Great Misery amid Plenty in Cameroon’s Blocked Political Processes

The wretchedness of much of Cameroon is not in doubt. There is squalor, slum conditions, almost anywhere you care to look. Not far from the Presidency, public offices and squares in the capital city, Yaounde. On the country’s many dirt and few surfaced roads, in towns and villages, out in the country, in and out of living quarters, from invasive dust in dry season to floods and muggy mud when it rains. Blocked or non-existent drains, mosquitoes, foul smells, clatter, preventable injury, disease, ill-health and deaths – despondence in so much physical and mental suffering.

Welcome to Cameroon! Not just that of the post card magnificence of the Presidency of the Republic and other buildings, blue and various shades of nimbus covered skies, fabulous trees, posing well-fed faces, colourful birds that fly about in the country and add to the songs that come from Cameroon’s changing landscape and all its many inhabitants including the sixteen or so million humans with common interests in a Body Politic set up to guarantee individual rights and freedoms.

For many citizens, the government of Cameroon has long stopped listening to them and treats them badly as seen in the extent of wretchedness amid plenty in the country. They, in turn, except when threatened or forced, have stopped bothering to communicate with the government. Their messages, when addressed to the government, tend to focus more on what they imagine or know the government wants to hear and less on their own actual needs and possibilities or plans to clarify and resolve the issues. The government that is denied strong skills and competence and scarcely does things right is so presented as one that works or can somehow work! The State of Cameroon is a long way, clearly, from ensuring the degree of co-operation that would deliver on its mandate.

Beleaguered governments, determined to hold on to power, seek props elsewhere when largely denied at home. The government of Cameroon has not been an exception to this rule. It has relied on strong bilateral hold ups and also, since the mid 1980s, on multilateral support that has been increasing grudgingly. Such are the agreements the government of Cameroon has been negotiating and reaching over the years with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, for example. The rhetoric of the government and some of its partners aside, the people the government appears to fear at home are taken hostage and continue to pay the price in their wretchedness.

Even those with skills and knowledge, health, formal education and money in their pockets to produce and/or pay for public as well as private goods and services in Cameroon, suffer in their numbers.

Who said “money is power!?” or that “knowledge is power!?” or “the customer is king!?” or that “he who pays the piper calls the tune!?” or “health, is wealth, is power!?” or that “power is in numbers!?”

Not so, if citizens as individuals ignore the way their State power is used, shy away from discussing and clarifying the issues in public and do not derive honour in doing things right!