This account is dedicated to the loving memory of all the Cameroonians who suffered and died in their selfless commitment to the cause to found the New Cameroon.
For over two-and-a-half decades now, John Fru Ndi has been presenting himself,
with tacit and at times open support from the French-imposed establishment, as
the unchallenged or most prominent leader of the hundreds of political parties
that constitute Cameroon’s so-called opposition, a rag-tag group that purports
to be engaged in the post 1990 phase of the Cameroonian struggle interpreted
differently:
By union nationalists as a continuation of the
five-decade struggle to bring down the French-imposed system or
establishment and found a New Cameroon that is democratic, free, liberal,
independent, progressive, and modern
By liberals and moderates as a struggle to
unseat Paul Mvodo Biya, the French puppet who manages the French-imposed
system in Cameroon
By Anglophone nationalists as a struggle to end
the decades of being marginalised by Francophone-dominated Ahidjo-Biya
regimes (though not the Francophone majority-backed)
By some as a quest to regain lost privileges
and by others as an opportunity to partake in
the “distribution” of the possible benefits the Biya regime and
establishment offer renegades, opportunists, and fortune-seekers.
Having lived three
decades of his adult years as a businessman, Fru Ndi’s financial position was
not a source of envy. But what most appreciated about him was his tenacity and
boldness, even though many people turned a blind eye to the fact that his tenacity
and boldness verged on arrogance and self-centeredness (considered by many as a
necessary quality for a businessman). It is not surprising, therefore, that in
1989, when the Social Democratic Front (SDF) of Cameroon was being put
together, Fru Ndi spearheaded the sidelining of other non-Northwest province
figures who were committed to a national force to change the country. It is not
surprising still that when more prominent members of the inner-circle of the
group called “The SDF Founding Fathers” turned down the offer to become
Chairman or president due to personal fears or worries, Fru Ndi demanded that
he be paid if he were to take the risk of signing in as the head of the
opposition party that was about to be registered and launched.
With
the launch of the SDF on May 26, 1990, Fru Ndi became a source of awe, taking
almost the entire credit for it, even though he did not spearhead the crafting,
creation and launch of the SDF. Months after, when asked in an interview about
what he wanted for Cameroon, Fru Ndi’s reply was “We want grassroots
democracy.” It was clear to the insightful that he lacked a clear vision at a
time when the SDF was outgrowing the purpose of its founding fathers. But with
the multitude of intellectuals, civic-nationalists and ideologues that swelled
the ranks of the SDF after its launch, there was never a shortage of SDF
insiders to give the far-reaching meaning to the purpose of the SDF’s creation.
By 1992, Dr. Siga Asanga and Dr. Samuel Tchwenko wielded the most influence
within the inner ranks of the SDF— Dr. Siga Asanga as Secretary General, the
brain in the group of founding fathers, and as Fru Ndi’s elder relative; and
Dr. Samuel Tchwenko as the party’s ideologue and architect behind the extension
of the party’s reach to the Southwest, West and Littoral provinces.
When
the National Coordination of Opposition parties(NCO) was formed in 1991, Fru
Ndi’s disputed popularity amongst Cameroonians at the time came to the
forefront when the steering committee that was created, elected Samuel Eboua
(head of the National Union for Democracy and Progress—NUDP) as the
chairman, with John Fru Ndi(SDF) as vice-chairman, and Adamou Ndam Njoya
(head of the Cameroon Democratic Union—CDU), Jean-Jacques Ekindi (Progressive
Movement—MP), Charles Tchoungang (OCDH) and Djeukam Tchameni (CAP-Liberte) as
members of the managing committee. When the NCO started the "Operation
Ghost Towns", following the student protests led by the student body
called “Parlement” in the Spring of 1991, the Cameroon
opposition appeared solid and united, even though most of the heads of the
opposition parties had been former members of the ruling party less than two
years before. The objective of the “Ghost Town” operations was to use strikes
to close down the Cameroonian economy during the week, and allow commerce to
function only on the weekends, in order to force the Biya regime to convene a
Sovereign National Conference to come up with a new constitution and a
transparent electoral process for Cameroon. By the end of October 1991, the
Biya regime was on its knees, and so decided to call for “TRIPARTITE” talks to
resolve Cameroon’s political impasse with pre-conditions to be met by the
Coordination of Opposition Parties (NCO) and the government. The NCO called off
the “Ghost Towns” operations, but the government failed to respect its
obligations. For that reason, the coordination pledged to boycott the talks,
only to attend them later.
