Chimes Of Change: Waiting For Cameroon’s Jerry Rawlings By Solomon Tembang* French philosopher, Victor Hugo, said “an invasion of a thousand soldiers may be resisted but not an idea whose time has come”. Ghana is presently a pearl in Africa as far as democracy and development are concerned. The West African nation, at one point in her live, was plagued by political upheavals and military takeovers. The country was embroiled in serious corruption in the late 70s until a ‘messiah’ mounted the stage to put a stop to all this and usher in a new era. In 1979 the then young Flight Lieutenant Jerry John Rawlings, together with a group of soldiers, who were fed up with the corruption that was clogging the wheels of development in the country, seized power from General Fred Akuffo. They replaced the Supreme Military Council with the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC). The AFRC, under the military marshal of Rawlings, carried out what Rawlings himself described as a “house-cleaning exercise”. This “house-cleaning exercise” was to purge the Ghanaian society of all the corruption and social injustices that they perceived to be at the root of their coup détat. As one of his first acts in power, Rawlings signed the orders for the execution of a former military president of Ghana who was later executed: Ignatius Kutu Acheampong, and Air Vice-Marshal Yaw Boakye. Four other generals—Kotei, Joy Amedume, Roger Felli, and Utuka—were also put to death. Rawlings is said not to have ever denied responsibility for this. The AFRC organised an election and it was won by Hilla Limann of the People’s National Party (PNP). On December 31, 1981, however, Rawlings and the AFRC again overthrew Limann, citing economic mismanagement. Rawlings then installed the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) with himself as the Chairman. In 1992, Rawlings retired from the military and set up the National Democratic Congress (NDC), legalised political parties and organised Presidential and Parliamentary elections, in response to demands for a more democratic process concerning the governing of the country. Rawlings and his party won 58.3 percent of the votes, with outside observers declaring the elections to be “free and fair”. In 1996, Rawlings went on to win a second term as President. After two terms in office, barred by his constitution from standing in any election, Rawlings endorsed his vice-president, John Atta Mills, as presidential candidate in 2000. But Atta Mills was beaten by John Kuffour and they accepted defeat. But four years after, John Atta Mills came back to beat Kuffour at the polls. Ghana is presently cited among the first politically and economically stable countries in Africa and there is no gainsaying the fact that Rawlings was the main architect of all this. Rawlings was a soldier no doubt, but he prevailed not because of his use of the gun but because the time for his idea for positive change to put Ghana back on the rails had come. Ghanaians could have resisted Rawlings’ military might, but they could not resist his idea whose time had come. I would like to mention that his first coup was jointly organised by both soldiers and civilians who could not resist the idea. I am not a warmonger advocating for any military takeover in Cameroon, but I think this country needs a Rawlings-type “house-cleaning exercise” to purge our system of all the bad elements within, who have been mismanaging our institutions and lining their pockets with public funds and all those dim-witted sycophants who have been parading the corridors of power, dipping their hands into the public till at the detriment of the common man. Our long-awaited political renewal has been overdue. Karl Marx died waiting for the day peasants will rise up against the bourgeoisie. It never happened in his lifetime. Populists borrowed the concept, from Lenin, Stalin, Mao to Castro, and today Communism is the most misinterpreted economic concept. Cameroon is the most contradictory country in the world, from its soccer to its politics. The present brouhaha within FECAFOOT and the Indomitable Lions is something I will not want to dabble into now. Let’s save that for another time. In Cameroon, politics has become what one writer often refers to as bellytics (‘politics of the belly’). There is a reigning oligarchy characterised by personal enrichment for politicians and their cronies; in this system, politics is the opportunity to eat and eat well. In Cameroon the regime is defined by the relative absence of the leader. By this I refer to the visible invisibility of the Head of State, who is more often abroad than in his country and who is rarely seen physically or publicly by the people. But there is a limit to everything. There is a limit to the level to which a people can be suppressed. Napoleon Hill in his bestseller book ‘Think and Grow Rich’ says “life is a checker board and the opposite player against you is time. If you hesitate before moving or neglect to move promptly, you will be wiped off the board by time. You are playing against a partner who does not tolerate indecision”. If Cameroonians must grow rich in terms of socio-economic and political development, they must not hesitate to act and take the decision to move their country forward. Now is the time. God Bless Cameroon. *Solomon Tembang is the Editor and Columnist of one of Cameroon’s leading English language newspapers, Eden
Posted on: Sat, 20 Dec 2014 10:18:15 +0000
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