Who is a tribalist more than the other? This is now the password in Cameroon. A real chicken and egg debate. A question of who started first?
Some blame others. They are the ones who started it. And we have a clear conscience. We don’t understand that we were brought up to hate ourselves. To find that the other is a threat. And so, to be a crowd that doesn’t know how to crowd. A crowd unable to mobilize.
I am Bamileke. I was born in Banka. Society educated me to hate the “njong” (mainly the baham) and the Nkwa (beti, douala, etc.) for free. I say free. Until I asked myself a simple question: but, what did a Kwa do to me? What did a “Njong” do to me? Nothing indeed. I am a southerner and I work in the Far North in MAROUA. I experience these things every day. Cliches.
My company in the South of Cameroon trained me to say that the Northerners are “Wadjo” or worse, “sheep”. Yes, but I am a discerning being. I know the historical reasons that justify these clichés. I am Francophone. I was brought up to call English speakers “Anglo-mad”. But, I understand that I am manipulated and therefore, I am not playing the game.
We are the problem. We maintain the clichés we grew up with. Without discernment. Yet we all know that we need to build a free and inclusive society. We continue to see the other through identity glasses. And that takes us away from the goals of development.
For example, many believe that economic patriotism means pushing out white people. No! The nationality or origin of the investor does not count in economics. Money has no color, they say. It is investment at the local level to create wealth locally that counts. Whether the investor is French, Chinese, American, Turkish or Russian, it is the investment at the local level that counts. And this is the foreign direct investment (foreign capital) that every normal country seeks to attract.
We are wrong about many things. And identity populism does not help us.
May God bless each other.
LMK
