Pro-democracy Movements And Affirmative Action Diplomacy In 2008

By Mwalimu George Ngwane

Alexis de Tocqueville attributed the success of democracy to an unusual national propensity for civic engagement. Recent empirical research in a wide range of contexts has confirmed that the norms and networks of civic engagement (now rebaptised “social capital”) can improve education, diminish poverty, inhibit crime, boost economic performance, foster better government and even reduce mortality rates.

Conversely, deficiencies in social capital contribute to a wide range of social, economic and political ills. One of the most important groups in the social capital or pro-democracy movement, according to Claude Ake, is the activist elements in civil society, which include the human rights lobby, minority rights groups, movements for the empowerment and participation of marginalised groups such as women and youth, students and labour, the Church and the media.

Indeed, history has shown on many occasions that  when political parties that were supposed to articulate the social interest of the masses and to provide concrete human and structural development solutions instead become conduits of immunity for the pornographic personalisation of power, the primitive accumulation of wealth and the predatory criminalisation of the State, a bottom-up emancipatory pro-democracy movement emerges.

The emancipatory pro-democracy movement or social capital draws inspiration from a 
people-focussed not populist agenda; a grass-roots mobilisation not elite-dominated 
hegemony; a bipartisan independence not an intra-party intolerance.

According to Atud Kohli as long as democracy remains more an affair of a few elite and less an established framework that dwarfs the leaders, only exceptional leaders are likely to resist the tendency to maintain personal power at the expense of institutional development.

Whether as lone rangers or aggregate networks, the following pro-democracy movements made a significant impact in the national life of Cameroon last year by dint of their courage and consistency to confront the foibles of the establishment.

Their active participation through various modes of non-State affirmative action diplomacy last year in Cameroon is testimony that the civil society might be docile but not dull; it 
might be organisationally weak but not institutionally weakened and it might be ideologically fragile but it is morally firm.

Street Diplomacy

The Cameroonian Youth used the weapon of the streets in February 2008 to articulate their fears and concerns about the social and economic malaise of Cameroon accruing from the polarisation of elite greed and the needs of the masses. In his New Year 2009 message,President Paul Biya acknowledged the justification of that popular uprising even if he legitimately disapproved of the methods.

Mboua Massock defied administrative bans and in January 2008 peacefully demonstrated against the constitutional amendment that provides succour for a limitless Presidential mandate. Massock later walked down the streets of Douala to protest against our cultural heritage that venerates colonialists and ignores our indigenous cultural patrimony. 

Emmanuel Neba Fuh, a Cameroonian in the UK, did a 200km barefoot walk for 17 days in July 2008 to raise awareness in the UK about the plight of Africa and to appeal to the African diaspora to do more for the continent.May 2009 bring forth political and economic conditions that would pre-empt street diplomacy.

Pen Diplomacy

The power in the writer was discernible in 2008 with the book “Paradoxes du pays 
organisateur” by Charles Ateba Eyene, the Snapshot column of Sam Nuvala Fonkem, Point of Order column by Henry Ngale Monono and the electrifying political newspaper treatises of Tazoacha Asonganyi.

Ben Okri, the young London based Nigerian writer and winner of the 1991 Booker Prize once said “if you want to know what is happening to a nation, find out what is happening to the writer”. May 2009 inspire writers to recognise their social role which is not a desire to lodge a claim for artistic leadership but to lay emphasis on democratic entitlement.

Art Diplomacy

Political conscientisation through art was embodied by the musician Lapiro de Mbanga reputed for his anti-establishment diatribe. His 2008 musical single “constitution constipée” that threw an acerbic comment on Article 6.2 modification of the national Constitution earned him the Oxfam Novib / PEN Freedom Expression Award.

The Award was presented to Lapiro in his New Bell prison on 22 November 2008 by the Dutch organisation Oxfam International. Other musicians like Joe la Conscience, Chris Tobie, Prince Afo-a-Kom and Papillion produced songs with vitriolic lyrics even if the songs did not attract a lot of media attention. The satirical cartoonist Popoli extended his political satire akin to Jonathan Shapiro of South Africa by turning his weekly newspaper into a daily.

