INTERNATIONAL

CALIXTHE BEYALA: << AN INDEPENDENT WOMAN WHO FOGHTS FOR AFRICA>>

Raphaelle Lucas

The woman-writer Calixthe Beyala, originally from Cameroon, today lives between Belleville, a multi-ethnic district of Paris, and her native land. Through her novels, it is her own life that files by and her struggles that seep through: the emancipation of African woman and integration.

<< I was the dirtiest little girl in the district, but I was a princess. I did not wear a crown, but my grand mother plaited me one which was invisible to the eye. I was, at the same time. The center of her ambitions and of all her hopes, her past and her future>>. This is how <<Tapoussiere, a girl of about ten and main character of Calixthe Beyala's novel, introduces herself. The novel is <<La petite fille du reverbere>> (the little girl of the street light), which came out in 1998, and it is one of her most autobiographical books. Indeed, just like her, the heroine grew up in shanty town in Cameroon. Just like her, she knew her mother very little. Just like her, a different future lay ahead. For Tapoussiere, it would be the discovery of the ancestral heritage of Africa. For Calixthe, it would be Belleville and writing.

She was the sixth of a family of twelve children in Douala and Calixthe Beyala was brought up by her sister who allowed her to go to school and to survive in spite of the surrounding poverty. At the age of 17, she left her country for France, got married, passed baccalaureat higher school certificate and then joined her husband who was a diplomat in Spain. She started tp be interested in the idea of writing. Back in France, in 1985, she signed on for a course in Spanish literature at university and, two years later she made it. She wrote her first novel, <<Le sloeil qui m'a brulee>> (The Sun hath looked upon me), in which she speaks of the despotism of men, of men, the wrong-doings of corrupted westernisation and of the fight that African woman has to wage, it is a theme which will be at the center of her life and of her work.

A lively style and great ideals
So Calixthe Beyala seriously got down to writing. In 1998, she published <<Seul le diable savait>> (only the devil knew); in 1990, <<Tu't appeleras Tanga>> (Your name shall be Tanga); and in 1992, <<Le Petit Prince de Belleville>> (Look houl the <, little Prince>. Of Belleville). These are followed by <<Maman a un amant>> (mummy has a lover) (1993) and <<Asseze the African), which was awarded the Tropiques prize and then the Francois Mauriece prize in 1995. However, in that same year a vast polemic broke out. A reader had naoticed strange similarities between >>Le petite Price de Belleville>> and the translation of the novel; by Howard Butte, <<Quand j'avais cinq ans, je m'ai tue>> (when I was five, I killed myself). The affair caused a scandal and the writer accused of plagiarism. In 1996, she was sentenced by the Court. Two years later, she explained her view of things to the newspaper <<Le Soir>>. "I have the right to be inspired? All the great writers admit to having done so. The real question is: what is creation? When we see a painting, we do bot ask ourselves if a certain yellow comes from Van Gogh."

This misadventure did not prevent her from being acknowledged by the Academie Francaise, which warded her its special 1996 prize for the novel, for <<Les honneurs perdus>> (lost honors) in which she once agiain takes up her fight for the emancipation of African woman, "I am an independent woman who fights for Africa", she declared at the time. "You cannot imagine how happy you are making all the woman of Africa," she said, addressing the members of the Academie Francaise. Here too, her novel is largely inspired by her life. Between Couscousville, on the outskirts of Douala, and the hill of Belleville, the road is long and difficult, full if pitfalls, small pleasures and great tragedies, as summed up her publisher. It is a road that the heroine Saida would take, clinging on to her honor, her only wealth. It is the fantastic story of a young Muslim girl who wants top integrate and where there is a combination of cynicism and indifference, written in a flamboyant style, full of honor and derision. The problem of integration also lies at the heart of her latest novel <<Amours sauvages>> (illicit love), published by Albin Michel in 1999. In it, Calixthe Beyala relates the misadventures of Eve-Marine, an African gir who, on arrival in Belleville, works as prostitutes for <<Monsieur trente pour cent>> (Mr. Thirty percent) and ends up being called <<Bonne surprise>> (good surprise) as a tribute to the low price other services, and marrying, <<Plethore>>, a slightly lazy white artist and writer, in fact, she had been looking for a white man for a longtime as, for her, a mixed marriage symbolized integration and hence consideration.

