Peterkins Manyong
30 March 2008
analysis
At the height of anti-government campaigns in the early 90s, the Biya regime provoked an unusual debate on the subject of Truth.
"Truth", a CRTV broadcast stated, "comes from above and rumour from below". The public was by this pronouncement expected to understand that "above" meant government and below referred to the opposition.
But what prevailed at the time was the deliberate intoxication of the public with lies churned out by Biya loyalists beginning with the misinformation that six young people mowed down by gendarme bullets at City Chemist Roundabout were trampled upon. This official falsehood infuriated most Cameroonians, obliging them to shun CRTV and Cameroon Tribune, in preference to foreign radio stations and the private press.
The pronouncements of Marafa Hamidou Yaya, on Monday, March 10, on the recent strike action that led to colossal loss in terms of life and property, rekindled those dark days of the early nineties. Marafa knew that the SDF youth who attended a seminar in Ayaba in mid February were not trained on how to effect change from the streets.
He knew also that the youths who went on the rampage never acted on Fru Ndi's instructions and that the SDF Chairman was simply pleased that the edifice which he had been trying to pull down had caught fire on its own.
His attacks on the SDF Chairman can therefore be termed, in the words of S.T Coleridge, "The motive hunting of a motiveless malignity"What made the MINATD Boss so ridiculous is the fact that he failed to master his subject and therefore did not tell the lies in a convincing manner.
For instance, in enumerating the areas where destruction took place, he named Ndop. The pronouncement ironically took place at the same time when Central Committee member, Bernard Nwana was in Ndop heaping encomiums on the youth there for remaining calm during the 4-day upheavals.
Some Lessons On The Art Of Lying
Lying in itself is not always a negative practice. Alexander Pope tells us that blunt truths sometimes do more harm that sweet lies.In his essay titled "Some Notes On The Art Of Lying", Alan Broughton, an American writer, says an artist must know the manner in which to convince others on the truthfulness of his lies.
Oscar Wilde, in another essay, "Lying in Art" gives the impression that lies are sometimes necessary as pedagogic weapons. The parables of Jesus Christ were events that never actually took place as the names of characters and their settings were generally not given. They were just sugar coatings on very hard moral lessons and his Apostles understood them as such.
There is a marked difference between telling a lie and saying what is not true.
When Samuel Johnson, in his dictionary, defines a diplomat as "an honest man sent to lie abroad" he is qualifying the liar in this sense as a patriot committed to the defense of his fatherland.
A good liar is not only someone with a sound memory, but one who can convey a lie without suffering the guilt of telling one. Bouba Bello proved his worth in this domain when he omitted to tell his militants that the organisation which once provided them food aid was the United Nations Development Programme, UNDP, and not UNDP his political party.
Bound To Violence
Marafa's unguarded attacks on Fru Ndi were a demonstration of pseudo-intellectual vandalism (Courtesy Sankie Maimo). It was indisputably a strategy to instigate violent reactions from the SDF Chairman and his militants. Historians would easily remember that it was the concept of the super race advocated by the German writer, Nietze, which acted as an impetus to the Nazi holocaust in which more than six million Jews lost their lives in Nazi Germany.
The Nigerian civil war of 1967-70 was prolonged by the propagandist Ekukondem who mounted radio equipment on a tree and deceived the Biafrans that they were winning. Radio Mille Collines instigated the Rwanda Genocide of 1994.
Marafa And Kontchou Compared
In his ill-fated speech made on the third day of the strike in question, Biya recalled memories of a dark "Ghost Town" days. Marafa's frontal attack on Fru Ndi also rekindled memories of Kontchou, Cameroon's Geobels who employed falsehood as a diversionary weapon. Perhaps the MINATD Boss's character can be better illuminated through comparison with his schoolmaster, whom Kontchou undoubtedly is.
Barefaced falsehood is as much a characteristic of Marafa as of Kontchou. But whereas Kontchou mastered his facts and used them to concoct his falsehood, Marafa works on assumptions.
Marafa lack's a sense of light heartedness, contrary to Kontchou, the nimble magician whose wit sparkled humour. Marafa's declarations summed up four of what Shakespeare terms in "As You Like It" the seven degrees of a lie (the Lie direct, the Lie Circumstantial, the Retort Valiant, The Countercheck Quarrelsome) Kontchou was focused in the issues he addressed and never ridiculed any structure of the regime.
Marafa is like an unguided missile, a reckless soldier that does not distinguish between friend and foe. The attack on NEO, during his last but one visit to Bamenda was as vicious as it was unwarranted and did not qualify as friendly fire because it was deliberate. To him, NEO's report was criminal because it criticised some aspects of the electoral process, which was largely controlled by MINATD.
If Biya is on the lookout for the veritable enemies in the house, he should spare himself the trouble of looking for Anglophone scapegoats. The likes of Marafa are not disguising their ambition, which, to achieve, Biya must do them one favour-drop dead.
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