Friends,
Make La Republique du Cameroun and Southern Cameroons the object and the subject of this still cut from Sartre's colonialism and neocolonialism and you only just begin to get the sorry picture;
---------
While Sartre focuses on the racism of anti-Semitism, his analysis is applicable, by inference, to all colonial ideologies supported by racism. The war showed him that life was not simply a series of existential choices against circumstance: that the domination of power turns the subject into an object: in this situation, freedom is constituted by taking responsibility to transform oneself back into an agent. According to Sartre, a refusal to accept that freedom, which for Sartre defines man, reduces the individual to a state of inauthenticity. In the situation of anti-Semitism, as Sartre acknowledges, the choice of freedom and assuming the responsibility of authenticity requires considerable courage.
Where the individual is defined as subhuman on account of racism, one understandable reaction is to aspire to the group from which he or she is excluded (‘thus the Jew remains the stranger, the intruder, the unassimilated at the very heart of our society’ (Sartre 1995:83)). For Sartre, however, this would be to live in a situation of inauthenticity: for the Jew, authenticity ‘is to live to the full his condition as a Jew - SOUTHERN CAMEROONIAN-; inauthenticity is to deny it or attempt to escape from it’ (Sartre 1995:91). This alternative for the persecuted subject, to live in a state of authenticity or inauthenticity, was to inspire Fanon in Black Skin, White Masks (1952). For Fanon, the colonial subject is not only denied his or her freedom and reduced to an object; he or she is unable to be fully human at an individual level: colonial oppression works at the level of psychology as well as in material form. If existence precedes essence, as Sartre argued, then the essence of the colonized subject aspiring to a ‘white mask’ is one of inauthenticity and bad faith. Sartre’s section in Being
and Nothingness entitled ‘The Look’, one of the most acute analyses he ever wrote, was a particular inspiration for Fanon – and subsequently for Lacan in his account of the Gaze, as well as the many discussions of various looks and gazes that followed in European feminist and film theory. Fanon’s genius was to recognize the implicit gender and class position in Sartre’s account of how, at a phenomenological level, the individual experiences the Other as an object. Soon, the looker finds himself looked at in turn and becomes conscious of himself as an object, or rather of seeing himself seen as an object:‘I am no longer master of the situation’ (Sartre 1958:263–8). In Sartre’s account of how a lack of self-worth is mediated by the look of the Other, Fanon recognized an insight into the mechanics of how colonialism was able to produce a sense of inferiority in colonial subjects, of the psychopathology by which the colonized individual was led to experience him or herself at one remove as an object. The look turns the subject into an object: ‘I want you to feel, as I, the sensation of being seen. For the white man has enjoyed for three thousand years the privilege of seeing without being seen’ (Sartre 1976a: 7). The colonial subject constantly oscillates between the two states, internalizing the colonial ideology of inferiority and being less than fully human – until he, or she, assumes responsibility and chooses authenticity and freedom. It is for this reason that Black Skin, White Masks is a liberationist text.
Sartre’s Hegelian training enabled him to recognize that power was a dialectical
phenomenon, that torturer and tortured, racist and victim, colonizer and colonized, the empowered and disempowered, were locked in a symbiotic relation in which the first could not escape the consequences of his relations with the second. The split between colonizer and colonized, internalized by Fanon to provide the kind of Manichaean schizo-culture so forcefully analysed at the beginning of The Wretched of the Earth (1961), is drawn directly from Sartre’s model in which colonizer and colonized are ‘similarly strangled by the colonial apparatus, that heavy machine’ (Sartre 1964:51). Caught up in that system, transformed into an oppressor or torturer, the colonizing subject also finds
himself in a condition of ontological ambivalence: ‘both the organiser and the victim’,as Fanon put it, ‘of a system that has choked him and reduced him to silence’ (Sartre 1976a: 724; Fanon 1980:10).TO BE CONTD.On Wed, Jul 23, 2014 at 3:57 PM, Ofege Ntemfac <ntemfacnchwete@gmail.com> wrote:
Hear Mr Horne,Background.A major, major irritant about these silly-season debates on Camnet etc is bounden on the fact that we have to post and repost the same answers to the same people again and again. It leaves one wondering if one is not dealing with the pathetic souls contrive by Thomas Horne:
“Pertness and ignorance may ask a question in three lines which it will cost learning and ingenuity thirty pages to answer; and when this is done, the same question shall be triumphantly asked again next year, as if nothing had ever been written on the subject.”
It is therefore prudent, in most of these instances, to ignore these pathetic souls and let them rant on. Rarely have they anything substantive to say, and it is valueless to spend precious time quibbling with them.
I posted these answers to Ms Lyn Joe ages ago.
Amazing her like-minded confederates - Konde+Mukefor etc - bring up the topic and again.
