(This paper was prepared and presented at the All Southern Cameroons Peoples’ Conference in Washington DC on March 30, 2019 by John Mbah Akuroh, President of the Caretaker Executive Committee of the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium, CACSC)
Abstract
This paper is a cold and detailed analysis on how the annexationist government of the Republic of Cameroon has handled the genuine concerns of political exclusion, socio-economic marginalization and fears of identity erosion expressed by the people of Southern Cameroons right from 1963; only three years after the birth of a federation that was supposed to keep each party’s people happy and their colonial heritage protected at all times, to present date. It traces successive efforts made by the people of Southern Cameroons over the years to render the union workable and demonstrates as well how each time, the response from Yaounde has been denial, excessive and bloody brutality, humiliation and dehumanization. Finally, the paper marks how the hardline approach generally adopted by Yaounde has resulted today, to the overwhelming desire and decision by the traumatized Southern Cameroonians to either achieve outright self-determination or all die fighting.
Introduction
The woes of the people of Southern Cameroons in the union with the Republic of Cameroon began just twenty days after reunification and that was to be a signal for rougher days ahead. On 20 October 1961, President Ahidjo signed a decree reorganizing the federal territory into six administrative regions, including West Cameroon, and appointed a federal inspector for each region, who was to report to the federal president. That provoked discontent among Southern Cameroonians, because West Cameroon could not at the same time be a federated state according to the constitution and an administrative region by decree. Worse, the federal inspector had more power than the elected prime minister of West Cameroon and showed it daily by humiliating members of the federated government and parliament with impunity.
In 1962, Ahidjo signed several orders limiting public freedoms. With the war against the UPC still at its height in East Cameroon, the arbitrary arrest and detention of opponents and trade unionists accused of subversion became common. Other measures, such as the introduction of driving on the right-hand side of the road, the imposition of the metric system and the CFA F as currency took place around the same period. The change in currency entailed a reduction in the purchasing power of Southern Cameroonians by at least 10%. Southern Cameroons’ multimillionaires fell from grace to grass within the twinkle of an eye. Ahidjo also demanded that West Cameroon cut all links with the UK with the result that it lost several export duty advantages afforded to Commonwealth countries.
The federated states did not have financial autonomy and depended on grants from the federal state. Understanding where the real power was located, the Southern Cameroons elites competed for positions in the federal government, spending more time trying to please Ahidjo than defending the Southern Cameroons population. Ahidjo took advantage and manipulated the rivalries among the elites and the ethnic and cultural divisions between Grassfields in the north, which had cultural and linguistic links with the Bamilékés of the west Francophone region, and the Sawa in the south, who had cultural and linguistic links with the Francophone coast. The result was political chaos in West Cameroon, including a split between Foncha and Muna, who left the Kamerun National Democratic Party (KNDP) in 1965 to form the Cameroon United Congress (CUC) and it dissolved into Ahidjo’s unique party- the Cameroon National Union, ending an era of multiparty democracy. This was the start of several years of complaints and repression until the tipping point was attained on the 17th of January 2017 with the banning of the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium- CACSC, the Southern Cameroons National Council- SCNC, the suppression of internet signals all over Southern Cameroons, the arrest of leaders of the Consortium and the launch of a manhunt of all other officials of both organizations.
Birth of the Era of Protests
It was also in 1972 that Southern Cameroonians really began to challenge their marginalization. At the CNU National Congress in 1972, Bernard Fonlon publicly criticized the creation of the unitary republic. Other prominent Southern Cameroonians, such as Albert Mukong and Gorji Dinka were also fiercely opposed. Foncha and Jua wrote privately to Ahidjo and expressed their opposition in the official media. Unification thus left Southern Cameroonians with a sense that their territory was in economic decline; it entailed the centralization and/or dismantling of their economic structures, such as the West Cameroon Marketing Board, the Cameroon Bank and Powercam, as well as the abandonment of several projects, including the port of Victoria (now known as Limbe), and airports at Bamenda, Tiko, Bali and Mamfe with investments in the Francophone part of the country winning out. Despite numerous peaceful means engaged to have these wrongs reversed, nothing has ever been done in this area to date. When Mr. Zacchaeus Fornjindam in his capacity as Managing Director of the National Shipyard company tried to revive the Victoria Deep Seaport project in 2005, he was brutally halted with charges of embezzlement of public funds, was arrested, detained and handed a lifetime jail term. Once he was out of the way, the project was carried to Kribi in the South region of the Republic of Cameroon. To put the icing on the cake, the central government enacted a taxation policy that forces all big companies located in Southern Cameroons to pay their taxes exclusively either in Douala or Yaounde, completely impoverishing the local councils and increasing the level of dependence on Yaounde.
