkey and may be home to other highly threatened wildlife. This area might also be an important migration route for the forest elephant, which regularly uses Korup and the Rumpi Hills. This oil-palm plantation will not only remove important habitat for threatened species but it will also further isolate these species inside protected areas.


These protected areas will likely see increased bush-meat hunting as a result of the oil-palm plantationand the conservation community will be ill-equipped to do anything about it.Taken together, the US researchers argue that, "If this oil-palm development is allowed to continue it will potentially have far reaching, long-term negative cultural and socioeconomic consequences for the affected villagers, who are being bullied into selling their forests. Additionally, the forests in South West of Cameroon represent a stronghold for many kinds of endangered and endemic species. This oil-palm development will destroy ecosystems and key habitat for threatened species and will be catastrophic for the wildlife inside the neighboring protected areas. [v]

Folks, you got it in black and white. Apparently, some well-intended American researchers are weeping more than the bereaved by pointing out the possible negative consequences of this land grab in Cameroon. Strangely enough, their cry appears to be as ineffective as water down a duck’s back. Shamelessly, our ill-informed traditional leaders and uncouth government officials are dead bent on pauperizing the same people whose taxes pay their bloated salaries. As I see it, Cameroonians will never see the light at the end of the tunnel until there is a complete change in their thieving mindset.

Notes

The Cruel Death of a Taciturn Zombie: A Day of National Abstinence in Cameroon


By Dr. Peter Wuteh Vakunta


Fellow Cameroonians, at long last la date fatidique (fateful date) is now known. On October 9th 2011 Cameroonians of all stripes will flock to the polls to elect a new president who will pilot the statecraft for another septennat (seven-year term). Barely two days after setting the date for the much anticipated 2011 presidential election on October 9th, Paul Barthélémy Biya Bi Mvondo’s team moved swiftly, depositing his registration fee into the national treasury before the deadline by close of business on Wednesday august 31st (Chia).


Cameroonians of all persuasions had hoped that Mr. Biya, nicknamed the “Taciturn Zombie,” would heed the voices of sages calling on him to resist the temptation to commit political suicide by presenting himself as candidate for this tough job for which he has shown gross incompetence. Cameroonians of all ages had wished that Mr. Biya would take stock of his dismal track record since his accession to the supreme magistracy in Cameroon in 1982 and back out of the race. Cameroonians of both genders had prayed in earnest that Mr. Biya would save face by passing the baton to a less senile Cameroonian. Cameroonian youths across the board had thought that Mr. Biya would appease them by announcing his intention to not participate in the race to Etoudi. Tough luck! Alas, he has listened to no one but his own lone voice. And so, here we are once again likely to be saddled with a moribund albatross for seven more years.

The fact of the matter, though, is that the upcoming presidential poll is fraught with unknowns. What will transpire in Cameroon in the aftermath of this election is everyone’s guess. The atmosphere is terribly charged at home and in the Diaspora. For one thing, the Zombie is no longer in the good books of his French bosses for reasons known to all informed Cameroonians. His recent trip to China is an ill-omen, a sign of distasteful things to come. Cameroonians are simply fed up with this egoistic man who governs their country as if he were a mercenary in transit.Agreeing with me is Guerandi Mbara who observes: “nous assistons à la révolte du peuple camerounais contre un régime tyrannique qui ne pense qu’ à pérenniser son pouvoir et paupériser les Camerounais… (1). [we are witnessing the revolt of Cameroonian people against a tyrannical regime that is intent on staying in power perpetually and pauperizing Cameroonians…]

Cameroonians can no longer stomach this man who has run their national economy aground. They want to seize the moment and make a change in their lives and in the lives of their children. As French writer Fanny Pigeaud points out in his book titled Au Cameroun de Paul Biya (2011), “Chaque jour rapproche le Cameroun du moment où le pouvoir changera de mains et où les camerounais devront, s’ils veulent donner l’avenir à leurs enfants, faire le bilan des décennies passées”(8). [Each passing day brings Cameroon closer to the day when power will change hands and Cameroonians will take stock of the past decades if they really want to prepare a future for their children.]

Taking a cue from Pigeaud’s self-fulfilling prophecy, I emit a clarion call for a national day of abstinence throughout the Republic of Cameroon on October 8th. To prime ourselves for the lethal battle ahead, we need to abstain from alcohol. Liquor numbs the brain. As a wise man once said, “Drunkenness is nothing but voluntary madness” (Roman philosopher, Mid-1st Century). On this pre-election day, let all Cameroonians observe physical and psychological “Ramadan” by pondering the havoc that the Beti-led government in Yaoundé has wreaked on their once affluent and pristine nation. 

Let us reserve October 8th for stock-taking; Cameroonians will have to reflect on all that has been lost under the inept Biya regime: Cameroon Marketing Board, Victoria Deep Seaport, Mideno, Mideviv, Upper Nun Valley Development Authority (U.N.V.D.A), CDC, Palmol, and more.

Above all, we must abstain from fear. Let us heed the wise saying of an erstwhile American president who once said: “There is nothing to fear but fear itself” (Franklin D. Roosevelt, American 32nd President, 1933-1945).  Recently, I listened to an interview granted by Cardinal Christian Tumi on Radio France Internationale in which he lamented the fear that has gripped Cameroonians in this day and time. He noted that there are Cameroonians with the mental wherewithal to lead Cameroon in the right direction but are scared to death by fear. He frowned on Biya’s inability to read the handwriting on the wall. In his own words, “Si j'étais Paul Biya je ne me présenterais plus. 30 ans c'est assez. »  [If I were Paul Biya, I would no longer run. 30 years are enough.] But Biya is not a God-fearing man. Not even sure which God he worships. On October 8th, let us sing requiem for the fear that has become a national epidemic and brace up for the worst case scenario. Like Tunisians, Egyptians, Syrians, and Libyans we must convince ourselves that the tree of liberty is watered by the blood of martyrs. Biya’s days are numbered, make no mistake about that.

More importantly, we must abstain from witch-hunting. Mutual distrust seems to be the very undoing of Cameroonians. The time for back-stabbing should be behind us. Francophone and Anglophone Cameroonians must hold hands as October 9th approaches for we have a common foe: the vampire at Etoudi and the cancerous system he has erected. South-Westerners and North-Westerners must work in tandem to right the wrongs of the past. If we will do this, it will dawn on Mr. Biya that he is not as invincible as his insane sycophants make him believe. Let October 8th be a national day of abstinence, a time to ponder the way forward.

Let us abstain from mental slavery. Let us not be like Mr. Biya who once told a French journalist in an interview he granted  at Monte Carlo that he was le meilleur élève du Président Mittérand [the best pupil of President Mitterand].  Biya epitomizes the mentally enslaved African who perceives the world through the prism of the ex-colonizer. Biya is a personification of the machinations of Francafrique.  In this same vein, Nanga-Boko posits: “Hier à Abidjan, aujourd’hui à Yaoundé comme à Douala, la jeunesse s’attaque aux symboles d’une Francafrique qui infantilise. Les suppôts et les supports de la FranceAfrique sont de nos jours ces dictateurs de la zone d’Afrique centrale qui sont maintenus au pouvoir par les bons soins et les services spéciaux de l’Elysée.”(2) [Yesterday in Abidjan, today in Yaoundé like in Douala, the youths are attacking the symbols of Francafrique that infantilizes.Nowadays, the henchmen and support of FranceAfrique are these dictators in the Central African zone who maintain a grip on power through the good services and special assistance of Elysée].  It is this sort of befuddled mindset that has created a crop of mental slaves who pretend to govern Africa.

Let October 8th be reserved for deep reflection on where we, Cameroonians, would like to be seven years down the line under the presidency of a man who spends three quarters of the year gallivanting in luxuriant cities in the Western world.Cameroonians will bite the bullet or perish under a president who runs around the globe with cash stashed in suit cases like a petty thief.Concurring with me is Hauloury Bengoubi who notes:“C’est sous  le règne de Paul Barthélémy Biya que l’Etat camerounais a subi un pillage systématique…Le volume des capitaux dans les circuits de corruption du président Paul Barthélémy Biya est  difficile à chiffrer à cause du secret d’Etat qui l’entoure.”(4)[it is under Paul Barthélémy Biya’s tenure that Cameroonians have witnessed systematic pillage …the amount of capital siphoned through corrupt channels masterminded by Paul Barthélémy Biya is difficult to estimate given the secrecy that surrounds State affairs.]

Let us avoid wild revelry on October 8th.I would be pleased to see my compatriots congregating to give serious thought to the fate of the lost generation in Cameroon; those university graduates who constitute a new social class code-named les habitants du Chomencam or the chronically unemployed.Biya’s regime has killed the private sector in Cameroon, thus creating a plethora of young eternally employed citizens. That is why Cameroonian youths are asking this grave-digger to relinquish power once and for all. Let us spend this day in the tranquility of our homes pondering the mortgage of our natural resources to France and other  imperial powers—SONARA in Limbe, Société nationale des Hydrocarbures (SNH),  Société forestière du Dja et de la Boumba (SFDB), oilfields in the Bakassi Peninsula and more.

Cameroonians—male, female, and transgender must abstain from sex on October 8th. Sex numbs mental faculties in times of crisis. Mae West opines that “Sex is emotion in motion.” He couldn’t be closer to the truth. Let us spend that day meditating on what the future holds in store for us and our progeny after October 9th. Let us take a hard look at the present state of our once sparkling cities (Douala, Yaoundé, Buea, Bamenda, Limbe, Nkongsamba, etc) bequeathed to this lame duck president by former President Ahmadou Ahidjo. They have become ghost towns in decrepitude; where roads have become dead traps.

Let us shun self-interest and deflate our bloated egos on October 8th.  Egocentrism, ethnocentrism and personality cult are the three cankers that Mr. Biya has wielded with dexterity to keep Cameroonians under lock and key for three decades.  Divide and rule is his modus operandi. Like the recalcitrant Caliban in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, let us break loose from Mr. Biya’s diabolical citadel on October 9th. If we will muster the courage to do this, then it will dawn on Mr. Biya that he is not as indomitable as his praise-singers have bamboozled him into believing.

In conclusion, suffice it to say that the October 9th presidential poll in Cameroon promises to be a watershed event. Cameroon without Mr. Biya will not be a terrestrial Paradise.  But it will be a wholesome clime that harbors hope for the young and old. I do not say this tongue in cheek. Cameroon, the well-known “Africa in miniature” has lost its charm and luster under a president who dines with mammon, chews the bark of trees and wears a bullet-proof jacket come rain come shine

Grinding poverty ushered in by governmental dysfunction has transformed Cameroonians into mindless go-getters. As Pigeaud observes in his book, “la réputation des ressortissants camerounais  s’est considérablement dégradée au cours des dix dernières années, les faisant souvent passer pour des individus évoluant dans le registre de l’escroquerie” (5). [the reputation of Cameroonians has been tarnished considerably in the course of the past ten years, making them look like people involved in underhand deals.] Undoubtedly, October 9th holds much in store for us. Qui vivra verra!


About the author
Dr. Vakunta is professor of modern languages at the Department of Defense Language Institute in California, USA. He is the author of numerous books including Cry My Beloved Africa: Essays on the Postcolonial Aura in Africa (2007), No Love Lost (2008), Ntarikon (2009) and Indigenization of Language in the Francophone Novel of Africa: A New Literary Canon (2011).  He runs a blog at http://www.vakunta.blogspot.com/ 


Works cited


Bengoubi, Hauloury.Cameroun: “Les raisons pour lesquelles Paul Biya est un véritable prisonnier ambulant.” Retrieved September 1, 2011 from http://lecode.canalblog.com/tag/Cameroun%20Les%20 raisons%20 pour%20les%20esquelles

Chia, Innocent. “ Paul Biya Forestalls Democracy in Cameroon Again.” Retrieved September 3, 2011 from http://www.chiareport.com/2011/09/paul-biya-forestalls-democracy-in-cameroonagain.html#moreforestalls-democracy-in-cameroonagain.html#more

Mbara, Guerandi. “Hommage à la jeunesse combattante du Cameroun.” Retrieved September 3, 2011 from http://jeunesse_combattantecamerounmonpays.over.blog.com/pages/Hommage_a_la


Nanga-Boko.  Pourquoi la jeunesse camerounaise conteste.” Retrieved August 31, 2011from http:// www. camerounlink.net/fr/blogs/?SessionID=
Pigeaud, Fanny. Au Cameroun de Paul Biya. Paris: Karthala, 2011.


RFI. “Cameroun: Monseigneur Tumi, ancien archevêque de Douala, dresse un état des lieux du pays à la veille de la présidentielle.” Retrieved September 3,2011from http://www.rfi.fr/search/sinequa_search/%20le%20cardinal%20TUMI%20CAMEROUN%20ET%20LES%20ELECTIONS%20PRESIDENTIELLES%20AU

Shakespeare, William. The Tempest. Cambridge: The University Press, 1623.


Clarion Call to Leaders of Bona Fide Political Opposition Parties in Cameroon

By Dr. Peter Wuteh Vakunta


Introduction

Common sense dictates that when you plan to build a house, all the steps of the process have to be considered before construction starts. Failing to do so, you could wind up installing the doors and then finding out that the bed would not fit through them. Similarly, the electoral process has to be considered together as a whole instead of one piece at a time.  Not long ago I sent out a strong call to Cameroonian compatriots urging them to prepare themselves both physically and psychologically for the upcoming do-or-die presidential poll billed for October 9th (“Death of a Taciturn Zombie”, 2011).


Today, I am emitting yet another strong call to all leaders of bona-fide opposition parties in the Republic of Cameroon. You realize I have used the epithet “bona fide” to qualify genuine opposition political parties in our fatherland. Many are actually bogus contraptions fired by greed and hunger. As Dibussi would have it, many opposition parties in Cameroon “are moles of the regime in power” (Cameroon Presidential Election….”,2011)
Before I get to the crux of the matter, I would like to revisit a statement made by an authority on African political affairs, Professor George Ayittey, who observes: “In far too many countries, dictators have triumphed because the opposition is weak, fragmented, prone to squabbling and susceptible to co-optation or bribery by the despotic regime” (Defeating Dictators, 2011). I know not if Ayittey had the Cameroonian opposition in mind when he wrote this, but it seems to me that his statement is a perfect portrait of Cameroon’s political opposition.


Leaders of Cameroon’s opposition political parties have failed us, to say the least. As all informed Cameroonians know full well, Cameroon is a one party State where opposition parties are allowed but have no real chance of gaining power. Cameroon now counts over 200 political parties, with more than three-quarters being mushroom parties that harbor the sole objective of causing confusion and mayhem in the Cameroonian political landscape. Fragmenting the political tapestry bodes ill for the movement toward change in Cameroon. Here is what I just read on the webpage of Radio France Internationale: “L’organe chargé d’organiser la présidentielle a reçu une quarantaine de candidatures. » [the institution tasked with organizing the presidential election has received documents from about fifty candidates.] Believe me, this is mindboggling and just goes to show that Cameroon’s opposition parties  are comporting themselves like a bunch of chickens without heads. Honestly, these are signs of very bad times to come. In the real world nothing works like this. The game plan has to change  pronto. If not, we will be fighting a battle that is lost from the onset.


