Unlocking the Door to Democracy in Cameroon III: Kinship Obligation Asserted as a Natural Right (?)

By Emmanuel Konde

In 2005 I received a stunning email message from a cousin of mine.  In the message one sentence stood out: my cousin asserted that I am obligated to help him because we are cousins, our mothers are sisters. I could not understand his assertion, which made me very angry each time I read his message. And I read that sentence many times over but could not still come to a full understanding of its import.  Anger, interspersed with guilt feelings, engulfed my entire being for days as I tried to grapple with this kinship obligation problem.  I wondered silently in despair whether something was wrong with me for adamantly refusing to accept the dictate of kinship as articulated by my cousin. 

I wondered about the mental orientation of my cousing that propelled him make such a claim on me.  Yes, it was a very troubling assertion. What if ten or more of many cousins, nephews, and nieces were to make similar claims on my limited resources on the basis of sanguinary kinship?  What if I did not have the resources to fulfill my kinship obligations to them but had access to state funds? What would I do to left the burden thrust on me by societal forces whose construction I consciously played no role at all?

Monetary Demands
If I were in Cameroon occupying a position of “big man” with access to state funds, I would probably be corrupt not by choice but by circumstances beyond my control.  During the last decade or so I have had to be directly responsible for at least 12 and at most 14 persons, including myself, in the United States and Cameroon.  How I have managed this responsibility without being driven to craziness and premature death still baffles me.   

In 2001 when I visited my extended family in Cameroon, an uncle came from Douala to visit with me. He sought an audience with me in the presence of my grandfather and my mother during which he demanded money from me for a business project he had not thoroughly thought through.  When I asked him what manner of business he wanted to go into, he abruptly began to stutter.  But he was clear as to how much money he wanted from me: between 150,000 FCFA and 200,000 FCFA.

It seemed to a strange demand, particularly because of the lack of clarity about the business venture he wanted to undertake.  But I had to handle it with care, with diplomatic skill, so as not to offend.  I told my uncle that in spite of appearances, I did not have the kind of money he might think I had.  I asked him if he knew the kind of job I was doing and he replied that I was a “teacher”.  When I asked him if he knew whether teachers were paid huge salaries in Cameroon and he retorted in the negative, I offered that the same applied in America and then proceeded to lecture my uncle as follows:

You may think that I have money because of the things I have accomplished in this compound.  But the only reasons why I have achieved this much is because I have consistently deprived myself of many pleasures of life.  I eat rather sparingly, mostly when I am hungry. I am not promiscuous. I do not smoke, seldom drink, and do not frequent the night clubs. I leave according to the means at my disposal.  I do not travel to see the world except when making my annual pilgrimage to Cameroon.  Back in America, we are five in my household; here in Cameroon, there are nine people in this compound:  my grandfather, my mother, my aunt and her husband, two university students, and three elementary school children.  I am responsible for the upkeep of 14 persons.  Yes, I alone must pay their school fees, provide shelter, food, water, light, clothing, healthcare, and all other incidentals.  How do you think one person, me, is able to do all these things with a teacher’s salary, I asked my uncle?  By the time I was done narrating this catalogue of responsibilities, my uncle was completely disarmed and, if I am not mistaken, he must have very sorry for me.  I concluded by telling my uncle that I will be leaving tomorrow.  Even though I do not have the money right now to fulfill his request, he should return in a few months to pick-up the 200,000 FCFA from my mother.  However, the money will not be free.  It was investment capital I was lending to him at no interest.  At the end of the first year, he will have to bring back my 200,000 FCFA. 

After my lecture was concluded, I gave my uncle 10,000 FCFA and promised to send him the money in a month’s time. Thirty day later I fulfilled my promise but my uncle never came to collect the money.  The year was 2001.  The next time he visited again was in September 2006 on the occasion of the death of my grandfather. Even then, I am told, he did not inquire about the money. 

My uncle’s request is illustrative of the social malaise imposed on many by kinship, which is a major source of involuntary corruption in Cameroon.   If  I were resident in Cameroon working for the government, and if I were a “big man” with access to state funds, there is little doubt that I would probably be pushed to swindle the public to help my uncle because kinship obligation dictates that I help him at any cost.  But kinship is not the only reason why some Cameroonians pilfer the coffers of the state.  Some people are by nature greedy and thus habituated to stealing.  Kelptocracy cannot, therefore, be blamed on kinship obligation.

The Consumption Ethos of Kinship
If properly deployed, kinship can be used as a strategy for social capital accumulation that could be invested skillfully for the family and clan.  In reality, however, what obtains from kinship is inimical to the development of individualism, a precondition for entrepreneurism. Whereas kinship collectivism leads to the exploitation of the wealth of the individual for the good of the group, its end result is not accumulation but the consumption of wealth and the perpetuation of poverty and egalitarianism. It is the rare and exceptional individual who can break away from this egalitarian system, which characterizes kinship societies. The burden of kinship breeds poverty, diminishes individualism, often kills entrepreneurship, and fosters egalitarianism. Indeed, in any society where the individual is subsumed under the collectivity, where the individual is important only as a member of the collectivity, the drive to succeed is   considerably diminished as the fruits of individual success are squandered by the demands of less industrious kinsmen.