It
was in the aftermath of the TRIPARTITE that the SDF gained in popularity for
not signing the heavily flawed Tripartite agreement, a stand or position that the
Southwest provincial coordinator and national executive member, Dr. Samuel
Tchwenko, sold to the SDF chairman and the rest of the party’s National
Executive Committee (NEC). By the end of 1991, Southwesterners had been won
over into the SDF by the Tchwenko-led multi-ethnic team; the UPC (the historic
upholder of Cameroonian nationalism) was in disarray after having been taken
over by renegades; and Samuel Eboua, the unifying head of the NUDP, had been
booted out by Bello Bouba Maigari, the sly and former Prime Minister of
Cameroon. In a network led by Dr. Samuel Tchwenko, the majority of the
francophone populations that supported the historic UPC were brought over into
the SDF, giving the party a national outlook and civic nationalist semblance in
a growing national ideal called Cameroonian Union-Nationalism. And it was these
civic nationalists in the party that gave Fru Ndi the financial support and
confidence, so that by the summer of 1992, the Fru Ndi-led SDF had more than
70% of the national support of Cameroonians.
From
early 1992, Fru Ndi became instantly recognisable as the symbol of the
Cameroonian struggle for democracy, prosperity, freedom, and liberty. In his
traditional Northwest regalia, he was recognized in the Northwest province as
one of their own; in his use of English language, he identified with
Anglophones; while in his rhetoric in Pidgin-English that was often translated
into French, he warmed himself into the hearts of Francophone union
nationalist, especially in those areas where the historic UPC fought against
the Ahidjo-French forces in the late 1950s and 1960s.
By
July 1992, beefed up by a broad circle of intellectuals and ideologues drawn
from across the national territory and provided with a national ideal of
Cameroonian union-nationalism that he purported to embrace at the time, Fru Ndi
was unquestionably the greatest asset to the struggle, and with that came
self-confidence. That is why he declared his willingness to run for the
upcoming presidential elections without discussing it in the National Executive
Committee of the SDF, even though no changes had been made to the heavily flawed
laws and electoral process. Nevertheless, Fru Ndi swayed the National Executive
Committee over to back his intentions, and with the deep support of the civic
nationalists, otherwise called the union-nationalists, who constituted more
than seventy percent of the party at the time, he won the October 1992
presidential election against the incumbent Paul Biya. But the French-backed
Biya regime declared the incumbent Paul Biya as the winner. Many in the party
hierarchy, especially the union-nationalists, blamed Fru Ndi and his clique for
withdrawing the petition to the Supreme Court, a petition that called for the
cancellation of the elections. This petition was filed during the counting
process in objection to the heavily flawed nature of the elections, even though,
based on results from the field at the time, Fru Ndi was leading in the vote
count. A cancellation and a rerun would have been done with a more prepared,
more organised, and more determined SDF backed by a population that would have
been more convinced that the establishment was about to be dismantled. However,
the Fru Ndi/Carlson Anyangwe withdrawal of the petition emboldened the Biya
regime to add more fake results from improvised constituencies in order to
declare the incumbent as the winner. In the isolated violence that ensued, the
establishment declared a state of emergency in the Northwest province, and then
put Fru Ndi under house arrest in the Northwest provincial capital of Bamenda.
Fru
Ndi emerged from the house arrest in December 1992 as a firebrand, a defiant
leader of the struggle obsessed with regaining the stolen victory. Still, many
could not understand how he thought he could achieve that when he refused
advice from union nationalists in the SDF to declare a government after the
elections. Fru Ndi claimed he did not want a confrontation (civil war). The SDF
leader, however, emerged from the house arrest with more support than before,
and then went on to attend the inauguration of the newly elected United States
president Bill Clinton in January 1993 in the USA. Upon his return, he called
on SDF militants, supporters and sympathizers onto the streets in a poorly
organized, a poorly-targeted and a badly-led effort that did not regain the
stolen victory, even though dozens of lives were lost and the population
encountered ruins caused by the malicious establishment and some members of the
security force blindly supporting it.
