Up Station Mountain Club

Discourse on the Source of Corruption: The Harvest of Decolonization in Postcolonial Africa

Emmanuel Konde 
  
The European colonizer never danced with the colonized African throughout the colonial period until the eve of independence. 

 

It was then that the music began to play, and the colonizer, with deceptive arms stretched as invitation to dance with the colonized, the African, thinking himself equal to his European colonizer readily jumped on the dance floor and began the long waltz to decolonization. 

Revisiting Anglophone Marginalization

By Emmanuel Konde
 
1. Introduction
 
A lot of verbiage is being spilled forth by journalists and rabble-rousers alike, all men only partially schooled in the history of Cameroon . In fact, it has become something of a fad lately to peddle tantalizing and titillating stories about Anglophone marginalization without careful substantiation of this macabre rumor. Hungry for facts relating to this marginalization thesis, an unsuspecting public has consumed it without second thought. What follows below is a synoptic account of what befell Southern Cameroonians on the eve of unification and thereafter. As you read this piece, please exercise uncharacteristic calm, and coldly ponder these questions: (1) Is the Anglophone marginalization thesis relevant? (2) Can a people marginalize itself/themselves, or must one people overwhelm another for marginalization to take place? (3) Is self-marginalization possible? (4) If so, have Anglophone consciously or unconsciously marginalized themselves?

Time, Patience, and Education: Weaving the Fabric of Cameroon's Incipient Democracy

 Emmanuel Konde 
   
The primary responsibility of government is to insure the security, peace and stability of the country.  Any government that fails to discharge this responsibility is unfit to govern.  For the past quarter-century the CPDM Government in Cameroon has discharged this primary responsibility exceptionally well.  If in discharging this responsibility some collateral damage occurs, especially when rabble rousers incite the populace to rampage and damage property in towns and cities far-removed from the villages of the perpetrators, it is the rabble rousers and perpetrators who are to blame and not the Government.  It seems to this writer rather strange that hooligans leave their own remote villages intact and instead come to Douala to destroy personal and state property.  One wonders why the angry men do not exact such destruction in their own natal villages.

Cables from the Fatherland 3: The Diaspora and the Need for Culture Change at Home

Emmanuel Konde
 
Having outlined the dominant position of the CPDM in Cameroon politics, our attention should now be directed to its affiliate organs abroad. 
 
CPDM members in the USA (c) CPDM USA Blog

Overseas CPDM Sections have a critical role to play in politics of Cameroon as long as the party remains in power.  More than any other body, overseas CPDM Sections are the natural catalysts of change that may enable the party to thrive in the coming decades.  Currently, however, many overseas CPDM Sections have not risen to to play the roles for which they were created.

Cables from the Fatherland 2: The Political Realities on the Home Front

Emmanuel Konde
 
For good or ill, CPDM is the political party of Cameroon, the dominant political force…the political reality of the day.


Around CPDM everything revolves on the home front. This is fact and not fiction.  As such, any person who desires to contribute to nation-building in any way, shape or form, at least for now and the foreseeable future must first come to grips with this and, then, join the party. 

Cables from the Fatherland 1: The Emergence of a New Kind of Corruption

Emmanuel Konde
 
I just returned from my annual pilgrimage to the Fatherland where, in my hometown of Limbe, the unceasing torrential rains still flood the streets as well as a slew of neighborhoods. 
 
Street scene in Limbe (c) Orock Eta

Pretentions of power and wealth still abound, while greed and graft are on the rise, even as social development lags behind. But the Green Revolution has ensured an eternal plenitude of food, so that there is hardly a single Cameroonian who spends the night with a hungry stomach. 

From Disjuncture to Consensus 1: Discourse on New Partnership between State and Civil Society

 Emmanuel Konde 
  
Human greed and human arrogance of power are two major sources of social evil.  This is true of life in general and particularly so in politics.  Greed is the appropriation of resources to oneself or by a group of individuals.  Arrogance of political power is the selfish consumption of power by one person or a few at the expense of the people.  Greed and arrogance of power breed mistrust between power and wealth, the powerful not-so-knowledgeable and powerless-knowledgeable, and between those who have and those who want.  The term, civil society, was coined to designate the powerless-knowledgeable who have been systematically excluded from power and who, desirous of political power, strategically posit themselves as advocates for the marginalized masses.  It is not surprising that this concept is used only in reference to societies in which consensus among the major stake-holders is yet to be hatched. 

The Day the Music Paused: How Michael Jackson was Killed

Emmanuel Konde 
 
The music paused the world over on Thursday, June 25, 2009 at 2:26 p.m. PDT when the “King of Pop,” Michael Jackson, ceased to exist.  It is said that Michael suffered a cardiac arrest and all attempts to resuscitate him failed.  And so the stunning news filtered from the UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles to the entire world:  “Michael Jackson is Dead!”
 
