Democracy for Breakfast?


Book Description

Democracy is the faith that the process of experience is more important than any special result attained, so that special results achieved are of ultimate value only as they are used to enrich and order the ongoing process. Africans must therefore be allowed to apply their cultural and historical experiences and talents in working out a pattern of 'government of the people, by the people, and for the people' according to their own understanding and as their own peculiar circumstances demand. Those who do not want the vertical 'Western-Style Democracy' must be given a fair chance to demonstrate an alternative African horizontal democracy. Perhaps what they come up with might be of benefit to politics even in the West, provided that their radical system of horizontal democracy protects the life, liberty and property of citizens, and provided that the people want it. The question of externally imposed or market-driven multi-party or dual-party or non-party is a matter of modality and should not occupy the center stage in Africa.




Democracy for Breakfast. Unveiling Mirage Democracy in Contemporary Africa


Book Description

Democracy is the faith that the process of experience is more important than any special result attained, so that special results achieved are of ultimate value only as they are used to enrich and order the ongoing process. Africans must therefore be allowed to apply their cultural and historical experiences and talents in working out a pattern of 'government of the people, by the people, and for the people' according to their own understanding and as their own peculiar circumstances demand. Those who do not want the vertical 'Western-Style Democracy' must be given a fair chance to demonstrate an alternative African horizontal democracy. Perhaps what they come up with might be of benefit to politics even in the West, provided that their radical system of horizontal democracy protects the life, liberty and property of citizens, and provided that the people want it. The question of externally imposed or market-driven multi-party or dual-party or non-party is a matter of modality and should not occupy the center stage in Africa.




Democracy, Good Governance and Development in Africa


Book Description

Questions surrounding democracy, governance, and development especially in the view of Africa have provoked acrimonious debates in the past few years. It remains a perennial question why some decades after political independence in Africa the continent continues experiencing bad governance, lagging behind socioeconomically, and its democracy questionable. We admit that a plethora of theories and reasons, including iniquitous and malicious ones, have been conjured in an attempt to explain and answer the questions as to why Africa seems to be lagging behind other continents in issues pertaining to good governance, democracy and socio-economic development. Yet, none of the theories and reasons proffered so far seems to have provided enduring solutions to Africa’s diverse complex problems and predicaments. This book dissects and critically examines the matrix of Africa’s multifaceted problems on governance, democracy and development in an attempt to proffer enduring solutions to the continent’s long-standing political and socio-economic dilemmas and setbacks.




Africans and Negative Competition in Canadian Factories


Book Description

According to Fossungu, we need healthy competition for progress. Competition that is not geared toward progress is negative competition. No competition or the absence of self-help is negative competition. With factories competing healthily, consumers have a variety of quality goods and services from which to choose. The entire community benefits when people in any grouping are competing positively; thus making the rules of competition graphical. The central focus of this book is the extent to which Canadian regulations apply without discrimination to all of Canada and to everyone, individuals and corporations alike. A swift answer is affirmative. But is that really it? The book is also about voluntary slavery, which is worse than forced enslavement. Drawing on Ignorance Theory, the book argues that the worst thing that can happen to anyone is to be ignorant of one's ignorance. He who does not know what he does not know will never know. Voluntary African slaves generally employ 'One Has No Choice' (On n'a pas le choix) to cloak their having chosen not to secure their rights. Fossungu demonstrates why he considers this an escapist way of shying away from doing the normal thing, thus giving the dictator or oppressor reason to dictate and oppress with impunity. This is Fossungu at his provocative and controversial best.




C est l homme qui fait l homme


Book Description

The idea that human beings are inextricably bound to one another is at the heart of this book about African agency, especially drawing on the African philosophy Ubuntu, with its roots in human sociality and inclusivity. Ubuntu’s precepts and workings are severely tested in these times of rapid change and multiple responsibilities. Africans negotiate their social existence between urban and rural life, their continental and transcontinental distances, and all the market forces that now impinge, with relationships and loyalties placed in question. Between ideal and reality, dreams and schemes, how is Ubuntu actualized, misappropriated and endangered? The book unearths the intrigues and contradictions that go with inclusivity in Africa. Basing his argument on the ideals of trust, conviviality and support embodied in the concept of Ubuntu, Francis Nyamnjoh demonstrates how the pursuit of personal success and even self-aggrandizement challenges these ideals, thus leading to discord in social relationships. Nyamnjoh uses a popular Ivorian drama with the same title to substantiate life-world realities and more importantly to demonstrate that new forms of expression, from popular drama to fiction, thicken and enrich the ethnographic component in current anthropology.




