THE
SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC FRONT
(SDF) OF CAMEROON:
The Role and Path of the1990-1997 Historic Party of the Opposition in Cameroon’s Quest for Democracy before its Derailment
Janvier Tchouteu
TISI BOOKS
NEW YORK, RALEIGH, LONDON, AMSTERDAM
PUBLISHED BY TISI BOOKS
Partition map of Africa (1884-1914)
Cameroon on a map of the world
Cameroon over time
- German Kamerun (1884-1911)
- German Kamerun (1911-1916)
- British Cameroons & French
- British Cameroons& La Republique du Cameroun (1960-61)
- British Southern Cameroons & La Republique du Cameroun (1960-61)
- Reunited—Federal
“Every process needs to follow its historical course and arrive at a logical conclusion, irrespective of the facilitators injected to speed up the process, or the obstacles put to stop or bar it.”
—CHRISTOPHER NKWAYEP-CHANDO
“Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”
Eric Hoffer
“We find that at present the human race is divided into one wise man, nine knaves, and ninety fools out of every hundred. That is, by an optimistic observer. The nine knaves assemble themselves under the banner of the most knavish among them, and become 'politicians'; the wise man stands out, because he knows himself to be hopelessly outnumbered, and devotes himself to poetry, mathematics, or philosophy; while the ninety fools plod off under the banners of the nine villains, according to fancy, into the labyrinths of chicanery, malice and warfare. It is pleasant to have command, observes Sancho Panza, even over a flock of sheep, and that is why the politicians raise their banners. It is, moreover, the same thing for the sheep whatever the banner. If it is democracy, then the nine knaves will become members of parliament; if fascism, they will become party leaders; if communism, commissars. Nothing will be different, except the name. The fools will be still fools, the knaves still leaders, the results still exploitation. As for the wise man, his lot will be much the same under any ideology. Under democracy he will be encouraged to starve to death in a garret, under fascism he will be put in a concentration camp, under communism he will be liquidated.”
T.H. White
“However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”
George Washington
The book reserves special praise for the civic-nationalists who joined the SDF in the third phase of the struggle, convinced that the party embodied the historic cause of founding THE NEW CAMEROON, and so sacrificed everything, never conciliated with the system, contributed disproportionately in giving the party its national and civic-nationalist outlook from 1990-1997--- civic-nationalists (union-nationalists) who guarded the light of the noble Cameroonian struggle for the next generation to pick up in the last phase of the cause in realizing the century-old Cameroonian Dream, even as their former comrades let them down by becoming a part of the Establishment, thereby making the SDF a party of the system that it is today. It is also dedicated to Cameroon’s historic civic-nationalists and union-nationalists who devoted their lives to the cause for the land they love or loved, and suffered deprivations and even death in the struggle to alleviate the wellbeing of the Cameroonian people.
My deepest, warmest and everlasting thanks to Dr. Samuel F. Tchwenko and Christopher N. Chando for their contributions in chiseling the national idea for the “New Cameroon”.
Many pundits of the Social Democratic Front (SDF) of Cameroon during its heyday from 1990-1997 attest to the fact that barely a year after the party’s creation, it attained its historic status as a unifying political movement with tentacles spread across the entire national territory and as a galvanizing socio-political force espousing a philosophy that Cameroonians of all ethnicities, religions, regions and language of expression could relate to, even though the authoritarian French-imposed system had been casting it as an Anglophone and Northwest Party, meaning that its influence did not extend beyond the Northwest Province (Northwest Region), which is one of Cameroon’s two English-Speaking provinces in a country of ten provinces. This concept that all Cameroonians consciously or unconsciously identified with Cameroon’s civic-nationalism, otherwise called Cameroonian union-nationalism or Kamerunism, was proven once again in the third phase of the Cameroonian struggle for the “New Cameroon”.
So, what is Cameroonian union-nationalism or Kamerunism?
In a nutshell, it is a unique form of civic nationalism which involves all those who subscribe to the Kamerunian Idea conceived in the 1940s, advocating for the reunification of the territories of the former German Kamerun (British Cameroons and French Cameroon), their joint independence and the implementation of the Kamerunian Ideal of a nation-state of equal, rights-bearing citizens who regardless of their ethnicity, race, color, religion, gender or language are:
• United in their patriotic attachment to the land
• Share values of democracy, liberty, tolerance and progress
• And who respect their self-governing rights, the traditions and cultures of the land, and the land’s freedom to determine its destiny in harmony with the progressive world.
