The Anthropology of Anger: Civil Society and Democracy in Africa, by Célestin Monga, translated by Linda L. Fleck and Célestin Monga

 

Preface

 

As I begin to write this preface to the expanded, English-language edition of this book, Lokua Kanza is singing on my CD player. His music sounds simple, yet it is so profound: a crystal-clear, breathy, melancholic voice, whispering some fresh words in Lingala, and following a circular melodic line that seems to express the quintessential magic of his guitar. His singing has a cosmic dimension, reverberating the rising and insistent scream of human loneliness on each vibrato—a scream tragic, but not desperate.

As the lyrics flow, expressing the sensation of a fissure in the soul—the original feeling of an age-old, open wound with which any African is familiar—in my apartment in Somerville, Massachusetts, I recognize the main features of what was a few years ago the sonorous ambience of my daily life in Douala, Cameroon. I can hear all the delicious noises, smell the heady fragrances, and recall the spicy memories of the African quotidienneté I know. Through the song, which alternates yearning and anger, which evokes at once the frustration of sorrow and the pleasure of uncertainty, I can feel the subtle and harmonious hubbub of everyday life in sub-Saharan Africa.

Lokua Kanza lives in Paris, but his voice and style express—perhaps better than anything else does—what I have observed in his fellow citizens in Zaire: the consciousness of pain and suffering, the desire to survive madness, the quest for another, better world, and the confidence that the worst is never inevitable. Yes, I am aware of the conceptual dangers of associating too quickly the work of an artist with the prevailing historical and social narrative. Nevertheless, I strongly believe that creators of African music like Lokua Kanza do not conceive the beauty of their art to be the full sum of it. Even if we acknowledge, as Jean-François Lyotard suggests (1993:111), that there is an intrinsic freedom to any given artistic product that transcends any historical determinism, we must also agree that “no art exists in a vacuum” (Carruth, 1993:24)—and certainly not that which, roughly speaking, we can label today’s African art.

Why is it that so many experts on Africa seem almost impervious to what I consider the best in African music? Why is so little consideration given to Lokua Kanza’s work, and to many other powerful pieces, in the traditional analysis of contemporary African art? Why is it that whenever a West-based scholar (whether African, American, or European) undertakes a study of the discourse of African music, he or she never mentions the existence of artists who try to express an alternative way of thinking? And to draw a parallel with the social sciences, why do we always read and hear accounts of everyday life in Mobutu Sese Seko’s Zaire with no reference whatsoever to Lokua Kanza’s version of the story? In other words, why is the everyday-life approach, the grassroots perspective, so consistently absent from the literature on social change in Africa? Here is an artist with all the credentials usually required for success and international recognition: his work is highly original, substantial, technically sophisticated, and properly packaged and marketed by a respected French producer. Yet, because he does not represent what is considered to be the mainstream of African music, because his records do not sound like those that, according to critics, the public is used to listening to, he is not taken seriously. At best, he is seen as another Francis Bebey, or another Pierre Akendengue—that is, an artist for a limited audience, a singer for a minority of embittered intellectuals—which means he will probably be the victim of his talent.

This brings me to the point of this book. Not only are African artists treated this way by the so-called experts (academics and journalists, for example), all African social actors who happen to be different, whether in the nature of their message or in the way they act, are ignored by those who influence public perception of the continent. This has been true for decades, in literature, in the movie industry, in painting, and it seems to be true today in politics as well. Most of the political science literature devoted to the continent is full of predominant paradigms and reductionist stereotypes, not only of African politicians but also of African peoples’ behavior in politics—or, more precisely, their lack of political behavior. And these paradigms and stereotypes are used to explain the economic misery and democratic ineptitude that characterize the continent in the eyes of the average Western citizen.

Having been brutally involved in sociopolitical turmoil in my country, Cameroon, and having worked and traveled extensively in various other African countries, where I became connected to different social networks, I felt frustrated by most of the literature on the determinants of a successful process of democratization, the exact role of civil society in the current changes, and the political behavior of African people. The more I read, the more frustrated I became, because I could perceive in the political historiography of Africa the same contempt and disconnection I described with regard to Lokua Kanza. I was most irritated by the fact that neither the academics nor the journalists were able (or willing) to capture what was the very essence of the social phenomena and the political movements that I had witnessed for years: the determination of people at the grassroots level to engage in the political arena, at any cost, in order to bring about some positive changes in the way they had been ruled for several centuries.

Working as chief economist for a commercial bank, I did not expect to write a political analysis of the events. But, as I said, I did become involved in the struggle for democracy in Cameroon. In late December 1990, four years after I had come back from Europe, I was fed up with the political monolithism that was destroying the economy. I wrote a small piece for a private local paper, criticizing the government. In early January, I was arrested, held without charge until my release (a few days later), and was not permitted any visitors. Charges were subsequently brought against me, notably for contempt of the president of the republic. The first session of my trial took place on January 10 in Douala. More than two hundred lawyers from the Cameroonian Bar Association joined to act as the defense counsel. Several thousand people showed up to manifest publicly their opposition to the government. It was the first time since the early 1960s that popular demonstrations against the government had taken place in the country. Everyone (including myself) was surprised. The trial was adjourned until the following week. On January 17, when the second session of the trial was set to begin, demonstrations took place in a number of cities. In the northern city of Garoua, troops fired on a demonstration supporting me and calling for democratization (the country was still under a single-party regime). Several people were killed, dozens were wounded, and many were beaten by the police or jailed without any specific charges.