Cat and Mouse Games gain Speed
With the dissolution of all political parties across the Federal Republic of Cameroon into President Ahidjo’s Union National Camerounaise- CNU, the death of the federal system whose substance was already fully drained, was only a matter of time. And it came to pass that in 1972, an illegal referendum was organized, involving even citizens of French speaking Cameroun who never voted in 1961 to accelerate the assimilation of the peoples of the Southern Cameroons. There was no sensitization, and no one could hold any campaign rallies on the choice to be made as was the case with the referendum of 1961, and the options presented to voters made the eventual result obvious; the choice was between “Oui” and “Yes”, simply a choice between “Yes” and “Yes”. Paul Biya put the final nail on the coffin in January 1984 when a signed a decree changing the name of the country from the United Republic of Cameroon (Erected in 1972) to Republic of Cameroon; a country that was already in existence in 1960. This is what became known as the restoration law; it marked the official secession by the Republic of Cameroon from the supposed union sealed in 1961 and the beginning of the rape or annexation of the Southern Cameroons.
In the early 1990, the wind of democracy that blew across sub-Saharan Africa opened a window that many thought could help to right some of the wrongs accumulated over time, but it was of course, a pipe dream. The Social Democratic Front, SDF Party with a huge following in Southern Cameroons and nationwide was quickly labeled “an Anglophone” party and in successive years all was done to deny it a national character and by that any chance of ever acceding to power. Its Chairman, Ni John Fru Ndi was robbed of his victory at the 1992 presidential election mainly because the French could not accept a “foreigner” as president in their overseas territory. The SDF won several councils and Parliamentary seats in the then Centre Province in 1997, but the results were all reversed in favour of the CPDM because, as they put it; “it would be shameful to have an Anglophone party controlling councils in the national capital”. These steps continued, closing chances of ever securing any meaningful changes to the Southern Cameroons case through the ballot box, as exclusion deepened.
In 1993, a tripartite conference was summoned to examine the teething problems of the country. Here, the Southern Cameroons’ delegation suggested a return to the two-states federation as existed in 1961 as a palliative to the numerous problems their people were facing in the union. In reaction, the ruling beti clan rather threatened to ask for a beti state (Centre, South and East) if Southern Cameroonians continued to talk about federalism. This was a clear sign that federalism would never again be on the table as far as the Republic of Cameroon was concerned.
The failure of the tripartite conference to discuss a lasting solution pushed Southern Cameroonians, who had previously held a conference in January 1993 in Buea dubbed; the All Anglophone Conference, AAC, to summon another conference in 1994. At the AAC II, the narrative changed, the people decided a return to the roots by refusing and rejecting the dubious appellation- Anglophones. That is how the Southern Cameroons National Council, the SCNC was born, with a mandate to either force a return to the two-state federation or ignite the independence restoration quest after a reasonable timeframe. The response from Yaounde was one of refusal to recognize the SCNC (which has been outlawed several times) and preferred to tag adherents as secessionists who rather deserved crackdowns and not consideration.
Even as the SCNC was settling down, the erosion of the Anglo-Saxon system of education Southern Cameroonians inherited from British colonial rule was gaining speed. At this point, the Teachers Association of Cameroon- TAC, led by Andrew Azong Wara launched a campaign to obtain an independent examination Board to run Southern Cameroons’ examination. The response of the government was first a denial of the existence of any problems with the system as it were. The teachers carried out countless demonstrations, supported by parents and other sections of the Southern Cameroons public. At one of the demonstrations in the heart of Yaounde, security forces exerted excessive force and brutality on the protesters, pouring truck-loads of water on peaceful demonstrators. In the process, some people lost limbs and others their sight permanently. In the end, a GCE Board was created; but before that, a Baccalaureate Board was handed to Francophones who never even knew what it was all about. The ploy was to water down the influence of the GCE Board and to create room for future calls for harmonization of the two boards; and we have already seen that. The move was a programmed death of the GCE Board that was only granted to calm down tensions. The GCE Board has now been nationalized and measures taken to ensure that most of its administrators would be people from the Republic of Cameroon; that happened only a few weeks ago, even as the armed conflict rages on.