Ms Joe: AngloNetters are prone to talk about Dr. Bland. Heck, Dr. Bland knew me in the public arena. In that public arena that I organized, the UN representatives and interest groups were there. Of recent, when Chief Alex Taku wanted to introduce me to Dr. Bland, once I called my name, Dr. Bland told me who I am over the phone. I asked Dr. Bland about his involvement with the SCNC. He was basically economic oriented about resources, marginalization, and believed Francophones have a higher standard of living. It was like the Ogoni people fighting Shell and Texaco in Niger Delta, Nigeria. That amounts to socioeconomic equity; not liberation. What liberation -- if there is no unique identity that binds Southwest and Northwest when English is removed? And that is increasingly removed with the new generation of Cameroonians to whom language and social interactions are not constraints. Primitivity and inferiority complex are self imposed for self cure. They are not public affairs.
Ntemfac Nchwete Ofege: Common history, my friend, a common history sharing a peculiar pattern of values, events and outcomes within a defined territorial continuum (Southern Cameroons) from a defined period - the 1922 League of Nations Mandate to the end of the Trusteeship Emancipation clause in1961. That is exactly what binds what you call the NW and SW together. Why do I pick on a particular time frame and not pre-history or post-1961? Simply because 1922-1961 circumscribed the processes of “modernity” and statehood under UN supervision. This unfortunate territory has gone through many names in its checkered history: Kamerun, Mandated Territory of Southern Cameroons under Nigeria, Trust Territory of Southern Cameroons under Britain, Southern Cameroons, Southern Zone and Northern Zone, the State of West Cameroon (an equal partner per the Federal Constitution that founded Cameroon), the North West and South West provinces, and soon, the North West Region and the South West Region. These names, and maybe more, have been tolerated because of the weird inability of British Cameroonians to name themselves. My, friend, Muluh Mbuh, says Ambazonia with solid historical evidentials to back his claim. I say Bimbia and I have a case to prove.
What binds us together? The Pluribus unum, the common history and the will to live together. Let me tell you a story. When I went to Sacred Heart College, (Years before you were born!) we were a collective of 60 hell raisers and holy terrors from all over Southern Cameroon. That gung-ho had fellows from Victoria, Kumba, Mamfe, Widekum and even from the Yaounde Diaspora. At no point in time did it matter to us who came from where and had what. The pluribus unum was still effective, my dear. Today frog Divide and Rule or manipulated and politicized ethnicity have come in where who comes from where is used for political expediency. Divide and Rule is transient because blood is always thicker than water...
Do you really know the Southern Zone that well? Do you know how exactly Divide and Rule or politicized ethnicity from LRC operates? Let me take an example close to you, right? When Chief Mukete and some of the Muketes take a stand against the separatists for political expediency and survival they would come across as anti-graffi, right? Wrong. Blood is thicker than water - take it from me. We can take a vote on it but I can tell you that the most uncompromising, militant Bimbians (Ambazonians) are from the Southern Zone. Let me tell you another story and declassify this for your reading pleasure. It is now public domain anyway. Sometime in December 2000 a group of fellows, members of the SCNC Strategic Committee under Prince Esoka Ndoki Mukete and with Justice Frederick Ebong Alobwede at the head decided that it was of strategic importance to the Republic of Ambazonia (Bimbia) to take over Radio Buea and cause the Proclamation of the Restoration of the Sovereign Independence of Southern Cameroons. The group, made up of Southern Zoners in the main, was “introduced” into Radio Buea and assisted by Southern Zoners to do the broadcast. The then Chief of Station, a Southern Zoner from Mamfe, who in his less mercurial moments brandishes a CPDM card, acquiesced to the deed but conveniently stayed away during the takeover. A popular sportscaster from the 11th Province (Eton-Anglophone), who remains a Buea Boy to this minute, helped the group and bought drinks for everybody after the deed was done. For four hours (4!) THE TAPE containing the Restoration message was broadcast, rewound and broadcast, over Radio Buea by a technician from the Southern Zone. The SCNC posse did not force anybody to function; nobody was bullied, nobody was tied. It was just a job that had to be done, period! You will see and live more of these grand moments of national pride and sheer heroism especially from Southern Zoners as we get along. Actually when the Southern Zoners brought the tape to the Bamenda Group and asked the Bamenda group to take over Radio Bamenda and cause the same broadcast, the graffi folks panicked and said, Ngang!
Since Foncha, the hesitation and betrayal have often come from the graffi people rather than what you think. Do you know the Late Pa Luma? Here was a strange old man who even that close to is grave would stake all for Southern Cameroons.
Do you know who hit the truck that crashed into the Mungo Bridge? () You really make me laugh!
