Fixing what is wrong with what is right with Cameroon

Book Review by Boh Herbert

My Faith:  A Cameroon to be renewed. By Christian Cardinal Tumi, Editions Veritas; 304 pages; $30.

A long time ago, the boy Christian Tumi found himself crying in a dream. The tears were out of fear. In the dream, the young Christian Tumi had accepted the sacrament of matrimony and had come face-to-face with his worst nightmare: he would be passed off for the priesthood. It was only a dream.

Several decades on, the 82-year-old has realized more than he dreamt for… He never married, of course. He was ordained priest in April 1966, consecrated bishop in January 1980 and created cardinal in June 1988. Since November 2010, he is the Archbishop Emeritus of Douala and an author in his spare time.

His latest book (My Faith: A Cameroon to be renewed) depicts the “old Cameroon” (of “garish injustice”; a country where “detention is the rule and liberty the exception”). Like the prophet Ezekiel, the Cardinal uses the book to announce his mission to the people of God in Cameroon. It advocates the “new Cameroon” of Cardinal Tumi’s dreams and faith; a Cameroon where “man is capable of God” and where all, including prisoners are respected, rehabilitated, and no longer have to face the death penalty.

The book is “the expression of the love I have for my country men and women”. That love – “mother of all virtues” – is best expressed, the prelate says, when Cameroonians have the courage to decry evil “even if it hurts some to hear it”. Love is when members of government are servants of the people, and the president is the first of such servants. Love shines through when political parties foster “widespread participation” and are “democratic in their internal structure”.

Aware of a far too frequently repeated accusation that he is but a politician in cassock, the Cardinal strikes first: “We dream and we have the right to dream for a developed Cameroon, where every citizen will have the minimum material goods necessary… to live a life worthy of a human being”. The dream mirrors Victor Hugo’s and the forceful “I have a dream” cry of Martin Luther King Jr., notes Mgr. Victor Tonye Bakot, qualifying this “thought provoking” book as a continuation of the Cardinal’s “fight” as “a man of faith”. Professor Pierre Titi Nwel hails it as offering an insight into how Cameroonians can “put in practice the social teaching of the church” in renewing their country.

In many ways, this is a book length sermon the Cardinal has preached or could have preached on the conversion of Cameroonians from their evil ways. It goes into satisfying details of why the country is a mess: corruption, rigged elections, illegitimate authority, marginalization, unjust laws, and limited access to free education for some students, etc. It touches on the devastating impact this mess has had, especially on the most vulnerable (children, youth, women, prisoners, the physically challenged) and offers suggestions on what can be done to mend the country based on biblical teaching.

The account is frighteningly gripping about the damning effect of prostitution, incest, and other abuses within families and among neighbors; about the disregard for the commonwealth; about the neglect of youth, including the trade in sex for good grades known as SIN (Sexually Transmitted Notes); or yet again the tender average age of a prisoner in Cameroon – a heartbreaking mere 13 years.

It is nicely written, in a conversational tone. The book is entertaining and insightful. It provides impressions, reflections, meditations and raises questions or agrees with some leading thinkers (Bernard Fonlon, among them) but also with theologians and philosophers (Pope John Paul II, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Augustine, etc.) as well as politicians like former Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere who is being considered for beatification. The Head of State, the Cardinal notes, “can become a holy man”.

The book addresses the problems of Cameroon with the frankness, honesty and straight talk that the Cardinal has made his trademark. On corruption, for instance, he writes: “Not to speak about corruption, would be culpable silence. Not to fight against it energetically, would be unacceptable neutrality. And not to do anything against it, is to betray our people”. The author speaks directly to the reader, offering uplifting messages of hope about Cameroon, making the book a real joy to read.

Readers may be put off by the extensive number of spelling and grammar mistakes in the book, some of them appearing even on the back cover summary. While the Cardinal takes responsibility for the book’s shortcomings, the blame for these is more likely attributable to the editor or translators who worked off of the manuscript old style (hand written) that the pastor turned over for typing and type-setting. The editing at certain points is so sloppy you would think the final cut was done by a Francophone book editor or translator. To convey the Cardinal’s dream, for instance, the editor’s line reads “I am dreaming of a Cameroon…” – which suggests such a Cameroon will never be, instead of “I dream of…” conveying a message of hope in a “born again Cameroon”. The book may have been rushed to press perhaps to ensure that it was out before the Cardinal’s ongoing visit to the United States.

