Imhotep: The Collective African Blog

DIVIDED WE STAND: The language of Annexation and Poverty

Innocent Chia

Dividing a people to conquer is so old a political ploy, it predates modern history. Yet most every leader makes the solemn public promise to unite those people under their leadership.
 
The Glory Days: An Elder & Fyffe Ship being loaded with Banana exports at the once bustling Tiko seaport in 1959.

As far as the politics of the West-Central African country of La Republique du Cameroun goes, its two life presidents (the late Ahmadou Ahidjo and Paul Biya) are responsible for systemic dogmas that preach national unity or national integration but practice just the opposite.

South Africa/Nigeria: Chastise Not Thy Friend: Tut-tuting a Diplomatic Ethos

By Teke Ngomba (Originally published onAfrica Files)

As the new Nigerian President Umaru Yar'Adua is sworn into office, Teke Ngomba looks back at South Africa's reaction to the flawed elections that swept the new President into Office.

Yar'Adua Taking the Oath of Office in Abuja

In 2005, the journal, International Affairs, published an article by James Barber titled ‘The New South Africa’s Foreign Policy: Principles and Practice.’ In the article, worth quoting at length here, James Barber (2005:1083-1084) recounts, among others that:

Cameroonians In UK Say Goodbye to Dr. Victor Pungong

By Samira Edi (Originally published in The Sun)

Saturday May 19th 2007, the shell-shocked, jetlagged, dazed, tired, grieving throng of humanity forgot their personal hype and hoopla for a day of tribute; for Victor was the real deal, and we must honor him. A rainbow of nationals trooped in from across the continents, united in collective grief, to pay their last respects to a truly unique soul; Dr Victor Pupesie Pungong. They would travel from continent Europe, Australia, Asia, Africa, America all across the UK; their hearts united in grief and disbelief over the loss of “Vicky”.

Africa’s Storied Colleges, Jammed and Crumbling

By LYDIA POLGREEN (Originally published in the New York Times)

DAKAR, Senegal, May 19 — Thiany Dior usually rises before dawn, tiptoeing carefully among thin foam mats laid out on the floor as she leaves the cramped dormitory room she shares with half a dozen other women. It was built for two.

Sitting on cinderblocks at Cheikh Anta Diop (c)Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

In the vast auditorium at the law school at Cheikh Anta Diop University, she secures a seat two rows from the front, two hours before class. If she sat too far back, she would not hear the professor’s lecture over the two tinny speakers, and would be more likely to join the 70 percent who fail their first- or second-year exams at the university.

Unleashing Nyamfuka

By Feka Wakai

Scouring a path 
Out of this labyrinth
Of answers and questions,
I began conceptualizing and crafting
Ideas and models to make sense
Of what wasn’t meant to make sense.
A realization:
I am that I am not!
Not the mango eating,
Palm-wine drinking,
Dancer to the toxic notes
Of an untrained drummer.
Your music gives me diarrhea.

DIVIDED WE STAND: La Republique du Cameroun vs. Southern Cameroons

Innocent Chia

Shame on me if anyone can point to any major speech addressing Cameroonians, either by the late Ahmadou Ahidjo or by Paul Biya of La Republique (Unie) du Cameroun, in which both Presidents fail to explicitly or implicitly call for “l’Unité Nationale”. Yet, on the eve of golden jubilee celebrations marking its Independence in 2010, the Cameroonian society is more factionalized and fragmented than the “divide-and-rule” policy institutionalized by the white colonialists.

On the one hand, one can argue that given the long-lasting impact of slavery and colonialism on Africa, it will be foolhardy to expect that current leaders would be able to undo these crippling centuries-old practices and policies a mere four decades after independence.

"Sweet Mother": A Son's Reflections on Mother's Day

By Innocent Chia

A song about motherly love has never sprung the well of tears, which I fight to hold back each time that I listen it, like Sweet Mother by the late legendary Prince Nico Mbarga. It was not always so... not until the kiss of death passed through ovarian cancer to invite my beloved mother to take her seat by God’s side in December 2000. Some time after laying her remains to rest and returning to Madison-Wisconsin, I attended an African event marking the Independence of one of the neo-colonies.

The Hard Queries Asked on Cameroon Plane Crash

By Patrick Mathangani and Cyrus Kinyungu (FromThe Standard- Kenya)

In the wake of a muddled rescue effort and puzzling inconsistencies in information officially released on the Kenya Airways crash, questions have emerged over the handling of the disaster in which 114 people died.

Piece of Wreckage from Kenya Airline Boeing (c) AFP

Several aviation experts and pilots raised queries over the discrepancies and questioned Cameroon’s competence in handling air disasters.

Cameroon: The Politics of Decomposition

Innocent Chia

The rot at the Douala International Suffocation Airport… Shoulder-deep potholes housing dust and mud as the dry and rainy seasons alternate… Human-sized rats and other rodents going about their business willy-nilly in broad daylight… A dilapidating Mungo bridge on an endless see-saw break with drivers and other users…

The Mungo Bridge

This shortlist is by far an incomplete playbook that the CPDM Government of President Paul Biya has apparently utilized with great success since the advent of multiparty politics in La Republique du Cameroun.

Nigeria: Of Farcical Elections and the Free and Fair Conundrum

By Teke Ngomba (Originally published in AfricaFiles)

As a perhaps, remarkable transcontinental coincidence, the first round of presidential elections in France took place less than 24 hours after the presidential elections in Nigeria. Even though France, to use the ‘established’ and ‘fledgling’ category noted by Elklit and Reynolds (2005:57), has an ‘established’ democracy and Nigeria a ‘fledgling’ one, for simple-minded, superficial comparative analysis, many are those who thought the conduct of the elections in France and Nigeria virtually at the same time, will at least add to anecdotal ‘evidence’ on how well democracy is faring comparatively in Europe and Africa. And the ‘evidence’, I need not emphasize, was aplenty.