Southern Cameroon Leaders Need Protest Imagination

Changing an entrenched political system with deep-seated, rhizomic national and international special interests, is always a long, hard, and bruising endeavor. In order to bring such change about, a group has to develop what I here call a protest imagination. A protest imagination is a way of perceiving the struggle for social and political transformation which begins from the premise that making such change is hard and takes a very long time. It therefore begins with a very long term vision and plan, studying and engaging in different means to effect the change sought. It was this very imagination which John Fru Ndi lacked when he thought that the change he sought in Cameroon could be achieved in a short time. When that did not happen, he became part of the government. The leadership (or should I say leaderships) of the Southern Cameroon struggles lacks this imagination and it does not bode well for the future of the movement. There is much tussling for turf and power in the groups but one hardly finds a long term vision and plan. Some of them think that this thing will be resolved in just a couple of years or even less. The idea that this may take ten to twenty years or even more is not part of their imagination. Their vision for the future of Southern Cameroons is even more fuzzy.

However, if one looks at any such struggles around the world, there is hardly any that has achieved its objects in just a few years. The struggles have often been protracted but means have been developed to always keep the struggle alive. People have planted crops, children have gone to school. hospitals have been built, people have bought and sold things: in all this, they have always known that they are in a struggle and the goal sought is always clear. I see South Africa as a good example of this. Life did not stop for Black people in South Africa because they were fighting against apartheid. The fight was carried out in the means of life. In fact, life was lived as a struggle until freedom was won.

The lack of protest imagination among Southern Cameroon leaders has led them to rely mainly on just a couple of tools, lacking vision as to how daily life may happen in the midst of seeking their vision. It is a deplorable state of affairs. The thought leaders of the movement have some hard thinking to do. 

How Much Does a Human Soul Cost?

The annals of the transatlantic and trans-Saharan slave trades have inscriptions of the cost of a human being, such costs perhaps most often dependent on the health, age, race, and gender of the person. Perhaps such is still the case today in the illicit trade in human beings, especially women, around the world. However, I have hardly encountered the tabulation of the cost of selling a human soul. that animating force in the human being, which marks out the person as a conscious participant in things human and/or divine. While the cost of a human soul may perhaps be found in many places in life today, the place that seems more evident to me is the pay stub or pay slip. There, you will find how much our souls go for, for better or for worse.

As is the case with the illicit sale of the human body, the cost of the human soul also depends on age, race, health, and gender. Education has however come to play an especially significantly role, especially education in science and technology, which are seen as the drivers of the modern global political economy. So, depending on how much education you have and what you are educated in, the going price for selling your soul may be quite steep. As a CEO, for example, you have the chance of screwing the lives of many people, fighting to cut their health insurance and paying them $7.50 an hour. Or you may work at one of the many rapacious governments around the world, convincing people that red is blue and that bad policies are actually good for them. Out of no fault of yours, you may sell your soul to the CEO for $7.50, voting for the government that robs you of dignity just because, well, your reason is not quite clear.

You could be a preacher, saying that the human soul is priceless (remember Master Card?), yet putting yours at the service of white supremacy. You know very well that a black person's soul is worth less than a white person's soul and that the souls of women and LGBT people are worth less than those of straight white men, but you carry on . . . . There are things about the cost of the soul you simply know are right and one of those things is that all souls do not go for the same price. Or you may be an elitist preacher in the global South selling your soul and that of your congregants to the powers that be.

The causes we support in life and what we derive from them should tell us how much our souls are worth and what we think a human soul costs.

China's Empire Begins in Africa

China's global ambitions have been on display for a number of decades now but this has mainly been seen through its vast global economic investments. The pretense that China's global ambitions were limited to trade has been laid to rest today with the announcement of China's first military overseas base in Djibouti, a small piece of real estate in East Africa, where America also has a military base.