Popoli’s cartoon steps were followed in 2008 by Dante’s corner in The Post newspaper.
May 2009 generate a new mindset that sees art as a tool of development and in subsequent processes of healing, reconciliation and development of inclusive national narratives.

Party-proof Diplomacy

Could the actions of CPDM parliamentarians Adama Bakari Modi and Ayah Paul Abine and SDF Jean Michel Nintcheu in March, February and December 2008 respectively be regarded as a travesty to party ideology in Cameroon, which consists of unbridled party loyalty or an innovative trend that sees the Cameroonian interest as the ultimate mandate of elected officials?

Could breaking party ranks and assuming an independent vision for what could be the 
collective common wealth of the greatest number be ominous of a new political dispensation that believes that celebrating party solidarity is good, enhancing the culture of peace is better but delivering on democratic development dividends is best?

Did 2008 not end with the elite of the Grand North closing party ranks to obtain more of 
their kith and kin in the Higher Teacher Training Institute in Maroua? May 2009 heed to Bernard Fonlon’s warning as he said “when democratic freedom of expression, where full, free and frank debate and constructive criticism are suppressed, where leaders are not prepared to face the truth when it is bitter, a party becomes warped, rigid and sterile, barren of ideas, incapable of constructive action, incapable of peaceful self-renewal”.

Media Diplomacy

The media was in the vanguard of articulating a social agenda in both the private and public facets in 2008. Media militancy rose to a crescendo that both the Magic FM radio and Equinoxe media complex were shut down ostensibly for administrative reasons. The media has a prime responsibility to examine what government is and is not doing, and to provide the public with information, comment, analysis, criticism and alternative views.

Among the media spaces that fulfilled this interactive responsibility in 2008 were STV’s Cartes sur tables, CRTV’s Scenes de presse, Radio Buea’s Press Club, Radio Bamenda’s Red Carpet, Radio Yaounde’s Morning Safari, Ocean City Radio’s Awilo, Canal 2’s Scratch your eye and Equinoxe TV’s Talking Point and La Grande Tribune. To these could be added the blogs www.dibussi.com, www.gefominyen.com, and www.gnwane.com.

In all, the francophone press seems to have beaten the Anglophone press in a citizen 
advocacy journalism that the latter had heralded in this country.May 2009 provide an enabling environment that would permit media practitioners to use their voices not their shoes as weapons for pluralistic discussion and dissent.

Whistle-blowing Diplomacy

Whistle blowing diplomacy could otherwise be regarded as preventive diplomacy since it seeks to avert an economic or political tsunami by raising an alarm on the corrupt practices of those in offices and in power. 2008 experienced an unprecedented wave of “list journalism” on real or imagined corrupt officials from Albatross to Epervier.

Even if some of the lists were entirely speculative and sometimes vindictive the majority put a spotlight on some of those big wigs who have now taken temporary residence in our prisons.

But the one man who in December 2008 troubled the conscience of the corrupt most was Bernard Njonga, the President of ACDIC.  Known for his agrarian mind and investigative instinct, Njonga throws his early warning system with the accuracy of a marksman.

If Njonga can be credited for having an independent mind to crusade for the powerless and voiceless the same can also be said of Christopher Tambe Tiku whose fettered connection as Southwest Regional Secretary of the National Commission for Human Rights and Freedom does not deprive him of his apathy for social injustice and rent seeking clientelism.

May 2009 point to what Paul Biya called in his New Year Message “his road map of a 
corrupt-free and economically-buoyant Cameroon”. In that same New Year Message the Head of State recognised all these affirmative action, social capital and expansionary pressures from State and non-State agents as partners rather than pariahs of our national project.

If only some of his junior collaborators would oblige.Indeed, if I were elected President of Cameroon, I would stay in office only for one day. In the morning, I would proscribe all political parties and establish an umbrella party with a two-list system and an independent candidate option; in the afternoon, I would convene a national forum to chart a long term development agenda that would be fine-tuned every five years as well as engineer a new constitutional framework; in the evening, I would organise free and fair elections in the primary, secondary and tertiary levels of government and the following day I would step down to pursue my pan African diplomacy of a United  States of Africa. Happy New Year 2009.