By
1993, while the civic-nationalists with the revolutionary fervor in the SDF
leadership still considered the cause as a long-term struggle that needed a
more effective organization, steeliness, resoluteness, a constant upbeat of
revolutionary spirit and education of the masses, Fru Ndi was beginning to
think of conciliation to the system he had been a part of until 1990. He subtly
and then blatantly started considering the cause as a struggle to realise his
desires (wealth, fame, glory, and/or power). With the 1994-1995 expulsion of
the Asanga-led liberals who made gestures towards joining a union government
with Paul Biya, Fru Ndi became the undisputed leader of the SDF. With that
achievement, developed exaggerations, the weaving of myths about his life by
his close supporters, and an obsessive desire to get his way, thereby paying
lip service to the idea of the historic nature of the Cameroonian struggle, of
which the SDF had become the holder of the banner. Fru Ndi started undermining
the collective nature of the SDF leadership that is necessary for any political
movement with a revolutionary vision to dismantle an anti-people system, right
historical injustices, and set the foundation for a new, advanced, and
progressive nation.
It
was evident by 1995, following the rising Anglophone movement, that Fru Ndi had
openly become a populist. The price of pursuing the national objectives of the
struggle was too high, yet he appeared sterile when it came to leading the
Anglophone struggle, many English-speaking Cameroonians thought he sympathised
with, and which many in the inner circle of the founding fathers of the SDF
actually thought the SDF was going to represent. Nevertheless, the trappings of
being the leader of a party(SDF), with a national appearance of majority
Francophone support and more than 80% financial backing, were too strong. Money
given to the SDF during Fru Ndi’s foreign visits never got accounted for,
withdrawal of funds from the party’s national treasurer was done at his whim,
and using the party to make money, especially in the Northwest province, became
a norm known to a few in his clique. And so began the gradual transformation of
the SDF from the political movement that most Cameroonians considered it to be,
to a political business of Fru Ndi and his clique.
By
1996, as his family matured, Fru Ndi, the businessman, dominated. Principles,
and especially those for the national aspirations of the struggle, became
secondary. There was a muted call for protest or resistance from Fru Ndi when
the establishment cheated the SDF out of its rightful share of councils in the
Council elections of 1996, especially in the Francophone SDF strongholds. It
defied logic in 1997 when he fervently pushed the SDF to accept the 43 seats
allotted to it by the establishment during the highly fraudulent Parliamentary
elections, and go to a parliament of 180 seats when the party had more than 70%
of national support, especially since the majority of the party’s union
nationalists or civic-nationalists opposed it. When his close collaborators in
parliament led by Joseph Mbah Ndam, betrayed the honor and national objectives
of the party and used their positions in parliament to accumulate personal
wealth, selling the image of the party in the process and killing the spirit of
collective self-sacrifice that the civic nationalist propounded as the flame to
keep the spirit of the struggle alive, Fru Ndi was acquiescent. After all, the
SDF chairman got monthly chunks of the proceeds from the loyal parliamentarians
and council heads as agreed-upon percentages of their salaries that he alone
knew about. Added to these kickbacks were other unsanctioned benefits his
go-between parliamentarians worked out for him from the establishment.
From
1997, Fru Ndi’s fight focused more against the revolutionaries and union
nationalists in the SDF than against the Biya regime or the establishment as a
whole. Many insightful people thought at the time that something was fishy
since his major rental property was under lease by a French company, even
though he was purporting to be leading the opposition to boycott French
businesses.
In
the SDF convention of April 1999, he gave orders to his “Boys’ to ensure the
defeat of those who were beginning to question the direction he was taking the
party to, that is, those who were not stooges. Prominent amongst these rising
voices were Professor Asonganyi, Andrew Akonteh and Dr. Samuel Tchwenko. Andrew
Akonteh lost in the elections, but Dr. Samuel Tchwenko emerged as the second
most popular figure from the convention. Fru Ndi’s obsession to silence those
party figures who refused to be sheepishly loyal, who opposed his rising
personality cult, who decried the derailment of the party and who were
beginning to be vocal in questioning the corruption in the party, was again
revealed when he directly intervened to make sure that the Kumbo candidate who
was vying for the post of North West provincial chairman never got elected. By
2000, the SDF was on the fast lane to becoming irredeemably dysfunctional,
taking on the form of other political parties like Kodock’s UPC, Bello’s NUDP
and Ndam Njoya’s CDU that had become open businesses working for the
establishment.
By 2002, the SDF had
fully become hijacked by a mafia-style clique under the patronage of Fru Ndi, a
clique that had no vision for the “New Cameroon” (New Cameroon), a clique that
had become an obstacle to change, like the French-imposed system that the
struggle was meant to change.
When
asked by a prominent pro-SDF European diplomat about the measure of support the
SDF had in Cameroon, Fru Ndi’s reply was “about 60%”.
When told that they (European diplomats) estimated SDF’s support at above 70%,
Fru Ndi acted surprised.
“Then how come SDF has not made it to power?” the diplomat asked further.
