after the death of Martinez Zogo, the end of time has begun

Over time, Cameroonians have forgotten that the end of rule in Africa is the end of the world. Cameroon has therefore disappeared, Paul Biya is Cameroon.

While the end times began some time ago, Cameroonians felt the first jolt last Sunday when they discovered the decaying body of the voice that had become theirs every morning from 10 a.m. An African president who spends 40 years in power becomes both the world and time. His longevity alone cannibalizes all the institutions of the Republic to replace them with the banana plantation of man who becomes more powerful than God.

Paul Biya in Cameroon is more powerful than Jesus Christ, his decree makes and breaks all Cameroonians who strut around in big cars, while a fasting novena of prayer does not guarantee the same result. The president became Cameroon at the expense of Cameroon. The heinous crime of Martinez Zogo who should have set in motion these institutions which confirm that we are still in the Republic seems to await the high instructions of the President of the Republic because it is he who has become the institutions.

Cameroon has therefore disappeared, Paul Biya is Cameroon. Except that despite his omnipotence, he remains a human being with the limits that go with it. Cameroon therefore has a sword of Damocles on its head which is the breath of the human Paul Biya. Cameroonians seem to have forgotten this, going about their business like people too busy building their homes in a country that could disappear at any moment. This is what it means to be very irrational.

We have cultivated irrationality out of the need to survive, by denying the obvious and out of opportunism, ready to say that the sky is red when we see it blue, because we are hungry. We started expecting eggs when we knew we didn’t have a chicken but rather a goat. This irrationality rubs off on our behavior and makes us a society of generalized incapacity where everything is beyond us.

It is also the irrationality that makes us celebrate our elimination from the World Cup because Aboubacar Vincent beat Brazil, making us believe that we are the strongest in the world. Despite the 31 degrees it was in Yaoundé last Monday, it was very cold throughout Cameroon. The absence of Martinez Zogo in the taxis and homes and shops of the capital this morning confirmed to us that the end of the world had begun, let’s say, the end of a world and Cameroonians are afraid because they have never really believed that this world would one day end.

It is however finished after a very long reign in the Zaire of Mobutu, another long reign in the Ivory Coast of Houphouet Boigny. Except that our irrationality blinds us, we are convinced that Cameroon is Cameroon, that Cameroon is the continent. The worst thing about these long reigns is that they ended in decades of war. What we call here with a smirk a war of clans, Bulus against Nangas, Laurent Esso against Ngoh Ngoh and so on, elsewhere the war of clans has quite simply become a war.

And war kills, sows desolation, creates misery and provokes exile. The assassination of Martinez Zogo is the first act of war in this coming end of the world. The question that arises for all of us is: how irrational are we going to remain in the face of this end of the world that has just begun before our eyes? Let’s not forget that no matter how long the night, the day will always end up breaking. How are we going to survive this night of the long knives? How do we prepare for daybreak and in what state will it find us?