To be sure, the transfer of responsibility from one kinsman to another is not unique to Cameroon. In every society where there is rampant poverty, you find strong kinship ties, the perpetuation of which if handled irrationally in the name of culture and tradition, unfailingly  leads to the reproduction of poverty. I have discussed kinship with my Nigerian and Ghanaian colleagues and have learned that the practice of kinship dependency is the same in Nigeria and Ghana.  But my encounter with a young woman in the summer of 2010 revealed yet another novel dimension of this kinship thing.  
 
 Echoes from Guinea Bissau
Last summer I met a woman from Guinea Bissau on an Air France flight from Atlanta to Paris.  Somehow, our conversation gravitated to the debilitating problem of the burden of kinship responsibility on members of the African Diaspora in Europe and the United States.  She had travelled to Atlanta to help her younger sister who had just given birth.  Even though she had other responsibilities in Paris, kinship obligation compelled her to travel to Atlanta.  More galling than this were the stories we exchanged about the responsibilities our cultures called upon us to discharge vis-à-vis our relatives who, for some strange reasons, believe that we owe them something.
This was a young woman 35 years old.  Her polygamist father decided to transfer the responsibility of educating all his children to her and she, for good or ill, had accepted that responsibility to the detriment of her own life and happiness.  One could see that this young woman was very worried.  The weight of the responsibility placed on her by her father could be discerned on her contorted forehead.  Cast in a position of power, influence and accessibility to state funds in Guinea Bissau, this young woman would no doubt contrive schemes to pilfer state funds in order to discharge the responsibility thrust on her by her father. Hence, the cycle of corruption is spun and continues to rotate ad infinitum.

Perhaps the most debilitating aspect of this type of involuntary corruption is its end products: cover-up and the proliferation of nepotism.  The big man or woman caught in this ever swirling system of corruption cannot but seek ways to cover up for his or her thievery and the thievery of her kinsmen and tribesmen.  One of the ways to do so is to encircle himself or herself with family members or trusted tribesmen and to deny similar jobs to qualified individuals who do not belong.  This practice of hoarding governmental positions creates nepotism, which in turn leads to the entrenchment and legitimation of corruption, making it very difficult to penetrate and destroy the culture.  

(To be continued)

Comments

[Asata Jerome]

Prof Emmanuel Konde:
While I find the attempt by you to write about this aspect of African culture interesting, your arguments, to me personally, are, to an extent, flawed. Throughout mankind's history, the attempt to help each other, especially those not fortunate enough, has always been part and parcel of human life. Your argument, it seems to me, is like telling Bill Gates, the world's richest man, that it's okay for him to help the rest of the world, because he is rich enough to do so. But do you really think that if Bill Gates were to look only at his immediate, and perhaps, long distance relatives, his wealth will be enough to take care of their problems? Not at all. What Gates and others are attempting to do, when they offer to help others, is just part of human kindess.Your attempt to quantify human kindess is errorneous. When one chooses to help others, it's not because one has enough or more than enough. I find a lot of Americans hungry, destitute and unable to fend for themselves. Yet you find in Cameroonian villages, American peacecorp volunteers, doctors and other personnel, who leave their homeland in confort, or could help others right here, to go help the unfortunate ones overseas. What would you classify these individuals? That they are stupid, because Americans here also need help too?
Your arguments, although targeted at family relations, also reveal something about Cameroonians: Our slavish mentality that is geared only towards serving Europeans or Americans in their homelands. How many of us overseas, like the Americans I've just cited, do volunteer to help others in our homeland.I find a huge number of Cameroonians nurses, doctors, lawyers and pharmacists living here in the U.S. and Europe. It's enough to be boasful about being a nurse or doctor in the U.S., yet those same indivuals who do so are unable to go to their villages and volunteer a few hours of their time to help the unfortunate sick Cameroonians.Visit Cameroon and go to any hospital there and see if there are any of these Cameroonians there doing volunteer work for poor Cameroonians. When I last visited, I went to a hospital to find out how many Cameroonians were there from overseas who wanted to do volunteer work like myself. You know what I found? A few British medical students there to help our poor folks.

Secondly, to imagine that the persistent fraud by Cameroonian officials is because of these extended family obligations is outright erroneous too. Human greed is all what pushes these individuals to do what they do, not the extended family obligations as you allude. If one is beyond reproach or attempt to be upright in the conduct of one's affairs, nothing else would enable one to do what Cameroonian officials do in order to enrich themselves. I know a lot of Cameroonians who have defrauded the government, enriching themselves in the process, but have no idea who their cousins, nephews or nieces are in their immediate of extended family. What would you say about this? That they stole because they wanted to help the extended family?

[limbekid]

Interesting analysis. The two most important factors leading to a crime, are: opportunity and incentive. As I always tell my friends who use Botswana as an example of good governance in Africa; the country is led by a wifeless, childless man. No need to hoard money for future generations; no need to ground the national carrier so that madame can organise shopping trips abroad; no need to reserve spaces in the public service, for your in-laws... Take away incentive and you are only left with opportunity and that alone does not suffice.