That
was at a time when Fru Ndi had found his comfort zone within the pro-SCNC,
pro-union government and Ngemba circles of the SDF. That was at a time when Fru
Ndi had pushed the SDF into parliament, thereby accepting the 43seats the SDF
had been allowed to have (24% of the total number of seats in the parliament).
Fru Ndi had sold the SDF cheap against the advice and pleas from the union
nationalists, revolutionaries, and intellectuals in the party; he had turned
his back against the forces in the party that had given the SDF its relevance.
Fru Ndi and his clique had become an obstacle in maintaining the SDF as an
effective opposition to get rid of the Biya regime and change the anachronistic
French-imposed system. Just like Arafat, Stalin and Savimbi in the movements
they led to prominence and then held hostage and dragged into irrelevance, Fru
Ndi had become a problem in the SDF, a fact recognized by the true exponents of
change within the inner ranks of the party, as had members of the inner ranks
in the cases of the afore-mention names. The French welcomed this rollback of
John Fru Ndi, the former CPDM member who apparently turned his back on the CPDM
only to turn around again and start working with his former CPDM comrades. The
diplomatic corps knew that. The Biya regime was overjoyed by the fact that Fru
Ndi had transformed the SDF that committed Cameroonians had crafted a national
movement out of, into a political business in the likes of Bello Bouba’s NUDP,
Ndam Njoya’s CDU, Frederick Koddock’s renegade UPC, Diakolle Diasalla’s MDR,
etc.
Even
so, most Cameroonians were not aware of the fact that Fru Ndi was now serving
the interests of the French-imposed system. It became blatantly evident in
2002, when he signed a pact with the establishment, behind the back of the
party’s National Executive Committee, accepting 13% of the seats the
establishment allocated to the SDF, even though the party was the most popular
across the national territory. Even after the National Executive Committee met
in a session and voted not to accept the fraudulent results of the elections,
Fru Ndi and his clique of collaborators overturned the National Executive
Committee’s decisions days later. This blatant disregard of the democratic
tenets of the party opened the eyes of the revolutionaries and
civic-nationalists in the party to the fact that Fru Ndi had transformed the
SDF within a decade from a great political movement into a business, and then
into a racket. Disillusionment set in full swing, and the cream of the SDF
started leaving the party, in a process that now makes the SDF a pale shadow of
its historic self of 1990-1997.
Die-hard Fru Ndi supporters, of which I was
one until 2002, and of which former Fru Ndi aide Herbert Boh was, still refused
to believe that the firebrand SDF chairman had sold out, despite mounting
evidence. However, in the first senate elections held on April 14, 2013, that
is 17 years after the 1996 constitution established the Senate as the upper
house of parliament, Fru Ndi shocked even the “Doubting Thomas” within and
outside of the SDF by backing the ruling-party’s candidates in other provinces,
while the CPDM backed SDF candidates in exchange, a swap of support that
brought to the limelight what had been a Fru-Ndi/Paul-Biya arrangement to
maintain the establishment in Cameroon, even as the country sinks into the
abyss, even as its neighbors who caught up with Cameroon’s economic progress a
decade ago, advance into the future with a sense of direction that now makes
Cameroon the sick country of the central African region, a country that
supplies cheap labor and crime to its neighbors, yet a country whose people
possess a resourcefulness that is the envy of other Africans. For a people
whose Diaspora outshines the Diaspora of most African countries and nations of
the world, the stifling existence of the Cameroonian establishment, made up of
the Biya regime and the so-called opposition of which Fru Ndi’s SDF is the
leader, is an affront to their dignity and the future of Cameroon.
Today,
the vast majority of the genuine advocates of change agree that Fru Ndi’s
actions have been symbiotic to the existence of the system. For the Biya regime
to survive, Fru Ndi has to survive as the head of the opposition. He would be
there to lead the SDF to contest fraudulent elections, and in the end accept
fraudulent results, which would give legality and legitimacy to the CPDM
government and the Biya regime, thereby perpetuating the anachronistic
French-imposed system or establishment that the vast majority of Cameroonians
have been rejecting for close to seven decades. Today, the SDF, like the CDU,
NUDP, etc., has become a party of the establishment, a party of the
anachronistic French-imposed system.