Although the physical death of Michael Jackson may have occurred on June 25, 2009, he had been killed spiritually many times over by journalists the likes of ABC ‘s Diane Sawyer (1995) and BBC’s Indian journalist Martin Bashir (2003). 

Iran is Not on the Path of 1979

Emmanuel Konde
 
Rabble rousing youth, incited by those who lost big in the Iranian Presidential Election of June 12, are on the prowl in the streets of Tehran.  These young people have nothing to lose but their naiveté. Many of them have practically no stake in Iran—no jobs, no operty, nothing….  Thus, they have chosen to eschew the orderly electoral process and elevate political disorder as an expression of their desire for democracy.  But democracy is rational and orderly.  It is expressed through the ballot box, not demonstrations designed to topple a duly elected government, and definitely not something that can be achieved through street action. 

Iran is a Theocratic Republic… Not a Democracy

Emmanuel Konde
 
Last Friday, 12 May, Iranian incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared winner of the presidential election that guaranteed him a second four-year term. 

Given the nature of the Iranian political system, few observers would feign that they did not know that the outcome of this particular election was pre-ordained. Yet   Ahmadinejad’s chief rival, Hossein Mousavi, his supporters and other so-called moderate candidates are contesting the election.  They claim that the vote was rigged, and have decided to capture that which they could not through the ballot by recourse to massive protests.  

Sotomayor's American Journey: From the Bronx Housing Projects to the Supreme Court

By Emmanuel Konde

Few American Dreams and dreamers can compare with Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s. Hers’ is more of a journey than a dream, a life’s journey that began in the Bronx Housing Projects of New York to ultimately end at the Supreme Court of the United States of America in Washingtom, DC.  This transformation in the life of Sotomayor epitomizes the change candidate Barack Obama had promised Americans during his campaign for the Office of President.  The slogan was “Change We Can Believe In”—the kind of change possible only in America— that President Obama is now transforming from mere belief to reality.

How the Gendarmerie Dislodged Fraudulent Abriba from Victoria

By Emmanuel Konde

The Problem in Perspective

I was only a boy when the momentous social transformations I am about to narrate were initiated in Victoria.  Granted, I cannot recollect every detail of what I observed but my inability to recollect these details cannot stop me from chronicling these events.  There is a lot of confusion out there being peddled by obstructionists and separatists.  And I think this is the historical juncture at which to narrate these facts.  I will, therefore, attempt to zero-in only on those aspects that I can still visualize with clarity, and try to present at least some outlines that can be filled by other Victoria boys and girls who witnessed them. 

The Human Will to Power

 Emmanuel Konde 
  
 When I write of power I mean real power and not the semblance of power, or the pretensions to power often exhibited by some powerless people.  I mean the kind of power that the powerful can employ at will to compel others to do what they would otherwise not do, or use to elevate or destroy life and property and render many a happy man or woman miserable.

Beyond Federalism, Unitarism, and Separatism: Harmonizing Cameroon’s Conflicting Colonial Political Cultures (Part 2)

II. UNCRITICAL ACCEPTANCE OF COLONIAL CULTURES

Rather than engage the process of fashioning a new political system grounded in the political usages of the 200 or so ethnic groups and tribes that make up the population of Cameroon, the new leaders of the Federation chose to remain true to alien political
cultures.

Post-independence Cameroon has been dominated by the French colonial legacy, but not without the assistance of the Anglophone political leadership. Far from seeing Cameroon's political problem as essentially a struggle between Francophones and Francophones, we can gain a better understanding if we begin looking at the problem as a "class thing."

Beyond Federalism, Unitarism, and Separatism: Harmonizing Cameroon’s Conflicting Colonial Political Cultures (Part 1)

By Emmanuel Konde

First it was the Germans, then the French and British. The impact of the political cultures of these three European powers on Cameroonians influenced the way they treated with one another at different times in their political history. Even after the defeat and expulsion of the Germans from Cameroon, the German colonial influence competed with the French and British in their respective spheres. By the end of the Second World War, however, the German influence was fast receding, as those Cameroonians nurtured in it were either too old to participate actively in politics or were gradually dying out.

Non-inheritance Begets a Culture of Poverty

Emmanuel Konde
 
All civilizations are produced by wealth.  Societies that have not mastered the methods of wealth accumulation and strategic deployment of wealth have remained perpetually primitive, poor,  and have never played any significant role in world history.  African societies seem to fit this bill and, by implication, so the African collectivity.  Why this is the case I cannot tell.  How to alter this primordial state of affairs, however, I propose to offer some valuable suggestions. 

Philanthropy or Misanthropy? A critique of our “Njangi House” mentality

By Emmanuel Konde

Philanthropy involves giving in cash and kind to support a charitable cause designed to help the unfortunate.  But charity should begin at home, not in the sense of giving to self but in terms of accumulating that which is to be used in executing the demands of philanthropy.  Few good-hearted compatriots do not understand this and are thus wont to embarking on philanthropic endeavors without first preparing the ground for success