You are exactly right. Democracy in all of Africa is an illusion. It's not our thing. We pay lip service to it. We still have the big man syndrome. The big man syndrome is perpetuated by natural leaders so called chiefs, fons, lamidos, kings, etc. Don't know about your dialects, but the literal translation of how we call the fon translates into English as "Big Man". The name for the chief or fon where I come from is "Wed Kieng", which means Big Man.
Many heads of State see themselves as "Super Wed Kiengs". That is, Super Big Men, Super Chiefs, Super Fons. Anyone doubt why a Super Chief won't want to remain in power for as long as, or for longer than a regular village chief?
Political Systems are cultural. The way your culture is, dictates your political system. Democracy has come out to be the best form of political system. Ours in Cameroon, and in Africa is not even close
You don't need to have taken a political science class to figure some of these things out. Of course fake political scientists have written books claiming that Africa can harness both these traditional institutions and democracy and make it work. What they don't tell you is that those theories have not worked, are not pragmatic. They all try to do things the "African Way", without being pragmatic. They cite no empirical evidence other than Ghana to show that their theories work. Not recognizing that a political system is as good as the lives of its people. Or as if to say because we are Africans we should be content with the level where Ghana is.
On Friday, October 4, 2013 9:21:48 AM UTC-4, Thomas Jing wrote:
-- Many heads of State see themselves as "Super Wed Kiengs". That is, Super Big Men, Super Chiefs, Super Fons. Anyone doubt why a Super Chief won't want to remain in power for as long as, or for longer than a regular village chief?
Political Systems are cultural. The way your culture is, dictates your political system. Democracy has come out to be the best form of political system. Ours in Cameroon, and in Africa is not even close
You don't need to have taken a political science class to figure some of these things out. Of course fake political scientists have written books claiming that Africa can harness both these traditional institutions and democracy and make it work. What they don't tell you is that those theories have not worked, are not pragmatic. They all try to do things the "African Way", without being pragmatic. They cite no empirical evidence other than Ghana to show that their theories work. Not recognizing that a political system is as good as the lives of its people. Or as if to say because we are Africans we should be content with the level where Ghana is.
On Friday, October 4, 2013 9:21:48 AM UTC-4, Thomas Jing wrote:
democracy in Cameroon is an illusion!
Date: Thu, 3 Oct 2013 11:19:39 -0700
From: ftr...@hotmail.com
To: amba...@googlegroups.com
CC: cameroon...@yahoogroups.com ; Camero...@yahoogroups.com; MANY...@aufoundation.org; min...@yahoogroups.com; bateyg...@yahoo.ca; bateyg...@yahoo.ca
Subject: Re: Elections spotlight Cameroon's weak democracyWeak oppositionLocal and foreign observers say the opposition suffers from structural weakness and democracy in the country is feeble.
I just don't understand why cultural conservatives can't understand this basic notion that democracy is "education". Democracy is practice. But most importantly, democracy is better attained when taught AND PRACTICED from BOTTOM -> Up.
Our democracy is not mature, at least, not as fast as one would expect as long as we do not have a veritable dialogue on, and even eventual replacement of the current natural leadership style government we call chiefs, fons, lamidos.
One course we had at the law faculty in Soa is "Political Institutions". Here, we studied that before the west brought democracy we always had our system of natural leadership. We also learned that before the west choose a better implementation of democracy they also broadly practiced natural leadership just like we currently do in Cameroon (Africa). The west then reformed and largely embraced democracy in its pragmatic sense.
Only a fool will wonder why democracy works for the most part in European countries that still have monarchies yet won't work in African nations where we also have monarchs. Duh!! The difference is that the West understood that democracy works best from bottom to top. In other words, it's better democracy to have democratic institutions at the most basic level of government (and then a monarch at the top) as in Europe, rather than the other way around. This also explains why even China, which is not considered a democratic country has survived implotion for so long since the father of their nation put the system in place. China's local institutions are elected, even if everyone in China belongs to the same party. At the end of the day, it's more about the person and not about the party they adhere to.
At least for Europe and the West, they had an excuse, they created democracy and didn't have any books or examples to follow. But in our case, the pragmatic examples of countries that have made it and those that haven't speak for themselves. Yet, we fail to grasp this useful knowledge.
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