Contrary to expectations, Cameroon’s opposition parties have failed woefully to take advantage of Mr. Biya’s monumental incompetence. Like Biya, the majority of them are power drunk. The SDF, for instance, saw the light of day in 1990 and since then, Ni John Fru Ndi has remained the unchallenged party chairman and presidential candidate ad infinitum. He silences all rivals or simply gives them the boot when challenged. The same can be said of  Ndam Njoya, leader of the second largest opposition party in Cameroon, Cameroon Democratic Union,  Bello Bouba Maigari of National Union for Democracy and Progress, and Augustin Frederick Kodock of UPC to name but a few.


Interestingly, the SDF which cried foul when the CPDM presidential majority in the National Assembly scraped the presidential terms from the constitution in 2008,  allowing Mr. Biya to run for elections  as many time as he deems fit, has equally changed its constitution giving extra powers to the chairman. In this light, Agendia sounds the pessimist note that follows: “in as much as Fru Ndi… Ndam Njoya, Bello Bouba etc would continue to lead their parties and represent them in elections; most Cameroonians would stay home and refuse to vote”(op.cit). He further points out that during the 2007 council and legislative elections, for example,  just a little over 3 million of the 12 million potential voters registered and less than 60 percent of the registered voters  actually cast their votes. Now, this is sad, especially in a country where a bloodsucking president has literally put the lives of all citizens on hold.


Jean Jacques Ekindi’s  annoncement that he is ready to join the Biya government if he is invited is full of ignominy for lack of better words to describe this kind of mental slavery.The worse part of it is that most of these aspirants gunning for the presidential palace at Etourdi are as hostile to change as Paul Biya himself. Some of have been chairpersons of their parties for 18-20 years. At this rate,will Cameroonians ever see the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel? We cannot hate change and want change; it is oxymonic. Some opposition parties behave as if they were competing from a level ground with Mr. Biya. The truth of the matter is that they are not. Biya is an incumbent and has mastered the ropes of trickery, gerrymandering, and fraudence pretty well. The task of the opposition is to pierce his bag of tricks by acting in tandem.


French writer, Pigeaud, bemoans the disarray within the ranks of Cameroon’s opposition in very strong terms and points out this attitude has made it impossible for them to “organiser autour d’une candidature unique” (56-57) [to rally behind a single candidate]. Though some observers of the Cameroonian political scene consider talk about an opposition coalition as hot air, I subscribe to the ideology that unity is strength. It is not too late for the opposition to put their acts together and unite against a common foe: the vampire at Etoudi.Factors that have weakened Cameroon’s political opposition include:
  • the power of incumbency,
  • regional divisions
  • the ineffectiveness of opposition boycotts,
  • the tendency toward party schisms and the creation of parties based around one figure, and
  • the incumbent’s ability to divide and conquer
There is no gainsaying the fact that, Mr. Paul Barthélémy Biya  Bi Mvondo has made huge political capital out of the weaknesses of the opposition. A case in point is the early presidential election he organized in 1992 and won with 39.9% of the votes against 35.9% for SDF Chairman John Fru Ndi. Of course, Cameroonians know why Biya won that election. We know that the then governor of the East Province, George Achu Mofor, resigned his post a few days following the proclamation of the results alleging that the erstwhile Minister of Territorial Administration, Gilbert André Tsoungi, had given all governors orders “d’employer  tous les moyens, quels qu’ils soient, pour assurer une victoire à hauteur de 60% du candidat du RDPC.”(Pigeaud, 2011, 58) [to use all means necessary to ensure that the CPDM candidate win by more than 60% of the votes cast….]


In his resignation letter, Achu Mofor explained that “pour nous aider dans cette tâche, un document en six pages émis par l’UDC sur les techniques de fraude électorale nous a été distribué (op.cit., 58) [to help us accomplish this task, a six-page document detailing the techniques of electoral fraud was distributed to us by the UDC]. I leave it readers to try and make sense of this sort of electoral obscurantism practiced by the Biya regime. I have discussed Mr. Biya’s gigantic fraud machine at length in a previous article (“The Gargantuan Fraud Machine, 2011).

It is imperative for opposition parties in Cameroon to put forward credible candidates for the upcoming election. They should avoid settling on candidates who lack what it takes to win votes in areas other than their birthplaces (Agendia, 2010). If feasible, let all the opposition parties with some leverage sink their petty differences and produce a single credible candidate. Doing so would enable them to channel their energies and synergies against a common adversary: Mr. Biya.

The Game Plan
I am sending out this clarion call to leaders of all opposition parties competing in the October poll:
  • One dependable safeguard against voter fraud is election monitoring.To the extent permitted by law, make your participation in this election contingent on the presence of International (bilateral and multilateral) election observers in Cameroon on October 9th. In many cases, election observers are used to help prevent gerrymandering and fraud, and assure voters that the ballot is free and fair. Insist on having domestic election observers as well. But they must be non-partisan (i.e. not representing the interests of one or a group of election contestants). Critics contend that observers cannot spot certain types of election fraud like targeted voter suppression but they are capable of detecting the others.
  • Stay wide awake and vigilant on voting day.  Be mindful of the fact that electoral fraud occurs in uncanny ways: electorate manipulation, gerrymandering, disenfranchisement, intimidation, vote buying  or “electoral treating”, misinformation, misleading or confusing ballot papers, ballot stuffing, fallacious recording of votes, misuse of proxy votes, destruction or invalidation of ballots,  attacks on polling places, legal and economic threats,booth capturing,  ghost votes, and more. I call on you to avoid the pitfalls of electoral boycott.  Our friends les gaulois say “les absents ont toujours tort” [you cannot be absent and right.] Boycotting elections has not cut it in the past and will not do the trick this time around. It is time to act together or perish.
  • Party chairpersons should urge their party militants to come out en masse on October 9th for a punitive vote. The biggest surprise the opposition could spring on Mr. Biya is to put on their thinking caps, deflate your petty egos and present one credible single candidate to confront him at the polls. If they did this, the outcome of the October election would be unanticipated.  
  • Enjoin your militants to stay put at the polling-stations until their votes have all been counted. They should resist the urge to retaliate or answer violence for violence when provoked by Mr. Biya’s savage security forces. Mr. Biya simply wants to create chaos and distraction in order to steal your votes. It is a trick he has played over and over to the point of becoming adept at it. With determination you can put spokes in the works for Mr. Biya. On election day, enjoin your militants to desist from behaving like sheep without a shepherd.
  • Let your militants be at the best behavior at the polls. They should remain calm throughout the entire process, knowing that the entire world will be watching this momentous event via channels unknown to Mr. Biya. They should endeavor to graph the number of votes against turnout percentage (i.e. aggregating polling stations results within a given turnout).
  • Most importantly, let your militants take the tally and use their mobile phones to send out the results to Cameroonian citizens at home and in the Diaspora. We should be able to have the big picture of the results of the whole voting process during the first twenty hours. We need not wait for ELECAM—Mr. Biya’s gigantic fraud machine— where Mr. Marafat Hamidou Yaya is leaving no stone unturned to hand over the people’s palace at Etoudi to Mr. Biya on a bloodstained platter. ELECAM is bogus. As  Emil  Bischoff points out, “ELECAM  does not have financial autonomy, cannot declare  election results and is subordinate to  the Ministry of Territorial Administration and Decentralization (MINATD) which is responsible for organizing elections”(1). I have the conviction that the moment is yours. You only need to seize it without fear or hindrance.
Conclusion


Regardless of what the outcome of the October 2011 presidential poll may be, it should be noted that Mr. Biya’s regime is tottering on the brink of imminent collapse.  His ruling CPDM party is not as unified as he would have us believe. For the first time in the history of the party, Biya is up against an ‘adversary’ from within. Mr. Eloi Bidoung has declared his intention to run for the party’s leadership during the party’s ordinary congress, arguing that Mr. Biya, aged 78, is too old to live through another seven year mandate.

Not only does Mr.  Biya’s age count against him but also the emerging radical group within his own party is a sign of fissures within the ruling party. This is a phenomenon that is very likely to weaken his grip on power even if he is re-elected in October. More importantly, civil society has become more vocal in its call on Biya to step down. The Southern Cameroons National Council (SCNC) though outlawed at home is still alive and active in the Diaspora. Others are in the offing. Cardinal Tumi has added his voice to many who are asking Biya to pass the baton to younger blood (RFI, 2011).

Last but least, let Mr. Biya and his supporters not lose sight of the fact that a popular uprising against a corrupt system that has lost touch with the governed does not necessarily have to be masterminded by an opposition political party. In the event that the upcoming presidential election fails to meet the aspirations of the Cameroonian people, mass mobilization could start from unsuspected quarters. Cameroonians should massively register and vote on October 9th.They should protest by all means necessary if their votes are rigged. What happened in Ukraine, Madagascar, Thailand, and Iran should give us some hope. In the event of an uprising, leaders of the opposition should lead the protests. As Agendia opines, “It must not be an issue of sitting at home and asking militants to go to the streets” (op cit, 2010).


Works cited

Agendia, Aloysius. “Cameroon: Why Participation in 2011 Presidential Elections May be Poor.” Retrieved July 24, 2011 from http://agendia.jigsy.com/entries/cameroon/cameroon-why-participation-in-2011-presidential-

Ayittez, George. Defeating Dictators: Fighting Tyranny in Africa and Around the World.  New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.

Bischoff, Emil. Pre-Election Reflection: Cameroon’s 2011 Presidential Election.”  Retrieved September 9, 2011 from http://www.consultancyafrica.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=843:pre-election-reflection-cameroons-2011-presidential-elections&catid=42:election-reflection&Itemid=270

Dibussi, Tande. “Cameroon Presidential Election: Opposition Coalitions Are Overrated.” Retrieved September 9, 2011 from http://www.dibussi.com/

Gomez, Juan. Présidentielle au Cameroun: une cinquataine de prétendants, RFI, 2011.”

Pigeaud, Fanny. Au Cameroun de Paul Biya. Paris: Karthala, 2011.

RFI. “Cameroun: Monseigneur Tumi, ancien archevêque de Douala, dresse un état des lieux du pays à la veille de la présidentielle.” Retrieved September 3,2011from http://www.rfi.fr/search/sinequa_search/%20le%20cardinal%20TUMI%20CAMEROUN%20ET%20LES%20ELECTIONS%20PRESIDENTIELLES%20AU

Vakunta, P.W. “The Death of a Taciturn Zombie: A Day of National Abstinence in Cameroon.”  Retrieved September 5, 2011 from http://www.postnewsline.com/2011/09/the-cruel-death-of-a-taciturn-zombie-a-day-of-national-abstinence-in-cameroon-by-dr-peter-wuteh-vakunta-fellow-cameroon.html#tp

Vakunta, P.W. “The Gargantuan Fraud Machine of Mr. Paul Biya’s Embargoed Regime” Retrieved September 6, 2011 from http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=142502905831755

 

Imperatives of the October 2011 Presidential Election in Cameroon

By Dr. Peter Wuteh Vakunta

As Cameroonians brace up for the upcoming watershed presidential election billed for October 9th, 2011, there is urgent need to diagnose the factors that may botch the likelihood of a pleasant outcome—free and fair elections.The first stumbling block is ELECAM, a bogus fraudulent contraption that President Fox (Paul Biya) has put in place to rig the polls. I have spilled much ink on this matter in my previous write-ups. Consequently, I will not waste precious time adumbrating what I have discussed before. What I will do at this juncture is refer readers to my previous articles on Paul Biya’s gargantuan electoral fraud and gerrymandering machine.[i]

The next irksome problem is the political opposition.In my previous articles, I have berated leaders of Cameroon’s opposition political parties whom I perceive to be a bunch of scatterbrained politically illiterate self-seekers. If you read my article titled “Clarion Call to Bona Fide Leaders of Opposition Parties in Cameroon”, you’d see what I am talking about.”[ii] Any politically savvy person knows only too well that it takes a smart opposition to unseat a brutal dictator like Paul Biya. Biya has lorded it over the opposition from 1990(birthday of multiparty politics in Cameroon) to date mainly because the opposition is fragmented, lack focus and prone to squabbling. Ni John Fru Ndi probably had this in mind when he claimed during a recent rally that “Cameroon’s opposition parties …are maggots”.[iii]  We all know the deleterious effects of “maggots” on the social fabric of Cameroon.

All too often, opposition parties that set out to liberate their compatriots from tyranny and despotism end up selling out, fighting among themselves, sowing seeds of discord, and derailing from the ambit of transformation. This, unfortunately, seems to be the case in Cameroon.  Take a look at opposition parties like the Social Democratic Front, Democratic Union of Cameroon, Union des Populations du Cameroun, Cameroonian Party of Democrats, etc, and it will dawn on you that leaders of these parties are political semi-illiterates in dire need of political education. Some of these so-called opposition leaders are themselves closet dictators, exhibiting the same despotic tendencies they so loudly denounce in the dictator they are eager to replace.

Fru Ndi, Ndam Njoya and ilk should understand that no single political party in Cameroon has the wherewithal to effect a regime change. It lakes a united alliance of democratic forces to effect a regime change. Our friends of the opposition should learn this hard fact pretty fast. It seems to me that their bloated egos have blinded them from seeing this grim reality thus far; as they grope in the dark at war with their own consciences. Learning can be a painstaking process. The prime objective of any bona fide opposition party should be to get rid of the dictator, rather than dance attendance in the corridors of power. Once this noble task has been accomplished, the opposition can then establish a level political playing field.

The third force I want to address in this discourse is the Cameroonian armed forces. It has become commonplace to see our men in uniform flexing their puny muscles in an incensed attempt to cow the citizenry into submission.These sons and daughters of Cameroon should understand that the outcome of the upcoming October presidential election may constitute that critical moment in their careers when they will be faced with the difficult choice of standing by their siblings or siding with a blood thirsty dictatorship tottering on the brink of collapse.

More importantly, I call upon the Cameroonian military to regain sobriety and take a walk down memory lane in order to learn a lesson from recent events unfolding in the Arab world—Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, Syria, Bahrain and Iran. Gone are the days when the international community stood by, hands akimbo, and watched brutal dictators ride roughshod over the citizens they govern. Gone is the time when France cared less about who presides over the destiny of their post-colonies as long as the incumbent played by the Gaullist rules. Believe it or not, visible pressure is mounting on Paul Biya from undisclosed quarters. Make no mistake about that.

Cameroonian security forces need to be educated on the basics of fundamental rights of citizens contained in the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1976). This document commits all signatories to respect the civil and political rights of individuals, including the right to life, freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of worship, electoral rights, right to due process and fair trial. Most importantly, Cameroonian soldiers of all stripes must to be educated on where they truly belong: in the barracks!

Last but not least, this discourse would leave much to be desired if I did not appeal to the conscience of Cameroonian voters  at home and in the Diaspora—young and old; Anglophone and Francophone, Graffi and Sawa, Bassa and Bulu, Fulani and Fontem.... Fellow compatriots, this is a new dispensation. The days of paranoia and crippling fear are over. The days when our votes were bought with a cup of salt, a tablet of savon[iv], or a bottle of jobajo[v] distributed by Paul Biya’s political witches are long gone. 

As you proceed to the polls on October 9th, 2011 to cast your historic vote, remember those sacrificial lambs that perished at Ntarikon Park in 1990 for the sake of democracy in our country. As you head for the polling stations on October 9th, ponder the fate of thousands of Cameroonian youths who have committed suicide because Paul Biya’s voodoo regime has transformed them into the ‘lost generation’ through chronic joblessness.

