PhD thesis Cultural and Social Anthropology

Feymania is the name for successful professional swindlers, a practice which for many marginalised urban youths in Cameroon has become the privileged means of claiming access to financial and material resources from which they are excluded by the present global capitalism, and more importantly by the ruling regime.

Ndjio concludes firstly that the popularization of feymania-related activities as well as the idealization of feymen as role models is the result of the lack of employment perspectives for urban youths, the marginalization of the youth by state power, people’s disenchantment with the democratization process of the early 1990s, and the steady loss of social prestige of the évolués-fonctionnaires (civil servants, and educated elites at large).

Secondly, both the vilification of feymen as mokoagne men (rich sorcerers) and the depreciation of their extraordinary riches as a mokoagne moni (occult or magic money) are informed by moralizing discourses that condemn asocial modes of wealth accumulation and consumption that do not correspond to accepted patterns of self-realisation and social norms.

Thirdly, feymen’s economic success rests above all on their ability not only to ‘straddle’ between legal and illegal businesses, but also to make use of both the prebendal system promoted by the local ruling CPDM regime, and the global economy that offers opportunities for quick enrichment.

Fourthly, feymen’s relationships with the Cameroon state oscillate between the poetics of transgression and the logics of connivance. Indeed, while some successful feymen accept to play the dance of collaboration with the ruling CPDM regime, or allow themselves to be enslaved in ethnic and cultural closures either by the state power or their village fellows, others rather position themselves as the main challengers of the officialdom’s hedonistic culture and the governmental promoted ethno-politics.

This research is related to the present global capitalism, and particularly to the global economy of crime and occult that thrives today in Africa and elsewhere. Ndjio argues that it is only by acknowledging the global process of criminalization of the state and the economy that we can achieve a better understanding of feymania-related practices and other criminal activities in contemporary Africa.

Basile Ndjio: Feymania: New Wealth, Magic Money and Power in Contemporary Cameroon

Promotor: Prof. Peter L. Geschiere, Prof. P.N. Nkwi