The Bushfallers: The Rise of a New Breed of Cameroonians

 

  By Emmanuel Konde

      The years between 1975 and 1991 something happened in Cameroon that transformed the generations after into creatures radically different from the before generations.  This work is about the generations after.  It traces their development through the prism of Cameroon’s political history. As the first generation of Cameroonians born under the United Republic of Cameroon, their character reflects the political changes of their country.  They attained maturity with the political maturity of Cameroon.  

                                                 Prologue

      A new kind of Cameroonian, either derogatively or approvingly designated as bushfallers in his native land, was conceived in the 1970s by a variety of social forces that intersected and then converged to give social birth to this formidable breed in the early 1990s.  These forces, mainly political and economic, also contributed to the inauguration of a quasi-multiparty political system in the erstwhile single-party state of Cameroon, and, accordingly unleashed a new ethos of aggressiveness among Cameroonians hitherto known for their passivity as a people who were always seen but seldom heard. Bushfallers, the human product of these forces of social change, are not only smart, determined, daring, calculating, enterprising, at once assertive and aggressive, but also seemingly unstoppable.  There seems to be nothing that this edition of bushfallers cannot accomplish if they set their minds on it.  These are the new exports of Cameroon to the world.  They are out to make money, the one thing that sets them apart from many generations before, and the one and only thing that compelled them to venture out of the Land of Promise into foreign lands far and wide.

     Markedly different from their antecedents who traveled abroad for various reasons, the driving force behind this driven breed is money. Again, unlike their antecedents, bushfallers never forget their roots.  They are first and foremost Cameroonians, nationalists of sorts, and totally devoid of tribal sentiment; they love their country, eschew tribal affiliations, are determined to make an indelible mark on the history of Cameroon, and to that end are making magic, literally, by their own exertions.  This new breed is transforming Cameroon from the coastal town of Limbe through Kumba to the Bamenda hinterlands.  Former shanty towns are being remade by the remittances of bushfallers.  Here and there marvelous buildings sprout from the soil like the corn crop. Indeed, even in the Bassa quartier Nkong Mondo in Douala, Francophone bushfaller wealth filtering into Cameroon from Gabon, Côte d’Ivoire, France, etc., is wreaking wonders there to the utter amazement of Bamileke merchants who once thought of the Nkong Mondo Bassa youths as lazy and un-enterprising. 

     Never before has Cameroon beheld a marvel like the one being wrought almost everywhere in the country by bushfallers.  It is improbable that such a breath-taking marvel could again be fashioned in the future; neither shall the country ever again behold a breed in the likeness of bushfallers. This newness,   this transformation of the Cameroonian being is novel as it is unique and epochal.  

     Bushfaller wealth is also transforming the lives of many in their respective families, clans, tribes, and the entire country. Because of the special qualities of bushfallers, this breed constitutes the wave of the future of Cameroon. What is not clear at this time, however, is whether this new wave of change represented by bushfallers portends good or ill for Cameroon.  Admittedly, the ultimate end of “bushfallerism” in Cameroon is a prognosis too premature to make at this juncture.  Time will, however, tell.

     The emphasis on bushfallers should not be misconstrued as a denigration of non-bushfaller achievements; for, we recognize that bushfallers were assisted by their older brothers and sisters who either preceded them to Mbengue Europa and Mbengue Amerika, or labored in the Fatherland to ensure the advancement of their brethren.  But the visible achievements of the Cameroonians who first ventured abroad simply fade into insignificance when compared to those of bushfallers. On this conclusion I stake my reputation as an observer of social change in Cameroon..

      I write as a social philosopher and student of history, whose task is to interpret and explain the workings of the social order as accurately as possible. I examine how individuals and groups behave in society; I analyze the actions of individuals and aggregations and draw general conclusions from these about society.  From this vantage point, I am able to discern a striking social phenomenon that has been unfolding before our very own eyes during the past 16 years or so.  This phenomenon is now taking concrete form.  Its locus of incubation is the Fatherland, Cameroon.  Although there was in fact a commingling of variables that ushered in this bushfaller phenomenon, I have decided to isolate a few pivotal ones that influenced the making of this new breed.

     My last teenage escapade in Cameroon happened in Victoria, present-day Limbe, in 1975.  We were in Bay Hotel one Sunday afternoon dancing to Makossa during “Tea Time” when a scuffle ensued between one local boy and a military man over a girl.  I was inside gyrating to the deafening blast of a medley of Toto Guillaume and  the Black Styl, and did not witness the scuffle.  The soldier carried a pistol, which he pulled out.  He did not fire a single shot.  But the mere sight of a small gun sent more than 100 civilians running helter-skelter for dear life.  I was one of those civilians, and those were the waning years of Ahmadou Ahidjo’s Cameroon when some contemporary bushfallers were either toddlers or yet-to-be-born.  Fast forward to 1991, sixteen years later during the teenage years of our bushfallers now come of age.  We behold them battling armed soldiers with fists and stones during “Operation Ghost Town” under the auspices of John Fru Ndi.  From all apparent indications, a lot had happened in Cameroon that created something of a generational gulf between my teenage years and those of our bushfallers.  It is that something, which distinguishes the new breed of Cameroonian, that this work promises to unravel.

     The years between 1975 and 1991 something happened in Cameroon that transformed the generations after into creatures radically different from the before generations.  This work is about the generations after.  It traces their development through the prism of Cameroon’s political history. As the first generation of Cameroonians born under the United Republic of Cameroon, their character reflects the political changes of their country.  They attained maturity with the political maturity of Cameroon.  When in the early-1990s Operation Ghost Town released Cameroonians from the dictatorship of the Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (CPDM), an offshoot of Ahidjo’s Cameroon National Union (CNU), the children of the Unitary State were the foot soldiers of this struggle and contributed to the making of the new epoch President Paul Biya aptly called the “New Deal Society”. Born in chains, these children were released from their chains by the promises of Biya’s New Deal Society, which opened up the closed society of Ahidjo’s “Old Oder” and gave vent to Fru Ndi’s “Operation Ghost Town”.

     If Operation Ghost Town provided them freedom domestically, the forces of globalization extended this freedom internationally. By the late 1990s, the would-be bushfallers were looking outward to the larger world for those things that the sagging Cameroon economy could not offer them.  Once abroad, their intermittent visits to Cameroon, which revealed behaviors, attitudes, and showmanship never before seen in Cameroon, won them the sobriquet bushfallers—those who fall bush (chappia bush), work (plant), and after harvesting come home to show off their newly acquired….

     The Bushfallers: Rise of a New Breed of Cameroonians is the story of their origins, growth, and transformative power.  As chronicler of the compelling story, that follows, I cannot help it but echo the sentiment of American sociologist C. Wright Mills: “I will try to be objective; I do not claim to be detached,” for, I am an offspring of Cameroon and can therefore not pretend detachment by any stretch of the imagination.

     This exegesis is an exposé of bushfallers cast within the context of some defining moments in the history of Cameroon from 1960 to the present. It does not attempt to pass judgment on this new breed because they defy social conventions and their proper place in the social order is yet to be defined.  The narrative style employed in this expose is the motif, drawn from music, whereby certain musical patterns recur time and time again throughout the piece.  In the case of this work, instead of musical patterns the focus of emphasis is on ideas, which are reiterated over and over again at different points and in different chapters of this work.  This narrative strategy is adopted in order to drive home the significance of the rise of bushfallers and the role that history seems to have pre-determined for them.  But, will they defy historical imperative?