I Spit on their Graves: Testimony Relevant to the Democratization Struggle in Cameroon

The Well Deserved Mockery of A People by its Own Leaders

133 The Well Deserved Mockery of A People by its Own Leaders L ast week, the war in “Baghdad” prevented me from fully appreciating Dr. Biya’s instructions to their honourable excellencies: Achidi Achu, Antoine Ntsimi and Mbella Mbappe, regarding the payment of salaries and re-opening of schools. I have once been falsely accused of witchcraft by some readers of this column. But today, I myself am strongly suspecting my brother and nextdoor neighbour, The Postman, of being a wizard. When the presidential order on salaries was released and loudly and repeatedly diffused over all arms of the public mass media, I felt cocksure that the salaries would be paid as ordered by His Excellency, although I could only speculate as to where the money would be coming from. How could I have known that the President of the Republic might just be trifling with 12 million Cameroonians? But it is now crystal clear that Dr. Biya was only playing games with a tragically gullible people. The immediate and only aim of the salaries announcement was to counteract the August 30th -31st general strike called by the UNION FOR CHANGE. And that is where the witchcraft of my brother, The Postman, comes in. When the announcement was made, we both agreed that it was a strategy against the strike and that credit should therefore go but to the legitimate President in Ntarikon palace. But The Postman was further quite sure that the money would not be paid. With calm confidence, he asserted that the whole thing was a hoax, a dud cheque; 134 Godfrey B. Tangwa (Rotcod Gobata) that there was no money in sight and that even if the fellow had won a jackpot during his latest short-private visit in one of the casinos of Beverly Hills, he would know better what to do with it. How right he was. But how did he manage to know this with such cocksureness? If he is not a wizard then it must be that he knows Bi Mvondo even better than myself who thought I knew him like the back of my hand. There is someone who owes me ten thousand francs and, since last week, I have been following him around so that as soon as he got his July salary, I could do my own “recouvrement forcé” immediately. So far, all he has succeeded getting is a yellow piece of paper called “bon de caisse.” No cash in sight. And we are here talking in September about July salary. These days Cameroonians seem to be talking only salaries and money and salaries and money. The other day at a cocktail party, I overheard an American diplomat telling a University of Yaounde I professor: “With the cost of living here so high, how on earth are you living without your salary? I was in Paris before coming here and, by comparison, I find the cost of living here really high. I can’t imagine going without my salary for a single month. And you continue going to work? Back in America, if people were to go without pay for a month, the government would surely be sent packing immediately.” His interlocutor only said: “We Cameroonians are very patient.” Well, I don’t believe Cameroonians are patient. Cameroonians are foolish. If not, tell me why a jobless person, without any prospect of a job in the foreseeable future, would receive one thousand francs and accept to march 15 kilometres to go and congratulate the President for (falsely) promising to pay someone else?! Garga Haman Adji has pointed out (See Le Chemin, No 001 of 23rd August, 1993) that in Cameroon history, both colonial and post colonial, it is under Mr. Biya that Cameroonian civil servants have ever gone without salaries at the end of the month 135 I Spit on their Graves: Testimony Relevant to the Democratization Struggle (now at the end of several months). Garga thinks that Biya should have quit the moment it first happened. He is right. But, apparently, when Biya looks at his other comrades in dictatorship, Sese Seko Mobutu of Zaire, Nyasingbe Eyadema of Togo, etc., and sees how far they have been able to go, he believes that he still has a lot of mileage before him. From the moment Cameroonians let him get away with the trophy of the October 11th 1992 presidential elections, he knew he could get away...