Don?t Ever Call It "Corruption"

By Daniel RIM, article published in ?Le Messager? Edition N° 1547 11-August-2003

At the time, quite remote already, when he still dealt with the business of governing in "his" country,
triple-world champion of corruption, Paul Biya, the president of Cpdm (Cameroon people democratic
movement, the rulling power) and of the Republic, scoffing the ill-mannered journalists and other despisers
of this national sport, said one day that "there is no corrupted without corrupter". Debatable sentence
indeed! He required "evidence" (which is never useful), thus suggesting to his "dear compatriots" to abstain
from corrupting, but most of all to catch the hand into the bag, and bring the hand and the bag together to
the chief, the gendarme or the prosecutor. Easy to say. Is it easy to do? In this world of forgery, of
institutionalized impunity and Feymania [phenomenon of swindle and crookering currently reigning in
Cameroon]? Wait and see!

When you have to cash a cash voucher of 200.000 Fcfa or 3 million Fcfa [Fcfa 1 = $ 0.010987 as of
08/23/2003] and your child is seriously sick or must be registered urgently at the school, if the cash clerk
claims 10, 20 or 30 % before paying you, what do you do? Accept? You are then a corrupter, and you
lose money. Go and denounce it to the "hierarchy"? If he [the hierarchy] agrees to receive you, nine times
out of ten times he would say something like this: "Ahn, What?s matter with you folk! 20 000 out of 200
000, 900 000 out of 3 million, what does is even represent? Pay him to quickly have your money and to
save your child! If the child suddenly dies, will 900 000 francs return him to you?" A few years ago, a
Minister of the Republic had, under recommendation of his colleague minister of Finances, to give in to the
paymaster the percentage required before the withdrawal of an official subsidy intended for a public social
work. This is to say?

When you invite Crtv [Cameroon Radio Television, the national and only mainstream media firm in the
country] to cover a noncommercial demonstration, even governmental, there is never a vehicle available,
or it is the gas that is missing, or the driver who is not there. It is necessary to go yourself and transport the
reporters, their technicians and their material. You will bring them back where you took them.  In addition,
you will pay in the "taxi" (the cap) of all these people. And this is not a guarantee that your "element" will
be aired, unless the realizer and the assembler in the studio have received their share of "gombo"? [gombo
= bribe]

When the gangsters attack you in the middle of the night within your premises and you call the
gendarmerie [a police armed forces unit], the gendarme who answers you is "alone at the station". And
there is no vehicle, not fuel. Just about he would order you to escape your attackers to go and pick him up
with your car, if ever you have one, and if the gangsters did not steal it. In any event, if you can "do
something" don?t hesitate. In theory, your safety is part of the kingly duties of the State, and you already
"did something" by paying your taxes. And we know that the government spends a lot, a lot of money for
the "police force". But, since the gendarmes, as one of them told you, do not have the means of
intervention to protect you while you are in danger, it is necessary to pay for your personal safety and that
of your family. Because, if you are robbed, if you are wounded, if somebody is killed within your
premises, you lose even more than what you would have given to the armed forces to help you, right?

When the police officer seizes the taxi-driver?s and his vehicle?s papers for? "double windshield" or some
other more or less whimsical "reason", when you present the correct papers to him and he retorts you: "
Does one eats that?" to make his real concern more comprehensible to you, when obviously he wants to
spend your time or your appointment, what should you do in this police State? Go to see the chief at the
office? Where is it, the office? What if the chief is not there?  What if he plays stalling tactics and gives you
not very sure appointments, just "to see it"? Time passes and losses are in your side. The receipts of the
day, you will not get them. Then, since you are in the hurry, since there is no fast and guaranteed recourse,
just do "something", put an "insert" [of a Fcfa bill] in your license file to "be released". In any event, the
police officer will not release unless you make a gesture, because the chief awaits his share; if not he
would deal ruthlessly with the bad "tax collector" and will not send him any more to road control.
Everyone knows that?

Are you candidate for a political election? Whatever your party, you will need to "see" the (under) prefect
before the event so that he registers your partisans on the electoral rolls and delivers them elector cards,
so that he validates your candidature, and that he doesn?t "arrange" results in favor of your competitors.
Bidding? What are we gonna do, with the electoral code such as the one over there?

When a tax inspector wedges you with a painful "rectification", and you would obviously risk the seals and
bankruptcy, what to do? Which saint to dedicate with? Nobody will understand that you do not do
"something" for you to leave from there at little cost. Then? Denouncing? Denouncing what, with whom,
for which results?

When the press flushes out a case of indelicacy and reports it, it becomes a scandal in the family.
Everyone requires evidence, everybody shouts out about "lack of professionalism" and "non respect of
deontology". But nobody engages any police or legal investigation towards the "Big one" who was
indexed. On the contrary, an acid rain falls down on the "slanderers", with the professorial, moralizing and
overwhelming official statements from the Minister of Communication, with the police raids, arrests and
brutalities, legal proceedings and judgments, and intimidations in all kinds. It happens always that way: that
which announces the death of the king is the king?s assassin to be condemned to dead?

When you see what they call "war against corruption" and the "means" that they put at it, a tear-laughter
grips you, and you wonder what good is it to tire yourselves in denunciations. They create commissions,
committees and cells by the dozen, at all the layers of the State. They are stuffed with the boss?
collaborators, managers of public funds, buddy-rascals of the "civil society", starveling smart guys, who
are not ready to let their "honesty" put sand in their perdiems. Obviously, the overdrive of these structures
of operetta constitutes in itself an additional source of? corruption and traffic of influence, because (1)
"One does not saw the branch on which one seats" and (2) "the mouth which eats does not speak"? Well
known satanic verses. Lastly, these things come, without any real power, to unnecessarily double other
constitutional structures which exist and are made inefficient because of the absence of political good-will
and? the omnipresent and omnipotent corruption: the Higher Control of the State, the Justice, the police
force, the police force of the police forces, and so on.

What are we gonna do then? The gangrene has already reached the bone and the marrow, the spirit and
the heart of the Cameroonians, whom in their unrestrained smartness for survival or for the (political and
financial) power are not even any more able to have a clear idea of the phenomenon of corruption. They
have so much integrated it in the obvious means of their daily fights, they have so much "standardized" it,
short of being able to eradicate it, that they refuse from now on to use even the term, to call it by its name,
even when they are posing the act. You irritate your friends by saying that you have corrupted the
policeman or the tax department, the gendarme, the cash clerk, the school principal or company, the
judge, the (under ) prefect, the voter, the journalist? No, you can?t say that! You can?t expose yourself,
especially when you did something everyone does. A little decency, really! And "realism", of course! You
"saw" this one, you gave "the means" to these; you "arranged" with somebody; it was the "taxi", the
"gombo", the "beer", the "gas", the "motivation"? not corruption.

Definitely, in the speech on corruption, the "camerounism" makes semantic and psychological wonders,
isn?t it? Don?t ever say "corruption", and corruption does not exist any more!