Another testimony. Some time in 1989 or thereabouts (I am so old now that I don’t remember), two “delinquents” - Boh Yusimbom Herbert and Ntemfac Aloysius Nkong Nchwete Ofege thought there was something fundamentally wrong with the way “Anglophones” - meaning Ambazonians or Bimbians - were treated at CRTV. We decided to spearhead a petition captioned: “The place of English language in a Bilingual CRTV.” This memo, over 300pages with affidavits - programme schedule (all Prime Time at CVTR or CRTV is for French programmes, staff list (Anglophones, or the same workload are understaffed 10-1), pay packet (a racket obtains at CRTV wherein a Francophone staff, member of the same class, earns more than his Anglophone colleague and I am not talking about the fact that the Francophones occupy all the main duty posts)iii “ and so on. Evelyn, when we finished our memo a glorious event occurred. Somebody suggested that we translate the thing into French because it was destined to the Presidency, see? We had finished the English text on a Friday and the memo had to be handed in on Monday. ALL, I mean AAAALLL, the Anglophone Translators in the presidency converged to the Muna and Muna Chambers downtown Yaounde to translate the document. These strange people came...North Westerners and South Westerners! Lawyers also came to help with the text! There were over 50 people working. Those who could type handled the typewriters grabbed machines and hacked away! Wives, girlfriends and sympathizers brought food as we soldiered on. North westerners and South westerners risked their, without doubt, lucrative jobs in the Presidency for something that they believed in! They started work on Saturday, stayed on through Saturday night, worked through Sunday and Monday afternoon the document was translated, typed and bound. I remember that Sunday very well because Cameroun was playing Tunisia for the World Cup qualifier. The Munas brought a TV set and we all watched the match while working. It was an emotional family affair. Needless to say, the document went to Mr. Biya and never returned. I recall that some of our elder brothers at CRTV refused to sign the petition because it was done by Ntemfac Ofege and Boh Herbert “those that they called children! I know they now regret their cowardice to this day but abi na their own wahala be that!
Evelyn, were you at Mount Mary? Too bad. If you were your “if there is no unique identity that binds Southwest and Northwest when English is removed?” would have no meaning. Nations are also fashioned by common history. Having gone through great positive moments in the past, Bimbians would want to live and share the same sensations again and again and again. Naturally traumatizing (gendarmerie brutality and torture) and negative (corruption and, in Tatah Mentanspeak, betitisation of power) moments are not worth living ad infinitum ad nauseam. We want out, period!
You seem to have forgotten that the Southern Zone voted massively to join Nigeria and that the treachery came from the Northern Zone through Foncha who was negotiating with Ahidjo behind Endeley’s back. The so-called North West/South West divide (hyped out of proportion and used for political gain by LRC) started with Foncha’s treachery but remember that Foncha was a Dschang man. Do you know the exact population spread of the Southern Zone and who makes up what? However, the issue is not within the strategic spread of the disparate peoples of the Southern Zone. Do you think Mr. Musonge will remain across the Mungo when we sever the bridge permanently? Do you think Mr. Musonge can forget the fact that Mr. Tekere from Batibo was married to his sister, Twenty years of belligerent Journalism and that Mr. Takere buried his wife in Batibo?
Another time you wrote, "If it is about cultural homogeneity, it makes little sense to lump Southwest and Northwest when Southwest has more indigenous ties with Littoral? What do you call a Bayangi person who does not speak English but is fluent in French? An incomplete cross breed?"
Ntemfac Nchwete Ofege: The Southern Cameroons Nation-statehood question commenced in 1922 by the League of Nations Mandate and prolonged after 1945 by the UN Trusteeship Agreements had nothing to do with the Littoral province of La Republique. Were the Duala peoples part of Southern Cameroons? Until you understand the fabulous history of Southern Cameroons you can only speculate and wonder what the fuss is all about.
Regarding Dr Bland, etc...That is why I still like your style. Ok what is it going to take to get you on my team, my dear? PLEEAAAAASSEEEEEE!!!
Ms Joe: You see, the AngloNetter does not really want pragmatic solutions that would devoid them of emotional agitation. We are yet to see the statistics that show the average Francophone in better social, economic and political echelons. The ails and beset Cameroon are not inspired by Francophones versus Anglophones and the solutions are not demarcated boundaries. Cameroonians across tribal and language lines need to work together to build a sustainable and free society.
Ntemfac Nchwete Ofege: Abi you dey craze? Maybe you are mad downstairs (J) Wetin concern me with Okro soup? Matthew 7:6 “Give not that which is Holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.” Who send you? Now let me ask you, what right do you have to pull a pig out of its natural habitat: the muck and the mud? The beast is very comfy wallowing in ignorance and shit, see? Personally I have always been scared of certain villagers especially those misguided luminaries in the SDF who, without a mandate, believe strongly that they have a divine mission to civilize, democratise and educate native Francophones and some native hybrids from some remote outback in Bassaland (J).Let them unfetter themselves, if they durst. Were he not a simpleton George Bush would have since discovered that it is no mean feat to bring “civilization” to the Arabs, especially when nobody asked you.
