Autopsy of a Malignant Nation-State: Revisiting Richard Joseph's Gaullist Africa: Cameroon under Ahmadu Ahidjo (1978)

Reviewer: Peter Wuteh Vakunta, PhD

Richard Joseph's Gaullist Africa: Cameroon under Ahmadu Ahidjo (1978) is an x-ray of the legacy of a terrestrial god that failed woefully. In his 217-page collection of essays, Joseph paints a befitting epitaph for President Ahmadu Ahidjo, the man who ruled Cameroon high-handedly from 1959-1982. Ahidjo governed Cameroon through the modus operandi of personalization of power. As Richard puts it, "One of the consequences of his primarily personal legitimacy... is that he has been able to proceed ruthlessly towards the concentration of powers in his own hands" (77). One important hallmark of Ahidjo's consolidation of personal power is the fact that the offices of the Presidency became principal structures of recruitment for the higher political echelons of the regime.

Ahidjo ruled Cameroon through decrees that imposed a state of emergency on the populace indefinitely. Joseph observes that the corollary of this state of affairs is that "the country has been buried in apathy, then debility, and today torpor..." (97). It is no exaggeration to describe Ahidjo's governmental paradigm as the "fascisation of the regime" (101). In other words, the maintenance of public order in Cameroon was reinforced by the implementation of a draconian measure code-named a state of mise en garde or state of alert. In this light, Gaullist Africa: Cameroon under Ahmadu Ahidjo is Richard Joseph's tirade on the repressive regime of Ahmadu Ahidjo, a man who governed his compatriots as though he were a colonial master doing the dirty job of the homeland in a benighted region of Planet Earth.

The highpoint of Ahidjo's totalitarian regime, according to Joseph, was the proliferation of centres d'internement administratif or detention camps where innocent citizens were incarcerated indefinitely on trumped-up charges.In the words of the author himself, "To these detention camps the State could send for a period of two months, renewable indefinitely, individuals considered dangerous to public security" (102).Yet it was apparent that the so-called dangerous individuals' included any person deemedsuspect' by the regime, and often even innocent citizens with whom some supporter of the regime had wished to settle personal scores. The author further observes that among the camps of internment established in Cameroon since 1961, the most notorious ones are the camp of Mantoum in the Bamoun area with a capacity of eight thousand places; the camps of Yoko, Tchollire and Tignere in the north; and those of Lomie and Yokadouma in the southeast. Joseph laments the fact that "In the years following the establishment of these camps, many of their inhabitants have disappeared without trace"(102).

Joseph's seminal book is a lampoon on Cameroon's dysfunctional judiciary. He maintains,"It can be categorically asserted that judges in this country have long lost the function of impartially administering the laws, and have become instead agents and justifiers of the repression" (102). He goes even further to qualify the judiciary under Ahidjo as a militarized judicial system. In a nutshell, Gaullist Africa: Cameroon under Ahmadu Ahidjo could be labeled Richard Joseph's diatribe on Gaullism in post-colonial Cameroon. The first manifestation of Gaullism in Ahidjo's Cameroon, according to Joseph, is the fact that in his approach to statesmanship, Ahidjo calls to mind erstwhile French President, Charles de Gaulle. The second approach is more constitutionalist and shows, in the author's view, the way in which "the Gaullist constitution of 1958, and subsequent amendments, strongly influenced constitution-making in Cameroon..." (194).

In sum, Gaullist Africa: Cameroon under Ahmadu Ahidjo is a seminal work that documents the trajectory that Cameroon has taken from accession to political independence in 1960 to date. And the picture is gloomy. Cameroonians have had the ill-luck of having been governed by two lame duck presidents--Ahmadu Ahidjo and Paul Biya, none of whom has passed the litmus test of visionary leadership. Gaullist Africa: Cameroon under Ahmadu Ahidjo is recommended reading for scholars and students of political science desirous of broadening their knowledge bank in the domain of the realpolitik in postcolonial Francophone Africa.