Neo-Colonial Politics in Africa

A Constitutional Hold-up in Cameroon
By Nfamewih Aseh*

By neo-colonial politics in Africa I am referring to the situation whereby politics in Africa is articulated from offstage by Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” from the metropolitan centres of Europe and America; where those who call the shots in Africa are hidden in the shadows, away from the view of the population, unknown to them, after the end of formal colonial rule. To go by the words of Jacques Chirac, where “the White Man is the absolute master and the Black Man is the slave and the servant” (Aseh 2006: 248); where there is something at stake, known only to the ruling class who benefit from it and want to monopolise it to the exclusion of the common people, with the use of force and legal instruments. It is like there is a kind of contract or a secret pact between the ruling class of the White Man countries and those of the Black Man countries to maintain sealed leaps over that “thing” that makes the “elite” powerful and would prefer to die in power than to sever links with neo-colonialism in favour of common sense democratic principles; in favour of the will of the people to decide who should rule, what the limits of power should be, and how the liberty of the citizens should be guaranteed in the processes of governance. Or why is it that presidents in Africa have a tendency of hanging on to power for life? Neo-colonial politics in Africa can be understood from the historical perspective of the white man’s mission to “civilise” Africans, the “primitive natives”, a mission which gave rise to an anomalous situation in which only a few, the chosen ones, qualify to dialogue with the white man; where those who are outside the realm of the chosen ones are “ignorant”, unable to manage the affairs of “civilised” people. We have come to realise that this shadowy, behind-the-scene operations uses the law as its fetish to pull the strings, to manipulate the people to achieve the desired effect; to legitimise its course. It is like a circus show where the people are helpless spectators, held captive by legality. And even when they have to act their actions are controlled and/or tele-guided to produce the desired effect, which is to keep them under servitude, or kill them in their desire to seek political freedom, which is their struggle to emancipate themselves from the stranglehold of neo-colonial politics, which is the politics of the economy.
On Constitutionalism and the Contemporary State in Africa One of the neo-colonial instruments in contemporary Africa that has received a lot of controversy, sometimes leading to civil strife, has been the constitution. But what is a constitution? A constitution is something much more than abstract statements written down on a piece of paper that any single individual can toy with at any time that s/he wishes. A constitution should derive from and actually be a reflection of a people’s charter history, defining the rights, obligations, and responsibilities of each individual citizen within a particular political entity. A constitution, therefore, should be a people’s foundation charter. For example, a constitution should tell us about the number of groups that make up this encapsulating entity called Cameroon, what each of them contributed in making up what the entity is, and what each of them expects from it. If there are over 250 ethnic groups in Cameroon as we are told, then that should be reflected in the constitution, which actually means the foundation charter, which should become the foundation of the people’s history. In simple terms, a constitution should refer to the elements that make up a set, i.e., the constituent elements of a set, defining the laws that govern the relationship between them, and the rule each element should play in the set to achieve a clearly defined objective. But what we have come to know in contemporary Africa has been contentions about issues of governance within vague entities; entities which are defined only by territorial boundaries with no mention made of its content or constituent elements and why they chose to come together to form the entity, and the rules of transformation that govern the life of the entity. The critical question at this point in the history of a people is that of whether Cameroon is a country or a nation. Politically speaking, a country is a geographical space enclosed within territorial boundaries while a nation refers to a body of people, a social formation, which emerged out of a people’s desire to establish a union, constituting a determinant factor in the type of structure the union should take: a federal state, a confederation, or a centralised state. We therefore realise that Cameroon is a country and not a nation because the various peoples who make up the entity were not even consulted, let alone participated in its formation. It rather emerged out of the wishes and predatory activities of Europeans, in this case the Portuguese, Germany, Great Britain, and France with the minimal participation of a few local collaborators who became the “elite” wielding enormous powers over Cameroonians who have no control over their own destiny within the entity. Neo-colonialism in contemporary Africa feeds on this constitutional vagueness, which was intentionally made to be so for the purpose of using it as a political instrument of deception, of blind-folding the masses. The ruling class in Africa has used this instrument, passionately referred to as the “fundamental law of the land”, to bamboozle the population to prolong their stay in power. After all, it is something that was drafted by a few individuals to serve their interests so they can mutilate it at will to achieve their goal of continuous exploitation of the people for their metropolitan masters who determine the rules of the game from offstage, unaware by the people. From Mali to Nigeria to Congo to Uganda and so on, it has been the same swan song: revise the constitution to allow the President to seek another term of office. The most recent cases are that of Abdelaziz Boutteflika of Algeria who upon his return from France last December announced the revision of the Algerian constitution to allow him run for another term of office. Paul Biya, after he returned from France where he granted an interview on French 24 TV Channel in which he said the revision of the constitution was not his pre-occupation, has taken the cue, last December 31, by announcing that he will mutilate the constitution to