The Cameroonian context is bedeviled by a hypocritical majority who invented, sustained their corrupt underachieving system and are thriving on its backwash while pretending to change it. Read Robert Bierstedt’s “The Sociology of Majorities” then your will only just begin to understand why LRC is doomed. “ Ils sont maudits!iv as my good friend Djeukam Tchameni who wants to preside over that mess says aloud.
Robert Bierstedt:
Within every polity, It is the majority, which sets the cultural pattern and sustains it, which is in fact responsible for whatever pattern or configuration there is in a culture. It is the majority, which confers upon folkways, mores, customs, and laws the status of norms and gives the coercive power. It is the majority, which guarantees the stability of a society. It is the majority which requires conformity to customs and which penalizes deviation…“except in ways in which the majority sanctions and approves. It is the majority which is the custodian of the mores and which defends them against innovation. And it is the inertia of the majorities, finally, which retards the processes of social change.v
Evelyn, there are times you sound so much like a member of the majoritarian, doomed, dastardly, kleptocratic, tribalistic, empty, hypocritical, corrupt, genocidal, exploitative, and oppressive Frog caucus that it is mortifying. I may be wrong but I understand where you are coming from. Let me tell you another story. My father was this Bamileke man, the 9th son of a family of twelve. Nine of them (9!) died fighting the French because they were members of the UPC Maquisards. My grandmother panicked and chased away the remaining children to “¦Kumba. The Ntemfacs-Tendekas-Nibohs, my pedigree, thus settled in FREEDOMLAND. Ahead of the Plebiscite, my father migrated to the grass field as an operative of the Public Works Department. His unit was deployed to Takum, former Gongola state now Taraba State to build the Takum-Nkambe Road. My father, the old crook, ran into this princess of the Jukun people of Ndaka and decided that "this is the one for me. So I arrived, born at the Bamenda General Hospital, the outcome of a Bamilekeman and a Jukun princess whose family is even more Nigerian than Cameroonian. The Plebiscite and its aftermath came and the Takum-Nkambe road never saw the light of day but my father, maybe because of his history and experience, joined the “anti-joining La Republique” campaign in the Nkambe Division of Southern Cameroons. Naturally, Nkambe voted massively against joining La Republique and my old man was so elated with his handiwork that he got into his rickety and wobbly Land rover and ferried the Nkambe Division results to...Bamenda. His friends bought him Heineken of whatever it was that they drank in those days by the cartoons. The issue is me, right? I am a chip of the old block. My father’s son “a drop of his own liquid as my man Charlie “The Hun” Ndichia would say. I am also my mother’s son. Spare me this your Cameroun booboo. I understand the 11th province phenomenon. I understand it even more some nincompoops, hee-haws, and members of the lunatic fringe of the SCNC point us out as 11th province and “not belonging.” Paragraphs 81-85 of the Southern Cameroon’s Orders in Council are very precise about the nationality issue. The choice is mine. Yours too. Whenever I am in Doula and I feel like getting Captain Nasah red, I stroll over to his abode and mention the SCNC. The man becomes incandescent in rage. But Professor Nasah is a Buea Boy. Talk to Doc Emil Mondoa. Sometime.
Ms Joe: Where is the comparison? The Ivory Coast insurgents do not want a new country, they want to be Ivorians and capture all of Ivory Coast if not. If the Separatists are hoping that they would be invited to Etoudi for talks and rights.... that is fat chance. The slick Biya instead wants everyone to be a voting Cameroonian and even gives monies for more people to presidential candidates or confusionists.
Ntemfac Nchwete Ofege: Invited to Etoudi? To do what? To listen to the Pontifex Maximax of Corruption Inc. pontificating about what he knoweth not? Are you out of your mind? We have a problem with the United Nations not Paul Biya. Biya is now running after the separatists not the other way round. Mr. Biya has mandated his Minister for Bakassi, sorry Justice, Amadou Ali to commence dialogue with the SCNC. Mr. Ali is running around throwing money at the wrong wing of the SCNC. Koffi Annan came running when Justice Ebong proclaimed the Restoration of the Independence of Southern Cameroons. Mr. Biya knows that when push comes to shove he has no case. You are right, Biya is smart and slick. You think he acts as if Anglophones do not exist and he changed the name of his country to La Republique for nothing. The man knows.
Ms Joe: Talk about fighting. If one known idiot out of three Internet patients touting war cannot help but masturbate at the sight of a disinterested women, that is one-third rate of effeminate men in the prospective field Marshalls. Then, how can they fight other real men? Small wonder how semi boys will advocate bloodshed when they piss in front of mere women and loose their minds thereafter. There would one kind of a hostage crisis seized by La Republique armies and mesmerized by Mvogatanganabala women. When you see a man writing on the Internet without a public focus and hang on private lives, he has a psychological hangover; not liberation matters. Therefore, the war would be lopsided.
