By Emmanuel Konde
In many of our Cameroonian and African cultures we share similarities in terms of cultural attributes as well as the prohibitions imposed on us not to question them. A stern stare from “papa” carries more weight in terms of shaping our respect for outdated elements of culture than the law. Yet any culture that prohibits questioning is doomed to decrepitude and stagnation. We question things in order to become knowledgeable about them. The questioning of things constitutes the first step towards enlightenment and progressive change.
The Problem in Perspective
African kinship is a form of societal tyranny… a system of indoctrination that is ingrained in us through socialization from birth to the grave. In societies where all blood relatives are brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, where the distinction between cousin and brother is meaningless, the line demarcating the individual and the collectivity is blurred. With the individual subsumed under the collectivity, he becomes somewhat depersonalized and loses his individuality to the group. And so does his wealth, because the lazy many must feed on the hardworking one, diminishing his wealth and reducing him to poverty, much like his lazy brethren. These are the egalitarian societies that early European anthropologists who visited Africa wrote about. African kinship can be likened to a patron-client relationship, a patronage system in which the giver is master and the receiver servant.
Unfortunately, many of the servants remain servants forever, always expecting the master to provide. This relationship is one of major the factors that fosters our acceptance of autocrats, making some of us to prostrate ourselves by kneeling and bowing in a posture of surrender when in the presence of our local chiefs who we were indoctrinated to believe to be all-powerful and capable of inflicting harm on us from near and far. Similarly, some of us are wont to fear that if an uncle’s request for money or other service goes unmet that uncle somehow possesses mystical powers to inflict harm on us by use of voodoo or juju. For many educated Cameroonians, superstition still governs their lives—particularly fear of being bewitched, which is a compelling factor that compels them to observe the irrational demands of kinship obligation against their personal interests. With the expansion of rational liberal education, and the passage of time, however, this fear and the irrational response it elicits from many will gradually wither away. This exposé—an admixture of scholarship, personal experience, original thought, and observation of men and women interacting as kinsfolk fulfilling their kinship obligations in Cameroon—constitutes an important contribution to a revaluation of the merits of kinship as the dominant principle of social organization in this industrial and technological epoch.
Kinship and Transfer of Responsibility
I have read the critical comments to the first part of this discourse (entitled “Unlocking the Door to Democracy”. Some of the commentators supported, while others opposed, my elaboration of kinship as a source of corruption and many of the ills that plague modern Cameroonian society. I welcome and thank everyone who has contributed to this expedition into enlightenment. It should be known, however, that I did not propose to provide a fix-all solution to this troubling malaise; and, even if I could, I would not try. I would rather we grappled with the problem individually and collectively, and it is towards that end the second part os this discourse is devoted.
I begin with some personal experiences with kinship, lest I be accused of detaching myself from its debilitating influence. I am a product of kinship and cannot escape who I am. I have met the obligations of kinship in the past and continue to do so but from a rational point of departure determined by the resources I could expend on relatives. I can only give that which I have after taking care of my own family. My first priority is my immediate family; my kinsmen take a second place. In so far as kinship obligation is concerned, I employ the rational choice model, using the cost-benefit analysis in making decision about my resources and not the sentimental approach that characterizes the responses of many in executing their obligations to kinsmen.
Some twelve years ago when I returned to Cameroon to work for one academic year, I met a cousin of mine who was about the same age with one of my children living with my mother. Her parents were in Douala. I enrolled my daughter and her in school. A few months later her father, my uncle, visited me in Limbe and sought an audience to discuss, as he put it, a very important matter. My uncle told me that he was going to hand over his daughter to me so that she may become my daughter. He promised to surrender her birth certificate to me as a sign of transfer of his responsibility to me. There was nothing unusual with my uncle’s proposal, but it was the kind of proposal that one learns about as something experienced by others. It never occurred to me that it could happen to me. Accordingly, this transaction seemed to me as rather bizarre. The hot blood of anger suddenly began boiling inside me. I took a few minutes to consider the strangeness of it all and to compose myself. I then turned to my uncle and, looking him straight in the eyes, inquired of him where the nonsense he was telling came from. I pointedly asked him a series of questions, some of which ran as follows:
When I came here and enrolled your daughter in school did you ask me to do so? When you decided to get married and beget children, did you consult me? Now, tell me my dear uncle, why do you want to hand over your daughter to me? What about my own children, who am I going to hand them over to?
The man was stunned and sat there silently until his departure. For some strange reason, kinsmen can decide to marry and have children in the hope that a relative will be saddled with responsibility of caring for their children. This exploitation of kinship is the most debilitating aspect of that institution. It permits lazy family members to transfer their responsibilities to hardworking and successful family members because they believe that they are owed certain obligations by virtue of sanguinary ties.
On numerous other occasions other stranger things happened. Whenever a visitor came my mother would insist that I give each and every one of them money, usually not less than 5000 FCFA each because anything less would bring shame to her. One evening my mother and I had a serious conversation during which I told her that if I must give 5000 FCFA to every person who visits me, by the end of my stay I would be as poor as those whom I am giving so lavishly. I added that my three children would be deprived of an inheritance, and there will be no person in the family who would be the giver. Something I did not understand then, and still do not understand today, is why my not giving lavishly to visitors would bring shame to my mother. And I told my mother hat “were I to be so stupid as to buy into the irrational logic of giving so as to avoid shaming you, I would end being as poor as you”. That evening my mother wept, saying that she could not believe I could speak the words I had just spoken to her. I held my ground. Some three weeks later after giving my words some thought, she confessed that I what I had told her on that fateful evening was correct. I replied that “I know”.
(To be continued: Part III)
Mr Konde,
I have been reading this your kinship paper and there is no mention of you benefitting from kinship (I will confess that I did not read part I). It seems like kinship was a thing to berate you with.
fsiele
Posted by: fsiele | Tuesday, 15 March 2011 at 09:28 AM