Why There Will Hardly Be Change In Cameroon

Interview by Charly Ndi Chia

Francis Beng Nyamnjoh midwifed the Department of Sociology at the University of Buea when it took off in 1993. But just when it was thought that this acerbic social critic and prolific writer would be nursing this Department to full academic adulthood, he left for the legendary greener pastures. The Professor is apparently still searching for the greenest of the pastures as he moves from one country and one institution to the other, gathering academic and intellectual moss in the process.
Nyamnjoh (personal website at: www.nyamnjoh.com) talked to The Post about his sojourn, in Buea, Botswana and Senegal. He examined the uniqueness of the Cameroonian people, which makes it impossible for them to go the Liberian, Sierra-Leonean or even Ivorian way.  Excerpts:

When you were last heard from, you were Head of the Department of Sociology at the University of Buea. But you abruptly went under, some five years back. What happened?

I left the University of Buea, for the University of Botswana where I taught for four years. I am currently with the Council For the Development of Social Science Research In Africa, called CODESRIA, as the Head of Publications and Communications.

Let’s look deeper into CODESRIA and what you do there.

CODESTRIA is a scholarly Publisher. It does more than just publishing. It sponsors research, undertakes training programmes; it gives fellowships and scholarships to scholars and it gives opportunities for scholars to meet at conferences, seminars and various summer institutes to exchange ideas, to network and do a lot more. I am in charge of the publications programme, because the research that CODESRIA sponsors in the various universities and research institutions eventually crystallises in the form of publications and my duty is to see that what comes through is publishable and that it gets the attention that it deserves amongst the scholarly communities in Africa and generally.

Just when you were very much needed at the University of Buea, to mould local minds, you voted with your feet… to Botswana and then Senegal. Looks like charity for you, begins abroad.

For one to be relevant in an institution, the institution must also express that it needs that person. But there were hardly any indications among the authority of the University of Buea that I was needed at that time. And indeed I’m surprised this day that people who want to go out for further studies are being held back and told they are needed because the staffing situation is desperate. But the University doesn’t do its best to keep the staff that is already qualified on the ground. It chases them away and turns around and tells junior staff they cannot go out for further studies. I think that is out rightly hypocritical.

I am assuming that you were chased out. If so, why?

Basically, a university administration that does not create the conducive environment for genuine scholarship; that prefers a highly political university environment rather than going out there to do what it is created or appointed to do which is enable scholarship and a conducive environment for students to study and do research…

You sound as if someone shoved you away from Buea to Botswana? In other words, would you have still opted for the Botswana idea had the UB authorities pampered you the way you expected?

I left the UB reluctantly. I didn’t leave it for greener pastures, although the pastures eventually turned out to be much more greener. But that was not the motivating factor. It was simply that my scholarship was stifled. The priorities were not what one expected of an academic institution. And basically I would of course, (to answer your question) have stayed, had there been any indication within the University of Buea that scholarship was the target. At Buea, one had the impression that premium was placed on administration and that as long as the University was alive people didn’t care whether its departments closed down or whether there was any scholarship at all. As far as I could gather then, students and staff are an encumbrance and administration is what everybody should protect.

Would you say that, that trend in anyway compromised scholarship at the University at the level of teachers and students?

Of course most of the staff and students at the university of Buea, are quite talented and if given the opportunity, would work very well. And Cameroon has a way of producing very good scholars. We can compete, but then we need to have the environment, leadership that is committed to such scholarship. I have just come back and I’m looking through the University of Buea talking to staff and I was appalled to understand that Internet access is highly policed. And that staff don’t have Internet links in their offices, even when they have computers. And curiously they have to pay FCA 300 or so to check their mails. And I can’t understand in this day and age what university authority cannot still see the importance of ICTS as an enabling factor in scholarship and learning amongst students. It is scandalous, to say the least.

We were informed that no sooner had you arrived Botswana than you were made an Associate Professor. Why did the authorities hesitate in conferring this on you back here?

I had two offers; one was from the University of Western Cape; a full Professorship and a second was a Senior Lectureship from the University of Botswana. At the time, I compared the two and the University of Botswana was a much better offer. First it was a better University in terms of facilities. Good library, good research possibilities and also financially much better. So I went for the Senior Lectureship in Botswana and shortly after that of course, given my scholarship, I was promoted to Associate Professor.

Would that have been the case if you had stayed here?