seek for another seven year presidential mandate come 2011. The strangest thing about the case of Cameroon is that the country has just emerged from an election and the President has hardly served half of his mandate. Now, with the revision of the constitution debate, the country has been plunged again into an election mode, an election which is four years away. Is the life of a “nation” only about elections? Will Cameroonians spend their precious time only voting neo-colonialists into office? Politics in contemporary Africa has shown that elections do not build a nation even if the incumbents are re-elected a thousand times because people waste heir precious time and energy voting people into office they cannot hold accountable. This is precariously so because politics in contemporary Africa is rather about colluding with foreigners (whites, Japanese, Chinese) in their profit seeking adventures and sharing in the loot and not about governance, corresponding to Jean-François Bayart’s idea of African states that are governed by the “politics of the belly”. This could explain why the incumbents would want change the constitution as many times as they want to stay in power indefinitely. Did Paul Biya not say he was the best pupil of Mitterrand? Those who do not want to collaborate in this game of international racketeering and thievery like Mugabe of Zimbabwe and Kaddafi of Libya are given bad names and vilified in the media. Due to the neo-colonial nature of African politics, which is controlled from the shadows by an invisible hand, the situation in Cameroon, come 2011, is not only promising to be volatile but is also very pre-occupying. At least we can see the invisible hand of France behind the caucus which has come to be known as the Generation 2011, known for short as the G11, and propped up from within the ruling circle to fight Biya if he dares seek another term of office. They have accumulated enough wealth that can sponsor war in Cameron for over a quarter of a century. We can also see that Paul Biya himself is equally supported by France and that embezzlement has been a game plan to enrich the elite and to impoverish the masses in such a way that they can easily accept to go to war with the blind hope that it will reverse their condition. Both camps are well armed and in the event of war impoverished and innocent Cameroonian souls will be dying while France and the so-called “International Community” will be pretentiously talking about peace, fanning the flames, and selling arms to both sides, which is why no opposition political party or civil society organisation should ever sent its militants in the streets as a form of protest for any reason whatsoever. There is a tendency to provoke Cameroonians to go to war, a senseless war, and the events that are leading up to 2011 provide good indicators, especially that the regime in place has a highly motivated and well equipped military force (the police, the gendarmerie, soldiers, etc,) who are ready, at a command, to shoot and kill anybody who dares to take the talk of freedom to the streets. Governor Faï Yengo Francis, by banning all public demonstrations against the revision of the constitution to allow president Paul Biya to seek another term of office, has already sent signals from Douala of what awaits Cameroonians should they dare to choose the physical confrontation option by taking to the streets. Life is too precious to be lost in this way. Africa has lost enough of her children in neo-colonial politics in the Great Lakes, in Cote d’Ivoire, in Kenya (it is surprising that Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga could still afford to allow themselves to be used by the USA and Britain to transform Kenya into an inferno of carnage), etc. Let Cameroonians not make the same mistake and plunge themselves into the same abyss. The struggle must be fought and won only on the intellectual plane.
The Revision of the Constitution Gimmicks and the State in Cameroon As a legal-rational entity; an entity which is held together by pieces of manipulative legislation coupled with forces of coercion, Cameroon presents itself as a classical example of an ad hoc state; a state that is governed by way of contingency political arrangements. And as a country that sprang into existence from the activities of foreigners, who came in during the last quarter of the 19th century to enslave the people on their own soil and to rob them of their material wealth in which Cameroonians have come to be participating in the process only as passive spectators, with no powers to decide on issues of great importance affecting their political destiny, and as a way of maintaining Cameroon as a subjugated territory, one of the legal instruments through which the neo-colonial state has consistently maintained dominion over unsuspecting people has been the constitution. The history of the constitution in Cameroon reveals that the draft of what was to become the constitution of Cameroon was, ironically, submitted to the French parliament in 1946 and was, as would have been expected, rejected on the grounds that it tended to grant more autonomy to Cameroon. It was revised that very year. Based on the provisions of the revised constitution fresh elections were conducted on June 1946 for the election of a Cameroon deputy into the French parliament, which was a way of inculcating a false sense of French citizenship in Cameroonians; to make Cameroonians think that they were part of the “Great France”; the French dream. Consequently, Douala Manga Bell, first elected on October 1945 as the first Cameroonian deputy into the French parliament, barely a year ago, was re-elected in addition to Dr. Louis-Paul Aujoulat, a Frenchman, all of whom were sitting in the French parliament claiming to be representing Cameroon. Since then the constitution has been a legal instrument through which Cameroonians are manipulated to legitimise the project of domination. In 1951 the so-called constitution was revised to enable the number of deputies to be elected into the French parliament to be raised to three to represent the Douala constituency, the Yaoundé constituency, and the Northern constituency. This paved the way for the 1956 election which enabled Jules Ninine to go to the French parliament to represent the Northern constituency while André-Marie Mbida went to represent the Yaoundé constituency with Louis-Paul Aujoulat still hanging around as a Cameroon’s deputy to the French parliament. In October 1958 the Cameroun Legislative Assembly voted