Her passionate quest for a rvised version of the values of the Republic (Liberty, Equality, Mixity), led the young womn to go so far as to sue the Ministry of Labor, the CSC (Conseil Superieur de l'Audiovisuel) (Higher Council of the Audiovisual) and the Ministry of Culture, considering that, on television, immigrants wer poorly presented or not at all.   << A fringe of the French population has no protection of itself on television", she deplored.

However, her most famous battle, which has crossed frontiers, still remains the fight to improve the condition of African woman and it is always present in her books. In addition to a French language public, her novels are highly successful abroad and have been translated into English and German. They are of interest to academics and fit in with a broader trend. Adile Cazenave from the University of Tennessee thus analyses the situation <<The generation of French language African women novelists of the last 10 years is characterized by a visionary criticism of post-colonial societies. In this respect, the introduction of a new sexual ethic between men and women becomes a priority in their vision of Africa in the future. Beyala ( a woman from Cameroon), Boni ( a woman from Ivory Coast), Tadjo ( a woman from the Ivory Coast) and Rawira ( a woman  from Gabon) are particularly representative of this trend in African novel written by woman.>>

Understanding Political Corruption

-Dr. Devendra Raj Panday, Nepal

Corruption is an ancient practice in all lands and at all times practiced by people with public power and an inclination to use it for private ends. South Asia is no exception. With its history strewn with stories of wars, invasions, colonization and deprivation the region has its share of the climate  that automatically breeds corruption. Now that the struggle against corruption is emerging as a global campaign, South Asia too needs to be a part of it.

Today corruption of all  kinds and sizes is a routine in the region. No country and no sector within a country are spared. Its growth is seen both in the quantity and the quality of the act. Modern corruption in South Asia is said to be associated with colonial administration. To some extent this is true because colonial administration is also associated with unequal international trade and waging wars, both if which activities provide a fertile ground for nurturing corruption. Elsewhere in Asia, the "clean" Singapore of  today had developed corruption as a way of life during the colonial period, and more so during and after the war. Singapore started cleaning up operation much later, after it became sovereign state. In South Asia, however, the situation was just the opposite of Singapore's experience in one crucial respect. Whatever might have been the exploits of the Lord Clives and the Warren Hastings, the empire-builders left behind elaborate administrative and legal structures, a work culture based on probity in public life and a remarkably competent and clean (though a status quoist, as many would allege)  civil service to independent India , Pakistan, Sri   Lanka  and other former colonies in the region. Corruption obviously existed then as now at lower rung where revenue officials, policemen and employees engaged in railways, public works and the like always like "to taste honey on the tip of their tongue". But in, India , corruption became a way of life only from the late 1960s when bureaucratic corruption, defined simply as corruption that corrupts politics and vice versa. Corruption becomes political when it becomes systematically institutionalized. Such corruption systematically impairs the functioning of political and economic institutions. It is this corruption that qualitatively transformed the act from being and opportunity-related personal aberration, even when found in clusters, as in a custom house, for example, to an institutionalized nexus that sabotages the very purpose of the state and its constitutional mandate. With successive changers in leadership, changes started to surface in the behavior and style of the key political leaders that brought about a shift in political culture itself. The image of most political leaders became gradually tarnished as the sixties drew toward a close. It generated cynicism, frustration, and a lowering of standards all around including senior bureaucracy. In Pakistan, there has been a transformation of a similar, bet perhaps more sinister kind with the army exercising a critical role in politics that, at the same time, remained shackled by forces of feudalism.

The anticipated "modernizing" influence of the business class could not surface either. Relying heavily on state largesse, as in not only Pakistan but also Nepal, this class, too, regularly corrupts and is corrupted, in return, by the political class.

