Mwalimu George Ngwane*
I am still to know a civil servant who was
appointed Provincial Delegate, three months later he was suspended from his
duties (without any official explanation apart from verbal exchange with his
hierarchy about writing a “subversive article against the government”) had his
suspension lifted after five years only after the victim requested to be sent
back to his Ministry of origin. Diary of a Dismissed Delegate subtitled “Public
Good at the Mercy of Bureaucracy and Sycophancy in Cameroon” is my personal
story of my trials and travails as a civil servant and my triumphs and
resilience as a civil society actor in Cameroon.
With
documented evidence in support, the book delves into the destructive
machinations of the bureaucracy and sycophancy at the heart of the Cameroonian
public service, and its detrimental effects on meritocracy and the public good.
It is a system where the personalisation of power devalues virtue, devotion and
dedication to truth and the call of justice.
This
personal essay (memoir) is not a travelogue of self-conceit but a compass on
how we can all transform our obstacles into opportunities and our blurred
visions of doom into our bright vistas of boom. As a Delegate I probably was
wrong into believing that the Delegation’s budget was meant for carrying out
activities in Art and Culture and for artists and their associations. I must
have been deluded into believing that state resources were meant for
development architecture and not for stomach infrastructure. I must have been
wrong into believing that appointments were about service not status,
performance not privileges and projects not promises.
Yet
until we as a Cameroonian people revolutionise our Mentality Adjustment Program
and stop making scholars soft target for our political ineptitude, we shall
continue to live in a country in motion without movement and in a country with
all the human and natural capital whose citizens are still stuck in the mire of
crass inertia and cushioned mediocrity.
There
are legions of examples of persons both in the secular and even in God’s
Ministry who have been victimized for their beliefs and values and the
consequence is that human resources are being sacrificed on the altar of
economic growth. For a country that has the ambition to recapture her lost
middle income status, for a country that boasts of a huge critical mass of
human capital, for a country that has all the potentials of a double digit
economic development, political patronage and intolerance to creative freedom
must be anathema.
For
I still believe in the power in the writer (title of one of my books) or to
paraphrase NgugiwaThiongo the barrel of the pen. I believe in Socrates the
writer-philosopher who spared no pains in urging the city’s rulers towards
goodness, truth and justice. When Socrates was accused of and arraigned to
court for being a menace to society because of his writings, he told the court
“Gentlemen, you know that I am not going to alter my conduct not even if I have
to die a hundred deaths. If you put me to death, you will not easily find
anyone to take my place. I suspect however that before long you will awake from
your drowsing and in annoyance, you will take Anytus’ advice and finish me off
with a single slap; and then you will go on sleeping till the end of your days,
unless God in his care for you sends someone to take my place”.
Life
is not a linear continuum but an undulating circle of circumstances with its
crest and falls. My civil society experience has taught me to rely on myself
without being self-centered, to appreciate the extreme warmth of my wife and
children without being parochial and to daily open communication lines with God
Almighty without being fanatical. My wife always says “Man is a lonely
creature” but with a supportive, nuclear and extended family, empathetic and
trustworthy friends and a prayerful heart that “loneliness” can be transformed
into “loveliness”. My life as a civil society actor and free canon has brought
me much closer to community pro-people relations.
Yes,
the South African ubuntu philosophy that says “I am because we are” or the
biblical precept of being my brother’s keeper has been manifested through my
family’s endeavour to reach out when we can, to the vulnerable, the
disadvantaged and those at the base of the economic pyramid.
So
with light years ahead of my public service retirement, do all of these tribulations
preclude me from accepting any appointment in the public service again? Not at
all. But such an appointment shall still be steeped in this statement by the
virologist, former Commissioner for Education and Special Duties, Rivers State
(1975-79), Minister for Petroleum Resources (1978-85) and Minister for Mines,
Power and Steel (1985-86) for Nigerian Government, Professor TamucemiSokari Tam
David-West as he says “an Academic in government must be analytical,
unpretentious and give valid solutions to problems. He must speak out against
injustice and corruption. He must not allow himself to be emasculated in
government. The day he loses his conscience, he ceases to be an intellectual.
He becomes an intellectual prostitute, a businessman rather than a true
academic in government”.
‘Diary
of a Dismissed Delegate” is a 2016 publication by Langaa RPCIG, Cameroon with
ISBN 9789956763085, 118 pages and now available online through the African
Books Collectives, Amazon books or through carolina.bruno@africanbookscollective.com
*Mwalimu George Ngwane is a Scholar at
Rescue Fellow (U.S.A), a Senior Chevening Fellow (University of York, UK), a
Rotary Peace Fellow (University of Chulalongkorn, Thailand), a Commonwealth
Professional Fellow (UK), and United Nations Human Rights Minority Fellow
(Geneva, Switzerland)
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