Desarrollo de las Capacidades Técnicas

Mindful of this, it should be of surprise to few that the mediascape in Africa in the age of intensified globalization represents more a degree of continuity in repression than change. Despite the winds of liberalization in the late 1980s and early1990s, it is still common in many countries to charge journalists, academics, musicians, playwrights and other artists simply for creativity that brings the state or any of its officials into disrepute. Equally frowned upon by politicians are cultural producers critical of national or foreign dignitaries in ways perceived to be embarrassing to governments and the vested interests they protect. Although governments may proclaim democracy, freedom of expression and cultural renaissance as is currently fashionable, in practice most do not hesitate to sanction even a cabinet minister, a distinguished academic or a celebrated artist who might express a critical or controversial opinion on an issue of pubic interest. This restricts access to government-held information and imposes self-censorship on the very agents whose creativity is supposed to engender the cultural renaissance of official rhetoric. Concerning journalists and the media as vehicles of cultural content, little room is allowed for them to choose freely among the competing cultural options available. Sometimes African governments would rather trust foreign journalists and the media with important decisions concerning their countries than honour their own local media with scoops. Few books by journalists with intimate, first-hand details of African leaders dead and alive are by African journalists, proof perhaps that foreign journalists penetrate African corridors of power much more easily, regardless of their qualifications and competencies. Similarly, it is much easier for a Western production team to make radio and television documentaries about various aspects of African societies than for African governments to fund such productions by their own local media. The reasons for this are not always inadequate finances, but the consequences are devastating for cultural production and reproduction informed by perspectives sensitive to local cultures and predicaments.

Although certain aspects of the draconian laws of the colonial period, the one- party era and military regimes have generally been replaced since the 1990s by new provisions that are relatively more tolerant of opposition views and criticisms, the selective application of the new laws, together with the use of extra-legal measures, have often been to the detriment of a culture of independence and creativity (cf. M’Bayo et al. 2000). There remains a craving to control that leaves little doubt about how the lawmakers see journalists, artists and academics as potential troublemakers who must be policed beyond considerations for cultural survival. The tendency is for new laws to grant freedom of expression in principle while providing, often by administrative nexus, the curtailment of press, academic and artistic freedoms in practice. And although strongest in Francophone Africa,

this use of derogatory and claw-back measures by the state to limit the right of expression and press freedom is common throughout the continent. Southern African governments have continued to use ‘outmoded legislation inherited from their one-party and colonial predecessors’ to criminalize dissent and numb the critical instincts of the press (Lush 1998). Even the Nigerian press, frequently presented as the most vibrant and critical, has had to struggle with a battery of repressive laws by successive governments (Oloyede 1996), and in some cases — especially between 1993 and 1999 — certain newspapers and broadcasters had to adopt ‘a guerrilla strategy’ against state censorship (Olukotun 2002). In South Africa where the first liberation was only achieved in 1994, the press has yet to break free of its past record of black debasement. The end of apartheid has not necessarily made the newspapers more representative of South African diversities (cf. Pityana 2000). The rhetoric of transformation does not seem to match the realities and expectations as the press continues to practice exclusion, even as it preaches inclusion (cf. Duncan 2000). The same is true of academia, which has still to transform itself significantly from its apartheid heritage (cf. Hugo 1998a), a point well illustrated by exchanges between Mahmood Mamdani and others in the curriculum debate on the teaching of Africa at the University of Cape Town (cf. Centre for African Studies, University of Cape Town 1998, Hall 1998). Such control occasions self-censorship that has led to a crisis of credibility of the press, academia and artists in many countries.

The same arsenal of repressive measures has been used to police cultural production in general. States have sought to institutionalize a definition and practice of culture that provides them with the conceptual noises needed to justify their excesses, promote violence and silence, and foster mediocrity as a strategy for surviving the exigencies of liberal democracy. Since 1967, President Omar Bongo of Gabon has been most adept at manipulating the symbolic sphere of Gabonese society to guarantee his own political longevity (cf. Ngolet 2000).

Almost everywhere, the quest for such longevity has implied, inter alia, states

recruiting the services of pro-establishment academics, intellectuals, poets and musicians, while censoring the creative imagination of those perceived to be critical and/or controversial in their art (cf. Soyinka 1994b: 7-9, Mongo Beti 1993: 77-82, Kom 1996, Shear 1996, Mkandawire 1997, Kagwanja 1997, Hugo 1998b, Ngowet 2001: 118-38; Jua & Nyamnjoh 2002). This tendency is illustrated by the reality in Cameroon — an example with parallels in other countries in Africa as evidenced in a recent collection of essays in a special issue of African Studies Review on ‘African Universities in Crisis and the Promotion of a Democratic Culture’ (cf. Nyamnjoh & Jua 2002).