Was the Social Democratic Front (SDF) of Cameroon born in May 26, 1990, with Kamerunism as its fundamental tenet or was this advanced form of civic-nationalism incorporated into the party afterwards? Well, this is another question that looms in the minds of many people who have consciously followed the developments in the party over the past decades,
Pundits argue that a clear answer to this question would explain the political evolution of the Social Democratic Front from its historic years as a movement—which this book covers—to what some people call today a business or a racket that risks becoming completely irrelevant in the century-old struggle to realize the Cameroonian (Kamerunian) Dream—an argument that would form the basis of the next book.
Even though pundits may argue about the SDF’s future role in realizing the Cameroonian Dream or the “New Cameroon”, most people agree that “The New Cameroon” would be founded by a force or by forces that espouse Kamerunism. Since that would be the case, Cameroonians need to understand the nuances of the forces that made the SDF the champion of Kamerunism in the 1990s and how disagreements with other competing forces led to the disarray in the party in the 2000s.
This book provides an insight into SDF and its evolution into the nation’s historic movement in the 1990s, and highlights the cracks that emerged later in its history.
If you board a plane or ship plying any of the international routes and ask to be taken to the heart of Africa, do not be surprised to find yourself disembarking in Cameroon. It is a beautiful country per se, situated opposite the middle portion of Brazil, on the eastern side of the Atlantic Ocean. Bordered by six countries of which Nigeria is the most prominent neighbor, Cameroon appears on maps like a heavily pregnant mother carrying a baby on her back.
This peculiar geopolitical entity was created by accident and apportioned to Germany during the 1884 Berlin conference that carved up Africa. Thereafter, Berlin treated German Kamerun as its treasured colony for thirty-two years until Great Britain and France captured the land during the First World War, partitioned it into British Cameroons and French Cameroun, and then went on to lord it over the people for four decades. However, they too were challenged by Cameroonian civic nationalists who campaigned for the divided territory’s reunification and self-rule. Today, English and French are the country’s official languages, mirroring the dominance of the two Indo-European languages in Africa.
They say the gods have a design even in the most outrageous acts of mortals. If that is the case, then it also applies to Cameroon. The country has defied so many odds in its history that the people now pride themselves with the saying that “Impossible isn’t a Cameroonian word.”
Renowned voices tend to call Cameroon “Africa in miniature”, not only because of its fanciful shape and turbulent history, but also because of the physical and human aspects of its geography. It is the point in Africa where the East meets the West and where the North meets the South. It is a country that features plains and mountains, plateaus and valleys, rivers and seas, lakes, and waterfalls and other landmarks that mirror the rest of Africa. The south is dominated by equatorial and tropical rainforests, the north is covered by Sahelian vegetation, and the middle portion of the country is graced with high savannah of mixed grassland and forest. In fact, all the different flora and fauna in Africa can be found in this carelessly-drawn triangle called Cameroon.
The curious eye is apt to notice varying statures, facial types and shades of complexion as it travels throughout Cameroon—the result of the territory’s history as the crossroads of African migrations. Anthropological linguists hold that all of Africa’s four major language groups converge in Cameroon.
The southern portion of the country is the base from where Bantu speakers spread to southern and eastern Africa. The furthest spread of Afro-Asiatic peoples is in the north of this territory, featuring groups like the Semitic-speaking Arabs, Berber-speaking Tuaregs, Chadic-speaking Hausas and Batas, and Fula or Fulfulde-speaking Fulanis or Peuls. Nilo-Saharan speakers dominate the north of the country in their furthest spread to the west of the African continent. Also present in Cameroon are small ethnicities of the fourth major subgroup called Niger-Congo-A that occupy the southwestern border regions with Nigeria. Settled in the northwestern portion of the country that looks like the pregnant part of mother Cameroon is the fifth and unique indigenous group that you will find only in Cameroon. Named semi-Bantu, Graffi or southern Bantoid, this group has characteristics of all the four major language groups or sub-races in Africa. Legends and lore hold that semi-Bantus are originally of Afro-Asiatic and Nilo-Saharan descent and that they assimilated all the peoples they encountered during their migration. The Bamileké people are the dominant ethnicity in this group.