Calls for the creation of an Anglo-Saxon style university in Buea were granted in 1993; and as usual 5 other universities were created for people who never asked for anything. But as the years went by, a programmed takeover was ignited and plans to downgrade the quality of education handed down there were immediately hatched, even as Francophones were given an edge in acceptance into the university on basis of admissibility conditions. It is the practice there to reject Southern Cameroonians’ entry applications because they did not make the English paper at the GCE Ordinary Level examination, despite learning in English all their lives, but accepting Francophone students who passed a six-month crash course in English. Lately, the little margin of independence the university enjoyed has been swept aside, with all powers of core decisions now vested on the President of the Republic of Cameroon.
In 1995, the government felt pressured by a Bamenda High Court judgment with regards to the 1984 presidential decree that reinstated the Republic of Cameroon, withdrawing it from the supposed union of 1961 and beginning the re-colonization of Southern Cameroons. The 1992 judgment took note of the restoration decree of 1984 and granted Fon Gorji Dinka’s prayer to create the Republic of Ambazonia as a successor state of the former British Southern Cameroons. To circumvent criticism that the people ought to have consulted in a popular vote for such an important decision, government sent a bill to Parliament to ratify the change of name from the United Republic of Cameroon to the Republic of Cameroon. Despite putting up a robust fight protect the future of the deceased union, albeit even symbolically by keeping the suffix “united” in the country’s name and returning the second star to the national flag, the 35 Southern Cameroons’ Members of Parliament- mainly of the CPDM and NUDP parties saw their voices drowned by the overwhelming majority of MPs from the Republic of Cameroon.
The Tipping Point
The early years of the return by Cameroon to multiparty politics left a lot of scars on Southern Cameroonians with a lot of derogatory names tagged on the people such as; “Les ennemis dans la maison”- translated “enemies within”, “anglofools”, “Biafrans” and the likes. But none of the tags provoked the kind of reactions that generally followed each attempt to wipe out the Anglo-Saxon sub system of education in the name of harmonization. The Cameroon Teachers’ Trade Union, CATTU initiated and executed several strike actions forcing the government to constantly drawback a little, although generally leaving room to realize its dream.
A forceful call to action on the need to promote technical education in Southern Cameroons but creating a higher institution to train Anglo-Saxon teachers for that sector, resulted in the creation of the Higher Technical Teachers’ Training College, dubbed ENSET Bambili in 2010. Before then, Southern Cameroons students taking technical education received their lectures mainly from Francophone teachers who taught in some language midway between French, English and sometimes their native vernacular. However, the gains supposedly made with the creation of ENSET Bambili were quickly lost as almost the entire administration was handed over to Francophones and the result was that Southern Cameroons hosted the school, but it trained mostly Francophones and the cycle continued. This development left the education sector as an active volcano that will erupt into a joint action with Common Law Lawyers.
When the wind of harmonization hit the legal system, lawyers resisted vigorously and as usual the government’s response was denial, excessive use of force on lawyers’ peaceful protests on the streets of Buea, threats and empty promises. When the lawyers and teachers made their plight a community problem, through the creation of the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium, enlisting every other Southern Cameroonian, the government adopted the stick and carrot approach. It opened negotiations with the leaders of the Consortium, made a lot of flamboyant promises, but when the people insisted on seeing concrete actions as a show of goodwill before suspending the strike actions, the result was the banning of the Consortium and the Southern Cameroons National Council- SCNC, the suppression of internet in all of Southern Cameroons, the arrest of Consortium leaders and the launch of a manhunt for all other stakeholders involved in the uprising and the militarization of Southern Cameroons. Despite all these, the situation only got worse.
When they realized that things were getting completely out of hands, the government deiced for the first time to acknowledge the existence of a Southern Cameroons problem. The Yaounde authorities then took several measures from March 2017 to try and end the crisis. They created a National Commission for Bilingualism and Multiculturalism; created new benches for Common Law at the Supreme Court and new departments at the National School of Administration and Magistracy; recruited magistrates of Southern Cameroons origin and 1,000 bilingual teachers; and turned the internet back on after a 92-day cut. But all these measures were cosmetic because the existence of these commissions and the recruitments did not address the root causes of the crisis in any way and most of the measures were just too little too late. And, unsurprisingly, of the 1000 bilingual teachers recruited, less than 100 were of Southern Cameroons origin.
