Jean-Marie Teno's two provocative new documentaries Chef! and La tête dans les nuages together with his earlier Afrique, je te plumerai offer the most searching critiques available on film of the political and economic stagnation besetting many African states. At the same time, he introduces us to grassroots forces in civil society and the informal economy which are usually overlooked by the Western media but which could point the way towards vigorous democratic development in Africa.
In his most recent film, Chef!, Teno locates the roots of Africa's authoritarian regimes in the patriarchal family, reinforced by traditional kingship and the colonial experience. Teno insists that this film was not planned but imposed itself on him during a visit to his ancestral village, Bandjoun, in the Ghomala speaking region of Western Cameroon. He had gone to film dances dedicating a monument to King Kamga Joseph II, the filmmakers' great grand uncle, but the ceremony soon turned into a celebration of one-man rule, in particular Cameroonian President Paul Biya's.
The next day Teno encountered a vigilante mob kicking and screaming at a 16-year-old boy who had stolen some chickens. It is easy to imagine what might have developed if the filmmaker and his camera had not been present. Teno comments "The paradox of this country is that the national sport - far more popular than soccer - is the plundering of resources by our heads and chiefs, yet a youth was nearly lynched for stealing one hen and four chicks." Teno wonders if the powerless in the face of massive injustice take out their rage on those less powerful than themselves.
A few hours after this, incident Teno bought a souvenir calendar listing "the rules and regulations of the husband in his home." These included: "The husband is always chief - even in bed;" " If the husband strikes the wife while visitors are present, she must smile and pretend that nothing has happened; etc. Teno wryly observes that if every husband is a chief then Cameroon is a nation of 7 million chiefs. The director of the Association for the End of Violence to Women points out that the husbands' dominance over his wife is guaranteed not only by tradition but the French Civil Code of 1804 still operative in Cameroon though long since revised in France itself.
Teno interviews a number of Cameroonian human rights activists who denounce "a political culture of irresponsibility granting those in power complete impunity and no accountability." President Paul Biya has disbanded most civic movements to protect what he calls "Cameroonian style" or "peaceful democracy." For example, in December 1997 Pius Njawe, editor of an opposition news weekly, Le Messenger, was arrested simply for asking if the President had left a football match because of ill health. Njawe was condemned to two years imprisonment in the horrifying, disease-ridden Newbell prison where 150 prisoners are crowded into 30' by 40' cells stacked three deep without a sewage system or adequate food. In prison, Njawe learned there was a fixed schedule of bribes that needed to be paid even to get a trial date; he came to perceive the Ministry of Justice as a giant business enterprise selling freedom.
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