Perhaps eventually, but then our system as you know clearly, is one in which your promotion or change of grade in the system does not so much dependent on your peers as on the caprice of political consideration. So you know of course that elsewhere the peer review system is very rigorously respected. And if you qualify you would go through the peer review mechanism and get your promotion awarded. But here, you may be very well qualified but if politically you are out of tune, for whatever reason, you would stay grounded and you might have mediocrity that is far from being qualified in any sense but  politically relevant and be propelled to the highest office. I am not telling you anything new.

Now you are where book business is thriving. And it would appear you have published quite a few books. Ever since Mind Searching, which other books have, you published between then and now?

I think I have published extensively. And just for books I have co-published with Piet Koenings, Negotiating An Anglophone Identity: A Study In Politics Of Recognition And Representation In Cameroon. I have published recently, an edited volume on the Rights and Politics Of Recognition in Africa. I have Upcoming Skills with Z-books in London; a book on Africa’s Media, Democracy and the Politics of Belonging, and another one which is just coming out on Globalisation Mobility and Citizenship In Southern Africa and The Convert.

Once upon a time, you spent quite some energy and force crusading for a change of mentality of the leadership of Cameroon in particular and of the Cameroonian mind in general. You were like out to inaugurate an ethical code of conduct. Did it work? Did you give up?

I haven’t given up but it is quite frustrating to remark just the degree of indifference of popular will that can be orchestrated within a country, with impunity. And so, it is frustrating in that regard but it is not something to give up its perhaps a question of seeing what I have done and what I continue to do. It is research that points to some of the issues that the public or Cameroonians might find useful in understanding the predicament in which they find themselves in. As far as that particular line of contributing is concerned, I continue to do that.

But research we would agree is very impotent vis-à-vis the coercive weapon of power. Put differently, one can do all the research which the powers that be, would decide that it belongs in the trash can. Doesn’t this destroy and frustrate you?

It does frustrate, but one thing I would say is that while research alone might not lead to a change from a mentality of impunity and callous disregard; at least, such a mentality cannot be changed without research.

We were talking about impunity. How much of it did you recognise in what was supposed to be an election in this country last October?

I didn’t. I was not in the country for the election. But at the same time the results were a fore-gone conclusion, in the sense that if you see what I wrote for the Nordic African Institute on Over 12 Years of Cosmetic Democracy, is exactly the same that I had said in there. For me, it was a foregone conclusion. You cannot begin to expect change when the structures that underlie the system are still well embedded.

As a sociologist, can you vouchsafe a statement on Cameroon eventually attaining the chaotic state of say, Sierra-Leone and Liberia of some years back or present day Ivory Coast? Should we hit this stage, what shape and colour would it take?

I think that Cameroonians are united by a common determination to hate one another. And that is very uniting. I once said Cameroonians are united by ethnic ambition and differences in a paper I did. And that is what keeps Cameroon stable. In the sense that your worse enemy is fetched from your own village for example. Lets take this talk frankly. To replace Musonge, Paul Biya didn’t do any creative work. He went to Musonge’s backyard and fetched Inoni. Made clearly, that means, he sends a message to Cameroonian that if you want to succeed with me, you don’t have any business fighting across ethnic boundaries. Start by killing your own closest brothers and sisters. Shoot them down because they are the ones most likely to stand in your way.

Whose creation is this? I mean, this system and for how long can this go on?

It’s a cynical application of what you call divide and rule and the play out of politics of ethnic balance. In that to take one out of an ethnic group you must look within there to put one in. What it means basically, is that Cameroonians get divided across regional and ethnic lines and instead of fighting different ethnic groups, they can only do that to the extent that they are not represented. But once they’ve had their own person the fight gets inside the ethnic group, to see who would be the one eventually, to get that trophy. Once they get representation, they start fighting within themselves. And I cannot foresee the Ivory Coast situation, under any circumstances.

How do you mean?

Because we are so implicated in the system. We have an interest in keeping it up. Everybody at their own level. From the taxi man who wants to avoid paying FCFA 500 to the policeman, and the policeman who wants to turn a blind eye on the businessman in terms of not paying taxes, right up to the University Vice-Chancellor or Professor who know they don’t deserve the positions. The market woman who wants to sell her vegetable without paying FCFA 100. Even the priests and pastors have a stake in the system. Because they know your latest Pajero might just be on the way if you are the President of the Episcopal Council…you make the right noises or don’t make the wrong noise at all. Basically we are all part of the system that we so definitely want changed, which is a contradiction. And that is why we can never spill over to the Ivory Coast situation. You spill over when people feel agrieved and are not part of the system either directly or indirectly.

