ninehillsRAMBLE in the JUNGLE
CAMEROONS Crisis: The real "Power of the People"
By Wanaku Verdzekov · · The Cameroons
Date note: Undated Facebook post, estimated to about 2020.
Tags: citizens, analysis, njangi
The real "power of the people" is the ability of citizens, individually, to analyse their living situation, use logic and reason to dig into the causes of their grief, and fix the issues. No one else can do that.
That's why there is stagnation: self-appointed do-nothings cannot solve the problems, while able citizens wait for them to do so. It won't happen, simply because it does not work that way. Individually, citizens have to figure out, at a granular level, what the problems are and what the right solutions are, and then move on from there.
The Central African, Franco-Camerounese gendarmes and divisional officers in British Southern Cameroons, or AMBAZONIA, West Africa, are thorny branches of a system set up to do nothing but poke holes in any sign of local KOMmunity organizing in AMBAZONIA that actually solves our people's daily problems.
My GrandMa could run a financial operation (a njangi) better than the D.O. or any gendarme.
Ija'iku fɨlasi!
— Wanaku Verdzekov
Reading & grammar
Reading level: Gr 9–11
Understand
- Where does the author say the real "power of the people" lies?
- Why is there "stagnation", according to the author?
- Why does the author mention GrandMa's njangi?
Grammar focus: no one else can. "No one else can do that." Negative words (no one, nothing, never) take a positive verb in standard English: no one else can, not no one else can't.
Try it: Correct these: "Nobody didn't come." "We never saw nothing." Then write two correct negatives of your own.
Discuss: Can individuals solve problems that governments fail to solve? Give examples.