By Asonganyi Tazoacha
One of our local
newspapers published an extensive interview of “former special duties minister”
Peter Abety who is also a university don. In the interview, the former minister
boasted of his political savvy, and described his having opted to have double
doctorate degrees (PhD/Doctoratd’état) as “a great feat”!
Our academic
paths crossed I think in CCAST Bambili and in the then lone University of
Yaounde as students, but more especially in 1981 over exchanges in Cameroon
Tribune on the wisdom of including Gerald Durrell's Bafut Beagles in the GCE
O/L syllabus.
At that time I had just returned
as a young PhD imbued with feelings of disappointment about the destruction
slavery, colonialism and neocolonialism had wrought on the African personality.
My contacts with Cheikh Anta Diop and many others during my university studies had opened
my mind to how seemingly impartial, objective academic disciplines like
mathematics, geometry, geography, history, literature, and others contributed
to the colonial subjugation of Africa and Africans. I had become convinced about
the truth that “all knowledge is interested” or that “all knowledge is a form
of colonial discourse...” I had read Chinweizu’s book “The West and the Rest of
Us” in which he dissects the “suicidal mystifications of colonial
miseducation.” What with Haminou Kane’s quip that “Better than the canon, it
makes conquest permanent - the canon compels the body; the school bewitches the
soul...”? So I had become convinced that our stories should not be told by
strangers; they should be told by us in our own language that reflects our own
culture and experiences.
I
had also read The Bafut Beagles set in Bafut country in northwest Cameroon. It
was written in 1949, and is a description of Bafut people at that time, and the
wild animals they helped Durrell to collect for his zoo project. As one western
reader of the book has put it, “Gerald Durrell is writing in another age, and
he just cruises around effortlessly, assuming his right to be called
"Masa" and "Sah" by the flock of undifferentiated,
caricatured natives whose words are transcribed phonetically and embellished
for comic effect. There's nothing so crude as overt racism of course, and it
would be pointless to judge him by the standards of today anyway, but the
spirit of the age shines through every paragraph…it's very funny indeed!”
Another western reader wrote “Unfortunately
this time there's a big qualifier: his portrayal of Africans. To be fair, it
would have been a rare European in the 1940's who saw Africans as equals, there
is no outright brutality - this is a book of humour, after all! - and from time
to time his paternalistic affection blooms into genuine respect…”
I was therefore
much affected by Abety’s response to a critic who found fault with the
inclusion of such a racist book in the syllabus for the education of our
children, and so I reacted to his contribution in an essay I titled “African
literary criticism: beyond the comprehension of Eurocentric critics.” Abety went as far as describing Mao’s
groundwork that set the stage for the present greatness of China as “their
catastrophic cultural revolution of the late sixties.” Since he states in his
interview that he is preparing to publish books that “revolve around literary
works,” he may probably publish in one of the books the arguments he made for
the inclusion of the Bafut Beagles in the GCE O/L syllabus.
As for his boast
about his double doctorate, it was quite intriguing to me and many other
colleagues, especially those with PhDs in the university system at that time,
when Abety decided to add a “Doctorat d’état” to his PhD. Because of the obvious “competition” between
the two “united” cultural groups in Cameroon, there were usually subtle efforts
to claim “superiority” of the Doctorat d’état over the PhD since so many years
were wasted under tutelage to obtain it. As terminal degrees, the PhD seemed to
be performing better than the Doctorat d’état, using the measuring rod of the
Nobel Prize for the two main pushers of the degrees, France (Doctorat d’état, 166)
and the UK/USA (PhD, 468). That is why in response to Abety's decision, some
colleagues of the other cultural group were chuckling that a “lower” doctorate
was being completed with a higher one.
One can say that it was Abety’s personal choice and should
interest only him, except that the terminal degree is obtained as a prize for
the acquisition and understanding of a body of knowledge, and the ability to create
and interpret new knowledge. In principle, its acquisition is a confirmation
that the individual can conceptualize, design and implement projects to
generate new knowledge, and in the process achieve “great feats.” It is not
rounds in universities to get multiple doctorate degrees that can constitute a
feat since the breadth of knowledge packed in one doctorate degree makes it
quite easy to add other degrees wished by the “doctor.” In any case, the Doctorat d’état/PhD
confusion is no longer relevant since France dumped the Doctorat d’état in 1984
because it was mainly for training state functionaries; it was streamlined to a
new degree called “Doctorat” which follows the more productive PhD scheme meant
to harness knowledge and channel it towards innovative and creative endeavours.
About
his political savvy, how somebody who presents a sorry experience of “active politics”
from 1986 to 1990 during which he repeatedly fell prey to the political ruse of
the Emah Basiles can turn around and claim that “Those who had just formed
political parties were not yet versed in political matters” (which they were
versed in) is difficult to conjecture. He has so easily forgotten that some of
those who formed “political parties” were high profile politicians who had been
more successful than himself in the CNU/CPDM.
Abety claims
that with his political savvy, he deceived the SDF to boycott the 1992
legislative elections. To repeated questions on how he did it, he dodged the
questions with sophism. Many people usually indulge in that type of absurdity
of placing a cause after its effect. As is usually said, success always has
many parents; the boycott of the elections by the SDF resulted in success for
the CPDM, so why not claim to be one of the parents? It is always easy to use
hindsight to make all types of false analyses, bogus claims and arrogant intellectual
gymnastics.
The
outcome of the tripartite conference is similar to the outcome of the Foumban
Conference. They are both metaphors for the betrayal of trust and truth; for
the triumph of selfish interest over general interest, for the absence of morality and
integrity in politics. Both outcomes will seriously affect the future of
Cameroon because a nation can only be built on trust by statesmen/women imbued
with morality and integrity.
And so what is
the final takeaway from the interview? Well, we take home the message that we should fear CPDM cronies even if
they are bearing gifts!