As you walk toward the election booths on October 9th, think of the millions of Cameroonians who have became economic refugees in foreign lands on account of Paul Biya’s misgovernment.As you go to the polling stations on October 9th, think about the hundreds of Cameroonians who lost their lives during the historic ghost town operations. As you make your way to the voting booths on October 9th, think about the martyrs who were prematurely sent to their graves during the 2008 popular uprising in Yaoundé.

 As you cast your vote on this momentous day, remember the 500+ victims whose bodies lie rotting in mass graves in the littoral region attributable to Paul Biya’s high-handed repression.
Remember these brothers and sisters whose tombstones we shall never see. As you cast your vote on this historic October 9th, think of the dilapidation of our national economy by the Beti-led oligarchy in Yaoundé: SONARA, CAMAIR, SOTUC, BATA, CDC, SODECOTON, CICAM, SOCAPALM, SOCIETE NATIONALE D’HYDROCARBURES, CAMEROON MARKETING BOARD, MIDENO,MIDEVIV, UNVDA,LIMBE DEEP SEAPORT, and more.

As you cast your votes on October 9th, 2011, think of our men and women in uniform that have given up the ghost in the Bakassi Peninsula, fighting for oil reserves that have already been mortgaged by Paul Biya to foreigners long ago.If you would muster the audacity to do this, then it will dawn on you that the upcoming presidential election in Cameroon is no trifling matter.If you would pluck up the courage do this, you would come to the full realization that the tree of liberty truly is watered by the blood of martyrs.

About the author
Dr. Vakunta is Professor at the United States Department of Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California. He is author of several publications including Ntarikon (2007), Cry my beloved Africa (2008) and more. He runs a blog at http://www.vakunta.blogspot.com/


Notes


[i] http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=142502905831755
[ii] http://www.niuzer.com/Cameroon/Clarion-Call-to-Leaders-of-Bona-Fide-Political-Opposition-Parties-in-Cameroon-7206779.html
[iii] http://www.cameroononline.org/2011/09/26/cameroon-opposition-leader-says-other-parties-are-maggots/
[iv]  Bathing soap
[v]  Beer


ELECAM Antics and Fraud in Canada

By Dr. Peter Wuteh Vakunta

Fellow Cameroonians, dear compatriots, in several of my write-ups in this forum I have blown the whistle on a zillion fraudulent activities orchestrated by Mr. Paul Biya’s gigantic election-rigging contraption code-named ELECAM. I have pointed out countries where ELECAM has convened bogus meetings supposedly to inform Cameroonians living in the Diaspora about the upcoming simulacrum called presidential elections in Cameroon billed for October 9th 2011. We have heard lamentations and cries of despair from our brothers and sisters in the Diaspora, patriotic Cameroonians who have been hoodwinked and misled into believing that the jackass of our President is serious about organizing free and fair elections in Cameroon. We know full well that all his comedy of errors are shielded by a very thin veneer and that before long both friends and foes of Cameroon will know that Mr. Biya is an outlaw not fit to stand elections in Cameroon again. Today, I am bearer of yet another piece of bad news:  Mr.Biya has decided to wash its stinking garments in public by exporting ELECAM’s despicable acts of gerrymandering and fraud to Canada. What follows is my translation from French of a communiqué from a Cameroonian Human Rights League, la Diaspora pour la Modernité [Diaspora for Modernity] based in Canada.Read on:
Dear compatriots living at home and in the Diaspora,
Undoubtedly, like members of the Diaspora for Modernity in Canada, you have been inundated with backdated messages, in order words, messages sent out after the event, issued by the Cameroonian High Commissioner in Canada convening Cameroonians to a so-called consultation meeting organized by a delegation of Elections Cameroon (ELECAM) sent to Canada by Mr. Biya to set up a commission charged with the task of establishing (and reviewing) voter registers in Canada.
It should be noted that this is a gigantic fraudulent scheme, a farce, and attempt to veil facts on the ground. The Cameroonian Community in Canada has never been convened to any kind of meeting whatsoever by ELECAM.
As a matter of,
1. The ELECAM delegation arrived incognito in Canada and met secretly with targeted members of the CPDM, in other words, members of the party in power in Yaoundé for more than 30 years headed by the dictator Biya. The ELECAM delegation had one objective in mind: pave the way for electoral gerrymandering and fraud in Canada by making it impossible for members of the opposition in the Canadian Diaspora to participate in the upcoming poll.
2. None of the many Cameroonian communication channels in Canada, namely radio stations like Cameroonvoice, Icicemac, Camfoot, Alloafrica and more was invited to this meeting which clearly was intended by ELECAM and the Cameroonian High Commissioner in Canada to secret.
3. None of the Cameroonian community organizations in Canada such as the Cameroonian Association in Canada (CAC) was invited to this meeting; none of its members were informed of the holding of this   ELECAM meeting.
4. None of the Cameroonian civil society organizations in Canada like the Cameroonian Diaspora for Modernity was invited to take part in this meeting.
5. No Cameroonian political party other than the CPDM was convened to this meeting.
6. Last but not the least, the three communiqués (088/HCO/CC of 8/19/2011, 009/HCO/CC of 8/22/2011 and 0/0/HCO/CC of 8/22/2011 sent out  by the  Cameroonian High Commissioner in Canada thinly veils the Commissioner’s intention to not hold a bona fide consultation meeting with Cameroonians in Canada. In fact,  communiqué No. 088/HCO/CC of 8/19/2011 published on 8/19/2011 supposedly intended to convene Cameroonians to a meeting on  the same date in Ottawa, capital of this vast country as communiqué No. 0/0/HCO/CC of 8/22/2011 clearly indicates the hidden intent of the communiqué.
In a nutshell, this simulacrum of a consultation meeting intended to rally Cameroonians all over Canada to a meeting convened by ELECAM is simply a fiction of the imagination of members of the delegation and of the Cameroonian Higher Commissioner in Canada. In brief, we are dealing in this circumstance, with a gargantuan fraud intended to cover the real intention of the party in power: re-elect the tyrant Paul Biya to serve another seven-year term as president of Cameroon.
Faced with this undeniable imposture on the part of Mr.Biya’s government, Cameroonians need to rethink the whole idea of participating in the upcoming presidential poll. Some naïve compatriots argue that boycotting this upcoming election would be tantamount to handing over the presidential palace to Biya on a silver platter. We contend that participating in the poll would not prevent members of ELECAM, Biya’s odious fraud machine, from rigging the election in favor of the dictator either.  
Considering all the anti-democratic fraudulent activities masterminded by ELECAM during visits to countries where Cameroonians live all over the world, it is imperative for every Cameroonian to do an examination of conscience. We need to ask ourselves in what way our participation in the upcoming elections that have been rigged beforehand would prevent the fraudulent re-election of the torturer of the Cameroonian people, Mr. Biya.  
As far as members of Diaspora for Modernity are concerned, the response to this question is simple and clear: participating in this simulacrum of an election would only serve the purpose of giving legitimacy to the coup d’état hatched by Mr.Paul Biya using ELECAM. In this light, we are asking all our compatriots to not only boycott the upcoming presidential election but also to contribute, each in his or her capacity, to sabotage this election.
To follow through with this decision to boycott the big fraud called presidential election, Diaspora for Modernity is taking the following steps and urges all patriotic Cameroonians to do likewise:
·  Work actively in tandem with other patriotic organizations in the Diaspora and at home to boycott this farce of an election.
· Inform and update all countries in partnership with Cameroon on all ELECAM fraudulent activities backed by documented evidence as time goes on.
·   Inform and update all relevant international organizations on all ELECAM fraudulent activities backed by documented  evidence as time goes on.
·    Most importantly, Inform and update the Cameroonian people on all   ELECAM fraudulent activities backed by documented evidence as time goes on.
It goes without saying Biya and his accomplices will accuse us, patriotic Cameroonians, of conniving with the international community to destabilize our country.Let this allegation be dismissed as half-truth concocted by the dictator and his henchmen to dissimulate facts on the ground.
In point of fact, those who are exposing our country to the whims and caprices of the international predators who may seize the moment to consolidate their design of re-colonizing Cameroon is Mr. Biya and his CPDM party.
The dictator Paul Biya will not be given the chance to impose a regime characterized by laziness, incompetence, systemic decadence, chronic poverty and unemployment, misgovernment, dictatorship and electoral gerrymandering and fraud on Cameroonians.
Mr. Biya has the time he needs to institutionalize true democratic structures in Cameroon that guarantee the true economic and political independence of Cameroon. By doing so, he will be averting the untoward likelihood of seeing our country falls into the hands of post-colonizers.
In other words, Mr. Biya has the choice to give the leeway to neo-colonizers to re-possess Cameroon or ‘institute genuine democracy’ in Cameroon. Failling to respond to the aspirations of the Cameroonian people, Mr.Biya and his associates will be held accountable for the eventual intervention of the international community in Cameroon.
Dear compatriots, let us remain united and organized as have been our predecessors in this struggle:Rudolph Douala Manga Bell, Martin Paul Samba, Um Nyobe, Ernest Ouandié, Ndeh Tumasah, Albert Mukong and all the illustrious patriots who preceded us.
Long live our Fatherland, Cameroon!
Michael, Fogaing, Spokesperson of Diaspora for Modernity
http://www.icicemac.com/actualite/11398/la-diaspora-pour-la-modernite-invite-les-camerounais-boycotter-les-elections-preside


Military Insurgents Call for the Departure of Dictator Paul Biya

By Dr. Peter Wuteh Vakunta

Fellow Compatriots, ladies and gentlemen, as I have hinted many times in my write-ups on this blog, the chickens seem to be coming home to roost in our homeland, Cameroon, where compulsive megalomaniac and mean-spirited dictator, Mr. Paul Barthélémy Biya, has held onto  power for three decades, brutalizing his own people, emasculating the national constitution, and siphoning the nation’s resources to foreign lands. News coming to us from Radio France Internationale (International French Radio) confirms the rumor that today, Thursday, September 29, 2011, men in military uniform rose up in arms calling for the departure of Cameroon’s dictator Paul Biya. Read my translation from French:


Men in military gear rose up in arms this Thursday morning, September 29, 2011 calling for the immediate departure of President Paul Biya. They fired shots into the air and brandished a banner on which could be read: Biya dictator! Biya must go! The insurgents immediately disappeared into thin air and their identities have remained unknown.
Shortly before 6 o’clock in the morning on Thursday, September 29, 2011, inhabitants of the Wouri neighborhood and motorists who ply this route that leads to the economic capital, Douala, were struck by panic when they heard gunshots being fired on the Wouri Bridge.
Sources confirmed that a man in military uniform accompanied by two other armed men opened fire.Eyewitnesses say that they the men fired a volley of shots into the air and blocked traffic. They say that the men displayed a large banner bearing the words: Biya dictator! Biya must go! One of the men jumped to the Wouri River after performing a military salute. The others followed suit and took off. Security forces arrived at the venue soon after the incident. Access to the Wouri Brige has been blocked and the area cordoned off. They were still patrolling the area into the late hours of the morning.
Reliable sources say that another group of armed men have been perceived around the Nyabi neighborhood in the southwest of Ndokoti, near the entrance into the city of Douala, brandishing the same kind of banner calling for the immediate departure of President Paul Biya.These armed men too have succeeded in disappearing into thin air and nobody has arrested them.
Several questions remain unanswered: who are these insurgents? Are they soldiers as the gear they were wearing seems to indicate?  The ongoing inquiry will shed ample light on unfolding events.



Lapiro de Mbanga calls on Cameroonians to cast  blank votes on October 9th, 2011

Cameroonians head to the polls on October 9th, 2011 to elect a new

president. Electoral campaigns will come to an end this Saturday at
midnight. While the twenty-three presidential candidates are traveling the length and breadth of the national territory canvassing for the votes of Cameroonians, Lapiro de Mbanga, on his part, is calling on all Cameroonians to cast blank votes on October 9th. This committed singer admired by his compatriots has just finished serving a three-year prison term after having been charged with instigating riots in 2008.

Lapiro has been savoring his new found freedom since April. His voice carries weight in Cameroon. He has paid dearly for having composed a resistance song titled “Constitution constipée [constipated Constitution] in which he lambasted the Head of State for attempting to amend the constitution to obliterate presidential term limits. The powers-that-be arrested him under the pretext that he instigated the 2008 uprising.

For Lapiro de Mbanga, this election is nothing but a distasteful comedy. He calls upon all Cameroonians to cast blank votes, maintaining that the poll has already been rigged beforehand.“Mr. Paul is disqualified from standing as candidate. To do so, he had to amend the Cameroonian Constitution. He has not accomplished a thing in 30years! As for opposition candidates, these are starving, self-seeking individuals who do not have the wellbeing of the Cameroonian people at heart.They have not been able to accomplish anything during the two preceding presidential elections. I am asking Cameroonians to cast a blank vote on October 9th as a punitive measure for both Mr. Biya and leaders of the
opposition.”

Lapiro de Mbanga is not sure whether or not Cameroonians will heed his call but he is certain that there will be blank votes in the ballot boxes on Sunday. That will be the voice of the Cameroonian people that have spoken.



Cameroun: l’alternance ne passera pas par les élections
By Achille Mbembe

Culled by Dr. Vakunta from  http://www.upacameroun.com/

Enseignant d'histoire et de sciences politiques à l'université Witwatersrand de Johannesburg, il analyse l’actualité autour de la présidentielle.

La France a qualifié l’élection au Cameroun « d’acceptable ». C’est le terme employé par le ministre des Affaires étrangères, Alain Juppé. Que vous inspire ce genre de commentaire ?
Ce genre de commentaire est typique des rapports que la France officielle entretient avec l’Afrique, et notamment avec ses anciennes colonies. Elle est prête à y accepter des choses qu’elle n’accepterait pas s’il s’agissait de la France elle-même. Cette attitude est très ancienne et elle ne m’étonne pas du tout. Les élites gouvernantes françaises ont grand intérêt à ce que perdure en Afrique centrale en particulier, un ensemble de satrapies au Congo, au Cameroun, au Gabon, au Tchad qui sont devenues des chiens de garde des intérêts français en Afrique.
Mais la France sait aussi revoir ses amitiés, lorsque la situation l’exige et lorsque les systèmes deviennent trop instables. Elle appuie les transitions démocratiques comme en Guinée. Alors, est-ce à dire que le régime de Paul Biya est suffisamment stable pour éviter les crises majeures dans ce pays?
Il n’y a pas de danger immédiat dans la mesure où le régime camerounais en particulier, est parvenu à émasculer la société civile. L’alternative politique au Cameroun dans les circonstances actuelles ne sera pas le produit des élections.

Cette destruction de la société civile camerounaise est-elle le fait du régime de Paul Biya ou le produit de la décolonisation ?
Le Cameroun a été depuis les années de la colonisation, et surtout depuis la guerre d’indépendance dans les années 50, un des laboratoires privilégiés de l’autoritarisme postcolonial à la française. C’est dans ce pays qu’ont été expérimentées, d’abord les techniques de la guerre contre-révolutionnaire que l’on a en suite disséminées en Algérie. C’est également dans ce pays qu’au cours des années Ahidjo et Biya, que l’Etat postcolonial a repris à son compte un ensemble de techniques se rapportant à la fois à la mise en place d’un système clientéliste parmi les plus corrompus de la planète, la division des forces sociales en terme ethnique et la décapitation presque systématique de l’intelligentsia et des associations. M. Biya y a ajouté un zeste de machiavel à l’africaine à travers un style de gouvernement que moi j’appelle le gouvernement spectral, le gouvernement par l’inaction et par l’immobilisme. Il n’a même pas besoin d’être sur place. D’ailleurs il passe l’essentiel de son temps dans un hôtel luxueux à Genève ou alors dans son village.

