No Trifling Matter: Contributions of an Uncompromising Critic to the Democratic Process in Cameroon

59 Meditation on Death

167 from them again. Have their Lordships gone to sleep or have the answers to their questions so shocked them that they have all fainted or something? Is this General with a message not the same one mentioned in the Messi Messi papers? Why are some people excited at his redeployment? Would he not be replaced at his old post by another Atangana? What is the difference between glucose and glucode? Or, if you don’t get that, is there any difference between Zebedee and the father of the sons of Zebedee? 5 59 Meditation on Death (Published August 7-14, 1992) This year would seem to be a bad year for Cameroonians or, more precisely, for prominent Cameroonians, the well-known big-(wo)men in the public eye. The massa damnata, the Fanonian wretched of the earth, have never had it any better; they have never stopped dying. When it has not been from gun-shots, hand-grenades or beatings, it has been from epidemics, endemic diseases or famine. The death of the big ones has one initial lesson for all of us, namely, that, in spite of cosmetic differences, all human beings are exactly equal and that no one can run faster than God. Death levels all human beings. It no longer matters how much power you wielded, how many sky-scrapers you built at home and/or abroad, how much stolen or honest money you have in your Swiss account. In nearly all cultures, posthumous flattery has been raised to the status of a fine art. Let some well-known scoundrel die and you would be surprised at the exaggerated eulogies heaped on him/her at the grave-side and the number of healthy people who will display grief to the extent of threatening to follow the dead into the grave. Elaborate funeral ceremonies are part and parcel of this scenario of post-mortem flattery. 168 In my view, the Moslem practice of burial comes closest to being the most rational. When someone dies s/he should be buried as quickly and as simply as possible with dignity devoid of sundry cumbersome contrivances. For this purpose, it is enough that the corpse be wrapped up in a mat or blanket and put in the earth within the context of some brief religious ceremony. But most people would do everything to have an expensive casket (to boost their own vanity) and to have the burial ceremony performed, if possible, by a whole college of bishops, if not cardinals. It would seem reasonable to give a religious burial to any deceased person on the simple request of the closest relatives, no matter how the person in question lived or died. Once dead, every individual is out of the reach of all mortals and face to face only with God. To deny any such person a religious burial for whatever putative reason is also to try to run faster than God. Christian churches in particular usually insist that, to receive a Christian burial, someone must have been a practicing Christian in addition to dying a good death. This insistence, I believe, is wrong. In practice, of course, rich people, even if they lived as notorious polygamists or criminals and died by their own hands, somehow always manage to get an elaborate Christian burial. My suggestion is that the ceremony should be severely simplified and also extended to the poor including pagans and apostates. This, I believe, would be Christian. As I am writing this, Madam Biya is being buried in their palace in Mvomeka, within the context of a Christian religious ceremony involving six bishops and countless priests. Since her sudden death three days ago, (nine days ago at the time of publication. – Editor) there has been an undeclared competition among groups and individuals to send the most flattering messages of condolence. All very reminiscent of those orchestrated “spontaneous” motions of support. It is very significant that these messages are not sent to Mvomeka but to the radio houses and read on the television screen. This clearly indicates that those sending the messages are basically performing a public relations exercise for themselves. Hence, the senseless exaggerations and misuse of language. To say that the death has turned all of us into orphans or that everyone wept at the news is a silly exaggeration. The death was, of 169 course, shocking in its suddenness but that is not to...