BOOK REVIEW - Rethinking the Contemporary State in Cameroon

Book Title: Political Philosophies and Nation-Building in Cameroon: Grounds for the Second National Liberation Struggle
Publishers: GVDA Buea
Printers: Unique Printers Bamenda
Year of Publication: 2006
Author: Nfamewih Aseh (E-mail: mbibiuh@yahoo.co.uk)
Number of pages: 261
Price: Cameroon FCFA 6.000, Europe/North America USA $30 including postage.
Reviewer: Dr. Mbuh Akungwi

As the battle-cry for freedom in post-war Africa was sounded, due to the promise of freedom that was roused by the creation of the United Nations, the idea of Cameroon becoming an independent nation, free from the European stranglehold and internal enslavement, was set afoot. Coincidentally too, the response to the call for freedom in the whole of Black Africa came from Cameroon with the creation of the national liberation movement, Union des Populations du Cameroun (UPC) in 1948. Unfortunately, in its struggle for freedom, the movement met with a counter insurgence from the French and the British who had invaded Cameroon since 1916 and were enslaving the people to produce wealth for Europe. The movement was eventually destroyed by these two European invading powers who installed their proxies in office in the 1960s to head a neo-colonial government in Cameroon; a government run by blacks on behalf of whites.

This book, which sets out to unravel the hidden history of on-the-spot slavery in Africa, using the case of Cameroon, attempts to establish the correlation between the twin concepts of political philosophies and that of nation-building. It takes a multidisciplinary approach in showing the colonial origins of the various political ideas that have been epochal in Cameroon, as a neo-colonial arrangement, since 1945. The author blends with ease a sound knowledge of philosophy and political science in showing the historical trajectories on which Cameroonians have trod, sixty years on. The book is not only an illustration of how history is subordinate to political ideas but it also goes a step further to demonstrate the historical processes through which political ideas are roused into existence. It departs very remarkably from the ordinary approach to the writing of history by rather interrogating history and probing into the psychic states of the historical actors to show how political philosophies develop and how they impact on history.

The book uses the case of Cameroon to bring to light how political ideas in contemporary Africa are roused into being by foreign “invisible forces” and kept in existence from offstage, being a classic example of how Adam Smith’s theory of an “invisible hand”, which operates the economy from behind the scenes, creates and sustains political ideas in contemporary Africa. It is segmented into eight chapters, which are preceded by a preface which qualifies to be a chapter in itself. In chapter one the author critically interrogates all the political actors in post-war Cameroon one after the other and wonders how, in Fanonian terms, they could have been asking for “an improvement in living conditions” from the very forces that had invaded and occupation their lands and were enslaving their people. As a direct consequence of that lacklustre approach to politics, typical of contemporary African politicians who are trapped in the neo-colonial mind set, “they failed at the decisive moment to recapture what they have lost” (p. 21), hence the need to rethink new political strategies in post-colonial Africa if the continent must disentangle itself from decades of foreign political domination and economic stranglehold.

In chapter two the author re-examines what he calls the critical issues which have marked political life in contemporary Cameroon. Chapters three, four, and five focuses on those the author describes as “the three principal political actors in Cameroon”, namely Um Nyobe who initiated the liberation project in post-war Africa, Ahmadou Ahidjo who appeared on the stage as a French acolyte and instead aided France to kill Um Nyobe and to destroy the national liberation movement and was enthroned by France to implement French designed programmes (planned liberalism) in Cameroon in that capacity until the curtains were drawn on him from the backstage, by the same France who thought that his time was up. Consequently, Paul Biya who, upon his returned from France in 1962 after six years of studies came along with a letter of recommendation from Luis-Paul Aujoulat, a French man who is presented as the “French God father” of Cameroon politics, to Ahmadou Ahidjo, was stage-managed by France to replace Ahmadou Ahidjo as Cameroon’s second President towards the end of the cold war.