Alors, comment s’y prend-t-il pour diriger son pays en étant la plus part du temps à l’étranger ou dans son village ?
Mais il s’est entouré d’à peu près une centaine de vieillards, qui à leur tour contrôle la majorité des cadets sociaux, des femmes et des jeunes.
Pourtant dans les années 90 l’opposition et notamment le Sdf représentait une force réelle. Alors comment expliquez-vous le déclin de cette opposition ?
Mais M. Biya a mis en place un rouleau compresseur qui a permis de faire imploser le Sdf. Le Sdf paye d’autre part, son propre aveuglement et son incapacité à analyser objectivement les transformations de la société camerounaise, à s’engager dans une lutte politique sur le long terme. Et donc nous avons à faire aujourd’hui à une opposition imbécile, qui ne sait pas faire masse et qui a perdu énormément de sa crédibilité.

Comment expliquer que ce système ne génère pas une contre violence. Une violence en réaction ?
Je dirais que c’est à cause des traumatismes historiques. Le Cameroun a été le seul pays en Afrique subsaharienne où la lutte pour l’indépendance ait emprunté le chemin de la lutte armée. Cette lutte a été écrasée pendant des décennies jusqu’à l’assassinat d’Ernest Ouandié au début des années 70. L’Etat d’urgence proclamé à l’époque coloniale s’est prolongé longtemps après les indépendances.
Paradoxalement, c’est aussi un pays ou la parole est relativement libre ou la presse foisonne ou les médias se multiplient ; il existe même une petite société civile malgré tout... et malgré tout on a le sentiment que le débat n’existe pas vraiment notamment le débat politique...
Mais c’est une société qui a du mal à faire corps. Les formes d’identification ethniques, sectaires ont été aggravées au cours des 30 dernières années. Il existe une masse énorme de jeune sans emplois ; c’est une société également ou les gens ne veulent pas prendre le risque de mourir pour des causes qui leur sont chères. Comme partout ailleurs en Afrique, ils estiment que la liberté peut leur être octroyée à crédit. Et tant que c’est le cas, tant que cette mentalité persiste M. Biya peut dormir absolument tranquille.

Interview retranscrite par Jean De Dieu Bidias (Stagiaire) Source : Rfi



Post-electoral Dysphoria in Cameroon: Death Knell or Rebirth of a Moribund Nation

By Dr. Peter Wuteh Vakunta

If you are like this fine etymologist, this refined linguist, this perspicacious wordsmith in quest of a germane epithet to describe the atmosphere in Cameroon in the wake of the October 9th political simulacrum that has just taken place, look no further. The word is dysphoria.  This really is quite a word. Take a look at the definition of this exquisite word contained in The American Heritage Dictionary (2000:559). It is a masterpiece: “An emotional state characterized by anxiety, depression or unease; a state of mental discomfort hard to bear”.

Indeed, hard to bear. Cameroonians had seen it coming:  the farcical gimmicks of ELECAM at home and in the Diaspora, the buffoonery of idiotic opposition party leaders, the deployment of thousands of soldiers and gendarmes to all the nooks and crannies of towns and cities around the country, the millions of CFA francs doled out by Paul Biya in the form of veiled bribery to starving, self-seeking opposition leaders, some serving as moles of the ruling CPDM party. As Pigeaud would have it, “beaucoup de partis se réclamant de l’opposition sont …dirigés par des individus ne représentant  qu’eux-mêmes et dont le seul objectif est de se voir “nommer” à un poste par le pouvoir”(77). [Several political parties claiming to be in the opposition are created by individuals representing only themselves, and driven by the hope of being appointed to positions in the government by the powers-that-be].These were all ill-omens, signs of bad times ahead. And so here we are today faced with the harsh reality of yet another stolen victory!

Cameroonians of all creeds are slowly but surely crawling out of their stupor, finding it hard to believe that for seven more years they will be saddled with a loathsome albatross—Mr. Paul Biya, a white-collar thief blinded by a false sense of grandeur. Here we are once again trapped in the fiendish lair of a Beti-led oligarchy in Yaoundé hell bent on fleecing our rich country dry. Here we are gain eternally mired in the squander mania characteristic of chopbroke-potters[i]. Here we are today stuck with a ‘president’ who spends three quarters of his time gallivanting in foreign lands in pursuit of nothing.

The President of Cameroon is an outlaw who should be made to spend the rest of his life at Kondengui[ii], because as Seme Ndzana would have it, “Paul Biya a commis le crime de haute trahison en trahissant son serment de 2004 où il avait juré de respecter la limitation constitutionnelle de son mandat en 2011 et de faire respecter cette constitution de 1996….”(2011)[iii] [Paul Biya  has committed high treason by lying under oath in 2004 when took the oath of office promising to uphold and respect the presidential term limits stipulated in the 1996 Constitution , and ensure that the constitution is respected.

In the same vein, French writer Pigeaud observes: “D’une manière générale, le pouvoir applique les lois de façon très aléatoire” (82). [In general, the government applies laws quite arbitrarily]. Paul Biya’s callous disregard for legality has emboldened him to the point where he is actually grooming his own son, Frank Biya, to replace him as Head of State if and when he makes up his mind to die. As Ndzana points out, “En méprisant le peuple camerounais …il est allé jusqu’à narguer à Douala en paradant son fils comme le dauphin...” (2011)[In stark contempt of the Cameroonian people…he showed off in Douala by hinting that his son could be his successor.][iv]

Oh yes, this is the extent to which our senile, dim-witted president has gone in his abrasive arrogance. After all, if Gabonese Omar Bongo could hand over the presidency to his son, Ali Bongo, on a silver platter, why would Paul Biya not do the same in Cameroon? If Gnassingbé Ayadema of Togo could pass the baton to his son, Faure Gnassingbé, what would prevent Biya from doing the same thing in Cameroon? See, dictators think alike, you know.

Bottom line: Cameroonians have come to a crossroads, a seemingly insurmountable bifurcation in the middle of nowhere. So what’s the way out? That is the question! Because sanity abhors incertitude, I take it upon myself to propose an exit route from the dreadful conundrum facing Cameroonians today.  Stanley Arnold contends: “Every problem contains the seeds of its own solution” (quoted in Norman Vincent Peale, 1989). Cognizant of the fact that Cameroon is indeed two nations in one (La République du Cameroun and Southern Cameroons)[v], my approach to the country’s predicament will be two-pronged.

To Francophone Cameroonians, I propose recourse to a Third Force to oust Mr. Biya  and his Beti-led oligarchy in Yaoundé. When a Head of State has failed woefully to meet the aspirations of the governed and the political opposition is weak, corrupt and liable to co-optation as is the case in Cameroon, the intervention of a Third Force becomes inevitable. When the incumbent has abdicated his official duties without cause and transformed the supreme law of the land (Constitution) into worthless pieces of paper like Paul Biya has done repeatedly for 30 years in Cameroon, it becomes imperative for a Third Force to step in and correct the anomaly.

A Third Force is a neutral body with no ties to the president or opposition political parties. Generally, it is the military that steps in when politicians fail to get their acts together, but Cameroon presents a rather thorny problem: the military has been inveigled into the camp of the incumbent by means of extraordinary high salaries and perks. On this count, they have no compunction about rough-handling and killing ordinary citizens in the event of an uprising against Biya’s dysfunctional government. Writing on the same subject Pigeaud observes, “… le régime compte toujours sur les forces de sécurité pour compenser son manque de légimité et assurer son contrôle sur les camerounais”(83).[ … the regime relies on security forces at all times in order to make up for its lack of legitimacy and to maintain its stranglehold on the Cameroonian people.]  

A Third Force could be a militia[vi] formed inside or outside the national territory, like Laurent Désiré Kabila did in Zaire to oust Dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. Ndzana probably had this in mind when he opined: “le vainqueur de l’élection présidentielle de ce 9 Octobre 2011, Paul Biya, n’aura aucune légitimité populaire. Il sera combattu et déposé par le peuple combattant du Cameroun” (2011) [vii][the winner of the October 9th 2011 presidential election, Paul Biya, shall lack legitimacy in the eyes of Cameroonians. He shall be combated and deposed by the combative people of Cameroon.]

These words are weighty. They make me take a walk down memory lane to recall the famous ghost-town operations that almost toppled Biya’s regime in the early 90’s. Cameroonians did it then, they can do it NOW. Cameroonians have got guts; they have got brains, their greatest assets. They must keep them under disciplinary control as they burrow their way out of Biya-imposed servitude.

Most importantly, Cameroonians must not give Paul Biya more credit than he truly deserves. Deep down, the man knows that he is a chicken-hearted coward and simpleton. A president who does not know the people he governs is an idiot (Not sure Biya can utter a single grammatically correct statement in English). A president who never holds cabinet meetings with his ministers and does not know them ministers by name is a moron.  A president who appoints dead people to occupy positions in his government is a dimwit. A president who has never made a single speech at an international conference is a numbskull. A president of a sovereign nation who describes himself as le meilleur élève of the president of another country is an imbecile.[viii] A president who is so paranoid that he wears bullet-proof jackets come rain come shine is an ignoramus. A president who builds hospitals in Baden-Baden while the people he governs lack basic medical care is a blockhead.  A president who believes in his own immortality and occasionally stages his own demise just to test his popularity is a dullard. Francophone Cameroonians, you have your job cut out for you!

To Anglophone Cameroonians, here is a panacea to get us out of this quagmire: rethink the Third Option, the choice to secede from La République du Cameroun and form an independent Republic. Truth be told, our elders (Foncha, Endelely, Muna, Angwafor and more) never had the foresight to press hard for this option during the 1961 Cameroon Plebiscite in Foumban (cf. Perceval, 2008).If they did we might not be in this unholy alliance with La République du Cameroun today. Our matrimony with the Frogs[ix] is a mismatch of sorts. History has a lot do with this state of affairs. The ways we learned to ape the white man are different—assimilation for Francophone Cameroonians and association for Anglophone Cameroonians. The dichotomy between these two imperial legacies makes or breaks the Cameroonian psyche, believe it or not.

The antagonism between Anglophone and Francophone Cameroonians has snowballed into what has now been code-named the Anglophone Problem. In fact, some perspicacious observers of the status quo in Cameroon have likened it to a marriage of convenience. Some have compared the uneasy co-existence between the two distinct linguistic communities to the attitude of two travelers who met by chance in a roadside shelter and are merely waiting for the rain to cease before they continue their separate journeys in different directions. The plain truth is that there is a palpable feeling of discontent and dissatisfaction amongst Anglophones in Cameroon. Some critical questions remain unanswered: Are Anglophone Cameroonians enjoying equal treatment with their Francophone counterparts in the workplace? Are Anglophone Cameroonians having their fair share of the national cake? Do they feel at home in Cameroon? These and many more unanswered questions constitute what has been labeled the Cameroon Anglophone Question.
 
The Anglophone Question manifests itself in the form of complaints from English-speaking Cameroonians about the absence of transparency and accountability in matters relating to appointments in the civil service, the military, the police force, the legislature, and the judiciary. In short, the Anglophone Problem raises questions about participation in decision-making as well as power-sharing in the country. The Anglophone Problem is the cry of an oppressed people, lamenting over the concentration of political power in the hands of a rapacious oligarchy in Yaoundé, where Anglophones with limited proficiency in the French language are subjected to all kinds of maltreatment by conceited Francophone bureaucrats who look down on English-speaking compatriots.

The Anglophone Question stems from the cocky attitude of French-speaking Cameroonians who claim that Anglophones are unpatriotic, and incompetent. This bigotry compounded by conceit has given rise to the offensive use of  derogatory slurs such as” les Anglophones sont gauches[x][ii], “c’est des ennemis dans la maison[xi][iii], “ce sont les biafrais[xii][iv] and so on. The consequence of this anti-Anglophone sentiment is the birth of the misconception that Anglophone Cameroonians are unreliable and untrustworthy, and therefore, undeserving of positions of leadership. This explains why key ministerial positions in Cameroon are the exclusive preserve of French-speaking Cameroonians. Such ministries include: Defense, Finance & Economy, Territorial Administration and Decentralization, etc. The Prime Minister’s office that has now become the preserve of Anglophones is symbolic. The Cameroonian PM has no voice. He is powerless, a toothless bulldog as it were.

Anglophobia has led to the appointment of Francophones with no working knowledge of the English language to ambassadorial positions in strategic countries like the United States of America, Great Britain, Germany, Nigeria and South Africa where they wind up making a complete fool of themselves linguistically and culturally speaking. The presidency of the Republic and its ancillary organs are “no-go” zones for Anglophone Cameroonians. Although political appointments in our country ought to be done in conformity with the constitutional “regional balance paradigm”, it is common knowledge that disdain for English-speaking Cameroonians has made this law a dead letter.

In brief, Southern Cameroonians (Anglophones) have no place at all in République du Cameroun. They stand no chance whatsoever to cause a modicum of change in that country. Anglophones are mere appendages in a political oddity that only Francophone Cameroonians can comprehend. Striving to stay within that diabolical contraption called La République du Cameroun is tantamount to embarking on a false start. The time has come to secede without further ado. The longer we stay, the more excruciating our agony will be. There are countries in Africa with populations less three million people managing their human and natural capital prudently and living in opulence (Botswana, 1,691,362; Djibouti, 506,221; Swaziland, 1,081,132; Lesotho, 2,067,000; Cape Verde, 560,917; Seychelles, 81,895; Reunion, 173,822 and more). The current population of Southern Cameroons amounts to about 5.5 million.
Fellow Anglophone Cameroonians, it is never too late to turn over a new page; we must stand up and fight for our freedom. Some blood will be spilled but we will be free, free at last. The tree of liberty is watered with the blood of martyrs. When this option becomes our central focus, there is need to have a game plan, perspicacious leaders, and fine strategists. Southern Cameroonian schools have produced the crème de la crème of the country’s intelligentsia. We have the natural resources that could be properly managed to sustain us and future generations. We must believe in ourselves, in our innate ability to make things happen. As Norman Vincent Peale, says, “It is very important to believe that you can, with God’s help, meet and overcome all problems” (9).