John
Fru Ndi, the businessman who joined politics and thrived in a corrupt system
that rewards members of the corruption clique, fooled Cameroonians in 1990 that
he had left the establishment. In doing so, he successfully snuggled himself
into the ranks of the new advocates of change and became the head of the
political party that picked up the banner dropped by Ruben Um Nyobe, Felix
Moumie and Ernest Ouandie following their killings by the Franco-Ahidjo mafia
called the Cameroonian establishment. In doing so, he found himself at the forefront
of a century-old struggle to lead Cameroonians to freedom, liberty, prosperity,
democracy, and independence. But then, in a Machiavellian act, he turned around
and delivered this party, the SDF, into the arms of the establishment, thereby
killing the spirit of the cause and betraying the hopes and dreams that
Cameroonians had been sustaining for decades to see change in their beloved
country.
John
Fru Ndi would be remembered in history as Cameroon’s biggest political traitor.
He betrayed hope all right, but the fact that he still hangs on to power and
the position as the head of the SDF, he has successfully marginalised into a
regional party today, makes it extremely difficult for genuine advocates of
change to mount a clear and targeted challenge to the establishment. That is
the case because the SDF he is leading and the other so-called opposition
parties he colludes with have become the decoys of the establishment. In their
desire to stay relevant and make money, these so-called opposition political
parties attack the genuine advocates of change even more than the ruling CPDM
and its satellite political parties. These self-centred and self-delusional
opposition leaders and their cohorts in the Biya regime that together
constitute the system in Cameroon need to be phased out for Cameroon to be
saved and a “New Cameroon” founded.
For a
little while longer, the spectre of John Fru Ndi, Bello Bouba Maigari, Ndam
Njoya, and the other heads of opposition parties, whose purpose is to bolster
the establishment and make Paul Biya and the French-imposed system relevant,
will continue to haunt the Cameroonian political scene---
In Africa's only country where those who
campaigned, fought and died for the country's
reunification and independence from colonial rule under the banner of a
civic-nationalist party called the Union of the Populations of the Cameroons
(UPC), have never made it to power; in the country called Cameroon where the
system established by France in 1958 that excluded more than 80% of the
intellectuals, ignored the voice of the
population and has expanded over the years into a racket of French-imposed and
supported marionettes that are completely detached from the interest of the
country, Paul Biya is the face of the
six-decade Franco-Cameroonian political mafia that in its broader implication
is called "FrancAfrique".
Paul Biya was handed the
position of President of Cameroon in 1982 from his predecessor Ahmadou Ahidjo
who was imposed on the Cameroonian people by France before the new French
Gaullist government allowed French Cameroun to become a member of the United Nations
Organization. Since then, the second Cameroonian head of state has successfully
maintained himself in power despite the opposition of the vast majority of
Cameroonians by tapping on the tacit and open backing of foreign powers and
corporations. As Randy Joe Sa'ah wrote in 2012 on the BBC in a profile of Paul
Biya "He may have adopted his nickname late in his political career—after
the country's football team, the Indomitable Lions, reached the quarter-final
of the 1990 World Cup—but the 79-year-old has employed the tactics of a lion
from the start."...
In fact, Paul Biya devours those
Cameroonians who oppose him or appear threatening to his stay in power. In this profile page culled from the BBC, we
find out how and why the land that was the founding base of the Free French
Forces that went on to liberate Paris from Nazi rule in 1944, the land that the
former German colonial masters called "The African Pearl", the land
that is variously described as "The Microcosm of Africa", the land
that some call the most enlightened in Africa, is trapped in a dictatorship
that has driven its best brains and hands out of the country; we are given an
insight into the nature of a country that boasts the biggest US investment in
Africa, but that cannot shake off an anachronistic French-imposed system that
foreign powers find conducive to maintain for the sake of business, a system
whose maintenance is Paul Biya's only guarantee of his continuous stay in
power.
Janvier Tchouteu, author of “FALLEN HEROES: African Leaders Whose Assassinations Disarrayed the Continent and Benefitted Foreign Interests”
Image copyrightAPImage captionPresident Bashir has held power since his 1989 coup
Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir's career has been defined by war. He came to power in a coup in 1989 and has ruled what was until 2011 Africa's largest country with an iron fist...(Culled from the BBC)
Robert Mugabe came to power in 1980 in Zimbabwe (formerly Southern Rhodesia) from the position of one of the leaders of the rebel groups fighting the white-minority rule of Ian Smith. At the time, he was seen as a revolutionary hero, fighting white minority rule for the freedom of his people - this is why many African leaders remain reluctant to criticise him. The key to understanding Mr Mugabe is the 1970s guerrilla war where he made his name.
Since Zimbabwe's independence, most of the world has moved on - but his outlook remains the same...(Culled from the BBC).
AP