By way of example: Cultural repression in Cameroon

Academic repression in Cameroon has been extensively documented, not least under President Biya who took over as president following Ahidjo’s resignation in 1982 with all the right rhetoric about freedom of expression (Eboussi Boulaga 1993: 30-34, Kom 1996, Tedga 1998, Jua & Nyamnjoh 2002). Under both leaders, the tendency has been to sanction only ‘occasional pieces composed by accredited hagiographers’ (Kom 1991: 84-88). Among the overtly pro-establishment writers Kom quoted in a 1991 publication were Louis-Marie Pouka M’bague who wrote ‘Prière-hommage’, a poem in praise of Ahidjo; Samuel Martin Eno Belinga,

author of Cameroun: La Révolution Pacifique du 20 Mai, a text celebrating the

‘high deeds’ of Ahidjo; Joseph-Charles Doumba whose Vers le Mont Cameroun:

Entretien avec Jean-Pierre Fogui was in the same vein; Jos-Blaise Alima, whose

Les Chemins de l’Unité was ‘a glorified account of Ahidjo’s nation-building

efforts’; Mono Ndjana, whose L’Idée Sociale chez Paul Biya made of him ‘the

ideologue and chief censor of the New Deal’; and Fame Ndongo, Bandolo and

Etoundi-MBalla, whose Le Prince et le Scribe, La Flamme et la Fumée, and Une

Vie à l’Envers were, respectively, apologies for administrative or conventional thinking. Over twenty titles have since been added to this list in accordance with

Fame Ndongo’s call in Le Prince et le Scribe for a new ‘race of writers capable of

producing aggressive and conformist works in response to the misguided efforts of “lost” souls such as Mongo Beti, Alioum Fantouré, and Emmanuel Dongala’ (Kom 1991: 87). Many academics who initially kept their distance from such pro- establishment scholarship have since yielded to the pressures and bait of co- optation by the regime that has refused to hearken to popular expectations and expressions of legitimacy. These old and new writers — like the government they serve — use selective discrimination in their observations, thus presenting an incomplete, preponderantly positive account of governments that have failed to deliver on nearly all fronts (cf. Nyamnjoh 1999, Jua & Nyamnjoh 2002).

The government has traditionally not hesitated to honour the efforts of researchers who sacrifice critical cultural production for praise-singing quasi- scholarship. Not only was Bandolo named ‘Intellectual of the Year’ in 1985 by

Radio Cameroon following the publication of La Flamme et la Fumée, in May

1988 he was appointed Minister of Information and Culture. Two years after the publication of his book that was highly critical of the anti-government press, Valentin Nga Ndongo, a journalist and sociologist, was appointed Director of Press, Information and Propaganda for the ruling Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (CPDM) on July 1 1989. In 1990 Hubert Mono Ndjana became a member of the Central Committee of the CPDM as Press and Propaganda Secretary, and subsequently rewarded President Biya with many more praise-

singing volumes, including Les Proverbes de Paul Biya (1997). Others, like

additional or a more prominent appointment has usually been the government’s way of thanking its ‘scribes’ or those who, like Fame Ndongo (1985), were charged with training ‘les journalistes du Renouveau’. After serving briefly as Rector of the University of Yaoundé I, he was appointed Minister of Communication in 1998 in appreciation of his commitment to the defence of the

status quo. For writing Pour Un Multipartisme Reflechi (1990) and for showing

unconditional loyalty to President Paul Biya — ‘the indomitable lion of Cameroonian politics’ — as Director of Cameroon Radio Television (CRTV), Professor Gervais Mendoze has earned himself the reputation of being the longest serving general manager of ‘the indomitable lion of the broadcast media’, a position he has held since October 1988. Most of the establishment scholars share the same ethnic origins as President Biya (who is Beti) and are generally sympathetic to inoffensive cultural production from this ethnic region. This would explain the dominance and prominence of Bikutsi music on national radio and television to the detriment of music from other ethnic regions.

With such an elaborate system of control and selective diffusion of cultural production, critical researchers and creative writers have largely been driven underground or have stayed bottled up by lies and the fear of victimization. When cornered by competing alternatives, the powerful have shown themselves tolerant

of limited reform but never a radical ‘remise en cause’ of what they stand for —

lies, mediocrity, double standards, exploitation and the primacy of the ‘politics of the belly’ (cf. Bayart 1993). Any change that means sharing their power and wealth with the dispossessed has been resisted, hence the banning of critical publications, music, theatre, art and performances. By thus feeding Cameroonians with falsehoods, the government has compelled everyone to adopt as reality its world of appearances. Convincing people has not been easy, especially as the context and cultures in place suggest that reality is much more than what the sensory perceptions bring home, and that the invisible or hidden hand is very much part and parcel of the order of things (cf. Mbembe 1997, Nyamnjoh 2001).