About the author
Dr. Vakunta is Professor at the United States Department of Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California. He is author of several publications including Ntarikon (2007), Cry my beloved Africa (2008) and more. He runs a blog at http://www.vakunta.blogspot.com

Works cited

Peale, Norman V. Six Attitudes for Winners. New York: Tyndale
          House Publishers, Inc., 1989.
Perceval, John .The 1961 Cameroon Plebiscite: Choice or
          Betrayal.    Bamenda: Langaa Research and Publishing CIG,
          2008.
Pigeaud, Fanny. Au Cameroun de Paul Biya. Paris: Editions Karthala,
          2011.
Notes


[i] spendthrift
[ii] Maximum security prison in Yaoundéé.
[iii] “Le président issu de cette mascarade sera déposé.” Retrieved October 8, 2011 from  http://africanindependent.com/news/?p=1879
[iv] Le président issu de cette mascarade sera déposé.” Retrieved October 8, 2011 from  http://africanindependent.com/news/?p=1879
[v] For anyone not apprised of this fact, I strongly recommend a succinct reading of John Perceval’s book, titled The 1961 Cameroon Plebiscite: Choice or Betrayal. Bamenda: Langaa Research and Publishing CIG, 2008.
[vi] A private, non-government force, not necessarily directly supported or sanctioned by its government.
[vii] Le président issu de cette mascarade sera déposé.” Retrieved October 8, 2011 from  http://africanindependent.com/news/?p=1879
[viii] During an interview he granted a French journalist at Radio Monte Carlo Mr. Paul Biya claimed sheepishly that he was the best pupil of French President Francois Mitterrand.
[ix] Pejorative epithet for Francophones
[x][ii] Anglophones are clumsy
[xi][iii] They are enemies in the house
[xii][iv] They are Biafrans

Language, Music and Human Rights in Cameroon: Voices of Elwood, Valsero and Lapiro
By Dr. Peter Wuteh Vakunta
Introduction
Orature as an academic discipline and tool of resistance has made giant strides in its evolution over the years. This transformation manifests itself in the form of musical productivity and scholarship on the subject matter. Among those who have contributed significantly to emerging perspectives on the discipline are musicians themselves. Cameroonian songwriters are township bards who double as entertainers and freedom fighters. Orality is the tool they wield with dexterity in their relentless vendetta against  the establishment’s endemic corruption, bad governance, abuse of power, influence peddling, impunity, misappropriation of public funds and other forms of dereliction of duty that plague the  post-colony. The lyrics of Donny Elwood, and Valsero a.k.a ‘Le Général’ and Lapiro de Mbanga alias Ndinga Man are telling.  This trio has carved out a niche for themselves as valiant human rights activists in Cameroon.
Voices of Elwood, Valsero and Lapiro
In a song titled “Mon cousin militaire”[i], Donny Elwood deplores two cankers that have rendered the government of Cameroon dysfunctional, namely influence peddling and corruption.  Listen to his lyrics:
Heureusement que j’ai mon cousin militaire,
Heureusement que j’ai mon cousin militaire,
Je serai déjà au cimetière,
Deux mettres sous terre,
Pauvre cadavre, simple squelette
En train de sourire comme tous les squelettes de la terre
Qui n’arrêtent pas de sourire,
Le sourire de la mort
Mort de misère,
Misère des hommes pauvres et macabre.
On m’appelle monsieur galère
On m’appelle tonton misère.
Je vis dans un quartier populaire,
Et nous sommes de vrais prolétaires,
Insuffisance alimentaire, vestimentaire, monétaire.
Et nous sommes de vrais prolétaires,
Nous sommes majoritaires sur cette terre de misère.

Heureusement que j’ai mon cousin militaire (…)
Quand il touche son salaire, il me donne mon argent de bière.
Et moi, je fonce chez ma rombière,
Toute la nuit on s’envole en l’air (…)

Quand il s’en va la-bas ver la guerre,
Moi, je fais des prières
Moi, je fais des paters austères.
Une mauvaise guerre,
Une guerre frontière,
Une guerre incendiaire,
Une guerre meurtrière,
Une guerre suicidaire (…)[ii]

The lyrics of this song are pregnant with meaning. Elwood’s reference to the Cameroonian military is significant. Under President Paul Biya, soldiers have become the most privileged group of people in the Cameroonian society.  Pampered with bloated salaries and perks, these partially educated servants of the State have nurtured an inordinate sense of their own grandeur. Rather than protect the citizenry, they have taken it upon themselves to brutalize and abuse their compatriots, especially in the event of public protests against the establishment as was the case during the 2008 youth uprising against the government for failing to put an end to skyrocketing fuel and food prices.
Elwood bemoans the fate of the underprivileged of his country: “The smile of death/ Death caused by misery/ Misery that is the lot of the poor and the macabre.”  He speaks for the proletariat, the toiling masses who are subjected to brazen exploitation by the corporate world— owners of means production: “Et nous sommes de vrais prolétaires.” Elwood’ song is the cry of a son of the soil whose heart throbs for his people. Many are living in abject poverty while a few people in government live in opulence. Like Fanon[iii] and Zola[iv], Elwood, speaks for the downtrodden: the wretched of the earth of his society. He is the voice of the voiceless. “Mon cousin militaire” satirizes warmongering. I suppose that the war referenced in this song is the Nigeria-Cameroon conflict over the Bakassi Peninsula, a costly insane war that has no rationale at all: “Une guerre incendiaire/ Une guerre meurtrière/Une guerre suicidaire.”

In sum, Elwood uses his song as a medium through which he articulates his concerns over human rights abuses in his homeland. Language choice and diction pose no problem at all in this song. The artist uses everyday French words and expressions known to the average Cameroonian. Colloquial terms like “tonton” may elude the non-Cameroonian listener but context could be used to unravel the signification of the word.In “En haut” he addresses the themes of influence peddling and corruption in Cameroon, as seen in the following excerpt:
Ma vie va changer
Le décret vient de tomber
Mon frère vient d’être nommé à un poste très élevé
La rumeur a circulé partout au quartier
Aujourd’hui, c’est confirmé.
La radio en a parlé, parlé, parlé.
La télé a confirmé (…)
ça y est, ma vie va changer
Je vais enfin respirer
Je vais devoir me comporter
Comme un bao puisque mon frère est en haut.
La souffrance est  terminée,
Terminée la marche à pied,
Les pains chargés,
Les taxis surchargés,
Ma vie va changer.
Je serai véhiculé.
J’irai partout dans les sous-quartiers
Me promener dans ma merco climatisée.
Toutes les filles vont tomber sans glisser (…)
Je vais gagner des marchés.
Mon frère est en haut.
Même si je ne peux pas livrer,
 Il va quand même me payer
Ma vie va changer.
Au village, on va fêter,
On va bouger
On va boire
On va manger (…)[v]

There is no gainsaying the fact that “En haut” reads like a facsimile of Cameroon under Paul Biya. The cankers that Elwood lambastes in this musical tirade: abuse of power, influence peddling, corruption, and nepotism are the common lot of Cameroonians living under this dictator. The song writer celebrates his brother’s appointment to a top government position because he is certain that his brother will abuse his position to award him contracts even if he is unable to deliver the services for which he will be paid. Not only will he embezzle government money to buy expensive cars for his personal use but he will also use his position to exploit women: “Toutes les filles vont tomber sans glisser” This sort of unethical comportment on the part of civil servants is common currency in Cameroon under Paul Biya , who himself is the absentee Landlord of Etoudi.  Biya spends nearly three quarters of the year gallivanting in foreign lands in pursuit of nothing.This spells doom for the entire nation. 

As far as language is concerned, Elwood borrows extensively from Camfranglais[vi] for the purpose of concealing certain significations from Cameroon’s security forces as in the use of “bao” for “bigshot”. It should be noted that “bao” is the abbreviated form of baobab.  Merco, is another word culled from Camfranglais. Camfranglophones use this word in reference to a posh car even if it is not of the Mercedez Benz brand. Elwood uses typical Cameroonianisms in his songwriting in a bid to transpose the speech mannerisms of Cameroonian youths into the French language. For example, “tomber sans glisser” as in “Toutes les filles vont tomber sans glisser …” is common pep talk among Cameroonian teenagers.  Recourse to Camfranglais does not only taint Elwood’s music with local color and flavor, but it also serves as an identity marker.  Camfranglais is a slang meant to be understood only by initiated members of certain social groups: conmen, drug-peddlers, prostitutes, cab-drivers and more.

Elwood is not a lone voice in the vendetta against the cancerous society that Cameroon has become under Biya’s regime. In a song titled “Ce pays tue les jeunes”[vii]  Valsero bemoans the fate of Cameroon’s lost generation—the young college and high school graduates whose future has been mortgaged by the Biya Kleptocracy[viii] headquartered in Yaoundé:
Pour 2008 je me parle
Pour 2008 je te parle
J’espère que tu vas bien
Et qu’il t’arrivera des choses bien (…)
Tous ces diplomés qui choment,
Cette génération ne verra pas le fameux bout du tunnel
De toutes les façons je n’y crois pas,
La jeunesse crève à petit feu,
Tandis que les vieux derrière les forteresses
Se saoulent à l’eau de feu.
Ce pays tue les jeunes.
Cinquante ans de pouvoir.
Après ça, ils ne lâchent pas prise
De bled dénature (…)

La vie est trop dure
Le système la rend encore plus dure, plus dure,
Ils le vivent.
A Yaoundé, ils le savent
Ce pays tue les jeunes.
Ce pays est comme une  bombe
Pour les jeunes à tombeau.
Faites attention quand ça va péter ça va tuer
Tous les lambeaux.
Alors les vieux, faites de la place.
Il faut pas le flambeau.
 Ce pays tue les jeunes.
Les vieux ne lâchent pas la prise
De bled dénature (…)[ix]
Valsero’s lyrics are fiery: “Faites attention quand ça va péter ça va tuer tous les lambeaux”. As I see it, his words are forebodings of tough times ahead. He is unapologetic in his opprobrium on a regime that destroys its own youths:  “Ce pays tue les jeunes.” In fact, this is the leitmotiv in Valsero’s song of protest. Notice the songwriter’s deliberate repetition of the verse “Ce pays tue les jeunes”. He does so in a bid to underscore the uncertain fate of youths in a country that has been governed by an unimaginative dictator for 30years.  
Valsero’s reference to the year 2008 is significant given that this year constitutes an indelibly dark spot in Paul Biya’s 30-year regime in Cameroon (soon to be 37).Cameroonians will remember that in February 2008 Mr.Biya ordered his blood-thirsty security forces to open fire on unarmed protesters, mostly youths, who had embarked on a protest match to vent their frustration against food and fuel price hikes.  The 2008 protests were a series of demonstrations in Cameroon’s biggest cities like Yaoundé, Douala, Bamenda, etc. The government sent out troops to crack down on the unrest, and protesters were killed. The government reported 40 people killed, but human rights groups claimed that the total was about 100 killed. They also noted that more than 2,000 people were arrested in Douala alone and decried the trials as overly swift, secretive, and severe.
It is interesting that Valsero perceives the macabre silence that hangs over the heads of Cameroonians as a time-bomb that will explode before long.  Playing the devil’s advocate, he calls on the gang of kleptomaniacs hibernating in Yaoundé to decamp before it is too late. Though singing in standard French, the singer infuses his lyrics with Camerounismes[x]  in order to be understood by the youths for whom he sings. Words like “bled”, “crève” and “se saoulent” [country, die and get drunk)] are colloquial French words chosen with circumspection by the songwriter to translate not only meanings but also emotions.
 In “Lettre au président” this valiant freedom fighter addresses his message directly to Paul Biya:
 Puis-je savoir, Prési, pourquoi pour nous ça ne marche pas
J’ai fait de longues années d’études et j’ai pas trouvé d’emploi
Je te rappelle que t’avais promis qu’on sortirait du tunnel
On y est toujours, ce sont les mêmes qui tiennent la chandelle (…)
Prési, tes potes vivent au bled comme s’ils sont de passage
Ils amassent des fortunes, spécialistes des braquages
Ils font preuve d’arrogance, ils frustrent le peuple
Ils piétinent les règles et ils font ce qu’ils veulent
Ah Prési, arrête ça c’est ça ton travail
Ou inch’Allah, je jure, un autre fera le travail
Le peuple n’en peut plus, les jeunes en ont marre
On veut aussi goûter du miel sinon on te gare (…)
Prési, les jeunes ne rêvent plus
Prési, Prési, les jeunes n’en peuvent plus
La majorité crève
Dans le vice ils basculent et quand le monde avance, nous, au
bled, on recule (…)
Le peuple est souverain il n’a jamais tort,
Il a la force du nombre, il peut te donner tort
On n’a pas peur de la mort, même si tes potes appellent des
flics en renfort
 Ils disent de toi que c’est toi “l’homme lion”
Mais ils n’ont qu’un rêve: ils veulent tuer le lion.[xi]
Valsero’s interrogative missive to Paul Biya is loaded. Not only does he take the president to task for promises not kept, he also enjoins him to perform the job for which his is paid: “Je te rappelle que t’avais promis qu’on sortirait du tunnel (…) Ah Prési, arrête ça c’est ça ton travail.” “Lettre au president” is an acrimonious diatribe that conveys the angst of the Cameroonian people against a regime that has failed them in every aspect. The sagacious rapper demands responses from Biya on a number of thorny issues, not least of which is the reason for governmental dysfunction: “Presi, pourquoi pour nous ca ne marche pas?” He revisits the vexing theme of chronic employment in Cameroon and the predicament of college graduates who cannot find gainful employment: “J’ai fait de longues annees d’etudes et j’ai pas trouve d’emploi.”
“Lettre au président” is the cry of disenchanted Cameroonians at odds with a regime that excels in arrogance, insolence, double-speak impunity, and dereliction of duty. Valsero deems it fit to inform the President that the Cameroonian people have defeated fear and that one day, God willing, someone else will have to do the job he is unable to do to do the satisfaction of the Cameroonian people. This apocalyptic admonishment ought to be taken seriously by the powers-that-be.
Linguistically speaking, this song is more colloquial than “Ce pays tue les jeunes.”  The reason is that Valsero is speaking for the Cameroonian youths and has chosen to employ a parlance that is characteristic of the social class for whom he is spokesperson. The musician constantly culls words and expressions from Camfranglais as seen in these examples: “tiennent la chandelle” (perform a duty), “en ont marre” (fed up), bled (home/country/village), potes (friends/henchmen/comrades), and crèvent (die). These words fit into the register of ‘youth talk’ in Cameroon. It is interesting that Valsero, transposes foreign language words, for example, the Arabic word, “Insha’Allah” into French.  This should not surprise listeners who may be familiar with the linguistic plurality in Cameroon.  Finally, Valsero has recourse to an expression to which all Cameroonians have been accustomed: “L’homme lion” or “Lion man”, has become a sobriquet for Paul Biya on account of the brutality with which he responds to legitimate complaints from citizens about governmental ineptitude.
Lapiro de Mbanga alias Dinga man[xii] is the only musician from the trio that has borne the brunt of Biya’s offhanded reaction to political dissidence. Nicknamed “président du petit peuple”[xiii]  by Cameroon’s underprivileged, Lapiro has used the power of popular music to campaign for social reforms in Cameroon for nearly twenty years. Angered by high living costs and a constitutional amendment that was intended to allow Paul Biya to stay in power indefinitely, Lapiro composed the song “Constitution Constipée,” (Constipated Constitution), in which he describes the country’s president, Paul Biya, as “caught in the trap of networks that oblige him to stay in power even though he is tired.” Lapiro calls for help, probably from the international community, to stop Paul Biya from committing the constitutional rape that he contemplates. He also states in no uncertain terms that Paul Biya is burned out and needs retire.  Here are the lyrics of the song that earned him a three-year prison term:
Au secours!
Venez nous délivrer
L’heure est grave
Les bandits en cols blancs
Veulent braquer la constitution de mon pays
Les fossoyeurs de la république
Veulent mettre les lions en cage (…)
Le coq est harcelé et menacé d’une tentative de holdup (…)
Big Katika don taya’oh!
Répé don slack’oh!
Wuna lep yi yi rest
Répé don fatigué
Yi wan go rest (…)[xiv]
This song became an unofficial anthem of the 2008 protests, and Lapiro was arrested and charged with inciting youth unrest. In September 2009, he was sentenced to three years imprisonment and ordered to pay a fine of 280 million CFA francs (640,000 US dollars) as compensation for damage caused during the riots. In spite of this humiliation by the government of his homeland, Lapiro has regained international renown and has become even more vocal against the misdeeds of the Biya regime. During the just concluded presidential poll in October 2011, he called on all Cameroonians to cast blank votes to show their contempt for Paul Biya. In November 2009, he was selected as the winner of the global “Freedom to Create Imprisoned Artist Prize”. The jury argued that “his songs constitute a cultural megaphone by which the disenfranchised and politically endangered can vicariously exercise free speech.”
The language in “Constitution Constipée” is surprisingly free of the Lapiroisms[xv] to which this maverick songwriter has accustomed Cameroonians. However, Lapiro borrows from Pidgin English not simply to embellish is writing but also to speak in a lingo that the rank and file can understand. After all, the message in this song like in his other recordings is intended for the downtrodden. Expressions such as “Big Katika don taya’oh!”, “Répé don slack’oh!”, “Wuna lep yi yi rest”, “Répé don fatigué” and  “Yi wan go rest (…) are pidgin expressions. It should be noted that “répé” is the inverted form of “père” [father]. Camfranglais speakers have borrowed this technique of lexical inversion from speakers of French Verlan.[xvi]
In another song “Lef am so” [xvii]Lapiro pours venom on Paul Biya and his lame duck ministers:
Envoyez tout le monde à Nkondengui!
Tout le monde à Nkondengui!
Big Katika à Nkondengui!
Tous les ministres à Nkondengui!
Biensûr! Biensûr Biensûr! (…)
Mola, taim weh person get daso one sick
For yi sikin yi get espoir sei da sick fit bolè
But taim weh sick beaucoup
Like how di kondre get’am so
Surtout how weh kan kan traitement à perfusions
Ana traitement de choc noba bolè yi,
Je jure que yi own mandat done shot.
All we we sabi sei taim weh sick noba bolè for l’hôpital
Dem di replier na for kanda sitick
Comment se fait-il que plus we win back
Plus kondre di so so meng daso?
Mombo, avant foua no be been
Jess noh, na manguru ngwété don been
 Pourtant banque mondiale ana ala instituts financiers
Dem don trust we ndoh avec majorations de crédit
Remboursable dans cent ans (…)
Dat be sei sep njanga for njanga for we njanga
Dem go come boulot for pay dang ndoh.
Donc, non seuelment we sep we don ton na ninga
We don hypothéquer avenir for we njanga forever and ever (…)
Ignorance avec mépris
Arrogance et insolence for dem kondre pipo (…)
Comme vous pouvez le constater,
Cameroon dong capside…
Yes, mombo, this country no well (…)[xviii]
This passage speaks volumes about the linguistic innovation characteristic of Lapiro musical composition. Lapiro’s language could be described as a mix of several codes: French, Pidgin English, and indigenous tongues.  In his lyrics, he tells the story of the disenchanted Cameroonian rank and file: taxi drivers, bendskin drivers, whores, conmen, hawkers, employed college graduates and more. To do so effectively, he is obligated to speak in a language that is intelligible to them all.  Interestingly, this lingo is likely to pose insurmountable comprehension obstacles to foreign listeners not familiar with Lapiroisms. A word like ‘Katika’ is a polysemous lexeme. In other words, it carries several connotations. In daily usage, “katika” refers to a bouncer in a nightclub. Lapiro has endowed it with a new meaning in his song: head of state or leader. In a similar vein, ‘mandat’ has undergone a semantic shift and taken on a new signification. It is used in this context as a translation of the English word, “life span” or “existence.” “Nchinda” is a loan from Pidgin English. Generally, it translates the notion of “royal pages”. In this context, it translates the English word “lieutenants” or “ministers”. ‘Ndoh’ is a camfranglais word for ‘money’. Njanga and manguru ngwété are gleaned from Cameroonian indigenous languages. Njanga is a Duala word for “child.” Manguru ngwété” translates the concept of abject poverty. Lapiro resorts to code-switching in an attempt to translate the speech patterns of the people he addresses into musical composition. Recurring themes in his songs are governmental impunity, insolence and disregard for the demands of the governed.
 Conclusion
In a nutshell, it bears repeating that Elwood, Valsero and Lapiro are anti-establishment songwriters whose lyrics harbor seeds of a revolution. They are both entertainers and social critics. Their danceable lyrics translate messages of hope and despair. The theme that runs through the songs of all three combatant musicians is human rights and freedoms. Their songs have produced a tonic effect on the new generation of young Cameroonians who are prepared to take the future of their country into their own hands by all means necessary.  Language is a mighty tool at the disposal of these songwriters.  They wield it tactfully. While Elwood has kept his French in a pristine standard form, Valsero and Lapiro have gone with the flow and created an urban slang that not transposes the speech mannerisms of Cameroonians into the written word but also portrays them as songwriters in search of a new identity. 
Notes