Those errors take nothing away from a book that is set to rise to Cameroon’s best seller list. Not the least because its message is one that millions share. The book decries a governing culture in Cameroon built on the “strategy of the deceitful” where genuine demands of the people for their rights to be respected are tagged “as tribal”. It acknowledges the ongoing efforts to bring to justice those who swindle public funds, but makes clear this does not suffice. Looted funds must be returned to the state treasury or the looters must be made to realize projects for the common good.

Trust the Cardinal to lay everyone’s blame at their feet. While it has been mighty convenient to blame the government for doing nothing, the time has come for all Cameroonians to do their own part by becoming each “a precious stone for the building of the nation” and each the “virtuous man that Cameroon needs to become a truly developed country”.  The book reiterates a well-known truth: the very poor bear more responsibility for their lives than the rich and powerful. “The new Cameroon of which I dream is that which is converted, perfect and radically changed”.

The cardinal does not explain why he includes an annex in the form of a letter from a young man telling of the irony of life, of how he has been overwhelmed by misery and despair. The reader is left wondering if the letter triggered the book or if it merely comforts the core messages of the book.

There is no such doubt about why the Cardinal agrees with and cites the writings of the late Bernard Fonlon in the years following independence, the Foumban Conference and the 20 May 1972 sham of a referendum. The choice includes Fonlon’s prophetic and thoughtful words against France’s hegemony in Cameroon. The prelate tells the story of his own experience with a French diplomat while visiting the Holy See and professes his support for minorities. “A minority group,” the Cardinal writes, “has a right to be”. Full stop! Minorities, he adds, have a right “to maintain their culture” and “may be driven to seek greater autonomy or even independence”.

The pastor says of the 1972 referendum that it was a wrong done to Anglophones. “We have no right what-so-ever to attribute to a people the results of a referendum that was organized by a bloody dictator”. He calls for the creation of a “new culture… for the two Cameroons”. If those two Cameroons “have to be one nation”, he says, that new culture “must be Cameroonian”.

He has strong words not only for France. The Cardinal says of democratization in Cameroon since 1990 that it has been a “clever plan, a pitiable comedy” which has raised “fraudulent politicians” who run around the prince and are the “ultimate exploiters of the coffers of the state”. He argues for African solutions to African problems: “no foreign intervention should be called in until African brains have exhausted themselves on the problem” especially when it comes to “conception, deliberation and choice” of development programs.

If you would like to find out what five conditions the Cardinal believes (based on the Church’s teaching) must be simultaneously met for an armed insurrection to be a justifiable means of ousting the government in Cameroon, read this book, especially the chapter titled “My Social Credo”. Before the violent-prone celebrate, beware! The author is clear: “I believe that political change can take place peacefully in Cameroon”.

The publication is timely. As former CRTV journalist Larry Eyong said last Sunday during the book launch in Washington, DC, it comes out in time to prevent Cameroon from going further down the road to Sodom and Gomorrah. The church, Larry Eyong said, cannot be silent while genocide is perpetrated. Along with the two book reviewers (Julius Wamey and Chris Fomunyoh), he praised the Cardinal for speaking truth to power, for his simplicity and integrity and for ensuring the church is not silent as many churches were even as the populist tyranny of Nazi Germany slaughtered Jews.

The book points out, rightly, that the riches of Cameroon have been its downfall. Cardinal Tumi's dream is that they can become its salvation, beginning with the wealth the country stands to gain from the conversion of its citizens into “slaves of Christ the Lord”. The book calls on politicians to break with bad politics and embrace good policy making. It appeals to the "man in the street" Cameroonian to break with fence-sitting and to join political movements; and to stop the procrastination, the inertia, the "on va faire comment" self-sabotage they have inflicted on themselves for 50 years.

For years, far too many Cameroonians have hoped and not so secretly wished that Cardinal Tumi would accept to be the political Messiah they have been awaiting to deliver Cameroon from bondage. The message from the Cardinal: I just want to be a priest. At the insistence of participants at the Washington, DC, book launch, he reiterated his opinion about President Paul Biya. "If I were him, I would resign", the Cardinal said. If Cameroonians have prayed for a revolution, the message in the Cardinal’s book is that each Cameroonian must be the revolution we have been waiting for; that all Cameroonians have duties and responsibilities to bring about the change they have been waiting for by being the change they seek.

When, and if that change does come to Cameroon, we may be able to look back and say that the publication of the Cardinal’s book qualifies was one of the  stimulant and turning points.

ENDS