Thursday, October 24, 2024

Salvaging the Country of Old Men (Cameroon)


You know it is a sick country when it has only had two heads of state in its 74-year history as a so-called independent state. You know its malady is chronique and degenerative when the current president has been the head-of state for forty-two years and has been at the helm of power  for more than five decades either as first in command or second in command, yet the country is not a monarchy. But then you wonder whether something is wrong with the psyche of the people of the country when the current head of state has hardly been involved in the day-to-day running of the country for most of those four decades, earning the nickname “Africa’s Absentee President” for spending most of his time abroad  as if he does not want to live in the country that has been degenerating into hellhole under his watch.

 

That country is Cameroon, a geopolitical entity in Africa variously described as “Africa in Miniature” and “The Microcosm of Africa; that is my beloved country which because of its dynamism and rapid development during the first three decades of German colonization was called “The African Pearl”, before it was conquered and partitioned by Britain and France during World War One; it is the only part of Africa where those who fought, campaigned  and voted for its liberation, independence, and reunification  have never been allowed to get the levers of power  and build the state into the country of their dreams. It is the only geopolitical entity in Africa where those who are in power are those or the heirs of those who were put there by the foreign forces that defeated the Cameroonian patriots who fought to liberate the land. Which explains why the Cameroonian president, like his predecessor, is a comprador.

 

Cameroon’s suffocation under the French-imposed system has been going on for two generations now. It has deformed the noble values once upheld by the Cameroonian society, and it has bred a new culture of double-thinking, double-talking, laziness and a disconnect between hard work and success that risks haunting Cameroon forever if allowed to persist for another generation. The system must be overhauled now. After all, it is the desire of the overwhelming majority of Cameroonians from every region, ethnicity, religion, and race in Cameroon. It is the desire of more than 95% of the people of Cameroon, and almost a hundred percent of Cameroonians who were compelled to live abroad. That is why overhauling the system and founding the “New Cameroon” along the patriotic ideals of Kamerunism (Cameroonian union-nationalism) that the land’s civic-nationalists have been espousing for more than a century in different forms (Under Martin Paul Samba/ Rudolf Duala Manga Bell from 1910-1914, under the UPC/KNDP from 1948-1971, and the civic-nationalist faction of the historic SDF of 1990-1997), is Cameroon’s only bargain with a promising future.

 

However, a reality looms. The French-imposed system has been around for seven-plus  decades, the politicians and their successors who were put in power by colonialist France and who have been working as puppets of contemporary neo-colonialist France are or were those Cameroonians or their heirs who played no part whatsoever---whether as moderates or as radicals --- in the 1955-1970 campaign and war of liberation by the UPC, which even though it failed  to ensure the transfer of power from the hands of the French to the UPC leadership,  is  laudable for its  persistence that forced  the French Empire to speed up the time table of transfer of sovereignty to its puppets under Ahmadou Ahidjo, a transfer that led to French Cameroun’s pseudo-independence on January 01, 1960, the reunification of British Southern Cameroons and the former French Cameroon a year later, and the perforce Franco-Ahidjo establishment of a police state (what is today Cameroon’s anachronistic French-imposed system) to impose the  rule of the French puppet masters and their puppets who never really had an idea of what Cameroon’s genuine interests are.

 

We are already in the third generation of the zombification and dehumanization of Cameroonians by the political mafia in France which created and is maintaining the anachronistic system that is disarraying one of Africa’s most dynamic people; the social engineering of Cameroonians to make them a docile and political messed up people with no sense of direction is almost complete. The 42-year regime of the comprador Paul Biya, and the twenty-four-year rule of his predecessor Ahmadou Ahidjo stand out as major symptoms highlighting the degree of Cameroon’s political malady, social infection, economic senselessness, and collective sink into the abyss. FrancAfrique, Mafiafrique, the French-imposed system of compradors in Cameroon, the Ahidjo-Biya regimes that have been acting like Nazi-kapos on Cameroonians, and the entire repository  that feeds the retarding system are an affront to the dignity of right-thinking Cameroonians who are in the overwhelming majority and who want a humane country with a sense of direction and responsibility.

 

Cameroon and Cameroonians are less than two decades away from the completion of the process of social engineering that would make them a zombified people for the purpose of serving outside forces that do not have Cameroon’s interest in mind. Unless we start thinking and acting as patriotic Cameroonians who uphold the civic-nationalist ideals of Kamerunism; and until we understand that our salvation shall come only when all or most of us act as a team for “The New Cameroon”, irrespective of the tribe, ethnicity, religion, language or region we identify with, we would not be able to reverse the current political, economic, social, and demographic trends that together with this new culture of ‘disrespect, disbelief, disorder, dehumanization, and nihilism’, as well as the growing ideology of ‘death’, promise to make Cameroon a failed state and Cameroonians a messed-up people that no true patriot can free. Simply, stopping the puppetry of the foreign mafia, France, and their Cameroonian compradors who played no role or are the heirs of those who played no role whatsoever in Cameroon’s liberation, is our only bargain with our salvation and restoration of our dignity and sense of purpose.

 

Dismantling the French-imposed system and founding the “New Cameroon” must be accomplished within a decade if we must save our potentially great Cameroon that was conceived to become the prototype and nucleus of “The New Africa”. That involves ending the gerontocracy and thwarting another deception that would involve Paul Biya and his French puppet masters choosing someone who would succeed him and continue the retarding system of compradors that more than 90% of Cameroonians loathe.

 

 

 

Janvier Tchouteu                                                                  October 24, 2024


Janvier Tchouteu is the author of Triple Agent, Double Cross



CAMEROON: The Haunted Heart of Africa



Janvier Tchouteu is also the author of " The Mistakes To Be Avoided in Building The New Cameroon"


No comments:

Post a Comment