MK’s THOUGHTS N° 41 to 60
MK’s THOUGHTS N° 041-2024.
Without forgetting them in the slightest, we must stop lamenting our historical misfortunes and work to ensure that they never happen again. It is only through power that we can demand apologies and even reparations from the perpetrators. States have no moral conscience. When they feign contrition, it is because their own interests demand it. They will then rub a balm of verbiage on aching hearts, if that is what it takes to turn the page, but will not hesitate to do it again if their own interests so require.
MK’s THOUGHTS N° 042-2024.
Africans spend their time studying the philosophers and other thinkers who have provided the intellectual and moral foundations for their enslavement, contempt and exploitation. The more discerning seek to understand the thinking of these authors in order to exercise their critical function, while others are content to assimilate them and take pride in the idea, validated by others, that they have mastered the writings of these theorists of subjugation who denied their humanity. Rare are those who question or propose answers to the existential question of the conditions of access of Africans to power and self-protection. We need to break the mental chains that prepare us for the belief that we are nothing and can do nothing without those who yesterday denied our very humanity, these complexes that predispose us to trembling and submission.
MK’s THOUGHTS N° 043-2024.
Sixty years or even a century is such a short time in the history of nations. Africans can retrace for themselves the map of their nations, inventing new formulas for the construction of new, larger, richer and stronger states, the only ones capable of facing up to the many challenges and perils to which they are and will be exposed, while awaiting the realisation one day of a continental or quasi-continental state.
MK’s THOUGHTS N° 044-2024.
We cannot continue to lament the fact that our current states are the result of arbitrary borders drawn by outside powers and continue to solidify abortive nationalisms and rigidify borders that are absurd given the sociological realities on the ground and the ambition to build a state architecture at continental level. Regional or sub-regional economic communities, often advised by the very people who divided up Africa, have shown themselves to be either useless or pernicious because of the way they have been used. It is now that we must bring together, wherever possible, our current States to build federations.
MK’s THOUGHTS N° 045-2024.
Some non-black or non-Negroid populations find it hard to accept that Africa could be the only cradle of humanity and that humanity is descended from a single African stock, as some of the most renowned scientists have shown. In truth, if Negroes were the richest and most powerful people on Earth, things would be very different. So Africans must know who they are, and never lose sight of the fact that history is always written by the winners or the strongest. It takes a long time for real history to emerge, if it ever does. Africans should not expect anyone to recognise them, they should live their lives.
MK’s THOUGHTS N° 046-2024.
When we have fallen into the abyss where we are, we only rise again to triumph. Let’s come together to sow the seeds of peace and prosperity. History will meet us in 2025.
MK’s THOUGHTS N° 047-2024.
When you proclaim yourself to be « the continent », you have to assume the role you have assigned yourself. You cannot be « the continent » and be among the last. Cameroonians have set themselves a challenge, and they must rise to it: firstly, by showing that they are capable of foiling all the apocalyptic predictions about their country’s political future by achieving the first democratic alternation, through the ballot box and in peace, in the coming months; secondly, by rolling up their sleeves and joining hands to fulfil their natural vocation, which is to be a beacon of light in Africa.
MK’s THOUGHTS N° 048-2025.
Our country’s current leaders have failed in their fundamental mission of preserving peace and security, consolidating the unity of the nation, achieving justice and shared progress, and promoting Cameroon’s international reputation. For a long time now, they have had nothing to offer Cameroonians and Cameroon. At the same time, they have embarked on a headlong rush, as if they didn’t know how to leave affairs with a minimum of dignity, if only out of gratitude for the country that has given them everything. The forthcoming presidential election must be an opportunity to help them withdraw, so as not to prolong their own ordeal and that of our country.
MK’s THOUGHTS N° 049-2025.
In any existential struggle, the greatness of the cause can propel us into lofty spheres, far from our ordinary human attachments. This is the moment of self-forgetfulness. I knew I was ready when I no longer felt the slightest sense of fear at the idea that I might die in the struggle for our emancipation, after all the tragedies that history has inflicted on us.
MK’s THOUGHTS N° 050-2025.
You cannot achieve something great for others, for your country or for humanity, if you do not feel, consciously, that you are the bearer of something greater than yourself.
MK’s THOUGHTS N° 051-2025.
Global geopolitics reveals a desire to fragment states whose size of territory and natural resources arouses the covetousness of rival hegemonic powers. We note, astonished, the deafening silence of the African Union and its Peace and Security Council in the face of threats of fragmentation of territorial giants in Africa, sometimes with the complicity of neighboring countries. Let African states know that most of them will suffer the same fate if they do not become aware of the situation and stand up collectively to block it. We cannot want to build the Unity of Africa and constitute ourselves as spectators of its fragmentation. Africans are capable of finding within themselves the wisdom necessary to resolve their problems whatever they may be.
MK’s THOUGHTS N° 052-2025.
The geographical proximity of Africa and Europe imposes on us a duty of good neighborliness, provided that we are both in the same frame of mind. For the rest, everyone goes out in the morning and takes their own path to get something to put on their household plate when they come home in the evening. No one is obliged to seek their food only from their neighbor if they are not convinced of finding it there. Our steps must lead us wherever the grass is green. It can be here, today, and there, tomorrow. The domination of civilizations is temporal. Alliances between nations are made and unmade. That is how human societies work. Everyone knows that ; Africa is not inventing anything in this regard. So let’s leave the African states alone.