It is true that Cameroon’s human and physical wealth has been the source of its turbulent history, its pride and the ingredients that give its people a unique flavor. The flavor has produced colorful Cameroonian characters that the curious eye and mind is likely to enjoy by hating or loving them, pitying or angrily denouncing them. These characters provide insights into the human nature and the African continent that is haunted by leaders with the evil disposition.
While other African peoples have picked up arms and warred among themselves to have their country split up, Cameroon is the only geo-political entity in the continent whose inhabitants went to war to reunite its people separated by the legacy of the Anglo-French partition of the former German colony of Kamerun. It is the only country where those who fought for its reunification and independence are yet to assume political power, as they continue to languish from the defeat suffered in the hands of the French overlords and the puppets the French political establishment installed in power in Cameroon. It is the land where you will find Africa’s biggest political deception and sleaziest mafia. It is the country in Africa with the lowest number of heads of state in its history, yet it is a country that is unlikely to engage in internecine war to get rid of the suffocating system.
In the middle of the twentieth century, a child was born in Cameroon who by the age of ten, proved he could become anything he wanted to be. This child prodigy happened to be the son of a soldier of the Free French Forces that fought across the African desert in the drive that liberated France from German occupation during the Second World War.
Culled from the political thriller “Triple Agent, Double Cross”, written in January 1992.
In power since 1982 is Africa's absentee dictator Paul Biya, who was made the successor of his predecessor Ahmadou Ahidjo by an order from former French President Francoise Mitterand; Ahidjo, who himself was brought to power by the French to usurp the aspirations of Cameroonians in their liberation struggle led by the UPC that the French banned in 1955, a party with more than 80% of the land's intellectuals and even more national support. France had made sure Ahidjo's power was secured by decimating its support base in a 12-year war against the party and by killing all the UPC leaders (Un Nyobe 1958, Felix Moumie in Geneva 1960, Ossende Ofana 1966, Ernest Ouandie 1971 etc.), leaving Cameroon a nation haunted by an "Unfinished Liberation Struggle". Today, Cameroonians are out not only to get rid of the Dictator Biya's autocracy, but also to get rid of the French-imposed system that its custodians want to continue with someone else after Paul Biya departs.
The cause for change being pursued today by the majority of Cameroonians (the struggling masses) does not bear its origins from the wind of change (demands for democracy) that Soviet leader Mikhail Sergeivich Gorbachev’s Glasnost and Perestroika generated across the world, a wind of change that jolted those political systems that were failing to conform to the demands of world civilization and progress, which place the freedom and liberty of man and the interest of humanity above the twisted interest of the unscrupulous selfish minority.
The cause for change otherwise known as the Cameroonian (Kamerunian) Struggle began in 1910 led by Martin Paul Samba (Mebene Mebongo). Patriotic Cameroonians, who accept one another irrespective of their compatriots’ ethnic, racial, religious or regional origins, acknowledge the fact that the first phase of the Kamerunian (Cameroonian) struggle was defeated in 1914 by the German colonial army following the execution of Martin Paul Samba and Rudolf Duala Manga Bell. They also accept the fact that because of that defeat, the land lost a unifying patriotic or civic-nationalist force to ensure Kamerun’s unity during and after the First World War (The Great War), a void that played against the Kamerunian people when the victorious British and French colonial powers went about partitioning the defeated German Kamerun after the war.
The lethargy that followed the first defeat of the Kamerunian struggle and the resultant partition of the pre-1911 German Kamerun into French Cameroun and British Cameroons (British Northern Cameroons and British Southern Cameroons) lasted for thirty years, or the equivalent of a generation, before the divided Kamerunian people revived their national consciousness again. This time around, the revival of the original objectives of the Kamerunian struggle—independence, freedom, justice, development, unity, peace, democracy, liberty, progress, international cooperation and international fraternity—was done with an additional objective of reuniting a land and a people who through no fault of theirs had been separated from one another to suit the interest of Britain, France and other foreign powers.