a resolution for the amendment of the constitution to permit the granting of what was called an internal self-government, which excluded defence, monetary and foreign exchange policy, and foreign affairs still to be controlled by France. That brought Councillor Ahidjo, who was instead opposed to the nationalist idea, to prominence as East Cameroon’s second Prime Minister appointed by French Governor to Cameroon Jean Remadier in February 1958 to replace Mbida who had become anti-France, who was himself appointed by French High Commissioner Pierre Messmer on May 9th 1957 as East Cameroon’s first Prime Minister. When French Cameroun became independent on January 1, 1960 with Ahmadou Ahidjo as Prime Minister, a referendum was conducted on February 21 of that year to adopt the first Cameroon constitution which, for the first time, carried the designation La Republic du Cameroun. The results of that referendum stood at 797.498 yes votes with 531.075 no votes. By that constitution, with provisions for the election of the President of the Republic by the then 100 deputies in the Assembly, general councillors and municipal councillors, East Cameroon became a Republic. And on June 5th, 1960 Ahmadou Ahidjo was so elected as the first President of La Republic du Cameroun. In 1961 Ahmadou Ahidjo shoved aside the Fumban accord, which laid down the modalities for the functioning of the federal structures, and revised the constitution to make provisions for the post of Vice President which he gave to J. N. Foncha, who was then Prime Minister of Southern Cameroons, as a way of co-opting Southern Cameroons into the French political arrangements, in line with earlier negotiations between France and Great Britain for the ceding of the territory to the former by the latter. The constitution of the United Republic of Cameroon, which was promulgated in 1972, was to be revised only three years afterwards in 1975 scrapping the post of Vice President and making the president of the National Assembly the constitutional successor to the President of the Republic in case of a vacancy. Between 1972 and 1996 the constitution has been revised nine times. In February 1975, during the CNU Congress of “maturity” in Douala, President Ahmadou Ahidjo, as a strategy to circumvent S. T Muna, an Anglophone, who was then president of the National Assembly, announced the creation of the post of Prime Minister, which prompted the revision of the constitution on May 9, 1975 creating the post of Prime Minister. On June 30th of that year Paul Biya was appointed Prime Minister. It should be recalled that Paul Biya, upon his return to Cameroon in 1962, after his studies in France, came with a special recommendation letter from Louis-Paul Aujoulat to Ahidjo to groom him as successor. On June 29th, 1979 the constitution was revised to make Paul Biya Prime Minister with rights to succession. In 1981 the constitution was revised granting retirement benefits to the President of the Republic promulgated into force by Presidential Decree of 10 September 1981. In 1983 the constitution was revised twice. The first revision was to permit the President of the Republic to organise an anticipated election and the second revision was to increase the number of parliamentarians from 120 to 150. In 1984 the constitution again was revised twice. The first revision was to change the name of the country from the United Republic of Cameroon to “The Republic of Cameroon”, while the second revision of that same year scrapped the post of PM and made the president of the National Assembly to assume interim succession in case of a vacancy for a limited period during which an election will be organised. In 1988 the constitution also underwent two revisions. The first revision was to increase the number of parliamentarians from 150 to 180, and the second was to permit President Biya to again organised an anticipated elections which he did an obtained a land slide victory. In preparation for the multi-party presidential election of 1992 Paul Biya, in 1991, with a comfortable majority of parliamentarians, asked for another revision of the constitution which re-established the post of PM with no rights to succession, imposed on him by the World Bank/IMF. Since President Biya has been more committed to the prolongation of his stay in power, the institutional reforms that were proposed by the Tripartite Conference of 1991 were shoved aside in favour of the revision of the constitution. And in 1996 the constitution was revised increasing the presidential term of office from five to seven years. As early as 2003 Françoise Foning and Gregoire Owona during a CPDM party meeting at the Congress Hall in Bonanjo Douala, like Delphine Tsanga in 1975, “pleaded” with President Biya to start thinking of presenting his candidature for the 2011 presidential election. In the course of last year speculations rented the air to that effect but Biya stayed mute until December 31, when he broke the silence and told Cameroonians, as a New Year message, that he was not insensitive to the call. From the look of things, it would appear it is President Biya himself who instigates such “calls”. For example, Jean Nkuete, the Vice PM in charge of Agriculture recently assembled all the parliamentarians from the West Province in Yaoundé in a meeting during which he told them that President Biya has ask him to solicit their support in his project for the revision of the constitution to enable him seek another seven-year term of office. If the president’s stay in power does not affect citizens, i.e., if in spite of that citizens could still go about their normal affairs unperturbed, that would not be a big issue. But the intriguing thing, as history has shown is that the revision of the constitution is rather used as a smoke screen to hold the country hostage by preventing the people from shaking off the heavy darkness in which they were plunged ever since the white man set foot on this soil. To be sure, if the white man’s money and the white man’s guns were not here such a prolonged constitutional hold-up will not happen. Those are the mitigating factors which render Cameroonians helpless in the face persistent official gansterism.

* Nfamewih Aseh is a political sociologist/social science researcher and the author of the book Political Philosophies and Nation-Building in Cameroon: Grounds for the Second National Liberation Struggle (2006) in which he has analysed the political history of Cameroon from colonial times till date from a social scientific perspective.