Professor Paul Nkwi is a professor of
Anthropology at the Catholic University of Cameroon in Bamenda and also former
professor of Anthropology at the University of Yaounde.
Within
the context of knowing Cameroon and its people better, how did the learned
professor take those first steps?
 |
| Professor Paul Nkwi |
I was born in Kom in a small
village called Wombong in 1940. I grew up there and one of my early experience was
the Ghost Town of 1958 which was declared by KNDP that is by Foncha and Ngom
Jua, leading characters in the party who for one reason or the other called for
a strike to disrupt the visit that was to be carried out by Endelley and that
ghost town disrupted schools in present day Boyo and very few of us were
fortunate to go to school then. Probably if I didn’t go to school then I would
not be where I am today. Schools were suspended for quite some time although
the First School Leaving Certificate Examinations were organised. I was lucky
to be among the three pupils who passed the examinations in 1958.
Secondary
Education and the infrastructure to provide such services were scarce at the
time. How did you people go through secondary school?
Because of that disruption,
Catholic School Njinikom became the meeting center for students destined for
Saint Josephs College, Sasse and at that time, there were only two secondary
schools in West Cameroon. These Schools were Saint Josephs College Sasse and the
Cameroon Protestant College, CPC Bali. Thousands of students wrote the entrance
exams and because of the disruptions I had to work the sixty Kilometers to
Mankon to be able to sit for the qualifier exam to Saint Josephs College. Among
those who could make it to Mankon on foot, 10 of us were eventually selected
and from this only two finally made it to Saint Josephs College, Sasse. It took
us three days to travel to Sasse. We travelled from Njinikom to Bamenda and
then waited for Mamfe-go-down. On such days, vehicles only went down through
Widikum to Mamfe. When you arrived Mamfe, you also had to wait for
Kumba-go-down. This was because the roads were so narrow and for you to go
against the direction of the day, the Divisional Officer had to authorise you.
From Kumba we went down to Buea and from Buea if you were lucky then you could
get a car for Sasse but if not you had to do it on foot.
Was
there a university at the time in West Cameroon?
There was no University at the
time in West Cameroon. I went to Saint Josephs College Sasse from 1958 to 1963
and we were the first batch of students in Sasse to learn three major European
Languages. We studied English, French, Latin and Greek. So if you graduated
with your West African School Certificate you would be expected to go and do
the A levels before proceeding to the university. CCAST Bambili became the most
obvious destination for most students but I ended up in a seminary in Nigeria
where I did Philosophy. When we finished Philosophy we couldn’t continue so we
were flown to Rome to continue theological studies. From 1967 to 1971 when I
got a…..Licence in Theology I moved to the Catholic University of Fribourg in
Switzerland where I spent six years studying Anthropology and ended up with a
PhD.
How
satisfying has your teaching life been considering the fact that you have
impacted a lot on the lives of Cameroonians in your long teaching career?
While doing my PhD I already
had a teaching job that prepared me for my teaching career. After obtaining my
PhD and with six months of teaching, I applied to come back home and work. When
I came back, my real intention was to spend most of my time doing research but
a friend of mine approached me when we met in Yaounde in 1973 even before I had
left the university because I had won a German UNESCO prize and I flew to
Yaounde to do the paper work. He urged me to come and join them that there was
no Anglophone in the department of Sociology. I jumped on the idea and on the
first of October 1976, I was recruited into the University of Yaounde which was
the only University at the time. My area of specialization was Cultural
Anthropology with emphases on applied domains for example: Medical
Anthropology, Anthropology of Development as well as Systemic Anthropology. My
idea was how to use my accumulated knowledge to help my country in a number of
domains. My thesis was actually based on Political Anthropology and it focused
on the transformation of grass field political institutions as a tool for governance.
My focus was to see the role played by chiefs in the process of independence given
that the chiefs of Kom, Nso, Bali and Bafut were very active, participating in
the negotiations for an inclusive form of government. How could I use
Anthropolgy to help managers of civil society understand the Nitti gritty of
culture which could be used in development programmes? In a sense, when I
started teaching from 1976 until I retired, my focus was teaching Cultural
Anthropology with emphases on applied domains.
Do
you think the mastery of Cultural Anthropology can enhance good governance?
I have always said that Africa’s
emergence from its underdevelopment requires an understanding of Africa’s
Cultural values and norms. We cannot wake up one day and take development as if
it were a copy card issue. My philosophy is what I call the African pragmatic Socialist.
Those values that we have can be used for better governance. The British by
introducing Indirect Rule recognized the value of Traditional Governance
Institutions to move the development process forward. My job has been to help
government to help those who are involved in the development of our local
communities. Don’t begin any development initiative without understanding what
the local culture is. Development that takes into consideration the cultural
dimensions ensures its sustainability. In 1982 at the World Conference on
Culture which took place in Mexico they arrived at the conclusion that for
Africa or any country to move forward, the European model was not the answer.
Studying and understanding African Culture, its values and norms should be the
starting point.
How
hopeful are you with regards to development in Africa?
Through the sixties and
seventies and even up to the eighties, billions and billions of money was
thrown into Africa to develop the continent and we didn’t make any fundamental
breakthrough. The 1982 conference in Mexico simply sort to find out where we
went wrong. Let me site an example. In the seventies, the Cameroon Government
in an attempt to integrate the Pigmy in development projects elaborated a
project which sort to build schools, clinics and encourage production of food
crops. Well they thought that if we built schools all the people would come to
school but nobody came there. This is because when the hunting season came
parents came to the schools picked up their kids and they were gone. Nobody
cared to understand the life style of the Baka Pigmies or the Bantus in the East and the project collapsed. We should
have known that the best form for this people was to train ambulant teachers to
travel with the pigmy colony.
Is
the Anglophone Crises a cultural thing?
The Anglophone Crises is
fundamentally cultural. Whether we like it or not, the British came here and
built schools, fabricated syllabuses, taught us how to live and acquire
knowledge. They gave us a life style which we have come to identify ourselves
with. Nobody can take that from us. Look at the student revolt in the nineties
when they tried to take the GCE from us. Simply saying look here my friend we
have come decades. The GCE system which was organized in Cameroon, controlled by
the University of London or University of Cambridge as the objective way of
appreciating the intellectual capacity of a people isn’t something cooked over
night that can easily be changed. The Nkar people had a language before the Nso
people came and wiped out a culture and a language so much so that the Nkar
people now speak the Nso language and even identify themselves as people from
Nso but there is something that makes them unique and can’t be taken from them.
The Anglophones are simply asserting that they were brought up in a manner that
can’t be taken away from them.
Let’s
talk about the award that you received recently at the hands of the Minister of
Arts and Culture.
It came as a surprise. I
received a phone call to come to Yaounde for an award. I think it’s an
acknowledgement of my contribution to the building of a culture vision in
Cameroon. Having taught for 40 years, there are hundreds of Cameroonians in the
various services and ministries. Many of them are working in the Ministry of
Culture and other ministries and I think it is simply in recognition of this
that I received this award. The Bilingualism and the Multi-Cultural Commission
does not solve the Anglophone problem. It is important that we see that
Cameroon is made up of four diverse cultural groups.
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