Dead Presidents Don’t Bite

By Mwalimu George Ngwane

It is twenty years today, 30th November 2009, since Cameroon’s first President El Hadj Ahmadou Ahidjo took his exit from this world to be laid in Yoff cemetery Dakar Senegal.
 
George Ngwane at Ahidjo's grave in Dakar, Senegal

In September 1995, I was invited to an International Conference on Peace in Dakar, Senegal and was privileged to accompany one of Ahidjo’s family members to the Ahidjo home.

There we had a friendly chat with Madam Germaine Ahidjo.  Though she was going through the mournful departure of her own mother ,she transformed what I thought was a mere patriotic courtesy call into a tirade of the exploits of her late husband, the “nationalistic” circumstances that led to his death and the difficulties she was encountering trying to bring the remains back to Cameroon.

In July 2009, I was invited to Dakar by the Government of Senegal and the University of Cheick Anta Diop to a symposium on the “United States of Africa”.  How could I weave this web of African Unity without forging the link of the past with the threads of the future?  How could I savour the expectations of a new generation struggling to make Africa united without recognizing the efforts of past African leaders whose attempts at laying a foundation for a United Africa constituted the critical entry point to our pan African discourse?  These questions found their answers in my visiting the grave of Ahmadou Ahidjo at the Yoff cemetery there in Dakar. 
 
In the company of two other Cameroonian friends, the cemetery cleaners asked us what our government was doing to hurry the corpse back to our country.  We stood dead silent not so much in memory of the deceased but in contemplation of such a time when Ahmadou Ahidjo, Andre Marie Mbida, Um Nyobe, Felix Roland Moumie, Z.N. Abendong, Douala Manga Bell, John Ngu Foncha, Augustine Ngom Jua, Emmanuel Mbella Lifafe Endeley, E. E Ngone, Samson Adoeye George, F. Ajebe Sone and all our heroes and heroines shall in the true African spirit of national healing and reconciliation have a befitting monument or mausoleum which may be called “Cameroon’s political pantheon” be erected in their honour.  When I returned to the Conference Hall at the Hotel President Meridien, Dakar, it was the daughter of Kwame Nkrumah and the son of Cheick Anta Diop who were addressing participants.  The past was gently crawling into the future and Africa’s redemption song was in ecstatic triumph.  How long shall they kill our prophets while we stand aside and look?

No Cameroonian in his or her rational mind can atone for the iron grid machinery that was Ahidjo’s political mantra and his leadership trademark, but no one with the benefit of historical hindsight can also refute Ahidjo’s rare blend of political highhandedness and his economic level headedness.  A friend of mine once remarked that America had just ushered in their 44th President, Barack Obama, yet America’s currency still carried the effigy of their first President George Washington.  We have had just two Presidents and until a couple of years ago, the mention of Ahidjo’s name in public space could earn you a free one way ticket to Kondengui prison.  Thanks to recent government overtures, media advocacy and President Biya’s interview in France some years ago, Ahidjo’s name has now been rehabilitated.  The remains of Francois Tombalbaye (former leader of Chad) and Milton Obote (former leader of Uganda) have had a heroic return to their respective countries heralding a template on which national catharsis and spiritual bonding can be built. Dead Presidents don’t bite. At a time our nation is fashioning visions and rebranding theories aimed at lifting the ordinary man from the bottom of the economic pyramid, at a time when our revisionist history and collective psyche should transcend the blame game of boom and doom, at a time when regional identities seem to be at variance with national development, we Cameroonians need to make our country “the cradle of our Fathers, Holy shrine where in our midst they now repose”.

 
Twenty years later we may not have forgotten Ahidjo’s hidden and hideous machinations to reconquer political power, but we must indeed learn about the human flaw and frailty that make all mortals want to elongate their tenure of political office even when the elasticity of age, time and performance has been stretched to a breaking point.