MK’s THOUGHTS N° 053-2025
Nothing can stop a conscience that has broken its chains. The awakening of our youth resounds like the trumpets of deliverance. Nothing must break the momentum.
MK’s THOUGHTS N° 054-2025
Uncompromisingly Cameroonian. Cameroonians always and forever. Cameroonians together, daughters and sons of this land of promise. No obscure laboratory of political malfeasance will succeed in dividing, shattering and fragmenting our people, who are forging themselves in the pain of their multiply injured history. From the depths of Cameroon I hear the same pride in being the singular country that we are; and around the political arena I see scavengers who want to tear our nation apart before offering it up as a meal. No community will be thrown into the sea. Cameroonians we are, Cameroonians we will remain, in our rich diversity that is slowly, gradually being made into one mould. Let those who conspire by hatred against Cameroon, pretending to express opinions, hold it for themselves: they will not destroy the strength of love that kneads this nation.
MK’s THOUGHTS N° 055-2025
I’m talking about the world and the dangers that await divided and unprepared peoples. And all you talk about is your village, and how much you hate your neighbour. As if foreign conquests or reconquests could spare any of you. Do we want to prove right, even in this 21st century, the speeches that have called us ‘primitive beings’, incapable of seeing the world beyond our own backyard, of projecting ourselves into the long term, of anticipating and ensuring our collective survival? Rooting ourselves in our culture is not about returning to some golden age deep in history, it’s about drawing on it to build our identity today, as well as the knowledge that can help us ensure our survival in a merciless world. Tribalism is a stagnation or regression in the construction of modern states and the royal gateway to foreign domination. At a time when the world of states is being reshaped, Africans must break out of the narrow-mindedness and deadlock of tribal thinking to give themselves a chance of survival in free, sovereign and respected states.
MK’s THOUGHTS N° 056-2025
Woman and man are the two legs of human society. If one is missing, society becomes one-legged; if it is a human being, it is said to be crippled, mutilated, splintered. Just like this one, a society without a female leg can’t walk normally, can’t go fast, can’t go far. I’ve never understood the reasons for the inequalities between men and women, apart from physical considerations, and even then. We still haven’t thought enough about this in our societies. By dedicating an International Women’s Day, the world wanted to encourage us to think about this, as well as paying tribute to this pillar of society as a mother, companion, guardian of lives, and worker endowed with every skill. On this day dedicated to her, may the Cameroonian woman forget for a moment the loincloth, alcohol and the depravity of morals, and reflect on the place she intends to occupy in the building of a modern and radiant nation, where she has the same opportunities, rights and duties as men, including the vocation to lead the affairs of our country.
MK’s THOUGHTS N° 057-2025
A person who demands your respect but has no respect for you has no morals whatsoever. He or she dumps his or her own faults on you, in order to victimise you with a defensive attitude that forces you to justify every one of your actions, and compels you to censor yourself, i.e. not to express yourself for fear of hurting him. In politics, this is a mental control technique by which you embarrass your opponent in order to bring him into line or keep him in line. Paralysed by the guilty conscience that your opponent has managed to instil in you, you can’t move and do exactly as he wants. So he or she can win an easy victory over you without a fight. Defamation, slander, lies and so many other similar offences punishable by law are not opinions. An opinion is the expression of a reasoned point of view based on facts. It must be expressed in the form that is appropriate to a civilised society.
MK’s THOUGHTS N° 058-2025
Any long struggle is likely to lead to moments of doubt, discouragement and sometimes even the desire to give up. But in the forest of obstacles and trials along the way, we must never lose sight of the ULTIMATE OBJECTIVE of the struggle. This goal must be our compass, our north star in the night sky. If our eyes are riveted to it, like our minds to the fireworks of victory, we will find the strength to continue the fight, to overcome the obstacles, and the embers of the road will be under our feet like a vital energy propelling you towards final victory. Think of the great relief on the day of that victory and the field of possibilities that will open up the very next day. It’s worth all the sacrifices, because in it we’ll find a higher meaning to our passage on the Earth of Man.
MK’s THOUGHTS N° 059-2025
To do good by force is only conceivable in the denial of the humanity of the other. Those who act in this way are making an extreme affirmation of their intellectual and moral superiority over others. This is how, for example, colonialism legitimised itself by a feeling of superiority in the name of which it invested itself with a «sacred mission», which it wanted to be at once saving, civilising and salvific. But to want to do good by force is to want to do good by evil, which is a logical impossibility (aporia). So to do good by force, with contempt for others and the law, is to do evil. We must recognise this and draw all the consequences to make it possible to build new relationships.
MK’s THOUGHTS N° 060-2025
It is undoubtedly good that citizens are afraid of the law. It is even better that they adhere to the law. Fear of the law conceals a desire to disregard it at the first opportunity. Adherence to the law reflects an awareness of its essential usefulness to the harmonious functioning of society. It is by respecting the law that those in power or responsible for enforcing it teach the rest of the citizens the need to adhere to the law. It is this teaching of respect for the law that transforms every citizen into a guardian of the law, and therefore of good social order. In so doing, they lighten and facilitate the task of law enforcement officers.