New Cameroon Views Blog: Reconstituting the Forces for the "New Cameroon"

Monday, April 9, 2018

Reconstituting the Forces for the "New Cameroon"

Hmm! I see my former comrades of the SDF (a party I quit in 2002), who could have lynched me not long ago for being steadfast in the long-held view (the civic-nationalist vision that dominated the SDF in the early 1990s fueled by the heirs of the historic UPC) that a "New Cameroon" is the only option for us, edging back to the fold, by asking for a federation/decentralization/confederation, thereby acknowledging that secession or separation is unachievable for the lands of the former West Cameroon (former British Southern Cameroons)--- Northwest and Southwest regions of Cameroon.

By the "New Cameroon" I mean a new era where the French-imposed system has been dismantled and a federal system put in place, where democracy, justice, freedom and economic prosperity reign supreme.

I am glad that today, SDF and former SDF supporters who abandoned the goal of a “New Cameroon”, are beginning to walk back to the all-embracing national ideal of the Cameroonian struggle. Welcome back to the National idea of a hundred plus years.

John Fru Ndi abandoned the basic tenets of this ideal that encompasses a federation by conciliating with the system, thereby helping to sustain it, and thereby making the SDF a party of the system like Bello Bouba's UNDP and Adamu Ndam Njoya's UDC before that. Once again, the system is incapable of realizing "The New Cameroon". Fru Ndi's SDF, like Ndam Njoya’s CDU or Bellow Bouba’s UNDP etc, are the two sides of the same coin---one as the face or the head and the other as the tails.

Nfor Susungi and the others---the pseudo-separatists (those using separatism as a strategy to push the hand of the French-imposed system or the political establishment to grant their goals) and the real separatists (the heirs of those who are or have always been against reunification) in the SDF who used separatism as a weapon, unfortunately, put into disarray the multi-ethnic, multicultural and multi-religious endeavor minus Anglophilism and Francophilism that Cameroonian civic-nationalism encompassed and that the vision of "The New Cameroon" embodied, a vision embraced by the historic UPC of Nyobe/Moumie/Ouandie/Ntumazang/Afana/Kingue etc, and the historic KNDP/OK of Foncha/Ntumazang-Mukong. They weakened the SDF from 1994, so that the forces in the party who believed in using the SDF to get “A share of the National Cake” (The Fru Ndi and co faction that dominates the SDF today) abandoned the quest for systemic change, so that those who continued to embrace the quest for systemic change, became disillusioned.

It is those who never wavered in their embrace of the quest for systemic change--- those who never betrayed---that the struggling Cameroonian masses can fully trust to lead the New Phase of the struggle to realize the "New Camerooon". They are the Kamerunists, the union-nationalists of Cameron. They never considered the separatists, especially the pseudo-separatists, as enemies, but more as victims too, albeit victims who lost their focus. Even some of those involved with the parties of the system (those in the system or those benefiting from it but do not believe in it) are considered as lost sheep who only need to repent, be "desystemized" (“defrancafriquanized”) and take their positions once again as advocates of the "New Cameroon". The process of this reconciliation will lead to the dismantling of the system and the realization of the "NEW Cameroon" we all crave for.

To those who are back, those who are on their way back, those who are thinking of returning and those who are embracing the ideal of the "NEW CAMEROON" for the first time, I say: Welcome Back, You will be Welcomed Back, Welcome!

vier Tchouteu is also the author of " The Mistakes To Be Avoided in Building The New Cameroon"