Saying the truth to those who need it the most often gets the wrong reception. Revolution is a science that those wanting to carry it out need to think it through, taking into account so many factors. No Western institution has a good grasp of it. The fine art of it was never developed in the West nor mastered there. Back in 1997, at a time that our SDF had more than 60% support in Cameroon and the system(Biya regime and France) was treating it with disdain, at a time that I was just back home, some of our people thought the SDF should pick up arms. Despite its popularity, the SDF lacked a national idea, a unifying ideology that all those who militated in, supported, sympathized with or led it could identify as a rallying or sobering source.
Advocates for a revolution should never dismiss the aspect of "unintended consequences" arising from an abortive revolution, especially one that is not well formulated. The SDF at the time was different things to different peoples. It was “na wya party" in different senses (tribal, linguistic, ethnic, regional, national, etc)of the phrase, hence a recipe for the worst (the unleashing of the Pandora's box) in a situation where it engaged in an armed struggle against the system.
In a nutshell, a revolution needs more than just goal(s). Cameroon, whether as a whole or a part of it needed a unifying idea or ideal in the democratic/revolutionary phase meant to finally bring down the system. Hence the article below entitled " TERROR: POLITICAL WEAPON, SOCIAL INFECTION, DEHUMANISER:", meant as a caution, or call it a warning cry. That task of coming up with a unifying idea was close to completion before the insurrection in Anglophone Cameroon. Now, it requires a genius or a madman to reverse this descent into political lethargy and other things, which are all to the benefit of the French-imposed system that is almost comatose. In fact, the moribund system under the Biya regime is feeding off the growing anarchy and getting a lease of life from the degeneration in the regions West of the River Mungo called the Northwest and Southwest.
And it would be a difficult task in any national and civic-nationalist endeavor to dismantle the system without considerable participation of the land and peoples of the Northwest and Southwest regions. That can only happen with the Kamerunist (union-nationalists) and federalists, who are the majority West of the Mungo, exerting themselves and extending a hand to the other forces of change in the rest of Cameroon.
In a nutshell, a revolution needs more than just goal(s). Cameroon, whether as a whole or a part of it needed a unifying idea or ideal in the democratic/revolutionary phase meant to finally bring down the system. Hence the article below entitled " TERROR: POLITICAL WEAPON, SOCIAL INFECTION, DEHUMANISER:", meant as a caution, or call it a warning cry. That task of coming up with a unifying idea was close to completion before the insurrection in Anglophone Cameroon. Now, it requires a genius or a madman to reverse this descent into political lethargy and other things, which are all to the benefit of the French-imposed system that is almost comatose. In fact, the moribund system under the Biya regime is feeding off the growing anarchy and getting a lease of life from the degeneration in the regions West of the River Mungo called the Northwest and Southwest.
And it would be a difficult task in any national and civic-nationalist endeavor to dismantle the system without considerable participation of the land and peoples of the Northwest and Southwest regions. That can only happen with the Kamerunist (union-nationalists) and federalists, who are the majority West of the Mungo, exerting themselves and extending a hand to the other forces of change in the rest of Cameroon.
March 2019
I quit the SDF in 2002 when Fru Ndi led the SDF in betraying the ideals of the Cameroonian struggle to complete its unfinished liberation by openly collaborating with the Biya regime and the French-imposed system through the Fru Ndi/Ngwasiri pact with the system to accept the councils and 23 parliamentary (13%) seats the regime allowed the SDF to keep, even though the SDF was the most popular political party in the country. Those seats were predominantly in the Northwest, hence Fru Ndi helped the regime/system in the game plan to tag the SDF as a regional party or a Northwest party, a capitulation by the Fru Ndi mafia in the SDF that effectively killed the party as a national party and perceived successor of the historic UPC that the civic-nationalists who had joined the party projected it to be.
Janvier Tchouteu is the author of " The Mistakes To Be Avoided in Building The New Cameroon"
Cameroon: France’s Dysfunctional Puppet System in Africa
by Janvier Tchouteu,