Ntemfac Nchwete Ofege: Only a fool would clamour for war and bloodshed, my dear, but make no bones about it when push comes to shove we shall rise to the occasion. The marines have this logic: They fight for those who cannot fight for themselves. Do you know who kept professional soldiers at bay in Liberia, my dear? Mere Children. Children brandishing the AK-47s. In 1997 a handful of SCYL members, less than 20 of them, held Kumbo, Bamenda, Bafut, Bali, etc. hostage for five days with… bow and arrows! You don see weti. Every war is a test of will and resolve. You should know our resolve by now. Responsibility, however, begins with exploring all the peaceful avenues until the point of no return.
Ms Joe: If the grown-ups and respetable persons like Dr. Anyangwe, Dr. Yongbang, Emil Mondoa and articulate advocates like Ntemfac Ofege have allowed these demi men and virtual rascals to run loose in America and smear the public face of whatever the Cameroon Anglophone Movement was about, I guess the Movement has seen its better days.
Ntemfac Nchwete Ofege: No Comment.
On Tue, Jul 22, 2014 at 3:56 PM, Ofege Ntemfac <ntemfacnchwete@gmail.com> wrote:
Mr Chambo, the NW and the SW did not exist prior to the insurgence of the concolonizer. Therefore this imaginary MAGINOT LINE was invented by the said concolonizer to foster and sustain his own agenda.Go figure why this DIVIDE AND RULE Line is so sustained that there is no direct route linking the so-called NW and the SW but the concolonizer must, per force, keep the territory DIVIDED so as to be ruled.Only the intellectual Wretched of the Earth would construct aught from this self-evident evidence of the EFFECTS of concolonization.2. Consider a Nation.One of my pastors, Pastor Oyakhilome had this phortizo on nations.Pastor Chris Oyakhilome says ‘the purpose of a nation – every nation - is the realization of human aspirations. It is in pursuance of man’s dreams and desires for happiness, prosperity, self-expression, ecological development, self-fulfillment; his unsearchable and unending desire for self-discovery and the maximization of man’s intellectual, physical and spiritual abilities,’ that agglomerates of people – yesterday, today and tomorrow established nations among themselves. Man cannot achieve all his aspirations in isolation but in his relationship with like-minded creatures.’
Like-minded creatures. The Southern Cameroonian like-mindedness is conferred upon us by what Ernst Renan argued to be the most important element in a modern nation: a communal imagined past.Konde has described our like-mindedness as a HERD MENTALITY.What does he know?On Tue, Jul 22, 2014 at 12:11 PM, Ofege Ntemfac <ntemfacnchwete@gmail.com> wrote:The current Camnet noisome noise on the so-called NW/SW Divide again vitiates Fanon’s fine stroke to wit, “in the colonial and concolonial (colonisation of a colony by a colony) situation, dynamism is replaced fairly quickly by a substantification of the attitudes of the colonising and concolonising power. The area of culture is then marked off by fences and signposts.
For example, the 1996 constitution of the Camerounese state instituted and ramified“autochtony” settlers and “allogeny” or natives as real boundaries between the circa 282 ethnic groups in Cameroun. Since then bush wars have been fought as hordes of machete-wielding allogenes defend their colours against equal hordes of autochtones. For example, in November 1998, the Nyokon allogenes of Makenene sallied forth to battle the Bamikele settlers and their anglophones confederates. It did not matter to the Nyokon that there were at least 20 different ethnia represented in the Anglophone quq Southern Cameroons settlers in Makenene. The Anglophones and Bamilekes were political allies at the time.
To be cont.d
Bayart is categorical (Bayart, Geschiere and Nyamnjoh 2001) that the ethnicisation of the state is an invention of the post-colonial or concolonial state as both a design to share and appropriate the state. Autichtony and allogene were thus never created to invent a national culture and consciousness.
Bayart prolong that the enthnicisation of the state is thus a regression of the pre-colonial orchestrations and kingdoms which were rather inclusive and placed their trust in the “wealth in people” rather than “wealth in things «which is currency in the current concolonial contraption in Cameroun. [1] *In fine, ethnicisation of the state is not an expression of the primeval identities inherent in Africa states prior to European colonization. Most historians and anthropologists agree that the ethnicisation of the state is rather derived from colonization and concolonisation and remains a divide and rule tool of the colons of yore. This tool has been deftly appropriated by the heritor rulers of the colonial state - the concolons of this day and their supporters.
C. Long Walk to Freedomland. By Ntemfac Ofege
Colonialism-Concolonialism is a System which makes some folks Ignorant and Dull.
Gurus (Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Memmi, François Lyotard and Frantz Fanon, Hegel, etc) of the dialectic phenomenology of racism, concolonialism-colonialism, divide and rule, tribalism, neocolonialism, etc. have underpinned the dehumanizing nature of colonialism especially.