The HISOFE Dictionary of Midnight Politics


Book Description

Building on Fossungu's earlier works, and essentially providing Africa with original, critical, and multi-level analyses of the trio of globalization, democracy, and national determination, this book theorizes that African states have to unite in order to have any impact in the global economy. Using the failure of the Cameroon Goodwill Association of Montreal (CGAM) as a case study, the book urges Africans to make hard choices and avoid politickerization and midnight politics in favour of fossungupalogy (that is, the science of straightforwardness, necessitating the fearless looking at truth straight in the eye). The questions of the book are many but do all boil down to whether or not Africans fear the truth and do not therefore do politics. It is amazing that Africans in the West live in societies where fierce political competitors do embrace each other after one has defeated the other; but they are incapable of looking their so-called friends in the eye and saying, for example: "Man, I think you've totally gotten it wrong this time." Such comportment defines politickerization or negative competition. While attempting some possible responses to the numerous queries it raises, this book basically proffers the science of Four-Eyesism as a discipline that all African schools need to institute and make a compulsory subject: if the vandalized continent would have to be awakened to its realities. This book is rich in Fossungu's dazzling capacity to invent, define and use a multitude of new terminological constructs informed by African experiences.




Incisive Journalism in Cameroon


Book Description

Working for Cameroon state-owned Radio in the 1970s and 80s meant toeing the official line and learning not to sing out of tune. While the rather scanty private press that existed at the time was subject to prior censorship, a different kind of censorship self-censorship prevailed at the Radio where topics for commentaries were vetted by the Minister of Information or his delegate. But for Anglophones working in a predominantly francophone environment, once topics were approved, the authorities could not be sure which direction commentaries were going to take as the journalists applied the tactics of bite and blow, sometimes giving full expression of their Anglo-Saxon spirit of debate and critical analysis as evidenced in this selection of commentaries from the Sunday morning commentary programme, Cameroon Report (now Cameroon Calling) of the late 1970s up till 1986. It is a showcase of the irrepressible seed of freedom of expression that Anglophone journalists were imbued with and demonstrated at a time when subjects related to coups dtat, human rights and governance were considered taboo. It was and shall remain the indelible input of the Anglophone character that has had a positive influence on Cameroons media landscape.




The Absurd and the Cameroonian Tragedy at Decolonization


Book Description

The Cameroons is in the grips of a perpetual tailspin. The confusion and lack of clarity in the nation threaten everyone's sanity. The Absurd and the Cameroonian Tragedy at Decolonization dissects these ills and tries to isolate what has caused them: emotional bankruptcy. Family life cannot survive in such an environment; which has been split down the middle since 1961. Political reality and slipshod behavior underlie the dystopian snare in which British Southern Cameroons finds itself within La Rpublique du Cameroun. Doh's narrative points to confusion and La Rpublique du Cameroun's bad faith dealings with British Southern Cameroons. This orphan in the storm quality extends to a far reach with The Absurd ... looking at the storm clouds that create such misery. Doh's characters have no control in a Francophone majority dominated world. This helplessness creates emotional stress and a severe breakdown requiring professional help. The social, political, and economic deficits are consequences of colonialism and the complicity of Francophone abettors of imperial exploitation. Africa is a marionette dancing on someone else's string. This book looks at theft, and the way in which kleptocracy at the governmental level has ripped the heart, spirit, and energy out of The Cameroons and shows how Doh's literature deals with the inability to count on anything and or observe a direct connection between the cause and the effect. Despite the negativity that permeates Doh's literature, he views The Cameroons as resilient.




Hate Speech


Book Description

An investigation of hate speech: legal approaches, current controversies, and suggestions for limiting its spread. Hate speech can happen anywhere--in Charlottesville, Virginia, where young men in khakis shouted, "Jews will not replace us"; in Myanmar, where the military used Facebook to target the Muslim Rohingya; in Capetown, South Africa, where a pastor called on ISIS to rid South Africa of the "homosexual curse." In person or online, people wield language to attack others for their race, national origin, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability, or other aspects of identity. This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series examines hate speech: what it is, and is not; its history; and efforts to address it.




Reason, Freedom, and Democracy in Islam


Book Description

Abdolkarim Soroush has emerged as one of the leading moderate revisionist thinkers of the Muslim world. He and his contemporaries in other Muslim countries are shaping what may become Islam's equivalent of the Christian Reformation: a period of questioning traditional practices and beliefs and, ultimately, of upheaval. Presenting eleven of his essays, this volume makes Soroush's thought readily available in English for the first time. The essays set forth his views on such matters as the freedom of Muslims to interpret the Qur'an, the inevitability of change in religion, the necessity of freedom of belief, and the compatibility of Islam and democracy. Throughout, Soroush emphasizes the rights of individuals in their relationship with both government and God, explaining that the ideal Islamic state can only be defined by the beliefs and will of the majority.