Reuniting Kamerunians also meant mitigating the consequences of partition and putting the land and its people on the path to realize the original purpose of the Kamerunian struggle embodied in the words “THE KAMERUNIAN DREAM” (CAMEROONIAN DREAM). This second phase of the Kamerunian struggle dominated by the quest for reunification of British Cameroons and French Cameroun was led by the UPC (Union des Populations du Cameroun”, otherwise known as the Union of the Populations of the Cameroons), a legal political party born in French Cameroun on April 11, 1948. The UPC and its affiliate political parties commanded more than 90% of the support of educated Cameroonians in both French Cameroun and British Cameroons and had the open or tacit backing or sympathy of more than 80% of British Cameroonians and French Camerounians before the vindictive and fearful French authorities banned the UPC on July 13, 1955, a move that was backed two years later by the British authorities in British Cameroons when the authorities there also banned the UPC in 1957. With the elimination from the political scene of the party that was the land’s most dominant movement and that was the best reflection of the aspirations of the Cameroonian people, advocates for reunification and independence for the lands of the former German Kamerun (British Cameroons & French Cameroun) were in a predicament.
The fact that the UPC was left after its ban with no other option to freely lead the struggling “Kamerunian Masses” to their aspirations, the fact that the colonial powers perceived the UPC as an obstacle in their design and influence over the former German Kamerun, and the fact that its members were being hounded and killed, the UPC finally came to a conclusion that it had no other option but to resort to the path of armed resistance. The painful decision that led to more than ten years of armed resistance contributed enormously in the political evolution of the territories of the former German Kamerun and the partial reunification of these territories (British Southern Cameroons and French Cameroun), but it came about with the death of more than half a million Cameroonians (10% of the population), and it came about with the loss of British Northern Cameroons to Nigeria. Yes, the cause that spurred the fight for Cameroon’s reunification and independence resulted in the reunification of British Southern Cameroons and the Republic of Cameroon (the former French Cameroon) in 1961, following the plebiscite results in British Southern Cameroons, but the price paid in achieving that was very high indeed—Cameroonians witnessed the first case of crimes against humanity committed by the French Army in French Cameroun and the puppet regime they put in place there after they made French Cameroun a member of the United Nations Organization on January 01, 1960 by granting it independence in a process that effectively made the territory a neocolonial possession of France.
The assassination of the Ruben Um Nyobe (The UPC’s leader) on 13 September 1958 by French forces; the poisoning of his successor Felix-Roland Moumié in Geneva in October 1960 by the William Bechtel, an agent of the French secret service; and the execution of the third historic UPC leader Ernest Ouandié in January 15, 1971, after he gave himself up in August 1970; marked the second defeat of the Kamerunian struggle, the successful entrenchment of the French-imposed system under the regime of French puppet Ahmadou Ahidjo (the first Cameroonian president), and a new reality of a pseudo-independence to soothe the pains and emotions of the patriotic struggling Cameroonian masses and to neutralize their civic-nationalism, a very peculiar union-nationalism also called Kamerunism, which is considered an advanced ideal that brings diverse peoples together in a continent plagued by ethnic, religious and racial divisions. The carrot and stick strategy of suppression, intimidation, handouts, extortion, bribery and corruption that the French political leadership under the umbrella of FrancAfrique (France's special relationship with its former African colonies and territories established before it granted them independence) sustained the 24-year rule of Ahmadou Ahidjo, and has been sustaining the usurper regime of Ahidjo’s successor Paul Biya ever since he was handed power by Ahmadou Ahidjo in 1982.
That defeat of the second phase of the Cameroonian struggle led to a second political lethargy that even saw the democratic nature of the former British Cameroons undermined after Cameroon’s reunification, a process of subjugation that kept the dynamic Cameroonian people docile or politically subdued for two decades.
Today, we are in the third and hopefully or certainly the last phase of the Cameroonian Struggle to realize the Kamerunian Dream of “THE NEW CAMEROON”.
That the struggling Cameroonian masses have been whisked off their political lethargy is glaring for all to see; that their determination to realize the objectives of the eight-decade old Kamerunian(Cameroonian) struggle is clearly and resolutely challenged or resisted by the status quo or the Biya regime and its external backers (The French- politically setup in Africa otherwise known as FrancAfrique) that have been benefitting from the mafia setup called the Cameroonian system, is something the world knows about. But exponents of change in Cameroon know that getting rid of the anachronistic French-imposed system is the only recourse which would allow Cameroonians to build “The New Cameroon” that would involve Cameroonians of all ethnic groups, religions, political affiliations, regions and races in the process of nation-building. Cameroonians know that getting rid of the system is the first step in reconciling Cameroon and Cameroonians.
