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177 17 How to Demystify John Fru Ndi F or quite a long time now I have never written anything directly about John Fro Ndi or Paul Biya, so as not to create or reinforce the erroneous impression that all our problems begin and end with individual personalities. But, as we draw closer to the very decisive 1997 Presidential Elections, which will surely make or mar Cameroon, a certain amount of focusing on personalities would be inevitable. In its secret blueprint (if we are to believe some newspaper reports) to get His Excellency Paul Biya re-elected next year, this time democratically (a plausible case of attempted circle-squaring) the ruling CPDM regime has put “demystifying Fru Ndi” high on its agenda. This piece can be considered as a modest contribution to that project; a clear service to the ruling regime for which, as usual, I may receive no thanks. But never mind. There is no doubt that there is something mythical and almost mystical about John Fru Ndi. It is something very simple but, at the same time, indescribable and unanalyzable. For want of a better word, we can just call it “Charisma.” It is what creates feverish excitement among the crowds wherever he goes. At Buea last weekend, I beheld, once again, the spectacle of a mother, child gripped under the left arm, racing breathlessly, breasts flapping freely, one slippers lost in the process, to catch just a glimpse of John Fru Ndi, as his convoy was speeding past to the SDF Convention grounds at Mount Mary. It is what makes it completely irrelevant that, before his emergence into the limelight, Fru Ndi was a simple bookseller or whatever; that he doesn’t have a doctorate degree, does not communicate “en français,” has never been a civil servant and never “treated” administrative “dossiers.” It is what makes even genuine intellectuals of the Fonlonian definitional calibre, look somehow puny in his presence, and some rival power-bidders look like bold pretenders. If you know Nelson Mandela very well, then you know what I am struggling to describe. There is something of 178 Road Companion to Democracy and Meritocracy the Mandela in John Fru Ndi. Go back to NO TRIFLING MATTER and refresh your memory with “Under the Magnetic Spell of the Bookseller” (CAMPOST, October 23-30, 1992). Had John Fru Ndi been allowed his victory at the 1992 Presidential Elections, he would, most probably, have already been demystified by now, because actual governing is a great demystifier. This would be particularly so for anybody stepping into the mess and wreckage left by one and a half decades of indescribable rapacious pillage. But, having “stolen” John Fru Ndi’s presidential victory, our dictatorship and its foreign neo-colonial manipulators would have done themselves a great favour by leaving him alone. But they went ahead and tried to consolidate their theft, first by imprisoning him in his own house and then attempting to assassinate him in broad daylight. Subsequently, sundry harassment in varying degrees of outrageousness were carried out against him and his party, the Social Democratic Front (SDF), and a total official media blackout imposed on them and their activities. But the man remained undaunted. This is what turned John Fru Ndi from a superman into a divinity. After all, Yondo Black and Albert Mukong who, in terms of chronological time, preceded John Fru Ndi in openly challenging dictatorship in Cameroon are still there with us. Today, every Cameroonian desirous of change, of salvaging Cameroon from the abyss in which she undeservedly finds herself today, knows that John Fru Ndi is the horse to mount whether you consider him divine or human, charismatic or not, whether you like him or you don’t. For sometime now I have observed how, when any other political pretender starts associating with Fru Ndi, his popularity rating among the masses automatically rises. All of Fru Ndi’s rivals and co-competitors in the race for the Etoudi Palace know very well that, in a free and fair election, none of them, singly or collectively, can make it without Fru Ndi. Let’s face facts! In starting its demystification campaign against Fru Ndi by opening up the official media to him and his activities, the ruling junta is, for once, very well advised. A logical step along this fruitful line would be to organise an American-style live televised debate between John Fru Ndi and his Excellency Professor/Dr. Paul Biya, on why we...

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