Such an event is banal under monocracy, to use Ambroise Kom’s word (1991b). I was lucky that a popular uprising and international pressure prevented the Cameroonian regime from using against me some of its usual repressive tactics (such as secret trials and executions). But the fact that some people who did not even know me had been killed shook me profoundly. I visited their families, but did not know what to say to weeping mothers, tearful fathers, suspicious friends and cousins. I decided to step back momentarily from my economic writings and to record my thoughts on the political transformations I was part of. I wanted to tell the story of the variety of ways in which people in Cameroon and elsewhere stood up—despite their fears, their material poverty, and the very real danger they faced—in order to defy humiliation and to live their humanity. I had completed a degree in political science at the Sorbonne, and I hoped that I could recall the rudiments of political anthropology I was taught by Professor Maurice Duverger and use them as a framework for analyzing what was going on in my country and in many others. (I was subsequently encouraged by my feeling that most of what was published did not properly reflect the real logic behind the new wave of social changes in Africa.)

Thus, I wrote to describe and to analyze our collective anger, mostly for conferences I was invited to attend between 1991 and 1993. I was concerned about my capacity to explore a field that was outside my area of professional specialization; furthermore, I was angry myself, and I knew that anger has its risks, chief among which is its impediment to clear-sightedness. But my good friends Paul Dakeyo and Ambroise Kom convinced me that some anger is healthy and that the only relevant question is what you do with it. This was enough to stimulate in me what Léon Poliakov once called the “Sorbonic vanity” (1981:104) to describe the inherent self-confidence of any graduate of the Sorbonne.

In carrying out this task, I tried not to be naive about the magnitude of the phenomena I was describing, nor about the chances of success. I also struggled not to be part of the game—I tried to remain “positively neutral,” to maintain the critical distance of a “spectateur impur” or “spectateur engagé,” as Raymond Aron used to say about himself (1972). I have every reason to fear that this book will strike some readers as “very African.” This would not be a compliment. African it is, of course, by virtue of its empirical focus. It would, however, be a mistake to regard all that is said here about different techniques of rebellious behavior in the arts, culture, politics, and everyday life as a collection of exotic curiosities and frivolities. My guess is that most of these patterns of behavior can be found in many parts of the developing world and even used for an ambitious, universal theory of sociopolitical change.

That there is an exciting political life in Africa is an idea unfamiliar to many people; the intellectual sterility of the continent’s leaders and people is too often taken for granted, and the intellectual achievements of its societies too often overlooked. I suggest here some ways of looking differently at Africa’s sociopolitical dynamics and also present a few tools for adjusting political science theories to the African context.

 

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There have been substantial changes between the French and the present version of this book. First, I have added Chapter 2, to situate my work in the theoretical frameworks available in recent literature on political issues in Africa. Second, I have taken into account some of the relevant findings in the North American literature, to which I did not have access previously. I have also updated the empirical evidence, using the latest available information on the democratic experience in such countries as Senegal, Benin, Kenya, and Zambia.

I have been fortunate to live in the Boston area over the past several years and to work in one of the best academic environments in the world. Being affiliated with M.I.T. and Harvard University and holding visiting professorships at Boston University and the University of Bordeaux has given me the chance to use some of the finest research facilities and also to meet many wonderful people, some of whom have contributed—whether consciously or unwittingly—to this book. I am grateful to my friends, colleagues, and mentors at Harvard (Kathryn Dominguez, Kalypso Nicolaidis); M.I.T. (Willard Johnson, Olivier Blanchard, Rudi Dornbusch, Susan Lowance, Glen Urban); Boston University (Edouard Bustin, Bill Bicknell); the University of Bordeaux (Daniel C. Bach, Jean-François Médart); the University of Pau (Thiérry Michalon); Stanford University (Larry Diamond); the University of Rochester (Cilas Kemedjo); the University of Yaounde (Ambrose Kim); Editions Nouvelles du Sud (Paul Dakeyo); CODESTRA (Achille Mbembe); the World Bank (Eric Chinje); and also Augustin Nya, Jean-Pierre Kakmani, Martin Jumbam, Jean-Marc Sika, Richard Nouni, Benjamin Zebaze, Pius Njawe, Severin Tchounkeu, and Charles Tchoungang. Some of them will probably wonder why on earth I made such a great leap from international monetary issues, which is my main area of academic specialization, into the study of political behavior. I do hope that after shaking their heads doubtfully they will dismiss the most obvious motivations (intellectual dilettantism of a trapezist, unchecked egotism) and understand the real reason for this book: the need to acknowledge a moral debt to those who paid with their lives for my innocence and, beyond them, the need to pay tribute to all the ordinary African men and women who struggle every day, in a variety of silent ways, to escape political cannibalism.

 

The Anthropology of Anger: Civil Society and Democracy in Africa