Charlotte Dipanda’s recent comments on the state of the country has set many tongues wagging. I want to say she is the last person I would have thought to hear such a firm political opinion from – so used we have been to her going quietly about her career quietly in her usual regal and graceful manner.
Her recently-expressed desire to see a new president other than the one she has known all her life (she was born in ’85) and her statements on the necessity of a regime change has all but very likely taken her off the roster of artists under consideration for the next Nations’ Cup – if Nations’ Cup in Cameroon there is in the first place.
But politicians will be always be politicians. And you will find none more stoic and taciturn than the very rare breed we have running our country. And only they could resort to such a system of thinking. We have come to expect nothing more from them. When an SDO announces that the acts of the president are not to be commented negatively, you realise that we are at the very bottom of whatever cesspool we currently find ourselves in.
But it is the other side of the glass that I am interested in. The side where we all fall, yes, you and me.
You see, in Cameroon, we seem to have a problem with dissenting voices. Already there is a huge problem of Stockholm Syndrome. Many of us have been so used to being fed the bottom of the burnt pot of rice that we are not able to, despite ourselves, to imagine that just above, there are white grains, well-cooked and without blemish that should have been ours as well. For many, it is the only reality they know and even when you show them the good rice, they still are unable to see anything other than the charred grains they have always eaten.
That is one issue. The other issue is some sort of crab mentality. A really different kind of crab mentality. People are not necessarily pulling you down into the pot with them, but they tell you “who do you think you are to think differently?” or “why and what do you want to show?”
It’s hard to imagine a place where abstract thinking is discouraged more than in our beloved Crayfishkistan.
When it comes to musicians, and just generally, people of the art, these two systems – the bottom of the pot blindness and the special crab mentality manifests itself in a very peculiar reaction. It can be summarised in one sentence; “joues ta musique et tais-toi.”
For the case of Charlotte Dipanda, that can be extended to “joues ta musique et ne parle pas de politique.”
It is not for nothing that I put these quotes in French. Some of you have already caught my drift, but I won’t be swimming on that bank of the Moungo today.
A huge chunk of the reactions that I have seen online have praised her for the opinion. As a matter of fact, any person in their right mind should. The people who do not are either retarded or are already dipping their hands in the barter that is going to be used to make the national cake.
And these people have touted the argument that musicians should not have to speak on politics. Why? Because it is not their place – they say.
Almost to say that the only ones who should talk about politics are politicians. And when you, the musician, do, the easy route they ALWAYS take is to insult your art “ahka! Elle chante meme d’abord quoi? Depuis 2005 elle nous saoule avec les memes genres de musique. Elle a meme déjà fait quoi pour le Cameroun ? Elle a employé qui ? Dis-donc, qu’elle câle meme en mbeng! Les anti-patriotes comme ca. Qu’elle continue a jouer sa musique la pour les whites. Nous on ne veut meme plus ça."
I remember a few years ago, my uncle asked his driver who he was going to vote for the presidential elections. His driver, no doubt disillusioned by the state of Crayfishkistan, said in no uncertain terms that he was not interested in politics nor did he take part in it. My uncle asked him “you are a member of your church’s thanksgiving committee, right?” to which the driver answer yes. My uncle then asked him “so what do you think that is?”
Politics affects every one of us; collectively and individually. Failures in the political system lead to failures in the system of governance and accountability, which lead to failure in something as tangible as you not having stable electricity for 10 days in a row.
Musicians are just as affected by these as any other person. Before they are musicians they are first of all citizens. Nobody says that musicians necessarily have to be political in their music but when they are faced with the issue, their neutrality benefits no one, starting with them.
I still have a bone in my neck with the stance Jovi took on the Anglophone problem. He took an ‘All Lives Matter’ rather than a ‘Anglophone Lives Matter’ stance and I found his neutrality both hypocritical and self-serving. Denying to see the specificity of the issue at hand was quite cowardly
But the other issue perhaps is also asking why musicians in Cameroon have these image pasted to them – that of a bunch of people who know nothing other than to play an instrument and devoid of any other intellectual activity – incapable of forming a coherent opinion on politics and thereby asked to steer clear of it.
I have a wild theory on that:- that of the glamourising of humble beginnings. The “I came from a poor family” narrative that we have heard over and over again – even from people who grew up in middle class families and went to good schools.
Someone made a joke once that he was afraid to piss in a gutter because he did not want to urinate on an upcoming musician’s head.
People end up thinking that they did not have a good education and are thus not “qualified” to address these issues. As if a formal education was a guarantee to critical thinking. I know people with PhDs who cannot think critically. One of them is a sycophant in the government. A Bakossi man you all know too well.
Another theory, and this is not so much a theory, is that most either choose to keep quiet on the issues or choose the Jovi route. It is easier for them to do so for multiple reasons ranging from the fear of being blacklisted from CPDM events to perhaps the fear of losing a fan base on a bank of the Moungo. Who knows for sure?
What is for sure is that whether we like it or not, we are all in this mess together. And when we try to hold someone from speaking the truth, especially a truth that will save us all, who are really fooling? Enh?
So, speak on, Aunty Charlotte. Ne te tais surtout pas, et dis ce dont tu as a dire et dis le a haute voix. We are all in this mess together. After all, when lights go out in my quartier, it goes out in my rich neighbour’s house as well as it does in my house, a poor tenant like me.
- Wandji Wilfred.