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Preface To The New Edition: Background To Gobata Columns And Essays I started writing under the pen-name Rotcod Gobata in the early 1990’s, as an attempted contribution to the democratization struggle in Cameroon, following the so-called “wind of change from the East”, in the wake of the collapse of the dictatorships of Eastern Europe, most notably that of the communist Soviet Union, and the awakening effect it seemed to be having on political systems around the world, particularly in Africa. The release of Nelson Mandela from prison around the same period, followed a few years later by the truly miraculous democratic breakthrough in South Africa, added great impetus to this wind of change. In Cameroon, the sudden voluntary resignation of Alhaji Ahmadou Ahidjo, and his handing over of the reigns of dictatorial power to Paul Biya in 1982, had ushered in great euphoria and optimism. Paul Biya rode on the crest of mass popularity as he made some moves, under the slogan “rigor and moralization”, to democratize and liberalize the hitherto heavily autocratic and centralized state structures. I was a University student in neighbouring Nigeria between 1974 and1984. I used to come home to Cameroon on holidays as frequently as I could, but home-coming was not an easy affair, because getting out of Cameroon legally was a Herculean task. An exit visa was needed by Cameroonians legally to cross any of Cameroon’s borders. In West Cameroon (the English-speaking part of the country), one applied for such an exit visa in Buea or Bamenda, but such application was referred to Yaounde, the governmental seat of the French-speaking dictatorship, for approval or rejection. Very often Yaounde took months to respond, if it responded at all, keeping applicants in a state of worrisome stress and anxiety. As a consequence, to come home on holidays was always to take the risk of not getting back in time for resumption of term. Many other Cameroonian students in Nigeria at the time used to opt for trekking “exit-visa-less” across the border through the thick bushes separating Cameroon and Nigeria, or bribing their way through the border posts, but I could not bring myself seriously to even consider such options. Once, I came from Nigeria and went right to Yaounde to apply for a multiple entry and exit visa to enable me carry out field work in Cameroon for my Master’s thesis. I instead got a good rude introduction to the Francophone system of public administration, general orientation, mind-set and way of doing things. I was given a long list of documents to compile, for my visa application, including a fiscal stamp of 8000 francs (quite a fortune for a self-sponsored student like me at the time). After submitting the “dossier” and following it up daily for about two weeks, the visa was finally refused on the grounds that I was not a Government-sponsored student! In 1986, after having earned my PhD degree two years earlier from the University of Ibadan, I quit a lectureship at the University of Ife and returned definitively to Cameroon, under the impression that I had been recruited at the University of Yaounde. I was in for a shock. On arrival in Yaounde, bag and baggage in tow, it turned out that the supposed recruitment had got stuck at the very last stage of the process. I landed into plain joblessness, which lasted for over a year before my recruitment “dossier” (not without the kind intervention of friends and secondary schoolmates well-placed within the system) was finally positively sorted out. You would therefore understand that I felt personally very concerned about the prospect of democratization and liberalization in Cameroon. Some fans of Gobata are wont to refer to me as “the hammer of the New Deal regime” but any careful reader of my narratives would realize that, far from being the hammer, I have been the nail. By the dying years of the 1980’s, Cameroon’s economy had started nose-diving, and corruption, as never before witnessed, had set in at the highest ranks of Government, and Cameroonians were becoming increasingly uncertain as to whether the peaceful revolution of 1982 was a blessing or a curse. In 1990, some Cameroonians, mainly Anglophones, boldly decided to challenge the one party dictatorship in Cameroon by launching a political party (the Social Democratic Front – SDF) in Bamenda. The first Gobata essays were published, at my own initiative, in a column...

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