[i] My soldier cousin
[ii] Thank Goodness I have a soldier cousin
Thank God I have a soldier cousin
 I would be at the cemetery already
Two meters in the ground
Poor cadaver, simple skeleton
Smiling like all skeletons on this earth
Who never stop smiling
The smile of death
Death caused by misery
Misery that is the lot of the poor and the macabre
They call me Mr. Trouble
They call me Uncle Misery
I  live in a ghetto
And we are real proletariats
 In need of food, clothes, and money
We are veritable proletariats
 We are in the majority on this earth
Thank Goodness I have a soldier cousin (…)
When he earns his salary, he gives me some money for beer.
I  jump into my jalopy
And we roam the streets all night (...)
 When he goes to war
I say my prayers
I say austerity prayers
A bad war,
A border war,
An inflammatory war,
A deadly war
A suicidal war (…)
[iii] The Wretched of the Earth(1961)
[iv]Germinal (1885)
[v] My life will change
The decree has just landed
My brother  has just been appointed to a very high position
 Rumor had circulated everywhere in the neighborhood
Today it’s a done deal
The radio talked , talked, talked
The TV has confirmed it.
 That’s right, my life will change
At last long, I will breathe.
 I will have to behave like a Bao
Given that my brother is now in a position of power
Gone are the days of hunger
Gone are the days of trekking
No more bread sandwiches
No more rides in overloaded taxis.
My life will change.
I shall possess a car
I will  visit all the inner cities
In my air-conditioned Mercedes Benz
All the girls will fall head over heels in love with me.
I will be awarded contracts
My brother is highly placed
Even if I cannot deliver the services
for which I have been contracted
 My brother will still pay me
My life will change
There will be feasting in the village,
People will come and go,
 We will drink
We will eat ( …)
[vi]  Camfranglais is a “composite language consciously developed by secondary school students who have in common a number of linguistic codes, namely French, English and a few widespread indigenous languages (Kouega, 2003: 23-29). Cameroonian youths use this urban slang as a communicative code to exclude other members of the community. They resort to Camfranglais to exchange ideas such as dating, sports, physical looks, and more in a manner that the message would remain coded.
[vii] This country kills its youths
[viii] Government of the thieves, by the thieves, and for the thieves
[ix] For the sake of 2008  I speak to myself
For  2008 I speak to you
I hope all is well with you
And I hope that good tidings will come your way (…)
 All these graduates who are jobless
This generation that will never see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel
In any event, I don’t believe they ever will
The youths are dying slowly
Whereas the old folks are getting
Drunk in their bunkers
This county kills its youths
Fifty years in power
And yet they will not relinquish power peacefully
Life is too tough
The system makes it even tougher.
They experience it
In Yaoundé, they know it.
This county kills its youths
This country is like a time-bomb
For the dying youths
 Watch out, when it shall explode,
 It shall destroy everyone
 So, I am asking the older generation
To make way for the youths
Let’s avoid flames
This county kills its youths.
The old folks will not relinquish power peacefully (…)
[x]  Cameroonian turns of phrase.
[xi]May I know, Presi, why nothing works for us
 I have spent several years in school but still can’t find work
You must remember that you promised bringing us to the end of the tunnel
 Here we are today still marking time, while the same people call the shots (…)
 Presi, your ministers live in this country as if they were strangers on vacation
 They amass wealth, they are schooled in the art of holdup
They are arrogant, and they frustrate the people
They flout laws, they act with impunity
Oh Presi, put an end to all this, that is your job
Otherwise, Insha’Allah, I swear, someone else will do the job in lieu of you
 The people cannot take it anymore, the youths are fed up
We want to have a taste of the honey too; otherwise we will give you the boot (…)
Presi, the youths no longer have dreams
Presi, Presi, the youths cannot take it anymore
The majority of them are dying
They live in  vice;
We retrogress in this country while the rest of the world progresses
The people are sovereign, they are never wrong
They have the force of numbers, they can give you a vote of no-confidence
 We are not afraid of death, even if your henchmen summon
Cops for protection
The people say you are the “Lion Man”
But they dream of one thing only: kill the lion.
[xii] Guitar man
[xiii] President of the rank and file
[xiv] Help!
Come deliver us
There is danger out there
White-collar thieves are
Bent on mutilating the Constitution of my country
The Nation’s grave-diggers want to
Put the Lions in the cage (…)
The rooster is harassed and shaken by threats of hold-up
The Big Boss is tired
The Father of the Nation is exhausted
Give him the opportunity to rest
Pa is tired
He needs help (…)
[xv] Turns of phrase created by Lapiro. Lapiroisms have enabled him to communicate with the underprivileged classes of society in a language that they understand best.
[xvi] Verlan is an argot in the French language featuring inversion of syllables in a word, and is common in slang and youth language. It rests on a long French tradition of transposing syllables of individual words to create slang words. The name verlan is an example: it is derived from inverting the syllables in l'envers ("the inverse," pronounced lan-ver).
[xvii] Let sleeping dogs lie.
[xviii] Send everybody to Nkondengui!
Everybody to Nkondengui!
 Send Big Katika to Nkondengui!
 Send all his ministers to Kondengui!
 Sure! Sure! Sure! (…)
If you are sick of only one disease, there may be some hope of recovering
But if you are afflicted by several illnesses like this country
 And all kinds of treatment, including drips and anti-shock medication have not helped
I  swear,  you can be sure your days are numbered
We all know that when hospital medications fail us
We fall back on traditional medicine an alternative
How can you explain the fact that the more medications we
Give to our nation, the worse its health becomes?
My friend, in the past there was no poverty in this country
Today, people are scraping a bare living
Yet the World Bank and other international financial institutions
Have loaned us money with incredibly high interest rates payable in one hundred years
 In other words,  our great grandchildren
 Shall have to work in order to repay these loans
So, we have not only been reduced to slaves
We have also mortgaged the future of our kids forever and ever (…)
Ignorance and spitefulness
Arrogance and insolence in dealing with compatriots
As you can see for yourselves
This country is upside down
Cameroon has capsized
 Yes, my friend, this country is sick indeed.

Discography
Danny Elwood.
·         Mon cousin militaire
·         Je suis Pygmée
·         En haut
·         Mon chien Dick Dick Dick
·         Turlupiner
·         Akao Manga
·         Odontol
·         Je t’aimais, je t’aime, t’aimerai
(All recordings are available on YouTube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wdZJjMEKMo&feature=related)
 Valsero a.k.a  Le Général
·         Lettre au président
·         Ce pays tue les jeunes
·          Réponse du président à Valsero
·          Valsero répond
·          Valsero, ne me parle pas du Cameroun
·         Holdup
·         Va voter
·         Touche pas mon manioc
(All recordings available on YouTube at:

 Lapiro de Mbanga
·         Constitution constipée
·         Lef  am so
·         Na You
·         Kop nie
·         Overdone
·         Nak pasi
·          Mimba wi
·         Pas argent pas amour
·         Qui n’est rien n’a rien
·         Jolie fille
·         Mi nding mi be, foua
(All recordings available on YouTube at:
About the Author
Dr. Vakunta is Professor at the United States Department of Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California. He runs a blog at http://www.vakunta.blogspot.com/
 
Cameroun: l’alternance ne passera pas par les élections
By Achille Mbembe
Culled by Dr. Vakunta from  http://www.upacameroun.com/
Enseignant d'histoire et de sciences politiques à l'université Witwatersrand de Johannesburg, il analyse l’actualité autour de la présidentielle.

La France a qualifié l’élection au Cameroun « d’acceptable ». C’est le terme employé par le ministre des Affaires étrangères, Alain Juppé. Que vous inspire ce genre de commentaire ?
Ce genre de commentaire est typique des rapports que la France officielle entretient avec l’Afrique, et notamment avec ses anciennes colonies. Elle est prête à y accepter des choses qu’elle n’accepterait pas s’il s’agissait de la France elle-même. Cette attitude est très ancienne et elle ne m’étonne pas du tout. Les élites gouvernantes françaises ont grand intérêt à ce que perdure en Afrique centrale en particulier, un ensemble de satrapies au Congo, au Cameroun, au Gabon, au Tchad qui sont devenues des chiens de garde des intérêts français en Afrique.
Mais la France sait aussi revoir ses amitiés, lorsque la situation l’exige et lorsque les systèmes deviennent trop instables. Elle appuie les transitions démocratiques comme en Guinée. Alors, est-ce à dire que le régime de Paul Biya est suffisamment stable pour éviter les crises majeures dans ce pays?
Il n’y a pas de danger immédiat dans la mesure où le régime camerounais en particulier, est parvenu à émasculer la société civile. L’alternative politique au Cameroun dans les circonstances actuelles ne sera pas le produit des élections.

Cette destruction de la société civile camerounaise est-elle le fait du régime de Paul Biya ou le produit de la décolonisation ?
Le Cameroun a été depuis les années de la colonisation, et surtout depuis la guerre d’indépendance dans les années 50, un des laboratoires privilégiés de l’autoritarisme postcolonial à la française. C’est dans ce pays qu’ont été expérimentées, d’abord les techniques de la guerre contre-révolutionnaire que l’on a en suite disséminées en Algérie. C’est également dans ce pays qu’au cours des années Ahidjo et Biya, que l’Etat postcolonial a repris à son compte un ensemble de techniques se rapportant à la fois à la mise en place d’un système clientéliste parmi les plus corrompus de la planète, la division des forces sociales en terme ethnique et la décapitation presque systématique de l’intelligentsia et des associations. M. Biya y a ajouté un zeste de machiavel à l’africaine à travers un style de gouvernement que moi j’appelle le gouvernement spectral, le gouvernement par l’inaction et par l’immobilisme. Il n’a même pas besoin d’être sur place. D’ailleurs il passe l’essentiel de son temps dans un hôtel luxueux à Genève ou alors dans son village.

Alors, comment s’y prend-t-il pour diriger son pays en étant la plus part du temps à l’étranger ou dans son village ?
Mais il s’est entouré d’à peu près une centaine de vieillards, qui à leur tour contrôle la majorité des cadets sociaux, des femmes et des jeunes.
Pourtant dans les années 90 l’opposition et notamment le Sdf représentait une force réelle. Alors comment expliquez-vous le déclin de cette opposition ?
Mais M. Biya a mis en place un rouleau compresseur qui a permis de faire imploser le Sdf. Le Sdf paye d’autre part, son propre aveuglement et son incapacité à analyser objectivement les transformations de la société camerounaise, à s’engager dans une lutte politique sur le long terme. Et donc nous avons à faire aujourd’hui à une opposition imbécile, qui ne sait pas faire masse et qui a perdu énormément de sa crédibilité.