Today, in this third phase of the struggle, just like it was during the second phase of the struggle, the force that stands as the vanguard of the struggling masses has a different face. It has a different face because the UPC did not resurface as the reincarnated historic UPC of 1948-1971. It is just like Martin Paul Samba’s movement did not lead the second phase of the struggle, leaving the historic UPC to fill the void instead. Today, the different UPC factions are not leading the third phase of the Kamerunian struggle because they are the pale shadows of the historic UPC. The Social Democratic Front (SDF) is the new face leading the struggling masses in this third phase of the struggle. It is the movement hoisting the banner of the Kamerunian (Cameroonian ) struggle first picked up by Martin Paul Samba, a banner that the leaders of the historic UPC and its affiliates—Kamerun National Democratic Party (KNDP) and One Kamerun (OK)—picked up three decades after Samba’s death, a banner that fell down following the execution of Ernest Ouandie, a banner that stayed for two decades in the mud during the subjugation of the Cameroonian people by the French-imposed system, until the SDF came into the picture and picked it up again.
The SDF is not a reincarnation of the historic UPC, but it stands out today as the national, union-nationalists party; or put it in another way, the SDF stands out as the civic-nationalist party that embodies the eight-decade old Kamerunian struggle. Just like the historic UPC and its affiliates inherited the task of realizing the aspirations of the struggling Kamerunian masses from Martin Paul Samba’s liberation movement against German colonialism in the second decade of the twentieth century, so has the SDF inherited the task of realizing the Kamerunian ideals from the historic UPC that got defeated in the partisan war of liberation it conducted against France and the puppet Ahidjo regime in French Cameroun and later the Federal Republic of Cameroon. The SDF is the inheritor of the historic banner of liberation not only because of its all-embracing nature and objectives which has a place for all Cameroonians in the task of realizing “The New Cameroon” and in the task of nation-building, it is the inheritor also because:
· It ushered Cameroon into the third phase of the Kamerunian struggle.
· It embodies the true goals of the struggle.
· And it is the successor of the UPC in the pursuit of a cause that must be realized for the salvation of Cameroon, a cause that is compatible with the changing times.
It is true the defeat of the struggling masses and Cameroonian civic-nationalists—the UPC and its affiliates the KNDP and OK—in the second phase of the struggle by Franco-Ahidjo forces resulted in the deaths of more than half a million Cameroonians (the first French collaboration and participation in a genocide in Africa); it is true that that defeat transformed the reunited Cameroon into a one-party dictatorship with a centralized system of government. However, the worst part of that defeat was the political lethargy that ensued, a lethargy that led Cameroonians to almost lose faith in the cause, their country and themselves. But after witnessing the destructive effects of two French-installed oligarchic regimes, most patriotic Cameroonians got jolted, a process that has awoken their pride, aspirations, democratic instincts and desire for “The New Cameroon” again. This time around, the SDF became the embodiment of the Cameroonian ideal, the vehicle to carry Cameroonians to that New Cameroon.
In accordance with Law No 67/LF/19 of June 12, 1967, and the constitution of Cameroon which made it legal (but not practical) to form and operate more than one political party in the country, the conceived Social Democratic Front (SDF) through its founding fathers led by John Fru Ndi, headed a delegation to the administrative heads in Bamenda, the provincial capital of the Northwest Province and capital of Mezam Division. On that day, March 16, 1990, the documents qualifying the SDF as a legal entity to operate as a political party, were handed over to the administration. This was the first major step in bringing multi-party politics to Cameroon. In accordance with the law, a political party or social organization could consider itself legal if it received no word, reply or feedback from the administration after three months of submitting its application for authorization to operate as a political entity.
Since the SDF made it a point to be an embodiment of legality, the leadership of the mushrooming party agreed to launch it and usher in the third phase of the Kamerunian struggle. May 26, 1990 was chosen as the day. Bamenda was chosen as the venue.
THE DIFFICULT ROAD TO CHANGE
Bamenda, the capital of the Northwest Province was clouded with high states and emotions after it woke up that Saturday, May 26, 1990, in anticipation of the launch of the Social Democratic Front (SDF). Even though the resurgence of the Kamerunian struggle (now in its third phase) was menaced by the threatening military presence in the Province, boosted by reinforcement from the West, Southwest and Littoral provincial garrisons; even though the fates of detained pro-democracy/pro-multiparty politics advocates like Albert Mukong, Black Yondo and Anicet Ekani still hung in the air; even though the murder in broad daylight of a pro-democracy lawyer in Bafoussam was still fresh in the minds of the people, the Bamenda population stood resolute that morning in its determination to usher in the rebirth of multiparty democracy (political pluralism), as the first step to realize the socio-economic and political aspirations of the struggling Kamerunian masses, who had been held hostage for close to a century.