But it takes just a little pin to prick and burst the balloon.

That is what we have been believing for years. And Cameroon has succeeded precisely because people had an illusion we could all fall in the Rwandan-type situation. But the truth is that until we begin to extract ourselves from the system and refuse to be part of it even in a small indirect manner; until we start doing that, this country is safe and the President can run it form a distance. It is much more difficult to run a family than to run Cameroon.

Comments

[Rexon Tayong]

Thanks Francis,
Your interview will broaded the scope of many Cameroonians who want changed but do not know how change begins. We have all been socked to the system that we sometimes fail to understand how the system impacts on our private lives.

[Cheongwa Nkwete Wanzie]

Hope you digest it.

[pw]

The good doctor is spot on. Cameroon has lost its moral compass. Whether a country can lose its soul to the god of materialism and survive is open to debate, but Cameroon will be a good case study. The place is a cesspit full of snakes and vampires all looking for an opportunity to sell their soul to the highest bidder. Everyone desires the Western European and North American lifestyle without the work ethic which provides that sort of lifestyle. Of course, it certainly does not help that the people running the country are gluttonous, corrupt cretins.

[Richard Akum Jr.]

The Prof. could not have said it better. However, I would beg to differ with his optimistic outlook on Cameroon's future. Theoretically, Cameroonians are party to the current systemic dissonance. However, we have no control over the unknowns of destiny. Cote d'Ivoire only imploded after the passing of Houphouet-Boigny. This was followed by the escalation of the Ouatarra-Bedie rivalry. Rwanda disintegrated after in the last days before Habyarimana's passing. Should our president pass within the next couple of years, Cameroon's fate would be far from optimistic. Political transitions breed seeds of discord which may not be evident within entrenched autocracies. Hence, I'd pray for enhanced institutional capacity, before the fates of others befall us. I would see peace only when someone can point to clear constitutional lines of succesion; the "de-ethnicization" of the Beti-laden presidential guard and the predominantly nordiste "Gendarmerie," and the reduced role of France in Cameroon's political evolution. May God Help Cameroon.

[Janvier Tchouteu]

THE POST-INDEPENDENCE INTELLECTUALS AND SELF-CRITICISM:

The generation of intellectuals who were born after independence or who were too young to remember it are today the victims of the deception of the system that was put in place in kamerun by the neo-colonialist Gaullist establishment in France. They are the victims of Kamerun’s legacy of broken promises and solemn dreams. This sacrificed generation grew up physically and intellectually in an epoch and environment where dreams were being realized everywhere and became certainty more than any time in the history of humanity. The 1960s-1990s were years when a man’s potentials could be exploited to attain great results and great personal heights, and today at the onset of their ripe years, the post-independence generation are faced with the harsh reality of a system which has betrayed them, and left them with no promising future when they had molded their intellectual capabilities to match the great potentials that our country truly harbors, and the greater heights the true Kamerunian dream had revealed, a dream with a visible link to reality.

Yes, Kamerun’s post independent and post-reunification intellectuals feel betrayed and disillusioned today. Not only is it being made impossible for them to manifest their intellectual acquisitions, they have also been sidelined by both the system and those of the pre-independence generation who profess to oppose it, leaving them with two options in their intellectual manifestations:
· The post-independence intellectual can accept the present system and its retarding influences and anachronistic bearings and be branded a pseudo-intellectual, while benefiting from the handouts that the system can offer to collaborators or
· They can pursue the path of protest, resistance or capitulation (abandonment).

By protesting and resisting, the post-independence intellectual would be confronted by the full wrath of the system’s machinations whose end result may be frustration or elimination, while if he abandons the cause he would find himself heading towards self-worthlessness and oblivion(internal or external).

Today, the exponents of the French-imposed anachronistic system feel threatened by those of the post-independence generations who have not given up hope and are prepared to protest and resist the system. They feel threatened because they know that the Biya regime and the system it is guarding can only survive in a kamerun that is devoid of alternative ideas and governance. This threat to the system emanates from the simple fact that these new breed of post-independence intellectuals suffer from the failures of the anachronistic French-imposed system (repression; improvisation; mismanagement; corruption; brain drain; discrimination; rapidly declining health, culture, morality and the disintegration of the Kamerunian society; and the Kamerun’s slow acquisition of a pariah state) and have acquired the priceless touch with the Kamerunian masses who have been hit the most. This extra touch has set them apart from the pre-independence intellectuals, and has created a gap, which should not be bridged for the interest of kamerun.