Proponents of the so-called NW/SW Divide in these chambers are the prototypal victims of the colonial, neocolonial and concolonial imbecilization of even the seemingly educated or schooled.
Frenchman Jean-Paul Satre underscores the degrading nature of the colonial system when he writes: ‘Colonialism denies human rights to people it has subjugated by violence, and whom it keeps in poverty and ignorance by force, therefore, as Marx would say, in a state of “sub-humanity.”’
There is no difference between colonialism, concolonialism and racism as far as Sartre was concerned. Per Sartre, a skewed form of racism is inscribed in the colonial - and, per force, concolonial - experience, in its events, in the institutions, in the nature of the exchanges and the production. The political and social statuses reinforce one another: since the natives are sub-human, the Declaration of Human Rights does not apply to them; conversely, since they have no rights, they are abandoned without protection to the inhuman forces of nature, to the ‘iron laws’ of economics and to the tendency of brain dead if not disturbed pseudo-intellectuals on Camnet to sell the Bonaberi Bridge to the unwary. If this is not the case, how come some ragtag and bobtails in these set of chambers would want to construe an effect of concolonization called the NW/SW Divide for reality? It is pure witchcraft.
Aaron, the attitude of these pseudo-intellectuals on public latrines like Camnet and Camerounese porotique is understandable.
It is also caused by colonialism and concolonialism.
You see, French colonisation prevented the natives from thinking. People become zombies vomiting rubbish and the outcome of half education and zero thought processes to the public with reckless abandon. Does Konde sound to you like a thinker? I confess that Mishe George Ngwane truly amazes me at times. Not being ex of Sacred Heart College, Mankon, Churchill Monono has a different kind of problem.
The gangrene has spread. Where the individual is defined as subhuman on account of racism, colonization and concolonisation one understandable reaction is to aspire to the group from which he or she is excluded. This explains the posture of the numerous collaborators in the Camerounese system who may want to believe that they are part of the establishment but who are really treated as outsiders by the local concolonists i.e. ‘colonizers of a colony.’ The “Anglophone collaborators” thus remain what they are – strangers, l’enemie dans la maison, interlopers, intruders and unassimilated at the very heart of “our society” and system (Sartre 1995:83): Strangers singing the Lord’s Song in a Strange Land. “Ce morceau est trop gros pour un anglo” or this morsel is too big for an anglophone is the manner in which the francophone system treats even its most heel-clicking collaborator.
Vis-à-vis the colonial and concolonial state of affairs, the native's reactions are not unanimous While the mass of the people maintain intact traditions which are completely different from those of the concolonial situation, and the artisan style solidifies into a formalism which is more more stereotyped, the intellectual throws himself in frenzied fashion into the frantic acquisition of the culture of the occupying power and takes every opportunity of unfavourably criticizing his own national culture, or else takes refuge in setting out and substantiating the claims of that culture in a way that is passionate but rapidly becomes unproductive.
They now sing songs about a so-called NW/SW Divide.
And they dance their Dance of Death.
Fela it was who sang about COLO-MENTALITY.
I would sing about KOLO-MENTALITY if I could.
Dis pipi dem don kolo!
On Mon, Jul 21, 2014 at 12:35 PM, ngunimicrowave@aol.com [camnetwork] <camnetwork@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
Bro,Do not mind these people. Here you have people talking about an economy that has no data. All what they are saying is coming from the head or via some wild guessing and/or wry speculation bordering of tribal feelings. The businesses in this particular area, like in most towns in Africa, has no known records. Even in Nigeria, businesses in cities like Lagos and Abuja are the few structural ones. What abounds in places like Onitisha and Aba is pure speculation and so for many reasons.How can you be talking about the economy of a place where 90% of what is going on is recorded nowhere? Even if they were asked to record it on paper, they won't for many reasons as well, principal amongst will be for tax evasion.The net is a very interesting place. For some, it is an opportunity to write as many feel-good messages to satisfy their lot. Most folks here begin reading and taking positions in many a debate topic from the author's name. If the mail is from someone they do not like or have no tribal affiliation with, it is dead on arrival. If the mail is against someone they do not like, then they throw in their support via one way or the other. We are dealing with a very confused generation here.Micro-Wave
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To: Camnet <camnetwork@yahoogroups.com>
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Subject: Re: [camnetwork] The Bamenda Paradox
" ... Today we are a corner shop economy doing rather well. Financial services in the one square mile of the city of London alone is more than 5000 factories in the North of the UK put together. ... " Tumasang
Not for long! America first made the mistake with NAFTA that saw American manufacturing jobs flee south and far eastward to China (mainly). Go to Brasil and see what she's made of the spoils that came her way via the NAFTA route. You will then understand why that country has become the favourite destination for American, Canadian and European pension funds investments. Then came outsourcing which swept the burgeoning ICT jobs from the California - Washington state axis to Asia (especially India). The direct result of all this is the bankruptcy of the city of Detroit and the idleness of Americans with ICT qualifications. As a derivative, China is deploying her formidable stash of cash raked in from American and European lost jobs to buying up America in almos t all its ramifications while also poking some finger in hers and her allies' eyes in South East Asia. Already, talk is audible about the dumping the US$ as the standard global currency of international finance in favour of the gold standard or some other currency to be determined by a collegiate of American adversaries. Capitalism's unrestrained greed for profit has supervened to temper associate ideals that built America into the world's most powerful nation of the current era into nudging it on her way to inexorable decline.
