Whenever I think of the Mboko Gang, almost always, a horde of Dothraki horsemen riding into battle comes to my mind. Wild, scattered, out for blood, and their loud ululations drowning out the sound of the horses’ hooves clopping the ground.
Other times, it is the image of an albino man that comes to my mind. An albino man in the holiest of holies, on his knees, and bent double under the stinging pangs from the lacerations on his back and the little rivulets of blood flowing from them. They are the result of the auto-flagellations done with the whip in his hand. A whip which he considers to be the only symbol of truth and of reality as it ought to be. Some sort of all-in-one penance, baptism, redemption and canonisation in a gospel he considers to be the one true one.
But here’s the thing about truths. A lie can be repeated so often that it becomes the truth.
I’ve always tried to refrain from arguing….sorry debating with members of the Mboko Gang. I’ve since discovered it to be an arduous task; a walk down the thorny path of futility, one could say. One of the reasons which I consider it to be so is because of their stoicism that I think does not have a foundation on any philosophical or aesthetic conviction exactly, but rather, whose walls are raised in the barns of herd mentality and the social media-induced fear of missing out. A straw-less manger that even Joseph would have turned down.
I had previously been open to a lot of their convictions and had given some leeway, telling myself that I, perhaps, was the problem and that my own views were warped. But the debate around the greatest rapper in Africa has swayed my opinion and my doubts have been assuaged. My perceptual clock has ticked backwards and my leeway compass is now pointing south to a direction that even Captain Jack Sparrow would not be able to set sail to. It’s not even about the fact that they argue that Jovi is the best rapper. I have had too many arguments with people over who is the better rapper between Tupac and Biggie to know that these arguments are often moot.
It is, however, some of the outright ridiculous arguments that were spawned out of that one-sided feud in support of Jovi that marvel me and make my balls itch.
When Ambe, for example, goes on Twitter to say that “after listening to MI’s preachings to Vector i finally reconfirmed JOVI is not only G.O.A.T in Africa but a visionary G.O.A.T in Africa cus MI just did to Vector what JOVI did to MI. MI took lesson from Big Bang to address Vector. Or I’m i the only one who noticed that? (sic)”
… you either begin to ask pertinent questions about the breadth and the depth of his personal convictions and that of anyone else that agrees with him. Or you begin to question our generation’s value system and start to wonder if the spectrum of our openness and our convictions’ elastic limit only stretches so far as to be embodiment of the zeitgeist's desire to create gods of pleasure and wine and crown them supreme deities as a result of our generation's lack of principle and actual power, and in the particular case of the Mboko Gang, wherever the Mboko Mistral blows.
Ashhh! The ridiculousness of ca!
In a way, I can’t really blame any such person. I mean, we are all products of the same educational system; no doubt the greatest fault in our stars. An educational system that is in actual fact, a large factory assembly line through which we all pass, one generic product after the other, built for the mass market, with the only differentiation being etiquettes stamped unto our foreheads saying that we either did the arts or the sciences. An educational system that neither fashions us individually at the hands of the potter encourages critical thinking, nor teaches us that because one believes in something, one must not necessarily always agree with it.
Mboko Gang members sometimes remind me of those literature students that would only read Tah Protus’ summary of the Sheldon Book of Verse in preparation for the GCE, never once opening the original text to see if they could, themselves, get a different interpretation.
BUT, it would be intellectually dishonest for me to tie all self-proclaimed Mboko Gang members into that bundle. All of them are definitely not like that. I actually met with three of these Mboko thoroughbreds over the weekend and we had a bomb-ass conversation for over three hours. One of them was even wearing a Mboko Gang tee-shirt. Our conversation was deep and it was quite edifying. For most of the time, they spoke, while I listened and learned. We spoke about the one-sided Jovi-M.I beef, and let’s just say your favourite Bafut boy will not like their opinion on the topic.
But unfortunately, that’s where the problem lies.
