Neoliberal Bandwagonism. Civil society and the politics of belonging in Anglophone Cameroon: Civil society and the politics of belonging in Anglophone Cameroon

11. Privatisation and ethno-regional protest in Anglophone Cameroon

11 Privatisation and ethno-regional protest in Anglophone Cameroon Introduction Privatisation has become a key instrument in the structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) and the good governance agenda imposed on Africa by the Bretton Woods institutions and bilateral donors. It is an essential part of the overall neo-liberal reform package aimed at creating transparency and accountability in the management of national affairs as well as a favourable environment for opening up the Cameroonian economy to market forces and private-sector development. Since public enterprises are considered to have performed dismally, African governments are under considerable pressure from international donors to sell them off to domestic and foreign private investors. Several authors, however, have observed that the actual number of privatisations has remained modest in Africa (cf. Bennell 1997; Tangri 1999; Van de Walle 2001). They point to various technical and financial constraints as well as to socio-political influences to explain this curious finding. Interestingly, some factors reflect the same political concerns that led to the creation of so many public enterprises in the years after independence: an inability to attract foreign investment to politically and economically unstable African nations , the absence of a well-developed domestic entrepreneurial class, and the pursuit of patron-client relationships by African ‘neo-patrimonial’ states. Some authors also highlight the resistance to privatisation by civil society, in particular by professional bodies, student organisations and trade unions, since privatisation often PRIVATISATION AND ETHNO-REGIONAL PROTEST 187 involves the sale of public property to well-placed nationals or to foreign enterprises , and generally results in massive lay-offs of workers (cf. Olukoshi 1998; Konings 2002b). Strikingly, in sharp contrast to the existing literature, international donors are inclined to blame almost exclusively the weak, predatory and neo-patrimonial African states for the poor performance of structural adjustment in general and publicsector reforms in particular and they stress the need not only for less but also for better government in Africa. By proclaiming that a ‘crisis of governance’ underlies ‘the litany of Africa’s development problems’, the World Bank’s 1989 report SubSaharan Africa: From Crisis to Sustainable Growth placed the concept of good governance at the heart of the donor agenda for Africa (World Bank 1989: 60). But what is good governance and how is it to be promoted? The term remains rather vague. The World Bank (1992: 1) defines it in managerial terms as ‘the manner in which power is exercised in the management of the country’s economic and social resources for development’. Good governance was to flow from enhanced accountability within the public sector, transparency and openness in decision -making, the rule of law, and more efficient public management (Sandbrook 2000: 10-13). The bilateral donors, however, soon linked democracy to good governance. Although they continuously stressed that democratisation had its intrinsic merits, they undoubtedly saw it primarily as an instrument for promoting the more efficient implementation of structural adjustment measures. Democratisation was said to empower the electorate by providing it with mechanisms of a parliamentary and extra-parliamentary nature to check upon the ruling regime’s neopatrimonial practices and to participate in the decision-making process about necessary structural adjustment measures. This would contribute to the legitimisation of unpopular neo-liberal reforms among the population. Clearly, the good governance discourse, propagated by the donor community generally and the World Bank in particular, represents an instrumentalist, managerial and technocratic approach to development. It aims at promoting the emergence of a more conducive and, in their view, more legitimate political environment, backed by the requisite administrative capacity, for the successful implementation of orthodox structural adjustment (Olukoshi 1998: 35). This approach entails an essentially depoliticised notion of governance. In my study of privatisation in Cameroon, I argue instead that the good governance-structural adjustment linkage, though largely framed in managerial and technical terms, is highly political, being embedded in particular relations of power, and contested. Ironically, it often contradicts the liberal-democratic principles prescribed by bilateral donors. Decisions about privatisation in Cameroon are taken by the Bretton Woods institutions and implemented after secret consultations with a small group of national technocrats representing the government. Power, in other words, is increasingly 188 CHAPTER 11 located outside the political community as conventionally defined by democratic theory, and beyond the reach of the democratic control of Cameroonian citizens (Abrahamsen 2000: 146-147). While the elected Cameroonian government has frequently tried to avoid, postpone, manipulate and dilute privatisations...