The majority of SDF supporters and militants in the 1990s were union-nationalists filled with the revolutionary enthusiasm. They did not care about the ethnic group, first language or religious affiliation of SDF leaders or other Cameroonians in so far as they were dedicated to change. But that is not how the SDF leadership thought, especially the founding fathers who were almost entirely from the Northwest province. The truth is that like Bello Bouba, Ndam Njoya and other fake opposition leaders, Fru Ndi and most of the founding fathers never grasped or embraced the broad vision for change that the majority of Cameroonians and union nationalists were looking up to. That broad vision is a hard, demanding and merciless task to change the anachronistic French-imposed system. But when union nationalists and the majority of the struggling masses joined the SDF, the old leadership embraced the rhetoric of far-reaching change without embracing the ideals. That is why when the struggle entered its difficult stage, the Fru-Ndi led clique resorted to their original intention not of changing the system but of making a voice and getting a share of the "national cake". In so doing, they abandoned even any pretence of Cameroonian union nationalism and its goal of totally and completely changing the system. In fact, they joined the pseudo-opposition parties of Ndam Njoya, Bello Bouba Maigari, Koddock, Diakole Diassala etc in ensuring the survival of the French-imposed system.
Should anyone be surprised by the squabbling above involving Fru Ndi and Ngwasiri? The answer is no. I will take you on a brief and selective ride going back in time. The interest of the struggle is to be guarded.
In Nfor Nfor's commission of inquiry to Limbe and the South West in 1994 over the rumblings of SDF members wanting to join the Biya government and the system, he supported the Ndoki Mukete led Southwest branch of the Muna-Asanga-Kamdoum clique that advocated joining a union government in subtle opposition to the broad-based objectives of the struggle. In the reorganization-provincial elections in December 1994 in Kumba that saw the Ndoki Mukete and his group losing their provincial positions, the Bamilekes were accused of plotting to take over the party by this group of union government enthusiasts.
In the 1999 convention elections in Yaoundé, the Fru-Ndi clique played the ethnic card, even within the Northwest province.
In December 2000 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, SDF's Professor Paul Nchoji Nkwi tried to convince Dutch Professor Piet Konings in my presence and against my vehement opposition that it would be good for the SDF to join a union government, citing the cohabitation government of Chirac and Jospin in France as an example. He did so, even though he knew that in France, it was possible because they had a developed and functioning democratic system with checks and balances, something Cameroon lacks. He did not heed the fact that parties in France are out to serve French interests and values, while in Cameroon, the Biya regime and the five-decade-old system is there to serve French interests and the stealing and corrupt interests of the mafia oligarchy.
In Fru Ndi's London visit in 2001, Ngwasiri in a conspiratorial manner told an SDF supporter from his home village that the party was doing fine, except for the Bamilekes who wanted take over the party. The party militant who is a union nationalist was disappointed with him because he knew that those SDF figures he was talking about were the party incorruptible who were decrying the derailment of the party by the Fru Ndi clique. That party militant advised me to forget about the SDF.
In July 2002, just days before the NEC meeting to decide whether or not to go to parliament and accept the council seats, in a chanced encounter with the YCPDM president of the UK, the above party militant and I learnt that Fru Ndi had given his blessings to a deal worked out between Ngwasiri and co of the SDF and the CPDM that would see the SDF in parliament and taking the council seats that the CPDM had allowed the SDF to win, even though the party commanded the support of most Cameroonians. Preposterous, I had raged, almost losing my temper in disbelief. Three days after, there was the NEC meeting with a majority vote against accepting the CPDM’s handout. Barely days after the NEC members had returned to their bases, Fru Ndi overturned the decision by NEC, confirming the UK CPDM president’s words. In an interview a few days after Fru Ndi’s Stalin era dictatorial decision, Ngwasiri said that Fru Ndi was above the NEC and that the money from SDF parliamentarians and councillors was needed to run the party, as if from 1996-2002 contributions they made was to the party’s treasury. The fact is that it went to the SDF chairman and his mafia or inner circle.
When Ngwasiri stated in an interview following the resignation of top SDF officials over the Fru Ndi/Ngwasiri deal with the CPDM, that they considered the Tchwenko-led protest move as good-riddance, he clearly spelt it out that the SDF was their party whose agenda was not being realized because of the inclusion of that faction. Yet Tchwenko was considered the party’s ideologue and the brain that crafted the SDF’s expansion as a national nationalist movement that embraced all Cameroonians irrespective or ethnicity, religion, race, region or linguistic identity. He was the mastermind that lured into the SDF, those Cameroonian union nationalists who believed in the historic UPC’s mission for Cameroon, helping them to leave the ranks of the usurped UPC of Koddock etc. And he did so by presenting the SDF as the ideological successor of the historic UPC. In essence, Ngwasiri, Fru Ndi and co dissociated themselves from the only unifying ideology in the history of Cameroon and blatantly pursued their original objective of having their own share of the national cake.
Many union nationalists and revolutionaries in the SDF, the incorruptible and those committed to a total, complete and unwavering change of the system became disillusioned and quit the party after having warned that by accepting the seats for the benefits that are hardly a decimal of what the SDF deserves, the party would be surrendering to Biya’s plans to portray it as a regional party. In presidential elections two years after, Fru Ndi was portrayed to have won only in those areas the CPDM had not stolen from the SDF in 2002, i.e. The Northwest province.
And today, the squabble in the SDF involves those whose actions in the SDF never served the interest of the struggle, and not surprising, those in the Fru-Ndi clique and the founding fathers happen to come from one region, giving the Biya regime more ammunition to sell their claim to the world that the SDF is a regional party, an image union nationalists leaders in the SDF had fought hard to kill, but who when finally betrayed in 2002 quit the party, even though they decided not to reveal the horrors of the mafia in the inner-circle, for fear that the revelation would be against the interest of the struggle.
Janvier Tchouteu 2005
Janvier Tchouteu 2005
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