The loudest voices in the Mboko Gang are, unfortunately, not these people. They are, instead, the ones I had once described as newly-minted converts. Especially the ones with little or no hip-hop culture. They are the ones who tarnish the name of what is unarguably the strongest artist community in Cameroon and what has the potential to become a true urban movement (whenever they figure that out).
They are the ones who are eager to jump on any Jovi bandwagon that passes by without wondering in which direction those same horses bred in the stables of herd mentality and FOMO are driving the wagon to. Their raucous hullabaloo on social media resonates so loudly that my phone sometimes vibrates without a call or a notification coming in. Ok… that’s a lie. But you get the picture.
And it doesn’t help that they want everyone else to get onto that wagon, handing down their support and opinion as diktats… you know… little social media writs of Habeas Mbokorpus where the aim is not to secure the release of everyone not onboard but to prove by any means necessary why they need to be detained in Mboko prison.
Vernyuy Tina was right. Freedom is really a type of prison after all.
Ko-C found himself in such a prison not too long ago. You remember the feud he had with Jovi? The Dothraki horde fell on him like the hammer of Thor and smashed his balls so hard that he apologized. In this one-sided African goat pepper-soup feud, he raised his hand, hit his chest 3 times and pledged allegiance to the stars and the stripes of the Mboko Republic. He is now an inductee into the Mboko Gang Hall of the Bandwagon. I’m not sure if it’s a PR move for him or if it’s really his personal conviction. All I know is, I feel all kinds of sorry for him. And not in a good way.
Asssh! The ça a cuit of ça!
All of this reminds me of a Carl Jung quote: “The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong. The numinosum is dangerous because it lures men to extremes so that a modest truth is regarded as the truth and a minor mistake is equated with a fatal error.”
To put it in Lamnso: Carl Jungvidzem is saying that as much as we like to think we choose between what we think is right and wrong, our ethical scales are actually weighing what we consider to be sense and nonsense. And for the newly-minted members of the Mboko church, our educational system’s failures and the pressures of our digital environment has rubbed off on their perception so much so that sense for them is what is said to be the truth in the Mboko bible and their internal albino has been so sedated by the corporal mortification in their mental holy of holies that this ‘modest’ truth is luring them to dangerous extremes. And Mr Gimme the Mic Yo’ has already had to pay the price of that.
That’s the danger we all face. And if someone doesn’t rein in the horses I fear it will only get worse. In all honesty, I don’t even bother so much about the Mboko Gang. I fear for the replication of such communities and for the adoption of such behaviour on individual levels. That in the age of information and open learning, we are so stoic on our convictions and brandish the most ridiculous arguments to advance our positions, and not only that, having a crowd applauding and egging us on is cause for concern.
That is the real danger. And while no one is holding you from loving and supporting Jovi, you have to be wary of the extent to which you are ready to do that and the propensity to which you are willing to drag others into whatever delusions your internal albino must have whipped himself into believing. Because, lie no sweet, at some point naaa, some of you and the arguments you bring to the table are just ridiculous and dim-witted…, to put it nicely.
“I mouf ma mpang shit for road, wona go halla swag.” Jovi may have been right after all. Lmao
- Wandji Wilfred.
. . .
Picture credit📸: Unknown* . .
CONTEXTUAL REFERENCES:
Game of thrones:- an HBO TV series featuring a tribe of skilled horse breeders called the Dothraki
The Da Vinci Code:- A book written by Dan Brown, with one of its scenes having an albino practicing corporal mortification.
Writ of habeas corpus:- A legal term whose meaning you can infer from the article or which you can google
Pirate of the Caribbean:- A movie starring Johnny Depp as captain Jack Sparrow, owner of a compass that doesn’t point north.
The Fault in Our Stars:- A movie starring Shailene Woodley
The Mistral: A strong, cold wind that blows from Southern France into the northern Mediterranean
Carl Jung:- A Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology.
Lapiro:- A song by Jovi from his first album, H.I.V