Roughshod: Tumbu-tumbu Governance

There seems to be no clear policy in this country, be it in the political, social, economic, health, education and the other domains. The policy in this country is that there is no policy.

South Africa, Ghana, Nigeria and many other countries have clear policies elaborately outlined so that everyone within the polity working for the State knows when they were employed, how long they are going to serve and exactly the day they will go on retirement.

But in the Cameroons, just like the Constitution can be changed for the President to rule for life, State workers also change service constitutions and can work for life. That is why there is a civil service census every year, but we keep being told that there are ghost workers.

What about asking someone who is supposed to be on retirement to clean the data base so that those on retirement don’t feature on Government pay roll. Of course, he has friends and colleagues in the same league with him. How can he expunge their names? The answer is a loud sounding and ricocheting no.

Plus, when they find out, the person is related to a Minister or a Director in this system which is running on the fuel of nepotism and tribalism. Or the person helped to rig elections for the President to win in his or her locality. Everything ends up in mumbo-jumbo.

So, what form of Government can you say is in this country? Whatever your answer, I think it is Government by trial and error. The kind of Government is virtually operating as if saying; let’s try this and see if it works. In the face of such situation, I think the boss does tumbu-tumbu to make a choice and where it fails, he goes back to it to make another choice.

If it doesn’t work and in his regime’s interest, he and his lackeys go back to the drawing board, or, better still the tumbu tumbu board and the ritual is performed again. Then they turn and deal the people the infamous three card; “you take this you win you take this you loss, touch the winning card.”

Some civil servants trained in ENAM who were serving in other ministerial departments took their retirement and went home. Then recently, the President extended the time for administrators some of whom were due retirement a long time ago. Their colleagues, who had gone on retirement especially those in the Ministry of Finance, dusted their coats and came back to work.

And you can be sure that they will work till 2018 when the Grand Master in his political calculus wants the DOs, SDOs and Governors to be there to manipulate the elections as they have always been asked to do. Then they can go on retirement while the elections would have given the Grand Master the desired rearmament.

But taking it is different from running it. That is why everything is a topsy-turvy.

What kind of country would auction its electricity and even water to foreigners? What if we have a conflict with that foreign country? They can decide to eliminate us by doing some chemistry with the water or interfering with the natural quality of the valuable liquid.

In their usual confusion, they sold our electricity and water under the guise of privatisation. They sold our tea to their henchman, in the name of privatisation. Then they turned around and made the Cameroon Development Corporation, CDC, a purely government structure. Now, they are contemplating privatisation of one of the corporations in the same sector.

I am beginning to think that Confucius, the god of confusion, has a shrine in this country and it is not very far from Etoudi. Confucius might even be living in one of the rooms of the palace.

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