Paul Biya, within his political philosophy of communal liberalism, aided the World Bank/IMF to liberalise both the economic and the political spheres but maintain restrictions at the entrance into the ruling circles when the countries of the North, in concert, were poised to play a new kind of political game: to re-invade Africa in a more direct manner through multinationals for the continuous enslavement of black people on their own soil and for the continuous enrichment of white man countries under the cover-up of “modern” paradigms such as liberalisation, democracy, etc. The author then shows that Um Nyobe, who was the Vice President of RDA (Rassemblement Territoriale Africaine), with Houphouet-Boigny as its President and Sedar Senghor as its Secretary General, fought to liberate Cameroon while Ahidjo and Paul Biya rather fought to hand it back to Europeans for their enterprise of invasion and enslavement in non-European societies, a project with whom the European proxies in power share the spoils of internal slavery, in a slave-worked economy, with their metropolitan masters.

In chapter six the book illustrates how both internal and external factors have been woven together to render the sixty-year-old political experiment a complete failure, a disaster, as the political and economic hiccups in Cameroon keeps on obeying the political and economic climatic changes in the white man countries, depending on the latter’s economic needs. And since the white man countries hold the political and economic handle and Cameroonians hold the political and economic blade, each time the metropolitan dictators pull the handle the palms of Cameroonians bleed. And the role of the UN in the project for the liberation of the Black Man from the yoke of the White Man and that of the IMF/World Bank Bretton Woods twins, all UN specialised agencies, are put to serious question.

Although the entire book introduces a social scientific theory for the understanding of the political history of Cameroon from a global perspective, chapter seven takes a more global dimension to that effect. This chapter traces the historical circumstances and processes through which the White Man became ubiquitous on the global scene, having migrated out of a small peninsula in Europe and occupied three large continents after killing the aboriginal populations and owning their lands and, like termites, rapidly multiplied their population and have since then used stolen wealth, technology, and the spread of disease, to spread their tentacles to all the nooks and crannies of the globe. It revokes the question of slavery and shows how slave trade might have been “abolished” in the West and how slavery was transposed into Africa where it continues still this day in varying forms under political structures that were purposefully put in place to cover up criminal intentions for the perpetrators of modern slavery.

Like a research project the book is, here incontrovertible evidence are brought out to demonstrate how diseases have always been the main ally of the White Man in their mission of ecological expansion, global invasion, and global dominance. It opens the way for discussions on a topic hitherto held as taboo, namely that of the myth of the origins and the spread of AIDS. The book shocks its readers about the Western origins and spread of AIDS and wonders whether the Black race may not be facing extermination in the hands of the White race.

Chapter eight introduces yet a new dimension in the understanding of history. It critically examines how politico-psychological factors played a great role in determining what Karl Marx refers to as historical materialism and postulates that if Cameroon must become a truly independent nation, Cameroonians must re-invent a new path and to completely turn away from these politico-psychological factors which have been the major pitfalls which have impaired their ability to think independently and to act decisively to become Men as Jean Paul Sartre puts it. The book does not only end at examining the political blunders of the past and showing how they have had disastrous social, economic, and political consequences on the lives of unsuspecting Cameroonians but proposes the way forward. Drawing from the historical experiences of some pre-colonial nations, it advances a theoretical proposition for forging a solid independent and autonomous nation in Cameroon that is integrative in approach, based on a social contract, rooted on a mastery and control of the physical world on which the people should depend, free from the white man’s burden.

Grounded on a theoretical approach as a methodological option to show how Cameroonians have no control over their own destiny in their own country, the book is certainly a must read for every Cameroonian and by extension all Africans who truly desire freedom. It draws on valid conclusions that there is need for rethinking the political destiny of Cameroon. In academic circles the book promises to be an invaluable document for most social science disciplines especially political science, history, sociology, media studies, philosophy, education, etc. It is available in bookshops in all the major towns in Cameroon.