All that's left to happen is for those services that London currently offers the world to be copied and replicated eastward and that would be to the impoverishment of not just Britain but most of Europe and America. Given the constant threat of sanctions in seizures and freezing of assets of adversaries, its only a matter of time that the West's resurgent and increasingly powerful adversaries would act to remove those loaded guns off their heads. D at time bros, yawa don gas, na him be dat.
Please, encourage not just Bamenda but the whole of Cameroon to acquire manufacturing capacity. It is one potent way out of Africa's collective poverty and a sure move into the industrialised present. For sure, the capital flight that would be staunched from manufacturing some of critical needs wouldn't hurt us.
Cheers,
CUE
Please,Sent from my BlackBerry wireless device from MTN
From: "SAF suhade@yahoo.com [camnetwork]" <camnetwork@yahoogroups.com>Sender: camnetwork@yahoogroups.comDate: Mon, 21 Jul 2014 02:31:30 -0700ReplyTo: camnetwork@yahoogroups.comSubject: Re: [camnetwork] The Bamenda Paradox
Dr. Tumasang,
If you were writing like this all the time, you would have received a Camnet title from me. This is EXCELLENT
Nkumkwifo SAF
____________________________________________________________________________________________Ignorance of the past and present; ignorance of the future; these are all pardonable. But ignorance of how ignorant one is, is unpardonable.
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Every heartache eventually fades away just as:
"Every storm eventually runs out of rain" (By Garry Allan)
On Monday, July 21, 2014 4:11 AM, "Martin Tumasang tumasangm@hotmail.com [camnetwork]" <camnetwork@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
Bamenda is a town that is booming but without any major manufacturing outfit. How can this be?. Margaret Thatcher once said that Britain does not need manufacturing to boom. That we can be only a service economy and do very well. Perhaps if translated to a low level, one can understand the Bamenda Paradox. When Iron and steel, ship building etc failed, people thought Britain will be down and out. Today we are a corner shop economy doing rather well. Financial services in the one square mile of the city of London alone is more than 5000 factories in the North of the UK put together.
Micro finance industry controls 60% of banking in Cameroon and Bamenda is the capital of microfinance in Cameroon. In terms of financial reserves, Bamenda has the highest accumulation in the country. In terms of foreign remittance, Bamenda has one of the highest if not the highest in the country.
In t erms of "foreign' investment, no SW individual has invested in Bamenda in any significant way. I am told in the good old days, there was Fomenky stores or something but nothing today. On the contrary, the investment from the Bamilikes has been phenomenal. A Mbouda man will rather invest in Bamenda than his nature Mbouda. The amount of Bamilike investment and capital in Bamenda is unbelievable hence driving growth.
Agriculture is playing a significant part in the booming of Bamenda. Before, money was in coffee and cocoa only and food crops were nowhere to be found. Today, groundnut coming from Befang, corn, Irish potatoes, palm oil, ginger, etc. are all money spinners. You do not need to grow cocoa or coffee anymore to make money. Food crops with hungry mouths in Chad, Gabon etc. make these crops viable.
On inflated land prices, in a deregulated land market like that of cameroon with no price controls, market forces can work wonders. Demand and supply directly or indirectly determine prices of land. The inflation in land prices is a strong indicator that there is liquidity in the market. Whilst bubbles can be created by speculators in the market, I think the forces of demand and supply have a way of putting some inherent checks in these activities.
On the 20% growth rate in Bamenda as stated by economists, it is incredible to imagine 20% growth rate. Even China at its peak was not growing 20%, Even Gabon, Equatorial Guinea etc. did not grow 20% so how can economists be saying Bamenda is growing 20%. Are there other indicators to support these unbelievable figures from economists?.
The first point from economics 101 is that it is easy to get exceptional growth rates from an economy with a low base if there is a paradigm shift. The economy of Bamenda is coming from a very low base although now 3rd city in the country. The 20% growth rate is underpinned by the low level of the economy to start with. For Yaounde or Douala to even grow 10% will be incredible and perhaps impossible in the present economic dispensation but areas like Bamenda with smaller economies, if given a significant push by various variables that converge at a given point in time, such growth is possible.
