Regional Balance and National Integration in Cameroon: Lessons Learned and the Uncertain Future

14. Balanced Rural Development in Cameroon within a Democratic Context

229 Chapter Fourteen The Form Of The State At The Centre Of Development Discourse Emmanuel Yenshu Introduction The purpose of this paper is to explore the prospects for regions serving as growth poles for rural development within the democratic dispensation. During the first three decades after independence, power, policy-making, planning and the implementation of development, were concentrated at the centre. This process was actively pursued and supported by both the power elite and the masses who bathed in the warmth of state paternalism. Political pluralism generally implies a reduction of the exorbitant powers of the state, both at the level of the individual and the group or community. Hence an important corollary of this process is political and administrative decentralization. This tendency can be observed in Cameroon with the clamour for various forms of decentralization by the establishment, the opposition and contestataire elements. By the time this paper is published a new constitution should have been enacted into law with a certain degree of autonomy for the regions, if we have to judge by the constitutional proposals tabled before the assembly for the November session for the year 1995. The question we are attempting to answer is the direction rural development, once controlled and managed by a strong central authority, will take in the eventuality of regional autonomy. Our exercise will consist in evaluating previous attempts at local empowerment, the role of the state policies in creating regional awareness, and the impact of the transition into democratic governance. This will lead us to look at the factors and conditions which will facilitate the development of regional self-reliance. Development here is taken in its implied meaning of movement from a set of conditions (social, material, political, cultural) defined as undesirable or detrimental to well-being to another set deemed necessary for or promoting well-being. Such a simple operational definition will help us to overcome the hurdle of an absolutist judgmental telos. This is so because the definition of 230 these sets of conditions has been shifting with the experimentation in ideology. The trend has been a movement from an economistic (material) to a humanistic perspective. Witness the recent abandonment of the physical quality of life index in favour of the human development index. With the shifts, threshold levels also become a shaky issue. We are therefore not concerned with the question of surmounting threshold levels, but with examining political projects (policies) aimed at facilitating the transition process within the development continuum i.e. from the undesirable to the preferred/necessary set of conditions. Rurality is taken in its essential opposition to the urban as a peripheral manifestation, with its cultural and organizational specificity, an agricultural outlook and its partial integration into both local, national and. international manifestations of a dominant economic, political and cultural framework (Mendras 1976). Reference to balance implies ethical considerations inserted into policy as a means of ensuring equity in the distribution of resources. As a political consideration, it would imply taking precautions against initiating conditions of exclusion, domination and marginalisation in the implementation of official policy. In short, it is redressing the imbalances so characteristic of the modernization process. The colour this would take would depend on the ideological framework in which the practice of development is set. Balanced Rural Development In Cameroon Within A Democratic Context The form the state should take has been justified by a development ideology, inspiring the style of policy formulation and the mobilization of development agents. The choice has fluctuated between centralization and decentralization. Even though Cameroon experimented participants and beneficiaries. The second plan came back to this approach stressing that “the village communities conducted by the most dynamic elements of the population of the rural world” would make for “a greater efficiency of administrative authority.” (Second Plan: 2). This plan instituted “rural action committees” and “young pioneer” villages. However, these structures were to be integrated into a hierarchical structure partially decentralized. This hierarchy moved from the Rural Action committees at the base through the divisional Development Committee to the Regional Development Councils. One has to note here that during the first decade following independence 231 and reunification, Cameroon was broken up into six regions. The regional organization of the structure of rural development was either prompted by the desire to take regional desires into consideration (WINTER, 1968) or to reinforce state intervention. Subsequent plans were silent on the issue of village communities until 1980 when...