Toxic Masculinity, Necropower, Tribalism and Democratic Mis-Education in Cameroon
CAMEROUN :: POINT DE VUE

CAMEROUN :: Toxic Masculinity, Necropower, Tribalism and Democratic Mis-Education in Cameroon

How to understand the non-stop necropolitical staging of the president’s death, each time, generating a storm of stupidity holding the population hostage, ignoring their own grim reality for a sappy and senseless melodrama dripping in bad taste and fueled by toxic masculinity?

To understand the persuasion of necropower is to understand the power of a toxic combo of a pathological culture drenched in violence, intimidation, the fear of death, and how that fear makes ordinary Cameroonians, without tribal exception, vulnerable and ready to accept the arguments of necropower. The shameless bullshitters who are drowning this culture of violence solely on tribalism is not to understand the legacy of the colonial biopolitical plantation now masquerading as a modern nation state. More criminally, a profound disdain for finding out the truth on these issues of toxic masculinity and necropower because of some greater end promoted by bullshit, and by bullshit alone as the power of Yaoundé does.

Therefore, to cry tribalism is to play in the camp of the regime and legitimize the authoritarian power of the president who decides who should live and who must die. It is also to legitimize the argument that the legitimate opposition to power is motivated by the same necropolitical ideology.

Thus, even his more dire critiques must acknowledge that no one stay in power for 35 years alone on violence. During a press conference with then French President Francois Hollande, the Cameroonian president went to brag that no one stays in power for that long just because he wants it, but because he can, as a rebuke to president Barack Obama who called for strong institutions and not strong men on the continent.

To understand this kind of longevity is to pay attention on how power is naturalized in Cameroon. Precisely, not on the president’s anemic record but his ability to manipulate life and death as the colonial master did.

Thus, as with his ability to survive many “staged death,” with a regular monotony that leave out no time for proper reflection, the president has acquired near divine power. People who are convinced that power is of divine origin tend to agree that this kind of divine power cannot be challenged by mere mortals. More, how divine power comes packaged with the absolute certainty that one’s is always right. Thus, trying to challenge this kind of assumption amounts to heresy, crime of lese majesty and outrage. Furthermore, the idea that terror cannot come from the state but always from the opposition and within that context how wanting power is an act of terror.

As a result, the African American intellectual, Carter G. Woodson, claimed that “when you control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his actions. You do not have to tell him not to stand here or go yonder. He will find his proper place and will stay in it. You do not need to send him to the back door. He will go without being told. In fact, if there is no back door, he will cut one for his special benefit.”

Carter G. Woodson makes the difference between education and indoctrination which lead to the contradiction that people comes to act against their own best interest. Education and democracy goes hands in hands and how one cannot be truly educated in an oppressive system. For instance, how with necropower, the biological cycle of one man has nothing to do with democracy as the propagandist of necropower seek to pretend. Democracy to do with the power of reason and truth to overcome prejudices. More, crucial issues are such as equal rights and better governance are more important than the life of one man be it the president.

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