Jean-Paul Pougala: Raider of the Broken Ark

Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) is often described as a forgotten Italian philosopher, mathematician and Dominican friar who spent most of his adult life wandering foreign [at times hostile] lands, earning some notoriety in the Parisian lecture circuit with his lectures on the nature of ideas and the universe; during his time in England, Bruno who was also a playwright had an audience with Queen Elisabeth before heading to Germany.

After fourteen years abroad, and about twenty books published, he returned home to the republic of Venice where he was charged and sentenced to the stake for heresy by the inquisition. There are many versions of his last days, but today, he is remembered for his writings on memory, a pioneer in what would later be termed epistemology, and his pantheistic ideas.

“Time is the father of truth; its mother is our mind,” Bruno wrote.

Jean-Paul Pougala, a self-proclaimed disciple of Bruno is a Cameroonian essayist, who spent over two decades in Italy, fourteen years in China, and claims to have visited twenty-two African countries.

Like his mentor, Pougala has spent a most of his life crisscrossing the globe, teaching, lecturing and using whatever platform at his disposal to distill his theories, opinions and analysis on geo-political issues. His primary concern is the continent of Africa.

According to Pougala, the world as it is has made Africa the designated victim, the continent's distorted image and reputation transmitted in the most subliminal of ways. Thus, in his "Géostratégie Africaine (ISBN 9791091059008)", a recently released collection of essays addressing a range of geo-political issues and events which have marked the second decade of the 21st century in the African continent, the author argues that:

“Strategic formation enables the youth to be proud to be African…because when a child is raised to think he or she is inferior, their country is worthless, and the African continent is hopeless, by the time they enroll in university, it is already too late.”

Pougala's ideas and arguments, if viewed from a certain perspective are akin to heresy, but it is his willingness to throttle public discourse, which has propelled him to notoriety.

During the post-election crisis in Ivory Coast, he was amongst a handful of African intellectuals to circumvent the global media's narrative of the crisis with a counter-narrative in the face of the blitzkrieg.

In “The Ivorian Crisis or the Prelude to a Sino-Western Conflict”, written in January of 2011, barely weeks after the elections, on the eve of Ivory Coast becoming a cause célèbre for the likes of The New York Times, BBC and France24, Pougala contemplated whether:

“It [the Ivorian Crisis] is the prelude to a tumultuous era between Africa and Europe; the latter in denial of the unyielding autonomy the former has attained fifty years after the parody that was independence.”

Pougala ended his essay highlighting three lessons he had drawn from the Ivorian crisis; the UN had abandoned its role as peacemaker, the reason for which it was created in the first place, and had now become an instrument of destabilization and facilitator of civil wars; the United States of Africa must be achieved in the quickest possible time; the African continent might become the battleground for the first world war of the 21st century.

On April 11th, images from the private living quarters of Mr. and Mrs. Gbagbo were broadcast across the globe in what could only be viewed as the Françafrique version of the “domino theory”, which states that:

“If one country in the former French colonies aspired toward economic sovereignty, then the surrounding countries would follow in a domino effect.”*

In Pougala's view, in Ivory Coast, Africans had lost yet again, and while the continent was still licking its wounds, a tempest was hovering over Tripoli. In a letter, which was translated in multiple languages entitled “Letter from an African to the American President Barack Obama on the War in Libya,” Pougala pontificated:

“Mr. Obama, the African youth have long understood through the globalized world, how your system enslaved their parents, but also that their misery, their suffering, their humiliations are not irreparable as they are not engraved in marble.”

Then, confirming what President Obama, Prime Minister David Cameron, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and NATO's military planners were well aware of before making the decision to throw their weight behind those they had determined to be Libya's “liberators”, Pougala confessed:

“We are aware of our weakness and that of our ancestors. Yes, we are a race that has lost, we lost every battle against the West and perhaps you would tell me that we are losers forever. But, Mr. President, beyond the cup and medal winner, the loser has something the others do not know, and do not see and which ultimately make it harder - it is the suffering, disgrace and shame of defeat.”

A few weeks after his letter to the American president went viral, the Libyan leader's capture, torture and murder was captured on tape, and broadcast around the globe. The next day, the same images were rebroadcast alongside remarks and photos of Western leaders reacting to the video of Colonel Al-Kaddafi's final moments.

Pougala describes himself as an economist, entrepreneur and geo-strategist. He is no prophet but borrows from the prophetic tradition—which has served others before him—when he states:

“Africa will achieve strength and real freedom through its capacity to act after thoughtful consideration; and when it takes responsibility for the consequences of its actions. Dignity and respectability come at a price. Are we prepared to pay that price?”

*Author's definition of the Françafrique version of the domino theory.

Kangsen Feka Wakai is a Boston based writer.