In Bamenda, as elsewhere, in other freedom loving towns and villages across the national territory, the struggling masses did not wish for a confrontation with the military and its French-backed regime. The peace-loving Cameroonian people never imagined in their wildest dreams that May 26th would be a bloody day in the country’s history and that it would come to bear so much historical significance in the Kamerunian struggle to realize the Kamerunian Ideals and found THE NEW CAMEROON. But the launching of the party in Bamenda by the SDF president (chairman) John Fru Ndi was baptized by the trigger-happy security forces who opened fire on the unarmed euphoric populace, leaving six advocates of change dead and hundreds wounded. The brutality of the Special Forces that day revealed the monstrosity and reactionary attitude of the Biya regime for those who did not want to believe that the regime was a child of the Ahidjo regime and a continuation of the French-imposed system meant to control Cameroon and prevent its union-nationalists from ever coming to power. The launch was celebrated in the petroleum city of Limbe (formerly Victoria) led by Dr. Samuel Fabu Tchwenko, in Bafoussam led by Dr. Mobi and in the capital Yaoundé led by Dr. Siga Asanga.
Stunned and awed, Cameroonians and the rest of the world watched and listened to the Biya regime as it contradicted and repeatedly contradicted itself with one lie after another, centered on the theme that the country’s security forces did not fire on the population, that the deaths were caused by stampeding, and that those who died were Nigerians by origin who gathered in Bamenda that day to witness the launch of the SDF. With the government in control of the media (print, audio and TV), the Biya regime and the French-imposed system as a whole still failed to sell those lies to Cameroonians and to the rest of the world. After all, the bullet wounds on hundreds of Cameroonians were there for all to see, and the dead were identified as Cameroonians with ethnic origins from three of the country’s ten Provinces.
Even so, what was particularly obvious was the fact that this system, which is made up of those who never advocated for independence and reunification, this system which is made up of anti-union-nationalists with a majority Francophile bent, was so overtly discriminatory that they had the temerity to call progressive-minded citizens of Cameroon of English-speaking expression “Nigerians”, simply because these patriotic citizens had the audacity to be the first among the majority of Cameroonians in overtly opposing the status quo—the political mafia in place under the French-imposed system led by the Biya regime.
During the immediate months after the launch of the SDF, the Cameroonian people and the rest of the world witnessed the ruling party—Cameroon Peoples’ Democratic Movement (CPDM), the government, the Biya regime and the system in general bickering over the Bamenda massacre and wrangling over the issue of whether to accept multi-party politics in Cameroon or not. Upon realizing that multi-party politics was an unavoidable prospect in Cameroon, especially with the mounting pressure at home and from abroad, and especially with the impact Mikhail Gorbachev’s Glasnost and Perestroika was having on the African continent, the Biya regime and its French masters finally budged and accepted the legality of multi-party politics and democracy in Cameroon. Nevertheless, the system (The Biya regime and its French masters) were bent on circumventing the developments. One way of doing that was by encouraging the proliferation of political parties, so that by November 1990, the system had legalized twenty-one (21) political parties. The vast majority of these parties had the government’s blessings with the intention to use them to thwart the democratic drive.
The Social Democratic Front’s (SDF’s) consciousness of its new role in the third phase of the Kamerunian struggle and its grasp of the evolving political dispensation in the country, helped it to quickly become aware of the confusion in the minds of the populace over the unexpected political trend. So, in a bid to harness the democratic drive, it master-minded the formation of the Coordination of Opposition Parties (COP), bringing together those newly formed opposition parties that indicated they were against the Biya government. The major objectives of the Coordination of Opposition parties were:
· To coordinate the activities of the of the new opposition forces to win power from the Biya regime in free and fair elections.
· To build a framework for the working of a new and democratic Cameroon.
· And to prepare or assist the populace so that they could stand up to the demanding task of founding and building the New Cameroon.