This particular nuance of the history of corruption in South Asia must be kept in mind as one tries to understand the impact of corrupt practices in  governance today. Rightly perhaps, much is made of the pervasive corruption and the specific scandals and scams – in cases from embezzlement of public funds meant from fodder for livestock, malfeasance in defense contracts or any other public procurements to shortchanging the stock market – and similar "events" in the region. However, unless the discussion is focused more on the "progress" rather than the events of corruption with emphasis on how politics or political corruption fuels it, the diagnosis that we make will not lead to the remedy we seek. More broadly, political debate and social discourses on democracy and development- the intertwined process that "good governance" is expected to lead and facilitate for the benefit of all peoples without discrimination – will remain academic, if not futile, unless the problem of political corruption is addressed head on.

Effect of Economy

The effect of corruption on the economy is well known. The ordinary people suffer the consequence in their day to day life. The distortion it beings to resource allocation and, consequently in the pace and quality of economic development is also a matter of routine knowledge.

The most demanding cost of political corruption on the economy has been in the confusion it has created in the debate with regard to the role of the state in economic development and management. In South Asia, the principal governance issue is not about whether the state is over-loaded or if it has taken duties beyond its area of competence. If the issue is at all one of competence and capability, the state stands in bad stead to perform any public function – from maintaining law and order to promoting good policies. The fundamental; problem, is that, because of political corruption, the state is incapable of playing the role of a mediator that it must to balance the interests of not only the socially and historically disadvantaged groups but also, literally, the majority of the people with that of the ruling classes. Corruption in high places fuelled by the "Upper class aspirations" of public servants with the ministers, members of parliaments and bureaucrats of today jockeying for the space enjoyed by their cohorts in the colonial administration and the like has come in the way of the state playing this role. Unless governance is pursued, not with a hidden ideological agenda, but as a practical domain for combating corruption, tinkering with the role of the state will not lead to positive results.

Economic efficiency is not necessarily assured by the reduced role of the state. Corruption has grown side by side with the growth of market forces in most countries. The erosion of state authority does not necessarily lead to the growth of directly productive entrepreneurial class. It can also empower Mafia groups as it has done most prominently in many countries including Russia amongst the so-called "transition economies".

Effect on Civil Society

Usually corruption is understood and debated only for its direct material consequences which obviously are important. More so, when corruption affects every thing from the day to day living of ordinary citizens to the return on investment and the sustainability of projects and programs erected in the name of development. Even when politically contextualised, the analysis ad interpretations limit themselves to debates on who gain(s)ed, and who loses or lost from recourse to corrupt practices in political competition. However, corruption is not only about greed of  some people, and money changes hands for the benefit of some at the cost of the others. It is about human relations, about values and institutions and about a sense of community among the people, the erosion in which harms the society beyond the immediacy of current event and material calculations.

The crisis makes corruption in general acceptable as a way of life. Civil society too has thus suffered in varying degrees in different countries rendering it unable to play the role it must to help democracy function as designed in the constitution. The crisis of democracy becomes unmanageable, when the alienation of the common people also drives then to be shortsighted and self-seeking to such an extent that they become instrumental not in checking corrupt practices but in fanning them. Similarly political corruption has blocked possibilities of ostracisation of the corrupt as the nexus between crime and politics becomes a basis for political power and enrichment of a wider section of the population. The urban intellectuals rarely show their solidarity with the powerless and the oppressed. The rural elite develops their linkages with the center rather than "clients" in the periphery. They tend to look after their own interests to the point where there is syndicalism, not a process of check and balance within and among the peer groups. Even the academics and intellectuals may cease to be creative and thus fail their traditional role of a dissenter and  a moral force against a corrupt order eating at the vitals of the society. Influential journalists regularly indulge in the image building of the corrupt and covering up corrupt acts of leaders who may be powerful only because they know better than others how to abuse power.

( Paper presented by the author at a SA regional seminar, CASAC, held last December in Kathmandu-Chief editor).