Comment expliquer que ce système ne génère pas une contre violence. Une violence en réaction ?
Je dirais que c’est à cause des traumatismes historiques. Le Cameroun a été le seul pays en Afrique subsaharienne où la lutte pour l’indépendance ait emprunté le chemin de la lutte armée. Cette lutte a été écrasée pendant des décennies jusqu’à l’assassinat d’Ernest Ouandié au début des années 70. L’Etat d’urgence proclamé à l’époque coloniale s’est prolongé longtemps après les indépendances.
Paradoxalement, c’est aussi un pays ou la parole est relativement libre ou la presse foisonne ou les médias se multiplient ; il existe même une petite société civile malgré tout... et malgré tout on a le sentiment que le débat n’existe pas vraiment notamment le débat politique...
Mais c’est une société qui a du mal à faire corps. Les formes d’identification ethniques, sectaires ont été aggravées au cours des 30 dernières années. Il existe une masse énorme de jeune sans emplois ; c’est une société également ou les gens ne veulent pas prendre le risque de mourir pour des causes qui leur sont chères. Comme partout ailleurs en Afrique, ils estiment que la liberté peut leur être octroyée à crédit. Et tant que c’est le cas, tant que cette mentalité persiste M. Biya peut dormir absolument tranquille.

Interview retranscrite par Jean De Dieu Bidias (Stagiaire) Source : Rfi

Paul Biya’s Rogue Governance of Cameroon: Open Sore of a Nation

By Dr. Peter Wuteh Vakunta
It's often said that people deserve their leaders. Can anyone in their right frame of mind honestly deny the fact that Cameroonians deserve Mr. Paul Barthélemy Biya Bi Mvondo? There is a generation of Cameroonians who have not known another president but Paul Biya.  And they will never know another leader but Paul Biya, because by the time Paul Biya has completed his godly task of messing up Cameroon and ready to give up the ghost these poor souls would be in the Never Land. Be it as it may, let it be known to these unfortunate souls that Cameroon has known its heydays. Cameroon has not always been this forsaken wasteland that has been transformed into a “corrupt club of banditti masquerading as leaders.”[1] The majority of Cameroonians born during this current dispensation of social and moral degeneracy have never known a police force that was not prone to corruption and dereliction of duty.  They have never known an armed force that was not half-educated and uncivil.

The vast majority of young adults in Cameroon are unaware of the fact that once upon a time a person went to prison for giving a bounced check. The generality of Cameroonians born under Paul Biya cannot fathom that there was a time when fraudulent acts such as procuring bogus diplomas, fraudulently obtaining a driver’s license, tinkering with marriage and birth certificates, transplanting visas into passports, fabricating counterfeit banknotes, enriching oneself as a conman,  and more were considered  felonies. To this generation, therefore, supposedly the future of this blighted nation the end justifies the means. As Doh would have it, “all they … think they need is a job and some money to keep finding their way through the maze of sleaze and professional ethical squalor that marks social life in Cameroon”[2] .

Another critique of Paul Biya’s lame duck government has the following harsh words to say: “Dans ce Cameroun, qui semble naviguer sans tête et sans but, les jeunes, soit la moitié de la population, ne parviennent plus à s’imaginer un avenir.”[3][In Cameroon, a country that seems to have lost it head and sense of direction, the youths that constitute half of the population, are unable to fathom a future]. Anyone who has had the misfortune of navigating the bureaucratic labyrinth of the public service in Yaoundé and other capital cities in Cameroon knows exactly what Pigeaud is talking and need not be lectured on the ethical squalor and mental retardation that have become the hallmarks of Cameroonian ‘civil’ servants.

The idea that propelled me into crafting this article is to let Cameroonians at home and in the Diaspora know that there could be a better Cameroon; that there had been a better Cameroon, and that bribery and corruption, white collar thievery, brazen impunity, and the rape of officialdom need not be the modus operandi in our beloved homeland. There is no gainsaying the fact that in a corrupt society, only few—the conniving and the powerful—continue to enrich themselves.[4] On the contrary, in a morally sane, law-abiding nation, all who can afford to discipline themselves and work hard can make it to the top. The reason is that everyone benefits from social, economic and political stability, all ingredients that fertilize the environment and occasion blissful existence in lieu of the dire straits in which the majority of Cameroonians now live under Paul Biya’s government; a rogue regime that is fashioned, guided and run by a bunch of unpatriotic morally bankrupt grave-diggers parading as God’s ordained leaders of the nation.  The stinking Beti-led oligarchy in Yaoundé is the open sore of our nation. The ramifications of the governmental hold-up masterminded by a bunch of cocky Betis at the helm in Cameroon are legion. I will limit myself to a discussion of the most salient ones on account of the scope of this write-up. Brain drain, the flight of human capital from the homeland to countries overseas, is real and harmful. Brain drain has deleterious consequences for the growth of the nation’s economy.  As a matter of fact, most Cameroonians are faced with two unpleasant choices: resistance or flight to unknown lands.

Pigeaud maintains that “Le président et son mode de governance sont  souvent présentés comme la cause principale des départs [Those who leave often point to the Head of State and his style of government as the major reasons they are leaving.][5] She cites the lamentation of a young Cameroonian immigrant she interviewed to buttress her point: “Si je reste au Cameroun, ma vie est foutue. Rien n’est fait pour encourager les jeunes alors que notre pays est riche.”[6] [If I stay in Cameroon, my life will be fucked up. Nothing has been done to encourage the youths although our country is rich.] This should sound like a familiar song to most Cameroonians residing abroad.

Institutions of higher learning in the Western world are replete with talented Cameroonian intellectuals who have made their mark in all walks of life but dare not return home for fear of being “fucked up” by a regime that has lost its bearings. Medical institutions the world over are teeming with gifted Cameroonian medics who cannot entertain the thought of returning home on account of the skeletal nature of our impoverished hospitals at home. The crème de la crème of our legal practitioners are hibernating in nations in the West, torn between the fate of staying put to face incisive racism and the temptation to return home to be subjected to home-bred apartheid. Here is what a literati living abroad told Pigeaud: “J’ai grandi dans le quartier d’Essos à Yaoundé: sur les cinquante copains de mon enfance, il n’en reste aucun au Cameroun. Certains sont au Bengladesh, au Népal. Voilà finit une grande partie de la jeunesse camerounaise” [7][I grew up in the Essos neighborhood in Yaoundé:  not one of the fifty childhood friends that I had is still here in Cameroon. Some are in Bangladesh in Nepal. That’s where the majority of Cameroonian youths end up.]

Corruption has crippling effects on the national economy. Moses Timah Njei makes heartrending remarks about the impact of corrupt practices on the image of Cameroon which I am citing at length:
Corruption has brought our beloved country to her knees and exposed us to international ridicule. Our country has held the first position as the most corrupt nation on earth and it is on record that those governing us actually lobbied that the country be classified as one of the poorest highly indebted nations on earth! One really needs to be courageous and shame-proof to make a request like this for such an apparently rich nation. This act alone qualifies us to be in the hall of fame of corruption. The issue of corruption in Cameroon has gone past the level that can be described only as a social ill. It has effectively become part of our national culture. Corruption is embedded in every facet of our national life and it has effectively thwarted and dislocated our path to nationhood for generations to come.[8]

This explains the consternation of Cameroonian sociologist, Jean –Marc Ela: “Le Cameroun semble échapper à toute catégorie de l’entendement. Ce qui arrive à ce pays relève de l’inimaginable, de l’incroyable et de l’impossible. Tout se passe, en définitive, comme si, sous le règne de M. Paul Biya, le Cameroun tout entier avait basculé dans le hors-norme, la déraison ou la folie.”[9][It would appear that the case of Cameroon defies all attempts at comprehension.  What has happened to this country seems unimaginable, unbelievable, and impossible. In sum, it seems as if under Paul Biya Cameroon has plunged into illegality, irrationality, and insanity.]  

In my hometown, it is said that the ‘baby’ cow watches its mother eat and then later it will begin to mimic her mother when its turn to eat comes.  The majority of Cameroonians have learned to ape their corrupt leaders. Why would Cameroonians not be terribly corrupt when their Head of State and his ministers are all corrupt to the marrow?  Nurses in hospitals and clinics have learned to misappropriate medicines, injections, and other medical supplies.  Some doctors have learned to charge illegal fees. Policemen have learned to take various sums of money in the form of bribes from taxi drivers, bendskin drivers[10], sauveteurs[11] and bayam sellam[12]  in broad daylight!
Corruption is so endemic in Cameroon that the few decent citizens who refuse to engage in it are either ridiculed or coerced into the practice.  On this note, Pigeaud maintains: “On peut donc parler d’une ré-institutionnalisation de la corruption sous le parapluie de l’Etat. Au Cameroun, on a même corrupu la corruption.”[13] [We could refer to this practice as the re-institutionalization of corruption with the blessing of the State. In Cameroon, the notion of corruption itself has been corrupted.] In Cameroon, if you are not corruptible, people think you are stupid. They will mock you and try to inveigle you into the rotten game. Cameroon’s brand of corruption is contagious.
It is not just corruption that has become the stock in trade of all Cameroonian leaders; impunity is another canker that has eaten deeply into the fabric of the government. That is why Pigeaud can afford to say: “La société camerounaise, sans plus de repères, multiplie ainsi les incongruités et semble souvent marcher sur la tête” [14][The Cameroonian society, having lost its bearings, continues to commit multiple incongruities and seems to walk on its head.]  Impunity knows no bounds in Cameroon. Informed Cameroonians would remember that in 2007, a member of the presidential guard shot and killed a young man who had tried to cross the street a little too early in the wake of a motorcade escorting the first lady. No one bat an eyelid after this incident occurred. Paranoia or apathy? Your guess is as good as mine.
Outspoken Cameroonian Cardinal, Christian Tumi, has wondered aloud whether or not he should be held accountable for flouting laws voted by deputies who have fraudulently made their way into the National Assembly: “Parfois je me demande moi-même, si je suis obligé d’obéir aux lois de ce pays, quand on sait que les députés qui les votent n’ont pas gagné les élections. Qui représentent-ils?”[15] [Sometimes, I ask myself whether I should be held accountable for not obeying laws in this country, when I know that the deputies who voted these bills into law did not win the elections that brought them into the House. Who do they represent?] He further reiterates that in Cameroon, “la justice s’achète, se vend” [16][justice is bought and sold.]
          As the foregoing discourse clearly indicates, the death knell of the Republic of Cameroon has been sounded under Paul Biya’s cavalier regime. His government is, indeed, an open sore that defies all treatments; it is the shame of the nation. Adulated in the past for its talented soccer players, well-mannered citizens, robust economy, and enviable status as Africa in miniature; Cameroon has ended up in the trashcan of history!  The misdeeds of our leaders have transformed our beloved fatherland into the laughing stock of Africa.
Ndifor’s narrative says it all:  “Ah! “Your country recently held a presidential election. How did it go this time?” the officer from Botswana, with a smirk on his face, asked. Even before I could answer, these men, all from African countries that have experienced smooth transitions of one government after another since their respective independence, jointly said that Cameroonians have lost their “dignity” as a people and should consider the consequences.” [17]  Ponder that!
About the author
Dr Vakunta is professor of modern languages at the US Department Defense Language Institute in California. He is the author of numerous books including Cry My Beloved Africa: Essays on the Postcolonial Aura in Africa’(2007), No Love Lost (2008), Ntarikon (2009) ,Martyrdom (2010)Indigenization of Language in the Francophone Novel of Africa: A New Literary Canon’ (2011 and more). He blogs at http://www.vakunta.blogspot.com/
Notes

[1] Emmanuel Doh, Africa’s Political Wastelands: The Bastardization of Cameroon, Langaa Research & Publishing CIG, Bamenda, 2008, p.vii.
[2]  Ibid, vii.
[3] Fanny Pigeaud, Au Cameroun de Paul Biya, Editions Karthala, Paris, 2011, p.7.
[4]  Ibid,vii
[5]  Ibid, 224.
[6] Ibid, 224.
[7]  Ibid, 225.
[8] Moses Timah Njei, “Cameroon and Corruption”, culled from http://www.njeitimah-outlook.com/articles/article/2076046/31946.htm
[9]  Jean-Marc Ela, Innovations socials et renaissance de l’Afrique noire, L’Harmattan, Paris, 1998
[10]  Motorcycle commuters
[11] Hawkers
[12]  Retail traders
[13] Pigeaud,202
[14] Ibid, 208.
[15]  Ibid, 207
[16]  Ibid, 193.
[17]  Joseph, M. Ndifor, “Our Collective Shame”, originally published at http://www.postnewsline.com/2011/11/-our-collective-shame.html

The Cameroonian Crisis: Call For A Truth and Reconciliation National Conference (TRNC)

By Dr. Peter Wuteh Vakunta

As I ponder the Cameroonian Crisis, it is increasingly becoming clear to me that it is time Cameroonians plucked up the courage to look at themselves in the mirror and ask the following question upfront: Is there light at the end of the tunnel in Cameroon? I believe that the response is in the affirmative because as Stanley Arnold suggests, “Every problem contains the seeds of its own solution” (quoted in Peale, 1989, p.9). What needs to be done at this juncture is for those at the helm to convene a Truth and Reconciliation National Conference (TRNC) to debate the root causes of the Cameroonian National Crises (political thuggery, governmental dysfunction, rogue civil service, trivialization of la patrimoine nationale, etc).

Representation at the anticipated TRNC could make or mar the proceedings. Consequently, the chair should be a man or woman of unquestionable integrity. Cardinal Christian Tumi comes to mind. The Chair of the TRNC should invite credible leaders from both sides of the linguistic divide in Cameroon to engage in frank dialogue on the myriads of problems that plague the Cameroonian Nation-State at present. These should include political leaders, traditional authorities, clergy, civil servants, and student representatives. The raison d’être of this encounter should be to seek lasting solutions to the nation’s topical problems. Cameroonians must desist from acting like ostriches that tend to bury their heads in the sand in times of crises. They must resist the temptation to dismiss all calls for a National Conference with paranoid cries of “sans objet!” as Mr. Biya had the habit of saying in the 1990’s each time members of the opposition called for a National Conference.

Cameroon’s political leadership must rise up to the challenge. They must set aside petty differences and take bold steps toward addressing the Anglophone Problem by all means necessary. If convening a National Conference would be instrumental in defusing the time-bomb that is likely to explode and do irreparable damage to the entire nation, I see no reason why Cameroonians would not be given the opportunity to come together and talk like brothers and sisters about the things that bother them the most. Cameroonians must learn from success stories in Africa and around the globe. The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) is a case in point. It was a not a panacea for all post-apartheid ills but it did heal many wounds of the past. I have the conviction that this success story could be replicated in Cameroon.

In order to salvage this hitherto enviable country from the canker of disintegration and annihilation, Cameroonians at home and in the Diaspora must put on their thinking caps, sink their trivial differences, deflate their personal egos, bite the bullet and do the right thing at the opportune moment. They have to get rid of the colonial mentality that was bequeathed to them by colonizers, and assume the posture of architects of their own destiny. The belief that goodwill from Westerners will solve Cameroon’s internal problems is a fallacy. Cameroonians must be prepared to look one another in the face and say: look, here is where we went wrong; it is time to correct the mistakes of the past and move on. Cameroonians must combat corruption and ethno-centrism in all its forms. They must fight grinding poverty, including intellectual poverty, by all means necessary. This means marshalling economic and human resources toward the acquisition of skills that are sorely needed in the globalized marketplace.

