CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background to the Study

Globalization describes the era that is emerging from the shattered glacis of the Old Cold War divide. Helping shape this era is an energetic economic powered by accelerating pace of transport, telecommunications and information technology.

Defined broadly, globalization is the process of growing international activity in many areas that is creating ever-closer ties, enhance interdependence and greater opportunities and vulnerability for all. Events at the far corner of the eart are now affecting each other, countries and regions are being drawn closer together, key trends are interacting as never before and the pace of change is accelerating. Because of it, the 21st century will be the first truly Global century.

Mastering the challenges of the Global Century will require governments everywhere to see, think and act globally in ways never demanded of them before. In previous centuries, the world history was determined largely by events in only a few regions, particularly Europe and North America. Now, the future is shaped by the actions and interactions of countries and people all over the world. Nobody knows what globalization will produce, but it is here to stay. It is to bring progress rather than trouble, its powerful dynamics must be channeled in constructive directions by sound government policies.

The emerging global system is rapidly ending old boundaries between foreign and domestic affairs as well as between economics and national security. Developments in one sphere are increasingly having rapid and sometimes surprising effects on others.

Despite the power of markets, the role of government remains crucial. Indeed, a peaceful security climate must first be created in most regions before globalization can take holding wars that bring economic prosperity, democracy and multilateral community building. Creating such a security is first and foremost the job of diplomacy foreign policy and defense planning on the job of markets, transport and finances.

The wide-ranging effects of globalization are complex and politically charged. As with major technological advances, globalization benefits society as a whole, while harming certain groups. Understanding the relative costs and benefits can pave the way for alleviating problems while sustaining the wider payoffs.

It is in the context of globalisation that the revolts underway in Cameroon draw all their energy. Cameroonians are trying to integrate themselves into a world where barbarism, political enslavement and oppression of the masses are becoming increasingly rare, and where the quest for freedom and dignity marks the history of humanity. This is not a Cameroonian exception, but a stage in humanity where societies are inspired by a model from elsewhere to claim their sovereignty while being globally agile.

As Robert Pianka, the American founder of the intercultural training company, Global Agility Services LLC, states: “It is important that our individual identity matches the identities of the social groups with which we identify. The quality of our fitting determines whether we are socially agile or incompetent.

Since globalization has recontextualized our lives, bringing us face-to-face with everyone on Earth, we need to complement the social and national agilities of the previous era with global agility. It is hard to do that if we are socially incompetent in the first place.” The people of Cameroon aspire to live in this globalised world: the ‘global village’. And their integration into this world will only be possible through the establishment of inclusive political institutions and social progress. To achieve this, nothing is more natural than to subscribe to non-violent methods of struggle, or better still, to soft power.

Even if, in the face of authoritarian rule, the people seem to ‘take their time’, this is a large part of their identity. Taking up Robert Pianka’s thinking on global agility, they are a “globally agile” people because they know “the many cultural dimensions in which similarities and differences are defined” and use them for their “integration into the evolution of the world.”

It is therefore outside of all xenophobia, all extremism and all sectarianism that the Cameroonian people draw the strength of their resistance and the substance of their struggle. Over the past four years, several demonstrations have been organised by the Cameroonian diaspora living in the West to oppose the war in the English-speaking regions of the country and protest the electoral fraud. In September 2017, during the UN General Assembly, thousands of Cameroonians massed at the entrance of the UN headquarters in New York to protest against President Biya and his government.

Later,, January 2019, social media platforms streamed the protests outside the Cameroonian embassies in Paris and Berlin, staged by activists hostile to the Biya regime. The Cameroonian people are globally agile and will complete their integration into the ‘global village’ by working tirelessly for the advent of a society where social progress is an indissoluble value. Observation of the national political field reveals that fear is no longer on the side of the people, but on the side of the powerful who have starved the people and insulted them after having impoverished and plundered them shamelessly.

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