The SDF chairman (president) John Fru Ndi accepted the post of Vice president of the Coordination of Opposition Parties, while the president of National Union of Democracy and Progress—NUDP, the veteran politician and ex-minister Samuel Ebola became the president of the Coordination.
The first major demand the Coordination made to the Biya regime and the French-imposed system was for the convening of a Sovereign National Conference (SNC) as a forum to discuss and seek the basis around which the country could move forward in addressing the socio-economic and political problems prevailing in the country as a result of;
· The premature execution of its political leaders in 1914 by the German colonial army and the resultant partition of pre-1911 German Kamerun,
· The makeshift independence granted to French Cameroun on January 01, 1960 to those who never fought or campaigned for the reunification and independence of French Cameroon and British Cameroons.
· A manipulated reunification process in British Cameroons that led to the loss of British Northern Cameroons to Nigeria, the reunification of British Southern Cameroons and the former French Cameroon (The Republic of Cameroun) under French puppet Ahmadou Ahidjo and its dictatorial French-imposed system designed to serve the interest of the Elysee Palace in Paris.
· An outdated French-imposed system under the grand FrancAfrique scheme,
· The destructive effects of two unelected oligarchic regimes (of Ahmadou Ahidjo and Paul Biya) against the wishes of the vast majority of Cameroonians,
· And the stifling dominance of Cameroonian affairs (internal and external) through the bad-faith policies of sectors of the French-establishment (FrancAfrique).
In the SDF’s bid to take stock of its ballooning influence and great strength; in its bid to give the party more purpose; and in its effort to gauge the progress the party had made since its creation, the party convened a constituent assemble in Bamenda in February 1991. It ended among other things with a decision to:
· Amend the SDF constitution,
· Retain the name of the party as the Social Democratic Front,
· Make Bamenda the headquarters of the party,
· Make the emblem of the party to be a scale placed on a ballot box, with a green tropical landscape as its background.
· Adopt “Democracy, Justice and Development” as the motto of the party.
The SDF Constituent Assemble not only gave the party a broader purpose, it reaffirmed its sense of direction through the following carefully and clearly articulated objectives:
1. The SDF pledged to mobilize, rally and galvanize Cameroonians into a united political force for the purpose of establishing a just, free and democratic society where:
· The elderly, the disabled, the retired and the unemployed can live in dignity and security.
· All workers and students are guaranteed the right to form unions with the view to collectively bargain for decent working and studying conditions, and for decent wages.
· Tax laws are based on the ability to pay.
· No one, especially a Cameroonian citizen, is denied the opportunity for a better and decent life.
· Sound education, proper nutrition, quality medical care, affordable housing and nationwide communication facilities are open to every citizen.
· The people can find jobs.
· All forms of oppression and repression are suppressed or made illegal with the view of promoting economic, social, cultural and linguistic development of the fatherland, the rule of law and the preservation of all the fundamental freedoms, rights and liberties of the citizens.
2. The party also pledged to pursue a policy to;
· Win power through elections,
· Make a good government,
· Build and protect the nation,
· Encourage commerce,
· Promote equality,
· Advance science and industry,
· Support the Arts and Humanities,
· Develop and conserve our human and natural resources,
· Protect our environment
· Relieve poverty.
3. The SDF went further in its commitment to liberal democracy by pledging to promote international peace and cooperation in accordance with the Organization of African Unity (OAU) and United Nations Organization (UNO) charters.
4. As the national party that is conscious of veiled Anglophobism by the Biya regime and the system in general, and which is aware of Francophobism in certain segments of the population of English-speaking Cameroon, the SDF also pledged to ardently protect and promote Kamerun’s bilingual character.
To achieve the above stated objectives, the SDF adopted Social Democracy as its political ideology and Participatory Government (Participatory Democracy) as its guiding policy.
The February 1991 constituent assembly meeting ended as a success story. Its achievements set the SDF apart and put them ahead of other political parties in Cameroon, heralding a new thinking in the all-encompassing effort to found the New Cameroon, a vision that set a precedence that many other new political parties in Africa appreciated and tried to emulate. Unfortunately, the status quo (the Biya regime and the system in general) did not welcome the SDF’s increased worth and noble intentions for Cameroon, Cameroonians and Africa.
June 01, 1996
please i will like to get a copy of this book how do i get it.
ReplyDeleteiam in germany berlin
You can buy it online from any of the Amazon sites below
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