Above all, Cameroonians must make assure that their hard-won political independence is not a sham. To put this differently, political independence must be backed by economic autonomy. This point has been adumbrated by Ngwane when he wonders aloud: “Of what use is political freedom without economic emancipation?” (14) Ngwane’s question is not a moot point. More than five decades after gaining independence from France and Great Britain it is a crying shame to realize that Cameroon is still tied to the bootstraps of these ex-colonizers. Cameroonians ought to be assertive in conceiving a modus operandi that would steer their country toward economic prosperity. More importantly, Cameroonians need an able leadership endowed with vision; not an avid oligarchy of self-seekers who live on the periphery of global affairs.

The people that govern Cameroon today are outlaws and petty criminals. Under an enlightened leadership endowed with goodwill, Cameroon would be the envy of the entire African continent. In a nutshell, I maintain that Cameroon is not on the brink of a cataclysm on account of her internal problems. It is not a country for the taking as some observers have suggested. Cameroon has the potential to serve as Africa’s success story provided Cameroonians are willing to sink their linguistic and cultural differences to work in tandem for the good of all and sundry. To achieve this goal, they must learn to be patriotic. Love of one’s homeland begins with respect for the supreme law of the land—the Constitution. Cameroonians must watch out for merchants of falsehood parading as benefactors. Regardless of the severity of the national crisis, Cameroonians should be mindful of the fact that in the final analysis, the story of their country is not all about gloom and doom. There are sure signs of a rebirth in the offing.

Works cited
Ngwane, George. “Cameroon’s Democratic Process: Vision 2020” CODESRIA
BULLETIN 3 (2004):45-59.
Peale, Norman V. Six Attitudes for Winners. New York: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 1989.

Note: This is an excerpt from Dr. Vakunta's forthcoming book" NATION AT RISK: A PERSONAL NARRATIVE OF THE CAMEROONIAN CRISIS

On Linguistic Apartheid in the Republic of Cameroon
By Dr. Peter Wuteh Vakunta
The Language Question in Cameroon has become the elephant in the room—a problem that no one wants to talk about. Of all the burning issues that continue to plague Cameroon, the language question is the thorniest. This problem has snowballed into what is now being touted as the identity crisis in Cameroon. More than fifty years after gaining symbolic independence from imperial powers (France and Great Britain) Cameroonians still do not have a language policy that protects indigenous languages. There is no language policy put in place, to the best of my knowledge, to forestall the marginalization of linguistic minorities.  Arguing along similar lines, Ayafor posits: “There has been unrelenting efforts and frustration at the fact that language policy has not contributed to national integration through linguistic fusion” (140). Unlike most other African countries which give pride of place to indigenous languages, French and English, languages of predatory imperialists, remain official languages in Cameroon in stark contradiction of the national constitution which stipulates: “The State shall guarantee the promotion of bilingualism throughout the country. It shall endeavor to protect and promote national languages (Article 1.3: 5)”.

The question that begs to be asked at this juncture is why Cameroon, where over two hundred native tongues co-exist, does not have an official indigenous language policy. What explains the fact that Cameroonians are still dressed in borrowed robes five decades after gaining token independence from their colonial lords? How can Cameroonian leaders reasonably pontificate on the need to nurture a national identity without putting in place an indigenous language policy to foster indigenization and cultural symbiosis? These questions need to be addressed with the urgency they deserve. Cameroonian policy-makers seem to be oblivious of the fact that languages convey the cultural identity, worldview and imagination of the people that speak them. In short, language constitutes the memory-bank of a people; it is an embodiment of both continuity and change in the historical consciousness of the community of speakers of the language. In other words, Cameroonian native languages carry with them the habits, mannerisms, and identity of native speakers. What prevails in Cameroon today is tantamount to linguicide, a term I have used to describe the linguistic genocide that is prevalent in the republic of Cameroon. Our leaders need to put an end to servile linguistic assimilation nationwide.

Bjornson describes assimilation as: “The adoption of European tastes, languages, customs, and colonial government policies by Africans” (19).  He further notes that language is the soul of a people; it transports visible and invisible culture. If you destroy a man’s language, you destroy his cultural roots.  Interestingly, Cameroonians tend to give pride of place to alien cultures to the detriment of their own indigenous cultures. Cultural imperialism manifests itself in different ways in Cameroon.  The choice of what Cameroonians consume is an indicator of the degree to which they have been assimilated into alien cultures. There is a crop of people in Cameroon, notably political leaders, who will not go shopping in Cameroon. Every month, they fly to France or other Western nations to buy groceries, including bottled water! This attitude of alienating oneself from things made at home has sounded the death knell of domestic industries in Cameroon. Albert Gerard has a point when he maintains: “…Les gouvernements issus de l’empire français ne prennent guère de mesures efficaces pour encourager l’activité écrite dans les langues du peuple. Ils ont pour cela des motifs politiques valables” (265) [Governments that were formed in the wake of political independence from France do not take effective measures to foster the codification of indigenous languages. They have valid political reasons for not doing so.]

Linguistic genocide is observable in all walks of life in Cameroon. In the judicial branch of government, the interpretation of the letter and spirit of the law is left to the whims and caprices of French-speaking judges who are ignorant of how the Anglo-Saxon legal system operates. This has resulted in several instances of miscarriage of justice.  For example, miscarriage of justice was evident during the infamous Yondo Black trial way back in the 1990s when an Anglophone witness was deprived of his right to testify on the grounds that the presiding judge could not understand the English language. One wonders what has become of the pool of trained translators and interpreters at the Presidency of the Republic and Ministries in Yaoundé who waste valuable time translating trivialities such as inscriptions on ballot papers for elections that have been rigged beforehand.

The Cameroon Radio and Television (CRTV) is another venue where language abuse is a sore point. This government-owned news network has been so “french-fried[i][i] that ninety-five percent of the programs broadcast are solely in French, to the detriment of English-speaking Cameroonians who have the constitutional right to be informed as well.  News items obtained from English-speaking countries overseas are rapidly translated into French to serve the needs of the Francophone majority at the expense of the Anglophone minority. During electoral campaigns, little or no time is allotted to Anglophone opposition leaders desirous of addressing the nation in a bid to sell their political platforms. The language of instruction and daily routine in the armed forces, police and gendarmerie is French. Anglophones recruited into these forces have to learn French 'overnight' or perish.

The foregoing is only a tip of the iceberg of the logjam that has earned the sobriquet the ‘Cameroonian Crisis’. There is no turning a blind eye to it. It will fester and become an incurable wound. Worse still, it will haunt not just the present generation of Cameroonians but also those yet to be born. It may even affect Africa as a whole because Cameroon is, indeed, Africa in miniature, a microcosm of the continent.  Besides, the phenomenon of globalization is tearing down the invisible walls that nations have hitherto erected around themselves. Cameroonians have to face this linguistic challenge squarely. We do not need another Bosnian or Rwandan Genocide in order to acknowledge the fact that we cannot ignore a festering wound for too long.

Downplaying the importance of indigenous languages amounts to self-hatred—a harbinger to identity crisis. Confiant et al perceive identity crisis as an anomaly. They point out that the tragedy of the ex-colonized is the servile manner in which he tries to “portray himself in the color of elsewhere” (80). In other words, the formerly colonized suffers from self-hatred and self-delusion. Franz Fanon describes Africans who behave in this manner as people with “black skin” wearing “white masks” (15). To put an end to this cultural erosion, it is incumbent on Cameroonians to defuse what Ngugi wa Thiong’o calls the “cultural time bomb” (3). He maintains that the sharpest weapon wielded and actually daily unleashed by imperialism against that collective defiance is the cultural bomb. The effect of a cultural bomb is to annihilate a people’s belief in their names, in their languages, in their environment, in their heritage of struggle, in their unity, in their capacities and ultimately in themselves. Cameroonians need to cultivate plurilingual proficiency. Language experts are unanimous on the fact that multilingualism is indispensable in today’s global village. In fact, monolingualism, they argue, is fast becoming an anachronism.  To put this differently, ability to communicate in several languages is an asset; not a liability. Multilingualism is an added advantage to the multilingual individual and to the nation as a whole given that what is acquired in one language is transferable to the other language. Studies have shown that multilingual individuals exhibit a higher level of cognitive ability than their monolingual counterparts. Surprisingly, Cameroon’s so-called bilingual education policy has proven to be a nonstarter on account of ill-will, ethnocentrism and bigotry.  Worse still, the language policy in Cameroon has been transformed into a political game of chess where ignorant players chip in with the sole intent of scoring political points. I want to reiterate the fact that the latent linguistic warfare that we are waging in Cameroon is not restricted to vernacular languages. English and French are at daggers drawn as well.

The second fiddle status that has been assigned to English-speaking Cameroonians by francophone members of government has made the implementation of the nation’s bilingual education policy a stillborn. There seems to be a deliberate attempt on the part of government officials to asphyxiate the Anglo-Saxon culture and language in Cameroon. This probably explains why in English-speaking towns and cities such as Buea, Tiko, Kumba, Bamenda, Bali, Nso, Ndop, and Nkambe to name but a few, there are billboards and toll-gates with inscriptions written in French! Tiko is an irksome example. As you approach this town, you are greeted by a billboard that reads: “Halte Péage!”  Gosh! What is this sentence intended to communicate to Anglophones who commute on this road day in day out? How do the powers-that-be in Yaoundé expect the average Joe who has never been given the opportunity to learn French to understand what this inscription connotes? Tiko is not an isolated case. There are myriads of such monolingual billboards all over the country. Similar linguistic hotchpotch litters Cameroonian airports. The Nsimalen Airport in Yaoundé is an example. At this airport commuters are exposed to stomach-churning gibberish such as: “To gather dirtiness is good.” This is a word-for-word translation of the Français petit nègre[ii][ii]: “ramasser la saleté c’est bien.”The French in this sentence leaves much to be desired.  But it is even more annoying to realize that there is no English language translation of the notices posted on the billboards. The originators of this unintelligible stuff know full well that in bilingual countries the world over, all official communication: billboards, memos, letterheads, road-signs, application forms, court forms, police documents, health forms, driver’s licenses, hospital discharge forms, and a host of others, are all written in the official languages of the country in question. Failure to do so is tantamount to a violation of the constitution, an illegal act punishable by law in countries that respect the rule of law. At the Nsimalen, one finds on billboards inanities such as: “Not to make dirty is better”. This linguistic trash is meant to be a translation for: “Ne pas salir c’est bien.” If the situation were not so serious one would be cracking up but the question of language policy in Cameroon brooks no laughter. I wonder what diplomats accredited to Yaoundé think of Cameroonians when they read this entire linguistic potpourri.

In my opinion, public officials, namely mayors, governors, senior divisional officers, sub-divisional officers, police officers and gendarmes ought to maintain zero tolerance in upholding Cameroon’s bilingual policy. Yet all they do is take bribes, drink beer and sleep around with free women. Breaches of official language policies ought to be punished severely. There are lots of translators at the Presidency of the Republic and Ministries downtown in Yaoundé spending valuable time on trifles. These technocrats were educated at the expense of the Cameroonian taxpayer and should be made to serve the nation by translating official documents aimed at public consumption. Cameroonian administrators should avail themselves of the services of these civil servants. Let myopia, inanity, and blind allegiance to selfhood not deter them from giving credit where credit is due.

Personally, I couldn’t care less how much cosmetic surgery in performed on the language of Voltaire. What I do care about, though, is where my mother tongue, Bamunka, fits into the linguistic picture in Cameroon. I believe it is the call of every Cameroonian to use all means necessary to prevent the demise of their own indigenous languages. The importance of native tongues has been stressed by scholars in the field. It is important to ponder the views expressed by President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana on the importance of having an implementable indigenous language policy. In a speech titled “Ghana is born”, this African visionary perceived the use of European languages in Africa as one of the problems compromising the freedom, equality and independence of African countries. He suggested the following blueprint for correcting the anomaly:
It is essential that we do consider seriously the problem of language in Africa… Far more students in our universities are studying Latin and Greek than studying the languages of Africa. An essential of independence is that emphasis must be laid on studying the living languages of Africa for, out of such a study will come simpler methods by which those in one part of Africa may learn the languages in all other parts (Quoted in Kwame Botwe-Asamoah, 2001:747).
In the aforementioned discourse, Nkrumah did not only warn against the dangers inherent in the neglect of one’s mother tongue, but he also underscored the importance of linguistic competency in the struggle toward the psychological liberation of Africans. Nkrumah believed that Africans should steer clear of embracing political independence with linguistic servitude, to echo another Ghanaian Africanist, Samuel Gyasi Obeng (2002). Echoing him, Kenyan writer, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, points out: “Every language has a dual makeup; it is both a mode of communication and a bearer of culture” (13).Asante might have injected a dose of iconoclastic humor in his reaction to the language question in Africa but his point is worth taking when he opines that “If your God cannot speak your language, then he is not your God” (4). These postulations are pointers to the fact that linguistic dependency plays a deleterious role in the underdevelopment of Africa.

Many years ago, I read some offensive material that brought tears to my eyes and made me rethink the place of the English language in the Republic of Cameroon. The offensive document that I read was the C.A.P examination. The following is an excerpt culled from Francis Nyamnjoh’s book, The Cameroon G.C.E Crisis: A Test of Anglophone Solidarity (1996):“Each candidat should pick by bilot a sujet. Each sujet is mark over 40 marks. For each port, candidat shall establish the working mothed card. Fill in the analysis car in annexe B” (114). So much for Cameroonian bilingualism! Frankly, any one in his right frame of mind reading this excerpt should be wondering what the hell is going on in Cameroon. Is this English, Franglish, Pidgin, or Camfranglais? How could Anglophone students possibly perform well on a test whose phraseology has been tinkered out of shape? This unintelligible material is supposed to be an examination that determines the fate of hundreds of Anglophone students who spend four years studying at technical colleges nationwide. Little wonder they fail in drones.

Cognizant of the long term ramifications of linguistic apartheid in Cameroon, Anglophone parents and teachers took to the streets in the 1990s and asked for the creation of an independent Board to manage the affairs of Anglophone students. That initiative gave birth to the Cameroon G.C.E. Board as we all know it today. Nyamnjoh notes that when irate Anglophone teachers confronted the erstwhile Minister of National Education, Mr. Robert Mbella Mbappe, over the issue of an independent Examination Board for Anglophones, he made the following remark: “You can do whatever you like with your so-called GCE board, none of my children studies in Cameroon” (114). In a decent country, this senile man would have been asked to resign without further ado. The rape of the English language in Cameroon speaks volumes about the disdain francophone decision-makers have for English-speaking Cameroonians.

In the final analysis, Cameroonians without exception need to muster the courage to ask the hard questions: Is our national language policy serving the purpose for which it was designed? Is this policy mere window-dressing or an implementable paradigm for attaining linguistic autonomy? Cameroonian policy-makers need to stop dancing attendance and cuddling moribund policies that tear us apart rather than unite us. Cameroon’s national language policy was intended to serve as an integrative instrument.  Interestingly, for decades facts on the ground tell a different story. Cameroonian politicians have hijacked the bilingual language policy and converted it into an instrumental tool for achieving self-gratification.

Notes



[i][i] Frenchified
[ii][ii] Simplified, often grammatically incorrect French

Works cited
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About the author
Professor Vakunta works at the United States Department of Defense Language Institute in Monterey-California. This article is an excerpt from his upcoming book Nation at Risk: A Personal Narrative  of the Cameroonian Crisis