In terms of external validation of the growth, my boys of the Surveying profession working in Town Planning Dept etc. in Bamenda were telling me that Cimencam and other records show a disproportionate amount of cement coming to Bamenda. The figures were so high that the Minister sent a request that a study should be conducted to see if this cement is being re-exported to Nigeria by smugglers or if it is being used only in the NW for the figures are just too high. The Dept. in Bamenda replied that all the cement is used in the province and that it is just the tip of the iceberg of what is happening because many houses are built with sun dried bricks and if not for that , the amount of cement would have still been far higher for no cement, not even a single bag is re-exported to Nigeria. This goes to support the stipulation by economist that the economy is growing 20%.
I have a relative who imports from Nigeria and sells wholesale in Bamenda. Before, when he goes to Nigeria, he takes a week there and his goods take about 3 weeks to arrive due to the bad road. Today, he takes 2 days and his goods reach Bamenda in 4 days. The effect of the Bamenda Enugu road on business in Bamenda is incalculable hence fuelling the economic boom in the city.
The value of that road to business is unbelievable. I remember the road was so bad that this relative of mine use to take a boat at Oron to Limbe and then drive to Bamenda to avoid the bad road. One day he did the usual trip and their boat started having problems and water started coming in. His phone did not have signal whilst another passenger's had. He borrowed the phone and called Bamenda and said this might be the end for their boat is taking in water. After that no contact. I was in London and in a meeting and his elder sister was trying to get me for over 2 hours but could not because my phone was off.
She finally got me and told me the message. I said you are phoning the wrong person. Are you mad?. What can I do in London. We have a second cousin who was a Colonel and I think in charge of all the combined forces in Limbe at the time. I think he is now a General (General de compagnie or something like that if my Mbouda french can spare me). I said he should have been the first person you call and not me in London. She then called the cousin and told him. He said no ship has sank in Cameroonian waters for if such event should happen, it cannot take 30 minutes before I am informed with all the details, that if a ship has gone down, it would be on the Nigerian side and I have no jurisdiction there. That if anything happened on the Cameroonian side, I would have dispatched a helicopter to do low level flights in the area to look for him but there is no information of a ship or boat going down in Cameroonian waters. This goes to show the effect of the bad roads and how people risked their lives to do business because of lack of roads but now the situation has changed and business is booming.
In terms of another external corroboration of the 20% growth rate stated by economists, I asked my Bambili landlord who works in taxation what he thinks about the local economy and he said "Dr leave that talk. 35 years of service and I noba see something like this". He says all loans by microfinance and banks are registered in taxation and the files come to his office. That the level of activity in the market is unbearable and his section cannot cope with the work. That the loans and number of buildings being built and planned from mile 4 Nkwen to Bambili is unbelievable and if they should build all these building we are registering the loans for, this city will be something else. That the place i s booming as mad. I told him the government has to cool the market for if they leave it like that, it is going to create a bubble and eventually burst. That there are instruments to regulate the market to prevent boom and bust but the government does not understand economics 101 and has just left the market to do what it wants.
Summary
The Bamenda boom is real, but I am not sure it is sustainable if left to market forces only. There is no investment in the NW coming from the SW but instead all "foreign" investment is from Bamilikes and now a few Igbos. The key thing for Africa now is jobs, jobs and jobs for the teeming youth population. There is not a single job I can point in the NW created by a South Westerner although the reverse is true. A service economy does not depend much on exportation of goods abroad hence being landlocked is of little economic relevance. Nigeria is not hostile to trade and in fact is on record as pushing such trade and blaming la Republique du Cameroun for not building roads in Southern Cameroons hence limiting trade with Nigeria. The Bamilike cousins of the Bamenda people will always trade with Bamenda even if Southern Cameroons gains or regain its independence. Inter NW/SW trade is limited or non existent because of bad roads. NW and SW are part of one nation i.e. Southern Cameroons hence they do not have to need each other before being together. The pygmies of the East of La Republique du Cameroun do not need the Hausas of the Northern provinces, the Bamilikes etc. but they are all in the same nation or country i.e. La Republique du Cameroun. North Westerners by sheer numerical size in the SW creates a market for the SW economy, in the informal sector creates jobs, and provide a cheap pool of labour force hence helping the economy in entities like CDC, PAMOL, Herakles etc. It therefore follows that SW needs NW in that respect and the NW needs SW for jobs in CDC, PAMOL etc. It is a symbiotic relationship. Indirectly, the NW needs the SW for its oil because to tar the ring road, La Republique must get the oil money and give a bit to the NW hence in that indirect sense, NW needs SW. In the modern world of globalisation and interconnectivity, it is pure stupidity for any half baked character who does not understand how the GDP of the SW or NW is generated to state categorically that one party does not need another. Even if just to provide a market for goods due to their population in the SW, the people of NW are needed in the SW and NW also needs SW directly or indirectly. The mini islands world has long gone.
Regards
Tumasang
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