Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the public representations of elite secrecy and imaginaries of the occult in Cameroon, a former French colonial outpost, and their wider implications for approaching the contested character of contemporary French-African relations .

Paper long abstract:

This paper focuses on elite affiliations to Freemasonry in Cameroon and its role in animating popular discourses and rumors about the 'secret' lives of elites as well as witchcraft accusations against some of these elites. Freemasonry is a global esoteric society whose origins in African contexts such as Cameroon cannot be dissociated from imperial colonial projects during the late 19th century. Today, in these African settings like in France itself, Masonic elites are under increasing suspicion of being dangerous agents of an illegitimate, dark and secretive power structure (Freemasonry) that constitutes a "para-state", a state within a state. Furthermore, in the case of French West African states such as Cameroon elites presumed to be affiliated to Freemasonry elites are further suspected of being agents for the perpetuation of neocolonial domination of African countries by France during the postcolonial era.

By focusing on Freemasonry as an object of popular suspicion against elites in Cameroon, the paper attempts to analyze how these locally-inflected trajectories of elite suspicion in Cameroon fit a more global atmosphere of conspiracy theories against elites, one that connotes with popular anxiety and suspicion of elite power that prevails today. But in doing so, the paper will also attempt to clearly delineate how these trajectories of popular suspicion against elites in Cameroon, like in many other former French African colonies, depart from these global imaginaries of elite conspiracies to articulate a specifically broader critique of postcolonial relations between France and Francophone African states through the rubrique of "Franceafrique."