When Cameroonians first heard that an American multi-national had bought the much-abused and moribund SONEL, even those of us who hated privatization heaved a sigh of relief. For once, an Anglo Saxon corporation would be competing with those countless French concerns, which had, with ostentatious arrogance, pillaged Cameroon in the name of running its parastatals. Naive as we were, we took the Anglo Saxon “front” as an augury of many things positive and good. I boasted to a friend that these were American Experts come to Sanitize SONEL. My friend was to have the latter laugh, a year later, when he told me mockingly that those experts of mine had come along with nothing but acute electricity shortage for SONEL, so we should always expect shortage henceforth. I was already disillusioned with the epileptic functioning of the company’s supply of power so I had nothing to say in reply.
Could the Americans now be engaged in the savage capitalistic ploy of "minimum investment-maximum profit?" Read on...
It had already dawned on me that the Americans were after all part of humanity’s lot of bunglers, that they were capitalists par excellence, who understood only the language of ruthless exploitation, and who had no qualms about giving pain to get gain. And I had recalled the controversial “Doctorat Honoris Causa” that had some time ago been granted to Grand Pablo, apparently for embezzlement and high-handedness, by one remote American University. I had come to realize that the dawn of a new era was yet to come and so Cameroonians should prepare themselves to cope henceforth with arbitrary electricity sharing. The intention of this write-up is to probe the application of the load shedding policy, this much touted official panacea (?) for Cameroon’s electricity woes, from the perspective of an uninitiated but victimized and worried Cameroonian living in Bamenda. I said uninitiated because there may be working principles that are beyond my ken.
There is a feeling that the “graffi” man, for whatever reason has been (and is still being) made to suffer or sacrifice more than his fair share in this war to keep Cameroon’s electricity out of the “endangered species” category. Usually, when CRTV has some of its popular, soporific programmes to screen, Bamenda is suddenly plunged into darkness. Maybe many a Bamenda inhabitant no longer bothers so much, especially because he has already accepted his position of scapegoat in the country’s political dispensation. Nevertheless, permit me cite some random examples to show how apparently A.E.S. SONEL inherited and is perpetuating a callously biased application of national policy
In 1998, before Cameroon took on Austria in its world cup opener, Bamenda where I was sojourning was suddenly plunged into pre-historic, primeval darkness. We would be told only the next day that the blackout had stretched from Ndongue, on the outskirts of Douala, through all of Bamileke land to the extremities of the North West Province- basically “graffi” lands. The infamous load shedding had probably begun four years before it would be born and fine-tuned by A.E.S. SONEL. Again and again, Bamenda would be prevented from watching other matches: the Cameroon-Brazil encounter during the bittersweet Confederation Cup Final and the Cameroon-Benin match that took place some time in early June 2004, because of a 36-hour blackout with untold repercussions. That’s that talking about CRTV programmes.
These are just a few random of very many instances when Bamenda was momentarily transformed into a literally dark town, in most cases by expatriate workers from a country which some time recently celebrated its 200th anniversary of the absence of power failure. Countless are the times when Bamenda businessmen, who must use electricity, were grounded for days by cuts, despite the exorbitant taxes they pay. Many cold store owners, on sundry occasions, had to empty and auction or throw away rotting food items. Yet many others who run documentation, photo laboratories, metal workshops etc were also forced into unemployment spells by these disruptive cuts. And many individuals from business and home perspectives replaced many an appliance destroyed in the process. Yet nobody did or has done anything to correct this injustice.
During the 36 hours of Bamenda blackout in June 2004, four G.C.E. candidates, who were revising with the aid of bush lamps and candles, were hacked with machetes by barbaric agents of night and death. Two (or three?) of the victims later died. When the news of this horrendous deed pulled me towards the hospital, I saw crowds milling about and venting impotent anger against a faceless enemy. It occurred to me, and I told those who cared to hear, that we should have rather gone to AES SONEL officials to know why we had been left in the dark for so long in the first place, instead of disturbing and distracting the nurses and doctors. I soon realized that I was the lone belligerent, even if many persons shared my sentiment. To the best of my knowledge, neither explanation nor apology was given and the bosses of AES SONEL Bamenda stayed as elusive and as cavalier as ever.
