Cameroon’s Constitution Day
Sunday, the 20th of May 2018, will mark another milestone in Cameroon’s chequered political history. This Sunday, the nation will be celebrating its “Constitution Day”- for the fourty-sixth time.
Most politicians, and sometimes innocent citizens, prefer refering to this day as “National Day” celebrations, not Constitution Day or “Independence Day” celebrations.
National Day celebration is preferred for Constitution Day because in official discourses, it conceals and hides history; refines, redefines, and reconstructs the nation’s political structures and society in general, giving new meanings to government and governance.
What these official discourses could not and did not eradicate is the memory inhabitants and citizens have of the past; of their history: the constitutional history of Cameroon and in particular, the 1972 Constitution.
Memory is a storehouse of past events; that is, a storehouse of past ideas, peoples, and activities. Memory is more or less event-dependent, which allows for and may influence individuals or group of people to imagine or reimagine, frame and reframe past experiences so as to challenge present and future political structures; reform and improve society, create a sense of awareness and consciousness; improve on the self and the collective etc. In his insightful essay Memory and Forgetting, Paul Ricoeur, who borrows from Greek Sophists (e.g. Plato) and Nietzsche, develops what he calls, a memory analytical “framework.” Ricoeur´s memory “framework” delineates three practical approaches to understanding memory. The third and last “approach,” which should be of interest to every Cameroonian, describes memory as the “ethico-political problem.” He explains that (I quote extensively for reasons of clarity and general understanding):
“The first reason why it is a duty to tell is surely as a means of fighting against the erosion of traces; we must keep traces, traces of events, because there is a general trend to destroy. There is a famous text by Aristotle in Physics Book 4, Chapter 11, where he says that time destroys more than it constructs. In this context, Aristotle appropriates one of his ontological categories, that of ‘destruction’. This is an intriguing text because it is true that there is a kind of erosion which strives to bring everything to ruins, to ashes. In a sense, all human activity is a kind of counter-trend which endeavours to see that growth prevails over destruction, and that traces and archives are preserved and kept alive.
There is, however, a second and more specifically ethical reason to cherish this duty to remember. Allow me to refer here to Hannah Arendt in Chapter 5 of The Human Condition, entitled ‘Action’. Here she asks how it is possible that there be a continuation of action in spite of death, in spite of the erosion of traces. In response, she brings together two conditions for what she calls continuation of action: forgiving and promising. To forgive is basically to be liberated from the burden of the past, to be untied or unbound, while promising enjoins the capacity to be bound by one’s own word. Arendt argues that only a human being is capable of being unbound through forgiveness and bound through promising. This is a very powerful rapprochement, forgiving and promising, untying and tying.
I would advance a third reason for cherishing this duty to remember. In preserving the relation of the present to the past, we become heirs of the past. So the notion of ‘heritage’ is privileged here. Heidegger developed this aspect of the problem under the notion of Schuld, which he renders both as ‘guilt’ and as ‘debt’ in the sense that we are ‘indebted to’ the past. I too developed this theme in my work Ideology and Utopia when I argued that all utopias would be empty were it not for the reactivation of unkept promises.
Finally, I would say that a basic reason for cherishing the duty to remember is to keep alive the memory of suffering over against the general tendency of history to celebrate the victors. We could say that the whole philosophy of history, especially in the Hegelian sense of this expression, is concerned with the cumulation of advantage, progress and victory. All that is left behind is lost. We need, therefore, a kind of parallel history of, let us say, victimisation, which would counter the history of success and victory. To memorise the victims of history — the sufferers, the humiliated, the forgotten — should be a task for all of us at the end of this century.
I will finish by raising what I believe to be an intriguing question: Is there a duty to forget? Are we allowed to add to the duty to remember a duty to forget? We have good examples of this in the history of classical Greece, where most cities at regular intervals elaborated amnesty as an institution. In one of these Greek cities there was even a law proclaiming that citizens should not evoke the memory of evil, or what was considered bad. In this case, the citizens had to promise not to recall such an event. We see here the function of amnesty. In fact, amnesty is present in all our institutions, because when somebody has reached the end of his punishment all his civic rights are re-established. This signals the end of the punishment. We see, therefore, that there can be an institution of amnesty, which does not mean amnesia. I would say that there is no symmetry between the duty to remember and the duty to forget, because the duty to remember is a duty to teach, whereas the duty to forget is a duty to go beyond anger and hatred. The two aims are not comparable.
Both memory and forgetting do, however, contribute in their respective ways to what Hannah Arendt called the continuation of action. It is necessary for the continuation of action that we retain the traces of events, that we be reconciled with the past, and that we divest ourselves of anger and hatred. Once again, justice is the horizon of both processes. Let us conclude by saying that at this point in our history we have to deal with the problem of evolving a culture of just memory.”
Without memory, there’s no history. Thus memory tells us that the 20th of May 1972 was a charade. It was the handwork of a “Northern Superman” and his band of bootlickers. Within two weeks (6–20 May 1972), they officially burned and buried the Union of the people of Cameroon that was forged at Foumban — The Cameroon Federation.
On the 20th of May 1972, the Cameroon Union died. Today the consequences are there for all to see.
I prefer using the term “Cameroon Union” because a union is a better noun describing political coexistence within polities. A union is simply “a state of being united or joined.”
What I find interesting in this simple definition of a union is the phrase “state of being.” No “state of being” of a thing is fixed or permanent. State of being of things change from time to time.Yet, they maintain their original physical or chemical or natural characteristics. Our state of being as a people is based on the union of us as individuals into, and between groups (families, clans, ethnic groups, and as the colonised) so as to form a nation-state: The Cameroon Federation of 1961. It is the foundation of our bilingual and bi-cultural nation; the guiding post for political, economic, and social reforms in our polity. It is the founding document designed, more or less, on and by consensus by our Founding Fathers. The sacrosant nature of federation as the rock on which all generations shall build and improve upon the nation-state is well expressed by Article 47.1 of the Federal Constitution.
For us to progress as a people, Federation is our state of being united as a people. A federal system of government, even a unitary one, wouldn’t mean we are united. It means we must constantly construct and reform ourselves based on what our Founding Fathers designed for us.
We should as a people, be celebrating October 1 as our Constitution Day for the Federal Constitution came into effect on October 1, 1961; reuniting Cameroonians as Union of citizens and peoples. It is on the day our Union came into effect. Yet, it shouldn’t stop us from celebrating other milestones in our history.
20 May 1972 erodes the history of October 1, 1961. “We must keep traces, traces of events,” of October 1, 1961 “because there is (has been) a general trend to destroy” it. And “it is true that there is a kind of erosion” of the memories of 1961 by the successive post-1972 successive Cameroon governments “which strives to bring everything to ruins, to ashes.” Ricoeur tells Cameroonians that memorializing October 1 “… is a kind of counter-trend which endeavours to see that growth prevails over destruction, and that traces and archives are preserved and kept alive.”
Finally, reverting to a federal system of government along the lines of the 1961 Constitution may obliterate the victor over vanquished syndrome pervading Cameroon as of now; correcting political thievery, not political mistakes; which may go a long way to reestablishing “a very powerful rapprochement” or entente cordiale between the two peoples of Cameroon. This may, ipso facto, heal us, help us come together, and “deal with the problem of evolving a culture of just memory.”
John Blackossima
