Democracy and Human Rights in Africa: The Politics of Collective Participation and Governance in Cameroon

Chapter 1 - Laughing at the Academia: The Federal Republic Of Cameroon (FRC) And The Definition Of Federalism

1 Chapter 1 Laughing at the Academia: The Federal Republic Of Cameroon (FRC) And The Definition Of Federalism One of the areas of study I intend to pursue is intellectual and individual responsibility and human rights in Africa. This is based on the belief that the elite has a great many responsibilities towards the population. These responsibilities, I intend to argue, have not been properly discharged. Instead, the elite has engaged in both justifying and participating in most of the political activities responsible for the current malaise in Africa [El Obaid (1996: 311-312 n.203)]. On The Importance Of Federalism And The Issues Federalism is such an important human rights protecting instrument in governance that it was a principal topic of discussion at one of the triennial congresses of the International Political Science Association, held in 1964 in Geneva. Majeed (2008: 5) sees federalism as an important method of good governance in which political accommodation and understanding become sound practices in the midst of conflicting ideologies, disparate groups, and seemingly irreconcilable positions. Given that a decline of the legitimate political order results in a decline of the moral authority of the nation-state, he concludes, the link between the need for good governance and federal power-sharing is obvious. Federalism has thus been prescribed and applied as a remedy to a great variety of political, economic, social, cultural, and other ailments at all levels of state organization. Federalism is not a fixed point on the map but a tendency that is neither unitary nor separatist. In Aristotelian terms, federalism is the median between those two polar positions, and thus the true opposite of the two (Trager, 1968: ix & x). Federalism has been prescribed and applied around the world with varying degree of success. Why has it not succeeded (or will not succeed) in Cameroon? It is simply because of confusion and manipulation from the intellectuals and other political elites; thus calling for the role of the intellectual in politics as well as the meaning of “intellectuals in politics”. The Role Of The Intelligentsia 2 Federalism and the New Nations of Africa contains contributions that are based on a symposium sponsored by the University of Chicago’s Law School Centre for Legal Research (New Nations) February 12-17, 1962. Three years after the formation of the FRC, David P. Currie could not have phrased it any better, when introducing said book: There has never been a greater challenge to the wisdom and ingenuity of the statesmen, lawyers and scholars whose task it is to establish forms and institutions of government. For although constitutions alone cannot ensure the freedom, the vitality, or the economic health demanded by the new nations, the creation of a sound institutional structure cannot fail to have a deep and salutary influence on the course of history.1 The curiously intriguing case of Cameroon concretely proves the professor’s thesis here; especially again because the status of its Federal Constitution is not even clear. Purportedly the very first political and constitutional document of re-united Cameroon (Le Vine and Nye, 1964: 31 would disagree here), it is only normal that the Federal Constitution has enormously dictated the pulse and rhythm of events since its inception. I demonstrate in this book – contrary to what has so far been presented – that, had Cameroon’s statesmen, lawyers and scholars been endowed with any wisdom and ingenuity at all, the country could not be mired in its present unfortunate and precarious politico-constitutional atmosphere; a situation significantly tied to the issues of democracy and federalism or selfdetermination . These are human rights concepts about which the “intellectuals in politics” say Cameroon’s versions are so advanced that even Americans can struggle all their lives and will never catch up with Cameroon’s. This has obviously prompted questions that specifically seek to know what the intellectual has to be doing in politics that is infested with political chameleons. “What is the role of an intellectual? Should the intellectual be an active participant or a seer in politics? How can he [or she] avoid brushes with political chameleons?”2 In response to the queries, de Smith (1964: 280) 1 David P. Currie, “Introductory Note” in David P. Currie, ed., Federalism and the New Nations of Africa (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964). 2 Canute C.N. Tangwa, “Siga Asanga’s Death and the SDF” The Post Nº 0067 (8 May 1998), 4. 3...