[J. S. Dinga]

The truth is that in Cameroon, we are neither practising Nyerere's type of socialism (equal sharing of miseries) nor western capitalism( unequal sharing of blessings). We just have a Cameroonian situation that favors "strong men" over strong institutions.

The culture of a people cannot be defined by the poor family members dictating to the well-to-do. For it to survive it has to be a two-way traffic. An uncle presenting a burdensome demand on a nephew can be doing the most natural thing if such an uncle wants to harvest some of his earlier investment in that nephew; it could also represent a parasitic exploitation by someone who goes for what is there for the taking. Secondly, almost all businesses fail because those called upon to provide funding hardly ever take a step back to ask or find out what input was presented by those demanding huge capital infusions from them. An investor must do some feasibility and decide if the project at hand is worth his time and money. Uncles and aunts can demand monies to run a taxi business, a shop or some other but what collateral or previous experience do they show for such a venture? Surely if they went to the bank for a loan - which is where they ought to direct their request in the first place - the bank manager would not just dole out money with nothing concrete to support the loan?

There is also the question of character. It is not because one is custodian of bank money, treasury funds or other national funds that one should take the liberty to pilfer and help needy relatives. Such a thing is of course possible where the individuals are more powerful than the institutions and so have no accountability to anyone. No reasonable blood relation -uncle, aunt,cousins and the rest - would place an individual in the risky position of embezzling public funds, knowing that imprisonment would be the outcome but in an environment where it is difficult to provide the authrities (police, courts, head of state) with the proof of such wrong doing, well, then of course the Cameroonian culture takes root. But here again, one must hurry to add that this is a new phenomenon that dates from Cameroon's famous reunification and reached its climax at the time people openly sang "c'est notre tour".

Cameroonians in the diaspora are not lacking in volunteerism. What is lacking is the set-up that will enable them contribute. How often have Cameroonians in the diaspora put aside consignments of medical supplies for donation to village efforts only for such consignments to end up in some "big man's" private reserves? Again it is the big man syndrome killing the nation. People in positions of responsibility without accountability end up hurting rather than helping such efforts. It it distressing. This trend will go on as long as the nation has only strong men but not strong institutions to cater for the collectivity. Detractors may argue from dawn to dusk, argue around this crucial issue, but the result remains the same.

The painful consequence is that such practices end up destroying the hens that lay the golden eggs - SOTUC, CAMAIR, ONCPB, etc. I would hardly call it involuntary corruption. It is simply corruption which ought to be given deterrent sanctions but in the Cameroonian context the answer has almost invaribly been a transfer to another unit, where the practice begins all over! If the nation recycles its kleptocrats, how can it ever recover and start creating the right climate for investment and volunteerism?

[Louis Egbe Mbua]

This article is pure nonsense. West Cameroon State (1961-1972) was run without any thievery. Any person who suggests an excuse for theft due to extended family is merely trying to justify the grotesque and wholesale stealing in Cameroon: on grounds that they want to perpetuate the hegemony of the Biya autocratic kleptocracy and patronage of the CPDM criminal enterprise.

Traditional African Kingdoms, from Egypt to Southern Africa, maintained African traditional families. There is no evidence of institutionalised corruption from 5000 BC.

Let the writer produce evidence of past corruption in African Kingdoms. Without which the hypothesis is baseless as it lacks solid foundation.

[limbekid]

I think the writer is trying to make a case for the burden of an extended family as additional incentive (motive) for corruption. Coupled with opportunity (being in a position to handle public funds), this provides a fertile environment for unscrupulous financial transactions.

Would be interesting to know what he thinks of the other side of the solidarity equation: where the extended family chips in to assist a promising family member.

[J. S. Dinga]

Yet it cannot be denied that the writer has enunciated a core problem that challenges all of us at one point or another - the moral burden of taking care of the extended family.

Seen in perspective, we are living in the twenty-first century and yet applying nineteenth century practices to our daily lives. Yes it was once fashionable to have large, extended families when our ancestors lived on the farm and many hands were needed to plough. All of mainking went through this phase of evolution. Yes it was at one time fashionable to have large families when high mortality swept away many. But times have since changed. Moving to towns and cities means that we no longer have the luxury of unlimited landmass to play with - to cultivate, build large homes - and so logic dictates curtailment of family size.

Also, we human beings do not want to reduce ourselves to the lower forms in reproducing without checks. Invertebrates like worms, insects and caterpillars can produce broods in the thousands because the hazards of life are too many. A simple broom sweep or spray of insecticide can kill many flies at one go, and predators can annihilate many helpless young in a hunting spree. But with humans, not only do we have nine months of guaranteed perfect maternal gestation and protection in the womb, we are nursed from cradle to grave by all of modernity. And so the desire for unlimited brood makes no sense in this day and age, especially so if the burden for raising this extra has to pass on to other hands. Society's survival cannot and should not be predicated on some members stealing from the common till to nurture their offspring! Human beings are supposed to be moral beings.