I Spit on their Graves: Testimony Relevant to the Democratization Struggle in Cameroon

The Fault is Not in Our Stars

45 The Fault is Not in Our Stars M en at some times are masters of their fates: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings Shakespeare No human being can be kept as a slave for very long without his/her own connivance. This is because all human beings are free, self-determining and purposive beings. This being the case, we are forced to conclude that Cameroonians themselves are responsible for their present plight. You cannot sincerely choose an end without at the same time choosing the means necessary to attain that end. Otherwise, you want to eat your cake and still have it. But it is absolutely impossible to eat your cake and still have it. If you want to prepare an omelette, you bloody well have to pluck the courage to crack eggs. Otherwise, you are an infantile somnambulist dreamer. Most Cameroonians are infantile dreamers. Apart from the really big-time public thieves, there is no Cameroonian who is not dying for change in this country. Yet how many are willing to do the minimum required to bring about change? In all honesty and fairness, only the populations of Bamenda and the N.W. Province in general have demonstrated a sufficiently convincing indomitable will for change. If others were like them, we would long have been firmly into a new Cameroon with justified hopes of fulfilling our day dreams. But most of us have only been day-dreaming and doing nothing else. 46 Godfrey B. Tangwa (Rotcod Gobata) When the salary cuts we are all “enjoying” now were first announced, a Frenchman here in Yaounde told me that he didn’t know of anywhere in the world where such a drastic reduction in salaries could be carried out in one swoop. According to him, if such a thing were attempted in France everybody, including those who don’t earn any salary, would be out on the streets, within one hour of the announcement, demonstrating. I told him that Cameroonians were slow learners and that I didn’t expect them to start demonstrating until they had actually received their January salaries and realized that the cuts were for real and not a New Year joke. But as things turned out, I was even wide off the mark: When the actual cuts finally came, they were more drastic than anyone had imagined. But not a murmur from any quarter! People were only crying on their wives´ laps in the comfort of their bedrooms. Shortly after the salary cuts, fees were announced for University students. I thought the Government had made a serious tactical error, a blunder it would soon regret. I didn’t see any magic any government could perform to get University students (of all groups of citizens) to pay fees after they had all registered and settled in and were still agitating for arrears of the previous year’s bursaries. But, there again, I was wrong. We soon heard university students sending radio messages to their parents and guardians to urgently send their fees by telegraphic ‘mandat’! What exactly did Alhaji Ahidjo do to Cameroonians to completely emasculate them in this way? The answer is blowing in the wind. But it is not at all easy to live with the realization that one is numbered among 12 million castrated bull dogs. The rape and pillage of the country has continued unabated under the same phoney rhetoric and dramatics. We hear of military co-operation accords between France and Cameroon. What military secrets can France learn from Cameroon? Mr. Charles Pasqua (what a name!), a fat 47 I Spit on their Graves: Testimony Relevant to the Democratization Struggle Frenchman, was here recently secretly to ask for money to finance the French legislative elections coming up in March. How much he was given out of our common purse remains a subject of wide speculation. In Togo, Mr. Pasqua showered praises on Eyadéma (of all African dictators!) and in Cameroon on our own Paul Biya and, in exchange went back with sacs of African money to finance French elections. Now, do you think that if the French were rich they would come to ask for money from here to finance their elections? Yet there are Cameroonians who foolishly believe that the French can and want to help us out of our economic crisis. Even if they could they wouldn...