Matters later took a twist for the worse with local apparatchiks doing their spite to implement load-shedding policy, especially concentrating it only to certain selected areas. There is a line that feeds Nitob 1, Bamenda, and its environs which is always disconnected for at least four out of seven days, when load-shedding is at its apex. Particularly, early in June last year, this same quarter stayed in darkness for five full days and it really pained me to see G.C.E. candidates running agitatedly from place to place to read at night, in a town become a veritable forest teeming with muggers. Many rich and influential persons in this location began re-connecting their houses to other lines-of course there was the wherewithal with which complaisant A.E.S. SONEL agents could be suborned. This game for survival had only begun.
I wrote this piece in the small hours of Saturday June 26, 2004, a day after the written part of the G.C.E., aided by the flickering light of a candle. My Nitob One neighbourhood had again been kept in darkness since last Sunday, with neither official explanation nor apology, despite the fact that G.C.E. candidates had one more full week to round off their end of course exams, and despite the European Cup extravaganza that was going on with its attendant throbs of sensation. These unfortunate G.C.E. candidates were not able to finish with flourish. And soccer aficionados in this quarter weren’t able to enjoy those thrilling moments of football magic that make them and their fellow countrymen tick; they didn’t watch any other matches till the competition ended. I finally came to know what was the ostensible cause of the blackout.
When I asked an AES SONEL agent what our crime was and he told me that lightning had destroyed our transformer and a new one was rather very expensive and not readily available. Nevertheless, he went on, their branch manager had just gone to Douala hopefully to get one from there. What an easy and convenient way of keeping a section of the town permanently “load-shed” for a pretty long time, I then mused. And of course business was booming for him. While we spoke, he was hurrying up and down electricity poles to reconnect a family, which had just given him a cool 35.000frs. Quite many others had already been favoured thus and many others were queuing up, cash in hand. The queue kept getting longer, and business brisker as more days rolled by. Make a rough calculation based on the sum mentioned and the fact of “many” and you’ll begin to realise just how fabulously rich functionaries in some of our national services are. Maybe this is not at the expense of A.E.S SONEL (?) but for certain it is the already pauperized masses that are the worst casualties.
However, something about these latter worries me. It maybe a surfeit or a nasty after-taste from the days of ferment in the nineties that today kills their will to raise a finger against glaring injustice. They accept everything and anything with passive resignation, even when you see them seething with indignation. On many occasions, we have agreed at meetings to go and talk issues out with A.E.S SONEL officials, but have never effectively done so because everyone suddenly becomes very busy and you appear to be the lone voice sounding a discord. When in June 2003 we agreed to, only two of us ended up going there. In 2004, it was the same set-up and we stayed in the dark for pretty long.
Thus these parents do nothing when they and their families are deprived of BASIC facilities for long spells at crucial moments. And they do nothing when, despite the prolonged periods of blackout, they are still fleeced of large sums of money in the name of bills. They equally do nothing when thieves harass, rob, rape, maim and/or kill their loved ones or when “feymen” dupe them of large sums of money. All they do is sit in the countless bars fondling and kissing their best love of all, the bottle. Maybe these beleaguered Bamenda folk, representative of Cameroon’s oppressed, will march in protest again only on the day they visit these favourite haunts and find no bottles to fondle and kiss. In the meantime, we of Nitob 1, Bamenda, many of who always have perpetually clogged cavities whenever load-shedding begins, the effect of inhaling too much candle and kerosene smoke, continue to cope with our hellish blackouts, while waiting to pay the very exorbitant bills that we must inexorably pay to our electricity god when bills come out. In the meantime, we continue to pay more than our due of the natural price called load shedding, to suffer unjustly on the altar of the whims of these ardent egomaniacs
Comments