Some say that it is a generation gap in Kamerun’s intellectual community, but it is more than that. It would have been a generation gap if the post-independence generations of intellectuals had wanted to do the things the pre-independence intellectuals did but in a different way (it would have meant accepting the retention of the anachronistic French-imposed system, which has clogged and cannot even accommodate the rising number of children of those benefiting from the system).

The fact that the post-independence intellectuals never benefited from the system and do not want to follow in the path of the pre-independence intellectuals and rejects the older generation’s deceptions in all its forms automatically draws open a phase of conflict. This is the conflict between the culture(corruption, dishonesty, ethnocentricism, repression, and economic, political and social degeneration) that the pre-independence intellectuals are manifesting in the French-imposed system under the Biya regime, and the new culture (freedom, liberty, unity, meritocracy, democracy, economic, social and political progress) for the future new kamerun that the post-independence intellectuals want to implement, a new culture that embraces global civilization and promises kamerun a place in the society of progressive nations. This new culture is embodied in Kamerun’s union nationalism whose advanced ideals are compatible with the rapidly changing world.

Rapidly, our rejection of the path taken by the pre-independence intellectuals is assuming a political content, which is strongly opposed by the French political establishment, the Biya regime, and all those who benefited and are benefiting from the imposed anachronistic system. For us to succeed and realize the new humanized kamerun with its new values and culture, we should kill all the negative aspects of the haunting legacy of Kamerun’s pre-independence pseudo-intellectualism, because if we do not, we shall be irredeemably consumed by it.

It is not enough to criticize and discard old aspects of what is Kamerun’s intellectualism. We must be honest to ourselves and live up to the task of detaching ourselves from any self-esteem, egoism and egotism; and accept some of the errors of our ways that may even have arisen from our deep commitment to the cause for a promising future for kamerun. Even though for now we are idealists, we are expected to be pragmatists and realists if we want the new system to work.

That is why we must question each action we have taken or are about to take, and if it is wrong, we should admit the shortcomings and finally correct it. Finally, we should not be carried by excessive rhetoric over our ideas because that necessitates frequent utterances, even in circumstances when they are irrelevant and unmeaning. And after several irrelevant and unmeaningful utterances, we may be tempted to defend them, while all the while being aware of our errors, but too proud to accept them, simply because we want to defend our egos and new positions. Such a direction would not make the post-independence intellectuals any different from the criminal pre-independence intellectuals, a sad development that would make us the obstacle to any constructive idea that the generations of the next millennium may want to implement.

February 27, 1995

Janvier Tchouteu

[Ignasio Malizani Jimu]

Nyamnjoh's wisdom highlighted in this interview is a great challnge to many in leadership positions in government and academia all over Africa. For some of us in academia we fail to rise up to the challenge to be the source of knowledge, inspiration and light to the hearts and minds of our nations. I envy your talents, in particular your eloquence and writing skills.Bravo Nyamnjoh!

[okolle justin]

THE INTERVIEW WITH FRANCIS NYAMJOH IS ONE OF THOSE THAT HAS REALLY TOUCHED MY HEART. FN IS REALLY A MAN OF FORESIGHT AND TRUTH

[Babatunde Ogunsina]

The interview with FN is a pointer to serious issues responsible the decay and erosion of values in the academia and governance in Africa. The Cameroun,s case is not different at all from most other African nations including my own Nigeria. Much as the academia is loaded with young people with unique potentials and sound intellect capable of bring resounding transformation to the African world, it is the wrong people that are getting up there. In cases when the right people gets there it is sickening atimes seeing how fast a lot of them compromise what they stand for. This is one serious unfortunate thing that has permeate the entire system, making it appear as if there is no solution in sight. However, just as someone
rightly said, one possible approach to attacking the problem is for everyone who knows and believe in what is right begin to do it, protect it and propagate it; in homes, schools, religious gathering and wherever. The process may initially appear to be slow but it will have a lasting effect.

[ogaga okuyade]

please when is your next conference coming up or do you have a call for paper.please i want information on your online journal.i want your jounal on globalization.

[ogaga okuyade]

please when is your nexst conference coming up.have you any call for paper?