The true intentions of Yaounde are being shown even as the crisis rages on; the assimilation project is continuing unperturbed. As we speak, a bill is on its way to Parliament in Yaounde to introduce the civil law practice in Southern Cameroons, undermining the Common Law system inherited from British colonial rule; a key factor of the ongoing conflict. This will add to the ongoing targeted killings, the burning of villages and hospitals, arbitrary arrests of Southern Cameroons citizens and their deportation to detention centres across the Republic of Cameroon, rampant kidnappings for ransom, blackmail, extortion and abuses of all kind.
Two Peoples, Two Nations, Two Destinies
Events in the Cameroons lately have demonstrated beyond reasonable doubts that these are two peoples with two different destinies that would never really make it together in whatsoever form of union. Evidence of this lies in the total indifference shown by people across the River Moungo in the face of the ongoing carnage being visited on people they referred to as their brethren. In some cases, outright calls have been made for the complete annihilation of Southern Cameroonians; while Jacques Ze and Ernest Obama, journalists at Vision 4 television in Yaounde see them only as roaches and cockroaches deserving to be wiped out, politician Banda Kani expresses disappointment with the government for not using military techniques and weaponry that should completely delete every single one of them from the surface of the earth. These utterances have never been condemned, but Southern Cameroonians were shot, killed, tortured, humiliated and traumatized beyond proportions for merely talking about the need to return to a federalist form of governance.
As if that was not enough, the Francophone-dominated Parliament has outlawed any mention of the Southern Cameroons Question and the ongoing genocide there in its premises. Each time opposition Deputies mentioned the carnage and hardship on Southern Cameroonians, they were either hushed down or abandoned on the floor by those of the ruling CPDM Party.
Also, the action of the government when a few houses were burnt down in Bangourain, a village in the Noun Division of the West Region of the Republic of Cameroon could not have translated this message much better. Countless government officials visited with relief assistance, financial and material aid to reconstruct. No such action has been seen in Southern Cameroons where over 400 villages and counting, are being completely reduced to ashes. On the contrary, soldiers have been seen chasing internally displaced persons right into the forests and killing them with impunity.
Last, but not least, recent street demonstrations organized by the opposition MRC Party of Maurice Kamto, saw soldiers and police firing at protesters only on regions of their bodies that could incapacitate them only temporarily. In Southern Cameroons, all such protests have resulted to deaths, right from May 6, 1990 during the launch of the SDF Party in Bamenda to date. While Mancho Bibixy has been handed a 13-year jail term for leading a social protest that demanded better living conditions, protesters who threw stones at the police for the same reasons at the Yaounde Central market in December 2018 all went home with neither questioning nor a scratch.
End Beat
In 1961, as world powers discussed the need to end colonial rule in most African countries, the fate of the people of Southern Cameroons was hanging in the balance. But, after several consultations and series of votes at the United Nations, the then US Ambassador to the United Nations warned; “The USA had voted for resolution 1350 (XIII) and still finds its provisions satisfactory. The USA congratulates the people of the Southern Cameroons for their accession to auto determination as it constitutes the will of the population who want to run its affairs democratically. The government and the opposition parties of the Southern Cameroons unfortunately have not come to an agreement, however, there is no reason to deny the population of the Southern Cameroons a brief; the results of a hurried choice imposed on the population of the trust territory would be catastrophic for their political future”.
This statement is just as true today as it was in 1961; at that time, the Western powers led by the British denied Southern Cameroonians outright independence on grounds that the territory would not have enough resources to self-sustain. Today, the same Western powers have been seen conspiring to deny Southern Cameroonians self-determination again, but this time on grounds that letting them go would render the neighbouring Republic of Cameroon totally impoverished because Southern Cameroons holds all by itself about 60 % of the GDP in the current failed union. What a paradox; what a world!
This is why the people of Southern Cameroons must come to the quick realization of the undeniable fact that, the ongoing conflict is an existential matter. The only way forward in these circumstances is for the people to bond together, fight together and either die or win together. No one else can understand and appreciate the plight of the people better than themselves; any form of further association with the Republic of Cameroon will be tantamount to shifting the carnage to another generation. This will be an inexcusable error and a betrayal of the thousands of Southern Cameroonians paying the ultimate price in the hope that we secure a better future for our people.
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