Cameroun - Cameroon, Make it plain: On Escaping your Inner Mental Prison

It is without saying that the state of affairs in Cameroon denote the reality that the independence of the country does not mean the independence of its people because the independence we have been experiencing so far is causing us more harm than good.

In practice, it means the difficulties to develop capacities for individuation, self-determination and autonomy. This has to do with the kind of institutional and political infrastructures the country has inherited from the colonial masters and the kind of political subjects being produced. The problem is that many Cameroonians pretend to be apolitical. They pretend no to care about what is going on in Yaoundé. Nor do they see that if you do not get your politics right, you can lose your liberty. Democracy is no accident. You have to protect it from those who would take your freedoms away to increase their own power.

Precisely, what happens when fighting oppression is not over because the crucial change in structures of oppression has, after, seven decades of independence, has yet to take place. This, partly because on the ongoing pathological relationship between the colonized and the former colonizer. The nagging feeling of self-rejection rather than analyzing with an open eye and courage the legacy of colonialism in the country. This crucial lack of engaging colonial legacy has generated a long list of insecurities and a mental prison of our making. Indeed, the idea of political prison does not serve the public in Cameroon. It is part of a continuing chain of social violence and it does not offer justice to anyone. I understand that many people believe as you do that offenders should be hanged, but the social cost of that attitude and practice is enormous, and as I said, it serves no one.

Thus, being in prison does not simply have a physical dimension. As a matter of fact, many human right activists, such as the Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Dr. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, to say the least, have shown that some people in prison might be more free than the ones wandering aimlessly outside. These heroes helped us to make the difference between prison and inner mental prison. Thus, in a regime running on the deprivation of personal freedom, there is the necessity for introspection, self-reflection and self-discovery. Hence, the untrained mind is a prison that entraps us within a maze of thoughts, beliefs, and concepts. As Gandhi said, “A man is but a product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes.” When we allow the mind to control us, it creates a mental prison that defines all aspects of our existence. Thus, as they say, there are those who watch the bars and those who look at the roof. As the Chinese Proverb, when the wise man points at the moon, the imbecile examines his fingers.

In Cameroon, it means finding ways to break out the mental cage the Biya’s regime have us imprisoned into.

It begins with a reminder that we cannot just put politics over as we cannot put politics over common goodness and kindness. Thus, never back down from these values and even be willing to die for them as Dr. Martin Luther King said, « If a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live. » Indeed, there is something in a universe that justifies the biblical writer in saying, « You shall reap what you sow. » This is a law-abiding universe. This is a moral universe. It hinges on moral foundations. If we are to make of this a better world, we have to go back and rediscover that precious value that we have left behind. Indeed, we shall know the truth, and the truth shall make us free because the mind is a terrible thing to waste.

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